A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Austere Academy (8 page)

and turn into staples. See?" "Gyba!" Sunny shrieked. She meant "You're a genius! But what can I do to help?" "You can keep your noisy shoes on your feet," Violet replied, "and keep the crabs away from us. And Klaus, you start summarizing stories." "Roger," Sunny said. "Roger," Klaus said, and once again, neither of them were referring to Roger. They meant, once again, that they understood what Violet had said, and would act accordingly, and all three Baudelaires acted accordingly for the rest of the night. Violet tapped away at the rnetal strips, and Klaus read out loud from Duncan's notebook, and Sunny stomped her noisy shoes. Soon, the Baudelaires had a pile of homemade staples on the floor, the details of Mr. Remora's stories in their brains, and not a single crab bothering them in the shack, and even with the threat of Coach Genghis hovering over them, the evening actually began to feel rather cozy. It reminded the Baudelaires of evenings they had spent when their parents were alive, in one of the living rooms in the Baudelaire mansion. Violet would often be tinkering away at some invention, while Klaus would often be reading and sharing the information he was learning, and Sunny would often be making loud noises. Of course, Violet was never tinkering frantically at an invention that would save their lives, Klaus was never reading something so boring, and Sunny was never making loud noises to scare crabs, but nevertheless as the night wore on, the Baudelaires felt almost at home in the Orphans Shack. And when the sky began to lighten with the first rays of dawn, the Baudelaires began to feel a certain thrill that was quite different from the thrill of being in disguise. It was a thrill that I have never felt in my life, and it was a thrill that the Baudelaires did not feel very often. But as the morning sun began to shine, the Baudelaire orphans felt the thrill of thinking your plan might work after all, and that perhaps they would eventually be as safe and happy as the evenings they remembered.

Chapter Twelve

Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make-bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake-if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning. The morning of the comprehensive exams, however, the Baudelaire orphans were so tired, not only from staying up all night studying and making staples but also from nine consecutive nights of running laps, that they made plenty of assumptions, and every last one of them turned out to be incorrect. "Well, that's the last staple," Violet said, stretching her tired muscles. "I think we can safely assume that Sunny won't lose her job." "And you seem to know every detail of Mr. Remora's stories as well as I know all of Mrs. Bass's measurements," Klaus said, rubbing his tired eyes, "so I think we can safely assume that we won't be expelled." "Nilikoh," Sunny said, yawning her tired mouth. She meant something like "And we haven't seen either of the Quagmire triplets, so I think we can safely assume that their part of the plan went well." "That's true," Klaus said. "I assume if they'd been caught we would have heard by now." "I'd make the same assumption," Violet said. "I'd make the same assumption, " came a nasty, mimicking voice, and the children were startled to see Vice Principal Nero standing behind them holding a huge stack of papers. In addition to the assumptions they had made out loud, the Baudelaires had made the assumption that they were alone, and they were surprised to find not only Vice Principal Nero but also Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass waiting in the doorway of the Orphans Shack. "I hope you've been studying all evening," Nero said, "because I told your teachers to make these exams extra-challenging, and the pieces of paper that the baby has to staple are very thick. Well, let's get started. Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass will take turns asking you questions until one of you gets an answer wrong, and then you flunk. Sunny will sit in the back and staple these papers into booklets of five papers each, and if your homemade staples don't work perfectly, then you flunk. Well, a musical genius like myself doesn't have all day to oversee exams. I've missed too much practice time as it is. Let's begin!" Nero threw the papers into a big heap on one of the bales of hay, and the stapler right after it. Sunny crawled over as quickly as she could and began inserting the staples into the stapler, and Klaus stood up, still clutching the Quagmire notebooks. Violet put her noisy shoes back on her feet, and Mr. Remora swallowed a bite of banana and asked his first question. "In my story about the donkey," he said, "how many miles did the donkey run?" "Six," Violet said promptly. "Six, " Nero mimicked. "That can't be correct, can