(One month later)

Finally, it's the end of term, and I need the long summer vacation to recover – both from this whole past year, and from the trip to Washington, D.C. yesterday. At least this year nobody destroyed anything irreplaceable, though Adam's group (who wound up being Gorman's group, because Adam had needed to take his eyes off them for a minute) got into trouble for throwing paper airplanes in the Air and Space Museum. I don't know for certain what they made the paper darts out of – especially as I had specifically banned origami on the trip – but I do know that several of the worksheets that were handed in the next day had been filled out on a blank worksheet that had been photocopied on the school copier. (You can always tell things photocopied on that machine, because the ink fades towards the bottom right-hand corner. And as we're likely to lose funding next year, we're not likely to be able to replace/repair it any time soon.)

Adam's head was still drooping when he walked back to the buses (with what had been Gorman's group) after the Paper Airplane Incident. He looked, more than ever, like the little boy back in third grade all those years ago. 'Am I going to lose my job?' he asked me, very quietly.

'Well, that's going to be Gorman's decision, now,' I said. 'And Todd Randall's, as vice-principal.' Gorman and Todd had agreed to share the duties of principal, and each combine this with teaching duties, as neither of them wanted to give up teaching and lose touch with what schools actually do.

'Gorman already told me I was dismissed,' Adam said, even more quietly.

'Did he specifically say you were dismissed from your job?' I asked. 'Or could he have meant "dismissed" as in "You may leave this room and walk away with your new group now,"?'

'I thought he meant dismissed from my job,' said Adam. 'He was really mad at me.'

'I don't think he can have meant that,' I said. 'Firstly, you don't get fired on the spur of the moment like that. Secondly, Gorman isn't principal yet, so he doesn't have the authority to do that even if he wanted to. Thirdly, Gorman gets loud when he's even slightly annoyed or stressed, so he sounds angrier than he really is. Now, suppose you tell me what happened?'

'Well, one of the kids – the little blond-haired one who goes around with that Yoda puppet…'

'Dwight Tharp,' I offered.

'Yes, Dwight wandered off, and I went to look for him, because I thought he might be hurt and I was scared that if someone else got to him first, they might do the wrong thing, like trying to move him when he might have a broken spine. And then I got trapped in the bathroom because I hadn't brought my wet wipes with me, and then one of the other kids – the one who brought all those Cheetos into Assembly once…'

'Quavondo Phan.'

'Yes, Quavondo came and rescued me, and we found Dwight talking to a kid from another school, just as the other kid's teacher came along to collect him, and…' he tailed off.

'Yes?'

'I liked that other teacher and I thought maybe we could be friends and we exchanged email addresses,' Adam whispered, blushing furiously.

'Wow! Are you going to write to her?'

'Maybe.'

'I think you should.'

'I don't know. It just seems disloyal to Patricia. And what's Logan [Adam's son] going to think?'

'Adam, you split up with Patricia over ten years ago. She's married to someone else. And Logan lives with them. You told me he loves his stepdad and his little half-sister. If he's happy with his mom being happily married to someone who isn't you, why wouldn't he want you to be happy, too?'

He smiled a little. 'I guess.'

'And it's up to Gorman and Todd, but I don't think you're going to lose your job. You're our chorus teacher. You're one of our drama coaches, because so many people want to do drama that it takes more than just me to teach them. You're the only member of staff who is a trained paramedic. And – you're one of us. You belong here. A student wrote a letter to the school board once saying that McQuarrie is a big family and it's our job to look out for each other. Admittedly, the student in question was going through a Dark Side phase and wrote that in a letter trying to get another student expelled, but – just because they weren't sincere in writing it doesn't mean it isn't true. It just took that student a bit longer to realise it, and me even longer.'

