CHAPTER 18

THE END

THEY MET IN SECRET.

The leader lit the candles. The loyal members of the evil organization were sweating beneath their awful animal masks. Something bad was about to happen. They gripped the couch cushions and the chair handles and their own knees and anything else they could find, bracing for the worst.

“Well,” sighed the leader. “That was… something.”

A tense silence. The sound of Dr. Luft scratching a mosquito bite underneath the banana sock on his ankle was as loud as a meteor ripping through the atmosphere.

“Obviously, we failed to open Talon Sharktūth’s vault,” the leader said matter-of-factly. “Luckily, as planned, we have pawned our PR problem onto Millicent Quibb, who seems to have fled. As for those children, I’m sure Desdemona and Ansel can keep them in line until the time comes.”

The group nodded.

“And as for you, Member Five…”

Mrs. Wintermacher perked up.

“You are hereby banished from the organization. And from Antiquarium, obviously. Your handling of the simple tasks associated with this all-important mission was so poor that we should kill you—but we’ve decided to let you live. So. You can leave town now.”

Mrs. Wintermacher stood with her jaw open.

“Oh, I meant that you can leave town right now,” said the leader. “Was that not clear? My apologies. The no-murder offer expires in… ten minutes.”

Mrs. Wintermacher laid her cape on the tufted red leather sofa. “It was so nice to get to know all of you.”

The group said nothing as she moped away from the hidden lair, struggling to hold aloft the various stuffed creatures on the brim of her huge hat.

“Well, now that the weakest link has been eliminated,” the leader continued, “we will forge ahead with our plans. I just need to regroup first. You’re all dismissed.”

The remaining members hung their animal masks and capes on a coat rack as they filed out the door, leaving the leader alone.

Once everyone else had departed, the leader loafed over to a vanity mirror and slumped onto the seat. She pried her porcelain mask from the damp flesh underneath and stared at her reflection. “I am coming, Talon! Wait for me, my prince! We shall be together… forever!”

If the Porch Sisters had been there, if they had seen who was behind the mask, it would have saved the pupils of the Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science a lot of trouble.

But as it was, the trouble was just beginning.

Meanwhile, on a velvet fainting couch in the Parquette parlor, Aunt Desdemona was executing a flawless “Upright Sit with Straight Back.” Across from her sat the Porch Sisters, who were still soaking wet from having crashed the Flycycle into the town fountain.

Ashley Cookie, Esq., had dragged the children back to Aunt Desdemona’s house and shoved them through the front door, shouting: “You deal with this!”

And so Aunt Desdemona was dealing with it, shaken as she was by the day’s events. “Porch children. Your crimes are as follows: (1) falsifying an etiquette school, (2) associating with a mad scientist, and lastly and most importantly, (3) creating a giant worm monster and releasing it upon the town.”

“We wish we could take credit, dear Aunt,” Dee-Dee sighed, “but the worm was a creation of the KRA. And Fifi Bubblegumme, of course.”

“You keep saying ‘KRA’ and ‘Fifi Bubblegumme,’ and I keep not knowing what those are, so just shush and let me continue!” Aunt Desdemona clutched her pearl necklace with one hand and her pearl brooch with another. “For your crimes, we are sending you all to Austria, where we should have sent you from the start. We were being cheap, and that’s what happens when you’re cheap.” Aunt Desdemona threw a look at Uncle Ansel, who burst into tears.

“Why don’t you just leave us on a Parisian sidewalk and forget that we ever existed?” Eugenia snarled. “Why must you control our every movement?”

“Because we are being paid handsomely to watch you until you are of age!” Aunt Desdemona blurted out, then immediately covered her mouth. Grantie Lettuce raised an eyebrow at Aunt Desdemona. “I mean… I simply meant that we are being paid… in grace, from our good Gourd above. And we simply cannot do without our… grace. Anyway, off to Austria you go. Do you have anything else to say for yourselves?”

Gertrude wanted to say something, but she knew it would make the Parquettes mad. But it was too late: Her lips were already moving.

“I actually would like to say, um…,” Gertrude began softly.

