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"Not everyone is here," remarks Miss Denby as history class begins. I glance around the room, noticing that Fabian's absent. That's really weird, actually. He should be here, he's not one to skip class so early in the term or at all if there's not a Sibuna thing. "Does anyone know where the others are?"
Patricia raises her hand and answers, "Fabian's at the doctor's." Well, that explains it, but what's he doing seeing a doctor? Is he sick? "It's personal. I really don't think I should say anymore."
I lean forward to look at her, brows furrowing. "Is he okay? What happened?"
"Uh, it's personal, Ashley."
"Pers—I'm his best friend."
Denby tilts her head at me, giving me the look I'm all too accustomed to receiving from adults and also my fellow housemates. "Ashley."
For the record, this makes the seventh teacher since I first started school here almost four years ago that knows my name before the first day is up. I turn to look at Jerome beside me, smiling. "Look, she knows my name."
"Not sure that's a good thing, babe," he points out.
Solely to spite him, I glance back to Denby and gesture to him with my thumb, questioning, "Do you know his name?"
Our new history/business ed teacher sighs deeply, but humors me anyway. "Yes, that's Jerome."
That's exactly the reaction I was hoping for. I raise my eyebrows at Jerome, remarking pointedly, "What kind of a thing is it now, babe?"
—
"I hate my family tree. I hate my family tree. I hate my family tree."
Jerome's voice replies, "Did you hear that? I think Ashley hates her family tree."
I pause in hitting my forehead on the desk, retorting, "Do you blame me?"
"Not really," Alfie's voice pipes up. "Hey, Ash, remind me again who your uncle is."
My eyes narrow into a glare as I lift my head to look at him. Alfie just grins at me and Jerome stifles laughter. "Well, look at this mess!" I say, motioning to the complicated family tree I've written up. "Aside from my parents and my sister, and I really miss the days when I thought it just ended there, it's Lily, and the Frobisher-Smythes who adopted her so I'm pretty sure that technically counts, then there's Rufus which I don't claim but still, and Eddie, and Sweetie, and who did I upset enough in a past life that this is my current life?"
Jerome gives up on stifling his laughter, leaning over to kiss my temple as he chuckles.
"This is so boring. Just like my birthday," remarks Amber. She speaks loudly and clearly so the rest of the house can hear her. "Have you all seen the necklace Ashley gave me? I love it. And her. Because she didn't forget."
I will say it's very fun being one of the two people (the distracted, currently absent Fabian is the other) she isn't upset with for forgetting her birthday. And apparently, earlier when Alfie said he was going to get her present, he failed spectacularly. I lean forward to look at her, asking, "Hey, did Alfie really get you bacon flavored dental floss?"
Alfie throws me a glare and directs his attention to her. "Ams, I'm gonna get you the best birthday present ever, I promise."
Well, I mean, anything has to be an improvement on bacon flavored dental floss. That's even worse than the cactus fiasco, and arguably even the raspberry cupcakes incident from last year.
"Hey, Ash," Eddie speaks up, "I'm not related to Lily, am I?"
I sigh deeply. "I am related to Lily through my dad. Unfortunately, I am related to you through my mum."
"That's a lot of words to just say no."
The door opens, revealing Mr. Sweet on the other side. He asks to have a word with Miss Denby in private. After less than a minute of speaking with him out in the hall, she returns to the classroom and says, "Okay, everybody, computers off. The family tree project is officially cancelled."
"Oh, thank God," I mutter, closing my notebook.
Joy's not as happy as I am. "But why?"
"I have absolutely no idea," Denby answers, which is a bit odd. Wonder why Sweetie doesn't want us doing the family tree project, but at least I don't have to write down my insanely complicated family tree wherein three of my relatives are criminals and another is the headmaster of the school. "Orders from above."
—
So Amber's still sulking, still unaware that everyone else is planning a big thing for her birthday. I haven't seen much of the others since we got home from school several hours ago, just her sulking. Right now I'm lying on my bed, holding my phone above my face as I backspace the message I was planning to send to Nina. I need to talk to Eddie and see if he's found the letter yet, 'cause otherwise I need to tell Nina she's got to tell Fabian whatever was in it herself.
Someone knocks on the door. I glance toward it, expecting Amber to get up and see who's on the other side since she's closer to it than I am, but she hasn't moved. I roll my eyes, pushing myself up from the bed. "That's all right, I'll get it."
"Thanks," Amber murmurs.
I'll deal with her sulkiness in a minute. I grab the doorknob and open the door, eyebrows raising when I see that Willow's on the other side. This is the second time she's been in Anubis House in twenty-four hours. What? "Willow, hi. You—you don't live here. What are you doing here...again?"
