Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  “I don’t know.” I shrug. “You must have been off with your first count.”

  The waiter places a giant pizza in front of us—sausage and mushroom, my brother’s favorite—and Wen claps his palms together, grinning for the first time since last night.

  I eat all the toppings off my slice first. “Hey, you’re okay, aren’t you?”

  That smile of his shrinks. He lowers his slice back to his plate. “It’s just us burying that owl. . . .”

  I hadn’t even considered what Wen might think. “We didn’t cause that.”

  After the lanterns came crashing down, some Wanderers called for us to leave, saying that the fire was an omen and we were in danger. Some begged for us to stay because it was in this blessed place where the wind extinguished the flames, saving our lives and our livelihoods. We waited for an hour for an answer from Boss, but he didn’t lift his chalk, no matter how hard we coaxed.

  “You could tell me if you weren’t okay,” I say. “After last night, I mean.”

  Wen’s eyes are so full of trust and light, when there’s nothing inside me except lies and shadows. If he actually came to me with his deep philosophical questions, I don’t know what I’d say.

  “I know, Tal.”

  I raise my slice and open my mouth to take a bite.

  “But what if you’re wrong? What if they’re omens? Something could really be wrong with this place.”

  I want to tell him I don’t believe in omens. That nothing the camp’s ever told him is real. But my words stay trapped in my throat like a pill I can’t swallow.

  Wen points to his pizza. “You know I like it like this. It’s artisan—that’s what they call it. Not with the thick crust.” He licks marinara sauce from his hand. “Mom didn’t like it this way, I remember. She liked those thick crusts. Maybe someday we could bring her back here.”

  I must make a face because he flinches. “Sorry,” he says. “I know you don’t like to talk about when Mom comes back.”

  Mom’s not coming back.

  Sometimes I’m so sure Wen knows it, and then he says things like this. We don’t talk about our father at all, and I wish Mom could live in the same place inside our memories, not roving the world without us. Of course, he’s dead and gone and never coming back. Mom’s just stuck in that great in-between.

  If lying to himself gets Wen through the days, I won’t shatter his illusion.

  I set my slice back on my plate. My voice softens to that soothing tone Rona used on us when we were kids, and sometimes still does. “It’s not that I don’t like to talk about her, Wen. This idea of Mom coming back is doing a number on you, dragging you under barbed wire. Over broken glass. I’d rather tell you an ugly truth than a pretty lie.”

  He bites off a hunk of crust. “I prefer the pretty lie.”

  Wen keeps his right hand on the wheel and presses his left against his forehead as he drives toward the drugstore. “Tal, are you sure you don’t want to blow off the markie? I could cut my trip to the bookstore short, and we could catch a movie. My popcorn deficiency is becoming a medical condition.”

  I’ve convinced him to drop me off in front of the drugstore, where I agreed to meet Spencer. He didn’t argue much. He’s having his own little markie affair with books.

  “I’m going.” I reach out the window and tilt the side mirror inward. I apply thick lines of black liquid eyeliner. “Concern yourself with driving straight and not thinking too hard.”

  “Don’t you worry you’re getting in over your head with this?”

  The wheels strike the reflective lane dividers before he yanks the truck straight.

  “Damn it, Wen!” I shake the tube of eyeliner at him. “Why are you driving in Braille? Watch the road!”

  “Okay, seriously? You’re, like, the absolute worst at changing the subject. This markie boy—”

  “Spencer.”

  “Spencer,” he repeats. “He may be in over his head, too. Does he know you’re leaving town in a few weeks?”

  The question is a knife between my ribs. I don’t think I’ve quite put a definition on what I’m doing with Spencer and certainly not a time line. “It hasn’t come up. And we’re just having fun. I would think you of all people would get it.”

  Between Palson’s Family Drugstore and the Cedar Falls Fire Department, Wen brings the truck to a halt. “Be smart, Tal.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  “You’re always clever but not always smart. There’s a difference.”

