Chapter 4

"Welcome to Aikenwood Academy,

We first would like to thank you for deciding to join us and we promise a very interesting and educational first year to our school. We hope you received your books and have read the introductory chapters to each, as they will explain the design and purpose of the courses.

School starts on Augusta 1st and our first in-school Holiday will be October 31rst. There will be Thanksgiving Holidays as well, and then Fall Semester Exams will precede the Christmas Holidays. School will commence on January 3rd and there will be no more out of school holidays until the Spring Semester is over, however there will be a few in-school holidays, such as St. Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and Good Friday. The purpose of in-school Holidays is to give the students a day off of classes and to afford teachers to catch up on their scheduling and grading. Students will be permitted to leave school during the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays to join their families. Additional vacations are allowed through request to the headmaster by the students' parents two weeks prior to the desired date(s).

Please send (as soon as possible) a full copy of your students' medical records, as Dr. Gillingsly, our school physician, prefers as full a medical history as can be provided. Dr. Gillingsly is a very skilled pediatrician who has been practicing medicine for over 20 years now, and has undergone studies in dentistry, optomelogy, dermatology, cardiology, proctology, urology and gynecology.   

Again, we would like to thank you for deciding to join Aikenwood Academy and we will be very happy to see you on August 1st.

                                                                                    Thomaston Ebbershire,

                                                                                    Margarina Castleton

                                                                        Co-Headmasters of Aikenwood Academy"

Reading the letter after his mother handed it to him; Richard had a weird sensation of relief at reading the paragraph about Dr. Gillingsly. "Sounds like the guy really knows his stuff" Richard thought to himself, and laying the letter back down on the counter, he wondered if the letter, like his school books, would magically change if he looked at it without his mother around. Grabbing the letter up again from the kitchen counter, Rozzy walked from the kitchen, through the living room, up the stairs, down the hall and into his bedroom. Shutting the door behind him, he examined the letter again, and at first he saw no changes, but at a closer look, he noticed there were differences. "Dr. Gillingsly is a very skilled healer who has been practicing healing for well over 20 years now. He worked at St. Mungos Hospital for Magical Maladies for 10 years before retiring into private study where he discovered several curse and jinx remedies."

Just as he was thinking about St. Mungos Hospital, and what a ridiculous name for a hospital that was when the phone rings. After an hour of excited talk between him and Niko, Rozzy hangs up the phone and decides to go outside into the back yard. As he walks outside, he notices it is a bright and sunny day. Basking in the warm rays of the sun, he walks in circles with his arms out-stretched, his head leaned back and his loose hair falling down and gently brushing his back as he swung round. Finally becoming dizzy, Rozzy collapses into the grass and lies there, a few feet from the woods for some time. With his eyes closed he imagines a creepy old castle with a hunchbacked man opening the door and bidding him welcome. He is instantly swept upon by a masked man who talks funny, whose eyes he can't see due to the shadows of his mask from the dim-lighting. Next he is standing in the shadow of a very tall, thick, green-skinned man with a flat head and bolts coming from his neck. This man is very stiffly pointing to someone else…a tall, skinny woman whose tall black hair has lightning streaks in it. She also has bolts in her neck, though she doesn't move as stiffly. There is another man in the room now, a very pale man with pointy fingernails. He is coming very close to Rozzy, puts his hands on his shoulders, leans in…and then enters yet another man, wearing camouflage. He has a big, puffy-red face, is built like a bull, squints like a pug and spits when he talks.

