Page 17 of What You Wish For

They really had been my dearest friends.

Slash mentors.

Slash surrogate parents.

The meeting centered, naturally, on Duncan Carpenter, and how nobody’d even heard of him, and what was the deal with that overly serious photo, and didn’t we get any say at all in the hiring process, and what was happening, andwhy the hell wasn’t it Babette taking over?

“Kent Buckley’s not wrong,” Babette said. “I’m hardly in a fit state to take over the school.”

But who was this new guy? And why hadn’t anyone been consulted? And what kind of psychotic break had I experienced in the meeting today?

So I told them everything I could confess to publicly. “We used to work together,” I explained, “in California, at Andrews Prep—my last school before I came here. He was a teacher then—fourth grade and gym—and he was… kind of a legend. Everybody loved him. I’m telling you, he was something really, really special. He was Max-like.”

I glanced over at Babette.

She gave a nod, likeIt’s okay. Go on.

“He just had a warmth about him. He was funny and goofy and crazy. He was playful. He was hilarious. Kids followed him around. Hell,adultsfollowed him around.”

Emily Aguilo from the second-grade team said, “Why would Kent Buckley hire a guy like that? That’s not Kent Buckley’s thing. He just lectured us for an hour on how this school needs to toughen up.”

I shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t realize?”

Carlos Trenton, our hipster science teacher with a beard long enough that he could braid it, said, “No way is Kent Buckley paying any attention to this guy’s teaching philosophy.”

We all agreed. Kent Buckley had no interest in pedagogical theory. He cared about one thing: status. If Duncan was a rising star, and he’d poached him from another school, then Kent Buckley was happy.

But that’s when Donna Raswell, who’d had Clay in the second grade last year, jumped in: “Kent Buckley pays attention to everything. I’ve never met a bigger control freak in my life. He counts the pencils in his kid’s pencil bag.”

I shook my head. “He may pay attention—but not to the right things.”

“But why would he hire another principal like Max?” a kindergarten teacher asked. “He’s been trying to undermine Max from the minute Clay started in kindergarten.”

Carlos actually snorted. “Unsuccessfully.”

True. Max had viewed Kent Buckley as an annoying, ankle-biting dog that he had to shake off his pants cuff from time to time.

But one he couldn’t get rid of entirely. Because of Tina. And Clay.

In truth, we all knew Kent Buckley would have no interest in our hippie school if his kid didn’t happen to be a student. And his kid never would have become a student if his wife hadn’t wanted their child to attend the school founded by her parents. And so now Kent Buckley was forced to watch his son attend a school that, in his opinion, was doing everything all wrong.

And it wasn’t Kent Buckley’s way to justletpeople disagree with him.

So while Max dying was a crushing loss for everybody else, for Kent Buckley it was—as he’d kind of confessed in the meeting today… an opportunity.

Right now, with everybody reeling, if Kent Buckley could stay focused and push through a new head of school more to his liking, he could impact how things were done around here for years to come.

And so he’d moved quickly, and quietly—and he’d brought in someone new before we could focus enough to protest.

But the joke was on Kent Buckley. He had just accidentally done the opposite of what he’d meant to: he’d hired a new principal almost exactly like the old one.

A part of me had to be happy about it. Given our sudden, unbelievable situation, Duncan Carpenter was a stroke of impossible luck. Bringing him here would be the best possible thing for the school.

Even though, given my history with him, it might well be the worst possible thing for me.

Later, after Babette had gone to bed, and most folks had gone home, as I rinsed cans and bottles for recycling at the kitchen sink, Alice leaned against the counter and said, “What’s going on, Sam?”

Her shirt today said, GRAPHING IS WHERE I DRAW THE LINE.

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