Being with Michael: Part 1 (Book Two)

Chapter Sixty Seven

Javon loses sight of Paige for a while until he sees her car weaving around other cars at the bottom of a hill.

"Where the hell is she going?" He thinks aloud.

They start to get to the lower-income sector right outside of LA. Paige suddenly takes a left turn and Javon gets stopped at a red light.

When the light turns green and he makes the turn, he runs into a small, meager town with empty buildings on both sides of the road.

As Javon drives down the two-lane road, the SUV rocks as it drives over cracks and potholes.

He approaches what seems to be the center of the small town. There's a post office, a diner, a mini-mart, and a gas station. All are old and outdated, but still look quaint put together.

Javon looks past the couple buildings and realizes the area is surrounded by houses that look like they've come from a public housing project.

He turns down one of the roads hoping to spot Paige.

On the other end of the town, Paige pulls up to a house and parks on the side of the road in front of it.

She sits in the seat and stares at the house, noticing that nothing about it has changed besides the addition of dirt on its siding.

She was kind of hoping it would look different now. Memories of her childhood and her parents come flooding back to her.
Only blurs represent her parents in her memories because she can't remember what they even looked like now.

As she's staring at the house, the front door opens with a big man stepping out.

Shit, she thinks.

She can hear the girl's voice in her head.

What's her name again? Paige struggles to remember.

But she hears her saying, "You're a celebrity now and nobody's seen you in like a year, so if you just walk out it's going to be crazy."

But Paige knows she looks suspicious being camped out in front of their house, so she can't just drive away. Especially since her car is as noticeable as it is in this neighborhood.

She sees the guy starting to walk down the driveway towards her, so she gets out of the car hoping to give a quick excuse and drive off.

She closes the car door behind her and the man says, "That's a nice car you got there."

"Uh, thank you," Paige replies.

"What's it doing here?" He asks, using his hand to motion across the houses.

"I was just checking this place out. This is where I grew up and I hadn't seen it for a while," she says.

"Why the hell would you want to come back here? I mean, you must be successful if you own that ca-" The man pauses.

Paige frowns.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" He asks.

"No, you do not," Paige says rather curtly.

"Yes, I do. You're Michael Jackson's wife!" He smiles and becomes giddy like a little school boy.

"No, I'm not. That's not me," Paige shakes her head and tries to turn to get back into her car.

When she's opening the door, the man shouts out, "HEY!"

Paige looks up only to see a camera flash in her eye.

She doesn't know what to do, so she gets in the car and starts it up.

The man is still taking pictures of her when Javon pulls around the corner.

He jumps out of the car and runs over to the man, wrestling him for the phone and yelling at him to delete the pictures.

Paige seizes the opportunity and drives off to get out of the neighborhood.

Javon gets hold of the man's phone and deletes the pictures. He throws it back at him and sighs knowing he has to go find Paige again.

He hops back in the SUV and drives off in the direction she went.

He drives around for fifteen more minutes and still can't find her. He calls Bill.

"I had her and then I lost her. Ask the boss if he has an idea where she might be," he tells him.

"Okay, hold on," Bill says. Javon hears muffled voices through the phone, but he can definitely distinguish the tone Michael has when he's upset about something in the background.

"Okay," Bill says to him, "Mr. Jackson said there's a park by her house that she might be at. He said it's down an old one-lane road in the woods. That's all he knows."

Javon looks around. To the right is a road that leads back to the city. The neighborhood they were just in is on the left, and some woods are beyond it.

"Okay, I might be close. I'll update you," he says.