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‘Ha!’ Chris erupted. ‘Absolutely not, you sweet, naive boy. No.’ – He grabbed a terracotta bowl from his desk and began to shake it, revealing half a dozen white slips of paper inside – ‘we’ll let the Bowl of Doom decide your fates. Take your pick, Timmy.’

Shit.

The bowl was offered to Tom, who reached in with trepidation to pick out a name. When he opened it, he asked, ‘Who’s Laura?’

‘I assume that would be me.’ At the back of the class, Lauren lifted her hand. In her thirties, she was one of the quieter ones, with fine blonde hair and sparkling eyes.

‘There we go. Our first pair! Congratulations. Next.’ The bowl was passed to Amir, who unfortunately got Luc. There went that hope, then. As the bowl got closer, Aiden’s knee began to bounce up and down. Juniper hadn’t been picked yet, but there was no way—

‘Alex. Your turn,’ Chris said, shaking the bowl in front of his face.

Aiden wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and reached in. There were only three people who hadn’t been matched yet:Tilly, Owen, the sandy-haired guy who sat behind her, and Juniper.

Please be Owen,he prayed, but his pounding heart must have known before the rest of him, because when he unfolded the paper to read the smudged ink, his worst fears were confirmed.

‘Jupiter.’

‘No. You’re messing with me!’ Juniper rushed around the table to snatch the paper from Aiden’s hands, and her proximity made him bristle with tension.

Her nostrils flared when she read the name. Her name. Well, almost. She looked up at Chris, ignoring Aiden entirely. ‘Well, this doesn’t count because Jupiter is not my name.’

‘Nice try, but there’s a reason we call it the Bowl of Doom.’ Chris tore said bowl away, motioning between Tilly and Owen. ‘That means Tammy and Olly are our final pair. Congratulations. I hope you will all be very happy together.’

Aiden finally mustered the courage to look at Juniper. If she was icy before, she was an arctic blizzard now.

‘Somehow,’ he mumbled, ‘I doubt that very much.

8

Juniper massaged her temples, her muscles turning rigid when Aiden spun on his stool to face her. She’d spent the last hour of class trying to morph reality into something she could handle with the powers of her mind, and when that hadn’t worked, she unlocked her phone under the table and Googled how to build that time machine Tilly had mentioned. Since she’d failed horribly at trying to build a simple bowl on the throwing wheel,again, quantum physics wasn’t exactly much help either.

Which meant that she was stuck with Aiden.

‘So,’ he began as she used a cloth to wipe the clay off her hands. Her knuckles and her biceps were aching. Meanwhile, Aiden had made the work look easy as ever. His perfectly sculpted bowl was currently in the drying room, ready for the kiln on Monday. A place Juniper hadn’t yet needed to visit. All of her clay ended up back in its bag to be dried out and reused by somebody who was probably more capable than her.

‘So,’ she repeated flatly, and hoped he sensed the warning in it. It was halfdon’t fuck me around for the sake of my own sanity, and halfplease don’t let me fail this bloody module.

‘Jupiter,’ he said with a straight face.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘Alex.’

His lips twitched. She tried not to let hers do the same. This wasn’t funny. It was tragic – and just plain cruel of the universe, or the Bowl of Doom, or Christopher. Whoever had done this had a sick sense of humour. Talented or not, there was no way in hell she could rely on Aiden Whittaker to get her a decent grade. He would probably laze about, leave all the hard bits to her because he’d never had to work for a single thing in his life. Or maybe he’d sabotage her just to piss her off, bribe Christopher to give him a decent grade and leave her at the bottom of the class. She wouldn’t put any of it past him. He’d already proven himself to be sly and immoral, good at taking things he didn’t deserve. And she was the only one who saw it, the only one who knew just what he’d done to get into Elmington.

‘We should set a few dates each week to meet up,’ he decided finally, his hands inching a little too close to hers on the desk. Clay caked his fingernails and clung to the hairs on his forearms, but what she really noticed was how big his hands were compared to her stubby little fingers. Always at an advantage, right down to his biology.

‘I have a gap between lessons on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.’ Spending them with him was the last thing she wanted, and her stiff voice conveyed it. Sitting behind him was bad enough. Now, she would have to work with him.Marrytheir ideas. She was certain that their ideas were completelyunmarriable, or at least destined for divorce.

Aiden pulled out his phone and unlocked it with a quick tap, his schedule lighting the screen and turning his face silver. It made his eyes greener, features harsher, and she marvelled at the unfairness of it all. To think someone so entitled could be so good-looking. Yet another thing she would have to take up with the universe.

‘Hm. What time?’ he asked. ‘I have seminars from two.’

‘That won’t work then.’

‘How about evenings?’

‘I’m working.’

‘Everyevening?’ His brows lifted, and she gritted her teeth.