by Bell, David
Janet nodded.
“I said it low and under my breath so the teacher wouldn’t hear. But I made sure Roger heard, and he did. And he told me he was going to get me on the playground. I thought about going to the nurse’s office and pretending I was sick, but some part of me just said, Fuck it. I didn’t care, really. I just wanted them to do what they wanted to do. Maybe I thought if they did that, then they’d leave me alone and go on to someone else. But when we got out there after lunch, they came after me, a group of about seven of them. All boys. All third and fourth graders.”
“Who were they?” Janet asked.
“Does it matter?” Steven asked. “They gathered around me, and they took that ball, and they rolled it in a mud puddle until the ball was soaked and full of water and mud. And they threw it at me. I remember very clearly—the first one hit me right in the chest. Water and mud splattered everywhere, and I knew my shirt was ruined.”
“I’m sorry.”
“They all laughed,” Steven said. His eyes remained dry, but he bit his upper lip. “I can see them all standing around me, just laughing. They looked like animals. They were all teeth and grins. They looked so stupid, so mindless. And then they just picked the ball up and they did it again. And again. They even hit me in the face with one of their throws. Right in the face. The mud was in my hair. It was cold and wet.”
“Where were the teachers?”
“I don’t know, Janet. Where were they? Where were they?” He rubbed his eyes with both hands. “I couldn’t get away. They had me surrounded. And you see, those boys didn’t understand what they were really doing to me. They thought they were just messing up my clothes and teaching me a lesson or whatever they thought of it as. I guess they were making themselves feel better. More dominant or something. But if one of my shirts got ruined, I didn’t get a new shirt to replace it. I only had a couple of shirts and a couple pairs of pants. Not only would I not have those clothes to wear, but I’d get in all sorts of trouble at Hope House. I’d ruined my clothes. I was going to get blamed for that. And it wouldn’t matter what I said or who I blamed—they were going to hold me responsible.”
“What would they do to you?” Janet asked.
“If I was lucky, I’d miss a meal or two. If I was lucky.”
“Why didn’t you tell? Wouldn’t someone intercede on your behalf? Wouldn’t someone from Hope House go to the school and tell the principal?”
Michael shook his head and laughed. “Right. Janet, there were so many kids living in that house, all of them going in so many different directions, they couldn’t be bothered to go to the school on our behalf. We were pretty much on our own unless the problem was right in their face. My ruined clothes were right in their faces.”
The door opened, and Detective Stynes stuck his head in. He looked from Janet to Steven and then back to Janet again.
“It’s okay,” she said. “We’re doing fine.”
Stynes left without saying anything else.
When Janet turned her attention back to Steven, he said, “The only thing that saved me was you.”
“I didn’t save you.”
“You did. You remember, right? You came right into that circle, and you stood right in front of me, and you told them that if they wanted to throw that ball again, they’d have to throw it at you first. And you just stood there, defiant. You weren’t going to move. And those boys just turned and walked away. You backed them down. They listened to you like you were an adult. It was like you scared them. At the time, I couldn’t figure it out, you know? How did you know what was going on? You must have been with the girls at the other end of the playground. How did you know what was happening down there with us?”
Janet knew. She so quickly saw and responded to what happened to Steven because she had been watching someone involved with the unfolding scene. Someone she always watched.
“But you know why you were watching, right?” Steven asked.
Janet nodded. “It was because of Michael Bower. Michael was one of the boys who went after you that day.”
Chapter Forty-seven
“He was there,” Steven said. “He was always there with the bullies.”
Michael. Janet didn’t see him that way. He wasn’t a bully, not by a long shot. Everyone liked Michael. He got along with everyone. Except—
He had a streak in him. A sense of superiority. A meanness. Always delivered with a smile or a joke, but it was there.
“Michael didn’t do anything to me,” Steven said. “He never mocked me. He didn’t throw the football at me that day. But he stood on the edge and watched. Those guys wanted his approval as much as they wanted to hurt me. And Michael stood there and he laughed and he egged them on. He always laughed when someone else did something to me. In a way, I think that’s worse. It seems like either the coward’s way or the two-faced way. But either way, he was involved. And that’s how you knew what was happening, because you were watching him, right? And when you asked him to do something, really asked him, he would listen to you.”
“Not often. Usually it went the other way around. Usually I had to do things for him. But you’re right—he would occasionally do things for me if I was really serious.”
“When you stepped in that day, when you stood up to those guys, Michael walked away too. If he hadn’t, then those guys wouldn’t have left me alone. Ever.”
Janet flashed back to the night with Ray, to Michael exploding and attacking his father. Was that anger always beneath the surface? Even in childhood?
“I never forgot you for that, Janet,” Steven said. “After that, the entire rest of the school year, I kept my eye on you. I watched for you in the hallways or at assemblies or on the playground. I know that sounds strange to say, but it wasn’t a creepy thing for me at all. As long as I knew you were around, I felt safe. You were like a superhero to me, a protector. But you know what you were really like?”
“Let me guess—a big sister.”
