Well! I did it. I wrote all of chapter 25 just today. It did take all day, but it was a little rough starting off after being off the story for like a year. I'm excited because I actually have material to write, though. Edit: I already posted it! aghh
Since I'm hoping to get a little jump-started on the updates, I'm including a word-count bar for NaNoWriMo, which I'm not doing, and I could NEVER reach 50,000!, but I thought it would be fun to find out just how many words I ended up writing this month.
4147 / 50000 words. 8% done! :D
Anyway... Uhm... my thoughts on this chapter are the following.
1.) Being able to incorporate a musical song that I love into a big story I care about - fantastical. Especially since they are both into theater.
2.) I'm even excited about progressing Mariam and Jeffrey's relationship. I don't know why. I just think they're cute. In the very near future, it's going to get elaborated, and Lily's going to be involved with it. And I just enjoy that the story can not be so strictly about Lily and her issues. I need M & J as a comparison anyway because it helps emphasize one of the main points of the story in the first place - what is an unhealthy relationship, and how do you know you have one if it's all you know?
3.) I enjoyed writing the Phantom conversation. I thought for once it was a genuine, affectionate correspondence from people who've been struggling with affection for 150 pages. And it's nice that they acknowledge what brings them together. Then a sense of attachment makes sense afterward. I can feed that flame like mad!
So here it is for my friends. If there are errors, feel free to let me know. Comments, critique, etc etc.
(Sara, I don't know if you saw that ch24 was up, so in case you missed it, it's here.
Favorite Part(s)
It would have been absurd to be in love with the Phantom. I say that not as Christine trying to pretend the feelings are missing, but because he must've been trying to rattle me asking something so out the blue. Especially since he has done nothing to deserve being loved at all. Nothing. In fact, he had done an excellent job at doing the exact things that should drive a sane person away and want nothing to do with him, which leads me to believe I can't be a sane person, because I feel drawn to him like no thing or person ever before. Every new problem that arises, I feel exhilarated by the anger and the confusion, like I'm living for the first time. He was like the sting of the cold air I felt returning home. It would've been futile, I believe, to be angry with a force so powerful.
Erik,
I'm sure you are fully aware that I'm still not happy with you. I don't think our discussion really cleared anything up for me, the only thing you seemed to do was insist that I can and should learn to deal with your weird behavior and your even weirder justification for it. That being said, you're right -- I do like to work things out with people. I don't like holding grudges, especially over issues such as this, where it's beyond my control no matter what I say.
Erik, I'm going to be honest here, even though I'm not sure if you will believe me. I care about your well-being. Your physical and your mental well-being. I have been lead to believe that you're having some inner turmoil, and I wish I could help you, but before the help comes your own willingness to discuss your problems with me. The way you treated me for being upset about this was unfounded. I'm trying to believe that through and through your intention was not to hurt me, you just have a very different definition of normalcy. You have not flung the idea of self-injury on me, thank God -- what happened at the library was beyond your control. Overall, it does not pertain to our relationship.
That said, I want to make a compromise. I will let you continue with your shameless self-injurious ways without further explanation if you will tell me, in detail, why you have been, for lack of better terms, stalking me, and when it started (my guess is when I was a freshman, as you have referred to those days.) I want to know how you've done it. I want to know if it involves my friends. You don't have to give yourself away to me... It just would be appreciated if... I got a little more from you than what I have.
Stay out of the cold,
-Christine
- - -
"Rahma, Lewis R" read on the portable phone the next day. Meg wanted to come over, with nothing in particular in mind to do, and my mom let her inside from the snow-ridden streets like a half hour later. She was amused to see me still in my pajamas, feet on the desk, playing Sweet Tooth. I'd been on Pogo.com all morning, truthfully. It was crack for simple-minded folk like me.
Meg walked past me and looked out the window. "I can't believe how thick it is out there, still."
"Mmm...?" I continued to play the game before her hands came landing on both my shoulders. She watched me play for a moment before sighing deeply.
"Oh, Lily. The one I know has gone far away..."
"Which one was this again?"
"The one that rode her bike every day, picked flowers and stuffed them in her pocket, had forts made for the secret club meetings..."
"Well it IS December, you retard..." She chortled. "And the secret club meetings stopped like three years ago."
"I don't know, I think we should have them again."
"What, so we can talk about Jeffrey?" I rolled around in my chair to face her and flutter my fingers.
She suddenly frowned.
"What." She pursed her lips and snatched the magnet-toy-thingamabob my dad had on his bookshelf.
"I thought maybe I'd have something to say to him before the break. I tried, too! Really, I did. I just felt intimidated because he was all distracted by this other guy, and I didn't want to make it seem like I just had to interrupt him, just to bring up something stupid."
"What were you going to say?"
"...That we had the same Stewie pens."
I don't know why, but I just pictured the Phantom holding up a Family Guy pen, saying he uses it all the time, especially to write to me.
"Oh my God, you know what I found out?! He has like this little comic series. He took one of them out during class, and it was like sooo good. That's not even a pity-compliment. He can draw!"
