"I have graded your book reports from last Friday and after I pass them out, we'll discuss them," George Feeny said to his class. Behind him was Cory with a clown nose on, goofing around with Shawn.

Riley stared quizzically at the screen in front of her. "Dad, are you wearing a clown nose?"

"Yes." Cory smiled. "I think it's a good look for me."

"Ah, Mr. Matthews." Cory turned around to face his teacher, embarrassed. "Shall I express my usual disappointment or just ask you to guide my sleigh tonight?"

"Uh, wrong holiday, Mr. Feeny. See, Halloween's coming up and I was just test-driving my clown nose."

"Then I insist you stay in the driver's seat. Put the nose back on...for the rest of the morning." Feeny walked over to Minkus. "Mr. Minkus, excellent work as usual. I particularly enjoyed your haiku on Captain Ahab's obsession with the great white whale."

Stuart recited his poem, "The calm blue ocean. Sun lights up the monster's eye. He sees me. Whale food."

"I think you should leave the poem writing to me," Shawn told Minkus.

The other man turned his head towards Shawn. His lips formed an impressed smile. "You write poetry now? I never would have guessed."

"It works on so many levels."

Shawn insulted, "Brown-noser."

"Troglodyte," Stuart shot back.

"You can't be hurt if you don't know what the insult means," Maya commented, earning a laugh from Shawn. She looked at Stuart, who was sitting to the far-right of her. "What does that mean?"

"A hermit or somebody that is deliberately ignorant," Minkus answered, "aka Shawn."

George gave the other papers back to his students. "Mr. Lewis, very good work. Mr. Matthews, not one of your better efforts. Mr. Hunter…"

Cory took the paper from his friend's desk and read it. "Hey, this isn't fair. Rick and I both got Cs. How come you tell him he did good work and you tell me it wasn't one of my better efforts?"

"Would Bozo please come to the center ring?" George talked to Cory in a low voice, "Mr. Lewis worked very hard to get his C and I respect him for that. You, on the other hand, waste your efforts on being the class clown."

"Literally," Alan remarked.

"How come you always pick on me, Mr. Feeny? How come you never pick on Minkus?"

"Have you taken a blow to the head, Mr. Matthews? Stuart Minkus gets nothing but As. If there was a letter before A, he would get that."

"I guess that's why he gets away with so much."

"And just what does he get away with?"

"Well, how come when I make paper airplanes I get detention, and he doesn't?" Cory held up his poorly made airplane, then the camera showed Stuart's expertly made one. "I withdraw the question."

...

Shawn stood in the halls, drinking juice. Cory exited detention and noticed Shawn leaning against the lockers. "You waited for me?"

"Am I not your best friend?"

"You had detention, too, didn't you?"

"Oh, yeah. Mrs. Engles nailed me."

"How'd you get detention in art?"

"Well, that's what makes me one of the greats." Shawn threw his bottle in the trash. He noticed a piece of paper and picked it up. "Hey. Check this out, answers to a test."

Jack gazed at his brother who was watching with a proud smile on his face. He could only imagine what his brother did to get detention. "I didn't think you could get detention in art."

Maya grinned almost as proudly as her dad. "Oh, you can. Trust me."

"Shawn. We can't be looking at test answers. That's major cheating, detention for life."

"No, these aren't for a real test. They're for that stupid IQ exam we're taking tomorrow." Shawn crumbled the paper into a ball and attempted to throw it into the trashcan, but Cory caught it.

"Wait a minute. Let me take a look at this. Wow. The person who knows these answers gets a perfect score."

"That's not going to be suspicious at all," Lucas said sarcastically. "Even Farkle couldn't get a perfect score."

"My straight-A's say otherwise, cowboy," Farkle responded.

"On a test that doesn't even count for a grade. Why bother?"

"Are you kidding? This is my one ticket to get Feeny off my back. If Feeny thinks I'm a genius he'll treat me just as good as he treats Minkus."

Riley's mouth was hanging wide open. "Dad, you're actually thinking about cheating? I'd expect this from Uncle Shawn, but you?"

