built the most astonishing pirate-ship tree house. Babette continued to boss Duncan around—in part because now she really could get him fired—but mostly just because it was fun.
He liked it more than he admitted, I think.
We did wind up making security changes at the school. The goal became to do enough without doing too much. Duncan brought us into the sad, modern age where schools have to think about these things, but he wound up trusting the instincts of the collective wisdom of the faculty when it came to figuring out where to draw the line. He changed the school a little bit, but he also worked to change the world a little bit, too, volunteering for a gun-sense group and trying to make the world safer.
And in the meantime, despite all the worries and tragedies and injustices in the world, we remembered to have fun when we could.
We remembered to have dance parties, and sand-castle building contests, and cookie-decorating competitions. We remembered to do karaoke, and have school-wide movie nights in the courtyard, and take long walks on the beach. We let the kids write stories about the school ghost at Halloween, we played hooky from school on pretty spring days, and we brought back Hat Day.
We made a choice to do joy on purpose. Not in spite of life’s sorrows. But because of them.
And it really did help.
Not that our lives were all magically fixed. Babette still missed Max, and grieved for him, and would for the rest of her life. Tina still—inexplicably—missed Kent Buckley, or, at least, the idea of him. Alice still had to live much of her life with Marco deployed half a world away. Clay still had kids at school calling him Brainerd.
And even after Duncan and Chuck Norris moved into my little carriage house with me, Duncan still had nightmares, and I still had seizures.
We didn’t fix everything for each other—but we didn’t have to.
We just made a choice to be there.
Which counted for a lot.
Max had always joked that if anyone ever made a statue of him, he’d want it to be a fountain—of him peeing. But the board, even with Babette at the helm, just couldn’t run with that idea.
We held on to his memory in other ways. We decided to hold an annual, disco-themed dance party in his honor. We hung a painting Babette had done of him in the office. And Babette painted a colorful mural on the playground fence with everybody’s favorite Max-ism: “Never miss a chance to celebrate.”
Did we miss chances to celebrate after that? Did we get caught up in our worries and our petty arguments and ourselves?
Of course. We were only human.
But we tried our best—again and again and again—to choose joy on purpose. Just like Max would have wanted.
And, of course, I didn’t quit my job, or leave my island, or give up on courage. I stayed, and I chose the people I loved over and over. For better and for worse.
But mostly for better.
acknowledgments
I need to thank many people who generously helped me coax this story into existence.
Much gratitude to all the librarians in the world for doing the soul-work the world so badly needs—as well as to the particular teachers and librarians I consulted with: my mom (who would say she only “barely” worked as a librarian before having kids, and then took over her dad’s company after he died—but she has an MLS degree, and she gave me a love of books from the very start, so she counts!); my sister, teacher Shelley Stein; librarian Mary Lasley; and librarian (and former Duran Duran fanfiction-writing childhood friend) Julie Alonso. I should also mention that my husband, Gordon, a seventh-grade history teacher, was basically the model for Duncan in this book. The crazy pants? The ties? The “Defense Against the Dark Arts” name tag? The drowned succulents? That’s all him. He’s seriously a teaching legend—and I’m so proud of his kindness, his wisdom, and the way he always makes everything better.
I’m also deeply grateful to my friend Dale Andrews and her daughter Izzy for being such phenomenal resources and talking with me so openly and honestly about the challenges of living with epilepsy.
Many thanks also to Veronique Vaillaincourt, LCMSW, and Gerard Choucroun, MSW, for their help as I researched PTSD and its treatment. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Patricia Resnick’s work on Cognitive Processing Therapy. Thanks as well to Norri Leder, former chapter division head for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense