"But Mom! I just wanted to look like you!" Tyler whines as he flops his head against his pillow. Mal sits down on the bed with a sigh to talk to him.
"That's not a good way to do it, Beastie. Mommy doesn't like people knowing she has those marks."
"Why? They tell everyone that you can kick their butts!" Tyler wrinkles his nose up as he starts to howl. He's still perturbed by Ben hauling him into the bathroom and scrubbing off every mark with a loofah, leaving sensitive skin behind.
"People already know that, Tyler. Those marks just tell them that someone hurt me. When you came in today, you told everyone that I had been hurt." Mal struggles to explain. Zach understood from the beginning that you don't talk about things that hurt other people, but Tyler struggles to understand the concept.
"But it was a long time ago!"
"But it still hurts me, Tyler."
"Maybe you should get over it." Tyler crosses his arms and glares at her. Mal sighs and struggles to keep a biting remark in the back of her throat. 'Isle remarks' she calls them. Things she would say if she'd never left.
"Maybe you should be more kind," She responds instead, rising to take her leave. She'll try again tomorrow when he's hopefully calmed down more. Unfortunately, Tyler jumps up, scrambles to the end of his bed, and shakes the footboard on it as he starts to scream after her:
"You're not kind! Dad's the nice one around here! You're just the mean, nasty, stupid dragon!" He leans from side-to-side to ram the bed into the wall and Mal waves her hand at it so he can't damage the sheetrock. That only incites him to drive it harder against the wall.
"Goodnight, Tyler." She flicks the light off.
"If you want to die then go ahead because I won't care!" Tyler screams with giant crocodile tears streaming down his face. Mal moves to close the door quickly to hide her tears, but a large hand appears in the center of the door and flings it back open. The handle slams into the wall and breaks off, clattering to the floor. Ben pushes her aside - not roughly, just guiding her over a few feet - and then blazes into the room and snatches Tyler by the back of his shirt. Her six-year-old lets out a piercing howl of protest that leaves her ears ringing. Ben growls right back. She's never seen him so angry. His face is so red and purple it looks like it's bruised over and swollen. He looks taller than he is with his big hands shaking like he's his own personal earthquake.
Mal turns away and leans against the wall, staring at the opposite side of the hallway as she hears a resounding smack echo from inside the room. Tyler's screaming cuts off and then he starts to cry. Meanwhile, Mal covers her ears and closes her eyes.
She and Ben are not above spanking the children for bad behavior, especially when things like death threats come into play. However, it's never really practiced. Zach obeys and listens and is calm. Tyler is the opposite, but he more often needs time to himself or a stern look from one of them. Not a thrashing, usually.
She hears another sharp smack echo from inside the room and flinches. Is she a bad mother, for letting Ben punish their son for his temper tantrum? It's not like she's her mother, digging knives into them and punishing them for using their full names and yelling at them every moment of every day, but she has to wonder if she's allowing the cycle of abuse to circle around to her offspring, even if it is turning a little more slowly now.
It seems like years have fallen off her lifespan before she hears Ben toss their sobbing child into his bed, yank his covers over him, and stomp to the door. "If I ever hear you speak to your mother like that again," he snaps, seizing the wobbly, broken door handle as he starts to step back into the hallway, "I will spank you until you are black and blue. You do not get to say things like that to her."
He slams the door so hard that the handle, already broken on the other side of the door, flies straight out of his hand and into the opposite wall. He cusses at it as it lands back at his feet and then kicks it down the hall toward the living room before stomping away. Usually, he'd stop to reassure her, but she just assumes he's too far pissed to even be able to control his voice and so she turns in the opposite direction to let a few tears slide down her cheeks.
Several minutes pass. She listens to Tyler crying in his room into his pillow and then slowly his hiccups stop and there's only soft breathing. Ben comes back into the hallway to turn off the hall light but doesn't say anything to her still. She glances down into the hole where the handle used to be and, using the hall nightlight to her advantage, makes out Tyler's body. He's lying on his belly with his face buried in the pillow and his arms encircling it, squeezing tight. He looks like he's asleep.