"This is the best day of my life," Maya declared with pure ecstasy in her voice.

"Is it too late to stop watching this?" Cory cringed.

"Hey, Cory, do yourself a favor. Crumple the paper up, throw it away in the trash. Don't complicate your life."

Topanga observed, "The one time Shawn was smarter than Cory."

"Yeah," Shawn agreed. He paused to think about what she said. "Wait, hey!"

"You know, that makes a lot of sense and if I was a smarter person, I'd probably listen to you, except I'm not a smarter person, but tomorrow, I'm gonna be a genius."

...

Mr. Feeny was now shown in front of his classroom. "I have in my hands the results of Tuesday's IQ test and one person here deserves special mention. This person achieved not only the highest score in the class, not only the highest score in the school, but a score so high as to give rise to the question 'Is there, in fact, a ceiling on human intelligence?'"

"That's me," Cory declared humorously.

"Please, Mr. Feeny, you're embarrassing me," Stuart responded as Cory and Shawn watched with smug expressions on their faces.

"You two are really enjoying this," Angela noted with amusement.

"Of course. For once, I was smarter than Mink...Stuart."

"Mr. Minkus, you came in second."

"Second?"

"Uh-huh."

"As in the context of not first? Someone scored higher than I did on the IQ test?"

Stuart beamed proudly, knowing that if Cory hadn't cheated he would have had the highest IQ in the class.

"Blew you out of the academic water. Someone sitting in this very classroom is a junior Kierkegaard."

"A what?" Cory questioned.

"Congratulations on making it more obvious that you cheated. What genius doesn't know Søren Kierkegaard?" Isadora critiqued.

Shawn defended, "I'm pretty sure not every smart person knows Soaring Kierke...whatever you said."

"A great mind, Mr. Matthews, just like yours. I have clearly underrated you, and I bow to your genius." The class started clapping. "Bravo."

Cory stood up. "It's no big thing, Mr. Feeny."

"On the contrary, Mr. Matthews, it is a big thing. It is a very big thing."

Cory turned to Shawn. "Uh-oh."

...

Eric entered the house, while Amy and Morgan were sitting on the couch. "Hi, mom. Hi, weasel."

"Eric, can you stay with Morgan for an hour while I show a house?" Amy asked her son.

"Sure." He sat down on a chair. He looked at his little sister. "You want to learn how to be a big girl?"

"Yeah."

"Because big girls know how to take out the garbage so their brothers don't have to."

"Really? You'd teach me how to take out the garbage?"

"Yep."

"What am I, an idiot?" She looked at her mother. "I want my Halloween costume."

"It's no big deal, mom. I'll help her pick one out," he told Amy.

"Oh, would you?"

"Yeah. If you could just drop us off at the store I'll have dad pick us up on his way home from work."

Amy bent down to her daughter. "Is that ok with you?"

"I love Eric," Morgan responded.

"Ready?" Eric placed Morgan on the table and turned backward. "Hop on, Weez."

The scene brought a smile to Josh's lips. It reminded him somewhat of his relationship with Eric as a kid. While Eric lived in New York and Josh lived in Pennsylvania, Eric made an effort to visit his youngest sibling often. He got to see Eric a lot more than Cory, but he saw Morgan the most due to her still living with her parents while he was a child.

Amy opened the door to see Cory and Shawn. "Oh, hi–"

"Can't talk, Mom, lot of homework. Got to go," Cory said hurriedly.

"Yeah. What he said," Shawn added.

Amy stared at her older son. "Something terrible?"

"Oh, yeah," Eric agreed as he walked out the door.

"I don't think we were as good at hiding things as we thought," Cory suggested.

"Definitely not," Amy agreed.

...

The boys entered Cory's bedroom. Cory threw his backpack onto the floor. "Feeny knows. Somehow he knows, and he's going to get me."

"You're wrong," Shawn told him.

"You think he's just sending a thank you note to my parents? 'Thank you for bringing up your son. He's a genius. He's smarter than Captain Kirkaguard.'"

Shawn began ripping open the letter. Cory snatched it from him and said, "What are you doing? That's a sealed envelope addressed to my parents. Now they're going to know I opened it."

"Cory, do your parents ever write letters to anyone?"

"Yeah."

"And when they do, what do they put the letters in?"

"Envelopes." Cory now understood what Shawn was saying. "Just like this one."

"So we could read the note."

"And seal it back up in a new white envelope. Ha! I love how we think." Cory watched Shawn reading the letter. "What's it say?"

"I like how you took partial credit for my idea," Shawn pointed out.

"It was a bad idea anyway."

"Uh-oh. He's bringing in the S.E.A."

"What?"

"The State Education Authority. They have special field agents who handle intelligence fraud."

Cory began freaking out. "I'm cooked! I'm cooked, Shawn! For the first time in my life, I'm in real trouble."

Riley's wide eyes were fixated on the screen with worry. She hoped her father wouldn't get into too much trouble. Maya, on the other hand, was loving every second of it and suspicious of Shawn's words.

"I may not know a lot, but I do know that I've never heard of the S.E.A.," Maya said. "Sounds fake."

"Why would he make that up?" Riley countered.

Shawn smiled slyly. "Not if I'm making all this up."

Maya leaned in closer to Riley. "Told you," she whispered.

"Are you?"

"No."

"Told you," Riley mocked.

"I'm cooked!"

"Relax. Of course I'm making it up. He just wants to talk to your parents."

Maya finally let out a victorious "told you." Shawn watched the girls with an attempted straight face, but he couldn't help but crack a smile.

"What if he tells them he doesn't think I'm a genius?"

"Who cares if Feeny doesn't think you're brilliant? As long as the test says so."

"Even I can see that this won't work," Zay said.

"But I'm not, and my parents know I'm not."

"Then you'll have to make them think you are."

"How do I do that?"

"Get with the program, Cory. It's Halloween, and this year you're going as a genius."

...

Cory saw a car pulling up from the window and quickly turned on the CD player. He started mimicking the movements of a conductor.

His parents entered the room. "Well, Cory Matthews is that classical music you're listening to?" Amy asked.

"Oh, that was just a commercial during the baseball game."

Alan smiled. "Oh, selling cellos, were they?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Come on, maestro, we saw you conducting that symphony with your Phillies finger."

"It wasn't a symphony, Dad. It was just Beethoven's Piano Concerto in E Flat."

Amy shook her head. "You really thought you could convince us you were a genius by listening to Beethoven?"

"In my defense…" Cory stopped in thought. "Yeah, I have nothing. This was a really bad plan."

"Cory, we just came from school, talking to Mr. Feeny. We know about the IQ test," his mother informed him.

"You do?"

"We do."

"So, what do you know?"

"Well, we know that you scored very high."

"The highest in the history of the school district," Alan added.

"I don't want to be treated any differently."

"That's literally why you did it," Katy commented.

"I wouldn't think of it."

"Cory, your father and I are having a little trouble understanding why your IQ test scores are up here and your report cards are, well, down here."

"You know, I've been giving that some thought, too, mom. I've decided that what you're seeing is the flaw in our public education system."

"Yeah, I'm seeing the flaw," his dad nodded.

"I'm seeing it too," George agreed.

"Because the way I see it I didn't fail the system, the system failed me."

"That's the way you see it?"

"What other explanation could there be, Dad?"

"Mommy!" Morgan called.

"Up here, angel face," Amy responded. "I don't know, Cor. It just seems that after fifteen years of being a mother I'd like to think I know my own children."

Morgan came into the bedroom with a headband that looked like a cleaver was in her head and an eyepatch that looked like her eye was hanging out. "I'm a zombie."

"Is my little sister hideous or what?" Eric questioned.

Morgan put her hand on her heart. "Aw, I remember that costume."

"Hi, Eric."

"Very gruesome. Blackout teeth? Ooh. That's my little girl."

"There were no Cinderella costumes?" Amy asked Eric.

"Hundreds of them."

"And you had to choose axe in the head here?"

"It was the last one," Eric said excitedly.

"Ooh, nice hanging eyeball," praised Alan.

