Disclaimer: I don't own POTO. If I did I would have never allowed that sequel to be.
Maybe this is what girls who dream of angels and happy endings deserve. Maybe this is what girls with their heads in the clouds get. Maybe I deserve this. Maybe I deserve to be locked away with him, in his house with no windows, and only him and his insanity for company. Maybe this is what I deserve for my unfaltering belief in angels, and the belief that one would come to me. Maybe this is what I get for hoping.
I never had a normal childhood. My father was constantly moving us around, he didn't like to stay in the same place for long. And I didn't realize this wasn't normal until a classmate of mine pointed it out. But I didn't mind, it was my father and me. We were all each other needed. Mother died of cancer when I was three. I only have one memory of her and I don't even know if it's real. But in my one memory she sat next to me and read Beauty and the Beast. Maybe I only think I remember this because my father has told me about it so often I started to believe I could remember her reading it to me.
I liked those stories, the ones of beautiful princesses finding their princes in unlikely places and living happily ever after in a castle. But my favorite stories involved angels. Maybe it was because I liked to believe that my mother was with the angels and one day I would be too. My father would tell me stories about angels that came down from heaven and took the good little children, who had died, up with them and they would play in the clouds. Sometimes I would imagine I was an angel and would fly around the house with fake cardboard wings I made out of an old box. Father would laugh, and play his violin as I twirled around and danced to the music. He would tell me about his favorite angel, the angel he was sure mother was with, the angel of music. My father told me about how she had the most beautiful voice in the world and that's how he fell in love with her. That's when I decided I was going to be a great singer and the world would know my name. I laugh at the irony now, but back then that was my greatest hope and desire, and my father encouraged it.
Looking back maybe I should have realized there was something wrong with him. Looking back I should have realized my father wasn't normal. He was more of an over grown child than anything else. He would never stay in any place more than a year, and he could never hold a job. His head was more in the clouds than mine was. I never noticed the periods of uncontrolled sadness he seemed to have, how for days at a time, he would simply play his violin and forget everything else. I never knew that constantly moving, and living in hotels, wasn't normal. I never knew that having friends outside my father was necessary. How was I to know? I was a child.
It wasn't until I was thirteen that we found a permanent place to stay. It was a street corner, where my father was playing for spare change, I didn't know this until I was much older, that Professor Valerius found my father. He was as unconventional as my father and maybe that's how they became friends. But he heard my father playing and invited him to play at a faculty dinner he was holding. He readily agreed and the rest was history.
Once Papa Valerius realized how talented my father was he offered him a teaching position at a school he Dean of. Of course my father wasn't authorized to teach, but Papa Verlerius, who was the Dean of music at a local college, recommended my father as a private instructor for all his students. With a steady flow of students and a friend to support him, we finally settled down. Professor Valerius and his wife became like grandparents to me, insisting I refer to them as Mama and Papa. I couldn't refuse, and our odd little family was born.
It was in at that town, I meet Raoul. The first real friend I had. If I had known the trouble that one friendship would spawn, I think I still would have been his friend. Those memories of that time in my life are the happiest I have. Raoul, like me came from an unusual family, his parents had died in an accident when he was younger and his older brother and two sisters took care of him. I think that was part of what made our friendship so strong, he knew as well as I did what it was like to be the outcast, the oddball out. We met the winter after Father met Papa Valerius. I was being teased on the playground, two bullies had just stolen my red scarf, when Raoul came to my rescue. He would always come to my rescue, even if it cost him. I think about it now, and wonder if he didn't imagine himself a white knight to my damsel in distress. So much could have been saved if he didn't.
But he retrieved my scarf and presented it to me with a black eye. It was that goofy smile, scuffed up appearance and black eye that solidified his place in my heart. To this day I have not forgotten the smile that was on his face when he gave me back my scarf. I love that smile.
When he learned my father taught music, he insisted upon lessons, despite his lack of ability. He never gave up on anything, even if everyone else thought it was impossible, I loved him for that. We would play together after every one of his lessons. At sleepovers, we would trade stories, I would tell him stories about angels, and he would tell me stories of ghosts and haunted campgrounds.
The difference in our genders never occurred to me, despite the teasing I would receive about Raoul being my 'boyfriend'. It wasn't until he gave me my first kiss that it even occurred to me, that he meant more to me than just a friend.
But it was too late for that. His brother had secured a new job, and only a year after we met were we parted. His family moved across the country, and after many failed attempts and being pen pals, we drifted apart. But I never forgot that smile on his face when he gave me back my scarf.
I spent the next two years with Father and the Valerius, but tragedy was never far apart were I was concerned. Papa Valerius died of a stroke when I was sixteen. His death took us all by surprise. Mama Valerius, couldn't stand living alone, and soon after her husband's death we moved in with her. But her house was no longer the safe haven I had once known. I couldn't enter a room and not think of Papa Valerius, the house stilled smelled like tobacco smoke from his pipe. Dinners became lonely affairs without his booming voice telling stories, and joking with my father.
I don't know who took his death worse, Mama Valerius or my father. Both lost someone irreplaceable in their minds, and I was left to deal with the after effects. Father became isolated and his habit of ignoring the world and playing his violin returned full force. I couldn't coax him away from his spot next to the window for anything. He would ignore meals and my pleas for him to return to normal. His music filled the house, but it no longer held the magic it once did.
Mama Valerius was torn between denial and irreconcilable grief. Sometimes I would see her holding Papa Valerius picture and crying, and sometimes I would see her talking to him like he was still there. That's when I first realized there was something wrong with her. That's when I first realized her mind was going, and with my father drifting into depression it was up to me to hold our makeshift family together. Luckily, Papa Valerius had a pension we could live off of, with my father's depression, and without Papa Valerius there to recommend him, his students stopped coming.
In their more cognitive moments, Mama Valerius and Father insisted I continue with music. Papa Valerius put in a recommendation for me, when he was still alive, at for the college he was the dean of. But an audition and scholarship were still needed before I could count on anything. So I sang. I sang to my father to drive his demons away. I sang to Mama Valerius to remind her of her husband and I sang to myself to remind me of happier times, when the four of us were together. But music lost its appeal, and I decided that after I was admitted I would switch my major to something more…realistic. I never should have gone to that audition.
It was at that audition that everything really started.
It was at that audition that he found me.