kind of He-Man power stance. “I want you to know that I understand Principal Kempner was pretty much the heart and soul of the school.”
Along with Babette, I wanted to add.
“But I’ll tell you something right now,” he went on. “If he wasn’t looking out for your physical safety, then he was no better than a fool.”
I felt the entire room catch its breath.
No. He. Did. Not.
Quick reminder: the man he was talking about had died right in front of us.
Babette went white, but she didn’t move.
“I want you to know,” Duncan went on, “that I’m excited to be here. Principal Kempner’s criminal neglect of your safety has given us the chance to make some epic improvements. Now it’s time to lead the nation in our next phase. The phase that will ensure the safety and security of every member of this school community and show all of America how it’s done.”
We stared at him.
He stared at us back.
Finally, he gave a little nod and said, “Thank you very much.”
And he was finished.
At least, I guess he was finished.
He hadn’t met anyone in the room, or asked us anything about this new place he was supposed to be in charge of, or interacted, or bonded, or, you know, done even one thing that he should have … but, no matter, he was picking up his broken laptop and walking off the stage.
Maybe three people clapped out of politeness.
Then the clapping stopped, and we all listened to the tapping of his shoe heels as he finished crossing the room, and walked, at last, out the door.
seven
As soon as the door clicked closed, everybody freaked out.
“What the hell was that?” Carlos demanded, just as Donna and Emily both said, in unison, “That guy is crazy!”
A coach named Gordo stood up then and gestured at the empty podium. “Did that guy just stand up in the auditorium of an elementary school with a gun?”
“A squirt gun,” I felt compelled to point out, almost like I had to do a little PR for Duncan … for old times’ sake, if nothing else.
“Looked pretty damn real to me,” Anton, the recently divorced science teacher, said.
“Until it squirted water,” I said.
Why was I defending Duncan? I was as horrified as anyone else.
“More importantly,” Carlos demanded, “did he just insult Max?”
The room descended into murmurs of abject bewilderment tinged with outrage—with phrases like “What the hell?” and “Who does that?” breaking the surface over and over.
“Maybe he just wanted to get our attention,” I said.
“With a gun?” Anton demanded.
I sighed. The whole morning was unfathomable. I couldn’t explain it, and I sure as hell couldn’t defend it.
Duncan—or whoever that had been—was on his own.
But I couldn’t disavow myself so easily.
I had stood up for him just now, but I had also been vouching for him all along, promising that Kent Buckley had accidentally hired us the best principal we could have hoped for. I’d sworn up and down that Duncan was going to blow their minds.
Unfortunate phrasing, in hindsight.
Either way, I’d established myself as the resident authority on Duncan, and now the room wanted answers. The panic turned accusatory. “You said he was amazing,” Emily said, turning to me.
“He was amazing,” I insisted. “I swear he was.”
“That was not amazing. That was psychotic,” Emily said.
“He painted a squirt gun to look real! Who does that?” Carlos added.
The outrage built to a din.
“Maybe it’s his evil twin,” the school nurse said, shaking her head.
I blinked and shook my head. “Maybe he was having an off day?”
“An off day!” They were indignant.
“I don’t know!” I said. “I’m as baffled as everybody else. Whatever that was—it’s nothing like the guy I used to work with. The guy I knew dislocated his shoulder testing out a Jell-O Slip ’n’ Slide for the school carnival—twice! He wasn’t obsessed with safety. He didn’t care about safety at all.”
Babette just sat in her chair, watching us. Normally, she’d be the person fielding everybody’s worries. But nothing about life was normal anymore.
Finally, I stepped up. “Okay,” I said. “That was not the meet-the-new-principal moment anybody was expecting.”
“That’s an understatement,” Coach Gordo called out.
“But,” I said, trying to instill that one word with an optimism I didn’t quite feel, “it was just one meeting. Maybe he was nervous. Maybe he was given some bad advice. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well. We don’t know. All we can do right now is go back to our classrooms and finish getting ready for the start of school.”