"I wanted Morgan to choose her own costume."

"She did choose it, Mom. She wanted to be a zombie."

Alan replied, "Eric, 24 hours ago, she didn't know what a zombie was."

"The undead are cool," Morgan said.

Amy looked at her oldest son with a raised eyebrow. He confessed, "Ok. Maybe I persistently suggested that she got one of those 'cool' zombie costumes instead of a 'boring' princess one."

"Maybe," Morgan repeated with a large grin.

…

Cory was sitting on his desk, talking to his best friend. "Shawn, this whole thing is getting out of hand."

"Relax. Everybody thinks you're brilliant. You should enjoy it."

"When it was just Feeny, I could enjoy it. But now my parents are involved, and I don't like lying to them."

"You don't?"

"No."

"'Cause it gives me a little rush. Besides, you didn't tell them you were a genius, Feeny did."

"And I didn't tell Feeny I'm a genius."

"The test did. And you didn't ask to take the test."

"They gave it to me."

Riley held back laughter by covering her mouth with her hand. "You guys can't be serious."

"Oh, they are," Feeny replied. "This is the kind of stuff I had to deal with every day."

"And you wouldn't have even seen the answers—"

Cory continued, "—if they didn't give us—"

"—detention," Shawn finished.

"We're innocent victims."

Everyone in the theater was laughing or grinning at this point. Shawn and Cory were a tad embarrassed since, after all, they were the ones being laughed at.

"Nothing we do is actually our fault."

"This is almost as good as the time Cory and Shawn thought they cheated on a pop quiz," Jonathan said.

Cory didn't have to turn to know that Riley and Maya were smiling even wider than before and even more excited to continue watching this show.

"It's good to be kids."

"Let me guess," Cory started with a sigh. "You're going to use this against me, Maya."

"Yep."

Stuart walked up with crossed arms. "I don't get it."

"What?"

"If you're smarter than I am how come you're always trying to copy from my paper?"

"Uh…" Cory looked at Shawn.

"He's not copying, Minkus. He's just glancing over to admire the work of a fellow genius."

"You are?"

"He is."

"I am."

"Oh, well, that's ok. In fact, from now on I'll kind of tip my test papers up so you can admire the answers even easier."

"Would you do that?"

"No." Minkus walked to his seat.

"Farkle and I definitely have a better relationship than you two. That one time I wanted to cheat off of him, Farkle tipped his paper so I could see the answers easily."

"What?" Katy almost shouted in shock.

Maya's eyes widened, knowing she would get scolded once this was all over. She laughed nervously. "Oh, Mr. Matthews, you never told her about that?"

"Genius envy," Shawn explained to Cory.

"I'm sure that's what it is," Farkle teased.

George walked in with an Asian woman. "Class, this is Miss Chin. She'll be with you for the first half-hour while I have a word with Mr. Matthews."

Cory got up from his desk. He stopped in front of Shawn. "Tell my mom I went out like a man."

…

"Mr. Matthews, I brought you down here in case there was anything you cared to say to me."

"You're cooked," Maya said with a smirk.

"Uh, about what, Mr. Feeny?"

"Oh, I don't know. Sports, the weather, the inevitable ramifications of deception."

"I choose sports."

Lucas laughed lightly before joking, "That last option sounds like a fun topic."

"Too bad."

"How come?"

"Your new school doesn't have any."

"You know, for a minute there I thought you said new school. Hahaha!"

"I did. One that offers an entire curriculum geared toward students like yourself. No mindless distractions such as baseball, football, basketball."

"Wait a minute. What do they do for fun?"

"They study."

"What do they do for exercise?"

"They study till they sweat."

Rachel slowly nodded. "Sounds fun."

"No sports teams at all?"

"Well, they have a highly spirited chess team."

"Chess? You know, Mr. Feeny, I'm thinking as fun as that sounds, I feel like the smart kids at that school don't really need me. You and my friends here need me."

"Oh, but we'd be holding you back."

"No. You wouldn't. Um, I could help you teach a class. You and I, we'd be like a team. Two men with IQs working together for the good of all these deserving kids."

