against. There's a movement to give vouchers for private schools when the public ones don't perform as well as they should."

"I do know that," Jane said pleasantly. She'd expected a Miss Milton to be straight out of college, but the woman was nearly Jane's age.

"This school district isn't in any danger, mind. But the school board decided to test first thing this year and again at the end of the year, and see what sort of improvement was made."

"I see," Jane said, wondering when Miss Milton would get to the point.

"This is a national test. I forgot to say that up front. And your Todd tested into the high ninety-ninth percentile."

Jane was too astonished to speak for a moment. "Are you sure of that?" she finally managed to ask.

Miss Milton nodded. "It's a remarkable skill that he's never shown. His previous scores in past years on the same sort of test put him in the upper sixtieth percentile. That's good, of course. But we have no idea why this great leap of skill happened."

"He went a few weeks to that half-day summer school the district set up," Jane said, "but didn't seem to enjoy anything but the math class. And he's become unusually studious this year. He's never really cared what kind of grades he gets, but seems to have turned a corner. Hormones, maybe," Jane finished with a smile.

"You're sure that's it?"

The smile faded. "Excuse me, Miss Milton. You're not suggesting that Todd cheated, are you?"

"I'm not suggesting it at all, but I'm forced to ask when there's such a remarkable difference."

"When was this test taken?" Jane asked.

Miss Milton told her date.

"I've got my datebook in the car. Let me get it."

When Jane returned, she had the datebook open to the week in question. "Monday he did his social studies homework right after school and was allowed to go to a seven o'clock showing of a movie. I picked him up. Here's the note of the time I was to be there," she said, pointing to the entry. "It's not noted here, but he came home, watched a television program with me about some sort of little furry African animals I've forgotten the name of, and went to bed with the lights out."