Author's Note: I'm really glad you are all enjoying this story so far, don't forget to review! This chapter has a number of flashbacks, since we don't have the luxury of the show to give us the background of what has happened between two chapters. I also included a flashback that I think many of you might have missed in the last chapter since it wasn't important then but is now.
Thanks to izzi08, Fina2212, Dragonclaw11, anubisfreak, and house of anubis fan 7 for reviewing.
Disclaimer: I do not own House of Anubis.
"How's that work coming, Mara?" Nina asked, standing in the doorway. Her entrance visibly startled Mara, who was lying on her stomach with a pillow under her elbows.
"Sorry, I didn't notice you were there, I'm studying biology," she lied. Nina shook her head but instead of walking away, she stepped into the room and sat on Mara's bed.
"It might help if you turned the page every so often," Nina offered, revealing Mara's deception. "I've been standing at your door for fifteen minutes, Mara. I know you're not actually studying right now." Mara turned onto her side and faced Nina. Seeing the sadness covering Mara's face, Nina rose and closed the door, remembering the first time she had shared this type of moment with her friend.
Flashback
"I can't believe you would say that, Jerome!" Mara shouted. Nina walked slowly toward the source of the commotion.
"What do you think he was doing today in the library?" Jerome countered, matching Mara's volume.
"I don't know, studying?" Mara argued, her tone oozing with sarcasm.
"Are you really that thick, Mara? Mick, study in the library? Are you kidding me?" Jerome's mockery only served to increase Mara's anger. "He's cheating on you, Mara, why can't you admit it?"
"Because he's not!" Mara fought, raising her voice even louder. Nina, who had sensed the explosion before it occurred, stood ready at the top of the stairs. She sprinted down to the living room where Mara and Jerome faced each other, only a few inches between their bodies. Nina waited in the silence until Mara noticed her watching.
"Why don't we go upstairs, Mara," Nina suggested cautiously. Mara stormed out of the room and up the stairs angrily, with Nina following her closely into her room, shutting the door beside her and waiting for Mara to speak.
"Jerome says Mick's cheating on me."
End Flashback
"I feel like I should be over him," Mara whispered.
"It's only been a week, Mara," Nina consoled. She heard a knock on the door and instinctively answered it, allowing Patricia to enter the room. The bolder girl sat on the lower bunk across the room.
"Oh Mara, what did he do today," she asked sadly.
Flashback
"Hey Mara," Mick greeted at breakfast. Mara kept her eyes on her plate, silently cursing her roommates for leaving early to research the latest clue in the library and cursing herself for opting to sleep in after spending hours working on deciphering it the night before with Jerome and Alfie. After a few more minutes of tense silence, Mick finally exploded.
"This isn't my fault!" he shouted. Mara looked up from her breakfast, shocked by his outburst. "You're the one who started this, with your notebook! Did you really think I wouldn't figure it out? That I was that thick?"
End Flashback
"And now I have to go cheer him on in the match," Mara summarized. Joy and Amber slipped into the room just as Mara finished her story.
"So let's make him regret it," Joy suggested. "We've got half an hour before it starts, which means we have plenty of time to get you ready." Amber grinned as Nina and Joy helped Mara off the bed. Soon all four girls surrounded her, discussing their options. At any moment, one of them would run across the room to her closet, dresser, or vanity to find a piece of the ensemble they were creating. Twenty-five minutes later, they ran down the stairs to meet Trudy in the entryway. Nina, Patricia and Joy sprinted ahead of Mara and Amber to secure their seats in the bleachers.
"Slow down, Amber! You know I can't walk in heels!" Mara complained.
"Mara, if we're going to get you together with Jerome, you need to learn to walk in heels. That way, you won't be awkwardly shorter than him when you kiss, only appropriately shorter," Amber countered, never breaking step and shocking Mara into silence. When they reached the field, Amber stopped Mara from walking in. She peeked around the bushes, waiting for the ideal moment. Mick's team, having lost the coin toss, was forced to begin kicking. Mick directed his teammates to an order, glancing at the empty seat in the bleachers between Patricia and Nina.
"I'm going to go in. Count to ten before you follow me, okay?" Amber directed. Mara agreed and followed the instructions. She walked slowly and purposefully to the seat her housemates had saved for her, keeping her eyes trained on her target.
