Small gross imagery/gore warning!! stay safe <3
☆
School couldn't end quickly enough. Although the night before we had discussed having a sleepover tonight, I hadn't seen Aubrey at all since our weird confrontation in the hallway and so I wasn't sure if it was still on. Leaving my final class, I noticed Juno outside the school and went over to see them.
"Juno! Have you seen Aubrey? She's ignoring me. Also, um, hi. How was your day?"
Juno snorted, crossing their arms. "I haven't seen her, no. Didn't you have Chemistry together today?"
"Well yeah, we were supposed to, but..."
I trailed off, remembering how distressed she looked in the corridor. "She wasn't there, and then we saw each other and it was really awkward and she started crying and ran away and I haven't seen her since and-" I took a deep breath. "I just hope she's okay."
Juno frowned. "Mike didn't mention anything happening, other than their parents coming home at some point extremely early in the morning whilst I was staying over."
"What were their parents like?"
They paused. "Their dad was funny, their mum was nice to me - she refused to acknowledge my pronouns though. Why, has Aubrey said something?"
"No, she hasn't said anything about her home life. I wonder if that's related to her being upset?"
"It could be, I suppose." Juno pulled out their phone and began writing a message to Aubrey. The wind around us was cold and bitter, a harsh reminder of the changing season, leaves beginning to fall and form a carpet around us. "She's typing," Juno called over, tapping their finger against the side of their phone. "She said she's not feeling well, and thinks it's probably best if we don't meet up tonight. She said we're more than welcome to hang out without her though."
"Well fuck that! It won't be right without her!"
Juno stood still for a moment, thinking. "Why don't we practise for a little bit? It's been a while since our last lesson."
My hands worked their way into my pockets. Despite my layered outfit, the wind somehow still managed to find its way through to my skin, erecting the hairs along my arms and raising the skin into small bumps. It felt wrong to hang out without Aubrey, even without Michael, since Thursday evening. That day felt like the foundation of something stronger than just friends, something that would carry on for years afterwards. A small shiver ran down my back, though I couldn't discern whether it was from an innate happiness, or from some omen or foreshadowing.
"Fine. Do you think we could stop off at the shop before we go to the forest?"
Juno frowned. "Why?"
A smile played at my lips, a simple idea forming that would help to make the flower field more personal for us. "You'll see when we get there."
With the daylight fading quicker each day, we figured we had about an hour and a half, or thereabouts, until it would be too dark to stay in the forest. A silence passed between us as we wandered through the lively streets of our small village - the kind of quiet that comes about when neither knows how exactly to speak to the other. It was our first time properly alone together since the first night, the day I accidentally stumbled into a whole other world, and though it wasn't that long ago, it still felt like I was a completely different person, that I had changed. I looked over to Juno, who was fiddling with the wires that connected to the single earbud in their right ear, the other dangling loose. Everything they did, they did with an air of confidence, of maturity, of wisdom. I wondered why they seemed so old for their age, what could've happened to them to make them that way. I brushed the thought away. Theorising on other people's lives was hardly a considerate pastime, especially about someone as cool as Juno, my friend.
