⇗ Chapter 5

The children sat quietly in the Orphans Shack, flipping through their journals and cooking up plans in their heads.

The shack was still awful, but with Violet's noisy shoes scaring the crabs away and the salt the children had thrown hardening the fungus so it no longer dripped its nasty juice on them, the shack was considerably less miserable than it had been before.

It certainly was not an ideal living space for three children, but it worked just fine for planning.

"I can't believe we didn't figure out Coach Genghis's plan earlier," Isadora said mournfully, paging through her notebook. "Duncan, Sabine and I did all this research, and we still didn't figure it out."

"Don't feel bad," Klaus said, giving Isadora a light pat on her arm. "My sisters and I have had many encounters with Olaf, and it's always difficult to figure out his scheme."

"We were trying to find out the history of Count Olaf," Duncan said. "The Prufrock Preparatory library has a pretty good collection of old newspapers, and we thought if we could find out some of his other schemes, we might figure out this one."

"That's a good idea," Klaus said thoughtfully. "I've never tried that."

"We figured that Olaf must have been an evil man even before he met you," Duncan continued, "so we looked up things in old newspapers. But it was difficult to find too many articles, because as you know he always uses a different name. But we found a person matching his description in the Bangkok Gazette, who was arrested for strangling a bishop but escaped from prison in just ten minutes."

"That sounds like him, all right," Klaus nodded.

"And then in the Verona Daily News," Duncan said, "there was a man who had thrown a rich widow off of a cliff. He had a tattoo of an eye on his ankle, but he had eluded authorities. And then we found a newspaper from your hometown that said-"

"I don't mean to interrupt," Isadora said, "but we'd better stop thinking about the past and start thinking about the present. Lunchtime is more than half over, and we really need a plan."

"You're not napping, are you?" Klaus asked Violet, who had been silent for a very long time.

"Of course I'm not napping," Violet replied. "I'm concentrating. I think I can invent something to make all those staples Sunny needs. But I can't figure out how I can invent the device and study for the test at the same time. Since S.O.R.E. began, I haven't taken good notes in Mr. Remora's class, so I won't be able to remember his stories."

"Well, you don't have to worry about that," Duncan said, holding up his dark green notebook. "I've written down every one of Mr. Remora's stories. Every boring detail is recorded here in my notebook."

"And I've written down how long, wide, and deep all of Mrs. Bass's objects are," Isadora said, holding up her own notebook. "You can study from my notebook, Klaus, and Violet can study from Duncan's."

"Thank you," Klaus said, "but you're forgetting something. We're supposed to be running laps this evening. We don't have time to read anybody's notebook."

"Tarcour," Sunny said, which her siblings translated to mean: "You're right, of course. S.O.R.E. always lasts until dawn, and the tests are first thing in the morning."

"If only we had one of the world's great inventors to help us," Violet said. "I wonder what Nikola Tesla would do."

"Or one of the world's great journalists," Duncan said. "I wonder what Dorothy Parker would do in this situation."

"And I wonder what Hammurabi, the ancient Babylonian, would do to help us," Klaus said. "He was one of the world's greatest researchers."

"Or the great poet Lord Byron," Isadora said.

"Shark," Sunny said, rubbing her teeth thoughtfully.

I bet Quigley would know what to do, Sabine thought sadly, still missing his presence.

"Who knows what any of those people or fish would do in our shoes?" Violet said. "It's impossible to know."

Duncan snapped his fingers like he had an idea, and his wide grin was so bright that Sabine felt almost blinded by it. "In our shoes!" he said. "That's it!"

"What's it?" Klaus asked. "How will our noisy shoes help?"

"No, no," Duncan said. "Not the noisy shoes. I'm thinking about Coach Genghis's expensive running shoes that he said he couldn't take off because his feet were smelly."

"And I bet they are smelly," Isadora said. "I've noticed he doesn't bathe much."

"But that's not why he wears them," Violet said. "He wears them for a disguise."

