The first day she discovers she can't come back she spends the whole day in bed, looking through the Fabina scrapbook that was a gift from Amber. The pictures are painful to look at. Fabian laughing at a joke she made, both of them grinning at the camera with their arms wrapped around each other. Mick in the background eating a muffin. Nina in her dress and Fabian in his tux.
She smiles despite herself, wiping her eyes hastily with her sleeve.
On the second day her phone rings with call from Fabian. She considers picking up, but ends up just staring at it until it stops. She's not ready to tell him. She looks through the rest of the scrapbooks while her phone keeps on ringing in the background, trying to quell the sobs ripping through her throat.
The third day she receives four emails from Amber telling her all about fashion school and two from Fabian about some book he got, emails which quickly build up in her inbox. On the seventh day she still hasn't replied to any of them, except for Eddie's. Eddie's the only one she can bring herself to tell.
Three weeks until school begins and she still hasn't told them. Fabian's calling becomes more frequent and his voicemails more desperate, and for some reason she can't bring herself to answer or shut off her phone. She tells herself it'll be less painful if she cuts herself off now rather than later. She's made the habit of carrying her phone around in her pocket, just to hear it buzz and to remind herself that somewhere, out there, he's thinking about her. They all are.
She writes a letter and sends it to Eddie to give to Fabian, a dumb letter that explains nothing.
Then school begins and she's swept up in the chaos of public school, where everything is wrong. There's no uniform and her friends are all distant, and she's missing Fabian like crazy, him and his awkwardness and cute British accent. None of the other boys compare.
And still, her phone keeps ringing.
Five days in and his emails are crowding her inbox, until eventually she cracks and sends him an email. A short one, telling him about the letter.
He doesn't know what she's talking about. Ask Eddie.
That's the last contact she has with him. After that his calls are less frequent, until eventually they just stop coming.
A month in and she's just beginning to adjust. Her grades have improved, and she has friends again, even going out to the movies on weekends to get her mind off things. She ties to focus on the positive. This year they'll be no scary life-threatening quests or days spent trapped underneath the school. All she has to worry about are grades and college applications.
(She finds herself looking at colleges in England, wondering if she can get into them, wondering if he'll be there.)
(She would ask but he's stopped sending her emails.)
She meets a boy named Ethan and the two go out for a first date, and he's awkward and shy and reminds her so much of Fabian that she says yes for a second date. They go to the movies. He buys her popcorn. And then she realizes that his eyes are the wrong shade of blue and she runs out. Outside she takes out her phone and scrolls through the contacts to reach his number. Her finger hovers over Fabian's name. Then she pushes it back in her pocket, her stomach churning like she's going to throw up. She doesn't try to call him again.
(He doesn't try to call either.)
She checks Amber's page one day and finds out she's not at Anubis either, but going to a fashion school in New York. Nina longs to visit but the trip would take two days and she doesn't know what she would do when she arrives. What are you supposed to say to someone after ignoring them for two months?
She braves it out and shoots her an email. Five minutes later Amber writes back, a long, excited email with lots of exclamation marks and abbreviations. Most of the words are misspelled. Nina smiles and writes back, and soon the two are writing to each other every day, never about Fabian or Anubis, just… stuff.
Nina wonders how Sibuna's holding up without her. Whether they have a new mystery or not.
(She hopes so.)
Amber's emails come less and less as the months fly by, and as their friendship dwindles and dies Nina finds she doesn't really mind. She hasn't seen Amber in what feels like years and the yearning that possessed her at the very thought of Anubis has faded. Time apart does not make the heart grow fonder.
(But she cries herself to sleep at night anyway.)
Her new best friend's name is Valerie and she's the most talkative person Nina's ever met, filling the space with so many words that Nina feels a little like she's back home, talking to Alfie. Rather than making her feel sad she's a little relieved.
The months pass quicker and quicker and suddenly- it's summer.
Her days are spent by the pool or working at the nearby bookstore. Every day she thinks about him a little less. Eventually she finds herself not thinking about him at all.
(But she still carries her phone around in her pocket, waiting for it to ring again.)