"You can draw a little too."
"He's like 10 times better than me."
Both of us paused a while before she sighed again.
"God, I hate this. I don't know why guys have to be so scary when you realize you like them."
"You're telling me. I pretty much just have to look at the Phantom and I feel like my legs are melting."
"Sister, I feel you."
"...Is it wrong that sometimes I just feel like hitting the Phantom over the head?"
"N-... what inspired this idea?"
"Last night. We were having a discussion that was sort of going in circles and I told him 'sometimes love right where you hating most'."
"PFFFfff! YOU ACTUALLY SAID THAT TO HIM?"
"It slipped!"
"Does that mean you love him now?"
I grabbed my forehead and grumbled.
"NO! I just meant I can't live with him or without him."
"The more you ruv someone, the more you want to kill 'dem!~"
"Oh God."
"The more you ruv someone, the more he make you cryyyy!~" She wailed, slamming the study door closed. "Though you are try for making peace wit' him and ruvingggg~"
"Mariam, stop."
"That's why you ruv so strong you like to make him diiiie!~"
She posed with her arms and legs wide, waiting for me with no relent to speak of.
"The more you ruv someone, the more he make you 'clazy'..." I chimed in, but not very enthusiastically.
"The more you ruv someone, the more you wishing him deeeeeeeead!" We both swayed toward each other and grabbed arms. Before we knew it we were ballroom dancing. "Sometime you look at him and only see fat and lazyyy~"
"And wanting baseball-bat for hitting him on his heeeeead!!! Love!"
"Love!" She echoed.
"Aaand hate."
"Andddd hate!"
"They like two bro'das~"
"Brothers!~"
"Who go on a date!-"
Suddenly the door re-opened. My mom stood there at sight of me dipping Meg over the rug. I yanked her back up and we stood there just as awkwardly as she was.
"Hey girls..."
"H-hi..." Meg feebly tried.
"I'm going to go take care of some stuff, so... I'll be back later." She smiled. Meg and I smiled back and she closed the door on us. We pretty much doubled over in laughter after that. When I returned to the computer, I realized I'd gotten a comment on LJ from an online friend. It sort of reminded me what Meg had once said that I never got to ask about.
"Oh! Mariam... I wanted to ask you a question..." I muttered, ex-ing out the rest of my windows.
"Yyyes?"
"Let's go to my room first..." I lead her to it and locked the door. She plunked down on my bed, and I saw her noticing the suspicious amount of candles lining the desk, and my table, and the window pane. "A few weeks ago you said he followed you and Paulina to the park."
"Oh yeahhhh." She darted her eyes around.
"That hasn't happened again, has it?"
"Not that I know of. I just wanted to know if you knew about what he was doing."
"That's kind of what I wanted to ask you."
Meg looked a tiny bit exasperated.
"I don't see why I would. I don't know him at all. He was seriously just watching us at the curb and then disappeared. Like a real creep."
"...This was... broad daylight?" I asked, skeptically.
"Well, the sun was setting, I think."
"Well this is going nowhere."
"Sorry...? He's your boyfriend." Suddenly things got a little awkward. "Maybe he was making sure you weren't hanging out with us? Wasn't it like... that week where you weren't supposed to talk to anyone?"
"Maybe... I don't know... Ever since that time, he's been weird, but he hasn't been controlling. I never felt like he was ever keeping serious track of you guys."
"Maybe you're wrong."
Meg stayed with me the rest of the day. We watched TV, finished off a box of teddy grahams, danced like a pair of general retards in the snow some more, and agreed that at some point during the break, we needed to make cookies. Sugar cookies. And chocolate chip. And as per usual, eat too many in a row and feel sick afterwards.
I was not thinking that Erik was going to have something to say so quickly after my email to him which I wrote at like two in the morning after the entire Adult Swim line-up finished and something in an episode of Inuyasha (I don't know why I was watching it, really) inspired me to finally ask.
I will answer all your questions, Christine.
-Erik
Okay. But when.
I decided to take out my cellphone and text him to ask. I happened to be walking downstairs when I did it. My dad stopped me mid-stride with phone out.
"Who're you texting?"
"Huh?" I flipped it closed.
"I said 'who are you texting?'"
"A friend."
He grinned like his interest had suddenly been lost and headed upstairs. I turned the corner just as my phone beeped on high volume and almost ran straight in my mom. I'm glad I only had two parents. If this kept happening during my conversation with him, I think the phone would end up shooting out of my hands.
"Lily,"
"Yes, Mother Dearest."
"Is there a certain day this week you want me to take you Christmas shopping?"
"Oh! Um... not really. Whenever's good. Is there anything you need to get?"
"Are you kidding me? I haven't even started! How about Tuesday afternoon. I get off early and we can leave before rush-hour."
"Okay. Sounds good."
"And remember, you have that other paycheck you can deposit."
"Yeah. I didn't forget..."
"Alright." She looked me up and down. "I think I need tea."
"Me too." She looked like she was ready to head to the kitchen with me when I shied away. "But I'll be right back."
