"Listen, honey, I just want to be honest with you," said Carmelita, resting a hand on my shoulder and giving me a kind smile. I was wary.
"Please don't call me that," I muttered, half hoping she wouldn't hear, half hoping she would just so I could see her reaction.
Her smile contorted into a deep frown, "Fine. Listen, Cakesniffer, I'm going to tell you something and you better listen or I might just have to script a tragic accident for your character that just so happens to coincide with your real life disappearance."
I rolled my eyes despite my heart beating fast against my rib cage. For someone so little, Carmelita was surprisingly intimidating and I had to pray that my face remained expressionless. Even the faintest hint of emotion and she would pick up on it, feed on it, and become even more self inflated and egotistic. I had to prevent that at all costs.
"Try me," I said through gritted teeth.
Carmelita stepped closer, trying to get in my face despite her small height.
"Listen here," she began, "Klaus doesn't like you and he never will. Just give up on your stupid cakesniffing romance and leave him to me. Don't you dare try and get in the way of our kiss. Klaus and I will fall in love, you'll see. And if you even dare to try and put a stop to it, I'll make sure that you're," she paused for dramatic effect, all the while pulling her thumb across her neck in a menacing manner, "destroyed."
At that she stepped back and seemed to convert back into "innocent" mode. Her smile returned although it fell dead at her eyes, which were wide and piercing.
"This backdrop is nice, don't you think?" Carmelita asked. I assumed she wasn't actually asking in the hope to get a response so instead I just shrugged. She didn't seem to notice as she was picking up different coloured paints, looking at them and then putting them back again. Her hands finally rested on a bright blue tube which was full. Her gaze fell on me for a split second, which was more than enough time for me to notice the fire in her eyes, "I think it could do with some more blue though."
I was about to agree when she turned to me and squeezed the tube, a stream of cornflower shooting towards me. I put my hands out to stop it but it was too late, not that I would've been able to do much against the flowing paint anyway.
"Serves you right, Cakesniffer!" Carmelita sneered before skipping away, her tap shoes somehow producing a melody that sounded like it was taunting me.
In my anger, I kicked the chair that Carmelita had been sitting on most of the morning, but squealed in pain when it didn't move a muscle and instead my foot just met pure metal. Maybe I was weak or maybe kicking over furniture wasn't actually as easy as the movies made it seem. Considering I had just let a girl falling under the five foot mark threaten me, I decided that I was probably just weak.
I sighed and looked down at myself, trying to access the damage. Blue paint covered almost my entire front; my shirt, skirt, blazer and tie all looked like they had got into a fight with a blueberry pie and lost. Needless to say, it wasn't a good look.
"What happened?" Klaus' voice took me by surprise. I had my back to him so I turned around and he gasped, "Did the paint explode or something?"
"Carmelita decided I should wear it," I deadpanned, watching as his face slowly shifted into a smile, "Klaus Baudelaire, I hope you're not laughing!"
He looked down for a brief moment before bursting out in a fit of giggles.
"It's not funny!" I complained, but even I couldn't hold back my laughter for too long. It was the type of situation where you had to laugh otherwise you'd cry.
After taking his sweet time laughing at my appearance, Klaus calmed down but the smile didn't leave his face, "It's not that bad, you know. You could start the newest fashion craze."
I tried to flick paint onto him but he jumped out of the way.
"I mean, you could be covered in worse," he said, a mischievous grin still lingering on his lips.
"Says the one not covered in paint."
"Fair enou- hey!" I finally managed to throw some of paint at Klaus, hitting him on the cheek. Suddenly he turned serious, "You'll pay for that."
Before I could stop him, he grabbed a yellow paintbrush and flicked it in my direction. The paint splattered against my blazer and, since I'd realised by then that my uniform would be stained beyond washing, I decided that this spelled war. I picked up some paintbrushes as well and suddenly we were both involved in a full out paint fight, neither of us caring about whether we got in trouble or whether we would even be able to get new uniforms. At that point I was having enough fun that Carmelita Spats could've walked through the door and I would've just thrown the entire palette at her instead of backing down and apologising.
Klaus and I chased each other around with the paint and soon enough we were both covered, top to toe. Or, more so, I was covered. My aim wasn't as good as Klaus' so he only ended up with a few splatters on him.
I'm not sure how it happened but, in the midst of our messing around, Klaus had backed me into the corner of the room without a single tube of paint to defend myself, and I found myself trapped. For a second, I wasn't sure what to do, but then I remembered what Carmelita had been nice enough to do to me only minutes before this whole ordeal.
Stepping forward, I pulled Klaus into a hug. I felt him freeze against me before relaxing and hugging me back tighter. After a couple of seconds, I let him go and laughed.
"W-what was that for?" He stuttered, a dusting of crimson decorating his freckled cheeks.
I didn't answer and instead point towards his shirt, which was stained with bright blue paint. It looked like he had been hugged by a smurf.
"Isadora!" He complained, although he was smiling throughout the entirety. As payback, he swiped a bit of red paint towards my face and it landed on my nose, making me look like Rudolph.
We shared a laugh before stopping and properly taking in the mess we'd made. The backdrop had somehow survived our paint war zone but the same couldn't be said about the floor. Every colour you could imagine had ended up as a massive mess that we now had to clean up. Luckily it could be wiped clean, we would just have to do it before Carmelita or Vice Principal Nero came to check on us.
As we started scrubbing the floor clean, I couldn't help but let my gaze fall on Klaus. The redness still hadn't left his face but I thought it looked cute, even if it did kind of make him resemble a tomato. And mixed with the paint he was covered in, he looked crazy. To be honest, I probably looked worse but that would be an issue for after we made sure the hall was spotless.
Almost as if he knew I was looking, Klaus turned around slightly and we shared a smile before getting back to work. Even though it sucked that we had all of the floor to clean now, I decided that it was well and truly worth it, not only because we had fun. It was worth it because I got to see that deadly smile again.
