Quinn stands over the stove in her college's common room.
Finally, some things click into place. Finally she starts understanding that all the attention Rachel once gave her wasn't because she meant anything, anything at all, to Rachel. It was just Rachel's protocol. Just her way of doing business. Just the way she treated anyone, anyone at all, who so much as looked her in the eye.
Protocol: an answer to every email, a response to every phone call. Always friendly and polite, if on occasion pointed. She treated Quinn no different than a stranger. In fact, she probably treated strangers in a friendlier fashion, simply because you never know, you never ever know, whether that might get you somewhere you couldn't get before.
That makes it all a little easier to accept, somehow. For so long she's felt strung along, then rejected, politely, even kindly, but rejected nonetheless. And anyway, now she knows. If a girl likes her, she might like her back.
But she's unlikely to go looking anytime soon.
Because it still stings. Because she still wants to see her and talk. It's crazy. And the little green pills help, but they don't erase the drama, or the feelings of the drama. Funny she chose Drama, isn't it?
Funny how in high school it was all drama under cover of no drama. Then just drama after drama after drama. Or was it trauma after trauma?
She realizes she had her own protocol. A slushy for every geek, for anyone who crossed her in any way, delivered by one of her minions. A cruel word, elegantly placed, cleared a path for her. Of course, reversal of fortune changed her. She wonders if Rachel will ever change. She's forever rewarded for what she does. And she's oblivious to checks on her behavior.
Quinn doesn't have the time, the attention, or the patience to wait for her any more.
She doesn't know if this will give her closure, or even if she wants closure, but the evidence of this stupid, stupid breach of protocol is pressing on her, keeping her from going forward.
She lights the burner, removes the train pass from her pocket, and makes ashes of what once was a dream.