NEVERLAND

by Melissa Jane

  A look of concern flashed over her pretty eyes. “You don’t belong here, Diamond.”

  “I know,” I replied, my voice small.

  “Come here,” she said, drawing me into a hug, her mouth by my ear. “You’ve got love in your heart and fire in your belly. Use that fire to get your revenge for whatever he’s doing to you.” She squeezed hard and I returned the gesture.

  “Thank you and maybe one day…” I smiled.

  “Just make sure I have front row seats.”

  “Pervert row,” we said together and laughed. We were referring to the seats closest to the stage where men liked to get up close and personal with our genitals.

  The horn from the SUV blasted and we both startled. “Gotta go,” I said, squeezing her hand as I left.

  Climbing into the back seat, I greeted my driver. “Hi, Roy.”

  “Miss,” he replied, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Sorry for the interruption, but I’ve got—”

  “A schedule to stick by,” I finished for him. Roy worked for Dominic. He was a good man who knew little of his boss’s vile behavior. His role was to escort me to and from the club, ensuring I arrived back at my apartment with no stops in between. It wasn’t even my apartment. Dominic didn’t just own me, he owned every part of me, including where I lived and how I moved around. Restricting me was his way of ensuring there was no chance of me escaping, for if I tried, he’d recapture me within half an hour or less. That was his promise.

  “There’s some grocery bags on the floor for you, Miss.”

  Feeling a surge of excitement, I flicked on the cabin light and hauled the paper bags onto the seat next to me.

  “You’re truly the best, Roy. Have I ever told you that?”

  “Every time I slip caramel fudge ice cream into your shopping.”

  I leaned forward and kissed his hairy cheek and I could feel him smile.

  “I also threw in some red licorice twists.”

  “Roy! You’re too good to me.”

  He chuckled. “I don’t know how you maintain that figure, Miss, but I’m happy if I can see you smile.”

  Ten minutes later and after hearing updates on his family, Roy pulled to the curb outside my apartment building. “Here you go. I’ll pick you up same time tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be here and thanks again for the treats.”

  Closing the door, I juggled the bags while climbing two flights of stairs and then fiddled with the lock to my door which finally gave way with a bit of force. My eyes, as usual every time I walked in, flicked to the small red lights dotted in each room. It was a habit of mine. A sinister reminder that this apartment was just as much a prison as the club. I had no privacy. The only rooms I knew were camera-free were the toilet and closet. It was a small liberty Dominic loaned me. Loan being the operative word. Everything else was for his private viewing.

  Storing the food, I walked down the darkened hall, keen to leave the lights off. Lights off meant less of a show for him. A soft silver glow from the street lamps filtered into the bedroom drawing my attention to something dark on my pillow. It stood out, contrasting against everything white in the room.

  I stared at the one thing that meant he’d been here invading my space. This was why he left the club early, to find another reason to get under my skin. Another way to remind me of the type of person he was. Sick and sadistic. I picked up the torn lace which was once my panties. The panties I’d slipped on before Dominic trapped me in the dressing room. The panties Dominic has ripped off when he threatened to rape me.

  I trembled with rage, balling the remnants of fabric into my fist until my knuckles turned white.

  Switching on the side lamp, I stood on the bed and moved closer to the camera where there would be no mistaking what I was saying. I smiled sweetly before mouthing my defiant, ‘Fuck you,’ before pulling the room back into darkness.

  Thankful I’d showered at the club, I turned to my closet. Grabbing bundles of coat hangers, I tossed the clothes on the floor. Claiming my comforter and pillow, I made a bed in the space I’d created in the closest and closed the doors on the prying cameras and the asshole watching. I stared at the ceiling, a peace overcoming me. Pulling the comforter under my chin, I smiled at the glow-in-the-dark stars I’d stuck to the closet walls and roof. I stared until my eyes grew heavy. I stared until sleep finally claimed me and dreams of memories not lost or forgotten played their familiar slideshow.

