Red Roses → Sweet Pea

[ one ]

"Name?" spoke a staff member, pushing his glasses up with his pen.

"Juniper, Juniper Rose." Juniper played with her hands was the man huffed while flipping through the pages, mumbling something incoherent.

"Is Juniper your last or first name?" the man finally asked, after a few moments of scanning the page for her name. She noticed his mistake. He totally thought Juniper was her last name.

"My first name." she answered meekly, growing more nervous as he sighed once more, flipping further into the pages towards the end of the packet.

"Juniper Rose." the man finally looked up, eyes widening at the girl. "You're Kendrick Rose's daughter."

At the name, Juniper's nervous smile faded quickly. Her eyes iced over, reluctantly nodding. She wasn't expecting to be reminded of him so early in the day; she hadn't even gotten her schedule.

"Yeah, that's me..." Juniper shrunk. The staff member, who revealed himself to be her school counselor cleared his throat, handing her a copy of her schedule.

"Welcome back to the Southside. Your father would be proud." she didn't answer that time, only nodding as she walked through the metal detector, waiting on the other side as her bag went through a scanner. After retrieving her bag back, she walked around the school, trying to familiarize herself with the high school.

She found her classes quite easily, resulting in her finding her first period class ten minutes before the bell even rang. She sat towards the back corner of the classroom, squeezing in between a few students who had nothing better to do than to just be in class early and talk amongst themselves.

"Hey, do you remember Serpent K Rose?" one of the students whispered, causing Juniper's ears to perk up. "The one who supposedly was killed like a few years ago? Apparently his family's back in town."

"That's insane." one of them whispered back. "Guess all of those Red Roses caught up to him. He got what he deserved." Juniper frowned.

Finally, the bell rang, causing students to flow in slowly, a lot of them sporting a leather jacket with a green snake patched onto the back of it.

"Good morning class. It's the second week of school, you all have had a week to get used to summer being over, so I hope everyone is on time today. If not, then you will lose participation points in today's activity, which will be a toll on your grade considering this will be one of the first things in your assignments, do I make myself clear?" Mr. Milburn questioned, earning a mix of answers throughout the peers.

Mr. Milburn began calling out roll. While students continued to whisper amongst themselves, the volume was low enough for the teacher to hear who he was calling on so he could make direct eye contact. "Edith Romaro?"

"Here." a girl called out popping her bubblegum.

"Ah. Juniper Rose?" Mr. Milburn called out. The class fell quiet at the name, looking around the classroom, failing to catch the eyes of the shrinking girl in the corner of the classroom. Juniper's hand shot up, in hopes of not drawing attention. The teacher looked down at his roll call paper, marking her as present before locking eyes with the girl. "Welcome back to town little Juniper."

She nodded her head out of respect, looking back down at her desk. From the corner of her eye, she could see the couple of students that were talking about her father look at one another. And of course, roll call continued.

Since Mr. Milburn dismissed Juniper from the activity, she had nothing better to do than to just sit. And though, she could feel several pairs of eyes on her from the lab table, she didn't mind their attention. It wasn't her fault they had a staring problem.

First period went by slowly, but the next period was a class she hoped she could get into. Algebra II. First period bled into second period. Juniper found herself actually enjoying the class, much more than Chemistry. It didn't stop other students whispering about her.

After the class had ended, Juniper gathered her things and made her way to her locker, which was on the second floor. She spun the dial, the combination she'd memorized the day before when she had first enrolled. As she opened her locker, she found a single red rose. She took a step back, her eye twitching slightly as she gaped the the flower in front of her. Was this some sort of joke?

A laugh could be heard from behind her. She turned on her heel, furrowing her eyebrows harshly. Juniper clenched her jaw with a spiteful glare sent in the direction of the high school boy. She eyed the blue and gold letterman jacket. The boy repped the northside of town, so undoubtedly, he was the one who'd planted the rose in her locker.

"Welcome back Ms. Rose. Hope you liked my little gift. You should feel at home with these Serpent scums." he sauntered towards her with a sarcastic pout.

"Hey, back off, this is our territory." a loud voice boomed, causing the two to turn their heads. A tall boy with black hair (eyes to match) could be seen walking towards them. The two stared at one another. "If you don't want any problems, I suggest you leave."

The boy didn't say anything, only smirking as he sauntered passed the group, looking over his shoulder with a taunting grin.

"Uh, thanks..." Juniper coughed, tossing the rose in the garbage can.

"Sweet Pea," he finally stood face to face with her. Juniper had to take a step back to crane her neck up at him, he was so tall. There was a brief pause in the air before Sweet Pea opened his mouth once more, "and you are?"

"I'm Juniper." Sweet Pea jutted his hand out to her, she took his larger hand into her soft, smaller ones, shaking it with a polite smile.

"Nice to meet you little lady. Looks like we'll be seeing each other often." he didn't hide the fact that he was checking her out, in fact, it was like he definitely wanted her to know.

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yikes, this is kinda all over the place, but we'll see where this goes.

the title says it's a sweet pea fanfic, but i also kind of wanted to make it a juniper one too. so it's Her story, but kind of a spinoff of riverdale, using the same characters. i own juniper, her family, and their storylines. everything else goes to the creators of riverdale.

i love my baby sweet pea

rany🌻