Phantom

by Laura DeLuca

  Her heart fluttered wildly as she worked the numbers on her combination lock, and she wondered what it was about the Gothic boy that made her feel so . . . so undone. It was like he unraveled her with his eyes. Undressing not her body, but her soul, and seeing things inside of her that she didn’t even see herself. Was she attracted to him? She didn’t really think so. It was more like she was mystified by him. And maybe a little drawn to his beautiful voice, the same way Christine was drawn to the genius of the phantom. But being enraptured by the music and actually having feelings for the singer were two very different things. Justyn was just a little too strange. She couldn’t have a crush on him. Could she?

  Rebecca had finally managed to get the numbers right on her combination, and she shook her head to clear all thoughts of Lord Justyn away. She had more important things to worry about. Like how she was going to get through the entire play without having a heart attack.

  Thinking again about the auditorium filled with people turned out to be more dangerous than thinking about Justyn. The panic of stage fright was starting to overwhelm her again, and she wasn’t even on the stage yet. But when she finally pulled open her locker door, that panic was quickly replaced with fear—a fear that had nothing to do with singing in public.

  Rebecca covered her mouth with her hands, and took a few unsteady steps backwards. She was too surprised to scream, and even if she had, there was no one around to hear it. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the grotesque scene that was in her locker.

  A doll, dressed in a late nineteenth century gown, dangled limply from her coat hanger, hung by its neck with an elaborate noose. Its eyes were blacked out with markers to make them look closed in death. Above its head there was a note taped to the metal, with a few lines scrawled in large black letters. It was a well-known and eternally foreboding threat from the play they were performing.

  “Keep your hands where you can see.

  Or the hangman might just come for thee.”

  Chapter Five

  “Keep your hands where?” Carmen asked, making a face. “It sounds a little perverted if you ask me.”

  “The phantom always used a noose to kill his victims. If you keep your hands raised up near your eyes, where you can see them, you would be able to stop the noose from strangling you,” Debbie explained.

  “Eww, that’s gross.” Carmen gave a little shudder. “You don’t really think someone wants to hang you, do you, Becca? That’s a little extreme.”

  It had been twenty-four hours since she had found the note and the doll in her locker, and still, just the thought of it made Rebecca shudder, too. And even though she had thrown the doll in the nearest trashcan, its ghost still haunted her every single time she opened her locker door. And every time she closed her eyes.

  “No, of course not,” Rebecca said with a sigh. “But I do think they wanted to scare me.”

  “Don’t worry about that stupid note,” Tom told her as he tossed his jacket behind the stage. “It’s probably just Wendy trying to get you to quit so she can steal your role. That sounds like the kind of stunt she would pull.”

  “And what about you, Tom?” Carmen asked. “Are you still upset that you didn’t get the part of the phantom?”

  Tom glanced at Debbie and looked chagrined. “Yeah, well, maybe I did overreact a little yesterday. No hard feelings, huh, Deb?”

  Debbie smiled. She was way too nice to hold a grudge. “Of course not, Tom. I know you were upset.”

  “Besides.” Tom continued. “Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, I’m glad I got the role of Raoul. After all, he’s the hero. And in the end, he’s the one who gets the girl.”

  He actually put his arm around Rebecca, and she felt her face flush with pleasure. Tom really seemed to like her. A few of the younger girls were looking at them with envy in their eyes, but Rebecca didn’t feel sorry for them. After four years of sitting on the sidelines, she felt she deserved this moment of honor, and she reveled in it.

  “It’s a shame that life doesn’t always imitate art.”

  Every single person standing on the stage jumped at the sound of Justyn’s voice, slightly eerie, somehow almost threatening, yet at the same time as alluring as ever. At least, it was alluring to Rebecca. She was fairly certain that the others didn’t see him that way. Especially not Tom, who recovered quickly from the surprise entrance, and glared at the newcomer.

  “Can you try to speak modern day English, vampire?”

  Justyn stepped onto the stage, darkly clad as usual, and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry, Tom. I forgot for a moment that you have a limited vocabulary. I’ll make an effort to use only one-syllable words when you’re around. What I was trying to say was—maybe Becca’s not interested in you.”

  Tom’s arm fell away from her shoulders and he took a few steps in Justyn’s direction. “And who else would she be interested in? You?” He gave a small, bitter laugh. “Dream on, vampire! Becca’s not interested in satanic freaks.”

  Justyn frowned, and his face became shadowed. It was as close to angry as she had ever seen him. “If I am a satanic freak, don’t you think you should be a little more careful what you say to me?”

