"What do you mean, I'm trying to cultivate drugs? It's just called 'milkweed,' it's not actual marijuana!" Ms. Norris exclaimed at the loudest volume acceptable in polite company. Mr. Kurtz maintained his stony glare.

"Look, we both know how times are changing. We aren't in the good old days of Reaganomics. Society's a lot more liberal now, but we still can't say we're growing something called weed!"

"It's just a name, Patrick!"

"And would a weed by any other name smell as much like a PR disaster? You can grow anything else you want, Mary—heck, grow opium poppies and invite a guest lecturer from the Taliban. But this is a no-sell. I'm sorry."

Ms. Norris was used to administrative pushback on every decision that would be in the best interests of the teachers, the student body, or the community as a whole. In her view, teachers and administrators were in a way elected representatives of the community around them, and could not function without a bilateral relationship of trust: if people couldn't trust the teachers, what would they do, private school? Part of this trust involved everyone else believing that the teachers knew best, and consequently not trying to meddle too much in their curricula; the thought occurred to Ms. Norris that if she hadn't sought official approval for her project, nobody would have stopped her.

"So what else can we grow then?"

"How about some fruits and vegetables? Give the culinary arts kids something to work with—or even better, grow better heirloom tomatoes than Ms. Foster. Call it a community garden, even if nothing is going to the community. The PR on that would be great."

"A good idea, but why is it all about PR? Why is it not about how it helps the community?" Ms. Norris asked, knowing perfectly well she'd receive a bad answer.

"We can do whatever we want that helps the community, but if it looks bad for us, someone will tell us to stop. The community biting the hand that feeds them, Mr. Mudd, anyone. You have to think about the bigger picture."

"So be it."

Ms. Norris went back to her classroom and began browsing Home Depot's catalog for fruits and vegetables, still rueing Mr. Kurtz's obstinance but at least thankful these were cheaper than new microscopes. There were the usual tomatoes, the zucchini she knew would take over the entire plot if left unchecked, some herbs she could dry and use to make her lab smell less like formaldehyde and AP students' sweat; but with the surplus there was room for indulgence: a kumquat tree, lavender that like the zucchini would be impossible to root out but would at least smell nicer, hope. This project would not save the monarch butterflies, but it would save the honeybees, and perhaps provide students with the knowledge that their food ultimately came from somewhere else besides a delivery app.

She returned to Mr. Kurtz's office a few weeks later, once all her new plants had begun to grow and it would be too late for him to nix the entire project.

"I thought you would want to know how your garden is doing, Patrick, after that talk we had last time," Ms. Norris said.

"My garden? Oh, no, I could never—that's my wife's job. I'm too impatient."

"I mean the garden I planted for my AP Bio class as a collaboration with culinary arts and AP Environmental Science. It's farm-to-table cookery, environmental stewardship, applied ecology."

"Keep up the great work!" Mr. Kurtz said dismissively.

"Don't you want to take a photo or something there? Get some good PR?"

"It's a garden, who's going to care? Unless we're feeding the community, nobody will notice."

"The Insight is already on the case. If I were to reach out to local press they'd send someone over. You really think so much other exciting stuff goes on around this school that this is irrelevant."

"I don't know, Mary, I have a good feeling about this new crop of freshmen."

"Whatever you say."

The garden continued to prosper thanks to Ms. Norris's remarkable talent for cross-department collaboration, and Mr. Kurtz's offhand prediction proved right: this new crop of freshmen was something spectacular. A year and a half later into spring semester, when the garden was in its most bountiful state and everyone had grown tired of plum marmalade in the break room, Mr. Kurtz came to Ms. Norris's classroom during a passing period.

"Hey Mary, I wanted to talk to you about something which could be beneficial to all. Frank approached me—of course you know him, he's your student—about having his club's members help out with the farm a bit. And maybe even taking this project to other schools, teaching kids how to garden and that sort of thing. What do you say to that?"

"Why wouldn't he ask me directly?"

"He's probably scared of you," Mr. Kurtz immediately responded.

"I don't want to work with his club. It's a good idea, but I don't trust that it's going to be anything but self-indulgent good PR. Something he's going to write about for a college essay."

"What do you mean? It's just a garden. It's going to help the community, maybe feed a few starving children."

"Do you know the fable of the scorpion and the frog? There's a frog who lives near a river, who every day swims back and forth across it. One day, a scorpion comes up to her and asks for a ride across. 'Why should I take you,' asks the frog, 'when you could sting and kill me?' The scorpion laughs, not taking the frog's worry seriously, and says, 'If I were to sting you, I would drown.' The frog begrudgingly accepts, and she takes the scorpion across. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog, and as they drown, the scorpion says, 'I can't control it. It's in my nature to sting others,' and they die."

"And?"

"I've spent the entire year watching Frank slowly turn from the class clown into a wannabe dictator. People like him run for office and make his followers donate to churches as part of prosperity gospel. What trust I've had in him to do the right thing has been lost, even if he's never done anything to personally wrong me. He's a scorpion: it's in his nature to take good intent and corrupt it. We're going to see kindergarteners used as forced labor to meet production quotas if you let him do this."

"Mary, come on, you can't say that about a student. Imagine if those remarks got out. It would be terrible PR!"

"It's my garden and my rules. If he truly believes in this idea, he can start a new garden somewhere with or without me. But I don't think he will, since it's not something that supports his goals, and I think some lingering spite over being told no is going to sour him on the idea anyhow."

"Very well. As you wish."

As Ms. Norris predicted, Frank never approached her about starting his own garden, or gave any indication that he hadn't immediately abandoned the idea. There was one time when he passed by the kumquat tree while she was gardening and looked just a bit envious, like he for once knew the pain of exclusion that he had caused in so many others. If he had worked up the courage to ask for a kumquat, she'd have let him take as many as he wished, but he walked away without saying a word. And so it was true: he was a scorpion, and a scorpion could never learn not to sting.

Discussion Questions:

Why's this garden important enough to have an entire chapter dedicated to it?

Where else in the story so far might the fable of the scorpion and the frog be relevant?

Do you think Ms. Norris is right that Frank would have ruined the garden if he'd been involved?