In the evening, Marilyn didn't mention Michael or the fact that he had been at their house in the afternoon to her parents with as much as a single word. It wasn't that she felt the need to hide it from them - after all, her mother knew about the bicycle accident and had even met him that very night. But Marilyn just couldn't wrap her head around the whole thing yet, and somehow she didn't want anyone else to form an opinion on the matter until she herself had decided what to make of it. It seemed as if the happenings of that afternoon weren't tightly woven into reality, yet, and she feared that they would somehow tear loose and become fantasy altogether, if she as much as thought about them too much. So she kept them to herself.

When she went to bed, fear of Monday at school started to mix with her thoughts of Michael. As nice as it had been to have him face Brian and his friends for her, he wouldn't be around to defend her at school. Without Michael around, they would probably treat her twice as bad. Yes, they'd probably be furious!

But Marilyn was exhausted from crying and from the excitement of the day, and so she fell asleep almost instantly.

Her parents had made plans for the weekend, and she managed to push her worries away and enjoy herself. But her fears returned with full force the very moment she woke up on Monday morning. Going to school had always been accompanied by a more or less strong feeling of unease, but on that particular morning Marilyn was downright afraid. It was the physical part of their attack the previous day in her driveway that scared her. What would their revenge for Michael spoiling their fun be? For a moment Marilyn seriously considered skipping school - just staying home, as her parents had both left for work already as she came downstairs - but they would eventually find out. And thinking about it while staring into her cooling coffee, she had to admit that she was even more afraid of her father's reaction once he did find out, than she was of Brian, Peter, Thomas or anyone else at school.

By the time Marilyn had decided that she would have to go to school after all, it was already quite late, and she had to hurry not to be tardy. When she entered the classroom, a little out of breath from running up the stairs, the second bell had already rung, and everybody was seated, but the teacher wasn't there, and the students were talking among themselves.

She almost thought she'd make it to her desk unnoticed. But just as she turned into her aisle, Brian leaned back in his seat on the other end of the room.

"Ey, ugly-Edmond! Where's your boyfriend?" he called.

Marilyn looked at him and made an irritated face, as if he was just getting on her nerves very badly, although in truth she was frightened to the point of trembling. She rolled her eyes, turned her back on him and sat down. Then she focused a concentrated stare into her book bag as she took out her folder, books and pens and laid them out carefully on her desk, trying to brace herself for the shower of insults and snide comments that was to come.

But it didn't come. Brian mumbled a little something like, "Who'd think ugly-Edmond'd find a lover?", but then he turned back to Peter and Thomas, who were discussing the last football match their school had lost, and all the things Thomas, who was captain of the team since the beginning of the semester, planned to do to prevent that from happening again.

In the aisle to Marilyn's left, two seats in front of her, Melissa turned. "Marilyn, you have a boyfriend?" she asked in a conspiratorial, girlish tone.

"Oh, Brian is just being stupid again," Marilyn tried to do away with the topic, feeling odd in the unusual situation. The teacher came to her help entering the room and loudly starting the lesson the moment he stepped through the door.

"Good morning. Kim, what was your homework for today?" he bellowed over the chatter causing it to die down almost instantly as he strode towards the front, not caring about a few 'Good Mornings' that were mumbled in response to his greeting.

"To read and summarize chapter 12 and to answer the questions at the bottom of the chapter," Kim answered dutifully.

"Thank you. Peter, what are your findings concerning Question 1?"

"No, seriously, Marilyn?" Melissa whispered, when the teacher had reached his desk in the opposite corner of the room, and was focusing his attention on Peter "Do you?"

"Melissa! Class has started for you, too! As Peter's answer is rather short - again! -, let us hear your answer."

When the teacher proceeded quizzing the other end of the class again, Melissa turned back to Marilyn with a questioning and encouraging look on her face. She still didn't seem to have lost interest in the topic. Marilyn gave her an indecisive shrug that could have meant anything, and looked down at her homework.

But Melissa kept looking back at Marilyn whenever the teacher turned the other way, and Marilyn smiled a little. She wasn't sure at what, maybe it was the attention she was suddenly getting form Melissa, maybe it was because she somehow felt a little embarrassed, but Melissa's smile told her that she interpreted it differently - and maybe she interpreted it just right.

In the afternoon, Marilyn went to the nearest mall. She didn't really like to go there, because it was where the students from her school would hang out, and she didn't feel like running into them without need. But curiosity about Michael and the Jackson Five had gotten the better of her, and so she decided to go and roam the record store.

