Over the Wall: A Collection of Short Stories (NaNoWriMo 2014)

Day 9: Resident Logan and Rory

Note: This is dedicated to oblivions for all her help during NaNoWriMo :)

They had been sitting in silence for a while, not awkward silence, just silence. A little while ago they had been sitting within a whole group of people also working on their articles but now everyone else had been approved and they were still there. In a way it was like each was alone but just happened to be sitting across from another person who was also alone.

This was actually an improvement for Owen and Casey, the guy and girl sitting alone but across from each other. Usually it was awkward silence or they would try to make conversation with too much awkward eye contact or Casey would feel awkward and talk to much and Owen would sit there, cool and collected. Awkward was a usual feeling for them. At least for Casey, less so for Owen.

He had once been an awkward, nerdy, guy but then he had come out from his friend’s, Keith, who had transferred to a different high school, shadow and become the baseball star. Suddenly he went from the awkward kid with an awkward haircut and a voice that still cracked to the guy all the girls loved to flirt with. Except for Casey. Her purpose in life was to keep Owen’s ego as small as possible and to keep him in his proper place.

Owen never told her how much he appreciated having someone do that, even if sometimes he felt she didn’t let him be proud of anything he did, no matter how reasonable pride would be in that purpose. He had told her one time, though, that she should stay an asshole because it was weird when she wasn’t. Especially since usually when she was nice to him it was because she needed something.

But don’t let this fool you. In a way, Owen and Casey were really good friends. They had known each other for six years, since the sixth grade. At the time, Owen was still nerdy and Casey was just becoming the sarcastic being she is today. Well, she was sarcastic but not quite in her putting-people-in-their-place stage. At that point in their relationship they were the more conventional version of friends.

That changed when they got to middle school. That’s when Owen became friends with Keith and that’s when Casey tried, unsuccessfully, to break away from the image of the girls she’d known since kindergarten. She asked them and herself many times “aren’t we supposed to go our separate ways a little bit? Meet new people?” but they were all determined to stay close, no matter how little each of them liked each other.

This was sort of the era of no talking for Owen and Casey. Owen started dating all the friends in her little “group” while Casey had no interest in dating. She saw no need for the awkwardness that could settle between two friends who decided to date, had no phone to communicate with any boys, and found the way relationships were created at that age closer to arranged marriages than actual relationships.

She wouldn’t care about dating until the eleventh grade, a year after Owen decided that dating was too formal and too much work.

At first Owen had thought Casey’s reasonings for not dating were ridiculous and would gladly say it was because no one wanted to date her. Then he saw that when Casey wanted to be agreeable, she could be. The reason for her single-ness, at least at that time, was because she ridiculed and nagged everyone who tried when they acted a certain way. He did have to admit that sometimes she was right and that guy was a pompous douchebag but other times he thought she just did it for sport.

He was wrong in that regard, it was actually more of a defense mechanism.

But by the time they were in the tenth grade, and Owen had serial dated every girl he had known for years plus all of that girl’s friends, he realized that he had no interest in trying to keep a girl’s interest by jumping through hoops. All they wanted from a relationship was being able to tell their friends about what he had done and basically for him to act like a Ken doll. For the first time he envied Casey’s love life.

Casey had “talked” to a few, a few as in a few not a few as in a lot, over the years but never dated anyone. Of course it was slightly awkward with the guys she had “talked” to it was nothing compared to Owen having to listen to all his ex-girlfriends talk about him with their friends, who, more often than not, were also one of his ex-girlfriends. It was horrible.

So, he gave up dating. At least officially. Due to his late birthday he couldn’t drive until almost their senior year but it didn’t stop him from having casual flirtations with girls from other schools, ones who weren’t friends with someone he dated. Or friends with Casey, for that matter. She would kill him if he did. She never directly said it but he knew she disapproved with how he acted, no matter what he did.

That brings us to this year, their senior year. They both had joined the school newspaper junior year and had earned themselves the title of the “Resident Logan and Rory,” which came from the characters Logan Huntzberger and Lorelai “Rory” Gilmore from the show Gilmore Girls. They both hated it because in the show, Logan and Rory were a couple and were almost engaged. They may be almost friends but they were definitely not close to dating.

The nickname itself came mostly from the fact that both Owen and Casey were on the paper, Logan and Rory were both on the staff of the Yale Daily News, and that when Logan and Rory first met, Logan was an overconfident playboy and Rory was more naive but not gullible enough to fall for Logan’s charms and had no problem telling him so. Everyone thought this was exactly like Owen and Casey, which was a little too close to the truth for them.

They both had mixed feelings for graduation, even though, as always, the peanut gallery had already pegged them for different reactions. Their friends had decided that Owen would be rich and single for much of his life and would not marry so no one would take his money. This was in fact a plan Owen had come up for himself.

This was another reason Owen was like Logan. Although he worked at the paper he had little interest in it and felt great pressure from his family, particularly his father, to fulfill his potential. Other than the fact that Logan had a sister an Owen was an only child, this was right on target.

The peanut gallery had Casey pegged as the person who would basically say “see ya suckers!” on graduation day and never speak to them ever again, if she could help it. This was also pretty on target. Casey had spent all her time at school grouped with the same girls whom she did not like and they did not like her back. She longed to have a new start with new people. She didn’t want to do it as harshly as everyone said she would but the general idea was the same.

Like Rory, she also wanted to be a writer but hadn’t decided in what field she would go for. She feared that when she got to college someone she went to high school with would be there. She had decided that if it was anyone, it would be Owen. The universe hated her like that.

She didn’t actually hate Owen. She was just tired of his cockiness and having to be the only one who didn’t fawn over him. She was tired of having to be mean. She liked getting along with him but she felt like if she wasn’t the mean one, who would be? She liked and got along with him when his ego was kept at bay and there were no guarantees he could control it himself. Besides they both had different directions they wanted to go in life.

To put it simply: he was going to be rich and she was going to be happy.

It is not yet known whether or not Owen and Casey achieve what they want. But that’s okay. For now all they have to worry about their articles. No need to worry about the other person or anyone else. They’re okay with just sitting there in their comfortable silence.