My name is Adithya. Everyone calls me Adi. I’m ten years old, and my sister Divya is thirteen, and she thinks she knows everything.
She doesn’t know everything. I know something she doesn’t know I know.
I know she’s cheating.
It started three weeks ago when she won the district spelling bee. She came home wearing a red ribbon that said FIRST PLACE, and everyone acted like she’d won the Olympics or something.
Sastry Uncle came over and said, “You’ve brought honour to our street!” Like our street was in some competition with other streets, and we were finally winning.
Radha Aunty brought sweets. The good kind, not the cheap ones. That’s how you know something is important—when adults bring good sweets.
Even Father looked proud, and Father never looked proud. He always looks worried about money, tired from work, or angry about something the government did. But that day, he looked proud.
“Regional competition is in three weeks,” he told her. “You’ll need to study hard. The competition will be tougher.”
“I know, Nana,” Divya said, like she was already bored with being told things.
That night in our room—we share a room, which is annoying because she takes up most of the space and hogs the fan—she made me test her spelling words.
“Bureaucracy,” I said.
“B-U-R-E-A-U-C-R-A-C-Y.”
“Correct. Phlegmatic.”
“That’s not a real word.”
“It’s in your book.”
She grabbed the book, checked, and made a face. “P-H-L-E-G-M-A-T-I-C. Happy?”
“I’m just reading the words. Don’t be mean to me because you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
She was totally nervous. She’d stopped eating properly. She snapped at everyone. She even yelled at Harry—Mrs. Rao’s dog—for barking during her study time.
But then something weird happened.
She stopped studying.
One week before the competition, Divya started going out with her friends after school. Watching movies at Preetha Aunty’s house. Buying puffs at the tea stall. Acting normal, like the competition didn’t even exist.
I thought maybe she’d given up. But she didn’t look sad. She looked… confident. Like she had a secret.
Then Monday morning, I woke up early to pee. When I came back, I heard her whispering on the phone.
“You’re sure? All fifty words? From the actual list?”
Pause.
“Okay. Tomorrow, meet me at the school grounds. Don’t tell anyone.”
She hung up.
I stood there in the dark hallway, my heart beating fast.
What list?
The next day, I followed her after school.
I’m good at following people. I’m small and nobody pays attention to kids anyway. Adults think we’re not listening, not watching, not understanding. But we understand everything. We just pretend we don’t so they keep talking.
Divya met a boy near the school grounds. He was older—maybe seventeen—and wearing a fancy school uniform. Not our school. He handed her a folded paper. She looked around, shoved it in her bag, and left quickly.
I waited until evening. Mother sent Divya to buy coriander from the market.
The second she left, I ran to our room.
Her bag was under the bed. I pulled it out, hands shaking.
Inside her spelling book, between pages 247 and 248, I found it.
A paper. Folded very small. I unfolded it carefully.
REGIONAL SPELLING BEE – ROUND 1
CONFIDENTIAL – DO NOT DISTRIBUTE
Then fifty words:
Chiaroscuro
Onomatopoeia
Fuchsia
Psoriasis
Mnemonic
And forty-five more.
The actual test. The exact words they were going to ask.
My sister was cheating.
I heard the front door open.
I shoved the paper back, pushed the bag under the bed, and ran out of the room.
“Why are you running?” Divya asked, holding vegetables.
“Just… playing.”
She looked at me suspiciously but went to the kitchen.
I went back to our room and sat on the mat, thinking.
What should I do?
If I told Mother and Father, Divya would get in huge trouble. Everyone would find out—Sastry Uncle, Radha Aunty, and everyone who brought sweets. They’d all know she cheated. Father would be so disappointed. He might cry. I’ve never seen Father cry, but I think he might.
But if I didn’t tell, she’d win by cheating. That wasn’t fair to the other kids who actually studied.
And everyone would think she was smart when really she just had the answers.
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
Divya was snoring softly on her side of the mat. The fan squeaked above us. Outside, a dog barked.
I thought about what Uncle Sastry said. “Brought honor to our street.”
But it wasn’t real honor if she cheated.
I thought about Father’s proud face.
But he’d be proud of a lie.
I thought about all the practice sessions where she’d been mean to me, impatient, acting like helping her was wasting her precious time.
And now she wasn’t even actually trying. She’d just bought the answers.
That made me angry.
Around midnight, I made a decision.
I got up very quietly. Took the paper from her bag. Went to the main room where we keep pens and paper for Father’s accounts.
Then I did something I’ve never told anyone until now.
I copied all fifty words. But I changed them. Just one letter in each word. Wrong enough that if she memorized these spellings, she’d fail.
