Juno was gone and Bart didn’t know what to think about that. Because she was no longer at the hotel, he could take it that the city had sent her back to wherever it was she originally came from. It was plausible and made sense. In a city like this, anything could happen and when it did, he would have no choice but to take a deep breath and deal with it, because it wasn’t like he could change anything. He wasn’t God or the Higher Powers. He was just a kid who could run fast and mess things up when he didn’t mean to.
He was upset that she was no longer there, but whining about it would do no good, nor would it bring her back. Juno didn’t belong here anyway, not when she was pregnant with a baby that shouldn’t have to be born into a city like Los Angeles, crazy and unpredictable. Bart had been worried about that since first meeting her. He’d been worried that she would go outside and get hurt, or that she’d have the baby and then they wouldn’t know what to do with it. It wasn’t like he knew anything about babies to begin with, and he doubted that she did either.
The hotel was back to normal. People weren’t throwing themselves out of windows or having tea parties in the hallways. With Elaine’s guidance he’d returned the stolen mask that liked making everything under his roof a living hell. Handing it back over to the old man who looked relieved to get it back, he had muttered an apology for taking it in the first place and then he’d hightailed it back to his room with his tail tucked between his legs. When he opened the door, he noticed the absence of the girl who had been staying with him. He saw that she wasn’t there and looked everywhere for her. His search brought up nothing, and he left it at that. There was nothing else to do.
Walking along the streets was where he could be found now. With his red t-shirt and his crimson wristbands attached to both wrists, Bart could blend in and pass for a common teenage boy when out and about. He ran the fingers of one hand along the walls to his side, carried a half-full bottle of coke in the other hand and tried not to look too pathetic. Achieving that goal was sort of hard when he felt like crap.
The shouts that followed her traveled through the door and they were what made him stop to take a look. Dropping his hand away from the wall, Bart arched a brow at the girl who looked to be running away from something and walked closer to her.