Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  But Wen slides his palms down his face and screams at the sky, “What the hell are you thinking, Talia?”

  “Hey, relax, man,” says Spencer, moving toward Wen.

  I touch Spencer’s elbow and pass him by.

  I take Wen by the upper arms, making this just him and me, with the futures we both desire close enough to touch. “It’s like you said that day in the lake. I’m street-smart and you’re book-smart, and we can make it. Come with me. Just for now. We’ll go back to camp later and pay off Lando and get our stuff. There’ll be no one coming after us. Not ever.”

  “No.” He backs away like I’ve struck him. “I’m through chasing markie dreams.”

  My chest burns with those words. He’s the one who always wanted this. “What about you and the bookstore? It can be yours now.”

  “That was a fantasy,” Wen whispers. “Come on, Tal. If you want to go back later—and you will—you won’t be able to. Not after the ruckus you’re causing. Lando will make sure of it. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”

  “Can’t you see, for me there’s no going back?”

  “But you’re not just my sister,” he says. “You’re my best friend.”

  “That’s why you have to come with me. We find each other, always.”

  Wen’s panting now, looking around him or inside himself for something that might make me change my mind.

  He grabs a fistful of my jacket and hangs on tight. “I won’t let you go.”

  This person threatening me is not my brother anymore. This is not Wen.

  I shove at his chest and move out of his reach. Over my shoulder, I say, “Make sure Felix gets the money.”

  “Don’t do this,” he yells after me. “I’ll hate you, Tal! I’ll hate you if you keep walking!”

  As much as I want to turn around, not once do I look back.

  In that selfish moment, as I leave my brother alone on the sidewalk, I’ve become exactly who I never wanted to be—my mother.

  Spencer’s voice is soft behind me. “My car’s this way.”

  I hook my hand into his and let him lead me between the buildings. He rips off his tie and tosses it into the backseat.

  I fall into the car seat and rest my forehead against the window, squeezing my eyes shut hard enough to hold all my tears inside me.

  As Spencer fires the engine, I open my eyes. Painted on a building’s brick façade, in the most haunting green and yellow paint, is a mural of an owl.

  CHAPTER 40

  I thought the day I left the wandering world, if that day ever came, I’d stand by the side of the road and watch the caravan move on without me. I never dreamed of running away with an outsider, a markie boy named Spencer Sway.

  He walks me to the front door after dinner, and even though his whole family is walls away, he kisses me hard, his lips moving mine apart. Pulling back, he looks at me like he expects something, maybe some words to bubble out of me, words even now I can’t say.

  He lets me get deeper into his house before he swings the front door open and throws his voice. “Good night, Tal.”

  The door slams shut, and I wink at Spencer before I close myself inside the basement.

  With my ear pressed against the door, I hear Marcus ask, “You didn’t walk her to her truck?” He never even noticed my truck wasn’t parked outside.

  “Yeah, I guess I should have.” Feet go tromping up the stairs, feet that must be Spencer’s.

  Shadows pass the crack at the bottom of the door. The click of the heels tell me it’s Ella. “He didn’t say much about the interview, did he?” she says.

  All through dinner—from the paella to the flan—Spencer’s answers were short when it came to his interview. With me there, it wasn’t the time for him to come clean.

  “I know,” says Marcus. “Poor guy. He must be worried he won’t get in.”

  I listen harder, hoping they’ll say more. Something I can tell Spencer, to put his mind at ease.

  “That girl’s done him some good,” Marcus says.

  Ella sighs. “I hope it lasts for a while and doesn’t end too badly.”

  “Who’s to say it has to end?”

  “Oh, Marcus.” Her laughter is soft as Marcus’s shadow joins hers. “You’re so painfully idealistic.”

  My throat aches. Ella could be right.

  I flip through a world atlas for a few hours, waiting for the house to go quiet and Spencer to join me. Hard as I try, I can’t trick myself into believing I’m not heartbroken over Wen. In our lifetimes, we’ve only had a handful of harsh words between us. Nothing like this.