it, Mr. Remora?" "Um, yes, actually," Mr. Remora said, taking another bite of banana. "How wide," Mrs. Bass said to Klaus, "was the book with the yellow cover?" "Nineteen centimeters," Klaus said immediately. "Nineteen centimeters, " Nero mocked. "That's wrong, isn't it, Mrs. Bass?" "No," Mrs. Bass admitted. "That's the right answer." "Well, try another question, Mr. Remora," Nero said. "In my story about the mushroom," Mr. Remora asked Violet, "what was the name of the chef?" "Maurice," Violet answered. "Maurice," Nero mimicked. "Correct," Mr. Remora said. "How long was chicken breast number seven?" Mrs. Bass asked. "Fourteen centimeters and five millimeters," Klaus said. "Fourteen centimeters and five millimeters, Nero mimicked. "That's right," Mrs. Bass said. "You're actually both very good students, even if you've been sleeping through class lately." "Stop all this chitchat and flunk them," Nero said. "I've never gotten to expel any students, and I'm really looking forward to it." "In my story about the dump truck," Mr. Remora said, as Sunny began to staple the pile of thick papers into booklets, "what color were the rocks that it carried?" "Gray and brown." "Gray and brown. " "Correct." "How deep was my mother's casserole dish?" "Six centimeters." "Six centimeters." "Correct." "In my story about the weasel, what was its favorite color?" The comprehensive exams went on and on, and if I were to repeat all of the tiresome and pointless questions that Mr. Remora and Mrs. Bass asked, you might become so bored that you might go to sleep right here, using this book as a pillow instead of as an entertaining and instructive tale to benefit young minds. Indeed, the exams were so boring that the Baudelaire orphans might normally have dozed through the test themselves. But they dared not doze. One wrong answer or unstapled piece of paper, and Nero would expel them from Prufrock Preparatory School and send them into the waiting clutches of Coach Genghis, so the three children worked as hard as they could. Violet tried to remember each detail Klaus had taught her, Klaus tried to remember every measurement he had taught himself, and Sunny stapled like mad, a phrase which here means "quickly and accurately." Finally, Mr. Remora stopped in the middle of his eighth banana and turned to Vice Principal Nero. "Nero," he said, "there's no use continuing these exams. Violet is a very fine student, and has obviously studied very hard." Mrs. Bass nodded her head in agreement. "In all my years of teaching, I've never encountered a more metric-wise boy than Klaus, here. And it looks like Sunny is a fine secretary as well. Look at these booklets! They're gorgeous." "Pilso!" Sunny shrieked. "My sister means 'Thank you very much,'" Violet said, although Sunny really meant something more like "My stapling hand is sore." "Does this mean we get to stay at Prufrock Prep?" "Oh, let them stay, Nero," Mr. Remora said. "Why don't you expel that Carmelita Spats? She never studies, and she's an awful person besides." "Oh yes," Mrs. Bass said. "Let's give her an extra-challenging examination." "I can't flunk Carmelita Spats," Nero said impatiently. "She's Coach Genghis's Special Messenger." "Who?" Mr. Remora asked. "You know," Mrs. Bass explained, "Coach Genghis, the new gym teacher." "Oh yes," Mr. Remora said. "I've heard about him, but never met him. What is he like?" "He's the finest gym teacher the world has ever seen," Vice Principal Nero said, shaking his four pigtails in amazement. "But you don't have to take my word for it. You can see for yourself. Here he comes now." Nero pointed one of his hairy hands out of the Orphans Shack, and the Baudelaire orphans saw with horror that the vice principal was speaking the truth. Whistling an irritating tune to himself, Coach Genghis was walking straight toward them, and the children could see at once how incorrect one of their assumptions had been. It was not the assumption that Sunny would not lose her job, although that assumption, too, would turn out to be incorrect. And it was not the assumption that Violet and Klaus would not be expelled, although that, too, was a wrong one. It was the assumption about the Quagmire triplets and their part of the plan going well. As Coach Genghis walked closer and closer, the Baudelaires saw that he was holding Violet's hair ribbon in one of his scraggly hands and Klaus's glasses in the other, and with every step of his expensive running shoes, the coach raised a small white cloud, which the children realized must be flour from the snitched sack. But more than the ribbon, or the glasses, or the small clouds of flour was the look in Genghis's eyes. As Coach Genghis reached the Orphans Shack, his eyes were shining bright with triumph, as if he had finally won a game that he had been playing for a long, long time, and the Baudelaire orphans realized that the assumption about the Quagmire triplets had been very, very wrong indeed.

