❝time for your beauty mask.❞

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Juniper stood waiting at the front desk, her nails done neatly, her white tennis skirt and checkered sweater with a white blouse underneath looking perfectly put together. She was called in to give the new boy a tour.

They told her it would be good for him to get the tour from the most known kid in school, giving as it would open more doors for him as the new kid.

After waiting a few more minutes, the principal walked out of his office followed by a boy around June's age, a senior.

The tall teenager had short, dark blonde hair and nervous green eyes that lit up once he saw the girl waiting for him at the desk, her natural curly hair straightened and pinned up with a hair claw.

Principal Higgins patted his back, "I leave you in good hands, miss McKennan here will take good care of you." he assured him, June gave the boy a grand smile.

She had to consider the mask, obviously, but that didn't mean she couldn't smile. She would just have to act like the typical popular, mean girl who's incredibly dumb. No one would know how smart she is in real life, because she knew no one wanted her to be.

She grabbed her books from the desk to hold them as she walked off, expecting the new boy to follow her. June named teachers and rooms as they walked passed. The hall was empty of students, they were all in class luckily.

"I'm Juniper by the way." she introduced as she turned around to face the boy while walking backwards.

"Ace," the boy smiled, "Ace Murphy."

Suddenly the bell rang. It was already lunch time, the tour took a little longer than expected.

"Come on," she ushered him to the lunch hall, "You'll sit with us. We're pretty cool."

He followed her to the table in the middle where the middle seat was left open, "Hey, nerds," June sat down at the empty seat, gesturing to Ace to sit down at the corner, "What's happening in your boring lives?"

Chrissy, a girl in the cheer team, straightened her back with a disturbed look on her face while the rest just ate in silence. Nobody dared to talk back to the most popular girl in school, she could ruin their lives in one second.

She shook her head, "Never mind, it won't be important." she leaned forward on the table looking at Ace, "This is that new kid I talked about, meet Ace Murphy."

Ace waved awkwardly to the people at the table, for him popular kids were intimidating and now he was sitting in between them. He would just need to get used to them.

"So I was thinking," June suggested, "Ace, you're pretty tall, I bet you're good at basketball."

Her best friend Luca patted her on her shoulder, "Not all tall people play basketball."

"No, she's right." Ace quickly jumped in, a childish smile on his face, "Been playing ever since I was six."

A smirk formed on June's face, "Good." she turned her head to the right, "See, Luca, all tall people play basketball."

She started talking about a random subject, until a boisterous voice snatched everyone's attention away from her.

"That freak again.." Jason grumbled annoyed, he stood up, slamming his hands on the table, "Hey, man, go someplace else or something!" he shouted across the room, June cringed a little.

Jason was supposed to be the star player of the basketball, but he wasn't really good. June always thought he just got the title because he's popular. The guy was too confident with practically nothing in her opinion.

She turned her head to see the face belonging to the voice. Eddie Munson had his middle finger up at Jason and had an innocent smile on his face.

He put his hand down, his smile forming into a smirk as he stared at Jason. His eyes met with June's for a second before his smirk dropped and he turned around to sit at the table with his Hellfire mates.

Hellfire apparently was a group of which he was the leader, they'd meet up for contests and wear matching shirts with the logo, all for some game.

Luca nudged June's shoulder, nodding her head in the way of two other boys wearing Hellfire shirts, "There's two more. They look like freshmen." she ventured.

The two best friends followed the boys with their eyes, watching them sit down at the same table as Eddie previously did.

"What's 'hellfire'?" June questioned, turning her head back and briefly looking at Ace whom was already more comfortable in the group.

"It's some club that likes to play D&D." Chrissy explained submissively, "It's a game."

"Huh," the black haired girl chuckled, "Well, good for them." she wiggled her eyebrows in a joking way making the rest around her laugh.

Luca peeped up, "Oh! I forgot to tell you, you know Helene, right? She totally banged that Peter dude.."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the hall, Eddie had to look at June's back. It was better like that though, this way she couldn't catch him staring.

He snapped out of his trance when two people sat down at the table, Mike and Dustin.

The two were in their first year at the high school, Mike looked back to the girls with their backs facing them.

He knew the middle ones name, everyone knew her name, but he didn't know what everyone found so interesting about her. Yes, she was beautiful, but so was El and no one seemed to care about her.

"Who's that girl sitting at the table?" Dustin asked, also having noticed Eddie's staring. Dustin was a little behind on names and all those things.

"Only Juniper McKennan." Eddie scoffed sarcastically, "The fact that you don't know that is kind of worrying."

Dustin's eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the response as he briefly looked back at Juniper.

"She's this girl Eddie's been obsessing over for years." a guy both Mike and Dustin didn't know informed them, "She's the cheer captain and considered the most popular and wanted girl in possibly all of Hawkins." he shrugged, "Shame she's so dumb and her personality stinks."

Eddie slapped the guy's arm, giving him a look, "It doesn't stink. She's been affected by her friends." he tried saving her, he's always had this feeling her personality was a set-up, but he could never be sure, "And she's not dumb, have you ever noticed her grades?"

