Page 55 of Little Stolen Memories

As much as I was enjoying the vigor of our conversation, my objective was to question Xander, not to be questioned myself.

“Marcus, are you older or younger than Xander?” I asked.

“I’m one year older.”

“You must have been in high school at the same time, then.”

“For a year,” Xander said. “I was a sophomore when my brother was a senior.”

The math wasn’t adding up, and then I remembered Cora saying Xander may have been held back a grade or two.

“You were in the eleventh grade when you moved to Cambria, right?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Xander said.

“Where did you live before?”

“Colorado. Our dad got laid off, and my uncle hired him as a salesperson in his furniture shop in town. We’ve been in the area ever since.”

“And your mother?”

Xander cleared his throat and said, “We don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“She took off with another guy when we were kids. We were raised by our father.”

Interesting.

I sat there a moment, thinking about Cora’s observation about Xander and mental illness. If he did suffer, he seemed normal now. Nothing in his demeanor suggested he struggled with mental issues—not yet, anyway.

“I’d like to talk about your classmates who died at the cabin,” I said.

“What about them?” Xander asked.

“I heard they picked on you at school.”

He shrugged and said, “It was high school. Everyone gets picked on or messed with at some point, don’t they? Even you, I bet.”

Not me.

I was as tough back then as I was now.

And I had brothers—older brothers—who were protective of their sisters.

No one dared to mess with me.

“You don’t seem affected by the way you were treated back then, Xander,” I said.

“I’m not. It’s not worth it to carry ill feelings about past experiences through your life. The only one you end up hurting is yourself.”

Wise words.

“He wasn’t picked on too much,” Marcus said. “Just a bit of harmless teasing among his peers, from what I can remember.”

A bit of harmless teasing?

When it came to bullying, we seemed to have differing opinions on what was harmless and what wasn’t.

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