House of Anubis

House of Black Bird p2

"Stop it. It's hurts!" Alfie cried out as Patricia beat him with his pillow over and over again. I leaned against the doorframe, watching this happen, waiting for Patricia so we could go to school together.

"I need the truth." Patricia says desperately. "Did you or did you not sneak into the bathroom last night, while I was showering and write.. on.. the mirror?!" Each break in her sentence was her slamming the pillow against him as he was on his back.

"Ow! No!" He cried out.

"You swear?" She asks, hitting him again.

"Ow! Yes. I swear." He says holding his hands out to protect himself as much as he could. "On sprocket's life!"

I raise an eyebrow and Patricia questions "Who?"

"Sprocket! My dog." He answered. I narrow my eyes at this piece of information. "I swear on his life I didn't do it."

"Patricia?" Jerome says, catching her attention. "Maybe you just need to accept the inevitable." He said, his tone dry and tired.

"What's that?"

"Something sinister's happened to Joy and she's trying to contact you." He replies dramatically, now very animated, acting as though there's some big mystery. Like she wasn't treating it like a conspiracy already.

"Whoooooooh!" Alfie chimed in, wiggling his fingers, which just resulted in her slapping him once more with the pillow before she and I left the building.

I waited till we were far enough away from the house, and closer to the school so she wouldn't turn back, to pull out my computer.

'You know he was lying, right?'

"What?" She asks as a look of confusion washes over her. "What do you mean?"

'Well for one, he doesn't have a dog named "Sprocket".' I tell her via computer.

"And you know this how?" She asks, not looking convinced.

'Simple, he's allergic.' Her eyes narrow and I grab her wrist, knowing she wanted to march back to the house.

'Secondly, I gotta ask. The message that you saw in the mirror, what did it look like?'

Her face scrunches up in confusion. "What does that got to do with anything?"

'Well let's say it was from Joy; why would she somehow find her way back to the house just to disappear again instead of just locking herself in the bathroom with you? This, assuming of course, the message was freshly done where the message was completely clear.'

She stops walking, and stares at me while I type out the next chunk of information I had.

'And again, if from Joy, knowing beforehand that she was going to be taken away, and had enough time to leave some hidden message, that would require her to have written it while someone was in the shower the day before in order to leave the imprint of that message for the next time someone showered, going completely unnoticed, which would have been unlikely.'

'But even then, the message itself also would have been filled with steam, if it had been old and left for us to find. And we'd see it as an outline vs freshly written words.'

She opens her mouth to say something, but I hold my hand up, telling her I'm not done, and I had one more piece of information to debunk it being from Joy.

'And more importantly, if again there even was a faint message on the mirror filled with steam that she left behind, I would have seen it the other day long before you.'