The Blackmail and Retribution Ch. 01

Barun was the one to notice it: Shanti Rangaswamy cheating on an examination! He nudged his friend Girish and pointed towards the front of the class.

"Check it out," he whispered.

They were all in the 11th class of the 10+2 stream and Stacy had failed twice while the guys had failed thrice in their previous classes - and now aged past the prime of a 11th class student at 18 years of age - and the two boys were men of 19 years.

Girish saw, but couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Shanti Rangaswamy- the ice-queen cock tease of the senior class at Greenwood High School Adyar Chennai - was staring intently at a slip of paper hidden on her desk under the exam.

Just then, Mr.Wilson, the teacher, coughed quietly and shifted position in his seat at the front of the class.

Shanti quickly pushed the cheat-sheet back under the exam paper and looked up guiltily, her face flushing a pretty shade of red. If Mr.Wilson had glanced over at her at that moment he would certainly have known that something was wrong with her.

But why would he be checking out Shanti Rangaswamy, who had been getting straight A grades ever since she had begun attending Greenwood High four years ago?

Instead, he turned his attention to Barun Pal and Girish Raman, who were the class trouble-makers: Barun with his long, greasy hair and semi-stylish ripped clothes and Girish with his cynical, cutting sense of geek humour. Sure enough, they were grinning and whispering together at the back of the classroom rather than writing the exam.

"Pal... Raman," he called out, drawing himself laboriously out of his chair and up to his rather unimpressive full height, "Front of the class."

No longer smiling, the two boys got up and walked slowly forward, the centre of attention, with everyone in the class looking up at them from their exams.

Barun noticed Shanti miring at him with her typical, haughty sneer. Bitch, he thought, we'll see who's laughing in a second.

"Mr.Wilson," he blurted as he reached the front of the room,

"We saw..."

He was cut off by Girish elbowing him subtly, but stiffly, in the side. He drew in a breath to continue speaking, but he was interrupted by the angry teacher. "You two have been nothing but trouble since you started this class in September," Mr.Wilson announced, his full white mustache quivering with indignation.

"I can no longer allow you to disrupt this class with your infantile jokes and games, particularly during exams."

Barun started to protest, but was again cut off by Mr.Wilson, who had worked up a full head of steam.

"You have both failed this examination. You will apologize to the class for the disruption, and then you will leave." He glared at the two boys. "Do you understand?"

Both boys nodded a sullen 'yes'.

"Any further problems," the teacher finished his pronouncement of sentence, "And you will be removed from this class permanently. Perhaps you will be able to make up the course in summer school."

Girish didn't react, but Barun looked up in alarm.

That was about the most serious threat a teacher could make, short of outright expulsion.

Adyar was a beach town in southern Chennai, and summer was by far the best time of the year, particularly for these outgrown school going folks and being forced to waste the summer months inside the stuffy high school while everyone else partied on the beach was about the worst fate a schooler could suffer.

Apparently cowed, Barun and Girish turned around and stammered out an embarrassed apology to the class.

A few kids giggled - Barun noted that Shanti was one of them - but most looked away, uncomfortable at the humiliation of their fellow students. The two boys then filed out of classroom and into the hallway.

Shanti shrugged her black hair off her shoulder and looked back down at the examination as the class returned to normal. Thank god those two geeks were gone, she thought, and tried to put Barun and Girish from her mind.

In her world, there were "people" and there were "geeks", and Barun and Girish definitely fell into the latter category. She wouldn't even have known their names except that Barun had spent the better part of the first term of the previous year following her about, and had even asked her out on a date.

As if! She had refused in as cruel a manner as she knew how (which was pretty cruel), and had later asked Prasad, her then boyfriend and captain of the football team, to beat Barun up, just to warn him off.

Prasad had dutifully administered the beating, and Barun had backed off.

She had soon afterward broken up with Prasad - he had lost his place on the football team that spring - and had put the entire episode from her mind.

Reluctantly, she turned her attention back to the exam. She frowned down at the test, as if she could intimidate the answers off the written page.

Questions which had been easy for her a year ago now seemed impossibly hard.

