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PERIOD ONE WAS ENGLISH Conment had been to write a Final Essay at home This was to be a typed docu The subject Ms Avery had assigned was My Understanding of Truth The Final Essay would count as twenty-five per cent of their final grade for the semester

Jake came in and took his seat in the third row There were only eleven pupils in all Jake remembered Orientation Day last Septehest Teacher To Student Ratio Of Any Fine Private Middle School In The East He had popped his fist repeatedly on the lectern at the front of the Common Room to emphasize this point Jake hadn&039;t been terribly i to his lather He thought his father would be i

He unzipped his bookbag and carefully removed the blue folder which contained his Final Essay He laid it on his desk, ht by the door at the left side of the room It led, he knew, to the cloakroorees in New York and no one had a coat which needed storage Nothing back there except a lot of brass coathooks in a line on the wall and a long rubber mat on the floor for boots A few boxes of school supplies - chalk, blue-books and such - were stored in the far corner

No big deal

All the sa the folder unopened on the desk, and walked across to the door He could hear his classes as they checked their own Final Essays for that crucial misplaced modifier or fuzzy phrase, but these sounds seemed far away

It was the door which held his attention

In the last ten days or so, as the voices in his head grew louder and louder, Jake had become more and more fascinated with doors - all kinds of doors He must have opened the one between his bedroom and the upstairs hallway five hundred times in just the last week, and the one between his bedroom and the bathrooht ball of hope and anticipation in his chest, as if the answer to all of his problems lay somewhere behind this door or that one and he would surely find iteventually But each time it was only the hall, or the bathroom, or the front walk, or whatever

Last Thursday he had come home from school, thrown himself on his bed, and had fallen asleep - sleep, it seee which remained to him Except when he&039;d awakened forty-fivein the bathroo than the toilet and the basin Luckily, no one had seen him

Now, as he approached the cloakroo burst of hope, a certainty that the door would not open on a shad-owy closet containing only the persistent smells of winter - flannel, rubber, and ool - but on so light would fall across the classroole, and he would see birds circling in a faded blue sky the color of

(his eyes)

old jeans A desert ould blow his hair back and dry the nervous sweat on his brow

He would step through this door and be healed

Jake turned the knob and opened the door Inside was only darkness and a row of gleaotten mitten lay near the stacked piles of blue-books in the corner

His heart sank, and suddenly Jake felt like si into that dark room with its bitter smells of winter and chalkdust He could move the mitten and sit in the corner under the coathooks He could sit on the rubber mat where you were supposed to put your boots in the winter-time He could sit there, put his thuainst his chest, close his eyes, and and

And just give up

This idea - the relief of this idea - was incredibly attractive It would be an end to the terror and confusion and dislocation That last was so that his whole life had turned into a funhouse mirror-maze

Yet there was deep steel in Jake Chambers as surely as there was deep steel in Eddie and Susannah Now it flashed out its dour blue lighthouse glea up What-ever was loose inside hiht tear his sanity away froive it no quarter in the ht fiercely Never! Nev -

"When you&039;ve finished your inventory of the school-supplies in the cloakroom, John, perhaps you&039;d care to join us," Ms Avery said from behind hiust of giggles as Jake turned away fro behind her desk with her long fingers tented lightly on the blotter, looking at hi her blue suit today, and her hair was pulled back in its usual bun Nathaniel Hawthorne looked over her shoulder, frowning at Jake from his place on the wall

"Sorry," Jake muttered, and closed the door He was iain, to double-check, to see if this time that other world, with its hot sun and desert vistas, was there

Instead he walked back to his seat Petra Jesserling looked at hi eyes "Take me in there with you next ti to look at"

Jake smiled in a distracted way and slipped into his seat

"Thank you, John," Ms Avery said in her endlessly calm voice "Now, before you pass in your Final Essays - which I am sure will all be very fine, very neat, very specific - I should like to pass out the English Depart I will have a word to say about several of these excellent books - "

As she spoke she gave a san to hand them out, and Jake opened his folder to take a final look at what he had written on the topic My Understanding of Truth He was genuinely interested in this, because he could nohis Final Essay, than he could re for his French final

He looked at the title page with puzzle unease MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH, By John Chambers, was neatly typed and centered on the sheet, and that was all right, but he had for soraphs below it One was of a door - he thought itStreet, in London - and the other was of an Amtrak train They were color shots, undoubtedly culled froazine

Why did I do that? And when did I do it?

He turned the page and stared down at the first page of his Final Essay, unable to believe or understand what he was seeing Then, as understanding began to trickle through his shock, he felt an escalating sense of horror It had finally happened; he had finally lost enough of his mind so that other people would be able to tell

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MY UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH

By John Chambers

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust"

- T S "BUTCH" ELIOT

"My first thought was, he lied in every word"

- ROBERT "SUNDANCE" BROWNING

The gunslinger is the truth

Roland is the truth

The Prisoner is the truth

The Lady of Shadows is the truth

The Prisoner and the Lady are married That is the truth

The way station is the truth

The Speaking Demon is the truth

We went under the mountains and that is the truth

There were monsters under the mountain That is the truth

One of thes

and was pretending it was his penis That is the truth

Roland let me die That is the truth