P.S. I have used the word "professional" in the last entry, and there is something to do with that word that happened in chapter nine.

What the hell, I'll share it:

She wouldn't stop staring at me at lunch. The entire forty five minutes was dashed with bickering about whether I would share more details. It wasn't enough to say that hardly anything had happened at all. "You've curled your hair today. What's up with that?" She asked. Nothing, I said. "I have never seen that flower before." Well I got a new one, I said. "You're acting like-- like... You and the Phantom didn't already like, do it, did you?"

"WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?!" I screeched, so loud that Mrs. Vardega snapped her neck in our direction, and we had to apologize for startling her. It wouldn't happen again, we promised.

"I'm just kidding. I know it would take you a million years just to dry-hump," she said under her breath, but that wasn't even the cruelest thing she did. The cruelest thing was that she proceeded to stuff her mouth full of food and give me ten or fifteen uninterrupted seconds to think about what dry-humping the Phantom would have been like. Apparently, the conclusion I had come to was all over my face when she bothered to look at me again, and the questioning got even more passionate.

"Look, we just had a short meeting the other night..."
"NIGHT!"
"Yes, night. We have talked about this before. Anyhoo, we had a very short meeting just to talk about how we would go forward. It was practical, professional-"
"PROFESSIONAL. What, did you bring your briefcases?" Neither of us were expecting to find that so funny, so we face-planted into the opposite arms of the couch.

I already told her this, but Mariam is super cute and reminds me of my friend Gianna. I think she went into the character without me even knowing.

Well, I am pleased to say that the creativity has went on for two days in a row. Might even keep up with it!

I decided I may as well draw if I can't write, and the website needs six profile images, two of which are now complete. Two of the characters getting profile images have never been drawn in detail and color before! I mean, Westin and Mr. Worden have been sketched, but that's it! I'm excited about Mr. Worden. He's but bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows and always looks irritated, so that should be fun.

So yeah, these girls!:





And, you know, since I've got their faces right in front of ya, why not throw in some charming interaction between them that nobody has read yet?

Her hands prodded through the notes again before she asked if she could read what he'd said that night from my phone, and I obliged, as quickly as I could, but she took her time answering. “So he made you go through all the trouble of meeting him somewhere else, but he didn't want Mariam to be there,” she clarified, just as Mariam returned, hearing her name and immediately interested in the context. I could feel my tenseness rising; I could realize in the back of my mind that something was off about this, but I would defend him, still.

“Who didn't want me to be there?” Mariam went straight for the onion rings again, sitting on her knees to reach them from across the table. I was swatting my hand like we should drop the subject all together, but Paulina had no discretion.

“Her Note-Sender.”

“He just said he was shy, is the thing, and she made him nervous. He only trusts me, he said,” and out loud the messages I'd received that day suddenly sounded strange. Or, at least, they did to Mariam and Paulina, judging by their expressions.

“So he was standing around in the dark and planning to come out all of a sudden, to meet you, if you were alone.”

“Wow wow wow, what are we talking about?” Mariam asked, and Paulina too seemed confused, I assume because she would have figured I'd told Mariam this story already. The glass light fixture above our heads became my point of focus as I clarified this admittance, but in my peripheral Mariam was just sitting there, with nothing to say. When I looked down, I could sense that Paulina wanted to say something, but she was never quick to jump to words. She finally formulated a question as Mariam had pointed her wide eyes and sarcastic grin to the table-top.

“How much evidence do you have that he's a part of that play?”
“She doesn't have any evidence,” Mariam answered for me. “And he won't give her any, either.”
“He could be in Stage Crew,” I offered.
“Maybe you should find out who he is before you meet him,” Paulina suggested. “And I don't mean asking. I mean finding out for yourself.”

“I agree. I mean we barely tried,” Mariam said. “But I watched that make-up closet constantly, and he never went in, and he never came out,” she trailed. I didn't know how to respond. The idea fleshed out in my mind of finally quelching this feeling of helplessness, of beginning something of an investigation about him, and in a way it seemed exciting. But was I the only one who gave him the benefit of the doubt?

“Well, I wonder if he stayed away from the house because he knew I'd recognize him. Or maybe Mariam would recognize him.”

“Maybe,” I answered softly.

