Oh look! I'm alive! And here's an update! Happy Easter, all. Sorry for the....delay?
DISCLAIMER: Phantom of the Opera belongs to Monsieur Leroux and is in no other way mine--but orginal characters and story is! HA.
Part Twenty-seven:
I won't bother going over the night's ceremony, because we didn't win. We did take fourth, though, and our instructors were content, with Mr. Perini almost to the point of tears. We got a nice little plaque with some important sounding French title and a lovely check for the band. Erik wasn't there but Daroga we took this time. He found peace in a French couple who talked to him throughout the ceremony, probably thinking he was some invalid or hermit just emerged from some foreign part of the country. I didn't think I would've gone against that thought myself to be frank. In the later course of the evening, when he was told of Erik's secretive ways of getting the right papers to actually live in this time and get away with it that afternoon, he never recovered the healthy glow from his olive-skinned face as he had went deathly white.
Now, still pale and a little shaky, he took to saying little and muttering to himself behind our band as we bore away our prizes triumphantly back to the buses. I realized that at that point, it didn't matter that we had another adult in Daroga that actually knew the whole truth. Erik, somehow, ruled over all of us with an iron fist, slowly taking control. I think Max knew this, for instead of being happy like she would have been for our winnings, her brows were pulled together in deep thought and her eyes were narrowed as if ready to find something to pinpoint why things were happening the way they were.
"We leave tomorrow," I said sadly as we rode back to the hotel, watching the lights of Paris flash past my window. "I can't believe we've been here for only a week."
"Erik's planning something," Max said, oblivious to anything I said. "I can tell, but I can't tell what!"
I settled back in my seat, turning my back on the merrily lighted streets and monuments in order to give my friend my full attention. With the greatness of our success and the natural tendency to talk loudly from the band, we had nothing to fear about being overheard.
"Don't worry about him," I said, patting her shoulder comfortingly. "He's just…preparing what we couldn't do ourselves."
"But how is he doing it?" Max demanded. "No one could come up with a social security card with his name on it without doing something illegal! It's wrong!"
'Whatever gets him to the US with us safely' I found myself thinking, but I knew better than to say so out loud. Instead I gave my most incredulous look and agreeing nod.
"But what can we do?" I asked her, more to get her off her brooding than to really answer the question, "He won't let us follow him. We can't follow him!"
"That and our deaths are always close into becoming reality," she said darkly.
I gasped and looked around to make sure, although it was near impossible, that no one overheard her.
"Max," I said in a hushed voice, "You don't really think he'd kill us?"
Max's gaze was steel.
"He did try very hard under the lake," she reminded me.
Somehow that seemed like so long ago, like another time in another life. Erik wasn't going to kill us; not in my mind. He was sneaky and insidiously clever, but it never struck me that he would actually kill us willingly. Not after all we had done for him. I shook my head while my friend sighed.
"We'll need his passport," she said broodingly. "I hope he knows how to get that!"
"Agreed," I said nervously.
And we didn't talk about it for the rest of the evening.
The evening was not filled with sleep like it ought to have had for a group leaving the very next morning on a over sixteen hour flight back home, but with mini parties contained within the hotel rooms. The adults and our directors attempted to control them but they had little success and decided that if we became tired and disoriented, there wouldn't be much of a difference tomorrow. However, not everyone was partying and our roommate safely off in another room, Max and Erik and I safely made it to Daroga's room where we would talk. Or so Max wanted.
I soon became aware, when I stepped over the threshold, of just how freaked the poor Persian had been the night before. Nearly everything electrical was either smashed or hidden. A phone cord was gruesomely seen halfway from under the second single bed and the other that he must've been sleeping in was torn askew. Erik took to the only remaining armchair and viewed the room skeptically while Daroga stood in stony silence. I sat on the second bed. Erik had abandoned his false nose for his mask since he was in our presence only.
"Erik," Max addressed him; respectfully I noted, "I know you've got your ID and the like, but what about Daroga? I have to take you both with me tomorrow."
Silently he took out more documents and passed them over to Daroga, who looked at them with a little bit more than a horrified stare.
"All he needs is to sign them," the French man said with a smug voice.
