Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  We didn’t know it then, but we were already confined by high stone walls—not of a castle—but of our own expectations.

  CHAPTER 15

  I grab the keys off the hook by the trailer door and creep around to the driver’s side of the Chevy. “Hey,” I yell. “I’m taking the truck!”

  Wen’s down the road, practicing his card-shuffling skills with Horatio and Emil, but he comes jogging beside me before I crank the gearshift into reverse.

  “You’re going into town?” he says. “Let me come with you.”

  “We sleep in a five-by-sixteen tin can together. Can’t I have a few hours of alone time?”

  He checks over his shoulder and looks back at me. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, Tal.”

  “That’s impossible.” I tousle my hair in the rearview mirror. “I don’t even know what I’m doing.”

  “You’re meeting up with that markie boy.”

  It’s not true. I’m not going to meet Spencer, but I am going to find him.

  Town’s no doubt hot as hell anyway, with the rumors of the ecstasy con circulating. It’s not going to be easy—between the townies and Lando—running the scams and coming up with the rest of the money before the expiration of my liberty. I might as well have a little fun.

  “It’s dangerous,” Wen says.

  “Let me calm your fears. There’s not a thing that’s dangerous about that boy.”

  But Wen’s hands stay in place, one on the side mirror, the other on the door, and he doesn’t appear to be moving them soon.

  “Hey, I appreciate the brotherly concern. I’ll be careful.”

  I follow the path cut through the trees all the way to the road, and the looping highway the rest of the way into town. With the wind in my hair and camp a little picture in my rearview mirror, I’m unshackled, even for only a few hours of freedom.

  Each turn grows more uncertain once I pass downtown. What I’ll do when I get to Spencer’s house escapes me. It’s not as if I can walk to the door, plant my feet on the Sway family welcome mat, and ring the doorbell.

  I don’t know why I’m looking for Spencer. Maybe because he helped me when he didn’t have to, or maybe because he’s a little bit of a liar—that’s something I relate to. My curiosity isn’t healthy, and the root of my interest isn’t anything that will do me any good, but I’d rather not think too hard about that now.

  There, up the road, is that brick retaining wall. All my bravery fades away. I decide to drive by the house once, pick up a pizza for Wen, and let Spencer be a memory of our travels—a mental snapshot of a soon-to-be-forgotten, sleepy Southern town.

  I drop my speed to a crawl as I pull past the old colonial, ready for my last look.

  Spencer sits on the porch in a whitewashed Adirondack chair with a laptop balanced on his knees. With him a short distance away, I realize my mistake. As my foot goes for the accelerator, Spencer glances up. I’m seen, and it’s too late to drive on.

  He closes his laptop and saunters down the drive. His smile is lazy as he rests his forearms on my open window and tilts into the cab. “You asked me if I was stalking you at Whitney’s party. Now the real question is this: are you stalking me?”

  “What if I said yes?”

  “Then I’d think you were lying.”

  I press my lips together and try to hold my smile deep inside. “What if I said no?”

  “Then I’d know for sure you were lying.”

  The car idles, and I stare at the unmoving needle on the speedometer, neither of us disturbing the quiet. Until I do. “So maybe you want to get out of here? That is, if all your homework’s done and your bed’s made.”

  Temptation flickers in his eyes, and I can see why. If I had to stay in one place, all I’d want to do is run. But he’ll give me some markie excuse, like his mom’s got a pot roast in the oven. I’m sure of it.

  Spencer glances at his house, and then me, before climbing inside.

  “Where to?”

  He rubs his knuckle under his chin like he’s solving some difficult homework problem. “You like pancakes?”

  He gives directions as I wind down the mountain roads and onto the highway.

  The diner is at least ten miles from town, a greasy place that smells like french fries and maple syrup. At the back corner, where most of the fluorescent lights are burned out, I find an empty booth. Spencer checks his watch and slides down the vinyl seat across from me.