  Both boys were tense, and Rebecca was afraid. She felt like she should be doing something to intervene. Jump in between them, wringing her hands like any heroine worth her salt would do in a similar situation. At the very least, she should be yelling at them to stop. She was so worried one of them would get hurt, she hardly thought about the fact that two gorgeous men were about to fight over her. Over her! Rebecca Hope. Three days ago, she couldn’t have gotten a guy to look at her if she had flung herself into oncoming traffic. And now, she was watching two men, both of whom she liked, gearing up to bash each other’s faces in. She wasn’t sure that she liked it very much. In a way, she kind of wished she could go back to being invisible.

  The whole room had fallen into silence, watching, waiting. Surfer and Goth were facing off the same way that Raoul and the phantom had faced off for Christine. Rebecca knew she had to move quickly. She pulled away from Carmen’s death grip—she hadn’t even noticed when her friend had dug her long nails into her arm—and moved to part the two boys. Jay Kopp beat her to it.

  “Ha! Back, vampire! Back!” Jay cried as he suddenly leapt from behind the side curtain. In his hands he had two—ball point pens, which he overlapped into the shape of a cross. He jumped between Justyn and Tom, brandishing his makeshift crucifix dramatically. “Back to your crypt, creature of the night! Back before I smite you on the spot!”

  Rebecca was never as happy to see Jay as she was at that moment. His tomfoolery had saved the day, though she doubted that was his intention. The other cast members on the stage were laughing, and even Tom was back to his earlier good mood as he exchanged high fives with his best friend. Only Justyn was still annoyed, and it only made sense since the snickers all around them were at his expense. He shook his head in disgust.

  “You both need to grow up.”

  Then he stomped to the other side of the stage to wait for Miss King to arrive and for rehearsal to begin. Rebecca felt kind of sorry for him. He was sitting all alone when everyone else was chatting with friends. He had been a little rude to Tom, but Tom had started it by always calling Justyn names. The person Rebecca was really angry with was Miss King. If their director could just manage to be on time for her own rehearsals, the boys wouldn’t have had the opportunity to exchange words at all.

  “He is the creepiest guy I have ever met,” Carmen said with a small shiver after Justyn had walked away. “Seriously, he really creeps me out.”

  Speaking of limited vocabularies, Carmen apparently wasn’t much better than Tom. How many times and in how many ways could she use the word ‘creepy’? And why did it annoy Rebecca so much to hear her best friend putting Justyn down anyway? Why should she care what anyone thought about Justyn Patko, Lord Justyn, as he would say? Yet, she felt an undeniable urge t
o defend him. But before she did, she checked to make sure Tom wasn’t listening.

  “He’s not that bad, you know,” Rebecca told Carmen. “I talked to him a little bit yesterday. He’s nice. Just a little eccentric.”

  Debbie wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Eccentric is just a fancy way of saying crazy. I bet that Justyn’s the one who put that doll in your locker.”

  Rebecca thought about it, and found herself realizing that despite the fact that she was so mysteriously drawn to Justyn, it was a definite possibility. He had been lurking around in the hallway. He certainly had the means and the opportunity. But why would he want to scare her? What would he have to gain? He seemed to want her in the play, unlike Wendy who definitely had the motive to try to get rid of her.

  “You don’t have to worry about that guy or that stupid note,” Tom told her. “I’ll keep you safe.”

  Rebecca’s heart did a somersault as Tom squeezed her hand. She couldn’t help but smile, even though she noticed Justyn watching with a frown from the other side of the stage. Before she could respond, Miss King finally walked into the auditorium. The kids in the orchestra starting tuning up their instruments, and the actors were ordered to their positions for the opening scene.

  “Okay, places everyone! We’re going to take it from the top of the first act. We’ll try running through the whole play, minus the dance scenes. Scripts are acceptable this week, but by next week, I expect, no I demand that everyone have their lines memorized.”

  Several students moaned, but Rebecca already knew every word by heart, so the request wasn’t intimating. More worrisome for her were the people who would be watching her speak those lines, waiting for her to make a mistake, just so they could laugh at her.

  “You’re going to be great,” Tom told her, and squeezed her hand one last time. “Don’t look so worried.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’re used to this.”

  Tom smiled and went backstage to wait for his queue. Rebecca took her spot among the chorus girls to wait until she was “discovered”. But before she even took one step forward, someone shoved her roughly from behind. The point of their elbow hit her painfully in the lower back, very nearly knocking her to the ground.

  “Clumsy much?” Wendy asked with a smirk.

  That was only the beginning of a fairly miserable afternoon for Rebecca. She made it through the first half of rehearsal without any major incidents, and aside from Justyn she was the only one that didn’t need her script for guidance. But she was still so skittish about even their small audience that her nerves were showing in her performance. She was stiff and unnatural for all that she was able to reach even the highest notes and achieve the most difficult scales. She also kept tripping over her own feet, and even bumped into some of her cast mates a few times, making Wendy’s clumsy comment seem only apropos. Rebecca noticed Miss King frowning at her more than once and she wondered if the teacher was regretting her casting decision.