“Yeah, but that means he doesn't want to be recognized. I thought the whole point of last night was that he would tell Lily who he is,” Mariam said, swishing her hand in my direction.

“It's definitely a little odd, but, again... if he's worried we'd recognize him, then he might be someone closer to you than you thought.”

“I bet you anything Paulina knows him; she knows everybody,” Mariam said, and although Paulina wouldn't quite brag about it, neither did she argue against it.

“Well, I'll tell you one thing: he seems like a senior. He even sounds older. Not that he is.”

The two of them were beginning to have ideas that I momentarily tuned out, simply getting lost in the notion of his age, and his intelligence. I couldn't admit it, or use it to mean anything about what I should do from there, but it attracted me and flattered me. Would either of them understand that the way he appeared... sounded... smelled... had already ensnared me, despite the peculiarities? Did I dare say it excited me that he wanted us to be alone, despite the dangers? I wouldn't believe yet that he was dangerous, and peculiarity – the very fact that we had to have a discussion about him to understand him better – was drawing me in every second.

Paulina took out a notepad, and she wanted to know everything about him. We went over every detail we could gather from the notes, and I started harnessing my smiles again, and everything remained on my mind even as the conversation shifted to other things.

On the ride back, Mariam complained she had eaten too much candy and gone to bed with a tummy ache.
“HA! Just as I had hoped,” I said.
“Shut up,” she answered, just as Paulina found herself with another question:
“You don't know anything about what he looks like... do you?”
“From what I saw of him, he's tall and thin. And I would think he was wearing something dark, but it was Halloween, so I guess that doesn't help.”

“Slenderman,” Mariam uttered, and I turned around from the front seat and slapped her on the knee just as Paulina pulled in front of her house. She faintly smiled before slinging her bag over her shoulder and stepping out. “Keep me posted,” she said with stern enthusiasm, even pointing a finger at us.

G'byyyyye! *leaps away*
-J

( Read more... )

Only when I least expected it, when I had lost myself to an entire afternoon of retrospection, would Mariam cluster-text me about wanting to know what happened. I called, but she sent it straight to voicemail! “We were out at the farm,” she wrote. I knew right away what she was talking about: the last two years her family went on a two hour drive to get vegetables and homemade bread – I'd even had the fortune of coming along. I knew she was having fun there, riding the horses with her younger brother, having stew at the inn. “Text me all about it and ill answer when I can,” she said, “im just in the car coming back,” but I couldn't.
“Not through text.”
“please! anything!!”
“Call me when you get home.”
“when i get home im gonna shower because im gross and then im gonna hibernate”
“Mariammm, this is serious!”
“write it on LJ! i know its serious, i wanna hear! ill read it when i can”
“I'm not writing on LJ, I'm not telling anyone but you and Giry.”
“who the fuck is giry”
“Paulina.”
“uhh,” she wrote, and I face-palmed, too exasperated to even compose a message, but she answered again. “wait a min, paulina knows already?!!!”
“She answered her goddamn phone!”
“geeeez ill see what I can do, jesus"

Well, work today, two times. I haven't gotten any groceries in like... forever. We don't even have SUGAR. I've got to find my food handler's and other documents before orientation for my second job tomorrow. I've neglected to fold the laundry. I should have washed my hair yesterday, but hoping nobody notices.

♥, J

Found this. I read it like it wasn't my own story, with no memory of writing it! And it sounded good. It makes me miss He's There. I miss working on where this story was going. It's going to be exciting! I'll allow myself return if I can finish NIL's first season.

For several days, his feelings, his new strategy, and his whereabouts were unknown to me. After such a discussion, being cut off from him made me feel like I was on a desert island, and I spent much of my free time, in all the metaphorical sense, kicking up sand, pacing about the shore, and cursing to myself in frustration. I was trying to decide if I preferred this to the old days, when I had no idea why he would stop responding to me. No. I never preferred, in any way, when he left me like this. In fact, I grew to be even more angry than I ever had before when I considered the circumstances. Any time I was mad, he would follow me, because he could follow me, but he had set it up so if he wanted to sulk about something or other forever, I couldn’t stop him.

