The Best Man by Richard Peck

gridlock across the normally quiet suburb.
    Mr. McLeod arrived on the floor of a classic Pontiac Firebird, driven by an unidentified student’s father who delivered the blue-eyed National Guardsman to a disused furnace room. He was briefly sighted in civilian clothes with a large dog on a short leash, between car and furnace room door.
    ABSOLUTELY NO MEDIA signs were posted throughout the school grounds. The principal, Mrs. Velma Dempsey, 52, was unavailable for comment.
    Local police plan to patrol the school grounds for the foreseeable future.
    Kinko’s printed up those ABSOLUTELY NO MEDIA signs for Mrs. Dempsey. But how was she to get Mr. McLeod into school without being mobbed, interviewed, or proposed to? She dumped the problem on Mrs. Stanley, who called Mom Sunday night. Dad thought of the Firebird. It was a car toonoticeable to be noticed, and Mr. McLeod would fit on the floor up front. Grandma Magill remembered that Grandpa had kept the keys to every building he’d ever built.
    So we were all in on it. I was the unidentified student in the back of the car, next to the dog.
    We’d picked up Mr. McLeod in the lot outside his gym, where he’d parked his old beat-up Kia, not the Hummer I’d hoped for. Then Dad tooled us across town. Mr. McLeod was under the dashboard. From down there he introduced me to the dog, who wanted to shake my hand. He was a Belgian Malinois named Argus.
    He crowded me on the backseat and looked like he could eat your head if it was dinner time. Cops waved Dad into the parking lot at school. Then Mr. McLeod and Argus and I made a run for the furnace room door. I had the key and led them to the classroom. Lynette had come early with her mom.
    â€œLook, no socks,” she said, pointing out Mr. McLeod’s ankles. He was in a dark blue blazer this morning, button-down blue shirt, maroon tie, wingtip shoes. It would be a long time before any of us saw him in uniform again. But that gets ahead of the story.
    â€œThat’s a new pantsuit on Mrs. Stanley,” Lynette remarked. “And she bought all the blusher at Walgreen’s. She cleared their shelves. She thought she looked too washed out on TV.”
    Mrs. Stanley was showing Mr. McLeod the roll book or something. Argus was stretched out in the paperwork on the floor, monitoring the room. It was the calm before the storm.
    Lynette leaned over. “What’s the dog about?”
    â€œSearch me,” I said. “It’s just his dog, I guess. It got in the car with him.”
    Lynette’s eyes rolled. “It’s not just his dog. Look at the collar on it. It’s some kind of official dog, a professional. Maybe it can sniff out narcotics or dead bodies. Maybe it’s trained to attack immature students who never notice anything.”
    â€œWho?” I said. “Russell Beale?”
    Lynette sighed, and the room exploded with everybody else: seeing Mr. McLeod, spotting the dog, milling around. They’d fought their way through the au pairs, and they were all keyed up and unready to learn.
    All the guys wanted to fist-bump Mr. McLeod. Josh Hunnicutt’s fist was above his head. A coupleof girls cried at the sight of him—not the usual criers. Needless to say, nobody was absent. We were hoping there’d be more helicopters. Raymond Petrovich wrote himself a pass to walk the attendance form down to the office. We never did get computerized attendance records at that school.
    Raymond dodged past Mrs. Dempsey, who loomed into the room with her phone out. An unauthorized dog had been reported. Also, unauthorized people were outside our windows.
    One was a big blond woman with a baby, holding up a sign that read:
    HI, ED!
    AU WHAT A PAIR WE’D MAKE!
    â€œA dog, Mr. McLeod?” Mrs. Dempsey said in her voice of doom.
    â€œYes, ma’am, his name’s Argus.”
    Argus arose. He was one beautiful dog, with that long muzzle and pointed ears and a brown coat with a