Two is Company (House of Anubis)

Chapter 17: "For Those I Love, I Will Sacrifice"

"Mara Jaffray, you are expelled!"

The chaos was immediate, students and staff alike crying out in outrage at Mr. Sweet's verdict. Kira wasn't sure when she'd jumped to her feet, but once she'd started shouting there was no stopping her.

Mrs. Andrews looked ghastly pale and guilty from where she sat in the front row, horrified by her employer's decision. Certainly, Mara had made a piss-poor case against Vera, but to be expelled over it? Outrageous.

Mr. Sweet banged the gavel repeatedly, wrestling order back. "My word is final," he said, voice wavering only slightly beneath the severity of his tone. "Court is now dismissed; everyone head to your next class immediately." He stood up and, without making eye contact with anyone, strode out of the room.

Mara was in shock, still sitting in her chair as she hyperventilated. Trudy and Joy leaped up and rushed to her side, rubbing her back soothingly, promising to find a solution; Kira shot a withering, final look in her brother's direction before joining them.

"Mara, please don't worry," Mrs. Andrews soothed, and behind her Victor lead Vera out of the room almost tauntingly. "I'm sure there's more to this than meets the eye. I'll have a word with Mr. Sweet now."

Mara nodded, fat tears rolling down her face in a continuous stream. "Oh my god," she gasped between shuddering sobs when Mrs. Andrews had disappeared into the mass exodus of students out of the lounge. "Oh my god, I've been expelled."

"No," Kira said immediately, grabbing her best friend's hand. "No, we're going to figure this out. You're not going anywhere."

"Yeah," Joy chimed in, squeezing Mara's shoulder, "we're not giving you up without a fight." Joy's eyes got a faraway look in them. "Trust me, Mara. We won't abandon you."

Trudy nodded and planted a kiss on top of Mara's head. "That's right, dearie. Anubis House is a family." She looked up and gestured with her head for Kira and Joy to head to class, lest they get in trouble too. "It will be alright, love."

Kira gave Mara's hand one last squeeze and stood up, biting back tears of her own. In all the daydreams and fantasies she'd imagined about reuniting with her father and rebuilding her family, never had such a horrible outcome ever crossed her mind.

He'd been so angry, and the finality with which he'd condemned Mara was jarring, not at all like the man who inhaled crab rangoons and proudly showed her goofy photos of him holding fish he'd caught, privately hoping to take his son out on the water one day.

That was not the same man who'd gone purple in the face and expelled the brightest, most respectable girl from school because she'd made a mistake. Albeit, a rather large mistake, but the point remained.

Perhaps Kira had overestimated Mr. Sweet. It was easy to remember her anger with him when he behaved like this, easy to recall the buried bitterness towards her estranged father that Eddie continued to unearth within himself.

Eddie. Her quiet, rolling fury snapped back to him again. This was his fault. All of it. Every single step forward they took, he threw a hand-grenade down at their feet, blowing them back by a mile. She couldn't even be honest about who she was, because he was too ashamed of his own family.

She shrugged off Joy's arm— and if it had been any other time, she'd have been positively mortified— and pushed past Alfie as he bustled into the lounge holding a ping-pong table; he hadn't heard the news yet, it seemed. Valiantly, she tried to hide her own tears as they dribbled down her face in depressing rivulets, but there was no stopping them.

It wasn't fair. It was selfish and cruel, and she wasn't sure if she should be mad at Eddie, or Mr. Sweet, or herself for being stupid enough to believe any good could have come from trying to force pieces of a puzzle together that long since stopped fitting.