Chapter Thirteen: I pray this punishment would have mercy on me.

I was starting to get the feeling that Malania didn’t have the perfectly wonderful life that initially fit my impressions.

Something was bothering her, she was not herself. Since her first visit with me, I found that she was incredibly caring, sweet and polite and obviously she was cute as hell. I liked her company, she wasn’t overbearing, she didn’t ask stupid questions and she didn’t make me feel super human.

She had turned up to visit me in a completely different headspace though and I was confused. She had barely spoken all night. On one hand that suited me just fine because I wasn’t overly talkative and just having another person present helped me. On the other hand, I wanted to get to know her and my curious nature really wanted to break down the walls that I’d began to realise were built around her.

I wasn’t sure if I liked Malania a lot or if I missed the company. I didn’t allow myself to read too much in to it at this point. I had too many other things fizzing around in my brain.

My mother had begged me not to go back to Neverland, but I didn’t want to stay at Hayvenhurst with the media crowding and waiting for me to come out. I knew enough time had passed for them to realise that there was probably no way I’d come back home, so it was safe to be there.

Also, my own privacy was important. I was sick of having family turn up and trying to see me when I wasn’t in the mood. For whatever reason, my Mom could never say no to Jermaine and he was the one I wanted to see the very least.

Malania sat with her hands folded in her lap. She stared at the TV but I caught her looking around the room once every often so I was convinced that she probably wasn’t paying much attention. I excused myself to go to the bathroom for a moment. My head was absolutely aching and seemed like it had been for almost a week. I looked around in my bathroom and found a few pills. I was sure I needed something a bit stronger, but I took a couple of aspirin and made my way back.

When I arrived back, she was slouching to the left in the large, red leather bucket couch. She was resting her head on her arm, staring straight through the television screen. I didn’t know what it was about.

I sank back down beside her. She barely looked up as I remerged in to the room. I supposed that she was bored. I didn’t really feel like talking about me, I’d done so much talking about myself to myself that I was a bit over it.

“Hey,” I gently touched her arm. She almost jumped a mile. I’d obviously interrupted her thoughts. “I’m sorry,” I apologised with a smile.

“Sorry,” she said too.

“Whats the matter, you look miserable, is this boring? We don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to.” I was a people pleaser. I didn’t want to be boring the crap out of this girl.

“Its okay,” she replied, straightening up a little bit.

I was kind of relieved that she was very calm in my presence. The first time I had invited her in, I had sensed her nervousness and excitement but I think she had composed herself the night before, and tonight? I was pretty much a regular person.

I’m sure it was kind of surreal to her.

“Can I get you something?” I asked.

She shook her head and tried to give me a smile but there was something behind it. I captured a glimpse of the bruise I had spied the night before below her eye and wondered about it. I knew obviously someone had caused it. If something had caused it, she wouldn’t have been so quick to change the subject.

“Would you like to take a walk outside? I could show you around, I’ll have the lights switched on, it’ll be beautiful and peaceful.”

That idea seemed to pique her interest. “Come on, who doesn’t love a good walk?”

“Okay, sure,” she agreed. I waited for her to get up. I turned the television off and surveyed her standing ready to follow me with her. She was wearing a pair of red jeans and a long black tshirt. She looked so good in casual clothes. I thought there was something very attractive about her ability to look beautiful in casual. She wore a gold medallion around her neck that I made a mental note to ask her about.

“I’ll have to grab my cardigan,” she told me as we headed downstairs. Her pull over and bag was down by the front door where I had hung them up for her.

We went down. I grabbed it from the hat rack and held it out for her. She gratefully put her arms through the sleeves and adjusted it. Her hair was tied back. I noticed she had a nervous habit of taking it out and putting it back up. It was jet black hair that had a slight wave in it, and if it were possible, even when it was a bit untidy it looked as though it was exactly in the place that she wanted it to be.

I wished my hair would do that.

I took down my letterman jacket that my nephews had given to me as a gift and shrugged it over my shoulders. I knew it was pretty chilly outside.

I opened the door and gestured her to go first. “Here,” I held out my hand as we descended the stairs by the front stoop. I saw a flash of a smile as I helped her down the stairs. As we reached the bottom, I felt her hand slowly, and probably reluctantly withdraw from mine.

“Oh drats, hold that thought for one moment,” I remembered something, “give me one sec, I’m just going inside by the door.”

“Yeah right,” she laughed with good humour, “this is your way of kicking me out without having to do the dirty work.”

I laughed too as we obviously both saw the same scenario play out in our imaginations. I quickly ducked up the stairs to the phone by the door. I left it open so Malania could still see me, reassuring her that I wasn’t going to strand her out the front.

I made a quick phone call to the security shack who were in charge of all the controls. I made a small request and hung up and went back downstairs to meet her.

