by AB Plum
The MisFit
The Early Years
By AB Plum
Dedication
As always, David, thank you for your help.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1: A Deadly Accident
Chapter 2: A Necessary Lie
Chapter 3: Motherly Love
Chapter 4: Bad News
Chapter 5: Worse News
Chapter 6: Whatever It Takes
Chapter 7: First Things, First
Chapter 8: Kill the Messenger
Chapter 9: No Mistakes
Chapter 10: The Strange Faces of Grief
Chapter 11: Mourning
Chapter 12: Ashes to Ashes
Chapter 13: Life Goes On
Chapter 14: No Regrets
Chapter 15: Cigarette Smoke
Chapter 16: Tough Love
Chapter 17: One Door Closes, Another Opens
Chapter 18: A New Face
Chapter 19: Dreams Do Come True
Chapter 20: A Bad Day Ends Well
Chapter 21: Fair Is Fair
Chapter 22: A Very Pleasant Surprise
Chapter 23: A Kindred Soul
Chapter 24: Homecoming
Chapter 25: Back to Earth
Chapter 26: Apologies Unaccepted
Chapter 27: Let the Good Times Roll
Chapter 28: A Dream Deferred
Chapter 29: First Plan Executed
Chapter 30: Burying the Past
Chapter 31: Sweet Revenge
Chapter 32: Extreme Satisfaction
Chapter 33: Just Desserts
Chapter 34: Blood Vows
Chapter 35: Time Passes
Chapter 36: Finding Adventure
Chapter 37: A Gift for a Queen
Chapter 38: Never Judge a Package by Its Shiny Wrapping
Chapter 39: Faces of Innocence
Chapter 40: The Way to a Good Woman’s Heart
Chapter 41: A Lesson Learned
Chapter 42: Playing by the Rules
Chapter 43: Mastering Manipulation
Chapter 44: Breaking Age Barriers
Chapter 45: Keys to Lifelong Learning
Chapter 46: Eyes Are Everywhere
Chapter 47: Zeroing in on the Prey
Chapter 48: Applying Pressure
Chapter 49: A Loose Thread
Chapter 50: The Last Laugh
Acknowledgement
EPIGRAPH
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
Mother Goose
PROLOGUE
Unhealable Scars
Older brother. Handsome. Princely.
Older brother. Father’s favorite.
Older brother. Undeserving heir.
Older brother. Mother’s favorite.
Older brother. Overly admired.
Older brother. Chosen one. Indulged.
Older brother. Taller. Meaner. Taunted me.
Older brother. Underestimated me. Big mistake.
Open Wounds
Why was I unacceptable—never loveable?
Why no happiness at my birth?
Why no celebration of my uniqueness?
Baby born bad? How’s that possible?
Baby born bad? How’s that logical?
Not my fault I was born different.
Why treat me like a misfit?
Why didn’t they love me, too?
Chapter 1
A Deadly Accident
On January 15, 1976, the plan to kill my older brother came to me fully formed.
Temperatures in København registered in the same range as those in Moscow. Everyone at Hovedbanegård (Copenhagen’s Central Train Station) wore fur-lined boots, coats, gloves, and hats. Only the stupidest bared their faces to the bitter wind and horizontal snow. Waiting passengers milled together like sheep seeking a bit of body heat.
My brother, shorter than most of the god-tall Danes, stood out because of his squared off torso—an aberrant gene, most likely, from our Finnish mother. The sheer mass of the crowd made pushing him—too close to the edge of the platform—too easy.
Everyone seemed to notice at once when he fell onto the track. Men shouted. Women screamed. Howled. Keened. As if their cries would halt the incoming train. As if the absolute volume of their cries would repel the massive engine bearing down on his stunned, prone body.
No one tried to stop me, an eleven-year-old boy, as I slipped through the crowd. Exultant over my first dispensation of justice. My chest burned with pride. Pride at my daring. Pride at executing my plan.
My only regret?
I wanted to proclaim what I had done from the rooftops. I soothed myself with the reminder that I would soon share every detail with the one person who would appreciate my brilliance and nerve.
Somehow, word of the accident spread to arriving passengers. The normally unflappable Danes were flapped. That realization kept me smiling as I trudged the opposite direction from the flock rushing toward the platform. The scalding heat in my belly countered the icy bite of snow mixed with sleet.
Morbid curiosity countered the same conditions for the fools running toward the tracks.
Five blocks from my school, I reflected on the rest of my plan. This was my first lesson in understanding implementation requires forethought and a willingness to accept personal discomfort.
Chapter 2
A Necessary Lie
“Older boys attacked me with snowballs.” I sniffed to keep from laughing as my fifth-grade teacher, Fru Jensen, examined my torn pants and skinned knees without laying a finger on any part of my anatomy. Her whole body bristled with distaste.
My insides jiggled with silent glee. If she only knew that, once away from the train station, I’d skated across an iced-over sidewalk a mile from Kreps’ Skole. I fell down repeatedly until both knees were bloody pulps. They hardly hurt. The clear vision of my brother plunging onto the train tracks erased the pain.
