Shouldn't You Be in School? (All The Wrong Questions)

by Lemony Snicket

But some secrets are so strange and so dangerous that showing them to people makes the strangeness and the danger pour into their lives like dark, dark ink.

“We believe in an aristocracy,” I said. Moxie wanted to type so badly that she rattled her fingers on the table. “Doesn’t that mean people who are rich and powerful?” “Not that kind of aristocracy,” I said, with both feet on the floor. “Not an aristocracy of power, based on rank or wealth, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Our members are found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between us when we meet.” “Like us,” Cleo said. “We’ve all read The Wind in the Willows, so we decided to use that as a code. “Exactly,” I said, watching Ellington frown out of the corner of my eye. “We represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. We’re an invincible army, but not a victorious one. We’ve had different names throughout history, but all the words that describe us are false and all attempts to organize us fail. Right now we’re called V.F.D., but all our schisms and arguments might cause us to disappear. It won’t matter. People like us always slip through the net. Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.”

“Can we join?” Cleo said finally. “It seems to me you already have joined,” I said. “I hope that doesn’t mean we have to get tattoos,” Moxie said. “I’ve never liked this,” I said, frowning at my ankle. “It is unwise to make something permanent when the whole world is shifting. There may be a time when this symbol means something treacherous and terrible, rather than something noble and literate.”

I’d like to think you can trust absolutely all of us, he’d said, so I thought it was best not to look at it in front of Ellington Feint. It occurred to me suddenly to wonder if I would spend the night tucked into her bed again.

She stepped nimbly out of sight. I had to follow her to see her. Good idea, I told myself. Follow a girl who has brought you nothing but trouble, toward a deep pit of water in an isolated location in the dark of night. If you were a book, Snicket, you would throw yourself down because your hero was acting foolishly. The Bombinating Beast is under her bed, Snicket, and you’re following her into the darkness. You’re unsupervised, Snicket, as Theodora would have told me. You’re unsupervised and you’re scared. Get scared later, I told myself. Myself told me very rude things in return.

The question was, how much trouble are you in? and the answer was I didn’t know. Nobody ever does. Ellington put her hand on my shoulder and guided me to the very edge of the rock, like it was a diving board. I could feel the nothingness of the dark pond, just under the tips of my toes, and Ellington’s fingers on my shoulder. If she pushes you, I thought, at last you will know. All of the reading and thinking you have done has pointed you toward a mystery of unspeakable size, and here it is, Snicket. Here’s the dark thing you imagine very late, on very terrible nights. It has been beckoning you since you were a baby, when you emerged from the darkness of the womb. You didn’t know it then, but from that moment on you would float toward another darkness, all the mysterious days and all the mysterious nights of your whole mysterious life. Here it is, Snicket. Listen for this mystery that has been stalking you since they first inked your ankle. These thoughts did not appear out of thin air. They had a cause somewhere.

Our conversation finally started to droop, and Ellington caught herself yawning and covered her mouth with her hand. “I’d better make more coffee,” she said. “No, thank you,” I said. “Don’t you ever sleep?” “Not here,” she said. “Not lately. Not for a long time.” “I’ll watch over you,” I said. “You’re running out of coffee, anyway. In fact—” She looked at me. I can get shy in a roll of the dice. “Snicket?” I zipped the bag back up, for something to do, and slid it back under Ellington’s bed. Then I checked if my socks were dry and they mostly were, so I slid them on my feet and then put on my shoes and tied them and tied them in double knots. “I want to ask you something,” I said, when I could think of nothing else to waste my time with. “Do you?” “I do.” “Then do so.” “I want to ask you to do something with me tomorrow night.” Ellington smiled. “It depends what the something is. Is it a crime?” “I’m sure it’s against the rules and regulations of this school.” “Sounds good to me.” “I want you to sneak out and meet me tomorrow night,” I said. “Together we’ll go into town and go to Black Cat Coffee.” “How will we get into town?” “In the back of a wagon,” I said, “pulled by a taxi.” “Are you inviting me on a hayride, Snicket?” “I suppose it’s like a hayride.” “Just you and me, underneath the stars?” “You don’t have to make it sound so gooey,” I said. “I just thought it would be a nice way to spend an evening.” “You’re up to something,” Ellington said. “Is this something with ...

