Chapter Text
It is a strange feeling to wake up in a shack after having lived in a mansion for your entire life, or so you would think. Unfortunately, after the last seven months in which the Baudelaires had been shifted place to place, been victim of countless schemes, and had witnessed several deaths of people they had grown quite fond of, Klaus Baudelaire was not, in fact, feeling very strange as he woke up in the Orphan Shack at Prufrock Preparatory School.
My name is Lemony Snicket and it is my very sad duty in life to bring to you the tale of the Baudelaire Orphans at Prufrock Preparatory School, most notably the story of how Klaus Baudelaire and Duncan Quagmire managed to find love amidst the turmoil that only they seemed to sense.
Crabs scuttled gleefully beneath the thin, straw-like bed, as they usually did in the dark and gloomy hours of the morning before the Baudelaires would switch on the light and the creature-mobile that Violet made would scare them away. Struggling to place his glasses back on his face, Klaus held a still-sleeping Sunny to his chest and sat up. Violet was nowhere to be seen and although Klaus knew she had probably ventured to the library or gone out for a walk, the familiar feeling of dread still locked in his chest and heightened his breathing.
A babble from Sunny, who had apparently awoken, brought him out of his thoughts. “Schuyler,” she asked questioningly, twisting her tiny body to look into Klaus’s eyes. She was, of course, trying to ask where their sister Violet had disappeared.
“I’m not sure,” he told her, heart beating faster than usual. “But we should go and find out, don’t you think?” Sunny made a little noise of agreement and Klaus reached up to turn on the light so that the crabs retreated, a word which here means that the crabs ran in fear under the bed due to the arrival of light in the form of strange creatures that they did not like or know.
He slipped his feet into the leather shoes, sighing as he saw that the edges were a little raggedy. The crabs had probably gotten into the leather shoes while they were all sleeping. He pushed open the door to the shack, wincing at the bright light before setting off towards the library.
Past Klaus would’ve been shocked at the thought of breaking in, especially to such a sacred and wonderful place as the library, but the Klaus after Uncle Monty, Lake Lachrymose, and Lucky Smells Lumbermill quite frankly did not care. The library was a quiet place that thankfully no other students seemed to be very fond of and it was only open for 10 minutes a day, meaning that the rest of the time the Baudelaires could languish with their friends, the Quagmires. Languish is a word that here means the Baudelaires would lie with their friends on beanbags in a very dusty and very old corner of the library and wonder if Count Olaf would manage to have them once more in his filthy little hands. A person can languish in a great many places, not unlike a woman I knew very long ago who was unfortunately put into prison after a series of events including a sugar bowl, a poison dart, and a performance of La Forza Del Destino . She managed to escape using a very facilitative disguise, although it is not she who we are talking about today.
The windows of the library were vastly unclean and dusty, but they had a mechanism that made them possible to be open from the outside. They were also not very high and of a good size that both Sunny and Klaus could squeeze through easily and land on a conveniently-placed beanbag.
Klaus made his way to the back of the library, Sunny in hand. To his relief, Violet and Isadora were there, seemingly playing cards. “When did you learn how to play?” He asked. Violet jumped, a hand flying to her heart in shock. Isadora went red upon being discovered.
“Iz taught me,” she explained quietly. He took note of the nickname, grinning to himself as he positioned himself on the ground and set Sunny down next to them.
“Play?” Sunny babbled curiously. Violet shrugged, dealing the cards.
“Where’s Duncan?” he asked, noting that the brunet wasn’t there. Violet and Isadora exchanged amused looks.
“Your boyfriend’s still asleep.” Isadora snickered. He glared at her.
“What are you on about?” VIolet laughed, loud and boisterous, a word that here means she laughed to irritate Klaus further and because she was happy that she could tease her brother in a way that she had not for a long time.
“You have a crush on him!” she teased.
Klaus felt the tips of his ears go red and his throat suddenly needed a good swallow to work once more. “I do not!” He defended himself.
“You so do,” Isadora told him, grinning mischievously. “I don’t know how he doesn’t know.”
Klaus playfully shoved her. “Shut up, you!”
“Playing cards, without me?” a sleepy-sounding voice, yet one still tinged with mischief and that made Klaus’s mouth go dry again, sounded from behind. Even though Klaus didn’t believe in any sort of God, he prayed and prayed that Duncan hadn’t heard what they were talking about. Violet smirked at him and he sent a warning to her through a glare: don’t you dare say a word.
“Hi Duncan,” she greeted, having that look in her eye. You would never think that Violet Baudelaire was particularly evil, but at this moment, she had a glint in her eye that uncannily resembled a movie character that was about to blow up a building. It was a very happy glint and before he could say anything, Violet blurted out “Klaus was just wondering where you were.”
Klaus really wished he hadn’t come to look for Violet. Duncan seemed to blush slightly. “Well, here I am. What are you guys playing?”
“Go fish,” Isadora responded. Duncan made a face and scooted closer to Klaus, who ignored the looks Violet and Isadora were giving him and instead gave Duncan a smile.
“So, read any books lately?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Not…really.”
“Oh.”