  Chapter 4

  THEN

  Glass shattered in a violent explosion against the front door. Stumbling back down the steps, I contemplated running. My father’s drunken rage exploded from every crack of the house, the neighbors closing their curtains and their hearts to the abuse occurring virtually on their doorstep.

  “What do ya want from me?” he shouted. “Huh? What the fuck do you want?” His demands were following by sickening thuds and more glass breaking against walls.

  “We need money!” my mother pleaded. She used to have a voice, but now she was a mere shell of herself, her conviction, weak and almost pathetic. “We have nothing.”

  Standing with my back against the paint-peeled door, I listened to the scuffle that followed. I couldn’t see it, but I knew exactly what was happening. My mother would be doing her best to escape her drunken husband. She’d be pleading, both when he had his hand over mouth or circled around her neck. She’d be crazed and rattling off dazed mumbles after her head had been smashed into a wall. He’d be grunting his drunken slurs, calling her every filthy name he could recall, and looking for anything to smash across the face of the woman he’d married.

  The street lamps flickered on, buzzing in an otherwise quiet neighborhood. I was never in a hurry to get home to the daily abuse. When I wasn’t with Romeo, I was studying in the school’s library until the librarians were virtually closing the doors on me.

  I loved my mother. But she didn’t love me enough to leave the bastard. She didn’t love herself enough to care.

  White-knuckled, my heart stopped when things fell silent. It meant one of two things if I could no longer hear my mother’s whimpering. She’d either given up and hidden herself away, or my father had knocked her out cold.

  Dropping my school bag and armed with the courage no ninth grader should ever have to possess, I opened the front door a fraction to see if the hall was clear. I tiptoed in to see the living room in complete disarray, shards of glass lodging in my rubber soles. Crouching at the sofa, I searched underneath it, my hands desperately seeking the baseball bat I kept there for these very occasions. My mother and father never cleaned, so the likelihood of them finding it was slim to none.

  However, this time, that wasn’t the case.

  “Shit,” I murmured angrily, sinking lower in case it had rolled to the other side. Still nothing.

  The crunch of glass under a heavy boot told me I should never have entered the house.

  “Looking for this?”

  I turned to the sound of the wooden bat slapping into his palm. My heart was thudding so hard it felt like it was going to burst from my chest. I scurried back creating some distance between us, shards of glass piercing my palms.

  “I gotta tell ya, Lucy,” he slurred. “I thought you were just like your mother. All weak and shit.” His eyes fell to the bat then back to me. “But now I see you’re just like your old man.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Only what she deserved.” His stare took an even more sinister turn. “Now tell me what you deserve.” Although his threat was loaded with promise I had no doubt he’d deliver on, I did notice a slight sway in his stance.

  “Why do you have to do this?” I asked while staggering to my feet. He lunged forward which caused me to stumble, the rug slipping under my feet.

  “This is my fucking house,” he roared, contempt for both my mother and me. We were the cause of his drunken stupors. We were the reason he hadn’t made anything of himself. We were the reason he couldn’t hold down a steady job.
“Why don’t you both leave me the fuck alone?” He swung the bat and instinctively, I raised my arm to stop it from hitting my face. It connected with a sickening blow to my forearm, excruciating pain radiating through my entire body. Although it didn’t feel like it, it could have been a lot worse. Combined with being drunk, my father’s shoe had caught the bunched-up rug when he advanced forward, throwing him off-balance and weakening the force behind the swing. He fell to the left in a big heap, his head striking the wooden coffee table.

  Holding my arm, I rocked back and forth, hoping and praying the asshole was dead. Luck wasn’t on my side. Blood seeped from his temple as he tried to sit straight. He was dazed but not dazed enough that he’d call it a night.

  “I’m gonna fucking kill you both.” He meant it. The monster inside of him would never rest until he did.

  I couldn’t stay. If mom was knocked out, then good, he’d leave her alone. But as long as I was still conscious, he’d keep coming after me. The glass that was already lodged in my soles, stabbed through to my feet, but the pain was nothing compared to that of my arm. Staggering across the living room, I turned back to see my father trying to balance on his feet.