“Yes? Out with it, Rude-Gert!”

Gertrude took a deep breath. Even though everything had gone topsy-turvy, deep in her heart, she knew something about herself that she didn’t know before: She truly valued certain things—things like… truth! Caring for animals! Caring for people! And the people she knew who valued those things too, well… they seemed to like her just fine. Her sisters liked her. Millicent Quibb liked her. Even a Kyrgalops liked her! A Kyrgalops, who was built to chew through solid steel, had bowed to her and purred like a kitten!

Gertrude cleared her throat. “I just want to say: You’re welcome.”

Aunt Desdemona gasped. Uncle Ansel scoffed. The Lavinias clutched their bichons close to their chests. Grantie Lettuce flared her nostrils.

“What did you say, child?”

“I said, um,” Gertrude continued, “you’re welcome. ’Cause from when we actually saved you from the worm. You’re welcome.”

The family had never seen Gertrude act in such a way, i.e., with strength and purpose. They made all sorts of noises: Pshaw! Phooey! AS IF. Only Lavinia-Steve refused to scoff, instead nodding to the Porches with gratitude.

Gertrude nodded back as the Parquettes continued their scornful noises: Tssk. Hahaha! Ugh! Blech.

But underneath all these sounds, there was another sound, a softer sound, but triumphant all the same: the sound of Eugenia and Dee-Dee patting their big sister on the back.

The Porches stared mournfully out the back window of the car that would take them to the Antiquarium Dock, where a boat would take them to Boston, where a bigger boat would take them to New York, where an even bigger boat would take them to London, where a smaller boat would take them to a town in coastal France, where they would board a train to non-coastal Germany, where they would take a car around the rim of a frozen lake to the top of a mountain in Austria, where they would rot in a boarding school until they turned sixteen.

Uncle Ansel whistled cheerfully as he turned the steering wheel. He had never had a conversation with the Porches before, but he chose this moment, when the girls were clutching their suitcases and silently crying, to tell them all about the wonderful world of cuff links.

“You know, a cuff link is like a diamond necklace—but for the sleeve. There are different kinds, of course, and they all say something different. The fixed back says, ‘I have an important job!’ while the chain style says, ‘I come from money and don’t need a job!’ And of course, each plays differently in the context of the pocket square—”

Ansel stopped at a stoplight and pulled out his map.

“Oh, toad, I missed the darn turn for the toad-darn dock! Toad it!” He threw the map into the passenger seat.

Gertrude glanced sideways at her sisters. It seemed they were all thinking the same mischievous thing. “Um, I think I know where it is,” she said. “You actually have to go back around and up Croissant Boulevard, by the cemetery.”

It would be wrong to leave forever without at least saying goodbye.

The car sputtered up the hill, past the cemetery. “Well, I don’t think this is the way to the dock either!” Ansel fumed.

“We’re very close,” Gertrude said, and bade him turn left into the cul-de-sac at Mysterium Way.

The street was lined with the same bramble bushes, the same abandoned lots, the same suggestions of what once had been houses, and then, at 231, there was…

NOTHING.

Millicent’s house was gone. There was only a hole in the grass where the foundation had been. Had it been burned? Had it been ransacked to the studs by the angry mob? Was Millicent alright? Would they ever see her again? Was she even alive?

The sisters sprang from the car and searched the meadow for some sign, some clue, perhaps one of her famous notes. They scoured the scorched wreckage, finding nothing but bits of broken glass and tattered linen, and a single rose petal, dyed electric blue.

“This is no time for lollygagging in random meadows, ladies—the boat is leaving in ten minutes!” Uncle Ansel called.

The Porches looked at one another with quivering chins and moped back to the car.

Uncle Ansel sped away from the former grounds of the short-lived Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science, while its onetime pupils clung to one another in the back seat, wishing for a different ending.

Three torturous weeks later…

The Versagenschule (School for Failures) was a giant castle of sandstone perched on a snowy white peak in the Austrian Alps, next to a frigid mountain lake.