Walking through the mall, drifting along with the masses, Marilyn thought about what Brian had said: Ey, ugly-Edmond! Where's your boyfriend?And she thought about Melissa's smile.

Of course Michael wasn't her boyfriend. They didn't even know each other. She had only met him twice. How often did one have to meet someone to be boyfriend and girlfriend? Certainly more often than just twice - and the first time she had met him didn't even count. And he was a star. He had a record deal and awards and Golden Records and all that kind of stuff. He was from an entirely different world, a world of lights and smoke and stardust. Marilyn was just a High School student, one of many, one of hundreds and thousands - and not even a popular one at that. Ugly-Edmond. Her life was small and unimportant and uninteresting.

Who'd think ugly-Edmond'd find a lover?Yes, who would think?

If you have a problem with Marilyn, come to me.

Marilyn was smiling to herself as the hallway opened into a wider area with a glass ceiling and a round flowerbed in the middle, that was surrounded by benches. This was the place where students would hang out most often. Firstly, because the record store was nearby - Marilyn could already see the huge black record and the yellow writing of the store front through the palm trees in the flowerbed -, and secondly, because 'The Indian Elephant' was right opposite it.

'The Indian Elephant' was a tea parlour where college students and really cool High Schoolers went to sit on cushions at low tables and drink Indian teas, or to work to pay their tuition fees. It was the place. It was decorated in a mix of Indian folklore and the latest Hippie Flower-Power style, in colors of dark red and warm orange. Marilyn, of course, had never been inside.

The less cool High Schoolers however, which was the vast majority, would from time to time sit outside on the benches, half way between the record store and 'The Indian Elephant', chat and dream of what it would be like to either be a college student or cool enough to go inside nonetheless or to have the money to buy the latest single, and do whatever it is that bored High School students do, and that Marilyn had no knowledge of.

She scanned the benches from a little way off, but she couldn't make out any familiar faces. And so she quickened her pace, passed through the dreaded area and entered the record store.

The strong, heady smell of cherry incense engulfed her while the latest import album lying on the shop tender's turn table filled the air with music so brand new, it wasn't even released on the US market yet. The tables, the shelves and the walls, every little space was occupied by album covers, their elaborate designs and artistic photos all made and meant to stand out, and yet all drowning in the visual overload they created.

What the toy store was to children, was the record store to young adults. The place made Marilyn look around in awe whenever she entered it. There was so much to see, and so much one might want to buy. But normally a teenager could maybe afford to buy an album every now and then, and more often all they could buy was a single. Marilyn smiled as she walked through between the tables, passed other young men and women studying covers or pulling records from their sleeves to inspect the black surface for possible scratches. For once her never going to lunch paid off - literally. She reckoned that she had money to buy as much as two albums if she wanted to, maybe even a single or two on top of that, if she went to the back room where the records and singles, that were on sale, were kept.

"What can I do for you, ma'am?" asked the tender, a young man with long blond hair, who smelled of pot so strongly, even the cherry incense couldn't disguise it.

"I'd like to have a look at some Jackson Five records. What d'ya have?"

"Jackson Five. Sure. The Motown sound. That'd be this way."

"Well, there's been nothing new by them since spring last year," he started his professional chatter, when they approached a shelf, "but we have their last album here, that's 'Moving Violation'," he pulled the record out and handed it to Marilyn, "and we have their previous one, too, that would be 'Dancing Machine', right here." With secure fingers he pulled a second record from the little box in the rack. "'Dancing Machine' was actually pretty good, if you want my opinion," Marilyn didn't, but she kept it to herself, "and 'Moving Violation' - well, if you like it, you like it, and if you don't... You know what I mean. And of course we have the older albums here as well, if you want to have a look at any of them. As for singles... You would have to have a look at the back room, I'm afraid. As I said, there's been nothing new since spring last year, so..." He looked at Marilyn.

"That'll be fine, thanks. There's been nothing new since last year? How come?"

"Well, most of the Motown acts are having problems lately. Music is changing. The 60ies are over. People want happy music, light music, disco stuff. Motown is soul, hardworking Chicago-, Detroit-soul. But the 70ies have caught up with them, too. Nowadays the Motown acts have town houses in sunny LA and more money than my old man will earn in a lifetime of hard work."

Looking at the guy with his over grown hair, his plain t-shirt and his flares, Marilyn thought that his old man probably didn't earn too much.

