The Metropolis Series #3: Quinn and Cassandra

WHEN FRIDAY NIGHT finally came by, Harumi and I decided to spend some quiet time after a long week. I lay in my bunk bed, scrolling through my phone, while Harumi sat on the desk and watched videos on her laptop. She had a cup of noodles at her side, and a pile of textbooks and study notes on the other. It had only been the first week since coming back from Christmas break, and St. John’s apparently missed us. A lot.

The few hours we had to ourselves were not only precious, but silent, as well. However, the silence of the night dissolved as a sense of excitement rushed in. It barged into our room through the high-pitched sound of Harumi’s ringtone. In my peripheral vision, I noticed Harumi take off an earplug and pick up her phone. She talked for a while to the person on the other line, and as she did, she tried to hide the smile on her face by covering her mouth with her hand. It didn’t work. Fits of giggles eventually escaped.

“Okay then, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said before hanging up.

She then threw herself over the side of my bed, making me jolt.

“OMGOMGOMG,” she squealed.

I lifted my head. “Who was it? What happened?”

Her face was flushed, and her cheeks were pink. She clung to the sheets of my bed and smiled widely. “Bree wants to go to the movies with me,” she said.

“That’s great,” I beamed. “Where are you guys going?”

“There’s a movie theater in that new shopping center that opened this week. She wants to check it out tomorrow.”

I overheard a couple of girls talk about that place a few days ago. There weren’t a lot of shops and the crowds weren’t so big, so it made the place clean, spacious, and quiet. I imagined it as the perfect place for hanging out and window shopping.

“Nice,” I said. “I’m happy for you, Harumi.”

Harumi played with her hair. “Pfft, it’s just the movies. Anyway, wanna come along?”

I blinked. “Won’t I get in your way? You two should have fun.”

“C’mon, Quinn, you know we wouldn’t mind.” She shrugged. “But if you insist. You can still look around the shopping center if you don’t wanna go to the movies with us. I hear that it has a few delicious food stalls and a lot of cute novelty shops.”

I stroked my chin. “I do love a good novelty shop.”

“And hey, maybe you can invite someone over to hang out,” Harumi said, smirking. “A special someone, maybe…?”

I furrowed my brows. I didn’t have a special someone like Harumi had suggested, but I thought that going to the shopping center was the perfect opportunity to meet with Julio. I hadn’t seen him since he visited me at the hospital. He had revealed something heavy to me back there. I wanted to check if he was okay.

Besides, I didn’t feel like doing my homework yet.

I woke up early the next morning to send Julio an airplane down by the school grounds. Saturdays were peaceful at St. John’s. Most students were still in their dorms catching up on sleep, so without the usual chatter filling up my surroundings, I could hear the birds chirping and the wind whistling through the trees.

And cars. It was the city, after all.

I stood behind the covered basketball court where not a lot of people could see me. After a while, a paper airplane came soaring toward me, and I caught it with two hands. I unfolded it and read the scribbled handwriting:

Happy New Year, Quinn! Sorry, I’m not available today. Maybe next time. —Julio

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel sad reading his reply. I couldn’t understand it. I knew that he had the Metropolis to defend and the Spanish House to lead, so I knew that he wouldn’t be free to meet all the time. Had I really been that excited to see him? But why?

Nevertheless, I still went to the shopping center with Harumi because I still wasn’t in the mood to do my homework. We met Bree by the movie theater where she greeted Harumi with a hug. When they pulled away, Bree turned to me and waved.

“Hey, Vasquez,” she said. “So you’re watching the movie with us?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Hope I’m not bothering the two of you.”

Bree held up a hand. “It’s nothing. Glad you can join us.”

We then lined up at the ticket stand. There, I looked at the different shops that surrounded us. There was a kiosk selling Korean cosmetics, a bargain book and antique store, and among the spots labeled FOR LEASE was another one of those grocery stores owned by a megacorporation. It was the most visited area in the shopping center, where young families and office workers did their Saturday afternoon shopping. But then, I spotted a familiar face among the crowd. He was by the entrance of the store, grabbing a shopping cart before disappearing into the rows of shelves.

When Julio said he’d be busy that day, I never would have guessed he’d be grocery shopping at the same shopping center I was going to.

“You know,” I said to Harumi. “Maybe I’ll just look around.”

“Quinn, are you sure?” Harumi asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure. There was this store we passed by that I wanna check out. I’ll meet you here after the movie.”

“Aww, okay, Vasquez,” Bree said. “Maybe we can all get something to eat later. I wanna check out the restaurants they have here.”

I nodded. “Sure. You guys have fun.”

I turned and waved, moving past the stalls to the grocery store. I wasn’t blind. Harumi and I spent a lot of time together at the dorm, and whenever she was with Bree, they were always around Deus Ex Machina. They deserved the time alone, even if they didn’t ask for it.

Or was that just my lame excuse to see Julio? Why did I ditch the movies to see him? It was probably because I was genuinely concerned for him. Other than that, I couldn’t wrap a solid explanation around my head. I only knew that I was happy when I found him by the aisle of biscuits, his nose buried in a long grocery list. I didn’t know how to react when he looked up and saw me. For some reason, my first instinct was to turn away and walk swiftly in the other direction.

“Quinn?” Julio said. “Hey, I didn’t think I’d bump into you.”

I would look even weirder if I pretended not to see him, so I smiled and waved at him.

“Neither did I,” I stammered. “I thought you were busy today.”

“I am,” he replied. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you today, but the Spanish House is running low on some supplies. It’s time to go shopping again.”