I looked at the poor, sickly plant, trying to grow in the coffee grounds instead of the earth, where it belonged. I wondered what happened to things that grew up in the wrong place.

Get scared later, I told myself, just as I’d advised my associates. Get scared later, and if you’re scared now remember what Kit always said. If you’re not scared, she told me, it’s not bravery. And you want to be brave, don’t you, Snicket? Of course you do. Of course I did, but I still felt sick. It was a sickness in my stomach and in my mouth and even in my heart. The symptoms were nervousness and dread. I don’t know what the illness is called. I’ve had it since I was a child.

When you find the sort of people who will show up to give you a ride exactly when they’ve promised to do so, hold on to them for life.

It was probably a skeleton key, I thought, a key that could open any door. But a skeleton key is like a skeleton. It doesn’t do much good if you don’t know how to use it.

He was looking daggers at me, a phrase which here means “giving me nasty looks.” I was in too much pain to look daggers back. The best I could manage was looking a couple of toothpicks. “This is a relief,” I managed to say. “You gave me a new bump instead of exacerbating the first one.” He just stared. The stick was still in his hands. “Exacerbate,” I said, “is a word which here means ‘make worse,’ as in the sentence, ‘Stew Mitchum is exacerbating the whole world.’ ” “I don’t like you, Snicket,” Stew said. “I’ve never liked you. You’re a full portion of my least favorite thing.” “What would that be?” I said. “Justice? Kindness? Literacy?”

“Then everyone’s accounted for,” Cleo said. “Everyone,” I said, “except Filene N. Gottlin.” “Why are you smiling?” Moxie asked me. “I guess because I’m hungry,” I said.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Cleo asked. “I need to shower and get dressed up,” I said. “I’m taking a girl on a hayride.” Moxie narrowed her eyes at me. “That’s your fragment of the plot?” “Don’t get sore, Moxie,” I said. “I’m not sore,” the journalist said, sorely,

Theodora was still talking. She was talking about Bertrand, her previous apprentice. He was a saint. He never gave her any trouble whatsoever. He was a decent person who never gave anyone reason to lose any sleep. He’d end up married to a wonderful woman and have very charming children, while I languished alone and lonely. I sat in my towel and agreed that was likely.

The Bellerophon brothers looked like they’d cleaned up a little for the occasion of being chauffeurs for a boy taking a girl on a hayride. Their clothes looked a little less rumpled and their hair a little less ratty. I appreciated it and told them so.

set. I swung back and forth like a ship in a storm, with the clouds swirling over me like the sea. The sky was still there. No one had drained it away. I sat up as we approached the school. I hadn’t thought about how to sneak back into the Wade Academy and meet Ellington in the library, but as we stopped at the gate I realized she wasn’t at the library. She was on top of the wall instead, sitting elegantly with her feet dangling off the edge and her hands fiddling with her braids. She was wearing a dress that matched the color of the sunset, and she was looking down at me with her green eyes and smiling the smile that could have meant anything.

Even at around thirteen years of age, I had seen many things that I couldn’t help staring at. I had quite a list of them in my head. Ellington sitting atop the brick wall, smiling down at me, was now at the top of that list.

It was probably at that moment that Ellington Feint ceased to be a mysterious figure in the middle of a whirlpool of difficult questions that had surrounded me since I first set foot in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, and started to become the reason I was still in Sta...

This is very difficult to explain. It is as difficult as jumping off a wall into a wagon with scarcely enough light to see your way. But it happened anyway. Difficult things happen all the time. She landed with a soft crinkle and the wagon rocked a little. Pip called up to ask if we were OK. We were. Ellington was close to me now, a little breathless from the stunt, and the...