"You're amazing, Erik," I said, staring at the papers. "I would absolutely ask how you did it without being caught if you didn't forbid me."
"Wise child," he replied.
Max made a frustrated gesture while I coaxed the papers out of Erik's hand.
"I hope you won't get caught," she told him almost sharply, but still there was that wary respect, "We can't help you if ours or your government realizes you never existed in our time."
He gazed at her calmly, with a leg crossed over a bony knee and hands folded in his lap. The picture of complete confidence.
"I am aware," he said coolly. "You have nothing to fear. Erik does not make any mistakes."
A tingle went up my spine at that but I tried to ignore it. Instead I shuffled the papers in my hands nosily.
"Who's fearing?" I asked to no one as I handed Daroga a pen from his side table drawer. He pushed the papers and pen back at me, looking angry and frightened. Erik noticed and spoke sharply to him, in what we assumed was Daroga's native tongue for Max had a queer look on her face that told me she didn't know what he was saying, either. Daroga snapped back for an instant then, very hesitantly, took the papers from me as if they were live vipers instead of wood cut into sheets of paper. He snatched the pen out of my hand as well.
"Alright, we're set then?" I said with a nervous smile.
Everyone just glared. Tough crowd.
In the end, everything seemed to be settled. Somehow papers were produced for Erik and Daroga by the skeleton himself, and they would have seats on the plane with one of us tomorrow morning. Max and I left the room while Erik would stay with Daroga only a bit longer to settle him down—no doubt he was worried about the bill he would be receiving for the price of all the smashed electronics Daroga got his hands on. It would be a long journey home, but our adventures weren't over just yet.
0-0-0-0-0-0-0
The next morning would have been difficult had it been only our band getting ready to leave, but Max and my plates were even fuller with Erik and Daroga to worry about.
Although they had seemingly come with nothing besides what we had bought them, Erik managed to appear with two small suitcases that didn't make any sense to have for only a few of his new suits. I knew better than to question it however. I had my own things to remember packing up my stuff. Somehow I seemed to have lost everything I owned in our one small bedroom so I had quite an adventure finding it all.
"Here's your watch," Max called to me from the bathroom.
I paused in stuffing a shoe into a side pocket of my suitcase to collect it.
"Thank you," I said with genuine relief. The watch had been my grandmother's. It was very old, very large, but very cool nonetheless. I slipped it on my wrist for safekeeping before doing one last search of the room.
"Ready?" Max said impatiently, standing by the doorway with her own suitcase in hand—our roommate had already cleared out, even though I knew she had left several hair bands and a couple bottles of empty lotion under her bed. I nodded and followed Max out and down to the stairs. The elevators would be packed with lazier band kids or just a few of the ones who brought several large bags with them.
Erik and Daroga were waiting for us. Somehow Erik had bullied a kid into taking his own luggage out to the buses for him and stood there empty-handed, nose in place as well with a wary stare at those few people around him scrambling to get their own suitcases out. Daroga, still looking pale and tired, had no luggage to speak of. Unless the kid who took Erik's also took his, too.
As we came up to them I smiled cheerily.
"Good morning!" I said.
"It is indeed," Erik said, looking at a pocket watch he kept in his suit. "When do we leave on your airplane?"
They followed us as we dragged our own stuff out into the cloudy daylight in front of the hotel. Max was able to pull out an itinerary and her suitcase at the same time and managed to place the suitcase in the lower compartments of the bus while simultaneously handing Erik the sheet.
"We leave around one," she said, "But we're going to switch planes in D.C.—our capital, so we can get another to go back home."
Erik nodded slowly and kindly handed the sheet to Daroga, who was peering over his bony shoulder to get a glimpse.
"Where do we board?" Erik asked.
"As soon as the plane is ready, whenever that would be," said a voice from behind us. "Mr. Specter, have you been out of France before?"
We all turned to see Mr. Party loading in his stuff and looking rather worse for wear. His hair had obviously not been combed and he had that look of a teacher trying to load in a hundred kids or so into buses but having no luck. He still smiled and addressed Erik politely. I think it made Erik happy. Musicians are a lonely bunch, but no one said they didn't like talking to another who understood them.
