Thank you to everyone for supporting this story! It always puts a smile on my face when I get a new notification or when I see how many people have stopped by, so I really appreciate it! Also, thank you to Kalethesimp for leaving me a meme in the reviews. It gave me a laugh :D
Chapter 4: This Means War
Who would've thought the arrival of thirty-six rowdy children could be a blessing? Certainly not Christine, but the kids were her only salvation from a stifling silence with Erik.
Luke Sorelli was the first to arrive, much to Christine's displeasure. She didn't play favorites with her students, but if she did, Luke would be her least favorite of all. He behaved poorly and never learned his lesson when she sent him to the school principal's office. It was no surprise Luke's mother was the first parent to dump her kid at summer camp.
"Hi, Miss Daae!" said Luke cheerfully as he burst through the door of the Royal Garnet.
"Hi, Luke!" Christine responded with her sweet "teacher voice" and a pained smile.
A look of confusion spread over the boy's face when he noticed the masked man examining old posters and photographs on the wall. Erik had been unable to stop fidgeting, so Christine had yelled at him to get up from the bench and walk around.
"What's that weird guy doing here?" Luke loudly whispered in concern. Christine resisted the urge to snicker at Erik's scowl.
"He's helping run the camp!" replied Christine with a fake excitement. This was just her luck to be trapped in a room with Erik and Luke.
"Why's he dressed like that?"
"I don't know, Luke. Why don't you go ask him?" Christine snapped in exasperation.
She hadn't expected the boy to actually approach Erik with the question, but of course he did. This was Luke Sorelli after all. The child marched right up to Erik and stuck out his hand.
"Hi there, mister! I'm Luke Sorelli."
Erik stared at the child's toothless grin before his tall frame bent over to shake the child's hand.
"Hey, kid. I'm Erik. Nice to meet you." The tone of Erik's voice betrayed his words.
Luke stared at Erik curiously. He'd never been allowed to call an adult by their first name, but then again, this was no ordinary adult. The boy pointed a tiny finger at Erik's mask and asked the burning question that had captured his capricious interest for almost an entire minute.
"Why're you dressed like that?"
"Because I can't go walking around naked, now can I?" Erik crossed his arms and Luke tilted his head in confusion. This hadn't been the response he was expecting, but Luke giggled
"You're funny, Erik," he said before walking away to find something else that would interest him. Christine noticed the smallest smile flicker across Erik's face, but she must have imagined it.
When the lobby was packed with chattering campers, Erik and Christine corralled their brood into the theater. Christine's sweet teacher voice attempted to break through the shouting and shoving as the children took their seats.
"Alright, everyone, please settle down for attendance."
Her request was ignored.
Christine bit her lip and peered sheepishly over her shoulder. Erik was sitting on the edge of the stage with his arms crossed and a smirk on his face. Christine was a school teacher. She should be able to handle children.
"Please. Everyone, settle down," she urged again, but it was useless.
"EVERYBODY SHUT UP!"
The theater was dead silent except for the last echoes of Erik's deafening scream. He gestured for Christine to begin the attendance, but she was still shaking.
"Erik! What was that for!" she hissed as her hand swatted his shoulder.
A chorus of giggles spread amongst the children. They enjoyed seeing Miss Daae upset.
"What do you mean what was it for?" Erik retorted. "You think that baby voice you're using is going to work?"
"You can't go shouting about! You have to set a good example!"
"Just take the attendance, Miss Daae," Erik sneered.
Christine glared at him before rolling her eyes and reading off the list of names in her hands. All the children were confirmed present.
"So...uh...what play are we doing?" Erik whispered to Christine. Mr. Richard hadn't provided him with any information, but he'd assured Erik that Christine knew what was going on.
"Well, we didn't have time to acquire rights for a show," she began carefully, "so they're going to write their own!"
Her enthusiastic smile did not convince Erik that Christine had everything under control. He gave her a blank stare before his masked face fell into his hands.
"What the fuck did I get myself into..." he muttered under his breath, but his voice was not soft enough. Another chorus of giggles broke out among their pupils.
"Erik! You can't curse in front of the children!" Christine shoved him, though not as hard as he deserved. Erik rolled his eyes, and the children laughed again at their counselors' bickering.
"Well, it would appear we have our work cut out for us," Erik said. "What's the plan for today?"
