When the Lion Roars [House of Anubis]

nine. Awkward Moments

While Sibuna were busy trying to figure out the meaning behind the book (all together, as Fabian and Nina refused to do all the work), Joy, Willow, Dan and Jerome were all sat in the living room together.

Dan was seated on one of armchairs listening to music and playing a game on his phone, Willow and Joy sat on one of the sofas talking and Jerome on the sofa opposite doing work; even though it was extremely out of character for him, he was serious about doing well at university. He had books spread out all across the coffee table.

Willow was speaking to Joy about the importance of names and their meanings, but she wasn't really paying much attention. She was too busy thinking about her and Jerome to listen to another one of Willow's meaningless rants. She had been in the room with him for about fifteen minutes and he had only looked at her once, when she first walked in. Even then, when she had smiled at him, he barely took any notice, it was as if he was looking through her instead of at her, and the second they made eye contact, he looked straight down at his books again.

Willow paused mid-sentence when she noticed her friend seemed distant, "Joy?"

Her attention instantly snapped back to Willow, although she didn't make it noticeable through her body language, just changing the direction of her eyes and keeping her head in the same position. She hummed a two note tune as if to say yes in reply to Willow.

"You don't seem very, well, Joyful," she said, her voice filling with concern, "Have you been listening to I've been saying?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm listening," she replied, still not paying much attention to Willow and looking back over to her 'boyfriend'.

Willow followed her gaze over to Jerome, "Oh, I'll just go"

"No, Willow, wait!" But Willow walked out anyway. She wasn't upset, but she realised that Joy and Jerome needed to talk so decided to leave, and Joy didn't really want that to happen.

Joy had raised her voice when calling Willow back and, even though Willow hadn't even turned her head, both Jerome and Dan had taken notice. Jerome looked at her and they made eye contact, looking into each others' eyes for a few seconds whilst Dan pulled out his headphones, leaned forwards, and looked between the two of them.

"Go on," he said to both of them, "I'm waiting"

*~*~*~*

"I think I've found something," Fabian said hastily, studying different pages of the book once more.

All of the Sibunas quickly dropped what they were doing and gathered around Fabian's seat at the desk, not all being able to see as the desk has been moved to fit in all three beds.

"On this page," he began, "both the Sacrifice and the Lion are referred to as 'her' or 'she', so we can now assume that they are both girls"

"That's it?" KT asked, rather rudely.

"Well none of you found anything," he fired back in a stroppy manner.

"I did!" Amber happily shouted as everyone looked at her, "What? It's not that hard to believe," and there was a pause as Amber just stopped.

"Well are you gonna tell us what it was, or," Patricia dragged out.

"Oh! Yeah, right," she began her short story, "Well, I was looking on this website, really poor design, just have to say-"

"Ambs just tell us what you found," Alfie interrupted her, knowing she'd add in random comments along the way if not told otherwise.