“I thought he was napping,” Duncan said.

“Well, he wasn’t,” I said. “He was roaming around loose.”

“I’m sorry about the books. I’ll pay for them.”

“Great,” I said, all deadpan. “I’ll put them on your tab.”

That dog, in fact, made quite a name for himself on the first day of school. By car pool, he’d climbed up on Mrs. Kline’s desk, eaten a whole box of tissues, chased a squirrel across the courtyard, gotten his collar caught on a tree branch, barked at his own reflection in the office doors for a full five minutes, peed on the carpet in the kindergarten room, chewed a hole in Coach Gordo’s gym bag, and stolen a whole bag of hot-dog buns from the cafeteria.

Not to mention when he tried to take a flying leap into Alice’s arms during recess and knocked all six feet of her down to the ground.

Alice didn’t mind. She was a dog person. But Coach Gordo was none too happy about the gym bag. “What the hell, man?” he’d said, after Duncan handed him back a decapitated sock and a drool-soaked pair of boxer briefs.

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

Anyway, that was the moment that prompted Duncan’s first faculty-wide memo of the day.

Memos are never good things in the world of education—or maybe anywhere. If nothing else, they’re usually dull, and repetitive, and, as Max always put it, TLTR—Too Long To Read. Max had banished memos entirely before I even arrived—replacing them with IOMs—Instead Of Meetings. These were basically … memos. But Max enforced a strict, hundred-word length, limited them to Fridays (when we were “almost free”), and emphasized that he was only sending them so we could avoid an MSM—a Meeting that Should’ve been a Memo.

Context is kind of everything.

Max’s guiding principle was to respect us as teachers—our ideas, our input, and, most important, our time. Memos, in Max’s view, were the very worst waste of all of those things.

But Duncan, as they say, hadn’t gotten the memo on that.

And if Max knew the value of calling actual memos by other names, Duncan did the opposite: He called an email that wasn’t even a memo … a memo.

Five minutes after the Sock Incident, there it was, in all our inboxes. And it read:

From: Duncan Carpenter

RE: MEMO—SECURITY DOG

Many of you got a chance to “meet” the Kempner School’s new security dog, Chuck Norris, when he stole a box of donuts from the faculty lounge and made an epic escape attempt—which was thwarted by security guard Raymond when he got tangled in the leash. Fortunately, no one was hurt, though I regret to report that none of the donuts survived.

In future, all members of the school community must stay aware that Chuck Norris is still in training and will need our help to succeed. Please do not pet, play with, scratch, talk to, coo at, or in any way agitate Chuck Norris while he’s on the school campus. All forms of human affection are a distraction from his duties as he learns to watch over our campus and keep us all safe. For his benefit, as well as everyone else’s, all interaction with Chuck Norris is expressly forbidden.

Two minutes after I got that email, through the library window that overlooked the cloisters, I saw Chuck Norris steal a kid’s lunch box, and then get chased across the courtyard by a whole class of second graders, his fur undulating and his fluffy face and bright black eyes loving every minute of everything.

Then I watched Duncan come out, scold the dog, return the lunch box to its owner, and sternly point the kids toward the lunchroom. Leave it to this new version of Duncan to bring an adorable dog onto campus and then forbid all forms of affection.

Anyway, the man and the dog were not the perfect match.

Once the kids were gone, I watched Duncan practicing obedience commands with Chuck Norris for about five minutes before Chuck Norris ran out of patience and rose up on his hind legs to lick Duncan all over the face.

Were we worried about the kids agitating Chuck Norris—or the other way around?

Anyway, that wasn’t the last memo we’d get from Duncan that day—only the first of a deluge:

From: Duncan Carpenter

RE: MEMO—NAME TAGS

Please note that all faculty must report to the security department today to register for new, digitized security name tags. Tags will be delivered next week. Faculty must wear their name tags at all times or risk disciplinary action.

From: Duncan 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.