“Okay, that’s better,” within about thirty seconds, Neverland lit up. All of the lights and the speaker systems went on. I knew she was impressed, her eyes widened as the path that we were about to set upon lit up similar to a yellow brick road.

“Wow, this is really… so…” she looked around at all the different attractions. There were some rides over upon our far left and to the right, a picnic area. Straight ahead was a pool and an in ground trampoline and much farther behind that was the zoo. Well, what was slowly becoming a zoo.

Originally I had placed the trampoline in the ground for Casey. We were afraid of her falling off one, the in ground one had its own pitfalls, but it seemed to be less dangerous for her.

“Michael, this is beautiful…”

“Thank you… Its still a work in progress…” I almost halted my sentence. I still dealt with day-to-day life, but my future freedom was uncertain. I tried not to think about it but it was always niggling at me. “Which way, left or right? Left I can show you down to the lake area or on the right will take us to a more woodsy-type area, your pick.”

“Lake,” she pointed to the left. We set off down the lit path, strolling quietly and thoughtfully. She had pulled her sleeves over her hands as I noticed she’d had a habit of doing. I, on the other hand, jammed my hands in to the pockets of the jacket I had put on at the door.

There was silence, not necessarily uncomfortable silence, but one that was bothering me a little bit. I started to think that maybe I was wrong about her, maybe there was no deeper side of her. Maybe we weren’t meant to connect. The first night we had chatted, there was an inexplicable part of me that felt a deep connection with her, but maybe it was just that I’d needed a friend and was slightly or completely emotionally unstable.

I wasn’t sure if it were shyness, melancholy or some sort of personal issue that was keeping her wound up so much, but I didn’t really like it and I wasn’t used to it. Most people, fans mostly, loved to vent their worldly problems to me. There was a part of me that both loved and hated it. I loved that to hear about other people’s journeys in life, but at the same token, a lot of responsibility to make others happy had been placed upon my shoulders – and mostly unknowingly.

I was the friend that most came to when they needed someone to hear them out, when they needed to cry – I was a good listener, I said all the right things and knew how to support someone in need. However, on a day like today, none of those so-called friends were to be found.

“I don’t want to keep pushing the issue, but… is everything alright? You’ve hardly said a word.”

“Yes, everything is alright. I’m sorry if I’m a bit quiet. I guess this is a bit surreal for me,” she murmured, but I knew she wasn’t being entirely truthful.

“You know, I know I have stuff going on here, but… if you want to tell me anything, it can stay between us,” I urged her. It was my last ditch effort. If it was really nothing, then really I would have been led to believe my suspicions were right, there was probably no connection between us.

She said nothing for a few moments. Finally she opened her mouth to say something but she closed it again.

“Go ahead,” I urged her, “you were about to say something…”

“My brother did this…” she blurted out at last. I looked at her and saw that she was pointing at her head.

I tried not to react too quickly, but rather, I waited for her to continue.

“He is just the source of every evil in my life… and I love my parents so much, we are so close but… they just don’t know how to keep him from the house…me, really,” she admitted, breathing a little shaky sigh.

I suspected that she had never dared admit that to anyone out loud. I was concerned for her safety, immediately. “Is this like a one off thing or…?”

She shook her head. The whole time she never looked up at me, she never dared even throw a glance my way. I could see she was shaking, even letting the words out of her mouth. I felt for her.

“Why you? I mean, what’s his justification?”

She shrugged, “I know that I’m the baby of the family and my Mama paid me extra attention because she was told she couldn’t have any more children after me. My eldest brother has always been particularly mean to me, I don’t really know why… but when I became a teenager…”

“He got worse?”

“Yeah... and now he’s married, he has two kids but he’s totally made a mess of it. He has gambling issues, he’s just crazy.”

“I’m sorry Malania…” I murmured, “are you safe at home?”

“My Papa- my father, he promised me today that he would keep me safe from him, but… if history is anything to go by, I don’t exactly trust his word. When this happened,” she pointed to her eye, “he was so aggressive, he literally ripped me out of bed and started beating me. My Mama tried to help and he knocked her out of the way so for the first time I fought back.”

“Oh no…” I expected her story to get worse.

“I was lucky, he wasn’t expecting it. I was so furious over him hurting my Mom. When he was keeled over holding his crotch, I made my Mama get in the car and I forced her to come to the police with me…”

“Oh thank God… and so what’s the story now?” I asked. She finally managed to look at me.

“He isn’t allowed to come near me. My Mama refused to make a statement. She’s lucky my love outweighs my anger and frustration with her.”

“You know…” I began, “people know about my father being abusive toward me, but… there’s a part of society that would look upon it as me being a bit dramatic – or that its just the way it was back when I was a child, you know, being strict with your kids sometimes meant beatings…”

“Bullshit.” Malania cursed. I almost laughed because it sounded so ridiculous coming from her sweet and almost husky voice.

