Sir Michael and the Quest for the Rubric

Sir Michael slipped from the warm blankets and stalked to the window with the grace of a predatory cat. He pushed aside the curtain, and looked out onto the darkness of early morning. No blanket of new-fallen snow welcomed him, and instead of bitter cold, the window leaked only a damp chill. Sir Michael let the curtain fall, and turned back to the well-appointed rooms of his tower bedchamber.

She was standing in the shadows near the door. "The world is waiting for me today, my love," he said regretfully. "I'm afraid we are not snowed in. We must again spend the day apart. But it will make our love all the sweeter upon my return." Sir Michael spoke below a whisper, and his words rose and fell like the gentle breath of deep sleep.

Mike snapped on the electric light and watched his dreams scatter. He went about his morning ritual: shower quickly, and leave a puddle on the bathroom floor. Hasty attention for his shoulder-length hair. Flannel shirt, jeans and gas money.

When he was done, Mike turned off the bright overhead lights of his room. Soft darkness crept forth; the furnace kicked on and the warmth took Mike's senses. For a dizzying moment, the lithe figure of his love had come forward to gird his sword-belt about his hips. Her brunette head bent studiously before him as her nimble fingers worked at her task.

From very far away, Sir Michael heard a woman's voice. Mike left the bedroom, and plodded down the stairs.

"Dale, you'll make Mike late!" his mom hollered past him up the stairs. "He's got to see his tutor this morning." His sister tromped down after him, whining through her braces that she wasn't going anywhere without breakfast.

He had just ten minutes to get to school. He was going to be late for the tutor. He was overcome by a sudden fantasy about locking Dale in the bathroom and leaving her behind, but decided that acting on it would take too long. His mom shoved a muffin into Dale's hand as she passed the kitchen. He kissed his mom's cheek and grabbed his keys.

Together Dale and Mike stepped into the moist early morning of a North Carolina winter. Again, the stealthy darkness took him: Sir Michael stood for a moment in a misty courtyard, looking up at the looming castle. A few lights shone here and there. Servants, no doubt, going about their morning tasks. His steed waited, and the day of reckoning was near at hand.

"Look, dork," Dale said, shoving him from behind, "if you're going to just stand here, I coulda slept another half hour. Move!”

#

The tutor, a red-haired girl with chestnut eyes, sat at a desk in the French room. Mike sat down across the aisle and said an awkward "Hey."

She looked up. "Hey. Did you finish the book?"

He nodded. She began. She questioned him about the characters, and he answered readily enough--he had read the book. But when she plunged into the realm of symbolism, he foundered. Their half hour together seemed torturously long. He fled gladly, just ahead of the first period bells, carrying her phone number on a crumpled piece of lime green paper in his hand in case he wanted more help that night.

She stayed behind in the French room. He went to junior English, and slouched in the desk in the front of the room. He slouched because he always did; he was in the front because of the alphabet, not from any eagerness to learn. And yet he was in this class--this advanced, college prep class, in spite of everything. The girls around him, and some of the boys, blathered at each other in French and German sometimes. They'd been on this track for ages. It was new to him; something thrust upon him by a high test score, an excitable teacher and an idiot guidance counselor. His classmates all stayed home at night to study, and none of them even knew anyone who had dropped out.

Mike's teacher blathered about the book; about the way a triangle pointed down meant the devil, which made the hero—-what? Mike didn't know. His eyelids drooped.

Sir Michael held himself still; he had been captured and dropped in a fetid pool of vipers, and if any saw him move, they would strike immediately. Death would not be instant and painless. Death would linger. His skin would fester; his blood would boil. Sir Michael could not let his vigilance fail, for then he would truly be lost.

Mike's eyes watched the clock. The clock was high on the wall, which kept his eyes wide, which gave the illusion that he was paying attention. Then, suddenly, he was paying attention. The teacher said the word "exam."

"The rubric for the exam is fairly simple," Mr. Conway said. "I've been lecturing straight off it, so there won't be any surprises." He waved a small sheaf of papers at them.

There was a pause as most of the students stared at him with blank incomprehension.

"A rubric," Mr. Conway said, "is a guide for grading papers." He laughed slightly. "To tell you the truth, last year I got such a stellar paper from one of my students, that I made it my rubric. And yes, you can still get an A if your writing and understanding are good enough, even if you don't include all the suggested elements. English at this level isn't about staying in the lines, it's about reading between them." And with that witticism, class was dismissed.

The other students got up and milled around the teacher's desk, trying to get a word with him, perhaps to ease their grades, perhaps because they were genuinely enthusiastic about the on-coming test. Mike was never quite sure. He hung to the back of the classroom for a moment, something he never did.

Sir Michael knew his thoughts before he did. "A quest," Sir Michael said sternly, "is a noble undertaking. A theft is not a quest."

"Yeah, but I could sure use a peek at the rubric," Mike answered. He pretended to drop his books, and hunched down to pick them up.

To Mike's amazement, the sea of students departed; they all hurried off to lunch. And Mr. Conway hurried after them, leaving his door wide open and Mike in the room. And the sheaf of papers--the rubric--was still on the table.

Mike walked up to the table at the front of the room, and laid his hand atop the rubric. He hesitated. Sir Michael did nothing. Mike stood with his hand on the rubric for almost a full minute--then turned and walked out of the room, empty-handed.

"The Rubric has the answers, yes," Sir Michael said when he left the room. "But a rubric has only the answers for this particular test. It will not teach you the things you need to know."

"I know," Mike said.

