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Our movie date has not involved a lot of actually watching the movie.
About a quarter through the movie (some American comedy with Melissa McCarthy I haven't paid much attention to past opening it on a streaming service), Jerome had leaned over to kiss me and that kind of led to the whole cliché 'making out during a movie' thing. Difference was, those clichés usually took place in a theatre, whereas we're in my room. The movie's actually still playing on my laptop, even though it's been pushed away and quickly forgotten as he pulls me closer, now that we finally have more than thirty seconds to ourselves.
But, like always, we get interrupted.
It isn't Alfie like I would have expected. It's Mara, who knocks on the door before opening it and walking in quickly, greeting apologetically, "I know, I'm sorry, I said I wouldn't be in here, but I can't find Patricia and Joy and I just yelled at Atticus—actually yelled!"
I look at Jerome, who says, "At least it isn't Alfie."
Rolling my eyes at that, I sit up and ask her, "What do you mean you just yelled at Atticus? It's eight o'clock."
"He knocked on the door!" Mara exclaims, sitting on her bed. She seems proud of herself, if pretty shocked. Honestly, this is a much more welcome interruption than what Alfie's been doing lately, because Mara freakin' Jaffray yelled at Atticus freakin' Monroe, and that in itself is completely awesome. "And I just looked at my hand and there was all this confidence—"
"You looked at your hand and you gained confidence?" Jerome asks skeptically. "Did I miss something?"
"You did," I confirm, looking back at Mara. "So, you had all this confidence...?"
Mara nods. "And I just told him that I didn't appreciate him telling his friends about us when I explicitly said that I wasn't ready and hadn't even told my friends. And he apologized and said he wouldn't do it again. But I yelled at him! That's so unlike me." She takes a deep breath and looks at us with a smile, standing up. "I'll let you two get back to whatever you were doing."
She heads to the door but it opens before she can even touch the doorknob, and who else would it be but Alfie Lewis, here to ruin our love lives?
"Oh, hey, Mara," Alfie greets.
"Alfie," Mara responds, giving me a wide-eyed look as she holds up her hand and points to the hearts. I motion for her to leave.
"Hey, guys, my two best friends," Alfie says, walking further into the room and sitting at the end of my bed by my laptop. "I need some adv—I don't think I've seen this. Hm." He pauses the film, completely ignoring our narrowed-eyed looks. "Anyway, I need some advice. It's about Amber and the bad thing I did—"
"Alfie, no offense, but I don't care," I interrupt after looking at my palm. What is it about these little hearts? Alfie looks taken aback and Jerome raises an eyebrow. "Not right now. I just—I want two hours with my boyfriend without getting interrupted and it feels like all you've been doing is interrupting us. I love you, but for the love of Sibuna, please give us two hours. All I want, just two hours."
"What she said," Jerome agrees after a moment. "Alfie, I swear, we're all yours tomorrow but just leave us alone tonight."
Alfie looks at us and nods. "Okay. I'll leave you guys alone. See you tomorrow." On his way out, he stops and grabs something from Amber's nightstand, but I can't tell what from my angle, and I don't really care right now.
As Alfie leaves the room and closes the door behind him, Jerome comments, "Well, that was easier than I thought it'd be."
Yeah, tell me about it. What exactly did we say this time that Alfie actually listened to us and left us alone?
I turn to face Jerome, saying, "You know what we need? A place that no one else knows about and no one would be able to interrupt us."
"Like where? We're at boarding school."
"I don't know."
"Well, you're the one who keeps finding all these secret spaces in and underneath the house," Jerome says, shrugging.
"The secret spaces that have almost killed us more than once," I retort.
"I'm just saying."
"And I'm just saying that you should kiss me again."
He leans forward and kisses me not a second after I finish my sentence.
—
We did eventually get back to watching the movie—if by watching the movie, you mean 'being confused because we spent half of it making out and now we're just hoping a character gives a quick recap or something.' There was a point when we just completely gave up on that and we didn't actually finish it, stopped it with about half an hour left in it to leave for another date.
After the date ended, Jerome went back to his room, and I considered going downstairs to Fabian's to see if he and Joy had made any further progress on translating the hieroglyphs. Then I heard Mara's voice in my ear saying, She's trying to be assertive! so I didn't, and considering Mara had the confidence to yell at her super-hot bad-boy boyfriend, I'm not too keen on being on the receiving end.
So, for a while, I sat in my room alone, trying to see if I could figure out any more symbols and remember where I've seen that crescent moon before. I mean, of course I've seen a crescent moon before, but the one that appears over and over on the parchment is just so familiar. It's not like the actual moon. I managed to translate one or two, but they're just... words. Plain, transitive word.
Finally, I decide to go downstairs to get something to drink. As I grab a glass from the cupboard and fill it up with water, I notice Alfie sitting by his lonesome at the table, eating a sandwich. When he sees me, he says, "Your boyfriend gives great advice."
