Owen Gardner is Losing It: A Woodvale Novella by Katie Cawood

Author:Katie Cawood [Cawood, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anonymous
Published: 2025-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter six

“Fireflies” by Owl City

“You look thirsty,” I said, twisting the cap off the Smirnoff and handing it to Beth. But as I bent over to pick up my own drink from the flimsy plastic chair where I’d put it, she frowned.

“Thank you, but I’m still working on the drink Xander made for me. I’m sorry.” She nodded toward the red cup on the hay bale behind her. “But I’ll drink this next.”

“Oh, okay.” I stood near the growing fire and gulped down my beer, hoping it could loosen me up and make it easier for me to talk to Beth. Because at the moment, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to her. Why was this so hard for me, when it came easily to guys like Xander?

As more and more people arrived, it started getting a little crowded around the fire, and soon I was surrounded by people I’d never seen beyond the walls of Woodvale High School. A couple of people questioned Xander on how he thought he was going to get away with throwing a party half a mile from his own house.

“Won’t your parents notice?” Davin Reedy asked.

“They don’t give a fuck,” Xander answered, stoking the fire with one hand, a red cup in the other. “I’m almost eighteen, anyway. Pretty soon they’ll have no control over me at all.”

He rattled on about how independent he was, stealing glances at Beth with every other sentence. It couldn’t be more obvious he was trying to impress her. I glanced Abigail’s direction to see how she was responding to all of this, but she was distracting herself by making a dandelion crown in the grass nearby. I sighed and turned back to Xander. He tilted his cup back before tossing it onto the fire, causing the flames to briefly shoot up higher. And, like clockwork, he turned to Beth to gauge her reaction.

He was supposed to be helping me lose my virginity that night, but his presence was more of a hindrance than anything.

The crowd around the fire had grown even more, with people seeking warmth as the night became increasingly chilly. “I can barely hear the music from my speaker,” Abigail complained, wiping the dirt off the back of her shorts. “I should just turn it off.” She threw her dandelion crown to the ground, having given up on that, too.

From the other side of the fire, someone said my name. “Owen.” I looked up to see Lena sitting on a hay bale beside Bailey, who was facing away from her, talking to some guy. “Isn’t this the song on your MySpace profile?”

I held my breath, as though that would somehow help me hear better. Sure enough, “Fireflies” by Owl City was playing up on the deck. “Yeah,” I said with a chuckle, meeting her gaze through the billowing smoke. “It is.”

“Noooo!” Beth protested, stomping her foot. With a smile, she rolled her eyes at me and said, “This song is so overplayed, and

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