AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic is an absolute hodgepodge of Phantom of the Opera adaptions. It is mainly based on the Webber stage musical, with a strong mixture of Kay, some influences from Leroux, and a brief reference to Yeston and Kopit, which is where I borrowed the surname Carriere for Erik. The only thing I am borrowing from Phantom of Manhattan is Antoinette as Madame Giry's first name; otherwise, I prefer to ignore the fact that Love Never Dies or Phantom of Manhattan exist at all.
The title is from "You Belong With Me" by Taylor Swift, and there are many references to various Taylor Swift songs in the fic itself.
"Thank you so much for watching this video! Feel free to comment and please subscribe!" The pretty brunette on the screen smiled to her camera, and the YouTube video went dark.
Erik Carriere clicked replay for the tenth time that night.
"Hey, Erik?"
In the blink of an eye, the masked seventeen-year-old paused the video, muted his laptop speakers, pulled out his headphones, and slammed the lid of his computer closed.
"Yes?" Erik replied casually, turning to face his foster parent.
"Rookheeya said dinner is ready," Nadir Khan said, giving the teenager a strange look as Ayesha hissed at the man from her spot curled up on Erik's bed. The Siamese cat's ensuing growls were ignored, however, as her owner nodded.
"I'll be right in."
"Alright," Nadir said. Pausing, he added, "Everything okay?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
Nadir glanced at the still-growling Ayesha. "Don't take too long."
Erik gave the older man a thin smile. "I won't."
As Nadir left and Ayesha quieted, Erik opened his laptop lid, put his headphones back in, adjusted the mask on the right side of his face, and un-paused the DaaeDays video.
"I saw your newest video."
Erik focused on unpacking his bagged lunch and adjusting his mask.
"You really didn't like 1989."
"I thought that was obvious from the video," Erik said dryly, glancing at the blonde across the rickety table in the Jean-Louis Charles Garnier Academy cafeteria.
"I thought Taylor Swift got better when she crossed over into straight pop music, not worse," Meg Giry offered, opening her Ziploc bag of sliced apples.
"Her country albums were extremely irritating," Erik replied, removing the Tupperware lid from the pomegranate walnut stew Rookheeya had sent, and stood from the table. "But her forays into pop music are completely and utterly insufferable."
He did not give Meg a chance to reply as he headed for the microwave across the cafeteria.
As André, the choir substitute teacher for Reyer, prattled about the differences between minor and major keys, Erik slid his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and held it up behind his music folder.
Meg, seated beside him in the alto section directly adjacent to the tenors, glanced over and nudged him when she realized he was checking his email. He ignored her and kept scrolling through his phone, deleting junk mail, reading updates from the Metropolitan Opera newsletter, and ignoring emails from Sam Tsui and Peter Hollens.
But Erik froze when he saw an email from cdaae hotmailcom with a subject that read Would you like to perform a duet with me on DaaeDays?
"Mr. Carriere?" André said, but Erik kept staring at his phone. "Mr. Carriere, please put away your phone."
Erik finally looked up at the substitute teacher, and glanced at the school accompanist, Antoinette Giry, seated at the old piano. Only when Meg's mother gave him a stern look and Meg herself nudged him again with her knee, did Erik shove his phone back into his pocket and go back to pretending to learn something from André.
Carlotta Guidicelli smirked at Erik from the soprano section, and he wondered how his fellow senior's voice would sound if he put straight lemon juice in her water.
Erik did not acknowledge Rookheeya when he swept into his foster's family's house, even ignoring Reza as the teenager went downstairs to the spacious basement and slammed his bedroom door behind him. Tossing his backpack carelessly on the floor, Erik went straight to his laptop.
As the device slowly turned on, a purring Ayesha leapt lightly onto his lap, but the seventeen-year-old distractedly set the cat on the floor and leaned forward to type in his password. He read Christine Daaé's email again even though he already had it nearly memorized, just to remind himself that it existed and that he hadn't imagined it.
He had received inquiries about duets from the likes of Nick Pitera and Boyce Avenue before, and as a rule always turned them down. If the comments on his videos were anything to go by, Erik knew he was gaining a reputation for being standoffish and aloof. But there was a reason he posted exclusively audios and never met with anyone from the internet.
