HaHa I love it that Erik gets modernized, but I'm still thinking of what to write later on in the story... Ah, well, I'll figure it out...
Disclaimer: I don't own Phantom of the Opera (still pouting from previous chapter)... Boo.
Anna explained to Erik what a CD was and what a movie was and what many other things were over the course of the next hour. She showed him all of the electric devices in her living room, and then led him to her room again.
"What is that?" he asked warily, eyeing Anna's electric guitar in the corner of her room.
"Oh, that's a musical instrument. Here, let me show you," Ana grabbed the guitar and fastened the strap around her neck and over her shoulder. She plugged it into her amplifier and grasped her pick firmly between her fingers.
She pressed a button on her amp and a beat could be heard from the speakers. After counting a few beats, Anna took a deep breath and strummed the strings of her guitar confidently. Chords of music poured through the speakers, and Erik listened in wonder.
Whoa, this is too much. I can handle almost anything, but electric guitars? Erik thought, What happened to organs? And violins?
"Wow, that's... interesting. It's... different," Erik commented.
"It's not what you're used to," Anna grinned wryly. She recognized that look on his face. She had gotten it many times from older relatives, and knew that it meant that Erik wasn't very pleased with her guitar.
"So, what song is that?" Erik asked quickly. Anything to change the subject.
"It's "1985", by Bowling for Soup. Yeah, I know, 'what the heck is that?', right? Just a song, to keep it simple. Hey, do you play the piano?" Anna knew that he did, but didn't want to freak him out by saying that she knew all about him.
"Oh, uh, yeah. Why?"
"Will you play me a song? I played you one," Anna begged. She wanted to do anything she could to keep Erik there with her.
Perhaps this would be a good time for some history on Anna, huh?
(A/N: Anna's history is completely made-up, no matter how realistic it may seem. I'm only saying that because some of my friends wanted to know if Anna's history was based on a real person's. It isn't)
Anna had been a little girl, a fourth grader, when her parents had taken her to New York for the first time. There her aunt and uncle showed them all around the city. Anna's aunt had bought tickets to see Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, so they went to see it late at night.
The adults had assumed that Anna was too young to capture the intense feelings of love, pity, and compassion that the play revolved around, but they had been wrong. Anna had always been rather mature for her age, and had soaked up the emotions faster than the actors could present it (metaphorically, of course). It was that night that Anna developed that longing sparkle in her eyes.
That night, Anna felt many unfamiliar emotions that were wonderful, horrible, confusing, and enlightening, all at the same time. She couldn't get enough of this wonderful feeling. She secretly wished that she had been Christine, and the Phantom was coming for her. She thought that that would be the most amazing thing in the world.
For almost a year, she had had dreams of singing songs with the Phantom. She loved him, in a strange way that she could not understand, but was more focused on reality. Crushes, BFFs, gossip, and CDs were all that really mattered back then.
Eventually, these things began to take over her life. She would crush on a new guy (and get rejected), or have a new BFF, or dig up the juiciest gossip almost every week. Still, though, the Phantom remained in the back of her mind, and in the shadows of her eyes.
When she went to 8th grade, her mother took her to see The Phantom of the Opera as a movie. It re-inspired Anna, and she found that her feelings for the Phantom had only grown stronger as time went by.
She began to imagine herself with him again, and talked about it with her friends (who jokingly called her crazy). She had given up on crushes, for she had been rejected too many times. BFFs had mainly stayed true-blue, but she longed for something more.
Anna longed for love. True love. Love that only one person she had ever seen had been capable of giving. The Phantom. The sparkle in her eyes grew bigger, but so did the shadows of her eyes, so it continued to remain relatively hidden.
It was for these reasons that Anna wanted to keep Erik with her. She pleaded with him playfully to play her a song, and finally got him to agree.
"Your piano is slightly out of tune," Erik noted as he sat down on the piano bench and tried out some keys.
"Everybody's a critic," Anna rolled her eyes and sighed, but she was grinning.
"No. I mean... I can help you fix it, if you would like..." Erik offered. He thought Anna looked strange when she rolled her eyes, but in a funny and pleasurable way. He also liked it when she smiled. Her whole face seemed to illuminate, and (for him only), the hidden sparkle emerged and filled her eyes, causing them to shimmer like garnet gems.
"Oh. That's alright, but thank you anyway. You don't have to," Anna almost blushed, but was able to keep her face looking normal.
"Alright. What would you like me to play?"
Anna handed Erik a black songbook, "I got it for Christmas a couple years ago," she muttered, flipping through the pages.
"This is a Phantom of the Opera songbook, isn't it?" Erik asked Anna with a grin. She nodded, then gestured toward a page with the sheet music for "Music of the Night" on it.
"Ah, an old favorite," Erik chuckled as he began to play. He was rather astonished that he was so cheerful and calm. He felt strangely that, had he been alone in his home cave playing his song, even back in 1861, he would not have felt as comfortable as he did right then, with Anna in 2005...
HaHa they're falling in love... oh, I'm hyper, and I haven't even had coffee... cool.
