Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  Between bites of egg the light has dyed green, Spencer counts the cash on the Formica tabletop.

  “What’s the total?” I ask.

  Spencer adds the last twenty to the stack. “Twenty-eight hundred and twenty dollars.”

  Wen thumbs through Spencer’s book. “Best haul we’ve ever had in one night.”

  It’s not enough, but it’s so much closer. “Not bad. Not bad at all.”

  I take Spencer’s hand under the table and, before I know it, we’re all talking about the game.

  “Man,” says Spencer. “I don’t know how you do this all the time.”

  “Did you almost lose your nerve?” I ask.

  “Sort of. They all put their stuff down and went outside for their team prayer before suiting up. I was going through Jeremy’s bag when Coach walked back in. I swear, I almost threw up.”

  “What’d you do?” says Wen.

  “Hit the ground. I hid beneath the bench—pressed on the disgusting locker room floor—until Coach left. I thought I was done.”

  Under the table, I squeeze Spencer’s thigh. “Didn’t it feel good to see them lose?”

  “No,” says Spencer. “It felt incredible.”

  We drive back to Cedar Falls with everything we want to leave behind forgotten. There are no Wanderers or markies, no owls or Falconers, and no Felix. Tonight there’s only us and this laughter that fills all the empty places inside me.

  CHAPTER 36

  I peer out through the metal screen of the door. It’s getting late, and Wen hasn’t made it back to our trailer. He said he was going to check on Rona’s place over an hour ago.

  Firelight slips between the RVs across the road. People are still gathered after dinner. My face is half frozen in the November air. I almost wish I’d gone to sit near the campfire, but it’s getting harder to sit there and pretend I’m still one of them.

  I get into bed and read from one of Wen’s encyclopedias. I wish we had O, so I could read about owls and omens. There’s a burning inside me for more information, like if I could get my hands on that book, I’d have all the answers.

  Instead, I pick up L and read about lions and Libya and liars.

  A raw scream travels through the windows.

  The book drops off the bed and thuds against the floor. I’m out the door and running. Gravel stings my bare feet. Even torn to shreds by the scream, I know it was Wen’s voice doing the yelling.

  Bodies buzz around something at the center of camp. They’re riled up.

  I shoulder through. There, with everyone looking on, Horatio pins Wen’s arms behind his back.

  Lando throws a punch into Wen’s face while Horatio holds him still. Wen wails again. This isn’t a bare-knuckle fight. It’s not a fight at all—it’s a beating.

  I dart closer. “Stop! No!”

  Blood pours from Wen’s nose down the front of his shirt. I lunge forward and get several jabs into Lando’s back, but an arm snakes around my waist and drags me backward.

  “Let me go!”

  Emil squeezes his fists into my abdomen. Emil is Wen’s friend, and yet he’s allowing this.

  “Stop fighting me,” he whispers into my ear. “We have to let this happen. He has to learn his lesson.”

  I go still. “His lesson?”

  There’s nothing Wen could have done that would make him deserve this punishment. The last time I saw this happen, a boy had stolen from the family bank. Later in the week, that boy disappeared. I thought he’d run away, but all his stuff was still at camp.

  “You know that bookstore he’s been hanging out in?” says Emil. “He’s been working there. A real markie job. Felix saw him in there today and told Lando.”

  Tears trickle down my cheeks. With my arms pinned to my sides, I can’t even wipe them away before someone sees.

  This is my fault. All mine. Wen’s watched me walk along the ledge between markies and Wanderers, teetering and about to fall off into the markie world for months now. I was supposed to set the example.

  Lando fishes around in his pocket. His hand comes out sporting a pair of brass knuckles.

  I claw at Emil’s arms with each punch Lando throws, screaming until my throat is sore and my ears are on fire.

  Wen holds an ice pack over an eye that’s black as night and dangerously swollen as I dab at his cuts. It’s the two of us inside our trailer now, me and this battered boy who barely resembles my brother.

