The Story of Owen Read Online Free PDF Page B

unofficially of course, was that this was probably what karma had intended.

    Ever since the second week of September, when we had played at dragon slaying in history, Owen navigated the halls a bit less like he was completely lost. He had no problem making friends—not a big surprise—and every time I saw him, he looked more settled. We spent a lot of time together at school—with three classes in common we had little choice—but I was busy with music most evenings and weekends, so I didn’t see him outside of school. By the end of September, he was at least managing to get to class on time on a regular basis, but I could tell by the amount of red pen on his algebra homework that his schoolwork wasn’t going very well. I didn’t think it was my business, though, so I didn’t mention it. I figured that he probably had other things to worry about.
    Even though we still had a whole other year after this one before we would be out in the world, there were a lot of decisions to be made. I had made mine with my course selections: English was required, history was sure to be a good mark on my transcript, I needed music to live, and algebra was a compromise with my father for not taking any of the business or accounting classes on offer. Next semester I had drama, French, and two free periods that I had already negotiated with my music teacher to spend in the music room, working on extra projects for university applications that weren’t even due for another twelve months. I’m a planner, what can I say?
    But at the same time, I was also unsure. I knew I could get a degree in music, but I wasn’t sure what I’d do with it afterward. I loved composing, loved taking the streams of notes I saw around me and turning them into something that everyone else could hear, if I ever actually let another person listen to them, which I never did. But composition wasn’t really a high-paying job, unless I somehow managed to become John Williams, and while I didn’t mind the idea of teaching kids to play piano or training them with various band instruments, the idea of teaching at a high school made me want to hide under my bed.
    As far as I was concerned, Owen had it easy. He just had to get through high school and then everything was decided for him. When they turned eighteen and finished high school, all dragon slayers were conscripted into the international dragon slaying force, called the Pearson Oil Watch after the aforementioned Lester B. Pearson, who had come up with the treaties that made it possible. The slayers served all over the world, wherever there was oil or some other natural resource that was a tempting target to dragons. The idea was to make sure that the dragon slayers were loyal to their comrades and their jobs first, and their countries second. After their four-year term of service was up, they were welcome to take any contract they liked, as Lottie Thorskard had done, or to retire and start training someone else, as Owen’s father had tried to do before his sister’s injury.
    I suppose it crossed my mind from time to time that Owen might have appreciated a bit of freedom, or even that he was terrified of getting some sort of fiery death, but he never acted like it was something that kept him up at night. He had laughed with me, that first day, and seemed like a normal kid.Ever since then, though, he had been weirdly professional at school. I figured that he just wanted to keep his distance from his rapidly increasing group of fans, or maybe that he wanted to focus on his studies and his training. He didn’t owe Trondheim anything, after all, and there was a very real chance that after he left for his Oil Watch tour, we’d never see him again, except on the news when he did something brave enough to save people or to get himself killed.
    As October began and Thanksgiving weekend loomed, I had more or less resigned myself to someday being able to tell my