When I was left alone, I sat at the edge of the couch and checked my phone.
"I'm sorry. Tonight won't work. I will come for you tomorrow. Around 5."
Come for me?! Come for me tomorrow? What, was he going to ring my doorbell or something? Introduce himself to my parents?
"how exactly are you coming for me?" I asked back.
I came to the kitchen to see my mom had picked out a cup for me. I stood next to her as she watched the microwave and she smacked her arm around me. "Owe!" She chuckled.
"Mother... you are beautiful and you hurt me."
"Beauty hurts."
The phone beeped in the pocket between the two of us. "I'llll... get that." I laughed nervously and she gave me the raised-eyebrow before continuing with her tea business.
"I'll be outside. ...Have a wonderful night."
My shoulders sagged. I always seemed to pour my thoughts out to him and his responses were so annoyingly ambiguously concise. Was it just how he thought fit to answer or was he juggling a million things at the moment? I closed the phone and noted the simple environment around me. Although... nothing was really simple anymore.
- - -
On Sunday, Giry called me to say that the tea I gave her was delectable. I know what you are thinking. Tea drinkers everywhere in this story; it just doesn't make sense! If it helps, Meg does not like tea, and the Phantom... I don't know... maybe I should've asked.
It was calming hearing from her again, I missed her even though it had only been a few days. Much had happened that I wanted to tell her, but she was still sick, and I didn't have the time because it happened to be a half hour before five and I needed to 1.) Do my hair and find something decent to wear. 2.) Try to work in meditating to a calming cassette tape I found in my closet, for this exact purpose, that I thought I'd lost forever.
At five, my heart was panicking. It must've been beating 120 times a minute. I was downstairs, pretending that I would be meeting Meg (being a godamn liar. I know.) I was looking out the living room windows, pretending I was just observing the snow/wondering if it would snow. I couldn't take the possibility of him and my parents being in the same place any longer, so I put on two layers of coats and came outside. I just leaned there against the closed front door. 5:00 and already the sun was sinking fast. From across the street I saw in the black trees a moving part that made me squint. When my eyes adjusted, they found the faint glow of his alien mask from the street lights, floating in the middle of a shadow. My fingers fiddled with a necklace I was wearing as I came down the deck and crossed the street for that patch of darkness. As soon as I departed the visible sidewalk, the shadow creature laid his hand across my back and lent his other to guide me through the terrain until we seemed in safe distance from my house to return to the sidewalk.
"Where are you taking me?" When I asked, he didn't answer right away. My first word inspired him to look straight down on me and after the silence, I met eyes with him. His gaze inspired formerly-mentioned leg-melting.
"Back to the opera."
"Hgheh. You made me worry if you were coming to my door, and all along I could've went alone."
"I don't like that you come alone. It's too dark out." I looked down at my feet, recognizing my response to that as positive but out of words. "It made me uncomfortable that you didn't let me come with you when you were angry with me."
"I promise I wouldn't have gotten lost," I reassured. Going in to joke mode... because that's what I do when people admit they care...
"Sometimes people are dangerous."
He took me inside through the side door and helped me out of my coat, then lead me up the stairs to a gold-furnished "room" on the stage, different than the last time. I lowered to a chair and he sat beside me, slowly slipping his fingers away from mine.
"People can appear dangerous when they aren't," he said, moreso to a nearby chair than to me. "I would have, to you. Before or after I cared." I looked to him, and he was still looking at anything but me. "I remember when I first realized you even existed... It seemed that you were stalking me..."
"What?"
He smiled with a corner of his mouth and thought a moment before his hand approached mine. I turned it over as an invitation and he clasped it, raising it closer to him.
"You were absolutely everywhere... You were a new face that was suddenly everywhere. It was making me annoyed. I didn't see a soul in you. I thought yours eyes looked dead sometimes."
"Thanks." I replied. He started caressing my fingers a little.
"So many people ridiculed you, though. You were an easy target. And you weren't trying to be... I've directed animosity at a lot of people in my life, sometimes without merit. It made me guilty to continue being so annoyed with you when you didn't deserve that type of energy from me, so I tried to stop. However, stopping the negative energy did not stop the energy all together..."
He stopped for a moment, and I found myself scrolling the red seats, trying to connect this prologue to the completely different chapter we found ourselves in right that moment. Whatever came next, he got what he wanted...
"And Christine..." I faced him again and he was leaning right over me. "Still I didn't care about you... at all." I retracted just the tiniest bit. "But you didn't try to change what made you so easy to ridicule. You were alive somewhere. I saw you perform. I thought it endearing," he uttered, almost like he thought everything he was saying was defiantly different than the opinion one should've had about me.
"You were my opposite. What we had, what we wanted, what we expected in the future -- opposites to the last possible nuance of the word. People scared you. You were hurt by their input... I couldn't imagine why when they had nothing... on you. I was so past that it wasn’t even funny. I almost wanted to grab you by the shoulders and yell in your face.”
“...I was a freshman, what do you expect?”
