Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  He swings his jacket over his shoulder and takes the bar stool beside me. “Where you from?”

  “Savannah.”

  “Pretty little place.”

  “Sure is.” I lift my Coke from the counter, making sure condensation has glued my napkin beneath it. As I drink, I let it flutter to the floor. I laugh and push back from the counter, collecting the napkin and slipping the ring into my palm.

  “What’s this?” I pop up in my chair, flashing the fake emerald in the light.

  The man’s jaw drops. “That’s, um, mine,” he says, reaching for it. Sheepishly he adds, “Must’ve dropped it off my finger.”

  “Looks like it’s worth a lot of money.” I whisper as I examine it, “If it’s really yours, then you wouldn’t mind putting up a little bit of a reward, would you?”

  He scoots his bar stool closer. “Fifty dollars should do it, right?”

  “Fifty dollars. You must think I was born yesterday. This ring must be worth five grand.”

  “How ’bout three hundred?”

  “I don’t even believe it’s your ring.”

  Sweat beads on his brow and rolls down the sides of his face. He uses a napkin to mop it up. “So it’s not my ring, but I do know where to find the owner, and you don’t. What’s it going to take?”

  “A grand.”

  “Would eight hundred dollars do the trick, then?”

  Eight hundred dollars. Much more than I expected. “We’ve got a deal.”

  “Hey, hey, hey!” says someone in the background.

  “Excuse me, sir,” says a boy from behind us. “I have a feeling this young lady is shaking you down. I’ve seen this happen before.” He turns to me, tipping his trucker cap higher and eyeing me. “You’re gypsy trash, aren’t you? You and that fella, who was in here, flashing his cash.”

  I can’t breathe, but I step from my chair, keeping my pulse level. “What in the world are you talking about? I found this ring, and he’s paying me a little reward. Nothing but an honest exchange here.”

  The man I was trying to scam grabs a cell phone from his pocket and dials. “Maybe you can explain it to the cops.”

  I set the ring on the bar counter and hold up my hands. “Hey, relax.”

  The boy grabs me by the back of my neck as I move toward the exit. He digs his thumb deep into my skin, then deeper. I can’t help but cry out. “You’re not going anywhere,” he says.

  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

  “There’s one way to find out.” The man plucks the ring off the counter and lifts a fork. Using a prong, he scratches at the stone. Green dust scrapes off.

  The boy spits on the floor of the diner. “We know all about your kind.”

  I yank free and back up to the bar counter, with both of them closing in on me. But the bells on the door jangle, and all our eyes shift to the entrance.

  It’s Wen. I suck in a sharp breath. No. No. No. If one of us gets caught, the other one is supposed to make a run for it. These aren’t our rules.

  Go, I mouth.

  “Okay, the jig is up,” Wen says, ignoring my warning. “There’s a perfectly good explanation for all this.” He’s grinning like a fool, but his words shake a little. I hope I’m the only one who notices. He points to a smoke detector on the ceiling at the other end of the restaurant. “Do y’all see that camera? Well, you’re on To Catch a Con Artist.”

  This is about to get really good or really bad.

  “To Catch a Con Artist?” asks the man I was trying to scam.

  “Haven’t you heard of it?” I say, fake-smiling so hard my jaw aches. “The television show.” I turn to the room, clapping my hands. The whole restaurant joins in.

  Wen sets one hand on the shoulder of the man and the other on the boy’s, guiding them away from me and farther into the diner. “Okay, here’s what you need to do. All of you look at the camera.” He points to the smoke detector. “Now say, all together now, ‘I caught a con artist!’”

  They exchange looks before staring up at the “camera” and mumbling the words.

  “You’ll have to get a little closer,” Wen says, backing away. “Right beneath it. That’s good. A little closer.” He inches toward my side and whispers one word: “Run.”

  We hit the door, and Wen knocks a table over behind us to block the doorway.

  We take off like jackrabbits, pulses in our ears as the men chase us down the sidewalk. But we’re younger and faster, our bodies accustomed to running from markies.