"Let me guess," I say. "You're gonna do the opposite of whatever he told you?"
"Yep."
I chuckle lightly, sitting down in my usual chair. Amber, Joy, and Patricia walk in, the former saying, "This is very strange. First, I lose my phone, now my charger. Search."
"Um, Amber, I need to talk to you," Alfie says as Joy and Patricia share an eye-roll and begin half-heartedly looking for her phone charger.
"Alfie, not now, I'm trying to find my stuff," Amber says, just before Alfie holds up her missing charger. "Oh, clever you! Where was it?"
"Hidden in my pocket."
"Hidden," Amber repeats as I raise an eyebrow. "Alfie, even by your reckless standards, that does not make sense. What are you talking about?"
Before Alfie can answer, Fabian runs in with his laptop, sitting next to me in Nina's old chair. "Major breakthrough," he announces as we gather around him.
"Did you break the code?" I ask him.
"Couldn't have done it without Joy," Fabian confirms as he pulls it up. A star map. The stars, of course! Joy gives a proud smile.
"Amazing," Patricia exclaims sarcastically. "It's some lines and dots."
"Wha—no, it's a star map," Fabian corrects. "The dog constellation. What else would it be in Anubis House?"
"Oh, because Anubis had a dog's head," Amber states, smiling at me. "Must have been so hard getting sweaters on. Did he mention that last year, Ashley?"
"No," I respond flatly, "but then again, it's not like he was the star of Fashion Week, Amber." She shrugs, sighing wistfully.
"If I place the map over the letters..." Fabian moves the hieroglyphs layer to overlay above the constellation. Some of the hieroglyphs light up and correspond with stars on the map.
"It takes away some hieroglyphics I don't understand," Alfie says, "and leaves some other hieroglyphics I don't understand."
"What does it mean?" I ask.
"I'll—I'll need another hour," Fabian says.
"Don't we just normally ask a ghost or something?" Patricia says, causing us to laugh.
Fabian shuts his laptop and gets up from the table. "I'll go do some more research."
"We'll be on Victor watch," Joy says, grabbing Patricia's arm as the rest of us head towards Fabian's room.
Eddie's not back yet, which is good for our needs but it's still be hours since I heard from him or KT. What are they up to?
—
Holding her plugged-in phone in her hand, Amber comments, "This thing takes so long to charge."
"Watched pot never boils," I tell her absentmindedly, texting Eddie for the second time since we got to Fabian's room. Where is he? Seriously, I'm starting to consider forming a search party.
"Do you want a butterfly-shaped sandwich?" Alfie offers.
"I wish you'd find a new hobby," Amber remarks.
"It's going to have to be something I can do from a hospital bed."
I raise an eyebrow at him before looking back to my phone. Still nothing from KT, and no sign Eddie's gotten any of my texts. The least they could do is send me back a 'we're okay' message, or they could've told me earlier that they were going to go missing from the house for a couple of hours.
"That's where I'll be when you're finished with me."
"Alfie, do you have something you need to tell me?"
"I've got it!" Fabian exclaims suddenly, turning around in his chair. "I've got it—well, part of it, anyway."
"Amber, seriously, we need to talk now—" Alfie starts, but Amber and I shush him. More important things than whatever's going on with Alfie, which he never actually told me or Jerome about despite interrupting us because of it multiple times. He kept getting distracted and going away.
"Okay," Fabian says, holding his notebook. "'When the dark son is born in the English sky, and children of children sleep the day by, give the loop of fire to the sleeping man, and the dark son of Egypt will rise again.'"
Sufficiently creepy and confusing. I pause for a moment before remarking, "Ominous."
"Just checking that didn't make sense to anyone," Amber says, shaking her head.
"Don't look at me," Alfie says. "I just find the secret hieroglyphic notes. I don't interpret them."
"So what now?"
"I don't know," Fabian admits.
Something beeps. Amber gasps, realizing her phone has risen from the dead. "Oh, there's all my missed calls!"
"Amber, it's the fashion school," Alfie says quickly. "They're offering you a place."
"Um," Amber says, "no, Alfie, if I'd got a place, they would have phoned me—"
"They did phone you. I just didn't tell you."
Oh. Oh. So that's the bad thing Alfie did. Oh, yeah, he's definitely dead.
"What?!" Amber shouts.
"Amber," he says, "you can go to New York and you could do what you love. Or you could stay here with the people you love. It's your choice."
Amber, without saying another word, gets up and leaves. After a moment, Alfie follows her out, leaving Fabian and me alone. We share a tense glance and instead of mentioning what just happened, I bring us back to the code, "What does 'the dark son of Egypt will rise again' mean?"
"I don't know," Fabian says. "It—It doesn't make a lot of sense. 'Give the loop of fire to the sleeping man'?"
"Well, we'll figure it out, won't we? We always do."