“I can relate to you a little bit on that level though,” I told her, “my father was pretty senseless when it came to getting beaten, or disciplined.”

“Did he beat you a lot?” she asked curiously.

I shrugged, “Sometimes and sometimes not. He did it a lot less the older I became and the more successful I’d become. But he could beat the wind out of me and for the most stupid reasons…”

Malania shook her head. I noticed she’d become very agitated. She hugged herself from the cold as we got very close to the lake.

“I just don’t understand that kind of callousness,” she remarked. “Anyway, I’m sorry if I’ve been quiet and miserable. I just had that discussion with my Dad today and it just brought up a whole tidal wave of crap with it…”

“Don’t apologise… I was just starting to think it was me…” I smiled. I could tell that she was cold so I shed my jacket and placed it over her shoulders. She went to protest, but I insisted.

Eventually she made eye contact and smiled, “thanks, Michael…”

“So this is the lake…” I told her as we came to the water bed.

“Its really beautiful and peaceful, especially here in the dark… I love it so much, is it true you drew up the plans for this place yourself?” she asked me.

“Well, sort of… I knew what I wanted and how I wanted it to look, but I’m by no means an architect,” I chuckled.

She cocked her head to the side as if to tell me my joke wasn’t that funny. She had a way of cutting down my humour that didn’t feel nasty, but in a mock-superior way. It made me laugh even more.

“You’re very clever… but I’m sure you knew that. Someone who doesn’t know they’re clever couldn’t confidently walk out on a stage of a hundred thousand people and pull off the kind of show that you do…”

I just smiled, she did know how to cut me down in her not-so-subtle way, but she also knew how to fill my heart up, too, and that was important.

“That’s sweet…”

I gestured for her to take a seat on a stone bench by the river. The sounds surrounding us were ones of nature and the streaming of the water in front of us. I forgot how serene Neverland was and how nice it was to share it with someone else.

“You never answered my question before, I asked you if you were safe at home.” I remarked, “you’ve got a crafty way of getting around my questions.”

She chuckled, “You’re very nosey,” she nudged me gently. I couldn’t help smiling to myself in the dark.

“Yes, I am… now answer the question,” I insisted.

“I think I’m safe, yes. I promised my father, that if my mother takes pity on him, as she always does, and lets him back in to the house, I am gone. I’ll move out, I don’t even care about the circumstances.”

“You think your Mom would do that?” I asked. I watched her pull my letterman jacket around her tightly, obviously feeling the cold more than I did in the moment.

“My Mama is so religious, she doesn’t believe he’s inherently evil, she believes he needs love to cure him and while that’s sweet and wonderful and may very well be true, she also owes it to me to keep me safe.”

“I agree… If there’s anything that I can help with, let me know okay?” I told her.

She just nodded.

“I mean it, Malania, anything, if something happens and you have nowhere to go, come here and I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”

“Thanks Michael, but I’ve been dealing with this psycho my entire life, I’ll be okay,” she replied.

I took her word for it, though I didn’t know how reliable it was.

“What about you, how is your Dad now that you’re an adult?” she wondered. I liked that she wasn’t afraid to ask me questions that other people might have considered too personal.

“He’s okay, he’s been really good during this time actually. He’s always been good in a crisis, awful to deal with otherwise though,” I joked.

“Well at least its improved slightly.”

We sat for a bit longer. Malania seemed content and her mood had lifted a little since unloading. “Michael,” she began, “how are you really doing? I mean, I know how you feel about the family who are accusing you, but what about you?”

I considered her question. My first instinct was to tell her that I was okay, but it wasn’t true, I wasn’t okay. “Well… I don’t really know.”

“Come on, I just vented my right kidney, don’t make me feel like an emotional leech, be honest with me…” she pulled her hair out of its pony tail and dragged it all across over to one shoulder and fidgeted with her hands. I discovered quickly that it was her nervous habit.

“I feel everything,” I told her, deciding to do as she asked, taking a chance on this one random person who was extending herself to me, who I had, for some reason, continued to invite back to see me. “Anger, sadness, deep, deep loss, shame, humiliation, anxiety… I don’t really know how to pinpoint it.”

“How do you manage it? Like, what’s your coping mechanism like?” she continued.

I felt a stab of panic. She had questioned me the night before on a cut I’d made. I felt like she knew, because I too, had spied what I’d thought were scars on her wrists.

“I try to dance each morning if I have the energy. I try to think of the people who do have faith in me and that spurs me on.” I didn’t flinch.

“You seem too ‘okay’ with it all,” she remarked, “like this kind of thing happens all the time.”

“Well,” I drew in a deep breath and let it out, “I really don’t know what you want me to say to that, I don’t know if there’s a right way to deal with this, mostly I just want to be alone…”

“Don’t let me stand in the way…” she challenged me. I could see her raised eyebrow at me in the dim light from a lamp post a few feet away.

