Author's Note: You thought I gave up on this, didn't you? I was just lazy, sorry. Plus I've been busy, again. I did ASOUE as a theatre camp. I was Justice Strauss. You can imagine how that went. ;)

Anyhow, your support encouraged me to keep writing this, so keep reviewing and being awesome, please. I'm trying to write about 10 minutes every day so I'll just be focusing on this story for a while.

I didn't realize this was a sad occasion.

Klaus almost collapsed at the sight of land. He found it quite hard to collapse while treading water, though. As he pulled the two little girls over to the beach, he felt a wave of relief wash over him as his feet touched land. Or perhaps it was just a wave. All the numbness in Klaus' body quickly dissipated as he realized the severity of his situation. He grabbed Sunny and Beatrice and quickly escorted them off of the beach before too many civilians noticed them.

"I'm cold, Klaus," shivered Sunny as she sat down cradling Beatrice. "We're soaked..."

"I am too, Sunny. Let's try to find somewhere we can get dry clothes." Klaus took Sunny's hand and walked towards the nearest buildings.

"And while we're at it, let's try to find out where we are." The Baudelaires (and Snicket) walked into a building with a sign reading 'Orange Beach Shop.'

"Excuse me," Klaus asked the store cashier, "could you tell us where we are?" The cashier looked up from her iPhone and raised an eyebrow. This made her eyes look quite creepy because she was wearing far too much fuscia eyeshadow.

"Well now, where did y'all come from?" she asked, walking over to the children and shoving her phone in her back pocket. She tilted Klaus' head up and down curiously.

"And why're you all wet?" Klaus took a step away from her uncomfortably.

"Well, erm, we were shipwrecked, in a sense." The cashier put her hand to her mouth in surprise but her eyes gave away that she wasn't believing their story.

"So, you need new clothes?" she asked. "You got any money?"

Klaus mumbled, "Not exactly..."

The cashier smirked slightly. "So you expect me to give you free clothes from my boss' beach shop? He'd kill me."

"Well, perhaps we can get clothes elsewhere," Klaus said. "But could you please tell us where we are?"

"Let me be the first to welcome y'all to Orange Beach, Alabama. And you could do that, kid. I COULD get you clothes for no price, though."

"What's the catch?" Klaus asked, hesitantly.

"There's this party tonight I reeeeeally wanna go to," the cashier started, "but my stupid boss says I have to work. You'd have to cover for me. Are you eighteen?"

"No, I'm fourteen."

"Close enough. All you'd have to do is ring up any items if people come in to buy stuff. Do you know how to do that?"

"No."

"Well, live and learn. The party starts in an hour and a half and I still need to drive to town to buy booze, so let's hurry up and get y'all some dry clothes." Sunny gave a little cry as the cashier dragged her over to a rack of children's shirts, all with the beach shop logo on it. She grabbed a blue one off the rack, thrust it into Sunny's arms on top of Beatrice, and shoved her in the changing room.

"Now," said the cashier, beckoning Klaus to her with her pointer finger, "what color?"

"I don't really care," Klaus replied.

"How about this one? Every boy likes green." Klaus thought that wasn't a true fact, but he took the shirt anyways and started towards the changing rooms.

"I can help you with that, if you need," said the cashier with a wink.

Klaus quickly locked the changing room door as Sunny yelled out, "I need pants!"

Eventually, Klaus was situated behind the cash register while Sunny and Beatrice were hiding behind the counter (apparently young children were not supposed to be allowed to be around the cash machines and other expensive equipment.)

"I'm hungry," said Sunny, "and so is Beatrice." Klaus eyed the mini snack bar the shop had.

"We don't have any money. I don't know what we can do until we get some."

"I could make something with the chips and dip," suggested Sunny, leaning towards the snack bar.

"Sunny," Klaus sighed, "I'd love for you to make something except that would be stealing. And you're supposed to stay under the counter. Sunny sighed and started to pout.

"Are we really going to do this? It's immoral."

Klaus picked up the two girls and broke into a run away from the store, the contents of the tip jar in his pocket. It was definitely immoral, but he would do what he had to to provide for his sisters. Until he reunited with Violet, which he was confident would happen, he was the eldest and in charge of their family. As he tried to figure out what to do next, he could relate to what Violet went through every day. One wrong decision...

"Can we eat there?" asked Sunny, pointing to a run down diner next to the road.

"Sure, Sunny," resigned Klaus, mostly because hunger was starting to affect him. He set sown the girls and held the dingy door open for them.

"Table for three?" asked a waitress that reminded Klaus of the beach shop cashier, mainly in the fact she didn't look like she cared. Klaus nodded as the waitress led them to a cracked red booth.

"Your server'll be here in a minute. Probably," she added, before turning away rudely and walking back to the hostess station. Klaus picked up a menu.

"What would you like, Sunny? I suppose to save our resources it's in our best interest to order off the cheaper side of the menu. Would you prefer the grilled cheese or... the secret sauce burger?"

"Grilled cheese!" chanted Sunny. "We can all share that."

"Good idea," agreed Klaus as a server walked up to their table.

"Welcome to Grub's. What do you want?" asked the server monotonously. He... no, was it a she? It was hard to tell. He/she/it had long brown hair that completely covered their face and a name tag that read 'P.D.'

"Um, we'd like an order of grilled cheese, please," said Klaus.

"What else?" P.D. asked.

"That's it," Klaus replied.

"Seriously?" Klaus frowned and nodded.

"Cheapskates," the server murmured as he walked off to the kitchen.

"Well, that wasn't very polite," said Klaus. Sunny nodded in agreement as she started playing peek-a-boo with Beatrice. Seeing as the two girls were occupied, Klaus looked around for something else to do. He walked over to the newspaper stand, figuring he might try to catch up on what was going on in the world. His mouth dropped open when he read the headline.