Phantom (Tattered Curtain Series)

Scarlett

When I woke up this morning, not only did I feel like I had a hangover from hell, my panties were damp and I swear I could smell sugar and whiskey. It’s one thing to have auditory hallucinations, but visual and olfactory? I didn’t even know the last one was a thing.

Needless to say, I called my doctor for refills and then I promptly freaked the fuck out.

For months, I’ve been hearing music coming from a vent in my room. I thought it was someone practicing and it took me searching high and low for where the music could be coming from to finally realize I was having auditory hallucinations again. At first, it worried the hell out of me, but oddly enough, there were no other symptoms of mania. So I took the beautiful piano tunes and the sexy crooning from the bass singer as a reprieve from all the emotions still whirling inside me from my dad’s murder.

Then I began to receive letters from the mysterious pianist and even interacted with him while I sang his music. I didn’t know what to believe, and frankly, by that time, I didn’t want to ruin what I had by looking into it. It sounds crazy in and of itself to just ignore what’s going on around me. But, whether my demon of music was real or fake didn’t matter as much as protecting the idea of him and the comfort he’d given me.

Now that my hallucinations have escalated to literally getting turned on by my visions, I’m not sure what to do. If I bring any of this up to my psychiatrist, I’ll no doubt be getting a one-way ticket to my own room with a barred window and a blurry view of a dumpster I’ll wish I could throw myself into.

Again.

I stare blankly into the fitting room mirror, fingering the thick fabric of my new costume, and sigh. Monty suddenly decided this morning that for the next opera we’re performing, Faust, I should be Marguerite, the female lead character, instead of Jilliana. Now I’m going to have to be refitted for the dress she was supposed to wear. All I’ll have to tell the seamstress later today is that it’s a few inches long. Other than that, it fits perfectly.

But it feels all wrong.

We already had auditions and, while I thought Jilliana sort of half-assed hers, I know she would do anything for this position. After being the star of the show for a night, I’ve realized that although I love the theater spotlight, just like this dress, it’s not exactly the right fit.

The truth is, I don’t want to be the lead in this opera. More and more lately, I’ve realized writing my lyrics is where my heart lies. My own words, my own music, my own stage. I’m not sure what to do with that revelation, especially since one lead performance has turned my mental state on its head.

“What the fuck am I going to do now?” I mutter.

“Um… get out of my way, for starters.”

I jump at the lovely soprano voice, tinged with anger, and immediately move to the side so Jilliana can check her dress—my old dress—in the mirror.

“Sorry Jilliana. I didn’t realize you were there.”

She huffs. “Of course you didn’t. You’re too busy blackmailing the director into kicking me to the curb.”

Monty sent us the announcement this morning via email since he’s still nursing his hangover. I’ve been dreading the moment I would see Jilliana ever since. I’d selfishly hoped she’d stay sick for at least a few more days. I’m silently cursing my luck until Jilliana’s accusation finally hits.

My eyes widen in my reflection as I gape at her. “What did you say?”

She shrugs a shoulder, her natural red, perfectly ironed curls fall effortlessly over her shoulder and I twirl one of my wild ones self-consciously.

“You’re blackmailing Monty into making you Marguerite.” She stops examining her dress in the mirror and turns to me with crossed arms. “Do you know how much I’ve had to sacrifice to get that spot, only to come down with a damn stomach bug the night casting directors from all over the country came to visit?”

“Casting directors were here last night?”

Jilliana’s brilliant green eyes flare. “Oh my god, you didn’t know?” She scoffs. “You didn’t know, and still sang the best performance of your life. That’s… infuriating if I’m honest. Monty and Maggie are meeting with some today to talk about casts for their upcoming shows. Where have you been, Scarlett? Do you even care about your future, or are you just stealing the spotlight for your own amusement?”

Heat rises into my cheeks and I know my light skin is beet red. But she’s right, I’ve been going to Bordeaux, fulfilling the dream my father wanted—the one I thought I wanted. Since I achieved a taste of it last night, I’m truly at a loss for what’s next. I’m more confused than ever as to whether I want to do anything theater related, or whether I’ve been hiding in my understudy position, too afraid to take charge and audition for the main character in my own life.

“Listen, Jilliana, I swear I didn’t blackmail Monty. I don’t even know where his letter came from. I was at Masque along with everyone else when it was delivered.”