  Now Wen’s clinging to the Wanderers while I’m pushing them away. I’m chasing some vague notion of living in the outside world, and he’s crushing his. He’s held on to these dreams like a kid with a bug in a jar, and now that it’s dying in his hands, he’d rather let it go than watch it suffocate.

  With my head against the foam pillow, I listen to the noises overhead—faucets running, the heater turning on and off. Soon the house calms to a nearly silent still.

  I wake up and feel for Spencer, but the blankets beside me are cold and empty. I collapse against the futon. He never snuck downstairs.

  Voices rumble overhead. It isn’t morning—it’s pitch-black inside the basement, no light streaming through the tiny half window high up on the wall.

  I listen closely. There’s whispering I can’t decipher, only the rhythm of Spencer’s voice. There’s definitely a rhythm to Spencer: his voice, his walk, the thoughts that dash across his eyes that he doesn’t say out loud.

  More voices.

  Exhaustion overtakes me before I figure anything out.

  Spencer’s parents go to work early the next morning. He breaks me out of the basement, carrying a plate of warm Pop-Tarts and a jug of orange juice. He kicks off his shoes, and slips between the sheets, leaving some distance between us.

  I pick a Pop-Tart off the plate and bite a hunk out of it, scattering crumbs across the blankets. “What’s on the agenda today?”

  “It’s just us and Margaret.” He swipes some crumbs onto the floor. “Do you have any kind of plan now?”

  There was a time when the wheels of my mind never quit cranking, when plans were as easy and essential as breathing a con into life. I know I can’t let Wen leave with them, but where the Wanderers are going, wherever that is, it’s no longer somewhere I care to travel.

  “No plan at all,” I say.

  I take a shower in the bathroom across from Spencer’s bedroom. I wash my hair with a big handful of shampoo that smells exactly like Spencer, and stay under the steaming hot water until it runs cold.

  “Tal,” Spencer says through the door. “Are you okay in there?”

  I wrap a white towel under my arms and finger-comb my hair, careful not to leave any of my long strands behind as evidence I was here. “You can come in.”

  Tufts of steam billow past the open door into the hallway. Wearing a grin, he’s got an arm tucked behind his back. “I didn’t think you were ever going to come out. I want to show you something.” He flashes three computer printouts with glossy pictures and sets them on the bathroom counter. “Prague, Florence, and Portugal. These are brochures for international colleges. If I went to one of these, I could travel by train on the weekends. All over Europe. Wherever I want to go. I’d get it all, then—college and the world, too.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “I talked to them late last night. For a long time. It’s not what they wanted, but they’re okay with it. They’re being . . . supportive.”

  With one hand holding my towel at my chest, I brush my wet hair over my shoulder and fan the pages out enough to see all the covers at once. “You’re doing it. You’re really doing it.”

  “Well, it’s a compromise. And Portugal, you know, distancewise, isn’t that far from Africa.”

  “I’m really happy for you, Spencer. I am.” But my voice quivers.

  He backs up against the cabinet
and rests both hands behind him on the edge of the counter. “You don’t get it. This wouldn’t just be for me. I mean, I have part of senior year left. I’m trapped until graduation. After that, though, I thought, maybe, if you wanted . . .”

  The whole world is sitting in my hands. All I have to do is close my fists to make it mine. But there’s one person holding me back.

  Wen jumped into the Wanderer world with both feet, and I’m no longer straddling the line; I’m a full-fledged markie hiding in the home of a judge and a gallery owner. The spaces between our worlds are only widening. Now I can see my brother, a small boat on the horizon, about to fall off the edge forever.

  Spencer sighs and stacks up the brochures. “I don’t have to know now. Or anytime soon. It was only a thought.”

  He leaves me alone in the bathroom, shivering in my towel.

  We settle into the couch and camp there all morning while Margaret plays upstairs, intent on creating magic. I hook my legs over the back of the couch and dangle my head over the edge of the cushions.