"Exactly!" Duncan said. "When you said 'in your shoes,' it gave me an idea. I know you just meant 'in our shoes' as an expression meaning 'in our situation.' But what if someone else were actually in your shoes? What if we disguise ourselves as you? Then we could run laps, and you could study for the comprehensive exams."

"Disguise yourselves as us?" Klaus said. "You two look exactly like each other, but you don't look anything like us."

"So what?" Duncan said. "It'll be dark tonight. When we watched you from the archway that first night you ran laps, to make sure Count Olaf wasn't trying to kidnap you or something, all we could see were two shadowy figures running and one crawling."

"That's true," Isadora said. "If I took the ribbon from your hair, Violet, and Duncan took Klaus's glasses, we'd look enough like you that I bet Coach Genghis couldn't tell."

"And we could switch shoes, so your running on the grass would sound exactly the same," Duncan said.

"But what about Sunny?" Violet asked. "There's no way two people could disguise themselves as three people."

Sabine said, "Don't forget about me. I could be Sunny. I'm kinda short anyways." She laughed quietly. No one else laughed with her, because they were all deep in thought. She sat in silence, hoping her offer wasn't stupid, and bit her fingernail nervously.

"Being in each other's shoes seems like an extremely risky plan," Violet finally said. "If it fails, not only are we in trouble but you are as well, and who knows what Coach Genghis will do to you?"

"Don't worry about that," Duncan quickly said, waving his hand in the air to dismiss the thought as if he were shooing away a fly. "The important thing is to keep you out of his clutches. It may be a risky plan, but being in each other's shoes is the only thing we've been able to think of."

"And we don't have any time to waste thinking of anything else," Isadora added.

"I'll need to snitch some things," Violet said, "for my staple-making invention."

"Nidop," Sunny said, which Sabine knew meant something along the lines of "Then let's get moving."

The six walked out of the Orphans Shack, switching back to their normal shoes instead of their noisy ones as they made their way to the cafeteria. Violet needed some things from there for her invention, but Sabine was nervous that they would get caught. They almost got caught when they snitched the salt shakers to get rid of the fungus, so she hoped nothing would go wrong this time.

Thankfully, everything went according to plan, though Sabine found it odd that Violet only needed a fork, a few teaspoons of creamed spinach and a small potato for her invention. She didn't question the eldest Baudelaire, though. Sabine trusted Violet and decided not to mention her worries.

They dropped Violet's inventing materials off at the shack, and then headed to finish their classes for the day. After school, they quickly ate their dinner of slightly pink mush, then rushed back to the shack.

"This is sort of exciting," Duncan said, putting Klaus's glasses on his face. "I know that we're doing this for serious reasons, but I'm excited anyway."

Sabine did not feel excited at all. She felt nervous and jittery. How was she supposed to pass as a baby? No one would believe that. She tried to calm herself by lightly shaking her hands by her sides for a moment and it helped a bit, but not much. Instead, she focused on trying to disguise herself. She pulled her thin, black dreadlocks into a low bun, trying to hide her hair as best as she could. Again, it didn't help much, but that was all she could do for now.

Isadora recited, tying Violet's ribbon in her hair, "It may not be particularly wise; but it's a thrill to be disguised. That's not a perfect poem, but it will have to do under the circumstances. How do we look?"

The Baudelaire orphans took a step back and regarded their friends carefully. They were standing outside the shack - or in Sabine's case, sitting on her knees in an attempt to look like Sunny - and the sun had just begun to set.

"I know we don't look much like you," Duncan admitted after the Baudelaires had been quiet for some time. "But remember, it's very dark on the front lawn. The only light is coming from the luminous circle. We'll make sure to keep our heads down when we're running, so our faces won't give us away. We won't speak a word to Coach Genghis, so our voices won't give us away. And we have your hair ribbon, glasses, and shoes, so our accessories won't give us away, either."

