Page 12 of Owen Gardner is Losing It

“You don’t even know how badly this makes me want to become a vegetarian,” she said. “But I tried that when I was going to ISU last semester, and I barely lasted a week.”

I sat the chick I was holding back down on the ground. “You were going to ISU?”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “But I had to drop out in January for… reasons. So for now, I’m helping my Uncle Boomer at the store.”

I was dying to know what those “reasons” for dropping out were, but if she wanted me to know, she would have elaborated. “What’s your major?”

“General Studies. What’s yours going to be, Frodo? Let me guess—female anatomy?”

“No,” I answered, grinning down at the ground. I held the smile for a moment, remembering that Abigail told me girls liked my dimples. I needed to learn to use that to my advantage. “I’m still undecided. Something in the science field, probably. Or education.”

“You want to teach?”

“I might,” I said, sticking my hands in my back pockets. “I actually, uh, tutor elementary school students now.”

I had hoped that would make her swoon the way Abigail and Xander assumed, but she was too busy swapping out the chick in her hands for another, clicking her tongue at them.

Outside, I could hear car doors closing. Beth heard them, too. “Should we head back to the cabin?”

“Yeah.” I held the door to the henhouse open for her, regretting the fact I hadn’t taken this opportunity alone with her to impress her more, or even make a move. But at least I knew a little bit more about her.

The blast of cooler air when we stopped out of there felt nice. Around the back of the cabin, Xander was throwing some big sticks into his grandparents’ fire pit. The sun was just barely peeking through the trees at the edge of the property, casting an orange glow on the six or seven cars that were now parked on the side of the gravel driveway. I couldn’t see Abigail, but I could hear a Arctic Monkeys song drifting from her speaker somewhere.

As Beth and I made our way onto the porch to retrieve our drinks from inside, I stopped when I spotted Lena Brower over near Xander’s grandparents’ wicker rocking chairs. She was standing next to her friend, Bailey, who was on the phone.

She noticed me at the same time. “Hey, Owen.”

I held the door open for Beth, but I didn’t follow her inside. For a fraction of a second, I hesitated, knowing that if I didn’t keep an eye on Beth, Xander was likely to swoop in and charm her somehow. But I couldn’t ignore Lena, and I didn’t want to, either. “Oh, good, you made it,” I said before turning to Beth. “I’ll be in there in a sec.”

I made my way over to Lena at the other end of the porch. Clutching her purse to her side, she tossed her head to get her dark hair out of her face as I approached. Though she didn’t wear a lot of make-up to school, her lips were an orangey-red color, and her eyelashes somehow looked longer tonight. Herfreckles, my favorite thing about her, were less obvious under a layer of make-up, but the darker ones still popped.

Lena was one of those girls who was so goddamn pretty but didn’t know it. If I weren’t actively trying to end the night with another girl, I probably would have let her know how good she looked. But instead, I just gave her a smile and shoved my hands in my pockets, asking, “Did I miss anything in history today?”

Lena winced. “Yeah. A pop quiz.”

My mouth fell open.Fuck.“What? You’re kidding me.”

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she said with a laugh. With both hands, she played with the ends of her hair on one side. Bailey turned her back to us, fully engrossed in whatever the person on the phone was telling her. “It was an easy A, too.”

“Damn it,” I muttered. I had a perfect grade in history–and this was certainly going to mess that up. Not only that, but my chemistry test didn’t go very well that day, either. I spaced out the entire time, staring at the wordisotopefor so long it didn’t even look like a real word anymore. And that was Xander’s fault, too, for making me leave school to smoke with him in the first place. “I wonder if I can make it up on Monday.”

“Probably. I told Mr. Thompson about your ‘migraine.’” With a smile, she made air quotes with her fingers. “Where did you and Xander go, anyway? Boomer’s?”

“Where else?” I asked, a little ashamed. She didn’t seem like the type of girl to skip class to hang out at Boomer’s. I’d never even seen her there after school, come to think of it. “Xander can be very persuasive.”

“Is he persuasive, or are you just a pushover?” she asked with a grin. This was the type of playful insult she often threw at me, always leaving me to wonder whether she was flirting or just thought I was a moron.

“Probably a mixture of both,” I chuckled out.

Lena licked her lips. “How’s tutoring going?”

“Oh, I love it.” A sliver of sunlight started blinding me, so when Bailey stepped off the porch to continue her phone call around the side of the house, I stole her spot next to Lena. “I’m actually a little sad the school year’s almost over, because I’m going to miss all the kids. Some of them might not even need me next year. They’ve come such a long way.” Was I talking too much? I couldn’t stop. “I just love seeing how much more confident they are once it all clicks.”

Lena’s head tilted to the side. “Aw,” she said, twirling her hair with one hand now. “You did so well with the reading buddy kids last year, too—remember how they all begged you to come back?”

I laughed, remembering how a few of us from the student council went to Grissom Elementary to read to some first graders last year. It was nothing short of chaotic. “Those kids were insane.”

“I was, like, chopped liver compared to you. You’re so good with kids. You’re going into education, right?”

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