Wandering Wild

by Jessica Taylor

  Spencer is in the woods, and Mags, too, unsheltered and alone because of me. I wish I’d said the words I’d been too damned stubborn to say at the car. Some last-meal, too-little-too-late offering. That I love Spencer. Because I do.

  Over the deafening wind, I barely make out Wen’s words. “Spencer’ll be okay.”

  Deep down, I know Wen could be horribly wrong. The way I love Spencer and the way I love Wen may be different, but the feelings are equally intense. Maybe we get no more than one great love in our lives, and maybe Wen and I are each other’s. This is the way it always was and maybe the way it’s supposed to be. Me and my brother, alone in the world.

  Boards rip away above us. It could be the wind or my panic rising, but with my face buried in Wen’s chest, I can’t catch my breath as I imagine uncharted worlds I’ll have to wander for Spencer and me both.

  CHAPTER 42

  Even after the world above us goes still, Wen’s weight anchors my body to the dirt beneath the dock.

  I roll onto my back. Through a section of boards the tornado ripped clean away, I see the gray sky overhead. “I think it’s over.”

  We crawl out, and as he dusts himself off, I scan the forest. Most of it is completely leveled, trees fallen down on each other and some half sunk in lake water. I stand still and stare over the trees, searching for some movement, even a rustle. Spencer couldn’t have had time to make it all the way to the ditch.

  “Spencer!” I yell. “Spencer!”

  He should have heard the words I was too proud to say.

  Wen cups his hands around his mouth. “Spencer! You okay, man?” He looks over his shoulder at me, his face softening. “He could be okay.”

  “His car isn’t there anymore.” Wen points up the hill at an area where most of the forest is gone. “Maybe he found his sister and drove out of here.”

  That day on Main Street, I imagined him there, and I know it’s silly, but maybe if I only think vividly enough—about his navy blue suit, his plaid shirts, the way his hair falls onto his forehead—I can imagine him back into my life.

  Hollers and screams shatter my thoughts. Wen sprints in front of me, but it’s not easy to make our way back to camp. We hop over fallen trees, stumble against splintered stumps, sink into the wet mud from unearthed roots.

  We run to the edge of the fallen forest and stop, both Wen and me, at the outer edge of camp. Only half of camp still stands.

  Trailers and RVs are destroyed, torn into a million pieces and scattered along the ground. It’s hard to tell where every vehicle—every home—began and ended. But our tent trailer’s okay, and so’s the Chevy.

  “The owls,” Wen says. “This is what the omens were about.”

  Only I’m not so sure. If the Falconer—or anyone else—was trying to warn us about something, it wasn’t this.

  Maybe those owls were showing up to threaten me against betraying my Wanderer life. But maybe, just maybe, the Falconer was telling me I didn’t belong anymore—and maybe all those years ago, he was telling Mom, too.

  Wanderers pool around one overturned vehicle. My feet carry me farther—it’s Sonia and Emil’s RV.

  Scanning the crowd, I find Rona, Felix, Lando, and Boss. I can’t breathe until I see Sonia emerge from the back of the crowd, stumbling closer and bending toward the ground.

  A boy is buried beneath the overturned RV, and he’s staring at the sky, his eyes wide open and glassy. It takes me a few heartbeats to recognize the boy as Emil. His body is crushed from the chest down.

  Sonia pushes forward, all the way to Emil’s body. She slumps to her knees, one hand covering her mouth and one on her belly.

  Her nails scratch against the metal siding. “Pull him out!”

  Lando ambles from behind Boss’s wheelchair and says, “He’s gone, Sonia. Getting him out’s not gonna make a difference.”

  Lando sets a careful hand against her back.

  I shoulder through Wanderers. My eyes meet Lando’s.

  “She’s my best friend.”

  His hand slips away as I slide to the muddy ground onto my knees beside her.

  Sonia’s soft weeping turns into wails as I crush her against me.

  We squeeze each other until I’ve lost all sense of where her limbs end and mine begin. There’s nothing I can say. She wanted to be the other half of something, and I always wanted to be all of me, but that doesn’t mean my heart’s not shattered for her.

  With her chin digging into my shoulder and her sobs wracking both our bodies, I stare dry-eyed at the unmoving forest.

  I catch a flash of silver. High up in one of the few trees that refused to fall is the bumper of Spencer’s sedan. Like Emil, somewhere out there, beneath a fallen tree, spread out among winter-cold leaves, might be Spencer.

  Rona tries to close Emil’s eyes, but they won’t stay that way, so she finds a blanket and spreads it over him. She soon pulls Sonia’s sobbing body away from me, and Wen hooks an arm under her, lending her support and leading her toward her parents.

  “Come inside with us, Tal,” says Wen as they trudge by.

  My arms feel empty as I stare at that ravaged, unmoving forest. I sink lower into the mud.

  There’s a rustle from between the fallen trees, and Spencer emerges from the forest with Margaret hanging in the shadows behind him. He focuses on me and lurches forward but looks back at his sister and doesn’t move.

