I got the principal job. Finally. After twenty-five years of teaching history to kids who mostly wanted to know if this would be on the test. I mean, it’s what I’ve been working towards, you know? The interviews were grueling, but I nailed them. Felt good. Like, genuinely good. I told my husband, and he made that awful lasagna he thinks is a treat. My neighbor, Brenda, probably already knew before I even got home, the way she hovers over her petunias. It felt like a win, a proper win. Then the meeting happened. The one with the current staff. My staff now. The ones who have been here, some of them, since before I even started teaching. Mr. Henderson, who’s been the math department head for thirty years. Ms. Chen, whose art room has probably seen more principals come and go than I’ve seen bad cafeteria lunches. They were all there, arranged in the conference room like I was the new substitute teacher. The air felt… heavy. Not heavy with congratulations. Just heavy. I started talking, you know, my little speech. About vision, about collaboration, about moving forward. The usual administrative buzzwords. And I watched them. It was like observing a biological specimen under a microscope. Their facial expressions were neutral, almost perfectly so. Not smiling, not frowning. Just… there. Mr. Henderson folded his arms slowly, like he was settling in for a very long, very boring lecture. Ms. Chen just kept her gaze fixed somewhere over my left shoulder. It was a practiced neutrality, I realize now. A very effective one. I could almost hear their internal monologue. “Who is *she* to tell *us* how things are going to be?” “She’s only been here what, twenty-five years? We remember when the old principal, Mr. Davies, used to…” It wasn't hostility, not exactly. It was more like… a quiet assessment. An evaluation of *me*. And I realized, with a sort of chilling clarity, that I was the one being evaluated. Not the other way around. My authority was just a title, a piece of paper. Their authority was built on decades of presence, of being the bedrock of this institution. The next day, during lunch, I found myself avoiding the staff lounge. Seriously. Like a freshman trying to avoid the upperclassmen. I went to my office, ate my sad little sandwich, and stared at the new nameplate. “Principal Thompson.” It felt like a costume. Like I was playing dress-up. When I walked down the hall, I noticed things. Conversations would subtly shift as I approached. Not stop, just… shift. Like they were talking about the weather when just moments before it was something far more interesting. Probably about me. I tried to initiate a casual conversation with Ms. Jenkins from English last week. Just, “How’s your syllabus coming along?” You know, small talk. And she gave me this look. This look that said, without a single word, “Don’t you know I’ve been doing syllabuses for longer than you’ve been alive?” She just nodded, gave a tight smile, and walked away. It was so perfectly polite, so impeccably professional, that it left no room for complaint. Just a cold, hard fact of my new reality. It's like I’ve been appointed captain of a ship, but the crew has been sailing this particular ocean for so long they know every current, every reef, every storm before I even see a cloud. And they’re just watching me, waiting to see if I run us aground. There’s a morbid humor in it, I guess. The newbie principal, intimidated by the veterans. It’s a bit of a cliché, actually. I just never thought I’d be the cliché. I’m fifty. Fifty years old, and I feel like I’m back in college, trying to figure out where I fit in, who to sit with at lunch. The stakes are just… higher now. Much higher. And Brenda probably already knows I’m a mess. She just has that way about her.