Fru Jensen clicked her tongue. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
“They hit me in the head.” I touched the top of my skull. “I think one of their missiles contained rocks.”
“You must go to the school nurse. Can you walk? Shall I accompany you?”
And let my classmates call me pussy behind my back? “Thank you, Fru Jensen. I can walk by myself.”
As I left my classroom, I curbed my impulse to strut. From my study of Machiavelli, I’d learned the power of deceit.
Twenty minutes later, the assistant headmaster Herr Petersen reported he’d called my house. My mother was indisposed. My father had not yet reached his office. What to do with me?
Had I been less different—more like my Danish classmates—I’m sure Herr Petersen would have expressed a bit of sympathy for my knees now bandaged as a precaution according to the nurse. He must’ve debated whether sending me home on the street car with Dimitri was ethical.
It was snowing harder. Dimitri was only nine months older than me. Perhaps Herr Petersen’s Danish conscience reminded him I was a child. In the end, the assistant headmaster insisted on escorting us to the streetcar, then riding to the house in Hellerup where Dimitri lived with us.
Dimitri is also different—though not quite as nerve-jarringly different.
Sending us both home must’ve allowed the school administrators a collective sigh.
As we trudged to the street car stop, Herr Petersen marveled aloud at what the world was coming to so long after the War when young ruffians would attack a schoolboy on his way to school. Of course, at
tending my elite school carried the danger of attracting riff-raff. Implicit in his tone was the suggestion I had somehow provoked the attack.
Brilliant educator that he was, Herr Petersen failed to notice that my attackers couldn’t have seen my prestigious school uniform under my thick, fur-lined coat.
His blindness inflated my confidence that no one witnessing the accident at Hovedbanegård had noticed either.
After a freezing ten-minute wait, heads down against the bitter wind, we boarded the street car. Herr Petersen directed me and Dimitri to a seat in front of him. As soon as he sat down, he pulled out his newspaper. Undoubtedly, he would stop for coffee on his return trip.
Unless my mother offered him a cup with a mid-morning kringle.
Dimitri, my only friend and companion since infancy, sat next to me without speaking. He knew I’d fill him in later. Dimitri and I kept no secrets from each other.
Chapter 3
Motherly Love
“I think a doctor is unnecessary.” Herr Petersen spoke to our maid in his best assistant-headmaster baritone. “But of course I leave that decision to his mother.”
“Yessir. I’ll certainly tell her as soon as she’s feeling better.” Ingrid bobbed her head, but watched me from the corner of her eye. Eighteen, dumb as a sheep, she secretly pined for my brother—blushing at the mention of his name, going mute when he spoke to her, practically wetting herself if his hand brushed hers as she held a serving plate in front of him.
Me and Dimitri, she shied away from as if horns sprouted from the tops of our heads.
In the awkward silence of my mother’s absence, Herr Petersen raised his hand to clap my shoulder, made eye contact with me, and dropped his hand at his side. “Take tomorrow off from classes if necessary. You’re also excused, Dimitri.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” I fought the urge to click my heels and opened the front door. Behind me, Dimitri made a noise of admiration. I frowned, a bit surprised the police hadn’t yet shown up. Hoping to catch sight of a policeman trudging through the snow, I played the well-bred young lad. I followed Herr Petersen to the front step. “Thank you, sir, for seeing me home.”
“Michael, please shut that door.” My mother, dressed in a long, lavender robe, shivered in what amounted to silken underwear. Without greeting me properly, she asked, “Who was that? Why are you boys home from school?”
“Thugs attacked him,” Dimitri said.
My heart skipped a beat. Careful, or he’d ruin everything.
“Attacked him? Where were you?” She swiveled her gaze to a spot over Dimitri’s left shoulder.
“Already in school, Gudmoder.” Sly devil that he was, Dimitri called her godmother—a term she detested almost as much as she loathed my calling her Mor. Or Mat. Or Mère. Or Mother. Or any word that denoted a maternal link to me.
“I had an early tutoring session, Gudmoder,” Dimitri added without smirking.
“That was inconvenient.” Her head swung back my direction, but her eyes again danced away from my face. “Why didn’t you go with him?”
Without missing a beat, I said, “I agreed to meet a friend. We wanted to discuss our geography assignment.”
“A friend? Really?” Her tone carried the subtext. You don’t have any friends.
For a moment, I wanted to hit her between those icy cerulean eyes, break that girlish upturned nose, smash those high Finnish cheekbones. I took a step toward her.
The doorbell saved me.
Chapter 4
Bad News
Ingrid moved first, but my mother said, “I’m not at home.”
The maid nodded like a puppet. My mother glided into the drawing room, pulling the doors closed. No compunction about telling Ingrid to lie.
But, why would she feel a twinge? She lied every day. From the moment she got out of bed—often not before noon—until she went to bed twelve hours later—she lied with the skill of an adept.
The top of my skull tingled with outrage. Smiling, I looked at Dimitri. Ingrid paused as if waiting for us to go to the room we shared. No one mentioned my bandaged knees. I hitched my head at Dimitri, but took my time advancing the first step.
