AN: Hello, faithful readers! I apologize for the gap between chapters, school tends to suck the creative juices dry. We're wrapping up this story arc and are about to embark upon another. In the meantime, enjoy this brief segment!
I'm not afraid of anything
Be it mountains, water, dragons, dark or sky
I'm not afraid of anything
Tell me where's the challenge if you never try
So watch me fly
I'm not afraid
- Songs for a New World
Having a hangover was kind of a novel experience. At least, it was for Christine. She'd never been really drunk before and as such, she'd never experienced the delightful morning after a night of binge drinking. At first, she didn't even realize she had a hangover, she thought she was just dying in an unexpected, but entirely mundane kind of way. It took Charlotte repeatedly throwing her blankets off and reassuring her that nope, she wasn't dying and she'd feel a lot better if she just had a cup of coffee and a bagel to get her up.
It wasn't so much that she actually believed her, it was just that Charlotte had a way of being super forceful about her opinions and she'd started dragging Christine out of bed by her ankles that that made her stomach lurch, so she stumbled out of bed and into a fresh outfit. Morning showers were out since Meg was currently in there using all the hot water and one of the curses of curly hair meant that it was still a little damp from last night's shower – wait a sec, she took a shower?
Christine tried to give her hair a sniff on a sly as she made a show of shaking it out before tying it back in a ponytail. Definitely smelled like shampoo...but when did she shower? Honestly, she didn't remember much from the night before. Yeah, they'd performed, but it had been like she was sleepwalking, or maybe sleepjogging. She was trying to keep busy because when she wasn't busy, she was thinking about what a mess her life currently was, the school she wasn't sure was right for her, the friends she wasn't sure were really friends and then there was Erik. It was always Erik, in the end and she was trying really, really hard to not think about him because every time she did, she found herself replaying that terrible moment in the parking lot. With the siren screaming and Erik screaming and the blood – it was getting bloodier and bloodier in her imagination, as though Mel Gibson had taken over the direction of the piece in her mind – it was too much. He was just too much.
The drinking helped, actually, for a while she was loose and chipper and enjoying herself at their forbidden hotel party and she felt like a real college student. Until the horrible moment when the room started spinning and she became BFFs with the rim of a toilet bowl. It got kind of hazy after that point, someone knocked on the door and said they respected her and then...um...she got back to her room, clearly and maybe watched TV? She had vague images of a really excited blonde woman with a really great voice in a dress with a blue sash. The dress had been pretty.
It was in a total daze that she made her way down to the continental breakfast with the other girls chattering a mile a minute around her. The harsh hotel lighting was doing nothing for her headache and, honestly, neither was the gabbing, but she was too embarrassed to ask them to tone it down and besides, clearly Charlotte or Meg or Jamie or Sorelli had helped her back to the room, so it would be the height of rudeness to tell them off because her stupid decision to drink left her in this state. Head still fuzzy, she allowed herself to be walked down to the room with the continental breakfast. Jamie left her in a chair by a big electric fireplace and Christine crossed her arms across her stomach and tried not to hurl into a planter which held a fake looking fern.
"Be back in a sec – I'll have coffee!" Jamie beamed, as though the offer of coffee was going to do anything other than cause Christine to edge slightly closer to the planter. Why did she even need to get out of bed? What was she even doing down there?
"Ready to sing?" Erik's voice wafted down from on high – damn he was tall when she was sitting – as he perched on the arm of her chair and held out a plain bagel wrapped in a napkin.
Sing. Oh, crap. Right, she'd signed up for some stupid class where she was going to have to sing with some stupid people. Granted, it hadn't been stupid at the beginning of the week, it was a smallish class and kind of hard to get into since 500 kids were usually crammed into some tiny hotel conference room and no one learned, but she was one of thirty students going to a voice 'intensive.' She had completely forgotten about it until Erik brought it up. Why was he bringing it up? Why was he bringing her bagels, didn't he remember she was mad at him?
Obviously not. "You don't have to eat the whole thing," he said, thrusting the room-temperature bread product under her nose, "but you'll feel better if you do. I was going to get you Gatorade, but I figure you've had enough of that, so I got you tea instead. Eat the bagel first though, it's still hot.
Gatorade. Just the name made her stomach churn. "I don't have any sheet music," she groaned.