"No, I think we'll just have to muddle through without you. The school district is committed to giving gifted children everything they deserve and I think you deserve everything you're going to get."

"That sounds more like a threat," noted Katy.

Feeny shook his head. "It was."

"I don't really think I deserve anything."

"Oh, but according to the test, you do."

"Mr. Feeny, I'm smart enough to know you don't really think I'm a genius."

"Mr. Matthews, it no longer matters what I think. What matters is you're no longer in my class." He got up and walked away. "Don't you love Halloween? No one is what they seem to be."

"For a teacher, that's a pretty cool exit," Maya said. Zay nodded in agreement.

…

Shawn entered Cory's bedroom. "Ok, I'm here. What's the big emergency?" Cory shot him multiple times with a Nerf gun. "Hey! What are you trying to do, kill me?"

"Kill you with foam bullets?" Jack jokingly pointed out.

"Kill you? I'll tell you about killed. How about what you did to me?"

"What'd I do?" Shawn questioned.

"Where are you spending your next recess? Playground, shooting hoops, playing ball?"

"So?"

"So let me tell you what I'm doing. I'm searching for Bobby Fischer!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Geniuses go to a special school. Did you know that? You killed me. I'm going to be in a class full of Minkuses. Wait a minute. What am I talking about? These kids make Minkus look like Fabio."

"Minki," Maya corrected.

"Wait a minute. They're putting you in another school?"

"Yes. The lady is going to be here in a half an hour and they're going to give me another genius test and then they're going to take me away. So I just called you up to say goodbye. Or as geniuses say, goodbye in Latin."

"That would be Vale," Farkle stated.

"Hey, idiot."

Maya chuckled, not expecting those words to come out of Shawn's mouth.

"What?"

"Are you a genius?"

"No."

"Do you have the answers to this test?"

"No."

"You kind of see where I'm going with this?"

"You want me to throw the test?"

"Oh, no, no. I want you to take the test to the best of your ability. And no guessing. I wouldn't want you to stumble onto a right answer."

…

"All done," Cory announced to his parents and the lady that was sent to give him the test.

"Why, Cory, most students need at least a full hour for this test. I'll just get out the answer template," the British woman said.

"And that should confirm," Alan started.

"What we already know," his wife finished.

The woman and Cory's parents all hmmed. "Well, Cory, if I'm to believe the results of this test then your I.Q. would be about that of an average sixth-grader," the British woman said.

"Yup, that's me. The lights are on, but nobody's home."

"Did you really think you'd get away with it, Cory?" she questioned.

"No, I guess I knew I'd be caught from the beginning."

"I guess we knew that, too," Alan said.

The woman stood there smiling. "Cory cheated."

"I'm not a genius."

"You'd like us to believe that, wouldn't you, Cory?"

"Huh?" most of the audience that wasn't there said.

"Huh?" Cory and his parents looked at her in confusion.

"Your son is manifesting typical behavior for a young genius."

Cory got up. "I'm, but I'm not smart! Look at your answer sheet. It says I'm a moron."

"I know it does. He doesn't want to leave his old school and all his friends. That is why you cheated on this test, isn't it, Cory?"

"Yes. Well, no, but look, when I said I cheated, I didn't mean this test. I meant the first test the one Feeny gave us that said I was a genius."

"Cory!" the woman interjected, still not believing him.

The kid put his hands up. "No. Please. Don't talk. Every time you talk, you make me sound smart. Look, Mom, Dad, I found the answers to Feeny's test and memorized them. I'm not a genius."

"So you memorize the answers to a test, but you can't study for a test?" Jonathan pointed out. "It's like you only want to put effort into school when you're cheating...or think you're cheating."

"We kind of figured that," his dad admitted.

"You did?"

Amy agreed, "Yeah, but we're glad you finally decided to come clean."

"You'll excuse me, but there are actual prodigies out there who deserve my attention and respect. I can't waste my time with normal people like you." The lady put the test paper in her bag.

Alan cleared his throat. "Well, you'll excuse me, but normal people like us have raised our children to be normal kids. I'm sorry if they don't fit some arbitrary intellectual standard of yours."