  He won’t walk out here, in the remains of camp, with Wanderers pausing and staring at the woods.

  Out here, we’re something different.

  I am something different.

  But Spencer takes two steps and plants his feet in the sunlight.

  The mud sucks at the knees of my jeans as I get my legs under me. I try to go to him, but it’s as if my whole body has gone to sleep.

  He hesitates there, at the edge of the boundary line, the uncertainty before his touch now present in his sad eyes. And I remember that when the Wanderers are watching, he doesn’t know if I’m his, if I’m still the girl I am when the lights are low and we’re alone in his room.

  Until right now I wasn’t sure, either.

  I set my body in motion, taking careful steps across the debris, never letting my eyes leave his. I meet him halfway.

  CHAPTER 43

  Alone, I sit inside a coffee shop on Main Street. Through the fogged-up windows, I watch workers rope off the street while I wait for Sonia.

  Her cheeks are pink from the cold as she takes a seat across from me. It’s been three days since the tornado struck.

  I push one of the mugs of tea her way. “How is everything at camp now?”

  She drums her fingers on the table. “Nobody can believe all those owls, those omens, were warning us about something like that. About the tornado. About”—her voice cracks—“about Emil.”

  I reach across the table, but she stills her hand against the Formica, leaving a space between us I don’t try to fill.

  She empties two packages of sugar into her tea. “You’ll be happy to know your plan worked, after all. Horatio’s been noticing some of his savings going missing for a while now. He marked a few bills and caught Lando with them. Everyone came forward then, claiming they had money missing. Turns out, Lando’s not that good a liar. He admitted it was all hidden in Boss’s RV.”

  A genuine smile creeps up. “You can’t be serious. Does Boss know?”

  “Damn straight.” Sonia matches my grin. “Boss got his chalkboard and scribbled that it didn’t matter if Lando was his son, he wasn’t his successor anymore. Not only that, he wasn’t welcome at camp. Already packed his bags and hit the road. And Felix took off, you know? He told Boss he was going to tell his parents he didn’t want you, after all. That it was fine by him.”

  I stare out the window, at no particular spot on the sidewalk. “That’s great.” I actually mean it, though the feeling doesn’t shine through. “Who’s going to take care of Boss now?”

  “Rona. She said she’d be his caregiver until
his end. Lando leaving doesn’t change anything, does it?”

  I try to smile, but my lips don’t cooperate.

  “You’re gonna stay here, Tal, after all that’s happened.” It’s not a question—she knows my mind is made up.

  “I can’t be a Wanderer anymore.”

  Streaks of mascara spill down Sonia’s cheeks. “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

  And I do know what I have to do. What I want to do.

  My words come out fast as I take her hand. “Stay with me. Here in Cedar Falls. Things have been weird between us, I know, but they don’t have to be anymore. Stay, and everything will be okay—I promise you.” I look to her belly. “I’ll help you with the baby. It’ll be the way you always wanted it. We’ll get diapers and a crib and even some toys, and your baby’ll have the both of us. For always.”

  Sonia doesn’t look up.

  “Sonia, stay with me.” My voice quivers. “You don’t have to go with them now. I’m so, so sorry about Emil—I never would have wanted that to happen to you—but you’ve got nothing holding you back now.”

  She cringes. “Tal, it was never because of Emil that I wanted to stay with camp. Staying in one place is never gonna be enough for me.”

  My chair’s legs screech against the floor as I scoot away from her. “We won’t stay in one place. Not always.” Spencer’s maps swirl through my head. I’m not certain we’ll see the world, but the hope I have is enough to make me stay. “We’ll—we’ll see everything.”

  A sad smile parts her lips. “I need more than the promise of the world. I gotta keep going.”

  Sonia wants the Wanderer life, and I want something more—something different—than being a Wanderer. And now I understand. So did Mom.

  She’s out there somewhere, not with camp, not with us, and, for the first time ever, the thought of her making her way through the world alone doesn’t anger me. It isn’t always right or pretty what we have to do to end up in that place we belong. Or who we have to leave behind.

  Wherever Mom is, I hope she likes her decisions. And I hope Sonia does, too.

  We finish our tea without saying anything else. She pushes away from the table, and this is it. We’re likely to never see each other again. I move closer to her and open my arms, but she says, “Hugging you is only going to make me cry,” so I glue my hands to my sides.

  She winds her scarf around and around her neck and breezes onto the sidewalk. Over her shoulder and through the windowpanes, she glances back at me, the weight of her dreamy eyes almost knocking me over.

  My voice dies inside my throat as I search for a way to get Sonia to stay behind, wishing for the power to cure the restlessness inside her.

  She walks on, and the moment is gone.

  My stomach twists as Spencer strolls through the doors, even though I’ve known for three days he made it out of the forest alive. The tornado ripped a violent path through Cedar Falls, but it left the Sways’ home, Marcus’s gallery, and, most importantly, Spencer untouched. Margaret took shelter in a drainage pipe, ready to wait out the storm. That’s where Spencer found her.

