I cheated on a unit test in math class this morning during second period with Mr. Burke. Afterward, I was too sick to eat lunch just thinking about it.

I came straight home from school, went to my room, and lay on the floor trying to decide whether it would be better to run away from home now or after supper. Mostly I wished I was dead. It wasn't even an accident that I cheated.

Yesterday Mr. Burke announced there'd be a unit test and anyone who didn't pass would have to come to school on Saturday, most particularly me, since I didn't pass the last unit test. I did plan to study just to prove to him that I'm plenty smart—which I am mostly—except in math.

Anyway, I got my desk ready to study on . Just when I was ready to work, Nicho came into my room with our new rabbit and it jumped on my desk and knocked the flashcards all over the floor. What a mess! Nicho and I finally took the rabbit outside but then Philip came to my room and also Marty from next door and before long it was dinner.

After dinner my father said I could watch a special on television if I'd done all my homework. Of course I said I had. That was the beginning. I felt terrible telling my father a lie about the homework.

It was nine o'clock when I got up to my room and that was too late to study for the unit test so I lay in my bed with the light off and decided what I would do the next day when I was in Mr. Burke's math class not knowing the 8- and 9-times tables. So, you see, the cheating was planned after all.

The next day, I'd go into class as usual, acting like things were going just great. I'd sit down next to Stanley Plummer—he is so smart in math it makes you sick—and from time to time, I'd glance over at his paper to copy the answers.

Lying on the floor of my room, I begin to think that probably I've been bad all along. It just took this math test to clinch it. I'll probably never tell the truth again. I tell my mother I'm sick when she calls me to come down for dinner. She doesn't believe me, but puts me to bed anyhow. I lie there in the early winter darkness wondering what terrible thing I'll be doing next when my father comes in and sits down on my bed.

"What's the matter?" he asks. "I've got a stomachache," I say. Luckily, it's too dark to see his face. "Is that all?" "Yeah." "Mommy says you've been in your room since school." "I was sick there too," I say. "She thinks something happened today and you're upset." That's the thing that really drives me crazy about my mother. She knows things sitting inside my head the same as if I was turned inside out.

"Well," my father says. I can tell he doesn't believe me. "My stomach is feeling sort of upset." I hedge. "Okay," he says and he pats my leg and gets up.

Just as he shuts the door to my room I call out to him in a voice I don't even recognize as my own. "How come?" he calls back not surprised or anything. So I tell him I cheated on this math test. To tell the truth, I'm pretty much surprised at myself. I didn't plan to tell him anything.

He doesn't say anything at first and that just about kills me. I'd be fine if he'd spank me or something. And then he says I'll have to call Mr. Burke. It's not what I had in mind. "Now?" I ask surprised. "Now," he says. He turns on the light and pulls off my covers. "I'm not going to," I say.

But I do it. I call Mr. Burke, and I tell him exactly what happened, even that I decided to cheat the night before the test. He says I'll come on Saturday to take another test, which is okay with me, and I thank him a whole lot for being understanding and all.

"Today I thought I was turning into a criminal," I tell my father when he turns out my light. Sometimes my father kisses me good night and sometimes he doesn't. I never know. But tonight he does.

1.After the author cheated on the math test, he felt ____________.

A．frightened because he might be caught

B．excited that he had succeeded

C．pleased that nobody knew it

D．unhappy because he had done something wrong

2.By “It wasn't even an accident that I cheated”, the author means that ________.

A．he had planned not to study before the test

B．he decided to cheat when he knew there was going to be a test

C．he decided to cheat after he had wasted the whole evening

D．he had planned to cheat with Plummer before the test

3.The author’ mother often drives him crazy because _____-.

A．She really knows what he is thinking

B．she was very strict with him

C．she doesn’t believe him

D．she asks him to come down for dinner

4.After he was informed of what he had done, the father _______.

A．scolded the author severely

B．didn’t say anything and left

C．called Mr. Burke immediately

D．let the author make a call to Mr. Burke

5.The author’s father kissed the author good night because ________-.

