The Story of Owen (3 page)

“Detention.” When Mr. Cooper managed to talk, his voice was level and balance was restored. “Miss McQuaid can show you the way.”

“Yes, 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 had
together, 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.

“It'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.

“You'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 had
closed 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.

“Well,” said Owen when the bell rang. “At least I know where the cafeteria is.”

“We have detention,” I reminded him.

“Yes, but it's lunch time,” he said.

“That's when we do detention,” I said. “If we did it after school, kids would miss their buses.”

“I hadn't thought of that,” he said. “Small towns are weird.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We kind of are.”

“I do like it here, though,” he said, closing his pencil case. He looked like he thought he might have offended me. “It's quiet.”

“And our dragons are smaller.” That wasn't true, exactly. Some studies claimed that dragons that preyed on cities and ate more carbon were bigger. Others theorized that it was easier to fight a dragon on open ground than it was to do it in an urban landscape. Even as I thought it, though, I realized that I wasn't sure if I had meant actual dragons or the more pernicious, high school cafeteria kind. It hardly mattered. After today, he'd probably disappear into a group of popular students, and I'd never get to talk to him again. I knew that was a stupid thing to think. Even with the addition of the SCI students, the school was still small enough that I'd see him every day. And, after all,
we did sit next to each other in two classes. But we wouldn't be friends.

“There's that too,” he said, apparently deciding to take me literally. “What do we do in detention?”

“I have no idea,” I told him. “This will be my first.”

Forty-five minutes later, I still had no idea what happened in detention. Or at least I assumed that not everyone had a detention like ours. Instead of writing lines or doing our homework, Owen had spent the whole time detailing his training regimen to Ms. Ngembi, our vice-principal. She coached soccer in the spring, and I knew she was already trying to determine if Owen would be able to play for the team.

“I don't really have a lot of time for school sports,” Owen said, as lunch wound down. “But I could ask my aunts.”

“You don't train with your father?” Ms. Ngembi said. Her tone was surprised, and I wondered why she thought someone like Lottie Thorskard couldn't train another dragon slayer.

“No, he's too busy,” Owen said. “There aren't always as many dragon attacks out here, but he does have a very large area to patrol. He spends a lot of time driving.”

“Of course,” Ms. Ngembi said. “Your aunt must be inspiring to you.”

“
They
are,” Owen said. I don't think Ms. Ngembi noticed the difference in his voice when he spoke of his aunts to people outside the family. He wasn't cold by any means, but he was very professional, and sounded a lot older than he actually was.

“My goodness, look at the time!” Ms. Ngembi said, as the clock on her desk gave a quiet ring to indicate that we'd served our punishment and that she was legally required to let us go
eat something. “Go have your lunches, and hopefully the next time we meet, it will be under better circumstances.”

Once we were in the hallway, Owen looked down toward the cafeteria. It was loud enough that we could hear it all the way from where we stood, and I could tell that he wasn't looking forward to the hush that would fall over the crowd when he entered.

“They're all going to know who I am now, aren't they?” he asked, not sounding particularly hopeful.

“Yes, they are,” I told him. “And they'll also know that you had detention. You're probably a rock star in there.”

“Is there another place to eat?”

“I usually just eat by my locker, when I don't have music stuff to do,” I said. “It's quieter, and so long as you don't make a mess, no one cares.”

“Let's do that,” he said.

I had music after lunch and Owen had gym, though he was decidedly morose at the prospect. I didn't see him again until fourth period algebra, where he secured me a seat at the front.

“Three out of four classes,” he said when I sat down. He sounded like he'd won something “That would never happen in Hamilton.”

“A lot of things happen here that would never happen in Hamilton,” I told him as Mrs. Postma called for attention.

“I'll bet,” he whispered. “So, what do you guys do for fun?”

To my credit, I managed not to laugh in his face.

The first time I saw Owen fight a dragon was in history class. It was the second Friday of September, and even though it had only been one week since Labor Day, and summer was hardly a distant memory, Thanksgiving seemed like an eternity away instead of a month. To make matters worse, it had been sunny and warm all week, and by Friday everyone was pretty much done with learning long before we even got out of English class. When we arrived in history, we could already tell something was up, because Mr. Huffman was rearranging the desks so that they faced each other in pairs. The desk pairs formed a snaking line from the back of the room to the front.

“Just sit down,” he said. “Wherever you like.”

