This story is now officially finished! There will be a total of 3-4 posts after this one, and that's it! I had the day off today, and although I had a bunch of other sh!t to do, I sat around writing this ALL DAY and now I'm finished with it completely. YAY! Of course, that leaves me not knowing what I will write about next, but I'm not worried. I have finished stories before and something else always comes to me eventually. I apologize in advance to all my Phantom of the Opera friends, though, as my next post will very likely be a bit of Moby Dick fanfiction. Don't worry, though, Ahab is a dark and tragic character as well, and I promise to write him in a way that you won't totally hate him, at least not all the time. (Also it'll be a short piece. Like a two-shot.) Anyway, without further adieu, here's the damn chapter. Enjoy.

Our fate? What right was it of his to resign anything about my fate? I wanted to smack him or shake him or just scream. But he was just standing there, staring at me with this stare like bottomless sorrow. The word melancholy came to mind, and Alex illustrated it perfectly.

"There… is no fate," I said. I didn't sound very convincing, so I tried harder. "This is nothing like the book!"

"Isn't it?" he looked around, then up. I copied him. We were in a dim, candle-lit, damp-smelling room. Above us, music played distantly as the musical went on without me. I faced him, he faced me. I was scared inside, but somehow managing to act mostly normal. I guessed it was sort of like the book in a way. And yet, it really wasn't.

"Hello? You just asked me a few minutes ago what am I doing here. If this were the book, if I were Christine and you were Erik, you'd know why I was here. You'd have brought me here, yourself!" What a creepy thought. Well, thank god he hadn't done that!

A bizarre string of emotions paraded across his face. First confusion, then surprise, then consternation, and finally disagreement. He didn't say anything, though.

"What? Isn't that how it would have gone if this was the same as the book?"

He looked away.

"Alex, seriously? It's opening ni—" I stopped. Alex's eyes widened. I don't know if he mirrored me as I realized it or if he worried what would happen once I noticed: It wasn't opening night. Tomorrow was opening night. It was only dress rehearsal. "I'm not supposed to be here, am I?"

"Christine, don't say that."

I ignored him. "I'm not supposed to be here tonight, am I?"

"Christine—"

"I'm not supposed to be here tonight, because I'm not supposed to be here until tomorrow, right? Oh my god, what are you—"

"Christine, I am glad you are here."

"Glad? Oh you're glad I'm here? Maybe so, but why don't you look glad? Maybe because it's not what you planned?"

What could he have planned? If he really had resigned himself to our fate, he might be planning to cause my disappearance in front of a live audience tomorrow night. He would then bring me here and offer me some horrible choice, which, I was supposed to refuse to make. He would threaten me, tie me up. No. No, Erik only tied Christine because he thought she would kill herself.

Well, I may be a lot of things, but I've never been suicidal, so he could forget using that excuse.

Who cares if Alex doesn't think Alex can choose differently than Erik did? He can't make me act like that Christine no matter what he does. Whatever he asked for, I'd say yes so he'd settle down and act right. I could always renig on that later, tell on him and get out of whatever horrible thing he'd made me promise. I couldn't quite understand why Christine didn't do the same thing. Why not just say she'd marry Erik and then not. I mean, if she got all the way to the church and said "I don't" instead of "I do" she'd have a priest as a witness that she was being forced. Then Erik might attempt to kill the priest, but wasn't that better than killing Raoul, the Persian and hundreds of other people? Bottom line, I don't think Christine tried hard enough. More proof it's not real, I guess. The author probably didn't feel like writing all that stuff that she could have done instead. It would have gone on forever and Raoul and the Persian would have just starved in the little room. But here there is no Raoul, there is no Persian, and I have arrived a day early.

"Christine, it's true I didn't expect to see you here tonight. Nevertheless," (again, who talks this way? I'd have said "whatever" or "but still" instead) "you are here. It is a welcome surprise."

I nodded. What could I say?