  He smiled like I imagined a cold-blooded killer would moments before he’d strike, his fingers touching his temple wound. “You’ll pay for that, you little bitch. I’m gonna make you hurt.”

  In that moment, I felt a passionate hate for a man who was supposed to love me. And fear. Fear that one day he’d see through his promise and end my mother and me once and for all.

  So, I took off my ruined shoes and I ran.

  Cutting through the overgrown grass, I put as much distance between us as possible. Running track at school had always given me the advantage when fleeing for my life, adrenaline my only ally. I sprinted until I found myself outside Romeo’s house on the other side of the block. When the adrenaline wore off, the pain in my arm returned and this time, with a vengeance. I doubled over, cradling my forearm and sobbing hard. Sitting in the gutter, just out of the glow of the street lamp, I closed my eyes and wished for a better place. A better life.

  I needed that scholarship if I ever stood a chance of escaping this neighborhood and my father. The sad reality was, I didn’t know if I would live to see if I got accepted or not.

  “Lucy?” Wiping my sodden face on my shirt, I turned to a concerned and confused Romeo. “Lucy, what’s happened?” He crouched in front of me, cupping my cheeks with both hands. “What did he do to you?”

  I swallowed the hard lump. “I can’t go home, Romeo.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  I nodded, still sobbing.

  “Show me.”

  He gently held my injured arm and assessed the damage. The baseball bat had split the skin, sticky, dark blood coating my arm, bruising and swelling already taking shape.

  “That fucking asshole,” Romeo seethed, moisture glistening his eyes. He turned his head quickly to blink away tears. Romeo was quick to go into battle, unafraid of being hurt if it meant he was seeking justice. He was also quick to take on my pain. If my heart broke, so would his. If I cried tears of anger, so would he. But Romeo was also quick to be my protector. “Come on,” he said, putting on a brave face. He wrapped an arm around my waist, lifted me to my feet and guided me to the front door.

  Unlike my house, Romeo’s was a traditional Mexican house in a neighborhood that was mostly post-war houses. His dad, a builder, had transformed it into something that felt more like a home. All arches and pale-yellow render. Colorful religious trinkets were dotted around the house and statues stood proud in their white rock gardens.

  “Mami,” Romeo yelled. “Mami!”

  Moments later, with eyes wide in concern, his mother ran down the hall from the kitchen. Wearing an apron and wiping her hands, she cursed in Spanish.

  “Miho, what’s happened?”

  Romeo turned to me for answers since I hadn’t told him much. “A baseball bat,” was all I could manage before it brought on another wave of pain.

  Mrs. Sanchez rushed forward and gently studied my injured arm. She was an EMT nurse who had the patience of a saint when it came to those in need, but it didn’t take long before her face turned to a bitter scowl.

  “Did that no good asshole do this to you?” Mrs. Sanchez was a very religious woman and would clip the ear of anyone who cussed, except for when it came to my father. When it came to him, she would unleash a fury that would have God himself shitting his pants.

  I nodded, my thoughts falling to my mother. I wondered if she still had a pulse or if she would wake in a pool of her own blood.

  “The good news is, it’s not broken. But… the piece of…” she eyed the two of us before correcting herself, “… he came very close to it.”

  I could thank the trip-hazard rug for being my saving grace this time.

  Mrs. Sanchez sat me at the dining table as Romeo’s father walked in. He stopped at the threshold, a newspaper in hand, glasses lowered on his nose and confusion on his handsome face. “Que pasa?” he asked with his thick accent.

  Mrs. Sanchez threw her hands around in frustration as she rummaged through the kitchen cupboard for her medical kit. Her Spanish was angry and rapid and although I was sitting on an A in Mr. Estaban’s class, I failed to keep up.

  “What’s she saying?” I whispered to Romeo who was smiling at his mother’s outburst. It was clear who Romeo inherited his anger from.

