The Literary Misadventures of Juniper Rosewood

1- Homogeneous from a Distance

Circe smirked at me from across the exam hall. It took a lot for me not to start laughing as her head was abruptly turned back to face the front by the peeved teacher who was overseeing the exam. I hid my snigger in the sleeve of my cardigan and continued to construct an unnecessarily complicated equation on the paper in front of me.

She and I had been friends for as long as I could remember. Though we were different, our personalities certainly complimented each other greatly. Circe was a fury, wild and untameable. She was the sort of person you could imagine running through a forest barefoot at two in the morning, red hair snagging on branches as she went. I was a little more reserved, although just as untameable. I was the sort of person who might bake cookies at two in the morning so that when her best friend trudged through the door, barefoot and sopping wet after yet another woodland excursion, she would at least have something to eat. I honestly felt sorry for our parents.

The exam finished without much consequence, and all of the students in the hall were dismissed to roam the corridors.

"Juni!" I heard Circe calling to me from the other side of the corridor. I hurried over to her, grinning like a fool.

"You look as though you had fun," I said, and she cast me an accusatory glare.

"You know I didn't study. I'm completely sure that I flunked it, actually. Unlike you, I bet."

"Quite." Circe rolled her eyes at me, presumably angry with me for having the sheer audacity to study. "I'm hungry," I said.

"You're always hungry," She replied, but she dragged me towards the canteen anyway.

The queue was too long, but we waited in it anyway, eventually emerging with unfortunately soggy slices of pizza. We sat down at the same table we always did, right next to the window. When the crowd had thinned and half of our pizzas were eaten, we were joined by Ingrid.

"How'd it go?" She asked Circe, but she was met with a scowl and an annoyed sigh. "That bad, huh?" She tossed the remark at me. I shrugged and smiled.

"Where are the others?" I asked.

"Still stuck in the queue," Ingrid said through a mouthful of pasta.

Our group of friends was not large, but we were all exceedingly close. While Circe would always be my best friend, Ingrid, Preston, Rashid and Emma were some of the people dearest to my heart. The other three made their way over to the table. Preston slid down the bench, sitting next to me. Emma sat next to him, and Rashid joined Ingrid and Circe on the other side of the table.

"Did you ace it?" I asked Preston, and he grinned widely at me.

"What do you think?" He replied with a cocky smirk.

"Stop rubbing it in," Circe said, pushing her head back against the glass behind her. Preston was by far the smartest in our year, if not the entire school. And he wasn't modest about it either, but only Circe begrudged him for that.

"What about you?" Rashid asked me.

"I don't think I did too badly," I said, but Circe rolled her eyes.

"Didn't do too badly, she says, when we all know she crushed it just as hard as Preston did,"

"Stop wallowing," Emma said. She had always been abrupt and callous, but none of us held it against her. In fact, it was sometimes a refreshing break from Ingrid's gossip, Circe's half-mocking cynicism, Rashid's endless poetics, and Preston's overbearing intelligence. I vaguely wondered if I had any qualities that my friends secretly begrudged. I supposed I must have, but they had not yet been brought to my attention.

As I was swept up in my wave of thoughts, Ingrid started on some story of how Dalton James had made yet another epic conquest at a party last weekend. His name registered vaguely in the back of my mind. He was the most popular, sought after boy at school. There's always one. Perfect sportsmanship, perfect looks, and a perfect brooding attitude to boot. Dalton was that one at our school. I turned around, my eyes settling on where he sat, surrounded by a gaggle of Stella Hodges's cheerleaders, and his football friends. I turned my attention then back to Ingrid as she continued with her story. Dalton and his cohort had always amused me. They all seemed so homogeneous from a distance. I'm sure if I got to know any of them, I'd find them as multifaceted as any of my friends, but I really didn't want to go to the trouble.

Ingrid was snapping her fingers in front of my eyes, pulling me out of my daze.

"Juniper, pay attention, you spacey fish-stick," She said. I gawped at her.

"You always have the most creative insults," Rashid said amusedly.

"Thank you," Ingrid smiled, a small blush blossoming on her cheeks. Between them, Circe rolled her eyes.

"Get a room," She said, even though nothing even vaguely romantic had happened. Rashid flipped her off, before standing up with his lunch and swapping sides on the table so that he could sit next to Ingrid. He kissed her shoulder gently, and I swore I could have heard Circe gag.

"Come off it, Circe," I said, "I think they're sweet."

"Yes, well, not all of us are disgustingly hopeless romantics like you," She said, jokingly. But then I realised that my peevish quality was how much of a sap I was. I laughed.

Lunch ended, but not before my friends and I had the chance to mock each other relentlessly and make plans to go to the winter festival on the Saturday after next. That was the great thing about living in a small town like ours. There were always fairs and festivals, and everybody knew each other. In fact, all of the teenagers in town came to our school, which meant that if there was any drama at all, everybody knew. I had a vaguely disturbing feeling that this only spurred Ingrid's gossiping ways. God knows what power she could accumulate if she actually had any friends besides the five of us. She would probably rival Dalton and his cohort in social status.

༓࿇༓

There were only two lessons left until we could go home. I had maths, and then English. Thankfully, I had maths with Preston and English with Rashid and Emma. In fact, I had my friends in most of my classes. Maths passed by in a whirl of incredibly confusing sums, but thankfully Preston was a genius and managed to explain things to me pretty well. Or at least well enough that I didn't leave the classroom with my head throbbing uncomfortably as it usually did.

English is when things started to take a turn for the unusual. Mrs Harris, our teacher, decided that it would be a good idea to pair us up for a project. What made that even worse was the fact that we weren't allowed to choose the pairs. I don't think I'd ever heard a groan that loud before, but she shook it off and continued unperturbed.

"You and your partner will exchange your favourite books, and write a piece- a minimum of five hundred words- explaining how their favourite book reveals their character to you. I will give you a week to get to know your partners, and after that, you will exchange your books," She explained. The class shook with wretched anticipation. I didn't like it. I'd seen enough terrible teen rom coms to understand how this sort of thing worked. And I absolutely refused to fall in love with whoever Mrs Harris had deemed a suitable partner for me. I desperately hoped that it was to be Emma or Rashid. But no. As fate would have it, when Mrs Harris read out the list of pairs, Emma and Rashid were lucky enough to be paired with each other, at which they were ecstatic. Mrs Harris descended further down the list and my name still had not been called.

"Katie Green with Tyler McCarthy, Stephen Bucket with Ian Bower," She continued, still not saying my name. Until there were only two names left to be called. I gulped, knowing my destiny, but I still reeled in shock and horror when she called it out to the rest of the class, sealing my fate.

"Juniper Rosewood and Dalton James."

It seemed to me like it was the end of the world.