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Basically, my day started like this: ringing up my phone bill with several international calls because my friends hate me. Just kidding—they don't hate me. They're just not cooperating the way I hoped they would.
"Just buy the ticket!" I exclaim, holding the phone to my ear as I pace outside the school. There's still, like, ten minutes 'til I gotta be inside for our final class at Amun Academic Boarding School. It's practically the middle of the night for her but she called me. "I thought you wanted to—okay, okay, I get you're nervous, but come on. I've been planning this for weeks and you agreed to it weeks ago. It's just for a couple days, the world is not going to end just because you're in the same room as—"
"Who are you talking to?" a voice near me asks.
I speak quickly into the phone, "Gotta go, bye." I hang up without giving her a chance to respond and turn to the person who spoke to me, sighing deeply. Jerome. "Nobody. My sister."
"Right," Jerome responds, clearly not believing me at all. I mean, it's a pretty lame answer, especially if he overheard the whole 'world's not gonna end' thing. But he fortunately drops it, which means my surprise is still intact. "It's our last day at school and I haven't been able to find you since you left the house. You missed breakfast, by the way."
Well, sorry if trying to get a hold of my overseas friends to make this surprise happen is more important to me right now than breakfast. "Did you bring me anything?"
"Muffin," he offers, taking it out. It's wrapped in plastic and I take it immediately, unwrapping it as he continues. "Trudy told me to bring it since you left so early. What, have you just been pacing out here yelling at people on your phone for the past hour?"
"Something like that," I reply. Actually, I had to clear this whole thing with Mr. Sweet (whom I've somewhat mended fences with since the whole Frobisher thing, but not all the way, assuming we had mended fences at all in the four years I've known him) so I was stuck with him for half an hour before coming out here for better reception. "Where is everybody?"
As if on cue, a blur rushes past us. Jerome and I share a knowing look as we turn around, finding Alfie doubling back toward us. "There you two are!" He runs back, panting, and puts his hands on his knees while he catches his breath. "Come on, I thought we were walking to school together! You know, end this how it started—Alfie, Ashley, and Jerome. The three musketeers!"
My eyebrows furrow. "Uh, Alfie, I thought you were walking with Willow."
"Yeah, so did I," Jerome agrees. "You never said anything about the three of us walking together."
"I didn't?" Alfie asks. We shake our heads. "Oh. I must've said it in my head and never said it actually to you. Well, anyway—" He shakes his own head and gets back on point. "I had to get away from Joy. She keeps asking everyone what they're wearing to the party so she can figure out how to place us in our last photo together."
"I had just assumed we were gonna choose where we stand on our own," I remark. "She's assigning everyone places?"
"Yeah. Mara was not pleased when I said we should go shortest to tallest and... pushed on her head to point out she's the shortest of us all," Alfie comments slowly. That causes Jerome and I to laugh. I'm three inches taller than Mara and an inch shorter than the tallest girl in our house—Patricia. Well, she and KT are the same height, I think, so I'd be stuck by them anyways if we did shortest-to-tallest. "But then Joy's girlfriend texted her and Mara and Willow started teasing her, so I left before I got sucked in."
Joy's girlfriend—a girl in Mut House called Isabella. Joy had come out as bisexual to the rest of the house during the fireworks and met Izzie shortly after when the girl came to congratulate her on the play and, well... sparks were flying. Although, it did take them forever to admit it (though admittedly not as long as, say, some other Anubis couples). Izzie's really quite nice, even if I've only met her a few times. And Joy's happy, which is really all that matters.
"Ah, Izzie," says Jerome. "Joy still keeping her away from us?"
"Pretty much everyone except Mara and Willow," Alfie confirms. Wow, is he totally off the mark there. "I don't know why she won't let us talk to her."
"It's not like we'll play a prank on her."
"Exactly!"
"Except that's exactly what you'd do," I point out, earning two pairs of questioning eyes on me. "Remember, Joy knows the two of you almost as well as I do. You'll pop around the corner just as Izzie's coming 'round wearing a zombie or Frankenstein's monster mask and scare her to death."
Alfie and Jerome scoff simultaneously, the latter moving from his place beside me to beside Alfie, forming a weird sort of triangle between the three of us.
"That's ridiculous," claims Jerome.
Alfie nods and agrees, "We didn't do that to Atticus. Or Evan."
I narrow my eyes. "Well, Atticus was a world-class jerk when Mara started dating him and we all knew that, plus by the time you realized they were dating he'd already cheated on her and she was already planning her own revenge with Joy and Willow. And if you had done it to Evan, well, then you probably would have had to incur my wrath at the time. Not to mention you wanted to egg his room after I broke up with him. But Izzie is different."