"Motown is Hollywood, now," he continued with a shrug, "and not just geographically. They're holding on to their hardworking image, but it's just that, an image. Acting, pretence, like everything in Hollywood. And it just doesn't sit right."

After the young man had left Marilyn alone, she pulled all the albums from the shelf and looked at the covers. There he was: Michael. Michael! Michael as a little boy, Michael as a teen, Michael as she knew him. She flicked through the records watching him mature and diminish to a child again. He had been a cute kid. But - Gosh! - he was cute now, too. On the album covers she could look at him all she wanted, his face, his eyes, his lips, his teeth - and his body; his lean body in tight shirts.

Then, with her arm full of albums, she went to find a free record player to listen to him.

"You do mean business, don't you?" commented the store tender with a side glance at the six or seven albums Marilyn was carrying as he handed her a pair of headphones.

"Yeah, it's for a school project," she lied. She didn't even know why she bothered lying. After all, it was none of the guy's business how many records she wanted to listen to. But somehow this felt much more personal than buying a record normally did, almost as if the store tender could tell what was on her mind just from looking at her. And she didn't want him to know.

When Marilyn left the record store, she was two new records the richer and a considerable amount of money poorer, but the latter didn't bother her for a moment. She had Michael. She had bought the Jackson Five's two last albums, no matter what the store tender thought of them, because the man singing on them was closest to the Michael she had met. It was his voice. She had stood among all the other people in the store and had heard his voice inside her headphones singing just for her. She had had to share him with nobody else. It was wonderful.

She carried the albums like raw eggs, just so nothing should happen to them. She couldn't wait to get home and turn the music up loud. She couldn't wait...

"...Ugly-Edmond!"

Marilyn stopped dead. She had been too deep in thought to check the benches upon leaving the store. Now Samantha, with Brina in tow, casually strolled over to her. As if they hadn't had more than their fill when they had ruined her hair, here they came again!

"You know," Samantha said in an accusing tone, "I called you 'Marilyn' like five times, but you didn't react. You only reacted once I called you 'ugly-Edmond'. You don't need to be surprised that people call you that, if you don't answer to anything else, you know?"

Marilyn sure didn't answer to that.

"You bought a record? What did you buy? Can I see?"

"Well, actually, I..." Marilyn would have loved to say, no, but Samantha was already reaching out for them and the only way Marilyn could have stopped her would have been by holding on tightly - which would have looked really strange. So she watched Samantha take her new Jackson Five albums out of her hands and felt helpless.

"Oh, you bought two, even? What is it? Jackson Five? Are they new?"

Marilyn hated it. She hadn't even listened to them completely, yet. They were hers! She didn't want Samantha to touch them, desecrate them. She didn't like the way Samantha inspected them, pulled them out of their covers, yes, even pulled them out of their sleeves touching the grooves. What did she do that for, anyway? Did she think she could 'see' the music in the grooves somehow? Or was she checking, if Marilyn had been sold a bad, scratched record?

"Oh, but they're old! Both! If I had money to buy two albums, I'd know what I would buy. Certainly not some from last year. Why did you buy these?" Samantha asked as if she had never heard of someone doing anything remotely as stupid. But instead of returning the records to Marilyn, whose fingers were itching to have them back, she casually handed first one, then the other over to Brina for consideration.

Marilyn tried a casual shrug and wasn't sure she succeeded. "I like them."

She watched the albums like a hawk. She was so worried they might get damaged or even break. She had spent all her money on them and had been so looking forward to listening, she was certain she would start crying there and then, if something happened to them - to the records themselves, or the covers with Michael on them.

"Really, Marilyn, they're old," Brina echoed. "Why?"

Because I wanted to have them, Marilyn thought, but didn't say it. It was too obvious.

"Brian says you have a boyfriend..." said Samantha. The change of topic caught Marilyn off guard.

"If that's what Brian says..."

"But Melissa says it's not true," Samantha continued.

Marilyn just shrugged and said nothing. She didn't want to talk about it - with nobody, least of all with Samantha and Brina.

"So, is it true?"

"What do you think?" Marilyn said dryly.

"I think it's not true!"

Marilyn clenched her teeth. "Whatever you want to believe. Well, could I just have my records back, Brina? I sort of have to go..."

"Well, it doesn't take long to say yes or no!" said Samantha.

Marilyn shrugged again. She wanted to leave as quickly as possible.