Jilliana’s face scrunches in thought before she sighs. “Okay, fine. I guess that was a little far fetched. It’s just weird that whoever the sender is said to keep you as the lead. Like, why would they care? Besides, I think I’m more mad about Monty rolling over like a wet dog after everything I’ve done for—”

Her mouth clamps down and I frown.

“What have you done, Jilliana?” I ask quietly.

Her eyes glisten and she shakes her head with her lips tight. I’ve known Jilliana for years but we’ve never been close. Still, my heart hammers at the distraught look on her face and every girl code alarm is blaring loudly in my mind. I glance around the fitting room before taking her hand.

“Follow me,” I order and lead her through the dark recesses backstage. My room isn’t far away, so it takes us no time to get there.

Once I do, I shove us inside and close the door.

My room is slightly less messy since I cleaned up this morning, but the couch is still covered with my costumes from closing night. I point to my makeup chair for her to sit while I perch on the arm of my couch.

“Okay… talk to me. Did you do something for Monty?” At my question, Jilliana’s gorgeous full red lips thin so much that they whiten and I rephrase the question. “What has Monty made you do?”

The change in wording seems to strike a chord and that bottom lip begins to wobble. Realization kicks in. I’ve always heard rumors about how Jilliana earned her role as Juliet after her crappy audition. That one day wasn’t her best, but she’s an amazing singer and a phenomenal actress. I never doubted she deserved the role, but I did doubt the rumors.

Until now.

“Oh, Jilliana…” I lean my shoulder against the wall and hold myself back from hugging her. I know what it’s like to feel violated, so I refrain from comforting her physically until I know how she wants to be consoled. “Does he… does he hurt you?”

She wipes her cheeks as tears spill down them and shakes her head vigorously. “No, nothing like that. He just, um, said that if I wanted the role I had to… show him how much I wanted it. On my knees.”

Disgust for that awful man slithers over my skin. “What a fucking pig.”

“Right? That’s what I said… but then he told me that if I didn’t do it, he’d tell everyone I came onto him and that I’d get kicked out of Bordeaux.”

“Jilliana, you have to tell Maggie. She’s the assistant director and can tell her husband—”

“No!” Jilliana yelps before gentling her voice again. “Just… no. All I want is to get through my senior year unscathed. No one will hire me if they think I accuse directors of… you know.”

I nod reluctantly, not comfortable with the forced limbo Jilliana is in. But I totally get it. I didn’t report Jacques last week and he was just one of the temporary stagehands, not our director.

“I’m sorry Jilliana… if I can do anything—”

“You can’t,” she murmurs. “Not unless you can find the blackmailer. Whoever he or she is, is ruining everything.”

“Believe me, if I could find him, I would.” Even though I have no idea who is sending the letters, I still feel weirdly responsible and wish I could do more than just comfort her. “Can I give you a hug?”

She gives me a watery smile, and as she stands, I embrace her taller form underneath her arms and whisper. “I think you should report him, but I get why you’re afraid. I’ll help any way I can, even if it’s just holding your hand while you come forward.”

“Thanks, girl. I don’t want to do anything, yet. I just—” Her hug stiffens right before she pushes me away so hard I almost fall. She snatches a paper off my desk and my heart freezes in my chest as cold panic grips me. “What the hell is this, Scarlett?”

She flips over the envelope from my demon of music, revealing the crimson wax seal I’d carefully opened around to keep intact.

“Jilliana, I can explain—”

“You said you had nothing to do with Monty’s blackmail.”

I take a step forward, but she raises the letter above her head, making it impossible to reach.

“I didn’t. I—”

“Then why the fuck do you have the same envelope?”

I stop trying to retrieve the letter and riffle through my jewelry box to find the sheets of music from my other letters. Part of me wants to keep my demon to myself and own up to a crime I didn’t commit. But my fingers shake on the paper because I’m more terrified I’ll get kicked out of Bordeaux if I keep him a secret any longer.

“What game are you playing, Scarlett?”

“It’s from… the envelope is from my…” I hesitate, not knowing how to out him and not seem crazy.

“Spit it out. Who is sending you letters?”

My demon of music.

“It’s from a secret admirer,” I finally blurt out.

Boiling my demon down to such a simple moniker feels like a betrayal on my tongue, drying my mouth like ash. But it’s the best I can come up with without sounding off my rocker for corresponding with what is essentially a very musically talented stalker.

I hand her the many pages of sheet music before I can stop myself. She takes them warily, eyes narrowed.

