Class Is Not Dismissed! (20 page)

“That was beautiful, just beautiful. I’d like you to give the eulogy at my funeral, should you outlive me,” Theo said, dabbing
his eyes.

“Way to be weird, Theo,” Lulu said as she started toward the massive front door. “Let’s do this. We don’t have much time if
we’re going to get any sleep before tomorrow.”

Lulu entered the foyer quietly, tiptoeing across the wooden planks. Theo, directly behind her, plopped around noisily, banging
things with his hands as he walked.

“Theo, stop being so loud. You’ll frighten them away,” Lulu whispered.

“Or frighten them
out
of their hiding spots? Lulu,
don’t worry about me. I’ve got plans. Or rather
a
plan. And everyone knows you need only one good plan. I’ve got mine—make some noise, draw them out of their comfort zones,
then swoop in. But no killing. That doesn’t work with my whole vegetarian thing…”

“Will you stop talking and start catching?” Lulu said as she pushed Theo toward the Great Hall.

“I got one,” Garrison said loudly as he pushed a large brown-and-burgundy spider into his jar.

“I feel a bit green,” Madeleine said when she saw the large furry creature. “Perhaps I’ll wait outside with Macaroni. We really
haven’t had much time for a proper catchup,” she said as she ran back to the front door.

Garrison figured the spiders and beetles would only have been able to squeeze into rooms with doors that were either ajar
or had a wide space between the floor and the door bottom. This narrowed the list down to the ballroom, the Library of Smelly
Foods, the kitchen, dining room, polo field, and living quarters. Lulu took the foyer and upstairs, while Theo and Garrison
started on the rooms off the Great Hall.

Lulu was extraordinarily fast at seeing and snapping up beetles. Knowing their proclivity for hiding in plain
sight, she instantly caught an astonishing twenty-five on the pageant photos, most of them posing as earrings, hair clips,
or brooches. (The bulk of this find was a double-wrap necklace made out of eleven beetles.) Shortly thereafter Lulu discovered
nineteen beetles framing a small painting, six on Madeleine’s favorite polka-dot pullover, and eight on the black squares
on the chessboard in the boys’ room. Lulu had impressively found fifty-eight in all, bringing the grand total to seventy-two
captured beetles. Unfortunately, she wasn’t so lucky on the spider front. Lulu was able to find only four in the hall closet
upstairs and three in the foyer.

Theo and Garrison started in the kitchen—not surprisingly, at Theo’s recommendation. As Garrison peered into the pink cupboards
and under the magenta stove, Theo looked through a loaf of sliced bread, eating two pieces in the process. He followed the
bread with shoving a handful of crackers into his mouth. Soon crumbs were cascading off his chubby cheeks and down the front
of his shirt.

“Would you stop eating? I need help,” Garrison barked.

“Excuse me, Gary, but I’m helping. There could have
been beetles or spiders in the bread or crackers. It’s not like they don’t eat carbs.”

“How do you know you didn’t eat one without realizing it? I mean, you barely chew.”

Theo immediately stopped chewing. He wanted to spit the food out, but worried what he would see. He wasn’t concerned that
he could have eaten a spider, as they were too big to miss, but a beetle was an entirely different matter. They were small
enough, and Theo imagined they crunched a lot like a cracker. With a pained expression, Theo swallowed the lump of food in
his mouth. Whatever was in there, he didn’t want to know. “Yeah, maybe this wasn’t the best time for a snack,” a queasy-faced
Theo acquiesced.

“Let’s check the dining room,” Garrison said as he walked toward the beaded doorway that connected it with the kitchen.

“Wow, they are smart,” Theo said as he stared at the pink strands of beads that hung between the two rooms. The beetles had
formed a
V
shape across the beads, looking much like a purposeful design.

“Lulu thinks they’re smarter than you are,” Garrison said with a grin.

“I take that as a compliment,” Theo said huffily, then paused. “On second thought, I don’t!”

After running through the Library of Smelly Foods and the polo field, Theo and Garrison had yet to find one spider. They did,
however, add to the sixteen beetles they’d found in the kitchen, finding another eight hidden on different parts of the horses,
from eyes to nostrils to the unmentionables.

As the boys headed for the classroom, they noticed a dim light shining beneath a nondescript door next to the Greenland Fungus
room. It wasn’t a beautiful, weird, or scary door; it was so utterly normal that it could have been found in any house in
America.

“Look, there’s a light on,” Garrison said, as he moved toward the plain door, much to Theo’s irritation.

“Let’s stay on track, OK? We are on bug duty. Then we have Abernathy tomorrow. We have a seriously packed schedule, and as
it is, I’m feeling a little overwhelmed… hey, wait! What are you doing?” Theo nervously asked as Garrison quietly opened the
door.

“Stay here,” Garrison whispered to Theo.

“No way! We’re a team! We’re Tharrison! Or Gareo!”

“No name combining,” Garrison whispered as he started down a dark, wood-paneled hall. The dimly lit corridor opened up into
a proper library with books, a fireplace, a wall of trophies, and more pictures than one could count. There were framed photos
of children, adults, and families all over the room—above the fireplace and on the mantel, the bookshelf, the end tables,
and hanging on the walls.

“Who is there?” Mrs. Wellington asked in a commanding voice.

The tall back of her leather chair obstructed the boys’ view of Mrs. Wellington, and vice versa.

“Garrison and Theo,” Garrison announced uneasily, nervous that they were about to get into trouble for snooping.