"How is Izzie different?" Jerome inquires. "Because she's a girl?"
"Because no one at this school has a bad thing to say about Izzie," I correct with a roll of my eyes. "I mean, none of us knew she even existed 'til Joy started dating her. And Atticus had a reputation and Patricia even says there was something off about Evan before we started going out and she's the one who pointed him out to me."
Jerome and Alfie glance at each other, shrugging. "Fine," Jerome says heavily. "We won't prank Izzie. But you have to tell Joy that so we can meet her. She's doing oddly well at avoiding us."
"It's not like Joy can deliberately stop us from meeting her with only two days left at school," Alfie states.
I look at them, laughing lightly as I walk past them and into the school. "Yeah, the two of you underestimate Joy."
—
The clock ticking on the wall is all any of us can focus on as Mr. Sweet lectures us for the last time (well, as students, considering two of us are literally related to him and I'm willing to bet he'll lecture us on literally everything every time we see him).
"And exciting news!" says Sweet. My foot taps the ground impatiently, waiting for the clock to strike so we can officially say that we're done with this school. "This afternoon, you've all been invited to the Cornelian Museum for a tour of their ancient Egypt exhibit."
Somehow, that's the thing that snaps me out of my clock-watching. I sit straighter, sharing an excited look with Fabian beside me, as I ask, "Wait, really?" Everyone but Fabian and I have differing reactions—they all groan, but Fabian fist-pumps the air and then my fist.
Behind us, Eddie whispers to Sweet, "You need to work on your definition of exciting, Dad."
"Why is it always Egypt?" Jerome questions.
"I don't know," I remark, glancing at Fabian exasperated as he rolls his eyes at Jerome's question, "probably because we live in Anubis House and it was built by one of the guys who was on the expedition to open King Tut's tomb, but, you know, you can always go find Hades House somewhere."
"Thank you, Adams."
I chuckle, directing my attention to Sweet as he begins to announce what Fabian's talked my ear off about for the past two weeks. "And so it just remains," says Sweetie, "for me to announce our most exceptional student, our valedictorian, who is..." Mara or Fabian, Mara or Fabian, Mara or Fabian? After an insanely long pause that could rival Alan Rickman's notorious pauses, Sweet announces, "Mara Jaffray!"
Oh, this is gonna kill Fabian. He had his speech already written, all fifty-seven pages of it. Okay, it's definitely better than Mara's valedictorian because it means she won't put us all to sleep with her speech. As the class congratulates Mara, I set a hand on Fabian's shoulder, comforting him through his loss, while also giving Mara an ecstatic thumbs-up.
As the applause and congrats die down, the ticking of the clock grows louder. Each second that passes has my heart hammering in my chest, waiting for the moment we're officially allowed to call ourselves graduates of a boarding school named after Egyptian mythology icons.
The bell rings.
"And that concludes your final lesson."
"School is out!" Eddie shouts.
I cheer, throwing my papers in the air along with the rest of the class as Sweet asks for a little decorum. I ignore him, pushing on Fabian's shoulder. "Come on, Rutter!" I tell him. He's remained in his seat, clearly upset about not being valedictorian. "We made it out of this school and Anubis House alive, that's reason enough to celebrate!"
Fabian doesn't answer, and instead stares ahead of him.
"Uh, might be best to leave him alone, let him process," Eddie suggests, pulling me around the table. Patricia chuckles, putting her arm around Eddie. It's very nice to see that they're back to being Peddie after everything that happened with the sinners. Actually, it's very nice having everything back to normal (or at least what passes for normal in Anubis House) after everything that happened.
"Oh, tell me we're at least leaving with him," I respond as we leave the classroom and him alone. "He'll get locked in the school if we just let him stay."
"You mean he'll lock himself in," Patricia remarks. Eddie laughs. "He'd happily make a home here and you know it."
"It was always gonna be between Mara and Fabian," I say. "And, really, it's no surprise it wound up being Mara. I mean, the only calm we get here is when we defeat the year's Big Bad and Mara's not involved in it, so it makes sense that the one who actually got a chance to study would be valedictorian."
Eddie's eyebrows furrow. "Oh, man, I have to keep sharing a room with him for the next two days. And I thought it was annoying when he talks in his sleep about Sibuna."
Patricia stops in her tracks, her eyes trained on something across the hall. "Uh, what are Alfie and Jerome doing?"