“I expected nothing. That's why I never spoke to you... You didn't need a Crazy anywhere near you..."
"I've tried very hard to look past our differences, if you haven't noticed.”
“You could try and fail, easily.”
“Well you could have tried and failed to contact me, but that didn’t stop you. You had faith in me, the way I sometimes, despite all offending logic, have faith in you-”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
I lowered my head. He reached over to move a lock of my hair behind my shoulder and I found feel it tensing up.
"So~ when I decided I'd never speak to you, it seemed there was still no danger, for either one of us, in watching..."
"Have you watched other girls you've liked?"
“I kept track of you because you kept me distracted," he corrected. He continued to stroke my hand and watch the floor, thinking how to continue.
"You were like my TV."
"I liked seeing your simple life take place."
"Things were not going well for me. Watching the Little Freshman made another day seem bearable.”
“What year were you-“
“Sometimes people become projects. They’re not amazing people at first, but you grow attached to them and pass the time trying to figure out whatever you can about them, trying to solve their problems inside your head... It’s thrilling learning exactly who they are… staring at photos of them… They become so important to you, but to them, you're no one." The black dots in the holes of his mask locked on me. " Everything about them is up in a mind they don’t know exists.”
I saw the mind past the eyes for a moment.
"It's a little scary when you put it that way..." He slightly smiled.
“Of course it is. It may not be... acceptable. But it’s personal. And it’s just you and them. And what you can do, which you shouldn’t but can easily do all to yourself… you will.”
“So is that how long you've been watching me? All that time?”
“I had to stop for a while. I lost grasp of the opportunity I had to keep track of you and thought I should quit the nonsense all together. It didn't mean anything that I'd grown feelings for you, Christine... Knowing everything about you didn't make my life better, or yours, inspire me, change me... You were useless candy."
I didn't like being called useless candy. I hoped that this opinion had changed.
"But... you didn't listen to yourself."
“I often don't." Neither did I. "I settled for the uselessness. We like candy, don't we?" I averted my eyes when he glanced at me. "I just wanted to see what you’d become from there. It would be like reading to the middle of a book and stopping. I felt like the book had been taken from me, and I was scavenging for the pages... they were everywhere you went -- so I followed you everywhere. Right behind you, sometimes... Followed you with Meg, to the park, to here, to there, when you thought you were alone. I found your screen name once as well." He seemed entertained that I expressed alarm over that. “I’ve sent you a message before, with a fake account, just to play with you. You weren’t having any of it, though. I think you blocked me.”
I laughed, just a little. I couldn't help it on that one. It was such a comic creep-thing to do. I wished that I could have found the log for that but until a year ago, I used express so my parents wouldn't know I was chatting.
“The more I learned about you, the more you did inspire me and change me. I love reading what you write and what you think, even about the most mundane of things... You capture the world in a way most people don't. It makes me want to experience it with you. It makes me want to know what you would say about me and how you'd interpret my behavior... When you seem dead sometimes, it's because still, what you see can't give you want you need, because you have a component of your soul that doesn't belong here."
Here, I could feel the melting sensation again.
"I knew this could no longer be what had quenched my thirst thus far. We had this connection, this…inexpressible one. The one between people that are nothing alike in some ways and identical in others."
"How did you know?"
“You get a pull to someone. It's not something you've felt with other people.”
"...I was thinking nearly the same thing last night. About you." I said. It seemed to please him in this way you couldn't have found through his mouth or his eyes... I just knew -- we had agreed on a force that took time to discover but would never leave no matter how we fought it.
"I see the same thing in you. You're..." I was groping for a word that didn't sound like a 14-year-old's romance fanfiction. What came out what basically what she would've written: "You're magic, or something."
"I'm not magic."
"You don't feel like a part of this world, either, is what I mean. I feel like I have to keep you with me because.. you came from the exact same place I've been trying to figure out how to get to all my life."
The hand of mine that he had been holding, warm now from his grasp, was lifted over my head and when we stood up, some silent communication in the way he placed his arms told me to rest my head on his shoulder. He was holding me like we were dancing, and it was perfect.
"It takes a lot of work to be, as you put it, 'magic'..." He whispered into my ear. "It's worth it for you though..." What were these words we were saying? If Meg had heard them, especially considering what went on the day before, she would be gesturing the gag-reflex...
"...Sometimes, Erik... It sounds like you are madly in love with me," I joked. "But.. it'd be-“
“All too easy.”
I held onto him a few seconds longer before retracting. He was sort of smirking at me, but not in the smug way, moreso in a lost-in-his-own-thoughts sort of way.
“I don’t know if you can yet. I-I really don’t.” I tried to reason.
“You’re right.”
I was glad we agreed on at least something.
“But I can when you start letting me.”
Here, my brain and heart were suddenly in conflict. Feeling the hand on my waist, it brought about such a peculiar lust in me, I don't think I would've stopped him if he closed that space between our bodies. But standing here, forced to make the decision... if it makes any sense at all, there became an instance on that stage where stringing words into sentences was just too much to ask of me. My body was no help either. Everything, absolutely everything, crashed like a malware-ridden computer. Fuck.
