One Night with Sole Regret 5 Tie Me

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because even thinking about the Mitchells brought him joy.
Tell me about Owen, she said, her hand tightening on his. I was homeschooled by the best
tutors money could buy, so I never got to be around anyone my own age until I became an adult. Piano
isn t a team sport. More than anything, I would have liked to have had a childhood friend.
Your family must be very wealthy, he said quietly.
I never wanted for anything as a child, she said. Except affection.
Kellen hadn t had a surplus of either wealth or affection. His grandfather had been an important
part of his youth, but he d been old and age had done terrible things to his memory. He hadn t lived
long after they d put him in a nursing home for his safety. Grandfather simply hadn t thrived away
from the brushy wilderness he loved to wander. It was as if taking him away from his land made him
give up on life. It wasn t long after his grandfather had passed that Kellen had met Owen. It was as if
destiny had known how much Kellen would need him in the coming years.
Living in the middle of nowhere, I didn t have any close friends as a child either, Kellen said.
I met Owen on the first day of seventh grade. We d gone to different elementary schools, but they
bused us to the same junior high. I was hoping for a fresh start. New school. Only half the kids there
would know where I came from. Even then, no one would sit next to the poor kid who d done a really
bad job of trying to cut his own hair the night before, and no one would let the pudgy kid in orange
and white horizontal stripes sit next to them. So Owen had no choice but to sit next to me. He d given
my bad haircut one long look, but he never said anything. He never made fun of me like the other kids
did. Owen sat next to me on the bus every day for a week and we didn t say a word to each other. We
had the same lack of popularity at lunch and sat at the same table, both trying to be invisible, because
when you re thirteen, invisible is better than being noticed for being different.
Dawn squeezed his hand. Thirteen is an awful age. So I guess you two finally started talking to
each other. Or do you still just sit in silence, trying to be invisible?
Kellen chuckled. We started talking after his mother stood up for me in the principal s office.
Principal s office? Were you a troublemaker?
I only made trouble when I couldn t ignore it any more. And there s just something in Owen so
pure and good that I wanted to preserve it. I hated that those assholes would walk up behind him in
the cafeteria and squeal like pigs as they shoved him against the table. I hated how they treated him
far more than I hated how they made fun of my clothes, my shoes, my haircut, and the trailer I lived in
with my mother and her welfare check. Owen had never done a mean thing to anyone in his life.
Where I came from didn t matter to him, and he wasn t upset that he was forced to sit next to me on
the bus and at lunch. He seemed grateful.
So a week after we started hanging out in silence, Owen s sitting there across the cafeteria
table from me, minding his own business as usual, and this fucking asshole, Jasper Barnes, picks up
Owen s chocolate pudding cup and smashes it into his chest. You still going to eat that shit? he said.
I bet you will, Piggie. Lick it off. Eat your own shit, Piggie. And then he starts making those pig-
squeal sounds.
That s so mean.
I was pissed, not going to deny it, but I probably would have just sat there and tried not to
watch, grateful it wasn t me being targeted. Then Owen lifted his head and he looked at me. I saw the
shame in his eyes. Shame. What the fuck did he have to be ashamed of? That fucking bully was the
one who should have been ashamed. When Owen started to clean the pudding off his shirt with a
napkin, I fucking lost it. I was a scrawny kid and didn t have a chance against a big jock like Jasper
Barnes, so I went after him with my fork. I didn t even get the chance to stab him with it before the
teachers pulled me off him. I got suspended for using a weapon at school and later got my ass kicked
by that bully and half the defensive line of the football team, but it was worth it because Owen started
talking to me after that. Actually, he hasn t shut up since.
Kellen smiled as he thought about Owen s ceaseless prattle. He was definitely a talker. And
something about sitting in the dark with Dawn O Reilly made Kellen a talker too.
I m glad you became friends. I can tell he means a lot to you.
I d die for him. I don t say that lightly. Owen s always saying how I saved him by protecting
him from the bullying, but he saved me a thousand times over. No telling where I d be today if it
wasn t for him and his family. He didn t see the dirt-poor bastard that everyone else in town saw. He
never judged me based on my mother s poor choices. Owen just saw me. It didn t bother him that his
mom gave me his older brother s hand-me-downs. Owen said great things like, You have no idea
how glad I am that I don t have to try to squeeze into Chad s old clothes anymore and I can t believe
my mom gave you socks and underwear for your birthday. The woman is so embarrassing. The
woman is a saint, is what she is. I hit my growth spurt in eighth grade and if it hadn t been for Janine,
I d have been wearing high-waters and ripping the seams out of my Spiderman T-shirt.
Did Owen realize that his mom was helping you?
He never said anything, but he had to have known. Everyone knew that I d never met my father [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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