I follow her eyesight, sighing deeply. Alfie and Jerome are by the lockers, staring down at Joy and Izzie while whispering to each other. "They're trying to get Joy to introduce Izzie to them before we graduate."
"They still haven't met her?" Eddie questions.
"Nope. I'll handle this," I decide, walking away from them. But I turn around and, walking backwards, add, "Hey, Trixie, you and the other girls wait up for me, all right? Girls' night in, I rented a Ryan Gosling flick for us tonight." Patricia throws me an annoyed look but gives me a sarcastic thumbs-up anyway. I give her a genuine one, turning back around and walking past my boyfriend and my best friend to the two girls they're focused on. "Hey, Joy, Alfie and Jerome are plotting."
Joy sighs. "Of course they are. Hey, Iz, you wanna run or you wanna met them?"
My eyebrows raise out of surprise. Wow, I really thought Joy was gonna keep her away from them for as long as she could. Well, it has been a couple months since they met and started dating, so I guess better late than never.
Izzie (who's in the same year as us and graduating as well) looks down the hall, where the two boys pretend like they haven't been plotting for the past two minutes. She shrugs. "Fine with me. I've heard enough about them. I think I know how to handle them."
"Okay, just out of curiosity," I comment, "what have you heard?"
"A lot," Izzie answers. "I was in on the bet about you and Jerome." That was expected. Apparently a lot of people were. "I also heard about their prank war earlier this year, and I also watched your whole Alfido project thing go down."
I look at her now, my eyes squinted. Now I understand why she looks familiar! "Oh, my God, you bought a hot dog from us!"
"Yeah, worst mistake ever," Izzie says.
Joy chuckles, smiling at her adoringly as she squeezes Izzie's hand. Oh, my God, they're literally so cute. I hereby dub them Izzjoy. "Well, Ash, do me a favor. Check their bags and make sure they don't have any prank items in them."
I salute her. "Got it, Mercer. Oh, and remember—Anubis girls' night in, Ryan Gosling's waiting for us tonight." Joy nods and continues talking to Izzie, so I go over to Jerome and Alfie (who are now pretending to read a textbook). "Hello, boys. Hand over your bags."
Alfie's eyes narrow. "Why?"
"If you want to meet Izzie, you'll hand 'em over." The two share a look before handing me their bags immediately. I search through them, channeling Victor every time he searched our bags, checking every pocket. Nada. "Turn out your pockets."
"Our pockets?" Jerome repeats.
"Your pockets. Now."
They share another look before turning their pockets inside out. Their phones were expected, as was Alfie's personalized pen (which we found in the gatehouse after Denby got all... devoured and stuff), but not the plastic flower in Jerome's blazer. I reach forward and take it before he can hide it from me, twirling it between my fingers.
"What's this?"
"It's a flower," Jerome answers, nonchalantly shrugging.
I nod slowly, turning the flower toward me. The water shooting out from it takes me by surprise and causes me to yelp, but I catch them snickering to each other before I throw them a glare (which causes them to stop). I wipe the water from my face. "Yeah, I'm gonna go tell Joy you can't meet Izzie."
"No, no, wait!" Jerome exclaims, grabbing my arm and pulling me back to them. "That was supposed to be for whichever one lost valedictorian, Mara or Fabian. Not for Izzie. And you've already confiscated it, so it's not like we can use it to prank her."
"Wait," says Alfie, "she can't confiscate it. You can't confiscate it, you're not Victor."
"No," I reply, "but I am technically a Sweet so that means I can. I can't believe I just said that."
"Well, you did," says Jerome, "so go and tell Joy that we're fresh out of pranks so we can meet Izzie."
I look between them, exhaling as I turn around. Joy mouths 'well?' to me and I shrug. Joy looks at Izzie, who nods, and then I can see Joy sigh as she beckons Jerome and Alfie over. The boys share a triumphant look before pushing each other to get over to finally meet Izzie.
"Come on, girl!" someone exclaims, linking their arm with mine and pulling me away from the disaster about to go down. It's KT, who's got Mara and Willow beside her. "Patricia's waiting for us outside. Now, what Gosling film are we gonna watch tonight?"
"And how many bowls of popcorn do you think we'll need?" Mara adds.
Willow squeals, hitting her heels on the tile. "Ah, I love this sisterhood!"
( the beginning of the end!! i did mention there would be a female love interest for joy that would probably happen between the end of season three and the touchstone of ra and her name is izzie and she's adorable ) ( i only ashley adams and her storyline. this can also be found on my quotev account at /queenlucythevaliant. )