Since I'm hoping to get a little jump-started on the updates, I'm including a word-count bar for NaNoWriMo, which I'm not doing, and I could NEVER reach 50,000!, but I thought it would be fun to find out just how many words I ended up writing this month.
Anyway... Uhm... my thoughts on this chapter are the following.
1.) Being able to incorporate a musical song that I love into a big story I care about - fantastical. Especially since they are both into theater.
2.) I'm even excited about progressing Mariam and Jeffrey's relationship. I don't know why. I just think they're cute. In the very near future, it's going to get elaborated, and Lily's going to be involved with it. And I just enjoy that the story can not be so strictly about Lily and her issues. I need M & J as a comparison anyway because it helps emphasize one of the main points of the story in the first place - what is an unhealthy relationship, and how do you know you have one if it's all you know?
3.) I enjoyed writing the Phantom conversation. I thought for once it was a genuine, affectionate correspondence from people who've been struggling with affection for 150 pages. And it's nice that they acknowledge what brings them together. Then a sense of attachment makes sense afterward. I can feed that flame like mad!
So here it is for my friends. If there are errors, feel free to let me know. Comments, critique, etc etc.
(Sara, I don't know if you saw that ch24 was up, so in case you missed it, it's here.
"You were like my TV."
"I feel like I have to keep you with me because.. you came from the exact same place I've been trying to figure out how to get to all my life."
It would have been absurd to be in love with the Phantom. I say that not as Christine trying to pretend the feelings are missing, but because he must've been trying to rattle me asking something so out the blue. Especially since he has done nothing to deserve being loved at all. Nothing. In fact, he had done an excellent job at doing the exact things that should drive a sane person away and want nothing to do with him, which leads me to believe I can't be a sane person, because I feel drawn to him like no thing or person ever before. Every new problem that arises, I feel exhilarated by the anger and the confusion, like I'm living for the first time. He was like the sting of the cold air I felt returning home. It would've been futile, I believe, to be angry with a force so powerful.
Erik,
I'm sure you are fully aware that I'm still not happy with you. I don't think our discussion really cleared anything up for me, the only thing you seemed to do was insist that I can and should learn to deal with your weird behavior and your even weirder justification for it. That being said, you're right -- I do like to work things out with people. I don't like holding grudges, especially over issues such as this, where it's beyond my control no matter what I say.
Erik, I'm going to be honest here, even though I'm not sure if you will believe me. I care about your well-being. Your physical and your mental well-being. I have been lead to believe that you're having some inner turmoil, and I wish I could help you, but before the help comes your own willingness to discuss your problems with me. The way you treated me for being upset about this was unfounded. I'm trying to believe that through and through your intention was not to hurt me, you just have a very different definition of normalcy. You have not flung the idea of self-injury on me, thank God -- what happened at the library was beyond your control. Overall, it does not pertain to our relationship.
That said, I want to make a compromise. I will let you continue with your shameless self-injurious ways without further explanation if you will tell me, in detail, why you have been, for lack of better terms, stalking me, and when it started (my guess is when I was a freshman, as you have referred to those days.) I want to know how you've done it. I want to know if it involves my friends. You don't have to give yourself away to me... It just would be appreciated if... I got a little more from you than what I have.
Stay out of the cold,
-Christine
- - -
"Rahma, Lewis R" read on the portable phone the next day. Meg wanted to come over, with nothing in particular in mind to do, and my mom let her inside from the snow-ridden streets like a half hour later. She was amused to see me still in my pajamas, feet on the desk, playing Sweet Tooth. I'd been on Pogo.com all morning, truthfully. It was crack for simple-minded folk like me.
Meg walked past me and looked out the window. "I can't believe how thick it is out there, still."
"Mmm...?" I continued to play the game before her hands came landing on both my shoulders. She watched me play for a moment before sighing deeply.
"Oh, Lily. The one I know has gone far away..."
"Which one was this again?"
"The one that rode her bike every day, picked flowers and stuffed them in her pocket, had forts made for the secret club meetings..."
"Well it IS December, you retard..." She chortled. "And the secret club meetings stopped like three years ago."
"I don't know, I think we should have them again."
"What, so we can talk about Jeffrey?" I rolled around in my chair to face her and flutter my fingers.
She suddenly frowned.
"What." She pursed her lips and snatched the magnet-toy-thingamabob my dad had on his bookshelf.
"I thought maybe I'd have something to say to him before the break. I tried, too! Really, I did. I just felt intimidated because he was all distracted by this other guy, and I didn't want to make it seem like I just had to interrupt him, just to bring up something stupid."
"What were you going to say?"
"...That we had the same Stewie pens."
I don't know why, but I just pictured the Phantom holding up a Family Guy pen, saying he uses it all the time, especially to write to me.
"Oh my God, you know what I found out?! He has like this little comic series. He took one of them out during class, and it was like sooo good. That's not even a pity-compliment. He can draw!"
"You can draw a little too."
"He's like 10 times better than me."
