What Lies Beneath ▸ House of Anubis [1]

chapter thirty-nine. house of hoax

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11-01-01-19-15.

Those are the numbers Nina woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me. She told me she had a dream and Sarah told her these numbers—and that our quest was only just beginning. There's no way we're giving up on this, no matter what Joy says. Someone told her to lie, I'm sure of it. Heck, maybe Joy doesn't even know what's going on herself.

All I do know? There's a conspiracy going on. And Nina and I are knee-deep in it.

Patricia comes into breakfast the next morning still wearing her sleepwear, strange considering the rest of us are in our uniforms for yet another day of school. Mara looks at her, asking concernedly, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?" Patricia replies dismissively.

"You had a bad night."

"I'm fine."

I did hear talking coming from their room last night, but I was so tired myself from yesterday's unfortunate realizations that I fell asleep the second my head hit the pillow, fortunately into a dreamless sleep. Seems like Patricia didn't get that pleasure.

"I didn't sleep too good either," Alfie pipes up. "I was up all night looking for UFOs."

My eyebrows furrow. "UFOs?" I repeat with a bit of stifled laughter. The others join in. "You were...up all night looking for aliens?"

"They're coming!" he retorts. "Trust me. And then everyone will be running to Alfie for his alien expertise!"

Patricia deepens her voice and imitates the narrator of a bad sci-fi movie trailer, "Alfie Lewis, Champion of the Earth! We're doomed."

Nina comes in with a serious look on her face, telling Fabian she needs to talk to him about something. Fabian leaves with her after saying the same. Maybe Fabian will be able to figure out the significance of the numbers. Sarah gave them to Nina for a reason.

Clearing my throat, I look back at Alfie. "Well, find any aliens?"

—

So Alfie began to regale me with stories of his searching the skies for aliens. No TARDIS, unfortunately, nor any other kind of aliens. I gotta say, it's been a while since he was on this alien stuff. Wonder what brought it back up.

"Okay, settle down everyone," Winkler instructs as class begins, "quickly, quietly." Alfie moves off of mine and Patricia's desk, where he's been telling us about his methods to find the aliens. Mara uncharacteristically arrives seconds late, Jerome by her side. I look away from the pair of them, biting the inside of my cheek. "I want to talk numerology."