  I shove my eyeliner into my purse and leave all but one of my fake IDs inside the glove box. My brother believes I’m clever, so clever he’s not the least bit worried about Felix carrying me away. Clever enough to collect twenty thousand dollars, buy myself some freedom, trade in the Chevy for a yacht, and sail us all the way to Morocco if it strikes my fancy.

  At least I’m clever enough to not shatter his illusion.

  “One last thing,” I say. “Pick up a lottery ticket for me. Numbers seven, thirty-four, fifty, twenty-five, six, seventeen.”

  “Seven, thirty-four, fifty, twenty-five, six, seventeen. Got it. But why?”

  I slam the truck door, rest my elbows on the open window, and lean inside. “All will soon be revealed.”

  CHAPTER 19

  I spin a rack of Cedar Falls postcards next to the gumball machine inside Palson’s. I pick out a postcard, one with a picture of the lake where we swam, and dig around the bottom of my bag for change.

  Through the windows, I see Spencer walk up in a polo shirt and jeans, hair still a little damp from the shower. I pay for the postcard—a first for me—and meet Spencer outside, where the evening sky has faded into tangerine, and streetlights make the sidewalks glow.

  “Hello there, Spencer Sway.”

  He grins and leans his back against the side of his car. “I didn’t know if you’d show up.”

  “I didn’t know if I would, either.”

  I open the passenger door before he can try to open it for me and make this night into something it’s not. He climbs in, too, and I kick my sandals onto the dash of Spencer’s car, a pair of brown espadrilles made out of leather soft as butter. “Take me to the most amazing place in Cedar Falls, please.”

  “You get your way a lot, don’t you?”

  “Always.”

  He glides through downtown, carrying us away from any sense I have that I’m betraying my world by being near him.

  “Are we knocking over a bank or heading for the border?” I say. “Or both?”

  He smiles so big it’s almost a laugh.

  I fish a penny out of his cup holder. “Heads Toronto, tails Tijuana.”

  Spencer cuts through a side street and turns down an alley. He slows behind a row of buildings and parks beside a Dumpster.

  I check for business signs as we get out of the car, but the buildings around us are unmarked and only faintly lit by the streetlights from the roadway.

  He presses on a door handle. It doesn’t budge.

  “Breaking in?” I cross my arms and sink my shoulder into the brick building. “Am I finally seeing a glimpse of that bad boy inside you?”

  He jiggles around in his pocket and produces a key. “No, but I am working on being spontaneous.”

  “Spontaneity isn’t something you can work on, Spencer Sway.”

  We step inside, and spotlights shoot from the ceiling to illuminate sculptures and paintings.

  “My dad’s gallery,” he says. “It’s closed today. And it’s the most amazing place in Cedar Falls.”

  “Your dad is an artist?”

  “The owner. An art aficionado, I guess. The gallery barely breaks even, but Mom supports his habit. Some of these are by local artists, friends of my parents. Most are from artists up north. Take a look around. I’ll be right back. I have a surprise.”

  I make a slow circle around the room, taking in these creations, all unusual.

  He returns carrying two clear plastic cups full of something dark red. In the
crook of his arm, a cork sticks from a bottle.

  “Fancy.”

  “Nope.” He passes me a cup. “It’s the cheap stuff my dad doesn’t like to serve. He won’t even notice it’s gone.”

  We trip through the corridors, drinking our wine and staring at paintings splattered with colors that stretch so far I can’t take them in without moving my neck right and left, up and down. They’re strange and lovely and untamed.

  “You don’t look bored,” says Spencer. “I wasn’t so sure you’d find it as amazing as me.” He stubs the toe of his shoe on the wooden floor. “I mean, as amazing as I find it.”

  “It is amazing”—I down the last of my wine—“and so are you, somewhere under all that unrealized potential.”

  We stop to refill our glasses, and the wine dwindles down to nothing. In the lobby, I lounge across a black velvet couch that’s more of an oversized ottoman. Half a dozen people could sleep there and never so much as brush their toes together.

  Spencer’s cheeks are red from wine as he stretches beside me.