Both of us paused a while before she sighed again.
"God, I hate this. I don't know why guys have to be so scary when you realize you like them."
"You're telling me. I pretty much just have to look at the Phantom and I feel like my legs are melting."
"Sister, I feel you."
"...Is it wrong that sometimes I just feel like hitting the Phantom over the head?"
"N-... what inspired this idea?"
"Last night. We were having a discussion that was sort of going in circles and I told him 'sometimes love right where you hating most'."
"PFFFfff! YOU ACTUALLY SAID THAT TO HIM?"
"It slipped!"
"Does that mean you love him now?"
I grabbed my forehead and grumbled.
"NO! I just meant I can't live with him or without him."
"The more you ruv someone, the more you want to kill 'dem!~"
"Oh God."
"The more you ruv someone, the more he make you cryyyy!~" She wailed, slamming the study door closed. "Though you are try for making peace wit' him and ruvingggg~"
"Mariam, stop."
"That's why you ruv so strong you like to make him diiiie!~"
She posed with her arms and legs wide, waiting for me with no relent to speak of.
"The more you ruv someone, the more he make you 'clazy'..." I chimed in, but not very enthusiastically.
"The more you ruv someone, the more you wishing him deeeeeeeead!" We both swayed toward each other and grabbed arms. Before we knew it we were ballroom dancing. "Sometime you look at him and only see fat and lazyyy~"
"And wanting baseball-bat for hitting him on his heeeeead!!! Love!"
"Love!" She echoed.
"Aaand hate."
"Andddd hate!"
"They like two bro'das~"
"Brothers!~"
"Who go on a date!-"
Suddenly the door re-opened. My mom stood there at sight of me dipping Meg over the rug. I yanked her back up and we stood there just as awkwardly as she was.
"Hey girls..."
"H-hi..." Meg feebly tried.
"I'm going to go take care of some stuff, so... I'll be back later." She smiled. Meg and I smiled back and she closed the door on us. We pretty much doubled over in laughter after that. When I returned to the computer, I realized I'd gotten a comment on LJ from an online friend. It sort of reminded me what Meg had once said that I never got to ask about.
"Oh! Mariam... I wanted to ask you a question..." I muttered, ex-ing out the rest of my windows.
"Yyyes?"
"Let's go to my room first..." I lead her to it and locked the door. She plunked down on my bed, and I saw her noticing the suspicious amount of candles lining the desk, and my table, and the window pane. "A few weeks ago you said he followed you and Paulina to the park."
"Oh yeahhhh." She darted her eyes around.
"That hasn't happened again, has it?"
"Not that I know of. I just wanted to know if you knew about what he was doing."
"That's kind of what I wanted to ask you."
Meg looked a tiny bit exasperated.
"I don't see why I would. I don't know him at all. He was seriously just watching us at the curb and then disappeared. Like a real creep."
"...This was... broad daylight?" I asked, skeptically.
"Well, the sun was setting, I think."
"Well this is going nowhere."
"Sorry...? He's your boyfriend." Suddenly things got a little awkward. "Maybe he was making sure you weren't hanging out with us? Wasn't it like... that week where you weren't supposed to talk to anyone?"
"Maybe... I don't know... Ever since that time, he's been weird, but he hasn't been controlling. I never felt like he was ever keeping serious track of you guys."
"Maybe you're wrong."
Meg stayed with me the rest of the day. We watched TV, finished off a box of teddy grahams, danced like a pair of general retards in the snow some more, and agreed that at some point during the break, we needed to make cookies. Sugar cookies. And chocolate chip. And as per usual, eat too many in a row and feel sick afterwards.
I was not thinking that Erik was going to have something to say so quickly after my email to him which I wrote at like two in the morning after the entire Adult Swim line-up finished and something in an episode of Inuyasha (I don't know why I was watching it, really) inspired me to finally ask.
I will answer all your questions, Christine.
-Erik
Okay. But when.
I decided to take out my cellphone and text him to ask. I happened to be walking downstairs when I did it. My dad stopped me mid-stride with phone out.
"Who're you texting?"
"Huh?" I flipped it closed.
"I said 'who are you texting?'"
"A friend."
He grinned like his interest had suddenly been lost and headed upstairs. I turned the corner just as my phone beeped on high volume and almost ran straight in my mom. I'm glad I only had two parents. If this kept happening during my conversation with him, I think the phone would end up shooting out of my hands.
"Lily,"
"Yes, Mother Dearest."
"Is there a certain day this week you want me to take you Christmas shopping?"
"Oh! Um... not really. Whenever's good. Is there anything you need to get?"
"Are you kidding me? I haven't even started! How about Tuesday afternoon. I get off early and we can leave before rush-hour."
"Okay. Sounds good."
"And remember, you have that other paycheck you can deposit."
"Yeah. I didn't forget..."
"Alright." She looked me up and down. "I think I need tea."
"Me too." She looked like she was ready to head to the kitchen with me when I shied away. "But I'll be right back."
When I was left alone, I sat at the edge of the couch and checked my phone.