"I have," Erik said as Max started to poke me towards our own bus. "Much of Europe and Russia. But I have not been on a plane before."
We were too far away to hear Mr. Party's response.
"They'll be okay until we get to the airport," Max told me as we found our seats in the bus. Only half of our bus was full, but we still managed to sound like it was filled to the brim.
"I don't think I can handle this kind of stress," I said, holding a hand to my head. "What's going to happen? No wait. Don't answer that, I don't want to know."
Max let out a chuckle and pulled out her book.
"Let's pull a leaf out of your book and not think about it until we come to it," she said.
I couldn't agree more heartily.
O-o-o-o-o-o-o
Erik never liked being in public. In fact, I knew he hated it with an unending passion. He seemed fine in darker places or even with our teacher, Mr. Party, but when he had to go out where there were more people and light he became more tense and snappish. Like a hungry tiger exposed to no food but its own captor. Dangerous. Upon the time of leaving Paris and entering the actual airport, he was nearly intolerable.
Everything was an insult to him, he replies were sharp and hateful, and he fidgeted in the most worrisome way—his hand itching for either its lasso or someone else's neck I couldn't quite tell. I explained to many around us that the prospect of flying for the first time made him nervous (it could be true) and so it would be best to not disturb him until later on. Many complied after seeing Erik's angry and ugly face glaring at the world and the people who were unfortunate enough to bump up against him. In a sacrificial air, Max and I stationed ourselves on either side of him to take the bumps and the glares.
After check in with the luggage, our group was told to load up our stuff onto carrier carts that would take them to the plane directly. This Max had to explain to both Erik and Daroga who both started as their things were taken from them. Thankfully Daroga looked too weary to care and sadly complied with the custom, but it took all our consolations and explaining to veer Erik away from his own two bags. Again, it made me wonder dreadfully what was in them even though we had told him the security had ways of finding things that we couldn't—especially metal, bombs, and drugs.
Security was next, and it made us undoubtedly nervous. Of course we couldn't stick next to them the entire time, and to our horror, we were separated due to the large outbreak in tourists and French scrambling to get through first. I was even separated from Max and spent an awkward moment being felt down by a large, Asian security woman when my belt caused the metal detector to ring four times before I was released on the other side. To my amazement, Erik came out behind me, looking disgruntled but not in handcuffs and being led away by angry police.
He glared at me as if to silently imply the security check was completely my fault.
"They made me take off my shoes," he said in outrage. "And put them through a strange mechanism!"
I shrugged unhelpfully, at a loss of what to tell him. He seemed about ready to strangle me before Max appeared at our side, looking sick with worry. Daroga had fainted and the medics needed Erik as the adult to identify him and take him away safely.
"I hate your airports," Erik spat, following Max, clearing a large pathway in the crowds. Being on the receiving end of Erik's furious looks was probably the last thing you'd be able to do.
O-o-o-o-o-o-o
As our plane was not to take off for another half hour, I took the break as a chance to flee to the nearest bookshop, and purchased a large French volume about modern electronics in hopes to distract him. Already, genius though he was, the strain of being surrounded by modernized things like an airport nearly overwhelmed him. Standing beside him I could almost hear his brain churning in efforts to keep up with the life around us. A sickly sort of flush came into his sunken cheeks as I offered him the book and he took it with the relief of having something that could explain the new world he was in and in a way that didn't involve poor high school student girls who barely understood how a mechanical pencil worked.
The book came in handy immediately. Whenever Erik spotted something that bothered him (like the automatic ticket counters and the insurance computer monitors) he would snap open the book and bury his false nose in the pages and say nothing, allowing himself to be guided gingerly around by the careful touch of Max or myself. And that was just Erik.
Now picture Erik—whose genius allowed him to understand much beforehand but already failed him in the modern day airport….and then compare him to the poor Persian, who knew nothing and never wanted to—who's sole belief was that McDonald's ketchup packets were pure evil in the form of plastic. In a sincere "fight or flight" moment, he was slicked with sweat and his breathing was heavy like he had run a marathon. After his experience with the security center, one could observe that his eyes were dilated wider then ever before, despite the bright flashing lights around him. In short, he was terrified out of his mind.
