The Rise of Sigmund the Sorcerer

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Falling Apart

I couldn't function in the couple weeks after Kyle had been expelled. Since my room had been smoked out, I'd been moved to a single room in the academy instead. I hated it. I felt alone again. Isolated all over again. After my falling out with Ivan and Nicolai, I truly kept to myself. That was until I told Erin about what had happened. She'd been determined to find a way to get Kyle back to Milkweed, but I urged her not to stress about it the way I had. Merlin had already told me I was outnumbered with the outcome of the discipline.

In the middle of the night, my phone had gone off. I'd rejected it the first time it rang to go back to sleep, but when it rang again, I knew it must've been something important. It was Erin.

"Erin?"

"I'm sorry...I wasn't gonna call but I couldn't wait till the morning."

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, I was just reading through the Milkweed Academy official handbook of conduct and—."

"At midnight?!"

"It's the witching hour...heh..."

"No. You promised me you weren't going to stay up doing this."

"I couldn't sleep." Erin whined. "And I just happened to come across the book of conduct, so~..."

"Fine, what did it say?"

"Okay, so the handbook actually has a whole list of circumstances that are eligible for appealing a discipline—."

"English please! I can't process all of this right now. I just woke up!"

"...you grouchy old man. Just listen! Kyle, or a board member, can place an appeal form in the school board and fight back on the grounds of self defense! He was a victim of bullying, and that's one of the circumstances listed in the handbook. Get it now?"

"So it's a loophole to the rule?"

"Ja, Nightbreed. A loophole."

With a plan in place, I went to the Headmaster's office the next day and filled out an appeal form on Kyle's behalf. Merlin was proud to see I was challenging the system, but when I'd run into Professor Flan on the way out, things had instantly gone tense. By the look he'd given me as he entered the office, I was more than sure that he knew what I was doing and had heard conversation between myself and the Headmaster.

The thought was confirmed when he'd shot me bad looks throughout my class later in the morning. The glares were so obvious, that even Ivan and Nicolai had caught a few of them. Even though we were no longer friends, Erin told me we'd need them for the case we were building against Professor Flan. I was hesitant to ask them for help, but for Kyle's sake, I did it anyway. Of course, I received a tongue lashing the moment I approached Ivan after class.

"I'm sick of you and that stupid wizard! You chose a troublemaker over us, so you deal with it!"

"I didn't choose anyone!"

"You totally did when you wouldn't report him to the headmaster."

"Ivan, there were no sides until you decided to make it that way! You decided to isolate him during a hard time, not me! I'm not a sheep that'll blindly follow you just because you tell me to, you have Nicolai for that!"

"Hey!" Nicolai gasped, puffing his cheeks out towards the insult. I was over the two of them.

"Forget I asked! You're both useless!"