"I'm sorry. Tonight won't work. I will come for you tomorrow. Around 5."
Come for me?! Come for me tomorrow? What, was he going to ring my doorbell or something? Introduce himself to my parents?
"how exactly are you coming for me?" I asked back.
I came to the kitchen to see my mom had picked out a cup for me. I stood next to her as she watched the microwave and she smacked her arm around me. "Owe!" She chuckled.
"Mother... you are beautiful and you hurt me."
"Beauty hurts."
The phone beeped in the pocket between the two of us. "I'llll... get that." I laughed nervously and she gave me the raised-eyebrow before continuing with her tea business.
"I'll be outside. ...Have a wonderful night."
My shoulders sagged. I always seemed to pour my thoughts out to him and his responses were so annoyingly ambiguously concise. Was it just how he thought fit to answer or was he juggling a million things at the moment? I closed the phone and noted the simple environment around me. Although... nothing was really simple anymore.
- - -
On Sunday, Giry called me to say that the tea I gave her was delectable. I know what you are thinking. Tea drinkers everywhere in this story; it just doesn't make sense! If it helps, Meg does not like tea, and the Phantom... I don't know... maybe I should've asked.
It was calming hearing from her again, I missed her even though it had only been a few days. Much had happened that I wanted to tell her, but she was still sick, and I didn't have the time because it happened to be a half hour before five and I needed to 1.) Do my hair and find something decent to wear. 2.) Try to work in meditating to a calming cassette tape I found in my closet, for this exact purpose, that I thought I'd lost forever.
At five, my heart was panicking. It must've been beating 120 times a minute. I was downstairs, pretending that I would be meeting Meg (being a godamn liar. I know.) I was looking out the living room windows, pretending I was just observing the snow/wondering if it would snow. I couldn't take the possibility of him and my parents being in the same place any longer, so I put on two layers of coats and came outside. I just leaned there against the closed front door. 5:00 and already the sun was sinking fast. From across the street I saw in the black trees a moving part that made me squint. When my eyes adjusted, they found the faint glow of his alien mask from the street lights, floating in the middle of a shadow. My fingers fiddled with a necklace I was wearing as I came down the deck and crossed the street for that patch of darkness. As soon as I departed the visible sidewalk, the shadow creature laid his hand across my back and lent his other to guide me through the terrain until we seemed in safe distance from my house to return to the sidewalk.
"Where are you taking me?" When I asked, he didn't answer right away. My first word inspired him to look straight down on me and after the silence, I met eyes with him. His gaze inspired formerly-mentioned leg-melting.
"Back to the opera."
"Hgheh. You made me worry if you were coming to my door, and all along I could've went alone."
"I don't like that you come alone. It's too dark out." I looked down at my feet, recognizing my response to that as positive but out of words. "It made me uncomfortable that you didn't let me come with you when you were angry with me."
"I promise I wouldn't have gotten lost," I reassured. Going in to joke mode... because that's what I do when people admit they care...
"Sometimes people are dangerous."
He took me inside through the side door and helped me out of my coat, then lead me up the stairs to a gold-furnished "room" on the stage, different than the last time. I lowered to a chair and he sat beside me, slowly slipping his fingers away from mine.
"People can appear dangerous when they aren't," he said, moreso to a nearby chair than to me. "I would have, to you. Before or after I cared." I looked to him, and he was still looking at anything but me. "I remember when I first realized you even existed... It seemed that you were stalking me..."
"What?"
He smiled with a corner of his mouth and thought a moment before his hand approached mine. I turned it over as an invitation and he clasped it, raising it closer to him.
"You were absolutely everywhere... You were a new face that was suddenly everywhere. It was making me annoyed. I didn't see a soul in you. I thought yours eyes looked dead sometimes."
"Thanks." I replied. He started caressing my fingers a little.
"So many people ridiculed you, though. You were an easy target. And you weren't trying to be... I've directed animosity at a lot of people in my life, sometimes without merit. It made me guilty to continue being so annoyed with you when you didn't deserve that type of energy from me, so I tried to stop. However, stopping the negative energy did not stop the energy all together..."
He stopped for a moment, and I found myself scrolling the red seats, trying to connect this prologue to the completely different chapter we found ourselves in right that moment. Whatever came next, he got what he wanted...
"And Christine..." I faced him again and he was leaning right over me. "Still I didn't care about you... at all." I retracted just the tiniest bit. "But you didn't try to change what made you so easy to ridicule. You were alive somewhere. I saw you perform. I thought it endearing," he uttered, almost like he thought everything he was saying was defiantly different than the opinion one should've had about me.
"You were my opposite. What we had, what we wanted, what we expected in the future -- opposites to the last possible nuance of the word. People scared you. You were hurt by their input... I couldn't imagine why when they had nothing... on you. I was so past that it wasn’t even funny. I almost wanted to grab you by the shoulders and yell in your face.”
“...I was a freshman, what do you expect?”
“I expected nothing. That's why I never spoke to you... You didn't need a Crazy anywhere near you..."