“Good evening,” I said. “It’s still empty,” she said, noticing where I was looking. She unzipped it to show me the empty space. It still looked small. “Good evening,” I said again. She smiled. “Good evening. Thank you for inviting me on a hayride.” She lay back and I lay back next to her. The wagon swayed, and the first insects of the evening began to whir and hum. “It’s not hay, though, is it?” “No.” “Bark?” ...

“I’ve been wrong about so much,” Ellington said. “So have I,” I said. “It’s a foolish feeling,” she said. “I don’t like it.” “Nobody does,” I said. “That’s why I invited you to ride on a wagon pulled by a taxi up a rocky cliff. So we wouldn’t feel foolish.” She laughed, but I smiled up at the sky. A star had appeared, the first star of the evening. “What’s the real reason you invited me?” she asked. I might have been wrong once more. It might just have been the first star I could see. “Because I can’t take my eyes off you,” I said. I felt her hand curl around mine. “I’m glad it’s getting dark,” Ellington said. “You can’t see me blush.” I slipped my hand free. “That’s not quite what I mean,” I said. “I mean that if I don’t keep an eye on you, you’re likely to do something treacherous.”

You were hoping to distract me tonight. Maybe we’d sit and listen to the piano at Black Cat Coffee, while this town’s last hope burned to the ground.” Her eyes glistened, like tiny splashes in a deep, dark pool. “He’s holding my father prisoner,” she said. “What else can I do?” “You can volunteer to do the proper thing,” I said, with the book in my hand. Ellington did not say anything.

“What kind of volunteer firefighter are you, Snicket?” “Not a very good one,” I said. “I’m part of an invincible army, but not a victorious one.” “I don’t even know what that means,” Stew said. “That’s not surprising,” I said. I looked around the library for the last time. “It’s not the sort of thing you learn at a top-drawer school. It means that our plans often get shattered, no matter how brilliant they are. But our purpose remains intact. We may ask the wrong questions, but we know the right answers. We might not always have an actual compass”—and here I stole a look at Ellington and then a look at the floor—“but we have a moral compass, something inside ourselves that tells us the proper thing to do.” “That’s a very pretty speech,” Stew sneered. “Thank you,” I told him. “I was being sarcastic, Snicket.” “So was I, Mitchum.” “I knew that.” “Did I say you didn’t?” It was another thing you do not learn at a top-drawer school. Bickering is like baldness or lousy birthday gifts. It runs in families.

“So your evening with Ellington was just a ruse?” she asked doubtfully. “I couldn’t take my eyes off her,” I said again. I’d tried to explain Ellington Feint to Moxie Mallahan several times, and each time she gave me the same skeptical look. “Skeptical” is a word which here meant she didn’t believe me. She thought I had other reasons for wanting to spend the evening with Ellington, and I’d been unable to convince her she was wrong.

“It’s true,” Kellar said quietly. “I couldn’t get her to leave Wade Academy with me, even when we went into town again for more honeydews.” “You can stay at the lighthouse for as long as you want,” Moxie told him, “or at least until my mother sends for me in the city. Father and I are grateful for the company.” Moxie smiled and moved over so Kellar could take over at the typewriter. It was a good friendship. It made me happy to see.

“I’ve been a little lonely all my life,” I said. “I see no reason why it should stop at age thirteen.”

My associate was right. The word “Mayday” does have a French origin. It comes from the term “M’aider,” which in French means “help me.” You could probably see it in my eyes as I stared out at the seaweed that lived when the sea was drained away, for no reason anyone could explain, and that moved in ways so mysterious no one could imagine them. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Help me, I thought, but I only let myself think it for a moment. Then I turned back and walked toward town. You are unsupervised, Snicket, I thought. You won’t get any help. You’ll have to help yourself.