The Metropolis Series #2: Quinn Beyond Bounds
29. An Illusory Lover

CURTIS BROUGHT ME to the library, and we settled in a nice little table at the far end of the room by the history section. The shelves formed some kind of fortress all around us, and they towered to the ceiling with an endless selection of books to read. We were isolated from the rest of the library—and in fact, very much alone.

“So,” I began. “What was it you’ve been wanting to talk about?”

Curtis pulled out his phone and earphones. “There’s a song I’d like you to listen to,” he said.

He then plugged a piece into my ear and played the track on his phone. While I expected another one of those indie rock tunes he had always been obsessed with, something else flooded my ears. The guitars started slow, and it wasn’t long until the drums kicked in. The vocalist sang solemnly, pouring out his honest feelings like the world had long kept him silent.

When an instrumental played, Curtis looked at me, steering our conversation to a different route.

“Quinn,” he said. “Rachael and I broke up.”

Oh, so that was what this was all about. “I’ve heard,” I replied. “What happened exactly?”

He sighed, shaking his head. “This is all my fault. I didn’t mean to, but I had fallen in love with someone else…”

I turned toward him, utterly baffled.

“And I told her,” he continued. “I just wanted to be honest with her; I’d been keeping it in for months. I told her that I’d try my best to get over it—I did still love her—and she trusted me. However, our conversations grew more unstable, and we got into a lot more arguments. She eventually called it quits.”

He remained silent for a while, listening to the sad song on his playlist. He avoided eye contact with me, gazing at the hundreds of titles that were stacked on the shelves before us. It was almost as if he was looking for his answers in the library books, but we were in the history section: accounts of great people making stupid mistakes.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Maybe you guys just need to cool off. Rachael will come back to you eventually.”

Look at me. What was I doing? What had happened to the girl who was supposed to be jealous of Curtis and Rachael’s relationship? Had she really disappeared, or was she lingering in the shadows, waiting for a time to strike?

“Thanks, Quinn,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “You always know what to say.”

I blinked. “No, actually, I don’t.”

He laughed. “Doesn’t matter…”

I wasn’t exactly sure how it happened, but our faces were now only mere inches away. I could feel his breath, and his eyes were looking straight into my own. We remained still for a while as we lingered in this momentary closeness, but I was the first to break from it. I began to have this feeling that something was very wrong, and that this moment I was having with Curtis wasn’t real at all.

For one thing, I thought that it was rather sudden for Rachael and Curtis to break up. There weren’t enough events that could lead up to that.

I got up from my seat. “I need to go…”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I gotta go to the bathroom. I’ll be back.”

“Oh. Okay…”

I stood up and scurried of out the library. Something about Curtis’ company just felt… wrong.

I needed a breather.

The nearest restroom was just outside the library, a secluded nook in the hallway that cut a path in the corner. It was hidden from most of the student body, so it was the perfect place to just get my thoughts straight.

As soon as I got there, I ambushed the sink and began washing my face with cold, running water. I needed to recompose myself. A lot of things were happening, many of which I didn’t understand. The water was a mere distraction from all of that. My mind was in so many places that I needed to relax, but the relief was short-lived. My eyes had wandered to my reflection in the mirror, and behind me, I saw a girl leaning on the cubicles.

I was shocked; I clutched my chest as my heart felt like it was about to implode. I was then dumbfounded as my eyes focused on who was actually behind me.

“Rachael?” I asked.

“Hey,” she said. “Got a minute?”

She approached the sink with a pouch of makeup, pulling out a compact powder as she applied the product to her face.

“Look, I know you don’t think well of me, but you have to believe me. The Curtis you know isn’t the Curtis that lives in this world.”

My hands slipped against the sink’s smooth surface. “Wait, what?”

Now, I was thoroughly confused.

She stopped dabbing her face with powder and looked to my direction. “Why do you think we broke up in the first place?” she then asked, a noticeable gravity present in her tone. “He’s lying, Quinn. Don’t believe anything he says.”

