“I’m not sure that matters. School starts on Monday.”

“Yes. Exactly. And we need a plan for facing that. What we don’t need is a dude walking in here with a water gun.”

“I did what I needed to do.”

“But you didn’t do what anybody else needed you to do. You didn’t meet anyone, you didn’t talk to anyone, you didn’t interact at all or bond.”

“I’m not here to bond.”

“You most certainly are. Do you think you can run this school as a stranger?”

“Do you think you can walk in here and tell me what to do?”

He knew better than this. “Look,” I said. “I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“You didn’t know Max. So let me just tell you that he never ran this place as a dictatorship. That’s not how things work here. It’s always been consensus and discussion. This is a highly engaged, very passionate group of people—and part of what makes this school so legendary is everybody working together. Whatever it was you just did in that meeting is not going to fly—not here.”

“What Principal Kempner did or didn’t do isn’t really relevant anymore,” Duncan said then.

“I’m trying to tell you how things work.”

“Things work the way I say they work.”

“If you keep acting like this, you’re going to lose them.”

“What are you saying? That they’ll quit?”

“These are amazing teachers—the best of the best. They could be teaching anywhere.”

“That sounds weirdly like a threat.”

“I’m not threatening you. I’m telling you how it is. They came here to be part of a very special school culture. One that’s all about creativity and encouragement and making learning joyful.”

Duncan was unfazed. “Well, it’s a new culture now.”

He wasn’t taking me seriously. “You have no idea how much you just freaked the entire faculty out.”

“I think I have some idea.”

“And don’t even get me started on the gun.”

“Here it comes.”

“What the hell was that?”

“A water gun,” he said. “And it got their attention, didn’t it?”

“Not in a good way.”

“I’m not here to coddle them.”

“Why are you here?”

“To get this place on track.”

“It’s already on track. It’s one of the best elementary schools in the country. It’s famous for being amazing.”

“It’s also a death trap. And I’m here to fix that. And if they don’t like it, they’re more than welcome to quit—every last one of them. Yourself included.”

But no way was I quitting now. “I can’t quit,” I said.

“Sure you can,” he said, in a tone like I dare you. Then he met my eyes and said, “There is nothing more expendable than teachers.”

Rude. And insulting. Max had spent decades filling this school with superstars—the best of the best of the best. Teachers were anything but expendable. The best teachers lifted kids up with excitement and drive and curiosity—and the worst teachers did the opposite. And no one on earth should have known that better than Duncan Carpenter.

I looked down for a second to try to regroup. What was I even trying to accomplish here? I wanted him to snap out of it. I wanted him to be his old self again. I wanted him to reach his potential. But I didn’t have any leverage. Was he bluffing? If he really didn’t care if everybody quit, I wasn’t sure what to do.

And that’s when I saw something sticking out from under Duncan’s desk.

Something furry.

Something that looked like a paw.

I stepped closer and leaned around to get a better look.

Curled up under the desk was a large, gray, very furry dog—fast asleep.

* * *

In this entire sleek, gray, cold office, the dead-last thing I would’ve expected to see was a fluffy dog—and, of course, the gray fur against the gray carpet had camouflaged it.

“Is that a poodle under your desk?” I asked.

“It’s a labradoodle,” Duncan said, like it was obvious.

I leaned a little closer. “Is it … yours?”

“It’s a security dog,” Duncan said, all business. “A guard dog.”

“It doesn’t look very on guard right now.”

“Even security animals have to rest.”

“Fair enough. What’s its name?”

Duncan stood up a little taller. “Chuck Norris.”

I let out a laugh. Then my face fell. “Oh. You’re serious.”

“He’s in training,” Duncan said, unamused.

“I guess I would have just expected a German shepherd or something. Something scary.”

“This dog is plenty scary,” Duncan said, as we stared at the not-at-all-scary pile of snoozing fluff. “Or at least, he will be when I finish with him.”

“Are you going to squirt him with the water gun?”

Duncan’s face was dead serious. “That’s not the protocol for training working animals.”

“If you say so,” I said. I actually liked the idea of having a dog on campus. I’d just read an article about how dogs had a soothing impact on humans. I could hear my voice softening as I looked at Chuck Norris. “He’s going to keep us safe, huh?”

“He’s not the only thing, but yes.”

That got my attention. “He’s not the only thing?”

Duncan stood up a little straighter. “I’m looking at enacting many new safety protocols, from improving visibility issues, to training teachers, to making use of new technologies. I’m eyeballing some very high-tech, very top-of-the-line changes. It’ll be expensive, but so worth it.”

I’m telling you: this guy—this guy—once broke his wrist at Andrews during a skateboarding race through the school hallways.

But then a question occurred to me. “Where’s the money coming from?”

Duncan blinked. “There’s room in the budget.”

I didn’t know that much about the budget, but I knew enough. “Not sure there is,” I said.

Duncan looked away. “You can always find room in a budget, if you’re creative.”

What an amazing nonanswer answer. I stepped closer to peer at him. His face was a mixture of determination, defiance, and just a hint of guilt. Taking it in, I just knew.

“Please tell me we’re not talking about the empty lot.”

He stepped closer to his desktop and fixed his eyes on it. “What empty lot?”

But my body knew the answer before the rest of me did. I stood up straighter. My muscles tightened. “The empty lot for the playground.”

“What playground?” Duncan asked then.

Was it possible that he really didn’t know? Building that playground was all set to be the main attraction—the defining feature—of the coming school year. We had plans and a contractor lined up already. It was on the schedule.

But he’d just gotten here. Things lately had been rushed, to say the least. Maybe he hadn’t been updated. I stepped closer to his desk and, never letting him out of my sight, I leaned down over his phone, pressed the intercom button like I’d done so many times with Max when we were goofing around, and in a careful, cautious voice said, “Mrs. Kline, could you please bring in the plans for the playground?”

Two seconds later, she appeared, efficient as ever, with a stack of file folders—rubber-banded together, stuffed and overflowing with brochures, sketches, plans, notes, Post-its, doodles, ideas and suggestions—and set the stack on Duncan’s desk with a whomp.

“Meet the Adventure Garden,” I said to Duncan, as Mrs. Kline swished back out. “Two years ago, we bought the lot next door from the city. One year ago, we started a capital campaign that raised a hundred thousand dollars to build the coolest, most creative, joyful, surprising, and multisensory playground in the history of the world. And, this year, at last, in the face of everything, we’re going to build it.”

Duncan blinked at me for a second, and I got the feeling he was sizing up what kind of an adversary I was going to make. Then, in a tone of voice that let me know exactly what he’d decided, he said, “Yeah. That’s all canceled.”

I felt like I couldn’t get enough air in to make the word. “Canceled?” It came out like a gasp.

“Yep,” Duncan said, all matter-of-fact, smacking his hand down on the top of the files. “We’re going to need that money for other things.”

I pulled the files closer to me, protectively. “Other things? What kind of other things?”

“Well, I’m not at liberty to get into details just yet, but there’s a lot going on.”

“You can’t cancel the Adventure Garden!”

“Why not?”

“Because it was Max’s idea.”

“Max isn’t here, though, is he?”

“But…” What was happening? I shook my head. “You can’t.”

“Sure, I can,” Duncan said pleasantly, walking to his office door and putting his hand on the knob, like we were done here. “You should read my contract. I can do anything, pretty much. I could serve hot-fudge sundaes for every meal. I could declare that the school uniform was Halloween costumes. I could fire the entire faculty and hire a troupe of circus clowns.”

“The board would never let you do that stuff,” I said.

“The board is a complicated place,” Duncan said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”