He shifted forward then back again, as though he couldn't decide whether it was all right to be near me.

It was akward, all right. He bumbled around for a few minutes then invited me to sit. Squinting in the darkness, I found another prop chair. I perched on the edge of it. Chair or no, there was really not much chance I was going to relax or anything.

I wondered what happened between Erik and Christine before Raoul and the Persian arrived. All she said was that he was worse than ever, that he raved, that he gave her time to think over the prospect of marrying him. Relax, I told myself. Alex is seventeen. There's no way he'd ask for marriage. Even if he did, you have to be eighteen, I'm pretty sure, so we'd have to get our parents to agree, and hello, my parents are not going to agree to something like that, so there's my excuse.

But my mouth went dry and my heart started to thump harder again. Mom was only seventeen when she married Dad. They drove to Virginia where the law was different. Ugh. Still, there was a chance Alex didn't know about that. Of course, who was I fooling? I hadn't yet discovered anything that Alex didn't know. Too bad you can't test out of high school by proving you know the stuff. Then he'd have been gone and I wouldn't be in this stupid mess. Even so, I was still pretty sure Alex wasn't looking to get married.

I wasn't completely sure what Alex was up to, but I had this really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that the horrible thought in the back of my mind might be for real, and I couldn't figure out how to bring it up or what to do to make sure it wouldn't happen.

But this was Alex, right? He was—dare I say—my friend by the light of day? So why was I so scared?

"Do you have any more candles?" Candles weren't like the book, they were like the movie. I didn't care. I swear I'm not exaggerating when I say I was filled with joy when he got up and blundered over a pile of boxes, half-tripped, grunted, wheezed, and eventually came back with more candles. Because his movements were so not Erik, not stage Phantom, not even movie Phantom. And with more candles lit, I could see him better, and looking at him helped me see that he was still Alex, just as fat and almost as ridiculous-looking at usual, though I had to admit the suit or tux or whatever he was all dressed up in gave him at least an ounce of dignity his windbreaker couldn't. The word dignity entering my head made me think of funerals, and I didn't like where my thoughts led. I considered the candles, some of them sitting on top of cardboard boxes that were no doubt filled with clothing, curtains, cardboard scenery and other flammable objects. I visualized headlines: Two Students Dead in Phantom Reenactment. I debated whether to suggest putting out the candles I'd just asked for and decided against it for now. As long as we didn't knock them over, everything would be fine. Alex's skin took on a weird orange glow by the light of multiple candles, but his eyes no longer were completely dark unless he looked down. I could see well enough to tell that he'd gotten his suit dusty climbing around the boxes. I looked down at my own white dress. Whoops.

"So what now?" I said. I guess I'd gotten over how nervous I was because I was starting to feel a little bit bored.

He shrugged and shook his head a little.

He said he was glad I was there, but he looked completely miserable.

"Maybe I should go," I suggested.

He nodded, not quite in agreement, but like he hadn't completely heard what I'd said. A vague, powerless nod.

I stood. I shuffled around the table without getting too close to the candles.

"I always knew you'd go."

And that was all it took. I was pissed.

"Shit! What the hell do you want from me? I mean, you're not even talking to me! I mean, you wanna do 'not-creepy' let me tell you how. You wait until after dress rehearsal, and you go out to Denny's with the cast. Like a normal person!"

He didn't even flinch when I yelled. And he waited a long time to say anything back. I hate that when you yell and someone doesn't yell back. It's like they didn't hear you! But at least he answered. He said, "It wasn't I who didn't wait, Christine."

Damn. He was right again. He'd been waiting, all right. Creepy, yes. Bizarre? No doubt. But waiting? Also true. I was the one who came down here all in the middle of things. Shit!

Why had I done that? Oh yeah… I remembered. Erik is dead.

Reviews, please?
Hey... 50 readers and only one comment. Did I do something wrong? Or the FFN broken again?