Shanti was quite intelligent, and had always gotten almost perfect marks at school, but lately the constant burden of socializing - cheer leading, beach parties, student council etc. - had left her little time for schoolwork. As a result, she had found herself approaching the first set of school exams of her senior year completely unprepared.

And if she did poorly or - unthinkable - failed, she would loose her record of straight as and would probably fail to be elected Homecoming Queen, the goal toward which she had been working for the last few years.

Hence, she had decided to make a few crib notes to get her through the first round of exams. After that, she told herself, she would get back on track with the schoolwork.

Looking around to make certain she was unobserved, she pushed the exam paper upwards to expose the notes she had written on the cheat-sheet...

Barun smouldered with anger as walked down the hall with Girish. That had been the perfect chance to get back at that bitch Shanti, and Girish had blown it for him! Barun's thoughts lingered on Shanti as he grumbled to himself.

Shanti was one of those unattainable high school princesses who enjoyed showing herself off, but didn't put out.

With her shoulder-length black hair, perfect face (large green eyes, pert nose and thick,pouty lips), and athlete's body (she was a member of both the swim team and the track team), she was easily the most beautiful girl in Greenwood, and every male student's dream.

But dream she remained for most. She moved exclusively in the highest high school social circles, and only went out with sports stars and the like. Barun had developed a crush on her earlier the previous year, and it wasn't until she had in sent that football jerk to beat him up that he got over her.

The fact was, she only noticed guys like Barun (and Girish, for that matter) when they bothered her, and she had to put them off (or "...out of their misery..." as Barun had once heard her laughingly remark to one of her friends).

The two boys left the school by the side entrance and began to walk across the south parking lot. Finally, Barun could contain himself no longer.

"Why'd you shut me up in there?" he complained, "I had that bitch right where I wanted her. I owe her."

Girish just smiled at this, making Barun uncomfortable. Where Barun was loud and obnoxious, Girish was quiet and strange. Despite the fact that the two had been friends for a number of years, Girish was still capable of unnerving his larger friend with his strange smile and even stranger ideas.

"What's so funny?" Barun asked nervously.

"You're right," Girish answered quietly, "We do have her where we want her, but not in the way you mean."

Barun was puzzled. "What are you talking about?"

"If you had told on her back in the classroom just now, Wilson might or might not have believed you. Probably not; you know he doesn't like us.

And if not - if Shanti had managed to hide her cheating - we would have been kicked out of the class for good, and been stuck in summer school. And even if he had caught her, at most she would have failed the exam, if that. The teachers love her. Then she would set her friends on us."

"But..." Barun began.

"You remember Prasad."

Barun could only nod glumly in agreement, recalling the beating he had suffered last year. Shanti had no shortage of friends on the football team. "So," he said finally, "You said we had her where we wanted her."

"Yes, I did," Girish agreed.

"How?"

By now, the two boys had reached Girish's car, a large, black Elentra. Girish unlocked the doors before answering. "If she's cheating now on a math test," he explained, "she must be in trouble with her schoowork. She's always gotten top marks in math."

"Yeah?" Barun was still confused. "So?"

"So," Girish continued patiently, "It's a pretty safe bet she'll cheat again. There's an English test coming up next week, and I don't think a little cheat-sheet will be of much use to her. You have to have read the material." He started up the car and began to pull out of the parking space.

Barun thought this over as Girish maneuvered the vehicle out of the school parking lot and onto the road.

"So," he asked finally, "What do we do about it?"

"I'll tell you when we get to Reshma's place," Girish answered, "We'll need her for what I have in mind."

Reshma was Girish's friend and sometime girlfriend.

Barun was never really sure about their relationship - he knew that they went out and that they occasionally had sex, but he also knew that Reshma did the same with at least a couple of other guys.

Girish, however, didn't seem to mind, so Barun had decided to take things at face value. He had even made something of a pass at Reshma at a School party last summer, but had been rebuffed.

He was philosophical about it; Reshma wasn't really his type anyway. The girl in question appeared in the doorway, answering their knock.

A year younger than the two boys, Reshma was short and heavy, with large breasts and curly, brown hair.