  I trace my index finger down the bridge of his nose. “I do believe you’re drunk on two glasses of wine, Spencer Sway.”

  His purple-stained lips curve upward. “Why do you always have to say my full name?”

  “I like the sound of it. Spencer Sway. What do you call it when all the words start off repeating the same sound?” I love that point when I’m drunk enough to talk nonsense. Drunk enough to forget all the sensical things I don’t want to remember.

  “Onomatopoeia?”

  “No, it’s . . .” I think about the vocabulary Wen’s always tossing around. “. . . alliteration. Shame on you, Spencer. You’re going to fail that SAT and never make it into that college.”

  Close to my ear, he whispers, “Please don’t talk about college.” He touches his mouth to my collarbone and kisses the column of my throat. “Is this okay?”

  The logical part of me says this isn’t okay. The illogical part of me wants this closeness, and tonight, illogical’s winning out. I like the feel of him.

  With my eyes closed, I breathe a dangerous word. “Yes.”

  Maybe it’s Felix, a few miles away in camp, waiting to cart me away, waiting for me to tell him I’m his. Being here with Spencer makes it better somehow, reminding myself my body is my own, that I get to choose who touches me.

  “Tell me something,” I say with our mouths inches apart. “Why’re you here with me, instead of anybody else in Cedar Falls? You’re far too pretty to be a loner.”

  He rolls onto his back and stares at the rafters. “So, I read this Vonnegut book for class once, and it said something about getting close to the edge. That when you’re on the edge, you can see things you don’t see from the center.”

  My heart aches at those words. I collect my focus the best I can. “Well, still waters do run deep.”

  “Everybody in this town is standing dead center.” His smile turns serious, and he meets my eyes. “I hate this town, everything about it. How my mom’s always worried about what people think about her, what people’ll think if I don’t get accepted to SJU.” He skims his thumb over my knuckles. “Hey, I told you how I did that exchange program last year? How I spent the year in Spain? When I came back to Cedar Falls, everything was the same. All my friends cared about was basketball games, girls they were trying to nail, who was running for mayor. Of course, my friends were Craig and Jeremy, so go figure.”

  “The guys at Whitney’s?” The gorillas.

  “Those would be the ones. I got wasted at a party, and I don’t know, I started talking, telling them what I thought about them. This town. Jeremy and Craig were the ones to throw the first punches. Someone should have ended it before it went that far, but we were all pretty drunk. They wanted everything to be the same when I got back, but nothing was. And I wished—I wish—I’d never come back here at all.”

  What he’s saying scares me, and it’s not easy to do that. What he’s told me means something big in his world.

  “If you could go anywhere,” I say, “where would you most want to go?”

  “Sailing from Sydney to Cape Town would be a dream.” His voice takes on that quality Wen’s gets when he’s starry-eyed over a book. “Someday, I want to sail around the world.”

  “I’ve never even been in a boat.”

  Thinking about things I haven’t done always makes me think about Mom. I wonder if she’s adrift somewhere, having some great adventure. I don’t really care where she is, but I wonder if she’s wandering or staying still.

  Either way, she’s left Wen and me to wander all alone.

  “You’d love it,” Spencer says as he skims his lips along my jawline. “Drifting over the water, heading off to places behind the horizon.”

  I want it. I do. And the wanting hurts because it’s something I’ll never have in my Wanderer life.

  The weight of Spencer sinks over me. I gasp—I don’t believe anything has ever surprised me so much before—and he pulls back. But I grab his wrists, anchoring his hands to both sides of my head and his knees at the sides of my hips.

  It’s an alluring, messy distraction, but this room feels safe, holding the two of us and our dreams of other worlds.

  I hope Spencer’s fine with it staying this way, though, clothes still on.

  I make a soft sound against his mouth before I pull away. “When are you going to tell your family you’re not going to that college?”

  His eyes twinkle with amusement. “What do you mean? Of course I’m going to SJU.”

  It hits me like a slap across the face.

