The Final Exam (6 page)

“Oh, really? I doubt it hurt more than being arrested at the altar after my future stepson told the FBI I was responsible for the Kennedy assassination!”

“I warned you not to go through with the wedding! We were happy before you! You made me break my promise! You ruined everything!” Abernathy screamed before storming out of the room, his gray face now red with anger.

“What promise is he referring to?” Madeleine inquired sensibly.

“Oh, who knows? The man is straight out of a straitjacket! Completely nutty!” Mrs. Wellington snapped with blood-red lips.

“Celery thinks we’re in a lot of trouble,” Hyacinth added with her usual peppy smile as the others digested the prickly situation.

“I never thought I’d say this,” Lulu admitted quietly to herself, “but Celery’s right.”

Early the next morning, with dawn breaking outside, Lulu woke from a ghastly nightmare of being buried alive. The young girl had been locked in a wooden coffin, lowered six feet beneath the ground, and covered in pounds of dirt. In the midst of clawing at the box, splinters ravaging her hands, Lulu was jolted back to consciousness. Almost immediately, thoughts of elevators, bathrooms without windows, and underground parking garages crept into her mind. In order to avoid such places indefinitely, she would have to move to a remote corner of the world.

As Lulu felt herself regress emotionally, a highly derogatory chorus echoed through the bedroom. Already mired in frustration, the strawberry blond threw back her comforter and dashed across the hall to the spare room.

“
The old lady in the wig is a pig, she’s grim and dim and full of sin!
” Abernathy and Hyacinth sang cheerfully in the extra bedroom.

“Hyacinth!” Lulu barked. “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be helping the team, not hurting us!”

“Don’t be mad, bossy bestie! It was Abernathy’s idea. I wasn’t so sure, but then he convinced Celery, and you know how hard it is to say no to a ferret with a harmonica.”

“Wait a minute,” Theo interrupted from behind Lulu in the upstairs hall. “Are you saying Celery can play the harmonica? I may be interested in starting a band with you guys, although I’ll have to insist on top billing.”

“Celery says dream on, Fatty.”

“Theo! Stay focused! We are on the verge of losing everything, or haven’t you noticed?” Lulu shrieked before stomping back to the girls’ room and slamming the door.

Shrouded in embarrassment after being publicly chastised, Theo returned to the boys’ room, where he promptly laid out his clothes: plaid shorts, a pastel polo shirt, and his trusty fanny pack. However, upon the removal of his pajama top, Theo froze. While not intuitive or even terribly perceptive, the boy felt something was amiss; he just didn’t know what it was….

I
’m finished!” Theo shrieked to Schmidty as he stormed into the dining room. “Destroyed! Ruined! Obliterated! Demolished—”

“Yes,” Schmidty interrupted. “I’m quite sure I get the point.”

“Sylvie Montgomery’s annihilated my career!”

“But you’re only thirteen; you haven’t got a career. To my knowledge you’ve never even been hired to babysit.”

“Um, hello? I’m a hall monitor, only the most important
job at my school. Okay, maybe not the
most
important job at school, but definitely the most important job in the hallway.”

“Of course.” Schmidty nodded patronizingly. “A most significant position. However, I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with Sylvie Montgomery.”

“She was hiding in the tree outside my room and she snapped a
topless
photo of me. My career’s finished!”

“But Mister Theo, you’re a
boy.
”

“You don’t understand. No one at school knows I’ve got a tummy,” Theo said as he pointed to his protruding midsection.

“Unless you’ve transferred to the Stevie Wonder School for the Visually Impaired, I assure you, they know,” Schmidty stated categorically, looking at the boy’s bulging belly.

“There’s a little more to the story,” Theo admitted meekly. “I’ve been wearing a girdle. I had no choice; no one likes fat people in power!”

“Mister Theo, some of the greatest politicians of our time have had large stomachs. Why, just think of Winston Churchill. And for the record, I’ve always found tummies rather distinguished,” Schmidty added, pulling
his polyester pants over the behemoth mass known as his stomach.

“Schmidty, I’m worried,” Theo said quietly. “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to do this. Abernathy, Sylvie, and Mrs. Wellington are each so impossible.”

“Oh, don’t be pessimistic. Our lessons have just begun. Why, I haven’t even tried hypnosis on them yet.”

“Schmidty, I went to see the top three hypnotists in New York City. These are the people congressmen and athletes go to for big problems, and it still didn’t work. I don’t think waving a spoon in front of Abernathy’s face is going to cut it.”

“I was planning on using a pocket watch,” Schmidty replied softly, clearly rattled by Theo’s dour assessment. “We mustn’t lose faith, Mister Theo. It’s terribly important that we believe in our ability to do this, or else… we’re sunk.”

Theo smiled halfheartedly, more for Schmidty’s sake than his own.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Mister Theo, there is a pesky reporter out there who deserves a piece of my mind!”

“Okay, but don’t give her too much; there’s not a lot left.”

Unfortunately, try as Schmidty did, he simply could not locate Sylvie Montgomery anywhere on the grounds. Of course, seeing as he’s legally blind, the odds were rather unfavorably against him. Having neither heard a snort nor seen a splash of pink, Schmidty returned to the manse to conduct his first group-therapy session. After Theo’s grave assessment of the scenario, he decided there simply wasn’t time for traditional talking; something much bolder was required. However, outside of his hairdo, Schmidty was not a bold man. And so he sought the counsel of the boldest person he knew—Lulu. Fueled by the seemingly dire straits, she quickly devised a medieval-inspired game aimed at releasing pent-up aggression.

The Duel of the Senses, as Lulu called it, was to take place on the polo field off the Great Hall. Murals of bucolic rolling hills with white picket fences adorned the walls, while lush green AstroTurf covered the floor. Two of Mrs. Wellington’s taxidermied horses were positioned face-to-face in the center of the room. A safe distance away, Theo, Madeleine, Hyacinth, Garrison, and Macaroni sat patiently in a row of chairs. Most abnormally, the students and Macaroni were covered head
to toe in slimy, heat-sensitive Greenland Fungus. Mrs. Wellington kept the rare organism in a room off the Great Hall, as it was frighteningly easy to spread; one only had to touch it to be instantly mummified in the green goo.

The sound of Schmidty’s poor trumpet playing signaled the start of the duel. Lulu led a trash bag–ensconced Mrs. Wellington to a regal black horse while Schmidty guided an equally trash bag–clad Abernathy to a spotted brown and white horse. Unfortunately, both were slippery and struggled to mount the stationary animals, an unforeseen consequence of their armor.

“Celery wants to know why we’re covered in this nasty green stuff,” Hyacinth whispered to Garrison. “I mean, I totally don’t care, but you know how persnickety ferrets can be—they’re total drama queens about their wardrobe.”

“It blocks the smell,” Garrison answered absentmindedly from beneath his green sheen.

“The smell of what?”

“You
really
don’t want to know.”

Meanwhile, on the field, Lulu and Schmidty handed identical satchels to Abernathy and Mrs. Wellington
before slowly backing away. The duel leaders then touched Macaroni, allowing the heat-sensitive fungus to spread to their bodies.

“May the best lunatic win,” Lulu announced with a smirk before waving a pink paisley scarf in the air to officially start the Duel of the Senses.

The rules were simple: whoever stayed atop his or her horse the longest won. While remaining mounted on a taxidermied animal might sound simple, that certainly was not the case, for inside the identical satchels were small vats of foulness from the Library of Smelly Foods, which Mrs. Wellington and Abernathy were to strategically hurl at each other. Fainting, uncontrolled tremors, and violent vomiting are just some of the reported side effects from coming into contact with such items.