Ingrid muttered something inaudible and opened the door on the third ring.
“Guddag. I’m Detective Lars Bensen with the Metro Police Department. I need to speak to Herr Romanov.”
“He-he’s not here.” Eyes wide, Ingrid glanced over her shoulder at me and Dimitri.
We’d stopped, but I hurried back to the front door, demanding, “What’s this about?”
“A matter for your parents. Is Fru Romanov available?”
“Nej—”
“She has asked not to be disturbed,” I interrupted Ingrid. God, my heart was actually thumping.
“Please inform her the police are here.”
Ingrid shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “But-but—”
“Dimitri,” I said, “please stay with Detective Bensen while I tell Mor what is happening.”
As I turned away, I spoke sotto voce in Russian. “This is going to be fun.”
I entered the drawing room without knocking. My mother didn’t even bother to look up from where she lay on the sofa with her eyes closed. Bitch.
“The police are here,” I announced, letting just a hint of malice creep into my tone.
She jerked upright. “The police?” Her hand flew to her heart as if she was a movie star in a bad melodrama. “Is it about your father?”
You wish. Unwilling to give up what I knew, I said, “Detective Lars Bensen insists on speaking to you.”
“All right.” She stood, smoothed her robe, tucked her trembling hands in the wide sleeves, and lifted her chin like a queen. “I’m ready.”
Not bloody likely. “I’ll bring him in.”
“Then you can go to your room.”
Don’t think so. I shook my head. “He must have bad news. Bad enough he insists on speaking to you even though Ingrid tried to keep him out. Bad enough—”
“Michael!” Her skin went as white as the falling snow. “Please. Bring him in.”
I took my cue and returned seconds later with Detective Bensen and Dimitri.
Detective Bensen introduced himself with no inflection, adding softly, “I’m afraid, Mrs. Romanov, I bring you bad news.”
Chapter 5
Worse News
Dimitri and I lurked near the door as my mother tried to understand what was happening. Her skin was so pale I could see the blood flowing through her veins. She bit her lower lip. (Again, playing the B-Movie starlet. Or did I mean, harlot?). Next to Bensen, she was petite. Not much taller than I.
She invited Bensen to sit, then asked in that breathy, little-girl voice I detested, “What bad news, Detective?”
“An accident. A fatality—your son,” he said without pausing. “Your older son. Alexei. He apparently slipped off the platform at Hovedbanegård this morn—”
“No. No.” She shook her head, and her silvery blonde hair flew out behind her like a skein of exotic silk. “Why would Alexei be at the train station? His school is here. In Hellerup. He attends Øregaard Gymnasium. There is some mistake.”
Her voice begged Bensen to agree. A vein bulged in her forehead.
“I regret there is no mistake, madame.”
“There is a mistake, I tell you. My son—how do you know this person was my son?”
“He carried ID, madame. His Øregaard Gymnasium student’s card. With his picture, address, and phone number. Miraculously intact.”
“But . . .” Her voice trailed off as she caught her bottom lip between her teeth.
“We tried to reach your husband, madame, but his secretary did not know his whereabouts.”
My mother threw her head from side to side. She drew in a shuddering breath.
Detective Bensen snapped his fingers. “Get your mother a glass of water.”
“Of course,” I replied, the obedient son who recognized the copper looked at me as
if I’d crawled out from under a rock.
Dimitri waited until we entered the kitchen before speaking, his eyes lit with admiration. “You never cease to surprise me, Michael.”
Chapter 6
Whatever It Takes
My mother sat on the sofa as if in a trance. She gave no indication she saw me or the glass of water I offered her.
“She’s in shock,” Detective Bensen opined in his flat, northern Danish accent. “We need to find your father. Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“None,” I lied, my headshake deliberate. I had every idea where to find my father, but had no intention of ratting him out.
Detective Bensen frowned. Now what? His stupidity was laughable. Not unlike my mother, his eyes were open, his brain was off.
Taking charge, I said, “Dimitri, please ask Ingrid to come in here. I’ll have her put my mother to bed while you give me the details of what happened, Detective Bensen.”
“How old are you?”
“Twelve next month. I should know what happened. In case my father comes home without speaking to the police.”
“I’m not so sure . . .”
Ingrid entered the room with Dimitri at her side—closer than she liked from the prissy way she pursed her lips. He said, “We need help getting Gudmoder to her room.”
Ingrid opened her mouth, but I barked out orders. It took all four of us to get my catatonic mother on her feet. Placement of the furniture made it impossible to steer her through the drawing room. Bensen and I formed a bridge with our arms. Dimitri and Ingrid lowered her like a rag doll onto the bridge. They supported her arms as we ascended the wide, floating staircase.
God, how I’d love to stumble and send her pitching forward.
As if reading my mind, Bensen tightened his grip on my forearms. Once we took the first step, we had to continue to the top. Twenty-five marble stairs flanked by railings too far on either side of us prevented a moment’s respite.
