(A/N: I have no clue what time of day Christine really did arrive at the Opera Populaire. I also don't know her exact age. It's just a guesstimate. Also, I will not be updating for a while because I will be skiing in Vail, Colorado! YAY!)

A New Life

The hansom cab clattered noisily over the cobblestone streets of Paris. The grey, stormy weather perfectly matched my mood. The rhythmic jostling of the cab had lulled me into pensive thought. As we passed a music shop, I saw a violin sitting in the window. Tears threatened to spill forth from my puffy, bloodshot eyes once more. My father, Gustaav Daae, had recently perished, leaving behind a ten year old girl to be taken care of by a family friend named Madame Giry.

My father hadn't believed me when I told him that he would die. Whenever I woke up from bad dreams about his death, he shrugged off my warnings, saying that they were only nightmares and nothing more. And now, the one whom my world revolved around was dead. My dreams had been telling me of his demise for many years now, ever since I was six years old. They were odd, those dreams that came to me every night. They always held a girl, a girl who looked exactly like me, who I knew was me and yet… she wasn't me at the same time. She lived in a totally different world, filled with almost magical things that, somehow in the deep recesses of my mind, I knew would come to be. Things like metal carriages, moving faster than any animal could, and boxes that had glass screens. Those screens held pictures that did not stay still, indeed it seemed as though the people and things depicted in those moving pictures were alive! So many wonders!

The dreams that I had every night always seemed to be the memories of the girl. Once, I dreamed about the time when the girl went to the circus for the first time. The circus was so different then than the ones that my father had taken me to. There were fewer "freaks" and more colorful clowns, fewer gypsies and more feats of bravery and comedy. Another time I dreamed of the girl's visit to her grandparent's house on Christmas Day. I could almost smell the savory roasted goose that her grandmother had cooked. The dreams about my life, and my future, however, started on the night of my sixth birthday. When my head hit the pillow, I was quickly asleep and dreaming of the little girl, whom I had then discovered shared the same name as me, and her birthday, which she also shared with me. Her parents had taken her to see a play on Broadway. I saw the play with the girl, and the whole play upset me slightly. It was about a girl, also named Christine Daae, and a phantom.

In the play, which was set in the year 1871, an orphaned girl goes to live in the Opera Populaire. A mysterious phantom teaches her to sing and Christine eventually gets to be the lead in the play Hannibal, but her childhood sweetheart, Raoul de Chagny, had seen her and started courting her. His interest in Christine, however, caused the phantom to become furious, and eventually the poor Opera Ghost lost his wits and tried to kidnap Christine. In the end, he released her, destined to a life alone.

What really bothered me about the play was the fact that a) Raoul de Chagny was a childhood friend of mine, b) the other characters seemed to have the same names as people that she knew, c) the play was set during the right time period, and Christine in the play was born the same day as both Dream Christine and me, and d) if the play was true, I only had four more years left to spend with my father. At the last thought, I woke up from my slumber and started crying and shrieking, waking my father up.

It had been four years since that awful, and yet enlightening dream. I now knew that the play, as well as the books that Dream Christine so often read, were based on my experiences in life. The end of the stories, however, always bothered me. I wonder if the future is set in stone, or if it can be changed? I was startled out of my musings when the cab came to a stop in front of an enormous, grand building. The Opera Populaire.

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"Sissy, big sissy, wake up! C'mon, big sissy, you need to wake up!" I said to my older sister. She was thirteen years old, and I idolized her more than anything in the world, other than, of course, my mother. Unfortunately, my mother had been dead for two years now. It had been a shock to my then eight year-old self, but I had adjusted. Now, however, it seemed that we would be adjusting to another death. When my sister woke up, groggy, I stuttered the words, "Father died." Immediately, my sister shot out of bed where the still form of my father lay on his bed. She checked his pulse, but since there was none she called 911, unsure of what else to do.

A man in a white hospital uniform came out with a mournful look on his face. He quietly told my sister and I that my father had intentionally overdosed on sleeping pills that had been prescribed to him after mother had died. He asked us if we wanted to see him, and, though I knew he was dead and there was only his dead body that lay in that room I followed him in. I was left alone when suddenly a particularly loud clap of thunder shook the room I was in. The lights flickered off. I was alone. In the dark. Alone. I felt a cold, clammy hand touch mine…

I sat up, gasping for breath. Through the tears that streamed out of my eyes, I could see that I was not in my room in my father's house outside of Paris, but I was instead in a dormitory of the Opera House. I hugged my knees to my chest, trying to drown out the sounds of my peer's snoring and sort my thoughts. So, as it turned out, Dream Christine's father had died the same day, some years in the future, as my dad had. It was odd, for though some of the details about our lives matched up, others did not. For instance, I had no sister. No sister to comfort me and care for me. The closest person to a sister that I had was Meg Giry, and she was a far cry from the older sister that Dream Christine had. I had no older sister to hold me when my father had died.

When my thoughts turned back to my father, I immediately started weeping once more. My eyes were still red from my crying during the day, and I thought that I had cried out all of the tears in my body. Apparently not. Whispering, so as not to wake the girls who slept peacefully in the room, I called out to the angel of music that my father had promised me. Although the angel was no older sister, perhaps he could comfort me all the same.

I wasn't actually surprised to hear a voice call out to me, to console me. I had expected this. After all, I had seen the "future," so to speak, and my father had, after all, promised me an angel. I guess that even flesh and blood could be angelic. The voice of my guardian certainly was. "Angel, is that you?" I asked, knowing what the answer would be.

My angel paused for a moment, and I smiled inwardly. After all, how often is it that a ghost gets called an angel? After the moment's hesitation, he responded, "I am."