The Literary Misadventures of Juniper Rosewood

29- Frayed at the Edges

To my absolute relief, we were not made to sit with our partners in English that Tuesday, which meant that I didn't have to suffer through Dalton's presence anymore. I still had to write about his presence though, which was proving especially difficult with Emma sitting beside me. This was unusual since Emma was typically the least annoying of my friends, but neither she nor Rashid had bothered to read the book that I gave them and so they were pestering me with questions.

"You should have read it," I snapped, and turned my head back to my page. I didn't snap very often, and so it was an unusual occurrence for them to see me in such a crabby mood. Up until yesterday, I had been looking forward to this book report. Now, I wasn't so sure.

"I suppose we could just read the spark notes," Rashid grumbled, and Emma agreed. She opened up her phone and typed something in.

"There isn't one," She said glumly.

"Drat," Rashid said, and they both turned hopefully to me again.

"There will be a summary somewhere," I said. They both hunched over Emma's phone and, thankfully, left me alone.

I scowled down at my paper, and at Dalton's book, which sat in front of me. I didn't know what to write anymore, and I wasn't sure I wanted to write anything at all. Sighing loudly, I flipped through the pages. Dalton's handwriting arched through the margins like somebody had dipped a spider wearing roller skates in ink and set him loose on the page. The letters stumbled over each other and it made them distinctly hard to read. I didn't find his jokes so funny anymore, nor were his insights quite as insightful as I once thought them to be. I stole a glance behind me and looked at him. He was writing furiously, no doubt in that terrible scrawl of his. His head was so close to the table as he wrote that his hair was touching the paper. I didn't know what I was feeling as I looked at him, the knotted twines of apprehension, dread, and desperate, disgusting longing in my stomach forcing me to sigh again as I began to write.

We had two lessons to write the book report, and a third to read what the other had written. I was dreading having to face Dalton during that third lesson, but for now, I was just trying to focus on writing the blasted thing. It was proving much harder than I thought it would be, perhaps because yesterday had proven that I didn't really know Dalton. Or at least not as much as I thought I did. Perhaps he was doing what I suggested from the start. Putting on a face for me to pretend to get to know. Either way, I kept writing.

By this time I had managed to get the hang of things, and the words were flowing from my pen at a steady pace. When the lesson ended, I had written just over half of the paper. I followed Rashid and Emma blindly as I left the classroom, not daring to look higher than the floor.

༓࿇༓

Tuesday night was movie night with Circe. We decided to skip out on takeaway since Circe's dad had made his world-famous lasagne, and so we had a warm slice of that each instead.

"She works so hard," Circe said admiringly at Shizuku as she sat hunched over her desk, writing as though her life depended on it. I wished that I could write with as much imagination and fever as Shizuku. I had read some of Rashid's poetry, at his request, and I knew I would never be able to write like him, but I had a decent enough imagination to make a story. Perhaps I didn't need imagination. I shrugged in response to Circe, taking a bite of my lasagne. It was so unbelievably delicious.

"I'm so glad her parents understood," Circe added, and I smiled. It reminded me of the conversation I had with my mother the day before. Was it bad of me to feel happy, when she was so miserable?

Barley was snuggled up on my lap, and I ruffled the fur behind his ears. I was tired. Exhausted, actually. I fell asleep before the movie could end.