Page 3 of When October Starts

“Don’t turn on me, Ezra. She’s a little devil. Just you wait and see. Sooner or later, she’ll annoy you by literally doing nothing. It’s like witchcraft,” Benji said, and I chuckled again.

“You’re too sensitive, Benji. If anything, I’m trying to stay away from you to let you catch a breath and have time for other students. I don’t wanna bother you, you know?”

“I know, that’s why you can start bothering Ezra with your laziness. I tell you what, Ez,” Benji said, turning to look at him again. “If you somehow manage to make her work harder and faster, I’ll promote you to best teacher here at Memphis.”

“I haven’t even taught yet,” Ezra said, and I started to find this little get-together quite amusing.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll bring you lunch every day or something. Just make Juno work harder.” Benji turned to look at me, then let out a heavy sigh. “I want you to take up two new subjects. Anything. I don’t care what it is. Just choose two and have the papers done in a month.”

“Two in one month?” I exclaimed. “Benji, no one else has to work that hard in here,” I complained.

“Others work harder than you do every day, Juno. Whatever topics you want. Anything,” he repeated hopefully.

“Can it be porn?”

“Christ, Juno. No. No porn.”

“But I’ve never had sex-ed. I’m sixteen. I should know about protection and all that,” I protested. I saw Ezra bite back a grin, and he rubbed his hands over his lips to not laugh. Glad I was amusing to him.

“Porn has nothing to do with sex-ed. No porn. No. Porn. But maybe you can look at…I don’t know, nudists? That might be interesting,” Benji suggested.

I laughed, shaking my head. “I’m just messing with you, Benji,” I said as I got up from my chair. “I already know enough about sex.” I puckered my lips and gazed at Ezra. “When do you want me to tell you my two new topics I wanna write about?” I asked.

He was still trying to hold back his amusement, and as Benji shot him a glare, he cleared his throat. “Uh, on Wednesday. Write down what your goal is, some questions you have before doing research. We’ll look over it together on Wednesday.” I nodded, giving him a quick smile before leaving Benji’s office.

Maybe working a little bit harder wouldn’t be so bad. I didn’t have anything else to do anyway. Besides, there were enough things I wanted to learn about. I just had to find my motivation to do so.

Chapter Four

Juno

“Good morning, everyone,” Ezra greeted as he walked into our classroom. It was Wednesday, and I had enough time to think about two topics I wanted to learn about in the next month. It was not only the end of September, but also my birthday. The thirtieth.

I woke up with my moms holding a plate with cake on it under my nose. Aggie baked it, and to Mom’s luck, it was a vegan cake. I tried it, but it tasted…wrong.

After eating breakfast together, Pixie walked into our home and sat next to me at the table, handing me a present. I didn’t ask for anything this year, since Mom and Aggie already got me a new bike last summer. But Pixie insisted on accepting her present, which was a gift card to my favorite diner in town. They had the best burgers, and I liked going there with Pixie at least once a week.

“Do you know what you wanna study?” Pixie asked, and I nodded, keeping my eyes on my hands. We were both comfortably sitting on one of the couches, with my head on her lap and her feet propped up on the small coffee table in front of her.

“Why don’t you guys go ahead and start with your new papers while Juno and I look at her ideas for next month?” That was my cue. I turned my head to look at Ezra who was taking off his coat and hanging it over the chair next to his small desk.

“Juno?” He looked at me with a raised brow, then nodded to the back of the classroom. There were two arm chairs and another small coffee table. I sat up and grabbed my papers, then followed him to the back of the room.

“I see you’ve got something written down. Tell me about your ideas.” We sat down and I put both my papers on the table, then picked one up and held it toward him.

“I’ve seen one of the other kids do this before, and I know Benji hasn’t thrown anything out, so I decided to go for sculpting for my first topic,” I said as he studied what I’ve written down.

“Sculpting,” he muttered, rubbing his stubbled jaw. “Sounds good to me. And what’s the goal of taking up this topic?”

“My goal is to sculpt something and learn the different techniques. But I don’t intend to spend a lot of time on it. My other topic’s a little…deeper. And I was hoping that I could prolong it until November.”

“What is it?” he asked, reaching for the other piece of paper on the table.

“Videography. I wanna make a movie. Well, a short one. I was thinking about using Pixie as the actress, and after filming it, she’d do a voiceover. I will write the script, of course.”

Ezra studied what I had written down, his eyes narrowing as he let his eyes move over my words. “Do you have a camera?” he asked, now looking up at me.

“I do. An old one. I was imagining it to be some sort of vintage movie. You know, where you can hear crackling from an old vinyl in the background or something like that. And maybe I can overlay a nice filter, so it has a different vibe to it,” I explained, hoping he would understand what I was saying.

---