Mike went through the rest of his day, slipping from class to class, slipping in and out of his other life in his mind. A thought was with him in both modes, however. Somehow, he must pass the test on the morrow, and he had probably given up his best chance to do so.

Dale had practice, so Mike had the house to himself until his parents got home. Sir Michael paced the battlements, trying to draw up a strategy for passing the test, since Mike had failed to take the Rubric when he had the chance.

Sir Michael's lady was not in evidence as Mike walked to and fro on the deck, his feet not quite making a crunching noise on the soggy leaves piled there. He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets, and his fingers closed on a slip of paper. He pulled it out, and the lime green note shone like a spring leaf on the midwinter day.

Mike went inside and dialed the number on the paper. The red-haired girl answered, and after he gave a graceless explanation as to who he was and what he wanted, she invited him over to review for his test. "I took the class last year--the test can't be all that different," she said.

Jamie, that was the name of the red-haired girl. Mike drove slowly to her suburb, feeling uncomfortable as the houses grew larger and the traffic more subdued. Why was she being so nice? He was not in her clique. Perhaps it was the money his mom paid her. Most probably it was. That was fine. It was still nice of her to see him outside their set time.

He reminded himself that he did not like her anyway, that she was rather bony, and quite freckly, not at all like the voluptuous and pale lady of his dreams.

Sir Michael rumbled chivalrous threats in the back of his mind at this affront to the learned lady Jamie. Mike pulled the car to a stop in front of her house.

Jamie opened the door for him, and drew him into the kitchen table.

"This is my least favorite book of all that we read last year," Jamie announced. "But I aced the test."

They hammered out the details of triangles and turnips and other unholy symbols for a while, until Mrs. Preuss came home with an armful of groceries. She invited Mike to stay for dinner, and Jamie didn't seem to object. Sir Michael noted the graciousness of both ladies with approval.

"Why don't you take Mike up to your room; I want to start dinner down here," Mrs. Preuss suggested. Jamie again didn't object, and together they went upstairs.

Jamie's room was lined with books. And not the series about impossibly cute blond twin sisters that Dale read, nor slim paperback mysteries as preferred by his mom. He recognized authors from the suggested reading lists at school: Austen, Brontë, Sir Walter Scott, Twain, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, all of the usual suspects. Mike was overcome with the urge to make a disparaging joke about her brainpower, but he refrained. Sir Michael was equally overwhelmed, convinced he'd stepped into a wizard's tower, and that he just might not be able to leave with his manliness intact.

"You have a lot of books," Mike said.

"Yeah," Jamie said guardedly. "I like to read."

Mike nodded, afraid to respond.

She ran her fingers over the spines of one shelf. "My mom thinks it's ridiculous. She thinks I'll never read any of them again, so I should get rid of them."

"Will you? Read them again?"

She nodded. "I already do. Not all of them, always, but parts of them. I like rereading the good parts." Her fingers lingered on a book called Persuasion, tapping the book absent-mindedly. Mike could see the creases in the spine.

They sat down on the floor to work. Jamie explained a point that would certainly be on the test--and she used the word "dichotomy" twice while doing it. Mike tried not to snort in either dismay or disdain.

Jamie only paused to go to the bathroom. Mike stared at the posters on the walls for a bit, and then dropped his gaze to Persuasion. He pulled it off the shelf, and read where it fell open: " I can no longer listen in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul—"

Mike heard footsteps padding on the soft carpet. He was still holding the book when Jamie returned.

"Can I borrow this?" he asked lamely.

#

After Mike called his parents, after he dined with the Preuss family, after they had a rambunctious round of s'mores for dessert, with the marshmallows almost exploding in the microwave, Mike and Jamie returned to work. She did her best to impart her knowledge to him, to help him think in the ways that the teacher wanted. She sent him out the door at nine o'clock with a sheaf of jotted notes and a copy of a Jane Austen novel.

Sir Michael went to his tower bedroom and prepared for sleep. But his mind was jumbled, and even with the lights out and a gentle rain tapping at the windowpanes, his lady did not arrive and the stark white walls didn't resolve themselves into the silken tapestries of a medieval castle. Mike slept deeply and alone, and in the morning he got up early to read over his notes. He didn't think about snow-days until he and Dale were halfway to school, when Dale said excitedly, "I think the roads are beginning to ice!"

The classrooms were all buzzing with the possibilities of an ice storm. In English, the teacher handed out tests and told everyone to concentrate--wouldn't it be better to get the test over with now, and not contend with it after a snow-day? Didn't everyone agree? Not everyone did, but Mike bent to his task. The first question was about the dichotomy of good and evil. Mike sat back and chewed on his pen, reading through all the questions before answering the first one.

The rubric, taken from the perfect test last year--it must have been Jamie's test. It had to have been hers. Yes, it was exactly what Jamie had prepared him for.

He finished the test in record time, and felt a pleasant feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment when he handed in the test. As first period neared its end, the principal announced over the intercom that school was letting out early due to inclement weather.

The bell rang to release the students, and Mike searched for Dale. He found her standing in the cafeteria with friends. She asked, "can we give Marcie a ride home, Mike?" He reluctantly agreed, and the two girls trailed him to the parking lot.

In the hallway he saw Jamie, her thin, bare arms wrapped around a green notebook. She stopped him with "How did the test go?"
"Perfect," he said with a grin. "Thanks a lot."

"No problem," she replied, smiling back.

Marcie and Dale insisted on sitting together in the back seat on the way home. They giggled, and made not-so-veiled references to his new girlfriend, but Mike ignored them. Sir Michael was too busy thinking about the red-haired wizard who had guided him to the rubric, and who would have to call him if she wanted her book back.