"We don't have to go through with this plan," Violet said quietly. "We appreciate your help, but we don't have to try and fool Genghis. My siblings and I could just run away right now, tonight. We've gotten to be pretty good runners, so we'd have a good head start on Coach Genghis."

"We could call Mr. Poe from a pay phone somewhere," Klaus said.

"Zubu," Sunny said, which meant, "Or attend a different school, under different names."

"Those plans don't have a chance of working," Isadora said. "From what you've told us about Mr. Poe, he's never very helpful. And Count Olaf seems to find you wherever you go, so a different school wouldn't help, either."

"This is our only chance," Duncan agreed. "If you pass the exams without arousing Genghis's suspicion, you will be out of danger, and then we can focus our efforts on exposing the coach for who he really is."

"I suppose you're right," Violet said. "I just don't like the idea of you putting your lives in such danger, just to help us."

"What are friends for?" Isadora said. "We're not going to attend some silly recital while you run laps to your doom. You three were the first people at Prufrock Prep who weren't mean to us just for being orphans. None of us have any family, so we've got to stick together."

"At least let us go with you to the front lawn," Klaus said. "We'll spy on you from the archway, and make sure you're fooling Coach Genghis."

Duncan shook his head. "You don't have time to spy on us," he said. "You have to make staples out of those metal rods and study for two comprehensive exams."

Violet sighed sadly and Duncan caught her gaze and held it.

"If we never see-" Violet stopped, swallowed, and began again. "If something goes wrong- "

Duncan took Violet's hands and stepped closer to her. "Nothing will go wrong," he said firmly while softly tucking Violet's hair behind her ear. "Nothing will go wrong at all. We'll see you in the morning, Baudelaires." He smiled sweetly at her and placed a kiss on her forehead, then slowly dropped her hands and stepped away.

Isadora nodded solemnly and shot Klaus a longing look. Sabine flicked her leg from where she was sitting, which was all the encouragement Isadora needed. She stepped towards Klaus and hooked her arms around his neck, tightly embracing him. He seemed shocked for a moment, then wrapped his arms around her back and nuzzled his nose in her hair. Isadora did something that Sabine couldn't quite see, but it made Klaus blush deep red. Isadora finally pulled away, and followed her brother to the track field.

Sabine crawled behind them, her hands and knees already scraped from the sidewalk underneath her. "This is not going to be fun," she mumbled to herself.

They finally made it to the luminous circle in the grass and started running when Coach Genghis blew his whistle loudly at them.

Sabine crawled next to Isadora, trying her best to look like a baby and not like a middle schooler pretending to be a baby.

"Isadora," she whispered. Isadora didn't acknowledge her and kept her eyes trained on the ground.

"Izzie," Sabine tried again, slightly louder this time.

"What?" Isadora whispered back.

"What did you do to make Klaus blush like that?" Sabine asked. She wasn't planning to bring it up, but her curiosity got the better of her.

Isadora glanced at her brother as if to make sure he wasn't listening. He didn't seem too focused on the girls, so she leaned her head down farther and nervously whispered, "Well.... I might have.... kissed his cheek?"

Sabine stopped crawling for a moment, but quickly kept going when Coach Genghis started to yell at her. Duncan looked back at them for a second but then turned his attention to the ground again. Sabine caught up with Isadora and could see the pink of her cheeks even in the darkness.

"Are you serious?" she whispered.

"Um... yeah," Isadora said quietly.

Sabine barely caught her laugh before it escaped her lips. "Wow, Izzie. Did he say anything?"

Isadora blushed again and fiddled with the hem of her jacket. "N-no, but he... he pulled me closer when I did it."

"Izzie's got a boyfriend," Sabine sang quietly.

"Shush!" Isadora scolded in a whisper, but she grinned anyway.

Sabine grinned too and slowed her pace to crawl behind Isadora so they would be in a line like the Baudelaires had instructed.

