The Metropolis Series #2: Quinn Beyond Bounds
50. Letting Go

DESPITE MY QUESTIONS, it didn’t feel right to ask Julio more about the Girl Beyond Bounds. He would tell me when he was ready, and all I could do was wait.

After breakfast, he left and returned to the Spanish House where they prepared for Mackenzie’s burial. Meanwhile, Ms. Louise insisted that I stay at her place for the night so that my injuries could heal. She let me borrow a fresh set of clothes and called over one of the girls from the Spanish House to send me a St. John’s uniform I could borrow. It was weird to think that after the madness that occurred in Curtis’ party, I would still be going to school the next day like everything was back to normal.

When Ms. Louise was at work, I spent the morning and the afternoon resting, lounging around on her couch in the living room. I found the tote bag I brought to the party and pulled out my phone. I had a few missed calls from a number not registered in my contacts.

I decided to ignore them. I needed some time alone.

I watched some TV until I noticed the video game console hidden under the sound system. I felt like I was back in my bedroom at my parents’ house where I did nothing but play video games all day to entertain myself. I was a child again, forgetting about the world around me.

When Ms. Louise came back from work, she took me to a salon. She told the hairdresser to cut my hair short, really short. She almost landed a knife in my face when she thought I was Cassandra, and that was when she gave me the advice to cut my hair and dye it pink to give myself a distinction. I didn’t have the hairdresser do the latter, though. Pink hair wasn’t something I wanted. (Besides, I would get suspended from St. John’s for dying my hair a bright color. You may be thinking about Bree, but the redness of her hair was close to brown, anyway. So it passed—barely.)

I felt the hairdresser’s cold scissors against my neck, snipping away my long locks. Once the hairdresser was done, she held up a mirror so I could see how I looked.

I hadn’t smiled at my reflection for quite a long time.

Julio came to The MacGuffin to pick me up the next morning, offering to drive me to St. John’s. Once I got in the car, I immediately caught him staring at me like I had something on my face.

“What?” I asked.

“Your hair,” he said. “It looks good on you.”

“Ah…” I suddenly became conscious. “It was Ms. Louise’s idea because of… well, Cassandra.”

Julio started the engine, staring off into the distance. The sun barely peeked over the city skyline. We had a long drive ahead of us.

“We just gotta hang on for a little while,” he said. “We’ll pull through. You’ll see.”

I managed a weak smile. I wished Julio could spare me a little bit of that optimism, but as his words hung in the air, I realized those were all they were. They were just words to ignite our spirits, but people like Julio and I were running low on of gas.

In the car, both Julio and I were silent. We passed by the big old church and marketplaces, their stalls draped in cloth. The stores’ windows were dark, and their doors were closed. Only the streets buzzed in the early morning, filled with people who have places to go.

“I must have looked weird in front of Rachael,” Julio muttered, a traffic light glowing red ahead of us.

“You saved her life back there,” I said, trying to comfort him. I knew it didn’t work.

“There were so many ways we could have met again. Why did it have to be during a monster attack?”

“Hmmm, let’s see…” I stroked my chin. “There was that time at school in the hallway. You just walked away when she bumped into you. You guys also could have talked when Deus Ex Machina had their gig—”

“Yeah, yeah…”

“At least she’ll remember you as a hero,” I suggested.

Julio leaned against his steering wheel. “A hero who smacked her boyfriend in the face.” He let off a little chuckle. “But even if I were a knight in shining armor or some pathetic loser, it wouldn’t really matter. She’s in the Metropolis, and I’m not. She would have forgotten about me in a matter of minutes. It would be like that night never happened.”

“I guess that’s true. Takahiro explained that to me at the gig…”

The silence lingered once more.

“She’s so unfair,” Julio then grumbled. “She won’t let me move on…”

“Hey,” I said. “No one’s asking you to.”

It would make sense at that time that he was talking about Rachael, but on my part, it was just an assumption. For a while, I had forgotten about that other girl who gave him a miserable time, the one who Julio referred to as unfair…

The traffic lights turned green, and we drove on.

St. John’s grounds buzzed louder on Monday mornings as students came back in from the weekend. I waved Julio goodbye as he dropped me off, watching him drive into an intersection and disappear into early Monday traffic.

From that moment on, I suppose that my life’s normal switch would toggle back on. I had returned to school with my sweater covering my wounds and bandages, and first period would begin in half an hour. However, all around me were hushed conversations; there were no boys playing cards, couples flirting and making out, and cliques forming like ranks in the halls. It seemed that everyone around me was whispering in each others’ ear as they sat in tight-knit groups on the school grounds. As I passed by, I picked up a few common words:

Last Saturday, Curtis, and the party.