Chapter Thirteen

"Where are they?" Violet cried as Coach Genghis stepped into the shack. "What have you done with them?" Normally, of course, one should begin conversations with something more along the lines of "Hello, how are you," but the eldest Baudelaire was far too distressed to do so. Genghis's eyes were shining as brightly as could be, but his voice was calm and pleasant. "Here they are," he said, holding up the ribbon and glasses. "I thought you might be worried about them, so I brought them over first thing "We don't mean these them!" Klaus said, taking the items from Genghis's scraggly hands. "We mean them them!" "I'm afraid I don't understand all those thems," Coach Genghis said, shrugging at the adults. "The orphans ran laps last night as part of my S.O.R.E. program, but they had to dash off in the morning to take their exams. In their hurry, Violet dropped her ribbon and Klaus dropped his glasses. But the baby-" "You know very well that's not what happened," Violet interrupted. "Where are the Quagmire triplets? What have you done with our friends?" "What have you done with our friends?" Vice Principal Nero said in his mocking tone. "Stop talking nonsense, orphans." "I'm afraid it's not nonsense," Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. "As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving." "Excellent idea!" Nero said. "What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?" "Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby," Genghis said, his eyes shining, "which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery." Nero clapped his hands. "I know just what you mean, Genghis," he said. "She's a terrible secretary as well." "But she did all that stapling," Mr. Remora protested. "Shut up and let the coach finish his story," Nero said. "But when I looked down," Genghis continued, "I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!" "That's terrible!" Nero cried. "So I ran after Violet and Klaus," Genghis continued, "and I found that they weren't Violet and Klaus after all, but those two other orphans- the twins." "They're not twins!" Violet cried. "They're triplets!" "They're triplets!" Nero mocked. "Don't be an idiot. Triplets are when four babies are born at the same time, and there are only two Quagmires." "And these two Quagmires were pretending to be the Baudelaires, in order to give the Baudelaires extra time to study." "Extra time to study?" Nero said, grinning in delight. "Hee hee hee! Why, that's cheating!" "That's not cheating!" Mrs. Bass said. "Skipping gym class to study is cheating," Nero insisted. "No, it's just good time management," Mr. Remora argued. "There's nothing wrong with athletics, but they shouldn't get in the way of your schoolwork." "Look, I'm the vice principal," the vice principal said. "I say the Baudelaires were cheating, and therefore-hooray!-I can expel them. You two are merely teachers, so if you disagree with me, I can expel you, too." Mr. Remora looked at Mrs. Bass, and they both shrugged. "You're the boss, Nero," Mr. Remora said finally, taking another banana out of his pocket. "If you say they're expelled, they're expelled." "Well, I say they're expelled," Nero said. "And Sunny loses her job, too." "Rantaw!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something along the lines of "I never wanted to work as a secretary, anyway!" "We don't care about being expelled," Violet said. "We want to know what happened to our friends." "Well, the Quagmires had to be punished for their part in the cheating," Coach Genghis said, "so I brought them over to the cafeteria and put those two workers in charge of them. They'll be whisking eggs all day long." "Very sensible," Nero agreed. "That's all they're doing?" Klaus said suspiciously. "Whisking eggs?" "That's what I said," Genghis said and leaned so close to the Baudelaires that all they could see were his shiny eyes and the crooked curve of his wicked mouth. "Those two Quagmires will whisk and whisk until they are simply whisked away." "You're a liar," Violet said. "Insulting your coach," Nero said, shaking his pigtailed head. "Now you're doubly expelled." "What's this?" said a voice from the doorway. "Doubly expelled?" The voice stopped to have a long, wet cough, so the Baudelaires knew without looking that it was Mr. Poe. He was standing at the Orphans Shack holding a large paper sack and looking busy and confused. "What are all of you doing here?" he said. "This doesn't look like a proper place to have a conversation. It's just an old shack." "What are you doing here?" Nero asked. "We don't allow strangers to wander around Prufrock Preparatory School." "Poe's the name," Mr. Poe said, shaking Nero's hand. "You must be Nero. We've talked on the phone. I received your telegram about the twenty-eight bags of candy and the ten pairs of earrings with precious stones. My associates at Mulctuary Money Management thought I'd better