Richard sits up in the grass. He looks down and sees a lone ant crawling up leg. As he is about to flick it off, he hears something rustle in the woods behind him. He turns to look but can see nothing. "Hello?" he calls. No answer. As he gets to his feet, he hears more rustling from inside the woods. Rozzy makes his way into the woods, curios though confident, seeing as he knew these woods like the back of his hands, and as many times as people have tried, noone has successfully snuck up on him in here…not his sister, not Niko, not even the Lancaster sisters…and from the sound of it that was exactly what it was, someone trying to sneak up on him. Hearing the sound retreat, he cautiously made his was around to where he thought the intruder was heading. "My perch is over there" he thought to himself, moving as quickly as he could, making sure his feet, long since trained for something like this, didn't make a sound. He mounted the old telephone pole that hung diagonal against the other two…from the first day he had ever ventured into these woods he thought how he wanted to train himself to sneak around, climb, run, all without being heard, and now as he climbed the remains of the main power poles for the old trailer park, he was very satisfied with himself. He stayed low as he climbed, and as he got high enough to look over the wall, he saw him. Short black hair, a black shirt and black pants; the intruder. It wasn't one of the Lancaster girls; in fact, it wasn't a girl at all. It definitely wasn't Niko, either. He could tell the man was lost, because he was fiddling with a compass, and just as he was about to duck back down, he heard something behind him. He turned and saw Niko coming up the pole. Now Niko was almost as good as Rozzy was when it came to the bush, but as he turned back around he noticed the intruder was gone. He hadn't heard leaves rustling, just a small pop, and as he climbed back down the pole and looked around, and he thought that was absurd because people don't just "pop" and disappear.

Not wanting Nikolas to think him crazy, he told him he was looking for a coin he had dropped. "Which coin" Niko asked

"That special one, you know, the one my dad left me" he lied.

"You mean the one with the star in the circle!?" Niko dug further.

"Yeah, you know, the one mom refuses to talk about."

"I can't believe you LOST it!" Niko gasped.

"Ah, I don't know, I think I did, I might not have…probably just misplaced it." Rozzy replied. He hated this, he hated lying to Nikolas. Wanting badly to change the subject, he reached in deep and grabbed the first thing that yielded.

"Did you get that letter today?" Rozzy asked as they started walking back towards the house.

"You mean the one from Aikenwood?"

"Yeah, the one about the 'Healer'? Gee, that's some stuff, ain't it?" Rozzy was glad the lie would be forgotten now.  

"What's up with that name…St. Mundos'?"

"I think you mean St. Mungos'?

"Yeah, that too. Pretty goofy name for a hospital if ya ask me."    

"Well, I think it's obvious they didn't ask you…you weren't even alive back then."

"Ok, that's true, but still, awfully odd name for a hospital, don't' ya think?"

Before he answered him, the look on Nikos' face shifted. They were out of the woods now, back in Rozzys' backyard. His friend no longer wore the gleeful look he normally did, in fact, it almost looked scared. Yes, that's what it was, fear.

"Hey, Roz, can I ask you something?" The fear was apparent in his friends' voice. He hated this. This hurt him very badly for his friend to be in pain like this, he wanted to find out what as causing it and make it stop.

"Yeah man, you know you can." He forced a smile, and, swallowing hard, playfully nudged his best friend in the whole world on the shoulder with his balled fist.

"Would you be mad at me if I told you I couldn't go to school with you this year?"

Now this definitely hurt Rozzy. Why on earth wouldn't his best friend be allowed to go to school with him!? What on earth could be running through his head? Of course he would be going to school with him, his mother filled out the form…he was there, his mother agreed to it on the phone with her. He had to get to the bottom of this, why on earth would he ask this question?

"No, I wouldn't be mad at you, but why do you ask that?" He looked his friend in the eyes. He had not seen Niko cry in a long time, but he could see the tears building up terribly. Not since they had to burry Nikos' dog, Rufus had his friends' eyes filled with tears. The first one made its way down his soft cheek, his jaw trembling, then he flung his arms around Rozzy and his knees gave way. He didn't ball; he just stood there crying softly into the hair that was on Rozzys' shoulder. Rozzy slowly bent his knees and came to rest on them on the grass. After several minutes of Nikolas' soft crying, he raised his head and said "my mom." With a horrible wrench all throughout his body, Rozzy instantly knew what Niko meant.

"Sh…sh...She's dying, man." Niko barely got these words past his lips as more tears rolled down his now glistening cheeks. Rozzy wrapped his arms around Nikolas' head and pulled him back to his shoulder.  After a long silence, that is if you call the small intimacy between two friends while one holds the other crying a silence, Nikolas regains some of his composure and leans back away from Rozzy. Avoiding his eyes, he speaks. "They found cancer in her." He huffles a little bit, then continues. "She went to the doctor cause she's been having really bad headaches, and they did blood work and scanned and found cancer in her brain." He sniffles and wipes his nose on the shoulder of his shirt.