I might have been going insane. The next time I blinked, Rachael was gone. Her compact powder lied sprawled on the floor, and mirror shards adorned its final resting place on the cold hard tiles.

I’d had it.

There was something very, very wrong with this world. It wasn’t real; I should have known. I ran out of the bathroom, hoping to replace a way to escape, but once I was back in the halls, something else happened. I was pulled by the arm and brought back to Curtis’ presence. Dark shadows made up his face, and he looked down on me like I was a bird that had escaped from its cage.

“Where are you going?” he asked again.

He had uttered this question once in the library, and there I was back to where I had started. Books piled up to the ceiling, and the fortress it had once created now felt like a detention cell. Curtis was now holding tightly onto my wrist, and his stance told me that he had emerged from his chair to chase after me.

I yanked my arm from his grip. I knew what this world was doing now.

You can run, Cassandra had said, but you can’t hide the truth forever. You want him, you want him so badly…

I needed to fight it.

“I have to go,” I pressed. “Right now.” I turned and began walking the other direction.

“Quinn, hold on,” he called, clearing his throat. “I know this is weird for you. This is weird for me, too…”

I stopped and turned to him. I shouldn’t have done that, but his voice was too compelling for me not to ignore.

I shook my head. “You’re not Curtis.”

At that, the floor trembled. Light bulbs flickered as fissures began to form on the ceiling. Shear horror flooded Curtis’ face as books fell from their shelves.

Was the fight over?

“Yes, I like you, okay?” I said, “But I can’t take this anymore. You’re not even real.”

The shaking then stopped. The library tidied itself as books arranged themselves again, and the cracks in the ceiling had slowly disappeared. Everything had eerily gone back to normal.

It wasn’t over.

Curtis took a step forward, looking at me with burning sincerity. “I like you too, Quinn…”

Yup, something was definitely wrong.

“And I want to be with you,” he confessed, “I didn’t mean to make things complicated, but ever since we met, I’ve known that I wanted to protect you. I’d do anything just to see you, so I’d go to the nurse’s office whenever I could. I didn’t understand what that feeling was…”

I didn’t know what to say—no, I really didn’t know what to say. Back in another timeline, I had felt guilty for accidentally making him fall for me, but now, this was different. I remembered when Bree had trapped me in that closet. She had said something that would forever throw me off guard:

Look, people think that either Rachael’s jealous, or that Curtis has secret feelings… for you.

“Yukine had told me about the bad dreams you’ve been having,” Curtis then said, “but not all dreams have to be nightmares, right? I may not be real, sure, but maybe you’re not real to me, too. But we’re both here. Even if it was just in our dreams, we could be together…”

Our faces were inches apart, and our eyes locked once more. With my back against a bookshelf, I couldn’t help but give in as the gap closed between us.

I had kissed Curtis Stevenson over the course of different realities. The first time was in the storage shed before the festival when I had unprecedentedly confessed my feelings to him. The second time was at the arcade during that twisted timeline where he had fallen in love with me.

Supposedly, this was the third time, but in retrospect, it probably didn’t count.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t forget how blissful I felt in his arms. I thought that maybe I could forget about this dark world around us.

And I did, but this world had interesting ways of demanding attention.

A chill built up from the back of my neck. My eyes fluttered open, and once again, I saw the chaotic sanity of the expansive field before me. It called to me as Cassandra’s voice echoed in my ears, a restless soul beckoning to oblivion.

Rest, Quinn… you could be free… don’t you like it here…?

I tried to resist it, but the voice made my mind throb, creating a pain I couldn’t ignore. Eventually, I had to pull Curtis away. Someone called my name, a twinge of bitterness in his sweet-sounding voice.

“Quinn…?”

I turned toward the voice. And to my surprise, I was staring at the eyes of another Curtis Stevenson.