Any suggestion of cuteness, however, was quickly dispelled by her hard face and small, piggy (Barun thought) eyes. If there was any beauty there, it was definitely in the eye of the beholder.

She was smoking a cigarette as she answered the door.

After a quick greeting (and an obligatory "hello" to Reshma's mother - propped up, as usual, in front of the television), Reshma led the two boys down to her basement bedroom, locking the door behind her (Reshma's parents were "progressive", and felt that she needed her privacy).

Barun accepted a cigarette and flopped down into a chair while pulling a lighter from his jacket pocket.

Girish, who didn't smoke, just leaned up against the dresser. Reshma lay down on the bed and propped herself up with a pillow.

"So," she asked, flicking some ash onto the dirty shag carpet, "What are you guys doing here? I thought you had math with Wilson until 3:00."

Barun grimaced. "We did," he answered, "Until he kicked us out."

"What?"

Girish took over the explanation and outlined the sequence of events that had led to their expulsion from the math class.

Typically, Reshma immediately blamed Shanti. "That cunt!" she swore angrily, "Cheating on the test and getting you guys kicked out. She's really asking for it."

"Yes, she is," Girish agreed quietly, "And I think I know how we can give it to her."

"What do you mean?"

"We know she's cheating on her exams, right?"

Barun and Reshma nodded in agreement.

"I think that it's pretty likely she'll cheat again. I don't think that she's had to do it before, so she's probably way behind in her work.

The fact that she's cheating - and that we know she's cheating - gives us a hold on her; a way of blackmailing her, but we need more."

Barun thought this over for a few moments. "Like what?" he asked.

"First, we need concrete evidence of the cheating. No one is going to take our word over Shanti's. That's where you come in, Reshma. Your dad lets you use his video camera and radio - microphone. We'll use that to trap her."

"And then what?" Barun was starting to become excited at the prospect of blackmailing Shanti. Girish fell silent for a moment, looking at his two friends.

"How much," he asked finally, his voice strained and odd, "How much do you hate her? I mean really. How much do you want to see her suffer?"

"Hey man," Barun answered uneasily, "I just want to get back at her for putting me down last year. I don't want to, like, beat her up or anything."

"Well, I would," Reshma spat out. "I hate the bitch. Always flaunting herself, and prancing about like she owns the whole fucking school. She deserves whatever she gets. I'll do whatever you want to help get her."

Girish looked over a Barun, his eyebrows raised as if to ask 'are you in?'.

"Aw, fuck it," Barun said finally, "I hate the bitch as much as anybody. I'm in all the way."

"Good," Girish nodded, "Cause when we're through with her, she'll be the biggest slut in the history of Greenwood High."

The English exam was being held the following Monday, only five days away, so they had to move quickly.

The first step was to get a hold of the exam questions beforehand, a proposition which might have proved difficult but for the advances in electronics technology which had culminated in the computer.

Exam papers were commonly written out on school computers and stored in the school network, which allowed for "maximum flexibility within the school bureaucracy regarding application of secretarial assets".

Incidentally, it also allowed someone with the appropriate equipment and skills to break into the system and download the required information without leaving any traces of his actions.

Girish, something of a hacker, had broken into the system a number of times in the past with his home computer and modem and was quite familiar with both the security measures and the layout of information within the network.

In the end, it took him all of about twenty minutes to download the appropriate exam paper. Barun and Reshma were impressed.

"Deva deva," she muttered, "I wish you'd told me about this before I failed my fucking history test last year."

Girish just shook his head. "I don't think this is the kind of thing you want to do too often. If I go in often enough, they'll figure out what's going on. I was saving if for a special occasion." He looked up at his two friends and grinned maliciously. "And I think this is it."

Frustrated, Shanti slammed the book shut.

The exam was coming up in just a few days, and there was no way she was going to be ready.

She had done her best to catch up on the first two months' work in a couple of days, but it was almost impossible for her even to get through the material in time for the test, much less actually understand it. And there was impossible for her to cheat on this exam the way she had in math.

In that class, she had gotten away with writing out a number of formulas and applications on crib notes, but that just wouldn't work for an English test.

