Chapter 1

The clipboard was posted the second week of school. There was nothing that had happened that morning that would make me think that anything exciting or even moderately interesting would happen.

"Christine, you have to come see this," my friend Heather told me when I was at my locker.

"What is it?" I asked her.

She took my hand, and before I could even close my locker, or grab any of the stuff I needed, she dragged me all around our school to the auditorium to find it. A signup sheet for the school's production of The Phantom of the Opera. I started to grin a little bit. I had always wanted to be Christine Daae, and I loved the story of The Phantom of the Opera, all the singing, the dancing, and just the story in general.

"You have to try out for Christine!" Heather yelled at me. I'd always wished she would be a little more quiet, because I felt like all the people in the hallway could hear us, but by then, 12 years into our friendship, I had gotten quite used to it.

"No, I'm not good enough," I answer, calmly and quietly, so maybe Heather would get the message to be a little bit quieter.

But I knew that I was good enough. I knew I could be Christine Daae if I wanted to. I knew I was a good singer, dancer, and actress. I had been doing this kind of stuff all my life, yet now that I was getting the chance, I was backing away from it.

It was as though Heather knew what I was thinking.

"You know you can do this," she told me. "You've been doing this all your life. You know you can sing, you know you can dance, and you know you can act. And I know if there's something you can't do, you will learn and practice it until you can do it. You can do this, Christine. I know you can."

She wrote my name down, in pen, so no one, including me, could erase it.

"Heather...the sign-up sheet says auditions are today after school. What am I supposed to sing? What if I forget the words? What if I mess up really badly, Heather?" I ask, turning to look at her. I didn't know what to sing. I knew all the words to all the songs, yet when I tried to think of one, my mind went blank. It was as though the idea of singing in front of people made everything I know disappear. I was afraid of being rejected. I was afraid of being told I wasn't good enough, or that I just barely missed it.

"You've always wanted to be Christine Daae. You know, like, ALL the words to ALL the songs. Christine, I know you can do this, I just know you can. I believe in you," Heather said, placing her hands on my shoulders and shaking me gently.

Before I could respond, the bell rang and we had to rush to class. I had to go back to my locker to get all my stuff. Just as I was about to close it, I saw a red petal, taken from a rose, in there. It felt soft, like velvet, in my fingers. I knew who it was from. I put it back in there, closed, and locked it.

All I could think about for the rest of the day was the audition. What if I got the role? What if I didn't get the role? What if they told me I was amazing? What if they all laughed at me? What would my teacher think? My teacher, the man who coached me everyday. The man who inspired my voice, who made me love singing, and seemingly gave my life new meaning after my mother died.

Whenever I would go to the auditorium alone to sing, he would always come out. He taught me so many things I had never even thought about. He taught me useful voice exercises, how to breathe in such a way that I could go higher, and how to increase my breath support. He taught me how to stand or sit properly while singing, and how to open my mouth to achieve maximum sound and tone quality. Yet the most important thing he taught me was to sing as though it would be my last time. As though I could never sing again. Even now, the feeling of those words entering my ears for the first time resonates within my very soul.

Whenever I was around him, I felt calm. I felt safe with him beside me. He cared for me like no one else ever had. The way he talked to me, it was in a way that no one had ever and could ever talk to me. When I was with him, my fears dissipated, and my anger and sadness were nonexistent. It was as if they were never there.

. . .

A year ago, my mom died. She had been driving to work, when she was hit by someone who was texting and driving. She was dead before she even got to the hospital, even before the ambulance came. I always felt so sad, so alone without her. Even when I was surrounded by friends, I felt lonely and sad. Hanging out with Heather lost its fun, and I cried a lot. The only outlet for this depression, the only thing that would give me solace, was singing.

One day, when no one was there, I went into the auditorium, and started to sing "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again", from The Phantom of the Opera, from the scene in which Christine Daae was singing in the graveyard. I sang it because the song reflected how I felt. It reflected the sadness and loneliness I felt churning within me. Christine sang about her deceased father, and I sang about my deceased mother. I wanted to hear my mother's voice again; to hear her laugh, to see her smile.

There's a reason I love The Phantom of the Opera as much as I do. I love it because I can relate to Christine. I can relate to the pain of losing a parent who wasn't just that, but a friend also. I felt like my world had been shattered. She was all that mattered to me. We had so many good memories together, and our time to make more had been cut short.