  “So, Spencer Sway, why didn’t you throw me to the wolves at that party? You one of those pay-it-forward types?”

  He brushes spilled salt off the table’s edge. “Those people aren’t my friends. Not since last year.”

  “What’d you do last year? Figure out they’re all assholes?”

  A corner of his mouth turns up. “That’s not so far from the truth.”

  The waitress flips a white mug right side up on my placemat, filling it to the brim with coffee. I take a sip. Diner coffee is the same wherever you go. Bitter and burned, with a few stray grounds in the bottom of the mug. Maybe that’s why I love it—because it’s always the same and one of the few things I can depend on from town to town.

  I close my menu after deciding on two orders of banana pancakes—one to go. Spencer orders blueberry pancakes with a side of bacon. He pulls back the sleeve of his checkered shirt and looks at his watch again.

  “Am I boring you, Spencer?”

  “What?”

  “Okay, give it over.” I lay my hand across the table, palm up. “The watch. Really.”

  He assesses me as he unhooks the latch. “Am I going to get it back?”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  He drops it into my palm, and I wrap the metal band around my own wrist, shivering at the cold against my skin.

  The waitress soon sets down our plates and a Styrofoam to-go box. As we eat, I say, “This trouble you got in with your friends, what’d you do?”

  “I wouldn’t mind having a few secrets. You’ve obviously got yours.”

  I steal a piece of Spencer’s bacon, and he slides the plate to the middle of the table.

  “So, you like to travel?” he says.

  “Huh?”

  “The pictures in my hallway. You liked them.”

  Out of all of Spencer’s fancy things, Africa is the one thing he’s had that I desperately want for my own. “Was Cape Town everything you imagined it to be?”

  That wistful look on his face falters. “Oh, that trip was just my parents.”

  I’m a little relieved nobody at this table has set foot on that continent.

  He traces the names carved into the tabletop, names of people like him, who sat in these cracked seats, celebrating homecoming games and graduating from Cedar Falls High with plans to travel the world, only to wind up back here, in some markie home by the lake with a mortgage and kids and a bunch of fading dreams.

  “But I want to see Africa someday,” he says. “More than anywhere.”

  So softly I barely even speak, I say, “I want to see it, too.”

  As soon as the words leave my mouth, I feel a weight lifted and a rush of embarrassment, like I’ve confessed some dark sin. Africa is my secret, my hope, my fear, and mine for the wanting. Knowing I have to share it with Spencer Sway is a little like jealousy and more like intimacy.

  “So you,” he says. “There’s got to be more to you than pool hustling, shoplifting sunglasses, and dealing fake drugs.” He props his elbows on the table and leans closer. “Whatever it is you are.”

  Every muscle in my body stills.

  “Wanderer,” I say.

  “I wondered.” He smiles and settles back in his seat. “Don’t worry. I’m good with secrets.”

  “How come you know so much about all this?”

  “This fucking town has a grudge—I guess that’s why. Some Wanderers came through here a long time ago. The town can’t forget.”

  All the whispers that we’ve been here before run through my head. “D
on’t toy with me, Spencer. What happened?”

  “My dad took me to this parade when I was a kid. It was downtown, on Main Street. I don’t know; maybe some of my memories are blending together. It was a weird year—we have that same parade every Thanksgiving, but the Wanderers got run out of town, or something.”

  “What was so special about that year?”

  He hesitates and blows out a breath. “Okay, this is crazy, but a kid—one of them—snuck onto a parade float.”

  Parade. The mystery of this town comes into focus—those wide drugstore windows, the tree on Main Street, and that sense of déjà vu this place keeps conjuring.

  I remember balancing myself high in a tree, watching the colors of balloon animals and clowns swirl together with the smells of hot dogs and cotton candy. The town near our campsite was having a parade, and I was a kid trapped between two worlds that kept colliding around me.

  Rona had been keeping us for a while, I guess, and Wen and I sweet-talked her into taking us to see the parade. Markie things like that weren’t permitted; she could have said no. Maybe she only agreed because we were these motherless things she couldn’t handle.