They sit there for a while longer, Rozzy staring into Nikos' hair, while Niko looks down, admiring the blades of grass they are crushing. A cricket barely has the room to hop between their knees. Just as Niko was thinking how much he hated the bug and wanted it to die, Rozzy pulled his knee up, and landing his bare feet onto the bug yet paying no attention to the crunch and squish of it, he puts an arm on Nikos' shoulder and says "Why don't you stay here tonight?"

"Ok man," Is Nikos' reply. Why had he hated the bug and wished it to die? Was it because he figured it was about to return to its mother, who probably was in perfect health…apart from being a bug, anyways. Now that it was dead, though, it didn't matter. They walked together, and it wasn't until they got to the door step that, "Eh, I must have stepped on a bug back there." Rozzy said.

Niko chuckled. He suspected that Rozzy knew all along about the bug, but in his own way, and probably not even conscience of it; he was trying to make Nikolas feel better. "Rozzy is such a great friend" Niko thought, "Everyone needs a goofy, crazy, eccentric friend like him."  

They ate dinner together in almost complete silence, enjoying each others' company and friendship warmly. They took turns playing their video game and showering, Niko first, as he obviously needed some time to "soak away the day". After their showers, Niko busied himself with reading one of Rozzys' old comics while Rozzy finished brushing his hair. "Maybe I should do that…" Niko began to think, but the end of the sentence stuck in the back of his brain, somewhere between his ears, and he let it die there before he dare finish the thought of growing out his hair "in memory" of his mother. They turned out the lights and lay down, and the silence was finally broken.

"Hey Niko?" Roz asked.

"Yeah man?" Nikolas replied.

"Ya know the other night you were over here, when you wet the bed?" Richard began.

Niko gulps, he had forgotten all about that. "Y-yeah?"

There was a long pause, and as soon as Richard had gotten up the nerve to answer, something scratched at the window.

            "What the llama?" They both said in unison, bolting upright, and then flying out of the bed. Niko beat Rozzy to the window, being on the closer side of the bed to it. They looked out and saw a large owl sitting on the window sill, with a parchment attached to its leg. Rozzy quickly opened the window and watched the bird march in and turn to his side like Rozzy remembered the last owl doing at his sill. Niko took the letter, unrolled it, and started to read it as the owl marched back out the window, and leapt into the air, spreading its' massive wings and taking flight.

            "Well, what does it say?"  Rozzy asked excitedly.

            "It's the same letter from earlier…about the healer…see?" Niko answers, pushing the parchment in front of Rozzy.

            "But why would they send me the same letter?" Rozzy asked.

            "It's not for you, it's for me." Niko replied

They examined the letter front and back, and, remembering Rozzy had left his on his dresser, he fetched it and the examined the two together and they were identical.

            "But why…why send you a second letter…and HERE?" Rozzy asked. "How do they know you're here?"

They stood together for some time thinking about it, examining one letter and then the other, never coming to a conclusion.

The question was still on their minds as they laid back down into Richard Oswald's bed and pulled the covers back over them. They had laid the letters side by side, and Rozzy would be sure and check in the morning to make sure they hadn't both just woken up with the same dream. As Rozzy fell asleep, he was glad that his friend Nikolas had something else to occupy his mind as he slept than his dying mother, for that surely wouldn't make sleeping very easy. He remembered how when Rufus had died that they curled up together and slept in front of the fireplace at Nikos' house where the dog use to lay. Richard was glad he could be such a good friend to Niko, but he didn't think the idea of spooning would work anymore, now that he was starting to wake up stiff in the morning. Rozzy noticed Niko was soon sound asleep, and he found himself drifting off sooner than he thought he would as well. "At least he'll sleep good tonight," he thought to himself, "he always sleeps good next to me." And with that the oblivion that catches up with young boys at the end of an eventful day finally caught Richard. He slept soundly and warmly next to his best friend in the whole world, glad he could be there for him.