  I don’t really know how I could have lived with myself if Spencer hadn’t found Mags and crawled in beside her, knowing the boy I love—yes, love—would have been thrown among drying winter leaves, his great big heart unmoving inside his chest.

  “Everything all right?” he asks as I pay the tab.

  “No.” I weave my fingers between his. “But it will be.”

  The air is colder since the tornado. The streets are empty, except for a few cars zipping past and even fewer people walking outside. Spencer and I sit on a bench in front of the bookstore, and I press my numb face into his shoulder while he runs his fingers through my hair.

  Across the street, I feel someone’s eyes on us. I turn, and there’s Whitney with her hand lifted and a smirk on her lips. I nod back. We might be friends, after all.

  It’s hard to think about staying here in Cedar Falls and harder to think about leaving. Even if being a compass was a lie, something out there, or inside me, led me back to Cedar Falls.

  I’m not the kind of compass from the markie world, pointing toward true north, and not the kind from the Wanderer world, leading our camp to the luckiest places. Yet there’s something inside me. It kept me turning in random circles for ten years and then brought me back to a small clearing of trees in Cedar Falls.

  I don’t know what I believe in—the stars aligned too serendipitously for nothing magical to be real—but I do believe in possibility. Of what, I don’t know. Of magic, of omens, of compasses, of love. Some of it’s a little bit true.

  Through the bookstore window, Wen glances to me, and he turns the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED. Keys jangle as he locks up the bookstore for the day. Only for the day. He’ll open the doors for business midmorning tomorrow and help the people of Cedar Falls find stories they can sail away inside.

  Blanche Fairchild offered us a cottage she owns, right on the outside of town, but we told her our tent trailer felt too much like home to abandon. So, instead, she’s got a patch of land on her property with our name on it, the right size for parking the Chevy and the tent trailer both.

  Wen settles into the space on the other side of me. “It’s almost time.”

  Down on Main Street, one block away, I hear the trot of horses and the excitement of town. The yearly Thanksgiving parade is about to start, though I won’t be riding down any floats of clouds or soapsuds this year.

  For so long, I tried to chase away the invincible wilds living inside my heart. But now I know there’s no beating them, that sometimes those wilds send your wheels turning to new, faraway places. And sometimes, those wilds keep your wheels from turning at all.

  Sitting between Spencer and Wen, not traveling with the camp and not really settled in Cedar Falls, either, my feet are calm for now, though I don’t know for how long. The whole world’s out there, all waiting to be seen, and I want to walk to the very edge of it, as far as I can go.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many wonderful people came into my life to make my dream of getting Wandering Wild published into a reality. My deepest gratitude to the following:

  My editor, Alison Weiss, who loved this book enough to acquire it twice. Thank you for believing in my words even when I didn’t, and for giving me such expert editorial guidance. You made me fall in love with Tal’s story again. This book wouldn’t exist without you. Yahtzee.

  Julie Murphy, my critique partner, and partner in crime. Your unfailing belief in my writing has kept me from leaving this world. Without you, I’d probably be a boring lawyer by now.

  Stephanie Garber, I so appreciate your willingness to listen, your prayers, and your advice. We were meant to climb this mountain together. Joanna Rowland, my favorite cheerleader and a wonderful friend—there aren’t enough bottles of Runquist to show you the depths of my appreciation. Jennifer Mathieu, your friendship and support over this last year have kept me afloat. Janelle Weiner, for countless hours of talking, and for helping me take my story to another level.

  My Fearless Fifteener family, especially Alexis Bass, Virginia Boecker, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Stacey Lee, and Sabaa Tahir. Even though we didn’t share a debut year as we’d planned, you made me feel as if we did. Your talent astounds me and your kindness has meant the world.

  Kendare Blake, Katherine Longshore, and (John) Corey Whaley, for lending your beautiful words to praise Wandering Wild.

  Julie Matysik and everyone at Sky Pony Press for coming to my rescue when I found myself without a publisher. Sarah Brody, for designing this gorgeous cover.

  Sarah LaPolla, for your guidance on my early work and for matching Wandering Wild with the perfect editor.

  My agent, Melissa Sarver White and my Folio Literary family, you can’t know what your enthusiasm and your confidence in my writing have meant over the last year.

  A special thanks to Sarah Clift, Rose Cooper, Kim Culbertson, Shannon Dittemore, Kristen Held,
Jenny Lundquist, Heather Marie, and Valerie Tejeda. You talented writers have given me the kind of community worth even the rockiest days of this journey.

  My lifelong friends, Ardeep Johal and Allison Fuller. Ardeep, for sharing your books and making me love them. Allison, for reading my first terrible writings and believing wholeheartedly that I could make a career of this.

  And lastly, my parents for going above and beyond to support my dreams of being a published author. Thank you for making your life harder so my life could be better. I love you both so very much.