The Set Up (ASOUE)

An Interesting Summer

Never in my life had I been more disgusted, and that's saying a lot considering I live with two teenage boys. My brother, Duncan, was currently trying to chat up an old crone by the poolside, who looked like she was literally knocking on death's door. One misplaced, Duncan-esque joke and he would have a case of manslaughter on his hands, considering she looked about one fit of laughter away from kicking the bucket. 

I just sighed and got up, absolutely needing to put a stop to the madness. I left my towel on the sun lounger but slipped my flip flops on, and edged around the pool to where my idiot brother was trying to act like some sort of casanova.

"Duncan!" I called out, and he turned to look at me, "Mum's looking for you!"

"Oh, okay," he said before turning to the old lady and saying, "I must leave, mon cheri, but I will return, I promise."

We got a few steps away before Duncan looked at me expectantly. "Are we just going to ignore whatever the hell that was?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at him. 

"What? Oh, you mean Beryl? She's nice isn't she?"

"Yeah, really nice... for an OAP! Not you, a skinny little boy."

Duncan gave me a look of disbelief. "I'm not a little boy."

"Compared to her, you are. She could be your grandma."

"Well, when she keels over and I'm the one written in her will, leaving all of her assets to me, don't come knocking."

I rolled my eyes, approaching the lounger where I had left my things. On one side, there was an empty lounger (Duncan's), and one with a towel, a t-shirt and a pair of sandals strewn haphazardly across it (Quigley's). Then next to me on the other side sat two empty loungers, ready for our friends the Baudelaires, who were meant to be joining us shortly. 

"So what did Mum want?" Duncan asked me and I gave him a look.

"Duncan, Mum's not even here. Or did you somehow forget?"

"It's all the lovely ladies, they're distracting me," he said, a dreamy tone to his voice.

The lovely ladies he was referring to included: a waitress at the nearby juice bar, a thirty year old yummy mummy, and Beryl, who had now put on a floral swimming cap ready to join the water aerobics class that was taking place at the other end of the pool. I wasn't sure why the list surprised me though. Ever since summer break started about a week ago, Duncan had been flirting with just about anything that moved. If it had a pulse, Duncan would chat it up. 

As for my other brother, Quigley, he had somehow joined a bunch of guys playing water polo, despite not knowing them before today. He was always good at talking to people, though, so him making friends with strangers was just the norm at this point. However, despite him being extremely charismatic, there was one person he always struggled to talk to. And that was the topic of conversation that my best friend and I would probably end up talking about today, since we usually ended up there most of the times we talked.

"Isadora!" I turned to see the subject of my thoughts, my best friend, Klaus Baudelaire, walking towards Duncan and I, flanked by his sister Violet.

Violet and I were good friends, bordering on best friends, as well but Klaus and I were always closer. We had been since we met, probably because we could bond over books and things like that. He had told me about all the poetry books he had read and we had instantly clicked, and even now he would always send me good poems or excerpts of books he thought I would like, and I would send him all sorts or interesting things, just to see if he already knew about it. Klaus was an encyclopedia of knowledge and I thoroughly enjoyed testing his mental boundaries.