"I have to hand it to you, Amber, you're good," Patricia commented, grinning. Mara sat beside her, playing with empty hands worriedly.
"Everything alright, Mara?" Joy checked, keeping only half her attention on the match.
"I'm not used to being here without my notebook, that's all," she admitted.
"Would you like it?" Nina asked, opening her bag and pretending to only want her water so that none of the boys could tell what was actually going on. Mara saw the edge of her notebook sticking out of the top, invisible to anyone who didn't know it as well as she did. "I wasn't sure, since it's started all this trouble," Nina admitted. Mara took a few minutes to think, and the other girls returned their combined focus to the match, cheering for their housemates in the closest match they had played yet.
"I think I would like it," Mara finally decided. "I know I should just leave this alone, but I can't help it. That notebook caused this chaotic mess, but before that, a lot of good came from that notebook. We never lost a game once the boys had a way to track their progress. A lot of good came from that notebook, and I don't think I'm quite ready to give that part up. You have to take the good with the bad, you know?" As if on cue, Mick stepped up to kick. The girls watched him anxiously, Mara reaching out to the hands of Patricia and Nina on either side of her. Mick pushed his hair back, and all five girls grinned, knowing it was his cue to let them know he had found an opening for a home run. Sure enough, as the ball approached him, Mick kicked it with all his strength, all his leftover anger and hurt, and it hurtled past the farthest players, who all ran to retrieve it as Mick circled the bases.
Nina handed Mara her notebook, and she ran her hands over its cover before flipping through the pages, searching for the one she wanted. Joy stopped her at one point, noticing something none of the girls had fully realized before.
"What's that?" Joy inquired, her attention once again departing from the game. Mara closed her eyes tightly, her face screwing into an emotion the others couldn't read.
"That's the reason Mick and I broke up," she whispered.
"You mean that's the page that Mick was talking about?" Amber checked, though she was not alone in mistaking it for a different section in her mind. None of the girls had ever seen that page before. "Is this what Jerome saw, too?" Mara nodded distantly as she remembered the first day she had written on that page.
Flashback
"I nominate Mara Jaffray," she whispered to herself, longing to remain in the moment forever. For a moment, everything had been perfect. No Mick bugging her for help with homework, no roommates bailing on her for secret meetings, no tension with friends over stupid arguments. Her hand moved of its own volition, dragging a pencil across the page of her closest notebook, sitting open on the table usually covered in food for their daily meals.
"Hey Mara," Mick greeted. Mara's perfect bubble popped as she looked up and registered his presence.
"Hi Mick," Mara replied, subconsciously dragging the notebook closer to her protectively. Mick, assuming she was working on homework, grabbed an apple from the bowl in the center of the table and returned to the bedroom he and Fabian shared. Mara released a breath she had forgotten she was holding and looked down to examine her doodles. She gasped when she saw a heart with two names in it – hers and Jerome's – jotted neatly on the side of the page.
End Flashback
"So neither of them saw this page," Nina checked, flipping a few pages further as their team struck out and changed places with their opponents. Mara shook her head.
"No. I think it would have been better if they had. All that shows is that Jerome liked me-"
"Likes," Amber interrupted. Mara rolled her eyes at Amber before continuing.
"Like I was saying, it shows Jerome's crush on me, but it doesn't indicate anything about my feelings toward him," Mara concluded.
"Which are...?" Joy prodded.
"A topic for tonight's sleepover," Nina jumped in, discreetly motioning to the other girls in the bleachers, who could hear their conversation without having to try. Her housemates noticed this and agreed to push their conversation to later that night. They forced themselves back to the match, where they watched Mick catch two tosses in a row.
"Mick's playing really well," Joy commented. Mara nodded, distracted. The opposing team scored a few runs before a younger team member successfully completed a play that ended with the third out of the inning. When the players traded places again, Mick glanced at Mara as he walked with his team, his eyes filled with determination.
"What do I do if he wants to give us another try?" Mara asked quietly, meeting Mick's gaze for a moment. Mick quickly looked away, walking forward past Jerome to meet Fabian and two other boys at home plate. They planned their next few moves carefully, hoping to take a large lead by the end of their turn.