When Giry texted me late Thursday night, I figured she just wanted to catch up. "If it's okay, I'd love to talk soon,” seemed to suggest nothing else. At the time, however, I’d been contemplating using my key to go up to the theater’s attic and stare out the window until I saw someone arrive. I’d already planned it all out – if anyone besides Erik started climbing the stairs towards that room, I’d hide in the wardrobe. I told Giry, vaguely, that I might try meeting him, but she wasted no time responding, and she seemed bent on it. She said she was already at the school, finishing a project, and that if I could just walk up there, she’d get “right to the point.”

So I went up the hill. I stared down the theater road to an empty parking lot, surrounded in trees yielding to wind. My hair was flapping just about everywhere, but it didn’t bother me as much as it usually would have. I wanted to know what this was about. I was in control of what I knew, today, and I wasn’t going to take it for granted.

She was already there, up front, waiting to drive away, when I came sprinting for the front doors, expecting to find her in the entrance hall, or somewhere obvious. I turned around and came to her when she called my name. I opened the passenger door and lowered. I smiled and greeted her. “You wanted to see me?” There was no smile on her face.

“Yeah,” she answered. She turned her key in the ignition, then asked if I minded us going back to her house. I didn’t mind. She pulled out just after I said so, looked both ways, and turned onto the main street.

“So-“

“What did Erik say to you last time you saw him?” I gave her a clear question of why she wanted to know in my face, and she picked up on it when driving permitted her to. “I think we should compare notes.” She found I took too much time trying to word it and said, expressionlessly to the road in front of her, “he knows you’re talking to Mariam, doesn’t he? And he's not happy about it.”

“No. Did he tell you this?”

“He’s told me a lot of things, lately, and it’s getting kind of… Well, first, I’d like to know what it is he’s said to you.”

I was taken aback by the authority in her voice as she asked me to do something that I had told myself many times I would do carefully, or not at all. And yet, the tone told me now was the time to stop holding back. She knew something. She knew enough that what I said wouldn’t be news. I somehow felt it.

She was watching the road, but I looked at her anyway, and I said as calmly as ever that Erik despised Mariam, and he told me quite clearly that he would become as territorial as she did friendly. “He’s taking everything the wrong way, and he thinks I’m letting go of him because I’m worried our relationship isn’t practical. He wants me to choose him and only him, and I told him I wouldn’t, and now he hasn’t spoken to me all week.”

She may have acknowledged what I said, but she concentrated on getting us through the neighborhood and into the driveway, where she stepped out and eyed her surroundings before proceeding, as if she worried we were being watched. I knew to follow her up steep wooden steps to her porch, and she gestured for the upstairs when I stopped at the doorframe, holding her screen door open behind me. The curtains were closed, and they left the room in a shadow beside the kitchen. She didn’t open them when she joined me, but she lit a lamp on the table by the couch, and she sunk in to the seat, first facing straight forward, then shifting suddenly to my direction.

“Are you worried about him yet? Please tell me you are.”

I tried to dissolve my own inhibition under her stare. I crossed my arms and said, simply, “of course.”

“Good. Because you should be,” she replied.

“Why are you suddenly telling me this?”

“I’ve just had enough¸ really.”

“You guys talk more often than I thought, then-“

“I’ve heard enough from him to last me a lifetime.” The comment seemed to make me uncomfortable, and she caught me growing stiff. “I’m really, sorry, Lily. I know the kind of thing you’ve had with him, I just don’t-… I’m convinced now that he’s more trouble than good.” My eyes widened.

“What happened?” I asked, and I felt myself slide to the end of my seat. She was sitting rather far away from me, I realized.

“Well, you know I’ve gotten texts from him here and there, for a while, and I text him.”

P.S. The first time I saw this I was like "oh geez, Lily and "Erik"."

I'm not even sure where this goes, yet, but I don't know what to make of me turning poetic like this, except it's kind of nice.

He was temporary, like the shriveled roses once were: brilliantly crimson and just for me, and, though his conscience was so strong, he was like everything without a conscience: unable to know he would expire.

So, I did some moderate work on the plot and completely got rid of chapter indications for 40-50. It's now just a bunch of plot paragraphs again. I don't know why I did that when I thought it would be more helpful to know what each chapter was about, but actually, some were chunks of information for multiple chapters and it wasn't that well organized.