A．he had done something unusual

B．he promised to study math harder

C．he was willing to take a make-up test

D．he realized his mistake and had the courage to admit it

He came into the room to shut the windows while we were still in bed and I saw he looked ill. He was shivering, his face was white, and he walked slowly as though it ached to move.
“What's the matter, Schatz?”
“I've got a headache.”
“You better go back to bed.”
“No. I'm all right.”
“You go to bed. I'll see you when I'm dressed.”
But when I came downstairs he was dressed, sitting by the fire, looking a very sick and miserable boy of nine years. When I put my hand on his forehead I knew he had a fever.
“You go up to bed,” I said, “You're sick.”
“I'm all right,” he said.
When the doctor came he took the boy's temperature.
“What's is it?” I asked him.
“One hundred and two.”
Downstairs, the doctor left three different medicines in different colored capsules with instructions for giving them. One was to bring down the fever, another a purgative(泻药), the third to overcome an acid condition. The germs of influenza（流感）can only exist in an acid condition, he explained. He seemed to know all about influenza and said there was nothing to worry about if the fever did not go above one hundred and four degrees. This was a light epidemic(传染病；传染性的) of flu and there was no danger if you avoided pneumonia（肺炎）.
Back in the room I wrote the boy's temperature down and made a note of the time to give the various capsules.
“Do you want me to read to you?”
“All right. If you want to, “ said the boy. His face was very white and there were dark areas under his eyes. He lay still in the bed and seemed very detached（超然的；冷漠的）from what was going on.
I read aloud from Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates（海盗）;but I could see he was not following what I was reading.
“How do you feel, Schatz?” I asked him.
“Just the same, so far,” he said.
I sat at the foot of the bed and read to myself while I waited for it to be time to give another capsule. It would have been natural for him to go to sleep, but when I looked up he was looking at the foot of the bed, looking very strangely.
“Why don't you try to sleep? I'll wake you up for the medicine.”
“I'd rather stay awake.”
After a while he said to me, “You don't have to stay in here with me, Papa, if it bothers you.”
“It doesn't bother me.”
“No, I mean you don't have to stay if it's going to bother you.”
I thought perhaps he was a little lightheaded and after giving him the prescribed capsules at eleven o'clock I went out with my gun and the young hunting dog….I killed two quail(鹌鹑), and missed five, and started back pleased to have found a covey of quail close to the house and happy there were so many left to find on another day.
At the house they said the boy had refused to let anyone come into the room.
“You can't come in,” he said. “You mustn't get what I have.”
I went up to him and found him in exactly the position I had left him, white-faced, but with the tops of his cheeks flushed（发红）by the fever, staring still, as he had stared, at the foot of the bed.
I took his temperature.
“What is it?”
“Something like a hundred,” I said. It was one hundred and two and four tenths.
“It was a hundred and two,” he said.
“Who said so?”
“The doctor.”
“Your temperature is all right,” I said. “It's nothing to worry about.”
“I don't worry,” he said, “but I can't keep from thinking.”
“Don't think,” I said. “Just take it easy.”
“I'm taking it easy,” he said and looked straight ahead, He was evidently holding tight onto himself about something.
“Take this with water.”
“Do you think it will do any good?”
“Of course it will.”
I sat down and opened the Pirate book and began to read, but I could see he was not following, so I stopped.
“About what time do you think I'm going to die?” he asked.
“What?”
“About how long will it be before I die?”
“You aren't going to die. What's the matter with you? “
“Oh, yes, I am, I heard him say a hundred and two.”
“People don't die with a fever of one hundred and two. That's a silly way to talk.”
“I know they do. At school in France the boys told me you can't live with forty-four degrees. I've got a hundred and two.”
He had been waiting to die all day, ever since nine o'clock in the morning.
“You poor Schatz,” I said. “Poor old Schatz. It's like miles and kilometers. You aren't going to die. That's different thermometer. On that thermometer thirty-seven is normal. On this kind it's ninety-eight.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” I said, “It's like miles and kilometers. You know, like how many kilometers we make when we do seventy miles in the car?”
“Oh,” he said.
But his gaze at the foot of the bed relaxed slowly. The hold over himself relaxed too, finally, and the next day it was very slack(松驰的) and he cried very easily at little things that were of no importance.
【小题1】The author writes about the doctor’s visit in order to _____.