I usually sit in the back corner of the classroom. Safer there, you know; teachers tend to call on me only to make sure I'm paying attention, and bullies can only attack at a difference with spitwads.. And I do pay attention, even if I doodle swords and armour while listening. It helps, somehow. Even with the bullies. So I like that back corner. I always sit in the back corner.
Well, except for one class. The class with the girl in it.
Normally I don't pay attention to girls. They giggle too much, and they aren't interested in cool things like swords and shields. But this girl—I don't know, something about her reminded me of tournaments, of knights kneeling and swords clashing, and battles that mattered.
I didn't notice her at first. Of course not. I was drawing a dragon—I can never get those right, their legs always look silly under their wings—and I heard her in the front of the class. Whispering, "But it isn't fair!" to her friend, Majorie or Margery or something. And she said fair the way it's supposed to be said. Not it isn't fair to me, but it isn't right or fair or sportsmanlike. So I began listening, because maybe that's what a knight would do. Or maybe there would be something for a knight to do.
And she had the same fury in her tone that a knight should have. There wasn't anything a boy like me could do about her conversation—something about bullying done in a school next to ours—but she caught my attention. I began listening to her more.
And I can't say what she said or did, that made it like this—if I knew I'd be doing it myself—but she never stopped reminding me of everything a knight really should be. And I could only hear half of her conversations. So I moved a little closer to the front, and a little closer, and a little closer, till there I was a few weeks later, in the front row.
The bullies didn't touch us, though. I'd heard that they'd tried to trounce this girl, Lucy was her name, three times. Once she escaped, up a tree none of them dared to climb, and once she fought back, and the third time her two brothers heard about it, and no one dared touch her after they came to school and talked to the people bothering her.
They sounded like more than knights, they sounded like kings.
And because they were and because she was there, the front row was safe in that class.
It was a good class. English, but more what-do-stories-mean than here's-where-you-put-a-comma.
I stayed there for the rest of the term. Holidays came and went, and I didn't see her again. But I remember her, that fearless bravery, and I remember sitting in the front of the class with her. Someday I might see her again and find enough courage to tell her about what I think about knights and armour, and see what she says.
Till then, I sit in the back of class and I listen.