She allowed herself a brief smile. “Your father wanted me to ask why you didn’t just tell him you had Exam Fever. He said he had it himself once or twice when he was a boy.”
Jake was struck by this; his father had never been the sort of man to indulge in reminiscences which began, You know, when I was a kid . . . Jake tried to imagine his father as a boy with a bad case of Exam Fever and found he couldn’t quite do it—the best he could manage was the unpleasant image of a pugnacious dwarf in a Piper sweatshirt, a dwarf in custom-tooled cowboy boots, a dwarf with short black hair bolting up from his forehead.
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. I’ll be up until midnight.
Remember that we all like you very much, and are on your side.
À votre santé
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 I 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