Important Author's Note

I'm going to be putting any information I consider important here, before the chapter. The link to this story's playlist is on my profile - it has the song for this chapter, as well as several songs that will be used in future chapters (but not all of them).

This story is mainly based on the 2004 movie adaption of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical. However, I will be pulling things from other versions of Phantom as well - primarily the 1990 TV movie (staring Charles Dance) and the original novel by Leroux.

The song used in the chapter is Kill Caustic by AFI. The book series discussed by Lyrica and Ms. Nelson is Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony.

Chapter 1: Prologue

"You should try harder, Lyrica."

Lyrica spun her glass of orange juice, watching the liquid inside slowly catch up with its container. With some work, she could get a small whirlpool to form – the hard part was making sure it didn't slosh out of the glass. Janie hated it when she did this, but the woman was too intent on the stove to notice.

"Try harder to what, exactly?"

"Work with your therapist. It's been months, and he says you haven't opened up at all. How can you work through your problems if you won't talk to him?" Janie punctuated the sentence by flipping an egg in her skillet.

"What problems? I don't do drugs, I have good grades, and I do all the chores you ask me to. Do I sound maladjusted to you, Janie?" Lyrica did all of this for herself, of course. She understood the world well enough to realize that everyone is out to get something for themselves, and she didn't intend to put herself at a disadvantage by doing things just to please her foster mother.

Janie and her husband, Alex, had become foster parents because Janie couldn't conceive. Some do-gooder instinct in them had made them try to rescue the poor unfortunate children in care of the state. It had been a lucky break for Lyrica – they were annoying, but she got to eat well and they didn't yell much.

Lyrica was unlikely to get that lucky again, so it was best to behave until she was ready to strike out on her own.

"It's not that... it's just that you never seem to make many friends." Janie slipped the eggs onto the waiting plates and took them to the table. She handed one to Lyrica, who pondered how the therapist was supposed to help her make friends. Janie must think it was some self-esteem mumbo-jumbo. "I know it must be hard, having moved around so much, but I think it would really help you to settle in here."

Lyrica studied her plate and nodded thoughtfully. "It's not like I haven't been trying. Everyone at school always wants to know too much. It's like I can't be part of a group without handing over five years worth of diaries first."

It was true, in a sense. Word had gotten around that she was in foster care, and a number of people had wanted to know why. However, it wasn't the reason she didn't socialize much. The people there had nothing to offer her – they were all terribly short-sighted, worrying about who was liked the most and which high school team won sports games.

None of it was important, and it wasn't worthwhile for Lyrica to pretend to be interested. She'd put effort into befriending the school librarian, which had eliminated the need to find a group to sit with at lunch. It was much more peaceful to eat in the library anyway. The lunch room was always a noisy, chaotic mess.

While she considered the finer points of eating lunch away from the crowd of her 'peers', Lyrica mechanically ate her breakfast. Janie seemed content to go without conversation for the time being, which Lyrica might have been grateful for had she been paying attention. She wasn't fond of listening to other people's chatter. They both quietly finished their meal. Then Lyrica grabbed her coat, lunch and bag before heading for the door.

"Thank you for breakfast, Janie."

"You're welcome. Have a good day, Lyrica."

"Thanks."

It wasn't a long walk to the bus stop, four songs at most. Her iPod was tucked into an inside pocket of her jacket. Her headphones were tucked snugly underneath her hat, which served the double purpose of keeping her ears warm and putting an extra barrier between her and the rest of the world. Her music was turned up loud enough that she wouldn't hear someone talking to her unless they yelled in her face. She made up for this handicap by keeping her eyes moving, making sure she was taking in everything. She didn't want to turn the sound down and let the city noises in, but she didn't want to get hit by a bike or car because she couldn't hear what was going on around her.

Most of the other kids were already there, and she barely got through one more song before the bus arrived. Her seat was three rows back on the left, a spot she didn't share with anyone else. She turned her eyes away from the constantly moving mouths around her and toward the city streets shown through her window.

If Lyrica had her own car, the trip would probably take little more than 10 minutes. The bus had a couple more stops to make after hers and took more than twice that time. When they finally made it to the school, she waited until the bus was nearly empty to leave her seat.

There was little interesting about spending a day in what amounted to a giant box. Lyrica looked forward to the day that she didn't have to come here anymore, but in the meantime she went ahead and payed attention to the dull lessons. Math and history might be boring and pointless, but she didn't want to move on and find out that some doors were closed to her because she hadn't performed well enough.

Her day was the usual mess of dry teachers, pointless busywork and the constant distraction of whispering students. One would think that these kids had never heard of silence. Barely a handful of them had the patience to just sit down and do what was necessary without resorting to that distracting noise. Lyrica understood that they valued their friendships, but she was still irritated when the buzz of fifteen different conversations scattered her own thoughts.

Lunch, at least, was a welcome relief. The only other people in the library were never the talkative types, and Ms. Nelson always had a new book to recommend if she had finished the last. A book was the closest thing that Lyrica could get to a time machine – it made her appear in the future, hardly having felt the passage of time.

Ms. Nelson smiled as Lyrica came in. "How far are you in the Incarnations series, Lyrica?"

"I'm partway through For Love of Evil. It's interesting to see the villain of the first five books be the protagonist. I mean, of all the characters you could try to paint as a good guy..."

"Well, there's always multiple sides to every story. If you want a story to be realistic, it doesn't make sense for anyone to be evil just for the heck of it. Everyone sees themselves as the hero of their own story."

"That's a bit hard to imagine. When you see people who practically live to hurt others, you'd never think that they consider themselves good people."

"Perception is a funny thing."