"I've tried very hard to look past our differences, if you haven't noticed.”
“You could try and fail, easily.”
“Well you could have tried and failed to contact me, but that didn’t stop you. You had faith in me, the way I sometimes, despite all offending logic, have faith in you-”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
I lowered my head. He reached over to move a lock of my hair behind my shoulder and I found feel it tensing up.
"So~ when I decided I'd never speak to you, it seemed there was still no danger, for either one of us, in watching..."
"Have you watched other girls you've liked?"
“I kept track of you because you kept me distracted," he corrected. He continued to stroke my hand and watch the floor, thinking how to continue.
"You were like my TV."
"I liked seeing your simple life take place."
"Things were not going well for me. Watching the Little Freshman made another day seem bearable.”
“What year were you-“
“Sometimes people become projects. They’re not amazing people at first, but you grow attached to them and pass the time trying to figure out whatever you can about them, trying to solve their problems inside your head... It’s thrilling learning exactly who they are… staring at photos of them… They become so important to you, but to them, you're no one." The black dots in the holes of his mask locked on me. " Everything about them is up in a mind they don’t know exists.”
I saw the mind past the eyes for a moment.
"It's a little scary when you put it that way..." He slightly smiled.
“Of course it is. It may not be... acceptable. But it’s personal. And it’s just you and them. And what you can do, which you shouldn’t but can easily do all to yourself… you will.”
“So is that how long you've been watching me? All that time?”
“I had to stop for a while. I lost grasp of the opportunity I had to keep track of you and thought I should quit the nonsense all together. It didn't mean anything that I'd grown feelings for you, Christine... Knowing everything about you didn't make my life better, or yours, inspire me, change me... You were useless candy."
I didn't like being called useless candy. I hoped that this opinion had changed.
"But... you didn't listen to yourself."
“I often don't." Neither did I. "I settled for the uselessness. We like candy, don't we?" I averted my eyes when he glanced at me. "I just wanted to see what you’d become from there. It would be like reading to the middle of a book and stopping. I felt like the book had been taken from me, and I was scavenging for the pages... they were everywhere you went -- so I followed you everywhere. Right behind you, sometimes... Followed you with Meg, to the park, to here, to there, when you thought you were alone. I found your screen name once as well." He seemed entertained that I expressed alarm over that. “I’ve sent you a message before, with a fake account, just to play with you. You weren’t having any of it, though. I think you blocked me.”
I laughed, just a little. I couldn't help it on that one. It was such a comic creep-thing to do. I wished that I could have found the log for that but until a year ago, I used express so my parents wouldn't know I was chatting.
“The more I learned about you, the more you did inspire me and change me. I love reading what you write and what you think, even about the most mundane of things... You capture the world in a way most people don't. It makes me want to experience it with you. It makes me want to know what you would say about me and how you'd interpret my behavior... When you seem dead sometimes, it's because still, what you see can't give you want you need, because you have a component of your soul that doesn't belong here."
Here, I could feel the melting sensation again.
"I knew this could no longer be what had quenched my thirst thus far. We had this connection, this…inexpressible one. The one between people that are nothing alike in some ways and identical in others."
"How did you know?"
“You get a pull to someone. It's not something you've felt with other people.”
"...I was thinking nearly the same thing last night. About you." I said. It seemed to please him in this way you couldn't have found through his mouth or his eyes... I just knew -- we had agreed on a force that took time to discover but would never leave no matter how we fought it.
"I see the same thing in you. You're..." I was groping for a word that didn't sound like a 14-year-old's romance fanfiction. What came out what basically what she would've written: "You're magic, or something."
"I'm not magic."
"You don't feel like a part of this world, either, is what I mean. I feel like I have to keep you with me because.. you came from the exact same place I've been trying to figure out how to get to all my life."
The hand of mine that he had been holding, warm now from his grasp, was lifted over my head and when we stood up, some silent communication in the way he placed his arms told me to rest my head on his shoulder. He was holding me like we were dancing, and it was perfect.
"It takes a lot of work to be, as you put it, 'magic'..." He whispered into my ear. "It's worth it for you though..." What were these words we were saying? If Meg had heard them, especially considering what went on the day before, she would be gesturing the gag-reflex...
"...Sometimes, Erik... It sounds like you are madly in love with me," I joked. "But.. it'd be-“
“All too easy.”
I held onto him a few seconds longer before retracting. He was sort of smirking at me, but not in the smug way, moreso in a lost-in-his-own-thoughts sort of way.
“I don’t know if you can yet. I-I really don’t.” I tried to reason.
“You’re right.”
I was glad we agreed on at least something.
“But I can when you start letting me.”
Here, my brain and heart were suddenly in conflict. Feeling the hand on my waist, it brought about such a peculiar lust in me, I don't think I would've stopped him if he closed that space between our bodies. But standing here, forced to make the decision... if it makes any sense at all, there became an instance on that stage where stringing words into sentences was just too much to ask of me. My body was no help either. Everything, absolutely everything, crashed like a malware-ridden computer. Fuck.
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