Disclaimer: Blah, blah, blah. I don't own anyone from Phantom of the Opera. They belong to Gaston Leroux. :) Okay, if this starts looking like characters who aren't from the book just start popping up, here's kind of who's who, if you are really that interested:

Christine- hmmm....
Erik- :)
Robert- Managers
Megan-Meg Giry
Colette de Napoli- Carlotta
Bryce Spencer: Piangi


Chapter 3: Streaks

"New York University? Damn equity! Columbia University? No experience," Christine mocked as she read over the applications that had been returned. The phone call she had earlier a few weeks ago had been a false call. Later on the next week they called to lay on the usual "You are very talented and you have a very nice voice" crap and then they do the whole "But, we've decided to go another way" stuff. A week late, huh? Now, that's punctuality, Christine thought sarcastically. She flipped through the acceptance letters from the colleges and moaned. Sure, she had been accepted to some of the best ivy league schools in New York, but she hadn't been accepted for Jekyll and Hyde, so it wasn't interesting to her anymore.

Putting the New York University, Columbia University, Fordham University and Barnard College letters aside, she went to her closet to change. Pulling out a pair of light and dark blue army print pants, a black leather belt with silver belt loops, a white shirt with the phrase, "If Barbie is so popular then why do you have to buy her friends?" across the front of it, a calf high black leather trenchcoat and her trademark favorite pair of black Doc Martens. She ripped the clothes off the hangers, snuggled into them and threw up her very curly hair into a loose upturned ponytail. She walked over to the small table near the door, grabbed her car keys, locked the door to her studio, and walked to the garage. Clicking the alarm off, she opened up the door to her hunter green Explorer and hopped in.

She turned on the engine, carelessly buckled up, and looked at the clock. The green letters informed her that it was 7:46 p.m.

"Damn it! Meg's gonna kill me," she muttered under her breath as she fully started the car. Once she was out of the parking garage, she turned on the radio and flipped her cd player on. She smiled in satisfaction as the first few electronic whines of "How Soon is Now?" by the Smiths came on. Tapping her fingers against the steering wheel of the car impatiently, Christine asked herself, and not for the first time, why the Hell did she bring her car to New York was about as unbreakable as the oatmeal cookies her grandmother used to send her when she was a little girl.

Christine's eyes scanned the next street for the Starbuck's Meg had told her to meet her at.

"Great," she said aloud. "There are 3 million Starbucks in New York. How am I going to find just one within a store's distance apart?"

Seeing the electric white and green sign, she quickly jerked the car into the next lane, cutting off three cars, that all in turn honked and yelled obscenities. Christine could honestly care less. Next was the ordeal of a parking place, letting out a relieved sigh when she saw a parking garage. Once she was parked, she quickly made her way across the street to the cafe. Once she was inside, she spotted Meg at one of the tables, waving at her. Christine held up a finger and mouthed out "in a minute." A few seconds later, Meg was standing next to her.

"Meg, you just lost our table," Christine complained.

"That's alright. I planned a few things anyway,"Meg informed her with a sly grin.

"What?" she persisted.

"You'll see. Just get your coffee," she said, pointing to the waiting cashier who was tapping her long hot pink nails against the top of the cash register impatiently.

Christine walked up to the register and said, "Hi. I'd like one grande double iced mocha with two shots of caramel syrup and..." She stopped and looked at Meg. "Caf or decaf?"

"Caffeine."

"Okay. With caffeine and that outta do it." When she finished with her order, she pulled out her debit card.

"Christine, just out of all curiosity, considering the fact that you intend to go to school, are 19 years old, have a studio and a car, and yet you don't have a job? How the Hell can you afford to live in New York?"

"Oh, well, you see, my grandparents invested in the stock market and their stocks did really well and they each set bought a $25,000 savings bond for me. In other words, they were loaded. When they died, they left the money to my dad and then when my dad died I inherited the lot of it, plus with what he left me. Money isn't an issue and it probably won't be for a long time," she explained while using the ATM. Finishing typing in her pin code and the amount, she added, "Plus, when I was back in Boston I had a job at an arts and craft store. Embarrassing, huh?"

