Kele Moon - Crossing the line

“Come on, baby. Where’s Wy?” Big Fred Conner scooped her up, making tall and perfect Jules look small and broken as she wrapped her arms around him and started sobbing onto his shoulder. “We’re gonna go home and do this.”

When Wyatt walked out of the room, his father reached out and grabbed his wrist, pulling him to his side. Then he draped a big arm around Wyatt’s shoulders and turned to walk back down the hallway with his children.

Jules’s cries bounced off the walls until they left the building, but there were no apologies. No explanations.

Death was their companion, looming around the corner like a dark threat they understood more than the rest of them. It took years for Tabitha to figure out that most people get there eventually. They realize that life is fragile, that death is inevitable, but for Jules and Wyatt Conner, it’d been there from the very beginning. There was something so sad and terrible about it. Tabitha realized she’d rather go hungry every night than know by just a look that someone she loved was gone forever, as if expecting it all along.

July 1989

“Excuse me, Mr. Dower, but I was wondering—” Tabitha wrung her hands and glanced nervously at Mr. Dower’s wife Marisa. She didn’t like Tabitha, but she tried to forget that and glanced up at the dark-haired man. “Have you seen Clay?”

Terrance Dower stopped mopping the front of Maple’s One Stop shop and arched an eyebrow at Tabitha. He lowered his voice so his wife couldn’t hear him. “I try hard not to see Clay when he’s in here, if you catch my drift?”

Tabitha nodded, knowing what he meant. Clay had developed the habit of shoplifting. Which was the reason Marisa Dower hated her so much. She had inherited the store from her mother, and it was her pride and joy. She sat at the front counter where they sold the lottery tickets, watching the place like a hawk. Even if Tabitha didn’t steal, she was usually with Clay when he did. Mrs. Dower’s anger wasn’t odd. It was Mr. Dower who was the unusual one because he’d caught Clay stealing food plenty of times and just looked away when he did.

“I can’t find him,” Tabitha said in a hushed whisper, knowing Terrance Dower was her best bet at finding Clay. “I’ve looked everywhere, and I figured if he was hungry, he’d—”

“Darlin’, you’re mumbling.” Mr. Dower leaned down lower and looked her in the eye. “Now tell me again what’s the problem.”

“He ran away.” Tabitha’s voice was soft and fearful because she didn’t want Clay to get in trouble. “And I don’t know where he’s at.”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” he said confidently. “He’s probably just off finding trouble like boys do.”

Clay hadn’t been home in three weeks. When his mother moved out and left him with her boyfriend, Clay packed up and left after the first black eye. Up until two days ago, he’d been keeping in contact with Tabitha, but now she couldn’t find him. He wasn’t finding trouble. He was homeless and hungry, and Tabitha didn’t know how to verbalize all that in a way that wouldn’t have Mr. Dower calling the sheriff.

She nodded and turned away. “Thank you.”

“I might have seen him this morning,” Mr. Dower called out as Tabitha walked to the door.

Tabitha breathed a sigh of relief as she turned around and smiled at him. “Really?”

“You want Terry to help you look for him? He’s just in the back doing inventory.”

She shook her head, because Mrs. Dower was sending long, furious glances at her husband that made it clear she didn’t want Terry anywhere but in the stockroom. Tabitha would have declined anyway. Their youngest son, Terry, seemed like a decent kid, but he was already in middle school, and that made her nervous. She was always waiting for older boys to turn mean like Brett and Vaughn.

Boys could be cruel. She didn’t trust them, even the nice ones like Terry Dower.

Which was why it was so weird that her only two friends were boys.

Maybe Wyatt would help her look without telling his dad. He and Clay hated each other more than ever, but this was different. It sort of felt like an emergency. Clay had been getting thinner since he ran away. She couldn’t leave him out there all alone. He thought he didn’t want her help, which was basically what he told her the last time she’d seen him, but Tabitha didn’t really care. He was getting her help if he wanted it or not, and she’d even risk telling Wyatt about it to make sure he was okay.