  Spencer leans over me while I hang upside down. Breathing into my wet hair, he says, a little disappointed, “You don’t smell like you anymore.”

  We watch a marathon on the Discovery Channel, and his arm finds its way around me. Maps of faraway places are swirling in my head as I feel a buzzing against my thigh. Spencer reaches into his pocket for his phone.

  “Hey, son,” Marcus says through the speaker. The volume’s turned up, so I make out almost every word. “Weatherman’s saying there’s a tornado warning.”

  Spencer sees me craning to hear and shifts the phone to the ear closest to me. “In November?”

  “Yeah, I know. Crazy damn weather we’ve been having. It touched down in Pike, so there’s a good chance it’ll be here soon. Take Mags into the basement until the warning is over.”

  “Oh sure,” Spencer says. “But you mean it’s a watch, not a warning, right?”

  I tilt closer to the phone. A watch is nothing—I’ve sat beside a scratchy radio with Wen enough times to know. A watch means the atmospheric conditions are right for a tornado to happen. A warning means it’s as good as here.

  “No, it’s a warning,” says Marcus. “Don’t worry, though. Last time this happened, it only touched down by the lake. Be safe, all right?”

  By the lake. By camp. My mind swirls with images of trailers and RVs spinning through the darkening sky, the dream Wen told me about. The dream about the two of us getting separated. Wen is out there alone.

  “You have to take me back to camp,” I blurt. “I have to make sure Wen’s okay.”

  Spencer snaps his attention from the phone and locks eyes with me. “Now? That’s insane. We need to stay here until the warning’s over.”

  I want to think I’m above manipulations now, especially when it comes to Spencer. I want to think I’m a new person, a better person. But Wen needs me to be the old Tal, so that’s who I’ll be.

  Leaping from the couch, I grab on to his shoulders. “Spencer, I won’t forgive you if you don’t take me out there.”

  He shakes his head but finally says, “Let’s go.”

  Margaret trudges around the corner, carrying a cape and her stuffed white rabbit.

  “Mags.” Spencer lowers to the carpet on his knees in front of her and shakes her small shoulders. “Run next door to the Brooks’s house, will you? Tell them your parents aren’t home, and I told you to wait with them until the storm passes.”

  He releases her, and she wobbles like a top that’s about to fall over, before she takes off out the front door.

  CHAPTER 41

  The sky is sickly green as we drive to that spot in the woods. We didn’t bother with seat belts. Or common sense.

  With the wheels sliding around the winding mountain roads, Spencer says, “You realize this is crazy as hell, don’t you?” But he doesn’t slow his driving as we round the sharp turns.

  He ducks between the steering wheel and the visor, watching the sky change colors. “Sirens haven’t started yet. We’ve got some time.”

  We make it to the edge of the boundary and leap from the car. My feet twitch, but I turn back, and Spencer’s frozen, staring at me over the hood. “Tal, I shouldn’t go into your camp—”

  As he steps to my side, Margaret swings the car door open and plants her feet on the ground.

  “Are you kidding me, Mags? I told you to go next door!” says Spencer.

  She sinks her hands into her hips and glares up at him. “You’re not the boss of me.”

  “I’m going to tell Mom and Dad that you didn’t listen, and you’ll be in big trouble—”

  “Look!” yells Margaret.

  Owls are flocking from the forest in droves, filling up the yellow sky. Spencer looks my way and watches me like I’m about to shatter.

  I rub my palms over my face. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  But I’m not sure what I believe anymore.

  Spencer’s attention snaps back to the car, the clearing, the forest. “Hey, where’d she go?”

  He flings all the car doors open, and the trunk, too. No Margaret.

  “Margaret!” I yell. “Margaret!”

  He looks right, then left, and screams into the forest, “Mags! I’m sorry! I’m sorry I was a jerk! Just come on out, and we’ll forget about it, okay?”

  Tornado sirens wail in the distance from Cedar Falls proper.

  Spencer stares toward town. “We only have a few minutes now. I’ll find Margaret. You get Wen and we’ll . . .”