But now this girl, new on the YouTube scene with only a few hundred subscribers, was asking if he wanted to sing a duet version of Taylor Swift's Love Story. Christine Daaé – whose channel he opened every morning to see if she had posted a new cover, whose videos he listened to on repeat, and whose voice he had started writing original compositions for – wanted to perform a duet and film a video with him.
And he was seriously considering it.
"Christine Daaé?" he asked over the bustle of the Starbucks, even though he had recognized her the second he walked through the door.
"Yes?" Her eyes were wide, but she only appeared surprised upon seeing his mask, not the usual judgmental looks he regularly received. Erik recognized the sandy-haired sixteen-year-old seated next to Christine; her boyfriend Raoul had appeared in many DaaeDays videos, and now gave Erik a careful smile while pointedly putting an arm on the back of his girlfriend's chair. The gray-haired woman seated at the table with them, however, openly gawked at Erik.
"I'm Erik Carriere of the AngelOfMusic channel. You emailed me about the Taylor Swift duet video…?"
"Oh! Yes!" Christine's chair scraped against the floor as she jumped to her feet. "It's so nice to meet the face behind your videos!"
Erik's smile faltered for a moment as he grasped the hand she extended; she did seem genuinely glad to meet him, so he let her comment slide. "It's nice to meet you, too," he said awkwardly, and glanced at Nadir. "This is my foster father, Nadir Khan."
"This is my foster mother, Mamie Valerius," Christine offered with a smile, returning to her seat as the gray-haired woman shook Erik's hand. "And my boyfriend, Raoul de Chagny. Won't you have a seat?"
"You play the violin, right?" the masked teenager asked as he and Nadir settled in at the table, even though Erik already knew Christine's videos that her now-deceased father had taught Raoul to play the instrument, he and Christine had started dating after her fifth video, and that Christine preferred her chamomile tea with sugar but without milk.
"Yes," Raoul answered, clearing his throat when he noticed Erik staring at the way the light caught in Christine's dark curls. "And you're the guy who doesn't like Taylor Swift, right?"
"Well," Erik said after a long pause, "for this video I've decided to broaden my horizons. Branch out."
After another awkward moment, Christine leaned forward. "So I was thinking about filming on weekends, as we both have school…"
"I saw on the DaaeDays channel that you're doing a video with her," Meg said as she and Erik walked through the halls of Garnier Academy on Monday morning.
He shrugged. "So?"
"So," she said, bumping her shoulder lightly against his arm, "you're finally doing a duet video!"
"It's not that big of a deal," he said, adjusting the straps of his backpack.
"Yes, it is," she said as he stopped by his locker. But as he opened the metal door, her smile faded, and she planted her hands on her hips. "But I wish you would have told me, instead of making me find out over the internet."
"Like I said, it's nothing to get excited about," he replied flatly, as if he hadn't been agonizing and obsessing over every detail of his involvement in the video since that Saturday at Starbucks.
"Erik…" she began, and gave a barely-audible sigh before asking brightly, "So what's Christine Daaé like?"
"Stunning," he said automatically, and his pale skin flushed behind his mask. "I mean, she has a stunning voice. You know what I mean."
"Yeah," she said in an odd tone, but when he glanced at her, she only smiled again at him. "So what are you singing with her?"
"You'll have to find out when Christine uploads the video," Erik said as the five minute bell rang, pulling a textbook out of his locker. As he walked down the hall, Meg called out after him.
"Are you saying that to surprise me, or because you don't want to tell me?"
He did not reply as he went through the door for calculus class.
ERIK CARRIERE Today 9:42PM So I had a thought about the video.
Reclined on the couch in the living room, he stared nervously at his phone as Nadir watched the news and Rookheeya spoke in a low mummer to Reza. Lazily ran a hand over a purring Ayesha's fur, Erik hoped Christine was still awake and wondered if he should be asking this question at all.
CHRISTINE DAAE Today 9:45PM What do you have in mind? :)
He drew in a breath and typed.
ERIK CARRIERE Today 9:45PM Are we acting out the storyline of Love Story in full? Or are we sitting there singing to each other in two chairs in a meadow like every other cover of anything ever on YouTube?
ERIK CARRIERE Today 9:46PM I'm not saying recreate Taylor Swift's music video frame by frame. But make it more interesting than the usual cover video.
He bit at a ragged edge of his thumbnail as he waited for her reply.