  Cops walked the streets, some on horseback, some on foot, down a length of rope that marked the border between the sidewalk and the street. Rona told us not to go anywhere and went off to flirt her way into a bag of blue cotton candy for us all to share.

  The parade had a float covered in these white balloons, like a cloud ready to float down the asphalt. I wanted to float, too.

  One of the cops guarded the rope that kept the onlookers on the sidewalks and the parade in the street, so I made Wen pretend to fall down and skin his knee. While the officer sat down in the road with Wen, rolling his pant leg to check for bleeding, I slipped behind him, under the rope, and between the clowns and trumpet players, all the way onto the cloud float.

  I buried myself deep in the balloons and waited while the music began, trombones and drums accompanied by a marching band wearing red-and-blue headpieces.

  Minutes later, the float started to shimmy and shake, rolling down the street.

  That’s when I popped out like a jack-in-the-box, snarls of my tangled hair blowing in the wind. I lifted my hand to the crowd, showing off the beauty-queen wave I’d seen minutes before from the local high school’s homecoming royalty nominees.

  I move my gaze up from the diner table, and Spencer’s got his face cradled in his hand. He’s staring at me like he’s trying to figure me out.

  I straighten in my seat. “Tell me more.”

  He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t really remember. They say she ruined the whole parade, but I—I couldn’t take my eyes off that girl.”

  What he doesn’t know is that he couldn’t take his eyes off me.

  Our plates are clean, and my hands are sticky with syrup as Spencer throws two tens on the table. I plant my index finger on one of the bills and slide it toward him. He watches me count my own cash, the little bit I didn’t deposit in the Cool Whip container, and lay it on top of his ten.

  I drive through Cedar Falls, and as we pass the neighborhood where the party was, I crane my neck. Regret hits me hard when I think about that girl—Whitney—who was only ever kind to me. Who made me feel like I was normal, just like her. Who saved me when the drunk girl almost blew my cover.

  As we round the corner onto his street, Spencer says, “Park a few houses down.”

  I pull the Chevy to a stop two mailboxes shy of the Sway family’s brick retaining wall.

  “Hey, um,” I say, “I’ve been meaning to ask you—is that girl okay? The one who threw the party.” Before I can think to hold back, I add, “I feel a little guilty about her.”

  “Whitney? You feel guilty about her?” Spencer laughs. “Look, she used you as badly as you used her. If you think she didn’t know exactly what you and your brother were, you’re not that good a con artist.”

  “How could she have known?”

  “Like I told you, this town holds a grudge. People are smarter here than you’re used to.”

  I’m torn between my growing curiosity and my aching pride. “What was her angle?”

  “She had a bet going that she’d throw the most-talked-about senior party of the year. Inviting you and your brother was her ticket.”

  “What about the cops? Was that her grand finale?”

  “Nah, she wouldn’t have done that. I take it one of her rivals called them. But after the scene you and I put on, we just about cemented Whitney’s win.”

  You’d think I’d hate her. But I can’t hate someone that cunning. Someone like me. If anything, I like Whitney all the more.

  Spencer’s fingers twist around the door handle. “When can I see you again?”

  “When do you want to see me again?”

  He clears his throat. “Tomorrow? Could I pick you up out there?”

  “I can’t do tomorrow.”

  His face falls.

  “Wednesday,” I say. “I’ll meet you in front of the drugstore at seven.”

  He smiles. “Wednesday.”

  “Hey, Spencer.” I unwind the watch from my wrist. “You wouldn’t want to be late.”

  He pockets it, leaving his wrist naked except for a white tan line before he slides down the length of the cab beside me.

  He’s close enough for the heat of his jeans to seep against my thigh. I want to feel his mouth on mine so bad the blood rushes to my lips.

  As he inches closer to me, I know he’s going to taste like maple syrup and summer and the tragedy of places I can never go. So I turn away, leaving him only my cheek.