  We jump in the Chevy and hit the locks. Wen’s mouth is gaping open as we fly down the street, past the man and the boy.

  We make it onto the highway, and I collect my hair in one hand, sweeping it away from my neck. The skin is tender and hot to the touch, but I could have been hurt much worse. So could Wen.

  “How did you know?” I gasp.

  “I don’t—I don’t know. A bad feeling, I guess.”

  “You always know.”

  CHAPTER 33

  I sit cross-legged on the floor of our trailer while Wen stretches a new shirt over the dining room table, our makeshift ironing board. He starches and irons the fabric until the collar’s stiff and the wrinkles steamed away.

  “Why are you going this time?”

  “Same reason as always,” he says. “Money.”

  I can’t argue with that. We do need the money.

  He goes into town every day while I stay at camp avoiding anyone and everyone. At first, I’d begged him to stay close to camp, not to go into town for fear Spencer might see him and know I hadn’t gone anywhere. Wen got crabby by the second day, sighing at the stack of books he’d already read, so I told him to go on and leave as long as he promised to make himself as anonymous as possible.

  “What’s the scam?”

  He yanks the shirt off the table and shakes it out before slipping his arms into the sleeves. “Whatever it needs to be. Depending on the mark.”

  “I should be going with you.”

  “Don’t worry yourself, Tal.”

  I stay on the floor after Wen swings the door shut, after the Chevy starts up, and long after the hum of the engine disappears up the road. I wanted to go along, but catching a glimpse of Spencer behind the glass of the diner on Main Street would be unbearable.

  I clean everything in the trailer that isn’t bright and shiny, all the windows first, and then I spray tire cleaner on the tent trailer’s tires. I do all the things I did before, trying to wedge myself back into my routine. It feels like a dress that’s a size too small now. I can only get into it if I don’t let myself breathe.

  In the tent trailer’s lowest cabinets, I gag on long-forgotten jugs of sun tea I’d made when we were camped near Biloxi, two towns before Cedar Falls. They’re near solid in spots and growing mold around the edges of the waterline. I carry them past the edge of camp to dump them.

  A voice at my back deflates everything logical that had risen up inside me and made me think I might be able to slip back into Wanderer life unchanged.

  “You’re still here.”

  I whip around and face Spencer Sway.

  His hair is sticking up all over his head, and his sweatshirt is wrinkled. He looks like hell. I didn’t want this. I wanted my last memory to be the two of us swimming in blankets and his dark lashes brushing against my cheeks as he asked me if I was okay.

  I want to touch him, but I cross my arms, erasing the possibility of them circling him. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

  “That’s all you’ve got to say to me, after that night in my room, after you never even fucking said good-bye?”

  He’s never spoken to me like this.

  I dump the last bit of tea, watching it spread and darken the ground because I’d rather look at anything over the anger flashing in his eyes. “My note was my good-bye. I didn’t want to say it again.”

  “We’re leaving town tomorrow. Have a good life, Spencer. That’s not good-bye.”

  Hearing what I said repeated back
sounds like wet gravel under bald tires. I was so afraid I’d say too much that I didn’t say enough.

  “I wanted to see this place after you guys were gone,” he says. “I made it halfway up the road when I thought I saw lights. You said you were gone, and then way up that road, I saw lights. Lights. Do you realize I thought I was losing my fucking mind? So I drove closer, and here you are.” He holds his arms out wide. “Here you all are!”

  The rumble of voices isn’t far, and there’s nothing that’s going to make Spencer go away fast. I have to deal with him, talk about this.

  Without asking him to follow me, I stalk off toward the clearing where he’s always dropped me off and park myself on the hood of his car. “We . . . we got delayed. We’re still leaving.”

  The sedan jars as he sits beside me. “Why?”

  Coming clean is always such a disaster. But he has to know leaving isn’t optional. Skulking away from him in the night was necessary.