CHRISTINE DAAE Today 9:48PM What do you want to do?
His heart started beating more quickly as he typed, throwing caution to the wind.
ERIK CARRIERE Today 9:48PM I think we should act it out. It would be more interesting.
ERIK CARRIERE Today 9:49PM For the viewers.
His heart literally started pounding as he waited for her text.
CHRISTINE DAAE Today 9:51PM Good point :) Let me talk to Raoul and his brother Philippe (you didn't meet him on Saturday, but he's directing the video and his girlfriend Sorelli is filming, remember?) and get back to you.
Erik released the breath he didn't know he had been holding.
"I started a YouTube channel," Meg said as they settled in for history class the next morning.
"Really?" Erik said as he texted Christine, holding his phone under the table.
"Yeah." She paused, but he still didn't look up from his phone. "I'm calling it BalletBaroness."
"Oh, so that was you that subscribed to my channel last night," Erik said as Christine texted him that Philippe and Sorelli had almost finished editing the video.
"That was me," she said flatly. As class started, Erik put his phone away and glanced at Meg, only to see her looking at Benjamin de Barbazac across the room.
"So thanks for telling me that Christine uploaded the video," Meg said sarcastically a week later as they waited outside Garnier Academy for Erik's ride.
"Sorry," he said awkwardly, and a corner of her mouth turned up. "I was… distracted."
"You were incredible, Erik," she said earnestly, and he couldn't meet her gaze. "Really. I've heard you sing every day in choir, but I was blown away by your performance."
"Thanks." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "But Christine was the star of the video."
"She was great, but you're the one people are talking about online. Not her."
He raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"
"Check the comments."
"There's a reason they say never to read those."
"Okay, fine, there's some mean idiots. But people are raving about you, Erik. They've all wanted to see what you look like for years now since you post only audios. And some of them said your mask was cool, too. They just thought it was a prop or a costume piece. I mean, obviously, part of the video was about a masquerade ball, so no one thought it was weird."
Erik adjusted his mask again.
After a moment, she asked, "Why was the violinist so mad the entire video?"
"The violinist? Raoul?" He looked at the short blonde. "He looked mad?"
"He kept looking off into the distance like someone was stealing his car or something from right under his nose and he couldn't do anything about it."
"I didn't notice," he said as Nadir parked his car nearby. "See you tomorrow."
"See you," Meg replied as de Barbazac approached, and Erik found himself stopping mid-stride as Meg said, "Hey, Ben."
"Hey, tutu." When de Barbazac noticed Erik, the younger teenager stared at the elder's mask and awkwardly smiled. "Oh. Hi."
"Hey," Erik said flatly, watching as the sixteen-year-old de Barbazac's hand brushed Meg's, and she leaned in ever so slightly towards him.
"Did you see my new video?" She asked her fellow sophomore.
"Of course," de Barbazac enthusiastically answered. "I really liked the part where you talked about the effect of unrealistic stereotypes on ballet dancers. Most people outside the dance world assume the things you discussed were true. I even thought they were real until your video."
Meg's smile only grew while de Barbazac talked, but when she turned to Erik, her grin became somewhat forced. "Did you watch my video?" she inquired in a carefully casual tone that was almost convincing.
"No," he admitted. "But I promise I will tonight," he found himself adding sincerely.
"Thanks," Meg said in surprise as Erik took a step back.
"See you tomorrow."
"See you," she called as he went to his foster father's car and got in the passenger side. As Nadir asked the teenager questions about school, Erik answered distractedly as he went the Safari app on his phone, opened a new tab instead of immediately refreshing the DaaeDays channel, and searched for BalletBaroness on Google.
"So for this shot," Philippe began, but Erik and Christine barely heard him as they laughed about a Vine on her phone.
"Lotte?" Raoul said in a strained voice, and an embarrassed Christine lowered her phone. Erik was more focused on how color blossomed on her cheeks as she blushed.
"So for this shot," Philippe repeated tersely, "you're singing 'Friday night beneath the stars, In a field behind your yard, You and I are painting pictures in the sky', right? So I want you lying in the grass together side-by-side. Hold hands and point at the stars casually while you're singing."
"Sure," Erik said, admiring the curve of Christine's neck and failing to notice Raoul's glare.