Mal pushes the door open with her foot and steps inside. Not a movement comes from Tyler as she walks to the side of his bed, bends down, and kisses his forehead. He almost scares her senseless when he rolls back over, sits up, wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve, and then leans forward to kiss her cheek before lying back down.
"Goodnight, Tyler," she whispers, running a hand down his back before standing up.
"Night mom," he whispers, snuggling his face closer to hers. She starts to leave, but before she can get out the door, she hears: "I didn't mean what I meant. I'd be very sad if you died."
It's such a small comment, but it makes her eyes fill with tears all over again. She barely makes it out the door in time.
Mal's small family tumbles through the front doors, dropping everything as they go. Ben is already on the couch, finishing up some paperwork, but he'll be moving to their room or his office now that the boys are here. Mal trips over Tyler's shoes, uses her feet to push them aside, raises the jumble of bags she's carrying over Zach as he leans down to untie his laces, and drops everything behind the couch with an exhausted sigh. Ben shuts his laptop and stands up to kiss her. "Guess what I did," He smiles as he picks up a bag with milk and orange juice in it.
"What did you do?" Mal groans, struggling to work her swollen feet out of her shoes.
"I booked a family vacation for four and a baby on a cruise," he announces. Both boys look up.
"What's a cruise?" Tyler asks.
"We're going on a boat?" Zach demands.
"A boat!" Tyler claps his hands to his cheeks in surprise.
"When?" Mal asks, picking up a bag of fresh fruit and furrowing her brow. "I'm having the baby next month."
"Not until July," Ben assures her. "And yeah, I know that they'll only be two months old, but I thought that it might be fun to get out with Zach and Tyler before..." He trails off, giving her a meaningful nod. Mal sighs as Zach pulls his phone out of his pocket to plug in.
"Before what?" he calls, skimming notifications from games and the news app.
Mal sighs and takes a seat as Ben takes the small collection of groceries into their kitchenette. They still eat most meals with Ben's parents as served by the staff, but it's good to have snacks around now that the boys are getting older. "Well, when your essay-writing is better, Dad and I were going to see if you'd like to go take classes at Auradon Accelerated," she admits, rubbing her hands on her knees and clearing her throat so it doesn't feel as tight. "We'd probably book you for morning classes because Tyler is going to have after-school things. You'd have your classes all day while he does his things." Her second child is struggling with math, so he's staying after school for a half-hour to get help. A theatre program was looking for kids to audition for their summer season, and he auditioned and got a small part that gives him enough time to walk with a friend to the theatre from the school after tutoring. If he likes it, he might do the next season's shows too. If not, he'll keep going to dance after school even though some of his other friends have dropped the class and are moving on to things like music and karate and computer-gaming clubs.
"You'd still have to keep up the guitar," Ben calls from the other room, though Zach doesn't look too put-out at the prospect as he smiles and nods eagerly. It's been several years he's been taking it now, and while he's nowhere near a mastery level, he's extremely proficient after so many long hours of practice. "And if you want to do piano, we'd have to balance that too. But it's an option."
"You don't have to do a full schedule either," Mal cautions. "Remember, you have to sit in the class and listen to the teacher to learn everything. If it's too hard to sit for so long, then we'll take you out of it."
"What if I don't know enough?" Zach frowns, folding his arms as he considers everything.
"You might have to get some extra help," Ben replies, walking over and setting his hands on Mal's shoulders. "You might have to stay after to talk to the professor or use your phone to do some extra studying."
"But if it's too much, then we'll make you slow down," Mal says, reaching up to put a hand over Ben's.
"I think I might try." Zach puffs out his chest in determination. "I have a website that's helping me to write essays. If I practice, then I'll get good at it."
"Why don't you just stay home?" Tyler asks, rolling over the back of the couch and falling onto Mal and Zach. "That's what I would do if I were smarter than Ernie Sunshine."
