RoseBlood(61)

Friedrich Nietzsche

At dinner, I sit with my friends, since my aunt hasn’t yet returned from Versailles. I tell them enough to give them the illusion that they’re my confidants, but not enough to put them in danger. I can only imagine how it would go if I confessed: “I might be a monster, though I’m not sure what kind.” Or, “I might be under a gypsy curse, and that’s why my grandma tried to kill me.” Or, the best one of all: “The Phantom is real, and he’s helping me master the music that has possessed me since I was four years old.”

Yeah, none of that would get me sent home for a psych evaluation.

This whole thing has become too unfathomable, like the premise to a horror movie. So once again, I elaborate on the truth: that I suspect I’m being pranked—the torn uniforms and cut-up roses (their blood remains my secret), the dead bird, and the wristband—but I have no proof who’s behind it, and until I do, the teachers will think I’m lying after my earlier confession. I convince my friends to support my claim that the cat found my bag of uniforms and tore up my clothes.

They agree, but only once I promise I’m not going to use the wristband. They reiterate that the rave scene is known for drugs, and they’ve all sworn off getting high out of respect for what happened to Audrey’s sister.

Sunny, however, still wants us to go to the pickup address and see who comes. She won’t let it drop until I finally pretend to toss the wristband into the trash in the atrium at breakfast on Sunday; unbeknownst to any of them, it was a sleight of hand trick, and I still have the band.

I can’t throw away the opportunity without thinking things through. As far as being seduced by the rave club world, it would appear I already have the upper hand in seduction . . . just ask Ben, if he ever wakes up.

While everyone heads back to their rooms to do homework, I search the orchestra pit and find that the message and book I left for the Phantom the prior day are gone. My reaction fluctuates between apprehension and anticipation. The rest of Sunday afternoon, I hole up in my dorm with a borrowed sewing machine, piecing together my uniforms with embellishments and scraps until they look more bohemian chic than Victorian. All the while I wonder if the Phantom will contact me—if it was a mistake to reach out to him.

I don’t have to wait long to find out. That night, with Diable curled at my feet, my maestro’s violin music drifts down from the vent over my bed. I take comfort that the metal slats are on a downward slant. No one could see me anywhere else in the room other than when I’m lying in bed. Maybe that knowledge shouldn’t make me feel safer, yet when combined with the ballad he’s playing on that familiar violin, it soothes me to sleep.

Each consecutive day over the next four weeks, I stand at the edge of the abyss and stare it down, unfazed by my growing attachment to him, seeing myself come alive within his provocative shadow. During rehearsals, and while the opera plays in the cafeteria on the big screens, I never once lose control. The moment any of Renata’s solos light my mind on fire, all I have to do is surrender to my maestro’s violin, reimagine it from my dreams—see his shadow inside the mirrors around me—and he douses my operatic compulsion in a cerebral flourish of strings and steam.

Every night, he’s back behind the vents, playing whatever song plagued me that day, and because I fall asleep humming the melody alongside him, it satisfies any need to purge the music when I wake up. At last, I’m in control and at peace, other than the desire to see him face-to-face, and not just as a pair of flashing copper eyes in my dreams.

Even when we share our fantasy dances—like the one onstage—spinning together in the center of my room, I can’t see anything but his silhouette. But, I can smell his scent as I nuzzle his clothes, hear his raspy humming next to my ear, feel the calluses on his fingers—traits of an accomplished violinist that remind me of my dad—as he holds my right hand in his left. And I have to wonder if he’s smiling like me.

Those nightly interludes always end with a Fire and Ice rose cradled in my fingers, materializing out of thin air in the instant his hand fades from my clasp. I place each flower in the vase beside my bed with the others I’ve accumulated. Then, my chest aglow, I close my eyes to embrace whatever new insights the Phantom imprinted upon me when our spirits touched: A mother who adored him and played piggies with his toes to warm them when they were cold; dolls made of the simplest things, such as twigs, leaves, and empty spools; a black car settling like a cloud over his childhood, taking his mother away forever, and leaving him orphaned.

The car is yet another layer to his ever-evolving mystique. If he’s a centuries-old creature, he wouldn’t have seen cars in his childhood. And his name was Etalon then, not Erik, as he’s known in the stories.

I’m beginning to have my doubts if anything in the literary version is correct. If I could only see his disfigured face, I would know. But I never do, because in every instance, I’m watching his past through his eyes.

Which leaves me curious . . . as his memories become my own, do mine become his? Is it possible he knows all my secrets, all my childhood experiences, hopes, and wishes?

Not once, when we’re together, does he mention the note I left in the orchestra pit, or the gift I gave him. But there’s no question he received it, because when he does speak aloud—in that broken, raw voice that is more achingly poignant than anything I’ve ever heard—it’s to deliver quiet excerpts in perfect French from our fairy tale.