Most of us took the seats that were usually ours anyway. Sadie Fletcher took the opportunity to sit across from Owen before I could get to my chair. I wasn't entirely surprised. I had been avoiding the cafeteria as much as possible, eating lunch as quickly as I could by my locker before heading to the music
room to practice. Jazz and concert bands started next week, and after waiting for two years for Sarah Mommerstein to graduate, I really wanted my turn at the school's only bari sax. I knew that I had competition, though, as a couple of the kids from SCI also played, and I wanted to be sure I was the best option when we had auditions on Monday.

It meant that Owen had been on his own at lunch, since he didn't play an instrument, so he'd spent most of the week getting in with the popular crowd. Sadie was, I knew, probably more interested in saying she'd dated a dragon slayer than actually dating one. The look Owen shot me as I sat down beside him was a little bit panicked.

“Congratulations!” Mr. Huffman said. “You have all chosen sides for Offense/Defense Fridays. Which I shall call something else as soon as I come up with a better name.” He gestured with his right hand, brandishing the meter stick. “Those of you facing the wall are dragons, those of you facing the window are dragon slayers.”

It was difficult to say at that exact moment who was more mortified: Owen, who was staring past Sadie's head out the window as though he could will it to brick itself over, or Sadie, who had just realized that she was the dragon. Mr. Huffman was clearly having the time of his life, and I couldn't help but smile into my hand.

“Before you begin your battle, however,” Mr. Huffman said, unrolling a large paper map and affixing it to the not-so-charmingly anachronistic blackboard, “I will give you some information. You will be reenacting this historic encounter.”

Despite our confusion, Mr. Huffman had our attention, and we all stared at him as he talked.

“The year was 1956, October 29th,” Mr. Huffman said. “The last Great War was finished, but things were not easy in the world. The dragon population, having gorged itself on the smoke over Europe for the better part of a decade, had never been higher or more ferocious, and they could smell the oil in the Suez Canal.”

With a dramatic flourish, Mr. Huffman stepped aside to reveal a map of the canal, where Egypt and Israel kissed across the Sinai. We could see the English, French, and Israeli lines, and the knots and crosses that marked their skirmishes with the Egyptians. I looked at the desks and realized that, though the classroom was too short for us to be in a straight line, Mr. Huffman had undoubtedly arranged the desks so that we mirrored the canal's path as closely as he could manage.

“Tensions were high,” Mr. Huffman continued. “Dragon slayers were present in force, but they were still officially enlisted in their various armies and had loyalties only to their own countries and allies. They would not necessarily go to the defense of an oil ship from another nation. The canal was in danger of being overrun. With blatant disregard for safety and collateral damage, the Israeli forces decided to take advantage of English and French interests in the area, and attack the Egyptians for sole control of the canal.”

The class shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The Great Wars had shown us that attacking one another, releasing all that carbon and lighting all those fires, only made the dragons more pernicious in their attacks. The non-aggression pacts that had been signed in the wake of World War II were tenuous, yes, but the literal threat of fire from on high was usually enough to keep rogue nations in line.

“The dragons responded in number,” Mr. Huffman said. His voice was low now, but the room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. “Like moths to a flame, they swept down across the British and French lines, making straight for the oil tankers which belched smoke into the sky above the canal. For the purposes of this exercise, dragon slayers, you are each charged with getting your own oil ship safely from Port Said, the back of the room, to Suez, which is the blackboard. When it is your turn, you tell me your move and I'll tell if you were successful. You will find the details of your ships or your species of dragon on the cards I am passing out now.”

We must have looked like idiots, gawking at him like that. Most of the kids were still confused as to the point of the exercise, having realized that this was a historical battle and we all knew the outcome already. I, on the other hand, had different concerns.

“But this wasn't a dragon battle,” I said. “Not really, anyway. The oil ships fought one another to get clear of the canal.”

At the back of the room, a couple of seniors who were repeating the class for better grades started to poke each other with pencils.

“You're right, they did,” Mr. Huffman said. “The dragons were able to pick off the ships one by one, and they're not even capable of higher brain function. It was a messy week for the Anglo-French troops and dragons slayers.”

“We need Pearson,” I said.

“You mean
you
need Pearson,” Sadie said in a quiet voice. My opinion of her rose a little bit just then. She clearly had a brain. She looked apologetically at Owen. “I might win if he doesn't show up.”

“Yes, you get Pearson,” Mr. Huffman said. “But by the time he shows up, half the boats are sunk and only a quarter of the dragons have been slayed. Every dragon slayer sitting behind Owen, you're dead. The four dragons at the back of the line are dead too. The rest of you, pick a surviving dragon slayer and pull up a chair.”