"I didn't know you made another video with Christine," Meg said as they jogged around the track during gym class a month later.
Erik didn't know how to respond.
"I mean, I'm Only Me When I'm With You was awesome, don't get me wrong," the blonde continued over the sound of their clunky school-issued tennis shoes hitting the dark gray asphalt. "But you know, you could have given me a heads up."
"I was really busy learning Style," Erik said automatically, and Meg raised an eyebrow.
"You're doing Style next? That's so cool! I love that s–"
"You can't tell anyone," he said quickly as Cécile Jammes ran up to them, the slender freshman all but drowning in her baggy gym clothes.
"Hey!"
"Hey," Erik awkwardly repeated.
"How's it going?" Meg said kindly.
"Great! Erik, I saw you in some Taylor Swift covers online with Christine Daaé…"
He braced himself for you looked stupid or your mask was weird or you sounded terrible so you should just go jump off a cliff.
"You sounded really good!"
"Really?" he asked suspiciously, wondering if she saving her negative comments for after she built up his self-esteem.
"Really!" Jammes said with a smile.
"Uh, thanks," he said as the freshman jogged away.
"That was nice of her," Meg commented, breaking the silence that followed.
"Yeah," Erik said quietly.
"For the record, I agree."
"Really?" he said again, looking down at her as she nodded. "I watched your video, by the way."
Her face lit up. "You did?"
"I mean, I didn't get to all of them," he said automatically, but when her smile fell, he added, "but I saw a couple."
"I appreciate that."
"They were good."
"You think so?"
"I mean, you could be more expressive," he began, and glanced at her again to amend, "but it was a good start."
She sighed good-naturedly, and they jogged in an easy silence.
"And cut!"
Erik reluctantly stopped waltzing with Christine as their cover of You Belong With Me was paused, and he stopped himself from blurting out to her that the prom scene was his favorite in the entire shoot.
"I'm almost out of water," Christine said as she picked up her plastic water bottle.
"I assume there's a drinking fountain nearby," Erik said as he scanned the nearly-empty gym of Perros-Guirec. He noted once more that Raoul and Christine's high school across town was much smaller than Garnier Academy.
"I'll be right back," she called to Raoul, Philippe, and Sorelli, who were discussing the violinist's solo shots. As Christine headed across the gym, Erik hesitated for a moment before grabbing his own water bottle and hurrying after her.
He managed to find her in a shadowy hallway, standing at the old drinking fountain in her strapless prom costume. As he approached, his palms grew damp.
"Hey, Christine?" he asked nervously.
"Yeah?"
"This is, uh, going to sound random, but, um…" he began, adjusting his mask. "Do you want to, you know, hang out after filming?"
"Sure!" she said brightly, lifting her water bottle from the fountain and brushed past him. "I'll go tell Raoul and Philippe and–" She stopped when he reached out and wrapped his hand around her arm.
"I was thinking just the two of us."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
Christine glanced back down the hallway. "Like a date?"
"I guess, yeah." He swallowed hard. "Like a date."
"Erik," she said, biting her lower lip. "I'm already dating Raoul. I thought that you knew."
His grip tightened ever so slightly on her arm. "But what about all the songs you and I sang together? I thought you were trying to… imply something."
"Could you let go of my arm, please?" she said in a thin voice. When he forced himself to release his hold on her impossibly soft skin, she stepped back. "They're just songs, Erik."
"But we started with Love Story," he insisted. "'We were both young when I first saw you' and all that."
"It's just a lyric."
He took a step closer to her. "Next was I'm Only Me When I'm With You. Just look at the title."
She backed away. "I didn't mean-"
"And then there was Style," he added. "'And when we go crashing down, we come back every time.'"
"It's not–"
"And now we're doing You Belong With Me." He had her literally in a corner, and, okay, fine, she looked really freaked out. But he had to make her understand. "It doesn't get more blatantly obvious than that."
"You're reading way too far into this," she said in a shaky voice. "Please, just move back a bit and then–"
He leaned forward, drinking in the scent of her rose-scented perfume. "You didn't exactly shoot down any ideas about the songs. The message was clear."
"I wasn't trying to send you any messages!" she protested. "You're making me really uncomfortable, Erik. Just let me–" But when she tried to move past him, he grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her back into the corner.
"Let go of me!"
