Chapter 10:
Amber
We continued playing my super spectacularific game of truth or dare long into the night. But eventually, all the good dares were gone and our brains were too tired to think of anymore truth questions, so instead we sat around talking with each other. Somehow, we got talking about names, and how strange it was that so few people actually liked the name they had.
"But think about it," Nina was saying. "There are so many cool, original names out there, and my parents pick 'Nina'. How boring is that?"
"Well, I like it." Fabian interrupted, putting his arm around her shoulder.
"At least people know how to pronounce your name!" Kara piped up from next to me. "It's pronounced care-ah but everybody pronounces it like Mara's name unless I correct them."
"Your name is so pretty!" I told her, trying to add on to the conversation. "Kara..." I tried it out again before turning back to her. "What does it mean?"
"My name has three different meanings from three different cultures." She explained.
"Just list them all!"
"Alright," she said with a smile. "Let's see... In Irish it means a friend, In Cornish it means love, and in Italian it means the beloved one." My eyes widened and I quickly exchanged a look with Nina. She looked horrified, as did Fabian and Patricia.
"Wow, those are nice!" I offered shakily, offering a smile.
"Thank you." She replied with a small smile.
"You know, this is kind of boring," I said, shifting positions. "Let's play something else! Any ideas?" I looked around hopefully for someone to speak up when Nina jumped up.
"Let's play Never Have I Ever!" she said with excitement.
"Never have I what?" Mick asked. All of us looked confused except for Eddie and Kara who were nodding enthusiastically.
"Oh my God, can we please?!" Kara begged. "I love that game but nobody would ever play with me!"
"How do you play?" Mara asked from her spot on Jerome's lap.
"Oh, it's simple," Nina started. "What you do is... Well, actually... I only know the strip version and drinking game... Uh... Anyone else?" she asked blushing while Fabian gave her a bewildered look. Kara laughed but finished for her.
"You can play either with your fingers or a deck of cards. What happens is the person who starts says 'Never have I ever' and then says something they've never done. Then, all the people who have done it, either put one finger down or throw a card into the centre of the circle depending on which version you're playing." she explained.
"Sounds fun! I have a deck of cards over here somewhere..." I said as I started shuffling through my things.
Mick
"Found it!" Amber called from under a pile of, for lack of a better word, shit. She rushed over and sat down, dealing the cards almost immediately.
"So who's starting?" Alfie asked as all the cards were dealt.
"I will!" Nina called. "Never have I ever... Um... Been to Jamaica." All of us put a card down except for Jerome, Kara, Joy and Eddie.
"Seriously? Daddy and I have been there like eight times!" Amber said, flipping her hair over her shoulder.
"We aren't all stinking rich Ambs." I said. Everyone turned to look at me. "What? I never said I wasn't rich. And technically I'm not, my dad is." I defended.
"Yeah, okay Mick." Mara said. "Your turn Fabian!"
"Um... Never have I ever failed a class." he said. Me, Alfie, Amber, Eddie, and to all of our surprises, Kara put a card down.
"You failed a class?" Amber asked astonished. "But you're like so smart!" Kara laughed, but didn't say anything.
"You really are! I've never been able to have such a great conversation with anyone about Science or literature!" Mara stated. Kara looked down and blushed.
"I've failed loads of classes," she said. "I failed Math and Science in year 10, and I had to drop out of physics last year because it was too hard." The room was silent before finally Patricia spoke.
"Well, teachers must be brutal in America!" everyone laughed.
"Anyway, it's Joy's turn." Kara said, desperate to get off the topic of her failure.
"Never have I ever slept with somebody." she said simply.
"Wait," Kara said. "Slept with or had sex?"
"Um... Sex I guess," Joy replied. Kara breathed a sigh of relief as Jerome, Mara, Eddie and Patricia put cards down.
"Mara?!" Joy asked, completely bewildered, all eyes turning to the dark haired girl.
"Shut up..." she mumbled.
"Haha okay, your turn then," Joy replied, but by the look on her face she was not about to leave it alone.
"Never have I ever done drugs," she said. Jerome and Kara put cards in.
"Well, you really are a bad girl, aren't you?" Eddie said to Kara, everyone looking at her in shock once again.
"It was a phase okay!" she shouted.
"How old were you?" I asked.
"Fifteen..."
"That was last year!" I said, astonished.
"Thank you Captain Obvious!" she snapped.
"Okay, I get it. Touchy subject."
The game continued well past midnight, and soon it was my turn for the third time.
"Ugh! You guys took all the good ones! I can't think of any!" I sighed. Kara had gotten us with her not kissing anyone, Alfie had completely failed when he said he was never abducted by aliens, we learned that Patricia, Eddie, Alfie, and I have all gone weeks without showering. "Um... Never have I ever... Been visited by a ghost?" I saw half of the people in the room exchange glances before Nina nodded. Nina, Fabian, Amber, Alfie and Patricia all put down a card, and after a deep breath, so did Kara. "Wow," I laughed. "You guys have some pretty wild imaginations!" Alfie and Patricia laughed slightly, Fabian was rapidly nodding, and Nina was watching Kara who looked completely shaken.
"Okaaaaay," Amber said. "It's getting late. How about we watch a movie?" She asked and Kara immediately perked up.
"Can I choose?!" she asked.
"Sure! I've got Harry Potter, and Monte Carlo, and I have-" Amber started.
"That's okay Amber, I have one that I think you'll all like." she said, cutting Amber off and running over to her bookshelf. She grabbed a movie and showed it to us.