"Well, I guess we need to brainstorm ideas…"
"Alright. It's about 9:00 now. We'll break into two groups to brainstorm. Then, we'll reconvene at 11:00 and have lunch. Everyone on that side of the room, follow Miss Daae to the back. Everyone on this side, you're staying with me."
While children scrambled to their battle stations, Christine stood in confusion watching the scene unfold. Thirty seconds ago, Erik didn't know what was going on. Now he was in charge? And the kids were actually listening? That was a miracle in itself.
Well, it's fine by me if we're on opposite sides of the room, Christine thought as she stalked to the back of the theater.
She frowned when she settled into a seat in the last row. Only a dozen or so kids had followed her. Erik had been making rather broad hand gestures as he barked out orders. Some of the kids in the middle of the group must have gotten mixed up about where the dividing line was. No worries, Erik would send the confused campers to her shortly.
"Here, Miss Daae!" Molly Poligny reached over her shoulder and dropped a notebook and pencil in her lap.
"What's this?" Christine asked.
"Erik told me to get it for you from Mr. Richard, so you can take notes!"
Molly wandered back towards the stage with another notepad under her arm for Erik. Christine furrowed her brow at the objects in her hand. Whenever she asked students to do something, they protested, but the kids listened to Erik with no questions asked. She glanced towards the front of the theater. The huge disparity in their groups' sizes was obvious. There were children in Erik's group who had definitely been on her side of the room. Christine's heart sank from overwhelming disappointment. The kids wanted to be with Erik. Christine's only consolation was that Luke Sorelli ended up in Erik's group even though he was supposed to be in hers.
Well, if Erik thinks he can handle two dozen kids all by himself, I'd like to see him try.
Christine and her group sat in a circle on the ground to discuss ideas for the show. None of the plot lines were anything out of the ordinary: fairy tale-esque elements and the occasional science fiction trope thrown in for good measure. Erik's group was going wild at the front of the theater. They couldn't possibly be getting any work done with all the jumping and shouting.
"Can you all keep it down over there?" Christine yelled since Erik wasn't making any efforts to keep his kids under control. He sat on the edge of the stage like it was his throne, watching the mayhem unfold before his eyes.
Two hours never passed so slowly. Christine's group ran dry with ideas and repeated the same one's over and over again until they resorted to fidgeting in silence. What made Erik think two hours of brainstorming was a good idea? Children don't have that kind of attention span. Even Christine was bored. She checked her phone for the time. 10:47 was close enough to 11:00. She gathered her children and led them to the front of the theater where Erik and his group were playing some sort of schoolyard game. Did they get any work done?
"Oh, is it 11:00 already?" Erik asked when Christine and her group rejoined him.
"So, what did your group come up with?" she huffed, ignoring his snide remark.
Erik's group had concocted a bizarre tale of ghosts, scorpions, and grasshoppers. Somewhere a lasso became involved, but Christine didn't know where that fit in. How any of the ideas fit together was beyond her understanding. The story was a mess, and it didn't help that Erik's children were shouting over each other, fighting to present their individual versions of the play.
"Well, that sure is…something," Christine said, scratching her head in confusion.
Erik and his group smiled innocently, nodding their heads in approval.
"Who wants to share our ideas?" Christine asked her group, but they were shy all of the sudden.
She called on some unfortunate little soul who blushed when their ideas were met with bored looks from their campmates.
"I guess we should take a vote," Erik suggested after Christine's timid spokesperson shuffled back to their seat.
To ensure anonymity, the campers closed their eyes and raised their hands for the plot they wanted to win. No one was surprised by the outcome. Erik's group won in a landslide.
"That's only because your group was bigger to begin with," Christine muttered as children offered Erik high fives, but she knew that wasn't the case. Not a single one of her children voted for their own ideas.
The children grabbed their lunchboxes and raced into the lobby so they could eat lunch. Christine and Erik sat down on one of the benches to supervise their charges.
"Erik, can you please try to have a little more control over your group?" Christine scolded. Or any control at all for that matter...
"I don't want to suppress their creativity," he answered smugly.
"Well, there's a difference between letting them be creative and letting them run amok. There's a literal hanging involved in your story! A hanging! What child came up with that?"
"Hell if I knew. I don't know any of their names." Erik threw his hands in the air and Christine took a deep breath.
"Erik, you need to shut them down if they get out of hand. Violence isn't appropriate for a school environment."