When I had finished the song, a voice in the distance called to me."Wandering child, so lost, so helpless, yearning for my guidance," it sang.

"Angel of music, guide and guardian! Grant to me your glory! Angel of music, hide no longer! Secret and strange angel," I sang to the voice in the distance.

We had a conversation for an hour. We talked about how I could sound better, and he told me he would like to teach me whenever he could. Before I left, he wanted me to sing him another song. I know I shouldn't have trusted him, but I did. So I sang "Ave Maria".

"She was lost in so many different ways, out in the darkness with no guide. I know the cost of a losing hand. Never thought that grace of God, oh I…

"I found heaven on earth, you are my last, my first. And then I hear this voice inside...Ave Maria," my voice started to get stronger and stronger. "I've been alone when I'm surrounded by friends. How could the silence be so loud?But I still go home knowing that I've got you, there's only us when the lights go down. You are my heaven on earth, you are my hunger, my thirst. I always hear this voice inside… singing Ave Maria," it now feels as though I'm singing to him.

"Sometimes love can come and pass you by, while you're busy making plans. Suddenly hits you, and then you realize. . . it's out of your hands… baby, you've got to understand.

"You are my heaven on earth, you are my last, my first. And then I hear this voice inside… Ave Maria, Ave Maria,Ave Maria…" I finish strong, and wait for my critique.

People came in to the auditorium before he could respond though, and I had to run away. As I was leaving, a rose with a black ribbon dropped from out of nowhere. Tied to the stem was a note that said:

Christine,

You are my angel of music, and I am your teacher. You sing beautifully, yet your skills can be refined. I will train you. Come into the auditorium whenever you can. However, I have one rule. You must always come alone. If you don't, I will not come to you.

O.G.

He kept his promise. Whenever I would go down there alone, I would hear his voice in the distance. We would sing for hours at a time. If I was at home though, sometimes I could still hear his voice in the distance. He would comfort me when I lay in bed. In my dreams, he was always there. He also stuck to his rule though. If anyone ever came down with me, he would never appear. He would stay in the shadows, and never speak, yet I could feel that he was here with me. I never got another rose again, but I planted the one he gave me in the garden of my home, and it always bloomed in the spring. He would give me words of encouragement, words of hope, words of comfort.

Slowly, I started to get better. I stopped crying so much, and I wasn't sad all the time. I had more fun with my friends. I laughed a lot more than I ever had. Just thinking about hearing his voice again made me happy.

He made a change in me, that no one else could. Soon, my dad started to notice also, yet he never said anything about it. I think he was just glad that he hadn't lost me as well. I'd never thought of it before, but before I met Erik, I think my dad felt I was leaving him also. It seemed selfish to wallow in self-pity, and have him suffer. The thought of him having to go through not only losing his wife, but his only daughter also, was too much for me to bear.

Even so, my father still suffered. He loved my mother so much. They would watch TV together all the time, and they would go on date nights. Sometimes, we would all get together and watch a movie on Netflix. My mother didn't really like to go out to dinner that much. She wanted to keep practicing her cooking, so she made dinner for us almost every night. She taught me how to make lots of things. My favorite thing to do with her was baking cookies and cakes. We always made birthday cakes, and we liked to make food and treats for her colleagues and coworkers.

Mom and dad liked to go to dinner sometimes and on their anniversary, every year, they went on a three to four day cruise. When they came home, they would never tell me anything, but they'd tell me that one day, we'd all go on one together, but we never did.

They would try to hide it, but I knew they fought a lot. They fought about lots of things: money, bills, taxes, how to clean the house, how to make a bed...the list goes on. They would fight for the most inconsequential reasons, but their fights never lasted long. In the end, mother always seemed to "win" the fight. If she said to not do something a certain way, they would argue, but in the end, father would do it how she wanted him to.

When I was little, when they used to say how much they loved each other, I wondered why they fought. I wondered why they would fight so much if they claimed they loved each other. As I got older though, I realized that was just what people couples do. They fight, then they make up. It quickly got tiresome to listen to them fight, so I began to plug in earphones, to block them out. Even if I was just playing a game, I would listen to the sounds or music of the game. It didn't have to be music, it just had to be enough to block them out.

I wanted to do well for O.G., yet the only thing I could do was sing my heart out, and hope I did well.