AT THAT MOMENT, I could only stare.

Back at the festival, when I found out that Rachael had been erased from the timelines, I confronted Cassandra about it. In the girls’ restroom, she told me that the only way to bring Rachael back was through the Author. Incredibly, Rachael was now sitting right in front of me, and never had I felt the spiritual presence of an Author in the span of her absence.

Did I believe in miracles? I didn’t know. But I could take comfort in the fact that Cassandra was wrong.

“Are you feeling okay?” Rachael then asked me. She put down her guitar and leaned it against the foot of the bed. “Do you want me to get you anything? Breakfast, perhaps?”

Her presence felt so surreal to me. Just last night, she was a corrupted, mindless zombie, and she was beating Julio up to a pulp.

I gasped.Julio…

Rachael tilted her head and gave me a confused look. “Er… hello? Is everything okay?”

I jolted. “Uh, yeah.” My forehead beaded with sweat. “Everything’s fine, it’s just—”

Just what?

Julio was able to undo Rachael’s corruption without dumping her into the River Lethe. He claimed that it was the only way to save a corrupted character; you had to wipe their memories clean so that they could start over. I knew that there had to be another way, but how? Was simply declaring your love for someone the answer?

I love you. And I always will.

From the way tears fell from Rachael’s eyes, was there a chance that she remembered him? What would happen if she did?

“There’s something I need to ask you,” I began.

Rachael furrowed her brows. “Oh. Okay then.”

“Do you know a guy named—”

Why was it that whenever I got to important revelations, some kind of godly force had to interrupt? This time, it was Rachael’s phone ringing from her vanity table. She told me to hold on as she picked it up and answered it.

“Hello? Curtis?” she said.

Okay, at least I would find out what kind of relationship Curtis and Rachael still had. Couples had a thing for saying I love you after phone calls—no matter how frustrating the actual call was. (My parents were like that.)

Then, Rachael’s face appeared to grow more and more frustrated. She stood from the bed. “What? She can’t be serious—”

Curtis then began to speak on the other line. As he did so, Rachael shot a glance at me, and she didn’t look happy.

It kind of worried me. Now that Rachael was back, I didn’t know how much of the original timeline was restored. Maybe this time, the storage shed kiss actually happened, and Curtis knew I had a crush on him through an unprecedented confession.

“Okay, okay,” Rachael sighed. “I’ll be there in about thirty… Alright, I’ll see you later… Yeah, I love you, too.”

And there it was; the infamous I love you seemed to linger in the air when Rachael hung up. She and Curtis were together in this timeline.

“Quinn, you sure you’re feeling okay?” she then asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Then you need to get dressed. Bree is calling a meeting in the band room.”

“Bree? I thought she left the—”

“Wow, for a newbie, you already know a lot, huh?” There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Anyway, yeah, she did leave the band. And now, she wants to come back.”

“She does?”

“Yeah. And for whatever reason, she’s calling for you, too…”

Bree was the student council president of St. John’s. She once bribed the entire student body to work on the school festival with pizza and told on Curtis and Rachael for making out in the hallway. Later on, though, I found out that she was a former member of Deus Ex Machina, the school band where Rachael was the lead singer. She played the bass, and why she left was unknown.

But what did I have to do with Deus Ex Machina? As far as I knew, nothing—except for the fact that I had a really bad crush on their drummer. So why would Bree want me to attend the band meeting? Did she want me to christen her return or something?

Rachael didn’t let me ask my question about Julio again. She sent me straight to my dorm so that I could get into my school uniform as fast as I could.

I sighed. I guess I would get to my answer later.

I unlocked my dorm room and entered, my footsteps echoing across the walls. A window had been left open, letting in a gust of wind. There were feathers scattered on the floor—white feathers. Julio and Viv were gone. Did they just decide to leave? Well, I couldn’t blame them for doing so, though. They must have had someplace else to go, you know, hunting down Cassandra and all.

But when I approached Harumi’s desk, I found something else missing: her notebook.

Possibilities wrung my head. What if someone else was in the dorm and captured Julio and Viv in their dove forms, taking Harumi’s notebook with them? However, who would want a high school girl’s study notebook? Someone who’d want to sabotage her, perhaps, but—

Then, everything added up: Julio and Viv captured plus something important to Harumi being stolen equated to none other than, you guessed it, Cassandra.

She knew that Julio had been wanting to capture her, and it seemed like she and Harumi had a rough history themselves.

Harumi had claimed that she and Cassandra were friends; she felt terrible seeing Cassandra’s own powers corrupt her. You see, Cassandra had once offered Harumi to join her to destroy the Metropolis as she was angry at the Author for getting rid of her.

And that was when it hit me. Cassandra had been here before. In this dorm. In her physical form.

A wave of panic rushed through me, but at the same time, I was too paralyzed to move. I was going nuts, so I just sat on my bed and collected myself, but the unpleasant thoughts continued to seep in as it grew into the worst possible scenario I could ever imagine. Was it possible that Cassandra was involved in Harumi’s disappearance, too?

It took a phone call to stop my brain from drowning in all that fear. I pulled it out of the pocket of my pajama pants (which meant I had slept with my phone in my pocket all night) and saw that Curtis was calling.

I picked it up apprehensively. “Hello?”

“Hello, Quinn?” he said on the other line.

You have no idea how much relief I felt hearing his voice. However, whenever I felt relieved, it was always short-lived.

“Yeah, sorry to wake you,” he continued. “But Bree is calling you to the band room for some reason. I’m not sure why, but—”

“Yeah, I know. I was with Rachael when you called her—”

“Hold on, you were with Rachael?” He said it like it was something scandalous.

“Yeah, why?”

“I dunno. I just never knew you two got along.”

No matter what had happened in this timeline, he had a point.

“Yeah, well…” I swung my feet back and forth. “She just happened to be around when… you know. Little Quinn Vasquez passed out again.”

“Oh, I see…” he sighed apologetically. “So she took you in, huh? Well, that’s nice of her. Anyway, hope you’re feeling okay.”

“Yeah, thanks, Curtis…”

“See ya.”

He hung up, and to dead air, I said:

“I love you, too…”

God, was I stupid.

I sighed deeply as I stood, making my way to the closet for my school uniform. When I crouched down to grab my shoes, I noticed a piece of paper stuck between the floor and one of the closet’s legs. I picked it up and examined it, seeing that everything written on it was in Japanese.

It was a page from Harumi’s notebook; there was no doubt about it. The first line was written in bold. What followed was a numbered list that counted from one to five with items I couldn’t read.

All except for one, though:

クイン (Quinn) 

There were a few more characters that followed it, and my senses were telling me that they spelled my last name, Vasquez, but I wasn’t exactly sure.

What was this list? And why was I written on it?