Summerstone’s foyer was unusually spacious with
pink fleur-de-lis wallpaper peeling from the ceiling.
Aside from the drooping wallpaper, the room was
pristinely maintained and incredibly clean. Much to
Madeleine’s relief, there wasn’t a cobweb in sight.
Still, as a precaution, she sprayed a circle around her
feet, causing the others to inch away. Schmidty left the
children in the foyer in order to lower the sheriff off the
mountain with the crane.
The foursome stood awkwardly around an oval
chestnut table with a vase of pink hydrangeas. As they
surveyed the room, it was hard to ignore the far wall
decorated with pictures of beauty quweewnws .AwTitIhBOOK.ir
beehive hairdos, crowns, sashes, and extremely shiny
teeth. Shoes clacking across a wooden floor
interrupted the students’ inspection of their new
surroundings. At the top of the sweeping staircase, an
elderly woman in a powder blue knee-length skirt and
matching jacket stood femininely with her right leg
slightly bent, as if posing for a photograph.
The woman’s clothes, like the interior of the
house, dated from the mid-to-late 1950s. With four
sets of eyes on her, she delicately and pretentiously
sashayed down the staircase. Theo, Madeleine,
Garrison, and Lulu had no way of knowing what to
expect, since so far nothing had been what they’d
thought it was going to be.
As the woman approached, her sagging paperthin
skin came into focus. She had clearly invested an
enormous amount of time applying makeup to hide
her age. The woman had bubblegum pink lips, thick
black eyeliner, fake eyelashes, and light blue eye
shadow that matched her outfit. Madeleine, grateful
she hadn’t lifted her veil, stared freely at the peculiarlooking
woman in a brown bob wig.
Lulu stifled laughter as she noticed tortoiseshell
glasses hanging from a gold chain around the
woman’s neck. Not even Lulu’s grandmother in Boca
Raton wore her glasses on a chain. Trailing behind
the woman as she made her grand entrance were
four cats — two black and two gray. She paused in
front of the students and waited for the cats. Once all
the felines were down the stairs, the old woman
began. www.ATIBOOK.ir
began.
“Hello, I am Mrs. Wellington, your teacher,
headmistress, and all-around center of the universe at
School of Fear,” she said in a haughty tone. “I assume
you have already met Schmidty, the groundskeeper
slash cook slash office assistant. He’s nearly blind, so
if you make a snide face at him, he’ll hardly notice. As
for Mac, he’s still recovering from the death of his
partner, Cheese, so be kind. I should add that only
Schmidty and I are to call him Mac; he’s Macaroni to
you. And the cats — Fiona, Errol, Annabelle, and
Ratty — are my greatest achievement, literally living
proof of my teaching abilities. I trained these cats.
And if I can train a cat, I can definitely train you.”
“What have you trained them to do?” Lulu asked.
“To behave completely untrained. Quite
exemplary if I may say so myself,” Mrs. Wellington
said with a cackle.
“Are we being filmed? Is this a reality show? Our
parents’ idea of a joke?” Garrison asked sincerely.
“I didn’t think my parents even had a sense of
humor,” Lulu responded honestly.
“They don’t, dear. And the only camera in this
house is a 1953 Polaroid Land Camera for which
they stopped making film. So unfortunately, your
dreams of national embarrassment are over. Please
mourn silently,” Mrs. Wellington said while stopping in
front of Lulu.
“Name?”
“Lulu Punchalower.”
Mrs. Wellington nodded and saunterewdw owv.eAr TtoIBOOK.ir
Garrison.
“Name?”
“Garrison Feldman.”
Mrs. Wellington again nodded and proceeded on
to Madeleine.
“Name?”
“Madeleine Masterson.”
Mrs. Wellington again nodded and turned toward
Theo; however, before she could ask his name, he
told her.
“Hello, my name is Theo Bartholomew, and I was
wondering if I could call my mom. I’m really
concerned. What if she ran out of gas, got into a car
accident, or picked up a deranged hitchhiker? I need
to get to a phone as soon as possible.”
Mrs. Wellington locked eyes with Theo, her bright
pink lips turning dark crimson.
“Wow, your lips change colors,” Theo unwisely
said aloud.
“I was born with an exceptionally high number of
capillaries in my lips. They are rather wide and close
to the surface, allowing those around me to see them
blush, if you will, when embarrassed or, more aptly,
annoyed.”
“Are you embarrassed?” Theo asked sincerely.
“What in Heaven’s name do I have to be
embarrassed about?”
“I don’t know, maybe your makeup,” Theo said
earnestly. “All I know is, you haven’t known me long
enough to be annoyed. My brothers say it takes over
a year to fully comprehend how annoying I awmw.”w.ATIBOOK.ir
a year to fully comprehend how annoying I am.”
“Clearly, I am an exceptionally fast learner as I
can already tell that you are annoying, with a capital A,
or maybe just a capital everything. Oh forget it; I am
too annoyed to even explain how annoying you are…
.”
While Theo may have been annoying, the
foursome was beginning to realize that Mrs.
Wellington might be more than a tad batty.