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knows about Pearson,” I told him.
    â€œYeah, but Mr. Huffman didn’t make him part of the game. He waited until you brought him up.” He stopped at his locker and I continued down the hall to where mine was.
    I collected the books I would need for the weekend from my locker. I wondered briefly if I should sign the bari out for the weekend as well, if only to prevent someone else from getting it, but regardless of how much I liked the sax, I knew that it was just for fun. I needed to focus on the piano and my compositions over the weekend. If nothing else, it kept my parents from re-starting the university talk.
    â€œShall we?” I said when Owen showed up with his bag over one shoulder. Now that I was pretty sure we were friends, I decided I should probably be friendlier. Probably. Owen had a sense of humor, and it wouldn’t kill me to try to be funny every now and then. I led the way into the parking lot, which was full of students doing their best not to maim one another in their rush to get home for the weekend. “I just want to drop my books at home on the way.”
    â€œOr you could bring them and we could do the algebra together,” he said. “And maybe the English.”
    â€œYou really know how to show a girl a good time,” I said, but to be honest, the idea of not having to do my homework alone and getting most of it out of the way on Friday was kind of appealing. No wonder I was boring.
    â€œHey, being a dragon slayer isn’t all glamour and commercial endorsements,” he said. I had the key in the driver’s side door, and I hesitated before I turned it. He must have seen me, though, because after we got into the car, he turned to me and said, “Aunt Lottie is a lot like me. And she knew before the first day she started training that she’d probably get injured or killed fighting dragons. It’s what we do. You can talk to her about it. It’s not like she’s traumatized.”
    â€œShe fell off the Burlington Skyway,” I said, as the engine turned over and began to hum. “That’s kind of traumatic.”
    â€œYeah, but she spent her whole life preparing for something like that,” he said. “She’s not emotionally bereft. She no longer has to risk life and limb on a daily basis, and all it cost her was a limp and the distinction of being the highest-paid dragon slayer of all time.”
    â€œWhen you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad,” I admitted, pulling carefully out of the spot. I didn’t really relax until we were on the street. Mum and Dad had been worried that my having a car would make me isolated on the road and more vulnerable to dragon attacks on account of the carbon emissions, but honestly I was more concerned that I would kill one of my classmates in the parking lot because they weren’t looking where they were going.
    Owen’s house was surrounded by cedar trees, which blocked it from view if you were on the road, but also provided a lot of material for burning if a dragon ever decided the house looked tempting. Inside the cedar hedge, the two-acre lot was almost entirely free of grass. To the side of the house there was a shed with a wide doorway and a nerve-wracking amount of smoke issuing from the chimney. As we pulled in, however, thesmoke thinned, and I knew that the fire inside the shed must have been banked.
    â€œAunt Hannah’s work shed,” Owen explained, off my nervous expression. I felt kind of stupid, because I’d forgotten until that moment that Hannah was a sword-smith and made swords for her wife, brother-in-law, and nephew. “She knows what she’s doing.”
    I parked the car and killed the engine just as Hannah came out of the shed. She was quite tall, and had very broad shoulders. She smiled when she saw us, only a slight facial tick indicating her surprise that her nephew had brought home a girl instead of a boy, and we got out of