Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  My fingers curl into fists, and I dig them into my hips to stop myself from doing something that will make everything worse. “You need to go.”

  “Hear me out. If you say you’ll go along with the marriage—nicely, I mean, without causing anyone any trouble—I’ll talk to Lando. I’ll make sure your little brother always has a place with us, even if we decide to move along to another camp or go roving. I’ll pay Lando good money, even.”

  The air around me spins, then stills.

  Saying yes would be the selfless thing to do. I would die for Wen, but marrying Felix for him is another thing entirely.

  Felix leaps off the mattress and thunks onto the floor. “Would you think about it? Pretty please? You don’t have to tell me now. Just think it over.” He takes a look around, at our faded curtains, the rubber bands holding our cabinets shut, our battered floor. “You deserve better than this hovel, you know?”

  The screen door screeches closed without another word.

  I grab my jacket and tug my feet into boots, then stuff our money into the waistband of my jeans. I’m out the door in sixty seconds. Wen has the Chevy, but I have to get away from camp.

  Locked up, Rona has no need for her truck, a little beige Mazda with primer shining gray through the paint. She keeps her keys stowed in the trailer beside a music box my mother gave her. She wouldn’t mind me taking the truck for a spin or two.

  I pounce up the two metal steps to her trailer door, and the screen swings open. There stands Lando.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “How is that any of your business?” He pushes past me, and I catch a flash of green sticking from his pocket.

  I wouldn’t think Boss’s son would bother stealing from people in his own camp, but the money we’ve had go missing makes me wonder.

  I won’t dare accuse him. Not until I’m sure.

  A crowd of about twenty people is lined up in front of city hall as I idle at a stoplight. All of them hold signs that say things like CRACK DOWN ON CRIME and SAVE OUR TOWN FROM GYPSY TRASH.

  With the Mazda seat humming against my thighs, I think about Rona, handcuffed and locked in a cell, with those townspeople outside, sharpening their pitchforks and lighting their torches.

  Most of all, I think about me. After the deal Felix offered, I shouldn’t be trying to scheme my way into the bride-price. My selfish urges shouldn’t be stronger than my love for my brother.

  I find the Cedar Falls High School easy enough. All the townie kids forgot about the party and the fake ecstasy—that’s what Spencer told me—so maybe it’s okay to show up here.

  But I know better. They didn’t forget, not really. Wen and I became one blur in their drunken night, a little cash that’s now missing from their wallets.

  In the parking lot, I spot the familiar shape of a girl in a navy blue skirt and cardigan: Whitney. Her legs are wrapped in mustard-colored tights that make me think of the old magazines Rona and my mother stole from a beauty shop when the conning business was slow.

  I duck, but Whitney waves. It seems rude to keep on driving. Like manners have ever been a great concern of mine.

  She props her arms on the edge of the open window and smiles.

  “Hey there, Whitney.”

  “Well, hello . . .” She trails off, like she’s unsure of my name.

  “I think you know it’s Tal.” There’s no sense in keeping the ruse going now. “So how does winning feel?”

  “Oh, please.” She laughs and taps her fingertip against her lips. “We had a mutually beneficial relationship. You just didn’t know it. I helped you to make some quick cash off my friends, and you made my party legendary.”

  “You weren’t the one who nearly got arrested.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about the cops. You’re not angry, are you?”

  “A little.” More like impressed.

  A bell rings behind us, and she throws a glance over her shoulder. “I’ll catch you later, Tal.”

  I drive down the aisles of the parking lot. Finally, I see Spencer’s silver sedan. I riffle through my bag for something to write on. All I find is the orange flier. I scribble a note, slip it under his windshield wipers, and drive off.

  Behind the gym, and mostly out of sight, I park Rona’s Mazda. In the woods near the back of the high school, I prop myself against a tree and try to dream up my next con.

  Bells ring, and a flurry of activity begins. Across the way-off parking lot, Whitney disappears into her convertible with two other girls, leaving one seat empty. I imagine myself sitting there, not because I want to be with them, but because I wish I knew what it felt like to be one of them.