They crawled and ran all night, and any excitement from being in disguise disappeared when it was overtaken by exhaustion. The coach kept blowing the whistle, even when they were still moving, and Sabine was so grumpy and tired and irritated that she was extremely tempted to snatch the whistle from him and smash it with her shoe.

Finally, when the sun began to rise, the exhaustion was replaced with overwhelming fear of being recognized in the light. Sabine's heart was pounding in exertion and horror, and she knew for a fact that her friends were feeling the same thing.

Please don't let us get caught, she prayed to no one in particular. Please let this work and be okay.

At about seven in the morning, the sun was almost completely overhead, and the Quagmires and Sabine were fully exposed.

"Hey!" the coach shouted, storming over to them. The three stopped moving.

"You aren't the Baudelaires!" he screeched, clearly very angry at being tricked.

"What do we do?" Isadora asked nervously as Coach Genghis neared.

"I don't know," Duncan replied.

"Well, you're the journalist, think of any journal-y stuff that might help!" Isadora said frantically.

"'Journal-y stuff'?" Duncan asked, giving Isadora an, I can't believe you just said that out loud, look.

"We don't have time for this!" Sabine snapped, getting off her knees and standing up. She grabbed Duncan's wrist in one hand and Isadora's wrist in the other and started running towards the school.

"Where are we going?" Isadora asked.

"Library," Sabine responded, running faster as the Coach's furious shouts sent a horrified burst of adrenaline through her body.

Duncan suddenly stopped just as they made it to the doors of the building the library was in. He wiggled his wrist out of Sabine's grip and started to run the other way. Sabine and Isadora stopped too and turned toward him.

"Where are you going?" Isadora shouted.

"Violet!" he yelled back.

"Oh my gosh, your brother is an idiot," Sabine grumbled, already racing after him.

"Duncan, get back here!" she yelled. He was faster than Sabine, and she struggled to keep up with him on her short legs.

It took her a while, but she eventually reached him and grabbed his arm. "Duncan, don't be stupid! Come on, let's go!" she said, already dragging him back to where Isadora waited.

"Izzie, run!" Sabine called, her heart racing as she saw how close Coach Genghis was to Isadora.

Isadora saw the coach as well and started sprinting into the building, Violet's dark purple ribbon falling out of her hair as she did so.

Duncan and Sabine ran to her as fast as they could, but stopped short halfway to the library when they heard a blood-curdling scream.

"Isadora!" they shouted at the same time. Sabine could see the tears in Duncan's eyes and tried not to cry herself as she started running in the opposite direction.

"What are you doing? We need to get my sister!" Duncan said.

"We can't help on our own, Duncan," she admitted with a heavy heart, stopping on the grass. "We need to go get someone! Some adult who can stop Olaf!"

"Who's gonna help us, Sabine? Nobody will believe us. We don't have time to waste."

"Duncan-"

"No!" he shouted at her, his dark green eyes blazing with anger. "I'm going to save Isadora!"

Sabine felt like she had been slapped across the face. Duncan had never yelled at her like that before. She didn't like it.

He didn't look like he'd liked it either, yet he turned around and kept running towards the library, towards his sister.

"Duncan, wait!" she called. He didn't turn around.

Sabine looked from Duncan to the relative safety of the school, then back to Duncan. She took a deep breath, then ran towards the Quagmires.

"Duncan!" she called again. He was out of sight by now, and he didn't respond to her. She picked up her pace and screamed his name once more.

Just as she sprinted into the building that held the library, she caught the eyes of her friends. She let out a sigh of relief before truly taking in the situation. Duncan and Isadora were being held by two white-faced women, the women's hands covering their mouths as they thrashed.

Just as Sabine tried to decide whether she should save them on her own or go get help, she was grabbed from behind by greasy hands.

"I've got you now, Trillian," the wheezy voice of Coach Genghis whispered in her ear.

She remembered screaming for help before she blacked out.

𝔼𝕟𝕕 𝕠𝕗 ℂ𝕙𝕒𝕡𝕥𝕖𝕣