Chiaroscuro became Chiaroscurro (extra R)
Onomatopoeia became Onomatopeia (missing O)
Fuchsia became Fuschia (swapped I and H)
Psoriasis became Psorasis (missing I)
One small mistake in every single word.
My hands were shaking so much that I had to rewrite some letters twice. It took almost an hour.
When I was done, I had a fake list that looked exactly like the real one. Same typing style. Same format. Same “CONFIDENTIAL” warning at the top.
I tore the real list into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Then I folded the fake list exactly the same way and put it back in her book.
Then I went back to bed.
My heart was pounding so hard I thought it would wake her up. But she just kept snoring.
I’d done it.
I’d saved her from being a cheater.
Except… I’d also made sure she’d fail.
I lay there in the dark, wondering if I’d just done something really good or really, really bad.
The next week was horrible.
Divya studied the fake list. Every night, she’d practice those wrong spellings, whispering them to herself, memorizing them perfectly.
“Test me,” she’d say.
“Fuchsia,” I’d say, my stomach hurting.
“F-U-S-C-H-I-A,” she’d say confidently.
“Correct,” I’d lie.
Every time I lied, I felt worse. But I couldn’t tell her the truth now. It was too late.
Sometimes I thought about confessing. Just telling her what I did. But then she’d know I went through her stuff. She’d know I found the list. She’d know she got caught cheating even though she didn’t actually cheat at the competition yet.
Everything was so complicated.
I thought I was helping. Now I wasn’t sure what I was doing.
Competition day was Saturday.
Sastry Uncle organized a bus. Twelve people came—neighbors, friends, people who wanted to watch “our champion” compete at regionals.
The auditorium was huge. Maybe 150 students, all looking serious and smart. City kids with expensive bags and confident faces.
Divya looked nervous for the first time in weeks.
The written round started at 10 AM. An announcer read fifty words. Students had to write the correct spellings.
I watched Divya’s face change as they read the words.
After the first word, she looked confused.
After five words, she was erasing and rewriting.
After ten words, her hand was shaking.
After twenty words, she looked like she might cry.
I felt like I’d kicked a puppy. A mean puppy who stole my cricket cards and hogged the fan, but still a puppy.
At lunch break, I found her sitting on the floor in the corridor, staring at nothing.
“Sister?”
“Something’s wrong.” Her voice was very quiet. “The words… they’re not what I studied. I got maybe ten right. The rest were all wrong.”
“Maybe you made mistakes—”
“Not fifty mistakes, Adi. Someone gave me fake answers. To make me fail.”
“Maybe—”
“Someone did this on purpose.” She looked at me, and her eyes were red. “Someone wanted me to lose.”
I wanted to tell her right then. I wanted to say it was me, I did it, I was trying to help.
But I couldn’t. The words stuck in my throat.
Results came at 2 PM.
Divya placed 89th out of 150. You needed the top 20 to advance to the state level.
On the bus home, nobody talked. Sastry Uncle tried to say encouraging things—”You tried your best, that’s what matters”—but his voice sounded flat and disappointed.
Divya stared out the window the whole way.
That night, she didn’t come to dinner. Just went straight to our room and lay on the mat facing the wall.
Around 10 PM, she finally spoke.
“I cheated.”
I was lying on my side of the mat, pretending to sleep. I froze.
“I know you’re awake, Adi. I can tell by your breathing.”
I didn’t move.
“I got the answer list. The actual regional spelling bee words. Someone gave them to me. That’s why I stopped studying. I thought I just had to memorize fifty words and I’d win.”
Silence.
“But the spellings were wrong. Someone gave me fake answers to sabotage me. And the worst part is… I deserved it. I was cheating. I got what I deserved.”
She started crying. Soft, quiet crying that was somehow worse than loud crying.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m still sorry.”
We lay there in the dark, both of us awake, neither of us saying what we should say.
The next morning, Divya told Mother and Father everything.
I sat in the corner of the main room, very small, very quiet, listening to her confess.
Father’s face went through so many expressions I couldn’t count them all. Shock. Disappointment. Anger. Sadness.
“Why?” he asked finally.
“Because everyone expected me to do well. Because Sastry Uncle said I brought honor to the street. Because you looked proud and I didn’t want to disappoint you.” Her voice cracked. “So I cheated. And I still failed. I cheated and failed. That’s even worse than just failing.”
Mother sat down heavily. “Who gave you the list?”
Divya told them. A boy whose cousin worked at the regional education office. The boy got paid by students’ parents to steal test papers.
Father made her call the competition organizers and confess. Made her apologize to them, to the teachers, to everyone.
