Hey, peoples! I live! I was really busy this summer (working, playing around with my man) so obviously I didn't do a whole lot of writing. I actually wrote this chapter months ago and never uploaded it. But I'm bored, so I have decided to just put it up here and see which direction it goes. I'm a month into fall semester already, so I don't see myself adding more chapters anytime soon.

Unless I get some awesome reviews, that is. Like maybe 3. How about that? 3 reviews=a new chapter by next week.

You'll all be scrambling to make sure that happens, right?

I'm Feeling Like a Jerk Today

I went home that evening, raging on my motorcycle as the wind whipped painfully about me. Through my full face helmet, I could see the sky begin to darken and hissed when I felt raindrops pelt my black coat. Of all the times to rain, the sky selected the night I was explicitly frustrated to pour.

There would be no composing with that awful ruckus.

I ignored the swift drop in temperature and continued, weaving in and out of the lanes of traffic. Strangely, my drifting mind traveled upon a road of thought which brought me to Christine Daaé. I knew why the strange girl had taken that twisted interest in me-or at least I was comfortable in my speculation. It was, after all, the only answer that made sense when paralleled with humanity. The stupid girl was curious about my mask.

Her big, blue eyes had been practically begging to find out what was underneath it. I shivered as I remembered that stare, that penetrating look that said, "I don't know what you're hiding, but I will find out." The rest of her face could have been portrayed in an expression of utmost confusion but those eyes knew exactly what was going on.

My hand jerked on the gas a little too much and the bike jolted forward. A car honked behind me as I swerved to regain control. I righted the vehicle, heart pounding a bit, and dismissed thoughts of the foolish girl from my brain. Columbia University was big enough. She would fade into the 25,000 student population by tomorrow morning, I reassured myself, not feeling as confident because I could still see those eyes in the back of my head.

I pulled onto Greenwich Street and sighed angrily when the rain began to pour mercilessly down. God was being eloquently horrendous to me today, I decided. I parked my motorcycle in the garage and dragged my drenched body to an elevator in my building, The Archive.

A few of my fellow patrons gave me an odd look for continuing to wear my helmet inside, but after finding an empty elevator I took it off and shook my head around. She was still inside my head. Sparkling blue eyes, laughter that made my stomach clench in fury, thick brown hair that would do well to be set on fire…

I got exited the elevator on the top floor and retreated quickly into my apartment. I had paid well for a room on the tenth floor, needing as much quiet as I possibly could, but tonight the blasted rain would override every dollar spent for such luxury.

Rain, I mused, a sign of redemption. Nothing more than hellish noise and wetness.

I should have been banging out the fugue portion of my newest composition so that I could be prepared to turn it in on Friday, but with my current frustration I doubted anything useful would become of that assignment. Instead, I sat down at the piano and shook it with my emotional storm-wild enough to match the one outside. From my mental repertoire I pulled out a succession of melodic minor scales and played them every way I could imagine, variation after variation of constantly altering themes.

It was a nice long night.

I don't know what drove me to do it. I mused that perhaps the .001 percent of my soul akin to kindness decided to splurge and use up its year supply of will power to make me. Yes, it could have been that. Or more likely, I was acting in spite of the predisposition being used against me. Little bitty masked boy will be too scared to do it; insignificant social outcast is too beaten in his ways to do something of that nature.

That had to be what she was thinking when Christine Daae slipped a sheet of her theory homework in with the Arnold concerto. The theory homework I was going to return.

A part of me wanted to know how she did it without me knowing. I mean really, I was on my guard twenty-four seven. My personal bubble extended out ten feet in every direction and I knew all workings within that space. So how had she gotten that close without my knowing?

I must have been distracted by visions of dousing her in gasoline at the time.

I sneered to myself. The girl wouldn't know what hit her when I showed up in the middle of Swicket's class brandishing her assignment like a flaming sword. Swicket wouldn't mind of course. The professor practically worshiped me after hearing my application composition. The man still emailed me questions about the chord progressions.

I might even make her come to the front of the class and explain every single incorrect answer that I had found on the paper. Swicket would find the display charming; he had a malicious bone in his body when it came to shaming students less intelligent than he-good thing I was obviously excluded from that category.

These hissing thoughts gained control of my mind for the entire morning and it didn't help my mood that the rain was still pouring when I departed on my motorcycle. Along with it, there was a torrent of angry music in my head and I had yet been able to release it. I was cold, wet, angry, and quite ready to strangle the first person to show even the slightest sign of cheek to me by the time I reached campus.

Nadir called me before I could reach the fine arts building and destroy Ms. Daaé's fragile world.

"Did you finish correcting the test?" He asked, sounding a tad bit frustrated.

"It took me hours."

"There were that many mistakes?"

"You have proven yet again how easy it is for a person to become a college professor." I smiled to myself. It was such good fun to pick on him.

"Thank you, Erik. That means so much coming from you." Right about now he was rubbing his forehead and feeling the newly developed wrinkles there. He took to doing that as soon as I had pointed them out last semester. "Why don't I quit and you can just have my position?"

"Because I hate students," I growled as I walked up the stairs to the fourth floor of the fine arts center. Swicket's room was down the E wing. A scrawny boy descending the same staircase-who had the looks of freshman year about him-flinched at my tone and proceeded in hurried fashion. I think I heard him stumble down the last five steps.

"You are a student, Erik," Nadir argued, "And have been for how many years? Which doctorate are you working on again?"

"I forget," my eyes rolled, "Not that it matters to you. I'll drop the corrected test off in an hour."

I snapped the cell phone shut and admired Swicket's door. The same phrase had been painted onto the wood for years and every now and then someone would create a small uproar about it before they realized it was pointless. Swicket had been on this campus for as long as anyone could remember and the day administration got rid of him because of a single sentence on his door was the day the entire place went up in flames.

"Music: more important to God than sports."

It was, of course, an allusion to the increasing amount of money in the budget allotted to the athletic department while the pianos in the practice rooms downstairs hadn't been professionally tuned in two years. On a good day every now and then, I would venture down and do it myself, but good days come so very rarely for me.

I chuckled to myself before turning the knob. Today certainly wasn't going to be a good day for Christine Daaé either.