"Who?" Mal asks.
"Albert Einstein," Zach corrects, pushing Tyler's head away from his. "He was a child genius like me. Except he went to school. I think he was very bored."
"Because he was smart?" Ben asks with a laugh while Zach nods solemnly.
"I'm not smart and school is still boring," Tyler yawns, rolling over his Mom's legs and then dropping to the floor. "Being smart is only fun if you don't have to go to school. Otherwise, it's just annoying. But either way, you're annoying if you're smart."
"We're going to be going to Motuni," Ben breaks in before an argument can start between the two boys. "Do you know who lives there?"
Hei-Hei!" Zach looks up with a mischievous grin on his face.
Tyler jumps up from the floor and flexes his biceps into the air. "Maui! he bellows.
"Moana," Mal deadpans. "She's the ruler of that kingdom. We were talking about Moana."
"But she's a girl," Tyler says, looking at them both in confusion. "I thought we were talking about boys."
Mal only sighs and shakes her head.
"Did you know that women were once forbidden to eat bananas in Motuni?" Zach asks as he reaches for his cell phone. "They also couldn't have pork or coconut."
"Coconut is gross," Tyler groans.
"That reminds me that we need to search your phone," Mal sighs. "We were supposed to do it yesterday before you went to bed and we forgot." She holds out her hand for the device and Zach puts it into her palm without a protest. He gets up and walks to the kitchen while Mal unlocks it and begins to skim his text messages.
"What are we gonna do in Motuni?" Zach asks Ben as he gets out a bunch of grapes. "Is this another work trip?"
"Nope," Ben replies, picking up his laptop and turning it around to show Zach. "We're going to go hiking and scuba diving and we're going to walk out in this bay area where you can see sunken ships. Mom's going to collect thousands of seashells for her art supplies and you boys and I are going to go fishing."
"Zach!" Mal snaps to a sitting position and turns to where her two oldest(Ben counts as someone she occasionally has to look after) are pouring over pictures of what their upcoming trip will look like. "Why were you searching for people getting pregnant?"
All of the color drains out of Ben's face. Zach shrugs. "I was wondering how you got the baby in you," he responds nonchalantly.
"Ben!" Mal holds the phone out to her husband with this very specific tone of voice. The tone of voice that says "You better fix this or I don't know what I'll do."
"What did you see?" Ben asks, taking the phone and searching through the history tabs. Zach, who suddenly realizes that he's about to get in trouble, sits down. Mal kicks Tyler's arm lightly with her toes and gestures for him to step out. He doesn't get the motion, so she takes him by the arm to the hall and whispers for him to stay out for a moment while they talk with Zach.
"I don't know?" Zach starts, trying to remember everything. "Most of the sites said the same things about waiting until ovulation and timing-"
"Zach!" Ben cuts him off, covering his forehead with one hand as he stares at Zach's phone in horror. "Why are you searching for this stuff?"
Mal looks over Ben's shoulders and immediately regrets it. Dozens of pornographic images are lined up on her son's cell phone screen. Ben scrolls by as fast as he can, but there's an entire page of them. More than that, when he hits the 'back' button on the browser, four more pages of other images are lined up after the first. Clearly, Zach did more than glance through them.
"Did I do something wrong?" Zach wonders, sinking into the couch and fidgeting. "I thought it was okay because the little block thing didn't come up."
"Why isn't he being blocked from these sites?" Mal snaps, wheeling around on Ben. "I thought the system we had would filter this out!"
"Most of these sites are medical sites," Ben responds, sitting down and looking a thousand years older as he catches himself up on what his son has been finding. "And these ones... I thought our filter would block these sites!"
"Which ones are the problem?" Zach asks, lip wobbling. "I've been reading some stuff for the last few days... most of it was at the library."