  “There’s a low-lying ditch on the other side of camp, halfway between the lake and the interstate.”

  He nods. “I know the one.”

  “Meet me there. We’ll all wait out the storm together.”

  Finally, I’m hit with the urge and the courage to tell him how I really feel. But now isn’t the time. “Spencer, be so careful.”

  “You, too. I’ll see you at that ditch.”

  “You—you better be there.”

  He forces a small smile. “I’ll get there or die trying.”

  I run the rest of the distance to camp, where Wanderers are hammering stakes into the ground, tying belongings down, and grabbing their children. They know. None of it’s going to make an ounce of difference if a tornado decides to come by and pick up their homes.

  Other Wanderers migrate to the ditch in herds. Across the expanse of camp, Rona drifts that direction. But I don’t see Wen.

  I burst through our screen door without knocking. He’s not there.

  Tumbling outside, I come face-to-face with Sonia.

  “You’re back?” she says.

  “I don’t—” I check the road behind her, searching for Wen’s dark head. Nothing. “I don’t have time for this right now. Wen—I have to find him.”

  “He’s working at that book place again.” She blows the hair clear of her mascara-coated lashes. “He didn’t even care when Lando said he’d beat him senseless. Wouldn’t listen to no one.”

  All the air I’ve been storing flows from my chest. Wen changed his mind—and he’s safe. With those sturdy buildings downtown he has to be.

  Wen’s probably hiding in a storm shelter beside Blanche, holding a flashlight, and riding out the storm with a book. He hasn’t given up on wanting more for himself. After everything my brother said, he still won’t let go.

  The forest rattles, and my jeans thrash against my legs. It’s starting. I scan the horizon for Spencer. We said we’d meet at the ditch—that was the plan—but I won’t be able to hold up my end of the bargain, not while he’s out in the wild because of me.

  “I have to find my—my friend.”

  “That guy you left us for?”

  I blink and take a step backward. There’s no sense in denying it. Breathless now, I say, “I have to—”

  “Go,” she says. And I do.

  People race around me as I cut through the trailers. I break the line of trees, running to the deepest brush, almost losing mysel
f in the dull greens and browns of the forest.

  “Spencer! Margaret!” I cup my hands around my mouth. “Spencer! Margaret!”

  Someone touches my shoulder. “Spencer,” I whisper. My whole body relaxes as I whip around. But it isn’t Spencer. It’s Wen.

  My chest gets so full I feel like I’ll burst. I sob as our arms wrap around each other. Into his shoulder, I say, “What are you doing here?”

  “When we heard about the warning, I had to find you. I knew you’d come for me.”

  I pull back. “How did you know?”

  “I just knew. We always find each other. Always.”

  “But you should have stayed put!” I knock my fist into his bicep. “You would have been safer!”

  “No.” Wen smiles. “Fortune favors the bold.”

  There’s a howling sound, and I look straight up, through the branches woven together overhead, at the darkening sky.

  “Spencer’s out here. Spencer and his little sister, Margaret. . . .” I smear the tears off my cheeks.

  “I know. I saw his car, but—”

  The wind picks up, throwing leaves around us, stinging at my arms and legs through my clothes. A tree sways to my left and starts to plummet. I squeeze my eyes closed as it crashes to the ground, and when I open them, Wen’s covering his head.

  He grabs my hand. “The dock by the lake.”

  “But Spencer and—”

  “Tal!” he yells over the wind and sirens. “We have to go! Now!”

  We run downhill toward the lake. I search the woods for Spencer, but I stumble and almost trip. As we run, the ground beneath us wavers, and trees start toppling. We run faster and faster. Not once do we lose each other’s hands.

  We make it to the dock, and Wen throws himself onto his stomach and crawls beneath the dry space beside where the dock meets the water. I follow him, and we wrap our arms around each other, shielding our faces in each other’s necks.

  A board from the dock above goes flying off into the sky. The sound grows unbearably loud above, like a freight train barreling down.