"Well, luckily this isn't a school. It's a summer camp."
Christine face palmed, but she wished she'd smacked Erik's face instead. She wanted to grab the man by the shoulders and shake some common sense into him. She would've done it too, if there hadn't been children around.
"You know what I meant, Erik," Christine spat through gritted teeth.
"Oh, alright. I'm sorry, and I'll try harder in the future. Happy now?"
"I'll believe it when I see it." Christine stood from the bench and rushed across the room to monitor a brewing food fight.
After lunch, Erik suggested they play a few games to give the children a longer break, but Christine kept her on the clock the whole time. She wanted a solid plotline by the end of the day, but with Erik's tangled up story, even that was an unattainable goal. After Christine put an end to the games, the children tried to explain their story again in a manner that was only slightly calmer than before. Then they arrived at the hanging, which Christine had hoped would conveniently be forgotten.
"I'm afraid we can't keep that in the story," she said.
"But we can't take it out, Miss Daae! That's the best part!" they whined. Why were kids so fascinated by everything they shouldn't be?
"But your parents would be so scared!" she said sweetly. And I would get fired!
The children looked toward Erik to save their show. Christine waited expectantly for him to speak. She glanced down at his notepad where he'd been furiously scribbling what she'd assumed to be notes, but there weren't any notes at all. He'd been drawing! Erik guiltily covered the page with his hand when he noticed Christine's disapproving glare.
"Well, Erik?" she said.
Erik lifted his head and gazed upon the sea of little faces. The children clasped their hands in desperate pleas, but Christine clasped her hands to prevent them from clawing Erik's face.
"There will be no hanging," Erik grumbled.
Erik's word was final. The matter was dropped and none of the children mentioned the hanging ever again.
As time ticked by, the plot of the play took shape, and the camp day ended just as the kids were losing interest. A wave of relief washed over Christine when all the children had been picked up, but it subsided when she and Erik were alone in the lobby again.
"Can I see your notes?" she asked, pointing to the notebook in his hand. She knew he hadn't been taking actual notes, and she was more than happy to call him out on it.
"Yeah, sure." Erik tucked his pencil behind his ear and handed her his notepad.
The lined pages were all empty, but the blank sides of the paper were covered in elaborate drawings. Upon closer inspection, they were sets for the show, complete with detailed measurements and scrawled notes in Erik's terrible handwriting. The man was an impressive artist; he must have had experience in set design or something like that, but Christine wasn't interested in finding out. Erik was wasting his time when his attention belonged elsewhere.
"These are very nice," Christine said bitterly, "but I hope you realize we're limited to what we can find in the basement of this theater and whatever we feel like buying with our own money."
"Yes. I know." Erik yanked his notebook from Christine's clutches and indignantly placed it under his arm. "See you tomorrow," he muttered as he sulked out the front door of the theater.
"How'd it go, Christine?" Mr. Richard called from his office. He'd popped his head into the theater a few times to check on how the camp was doing. Everything had looked to be running smoothly and the kids had been having a blast.
"It was good!" Christine replied. There hadn't been any injuries, so that was a small success.
"You and Erik getting along well enough?"
"Oh… well…" Christine chuckled nervously and shrugged.
No. They weren't getting along. In fact, she would've rather done the entire thing by herself. She was already doing more than her fair share of the work. Might as well get the credit.
"I just don't really know what to make of him, I guess," she said politely.
"You know how city folks can be, Christine. Sometimes they're a bit...prickly."
Mr. Richard laughed, but Christine didn't believe Erik's problem was his urban origins. Maybe city people were a little more wary of strangers, but she'd met plenty of friendly people when she had lived in the city. Erik was more than a bit prickly. He was plain rude, but Mr. Richard felt differently. After all, Erik had agreed to volunteer at a children's summer at the very last minute. How bad could the man be?
"You'll warm up to each other," said Mr. Richard. "See you tomorrow, Christine!"
"See you tomorrow," Christine replied before she exited the theater and trudged to her car.
Christine was skeptical that she and Erik would warm up to each other. Never before had Christine been consumed by such hatred for another person. Being a teacher trained her to have a great deal of patience, but she had little tolerance for Erik's bullshit, and it was only day one. This was going to be a very long summer indeed.
I hate group projects, Christine fumed as she pulled out of her parking space.