  CHAPTER 16

  Under a moonless sky, I return to camp. I find Wen playing solitaire outside the trailer. Tonight was a birthday celebration for Emil, but I was far away from camp and far away from Boss and Felix and Lando. I was in another world.

  I plop into the empty lawn chair beside Wen. “Are you hungry?”

  “Not really. Sonia brought me a tin of preacher cookies.”

  Preacher cookies are the only kind we make in camp because they don’t need to be baked and nobody has an oven.

  “Oh, I’ve got something better than those.” I push the to-go container and a plastic fork across the collapsible picnic table, to the edge of his cards. “Pancakes.”

  “Yum.” He opens the container and cuts his food with the side of the fork. With his mouth full, he says, “You’re eating pancakes with the markie now?”

  “Spencer.”

  Wen’s fork pauses midair. “First-name basis. What’s the angle?”

  “No angle. He saved my ass. He’s a friend.”

  Wen snorts and shovels another forkful into his mouth.

  “What?”

  “You say it so casually. A friend. Like you’ve had a ton of friends outside camp before.”

  I push up from the table. “It’s not really any of your business.”

  Wen catches my arm and rolls his eyes. “I don’t mean anything by it. Just curious. Those people at the party, they were all friends.”

  “Yeah.” I’m careful as I lower myself beside him again. I don’t like to get Wen started on thinking about how markies live.

  He cups his chin in his hand, zoning out into the distance while he chews. “It’s interesting how they choose their friends, you know. Our friends are all in camp. We don’t have much choice.”

  “I think they go to school together. They don’t have a choice, either.”

  “Interesting.”

  That night, Wen props himself up with pillows and a book he bought in town but claims he stole. But me, I lie there, looking up at the cloth ceiling with its duct-tape patches, thinking my nights beneath this roof are numbered. Felix is closer than I ever imagined him being. It’s not as if he’s moving in here with my brother and me.

  I’ve never been the kind to sit back and let my fate come to me. Defying authority, that’s what Rona and Lando called it. When things press d
own on me, I hit back. Now if only I could hit back to the tune of twenty grand.

  Soon Wen turns off his light. He whispers his good-night ritual in a groggy way that tells me his eyes are already closing.

  I’m the restless one for a change.

  Wen snores softly while someone’s generator buzzes outside our windows. My own sounds stir through my mind. And others, too. The click of the second hand on a watch, the hum of a voice. All the sounds of Spencer should be sealed on the other side of Cedar Falls, bricked in and boarded up inside the Sway family home. Here, in my tent trailer, they’re unshakable.

  I even think I hear a whisper outside my screen. But the things you think you hear in the dark are never real, not even the things you whisper to yourself.

  Nothing. That is, until I hear it again.

  “Tal.”

  It comes from behind a tall maple at the edge of camp, catching with the wind so I can’t identify the speaker.

  I grab my heaviest flashlight from under my mattress and slip my feet into a pair of Wen’s boots about five sizes too roomy. I close the screen door behind me, careful the bolts don’t creak.

  The light from my flashlight is faint as I shine it into the woods.

  “It’s only me,” says Sonia. “I didn’t want to wake up Wen.” She shifts her sandals in the dry grass. “Would you mind doing me a favor? I gave Emil some real nice cigars for his birthday—well, not real nice—but nice enough. He went to sleep early, and when I was finishing up the last of the dishes, I knocked the last couple into the sink.”

  A real kitchen with an actual sink was a perk of Sonia’s marriage. She got all blushy the first time she showed me the checkered linoleum floor, the sink with running water, and the flushing toilet, like she was embarrassed of having something so fine when Wen and I were still living in squalor. But walking back to my tent trailer that afternoon, that metal siding shone for me—outright sparkled—in a way it hadn’t in years.

  She rubs her teeth against her lip now. “Emil’s asleep still, and I don’t want him to know about the cigars.”