“You’re different, you’re not setting out to hurt me, I’m pretty sure you’re not here for financial gain,” I told her. It wasn’t entirely true. I asked to see her again because I’d discovered that she had scars too. Someone with scars would surely understand mine.

“Pffft,” she rolled her eyes, “my father is loaded, I don’t need your money,” she joked in a way that I wasn’t entirely sure if she was serious or not.

I just laughed. I was starting to get cold so I suggested that we head back to the house.

We went back to the kitchen where she had left another bag and had obviously forgotten about it from when we were having a snack. I wasn’t sure what it was, “oh when you leave, don’t forget this…” I picked it up to put it on the dining table.

“Oh…” she looked at it and hesitated. “Actually, its for you…”

“What? No, you brought me cakes last time…” I told her, “you can’t keep bringing me things.”

“Well… I wasn’t sure if its stupid or not and there’s a large part of me that thinks this is probably going to be the dumbest idea ever. Then the other part of me thinks you’ll probably never work it out anyway so who cares.”

I was confused.

“Right-o,” I went to use her last name but realised I didn’t know it, “hey, what is your last name?”

“Nakamura,” she replied as she took a seat at the dining room table. I was glad she obviously felt a bit freer since sharing her family incident. Her hair was back up and she was preoccupied by her bag. I took a seat too.

“Righto, Nakamura, make with the gift, I’m intrigued now.”

She laughed briefly but then made began to slide the item out of the bag. She paused and looked at me making strong eye contact. “Wait a second, you have to promise me something,” she began.

“Okay?” I grimaced mockingly causing her to give me another brief smile.

“This thing means a lot to me but I would like to give it to you, but you have to promise that you’ll take care of it and if you decide that you don’t care about it, you’ll give it back to me.”

“Okay, of course…”

She slid a wooden box out of the bag and slid it across the table to me. I didn’t get it at first.

“This box was given to me by my father when I was 16,” she explained, her almond shaped eyes were finally paying mine a lot of attention. I loved her smooth, low voice, it really sang to my ears. “It was bought from Japan and all those colours,” she ran her small hands across the top of it, “its all different types of wood… its worth a lot of money,” she added, “its called a Hakone Zaiku. It’s a mystery box, there’s something that I’ve put inside it for you.”

I looked at the box and back up at her, I felt a little moved that she would give something to me that obviously meant so much to her. I was unsure if it was the right thing to do, to take it. “Malania, maybe you should keep this,” I told her as I ran my hand across the surface of the wooden box. It was beautiful.

“Nope,” she shook her head and gave me a little smile. When I looked up at her again I could see her eyes were filling with tears.

“Oh no…” I murmured softly. I reached across the table and grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “This means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”

She sniffed and nodded quickly before chuckling and apologising, “just take care of it…”

“Are you sure, if it is so important to you, why are you giving it to me?” I asked her gently.

“You’ll figure it out when you get it open. It will take you awhile and a lot of patience. Also, the distraction you’ll need for it will be good for you,” she explained.

“Thank you, I promise that I will keep it safe and put it in a place of honour in the house.” I told her meaningfully.

And then there was that look again, that sassy, gorgeous face cutting me down to size. “I don’t expect people to light a candle for it and kiss it upon arrival or anything, no need to sing songs to the Gods… just… don’t let anyone mess it up.”

I laughed, “you are so…”

“awesome,” she finished for me, smartly.

“You’re something.” I joked back, my tone dripped with sarcasm.

She laughed with me.

She explained to me exactly how the box worked and how it needed to be manipulated. I was still taken aback by how emotional she got over it. I knew it must have been precious for a reason so I decided that I would try my best to figure it out.

We talked for awhile longer until she began to grow tired. I called the car service again for her.

“Do you want to come hang out again soon?” I asked her.

“Yeah… that would be great but… how about you figure the box out first, then you can call me,” she suggested. She was obviously a lot more comfortable.

“Okay, leave me your number then, I’ll call you… maybe I’ll call you over the next few days just to say hello.”

“Great.”

I got her something to write on. She slowly and carefully printed her phone number on the paper. “Whatever you do, if my parents answer, don’t say its Michael, say your name is Peter.”

“Why? Who’s Peter?”

“A guy I used to be friends with in college who used to call to see how I was going, I couldn’t be bothered trying to explain that Michael Jackson is calling me.”

I laughed, “okay, Peter it is…” Before she left, I also bravely gave her my number. It was a direct extension. I didn’t bother telling her not to give it out, I was pretty sure she knew that by now.

After she left, I took the box upstairs with me to my room and spent a little while trying to work on the puzzles but I wasn’t in the right headspace. Instead, I went to the bathroom to take a codeine pill for my headache and went to bed, feeling a bit lighter with the new friendship that was blossoming.