Going Off Script by Giuliana Rancic

checks. I wondered if there was a way to report dial-a-cheater for consumer fraud. Lucky for me, it turned out that the professor wanted to avoid the bureaucratic time-suck of an ethics trial, and he offered me a plea bargain, instead: I could accept a D for the full semester’s grade. I gladly snatched it up and rode off into the metaphoric sunset.
    I was never one to be scared straight, and the only lesson I learned about cheating was that if you wanted to do it right, youhad to do it yourself. Or, in my case, with a trusted accomplice. I recruited Richard to help me with an elaborate scheme to ace a botany final I was dreading. The reason I was dreading it was because—minor detail—I had never actually gone to botany class. What did succulents have to do with journalism?
    The idea was to wire me up so I could relay the final exam questions to Richard via a hidden mike, and he would consult my notes and radio back the correct answer. If I had spent half the time I spent researching recording devices just studying the damn textbook, I would have been fine. Luckily, Washington, D.C., provides excellent shopping opportunities for both amateur and professional spies, so I was able to pick up what I determined to be a reasonably good two-way radio set. Come the big day, I squashed a baseball cap down over my long hair to conceal the earpiece in my ear. The cord was taped down my back, leading to a battery pack clipped to the back of my bra. Then another wire ran down my arm to my wrist and the tiny mike I would read the exam questions into for Richard. Growing up in greater D.C., I had seen the Secret Service in action plenty of times, and I was confident I had this. Richard was hiding in the stairwell closest to the lecture hall, standing ready with his spy gear and the botany notes I’d bought. (Remember, this was pre-Internet!) I sauntered into the classroom and settled in for the big test. I wasn’t just going to pass this course; I was going to get an A-plus! I pretended to cough while covering my mouth and dictating the first question to Richard:
    “What is cytokinesis?”
    My ear was filled with loud crackling, then Richard all but shouting.
    “Wait, repeat that!”
    I put my wrist up to my mouth and softly read the question out loud again. Everyone within a three-row radius seemed torespond with an annoyed
“Ssh!”
which only piqued the interest of the TAs who were posted as test monitors throughout the lecture hall. The nearest one shot a suspicious glance my way.
    “They could hear you in my ear!” I hissed at Richard. Secret Service my eye. We were the friggin’ Penguins of Madagascar.
    “What did you say?” Richard crackled back. Now the TA was staring hard. I flipped over my exam, scanning the questions. There were eighty of them.
    “I still can’t hear you!” Richard squawked.
    Now the TA was striding toward me. I was busted. There was no way this was going to work. I gathered my things, left the blank exam behind, and walked out. I found Richard in the staircase barking into his microphone: “Giuliana? Are you there? What was the question again?”
    “It’s over,” I said, unplugging us both. “This was a horrible plan. Let’s go get a burger.”
    I got a C.
    Okay, maybe it was a D.
    Bumbling spy episode aside, Richard had the kind of style that made it easy for me to forget that I was just another struggling student, anyway. His sophistication always rankled the frat-party college boys in my apartment building, and they made a sport out of coming outside to heckle me whenever Richard showed up in whatever fabulous fresh-off-Daddy’s-lot car he felt like flashing that day. I’d hear shouts of “gold digger!” as we drove off laughing, killer sound system blasting. I didn’t care what anyone called me; I was Richard D.’s girlfriend—
the
Richard D.—and I wanted everyone to know it. When Richard arranged a sweetheart deal on a leased Lexus for me, commuting to campus made a lot more