Page 36 of What You Wish For

Spoiler: it was a squirt gun.

Not that that makes it any better.

Duncan had spray-painted a clear plastic water gun metallic gray.

Like a psychopath.

He’d done a great job, too. It looked friggingreal.

He paused for one second of terror. Then, before people could start screaming, or fainting, or dying of heart attacks, he pulled the trigger and squirted several little harmless fountains at the ceiling before dropping his hand to glare at us.

There was a long pause before he spoke.

Then he said, “Scared?”

The crowd did not respond.

He set the water pistol down on the podium. “Because you should be.”

Nobody knew what to do. We all just sat there, frozen by fear.

Whowasthis guy? Did Duncan Carpenter have an evil twin? The Duncan I knew would have been juggling rubber chickens by now. I waited, hoping that any moment a marching band was going to come filing into the auditorium.

But, nope.

Duncan just held up the gun again.

Even knowing it was fake, we all winced.

“For all this school’s prestige,” Duncan said, looking genuinely angry at us, “for all its brilliant innovations, and groundbreaking programs… it’s got a long way to go.”

He set the gun down again, and we all sighed. “I walked right in here with that. Anybody care to guess how I did it?”

He blinked at the group.

The group blinked back.

Finally, I couldn’t stand it—for him, as well as us. I raised my hand as I called out: “Because you’re our new principal and we trusted that you were not a homicidal maniac?”

Duncan nodded at me. “That’s exactly my point: never trust anyone.” He surveyed us all then, nice and slow, and he said it again. “Never. Trust. Anyone.” Like it was going to be our new school motto.

Alice looked over at me, likeYou’ve got to be freaking kidding me.

And all I could do was give her the same look back.

What was going on? Was Duncan doing good cop/bad cop—but without the good cop?

“The security at this school,” Duncan went on, “is appalling.” Then he started ticking problems off on his fingers. “Nobody looked. Nobody checked. The gate to the courtyard was standing wide open. Nobody asked me who I was or required that I get a security badge. The security guard wasfast asleep in a folding chair with a fishing magazine over his belly.”

Alice and I shared a glance—and a head shake.Raymond.

Duncan kept going. “I’ve just completed an assessment of your security practices. Do you know that the school’s emergency plan has not been updated in seven years? Did you know that half of the posted emergency instructions in the classrooms are missing or obscured? Did you know that a third of the surveillance cameras are nonoperational?” He held up a yellow notepad. “I could go on for hours. For a school ofthis caliber to care so little about its students’ safety is a disgrace. This school is a national embarrassment. It’s a nightmare.”

I looked around at our sunny cafeteria. Its tall, bright windows. Its cheerful yellow checkerboard floor. The kid-painted paper lanterns strung from the ceiling. The bulletin boards already papered in orange and red and yellow, just waiting for some kindergarten self-portraits to fill them. Not to mention the wall mural of giant butterflies that Babette and I had lovingly painted a few years back—colorful and whimsical and joyful.

I wouldn’t exactly call it anightmare.

“What I don’t understand,” Duncan went on, “is how things could be this bad? What current-day school doesn’t lock its gates during the school day? Or require that visitors show ID? Or have security guards that are conscious?”

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