“A secret admirer?” Her words are carefully measured before she studies the papers. After a moment, she hums one of my favorites until a high note cuts her off with a squeak. She clears her throat and those angry emerald eyes shoot daggers at me. “Nice song. And how convenient it is that it’s perfectly in your register. Tell me something, Scarlett, whenever do you find the time to compose, what with all your backstabbing and blackmailing?”

My jaw drops. “What? No, I—”

“Did you give me the stomach flu too? So I’d have to miss the one night casting directors come to scope out the talent?”

“Jilliana, you have to believe me—” I take a step forward and Jilliana gathers all the sheet music up before power walking out my door.

“Believe what? That you’re a lying bitch who is so pathetic she writes herself love letters?”

She twists the papers in her hands, ripping up a page of music, and I run after her to rescue my gifts. Thanks to her dance experience, she easily pivots away from me before picking up her pace and throwing handfuls to the ground. My throat tightens as each piece drops.

“Jilliana, stop! Please—”

I bend to the ground to collect them as we go, ignoring all the ogling spectators drawn to our drama. She continues to march toward the stage and hot tears burn my eyes. I do my best to keep them from rolling down, widening my eyes so that I don’t embarrass myself even more by getting too emotional, but it’s nearly impossible to stay composed.

By the time I’ve caught up to her, she’s already in the middle of the stage, ripping all the music sheets and my heart into shreds, scattering them both to the ground like confetti.

“What is all this supposed to prove, Scarlett?” she spits out bitterly, straightening her posture when she seems to realize we have an audience. “Because all I’m seeing is a jealous psycho coming for my spot. The spotlight I earned.”

It’s on my tongue to be vindictive and correct her, but that would undoubtedly make things worse.

“I swear, I had nothing to do with Monty’s message. That’s what I was trying to show you. That I’ve been receiving my own letters, too—”

“What’s going on?” Jaime appears from backstage with Maggie not too far behind. “Jilliana, what the hell are you going on about now?”

“We’ve got rehearsals and not a lot of time to make this show flawless,” Maggie joins in. “Let’s get back to our places, people.”

Reinforcements. Thank goodness.

“Oh, great. Let’s ask her best friend, shall we? Jaime, why don’t you fill us in?” Jilliana turns around in a circle like an announcer for a fight, stopping at Jaime. “Maybe you can tell us who blackmailed Monty. I’m sure Scarlett’s bragged all about her little secret admirer.”

“Her what?” Jaime snorts before Jilliana’s eyes narrow and he realizes just how pissed she is.

She slaps a torn sheet of music and the envelope into Jaime’s chest. He catches them and a bewildered expression wrinkles his face as she questions him.

“Looks just like the so-called Phantom’s, right?”

Jaime chews his lip as he inspects the sheets, and Maggie reads around his shoulder. When Jaime turns over the envelope to the seal, his eyes flare with recognition and flick to me. Either confusion or indecision wrinkles his brow, neither of which is good for me.

“So?” Jilliana asks, her hand propped on her hip. “Tell us all about her little admirer. I’ll be the first to apologize if you can tell me who wrote these. Who threatened Monty and sent her love notes?”

Jaime gulps and his grimace shows how concerned and uncertain he is. My chest aches as soon as I realize he’s not going to stick up for me. And why would he? I never told him about the letters because I was afraid of the exact look he’s giving me right now. His face is one I vaguely remember him making only once before, right before the cops took me to the hospital.

“Um, Scarlett, are you feeling okay?” he asks quietly. “I know you were excited last night—”

Maggie winces. “I’m sure there’s another explanation—”

“Oh that’s right. How could I forget the most important thing about our little Miss Perfect Scarlett? You’re bipolar, aren’t you? Doesn’t that mean you’re crazy as fuck?”

“Jilliana, shut the fuck up. You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jaime reprimands while he glances nervously at Maggie.

But Jilliana barrels ahead, like she’s finally found the missing clue to her mystery. “You’ve even been committed once before. You went cuckoo bananas and the cops had to take you in. What does your psychiatrist have to say about you sending yourself little love notes to brag to all your friends? Did you somehow make Jacques hang himself, too? I know he had a thing for you.”

Have I gone crazy again?

The question rings in my mind and the burning tears finally leak from the well of my eyes, trailing down my cheeks. I let them fall, refusing to call any more attention to them by wiping them away.

“Scarlo—”

“Aw… Scarlett,” Jilliana interrupts my friend and mocks me with a fake pout. “There’s no reason to get so emotional. They’re just questions. I just want to know why you’re writing these notes to yourself and blackmailing Monty.”

Am I writing these notes to myself? Is it all in my head?