If it wasn't for Max hanging onto his arm and whispering kind words and assurances to him, I would not have been the first to bet he was close to having a full on cardiac arrest. In a subtle way I suggested we fetch him some Nyquil or another drug to make him tired so he'd be easier to handle. Needless to say I received a rounding smack on the head for it. Max didn't like the thought of drugging him in any way—Darius would kill us, if he ever knew.
"Be ready to board!" barked Mr. Perini as we gathered once again in front of the gate. "Everyone have their tickets? Good!"
Mr. Party moved around the students and helper parents, checking the tickets before we would actually have them officially ripped up.
I nearly chocked. Tickets! Where were our tickets…? I started to pat myself down frantically.
"Here, dummy," Max said, waving them in my face before tucking mine securely in my back pocket.
"Thanks," I said sighing.
It was good to know that one of us wasn't loosing our head in the group.
Everyone was gossiping and chattering excitedly, pointing as the tunnel connecting to the plane started to move out from the building. Friends nudged each other knowingly and parents checked their watches, already irritable. Daroga shuddered beside me and I heard a page being turned savagely as well. The time was near at hand to leave. And we were taking two storybook characters right out of their natural habitat. I doubted that there was any license for that…or if Leroux would mind that we were taking his creations far out of their normal scope.
"I'll be sad to leave here," I told my own friend wistfully.
She bit her lower lip and nodded, keeping an eye on Daroga.
"Boarding, Gate H." A cool female voice said over the intercom. Daroga jumped so badly he stepped on my foot and Erik jerked his head up from his book. "Boarding, Gate H. Please have your tickets ready."
"Time to go," I said to them as cheerfully as I could manage.
They stared at me while Max allowed them to hold their own tickets, saying what they had to do with them.
"Let's move out!" Mr. Perini bellowed over the still repeating voice of the intercom and the sudden outburst of loud clamor of the peanut gallery.
As we muddled into one of or least best line formations Max drew alongside me.
"I gave my original ticket to Erik so he'll be with you," she said quietly, "I would have given you Daroga, except…"
"He doesn't know what I'm saying and I can't speak French," I finished, blushing slightly. "I understand. No problem! And good luck yourself."
She groaned.
"I might switch with you in a few hours if Daroga keeps acting like he is," she said, casting a weary eye on the twitchy man.
I nodded sympathetically and dutifully hooked myself up with my fake uncle, whose nose was so buried in his book all I could see was his discolored forehead. I knew better than to interrupt him and managed to slide his ticket out of his hand so I could hand it to the ticket man, who gave Erik a startled look before letting us pass.
"We're in row 25," I told him when we stepped into the plane, craning my neck to look at the numbers printed above my head on the luggage holders. "And...in B and C. Hey, that's awesome! Want the window seat, Erik?"
He ignored me.
We squeezed ourselves past people, their legs, their bags, and once a blind woman's dog before reaching our spot. Without any help, Erik slid in to the window while still hiding behind his book. I lowered myself down in my own place once he made himself comfortable and stowed my handbag underneath my seat before leaning back to lock my seatbelt. Of course my uncle didn't put his on and it lay morosely by his side. I was shocked to see that if he scooted over in his seat, he would hardly take half of the space.
"You...might want to put that on?" I said squeakily, not sure if he was still in his frightening mood or not.
Finally the book came down and I saw that his face had deeper shadows on it–he was exhausted. I pointed out his seatbelt buckle mutely, trying not to seem imperious or scolding. He took up the two bits and looked at them a long time. So long, that I had the sudden thought that I might have to do so for him. It made me blush to think of ever wrapping his belt around his tiny waist, of being that uncomfortably close to him and I hesitated. Thankfully, thankfully he clicked the two pieces together smartly and picked up his book only to carefully set it next to him in his seat. He turned to me slowly.
"How does the plane fly with so much weight in it?" he asked me then, producing his mask from his suit. "I can fathom a smaller craft, but this seems mostly produced of heavy sheet metal..."
I managed a small smile as he talked. Even exhausted, his brain still worked hard to understand and ask questions. I felt at ease with him at once. I felt that Max couldn't possibly be right about Erik killing us. I just don't think he was that type of man.