  He dips his mouth toward mine, but I press against his chest and dodge his lips.

  The gallery lights swirl from the wine as I sit up. Over my shoulder, I say, “But I thought—I thought you weren’t going to do that.”

  “Go to college? I don’t want to. But there’s a difference—a big one. What else am I going to do? Assuming I have what it takes to get in, I’m going to SJU next year. Nothing’s changing that.” He yawns into his hand and shrugs. “Maybe I’ll finally be able to do more traveling someday. After SJU, after I work a bunch of years in some windowless office.”

  Just like that, he’s giving up. All talk and no action—Spencer Sway to a T.

  The realization hits me—Spencer Sway is no different from everyone else in Cedar Falls. He almost had me fooled.

  “You lied to me.”

  If this was the slightest bit funny, I’d laugh at the irony—a markie lying to me for a change.

  “It wasn’t a lie.” He sits up and rubs at his eyes. “I was—oh come on, do we have to take this so seriously?”

  I feel so impossibly stupid, for coming here tonight, for allowing myself to be the mark in a con I never saw coming. For putting myself in jeopardy—Wen and our whole camp, too—because of some stupid, selfish urges. For being a little less myself and a little more my mother.

  We wait for the early morning hours to leave the gallery, until our limbs aren’t heavy and we’re all sobered up, but it’s still dark enough to slip back into each of our lives unnoticed.

  Spencer drives me to camp without talking, easing his car around curves and over potholes. In the vanity mirror, I find the reflection of my eyes. They looked dangerous before I left, lined with streaks of black eyeliner. Now, with everything he said ringing in my ears, there’s a little uncertainty the makeup can’t hide.

  It’s windy, and the lanterns of camp dance through the trees. When I was a kid, if we came back to camp late at night, I’d press my face to the window of the truck, watching the lights beckon us home.

  Spencer guides us off the main road and underneath the trees that keep camp hidden.

  “Stop right here,” I say.

  Before I know it, he’s around the car, opening my door. “I’ll walk with you.”

  It’s a bad idea for him to come this close to us. Someone could see. And I shouldn’t blur the lines between our two worlds. I don’t tell him no, though, and
let him walk beside me until the smoke from our campfires tickles my throat.

  My sandals slow in the pine needles. “We’re here.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Everything you said last night—that’s why you like me, isn’t it? I’m the sweet promise of somewhere else.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  He’s playing with me because I’m a piece of somewhere else. But I won’t be his toy.

  As the shape of his back moves away from me, I realize something horrible’s happened—I let the momentum of Spencer and me build to a dangerous speed.

  And we just crashed.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Let’s start it up.” Wen lets go of the Chevy’s bumper and grabs on to his knees to catch his breath. “We’re far enough away.”

  I bear my shoulder into the tailgate of the Chevy, my boots sinking into the mud as I heave the truck a few more inches by myself.

  Camp is off in the distance. I rest my hip on the bumper. Everyone’s tucked away in their trailers except for someone softly strumming a guitar.

  Wen and I are both dripping with sweat, even though the October air is cool, and he’s probably right—we’re far enough away that Rona won’t hear the engine starting.

  Anyone else wouldn’t care too much about us sneaking off into the night, but if Rona heard us, she’d march down the road and order us back to our beds.

  I wouldn’t go, of course, but Wen would hang his head and trail her back to camp, his tail between his legs.

  That can’t happen tonight. I need my brother.

  This is a two-man con.

  “Shouldn’t be this hard to get away,” I say.

  I use a bottle of hand sanitizer to clean the dirt and sweat from my bare arms as Wen drives. By the time we’ve reached town, I’ve applied mascara and lip gloss, brushed my tangles into submission, and swapped out my boots for a pair of sandals.

  “You feeling good about this?” he says.

  “Fortune favors the bold.”

  Wen takes off into the Cedar Falls Inn a few minutes before I do. For this con, my brother is a stranger to me, waiting in the shadows in the event I need some muscle. A sad excuse for muscle, but he’s all I’ve got if everything goes south.