What You Wish For

Sam Casey is the school librarian at the Kempner School, a beloved independent elementary school on Galveston Island, Texas. She has no close family: Her mother died when she was ten, and her father is absent from her life. Sam lives in the carriage house on the property of Max and Babette Kempner, the school's founders, whom she considers surrogate parents. Her best friend is Alice, a tall math specialist.

While Max and Babette are on a cruise to Italy, Sam organizes Max's sixtieth birthday party. At the party, Max collapses while dancing with Sam, appears to recover, and collapses again while dancing with Babette. He dies of a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot from his flight home. Tina Buckley, Max and Babette's daughter, resents Sam's closeness with her parents. At the funeral reception, Sam takes Tina's son Clay, a bookish third-grader, to the library while Clay's father, Kent Buckley, is busy with phone calls. When Tina discovers Clay is missing, she orders Sam to leave.

Kent, chairman of the school's board of directors, announces he has hired Duncan Carpenter as the new principal, bypassing Babette. Sam is shaken: Duncan is the man she had an intense, unrequited crush on when they worked together at Andrews Prep in California. The stress triggers an aura, a precursor to a seizure. Sam has epilepsy, dormant since middle school but returned in her midtwenties. She plans to attend Duncan's introductory meeting and then quit.

At the meeting, Sam collides with Duncan in the doorway, but he shows no sign of recognizing her. Since Andrews, she has adopted a colorful wardrobe of polka dots and pink-dyed bangs, inspired by Max's philosophy that joy is an antidote to fear. Duncan wears a gray three-piece suit and delivers a stiff speech before pulling out a spray-painted squirt gun, declaring the school will lead the nation in campus safety. He dismisses Sam's concerns and cancels the Adventure Garden, a playground project the faculty fundraised $100,000 to build. Sam abandons her plan to quit, deciding she cannot leave her colleagues unprotected.

Duncan's regime brings assigned seating, shortened recess, locked gates, and a flood of memos. His labradoodle, Chuck Norris, supposedly a security dog, eats library books and charms children. Sam organizes Friday gatherings at Babette's backyard, becoming the faculty's informal resistance leader. Before Thanksgiving, Duncan announces metal detectors, bulletproof glass, gray uniforms, and the cancellation of all field trips.

Sam defies the ban by secretly leading the third-grade class to their annual beach cleanup, where she bonds with Clay over his knowledge of marine life. Duncan discovers the outing and confronts her. Sam reveals she recognizes him from Andrews and confesses how devastated she is by his transformation. Duncan admits he always remembered her. Sam also learns he is single.

Before winter break, Duncan has the beloved butterfly mural painted over with gray. The mural, a floor-to-ceiling painting Sam and Babette created, is preserved: The paint is washable. Over the break, Sam sees Duncan with his family and finds him relaxed and recognizably himself. Duncan asks Sam to drive him home from a cryosurgery procedure to break up scar tissue. Heavily sedated, he confesses he has had feelings for her since Andrews. While helping him change, Sam discovers massive scars on his left side. Duncan reveals he was shot in a school shooting at the Webster School in Baltimore; his sister Helen later explains he was hit three times and nearly died from a punctured lung and blood infection.

Sam tells Alice and Babette everything. Babette reveals that the board begged her to take over after Max's death but she declined; she claims she can have both Duncan and Kent fired at any time. The three women devise "Operation Duncan": Duncan must attend therapy twice a week, halt his changes to the school, and complete one daily joy-oriented task chosen by Babette, or face termination. Duncan agrees, and Sam becomes his companion for activities ranging from eating frozen custard to juggling for children at lunch.

Over the spring, Duncan softens. When Babette sends them to ride the Iron Shark roller coaster, the ride stalls at its peak and Sam discloses her epilepsy. Duncan coaches her through a panic attack by synchronizing their breathing and holding eye contact. On the walk home, he reveals he plans his own funeral, while Sam shares her philosophy of deliberate joy.

At the end-of-year faculty party, Duncan restores the butterfly mural. After initial resistance, he dances with Sam and teaches the faculty the Hustle, then pulls Babette onto the floor for her first dance since Max's death. Days later, Kent announces plans to sell the school and relocate to a windowless fortress built by a defense contractor he has invested in. Sam turns to Babette, expecting her to intervene, but Babette reveals she never had the power to fire anyone and fabricated the threat, knowing Sam, a terrible liar, could sell the bluff only if she believed it. Sam storms out.

Duncan follows and explains he initially cooperated with Kent's security vision but came to see Kent was exploiting the situation for profit. He tells Sam the full story of the shooting: A student named Stevie unlocked the classroom door to let in a fleeing classmate, and the shooter killed Stevie before hitting Duncan. Overwhelmed, Sam runs to the end of a fishing pier and jumps into the ocean. Duncan dives in after her. They argue in the surf before Sam kisses him. Back at her apartment, Sam recognizes the signs of an oncoming seizure and tries to get Duncan to leave, but the seizure strikes first.

Sam wakes alone and concludes Duncan fled. The assumption echoes her deepest wound: As a child, she overheard her father say he could not live with her seizures, and his abandonment cemented her belief that her condition makes her unlovable. Alice arrives, sent by Babette, but they soon receive an emergency notification that Clay has gone missing. Kent forgot Clay's birthday trip to a museum, and Clay let himself out through the back gate.

Sam and Alice find Clay under a pier, standing chest-deep in the surf beside a stranded pygmy sperm whale tangled in a fishing net. Clay has been cutting at the net with his pocketknife for hours, singing to keep the whale calm. Sam takes over while police and firefighters join the effort. When Kent arrives and shoves Clay, Duncan steps between them, and Kent punches Duncan before being arrested. Duncan tells Sam he never left after her seizure: He stayed and put her to bed, departing only when the call came about Clay.

The net is cut free and the rescue succeeds. Sam tries to walk away, but Babette and Alice stop her. Babette tells Sam that joy is fleeting and nothing lasts, and that is exactly what courage means: knowing all of it and going in anyway. Sam runs back to Duncan, who tells her the seizure made him love her more. Sam tells him she loves him.

In the aftermath, Tina divorces Kent and moves in with Babette; she and Sam reconcile. Tina blocks the sale of the school, and Kent's assault prompts his removal from the board. The Adventure Garden is built. Duncan and Chuck Norris move into Sam's carriage house. Duncan still has nightmares and Sam still has seizures, but they choose to be present for each other. The school holds an annual disco-themed dance party in Max's honor, and Babette paints Max's motto on the playground fence: "Never miss a chance to celebrate."