The Story of Owen Read Free Page B

level and balance was restored. “Miss McQuaid can show you the way.”
    â€œYes, sir,” Owen said.
    From then on, the class proceeded as scheduled, with introductions and a slightly more interesting round of “What I Did on My Summer Vacation” than usual. Even though Owen only told a story about moving to Trondheim, several of the other students had stories of Aodhan valiantly defending their farms or houses. I wondered, for the first time, how much trust I could place in the truth of those stories. Dragon slayer or no, Aodhan Thorskard was still only one man, and he couldn’t be everywhere at once. I knew that the Littletons had lost four fields, not to mention all of Chelsie’s hair, to a corn dragon just last week. And Alex Carmody’s cousin had died in Lake Huron after a
Draconis ornus
tried to carry off the car he and his girlfriend were “sitting” in. They had bailed rather than wait to be eaten by the soot-streaker, and while the girl survived the fall and the swim to shore, Alex’s cousin hadn’t been so lucky. Yet in the stories my classmates told, Aodhan was a giant, seemingly capable of leaping small drive sheds in a single bound, and left no dragon unvanquished.
    Owen seemed to slump lower in his chair with each story, and by the time the bell rang, it looked like he was having second thoughts about his continued participation in public education. He followed me to history, which we also hadtogether, without saying anything at all. This time, we were early and secured seats safely in the middle of the classroom. Owen would have sat up front where, presumably, he could just let people stare at the back of his head and not have to endure them turning in their seats to look at him, but I dragged him back a few rows.
    â€œIt’s for safety,” I explained, as the other students trickled in and took seats around us. “Mr. Huffman teaches with a meter stick in his hands. When he gets carried away, it can be dangerous in the front few rows.”
    Owen smiled at me then and sat up a bit straighter.
    Mr. Huffman adapted fairly quickly to learning that he had a potential dragon slayer in his class. He’d skipped over introductions entirely and just launched straight into his lesson. “There’s a lot of history,” was his argument, “and we’re going to have a hard enough time getting to it without dawdling at the start. I’ll learn your names eventually.” So he had no one to blame but himself when, after he made a comment about the legality of forcing all newly minted dragon slayers to join the Oil Watch, everyone who had come from English looked at Owen.
    â€œYou’re him, then?” Mr. Huffman said, being more apprised of current events than Mr. Cooper, apparently. “Well, good luck to you.”
    I blinked, a bit surprised, but Owen only said, “Thank you,” and kept taking notes.
    Our school day was still split five ways: four seventy-six minutes classes and an hour for lunch in the middle. The school board kept trying to rework the schedule so that we had six classes instead of four, but ever since Saltrock Collegiate hadclosed last spring for the amalgamation and the school board had moved into their old building, there had been an unusually high number of dragon attacks. It was rumored that Aodhan had been called there almost once a week since his midsummer arrival. Whatever the circumstances, the school board had been too busy to worry about something as mundane as the educational welfare of their students, and so we still had just two long classes before lunch.
    â€œWell,” said Owen when the bell rang. “At least I know where the cafeteria is.”
    â€œWe have detention,” I reminded him.
    â€œYes, but it’s lunch time,” he said.
    â€œThat’s when we do detention,” I said. “If we did it after school, kids would miss their buses.”
    â€œI hadn’t