The Kitsune Preschool of San Francisco’s ad campaign—Kitsune School Makes Me Feel Famous—features a photograph of a girl of indiscernible cultural fingerprint: a citizen of the world. It is run according to the principles of Japanese folklore, its hand-drawn mascot the nine-tailed fox. The school is about to be made famous for shutting its doors, and the fox’s story is also one of transformation—indeed, the tale drifted into Japan from Chinese storytelling, and before that who knows—about a creature who lives for hundreds of years, in one treacherous form or another. She begins as a courtesan, which is, at the school, underplayed, but is hero and thief, lover and rival, murderer and tree, over the wild courses of the story. The fox disappears and reforms, pounces and changes costume, and similarly every day at the Kitsune Preschool is a new one. Circle Time is at the beginning or the end of the day. Different groupings are encouraged to start and disperse. One student may lead a song and the next day sit in back, and there is snack or there isn’t or there are two snacks. The idea championed by Maureen de Winter, until her shocking death, is that the new generation learns to be a part of constant change, in the current world with technology ascendant and important and mercurial and fun. The story of life keeps changing, so once you decide what sort of story it is, you have locked yourself into thinking unhealthily. Ill-behavers are forgiven almost before they’re done misdemeanoring, and the furniture is moved around daily, except when it’s not. The philosophy of change and reformation extends to the hiring of its staff, which includes among longtime experimental enthusiasts and other young women an ex-con, a reformed felon. The head of the school, Ariel, hired him for his openness and honesty and willingness to change, and because she was sleeping with him. She is not a felon herself, because she has not been caught, but a few years back, she took some of the money meant for the school and saved it for herself, in case of a rainy day, betraying legally and morally her old college roommate. She would likely have been caught had Maureen not died. Ariel thinks this for the millionth time, in a bus station, panicked and soon to be trailed and caught. She’s kept the money, but the felonious spirit has moved on to someone else.