Page 46 of Little Stolen Memories

I squinted, taking a good look at the boy in question. He was dressed in faded jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt with a gray T-shirt over it.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“His name is Ty Conroy. He was in our graduating class. His father was our biology teacher.”

“How well did you know him?”

“Not as well as Jackson did. Toward the end of the school year, Jackson started stressing out about not passing the final biology exam. Jackson’s stepdad was … ahh, let’s just say he was always hard on Jackson, and not just when it came to his grades.”

“Hard in what way?”

“I never saw any signs Jackson was being abused, you know, in a physical way, but Aubree did. She saw bruises on one of his shoulders and back.”

“Did Aubree ask him about it?”

“Yeah. As soon as she did, Jackson changed the subject. She thought he was upset with her for asking, so I don’t think she ever brought it up again.”

If Jackson’s stepfather was abusing him, the fact Jackson had been known to be a bully at school made a lot more sense to me now.

His stepfather took out his anger on Jackson.

Jackson, in turn, took his anger out on someone else—someone he could vent his frustration on—instead of venting it on his stepfather.

“What do you know about Jackson’s stepdad?” I asked.

“I saw him a few times at football games. He was a big guy, a lot bigger than Jackson. Everything about him gave off bad vibes.”

“In what way?”

Cora paused a moment, like she was thinking about how to describe him to me.

“He always seemed … well, mean,” she said. “If Jackson was being abused, I doubt his mother knew. Back then she was working a lot at the family business.”

“And the stepdad, what did he do for a job?”

“From the stuff Jackson told us about him, it sounded like before his stepdad got together with his mom, he was always in between jobs, or getting fired from a job not long after starting it. Once he met Jackson’s mom, he started working for the family business too.”

“What type of business?”

“A car dealership.”

I glanced back at the photo of Ty, wondering what the connection was between Ty and Jackson. There must have been one. Why else would Cora have shown me a photo of him and then start talking about Jackson?

“I’m assuming the story you just told me about Jackson’s stepdad relates to Ty in some way,” I said.

Cora nodded. “Ty was the type of person who’d do anything to hang out with guys like Jackson. About a week before final exams, Jackson told Ty he was worried he wasn’t going to pass his biology test. If his final grade wasn’t an A or a B, his stepdad threatened not to allow Jackson access to the funds his mother had set aside for him for college.”

“Did he get a good grade?”

“He did, but it wasn’t because he studied hard for the test. Ty gave Jackson a copy of his dad’s test a few days before the exam. I guess Ty’s dad had used the same final exam for years.”

“Aside from Jackson, did anyone else see the test before the exam?”

Cora hung her head and said, “Yes. A couple of nights before the exam, we were all hanging out in my backyard, talking about the camping trip. Jackson told me about the test, and then he passed it around. At the time, I remember thinking it was too good to be true. I didn’t believe it was the actual test.”

“Was it?”

“Yeah, word for word. I’ll never forget the day we took the exam. We were all looking around at each other, shocked. Thing is, when Ty gave Jackson a copy of the test, he made Jackson promise not to show it to anyone else.”

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