What's The News? • Lemoxie

Chapter Seven

"Alright, everyone, are we ready to get going?" Kellar asked after we'd all gotten a good night sleep and a quick breakfast.
"I think so," Cleo spoke for everyone, looking around.

"How are we all getting there?" Ornette asked, "None of the cars are big enough to seat six."

I ended up reluctantly surrendering my keys to Kellar and he drove the girls (they had my typewriter and I told them there'd be hell to pay if either wasn't exactly how it was the next time I see it). I turned to Lemony and his motorcycle. "You getting on or what?" He called to me with a smirk.
"Just go slow, okay?" I said, accepting his helmet and putting it on after taking off my hat.
"No no no, it's actually much more dangerous if we go slow. You are going to need to hold tight." He told me. I wrapped my arms around his waist, hat in hand, and let out a deep breath. I'd actually never been on a motorcycle before but as we whooshed past houses and stores in our way to Offshore Island, I felt a sense of security with my prime associate. Lemony Snicket always cared about me and my safety and I couldn't help but love him for that.

Offshore Island had been abandoned for a while since Wade Academy was evacuated and nobody rang the bell anymore. "Kenneth Graham." We all mumbled fondly once we were standing together.
"We're looking in pairs, people!" Lemony said. "We can cover more ground this way!"

"Ellington, you're with Cleo. Ornette, you're with me. Kellar and Snicket are the last pair." I told everyone. It would be counterproductive to have the couples looking together, although I wanted to spend time with Lemony. The six of us split up once we were inside and Ornette and I were deciding where to look.

"Teacher's lounge, possibly?" She suggested.
"Let's go."

I looked at the architecture of the building and the halls and realized I barely remembered much of it because I was under the influence of laundanum and exceptionally tired because of this. We searched the teacher's lounge, we double checked the library (Ellington and Cleo had gone in before us), we searched half the dorm rooms, the nurse's office, and even the cafeteria but didn't find anything...

About two and a half hours into looking for that fungus sample, I got a text from Kellar.

"I think I found it... Broom closet with a ton of boxes of laundanum. Second floor in the east side of the building."

" Kellar told me he found it! Let's go! " I told Ornette. The two of us met up with Ellington and Cleo in the hall and we ran over to where Kellar told me to find them and sure enough, Kellar and Lemony were holding a sealed glass case. It was about the size of a wooden toy block children played with when they were little, if not slightly bigger. Inside of the case was a single dark gray mushroom with black splotches on the cap as if it had been spattered with ink.

"Don't drop it." I said carefully.
"Wouldn't dream of it." Kellar replied, setting the sample on a shelf, "But there was more in the box we found it in."

I peeked inside the open laundanum box and pulled out what was inside: a knife and a slip of paper. I recognized this knife, though.

"Nurse Dander's knife..." Cleo whispered in shock. I shifted the slip of paper, which I noticed had writing on it, to the same hand as the knife and pulled up my sleeve to look at the cut on my arm for a moment before pulling it back down.

"What does the paper say?" Lemony asked me. I carefully added the knife back into the box and smoothed out the paper so I could read it.

"You thought it would be this easy to find what you're looking four/I hope this knife tells you where to find more." I recited the poem.

"Let me see that," Ornette said, her eyes widening as she saw the poem. "This is Ethan's handwriting. He was a poet..."
"Oh, Ornette, we're so sorry... But this is confusing; why would he be helping us if he was a fire starter?"
Kellar looked at it from over her shoulder. "But wait: here it's supposed to say 'for', as in F O R, it says 'four', like the number. That must be how many samples there are, right?"

I looked at the five of them, thinking about the second part of the couplet. "Hope this knife tells you where to find more" ? What does it mean by that. How would Nurse Dander's knife tell us where in Stain'd-by-the-Sea the second sample is? Unless... "Guys, the next sample must be at Colophon Clinic!" I gasped.