ever-changing stacks of papers.
The same office—now belonging to Duncan—was the opposite.
Of course, Duncan had just moved in. Most of his things were still in the boxes stacked in the corner. But it wasn’t just that he hadn’t unpacked. He’d changed everything. When facilities had repainted—which the room had needed—Duncan had chosen a cold gray to replace the warm, creamy white from before. The tan carpet had also been replaced with gray. Max’s warm, Stickley-style furniture had been replaced with—you guessed it—cheap, gray office furniture. With a little black for variety.
The paint smell wasn’t helping, either.
I’m not here to debate the merits of tan carpet over gray.
It was just a very different vibe.
“This place…” I said, looking around. “It’s like the Death Star.”
If Duncan heard me, he decided not to engage.
I took in the sight of him, still going strong—down, then up, then down, then up—with the push-ups. No faltering, no variation. Like a piston firing in a factory.
No wonder his shoulders were so much … shoulderier.
“So,” he said, from below me, in the most conversational tone, as if anything about this moment was normal. “What is it that can’t wait forty-one minutes?”
Good question. What was it again?
I was so disoriented, both by what was happening right now and by what had happened at the morning’s meeting, that I couldn’t figure out where to even begin.
My original goal had been to meet with Duncan this morning, tell him it was nice to see him again, give him a few pointers, and then pleasantly quit my job.
But it wasn’t nice to see him again.
It was many things, but definitely not nice. It was highly disturbing. And worrying. And panic-inducing. And so now I was here to—what? Give him a talking-to? Shake him by the shoulders? Find out why he was acting so weird?
And how, exactly, do you follow all that by saying, “Oh, and P.S. I quit”?
But, of course, I wouldn’t be quitting now. Not anymore. I couldn’t. How could I possibly quit now—and leave everybody I loved behind with no one to protect them from this guy?
My half-an-hour-ago goals had all been nullified—but now I wasn’t totally sure what my new ones were.
“We need to talk about that meeting,” I finally said.
Duncan straightened a crease on his sleeve. “What about it?”
“It was … really odd.”
No response. Duncan just kept pumping up and down.
“Is there any way at all you could pause your exercise routine? Doing push-ups while I talk to you is kind of super rude.”
“Barging in here without permission is also super rude.”
“So,” I said, “we’re even.”
Duncan seemed to slow while he thought about that. “Fair enough,” he said, and then he shifted back onto his feet, stood up, and turned toward me, looking … extra tall.
“Okay,” he said, resting his hands on his belt. “Let’s talk.”
But what to say? Where to even begin? I wanted to say, “What the hell was that?” Or, “Who the hell are you?” Or maybe even, “Did you eat the real Duncan and assume his identity?” That’s how weird things were in my head.
In the end, I went with plain old: “What just happened?”
But I really amped up my tone of voice to compensate.
Now that I finally had his attention—now that we were alone, and face to face—I couldn’t help but wonder if, away from the audience and the stage, he might recognize me then. I hoped he might say something like, “Hey—do we know each other?” Or, “Hey—you look a little bit like…?”
But nope. He just said, like he’d say to a total stranger, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And here’s where my ego got in the way of my goals. Because if he didn’t recognize me, then I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit that I recognized him. Which eliminated some of the most insightful things I could have said. “I’m talking about the meeting,” I said.
“What about it?”
“It was a disaster.”
“I disagree.”
“Do you have any idea what this school is dealing with right now? We’ve just lost our principal. Our beloved principal—and founder. Not last year or even last spring. This summer. Everybody in that room was grieving and raw and lost and scared—including, I’ll add, his wife, who was sitting in the back row like a statue.”
“None of that has to do with me,” Duncan said. “I didn’t cause any of that. And I can’t fix it, either.”
“Maybe you can’t fix it. But you can try like hell not to make it worse.”
“People die,” Duncan said then. “It