Broken - Isadora Quagmire

Chapter Seven - School

The door swung open, "Enter!"

"Hello?" I said, looking into the room.

"We're the Quagmire's, is Vice Principal Nero here?" my brother asked. We walked inside the office, it was small and messy. There were several portraits of strange looking violinists which still creep me out.

A cough came from the desk in the centre of the room which made me and my brother immediately turn to face it. "Hello?" I called.

"Ladies and Gentlemen!" a voice announced. "Put your hands together for Vice Principal Nero!" the strange man jumped up from behind the desk and started playing the violin, terribly.

Duncan and I stared.

"It is traditional to applaud when a genius plays a violin"

We clapped.

"Thank you, thank you" he sat down. "Welcome to Prufrock Preparatory School, blah, blah, blah. I am Vice Principal Nero and I am in charge of the school"

"Isn't the Principal in charge of the school"

"Isn't the Principal in charge of the school?" He mimicked. "No, he is not and anyway, we haven't seen that guy for years" he looked at one of the papers on his desk. "Duncan?"

My brother raised his hand for a second before putting it down "Yes?"

'You will be studying in Room One with Mr. Remora and Isadora?"

"Yes?"

"You will be with Mrs. Bass in Room Two. Can you two non-genius' remember that?"

"We'll write it in our commonplace books" said Duncan. I nodded my head in agreement and jotted the information in my commonplace book.

Vice Principal Nero quickly went over some of the school rules. "Now leave me alone, your tour guide will be here soon and genius' need to rehearse.

We started walking out. "Is there anything else that we should know" asked Duncan.

"Yes, you'll be living in a shack" Vice Principal Nero said playing his violin.

"He was joking, right?" I asked Duncan after we had left.

A little girl appeared at the end of the hallway and she started towards us. The first thin I noticed about her was her over-the -top putrid pink dress and then her short, curly, red hair that bounced on her shoulders as she danced over to us.

"Welcome to Prufrock Preparatory School, I'm your tour guide and blah, blah, blah" she said in a monotone voice.

"Hello, I'm Duncan Quagmire and this is my younger sister Isadora"

"Stop. Just stop talking, I do not care. My name is Carmelita Spats and I'm the most interesting, cute, adorable, funny, completely flawless girl here, I'm everybody's favourite, especially Vice Principal Nero's, that's why I get to wear beautiful dresses like this one instead of that disgusting uniform that you two and everyone else are forced to wear"

She showed us around the school: the cafeteria, the classrooms, the lockers and much more. We walked around one more corner,

"And finally, this is where you orphans will be staying" Carmelita said.

"It's a shack" I said looking at the small tin building.

"We thought he was joking" Duncan said.

"Well he was not, you two orphans will live in the Orphan Shack until a new set of orphans arrive at Prufrock and then they will move into the Orphan Shack"

"Then we'll move into a dorm and share it with the other orphans"

"No, you'll move into a broom closet"

"This can't be allowed..." I said

"Well it is" she opened the door to the Orphan Shack.

We entered the shack and Carmelita slammed the door shut. We immediately jumped onto the hay bales that we would later use as beds when we saw how utterly disgusting the the Orphan Shack really was. There were crabs crawling around on the floor and green fungus dripping from the roof.

"We're going to have to figure out how to get rid of the crabs and stop the fungus from spreading" I said.

"We're also going to have to figure out what this is" said Duncan, bringing out the object that he found in the ruins of our parents home.

"And we have to find out what's inside The Incomplete History Of Secret Organisations"

"There's so much that we have to find out"

"On Carmelita tour, we walked past the library. She didn't know what it was but it was still there and we can use it for research"

"What are we waiting for then?" said Duncan.

Duncan and I made our way to the library but when we tried to open the door, it was locked. I looked through the glass and the lights were off.

"Why hello" said a lady behind me.

"Hello" said Duncan.

"I'm Isadora Quagmire and this is my older brother Duncan"

"Oh, you're the new students" she smiled.

"Do you need any help?" asked Duncan, referring to the large pile of books that she was carrying.

"If you could open the door, that would be great" said the lady, handing us the keys. We opened the library doors and she placed the books down on one of the tables.

"Are you the librarian?" I asked.

"Yes, oh, I'm sorry" she held out her hand "I'm Olivia Caliban" I shook her hand, then Duncan did.

"Why wasn't the library open?" Duncan asked.

"The library is only allowed to be open for 10 minutes a day, starting, well, now"

"Really?" I said.

"Only 10 minutes?" continued Duncan.

"Yes, unfortunately. What can I help you two with?"

"The Orphan Shack"

"Oh, you two are orphans"

"We lost our parents and our brother Quigley in a terrible fire"

"We were triplets" I said

"I'm so sorry, I know how you feel and lucky for you I had to live in the Orphan Shack when I was younger" she went into a drawer and brought out four strips of metal. "I always keep some in my drawer, just in case. Could you pass me your shoes?". Duncan took his shoes off his shoes and I took off mine. We passed Olivia our shoes and she taped the metal strips to the bottom of them.

"You'll have to tap dance all the time but it scares away the crabs"

"Thank you" we said.

"You can take the metal off when you aren't in the shack. But I don't know anything that can be done about the fungus. Though, we could research it together for the next" she checked her timer "seven minutes"

"That would be great thank you" said my brother.

For the next seven minutes, Olivia, me and Duncan researched fungus and how to stop it. I found out a lot about different kinds of fungus including information about a particular fungus that would come in useful later:
"A single spore has such grim power,
that you may die within the hour"
"Is dilution simple? But of course,
Just one small dose of root of horse"
I wrote both couplets into my commonplace book under the title 'Medusoid Mycelium' and then the timer went off.

Olivia walked me and Duncan to the mandatory violin recital, and when she went to sit with the other staff members at the front, we went to sit at the back so we could talk while Vice PrincipalNero played his violin, which he did for the full SIX HOURS. It was midnight when the 'concert' ended. And when I got to the Orphan Shack I just slept.