"I have a present for Amber," Willow states with a wide smile as she passes by me into the room.
Amber's entirely pleased to hear that and has sat up. "You got me a present!" she exclaims, tearing it open after Willow gives it to her. Looking at Willow strangely, I close the door back. Amber pulls out some kind of fabric, a scarf or a handkerchief or something, I don't know. "It's beautiful. Thank you, Willow."
"It's genuine Indonesian silk made from moth silk saliva," Willow informs with a giggle.
I snort to myself. Amber's face falls and there's a long pause before she adds slowly, "That's so nice."
"So, about the room, then," Willow says, taking a seat on Amber's bed. Oh, not this again! KT's already got her name on it, I'm pretty sure. "I've always been a huge fan and I know we'd get on brilliantly. Ashley, don't you agree? The three of us."
Um. "W-what?" I ask, shaking my head. There's another knock on the door and I immediately turn to open it again. This time it's Mara on the other side. "Oh, hi, Mara. Have you come to save me?"
"Maybe later," Mara tells me as her eyes set on Willow. We're about to have a weirder repeat of last night, aren't we? She greets curtly, "Willow. What are you doing here?"
"Moving in," Willow replies happily.
I frown. "See, I must have missed that."
Mara responds to her at the same time, "I don't think so."
"But it's meant to be," Willow insists.
Mara shakes her head and argues, "No."
Willow stands from the bed, countering, "Yes."
"No."
"Yes!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"No!"
Okay, I'm officially confused. Fortunately before the 'yes-ing' and the 'no-ing' can go any further and any louder than it already has, Trudy comes through the open door and interrupts, "What's all the commotion?"
Mara turns to her. "Please may I share with Amber and Ashley?"
Willow counters as KT comes in the room with a box in her arms, "This room absolutely needs me."
So all four of them turn to look at Amber and me, like they expect us to break this tie and choose who our new third roommate is. I retort, "What are you all looking at us for? I thought KT was moving in," while Amber states, "I refuse to get involved in politics on my birthday."
Trudy sighs and looks to Willow. "No, Willow, it doesn't. Back to your own house, please."
Mara smirks victoriously. Willow says, "I'm sorry, Amber. I tried my best." She walks out of the room after flipping her hair dramatically. Just when we think she's gone, she suddenly walks past the door again—must've gone the wrong way—and repeats, "I'm sorry, Amber."
I really don't know what to think about everything that just happened.
"I did have KT down for this room, Mara," Trudy says, "but I suppose."
"Hey, I'm cool with anything," KT remarks sincerely.
Mara smiles. "Oh, thanks, KT. That's so lovely of you."
"Okay, good then," Trudy states. "KT, your room's now this way."
I admit to having looked forward to having KT as a roommate, especially since I think she'll agree with my offer from earlier in the day to figure out what her key goes to, but Mara will be fun to be roomies with. Maybe she'll be more likely to spill the name of her new boyfriend to her roomies.
As KT and Trudy leave to KT's new room down the hall, I turn to Amber and Mara. "Either of you want a snack from the kitchen, or a drink? Just watching all that got me exhausted."
"No, thank you," Mara declines, while Amber shakes her head.
Oh, well, more for me. I close the door behind me and go down the stairs, through the kitchen door to grab one of Trudy's peanut butter cookies from the jar. It's only then I notice that the living room's been decorated with streamers and balloons.
"Time for the surprise party?"
Joy's hiding behind a door, and she pokes her head out and asks, "Where's Amber?"
"Upstairs sulking because you all decided to pretend to forget her birthday," I answer, taking the cookie into the living room with me. I can see most of the others in their hiding spots—we're missing Patricia, Fabian, and Jerome it seems (as well as the girls I just left upstairs).
As I sit down on the couch, Jerome's voice suddenly says from behind it, "You know," I jump at the sound, turning around to look at him, "surprise parties usually involve people hiding."
"I'm eating a cookie," I point out, holding it up. "Look, she'll probably be down in a few minutes if you guys still want to hide. But by the way, I still think pretending to forget her birthday is not the best way to treat a girl on her birthday. And you especially aren't supposed to give her bacon flavored dental floss, Alfie."
Alfie exclaims, pointing at the couch, "Your boyfriend tricked me!"
"And you fell for it?" I question. Jerome laughs loudly. I turn to him. "Hey, stop laughing. Last time someone fell for one of your tricks, three girls ended up wearing the exact same dress to that masked ball last year."
"Oh, come on, you have to admit, that was funny," Jerome insists.
Joy, one of three people wearing said dress (the others being Nina and Mrs. Andrews), remarks plainly, "Not really."
Eddie pipes up, "Surprise parties are supposed to be surprising, so shh!"
