Carpenter
RE: MEMO—PARKING SPACES
Please note that all faculty must report to the security department today to register for a new numbered parking space. Once numbers are assigned, they cannot be changed or traded. Faculty must park in their designated spaces at all times or risk disciplinary action.
From: Duncan Carpenter
RE: MEMO—SECURITY QUESTIONNAIRE
Please note that all faculty must check in online today to fill out a new standardized security questionnaire and screening. All surveys must be completed by Friday—no exceptions. Faculty who do not complete their surveys before the deadline risk disciplinary action.
Risking disciplinary action was a big thing with him.
We got maybe nine of these memos before lunchtime. Most teachers I bumped into that morning stopped reading after the first two or three. Which meant by the time “From: Duncan Carpenter. RE: MEMO—CAMPUS TOUR” came around just before car pool, only the most obedient members of the faculty were still paying attention. I was one of them, of course. I read everything. It turned out Duncan needed somebody to walk him around the school, give him the inside scoop, and familiarize him with everything he needed to know.
As I was skimming the memo, I’d said, out loud, “Not it.”
But then every single person who responded nominated me.
Unanimous.
* * *
Fair enough. After car pool, I went to Duncan’s office, once the school had emptied out.
He was in another gray suit today. One exactly—down to the weave of the fabric—like the one he’d been wearing before.
Same pants. Same vest. White shirt. Navy tie. And—even though it was August in Texas, which meant it was going to be a minimum of one hundred degrees out—a suit jacket. Buttoned.
Was there a tiny part of me that had been hoping he’d show up on the first day of school in checkerboard pants and a SpongeBob tie?
Absolutely.
But only a very small part.
For contrast, I’ll mention that I was wearing a navy blue polka-dot blouse, an orange pencil skirt, and hot-pink, open-toed sandals. I also wore a long necklace with heavy white beads and I had a pale pink hibiscus flower tucked behind my ear that exactly matched my pink bangs.
I’d worked extra hard on this outfit that morning. To make it, shall we say, memorable.
“We match,” I said, when I showed up.
Nothing about us matched.
“Navy,” I explained, touching the navy part of my blouse, “and navy.” I pointed at his tie.
He knew I was teasing, but he didn’t smile. Just looked me over, taking particular note of the flower over my ear.
So I looked him over right back, taking particular note of the fact that nobody in our generation wears three-piece suits.
But I can’t deny that he wore that suit well.
He just … wasn’t Duncan.
I’d hoped that Chuck Norris would be with him, for comic relief if nothing else. But I guess he’d tuckered himself out, because when I arrived, he was conked out, belly-up, on Duncan’s new, gray, office sofa.
Duncan sighed. “Let’s do this.”
I sighed back. “Fine.”
I had one goal as we started the tour—to not show him the library.
Because I already knew how this whole thing was going to go. I was going to show him every whimsical, surprising nook and cranny of our beloved campus, lovingly turning his attention to the colorful, fluttering bunting flags we’d strung above the courtyard, the fairy houses the first-graders had been making for the garden, the collection of driftwood sculptures Babette had amassed in the art room, the mural the fifth-grade girls had painted last year on a blank wall across from their bathroom that said, BE YOUR OWN KIND OF BEAUTIFUL, and on and on … and he’d be uninterested, inattentive, and unimpressed.
Or worse.
I mean, I hoped he’d prove me wrong. But I also knew he wouldn’t.
The library was special. The library was mine. And I had no interest in watching him undervalue it, insult it, or say something like, “These books are a fire hazard! Get rid of them.”
It wasn’t out of the range of possibilities.
So I decided to take him to the library last, keep the pace of the tour nice and glacial, and hope that we’d run out of time to ever get there.
We started in the courtyard.
“It’s a historic building,” I said, as I caught up behind him. “Built as a convent in the 1870s, and the nuns lived here for a hundred years before their numbers dwindled so much, the church sold the property to the city. It sat empty for another twenty years before Max and Babette”—I always made sure to give