"A job is a job," Meg replied, taking a sip of her own coffee.

"I suppose. Speaking of jobs, how are rehearsals going?" As Christine had suspected early on, Meg got the part of Emma.

"Pretty good. We got fitted for our wigs today and mine are pretty ugly. The dresses are pretty bad too. Then there's always Colette..." Meg stopped at the name and cringed. Colette de Napoli was the woman who was playing Lucy and apparently from what Meg had told her she was a diva with a capital D. Her love interest, the dual personality, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was being played by a man named Bryce Spencer who, from what Meg had said, was not only her love interest on stage.

"Ignore her. Come on, she's just getting on your case because you are probably a better singer than her."

"Christine, a cat being stuck in a blender sounds better." Meg's face was so earnest that Christine couldn't help but laugh.

"My God Meg, you really are a drama queen." She reached over and grabbed a java jacket. They both walked out to the Explorer. After the car had long started, she looked at Meg curiously.

"Where are we going now?' she asked, looking left and right.

"Go back to the studio," Meg instructed. She nodded and turned left. Once they reached the studio, Meg reached into her backpack and pulled out a small paper bag.

"Okay, promise me that you won't hate me. It will just be for fun. You don't have to do it."

"Well...what's in the bag?"

Meg pulled out two medium sized boxes. Grabbing the box from her, Christine looked at the box, then at Meg, and then back at the box.

"Streaks?" She looked back at her. "Red no less."

"Yes, well, I bought blue streaks for me."

"You want me to streak my hair with red?" she asked looking at Meg incredulously.

"Oh come on. I think that it would look cool," Meg pushed.

Christine snatched up one of her medium tinted brown curls and looked at it doubtfully. "I don't know, Meg."

"You need to do something with your hair. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love your hair and it's great, but its not your style. Your clothes are not equal with your hair. If your gonna dress hard ass you may as well make your hair make you look like a hard ass." Meg pointed to Christine's outfit.

Glancing down briefly, Christine shrugged and asked,"What?"

"Okay, how about this: if you don't like it, I'll pay to have it dyed back to the color it is now. Pleaaassseeee", Meg half whined/half begged.

Christine dropped the curl and let out sigh that could have only been classified as either a sigh of resignation or one of pleading. Blowing the curl out of her face, she nodded and said,"Fine, but if I look like crap afterwards, I'll kill you."

Meg smiled and jumped up and down in excitement. "It'll look gorgeous. Trust me, you'll love it! Just love it!"

Christine reached behind her head and pulled out the ponytail holder out of her hair and muttered,'You better be right," while running her fingers through her hair. Meg grabbed the bottle, unscrewed the lid, and walked over to Christine, almost looking comical with the menacing look she was trying to pull off.

"Let's get this show on the road."


* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"What the Hell are you talking about?!? I talked with Brian and he gave me the get go with it," Erik shouted.

Robert, however, remained unaffected by Erik's show of anger. He had known Erik far too long to primarily know that it was basically all talk.

"Erik, I couldn't. You know that. She's not in the Equity," Robert rationed.

"For God's sake, Robert, it was an open call,"Erik argued. "That means, as you so perfectly put it at press, "All are invited to audition."'

"Yes, but you know that Equity performers make them priority cases."

"Oh, and talent doesn't matter?" he inquired.

"It does, but what about training?"

Erik remained silent, folding his arms and pushing the chair back to put his legs on the table and cross his ankles. He knew that it was in vain to fight Robert when he had made a valid point because on the very rare occasions when Robert was either correct or had a point, he tended to gloat for weeks on end from it. Robert leaned back in the red leather chair and said,"I'm really am truly sorry, Erik, but I did what the union would want me to do."

"So it's a sense of duty that makes you toss perfectly capable performers over your shoulders?" Erik replied icily.

"What is your obsession with this girl's voice? God, do you know her? What is so amazing about this girl's voice that would make you want to go against the union?"

He shook his head that he didn't know and shrugged. "I'm not obsessed, just impressed. There is a subtle difference between the two."

