"I'm back!" I yelled as I entered the cabin, taking my shoes off by the door. I figured my aunt was outside, 'cause she didn't answer. I found her on the back deck, elbow deep in the herb garden. "I'm back," I said, and handed her a glass of iced tea I had grabbed on my way outside. My aunt Care looks nothing like me. She is fair-skinned with curly auburn hair and hazel eyes, has a narrow face and high cheek bones; I have bronze-colored skin, with fluffy brown hair that is most often curly (just add water), bright green eyes (which I love), and dimples (which I don't). I am pretty, but I do not flaunt it.

"Thanks." She wiped her forehead on the back of her glove, leaving a slight earthy smudge where the sweat used to be, and took a long swig of the tea, "I could really use some help out here."

"Did Rick drop off our mail today?" Rick is one of the forest rangers in our region. He tries to find excuses to come over a lot, like to shovel snow off our deck, trim the trees in our front yard, and drop off our mail – I think he has a thing for my aunt. Not that I don't appreciate his enthusiasm, I mean, he drives right by our mailbox everyday. It's summer break now, and I don't like to drive into town that often.

"Yeah, it's on the counter," she answered, and picked up her trowel again, "I haven't looked at it yet, so if there's a really big envelop from Publishers Clearing House, let me know." She smiled and returned to weeding.

"I'll go take a look at it, I'm should be getting a letter back from Caprice about the audition," I said, "I'll come help you when I'm done, ok?"

"Oh! Sophie, you have a phone message from Tiff. She called an hour or so ago, and she wants you to call her at home." Tiff (Tiffany Rooste) is my best friend, aside from Trek, but I've known Tiff for many scars longer.

That's an inside joke of ours, measuring friendship by the adventure scars. I have a scar on my elbow –it's not that big, but I mean, you can see it if you look, I don't need to point it out- from playing pirates with some of her neighbor boys. They chased us up into a tree (our crow's nest), and I ended up falling out of it. But I turned out all right in the end; one of the boys gave me one of those sloppy "this will fix it" kisses. We were both seven (the boy and I), and we never spoke of it again.

And there's another on my palm from when we had to dissect frogs in junior high; like Tiff, I was totally against it, and in my very animated "discussion" about cruelty to animals with the teacher, sliced my hand open with a scalpel. I was excused from the assignment, which basically means I was dragged off to the hospital instead, with Tiff in tow. She was so proud.

I dialed Tiff's number as I sorted through the mail. I had applied for an audition to Caprice School for the Arts (CSA) a few weeks ago, and was anticipating their response.

Tiff picked up, "Hello?"

"Hey Tiff, what's going on?" I asked her, "Care said you'd called." Tiff started into who got caught at what party, who had been incarcerated lately, and then –what a surprise- moved on to chatter about her latest boyfriend, incidentally the guy who kissed me after I fell out of the tree. I kept shuffling through the mail, only half-listening (the stuff about her boyfriend is always the same anyway), and found one addressed to Miss Sophie Athena Prewett, and smiled at the sight of my middle name in print (my mom had a thing for Greek mythology). I let out a gasp of excitement and tore open the letter.

"Yeah, I know. It'll be awesome!" Tiff said. She had just gotten to the part about how she had convinced him to sneak out to go toilet paper the mayor's house.

"Oh my God, Tiff, guess what I just got. Listen to this: Dear Miss Prewett, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at-" I stopped, this wasn't my letter from CSA. This was a joke. "Tiff, did you do this?"

"Did I do what?" She asked innocently - her motto was, "Never confess to anything they don't know about yet."

"This letter. It's seriously hilarious. Takes the edge off, you know, waiting for CSA's response. Wow, Tiff, I didn't know you were this creative, you've really outdone yourself!" I ignored her feigned defenses and read out loud, "Dear Miss Prewett, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry-"

Crash! I jerked my head around towards the noise; my aunt stood in the kitchen doorway, her face pale, with a shattered glass of iced tea at her feet. She looked sick. "Tiff, I'll call you back," I said, and dropped the receiver.

I reached out to my aunt as she gripped the kitchen counter for support. "Aunt Care, are you okay? What happened?" I helped her sit down at the bar, and when she motioned for a drink (I made to get her some water and she said, "No, please, I need a glass of wine!"), I quickly poured her one.

She took a sip, and another, and the quake in her hands lessoned a bit. "Let me see that letter," she said quietly. I handed it over. Her eyes darted over the page, reading and re-reading the words. I asked her what was wrong; she didn't answer, only took a large gulp of the wine and put the letter down onto the counter.

I was getting a little anxious at her silence. What was wrong? "Sit down Sophie," she said quietly, "I've got a lot to tell you."