“Students from your school,” Theo added awkwardly. “We didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s just that we noticed a light on while
we were bug hunting. And since we don’t like to waste energy, we came in here to turn it off. So please don’t be upset. We
thought we were helping the environment…
let’s not fight over a silly light
… I just made that slogan up… it’s not my best work, but I think you get the idea—” Theo blustered.

“Look at all these faces, all these lives I’ve helped. Quite remarkable, isn’t it? And soon none of it will matter,” Mrs.
Wellington interrupted Theo, completely disregarding the conversation on conservation.

“That’s not true,” Theo responded. “Look at all your trophies. Speaking as someone who has never won a trophy, they really
matter… they make you important… and no one can take that away from you.”

“I’ve won more trophies than I can count,” Garrison said, before noticing Theo’s envious expression. “So where did all these
trophies come from?”

“We used to play other schools—specialty schools like the Fibbers’ Academy, Silent School, the Awkward Institute, Contrary
Conservatory—but now there are hardly any left. People are too afraid, too afraid of being found out, and lied about, and
sued, and ruined,” Mrs. Wellington said as she stood up and walked toward the boys. “And conceivably with good reason. The
world is not what it used to be.”

“OK, this isn’t good,” Garrison mumbled.

“No, it certainly isn’t, but there is nothing left to do, except perhaps die,” Mrs. Wellington said as she approached the
boys. “I suppose I should start planning
my funeral, picking out the dress, getting my wig ready, finding worm-proof makeup, and of course, decorating the casket.
I’m thinking a pink exterior with a lavender lining. Or maybe I should do solid gold. After all, you only die once…”

“Mrs. Wellington, we are more than happy to help with the casket decoration, but right now there’s another more pressing situation,”
Theo babbled while stepping away from his teacher. “Way, way, way more pressing situation.”

P
oor Mrs. Wellington, so distraught and distressed, had failed to notice that her shawl was in fact a blanket of brown-and-burgundy
spiders. The spiders had interlocked their legs with one another, creating a rather sophisticated-looking knit. It was all
quite a blessing, as it was terribly easy to transport the spiders back to the B and B while clustered together. And Mrs.
Wellington hardly seemed to notice or mind that she was wearing a mass of spiders. She was far too inconsolable
about the school to care about such a trivial thing. When all was said and done, only four beetles were unaccounted for, and
Theo was beginning to think he may have eaten at least two in his haste to inhale the crackers.

After a detailed search of the girls’ bedroom and bathroom, Madeleine was finally able to fall asleep, albeit in her shower
cap, veil, and rain poncho, with a can of repellent in each hand. Nearby, Lulu tossed and turned with vivid dreams of dogs
tap dancing and singing show tunes. Next door, Theo lay awake most of the night with his hands on his stomach. The contractions
in his lower intestine left him with little doubt that he had indeed eaten a beetle or two. His mind teemed with images of
half-chewed beetles gnawing on his organs or, worse, procreating.

Theo longed to wake Garrison and get another pep talk, maybe one about putting aside your own internal insect farm to help
your teacher, but he refrained. Garrison was sleeping far too soundly to wake him. The ability to sleep before a big day must
be the result of years of sports tournaments, Theo thought.

Across the hall, Hyacinth awoke in the middle of the
night confused and disoriented. As she sat up in bed, it all came rushing back to her. Her heart again dropped into her stomach
as she remembered the terrible events that had transpired. Though impressed that she had actually been able to fall asleep
while alone in a room, she was still in the grip of rampant panic. The extreme silence of the room left her with a pounding
heart and racing thoughts.

What would her life be like if she were
always
alone? Would she be forced to live with the horrible, suffocating fright she was currently experiencing? The young girl hopped
out of bed and threw on a clean green pantsuit. With sweaty palms she slowly turned the knob of her bedroom door. Hyacinth
listened with all her might for some small sound from the others. She just needed proof that she wasn’t actually all alone
in this enormous mansion. But she heard nothing. It was, after all, 4:00
AM
. She slid to the floor and waited for the sun to rise, for confirmation that the others were still there.

When Madeleine, Lulu, Garrison, and Theo tiptoed into the hall at 6:45, Hyacinth covertly watched from her room. Simply seeing
the others flooded her with a sense of joy and reassurance, but it also magnified the
estrangement she had caused. Hyacinth slipped into the kitchen while the others held an extremely early breakfast/strategy
session with Schmidty. She eavesdropped as the group decided that Macaroni would not accompany them on the Abernathy adventure,
due to his aversion to the feel of cobblestones on his paws. Also, bulldogs are not known for their communication skills,
so all agreed it was best to leave him at Summerstone. The rules set forth by Schmidty were simple: do not enter the woods.
The students were only allowed to call Abernathy’s name from the edge of the forest, and if the man appeared, to plead with
him to come up to Summerstone.

“You know I loathe to be the naysayer,” Schmidty explained, “the voice of gloom and doom, especially since I am so touched
by all that you are doing to help Madame, but I simply don’t want you to feel disappointed or responsible should he not return
with you. This is a man who has been alone for most of his life, living outside in the wilderness, away from society. He won’t
be the easiest of candidates to convince.”

“But Abernathy came out before; he could do it again,” Garrison offered. “We have to try. We can’t just let Mrs. Wellington
sit here and wait to die. She is a
good teacher and she has helped a lot of people, and if she could help Abernathy, then we might be able to stop that article.”