  He cleared his throat, unsure if he should repeat. “She, um… she…”

  “Just tell me.”

  “She said ‘that dickless bastard of a man needs to be’—”

  “Romeo!” Mrs. Sanchez reprimanded over her shoulder, arms outstretched to reach the medical kit in the highest cupboard.

  He grinned and despite everything, I found it infectious. “See? She can say it but I can’t.”

  “That’s probably a good thing. You get into enough trouble as it is.”

  He cheekily stuck his tongue out at me and I returned the gesture.

  Mrs. Sanchez started preparing bits and pieces, all while lost in a heated Spanish discussion with herself. I admired this lady who wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone. Hell has no fury like an angry Mrs. Sanchez.

  For the next ten minutes we sat in silence, me too numb to talk. Romeo held my good hand and didn’t flinch once when I squeezed tight, alcohol stinging the open wound. Mr. Sanchez paced back and forth in the kitchen while trying to convince the police to check on the state of my mother. Somehow the conversation had turned into him being asked questions about his whereabouts, and his relationship with my mother.

  Once the bandage was clasped and mugs of hot chocolate were slid in front of us, Romeo led me out to the backyard and to a place we called our second home, Neverland. Neverland was an old treehouse built well before the Sanchezes moved in, but it was a place I’d often come to when escaping my father’s drunken tirades.

  At the base of the ladder, Romeo pivoted to face me, his eyes wide like he had just recalled something. “I need you to stay here a moment.”

  I giggled at his urgency. “Why?”

  “Just two seconds, that’s all I need.”

  I watched in amusement as he hurriedly climbed the ladder and disappeared inside. A light flicked on and moments later, he stuck his head out the door. “Ready.”

  “All that just to turn on the light?” It was a lamp we’d been allowed to borrow from the house, extension leads running the length of the tree and across the yard.

  “Look to the left,” he said with a knowing smile. I did as told and noticed a wooden tray, the same as we’d made in woodwork at school, except this was attached to ropes.

  “Is this a lazy butler?” I asked, impressed by Romeo’s recent addition to the treehouse.

  “Sure is. Put the hot chocolates on the tray and watch the magic happen.”

  “Magic is a bit of a stretch, but I’m seriously impressed either way.”

  I knew what he was doing. Romeo was
the king of distraction. He’s made it his personal life’s mission to replace my shitty memories with ones to cherish. And this was just another one of those occasions.

  “Just come on, and be careful.”

  Wrapping my arm around the ladder allowed me to maintain a one-handed balance as I climbed each rung. When I got to the top, I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull myself up.

  “Take my hand,” Romeo offered as he heaved me inside with an awkward struggle.

  We’d done the treehouse up nice. It had all the modern comforts my own home lacked. None of what it contained was brand new, but Romeo was a wiz with fixing things. We wriggled onto the mattress loaded with cushions and we sat facing each other in silence. It was easy but also melancholic. Sad and reflective. The truth was, I didn’t know what my future held. And while Romeo could always heal me in many ways, I still had a battle ahead.

  “Your mom is so good to me,” I whispered.

  “You were born into the wrong family, Lucy.” He reached forward and gently tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re too good for this world. I promise you one day, we’ll leave this place.”

  “Together?”

  “Always together.”

  My mind became drunk with dreams of a better life with Romeo by my side. His life wasn’t easy either. While he had two loving parents who would do anything to see him succeed, he and his family were often the victims of racial attacks and prejudice. Mr. Sanchez has been unemployed for almost a year. A builder, he was unable to find work in his field, usually dismissed while he sat in the interview waiting rooms. He wasn’t a prideful man, however, taking work at the milk bar until the locals complained and threatened not to return, forcing the owner to fire him.

  We both had our struggles and that’s why the chance of receiving scholarships was so important to us.

  “If you could go anywhere, where would it be?”

  He considered my question carefully. “I’d like to go anywhere as long as we’re near each other. I love the country. You love the stars. So somewhere where we can see them glistening.”