My Friend Juniper
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko via Pexels Back then, it felt like everyone who knew Juniper had the same fascination with her. We’d attended the same experimental liberal arts university on the southernmost point of the beach island Sentosa, a school that seemed promising but wound up shuttering after just six years. It was the kind of place most Singaporean kids dreamed of: a small, intimate student body; professors imported from America and Europe; life cloistered in a refurbished Beaux-Arts building. I was part of the second cohort and couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have been admitted. Every other day, there was some kind of university social event ripped straight from the imagination of someone who’d grown up reading English boarding school novels — a paint-and-sip night, a jazz listening party, a philosophy club salon — and at the center of all these events was Juniper, a radiant, entouraged sophomore who always stayed late to mingle with us freshmen, never giving off the impression that she had somewhere better to be.
She and I spoke for the first time at a party thrown by the theater students, who were fundraising for a production of Hamlet to be held over the December break. One of them had managed to get their parents to sponsor unlimited box wine and crackers for the mixer, which pretty much guaranteed a full house, though I had other reasons to consider the seven-dollar entry fee a bargain. I’d been trying very hard to believe that the sustained flirtation between me and Sebastian, one of the supporting cast members, would eventually morph into a relationship. We had four classes together and saw each other all the time, but it was hard to tell where I stood with him. Our interactions had consisted of my recommending nineteenth-century literature and hoping that the longing in Austen would make my intentions clear. I had two titles out on loan with him and was waiting for the epiphany to hit.
Sebastian seemed happy enough to see me at the mixer. I found him engaged in an imaginary sword fight with some of the other actors and drew him away to the second-floor windows, where we stood chatting about classes and his thespian-y ambitions until the theater club’s president, who had until recently been the events manager for an Early Starts enrichment center, clinked his fork against a musical triangle and proposed a toast.
“Thank you all,” he said, signaling for the music to be turned down, “for gracing the Fall Soiree with your presence. What a privilege to be here, at Singapore’s first-ever liberal arts college, with some of the finest thinkers and artists of our generation. How long we” — and here he gestured broadly at the few local faculty members dotting the room — “have dreamed of this. Know that you are part of a historic moment.” The president looked quite overcome with emotion. It felt as if he might say a bit more about freedom from capitalist key performance indicators, the chance to nurture meaningful artistic discourse, et cetera — the stuff that’d been expounded to death in the application brochures — but he visibly restrained himself and concluded: “To the beginning of Fall.”
We raised our Dixie cups. “To Fall.”
The party resumed its roar, and Sebastian escaped to refill his drink. I turned and stared out at the sea so it wouldn’t look like I was waiting around. The sun had recently set, and the beach was phosphorescent with pink-and-purple lights affixed to the bases of various palm trees. In the distance, across a short strip of water, cable cars floated to and from mainland Singapore. My cheeks were warm from the pure, simple bliss of cheap wine and conversation; for a couple of minutes, I made a game of letting my eyes go unfocused so the cable cars’ blinking lights would blur and glitter pleasantly. I felt strongly that I had never been this happy before. Then something moved in the