I finish eating my cookie in relative silence over the next five minutes, ignoring Jerome's attempts to get me to give him half of it, as we wait for Amber to come down and see everything they planned on. And everyone who's stuck hiding is getting restless, if Jerome's statement is anything to go by. "Where are they? I'm getting pins and needles."
Joy motions for us to be quiet as heavy footsteps sound in the entrance hall. Someone's coming. Those with party stuff in their hands exclaim as they jump out from their hiding spots, "Happy birth—" It gets cut off when everyone realizes that it's not, in fact, the birthday girl, but instead Fabian and Patricia.
"That's Fabian and Patricia, idiots. Not Amber," I say, gesturing to them. But Fabian and Patricia don't look like they've come for the party. They've both got matching death glares on Eddie. This can't be good.
Fabian says to Eddie pointedly, "I need a word with you."
"Dude, we're about to yell 'happy birthday,'" Eddie replies.
Fabian angrily brushes the silly string off his hair. Joy grabs his hand and begins dragging him to another part of the room. "Fabian, you need to get down or you'll spoil it. Ashley, you too. You got lucky this time."
I sigh, getting up from the couch and kneeling next to Jerome behind it. A few minutes of uncomfortable hiding later, we finally hear familiar laughter and Joy exclaims quietly to us, "They're coming!"
"Finally," Jerome mutters.
"Squee!" adds Willow excitedly. Wait, Willow? I pop my head over the couch to look at her, raising my eyebrows at the ginger. I thought she'd gone back to her own house. "I'm so excited."
Joy shushes her. I duck back down as the voices get closer. Amber's saying in a bored tone, "Do I have to? I'm allergic to white sliced bread." That's when the rest of us jump up with our surprise birthday shout, and she looks entirely shocked and happy. "Oh, guys, this is awesome! And there's cake!"
"This part here's from us," Mara gestures to the table covered with presents, "and all these arrived this morning."
"Daddy didn't forget me!" Amber exclaims, beginning to count the presents.
That didn't take long. I laugh lightly, turning to look at the others and catching sight of Fabian's death glare on Eddie, which hasn't let up even a little bit. What could he be so angr—oh. Oh, no. This is way worse than not good, this is really, really bad.
"Fabes, whatever it is, save it," Joy warns, seeing the same look I have. "This is about Amber."
"No, no, no, this won't wait," Fabian says, following Eddie into the hallway.
"Fabian—" I start, brushing past Joy to the entrance hall.
Fabian's already speaking to Eddie, "I know about the summer romance." Whoa, wait, the what? Eddie echoes my thoughts, as confused as I am. What's Fabian talking about, summer romance? "Well, that's the real reason Nina hasn't come back, right?"
"I have no idea—" Eddie begins.
"Don't lie to me!"
This is a completely different Fabian than I'm used to. I've never seen him so angry, and honestly, it's...it's a little scary. He really has no idea what's going on. I move to stand next to Eddie, trying to calm him down, "Fabian—"
"No, I know everything!" Fabian continues, eyes back on Eddie after briefly glancing at me. "You've been e-mailing each other. Oh, and she gave you this."
He takes Nina's locket from his pocket. He found it. Okay, in retrospect, I shouldn't have been so stubborn about the locket yesterday and just taken it, because now Fabian's majorly barking up the wrong tree, and everyone else is staring at Eddie. I mutter his name, nudging him, while Eddie barely manages to stutter out a response.
"The only person Nina would give her locket to is Ashley," Fabian states, "and she's not the one who had it. Something's going on, and you're gonna tell me."
"Okay, dude, you need to back off," Eddie says, just before Fabian lunges at him. I stumble back as Alfie grabs him, holding him back from lunging again.
"I need to know," Fabian says desperately, pleading eyes and all.
This is more than a little heartbreaking. I shake my head at him, telling him, "It's not what you think it is, Fabian. It's not even close to being what you think it is. But we'll tell you everything." He looks at me confused, just as the others are looking at me, but Fabian's the only person I'm willing to focus on right now.
"Just not in front of an audience," Eddie adds. "You might not like what you hear."
Amber skips out into the hallway, evidently completely unaware of the tension. How did she not hear any of that? Oh, right, counting birthday presents must have thoroughly distracted her. "Hello, people. Party's this way."
"Let's go," Eddie says quietly, heading down the hall to his room. Fabian follows immediately, but it takes me a moment to. I take a deep breath, closing my eyes briefly, before moving past my housemates to their room. Time to get this over with.
—
"So you're saying all of this is because you're the Osirian."
Well, the truth is out now. To Fabian, at least, because I'm sure the other Sibunas are gonna find this out by the end of the night. Right now, he's the only one that needs to know.