“Exactly.” Steven nodded. “I don’t have one. I didn’t have any siblings. By the time I was six, I didn’t even have parents. But I thought about it all the time. I thought about what it would be like to have a family. To have a sister, just like you. Even after I moved away, which was at the end of that school year, I kept thinking of you. I kept it in my head that you were the ideal. You were the family I wanted to have.”
“So you decided to become my brother.”
“I wanted a new start. This was about ten years ago. I’d had some trouble with the police, mostly when I was a teenager but a little when I was over eighteen. I committed some petty crimes, some robberies. Nothing that serious, but I just woke up one day and was sick of myself, you know? I looked in the mirror, and I thought, ‘Who the hell are you and why are you such a piece of shit?’ It’s pretty easy to assume a new identity if a person wants to. You can look up the tips for doing it on the Internet or from the library. And the way people always do it is they find someone who died, preferably a little kid because then there are no real records about them. All you have to do is find the social security number and request a birth certificate. I figured, why not accomplish two goals at once? I could get a new identity and be the person I kind of always wanted to be. Your brother. I knew the story from when I was a kid. I knew this tragedy had befallen your family. People still talked about it in school sometimes—the other kids. I think everyone thought of you as the girl whose brother had died.”
“I don’t think of myself that way,” Janet said.
“I get it,” he said. “You’re more than that. You have your own kid. You have a life. I get it. I didn’t want people to look at me and just see Hope House. Or foster child. I did what you did—I created a new life.”
“I didn’t steal someone’s identity,” Janet said. “I didn’t steal an identity and then torment a family. Why did you let me believe, even for a second, that you might be Justin?”
“Because I liked thinking that I might be him. I wanted to be someone e
lse, someone from a decent family. Someone with a home like yours—”
Janet had listened long enough. She got it. Steven Kollman was a messed-up adult who grew out of a messed-up kid. She remembered that day on the playground, her act of what Steven considered heroism and what she considered simple decency, and she understood the impact such a gesture could make on a young life.
But that was as far as she went with Steven Kollman. She couldn’t forget the cruel trick he’d played on her, encouraging false hopes about Justin, leading her to believe there were possibilities where none existed. So rather than listen to any more of Steven Kollman’s sob story, Janet stood and went for the buzzer near the door, which would summon Detective Stynes and let her out. But before she reached it, Steven spoke, his voice stopping her.
“I ran into Michael about six months ago,” he said.
Janet froze in place. She didn’t hit the buzzer.
“I came to Dove Point almost a year ago. I got arrested in Columbus for an assault. I blew the court date, so there was a warrant.”
“You got arrested?”
“I assaulted a guy who worked for the child welfare office. My records are sealed, the ones from when I was a kid. I wanted to see what they said about my parents and if maybe I had any other family members I could look up. Cousins or something. Since they’re sealed, I couldn’t even see them. They’re my records, but I couldn’t see them. And this asshole in the welfare office offered to let me see them for a price. You know, some kind of side deal. We met at some dive bar in Columbus, and when I got there he wanted more money. I punched him. It was stupid, I know, but when the cops came and found me I was only carrying the Justin Manning ID. Some days, that’s all I carried, like I really was him. I went into the system that way.”
“They found the summons in your apartment,” Janet said. “Actually, my daughter found it.”
Steven looked a little surprised, but then he shrugged and kept talking. “I figured I needed to get out of Columbus, so I decided to come back here. At least it was a little familiar, and I figured you might still be here. I thought you’d be married and all that, but who knows? We could reconnect maybe. We could be…I don’t know. Something. Friends? Maybe like family even.”
“What does Michael have to do with this?” Janet asked.
“It’s interesting the way you snap to attention when his name comes up. I don’t even know if Justin’s name gets the same rise out of you that Michael’s does.”
Janet looked into Steven’s eyes, saw the little glint of glee he seemed to be feeling. “Good-bye.” Janet reached for the buzzer.
“You love him, don’t you?”
“He’s my best friend.”
“But you love him, right? You sat around here in Dove Point all those years, like I said, raising your kid and making a life. And it was all good, wasn’t it? Except you always wondered what Michael was doing. Was he having a good time? Was he having an adventure? Was he having it with someone else?”
Janet looked at the floor, the scuffed, filthy linoleum tile, the harsh glare of the overhead lights showing every speck of dirt. He was right. She carried that image of Michael around with her all those years, using it as more than just a distraction. She used it as a spur, something to urge her forward. She didn’t want Michael to come back and find out she’d completely fallen to pieces after high school, that she’d married the first loser who came along and continued to pump out kids. No, she wanted to show him something—anything—if he ever came back. Some might say she lived for him, and would consider this pathetic, but she didn’t see it that way. She wanted a better life for Ashleigh and for herself, and if thoughts of Michael helped her get there, so be it.
“Let me tell you about meeting the golden boy when I came back to Dove Point,” Steven said.
But he didn’t start talking. He waited for something. Janet understood what he wanted, so she went back to the table and took her seat again. He had something important to say, and he needed his audience in place.
