A Most Uncommon Degree of Popularity by Kathleen Gilles Seidel Page A

and me to meet with him about the Spring Fair, but the day we were scheduled to see him, Brittany was having another migraine, and Blair wanted to stay home with her. So I went alone.
    Chris’s office was in the old Alden family mansion. Miss Alden had first started teaching young ladies piano and voice in her father’s music room, and then after her parents died, she turned the whole house into an academic school. Eventually new buildings were built for the lower and middle school, but the high school continued to meet in the mansion.
    Chris’s office was on the first floor in what had once been the summer parlor. The room projected out from the main body of the house and had tall, white-mullioned windows on three sides. The crooked, spreading branches of a bur oak tree arched over the peaked roof, and its yellowing leaves filtered the thin October sunshine. It seemed almost colder in Chris’s office than it was outside, and not surprisingly he was wearing a black cashmere sweater under his taupe suede blazer.
    On the credenza behind his desk was a wood-framed photograph of a boy, almost a young man. The photo was in color, and while there was a little too much shadow along the subject’s nose, the background was nicely balanced—a yellow brick, white-trimmed building that looked familiar.
    Chris was sitting at his desk, flipping through a stack of papers. Each page was a handwritten list entered on a preprinted form. His left hand was holding down the lower corner of the stack, and I noticed his watch. The band was leather; the face was thin and gold.
    You don’t buy a watch like that on a headmaster’s salary—at least not on the Alden School’s headmaster salary. Both Chris Goddard’s effortless elegance and his son were thanks to his road manager days.
    He was shaking his head. “We’re going to get hammered on the early decisions,” he said.
    I had been trying to imagine him with a ponytail and a faded T-shirt so it took me a moment to understand. He was talking about the high-school kids’ college applications.
    “Half of these lists have no rhyme or reason to them. And they all have the same two safeties, which means neither one is a safety anymore.” He shook his head. “For what our families pay, they should be getting better advice than this.”
    I was surprised. It had never occurred to me that the school might not be doing everything possible to get the kids into the best colleges; that was what people expected from a private school. Getting into the right colleges matters more than anything to private-school families. “I hope you aren’t shouting that from the street corners.”
    “No, I have some sense of self-preservation,” he said, smiling, “and by this time next year it will be better, maybe not fixed, but at least better.” He closed the file. “I’m sorry. I haven’t asked you to sit down. Please do.”
    He had already read the documents that Blair and I had sent, and he was interested and approving, but suggested that we have some activities for the high-school students. “The ones who were at the school as little kids remember loving the Spring Fair. They would come back if there was something for them to do.”
    It was a good idea. It really was. He seemed to have talked to more students in his two months on the job than our last headmaster had done in two decades. But provide something that would interest the high-school kids? “What will they like?” I asked. “Isn’t the after-prom party a disaster because the activities aren’t all that interesting?” In the spring the juniors and seniors were supposed to go straight from the supposedly alcohol-free hotel ballroom where the prom was held to the definitely alcohol-free after-prom party at the school. They didn’t.
    He winced. “Oh, I hadn’t heard that about the after-prom.” I could sense him making a mental note. That, too, was something that would be improved in the next year or two. “Let me give the