He did not fight me.

“Kids!” he shouted, standing up to get their attention. “Who wants to see me juggle?”

A great cheer went up in the room.

Duncan walked around the room, snaking between the tables, picking up items off the kids’ lunch trays. He took a red apple from a fifth-grader and started tossing it up and down as he kept walking, prowling for other things to gather.

“What should I juggle?” he asked the room over and over, as the kids watched him and shouted out suggestions: A salt shaker! A glass of milk! A cupcake!

“I’m choosing round things,” he called out to the room, “because they’re easier. And it’s been a long, long, long, long…” He paused to look around the room, and then kept going: “long, long, long time since I’ve juggled anything.”

The kids were spellbound, watching him.

So was I.

“Not even a spaghetti noodle!” he shouted. “Not even a square of Jell-O!” He was still tossing that apple up and down, barely even looking at it. “Not even,” he said at last, lowering his voice, “a piece of belly-button lint.”

A ripple of laughter from the kids.

“Some of you,” Duncan went on, turning all around the room, pointing at the kids, “were barely even born the last time I juggled.”

The kids cheered.

“So I’m sticking with easy,” he said then, lifting up the apple, and saying, “Like this donut!”

“That’s not a donut!” the kids called out.

Duncan was standing near Clay, and, with that, he leaned over and picked up an orange off his tray. He held it up for the kids. “You might think this watermelon is too heavy,” he said next, as the kids launched into giggles and protests, “but I’m telling you, as long as it’s round, I got this.”

“That’s not a watermelon!” the kids shouted.

“Now, I just need one more round thing,” Duncan said, and the kids quieted to see what he was going to choose. “What should it be? A pomegranate? A tomato? A cactus?”

“A cactus isn’t round!”

He sidled his way over toward the faculty tables now. “It’ll be hard to top the watermelon, but I’ll try.”

That’s when Duncan noticed an unpeeled kiwifruit on the lunch table in front of me. He met my eyes and started walking my way.

Quietly then, just to me, under the din, he said, “Who packs an unpeeled kiwifruit in their lunch?”

“Ran out of time,” I said, tapping the paring knife I’d also brought.

Then Duncan winked at me and turned back to the room.

“I’ve got it!” he shouted. And the kids quieted to see what it would be.

He stepped closer to me, leaned over, picked up the kiwi, held it up, and shouted, “An avocado!”

The kids went nuts.

Duncan made his way back toward the stage at the far end—never breaking his rhythm with the apple and the orange. He climbed the stage steps without stopping.

He had their attention now. Lucky for all of us, he had not forgotten how to juggle.

And once he let himself start, it was like he’d never stopped. At first, it was just a simple circle, but then he started adding in pops and surprises, syncopating the rhythm. I left my table and moved closer to the stage, mesmerized by the sight, lost in the easy rhythm. He tossed the orange up high and caught it. He Hacky-Sacked the kiwi with his shoe. He tossed the apple between his legs and behind his back.

He created a marvelous, transcendent little moment of magic.

And then, once it was all over, he went back to the edge of the room, reassumed his military posture, and reapplied his poker face like it had never happened.

But it had happened.

And I’ll tell you something. Even as I eyed him for the rest of lunch, looking stern again, and boring again in that same-old-same-old identical gray suit with that identical navy tie … I knew something was different.

Because when he’d caught that kiwi on his shoe a few minutes before, his pants leg had flipped up, and I’d seen something hidden under there. Something I couldn’t unsee.

The socks he was wearing today? They had polka dots.

* * *

The next night, our activity was to walk downtown to the movie theater that played the documentary about the Great Storm of 1900. “It’s very tragic,” Babette had warned me, and I had explicit instructions to stress themes of resilience in conversation afterward.

On the walk there, I couldn’t stop talking about the juggling.

“You’re just … so good,” I kept saying.

“I used to perform on street corners. That’s how I made money in college.”

“Juggling?”

He shrugged. “Other things, too.”

“Like what?”

He sighed, like So many. “I can walk on stilts. I can do magic tricks. I can solve a Rubik’s Cube in under five minutes. I can blow a bubble inside a bubble. I can burp the alphabet. Oh, and I’m a yo-yo champion.”

“You’re a yo-yo champion?”

“Well,” he corrected, kind of aw-shucks, “state champion.”

“That’s a thing?”

He gave me a look. “Trust me. I could mesmerize you.”

I flared my nostrils at him. “I’m not easily mesmerized.”

“You only think that ’cause you’ve never seen me spin a yo-yo.”

We strolled on for a second. Then I said, “How did you learn how to do all that stuff?”

He thought about it for a second. “Do you remember when you were in school and you came home every night and did homework?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I never did that homework.”

I smiled. Of course he didn’t.

“I taught myself mumbley-peg instead. I read comic books. I taught myself Morse code. And knife-throwing. And cracking a whip. I memorized the name of every bomber that flew in World War Two. I built a working radio from scratch. Basically, I was wildly enthusiastic to learn everything they don’t teach you in school.”

“And now you’re a school principal.”

“They didn’t hire me for my brains.”

Our whole idea was to lure him in gently with easy things, and get him hooked, and then build from there. As the weeks went on, we upshifted slowly: making him read a favorite Garfield of Clay’s choosing, making him wear a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops on casual Friday, making him serenade Mrs. Kline in the courtyard on her birthday, making him eat a quarter-pound of fudge at La King’s candy shop, making him play charades, and making him read a psychology book about post-traumatic growth.

Oh—and let’s not forget the therapy. Babette’s guy had confirmed that Duncan had, in fact, started attending sessions twice a week.

It had almost been too easy.

Maybe he’d known he was struggling. Maybe he’d wanted some help.

Maybe, on some level, he was grateful that Babette and I were bossing him around.

Was that possible?

I was, of course, the designated companion slash chaperone on all these outings. Babette always planned her biggest events for Friday nights and then gave him the rest of the weekend off. They weren’t dates, of course, but since we did them together, just the two of us, they definitely resembled dates. Babette sent us to the movies, and to the aquarium, and bowling, and out to dinner.

It was confusing, to say the least.

For me, anyway.

The more time I spent with him, the more time I wanted to spend with him. And the more I thought about him when he wasn’t around. And the more I looked for him in the hallways.

It wasn’t … not agonizing. I’ll say that.

I definitely felt like we were helping Duncan. And the kids. And the school.

I just wasn’t quite so sure what we were doing to me.

nineteen

One Friday, Babette’s task for us was to go to an amusement park that was built on a pier out over the Gulf. It was just a few blocks from school, and Duncan left Chuck Norris dozing on a dog bed in his office and walked over to meet me around sunset.

Before we’d made it to the pier, the sun had gone down, and the lights had begun to glow—neon ones on the rides, and string bulbs in graceful scallops all up and down the pier. We bought our tickets and strolled along.

Unable to resist a teachable moment, I said, “Wouldn’t this place be so sad if someone had painted it gray?”

Babette actually had a specific ride that she’d designated for us, and it was a roller coaster called the Iron Shark.

Important note: roller coasters are not exactly safe for people with epilepsy. Some people did fine on them, and some people did not—and I was not exactly sure which category I fell into.

Duncan was clearly a fan of roller coasters. “I hear it has a ten-story, face-down, vertical drop,” Duncan said, like that was a good thing. He’d done a lot of things on Babette’s orders so far, with varying degrees of reluctance, but he actually seemed excited about this one.

He was about as excited as I was nervous.

What the hell was I doing?