Children of the Knight (5 page)

It seemed like every decision was made in a vacuum, without thought or recourse as to how those decisions would affect the kids. She knew too well the overreaching power of the unions, both certificated and classified, and had come to recognize that the needs of the students were not foremost in either of their agendas. Still, weren’t they all here to educate the kids, to bring them to a better place than where they’d found them? Even this construction was an enigma. They managed to get money for rebuilding the entire school, but there wasn’t any to reduce class size or buy newer computers or new software or books or supplies or even athletic uniforms. The kids had to raise their own money to pay for a uniform, for crying out loud!

Ever since she’d begun teaching at MTS, all Jenny ever heard from the top was how they had to shove every kid into college. But she knew full well—because she actually talked with the kids—that many of them didn’t
want
to go to college. They wanted a good trade, a good skill so they could raise a family, but most didn’t want or need a standard bachelor’s degree. And yet that seemed to be their only choice here. Electives were few and far between and even some of those were half-assed anyway. Jenny had been teaching for seven years, and yet the system was already burning her out.

Her freshman English class, as all of her classes, bulged at the seams with forty-two rambunctious, often ill-mannered and completely uninterested ninth graders. Knowing the neighborhood kids fairly well by now—reading was disdained, but they liked photos and visuals a lot—Jenny had adorned her classroom with pictures of famous writers and poets, like Shakespeare and Byron. She’d posted school and classroom rules, not that it did much good. Teachers at this school were left pretty much to their own devices when it came to discipline. There was a dean, but unless a kid committed murder on camera, suspensions were kept to a minimum.
Wouldn’t want to lose that ADA money, would we?

Jenny also loved movies, and knew the kids liked them too, so she’d displayed numerous posters of popular films, mostly recent ones the kids would know. On display were several movie posters depicting King Arthur, most too old for her students to have ever seen except maybe on television. Jenny loved Arthurian legends and stories and attempted to incorporate them whenever possible—not much these days with the rigid curriculum and fixation on the state standardized testing. She’d also put up pictures of castles and a large map of medieval Britain.

At the moment, she had her back to the class as she quickly wrote page numbers on the whiteboard. As she turned back to the class, she observed Lance Sepulveda whispering to another boy seated beside him.
Ah, Lance
, she sighed inwardly. Probably the smartest kid in the class, when he chose to show up, that is.

“Ahem. Lance, something you’d like to share with the rest of us?” she asked with a raise of her well-groomed eyebrows.

Lance looked at her, a bit startled, but immediately regained his aplomb. He smiled sweetly. “No, Ms. McMullen.”

He suddenly noticed two cute girls sitting a few rows over giggling and smiling his way. He blushed and quickly looked down at his graffitied desk in red-faced embarrassment.

The bell screeched and signaled a mad scramble for the door. Jenny quickly shouted, “Leave your papers on my desk!”

The two girls sighed and brushed up against Lance on their way out. He refused to look up until they were gone.

Pushing and shoving their way loudly toward the door, the students tossed their papers haphazardly atop Jenny’s desk as they whizzed on past.

“Neatly!” Jenny added, knowing it was fruitless. Within seconds, the room had emptied, and the papers were a shambles. Lance hung back, skateboard in hand, as always, and paused to straighten the pile, much to her amazement.

“Thank you, Lance,” she said, gratefully. “It’s nice to see you in school today.”

She’d taken a liking to the boy immediately, with his sharp wit and keen intellect. And what a beautiful boy, she’d often thought. His hair was silkier than hers! And those green eyes were striking. She’d seen many a girl this year trying to get close to him, but he seemed to shy away from all the kids. She’d occasionally see him during lunch chatting with one of the other skaters, but more often than not he’d be sitting by himself staring off into space. She didn’t know what was troubling him, but she liked him enough to want to find out. However, his attendance was spotty, and he so seldom spoke up in class that it was hard to get to know him. She’d tried calling home, but could never seem to get hold of a parent or guardian at any of the numbers in the school’s computer database.

“Ms. McMullen, do you know anything about King Arthur?” Those green eyes were open and expectant.

Jenny’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and she smiled wryly. “Look around you, Lance, then take a guess.”

Lance looked around at the posters and photos of castles as though seeing them for the first time. In fact, he never
had
paid much attention. But he’d always had a good feeling about the pretty young maestra and felt she might be the only one around here he could trust. To a point, anyway.

Jenny pushed a strand of light-blonde hair back from her face. “If you showed up to class more often, you’d know that Arthurian stories are among my favorites.”

Lance heard her, but her sarcasm didn’t even register. His gaze remained riveted to one of the King Arthur movie posters, transfixed by the artist’s rendering of Arthur. Pushing his flowing hair back away from his eyes, he shook his head.

“He don’t look like that.”

That caught Jenny off guard. “Who?”

Lance sighed heavily. “No one. Is he real, King Arthur?” He couldn’t take his eyes off that poster.

