As if sensing me watching, Jax casts a glance over his shoulder in my direction. I look away, focusing instead on Kat and Roxie off in a corner. Roxie’s glistening pewter-statue makeup and skintight costume, complete with cracks in the stone, is stunning with the matching gray contacts that fog her irises and the metallic silver glaze in her hair. Kat’s half-skeleton, half-human makeup and costume are just as creative and gorgeous. They both have a chance at winning the artistry portion of the contests later, but with the way their gazes keep flitting over, that’s the last thing on their minds. They’re conspiring payback. Little do they realize their petty revenge is the least of my worries tonight.
Most students stand around talking, others are on the dance floor, rocking out to the dark, electronic indie-pop playlist streaming through the speakers. Tomlin put it together. Hard to believe he had time with teaching every day and moonlighting for the dark side. A few small groups occupy the tables around me. One couple dressed as silent-movie characters—in black and white from head to toe—hold up signs with clever dialogue to answer their friends’ questions. They all bust out laughing, oblivious to who’s on the guest list.
Aunt Charlotte and Bouchard are on the other side of the room, watching me. They’ve come as Red Riding Hood—in a long red cape and dress—and Grandma in a wolf costume, complete with nightgown and cap. No surprise Bouchard chose to be the furry, snarling half of the duo.
They’re keeping their distance, although Bouchard didn’t even like handing her key over to Jippetto. Predictably, it has more to do with her aversion to anyone going into her sacred shrine of dead animals than watching over me.
I touch the necklace hanging at the dress’s deep V above my cleavage. The ruby ring pendant is only costume jewelry. Etalon put it in with the Pandora pieces to be worn as the final nail in Erik’s sentimental coffin. And I understand the significance now. The true meaning of the ring.
During lunch, I convinced Sunny that Christine’s letters were another prank, along with the broken mask, and that Professor Tomlin was going to help me catch my creeper tonight. I told her if she saw me leave with him not to follow, because she could mess up the plan. It was as close to the truth as I could get to protect her without blowing her mind.
After she left for fifth period, I chose to skip theater, which was to be another study hall, and read Christine’s journal entries, in case I could find anything to use. Instead, I found the heartbreaking ending to the Phantom and his love’s star-crossed saga.
Shortly after Christine’s husband died, Erik faked that he, too, was dying. Years earlier, he and Christine had made a pact that neither one would let the other die alone. When she found him, he confessed he still loved her. He hadn’t aged a day in the ten years since they’d last seen each other, but Christine was in her early forties, and had at last matured beyond her fear. She gave in to her heart after years of denying, and they had a night of passion that resulted in an unexpected conception. Terrified of how a baby would react to his face, Erik holed himself up underground and locked Christine out of his life. It took him five months to conceptualize a mask so real he could wear it and look “human” enough not scare his child. He went to Christine. She’d been concealing the pregnancy to perform, as she’d signed a contract with a French opera house two years earlier. He told her his plan, but she said she didn’t want him to hide from their baby, that the child would grow seeing him each day. That their child would be the one person in the world who would never think him repulsive or different. Overcome with happiness, the Phantom asked her to marry him, offering the ruby ring. She said yes, and for a week they hid away, blissfully happy in his underground apartment. But there Christine went into premature labor, giving birth to a perfectly formed beautiful little girl—weighing less than a pound and lacking the ability to take a breath—too fragile to survive outside her mother’s body. Christine was devastated and bedridden, unable to even name her, so Erik buried the infant while composing the ballad her tiny ears would never hear.
There was no more to the entry. After reading it, I checked the cemetery. The unnamed infant’s headstone—which cradled my roses and led me to the chapel a month ago—had the same birth/death year as Erik’s poor, tragic baby: 1883.
He’d almost had everything, then was left with less than nothing—with a heart so battered and beaten, it turned to stone as dense and immovable as his daughter’s nameless grave.
The ballad Etalon taught me, the one Erik sang with Christine, belonged to that child. It’s undeniably the most powerful weapon I could wield, but I dread using it.