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Chapter Seven: Silence is Golden 



The next morning, a teacher shook me awake. Matthew and I had fallen asleep by 
the fire in the common room talking to each other. He was still out cold on the 
couch, and I was on the floor under a blanket. 
         The teacher explained everything. The students had mostly recovered, 
and had been given the day off to sort through the pokéballs. Matthew and I were 
to be given medals for saving the school, though we both insisted that it was 
just an act of kindness. (Matthew had woken up by now) 
         The teacher gave up and left. I stared into the fire for a while, 
absorbing its warmth into my soul. I turned around to face Matthew. 
         “Um…Matt, I…” I began but was interrupted.
         “Please call me Matthew, I never liked nicknames.” He told me.
         “Matthew, I just wanted to say….Thank you, for everything. I couldn’t 
have stopped them without your help.”
         Matthew looked into my eyes, “No, I should be the one doing the 
thanking. You taught me that your friends should like you for who you are, not 
for how tough you are.” He paused for a moment in thought and then asked me, 
“Remember when you first spoke to me, up in the boy’s dormitory? How come you 
were able to talk to me without stuttering or losing your voice?”
         I thought for a moment as well. Then I said, “My father once told me, 
around the time that I lost the ability to speak to certain people, that words 
may be silver, but silence is golden. I suddenly realized while I was talking to 
you that friendship is more valuable than anything in the world is. It’s a 
terrible thing to be enemies with someone.There are so many things you can learn 
from a person, and each person can teach you different lessons in life. If you 
are enemies with someone, you may never learn anything from them. I knew 
somehow, that I could learn a lot from you. That thought gave me the courage to 
speak.”
          
         Matthew, Téa and myself soon became inseparable. We had gone from being 
the worst of enemies to the best offriends. It was all because of the golden 
silence that I had brought with me to the school that year.