I Heart Band by Michelle Schusterman Page A

Carefully, he divided the cards up into two stacks. Then he held one stack out to me.
    â€œUm, Owen?” I said, eyeing the cards. “I thought you were going to help me with science.”
    â€œI am!” He set the cards down on my book. I picked up the top one and examined it. These weren’t the same cards from lunch, although at first glance, they could’ve been. The first one had a picture that kind of looked like one of the cell illustrations in our textbook, except it was floating in what I was pretty sure was supposed to be a witch’s cauldron. I flipped the card over.
    Â 
    CENTRIOLE
    Pair of organelles found in animal cells
    Â 
    There was a whole bunch of other stuff written on it, none of which I understood. I looked at Owen uncertainly.
    â€œOkay, say you play that card first.” He took it from me and placed it on the table. “My turn.” He held up a card with a picture of a long, curved blade chopping an onion. I raised my eyebrows.
    â€œRemember the onion skin lab we did?” Owen asked.
    â€œYeah . . .”
    â€œSo is an onion a plant or an animal?” I glared at him without answering, and he laughed. “Okay, so I have a plant cell, and you have a centriole. Are there centrioles in plant cells?”
    Okay . . . Owen was nice, but maybe he was kind of insane, too. I looked at my centriole card again. “It says it’s in animal cells. So . . . no?”
    â€œRight!” He slid his onion card next to my card. “So you win that hand. But if I’d picked this one”—he waved a card with a mouse wearing a wizard’s hat on it—“then I would’ve won. Get it?”
    â€œSort of.” I narrowed my eyes. “So hang on—you let me win?”
    Owen shrugged. “Just this hand, to show you how—”
    â€œDon’t do that anymore.” I sat up straight, shuffling through my cards. “Okay, let’s play.”
    Ten minutes later, this game was actually starting to make sense. After a while, I was kind of rocking it.
    â€œHa.” I slapped down a card with a leaf triumphantly. “I’ll take that chloroplast card, thank you very much. What?” Owen looked like he was trying not to laugh.
    â€œNothing.” He grinned. “Just . . . I bet you really hate losing, don’t you?”
    I rolled my eyes. “Does anyone
like
it? Who wants to be a loser?”
    â€œLike it or not, everyone’s a loser at some point.” Owen tossed his cards down, glancing at the clock. “Want to take a break? We could play a video game.”
    I was startled to realize we’d been playing for way over an hour. Mr. Gordon was probably heating up the grill for fajitas right now, while Julia and Natasha painted each other’s nails. I pushed that image out of my mind.
    â€œYeah, sure.”
    â€œWhich one?” Owen asked, kneeling down next to the stacks of shoe boxes.
    â€œDoesn’t matter.”
    He glanced at me, but didn’t say anything. I picked up one of the cards and examined it while Owen put in a game and plugged in the controllers.
    â€œOwen, did you make these?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWhy? And what’s with all the dragons and swords and stuff?”
    He turned on the TV and plopped back down next to me. “Last year I had Mr. Adams for history—did you?” I shook my head. “His class was really hard. I failed two tests in a row because I couldn’t keep all the dates and names straight. My mom kept saying it was ridiculous that I couldn’t remember who was president during World War I, but I have all seventeen of the forbidden spells memorized. From Warlock,” Owen explained, handing me a controller. “So I made a card game for history, kind of based off that game. I think part of the reason I can remember all that stuff in Warlock is the pictures. I thought it might help you,