Ten minutes before the physics test I saw the question paper on the teacher’s desk.
I did not steal it. I only photographed it with my phone. That was all: two seconds, and the answers to all eight questions were in my pocket.
That evening I did not study. Why would I? The photo was there. I opened it, looked at it, and closed it. Then I opened it again. Then I put the phone down on the carpet and fell asleep with my hand lying on the carpet, as if I wanted to hold on to it.
In the morning Zsófi was waiting at the gate. She had waited there every morning for two weeks, because we walked into the physics room together, and on the way she recited the formulas and I corrected her when she got one wrong.
“Mass times acceleration.”
“That’s force.”
“I know. I just like saying it.”
Zsófi had been studying for weeks. The scholarship was for one place, and two of us had applied: she and I. It was the only thing we ever competed over, and we never talked about it.
During the test eight questions waited. I knew the answer to all eight before I had read them. It is the worst feeling I know: not not knowing something, but knowing it and it not being yours.
At the seventh question I put down my pen.
I do not remember how long I sat there. The teacher looked at me once, then moved on. The others wrote. Zsófi bent over her paper in the second row, and her hair hid her face.
At the end of the test I did not hand in my paper.
“Not finished?” asked the teacher.
“No,” I said.
That was not true. It was finished. It just was not mine.
In the corridor Zsófi asked:
“What happened?”
“Nothing. Bad day.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes.”
She did not ask anything else. That was the best thing about her: she knew when to stop.
A week later we got the results. The scholarship went to Zsófi. Mine was a fail, and the teacher called me in.
“Will you tell me what happened?”
And then I told her. All of it. The photo too. Not because I was brave, but because by then I could not hold it in any longer.
The teacher was silent for a long time.
“I’ll be there at the retake,” she said at last. “But delete the photo now.”
I deleted it. I did not look at it again.
The retake had eight questions, and I solved all eight. I did not know a single one in advance. It was the hardest and the best test of my life.
Zsófi never found out. Not because it is a secret, but because it was not her business. Hers was to study, and to deserve it.
Sometimes I think of that morning, with the phone lying on the carpet. If I had decided differently then, I would still know the answers today.
And I would know nothing about myself.
