doubts.
Whose idea had it been to cast him in this? Whoever was in charge of these things clearly didn’t think the decision through, because he was nowhere near ready. While he had watched Raoul perform every night for about a year during his run on Broadway, he had never gone on for him. He was woefully inexperienced, and had even messed up the words during All I Ask of You. The director hadn’t said anything, no one did, but that didn’t make it any different. They probably all stayed quiet because they thought he was a lost cause.
The dressing room he shared with Matthew, which he had escaped to shortly after the director called for a break, suddenly felt much too cramped. He stripped off his formal coat and undid the tie around his neck, quickly stepping up on a chair so that he could open the small window towards the back. There wasn’t much of a breeze, though, and it didn’t do much good. At the sound of someone entering, he almost fell off the chair, half convinced that it was the director come to fire him. But it was only Matthew, looking suitably intimidating in his black cape and mask. Matthew was intimidating. He knew this role inside and out. “Hey,” Casper said, stepping down shakily from the chair. “It’s ... warm in here, right?” Like the other wanted to talk about the temperature.





