The boy got in trouble. Lost his job at the education office.
That made me feel terrible, too. Like I’d gotten someone fired.
For three days, I kept my secret.
But it felt like carrying a rock in my stomach that got heavier every day.
On Thursday, I was cleaning under our bed and found the fake list.
It had fallen out of Divya’s book somehow. I was about to throw it away when she walked in.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing—”
She grabbed it from my hand.
She looked at it for a long time. Then she got her spelling book and started comparing.
“Chiaroscuro is C-H-I-A-R-O-S-C-U-R-O,” she said slowly. “This paper says C-H-I-A-R-O-S-C-U-R-R-O. Extra R.”
She checked another word. “Fuchsia is F-U-C-H-S-I-A. This says F-U-S-C-H-I-A.”
She looked at me. Really looked at me.
“You changed them.”
I couldn’t talk. My throat was too tight.
“You found the list. You changed all the spellings. You made me fail.”
“I was trying to help!”
“By sabotaging me?”
“You were cheating! I was saving you from being a cheater!”
“I WAS ALREADY A CHEATER! YOU JUST MADE ME A CHEATER WHO FAILED!”
We were both yelling now. Mother came running.
“What’s happening?”
Divya held up the paper. “He sabotaged my spelling bee. That’s why I failed. Not because someone gave me a fake list. Because he MADE it fake. He found the real list and changed all the words.”
Mother looked at me. “Adi?”
I nodded, crying now too.
“Why?”
“Because she was cheating! Everyone was so proud, and it was all fake! If she won, it would be a lie! I was trying to stop her from doing something wrong!”
“By doing something wrong yourself?”
I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“You let me think I wasn’t good enough,” Divya said, her voice shaking. “For a whole month, I thought I failed because I wasn’t smart enough. Because I deserved it for cheating. But really I failed because of you.”
“But you DID cheat—”
“But it should have been MY failure! Not yours! You took that away from me!”
Father came home then. Heard everything. Made me explain the whole thing from the beginning.
When I finished, he was quiet for a long time.
“Your punishment,” he said finally, “is you’re going to apologize to your sister properly. Really apologize. And you’re grounded for one month. No playing outside. No cricket. Nothing.”
“And you,” Mother said to Divya, “already have your punishments. They don’t change just because Adi also made a mistake.”
So both of us were punished. Both of us had done something wrong.
Neither of us had won anything.
That night on our mat, we lay there not talking.
Finally, Divya said, “Why did you do it? Really, why?”
I thought hard. “Everyone was so proud of you. Sastry Uncle, Father, everyone. And I knew it was fake. I knew you didn’t actually earn it. I couldn’t stand watching everyone be proud of something that wasn’t real.”
“So you destroyed it.”
“I thought… I thought if you failed honestly, at least it would be honest. Better than winning as a cheater.”
“But you didn’t let me choose. You made the choice for me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
We were both quiet.
“I’m still mad at you,” she said.
“I know.”
“For a month, I thought I was stupid. I thought I deserved to fail because I was a bad person. You let me think that.”
“I didn’t know how to fix it,” I said, my voice small. “Every day I wanted to tell you, but I was too scared.”
More silence.
“But…” she said slowly. “I understand why. You saw me doing something wrong and you tried to stop me. You did it in the wrong way, but you tried.”
“Does that make it better?”
“No. But it means you’re not a bad brother. Just a brother who did a bad thing. Those are different.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Adi?”
“Yeah?”
“Next time I do something wrong, just tell me. Don’t try to fix it yourself. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
We lay there in the dark. The fan squeaked above us. Mrs Rao’s dog barked outside. Everything felt a little bit lighter.
Things got better slowly.
The first week, we didn’t talk much. The second week, we started talking again. The third week, we fought about normal things—who gets more fan space, whose turn it is to wash dishes, whether I can borrow her ruler.
Normal sister-brother fighting. It felt good, actually.
At school, some kids asked what happened at the competition. Divya just said, “I didn’t study the right words.” Which was true, technically.
Nobody except our family knew the whole story.
Sastry Uncle stopped asking about the competition. I think Father told him to stop.
Three weeks after everything happened, Divya was reading her spelling book again.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Just reading. Did you know petrichor means the smell of rain on dry earth? That’s beautiful.”
“That IS beautiful.”
She smiled at me. A real smile. “Want to learn words with me? The right way this time?”
“Yeah. I’d like that.”
So we sat together and started reading. No cheating. No sabotage. No fake lists.
Just a brother and sister and a book full of words neither of us could spell yet.
But we were learning.
Together this time.
