Family Comes First- ASOUE

Chapter 79: S.O.R.E.

*Violet's POV*

Coach Genghis blew the whistle as hard as possible as we walked up to the athletic field. "Punctuation, orphans!"

"Punctuation??" I repeated in a confused, yet angry way.

"The art of arriving not-late." He defined incorrectly.

"That's punctuality," Isadora corrected.

"And you said to arrive at sundown, so we aren't late," Klaus added.

"You know," Genghis said, "This reminds me of a story. A long time ago, I was approached by a fortune of children, or whatever the word is for a large number of them. They needed my help. 'Coach Genghis,' they said to me, 'We're failures. Our parents have abandoned us for careers as burnt up skeletons. We have nothing in our lives but all this money and jewels, and they made us failures who read books and stuff.' I looked at them and told them to put on some expensive running shoes-" Here, he threw five pairs of sneakers that were decorated with the program's acronym at Klaus and Duncan. "-and then take this bucket of luminous paint, and drag it around and around, until they have made a luminous circle on the ground. You will then run around, and around, until I tell you to stop"

"What???" I asked. I could hardly believe that was the plan? There had to be more.

"WhAt???" He mocked me. "Take the fucking bucket and get to it."

I reluctantly snatched the bucket from his hands and we started pouring the paint onto the field. Genghis went and sat on the bleachers to watch us, blowing his whistle when he wanted us to make the circle bigger, and when we were far enough to be out of earshot, we started sharing our theories about his plan.

"What do you think we're really doing here?" Duncan asked.

"I don't know," Klaus said, "But I don't think it has anything to do with the paint. I've read four books on the subject and some paints can be poisonous."

"He's not making us eat the paint though," Izzie noted. "We're just running around it. We'll have more information as we go along."

We eventually had a whole circle, if you could call it that, at least. It was lumpy and veered off in different directions the more Genghis told us to make it larger. We sat down to switch out our shoes for the running ones, rushing to do so to stop the horrible sound of the whistle. The whole time my head ran rampant with ideas and possibilities of what this scheme could be this time.

We all lined up at a certain point of the circle at Genghis' demand. Now take your marks, all of you, and begin running as soon as I blow my whistle."

"But Sunny is a baby," Klaus protested. "She can't really run, at least not professionally."

"Then she may crawl as fast as she can," Genghis replied. "Now-on your marks, get set, go!"

Genghis blew his whistle and the five of us began to run, pacing ourselves so they could run together even though we all ran at different speeds. We finished one lap, and then another, and then another and another and then five more and then another and then seven more and then another and then three more and then two more and then another and then another and then six more and then I completely lost track. Coach Genghis kept blowing his whistle and occasionally shouted tedious and unhelpful things like "Keep running!" or "Another lap!" We looked down at the luminous circle so we could stay in line, and sometimes looked over at Genghis as he grew fainter and then clearer as we finished each lap, and we looked out into the darkness to see if there was any hope of escaping these exercises.

The five of us also looked at one another from time to time, but we didn't speak, not even when we were far enough away from Genghis that he could not overhear. We stayed silent to conserve energy, and even then, I was out of breath at least. I had already spoken for us when I had asked "What?" Coach Genghis kept blowing his whistle, and we kept running around and around the track. We had heard Coach Genghis, but we couldn't believe that S.O.R.E. was the extent of his evil plan. My family and I kept running around the glowing circle until the first rays of sunrise began to reflect on the jewel in Genghis's turban, and all we could think was "What? What? What?"