  I close my eyes, and, before long, the orange flier drops into my lap. I read what’s penciled on the other side. My message: MEET ME IN THE WOODS BEHIND THE GYM.

  Cupping my hand over my eyes to cut the glare of the sun, I scan Spencer’s body from his feet all the way to his lopsided grin.

  “You got my note. Guess I forgot to sign it.”

  “Only you.” He looks around like there are answers dangling from the tree branches. “I’ve got to drop Margaret off at ice-skating. But, uh, afterward, we could go back to my place. If you want.”

  CHAPTER 25

  “Let me see your room, Spencer Sway.”

  Halfway up the staircase, I lean over the banister. In the foyer, Spencer swings the front door shut, sealing the mid-October air outside.

  He drops his backpack on the hardwood floor. “You really care about seeing my room?”

  The house is empty, other than the two of us, and while I have no business being here, it’s the only place I want to be. After Felix’s proposition, I need a good, strong distraction.

  I sprint up the rest of the stairs before he actually says yes.

  All the doors are closed at the top of the landing. “Which one?”

  He strides up the stairs behind me and folds his arms over his chest. “Guess.”

  I start opening doors, the first a bathroom. “Cold,” I say. The next one has pink-painted walls and shelves full of stuffed animals. “Brrr. Definitely not this one.”

  Plaid wallpaper lines the walls of the next room. Bookcases are brimming with yearbooks and textbooks, and on the wall hangs a map of the world.

  I hug the door frame and smile up at him. “Warm?”

  “You’re on fire.” The way he says it isn’t all sexylike—it’s kind of self-conscious.

  The room has a smell, not bad or good, but something indescribable that’s so definitely Spencer. New clothes, laundry detergent, book paper, and a little cologne his parents probably gave him for his birthday. There must be a scent to all of us that we’ll never be able to smell. Mine must be pine needles and lake water and rain and dirt and summer.

  He keeps one foot in his room and one in the hall while I stop in front of the world map.

  Little blue-tipped pins stick into almost every continent, but there’s not one in Africa. All the places he’s been. My own map, the one that exists in my mind, has a cluster of pins stuck in only the US. For sixteen years of solid traveling, I’ve seen almost nothing.

  Spencer sits on the bed, watching me go through all of his stuff. “We could watch a movie downstairs.”

  “Maybe.” A movie downstairs might bore a markie girl, but I wouldn’t mind it, doing what he probably does every day, walking around in Spencer’s shoes all afternoon. I’d even like to dive into his closet, wrap myself in one of his plaid shirts, and blend into those wallpapered walls.

  “I might be able to score something out of my parents’ liquor cabinet.”

  “Booze and drugs and hijacking parade floats aren’t the only ways I chase my boredom away, Spencer Sway.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.”

  A few weeks ago, getting drunk was another way of traveling. I would have chosen oblivion over anything else.

  On his desk is a folded navy sweatshirt with burgundy letters—S, J, and U. The ta
gs are still attached.

  “A gift?” I say.

  “You bet.”

  I saunter over to him, move his knees apart with mine, and step between them. “Spencer Sway, you are going to spend the first half of your life making plans and the second half regretting them.”

  “Then I’ll make better plans.”

  “Like what?”

  He smiles. “Like Africa. With you.”

  This is a lie I wish I could believe.

  His right hand spins his watch around and around his left wrist. He unhooks it and drops it on his nightstand.

  “You don’t believe in time anymore?”

  “I don’t know.” His fingers circle the wrist where his watch had been. “There’s a lot I don’t believe in. Nine-to-five jobs and small-town bullshit. We’ve all got something we’re supposed to believe in that we just don’t. What do you not believe in?”

  Images of owls and lanterns blaze right through me. My lips part, but everything truthful is trapped behind my tonsils.

  “I believe in me,” I say. “That’s it, and nothing else.”

  “Oh, I assumed Wanderers had a whole different belief system. A religion or something.”

