Scott counted the pencils on his desk and stopped at nine. He had twenty-six students. He wanted this classroom to be the best in the district, but he could not teach fractions with nine pencils and four workbooks. The math unit started Monday. His students had fallen a week behind already, and every day the gap grew wider. He took the problem to the front office. The clerk slid a form across the counter without looking up. The supply budget was frozen until spring, she said. Scott folded the form and pushed it into his pocket. Spring was two months away. That afternoon he found Margaret Hartwell in the staff room, grading papers with a red pen. She had taught at Maplecrest Public School for thirty years. New teachers feared her silence more than her words. Scott had never asked her for anything. "I need supplies and I have no budget," he said. "My kids are drowning." Margaret set down her pen. She looked at him over her glasses. "You went to the office first." It was not a question. "They froze the money." "Of course they did." She capped the pen and stood. "The office is the last place a good teacher looks. Get your coat." She walked him three blocks to the town library. The tall arched windows glowed against the gray sky. Inside, Margaret led him past the front desk to a back room stacked with boxes. "They clear out donations every term," she said. "Notebooks, pencils, rulers. People give them and no one comes to take them. I've furnished my classroom from this room for a decade." Scott opened the first box. Inside were rows of unsharpened pencils, still in their wrappers. The next box held workbooks, barely used. His chest tightened. He had spent a week feeling helpless, and the answer had been sitting three blocks away. The librarian was glad to see the boxes go. Scott and Margaret loaded two carts and wheeled them back to the school through the cold. By dark his classroom shelves were full. Twenty-six pencils. Twenty-six workbooks. Enough rulers to go around. "Thank you," Scott said. Margaret pulled on her gloves. "Don't thank me yet." She nodded at the full shelves. "Now the parents will see a real classroom. Word spreads fast in this town. The ones who never showed up will start showing up. And they'll expect you to keep it that way." She left him alone with the shelves. Scott ran his hand along a stack of workbooks. He had the materials now. Monday he could teach. But Margaret was right. He had solved the shortage by making a promise he had not meant to make. The classroom looked ready. Now the whole town would be watching to see if he could deliver.