The note was from Mr. Bissette.

Dear John,

Bonnie Avery told me that you left early. She’s very concerned about you, and so am I, although we have both seen this sort of thing before, especially during Exam Week. Please come and see me first thing tomorrow, okay? Any problems you have can be worked out. If you’re feeling pressured by exams-and I want to repeat that it happens all the time-a postponement can be arranged. Our first concern is your welfare. Call me this evening, if you like; you can reach me at 555-7661. Ill be up until midnight.

Remember that we all like you very much, and are on your side.

A votre sante”

Len Bissette

Jake felt like crying. The concern was stated, and that was wonderful, but there were other things, unstated things, in the note that were even more wonderful-warmth, caring, and an effort (however misconceived) to understand and console.

Mr. Bissette had drawn a small arrow at the bottom of the note. Jake turned it over and read this:

By the way, Bonnie asked me to send this along-congratulations!!

Congratulations? What in the hell did that mean?

He flipped open the folder. A sheet of paper had been clipped to the first page of his Final Essay. It was headed FROM THE DESK OF BONITA AVERY, and Jake read the spiky, fountain-penned lines with growing amazement.John,

Leonard will undoubtedly voice the concern we all feel-he is awfully good at that-so let me confine myself to your Final Essay, which I read and graded during my free period. It is stunningly original, and superior to any student work I have read in the last few years. Your use of incremental repetition (”… and that is the truth”) is inspired, but of course incremental repetition is really just a trick. The real worth of the composition is in its symbolic quality, first stated by the images of the train and the door on the title page and carried through splendidly within. This reaches its logical conclusion with the picture of the “black tower,” which I take as your statement that conventional ambitions are not only false but dangerous.

I do not pretend to understand all the symbolism (e.g., “Lady of Shadows,” “gunslinger”) but it seems clear that you yourself are “The Prisoner” (of school, society, etc.) and that the educational system is “The Speaking Demon.” Is it possible that both “Roland” and “the gunslinger” are the same authority figure-your father, perhaps? I became so intrigued by this possibility that 1 looked up his name in your records. I note it is Elmer, but I further note that his middle initial is R.

I find this extremely provocative. Or is this name a double symbol, drawn both from your father and from Robert Browning’s poem “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"? This is not a question I would ask most students, but of course I know how omnivorously you read!

At any rate, I am extremely impressed. Younger students are often attracted to so-called “stream-of-consciousness” writing, but are rarely able to control it. You have done an outstanding job of merging s-of-c with symbolic language.

Bravo!

Drop by as soon as you’re “back at it”-I want to discuss possible publication of this piece in the first issue of next year’s student literary magazine.

B. Avery

P. S. If you left school today because you had sudden doubts about my ability to understand a Final Essay of such unexpected richness, I hope I have assuaged them.Jake pulled the sheet off the clip, revealing the title page of his stunningly original and richly symbolic Final Essay. Written and circled there in the red ink of Ms. Avery’s marking pen was the notation A +. Below this she had written EXCELLENT JOB!!!

Jake began to laugh.

The whole day-the long, scary, confusing, exhilarating, terrifying, mysterious day-was condensed in great, roaring sobs of laughter. He slumped in his chair, head thrown hack, hands clutching his belly, tears streaming down his face. He laughed himself hoarse. He would almost stop and then some line from Ms. Avery’s well-meaning critique would catch his eye and he would be off to the races again. He didn’t see his father come to the door, look in at him with puzzled, wary eyes, and then leave again, shaking his head.

At last he did become aware that Mrs. Shaw was still sitting on his bed, looking at him with an expression of friendly detachment tinctured with faint curiosity. He tried to speak, but the laughter pealed out again before he could.

I gotta stop, he thought. I gotta stop or it’s gonna kill me. I’ll have a stroke or a heart attack, or something.

Then he thought, 7 wonder what she made of “choo-choo, choo-choo?,” and he began to laugh wildly again.

At last the spasms began to taper off to giggles. He wiped his arm across his streaming eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Shaw-it’s just that… well… I got an A-plus on my Final Essay. It was all very… very rich… and very sym… sym…”

But he couldn’t finish. He doubled up with laughter again, holding his throbbing belly.

Mrs. Shaw got up, smiling. “That’s very nice, John. I’m happy it’s all turned out so well, and I’m sure your folks will be, too. I’m awfully late-I think I’ll ask the doorman to call me a cab. Goodnight, and sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Mrs. Shaw,” Jake said, controlling himself with an effort. “And thanks.”

As soon as she was gone, he began to laugh again.

21

DURING THE NEXT HALF hour he had separate visits from both parents. They had indeed calmed down, and the A + grade on Jake’s Final Essay seemed to calm them further. Jake received them with his French text open on the desk before him, but he hadn’t really looked at it, nor did he have any intention of looking at it. He was only waiting for them to be gone so he could study the two books he had bought earlier that day. He had an idea that the real Final Exams were still waiting just over the horizon, and he wanted desperately to pass.

His father poked his head into Jake’s room around quarter of ten, about twenty minutes after Jake’s mother had concluded her own short, vague visit. Elmer Chambers was holding a cigarette in one hand and a glass of Scotch in the other. He seemed not only calmer but almost zonked. Jake wondered briefly and indifferently if he had been hitting his mother’s Valium supply.

“Are you okay, kid?”

“Yes.” He was once again the small, neat boy who was always completely in control of himself. The eyes he turned to his father were not blazing but opaque.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry about before.” His father was not a man who made many apologies, and he did it badly. Jake found himself feeling a little sorry for him.

“It’s all right.”

“Hard day,” his father said. He gestured with the empty glass. “Why don’t we just forget it happened?” He spoke as if this great and logical idea had just come to him.

“I already have.”

“Good.” His father sounded relieved. “Time for you to get some sleep, isn’t it? You’ll have some explaining to do and some tests to take tomorrow.”

“I guess so,” Jake said. “Is Mom okay?”

“Fine. Fine. I’m going in the study. Got a lot of paperwork tonight.”

“Dad?”

His father looked back at him warily.

“What’s your middle name?”

Something in his father’s face told Jake that he had looked at the Final Essay grade but hadn’t bothered to read either the paper itself or Ms. Avery’s critique.

“I don’t have one,” he said. “Just an initial, like Harry S Truman. Except mine’s an R. What brought that on?”

“Just curious,” Jake said.

He managed to hold onto his composure until his father was gone… but as soon as the door was closed, he ran to his bed and stuffed his face into his pillow to muffle another bout of wild laughter.