deliver them in person, so here I am. But what's this about expelled?" "These orphans you foisted on me," Nero said, using a nasty word for "gave," "have proven to be terrible cheaters, and I'm forced to expel them." "Cheaters?" Mr. Poe said, frowning at the three siblings. "Violet, Klaus, Sunny, I'm very disappointed in you. You promised me that you'd be excellent students." "Well, actually, only Violet and Klaus were students," Nero said. "Sunny was an administrative assistant, but she was terrible at it as well." Mr. Poe's eyes widened in surprise as he paused to cough into his white handkerchief. "An administrative assistant?" he repeated. "Why, Sunny's only a baby. She should be in preschool, not an office environment." "Well, it doesn't matter now," Nero said. "They're all expelled. Give me that candy." Klaus looked down at his hands, which were still clutching the Quagmire notebooks. He was afraid that the notebooks might be the only sign of the Quagmires he would ever see again. "We don't have any time to argue about candy!" he cried. "Count Olaf has done something terrible to our friends!" "Count Olaf?" Mr. Poe said, handing Nero the paper sack. "Don't tell me he's found you here!" "No, of course not," Nero said. "My advanced computer system has kept him away, of course. But the children have this bizarre notion that Coach Genghis is actually Olaf in disguise." "Count Olaf," Genghis said slowly. "Yes, I've heard of him. He's supposed to be the best actor in the whole world. I'm the best gym teacher in the whole world, so we couldn't possibly be the same person." Mr. Poe looked Coach Genghis up and down, then shook his hand. "A pleasure to meet you," he said, and then turned to the Baudelaires. "Children, I'm surprised at you. Even without an advanced computer system, you should be able to tell that this man isn't Count Olaf. Olaf has only one eyebrow, and this man is wearing a turban. And Olaf has a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, and this man is wearing expensive running shoes. They are quite handsome, by the way." "Oh, thank you," Coach Genghis said. "Unfortunately, thanks to these children, they have flour all over them, but I'm sure it'll wash off." "If he removes his turban and his shoes," Violet said impatiently, "you will be able to see that he's Olaf." "We've been through this before," Nero said. "He can't take off his running shoes because he's been exercising and his feet smell." "And I can't take off my turban for religious reasons," Genghis added. "You're not wearing a turban for religious reasons!" Klaus said in disgust, and Sunny shrieked something in agreement. "You're wearing it as a disguise! Please, Mr. Poe, make him take it off!" "Now, Klaus," Mr. Poe said sternly. "You have to learn to be accepting of other cultures. I'm sorry, Coach Genghis. The children aren't usually prejudiced." "That's quite all right," Genghis said. "I'm used to religious persecution." "However," Mr. Poe continued, after a brief coughing spell, "I would ask you to remove your running shoes, if only to set the Baudelaires' minds at ease. I think we can all stand a little smelliness if it's in the cause of criminal justice." "Smelly feet," Mrs. Bass said, wrinkling her nose. "Ew, gross." "I'm afraid I cannot take off my running shoes," Coach Genghis said, taking a step toward the door. "I need them." "Need them?" Nero asked. "For what?" Coach Genghis took a long, long look at the three Baudelaires and smiled a terrible, toothy grin. "For running, of course," he said, and ran out the door. The orphans were startled for a moment, not only because he had started running so suddenly but also because it seemed like he had given up so easily. After his long, elaborate plandisguising himself as a gym teacher, forcing the Baudelaires to run laps, getting them expelledhe was suddenly racing across the lawn without even glancing back at the children he'd been chasing for such a long time. The Baudelaires stepped out of the Orphans Shack, and Coach Genghis turned back to sneer at them. "Don't think I've given up on you, orphans!" he called to them. "But in the meantime, I have two little prisoners with a very nice fortune of their own!" He began to run again, but not before pointing a bony finger across the lawn. The Bau-delaires gasped. At the far end of Prufrock Prep, they saw a long, black car with dark smoke billowing out of its exhaust pipes. But the children were not gasping at air pollution. The two cafeteria workers were walking toward the car, but they had taken off their metal masks at last, and the three youngsters could see that they were the two powder-faced women who were comrades of Count Olaf's. But this was not what the children were gasping at either, although it was a surprising and distressing turn of events. What they were gasping at was what each of the women was dragging toward the car. Each powder-faced woman was dragging