  “Wanderers do. I don’t.” I’ve never told anyone else I don’t believe. Not even Wen. “They believe the Spirit of the Falconer—a Wanderer from the past—watches over us. They believe in omens, in owls, in a lot of things.” I circle the room so fast that I make myself dizzy. I face him and rest my hands on the desk behind me. “That’s not it, though. My camp believes in me, too. . . .”

  I tell him everything. The powerful dogma of our camp, their believing I’m their compass, that a divine force guides us to the places we’re meant to be. How I let everyone go on believing in me, and I carry their faith on my shoulders.

  He doesn’t say anything, not for a few moments, but then he walks to me and whispers, “I’d make a good Wanderer. I believe in you, too.”

  He leans close, like he’s about to touch his tongue to an electrical socket. It’s always like this with Spencer. Tentative at first, maybe a little shy the way he holds back, but once he’s touching me, every bit of his uncertainty vanishes.

  I like the feel of his hands on my hips, the steadiness of them. I close my eyes and tilt my head to the ceiling as they roam and sink into the dip of my lower back.

  “Why do you have all this money?”

  My eyes fly open. My cash shifts under his touch. I bolt away and tuck the money back into place. “What’s it to you?”

  “Well, it’s . . . crazy. You can’t carry that much cash safely. Why do you need that much on you anyway?”

  He’s right. It is crazy. Everything about our plans, exposing a thief and earning the bride-price, too. “Please don’t act like you know my life, Spencer.”

  “Tell me more then. Make me understand.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “What are you doing next, you and your brother? You’re going to leave Cedar Falls and head somewhere else after your guardian’s out?”

  Uncertainty is no friend of mine, and I’ve never been so uncertain about my future. Even if I break free from Felix, what good is freedom to the kind of girl who chooses herself over the woman who raised her? A girl who threatens her own brother’s well-being?

  A door slams downstairs. Voices trickle up from the hallway, and Spencer straightens. “So, that would be my parents. I guess they’re home early.”

  I crane my neck toward the window where tree branches aren’t too many feet away. I could make it out the window.

  “Relax.” He collects my hands in his. “I’ll tell them I’m having a friend over for dinner.”

  “You need a better cover than that. A whole backstory. How we met, what I’m doing here. Ordinarily, I’d wing it, but you’re such a rookie. . .. You’d ruin this for sure.”

  We settle on a variation of the story Wen told in Chicken and Billiards in Pike. My parents are involved in a real estate transaction, a transferring of property—one of their old summer homes they’re sick and tired of—one that requires they oversee some repairs. My brother and I are only here until the job is complete. If his parents ask too many questions, I’ll be vague about our fictional loft in Chicago and the private school my brother and I attend.

  We decide to use my real name and my brother’s, too. That bit of truth might make it harder for me. It’s easier to become someone else when everything’s a lie.

  He bounds down the stairs, with me tiptoeing behind him.

  Spencer’s mother—Judge Sway—sits at a bar stool sipping wine, with her blonde hair swept off her face, while his father stirs a pot on the stove.

  “It’s too peppery for my taste,” says Spencer’s father. He swirls wine around in his glass and whistles. “But look at the legs on that.”

  The kitchen has high ceilings, dark mahogany cabinets, and stainless steel appliances. I tagged along with Rona once, when she ran the rental scam, into a home with a kitchen a lot like this one. She called it a million-dollar home. Sonia would swoon over this place, the same way she loved that sparkly new trailer Emil provided.

  “What are you guys doing home so early?” says Spencer. “I thought you had a full calendar, Mom.”

  She answers without spinning around, her voice moneyed and honeyed. “The defense asked for a continuance on the Williams case, which pushes everything to my already full, 9 AM traffic calendar. Your dad closed up the gallery early because Margaret’s coach called and said she wasn’t feeling well.” She whirls around, pausing as she looks past Spencer to where I stand.

  Judge Sway makes her living measuring truthfulness; I’m terrified she’ll look right through me and see me for what I am.