“He was, yes,” Jenny replied evenly, slipping into her “teacher” voice. “But where facts end and legend begins no one really knows.”

Lance pulled his gaze from the poster and looked the pretty young woman in the eye. He was easily as tall as she. “Did he ever die?”

Jenny was truly mystified. Why the sudden fascination with King Arthur? And those eyes looked so intense, so uncertain. “Well,” she went on, “he was supposedly wounded at the Battle of Salisbury Plain, and then taken to a mystical place called Avalon. There he was to wait out the years, to return one day when Britain needed him most.”

Lance looked at her in confusion. “What’s ‘Britain’?”

Jenny pointed to her map of Britain. “England, Lance. You know, the country?”

Lance shook his head in confusion. None of this added up. “But this ain’t England.”

Jenny laughed nervously. The boy wasn’t just asking random questions. She knew his style well enough. Something was going on. “Now I’m totally lost. What are we talking about here?”

Lance stopped then, realizing he’d probably said too much already. “Nothing. Just something I saw on TV. Gotta go, Ms. McMullen.”

He glanced one final time at the King Arthur poster, then turned and hurried to the door, as Jenny’s fourth period students pushed past him aggressively. One burly boy leered and sneered, “Oh look, Pretty Boy’s back!”

“Eat shit and die,” Lance muttered as he shoved his way out the door, leaving Jenny gazing after him in consternation.
These kids!

L
ANCE
had not only agreed to Arthur’s plan, but had also accepted the job of teacher to this strange man who seemed to know little or nothing about twenty-first century Los Angeles.
Hell, he’d never even seen a cell phone!
The whole plan sounded nutty, yeah, but there was something so unusual about Arthur, something so rare that Lance felt, against all his street-born instincts, compelled to trust him. Arthur was genuinely
sincere
. And that was a quality Lance had never known in anyone, except maybe Ms. McMullen. Could they actually accomplish what Arthur had proposed? Lance wanted to believe they could, and in believing, finally become someone important in this sorry world. Someone worthy. Right now, he was nothing, and nothing was all he’d ever been.

He told his skater friend’s mom he had somewhere else to stay, and moved underground with Arthur. He had a decent bedroll to sleep on and plenty of empty tunnels to sleep in. Arthur never got too close, though Lance remained wary, nonetheless. His instincts told him Arthur was not to be feared, and yet caution always won out, and he remained ever on the alert.

Arthur didn’t have money, but he did have jewels and gold and other fancy stuff he’d called “the crown jewels,” so over the next few days Lance had shown him places where he could sell this stuff. Lance had a cell phone his skater friend gave him to use, and he’d tried to teach Arthur about using the Internet to sell things, but the man was mystified by the technology, so that option was out. Besides, the guy didn’t even know what a credit card was!

In any case, they seemed to be making enough money through jewelers and pawnshops to get by, and that’s all Lance had ever done anyway. There was enough money to buy food for the two of them, and after a few nights Lance had gotten accustomed to living underground with the rats and the dank smells and the drip, drip, drip of water. Hell, he’d lived worse than this before. He
did
manage to convince Arthur to buy battery-powered lanterns to use within the storm drains instead of the nasty-smelling torches that stung his nose and burned his eyes, and the king readily agreed.

They also purchased a first aid kit, nonperishable food, and a waterless toilet for use within the tunnels, even though Lance was accustomed to just using the bathrooms at school or at the skate park. But he figured the toilet would be handy to have for emergencies. As for Llamrei, Lance told Arthur to
make sure
she “did her thing” outside or they’d never get the smell out of those tunnels. And those tunnels smelled bad enough already!

Arthur recounted stories of “the old days,” which, if Lance believed him, happened hundreds of years ago.
Hundreds
of years? Lance knew the guy had to be making that part up, yet he loved the stories, nonetheless. Most importantly, Arthur taught him how to wield a sword, how to rapidly string a bow and fire the arrow before his intended target—usually a rat—even knew it was being stalked. In a matter of days, Lance already felt his upper-body strength increasing, his quickness and agility improving, his hand-eye coordination vastly better.

He was usually sore as hell, but he still got up most days and hopped the Metro to school as Arthur had instructed. The word had to be spread, after all. His conversation with Ms. McMullen had confused him because her version of the story didn’t seem to fit all the aspects of
this
Arthur. But rather than challenge the man, Lance did what he always did best—kept his eyes open, his guard up, and his taut young body ready for flight at a moment’s notice.

After the first few days of training and gathering supplies, Arthur wished to see as much of Los Angeles as possible, to learn “the lay of the land,” as he’d put it. So each night the two of them toured various parts of the vastness of LA, with Lance acting as teacher and guide. Sometimes they rode Llamrei if the neighborhood was quiet enough and they could keep to the shadows. At other times, they rode the Metrolink train or hopped onto a city bus.