Reality Check

One Last Time

Toynbee Tiles (by The Scary Jokes)

"There once was a time when we walked crooked lines, but that's all over now. I'll walk with you into the blue . . ."

___

For some reason, it was taking Owen a long time to fall asleep.

It had been about an hour since everyone else had gone to sleep. Underneath the wooden roof of the cabin, the pounding of the rain seemed louder than ever, drowning out even the sounds of crickets. He flipped over onto his back for what must've been the dozenth time, wishing he could get some sleep already. Usually it never took him this long.

He slowly breathed in through his nose, placing both of his hands on his stomach. He was laying in a hammock, which he had to admit, was a really cool thing for Toby to have in his cabin. He'd never slept in a hammock before, and it made him excited. Well, only at first. Now he was missing his comfortable bed at home.

The gentle rocking of the hammock should've drawn him to sleep, but when an hour passed and Owen still wasn't able to doze off, his excitement had worn off. There was only one hammock in the room, so everyone else was scattered around the floor in sleeping bags, and Kara hadn't moved from the couch.

All of his friends had seemingly gone to sleep much faster than him. Why couldn't Owen? Maybe it was because of the loudness of the rain, or because he was still feeling a great deal of shame about today. He felt like all of his friends were distancing themselves from him, and that hurt more than anything else in the world.

Owen hadn't meant to make Bethany feel bad about her powers not working. He'd only been trying to help, but it seemed that she was mad at him too, because she had yelled at him. He'd had thousands of occurrences where Bethany was mad at him for messing up badly, but he could tell that her anger was deeper now. She must've been really mad at him for what had happened earlier.

Not only that, but Owen felt like he couldn't do anything to help his friends. He helped in any way he could, which was to spout information from books, but every time he did it seemed like his friends didn't listen. And he knew that was probably just an insecurity that he was having, but it really did seem that way when everyone was pushing him away.

They all were still feeling bad from going through their worst fears. Owen understood it if they blamed him, because who wouldn't? It seemed like every time he messed up, his friends blamed him. It happened constantly, except this time, it was a much bigger mess-up. Too big to easily come back from.

It wasn't hard to tell that his friends were upset with him. Even Kara, Owen could tell, had been kind of ignoring him all night. For a long time before bed, he'd glanced over at her, wanting to talk to her and laugh like they used to. But he didn't know how. It felt like there was a barrier between him and his friends. Even when they were in the same room.

Owen couldn't deny he was blaming himself a lot for what had happened, and figured that everyone else was blaming him, too. That was another reason he took it to heart when no one tried talking to him, except for Gwen, who was the only person he'd talked to before bed.

She'd given him a hug, assuring him that everyone just needed their alone time and would be back to normal soon. He'd hugged her back, trying his best to believe her. But it was hard to when some of his closest friends were ignoring him. Even Bethany and Kiel had been outside for the longest time, probably wanting space from Owen.

So he'd give them space. He'd give them time to feel better, but he wasn't going to keep hoping that they'd forgive him so easily. He found himself wondering if he'd done anything wrong at all. They'd had to take the stone so they could use it's powers; that was why they'd gone to the cave. But it seemed like they looked past that and blamed Owen instead.