Page 127 of What You Wish For

“So you knew what he was up to.”

“Yes, but in his version of reality, he’s the hero and everybody loves him. So it took me a little time to get that sorted out.”

I kept walking.

“At first,” Duncan said, “I was just doing the daily tasks tonotcall Babette’s bluff. I didn’t want her to know I was onto her. But then the weirdest thing happened…”

I waited, but he didn’t go on. Finally, I said, “What? What happened?”

Duncan took a breath. “I started to like them.”

For the first time, I looked over.

“I mean, I started to really like them. I started looking forward to them, wondering what was coming up next. I looked forward to the moment in the morning when you would swing by my office and give me some nutty assignment, like ‘eat a bowl of udon noodles,’ and I looked forward to actually doing it. Most of all, I just looked forward to you.”

I sighed. “I looked forward to you, too.”

“And the more time I spent with you, the more I started seeing the world through different eyes.”

“We were trying to wake you up. We called it Operation Duncan.”

“Well, it worked.”

“Not well enough.”

I thought of our school building. Its butterfly garden, its courtyard, and its cloisters, and the way it felt like another place and time. Ithought of my library and its book staircase and our sunny cafeteria and our butterfly mural.

Then I said, “Is there anything you can do to stop him?”

Duncan didn’t answer right away. I looked over and saw a funny expression on his face.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You don’t want to stop him.”

“I didn’t say—”

I started walking faster. “Oh, my God, here I was thinking we were friends.”

“We are friends.”

“You can’t be friends with a person who wants to put you in prison.”

“Come on. It’s not prison!”

We’d just come to a fishing pier that jutted out over the Gulf. I turned and started marching out along it, over the water. “It’s pretty damn close,” I said. “You can’t live your whole life in fear. You can’t insulate yourself from everything. Kids get hurt all the time—but we don’t make them wear bicycle helmets everywhere. You take reasonable precautions, and then you hope for the best. That’s all you can do.”

“This is bigger than a bump on the head,” Duncan said.

But I didn’t break stride. “And even if you make us all move to that tragic Death Star building—if you really make the kids give up natural light, nature, play, color, and joy, and hope to lock them away all day in some hermetically sealed, unearthly environment all their lives—even still… they could still step outside and get shot. They could go to the movies and get shot. They could go to the beach and get shot. They could go to a concert and get shot.”

“But it wouldn’t—” He stopped himself.

“It wouldn’t what?” I stopped walking to meet his eyes. We were out over the water now, waves beneath us. “It wouldn’t be on your watch?”

Duncan looked away.

“That’s all about you, friend. That is not about them.”

“It’s not just about me!” Duncan said, his voice loud. “It’s about you. It’s about all of you. It was hard for me to see you in danger when I first got here—but it’s even harder for me now! Because nowI know you—and the kids, and the teachers—and now I’ve spent time with you, and now I care about you! Before, it was theoretical. Now it’s real.”

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