  “It was because of the owls. Everyone thinks we’re headed for an apocalypse, or something, and that we gotta get out of here before it hits.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Neither do owls falling from the sky. But now we’re not leaving after all. It’s, uh, because Rona’s still locked up. As soon as we get her out, we’re gone.”

  “So you’ll be leaving soon?”

  “Sooner. Later. It could be tomorrow or a month from now.”

  He works the zipper on his sweatshirt, the metal teeth wheezing in the quiet forest. “You act like it doesn’t matter.”

  It matters. I’ve never wanted to stay put so bad, but those desires are tragedies I shouldn’t form into words.

  Above, between the low-hanging branches, the sky is darkening, a not-so-perfect way to end this. “You should get out of here, Spencer, before someone sees you.”

  We get to our feet, and he puts his back to me. He opens his car door and stands staring inside as the keys in the ignition make the sedan ding. He slams the door shut.

  “That night,” he says, “I told you I had something to tell you. It feels stupid saying it now, but I want you to know.” He moves closer, until the tips of his shoes brush against my toes. “I want to tell you.”

  He goes in to kiss me, just missing my mouth but making heat pool where his lips touch. I close my eyes, tipping my mouth to his, in time to hear him whisper something I don’t want to hear: “I was going to say . . . I think I might love you.”

  The world whirls around me, and I realize I’ve rushed away from him like he’s burned me.

  This wasn’t what I wanted. I’m not the kind of girl who runs because she wants to be chased.

  Tears drip from my eyes, roll down my cheeks, and leave dark spots on the cuffs of my sleeves. Love. The sound of it rings in my head and hurts like hell, a migraine of a word. Using that one word—love—he’s made us into something so sugary sweet we have to be phony. Like cotton candy and Pixy Stix and promises.

  “You’re a coward,” I say.

  “A coward?”

  “You’re all talk and no action. All you do is talk about seeing the world when you’re really just going to SJU. What do you think you’re doing with me? You can’t have me, Spencer—no one can—and I can’t have you. And that’s why you said that to me—because you’ll never have to act on it.”

  His Adam’s apple bounces. The light that was once in his eyes, I’ve destroyed it. I’ve gone too far.

  His blank look goes hard. “No, Tal,” he says. “You’re the coward. You couldn’t even give me a real good-bye. I’ve been standing here for an hour, trying to decide if I should walk into your camp and confront you. I should have realized how pointless all of this is—my fake idea of you.”

  It stings. I’ve been someone else with every outsider I’ve ever known except for him. With Spencer, I was always the real me.

  I take a step back and whisper, “You know me.”

  “Not really.” He stares at the ground and runs a hand through his hair. “When the Wanderers are near, I don’t know who you are. You’re not the same girl you are when the lights are low and we’re alone in my room.”

  I take a step closer, and he moves away, keeping our distance a constant.

  “In case you were wondering, your note wasn’t a good-bye. This is.”

  He gets inside his car and slams the door. No matter what happens, I think he’ll always remain in my mind, like some scam I planned that failed.

  Without ever meeting my eyes, he starts up the engine and takes off down the road. As the shadows swallow up his sedan, I realize that even if I never see him again, Spencer Sway and I will never be through.

  CHAPTER 34

  Wen shakes me halfway awake, but I want to stay lost in oblivion for longer. I tug my blanket over my head.

  “The trap,” he whispers. “I checked just now.”

  I sit up too fast, and our trailer spins. The late morning sun is bleeding through our screens, and Wen’s holding his finger to his lips and our Cool Whip container against his chest.

  “Some of it’s gone?”

  “A fifty.”

  A fifty—one-eighth of the four hundred dollars we left as bait.

  I last checked the Cool Whip container the afternoon before. Someone snatched the money while we were eating dinner in the heart of camp.

  “When do we do it?”

  I throw back the covers. “No time like the present.”

  He hugs the container against his chest and stares at me.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” I finger-comb my wild tangles and slip my jeans up my legs. “We need to do this before Lando has a chance to hide it.”

