The Story of Owen by E. K. Johnston Read Free Book Online

the car.
    â€œAunt Hannah, this is Siobhan,” Owen said, waving at me with one hand and swinging his backpack up with the other. “From school.”
    â€œNice to meet you,” Hannah said, offering her hand.
    â€œHi, Ms.—uh,” I said, and then winced because I only realized after I said it that I didn’t actually know what Hannah’s last name was. “Thank you for letting Owen invite me over.”
    â€œHannah, please,” she said, and her smile let me know I hadn’t offended her. “MacRae-Thorskard is such a mouthful. And you are quite welcome.”
    â€œOwen!” said a voice from the house. I looked up and saw another woman standing on the porch, all of her weight on one leg. The most famous dragon slayer in North America. “You failed to mention the part where your friend was a girl.”
    â€œLottie,” Hannah said. “Be nice.”
    â€œWhere would be the fun in that?” Lottie said. I was, I imagine, quite pink, but I wasn’t anywhere as pink as Owen. Idecided that I liked her. She turned to me and raised an eyebrow at my car. “You drive that thing?”
    â€œI took all the classes,” I said defensively. My car wasn’t much to look at, but it was as safe as a carbon emitting vehicle could be. “I’m Siobhan. I helped him find his classes on the first day, and now I can’t seem to shake him.”
    â€œThat happens,” Hannah said, cutting off what I hoped wasn’t another disparaging remark about my car. Owen looked at me like I had betrayed him absolutely, but Lottie laughed, and the awkwardness passed. “Lottie and Aodhan wandered into my father’s smithy in 1985 and I haven’t been able to shake them either,” said Hannah. “You’re probably stuck with us.”
    â€œUs?” I said, momentarily confused. I couldn’t figure out why I would be stuck with all of them.
    â€œYou could have waited until dessert,” Lottie said to Hannah with a fond smile.
    â€œCome on in, Siobhan. This might take awhile to explain.”

DRIVER’S ED.
    Today, they tell you way too often in high school, is the first day of the rest of your life. It may also, if you decide to drive your car without taking driver’s ed, be the last day of your life. They like to really highlight that in the brochures.
    At the precise moment little Amelia was watching Lottie Thorskard plummet off the Burlington Skyway, I was standing in the driveway, gawking at the 1998 Toyota Corolla that my parents had bought me for my birthday. I was more than a little surprised, to be honest. I hadn’t expected them to trust me with a car so early in my relationship with driving.
    And yet there it was: four wheels, paint a color of greenish yellow not ever found in nature, late spring morning sun glinting off the windshield. My very own car.
    â€œGo ahead and say it,” my mother said. She has a healthy sense of the morbid, which I’d been told that her healthy sense of the morbid was typical of someone in the medical profession. I came by it honestly.
    â€œYou don’t love me enough to buy me a hybrid?” I asked. They’d probably had this conversation themselves and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know the details. To be perfectly honest, I was less than concerned with my own mortality at this particular moment. I was already wondering how fast my car could go.
    â€œDon’t press your luck,” said my father. “Just make sure you always follow a truck and the dragon will go for it instead of you.”
    â€œDo you love me enough to pay for driver’s ed?” I asked.
    â€œNope,” said Mum with a careless smile. “You’re on your own for that too.”
    â€œI did make French toast, though,” Dad offered, as though that would save me from a fiery death on some deserted roadside.
    â€œBest. Birthday. Ever,” I declared, and we went