When Sebastian Met June ✓

Part Two

Middle School:

At the age of twelve, June still hasn't gone through puberty like some of her peers. Her growth has been stunted by malnutrition as a child. Her bones stick out even more so than before. She eats like a bird, meager portions that would make a better snack than meal.

As a baby, her bottles had been filled with off-brand apple juice rather than formula; her mother had been too mindless to care. She developed a tasting for sweets, nothing plentiful enough to warrant growth.

While most of the girls in her grade grow charmed with boys and Teen Beat Magazine, June can't comprehend why. How can they warrant reading something so unsubstantial and consider it insightful? How is there time better spent with another person than secluding themselves to their room?

In the years since elementary school, her personality has grown more isolated. She's become an island surrounded by large bodies of frigid, icy waters. June drives herself away from other children her age, keeping herself reclusive. She only talks to Nadine, who has her own friends now.

When she shows up to school, her wild curls are a frizzly halo around her head. Her salvage department clothing is almost always stained and ratty. Her jeans are patched by her neighbor where she'd torn through the denim.

June doesn't have friends, skipping lunch to duck out in the library. Books don't judge her or worry about what she is doing. Headfirst into a book, June wasn't June anymore. Sometimes she was an heir to the regal throne, meant to kill out her malicious opponents. Or an average teen with the capacity to preserve the universe just by her touch.

June was nobody and she was everybody when reading. Books were her refuge, the place she went to escape reality.

---

Clutching the new book in her dainty hands, her fingertips flip rapidly through the crisp, textured pages. The book smells of mildew, the surface coated with a sheen of dust. She drowns out the noise of the teacher in front of her. Her scuffed shoes, tapping against the metal bar of her stool anxiously as she flips through the pages, engrossed in the words.

Biting her lip, June's eyes skim over the even lined words. What she doesn't notice is the impending presence. Intense blue eyes stare at a point on her hunched shoulders. She doesn't see the boy with unkempt blonde hair and a lopsided smile. Pulling out his own stool, it scraps against the tiled floors.

"Looks like we're partners, June." His voice is merry, matching the glowing tint in his periwinkle eyes as he smiles at her. He is like the aftermath of rain, the air around him suffocatingly thick.

June glances up, her somber gaze finding him. He is close enough to her that he can make out the eight freckles that graze over the peak of her nose. Noticing how her deep honey skin seems dull and pale.

A rare type of beautiful. That's what Sebastian is thinking as he sits down on the empty stool next to her, his smile growing.

She watches him carefully, tilting her head as if to see him better. She knows who he is. June has a basic understanding of the people with whom she goes to school every day. But she doesn't recognize him as the kid she nearly made cry in elementary school, the boy with the action figure backpack. He had grown considerably since then, filling into his large features.

No, he was just another trying to catch her attention.

"You can't ignore me this time. We're partners," he grins, opening his notebook to a fresh page. The other sheets are scrawled with indecipherable handwriting. A few charts and penciled drawings tangled in. He glances up with a soft smile, noticing June staring at him out of the corner of his eyes.