The Story of Owen by E. K. Johnston Page A

to their profession.”
    â€œIn theory, yes,” Mr. Huffman said. “But how many dragon slayers have you ever heard of who went to a country other than their own home after their tour in the Oil Watch was concluded?”
    There was a long silence. I racked my brain, trying to think if I’d ever heard of anyone doing that. From habit, I looked at Owen, figuring he’d know if anyone did. There was a very strange expression on his face, and I felt the overwhelming urge to change the subject as quickly as possible.
    â€œWhy should we bother with moving the hatching grounds?” I said. “Why don’t we just weaponize mosquitoes?”
    â€œThat, Miss McQuaid, is an excellent idea,” Mr. Huffman said. “I can’t believe no one has ever thought of that before.”
    The class laughed, and the discussion meandered back in the general direction of the original topic. I looked at Owen again. His eyes were still strained, but his face had relaxed a little bit. When he made eye contact with me, he gave me the ghost of a smile and turned toward the front of the room.
    By the time the bell rang, Owen was back to his old self, and he ended up heading for the cafeteria with Sadie while I went to the music room for lunch. We’d reached a wordless impasse on that topic. Owen would eat with the popular kids, and then come and watch me poke at the piano for whatever was left of lunch period. I can’t imagine that it was very interesting, and I know it confused the hell out of Sadie, with whom I now seemed to speak about subjects other than schoolwork on a daily basis. I guessed she was operating under the “enemiescloser” theory of high school politics, which I found exhausting. Fortunately, she turned out to have decent taste in music, so at least we had something to talk about instead of awkwardly not talking about Owen. Sadie asked endless questions about my sword training with Lottie and even took to calling me in the evenings, which my parents viewed as an immense success. More important than my newfound quasi-popularity, both Owen and Sadie understood that if I was in the middle of a song, I was not to be bothered. They never interrupted me when I was on a roll.
    I’d spent most of the month trying my hand at various members of the brass family. The trumpet was first, and while I could manage it well enough, I decided that it was entirely too yellow for the music I wanted to play. I spent a long time with the euphonium, which was similar in sound to the bari sax and usually got the same part in band arrangements. I gave it up in the end, though, because it was so similar to the bari, and therefore wrong for the same reasons. We had a piccolo trumpet that I knew would be wrong before I picked it up, but I was tempted by the range anyway and gave it a go. It was a fluorescent disaster. I ruled out the tuba as too comical and too difficult to feature, and the trombone for being too stretchy, after only a few days of playing them.
    I feel I should mention here that I was by no stretch of the imagination competent at any of these instruments. I could make them make noise, and after a couple of days, I could make them make noise on key, but I lacked any finesse. I didn’t even take any of them home to practice, not because I didn’t want to carry them to my car, but because I wanted to play them exclusively in soundproof rooms where no one could hear memaking a fool of myself trying to play something I was new at. I did have my pride.
    The day Mr. Huffman told us about Scotland was the day I cracked open the case with the French horn in it. I’d left it until last because I knew it was the hardest in terms of technique, but as soon as I picked it up, I knew that I was a little bit in love with it. Even if it was wrong for the music I wanted to play, and even if I never got past the “distressed duck” stage of playing it, I loved its coils and slides, the way