Brina was making a movement as if she wanted to return the albums after all, when something caught her attention and she and Samantha turned the other way. Marilyn looked, too.

In the door of the Indian Elephant, Josie was breaking away from a conversation with a guy, who walked back into the tea parlour. The back of his Indian blouse gave him away as a waiter in the place.

Of course, thought Marilyn, Josie would be the kind to go there.

"Hello, Josie," said Brina, still holding Marilyn's records. Couldn't she just give them back?

Josie hesitated for a moment, but then decided to join them. A whiff of patchouli came with her as she did. "What ya doin'?"

"Nothing much," said Samantha. "Marilyn bought two records." And as if on command, Brina handed them to Josie.

Next one please, thought Marilyn in despair.

Josie made eye contact with Marilyn. "Oh, hi. I didn't actually see you there. So, you guys have been shopping?" With that Josie looked down at the covers in her hands.

"Oh, no. We just met Marilyn accidentally," said Brina. "The albums are old," she added, "Don't know why she bought them."

"Well," said Josie not looking up from studying the back cover of 'Dancing Machine', "you don't always have enough money when they are new. At least I don't."

"Are you here with Thomas?" asked Samantha apparently looking for a new topic.

"No."

"Oh? Why not?"

Josie turned 'Moving Violation' over to study the back of that. At least she was more careful with Marilyn's things. "He's at training."

Even when Thomas wasn't around, Marilyn seemingly couldn't escape him.

"Aww, I'm sure you miss him, don't you? He's at training a lot since we lost the last two games, I bet."

So the school had lost two games? It had passed Marilyn by completely. And she couldn't have cared less, either. She wanted her albums back, and then she wanted to leave.

Josie looked up and smiled. "He's the captain of the team. So he should be there. Also, he's aiming for a football scholarship to go to college. So, yeah."

As far as Marilyn was concerned, he could have entered college tomorrow - Ah! - today, as long as it was in a place far away from her. Alaska, maybe. Did they have football scholarships for Alaska? Whatever.

"I'm sorry, but I really have to go. There's something my father wants me to do for him," she lied. "So, yeah. Could I just have my albums back, please?"

"Oh, yes, I'm sorry," Josie handed them back immediately. "I'm sure they're good."

"So, yeah? Are you copying Josie now?" Brina eyed the records. For someone who considered them old, she was showing quite some interest in them. "Well, I don't mind," Josie said, but Brina pretended to have missed it.

"Your father?" asked Samantha with a snort.

"Yes, my father!" Marilyn returned sternly, clutching her records and pretending to have missed Brina's remark in turn.

Brina giggled.

"What's so funny about that?" Marilyn spit suddenly.

"Oh, nothing. Nothing at all! Calm down, Marilyn!"

"Well, I've got to go, too," Josie said interrupting the arising dispute. "You don't have a car, Marilyn, do you? I don't think I live too far from you. Do you want me to give you a ride?"

"No-it's-okay-thanks-I-got-to-go-bye," Marilyn murmured and, hugging the albums to her chest, marched off in a random and actually wrong direction, imagining, yes, almost feeling three pairs of eyes drilling holes into her back. She didn't want to turn and pass them again, so she kept walking down the hall until she reached the exit and then rounded the entire mall on the outside.

When she was finally home, she got herself a glass of lemonade - the same kind she had been drinking with Michael the previous day -, put one of her new albums on the record player, sat down on the sofa and placed the two album covers neatly next to each other on the living room table. And then she listened - B-side after A-side, album after album, and then everything all over again and again until her parents came home.

Never once did she think about the fact that she would have had homework to do.

That evening at dinner, Marilyn was so full of things she wanted to share with somebody but knew nobody with whom she could have shared them, that she couldn't wait to tell her parents.

"Michael was here to repair and pick up his bike," she started out when asked about her day. She didn't mention that he had been there on Friday already.

"Michael?" asked her father without looking up from his dinner, "Who is Michael?"

"Michael is a young man," said Marilyn.

Now her father did look up. "And he has a bike, I take it. Is there anything else worth knowing about this Michael? Something like a family name, maybe?"

Marilyn smiled. "Jackson. His family name is Jackson, dad. And he's a musician. A singer."

"A singer? Well, in my time boys were quarterbacks or something along that line, but times change, I guess. Does he go to your school?"

"No, dad, he doesn't go to my school. He's a musician. I mean, really! He makes records with his brothers. They are the Jackson Five!"