"Awww Yeah!" Eddie called, giving her a high five.
"Grown Ups?" Fabian asked.
"It's only the best movie of all time!" Eddie responded as Kara put it into the DVD player.
"I must have seen it like 20 times, that's how good it is." she said.
"I think I've heard of it," Nina said. "My friends were talking about it over the summer. Something about... Getting chocolate wasted?" she asked, obviously confused. We all gave her confused looks while Eddie and Kara laughed.
"You'll see!" Kara said. She pressed play and soon we were all laughing along at the ridiculousness of the adults in the movie.
"Omg!" Amber squealed as the gorgeous teenage girl in the movie was referred to as Amber. "It's a name for beautiful people!" she said, flipping her hair. I rolled my eyes and looked back to the movie, laughing as another funny part came.
Kara was sitting in between Nina and I, and when no one was looking, I inconspicuously shifted closer to her. By the time the sappy parts came along, we were practically squashed up against each other. I know she noticed, but she didn't do anything to stop me, so I just continued moving closer to her until, to my surprise, she cuddled into my side and rested her head on my shoulder. Soon enough the end credits were rolling up the screen and all the Anubis house residents were stifling yawns.
"Okay guys, time for bed," Nina said, hopping into her bed. "Goodnight!" she pulled up the covers and rolled over, forgetting us completely. Amber rolled her eyes but then helped us arrange our sleeping bags. She put Fabian's sleeping bag by Nina's bed, Alfie's by her's, and mine by Kara's. She put Joy in the centre of the room, with Patricia beside her. Eddie was next to Patricia and was against the wall. Jerome and Mara were crammed in the corner but from the looks of it, they didn't mind.
Soon everybody was comfortable and Nina's alarm clock was set. Ugh, getting up at 7 after going to bed at 2:30 was gonna be really damn awful. I zipped up my sleeping bag and folded my pillow so my head would be higher up. As I lay there staring at the roof, I started thinking to myself.
For the two days I was here before Kara came, I was still pretty upset about Mara dating Jerome. I flinched every time someone referred to them as a couple, but once I became good friends with Kara, it stopped bugging me. What did that mean? Did I like her? Well, obviously I liked her. Short chestnut brown hair, eyes as blue as the sea, the most flaw free nose covered in freckles, and- I sound like a love struck puppy.
I yawned and rolled over, closing my eyes and forgetting all about what I was just thinking.
-.-.-.-.-..-..-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-..-.-.-.-.-..
Where am I? I wondered to myself. I looked around and saw that I was in the common room, but no one else was there.
"Hello?" I called. No answer. I wasn't really sure what was going on, but something was telling me that I should go look at the fireplace. I wondered if this had anything to do with Kara's nightmare the other day. She did say something about the fireplace. I went over and saw that the big brick in the centre of the mantelpiece was glowing. I found it odd and lifted my hand to touch it.
Suddenly, the scene changed and I wasn't in the common room anymore. I was in Kara, Nina, and Amber's room. They were on the floor along with Alfie, Patricia, and Fabian. Kara looked as though she was crying. I was confused, this looked like earlier today, just after I left Kara to talk to the others.
I looked back to the scene before me and saw Nina pull out a tattered old piece of parchment. Kara screamed and ran across the room in what looked like an attempt to get as far from the paper as possible.
"The papyrus?" she said. A papyrus? What's that? Isn't that some sort of duck billed otter? Oh wait, that's a platypus...
What was going on? Was this what Nina and the others were always sneaking off for? Reading really old pieces of paper that have weird squiggles and shapes on them? Once again, the scene changed and I was watching a younger looking Nina and Fabian sneak up to the attic. I watched as Nina pressed that strange locket of hers to the wall and a passage opened. Um... What? This was weird.
The scene changed once again and I was then watching Patricia being shoved into a warehouse by a scary guy wearing all black. She looked younger and was wearing less makeup than she does now. What in the hells was going on? Was I seeing glimpses of the past? I was really confused. The trees around me dissolved and I was now in what I'm guessing was the cellar. I saw Nina and Fabian inserting numbers into a code slot above a bookshelf. As they stepped away, the shelf moved aside to reveal a secret study covered in cobwebs and dust. They pulled out some amulets before moving a book on another bookshelf and stepping into a long tunnel. I followed them and saw that the tunnel lead to a large chasm with no way across.
The scene changed one final time and I was back in the common room. What had just happened? All those things I saw, did they all really happen?
"Confused?" A mystical voice asked me. I whipped around to see a floating figure. Assuming the voice belonged to it, I responded.
"Yes. All those things I saw... Are they-"
"Real?" it finished. "Yes. Your friends have been on quite the adventures." I stared at it astonished. There's no way all that could have happened! Who would have kidnapped Patricia? And since when are there secret passages and tunnels in the house?! I shook my head.
"No. There's no way! I've lived in this house for five years and I'm 100% sure that there are no tunnels, or secret passage ways, or creepy papyri, or scary dudes dressed in black kidnapping my friends." I shouted. The figure laughed and began advancing towards me. By instinct, I started backing up.
"How wrong you are boy!" it spat. It was now very close to me, hovering approximately three feet in the air, towering above me. "Your friends are in even deeper than you can imagine and soon, soon you will be too!" it started cackling as it rose an arm. It opened it's hand and a burning sensation rippled through me, the fire licking every inch of my body, engulfing me in excruciating pain. I collapsed and hit my head. As I blacked out, all I was left with was the questions that had arisen in my head accompanied by the blistering heat of the figure's wrath.