I considered that good enough work on the plot and have thus been prepping to return! I've read old entries having to do with intentions, gathered quotes from here or there, and am getting rather nervous about everything coming together and the more deeper aspects of what's going on being revealed.

I also have read a lot of past chapters (mainly in the 20's and 30's) and just went through 37-39 (which my beta operaghostess left a wonderful long review for and I was saving to reply to until I was coming back from hiatus.)

But... to get myself really in the mood to write this long-postponed Chapter 40 after Lily and Erik kissed the first time and she was fighting with Mariam, I did something quite new. I wanted the feeling of this chapter to be falling into the abyss of infatuation for Erik, but guiltily and filled with tension. The tension is from Mariam, and she's becoming a voice growing in strength that says this is not okay. And I really like Mariam as a character, so it was natural to want to really know how she was feeling and use that to give the chapter its balance. So, I wrote in her POV. I might do more of it as prep since their friendship, with all its ups and downs, will be put in a spotlight during chapters 40-50.

But for the time being, I have this email, and it's very interesting because I had to think about how she would write it and give her her own voice. I know that her and Lily wouldn't write the same, especially over the computer (Mariam's incredibly lazy and usually doesn't even capitalize.) Also, talk about a change in opinion. I spend 39 chapters writing about why the Phantom could be appreciated and Mariam has no fond thoughts for him at all. It's a little fascinating, actually, when you start plunging into different perspectives. Writing for her makes me feel like I'm channeling someone's feelings about a real problem. lol

Lily,

Before I can go on another day I need to say this to you, because it's been driving me mad, and now that you're already angry with me, things can't get worse. I avoided being completely honest in the past because I respected your feelings and wasn't sure if what I thought was right, but now things are getting ridiculous and I'm probably the only one who will say something rational.

I knew he was up to something. Since day one. In fact it was you who said how strange it was that a stranger wanted to meet you at the theater building out of nowhere, and me who thought you were being too suspicious. Well.. I regret that now. And no, before you get any ideas, it was hardly because he wouldn't tell you who he was. I was teasing you. It was when he started telling you what to do and making you mad that I thought he had some nerve when he had met you like a month ago, or less than a month ago. You claim that that is part of the roleplay but he's just kept barging in to our personal lives and following even me and Paulina around. Who knows if you've even heard the full story, but it hasn't been that nice. It's only been "nice" for you. I got that. I believe you, I think he probably does a lot of nice things for you, but it's in a certain context which I do not know if you see. Which is that he is clearly obsessed with you. That's not good nor is it the same as having a crush. He is OBSESSED, and (I can't believe I'm about to compliment him) has done something really smart thinking if he talks to you as a phantom that you will listen to him. But you listen too much and that's why I get freaked out. That stuff about you being a weirdo --- it's crap. He's alienating you from us. All he ever does is pull you away, make you devote all your energy to him, believe God knows what. I only hear snipits from Paulina that don't make any sense. And yeah, Paulina's gotten on my nerves too, something just doesn't set right with me with how she worked her way around the both of us. I heard about how she has talked to him and tried to find things out about him but shit, I don't know her that well and sometimes I wonder if she's on his side or something, because she always encourages you to work things out with him.

If it were ever just a "roleplay" you would not be acting so serious about it. I don't want to be going around having fights with you but you seem like you're losing it. I'm not the bad guy. Okay fine, for argument's sake I won't call 'the phantom' the bad guy either, but you don't seem to have your guard up with him. You have your guard up with me but not at all with him, it makes no sense. It's frustrating because the more you just trust him and not tell the whole story to me, the more he'll take advantage of it. He's probably loving this, just reeling you in one day at a time, nobody to stop him... of course, you don't believe me at all. You've even ignored that he's scared me more than once. I don't know what else to fucking say because it's so obvious except I'm NOT trying to be the bad guy, but if you're just going to ignore me, I guess you have to figure it out on your own. Or maybe, since you listen to Paulina more than me, she will finally say something that takes into account reality and you will listen to her.

Well, those are my thoughts. Sorry that they actually come between us.

It may turn out that this is in Chapter 40, actually. Anyway... that's all for now. I think I'll go write more. :) Narrative-wise, perhaps.