"But we're not sorry that they're well brought up and completely normal," Amy added.

Morgan screamed as she ran down the stairs while dressed in her zombie costume. "Is this better?"

"I have great timing," Morgan said fondly.

Alan stared at the woman. "She's a zombie. You got a problem with that?"

"You must be so proud." She left out the door.

"You guys knew I wasn't a genius all along, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I guess we did."

"How come you went along with me?"

"Well, Cory, we would never accuse you of cheating. We had no proof that you did," his mom answered.

"We just hoped you were smart enough to tell us the truth eventually."

"I wasn't even smart enough to do that until I was backed into a corner. I guess I blew it, huh?"

"Yep."

"Grounded?"

"Yep. Two weeks."

"I'll be in my room."

"Yes, you will be. Starting the day after Halloween," Alan told him.

"You mean I can still have Halloween?"

"As long as you don't go disguised as a boy who cheats on tests."

"I won't. That costume was totally wrong for me."

"Cory, you don't have to ever try to be something you're not."

"So from now on, I'll just wear my normal-kid outfit."

"It always looked good on you."

Cory watched the scene with a twinkle in his eye. He then gave his parents a glance. He hoped that he was at least as half as good of a parent as his parents. And based off of how Riley was turning out, maybe he was.

…

"Please read chapter seven and be ready to discuss it tomorrow," Mr. Feeny said to his class after the bell rang.

Cory walked up to the teacher's desk and held up his red clown nose. "Bozo resigns. I'm turning in my nose. I figure as long as I'm going to give up being the class genius I'll give up being the class clown, too."

"Fair trade. Welcome back to class, Mr. Matthews."

"I guess I thought a guy had to be a genius to earn your respect."

"All my students have to do to earn my respect is try their hardest."

"I guess that's why you didn't bust Rick Lewis for failing this week's math quiz."

"That's right. He did the best he could. He just didn't understand the material. I consider the failure mine, and I will try my hardest to make sure Mr. Lewis understands the next assignment."

"Wow. You're a really good teacher, Mr. Feeny. Sadly I'm stuck with Matthews." Riley nudged Maya. "Ow."

"Well, I think that's really cool of you, Mr. Feeny." Cory gathered his books and left the classroom.

"I'm cool. God, help me."

…

The doorbell rang. Morgan got off the couch and went to open the door. "My turn, my turn!"

Two boys with masks were behind the door. "Trick or treat!"

"One for you, one for you, two for me."

Mr. Feeny was behind the kids. One of the boys turned to his friend, "Hey, look. There's the guy that's handing out the rulers."

Turner turned to Feeny. "Really? That's something a sitcom teacher would do."

"You're too big to trick or treat," Morgan informed Feeny.

"Yes, well, apparently my treats aren't going over so well. Uh, would you ask one of your parents if I could borrow some candy?"

"Mom! Dad!" Morgan went off to find her parents.

Three more kids walked up. "Trick or treat!"

"The candy's on its way."

"Hey, aren't you that Feeny guy from school?"

"I'm Mr. Feeny, yes."

"My brother's friend Cory Matthews said I'm going to have you for a teacher next year. He said you're the best teacher in the whole school."

"Well that's obviously you, Dad," Riley said.

"Oh, please, Mr. Matthews. I wasn't born yesterday—" He removed the boy's mask, revealing a redhead that was obviously not Cory. "I'm terribly sorry. Happy Halloween. Here, have a ruler. Have all the rulers."

Amy came from around the corner. "George."

"Yes?"

"There's plenty of candy here in the kitchen."

"Thank you." He walked to the kitchen.

The other two kids that were with the redhead took off their masks, revealing Cory and Shawn. Cory smiled proudly. "And they say I'm not a genius."

"What?" George stared at the screen in disbelief. "So after all these years, it was you!"

"Yeah, that's right," Cory responded.

Shawn crossed his arms. "We're smarter than you give us credit for."

"No, you're not." Topanga retorted. She rolled her eyes and smiled at her best friends.