But that wasn’t the point.

The point was Duncan.

The point was he’d been in some kind of cahoots with Kent Buckley this whole time. He’d been hanging out with me—acting like a friend—when all the time he’d been working with the enemy. He’d been helping Kent Buckley sell the school? Of all the worst-case scenarios I’d pictured, this wasn’t even in the running. I’d thought we’d cured him. I thought we’d solved it. I thought the threat was over.

Apparently not.

I was two blocks from the seawall when I heard running feet behind me.

“Sam! Wait!” It was Duncan.

I did not wait.

The sun had gone down. It was dark. I kept moving.

“Sam!”

I knew Duncan’s legs were longer than mine, and I knew he’d eventually catch up with me, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to make it easy for him.

I didn’t even know where I was going. I was just … going.

When Duncan finally caught up with me, I wouldn’t slow, and I wouldn’t look at him, and I wouldn’t wipe the tears off my face. What I would do was yell: “Are you kidding me right now? You’ve been in cahoots with Kent Buckley this whole time? You’ve been eating Babette’s food, and hanging out with me, and bonding with the teachers—letting us all like you, and root for you, and help you—and you’ve been some kind of enemy spy all along—for Kent Buckley? Of all the douchebags in the history of douchebags—that guy? Really?”

These weren’t even questions that needed answers. I was just talking. Just making noise. Just attaching words to the primal yelling.

But Duncan tried to respond. “No! No. I didn’t even know about this until today.”

I kept charging forward, not looking at him.

“Okay—technically, I knew last fall. I knew when I started that Kent Buckley wanted to turn the place into a fortress. And at the time I was all for it, honestly. When I first got here, I totally agreed with him about the Death Star. I couldn’t believe you guys were teaching kids in that crumbling old building with nothing but Raymond for security. It offended me, honestly. It made me angry that you would be so willfully ignorant of the world we’re living in right now.”

When we hit the seawall, I didn’t even break stride, just turned and kept going, crossing my arms against the sea breeze. But my pace was slowing some. At first, I’d only wanted to yell, but now, I couldn’t help but listen, too.

“So yes,” Duncan went on, “I helped him. That’s what he told me the job was—that’s what he said the school wanted—a total security revamp. That’s why I walked in with that water gun last fall. Kent Buckley had told me this group was super pro-guns.”

“One look at us should have cleared that right up.”

“Yeah. But this is Texas.”

“Literally nobody wanted any guns anywhere except Kent Buckley.”

“But I didn’t know that. And it was only as I spent more time with him that I started to realize that he was … kind of … off.”

“Duh,” I said, still charging on.

“That—and once he got the idea for the new building—the way he obsessed over it, it felt kind of personal.”

“Max did not like Kent Buckley.”

“I got that impression. And then once he got this idea for the new school, he realized that he could make money off of it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a part owner in the company that builds those Death Stars. Plus, he owns the pad site on West Beach. So if the school buys it, they buy it from him.”

“He told you that?”

“He did. Winter break. He called me and told me to put all that on hold—that we might be selling this building, and he wanted to save that money for the new school.”

My pace slowed now, as I thought about it. “So … you didn’t stop painting everything gray because of Babette?”

Duncan shook his head.

“So were you just—playing along?”

“At first. Yeah.”

“And when Babette told you to get into therapy?”

“I’d been planning to do that anyway, so Babette just made it easier. My sister was overjoyed.”

“And … me? All the stuff we did together? What was that about?”

A pause. “I knew Babette was bluffing.”

“How?”

“I’d read everything. I’d read my contract. I’d read the bylaws and guidelines and rules for the board. Babette wasn’t anywhere—not in the paperwork, anyway.”

“That can’t be right. Max wouldn’t just leave Babette out.”

“Maybe he didn’t think about it. Maybe he thought he’d live forever. Maybe he wasn’t a paperwork guy.”

“He definitely wasn’t a paperwork guy.”

“Maybe he was too busy dreaming up playgrounds to get into the nitty-gritty of the power structure of the board.”

That sounded about right. That sounded like Max.

“But Kent Buckley?” Duncan went on. “He is all about the power structure of the board. And after Max died, during all the shock and chaos, he was working to bring his friends on to the board, he was rewriting bylaws and pushing them through when nobody was focusing—and pretty soon, he’d executed a good old-fashioned power grab.”

“Did you know about it?”

“Some. He’d take me out sometimes, back at the beginning, and drink quite a bit and tell me too much.”

“So you knew what he was up to.”

“Yes, but in his version of reality, he’s the hero and everybody loves him. So it took me a little time to get that sorted out.”

I kept walking.

“At first,” Duncan said, “I was just doing the daily tasks to not call Babette’s bluff. I didn’t want her to know I was onto her. But then the weirdest thing happened…”

I waited, but he didn’t go on. Finally, I said, “What? What happened?”

Duncan took a breath. “I started to like them.”

For the first time, I looked over.

“I mean, I started to really like them. I started looking forward to them, wondering what was coming up next. I looked forward to the moment in the morning when you would swing by my office and give me some nutty assignment, like ‘eat a bowl of udon noodles,’ and I looked forward to actually doing it. Most of all, I just looked forward to you.”

I sighed. “I looked forward to you, too.”

“And the more time I spent with you, the more I started seeing the world through different eyes.”

“We were trying to wake you up. We called it Operation Duncan.”

“Well, it worked.”

“Not well enough.”

I thought of our school building. Its butterfly garden, its courtyard, and its cloisters, and the way it felt like another place and time. I thought of my library and its book staircase and our sunny cafeteria and our butterfly mural.

Then I said, “Is there anything you can do to stop him?”

Duncan didn’t answer right away. I looked over and saw a funny expression on his face.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You don’t want to stop him.”

“I didn’t say—”

I started walking faster. “Oh, my God, here I was thinking we were friends.”

“We are friends.”

“You can’t be friends with a person who wants to put you in prison.”

“Come on. It’s not prison!”

We’d just come to a fishing pier that jutted out over the Gulf. I turned and started marching out along it, over the water. “It’s pretty damn close,” I said. “You can’t live your whole life in fear. You can’t insulate yourself from everything. Kids get hurt all the time—but we don’t make them wear bicycle helmets everywhere. You take reasonable precautions, and then you hope for the best. That’s all you can do.”

“This is bigger than a bump on the head,” Duncan said.

But I didn’t break stride. “And even if you make us all move to that tragic Death Star building—if you really make the kids give up natural light, nature, play, color, and joy, and hope to lock them away all day in some hermetically sealed, unearthly environment all their lives—even still … they could still step outside and get shot. They could go to the movies and get shot. They could go to the beach and get shot. They could go to a concert and get shot.”

“But it wouldn’t—” He stopped himself.

“It wouldn’t what?” I stopped walking to meet his eyes. We were out over the water now, waves beneath us. “It wouldn’t be on your watch?”

Duncan looked away.

“That’s all about you, friend. That is not about them.”

“It’s not just about me!” Duncan said, his voice loud. “It’s about you. It’s about all of you. It was hard for me to see you in danger when I first got here—but it’s even harder for me now! Because now I know you—and the kids, and the teachers—and now I’ve spent time with you, and now I care about you! Before, it was theoretical. Now it’s real.”

He had just told me that he cared about us—about me—but I couldn’t even hear it. “We are not in danger!” I shouted. “No more than anybody else is any other minute of the day. Life is full of danger. Terrible things happen all the time. That doesn’t mean you live your life in fear.”