"Christine, just listen–"
"I wasn't trying to lead you on!" Tears came to her eyes as his fingers dug into her bare skin. "I promise! Please–"
"So all of this means nothing to you?" he demanded.
"Erik–"
He pressed his lips to hers.
This was not how he imagined his first kiss going. She was crying, and he was technically pinning her to the wall. He wondered if perhaps he had gone too far, but her lips were so soft and he felt he couldn't for anything in the world. Then suddenly her hands were on his face, and he wondered for the briefest of moments if she realized she was in love with him too, and was pulling him in for a deeper kiss.
But then she was pushing him away with all her might, and he finally pulled back, but not before his mask slipped and clattered to the floor.
Suddenly he was reeling and she was doubled over, covering her mouth as though she was going to throw up. He screamed curses at her as he tried to hide his face with his hand, falling to his knees as he frantically tried to locate his mask. Erik heard running footsteps behind him, and reached for his mask that lay at Christine's feet. It was horrifying enough that Christine had seen his face; Philippe and Sorelli and Raoul couldn't. But then Christine handed him his mask, tears running down her cheeks. He saw compassion in the myriad of emotions on her face, but he couldn't handle pity. Not from her.
Shoving his mask back on, he scrambled to his feet, pushed past the others, and sprinted down the hallway and out the door of Perros-Guirec.
"Hey," Meg said gently as a listless Erik trudged through the front door of Garnier Academy. "I heard you were sick on Monday."
Erik didn't correct her. He had actually thrown up from the guilt on Saturday and had barely eaten on Sunday or Monday, so her statement was technically true.
"I'm glad you're back," she offered, but he didn't have the energy to reply; that had been focused over the weekend towards calling Christine around fifty times, sobbing through voicemails, and begging her to forgive him in countless texts. His emotional state had only gotten lower when she unfriended him on Facebook, unfollowed his account on Twitter, unsubscribed to his channel on YouTube, and did not respond to any of his messages over the phone. His soundtrack for those three days had been Bad Blood, White Horse, Red, and We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together on loop as his self-imposed punishment.
"How are you feeling?" Meg tried.
"Like a living corpse."
"Oh," is all she could manage. After a moment, she added, "Your eyes are red."
"Are they?" he deadpanned.
"Yeah." She hesitated. "Did something happen?"
He didn't answer.
"If you want to talk…"
He had a sudden, almost violent urge to tell her everything. "Not at the moment."
"Okay, that's fine," she said softly. "But if you do, I'll be here to listen."
He cleared his throat, but did not answer.
Yet at lunch, he found himself voluntarily talking for one of the first times that day.
"What do you do when you do something completely unforgivable?"
Meg looked at him in surprise, but only said, "Apologize to the other person, and then forgive yourself."
"Oh, I did the first part," he said flatly, "but I don't deserve to forgive myself."
"Everyone deserves forgiveness."
"Not me."
Meg paused, and asked in a light, careful tone in a clear attempt to change the topic. "How's Christine?"
Erik quickly blinked back the tears that came to his eyes. "I don't know. I don't really deserve to know, honestly."
"What do you mean?"
He grew in a shaky breath. "Let's just say I'm a complete and utter monster." He let out a bitter, mirthless laugh. "I even have the face to match."
"Erik…"
"I don't deserve to even speak her name."
Meg sighed. "I don't agree about any of that."
He adjusted his mask for the millionth time. "What do you mean?"
"Well, whatever you did doesn't make you a monster. And you clearly are so full of guilt you're beating yourself up until you're black and blue. You obviously realize that your actions were wrong." She met his gaze. "Did you ask for Christine's forgiveness?"
"Begged for it," he said in a ragged voice. "Literally."
"Okay, so you did the right thing. You tried to right your wrong." She leaned forward from the other side of the cafeteria table. "Now the ball is in her court to forgive you. So all you can do is move on with your life, and do your best not to make those original choices again."
Erik let out a long sigh. "I'll… try."
"Good," Meg said as she waved to de Barbazac across the cafeteria.
"Is he taking you to prom?" he said without thinking, and immediately wondered why he even brought up the topic in the first place.
"Ben hasn't asked me yet," she admitted, and glanced at Erik. "And to be honest, I was wondering…"
His gut clenched.
"I was wondering if you and I wanted to go together. As friends." When he did not reply, she added, "You've been so busy with filming and school, I thought you could use a night off."