There was too much material to read and assimilate, and without knowing exactly what material the test was going to focus on, she was forced to try to learn it all in just a few days: a daunting task at best, and almost certainly doomed to failure.

She was going to blow the test for sure!

Shanti slumped back in her chair and stared at her pouting reflection in the desk mirror.

It wasn't fair. How could she be expected to keep up with all of this classwork while at the same time attend all the student council meetings as well as the swim club practices each morning.

It was impossible. They just expected too much of her! She felt her large, green eyes brimming with tears; she wanted to be Head Girl so badly, and now...

She was interrupted from her self-pity by the ring of the phone at her bedside. Sniffling, she got up and crossed the room to answer it.

"Hello?" It was Ashima, her friend from school. Careful to disguise her inner turmoil (Ashima, like all of the other girls in their particular clique, could smell weakness the way a shark smells blood; any hint of a problem and it would be all over the group by the end of the next school day, threatening Shanti's position), Shanti fell easily into the standard school banter of gossip, innuendo and casual put-downs of other students. Shanti was good at this, and Ashima sensed nothing out of place.

After a while, Barun's name came up and Shanti happily recounted the events of yesterday's math test.

Ashima had almost certainly heard about it by now, but the combination of a first-hand account together with Shanti's particular style of sarcastic humour made the story well worth hearing for a second time.

The two girls were soon laughing together at what had happened.

"Well," Ashima laughed at the end of the story, "It does sound as if they made absolute assholes of themselves, alright. And that threat of summer school must have scared the shit out of them from what I heard."

"What do you mean?"

"I heard that Barun has got a hold of some of some of the exam papers coming up. I guess he wants to bring up his overall marks so Wilson can't fail him or something like that."

Shanti felt her heart jump a beat as her breath caught in her chest. Barun had copies of future exams? "Where did you hear that?" she asked, trying to keep her voice casual. Evidently she had succeeded, as Ashima failed to detect the change of mood.

"Sana told me," she answered, "I think she heard it from Reshma, although why she was talking to that cow, I don't know. You remember Reshma? She was the one..." Ashima started to drone on about Reshma, who was definitely not a part of their exclusive clique, but Shanti wasn't listening. Barun had copies of some upcoming tests.

AND HE WAS IN HER ENGLISH CLASS!

After a while, Ashima wound down, and Shanti let the conversation die a natural death. While she was careful not to mention Barun and the exam papers again, it was never far from her mind. Finally, the two girls said goodbye and Shanti hung up the phone.

Thoughtful, she walked back to her desk and looked the pile of unread English books. Cheating was a serious matter at Greenwood (it had taken her a long time to screw up her courage enough to do it during the math test), but stealing exam papers was something else altogether.

She remembered a guy who had been caught with a stolen paper about four years ago, when she was in her first year at the high school.

He had not only been expelled, but the school had prosecuted him for breaking and entering and theft (they succeeded on the first count, but failed on the second).

It had been all over the papers in Adyar. She shuddered at the thought of that happening to her, but what was the alternative?

Besides, she thought, making up her mind, she wasn't going to get caught; she was too smart for that.

It was all too easy!

Shanti had approached him the next day - just as Girish had predicted - and, in the guise of sympathizing with him over his humiliation in Wilson's math class a couple of days ago, she had sounded him out about the papers for the upcoming exams.

As Girish had instructed him, Barun pretended to be suffering from a bad cold and sore throat, and lowered his voice to a rasp. Shanti didn't seem notice; either she didn't care, or couldn't remember what he normally sounded like. Probably both.

Enjoying the experience of Shanti being friendly to him (although aware that Shanti had skilfully manipulated the circumstances of their "accidental" meeting in such a way as to locate it in the Study Hall, which was usually deserted), Barun drew the encounter out, repeatedly side-stepping her indirect attempts to get him to admit to having the papers.

Finally, she was forced to ask him directly: did he have copies of the upcoming exam papers? Seemingly reluctant, Barun eventually admitted that "yes" he happened to have some copies of future exam papers, and "yes", in particular, he did have copy of next week's English exam.