The Porches arrived at nighttime. The stars shimmered on the surface of the lake, and they could see their breath in the frozen air, even though it was mid-June.

The doors of the castle were flanked by two burning torches and two Doberman pinschers whose perfectly black fur gleamed blue in the moonlight. Their lips flared in a smirk on one side, just enough to show the corner of one perfectly sharp Doberman tooth.

The dogs growled at the Porches as they passed through the front doors, a pair of wooden behemoths covered in iron spikes big enough to impale several human heads at a time, if necessary.

Inside the main hall of the cavernous castle, cold fires burned in all the marble fireplaces, fireplaces flanked by—you guessed it—more Doberman pinschers.

The Porches were greeted in the main hall by the headmaster of the Versagenschule, Dr. Klaus Van Hundfreund, which means “dog-friend” in German. He was a tall, sinewy man with white hair to his shoulders, tiny spectacles, and a thin scarf wrapped around his neck.

“We have been expecting you,” he said in his piercing German accent, which echoed from the vaulted stone arches overhead. “I am Dr. Hundfreund, but you can just call me Dr. Hundfreund.”

The Porches were heavy with the filth of weeks of travel by boat and boat and boat and boat and train and car, but still they trudged dutifully behind Dr. Hundfreund to their new room, which was located at the top of three long spiral staircases of stone, each one narrower than the last.

The sisters’ new bedroom was a damp stone cell with only a small round window in the wall and a small round window in the door. The Porches couldn’t see but a few feet in front of them, so thick were the clouds of frozen breath puffing from their mouths and noses.

“I will leave you to get settled,” said Dr. Hundfreund. “Then in the morning we will begin the delicious process of delving deep into your psyches and finding out why they’re wrong and how to fix them.”

He locked the door behind him, leaving the Porches to shiver in a huddle.

“I guess this is where we live now,” said Eugenia.

The sisters felt like their chests were filled with dead ferns. How could it end like this?

Still, Eugenia reached into her suitcase and pulled out the textbooks Millicent had given them during their training: Gemistry for Fools, Fryzzics Is Fun!, and Unnaturalism and You.

“How did you get those past the dogs?!” Gertrude said, laughing. As they had stepped off the gondola that had carried them across the frozen lake, Dr. Hundfreund had ordered that the sisters’ luggage be sniffed by the Dobermans “for weapons, such as books.”

“I wrapped them in Taffetteen,” Eugenia replied. “No Doberman can sniff through Taffetteen.”

The young mad science students happily stroked the dusty pages of their textbooks as though they were the soft ears of a beloved pet, or the soft fringes of a beloved blanket.

They spoke not of the mysteries that lingered in the air: What had become of Millicent Quibb? Why did Millicent choose the three of them for her school? Were all of their mothers really garlic farmers named Pookie? Would they ever get home? What would Majestina DeWeen do next, and who on earth would stop her?

But these were questions for another time. The sisters had only to huddle together through that cold night—to read, to dream, to hope.

“We will not rot in this gourdforsaken school,” said Eugenia. “When the time is right, we will return to Antiquarium, and we will fight.”

“I think I’ll shore up Talon Sharktūth’s vault so that it can never be opened,” said Dee-Dee. “Yeah. I already have an idea about how to do it.”

“Good. But for now, we will study,” Gertrude said with a lump in her throat, a lump that felt like despair and hope all wrapped up together. “For Millicent.”

For Millicent.

Meanwhile, under that same moonlight, on the perimeter of the frozen Austrian lake, a fly sat in wait.

Well, a Flycycle.

Next to the vehicle, a mad scientist in a filthy lab coat with hair like a blooming onion shivered under a pine tree, cursing the cold.

She would have given the crickets in her pocket for a slice of hot pizza, but there were more pressing concerns, namely, rescuing her students from the clutches of the Dobermans.

Her frozen breath swirled and glinted in the moonlight. She puffed three times, sending three rings of breath from her lips, like three smoke signals, one for each of her pupils, who had a lot of work to do.

“Sit tight, my dear pupeels,” she whispered. “Professor Quibb is coming.”

THE END