I shake away the thought because it can’t be true. I know how to write music, but I’ve never been as talented as my demon. Or maybe I have been and I’m just realizing it now in a manic state?

“No,” I say out loud and focus on Jilliana. “I didn’t blackmail Monty. Obviously Jacques was having trouble of his own, and I didn’t send these notes and music to myself—”

“Then who did?” Jilliana asks as she crosses her arms.

“I… I don’t know.”

No way in hell am I going to explain my theories that sound wild even to me. That my demon of music wrote them for me, or that he’s the muse my father promised me, or that I dreamed he and Sol Bordeaux were one and the same in a drug-induced stupor and that I had the best orgasm of my fucking life with only my fingers and a dream.

Shit. Maybe she’s right.

“All right, that’s enough of that,” Maggie yells over the crowd’s growing whispers. “Everyone, we have a lot to do in very little time, alright? All this will get sorted out soon.”

I bend to pick up a few more sheets, keeping a wide berth away from the fellow student I once thought could be my friend. There are a few pieces left that I leave alone as embarrassment stings my skin. All the while, people snicker and gawk. No one helps me. Not even Maggie or Jaime.

By the time I’ve gathered up enough to hopefully put most of them back together, I turn on my heels and walk back to my room, trying to hold my head high.

“Make sure you take your meds today, Scarlett! You’re already so upset. Don’t want to have to lock you up again!”

“Cállate la puta boca, Jilliana. Goddamn,” Jaime fires back as the dark hallway swallows me up.

I desperately wish I could disappear. My friend is calling for me to stop, but I don’t wait for him. Instead, I pick up speed until I get to my room and shut the door, careful not to slam it in case someone thinks I’m being moody.

Taking a steadying breath, I try to ignore Jaime calling for me from the other side of the door. If he can’t stick up for me in public, then he can sit out there all by himself. I lock the door and collapse right on top of the clothes covering the couch. I spread the sheet music pieces on my small coffee table, trying to organize them, but angry hurt has blurred my vision to near blindness. Blood rushes in my ears, muffling Jaime’s—and now Maggie’s—pleas.

I know they were just as blindsided by this whole fiasco as I was. Still, not being able to adequately stick up for myself, and then not having anyone stick up for me, stings like hell and I’m not ready to see them again.

My mind flashes back to my dad comforting me, talking me through what we hadn’t yet realized were episodes. The depression or mania would come on slowly back then and last for weeks. But he’d always remained patient, just joking that I had my mother’s wild fighting spirit.

He’d meant it as a compliment, but my mom left us because she didn’t have the tools to understand herself, and we certainly weren’t equipped to handle her. We had to find out from the officer on our doorstep when that fighting spirit left this world entirely. She’d been in the middle of what must have been a depressive episode and alcohol had always been her cure. It’d been her damnation the night she’d gotten behind the wheel with it.

Ever since, my “wild fighting spirit” has scared the shit out of me. It wasn’t until my first full-blown manic episode after my dad died that I was forced to get help. Jilliana just cruelly threw my worst moments in my face.

But is she right? Am I going crazy again?

From my seat on the couch, I peer inside the open door to my bedroom, to where I know I left my orange bottle of old medication last night. The container is nowhere to be found and has been missing since I woke up this morning. The only explanation I have is that the dream version of Sol Bordeaux I conjured last night took it.

Fuck, what if I am losing it again?

More than anything, I wish my dad was here… or, ironically, I wish I could hear the music that caused this whole mess.

Vibrations buzz against my thigh and it’s only then that I realize I’m still wearing my costume over my leggings and thin T-shirt. I unzip the back and slide it off quickly, just in time to retrieve my phone from the pocket on the side of my leggings and answer without looking at the caller ID.

“Little Lettie!” Rand’s voice sounds so wrong to my ears, especially when I was just wishing for my dad’s. But maybe Rand’s the exact distraction I need right now. Someone who knew me before my diagnosis. Someone who knew my dad.

Hope for a reprieve flutters in my heartbroken chest as I mask the wobble threatening in my voice. “Rand, hey! What’s up?”

“I’m in the Quarter on business. Want to go get your favorite while I have a break?”

I jackknife up. “Beignets?” I pause and narrow my eyes with suspicion even though he’s not in the room. “From where?”

His chuckle warms my chest, reminding me of a time when twelve-year-old me craved to make him happy. The fact that he’s laughing now does wonders for the throbbing pain in my heart, especially when he answers correctly.

“Café du Monde, obviously.”