Chapter 1: Not an Extra

This chapter is mostly Owen deciding that everyone around him is performing for someone's camera. He has been wrong about this world before, and he would still rather be wrong than hopeful. What stays with me is the last beat: he turns the girl down flat, rides home, and the candy is still in his pocket. He kept it. That feels like something, even if Owen would call it candy and nothing else.
Would you have kept it, or thrown it away?
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