Part of him wanted to say that he never wanted to hear the word prom again, but he also – belatedly – realized how supportive Meg had been during this process, and how terrible of a friend he had been. She was even giving up the chance to attend the event with a perfectly decent guy who treated her well, in order to go to the dance with her jerk of a friend who had ignored her in favor of a girl he met online.
It was the least he could do for Meg.
"Sure."
"Wait, what?" Her eyes widened. "I honestly thought you would turn me down."
"Well," Erik said after a moment, "it's the least I can do for a good friend."
The bell rang before she could respond, and he stood from the cafeteria table. "See you in English class, Giry."
After fiddling with his red tie, Erik rang the doorbell.
"Good evening," he said to Madame Giry, who eyed him as sternly as she did with everyone else. "Is Meg ready to go?"
"She is," Madame Giry said as Erik saw a flash of red behind the woman. Meg stepped around the corner in a red dress with a knee-length tulle skirt, her golden hair swept up in an elaborate bun, and Erik managed a smile.
"Be home by midnight," Madame Giry said as Meg went out the door, teetering in her heels so different from her pointe shoes.
"We will," her daughter said, kissing her mother on the cheek before following Erik to the car he had borrowed from Nadir.
The theatre Garnier Academy had rented for prom was packed by the time Erik and Meg arrived, but they eventually found their table. Erik had planned on sitting at the table all night, but Meg pulled him from his chair with a smile as Shut Up And Dance With Me by Walk The Moon ended. A gentle acoustic guitar melody he did not recognize began over the speakers, but once they reached the dance floor Taylor Swift started singing.
Erik froze as the singer's quiet voice filled the room, couples swaying around them as Begin Again played. Meg clearly saw the tension gripping his body, because she put a soft hand on his arm and said in a low voice, "Let's make our own memories to Taylor Swift, alright?"
He wanted nothing more than to run, but nodded, putting his hands gingerly on her waist as she reached up to rest her hands on his shoulders. He felt himself loosening up. Slightly.
"'I've been spending the last eight months Thinking all love ever does is break and burn and end.'"
He met her gaze.
"'But on a Wednesday in a cafe, I watched it begin again,'" Taylor Swift sang, and Meg smiled.
A few hours later, they were driving home from the theatre when they stopped at a red light. Meg was singing along to the upbeat Be My Forever by Christina Perri and Ed Sheeran on the radio when Erik saw Christine on the sidewalk.
She was radiant in a soft pink dress, curls loose around her shoulders as she laughed with Raoul; other teenagers in formal attire, presumably from Perros-Guirec, swarming around them outside the dance hall. Christine looked relaxed, lighthearted, happy – a far cry from the fear in her eyes on the last day of filming You Belong With Me.
Erik did not realize he was staring until the cars behind him honked and he glanced up to see that the traffic light had changed.
"Hey, Erik?" Meg said carefully as he hit the gas.
"Yeah?" he said distractedly, gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Maybe you should let me drive."
He let out a long sigh and turned into a gas station.
His eighteenth birthday passed quietly on a Saturday.
Rookheeya and Nadir gave him a fifty dollar iTunes gift card, a frame print of the transcribed soundwaves of the overture of Don Juan Triumphant, and a clock that looked like a record, but Erik spent most of the day alone, shutting even Ayesha out as he edited his opera.
When he had mentioned to Reyer and played part of it for the teacher, the choir instructor had asked if Erik would play it at the Garnier Academy's last choir concert of the year. Erik had agreed, but now was rethinking his decision as he poured himself into his composition, making what felt like thousands of changes and having to rewrite entire arias. He was so engrossed in the music he barely heard the knock on his bedroom door.
"Erik?"
The overture came to a crashing halt, and he pulled out his headphones. "Yes?"
"Meg came by," Rookheeya said. "She has something for you."
"What do you mean?" Erik asked, standing from his electronic keyboard and heading for the stairs.
"She's in the kitchen," Rookheeya said simply as the teenager swept past his foster mother and strode into the main level of the house.
Meg stood in the kitchen in a black full body leotard under jean shorts, a white cardigan draped over one arm; a plate covered in plastic wrap and a large gift bag printed with sheet music sat on the counter as she turned to see him.
"Happy birthday, Erik."