At times, I would hear my parents complain about how expensive groceries were, and there were only four of us in the house—well, five counting Oliver. I remembered seeing a lot of kids at the Spanish House, probably enough to fill the multipurpose hall at St. John’s. How many grocery items would they even need? My parents would probably have a heart attack.

“Wow,” I mused. “You must need a lot of groceries, then.”

“Actually, Mackenzie’s computer generates all the basics for us,” Julio explained.

“So, you’re telling me that you don’t just live in a magical self-repairing house, but you also get an endless supply of magical basic commodities? Living in the Spanish House must be a dream, then.”

“Unfortunately, that’s where the dream ends.”

We walked down the shelves of instant coffee. Julio got a couple of packs and placed them in his cart.

“Anyway,” Julio began, “I’m shopping for everyone’s individual wants and cravings, and trust me when I say that they can be very specific. The computer in Mackenzie’s control room is pretty old, and it’s already supplying us with our basic needs while keeping the Spanish House in top shape. We don’t want to overload it with everyone’s favorite brand of chips and preferred soda flavors.”

Then, his expression darkened. “Besides, you’ve met Mr. Simon. You saw what constantly fixing the Archives is doing to him. It’s a good thing we chose not to ask much from that old computer in the first place. For all we know, we would have all been corrupted a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Wouldn’t want that.”

It was believed that the computer in Mackenzie’s control room used to belong to the Author. It was the best way to explain why anything typed into it would be brought to life. That was how they made the Spanish House virtually indestructible. That on its own already seemed like a lot to ask.

“What’s on the list?” I queried. “Maybe I can help out.”

Julio raised a brow. “You’re seriously going to help me with something as boring as groceries?”

“Hey, I’ve saved your butt a few times rewinding time and all that. I can help with groceries.”

He looked at me like I was joking. Then, he smiled. “All right, if you insist. Let’s head to the snacks aisle first.”

It was interesting to find out what sort of things the kids at the Spanish House wanted. Tamara, the new second in command, liked individually wrapped sweet cakes. Viviana, Julio’s half-sister, liked powdered doughnuts and chips. As for other requests, Julio was right, some were quite particular with what they wanted. They asked for brands of beverages, chips, and sweets that I never heard of before. (I grabbed a few for myself so that Harumi and I could try them.) Sometimes, they’d ask for a flavor that was out of stock, and Julio and I would argue what the best alternative would be.

“Let’s get lemon instead,” he once said. “That’s like lime, right?”

“But the lemon flavor’s disgusting,” I reasoned. “It leaves an artificial sour taste in your mouth. Orange is more delicious.”

There were also more girls than boys in the Spanish House. When I stayed there one night, I remembered having to take Rachael’s old room because they didn’t have a spare for girls. Now that I knew that the Author was a woman, it made sense that she would have more female characters, but it left Julio clueless about some items on his grocery list. There were a couple of requests for beauty products, and he didn’t know where to look.

“What the hell is a beauty blender?” he asked as we went through the cosmetics aisle.

My knowledge of makeup was pretty basic, but I’d try my best to explain what it was and what it was for.

“You girls go through so much trouble getting ready, huh?” he commented.

He knew the difference between eyeliner and eye shadow, though.

“Rachael wore a lot of eye makeup back in the day,” he explained.

He then threw a stick of eyeliner into the cart.

That was when the mood of our shopping trip suddenly changed. I didn’t know what to say to him, but the least I could do was acknowledge how he was feeling.

“I don’t know if I’d said this enough,” I began, “but I’m sorry for what happened between you and Rachael.”

Julio let out a sigh. “Hey, don’t worry about it. I think talking about it with you at the hospital helped. Back then, only Ms. Louise knew. Mackenzie only had suspicions. I kept it to myself because I was afraid of what people would say. So I worked hard. I became the leader of the front lines. I thought that all I needed to do was defeat Cassandra by bringing her to the Lethe, and nobody would know. However, as the months dragged on, it proved to be a much harder task than I thought.

“I wasn’t just fighting Cassandra, but my inner demons, as well. Talking to you made me realize that I had only been hurting myself. In due time, I’ll tell the others the truth, but for now, I think you helped me move on, and I feel so much better.”

Since meeting him, Julio rarely smiled, but on that day, he gave me the most genuine smile I’d seen. His tired eyes twinkled, and I wondered when they would sparkle like that again.

Once out of the grocery store, Julio turned to me and said, “Thanks for the help today, Quinn. I can take it from here.”

“No problem,” I replied. “It was nice catching up with you.”

That was when I remembered that I still needed to give him his Christmas gift. I unhooked the airplane keychain from my bag and handed it to him.

“Oh, and this is for you,” I said. “I was supposed to give it last Christmas, but—”

Julio held up a hand and smiled. “It’s okay. Thanks for this. I really like it. Guess I now owe you a present for the next time we meet.”

“Oh no, you don’t need to.”

“C’mon, it’s the least I can do.”

Then, someone interrupted our conversation.

“Flowers!” they called. “Fresh flowers!”

There was a small flower stall right by the entrance of the grocery store. A middle-aged woman stood by her display of various flower arrangements as she waved red roses at the people who passed by.

“How about a rose for the lady, sir?” the vendor then asked Julio. “She’s very pretty, no?”

The rose looked like the one he tried to give Rachael at prom. That was when he found out she had been dating Curtis in a timeline without him.

Julio looked somber for a while, but then he smiled, politely shook his head at the vendor, and walked on.