  “This is Tal.” Spencer steps free from me, leaving me feeling exposed. “She’s staying for dinner.”

  Spencer’s mom rises from her bar stool, her warm smile spreading. “Lovely to meet you, Tal.”

  “Nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Sway. Judge. Your Honor.”

  I’m usually so much smoother than this. It’s dinner, not a con, not a scam.

  This would be different if I was a normal girl—sweet sixteen and having dinner at a boy’s house.

  “Ella. Call me Ella. I insist.” The phone sitting beside her buzzes, and she types away on it, muttering about a “sequestered jury from hell” as Spencer’s father lurches forward.

  “Glad to know my son has good taste. Marcus. Nice to meet you, Tal.”

  Marcus Sway looks so much like his son, with a strong nose and a square jaw. The hair, though; it’s different. All I love about Spencer’s hair is absent from his father’s. That unruly piece that’s a little too long and dusts Spencer’s eyebrow is gone. It must need years of combing to stay put, and Marcus has finally mastered it. I hope Spencer never tames his.

  Spencer repeats my cover story almost flawlessly. Ordinarily, I would take the lead but not here with the Sways.

  Margaret teeters into the kitchen, still wearing her spandex ice-skating costume.

  “What’s wrong with you, Mags?” Spencer touches the back of his hand to her forehead. “You’re sick?”

  “She says she has a sore throat,” Ella says.

  Marcus slams the refrigerator shut and spins toward the island. “She’s probably faking. I think she’s just tired of ice-skating. She keeps going on about magic lessons instead.”

  “Mags, say hi to Tal,” says Spencer.

  Ella flicks her eyes up from her phone. “Margaret knows Tal?”

  Margaret’s wide, serious eyes catch mine. “Spencer kisses her in the forest.”

  Marcus throws a dish towel onto the counter and gives Spencer a look. “Way to be a good influence, Spence.”

  I choke back lies they’d never believe. It wouldn’t take much for them to realize exactly what I am.

  A smile touches Marcus’s eyes, and I relax.

  Around their dining-room table, we eat a meal Marcus prepared: pasta, salad, and garlic bread. E
lla says she works long hours, and Marcus’s schedule is more flexible, so it’s never made much sense for her to cook. She drinks the last drop of red wine from her glass, and Marcus is quick to refill it.

  She presses a hand to her temple. “I feel like I should be drinking it out of the bottle after my day. Those protesters are camped right by the window of my chambers. Can you imagine a judge having this problem in Philadelphia?”

  “Which protesters?” asks Marcus.

  Ella huffs. “You haven’t seen those half-wits and their anti-gypsy propaganda?”

  The word gypsy makes my back go ramrod straight. They wouldn’t be saying this if they knew who I was.

  Marcus tops off his own glass. “Honey, you need to open up your window and tell those people to get a life.”

  “Hear, hear.” She clinks her glass with his.

  Marcus taps a finger to his cheek. “Do you remember that parade years ago?”

  Across the table, Spencer’s eyes meet mine.

  Ella groans. “Do I ever.” She passes the bread basket to me. “Tal, I’m sorry. We’re being horribly rude, talking around you.” She angles herself toward me. “So, years ago, a group of Wanderers passed through town, and this little girl from their camp climbed up on the float for Swanson’s Washers and Dryers.”

  It takes a few seconds to realize Ella isn’t playing a game with me, only being friendly. Me, I always see the worst in people, and I especially expected it from her, the mother.

  “Swanson’s Washers and Dryers float?” asks Spencer. “I thought that thing was some kind of cloud.”

  Marcus points his fork toward Spencer. “Those were bubbles, son. You remember Mr. Swanson’s daughter, Becky?”

  “Uh, the artist who begged you to display her paintings?”

  “That’s the one.” Marcus rolls his eyes. “She designed the float. What a nightmare. It’s one thing if you’ve got talent, but that poor woman doesn’t have an ounce.”

  All this time, I thought it was a cloud, but I was floating on soapsuds.