Now, I knew what was different. There was no time reset, so everyone who attended the party had vivid memories of what had happened, but even that should have been unusual. They were Metropolitans; they should have forgotten about Julio and Mackenzie and their fight—

I paused. Maybe that was the loophole. They might forget about the people involved, but they would never forget what they did.

The fight was spectacular; it was too nerve-wracking, too dangerous, and too scary to be forgotten. The students of St. John’s were talking about it with their friends and classmates, to those who were lucky enough to not be able to attend.

“Did you hear what happened at Stevenson’s party?” I heard a girl ask her friend.

“Is it true?” the friend replied. “Two people crashed and started fighting each other?”

“That’s what Eric said. He was with Philip in the living room playing video games when it happened.”

“Do you think this has something to do with that suspicious figure on the news that day?”

“I dunno… It’s all crazy.”

I walked on, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to escape all that chatter forever. As I made my way to the classroom, Bree and Philip spotted me.

“Hey, Vasquez!” Bree called. She didn’t have the same enthusiasm, though. “Whoa, nice hairdo. Did something happen between you and Stevenson?”

“Bree…” Philip scolded.

“What? Don’t girls cut their hair when some asshole breaks their hearts? I semi-shaved my head the first time I got dumped.”

“We can save the emotional sob stories for later. Right now, there’s obviously something that needs to be talked about.”

“Ah, right.” Bree clasped her hands together. “Band activities are suspended for the time being, Vasquez. You may want to join a different club if you want those extracurricular credits for grad. I hear the drama club has an available spot.”

With everything that had happened, credits for graduation were the least of my concerns, especially if it meant I needed to join the drama club to get them.

“Stevenson’s in the hospital,” Bree added. “Philip went back inside and found him unconscious in the pool area. It looked like he slipped.”

“Oh God,” I said, pretending I just heard such information for the first time.

“And Rachael’s apparently traumatized by what happened at the party. She wouldn’t speak. She went home to her grandma’s yesterday to unwind. We have no idea when she’s coming back.”

“I couldn’t replace you in there,” Philip said. “Where did you go? I couldn’t reach you on your cellphone, either.”

I then thought of the series of missed calls I had received from an unknown number. It had been Philip who was trying to reach me all this time.

I decided that the best way to answer was to make something up, even if I felt compelled to be honest with them.

I began stirring this concoction with a dose of total obliviousness.

“Why? Did something happen?”

“Two people crashed into Curtis’ party and sorta dueled each other,” Philip replied.

“They had daggers that were this long,” Bree gestured with her arms. There were approximately six inches between her hands. “Terrifying stuff.”

“We didn’t get to see what happened next. We all ran out the back entrance once the fighting started.”

“Seriously, Vasquez. How could you miss it?”

“I was going home that weekend after the party,” I lied. “I gave my parents the address and they picked me up.”

Bree raised a brow. “At eight P.M.?”

“We live far.”

It was true. My family did live far from St. John’s, but if I elaborated, I was afraid that Bree and Philip would see through me.

“Fair enough,” Philip said, much to my relief.

Bree sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Jeez, Vasquez. You could have said goodbye. Anyway, Philip and I are visiting Stevenson after school. You coming along?”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go; I didn’t want to say something that would corrupt him again. But then, my curiosity about his situation overpowered my fear. With the Lethe water Julio used on him, how much of the party would he be able to remember?

“Sure,” I said.

The school bell rang, and the chatter in the hallways slowly dissipated. Students began coming in from the school grounds, making their way up the staircase.

“I’ll see you guys later,” Bree said.

Philip and I waved as she disappeared into the moving crowd. I was supposed to start getting to class myself, but Philip opened his mouth to speak.

“Strange things are unfolding, aren’t they Quinn?”

A certain heaviness materialized in my chest. “Yeah… they sure are.”

And with my response, Philip just nodded and walked away.

“Nice hair, by the way,” he said.

It was the end of a seemingly normal conversation.

There were only three minutes left to class. I caught a glimpse of my reflection on a glass window. My hair was short, and my eyes were solemn. I was pale, but other than that, when I kept staring, Cassandra’s image never flickered into view. I was all alone in my reflection.

I walked down the corridor, approaching my normal classroom and normal morning lectures. I suppose normal was too much to ask from this world. There were so many things out there, so many dangers just waiting to show itself.

Well, what else could I expect from this dying fictional universe?