Lyrica only smiled and nodded in response before finding a seat near the fantasy section. The chairs here were obscured by the shelves of books, making it so they could not be seen from the entrance. It felt almost as if Lyrica was alone.

Everyone is the hero of their own story. It was a nice catch phrase, but it wasn't true. Lyrica certainly didn't consider herself a hero, she simply did what was necessary. She wasn't a villain either. Most people, she thought, didn't view themselves as either of those extremes. If people saw themselves as 'good' at all, it was because their idea of morality was tied to what was good for them. The fact that people's concept of right and wrong was so fluid only proved that.

Perhaps Lyrica was cynical, but the idea that people were selfish explained more about the world than any touchy-feely 'people are good inside' tripe. No matter what a person believed, the world stayed exactly what it was. It was better to accept that and accept reality than to wish for things to be better. After all, wishing only ever worked in fairy tales and movies. In real life, the only thing a person could change was their own reaction to what was presented to them.

She ate her lunch – peanut butter & jelly with an apple – in quiet solitude that was only broken when the headphones found their way back over her ears. Before terribly long, it was time to head back to classes.

The rest of the school day went by as usual – English, at least, was somewhat interesting. They were covering the concept of utopias. Still, Lyrica was glad to be on the bus and heading back to Janie's place. There was nothing she wanted more than a little bit of peace. She let some of the stress go as she walked back to the house, her footsteps keeping time with the beat.

Peace, a little time with nothing but her own thoughts. It wasn't really so much to ask for, was it?

Janie and Alex were sitting at the kitchen table when she walked in.

"Lyrica?"

"Yeah."

"Alex and I would like to talk to you for a minute."

What Lyrica honestly wanted was to walk past them, up the stairs and into her room. She considered it for a moment, but it would cause far too many problems. Janie would be pissed, for starters. Whatever conversation she wanted to have would turn into a fight instead. It would be much easier to sit through this now before anybody started turning up the volume.

"Alright." She dropped her bag and coat in the hallways and came to sit down across from the couple. "What's up?"

Alex leaned forward, resting his folded hands on the table. "Lyrica, we understand that things are very hard for you right now. Adjusting to a new place is never easy. But we need you to work with us."

"Okay?" Lyrica couldn't help but feel a bit concerned. Had she made some mistake without realizing?

"Janie told me about her recent conversation with your therapist. I get that talking to a stranger can be hard. So we thought it might help you to talk to us instead."

That was what this was about? "Dr. Fel isn't hard to talk to. I just don't know what he wants from me. He asks me questions, I answer, but he's not happy with what I have to say. I don't know what to tell you."

"You keep telling him that you feel fine," said Janie. "I know you're trying very hard to keep going after everything, but if you're never willing to talk about her - "

"Don't."

One small word, softly spoken, from a small and fragile-looking girl. It was enough to stop Janie, her jaw dropping open in surprise.

"Don't try to pull this heart-to-heart stuff." Lyrica kept her voice low, her gaze even. "I'm doing what I can with what I have right now. Talking about things that happened before is not going to make anything better."

Alex put on determination like a mask, taking on a commanding tone like he thought he was her father. "If you don't talk about how the past is affecting you, it can never be fixed. You can't expect anyone to believe you when you say that you feel nothing about it."

"But that's exactly what I feel. Nothing. And I'm okay with explaining that to someone who thinks I'm a liar for an hour every week, but if you think I'm supposed to be okay with you heckling me about it the rest of the time, you have another thing coming."

She needed to get away.

As she stood up from the table, Alex moved as if to follow her. Janie laid a quiet hand on his shoulder to settle him down. Lyrica could hear the soft murmur as she left the room.

"Let her be for a little while. We need to be understanding of her problems, even if that problem is connecting with us."

She stopped for a moment in the hall, collecting her iPod and headphones. In barely more than a moment, she was out the door.

She felt a little chilly without a jacket, but it only took a moment for her to plug in and start playing. She skimmed through the list, looking for something loud and scathing. Relief washed over her as the music poured into her ears. She turned at the end of the block, determined to get herself a little lost for a while. She could always track down the way back later.

What right did they have to pry into her brain like it was some puzzle to solve? She didn't owe them that. She wasn't going to just lie on the dissecting table for them all to look at because they thought they knew what was best for her. And to top it all off, they called her a liar. What did they know? They put so much stock in their feelings, it was inconceivable to them that Lyrica might not bother with it.

Her eardrums throbbed with the screamed vocals and deep bass. She could feel the cork on her heart prying loose, looking forward to the relief she would feel when the sound stole that growing pressure in her chest. She turned the volume up further, until the song made its way into every space in her mind.

All the same
I remain
The one to blame and I'm

Now she could feel it all – the bitter rage that everyone wanted to peek inside, that her privacy was nothing but an inconvenience to the rest of the world. She had a right to her own counsel.

She kept moving, her eyes on the sidewalk as she made random turns through the city.

Demonized
Purified
Justified
As you let yourself show

Lyrica didn't care that she didn't understand them. You couldn't get into someone else's head and think exactly the way did. She understood that, and was content to let them function in their own absurd way. She couldn't help but wonder, why can't they extend the same courtesy to me? It wasn't enough to live and let live. They wanted her to think the way they did.

So now you'll love these screams
What's left of me
Love these screams like I do

With quick steps she moved between a pair of parked cars and into the street.

As the infinite stops cold...

Distracted as she was, Lyrica didn't see the truck until she was already standing in its way.

Question of the Week:What's your favorite song to listen to when you're irritated? (I have a whole playlist for that, actually...)

A/NNow for the random rambly author chatter. This is a reupload, because I finally got myself a good editor - and she's now working on the second chapter. I should be able to post it in a couple of days.