"Tell him no," Patricia insisted. "He's the one who cheated on you, not the other way around." Mara's gaze turned from longing to puzzled as her peripheral vision caught a shadow moving along the forest, just barely out of sight. She focused her eyes there, wondering what was there, and the shadow moved again.
Flashback
Behind the bleachers, the shadows moved unseen. A man dressed all in black emerged long enough to slip a single sheet of paper into a jacket left for a moment on the bleachers. He disappeared for a moment, and then Mara saw his hand reach through the bleachers, another paper in hand.
End Flashback
"Did anyone just see that?" she asked, nearly jumping out of her seat in surprise. "The shadows in the forest just moved. I saw it last game too, but I didn't think anything of it." Nina's hand moved to her locket and she closed her eyes, increasing her awareness of her surroundings. She opened her eyes once more and indicated to the other girls that their best option in that moment would be to focus entirely on the game. Her hand remained on her locket, however, through the next two innings. Mara worried that the metal chain or the clasp would cut through Nina's hand, but she didn't speak up, knowing that her friend knew the locket much better than she did.
Alfie and Jerome plotted as their teammates walked forward one by one until the two sides switched positions once again. When they returned to the field, Jerome stood on the pitcher's mound, ignoring Mick's protests. Alfie stood beside him with the ball, grinning with his best friend. Finally, after a loud, one-sided argument, Jerome stepped off the pitching mound and stood in the infield. The girls grinned, noticing the boys' new strategy: distracting their opponents and creating a sense of disorder. Only the girls from Anubis felt the tension underlying the game, caused by the constantly changing relationships within their small group.
As the game continued, the boys took turns looking over to the girls from their houses. The phenomenon was not specific to the students from Anubis, though they certainly paid the most attention to it. Mara noticed, however, that the other houses had begun following Anubis's lead. More and more of the girls had turned out to the matches recently. A few other houses were starting the term with perfect attendance records, matching the one Anubis always upheld. Amber, Patricia and Joy all enjoyed chatting with the other girls in their cheering section, and Nina had been there long enough that she knew nearly everyone. However, it was her turn to assist Mara in keeping track of the behaviors on the field.
"Last inning," Nina announced, handing her job over to Patricia and joining the conversation between Amber and a few girls behind them.
"Last chance," Patricia added as Mick stepped forward. The girls watched as their team pulled ahead by 6 runs before they were forced to switch positions with their opponents one last time. Across the field, the other half of the spectators cheered loudly as their star player waited for Alfie to roll the ball.
"If they don't get him out, we're done," the girl behind Mara whispered, genuinely nervous.
"So they'll get him out," Mara replied instantly. The younger girl smiled and remained silent until the play had been completed, and Fabian caught the ball as it flew through the air, holding it close to his chest as he ran towards the pitching mound, where he hand-delivered it to Alfie.
"How do you do it? You're always so confident in them," the girl behind them commented.
"If we don't believe in them, why are we here? They're our housemates – we support them no matter what," Nina replied, her hand reaching out to Mara, who was grateful for the double meaning of the words her friend had spoken.
Four plays later, the game ended, and the Anubis boys came out on top once more. Their team had won by a single point. Patricia and Joy walked closely on either side of Mara, guarding her on the walk back. Mick walked next with Amber and Alfie, and Fabian and Nina joined Jerome in the rear of the group. Mara stopped them as they walked back, and Nina grabbed her locket as the shadows moved again.
"Does this have to do with those messages we've been finding since the last game?" Fabian checked.
Flashback
"I don't understand, why do you have a piece of paper with a bunch of numbers on it?" Alfie asked.
"I found it in my bag," Nina explained, though she seemed just as confused as the others.
"This one was in my jacket pocket," Amber added. "I don't know what they mean, but I think we're onto something."
End Flashback
"I think it does," Nina confirmed. "Looks like we'll have to make this a Sibuna sleepover."
"I'll start setting up everything in our room," Amber agreed.
"We can try and get some extra snacks," Joy added; her roommates agreed.
"I'll get the notes out of the hiding spot," Nina finished. "Sibuna?" she checked, lifting her right hand.
"Sibuna," the other members of Anubis house chorused.
Author's Note: There you go: a peek at the notebook, as well as a glimpse of the new mysteries. Don't forget to review – reviews make a happy author and a happy author likes to update!