"Thanks," he said, adjusting his mask. "I didn't know you were coming over."
"I wanted to surprise you." She held out the gift bag, and as Erik approached, he saw on the plate on the counter rows of homemade cupcakes with white frosting and various black music symbols.
"Thanks, Giry," he said sincerely, accepting the gift bag and pulled from its depths a card that read Friends Don't Let Friends Clap On 1 & 2, a twenty dollar iTunes gift card, a small stone bust of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and a black sweatshirt that read # That's A Sharp, Not A Hashtag! in white lettering.
"Wow. Thanks. For everything."
"You're welcome." Meg gave an apologetic smile. "Well, I'd love to stay, but I have a ballet class to go to." She turned to Nadir and Rookheeya. "It was wonderful to finally meet you."
"It was lovely to meet you, too," Rookheeya said as Nadir shook Meg's hand.
"We'll walk you to the door," Erik's foster father said.
Ayesha appeared when Meg was putting on her jacket, the feline winding herself around the girl's legs. But when Meg opened the door and seemed ready to leave, she suddenly gave Erik a quick hug, murmured "Happy birthday" into his chest, and left to hurry down the steps.
"She seems like a nice girl," Rookheeya said, waving to Meg as she started her car.
"She is," Erik said, not noticing the look Nadir and Rookheeya exchanged as he watched Meg drive away.
Agreeing to sing and accompany himself in one of Don Juan's solos from his opera in front of the entire school definitely was a bad idea. It also didn't help that he couldn't stop picturing Christine as Aminta. Erik was just glad he didn't sing The Point of No Return in front of his foster parents as the audience applauded much more enthusiastically than he expected.
But thankfully, the choir's final song was next, and he joined their ranks as they filed onto the od risers. As he finished singing with Garnier Academy for the last time as one of its members, he glanced at Meg standing beside him, and the back of her hand brushed his.
After the concert officially ended, Erik found Nadir and Rookheeya, but just when Meg approached, her congratulations were cut short when a woman came up to them. "Erik Carriere?"
"Yes?" he replied, looking at the woman in the pinstripe blazer and business skirt, a far cry from the casual attire of the rest of the audience.
"I'm Andrea Johnson, a talent scout from Juilliard."
Erik's heart started pounding.
"Juilliard?" Nadir asked. "As in, the Juilliard in New York City?"
Andrea nodded. "I was sent to Garnier Academy because of your work online. You are even more talented in person than in on the internet, and there's a reason your videos went viral, Mr. Carriere."
"Thank you…" Erik began, but the woman continued.
"I was sent to invite you to apply to Juilliard. However, given your immense talent and the quality of the aria you wrote, I am willing to suggest to the scholarship committee that you are worth even a full ride."
Erik couldn't breathe.
"I can't make any promises, you understand."
"I do," Erik said faintly, and cleared his throat. "Thank you very, very much."
"You are welcome," Andrea said, shaking his hand, and he saw the barest hint of a smile on her lips. "Good luck."
"Thanks," the masked eighteen-year-old said as the scout walked away through the crowd.
"A full ride to Juilliard!" Rookheeya gasped as Nadir clapped a stunned Erik on the shoulder, a shocked grin slowly spreading across the teenager's face.
"I knew you could do it," Meg exclaimed, giving him a broad smile.
He raised an eyebrow. "You knew someone would offer me a full ride to the best music university in the world?"
"Well, no. But I knew you would amount to great things."
"I'm not in New York yet."
"Most people don't get basically handed a full ride without even applying." With a smirk, she scanned the crowd. "I should go find my mom. Congratulations again, Erik."
"Thanks," he began.
Then she threw her arms around him. "I'm so happy for you," she murmured into his chest.
"Thanks," he repeated as he embraced her in return, a buzz under his skin. When she leaned back to look up at him, they both paused. He was keenly aware of the feeling of her arms around his waist, and how her hips curved under his hands. Suddenly, she leaned up to press her lips to his left cheek, her mouth gentle against his skin, and moved away. Erik stood, motionless, for a moment, and stared at her retreating figure.
He stepped forward to carefully, gently catch her wrist.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am grateful to Susan Kay for making me realize Erik is totally a cat person.
Also, Erik's views of Taylor Swift are not my own. I respect her musical talents. Erik wouldn't.