Page 50 of What You Wish For

So I looked him over right back, taking particular note of the fact thatnobody in our generation wears three-piece suits.

But I can’t deny that he wore that suit well.

He just… wasn’t Duncan.

I’d hoped that Chuck Norris would be with him, for comic relief if nothing else. But I guess he’d tuckered himself out, because when I arrived, he was conked out, belly-up, on Duncan’s new, gray, office sofa.

Duncan sighed. “Let’s do this.”

I sighed back. “Fine.”

I had one goal as we started the tour—tonotshow him the library.

Because I already knew how this whole thing was going to go. I was going to show him every whimsical, surprising nook and cranny of our beloved campus, lovingly turning his attention to the colorful, fluttering bunting flags we’d strung above the courtyard, the fairy houses the first-graders had been making for the garden, the collection of driftwood sculptures Babette had amassed in the art room, the mural the fifth-grade girls had painted last year on a blank wall across from their bathroom that said, BE YOUR OWN KIND OF BEAUTIFUL, and on and on… and he’d be uninterested, inattentive, and unimpressed.

Or worse.

I mean, I hoped he’d prove me wrong. But I also knew he wouldn’t.

The library was special. The library was mine. And I had no interest in watching him undervalue it, insult it, or say something like, “These books are a fire hazard! Get rid of them.”

It wasn’t out of the range of possibilities.

So I decided to take him to the library last, keep the pace of the tour nice and glacial, and hope that we’d run out of time to ever get there.

We started in the courtyard.

“It’s a historic building,” I said, as I caught up behind him. “Built as a convent in the 1870s, and the nuns lived here for a hundred years before their numbers dwindled so much, the church sold the property to the city. It sat empty for another twenty years before Max and Babette”—I always made sure to give her equal credit on feminist principle—“founded the Kempner School and renovated it. Fun fact: did you know that our school is named after Babette?”

Duncan looked at me like that didn’t make sense.

“BabetteKempner,” I said.

“But wasn’t Max’s name also Kempner?”

“Sure,” I said. “But he was thinking of Babette when he named it.”

We kept walking.

“The cafeteria used to be the chapel,” I went on.

“I read that in the manual.”

“We have a once-a-week assembly with the kids where we bring in speakers and programs from all different faiths and philosophies—plus performances. Singers, drummers, belly dancers, fire-eaters.”

“Fire-eaters?”

“It’s kind of an anything-goes situation.”

I could almost hear him mentally typing: MEMO—RE: FIRE-EATERS.

I pointed up at one of the second-story rooms. “That’s where the ghost lives.”

Duncan glanced sideways at me, though he never actually met my eyes. “The ghost?”

This was a good story. “One of the nuns fell in love with a sea captain whose boat went down in a storm in the Gulf. She couldn’t believehe was dead, though, and she locked herself in this room, watching the ocean, refusing to come out until he came back to her… but he never came back, and she died of heartbreak. They say she’s still here, waiting. Sometimes people see her, still waiting by the window, watching for him, never giving up hope.”

Duncan frowned again. “Do the kids know that story?”

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