"Have you been to San Juniper?" first time ever he spoke to me & his question was have you been to San Juniper, What the hell, not hello, hi but a question. My answer was more of a confused look. That was the end of it, our conversation, and no follow-up question whatsoever. Even though I want to ask him what SAN JUNIPER is, I kept my mouth shut since the teacher started distributing the pop quiz papers.
During that half hour I kept thinking about it, why ask such a question out of blue to a person you don't even know, why. Pretty soon I got the answer.
After finishing the quiz, I heard the rumour surrounding him was true, that he is moving to San Francisco & he will be leaving this week. I felt my ears must have betrayed me, maybe he said San Francisco & I heard San Juniper. But still, why ask me, we are in the same school since 8th grade, and have English & social studies together but still he never acknowledges me not even once. There was no reason we would talk too, being in different groups & having different interests but he was popular, sorry still is, & I am not, it's not like I kept a tab on him, or have a crush on him it's just that, we never bothered by or for that matter knew each other.
The more I thought about it more I started to pay attention to the rumour, even my friends started to gossip about it, if for not my curiosity I would have rather read a book after finishing my lunch.
Those were rumours, not the truth still I feel it may be a start to understanding why he asked me that question. According to the Gossip Crew aka my friends, his parent are divorcing, pretty common but then reason, nobody knew & everyone is putting their theory into it, how his parents were cheating on each other, how it is not working for them etc...
I tried to keep up with it, but soon lost track of it. Just one more class & it will be the end of the school day or so I thought.
While going towards class I saw it, book in his hand with SAN JUNIPER written in cursive, he was talking about SAN JUNIPER in the class & I heard him right, next thing I know I was standing next to him, asking him "So you going to SAN JUNIPER?" He replied "Yes you want to come, it's my happy place" It took me a few seconds to realise that he was waiting for my answer "Maybe if you allow" He smiled it was more like a smirk & gave me the book & said "see you there"
At the end of the day, I felt pretty good about the fact that I am not popular or that my shitty mom doesn't care about me, this is perfect, nobody is going to care when I will be joining him in SAN JUNIPER...............