"Alright," Robert sighed. Glancing up at the clock, he reached over and grabbed his briefcase and started stuffing the papers from the desk unceremoniously into it. Snapping it shut, he stood up and stretched his arms over his head. "It's 9:30, Erik. We should probably get out of here."

"No, I'm going to stay here for a little while longer and work. I won't have to stay as long tomorrow," he muttered, taking his legs off the table and reaching across to grab a pen. Robert shrugged and reached into a desk drawer, pulling out a key. He tossed it on the desk in front of Erik.

"If you stay after 11:00 without it, you'll be locked in,"Robert explained. Erik reached across the table, pocketing the key.

"Good night, Erik"

"'Night, Rob."

Long after he had left, Erik stood up and walked over to the file cabinet. It was completely beyond him as to why the company insisted on keeping all headshots, resumes, and applications of every person that had auditioned within the last six months. Swings was the only answer he could come up with. After a long, fruitless search, he was finally rewarded with her application. Pushing the papers aside, he picked up her headshot. She certainly was a pretty little thing and that was always helpful in musical theater. Not that it was Erik in particular who was looking at who could be the next fresh face on Broadway, but Broadway's freshest voice. However, upon looking down at the picture again, he decided that the most beautiful and most prominent feature had to be her eyes. They weren't too large and they weren't too small, but just about right. The application read that they were blue green. No matter where he moved, her eyes seemed to be watching him.

Erik, against his better and usually more sensible side, found himself slipping the picture into his briefcase. Looking at the mess he had created on the desk, he sighed and silently cursed the secretaries for not keeping the files in some semblance of organization. Ruffling through the files, he decided to follow the old saying "If you want something done, you have to do it yourself." Walking back over to the file cabinet, he opened up the drawer, pulling out as many files as he could carry.

After two more trips, hundreds of files laid in stacks on the desk, next to him, and in the chair Robert had been sitting in. Looking around himself, he muttered, "They don't pay me enough for all I do."

Not that he was lacking in money: quite the contrary. Ever since he was legally old enough to work, he did. College had been simple enough. Not the great challenge that it was worked up to be, but it had proven necessary. He attended Carnegie Mellon University and majored in musical performance, mastering in the piano, violin, and vocal performance, as well as getting his minor in arts and science. He graduated when he was 21, being the youngest in his class to do so and with honors. As much as he loved music, he loved everything else that was artistic just as equally. He was an artist in every sense of the word. Many of his classmates had always talked about how quiet he was or how he could go into medicine or architecture and were all quite baffled when he moved to New York to join a casting company, occasionally producing on the side.

Finishing his task, he looked up to see the clock ticking the seconds away until it was 12:31 a.m. After putting the files back, he stretched his muscles and decided to go for a walk around the theater. Maybe spend a little time thinking about something that wasn't work related .

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Okay and rinse," Meg commanded, shoving Christine's head back under the faucet. Christine spluttered something and blindly reached for her root beer scented "So-duh" shampoo. Finally knocking it into the tub, she unscrewed the top open and started to rinse the dark purple solution out. Meg's blue streaks had finished way before hers because her hair was blonde and easier to dye. Christine wasn't sure how Meg was going to look with blue streaks, but she actually pulled it off pretty well. Next came the towel that Meg wrapped her hair up in. She stood up slowly and made her way over to the long mirror. Slowly pulling the towel off, she reached over for her bottle of "Bed Head' hair gel and hair pick, combing out all of the twisted up curls. Quickly adding the gel in, she slowly turned to look at her reflection. She let out a gasp of surprise and started to bounce her hair up and down with her fingers. It didn't look half bad. Not bad at all. Meg came over and put her hand between Christine shoulder blades.

"There now you see, it's not that bad. It looks great."

The hazelnut curls had a few richly colored dark wine curls scattered in various places, but the two colors blended quite well.

"This is actually pretty bitchin'! I thought is was gonna suck, but it looks really good. Wow! This is really cool," she exclaimed happily.

"Now for the real fun," Meg said enthusastically.