“I ran into Michael about six months ago here in Dove Point. Do you know Rodney’s? That bar out on Old Dayton Road?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“I guess it’s not the kind of place you would frequent. I’m not even sure why Michael was there, except maybe he was feeling sorry for himself. He was drinking a lot, you know?” Steven pantomimed throwing a drink into his mouth. “I studied him for a while from across the room because I thought I knew who he was, but I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t seen him in, what, twenty-some years? I wanted to be sure, but after I checked him out for a while, I knew I recognized him. I had all those faces from that day on the playground memorized. He didn’t look that different. Just grown-up is all.”
“Did he recognize you?”
“Recognize me?” Steven laughed. “Janet, people like Michael don’t recognize or remember people like me. Hell, did you recognize me when I came to your door in the middle of the night? Or when you saw me in broad daylight on campus? Did you recognize me?”
“I thought you were familiar.”
“You hoped I was your brother,” he said. “Hoped. But you didn’t recognize me. You didn’t even recognize me when the cops told you my name, did you?”
By not saying anything, Janet knew she was answering his question.
“I told him we went to school together,” Steven said. “I bought him a drink, told him my name. I told him I moved away after the third grade, which is true. I didn’t mention Hope House and all that shit. We started talking. We just shared stories of our lives. And here’s what got me, man—here’s what really got me. As he talked about his life and I talked about mine, I realized that the paths we’d been on, the way we’d been moving through our lives in the years since high school, really weren’t that different. Sure, he had a great time up to a point. The exact opposite of me. But after graduating, the wheels came off for him. He didn’t finish college. He tried a few different careers—salesman, store manager, substitute teacher—but none of them panned out. Nothing ever stuck with him. Or he never stuck with anything. Whatever it was, his life just wasn’t that golden. Do you understand what I’m saying here? Do you understand what a revelation it was to hear all that?”
“You thought his life would have gone better.”
“That’s right. And I bet you thought the same thing all those years you were here and he was out there. Right? Am I right?”
“I did.”
“See, we’re just alike in that sense,” Steven said. He smiled, his eyes glowing at what he saw as a deep, connecting bond between them. “You sat here in Dove Point all those years thinking Michael was out conquering the world, sleeping with every girl who came along, making a lot of money, living a big life. Except he wasn’t. He was a nothing, a failure. He was the classic case of a guy who peaks when he’s about seventeen, and the rest—” Steven held his right hand out, parallel to the table, like it was an airplane. Then he dropped his hand, fingers first, against the tabletop. “It all just falls away.”
Janet thought back to that first day when she saw Michael standing in the parking lot on campus. As soon as she recognized him, she’d noticed the changes the years had marked on him and chalked them up to simple age. But the light wasn’t as bright in his eyes, and the force of his personality seemed dimmer. And since then, whenever they talked, he seemed to be a little scared, a little off his game. Not the same Michael at all.
“It’s funny the effect alcohol will have on people,” Steven said. “If you give them enough of it, they’ll tell you anything. It helps if they’re a little desperate to share their story, especially with someone they think really knows or understands them. Michael didn’t see me as the loser kid from Hope House that night. He didn’t see me as the kid he watched get smacked with a soggy football. He saw me as a guy from his past, someone who had lived in the same town and gone to the same school. He thought we shared something. It let him open up to me.”
“What did he tell yo
u?”
“What didn’t he tell me?” Steven laughed. “You know, I have to be honest with you—a part of me talked to him because I wanted to find out something about you. I’d taken on Justin’s identity. I’d looked you up in the phone book and on the Internet. I knew where you worked. Hell, I’d driven by your old house, the one you used to rent before you moved in with your dad. That’s how I figured out you’d moved. But Michael, he didn’t want to talk about you. I asked about Janet Manning, but he kept changing the subject. He wanted to talk about something else. Or someone else, I guess.”
“Who?”
“His old man. His dad.”
“What did he say about him?” Janet asked.
“He’s not a big fan of his dad. I can tell you that. Apparently, the old man used to support him. He sent Michael money out in California. Michael made it sound like he just needed the money for the short term, but I got the sense it was more than that. I figure the old man was carrying Michael a lot of the time. I guess Michael’s dad left his mom at some point, and he’s an only child. You can see that the old man might feel so much guilt he’d shell out whatever he could to keep the kid happy. I wish I had someone who could do that for me.”
“I hear his dad is getting remarried.”
“Right. Well, maybe that’s why the old man cut him off. And Michael didn’t like that one bit. Who would, right? If you have a nice meal ticket, who wants to see it go away? But I’m not really interested in Michael’s ramblings about his dad. I couldn’t care less if he hates his old man. I wish I knew my old man so I could hate him, but I don’t. So I tried to steer the conversation back to you again. I thought, what’s the one thing I could bring up about you that might get him off this riff about his dad? Do you know what that is?”
“The murder?”
“The murder. I remembered from growing up that Michael was there that day. I knew the two of you were close friends. So I ask, what happened that day in the park? Do you mind talking about it?”
“And did he?”