Sunny babbled, “Romeo.” and Klaus thanked his dead parents that Duncan had no idea what Sunny was saying. Sunny was referencing a very old and very famous play called Romeo and Juliet, about a pair of tragic lovers that eventually kill themselves. However, the youngest Baudelaire was saying “Romeo” as a reference to Klaus’s feelings for Duncan, and how he ought to do something about it, which Klaus understood perfectly well. However, he chose stubbornly to ignore Sunny who hmphed and gave as big of a sigh as a baby her age could, going back to playing cards.
Duncan arched an eyebrow. “What’d she say?”
“Nothing,” Klaus said quickly. Duncan pursed his lips and looked away. Shit. What was Duncan interested in? Journalism. Right. “Um, have you…written anything?” It sounded so lame and yet Duncan lit up as he pulled out his commonplace book, flipping back the dark green cover as he flipped past pages and pages of notes and drawings that Klaus attempted to look at, though Duncan was too fast. Finally, he showed a page to Klaus. It was a drawing. Of…him. Well, and Violet and Sunny, but he was more focused on the fact that Duncan had drawn him, not out of narcissistic nature but because the detail was immense and it looked like there were a great many faint lines underneath the drawing of himself, more than that of Violet and Sunny, the kind that appeared when you erased pencil with a particularly bad and used eraser. Duncan looked slightly embarrassed. “I couldn’t get your face right,” he explained quietly.
Klaus was rendered speechless. He traced his fingers softly over the drawing, feeling the smooth edge of the lead-marker paper. Realising that Duncan was waiting for some sort of reaction, he glanced back up. “This is beautiful, Duncan. I didn’t know you liked to draw.”
Duncan shrugged, hastily taking the book back and shutting it. He looked adorably awkward, with his cheeks inflamed. “Yeah, well, I do from time to time, I suppose.” He tucked the book back in his school jumper. He heard a loud sigh coming from Isadora and Klaus looked up, surprised. She seemed to be glaring at Duncan, for some reason.
“Itane? Hoccine est quod cum itis?” Isadora raised her eyebrows, looking simultaneously disappointed and frustrated, a word that here means she thought that Duncan was abysmal at flirting and that she was getting rather tired of the two boys skirting around each other’s feelings. The Quagmire siblings knew Latin perfectly, having spoken it comfortably at home with their parents.
“Tace, Isa!” Duncan snapped heatedly, his face red. Klaus raised his brows. Having studied Latin by himself several years back, although not enough to fully speak the language nor translate what Isadora had said, he did understand to some extent their conversation. What he didn’t understand was why Isadora had asked Duncan the word “Really?” which is often used when one cannot believe something and needs genuine confirmation that the event was real and had happened. He also did not understand why Duncan had told his sister to be silent, knowing his usually friendly demeanor.
The Quagmires were like their parents in a great many ways, including their complete bashfulness and awkwardness in front of the people they love. Their mother, indeed, left secret Italian poems detailing her love for her later husband to avoid directly confessing to him, who managed to decode the poems using a stolen spyglass that I never did get back. I never will.
The doors to the library opened. In any other book, this sentence would be perfectly normal, however, for the Baudelaires, it simply meant that trouble was here. Trouble is a word thrown loftily around by a great number of individuals and has different meanings for different people. For a small child, trouble might mean that they are not allowed to have a second slice of chocolate cake. For a bank worker at the most popular bank in the city, trouble might mean that he is getting passed over for a second promotion. For the five orphans in the library, however, trouble meant a harsh clang and a creaky sound getting louder and louder, which in my and the children’s experience, meant that whatever the source of the sound was, was getting closer.
For a brief moment, Klaus Baudelaire stood petrified with fear, as did his siblings. The Quagmires had not a clue what was going on, but followed suit.
“Baudelaires, Quagmires? Did you sneak in again?” The children breathed a sigh of relief. It was only Olivia Caliban, the librarian at Prufrock Preparatory School. Jumping up, Violet handed Sunny to Klaus to hold as Olivia wheeled around her book trolley.
“I’m just filing away some books,” she explained with a friendly smile.
“Uh, we could help you if you’d like,” Klaus offered. Olivia waved her hand, taking a rather heavy-looking book out with ease and tossing it over her shoulder, where it slotted perfectly into the shelf.
“No need, dears. I just wanted to know who’s in here. But you may have to get going soon - Vice Principal Nero is getting quite irritated that I keep asking him for the library to be open more than ten minutes a day and he wants to come here and check no one except me is there, so…” she shrugged sadly.
When the Baudelaires and the Quagmires were out of the library, Violet seemed to notice something and she frowned, kneeling to pick up what seemed like a golden tube with markings. “That’s strange,” she murmured. “This looks exactly like…” she pulled at one end of the tube and immediately, a spyglass emerged.
Klaus and Isadora exchanged looks as Isadora pulled out the spyglass they had put together at one of their first lunches. They still didn’t know what it was. And now they had found another one.
“That’s so weird.” Duncan furrowed his eyebrows.
“I know, how can we have found another one?” Isadora looked bewildered.
Duncan knit his brows further. “No, it’s
weird
because…I recognise that symbol.”