So Adam looked a lot less worried – until we stopped for supper at a Wendy's on the way home, and I admitted that I'd deliberately scheduled this trip to miss test day. I hadn't been sure whether my students would now decide to do their best on the test because I had scrapped FunTime, or still deliberately fail to prove that FunTime doesn't work, so I had decided just to refuse to let the school take the tests at all. Gorman and I were laughing about it, and then he said, 'I love you,' and I said, 'I know,' and then 'Let's Twist Again' came on the restaurant radio, and I wished I had asked Gorman to dance a year ago when they played 'The Twist' at the school dance (I had been amazed then how many students somehow knew how to do the Twist, apparently from either watching YouTube videos or learning from their grandparents), but we got up and danced now, and everyone, teachers and students, were dancing – except for a few grumbling students, and Adam, who was sitting there looking deeply troubled.

I assumed that he was just worried that dancing was unhygienic, but later he asked, 'You said the school was going to lose funding if your test results weren't good enough. How much do you – do we lose if we don't take the tests at all?'

'Not as much as if we bought more useless videos,' I told him. 'We'll just need to run more fundraising events, that's all. But preferably not selling popcorn again.'

'How did that go?' Adam asked. Oh, of course – he had been there to publicise the popcorn-selling drive, but not to find out what actually happened.

'Surprisingly well,' I said, laughing at the memory. 'Some of the students had the bright idea of offering their friends and family a choice of $10 to buy an overpriced tin of popcorn they didn't want, or $5 not to buy it, and a lot of donors ordered several nothings.'

Adam blinked. 'I'm not sure I'll ever get used to this school,' he said.

'It takes time,' I told him. 'You'll get there.'

This morning, I found something in my office again. Not a case file this time, but a single sheet of paper folded in half. Not exactly origami (though I'm sure Harvey Cunningham would remind me that any folded paper is origami, unless it has extra bits glued to it, in which case it's kirigami). This didn't have glue, but simply drawings. On the front, it had a drawing of me as Emperor Palpatine and Gorman as Darth Vader, and the words 'CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ENGAGEMENT'. On the back, it had a drawing of Gorman as Jabba the Hutt and me as Princess Leia-as-underwear-clad-slave. I'm fairly sure the artist was Kellen Campbell, though the pictures weren't signed. Inside, though, the card was signed by probably every student in the school.

They were clearly trying to test the limits of how far my new, mellower personality extended – or how far the fact that it was the end of term and that I was about to be no longer principal meant I couldn't punish them. I couldn't feel angry – perhaps the cartoons were funny, or because I was so relieved that the year was over, or because I was so happy to be with Gorman. Not that we are engaged, but – it's not a bad idea.

When I showed the card to Gorman, he liked it, too – though as art teacher (as of last month) he tutted at the lack of perspective in the drawings.

'Looks like they can't decide which of us is the other's slave,' I said.

'My dad always used to tell me that was the definition of a relationship: that there are two slaves and no master,' Gorman said. 'When I was a kid, I took him literally – we'd just been learning about slavery in school – and thought it sounded horrific. Now, I think I know what he means.'

'Yes. Some things sound creepy when they're not meant that way. You know, a while back, some of the kids found an old yearbook, with a picture of a student who was here in 1981, and they thought she was quite cute, until they realised she was me. I can see how creepy that must feel, realising you've been fantasising about dating a thirteen-year-old version of your principal.'

'I expect when I was thirteen, I'd have wanted to date thirteen-year-old you,' said Gorman. 'I don't know whether you'd have wanted to date thirteen-year-old me, though. All I know is: the person I am now loves dating the person you are now.'

Author's note: I discovered the Origami Yoda books back around 2018, when I found a copy of Secret of the Fortune Wookiee in a charity shop (which was a weird way to discover the series, given that Dwight and Origami Yoda are absent for most of this book). I bought the rest of the series, and knew that I wanted to write a fanfic telling the story from Ms Rabbski's point of view.

However... in 2018, I lent the books to a friend of mine whose children were just the right age for them. In 2019, my attempts to visit my friend and get the books back were scuppered by various family illnesses and crises. In 2020, I couldn't visit her because of Covid lockdowns. Over 2021 and 2022, more crises happened. In 2023, I finally got to visit her, realised she couldn't give the books back because she never had the full set together because her children kept lending them out to their friends, so I bought a replacement set. I then found out that there actually used to be a dedicated Origami Yoda fanfiction website - which had closed in 2022. Oh well, I've written this fanfic anyway. I hope someone reads it.