Eddie confirms, "Nina said that the Chosen One and the Osirian needed to be kept apart."
I add with a sigh, "Basically, they don't mix when they're around each other as often as they would be here. Only supposed to, like, get together when the Chosen One or, like, the world needs saving or something. And apparently, when the Bringer of Death and the Osirian are brought together, we're..."
"A force of nature?" Fabian finishes.
Force of nature. Nice description of us, considering what went down in the library. "Yeah. I guess. Ultimately, it becomes too dangerous for the Chosen One to be around the two of us when we're together. I still don't completely understand it, but it's probably why Sarah and Lily ended up drifting apart. They tried their best to stay together through it all but that combined with Rufus being both the Osirian and a maniac, it just...fell apart. I told you it wasn't what you thought it was."
Fabian nods slowly, looking back to Eddie. "So there was nothing between you two at all?"
"No!" Eddie denies vehemently. The idea of Fabian genuinely thinking Nina and Eddie had any kind of romantic relationship is just insane, but I suppose makes sense given what he knew at the time. "No. She just gave me the locket, okay? She said that Ashley and I could decide for ourselves who gets it."
"We played rock-paper-scissors for it," I say. "He lost, hence you finding it in his things. Nina said it had to be here and he needed to bring it back."
"And she asked me to give you a letter."
"Yeah, but it was a fake letter," Fabian comments.
You've got to be kidding. I turn to Eddie, glaring at him. "You forged the letter?! What's the matter with you? I told you not to do that!"
Eddie grimaces, confessing to Fabian, "I maybe kind of lost the real one a bit."
"You what?" Fabian questions.
"I told you, you might not like what you hear."
"So, you—you faked the letter."
"Yes. Yes. And I'm really, really sorry, okay? I am going to find the letter, though, okay?" Eddie promises before getting down on the floor. He looks underneath his bed, and Fabian and I exchange an exhausted expression. Eddie glances back at us. "I could use a little help."
Okay, honestly, how did he lose this letter? It and the locket were the two most important things he was bringing with him from America, he should have had both of them in the exact same pocket of his luggage. I open one of Eddie's boxes, rifling through it for an envelope that reads Fabian's name in Nina's handwriting. Nada. Same with the second box I search.
I sigh, asking, "Eddie, what did you do with the letter?"
Eddie retorts, "If I knew, would we be looking for it?"
Fabian remarks, "You know, I think this is a task better done in silence."
He's probably right. Leaving those boxes alone, I go to Eddie's nightstand and open it up. Maybe he put it in here for some reason and didn't remember. Eddie suddenly exclaims, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I perk up, turning around and looking at him expectantly. Has he found the letter? That answer is no, because he throws whatever's in his hand to the floor.
Two minutes of worthless searching later and Fabian says defeated, "Look, let's just face it. It's gone. Gone."
"It's got to be here, man," Eddie insists.
"He's right, it can't be far," I agree. "Let's keep looking." I finish searching Eddie's nightstand, finding no trace of the letter, and start to step away from it when my foot hits one of Eddie's shoes. Not a big deal if it weren't for the folded envelope sticking out of it. "Hey, Eddie."
"Yeah?"
"What's in your shoe?"
"What?" Eddie follows my pointed finger to the shoe on the ground, the one with the envelope inside of it. "No way." He grabs the shoe and reaches into it, pulling out the envelope. That's it! I recognize Nina's handwriting on the front. "Ha! Yes!"
"Why did you put it in your shoe?"
"Is that really important right now?" Eddie replies. I roll my eyes. A shoe is the strangest place ever to put a letter, especially one as important as this one is. Eddie turns to Fabian, who looks like he's in disbelief. He offers him the letter, and Fabian just stares at it after taking it. "We'll leave you to it. Ashley, come on."
With a final glance to Fabian, I start to head toward the door, but he says, "Wait, Ash...can you stay for a couple of minutes?"
"Of course," I agree quietly. Eddie glances between us before leaving the room, closing the door behind us. I hesitantly sit down on Eddie's bed, watching Fabian carefully. He has the letter. He's about to get closure. "Are you okay?"
"Do you know what she wrote?"
"No. She didn't tell me what was in it and I didn't ask. I figured it was just for your eyes only."
Fabian swallows and nods, taking a deep breath as he looks at the envelope again. I reach over and grab the Eye of Horus locket from the other end of the bed, gently rubbing my thumb over the red gem in the middle. The silence is deafening in this room. As I open the locket, the portrait of a young Sarah Frobisher-Smythe meets my eye.
She really does look like Nina.
( this one's always been one of my favorite chapters from season three, it just really screams 'anubis family' and i love that dynamic )