Tricky thing was, June's parents would tell her to get the best grades, so she did. It just made acting dumb really difficult. Because of this, June always hated presentations. Unfortunately for her, she had one coming up today.

The guy's hands went up in a surrendering gesture, "Whatever you say, dude. Just know, girls like that, they don't hang with guys like us."

"We'll see." Eddie concluded with one last sad glance at the girl, his sad look turned into an excited one, "So, Mike, Dustin, seeing as Lucas isn't here right now, I was hoping you could tell him this.."

Time went by as Eddie talked to his D&D friends and June to her preppy ones. For June, these periods always felt like they lasted forever. She was so tired of pretending to be someone else at the end of the day that she sometimes went straight to bed after school.

Before June's last period, the feared presentation, she rushed to the bathroom. She washed her hands, watching through the mirror to see a girl she knew to be named Max Mayfield going inside one of the stalls.

Max Mayfield seemed like one of those girls that couldn't care less about people that are not her friends. June respected that, but she couldn't show that and she hated that she couldn't.

She dried her hands before walking out and going to class. She sat down with a sigh, she was one of the few to present this.

A few weeks back miss Taylor had given up an assignment about writing an essay about a topic you chose yourself. June chose the Japanese comfort women. Miss Taylor informed the class that only the best essays would present and unfortunately, June was one of them.

She was called forward, not knowing her teacher had great expectations from her, tests she always had A's on, because no one else had to see those.

She stepped to the front of the room, turning around and seeing the expressions of her classmates, they were expecting an atrocious presentation and they were going to get it.

"So.." June began, giving her best shot at her dumb tone, "I hate presentations." she laughed, "Comfort women. They, uh, are women, they brought comfort to soldiers of some Asian country."

Miss Taylor gave her a confused look, "Just say what you wrote. That's perfectly fine." she reassured her.

June only became more concerned, this was why she always tried to get out of presentations, "They were, uh, meant to comfort the soldiers. As in pleasure them, even little girls. They got trafficked, raped, enslaved, hurt." she pretended to not know anything further, so she had to improvise, "The worst part was that they had to be rotting in the same clothes for months. Imagine that."

Her teacher gave her a dissapointed glance before turning around to look at her paper for the next name. She sat back down as the class applauded, it was terrible and not even worth the name presentation, but they'd clap no matter what.

Eddie sat in the back, examining her expressions, he thought he saw some sort of disappointment in herself.

Two more presentations were held that day, afterwards miss Taylor talked about the assignment for next week, only this one would be in duos, she would also give the subjects this time. She hung up a paper with the partners on it.

Everyone ran to the paper, except Juniper, the teacher took the moment to approach her about her essay, "I expected more after such a great essay." she scolded, "Where are you in your head?"

"Depends." she answered cockily, "Physically I'm here. Mentally I'm in a place where the mall didn't burn down."

"Well," the graying woman retorted, "I think you need to reschedule your appointments with Ms. Kelly. You're not here, seems like you're not even here in physical form."

To June, she came off as harsh, but in reality the woman was just worried about her student. Even she saw she wasn't herself, it really showed the difference between teenagers and adults.

Suddenly the other students were silent, looking at June sitting on her chair, she furrowed her eyebrows, standing up to see what all the commotion was about.

The students made a free pathway for her, she traced her eyes down the list to find her name at the M. When she finally found it, her eyes widened reading her topic and partner's name.

"You've got to be kidding me." she marveled, "Dungeons and Dragons?!"

She whipped her head around to look back at the woman shrugging, the names went on alphabetical order, but it wouldn't be bad for her to spend some time away from her friends according to miss Taylor.

"You're lucky you have me as a partner, 'cause I.." Eddie stood up from his seat on one of the nearest tables, "happen to be an expert at that."

"Lucky me." she stated sarcastically yet with a small smile, the bell rang, making all the students bolt out of the classroom.

June was still packing up her books when the brunet approached her, "You should come to my place tomorrow. I'll show you the game." he proposed.

"I have cheer practice, but if you wait for me, sure." she droned, swinging her backpack over her shoulder.

If she was being honest, she was so glad he began about his place, that way he wouldn't come to her place. He didn't have to know about what happened there.

Eddie smiled a sheepish smile, "That's a dat- a deal. It's a deal." he cleared his throat.

"Okay." June laughed slightly at his reaction, "I'll see you tomorrow."

Eddie watched how she walked out of the classroom, "See you tomorrow!" he called after her, a smile on full display on his lips. She didn't turn around anymore, but she sent him a backwards wave and that was enough for him.

author's note:
first chapter! i'm
starting way before
season four, because
i think it's better
they have a bit of
history we know
about, mostly
because in the series
there's not too much
time. i felt like that
would be too quickly.

i'm also basing eddie's
personality around june
on how he acted around
chrissy, i just thought he
was so sweet with her.

anyway, hope that's
good and hope you
have a good day,
bye!

jules