Her father stopped eating and put his cutlery down. "He makes records," he stated doubtfully. "Well, has he made a record, yet, then?"

"Oh, yes, yes! Plenty of, actually. He's Michael Jackson from the Jackson Five, dad. They make soul music. The Jackson Five, dad!"

"Do I have to know them?"

"They're a band of children," Marilyn's mother explained. "Marilyn, he probably just said that to impress you."

"Oh Gosh, no, mum!" Marilyn jumped up from her chair and went to get 'Moving Violation'. On the cover Michael and his brothers were shown in a vintage car, apparently having just hit a police officer on a motorcycle. She thought the cover fit the situation pretty well. "Here, mum, look. That's him right there."

Her mother looked at the album cover. "Well, it's hard to tell from that, love."

Annoyed, Marilyn turned the album over. There were more photos on the back. "Mum, look at it! You're a doctor! You said a doctor has to be able to recognize people's faces so they don't accidentally take the wrong leg off the wrong patient. Look at it."

"I never quite said that."

"You keep saying exactly that, mum!"

Her mother sighed and looked at the album again. "Well, yes, it could be him..." she admitted. "Or someone who looks like him."

"I drove him home, mom! He entered the house. It's really him!

"You drove him home?" her father interrupted. "I have just heard of this young man for the first time ever, and it turns out your mother knows him, you have been at his house and he has a bicycle at my house! Mind you telling me what this is all about?"

Marilyn laughed. "No, dad, it's not like that! He almost ran me over with his bike the other night and fell off and damaged the bike. So he left it here, and I drove him home. I just drove him there. I wasn't 'at his house'. Well, I was 'at' his house, I guess, but not inside. Oh, you know what I mean! It's not like that!"

"Did he hurt you?" Her father was sitting much straighter on his chair now.

"No, Dad! No, he swerved at the last moment. He fell off because he was avoiding me. That's how mum met him. Because I brought him here after he fell off his bike."

"Well, how is he doing?" asked her mother, and Marilyn happily chattered on about him having a concussion and his strained wrist and cracked ribs. For a moment she thought about telling them about how he had defended her against her classmates, but somehow she thought that her father might get it wrong and think bad of Michael for threatening others to start a fight. One never knew which way parents took things.

"I don't like the thought of you being out in the street alone at night," her father stated, oblivious of what she had just said about Michael's condition. "A girl shouldn't be out alone after dark. It's too dangerous. Why were you out there at all?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I wanted to catch some fresh air, that's all. And I was just walking around the streets in the neighborhood. I didn't go far."

"It's not the neighbors I worry about, Marilyn. It's the people that don't live around here and that might be hanging around the streets at night. If you can't sleep and want some fresh air, please go out to the yard, and don't wander around abandoned streets."

"Your father has a good point, there, dear," said her mother. "You should listen to him!"

Right, thought Marilyn. Of course her mother would take her father's side. Instantly! In the night Michael had been there, she had said nothing like that, but now it was such a good point!

"As you met him, what did you think of him?" Marilyn's father continued, after he had picked up eating again.

"Well, he seemed decent enough...," her mother said. "At least he was polite, and you can't say that of every young man these days. He also didn't smell like he needed a shower - and there's no need for you to roll your eyes, Marilyn! You wouldn't believe what some people smell like when they go to see a doctor. You would think they haven't seen a bar of soap in their life." Then she looked at 'Moving Violation' again, that was still lying by the side of the table and after a moment slowly shook her head. "You know, that could actually be him..."

~~~~~

Hello, dear readers! <3

I'm so happy to see you here again! Thank you for reading! :D

This chapter has 4,558 words, and it's thus by far the longest chapter of this story (until now, anyway). I know you all probably want to read about Michael more, than about anything else, and he'll be in the next chapter again! :D So please come back for it! This chapter is full of information that this story is built around, and which we need to know to understand why the characters do, what they do - including Michael. So I hope you enjoyed the chapter, nonetheless. :)

By the way, Samantha and Brina, I really wanted to punch their faces when I wrote this! XD Did you feel the same??

As always, votes are very welcome, so if you enjoyed reading, please consider to vote! It puts a smile on my face. :)

All kind of comments, good or bad, are always welcome, too. So if there's something you would like to say, please comment, whatever it is! :)

I hope you'll have a wonderful week and a lovely day! See you soon! <3

Much Love, Birdie <33