HARUMI AND I retired peacefully to our dorms that night. We had a lovely convenience store dinner and settled for bed shortly after. (We’d had a few sleepless nights recently. We deserved it.)

However, I couldn’t sleep. There was something in me that kept me from closing my eyes and drifting off into peaceful slumber. Whatever it was, it would lead me to that moment after school, the sight of Curtis being with another girl making me uneasy.

At first, I thought that if I kept such feelings to myself, they would go away, and that was where I was mistaken. What felt like hours was actually just a mere fraction of it. I went to bed at ten, but when I checked my phone, I frowned to see that only three minutes had passed.

I sighed, cursing to myself. I turned to the other side of the bed, hoping to find comfort where I knew there was none. Then, I shrieked.

There was a figure looming over my bed.

“Quinn, it’s me,” the figure said. It had Harumi’s voice.

As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that it was indeed Harumi. I clutched my chest, feeling my heart beat a million times per second.

“Oh my God, Harumi,” I exclaimed. “You scared me.”

I honestly thought that I was having a nightmare again, one with Cassandra peering over my bed.

“We forgot something,” Harumi said promptly.

I blinked. “What?”

“The application form for the festival…”

Oh right, we were supposed to submit it to the student council room after class. We had totally forgotten about it, and it was already too late to rush to the main campus.

So Harumi and I returned the next morning to the student council room and finally had the application form submitted. Student council president Bree Leonard frowned at us for being way overdue, but she still wished us luck on our class’s burger stand. That was pretty nice of her. She placed the form on top of a pile of paperwork, humming a tune as we left.

Harumi and I then walked down the halls in silence. Gray clouds covered the sky, looming over the busy streets out the window. The road was at a standstill as the sound of cars thundered.

Harumi stretched her arms and sighed. “Glad that’s done,” she said. “Class doesn’t start ‘till another hour. Wanna head to the cafeteria?”

I didn’t answer; I was hushed by the music that was coming from the room to our right. Curtis and his band, Deus Ex Machina, were holding a practice session, and I watched him pound away on his drums from the other side of a glass window, beating melodically with Rachael’s vocals and Philip’s guitar.

Harumi must have noticed me staring. “They’re pretty good, aren’t they?” she said.

“Yeah…” At that, my voice trailed off far, far into the abyss.

I had trouble thinking straight. Everything else around me was a blur—and thankfully, it wasn’t because I was about to pass out. However, the feeling was, well, strange. It was a mix of wanting to jump for joy and wanting to huddle up in a dark corner all at the same time. For the most part, I was uneasy.
My cheeks burned. I was utterly lost. What was going on?

“You like him, don’t you?”

I turned to where the voice had come from, and there she was. Tall, glass windows stood on the other side of the hall, overlooking skyscrapers and telephone wires. I watched as my reflection warped between an image of myself—the me I had always known—and of Cassandra, the evil twin that lived in my nightmares. She dominated the city skyline, casting shadows over the gloomy Metropolis.

I was too stunned to move. Ever since I came to St. John’s, she wouldn’t leave me alone. She was this living nightmare that haunted me for whatever the heck knows what. Her messages always said the same thing: I had done something terrible, and she wanted me to feel bad about it.

As much as her appearances scared me, I sometimes thought that her methods were too complicated. Maybe if she would just open up and tell me what her problem was, then perhaps I could actually help her—assuming that she wanted my help, though.

“Oh, Quinn,” she said, smiling and letting out a little giggle. “You can’t keep your little secret much longer…”

Then, she disappeared into a cloud of dark smoke.

I wanted to slap myself. Maybe I would be able to wake up in a different place and pretend that nothing ever happened, but why did I feel so guilty? Cassandra probably wasn’t a real person to begin with, so I guess it didn’t matter that she knew about—well…

You know what? Forget it. Thinking about it just made me feel bad.

“Hey! Earth to Quinn…”

I jumped as Harumi tapped my shoulder. For a second, I totally forgot that she was there.

“Huh, what?” I looked at her wide-eyed, already breathing heavily.

“Hung-ry,” Harumi patted her stomach with every syllable. “Let’s go.”

For some reason, I glanced at the band room one more time. Deus Ex Machina had just hit the last notes of their song, and Rachael appeared to sigh with relief. Hands akimbo, she held her chin up, and with a swish, her curly brown hair fell perfectly down her shoulders. She turned to Philip and gave him a high-five as Curtis stepped out of his drum set and met her with a hug.

And that was it.

Little drops of rain began to fall as thunder roared in the distance.

“Harumi,” I began, taking a deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“Oh sure,” she replied. “We can talk about it over breakfast.”

Before Harumi could get distracted by the pancake special in the cafeteria, I needed to stress my point. I grabbed her wrist, bringing her face-to-face. “Yeah, okay, but you can’t tell anyone.”

Harumi furrowed her brows. “Why are you whispering?”

“Let’s just go already…”

I then made my way toward the most bittersweet batch of pancakes I’d ever had in my life.