"Don't worry about it, I took the liberty of bringing some along – seriously, eat the bagel, your life will be so much happier," Erik said and just like that some crisp white sheets of paper appeared in his right hand that she would swear hadn't been there a minute ago. He was a freaking witch.
"Lemme see," she said, since the notes did not look remotely familiar to her.
"Eat your bagel," he said tauntingly, easily holding the papers out of reach. It was infuriating, how he could be so...Erik. At a time like this, especially when she didn't think she liked him. But she took a few bites of the bagel and didn't projectile vomit everywhere and started to think this whole eating and drinking thing had merit. "Anyway, the point, if you read your pamphlet, is to work on something you haven't mastered. I'm pretty sure you've done about as much as you can do with The Music Man."
"Nuh-uh," Christine replied lamely, blushing a bit since she kinda-sorta wanted to do 'My White Knight' to look good among her fellow singers because she knew she nailed it every time. "And what'd you give me? I can't just learn some random song in ten minutes."
"You know this song, don't worry about it," Erik said, but he relented and handed the copies over, apparently satisfied that she was well on her way to recovery.
It took a quick glance at the key signature and the lyrics to confirm that Christine did know the song and there was no way in hell she was performing it cold in front of thirty strangers. "Are you trying to kill me?" she asked him, eyes wide in horror, voice squeaking a bit. "No way. No way. No way am I singing Jason Robert Brown at nine in the morning and...are you trying to torture me? Is this a punishment?"
He actually had the audacity to look offended. "No, Jesus, what's your problem?" he asked, running a hand through his hair nervously. "I don't have the key card for your room and this is the only score I have – I thought you'd be pleased,at least I'm not letting you embarrass yourself going in there without music. Sweet Erik, remember?"
No, she did not remember. Songs for a New World was filled with notoriously difficult music that was incredibly dependent upon the singer's acting ability to make the performance worthwhile. And "I'm Not Afraid of Anything?" Please. She was afraid of everything. In high school, her voice teacher actually wanted her to learn this one for the end of the year concert, but gave up after two lessons. It was like Erik was psychic. But an evil, malicious psychic.
"I'm pretty sure I hate you," Christine said, taking another bite of her bagel and glaring at Erik.
There was a momentary flicker of...something on his face. Hurt? Was he hurt? Before Christine had time to process it, though, he was shrugging and said simply, "You're just hungover. You'll thank me someday." And he patted her on the head, like she was a labradoodle or something and wandered off, leaving the cup of tea on the arm of the chair.
Charlotte marched up, her own sheet music in a folder under her arm, not paying Erik any attention as she made a beeline for Christine. "Ohmygod, I totally forgot to grab your music, are you up for running? 'Cuz we can run back for it, we'll only be, like, two minutes late, tops."
Christine just shook her head and said, "No, no, I don't want to make you late, you just go, I'll...um. I don't even know."
Charlotte narrowed her eyes, "What do you mean, 'you don't know'? You're not coming. You're so coming, don't even give me that, I'm not going alone."
For all of Charlotte's piss and vinegar, take-no-prisoners bitchitude in front of friends and acquaintances, she had serious issues walking into new situations without backup. And in this particular case, that backup was coming in the form of Christine. If she didn't have someone to perform her 'I don't take other people's shit' attitude for, someone who was expecting her to perform that way, well, she had a hard time maintaining the facade. Luckily, for her own sake, the current performance did the job and Christine shuffled along behind her to the conference room and the two of them grabbed seats near the back. Charlotte glanced over at Christine's music stand where she was desperately trying to memorize the words as she hummed under her breath.
"Ooh, love this song, way more awesome than 'White Knight,' hun, good choice."
"Not my choice," Christine hissed through gritted teeth. "Erik just handed it to me, like, five minutes ago, he is such an asshole, I can't stand him."
Charlotte gave her a confused look. "I thought you guys were cool now."
"What? No, I'm mad at him. I'm way mad at him, like...god."
Both of Charlotte's dark eyebrows rose toward her hairline. It occurred to Christine for the first time that the fire-engine red curls she sported might actually come from a bottle. "Still? I mean...okay, be mad if you want to, God knows I get pissed at him, but I figured after he got you back to the room last night, you'd give him a break."
"What?" Christine asked, but there was a sudden rush of students, talking and warming up and scraping chairs and music stands across the floor. Either Charlotte didn't hear her or thought the conversation was over because she didn't reply.