  It wasn’t until the final scene of the first act that things started to look up. It was the duet between Christine and Raoul, and Rebecca got butterflies just thinking about singing the love song with Tom. It soothed her frazzled nerves when he took her hand and led her to the center of the stage, just like Raoul had soothed the fears of his soon-to-be lover. When he began to sing, even though he had to use his script and was just a little off key, she truly felt that he was singing to her. Singing from his heart.

  “Don’t let dark thoughts consume you.

  I’m here to sooth your fears.

  I’ll let nothing and no one harm you.

  I’ll protect you all your years.

  So take my hand and I’ll guide you.

  From the darkness of the night.

  And when I am beside you,

  You’ll no longer live in fright.”

  Rebecca sang her own part flawlessly. Swept away by her feelings, as well as the music, she forgot for a little while that anyone other than Tom was watching her. As they sang, Rebecca truly did feel safe and protected. The note, the doll, Wendy, and even Justyn were all far from her mind as they neared the final verse.

  At the end of the song, they were supposed to kiss. And judging from the look on Tom’s face, when that time came it would be more than just acting. Rebecca’s heart was pounding with excited expectation as the last lines of the song poured forth from them in sweet harmony. Tom’s lips moved closer to hers with every word.

  “All I ask is that you love me true

  Can I ask this simple thing of you?”

  Their lips were just about to touch. Rebecca felt her eyes start to close as she waited for the inevitable feel of his lips against hers. But the spell was broken when she heard Carmen’s voice cry out in alarm.

  “Becca, Tom, look out!”

  There were a few more shocked cries, but before Rebecca even had the chance to look up to see what all the shouting was about, she was roughly thrown to the ground and instantly surrounded by darkness.

  Chapter Six

  Everything was pitch-black. Total darkness surrounded her. Something heavy was smothering her. Claustrophobia set in, and Rebecca felt herself beginning to hyperventilate. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She thought irrationally that maybe she was dead and this was the black abyss that followed. No bright light at the end of the tunnel. No smiling family members there to great her. Just nothing. It was her worst nightmare coming true.

  Then something hard jabbed her in the forehead, which was followed by a loud grunt. She realized it was Tom’s elbow, and she started to calm down just a little. She wasn’t dead, at least not yet. But she still wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, and it was getting more and more difficult to breathe.

  “Becca? Are you all right?” Tom’s voice was muffled and even if she had an answer, she was too short of breath to give it.

  “Get that off of them!”

  The new voice was even more strained, even more difficult to hear, because it was coming from the other side of the cloth-like prison. But she was fairly certain it was the frazzled voice of Miss King that was ordering people into action. Above her, something started to shift, but still no light appeared. Rebecca was nearing a complete and total nervous breakdown. She was sure that she could never escape, that she was going to suffocate before they reached her. Even as she thought it, the little air she had seemed to retreat from her lungs, and she heard herself gasping.

  “It’s okay, Becca.” She felt Tom reach out and touch her hand. “We’re almost out of this.”

  Tom’s voice was soothing in the mist of the crisis. She felt herself calm down just a little. Before long a crack of light appeared in one corner. A second later, the heavy velvet curtain was completely pulled away with a heave from a few of the stagehands. Rebecca squinted, attempting to adjust to the light after having been plunged into complete darkness.

  Carmen rushed to her side. “Becca, are you okay?” She reached out to hug her, and somehow Rebecca found the strength to hug her back, even though her arms were still shaking.

  “What happened?”

  It was a stupid question. It was plainly obvious what had happened. The main curtain had fallen and covered them. It was still lying on the stage in a huge velvet heap. Around her, half the cast was watching with a mixture of surprise and amusement. Jay was snickering even as he helped Tom to his feet.

  “You aren’t hurt, are you?” Miss King asked nervously. Tom and Rebecca both shook their heads and the teacher was visibly relieved. “Thank heavens for that! Remember, bad rehearsals mean a great opening night. Besides, I’ve been trying to get the school to replace this mangy old curtain for years. Now they won’t have a choice.”

  Miss King had the stage crew pull the fallen curtain to the side of the stage. And then had the nerve to expect her to act, literally act, as though nothing had happened. Rebecca wasn’t sure how she was going to go back to practice after she had nearly smothered to death. But Tom appeared unfazed by the whole fias
co, and everyone else was falling into line for the next scene, so Rebecca did her best to pull herself together. Her acting was more or less terrible, but they made it through the rest of the play without incident. When it was all over, she joined Debbie and Carmen who were dangling their legs from the corner of the stage.

  “You did a great job today, Becca.” Debbie gushed.

  Rebecca rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to be nice. I know I was awful.”

  “Everyone was awful,” Carmen told her. “The first rehearsal is always awful. It will get better as we go along and get used to each other.”

  Rebecca hoped she was right. She also hoped that the next rehearsal would pass without any disasters. She was nervous enough without random things crashing down on her head.