Anywhere… Even if it was only around this boring little town where I languished. Suddenly my days would have color and meaning, no matter how mundane the activities. With Riley beside me, nothing would seem mundane again.

Anywhere…

“There’s this…” I hesitated, “this… thing coming up this weekend.” I searched his eyes, then glanced down with chagrin. “It’s stupid really. I have to go, my parents make me do it every year. But I mean, everyone goes.”

“Then I will go.”

“But you don’t even know what it is yet.”

“It matters not.”

Could he really mean it? As I met his eyes again, I could tell that he did. He was with me now.

“Well, it’s the Annual Portsmouth Pumpkin Festival,” I yammered awkwardly. “There’s… well, there’s pumpkins. But a lot of other stuff too.” I chewed on my lip for a moment, then looked up at him again. “And there’s this dance. The Pumpkin Ball.” I took a quick breath. “It’s really stupid, I know.”

He caught my chin in his fingertips and tilted his face close to mine, commanding me to look into his eyes. “I don’t think it is. It could not be, if you will be there.”

I felt ready to turn to goo under his gaze. I shook my head just faintly, afraid he would let go if I moved too much. “How can this be real?” I whispered. “I mean you… you… where you come from. Your world. It is so beyond everything I’ve ever known. And you would… you would take me to the Pumpkin Ball?”

“Try and stop me.”

The gooey feeling flushed to my extremities. “But what is it like?” I queried. “Where you come from. I wish I could know. How do things look there?” I let my eyes drift from his face, following the trails of water that dripped from his hair and ran down the sculpted marble magnificence of his chest. “Did you always look like this?”

“This human form of mine is but a mask,” he said. “It has little use beyond this earthly plane you inhabit. I thought it appropriate for my initial purpose in coming here.”

A mask… like the one my beloved Phantom wore. The Phantom who Riley was so very like, whether he realized it or not…

Riley continued, “I could hardly take my place in your high school in my true form.”

I blinked and pulled my eyes back up to his face. “Why not?”

He chuckled and tilted his head back to look at the stars. “I wouldn’t exactly fit in.”

Considering he looked a thousand times more gorgeous than any of the other boys in my class, he didn’t exactly fit in as it was, but I was too intrigued to mention it.

“Will you show me?”