“He was there. He was on the ride, in the cart, when his dad walked out of it, stepped out to the edge, and jumped. He killed himself right there in front of Owen. And the Harper boys have been ruined ever since,” she says, and I can’t help but hurt a little thinking of Owen as a little boy. I wonder what he was like then. And I wonder if Willow’s right—if he would have been different, wouldn’t have kicked rocks at me or would have helped me carry my things inside if he hadn’t been damaged.
“They’re not ruined,” Ryan finally says. “Owen’s a good guy. He just has to trust you; that’s all.”
“You’re just saying that because he’s on the basketball team with you. You have to say that because he’s so good,” Willow says.
“Yeah, he’s good. But honestly? He’s always been pretty decent to me. Maybe I’ve just never labeled him though,” Ryan says. I take note of the hint of disappointment in his tone over how Willow is talking about Owen, and it makes me wonder where the truth lies.
“He has an arrest record,” Willow says, a little defensively.
“Fuck, Will, so do I! Half this school has some sort of something on their record. We drive too fast, we get caught at parties with beer, we steal shit from the convenience store. It’s what we do because there’s shit-squat to do out here,” Ryan says, standing and kissing Elise on the head. “I’m just saying maybe we’re all a little fucked up, and the only difference is the world knows Owen’s story, because it happened out in the open. The rest of us…we all just keep our shit private.”
Elise doesn’t add anything to Ryan’s speech, but she looks at her boyfriend with a sort of reverence when he speaks. With trays in their hands, they slide from the table together, leaving just Willow and me now to finish the story.
“I guess Ryan’s sort of right,” she says, slipping her backpack over her shoulders and nudging me to do the same so we’re not late for class. “But…I don’t know, Kens. That guy? He has some extra crap going on. He lives on the edge, like he doesn’t have fear or something. I’ve heard he’s played that game, Russian roulette…you know, where people take turns holding a gun up to their heads with only one bullet inside? He does that at parties. I don’t think that’s normal, do you?”
I shake my head no when she asks. No, that’s not normal. And I think I knew the first time I looked into his eyes that there was nothing normal about Owen Harper. But what scares me is I had this flash of an idea—a fleeting thought—that there was something special about him, too.
When I dump my trash and stack my tray, I hold the door for Willow to walk through. I sneak one final look to the courtyard outside. Owen’s hand has finally dropped from the girl’s arm, and he and a group of five other guys and girls are walking away—away from the school completely.
He’s wearing gray jeans, black Doc Martens, and a tight black, long-sleeved shirt that fits his frame perfectly. From a distance, he’s a shadow. I don’t know about the wild theory. But Owen Harper is definitely dark.
And he sleeps thirty feet away from me.
Chapter 3
Why did he bother to show up at all? Why did he leave after lunch? Why did he miss his classes on the first day of school?
Who did that?
I can’t quit thinking about what Willow said. Ditching classes, three at least as far as I could tell from his absence during roll call in science, and flaunting his make-out sessions aren’t exactly things I would consider wild. But that last thing she said—about playing roulette with a loaded gun—I couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around that. It frightened me, and it made me dread going home, being near someone who could do that.
Mom was working the late shift at the hospital, and Dad wouldn’t be home until late in the evening, so I was going to experience my first ride on the country-bumpkin bus. It’s really more suburban than that, but compared to the city, where transportation options are waiting around every corner, this feels like I’m waiting for the tractor pull to swing by to give me a lift.
Willow’s car slows at the curb next to me, and her honk makes me jump. “Hey, what are you doing?”
She asks a lot of obvious questions.
“Well, maybe my powers of deductive reasoning are flawed, but I was assuming that this was the place where one waited to take the bus home. You see, there’s this sign here,” I say, tapping my fingertips on the metal sign that reads BUS STOP. “Then, there was this gathering of students all in some sort of line-type formation. So I thought…”