  On the counter is a bottle of Vicodin Emil left when he carried Wen inside. I shake them out in my palm and pass Wen a handful.

  “So, how’d all this job business start?”

  He throws back the pills and swallows them. “Blanche offered me a job that first day I went in there without you. A few hours a week, under the table.”

  All those times Wen barely spoke, snuck away without me, those had nothing to do with his awkwardness over me and Spencer, and everything to do with the bookstore, his own little markie fantasy.

  “What all does she know?” My bowl of water swirls with red as I dunk the rag and touch it again to his cuts.

  He cringes at my touch. “She knows about us. Says she’s a sympathizer.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “I don’t know, Tal. It was weird, so I didn’t ask.” He moans as my fingers put pressure on his swollen jaw. “I couldn’t not take the job. Not with you owing the bride-price back to Lando.”

  I should have taken Felix up on his offer. If we weren’t trying to scrape together the bride-price, Wen wouldn’t have taken a job at the bookstore, and he wouldn’t have been beaten bloody.

  “You shouldn’t have done it for me. Got yourself tied down to a markie job.”

  “It wasn’t you. It was . . . I don’t know. I wasn’t tied down. We think we’re so free, going where we want, when we want. But earning my own money, knowing it was coming in day after day, it made me feel freer than I’ve ever felt before.”

  “That’s not real freedom.” I slump down to the floor of our trailer, leaning my cheek against the edge of Wen’s mattress. “And neither is this.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I wish I could tell you.”

  “Right before Lando hit me, he leaned in and said I’d have to quit the bookstore because I couldn’t go to work looking like this.”

  “You didn’t know Felix saw you?”

  “No.”

  Wen was never the illusionist in our two-man show—I was. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to go on running around with Spencer without camp discovering. How long until my magic will run dry.

  Wen sinks down beside me and wraps an arm around my shoulders. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Maybe we were both just playing around with this markie stuff after all.”

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “All things have to end, I guess. I had a good time. You had a good time. Let’s try to forget.”

  “What if we ran? I know I’ve always said we couldn’t stay on the run from them, but what if we settled down somewhere, hid out for a few months until Lando forgot about us?”

  His lips turn up but he moans, and his almost-smile becomes a grimace. “A little town like Cedar Falls?”

  Warmth rises in my cheeks.

  “Oh, Tal, don’t tell me you were starting to think things might work here. You’re supposed to be the logical one. I’m the dreamer. All of this—it’s gotta end.” He focuses on the stack of encyclopedias beside his pillow, then digs an envelope out from under his mattress and hands it to me. “Oh, this is for you.”

  I flip it open, and it’s stuffed with cash. A quick count of the hundred-dollar bills, and I realize it’s the last of the money I need. Every bit of the bride-price.

  “You stole it from the book lady? ’Cause if bookselling pays this well, then we’ve got to stop our thieving ways.”

  He doesn’t smile. “Blanche had a real heart for our problem.”


  “Damn it, Wen, thank you.” My fingertips skim his swollen cheek. “This wasn’t worth it, though.”

  “It was.”

  He snuffs out the lamp, and I lie in my bed, listening to the crickets, waiting for him to begin our ritual. After too much silence, I say, “Good night, Wen.”

  There’s an impenetrable quiet as I wait for him. He clears his throat. “Good night.”

  All the broken parts of me ache for all that’s lost in the moment.

  “Wen?” I say softly. “Good night, you thief, you vagabond.”

  All he gives me back is nothing at all.

  The smell wakes me up, sharp and smoky like good barbecue.

  What really coaxes the sleep from my limbs are the brightness and the searing heat. I lift up on my elbows and stare out my window. Filtered by the screens, a fire crackles in the space between our trailer and the forest. Wen stands beside the flames, shirtless, even though the weather is cold and biting.

  It’s not unheard of to do our burning in the middle of the night, when the black sky can swallow up the smoke and keep our secrets hidden away from the outside world, but there’s nothing Wen has that needs burning.