Ben sinks further into the couch, looking furious. He keeps scrolling. Most of the search bar history options make sense, but it was clicking on the 'related links' that led Zach to trouble. "How babies grow" turned slowly into "what happens during childbirth" before becoming "implantation and conception." Her baby wasn't meaning to stumble onto these sites, but he somehow ended up there anyway. Ben thumbs into Zach's settings and then to the internet browser. Mal seethes when she sees 'Block Adult Content' still enabled. Still not enough to keep everything away.
"It must have been the different WIFI network," Ben realizes under his breath. "I have the settings enabled from my phone... they must just block him from searching on our WIFI. Being at the library, he's not protected."
"Mom? Dad?" Zach calls and both parents finally look over at him. He sinks into the couch, looking ashamed, and his lower lip sticks out as he begs forgiveness with his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whines.
Mal lets out a breath. "It's okay," she murmurs, glancing at Ben as he pulls out his phone and starts researching for a different filter they can use. "It's not your fault."
"But," she thinks, "you're probably going to have lots of questions now. Questions I don't want to answer."
"Zach," Ben says, patting the seat next to him and then scooting over so there is room for Mal to sit on the end as well. Zach walks over and sits in the middle of them as Ben begins to type in the web addresses that Zach's been searching into a list of blocked websites his phone won't let him go on now. "Why did we let you have the phone?"
"So I could look up things that confused me and call you and mom," Zach responds, leaning into Ben's arm and watching his search history vanish as Ben deletes things, adding them to the blocked sites list.
"And so why would we put filters on your phone if we wanted you to be able to learn things?" Ben asks as he finishes and sets the cell phone down on the coffee table.
"So that I didn't see any blood or guts or scary things," Zach says.
"And?" Ben prompts.
"Bad things." Zach shrugs, glancing over to her for affirmation.
"That's right," Ben agrees, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. "We don't let you look up things with blood and violence because we don't want you to have nightmares, and also because we don't want you to think it's okay to act like that. We don't let you buy things without permission because we don't want you to buy something dangerous to you. We don't let you spend too much time on your games because we know it's not good for your head and eyes to be staring at a screen all the time. Do you agree with all that?"
Zach nods and Ben takes a moment to put an arm around his son. "The things you were looking at aren't good for you yet. Adults don't usually tell kids all about them because we don't want to confuse or hurt you. If you had asked Mom and me, then we could have told you something that would have been easy to understand and that could have answered your questions. The internet doesn't know that you're an eight-year-old kid. It doesn't know how much to tell you."
"You would have lied?" Zach asks, furrowing his brow.
"No," Mal refutes. "It's a little bit like how Dad didn't tell you all about my scars. Some of the stories scare him, and they would have scared you. We're going to wait until you're a little older to tell you everything, but we'll tell you the basics because you asked."
"So, not lying, but still not being honest," Zach crosses his arms.
"No, it is honest. But it's also careful," Ben says. "Zach, did you talk to Tyler about how your day was today?"
"I said it was good," Zach shrugged.
"But you didn't tell him everything!" Mal blurts out, catching on to where Ben is going with this exercise. "You didn't tell him all the books you read or how guitar lessons were or about how many times you went to the bathroom or to go get a drink..."
"It didn't matter," Zach's face twists in annoyance. He doesn't like how he feels like he's the bad guy here.
"Exactly. He would have gotten bored or confused or started talking to you too much about it," Mal says. "And it's the same way. If we tell you everything, you'll get confused or you won't understand what we're trying to say. That's why we're keeping everything in small answers on this subject."
"Why is it so bad?" Zach asks, deflating like a popped balloon. "I was just trying to figure out how the baby got into Mom." He glares at Mal's belly as if it's what's caused the issue.
"That's not all that bad," Ben sighs, treading carefully as he tries to figure out what he wants to say. "But... there is a problem when you start reading about how people get pregnant and start looking at pictures. For one," Ben holds out a finger, "we wouldn't want you to try making a baby with anyone, though I think you're smart enough to realize why that's a bad idea. For two," another finger goes out, "we don't want you sharing that information with friends who aren't ready to understand it. Three, lots of studies have been done, and they say that looking at those bad pictures can do lots of things to your brain. For example, it can lead to low self-esteem and can hurt your relationships with other people."
