Rewriting My Score

The congratulatory poster in the principal's hands had someone else's name printed on it.

And the people walking straight toward Tyson were police officers.

The two groups approached and then split apart. Everyone present froze, caught off guard by the sudden turn of events.

The reporters quickly realized they had been interviewing the wrong person.

Even so, not one of them left. When cops show up like that, you don't walk away. You wait and see what blows up.

All eyes shifted to Tyson. His face went pale, and he cast me a quick, uncertain glance. Before he could say anything, the officers were already in front of him.

"Are you Tyson Jenkins?" one of them asked, holding up a photo for comparison.

With so many people watching, Tyson could only nod.

"You're suspected of cheating on the SAT. You'll need to come with us."

Tyson froze for a moment, then shook his head.

"I didn't cheat, officer. I-I really didn't." He tried to steady himself. "If someone cheats on the SAT, wouldn't they be caught during the test?"

After a brief pause, he asked, "Did someone report me?"

His gaze shifted toward me, sharp with suspicion.

The students around him quickly spoke up in his defense.

"Officer, Tyson's one of the top students! He wouldn't cheat!"

"Some people in our class have always been jealous of him. He's probably being set up."

"If there was cheating, they would've flagged the test right there, why show up now?"

"Someone's clearly messing with him! You should look into it and clear his name."

The officer didn't budge. "No one reported you. The problem is with your test."

Tyson frowned, clearly lost, like he couldn't piece together how this could happen if no one had turned him in.

Then, his eyes widened.

"Officer, I think you've got the wrong person. My name is Tyson Jenkins, but that's a common name, and I ranked in the top 50 in the state on the SAT. There's no reason for me to cheat."

The students around him backed him up, insisting that his score had even been withheld, which only proved nothing was wrong.

The officer narrowed his eyes. "Have you checked your score?"

"Not yet."

The officer glanced down at the photo again, then looked back up, his tone turning hard. "If you haven't checked it, how do you know there's no problem? This is serious, so don't try to talk your way out of it."

Before Tyson could respond, Paul stepped forward.

"Good thing the website’s working now. Tyson, just pull up your score right here in front of everyone. If you're wrong about him, then everyone here owes him an apology."

Tyson hesitated, unease settling in.

He hadn't taken the test himself; if something had gone wrong, it wasn't something he could fix.

But with everyone watching and speaking up for him, he had no choice but to sit down at the computer and check. His hands trembled slightly as he entered his information.

The screen loaded.

A zero.

"N-No, that's not possible," Tyson stammered, staring at the screen in disbelief.

People around him started talking all at once, saying the score had to be wrong. Even someone who never went to high school wouldn't get a zero.

The officer cut through the noise.

"You cheated, so you don't get a score," he said. "You filled out your entire test in red ink. That alone counts as cheating."

Tyson stood there, frozen. Slowly, he turned to look at me, his eyes wide with shock.

I met his gaze and smiled.