  I work my feet into a pair of shoes and yank the quilt off my bed, wrapping it around my shoulders like a cape and heading out the door.

  My feet crunch through the frozen grass as I step closer to him. Stacked in the dirt are all his encyclopedias.

  Wen barely turns. “Go back to bed.”

  “Wen, you can’t.”

  He grabs an encyclopedia off the stack and tosses it onto the flames. They lick at the book, spreading the pages open, and turning them orange, highlighting the words my brother stayed up late devouring.

  Pain twists in my rib cage. Fighting with the tears trapped behind my eyes, I whisper, “You’re gonna be so sorry tomorrow.”

  He takes another book into his arms and hugs it against his chest before sending it spiraling into the flames. “I’m sure I will, but it’s got to be done.”

  Sparks fly at our toes, and I take a step backward.

  “You really should go back to bed, Talia.”

  Too long, I wanted him to fit in with camp, and now he does. With the firelight flickering across his bruised ribs, Wen’s crossed the line he always danced around. He’s a Wanderer for good. That hurts most of all.

  A soft gust makes me wrap the quilt tighter. I step away from the fire, beside the stack of encyclopedias. The letter embossed on the spine of the top book, the one next in line to be burned, is A.

  A for adventure, academia, Algeria, and agony. A for Africa.

  Wen’s facing the fire, his back shuddering as the book burns. I can’t bear to watch A go up in flames, so I tiptoe to the pile and slip it beneath my blanket. Squeezing the four corners into my skin, I carry the encyclopedia against my heart and never turn back.

  CHAPTER 37

  Spencer and I settle into the couch and click on the TV while Margaret flips through a book of magic tricks.

  News coverage in a place like Cedar Falls should involve prize-winning African violets and high-school sports coverage. Tonight, it’s all about the owls and the hordes of media filling up the one hotel in town.

  “Is this bothering you?” asks Spencer.

  “It’s fine.”

  The truth is that not being okay has nothing to do with owls and everything to do with the wall Wen’s built around himself that I haven’t been able to break through.

  Spencer turns off the TV and stands by the edge of the couch. “Let me take you somewhere now.”

  “Where?”

  His fingers circle my wrists and slide until our palms join. He pulls me to my feet. “Coffee, ice cream, pancakes, Africa. I want to go somewhere with you. Right now.”

  I go limp, leaning the weight of me away from him and deep into the couch cushions. He grins and tugs harder, hauling me to my feet and against him. My whole body hums with the feeling of us pressed together. I’m suddenly conscious of the tiny places where our unclothed skin touches: my index fingers against the fine hairs at the back of his neck; his rough thumbs grazing the space where my jeans and sweater don’t quite meet; my bare toes brushing over his bare toes.

  “Stay with me,” he whispers. “Don’t leave with the Wanderers. Ever.”

  “I’d have to change to stay here. To fit into your world.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would.”

  He says into my hair, “The rest of the world doesn’t matter.”

  I’ve never felt this, my heart leaping away from my body, every inch of me aching. I should fight the feeling. I should pull away. Instead, I push harder against him, and it makes me want more. More of what, I don’t know, but whatever it is will be my destruction.

  A glass shatters in the kitchen, and the room rushes back to me. We let each other go as Margaret’s shrieks drown out all the wanting.

  We break apart, and Spencer runs into the kitchen.

  “It’s broken! It’s broken!” Margaret’s standing barefoot on the taupe-tiled floor, and she’s surrounded by shattered hunks of cobalt-colored ceramic.

  Spencer grabs her around the waist and sets her onto the counter. “You didn’t cut yourself, did you?” He lifts one of her feet and then the other.

  “Nope.”

  “Stay right there. Don’t get down.” He jogs to the walk-in pantry and comes back with a broom. He scans the tiny pieces scattered over the floor. “Mags, what was this?”

  She lifts her hand to her mouth and bites at her nails. “The cookie jar.”