"Dad just doesn't like them," Mal cuts Ben off. "You stumbled on one of the things he hates the most."
"I do hate them!" Ben snaps at her. "They're... self-indulgent! They encourage you to see other people as objects, not as people. It's a representation of lack of class and discipline and respect! Especially towards women!" He pauses to readdress Zach, who is looking between them in confusion. "Listen, I'm going to tell you now that it's not okay to treat other people the way they're treated in those... comics. Or pictures. Whatever."
"Ben, he's seven," Mal says, putting a hand on Ben's arm. "Calm down."
"It is never too early to teach children about how to respect other people," Ben refutes her, getting up and walking aimlessly around the coffee table. "Zach, what did you see?"
Zach shrugs, cheeks going a bit red. "Not too much," he mumbles. Mal notices, though, the way he's suddenly avoiding looking at either of them and it makes her stomach turn. "I mostly just read stuff and tried to look around the pictures for words."
"Read stuff like what?" Ben gets down on eye level with Zach. "Did it look like a science book or like a story?"
Slowly, Ben begins to tug information out of their disobliging son. He describes at first things he read about where Mom's baby is in her belly and when heartbeats first start and things like that. Then he starts admitting about how people put babies inside themselves and how to increase and decrease that risk and by the time he's gotten around to trying to explain the pictures he was looking at from his innocent seven-year-old perspective, Mal is convinced that the cell phone lying on the coffee table has ruined her baby forever. Ben doesn't seem as concerned as she is, but he didn't grow up on the Isle of the Lost where people were taken advantage of and parents let other villains into their children's bedrooms and...
Oh, wait.
This is another cultural difference, isn't it?
"Okay, bud," Ben sighs when Zach is finished. "From now on, I'd rather you ask Mom and I questions about babies and love and things that are right and wrong. The internet knows a lot, but it doesn't know what you need to know. Mom and I do, so come to us first." He sighs and looks at Mal, emotionally exhausted. "I don't think we have a lot of time left, Mal," He whispers.
Mal slumps when she realizes what he means. Oh. Her baby is growing up even faster than she thought he was. Giving him the phone... he's already halfway to independence.
What's school going to do to him?
Ben turns back to Zach. "You may not have your phone until Mom and Dad set up a new filter that will keep you safe," he whispers, and Zach nods and sighs in frustration. "Do you have any questions about anything we talked about or what you saw?"
Zach shifts back and forth and nods. "A few," he agrees. "I wrote them in my notebook."
Of course he did. Of course he would take notes. Of course. Mal feels like slapping herself. Ben, too, sighs. "You should go get them," he whispers. "Go get them, but let's talk in your room so that Tyler doesn't have to keep waiting in the hall." He glances up at Mal. "Does Mom want to be included in this conversation?" he asks.
Mal immediately shakes her head. "No," she backs off. "No. You handle it. Just... don't go too deep."
Ben nods and Zach gets up and goes to pull his notebook out of his bag. Ben squeezes her hand once and kisses her cheek before the two head out of the room with Ben's hand spread out between Zach's shoulder blades. Mal doesn't quite know what to do after that since Tyler has long since gone to play with his action figures in his room. So goes and curls up with the comforter on their bed while the sky grows darker outside and waits for Ben to sneak back in.
He does, right as the sky is getting dark, and whispers something about how the boys went down to dinner before lying down next to her and wrapping his arms around the comforter and her in a hug that his arms almost aren't long enough for.
"He okay?" Mal asks. Ben nods against her shoulder.
"He knows a lot of crude words now."
"Are we horrible parents for talking to him about this before he's even eight?"
"Better that he hears it from us than the internet or kids at school."
Mal breathes against the pillows and closes her eyes. Another reason to be afraid of Zach going to college.