one of the Quagmire triplets, who were struggling desperately to get away. "Put them in the back seat!" Genghis called. "I'll drive! Hurry!" "What in the world is Coach Genghis doing with those children?" Mr. Poe asked, frowning. The Baudelaires did not even turn to Mr. Poe to try and explain. After all their S.O.R.E. training sessions, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny found that their leg muscles could respond instantly if they wanted to run. And the Baudelaire orphans had never wanted to run more than they did now. "After them!" Violet cried, and the children went after them. Violet ran, her hair flying wildly behind her. Klaus ran, not even bothering to drop the Quagmire notebooks. And Sunny crawled as fast as her legs and hands could carry her. Mr. Poe gave a startled cough and began running after them, and Nero, Mr. Remora, and Mrs. Bass began running after Mr. Poe. If you had been hiding behind the archway, spying on what was going on, you would have seen what looked like a strange race on the front lawn, with Coach Genghis running in front, the Baudelaire orphans right behind, and assorted adults huffing and puffing behind the children. But if you continued watching, you would have seen an exciting development in the race, a phrase which here means that the Baudelaires were gaining on Genghis. The coach had much longer legs than the Baudelaires, of course, but he had spent the last ten nights standing around blowing a whistle. The children had spent those nights running hundreds of laps around the luminous circle, and so their tiny, strong legs-and, in Sunny's case, arms-were overcoming Genghis's height advantage. I hate to pause at such a suspenseful part of the story, but I feel I must intrude and give you one last warning as we reach the end of this miserable tale. You were probably thinking, as you read that the children were catching up to their enemy, that perhaps this was the time in the lives of the Baudelaire orphans when this terrible villain would finally be caught, and that perhaps the children would find some kind guardians and that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny would spend the rest of their lives in relative happiness, possibly creating the printing business that they had discussed with the Quagmires. And you are free to believe that this is how the story turns out, if you want. The last few events in this chapter of the Baudelaire orphans' lives are incredibly unfortunate, and quite terrifying, and so if you would prefer to ignore them entirely you should put this book down now and think of a gentle ending to this horrible story. I have made a solemn promise to write the Baudelaire history exactly as it occurred, but you have made no such promise- at least as far as I know-and you do not need to endure the wretched ending of this story, and this is your very last chance to save yourself from the woeful knowledge of what happened next. Violet was the first to reach Coach Genghis, and she stretched her arm out as far as she could, grabbing part of his turban. Turbans, you probably know, consist of just one piece of cloth, wrapped very tightly and in a complicated way around someone's head. But Genghis had cheated, not knowing the proper way to tie a turban, because he was wearing it as a disguise and not for religious reasons. He had merely wrapped it around his head the way you might wrap a towel around yourself when getting out of the shower, so when Violet grabbed the turban, it unraveled immediately. She had been hoping that grabbing his turban would stop the coach from running, but all it did was leave her with a long piece of cloth in her hands. Coach Genghis kept running, his one eyebrow glistened with sweat over his shiny eyes. "Look!" Mr. Poe said, who was far behind the Baudelaires but close enough to see. "Genghis has only one eyebrow, like Count Olaf!"Sunny was the next Baudelaire to reach Genghis, and because she was crawling on the ground, she was in a perfect position to attack his shoes. Using all four of her sharp teeth, she bit one pair of his shoelaces, and then the other. The knots came undone immediately, leaving tiny, bitten pieces of shoelace on the brown lawn. Sunny had been hoping that untying his shoes would make the coach trip, but Genghis merely stepped out of his shoes and kept running. Like many disgusting people, Coach Genghis was not wearing socks, so with each step his eye tattoo glistening with sweat on his left ankle. "Look!" Mr. Poe said, who was still too far to help but close enough to see. "Genghis has an eye tattoo, like Count Olaf! In fact, I think he is Count Olaf!" "Of course he is!" Violet cried, holding up the unraveled turban. "Merd!" Sunny shrieked, holding up a tiny piece of shoelace. She meant something like "That's what we've been trying to tell you." Klaus, however, did not say anything. He was putting all of his energy toward running, but he was