  “Are you serious, Mags? That was Nana’s. It was an antique. Mom’s going to be so upset.”

  Tears roll down Margaret’s cheeks. I sidestep the broken pieces and wipe her tears away. “Hey, it’s okay. We can buy another, can’t we? What did it look like?”

  He doesn’t answer, focusing on sweeping broken bits into a dustpan.

  “Spencer?”

  “Don’t read too much into this.” He sighs. “It was an owl.”

  The smoke from the burned encyclopedias is inside my throat, even though it’s been days, and Wen’s ragged breathing is in my ears as I lie awake. He hasn’t breathed right since Lando took a fist to his ribs.

  Two hours before sunrise and I haven’t slept. Any courage I could have built up would have made its appearance already if it was going to show up at all.

  I dress quietly, so I don’t wake Wen.

  As I’m carefully guiding the screen door back into the frame, I look down at the mini-flashlight in my hand. It’s no good for protection. I go back for my heavy-duty Maglite.

  Lando’s asleep in his bed. He never even stirs as I close his door behind me.

  I turn my flashlight beam on him and say, “Here’s how this is going to go down.”

  He throws back the covers and comes at me. Backing me into the wall, he says, “Talia, what the damn hell are you doing in here?”

  I lift my chin and harden my eyes. “I know you’re the thief.”

  I watch his hand hanging loose at his side, how his fingers curl inward and make a fist. If he were to hit me, I don’t know if the rest of camp would say I had it coming or if Boss would give a damn about me.

  Lando raises his arm, and my own hand tenses around the flashlight, ready to swing. He slams his palm into the cabinet behind me, inches from my ear.

  “Whatever you think you know,” he says, “you’re wrong.”

  “I’m not wrong. But it doesn’t matter if you are the thief or you aren’t. All that matters is that everyone’s about to think you are.”

  He laughs as he rubs his chin. “What are you getting at?”

  “Three hundred marked bills are in this trailer. I know because I put them here today while you were out.”

  Lando leaps away from me. He dumps the fruit bowl on the counter, sending oranges and pears bouncing to the floor. He goes for the first cabinet on his left.

  “You’ll never find them,” I say. And that’
s the truth because I’ve never set foot inside Lando’s trailer until right now. “They’re hidden too well. Nope—no one’s gonna find them until I convince Boss to let us search this place. Then I’ll be the one to find them.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Am I?”

  He glances in the direction of Boss’s RV. “My father would never let you search my trailer.”

  “What if I told you he asked me to prove you’re the thief? You really think he trusts you?”

  “You wouldn’t part with three hundred dollars just to frame me.”

  “You don’t know what I’d do.”

  “What’s your angle?”

  It’s time to play. “A little old-fashioned blackmail.”

  “You think I’ve got enough to pay Felix back? Because I don’t have near that kind of money.”

  “This isn’t about Felix. It’s about Rona.” I don’t know for sure if he has enough for Rona—but he has to think I do. “You’ve got it. I know you do.”

  This won’t make up for Lando beating Wen, but at least I’ll fulfill my promise to my brother.

  Lando cocks his head to the side, as if he’s considering that. “Bailing her out might take time.”

  “I wouldn’t let it take too long, if I were you.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Wen brings the Chevy to a stop at the corner of Main Street and Ivy. I squeeze the door handle but don’t press down.

  “I could go with you, you know?” I say. It’s the first day of Spencer’s Thanksgiving break, and we’re supposed to celebrate, but he’ll understand if I’m late.

  “Nah.”

  Wen’s face is swollen and purple and ghastly in the sunlight. He’s on his way to tell Blanche he won’t be coming to work today and not ever again.

  “Wen, you can tell me if you don’t want to go alone.”

  “I’ll be all right. I promise.”

  On Main Street, I jaywalk against the DON’T WALK. The bell tower chimes noon, and I quicken my pace.

  Up the street a ways, Sonia’s standing by herself. She’s arching her upper body inside the passenger side of a car, her belly brushing against the door.