  A few people are buzzing at the heart of camp. Boss is parked beneath the shade of his RV, a thin tube from his oxygen mask running from his ears to his nostrils. Today’s one of his bad days. I hope he’ll listen.

  I scan the crowd for Lando. He isn’t around.

  “I think he’s in Boss’s RV,” whispers Wen.

  “Hey!” I cup my hands around my mouth. “Everyone needs to gather ’round. We need an emergency camp meeting right now.”

  People exchange looks and move in closer as murmurs shift through a building crowd. Sonia’s staring at me in a way I don’t know how to interpret. I used to know every type of smile she’d try on, every freckle on her face.

  I scan for Felix and am relieved not to find him. I still haven’t said another word to him about his proposition.

  Boss holds his chalkboard up to me. It says, Not supposed to call meetings.

  I bend down to Boss’s level out of respect. “If this wasn’t truly important, Boss, I wouldn’t do this. But you gotta hear what we’re going to say.”

  The door clangs shut, and heavy feet tromp down the steps—Lando.

  His hand closes around my upper arm, and he hauls me upward. My bicep burns as we come face-to-face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? If Father says there will be no meeting, then there is no meeting.”

  Loud enough for everyone to hear, Wen says, “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”

  Lando releases me and kicks up a dust cloud heading toward Wen, but Boss holds up his hand and motions for him to let Wen speak. Lando lowers his fists.

  “We’ve, uh, noticed some money going missing.” Wen’s voice quivers as everyone turns to him. “We’ve got some savings, you see. Like, uh, like most of you do.” I glare—we can’t let them know the amount of cash we were hoarding—and he adds, “Meager savings, that is. But it’s a lot to us, so we marked some of the bills.”

  Tiny, almost-invisible pen marks you’d have to be looking for to see.

  The scratch of the chalkboard sends us all spinning to Boss. He beckons me closer. In tiny letters, he writes, Who is the thief?

  “I—” My throat closes up on me. “I think it’s Lando.”

  Boss shakes his head as someone in the crowd yells back, “You think it’s Lando?”

  “We don’t think
it,” says Wen. “We know it.”

  Lando chuckles to himself. He removes his wallet from his back pocket and tosses it to me. “Go ahead and find your marked bill, if you’re so sure it’s me.”

  I skim through Lando’s wallet, over fives and tens and twenties and hundreds. There isn’t a single fifty.

  Horatio steps from the crowd with his hands buried in his pockets. “Well, we could always search his trailer. If Boss would let us.”

  I bend down beside Boss, sitting on my heels and resting my fingers on the wheelchair. “Boss.” His eyes slowly trail my way. “You up to hearing me out for a minute or two? I know he’s your son, and it’s hard for you to see the ugliness inside him. But I’m so sure I can find that money in his trailer.”

  His hands don’t move toward the chalkboard.

  “Boss, please, I’m begging you.”

  Carefully, Boss scratches along the chalkboard, his hands slow and shaky. He holds the chalkboard up for the crowd to see.

  Not the thief.

  Boss wraps his cool fingers around mine and squeezes. His lips barely moving, he whispers, “Need more proof.”

  I back away from Boss as the crowd disperses, and I head for my trailer. Wen comes to my side, and I whisper what Boss said.

  “How are we going to prove it?” he asks.

  “We’ll find a way.”

  Camp’s as good as lost to me if Boss requires solid evidence. That’s another truth I can’t tell Wen.

  Spencer’s car pulls into the ice-rink parking lot right on time. I wait for Margaret to swing the car door open and to skip up the steps before I make my way to him.

  Right now I need to not feel so alone, and there’s only one person who can fill that void.

  I drop beside the open passenger window and rest my hands on the window ledge. “Hi.”

  Spencer’s eyes glow for the briefest second before he squeezes them shut and stares straight ahead. “What are you doing, Tal?”

  “I’ve got something important to say. I—I told you I didn’t believe in love—”

  He knocks the car into reverse.

  “Wait!” My fingers curl around the window ledge, as if my sheer will can keep him parked long enough to hear me out. “You’re not letting me finish.”