The Curse of the Osirians

House of Hoax

Layla's POV

"I'm taking these to school with me. I know Joy said Victor was one of the good guys, But I still don't trust him," Fabian said as Sibuna met in the hallway before school.

"Oh, Fabian, be a love. Give these letters to Victor. I'm off to the supermarket. If I don't go now, I'll miss my bus. And then lunch with your uncle Ade," Trudy said as she handed him a small stack of envelopes. Aww, those two would make a cute couple.

"Why do you look like you've seen a ghost?" Nina asked as Fabian flipped through the letter.

"This one's from the hospital," he said holding one of them up.

"It must be Alfie's toxicology report!" I said excitedly.

"The hall is not an area for loitering!" Victor suddenly called down to us.

"Just, uh, letters, Victor!" Fabian said as he rushed up stairs and begrudgingly handed them over.

"You need to relax, Fabian. You basically have to trust Victor. Remember what Joy said," Patricia told him as we walked down the hallway.

"Did you just say you spoke to Joy? Is she all right?" Mara asked as she came up to us.

"Joy is fine. She just said she doesn't want to come back to the school. And, and she doesn't want to talk to any of us anymore," Patricia rushed to say.

"When did she say all of this? Ow!" Amber exclaimed as my sister stepped on her foot.

"I'm sorry. Was that your foot?" She said.

"Yes, more importantly, that was a very special shoe. Oh. Uh, yeah. Yeah, Joy hates us all.

I spotted Jerome and motioned to let my sister know I would catch up with them. She grinned at me as she spotted Jerome and winked.

"Hey, Jerome!" I said as he skipped up to him.

"Hey, Layla. Do you know, I've been at boarding school since I was five years old?" Jerome randomly said.

"Um, no. I didn't. That's so young. Even Harry Potter didn't go till he was 11!" I said. He rolled his eyes at yet another Potter reference from me but I could tell he wasn't truly bothered by it. I wondered what had brought this up.

"You just learn how to hide your emotions," Jerome's added as he looked down at me. It looked like there was something else he wanted to say but seemed to think better of it.

"Wow. Who'd have thought it? You have a sensitive side," I teased, trying to lighten the mood, not that it seemed to work. "Sorry. I'm sorry. It's just, I'm used to you and Alfie goofing around. That's all. There's more to you than meets the eye, isn't there?" I quickly said.

"I'm actually a very deep person, Layla. For example, did you know that I am the current.
Anubis house jellybean-eating champion?" Jerome said as we sat.

"The what?" I laughed as he opened up a bag and tossed a bunch of jellybeans at his face. "That should really be an olympic event!" I giggled. "Toss me one!" I told him. He did and cheered as I managed to catch it and happily ate it. We went back and forth for a while, me managing to get all of mine and him getting smacked in the face every time. Eventually we ran out and I looked around for something else to occupy our time and spotted a chess board. It made me miss gran, who had been the one to teach me how to play. We used to spend Friday nights playing one another. I stood up and went to go fetch the board and set it up with Jerome's help.

"Okay, you are way better at this than jellybean challenge. Why am I not surprised?" I chuckled after a few minutes.

"Oh, I'm a guy of many and varied talents, Layla," Jerome smirked at me as I rolled my eyes. I was still beating him! I studied the board and finally moved my next piece only to look up and find him staring at me. I ducked my head trying to cover my blush.