Clay was going to be furious. Being homeless was making him really grouchy.

“I’ll find him.” She gave Mr. Dower another smile of gratitude, because now she knew Clay was still in town, and he’d at least managed to steal something to eat this morning. “Thank you.”

She got onto Brett’s old bike she’d parked outside the store and decided to ride to the rec center. Wyatt practically lived there since his grandfather died. Big Fred Conner had taken over as sheriff, and he was a very busy man. He took full advantage of all the after-school and summer programs and signed the Conner twins up for everything.

Unlike Clay, Wyatt was always easy to find.

The rec center wasn’t a far ride, but the bike didn’t cooperate that well, and the summer heat was unbearable. She was sweaty and miserable by the time she got there. She parked her bike in the rack on the side of the building, putting it next to Wyatt’s brand-new Huffy that he’d gotten for his birthday. She didn’t bother locking her bike up. No one would want it.

She worked on retying her long hair in a ponytail and wiped at the sweat running down her temples. Her shirt was sticking to her, and her jeans were stained from the rusted chain. She brushed at them as she walked up the front of the rec center.

Tabitha hated for anyone to see her looking dirty, but Wyatt most especially.

She made a detour to the ladies’ room to wash her face. She winced at her reflection in the mirror. Her freckles had multiplied under the summer sun, and she was burned from riding around looking for Clay the past few days.

“Hey, Tabitha.” Jules walked into the bathroom with Serena Dennis, sounding bouncy and upbeat as usual. “What’re you doing here?”

Tabitha turned to the two girls, who were both pressed and perfect-looking in their karate outfits. Jules was exceedingly tan, which caused her light blue eyes to stand out more than ever and made her hair seem even blonder.

“I was just looking for Wyatt.”

“Ain’t gonna find him in here.” Serena giggled.

Tabitha flushed, feeling stupid, but Jules didn’t notice. She just smiled and offered, “He’s boxing.”

“Ah.” Tabitha smiled back, because that’d save her from wandering around and peeking in all the classes. Wyatt took so many, he could be in any one of them. “Thank you.”

“Sure thing.” Jules had a look on her face, as if she knew something Tabitha didn’t. “He’ll be happy to see you.”

Serena giggled again, and this time Jules laughed with her.

Tabitha walked out of the bathroom feeling as if she wasn’t just left out of the joke but was somehow part of it. She’d given up trying to understand other girls. Scared of boys, uncomfortable around girls. Tabitha had more issues than Clay.

She knew where the boxing was, because she’d come to the rec center sometimes. It was cool in there, and it got her out of the house over the long summer months. Even if she couldn’t afford to take any of the classes, there were activities that were free on Tuesdays, and sometimes she just liked to watch Wyatt take his classes.

He was one of those people who was good at everything. In that respect, he was very much like his sister. He might not excel at school, but he did well enough, and once school was out and they let him loose on the football field or put him in a boxing ring, he was amazing.

Tabitha’s fingers itched to grab one of her notebooks just thinking about it. Sometimes she wrote stories when she was on the outs with the library. Brett liked to rip up her books. He knew it took her forever to find the money to pay the library back for them and re-earn the privilege of borrowing more.

So she wrote her own stories, but she always changed Wyatt’s name so no one would know she was writing about him. Tabitha learned a long time ago that her imagination was one of the few things that couldn’t be taken away from her. She liked stories with real heroes and over-the-top adventures, ones that she could get completely lost in. Wyatt Conner made good hero material.

She walked into the room, seeing that Wyatt was actually in the ring with Manny Hardan, who was thirteen and bigger than him. That didn’t seem to deter him. Wyatt bounced around him, red boxing gloves held up as he dodged each of Manny’s blows. She winced every time Manny took a swing, but Wyatt ducked and moved in a way that was almost like dancing.

Tabitha sat on one of the benches in the corner, willing to wait patiently until he was done with practice. Fighting didn’t bother her like it did some girls. She saw it all the time in her backyard or around the corner at the trailer park. Her uncles would get into fights. Her brother would get into fights. Last month, before he’d run off, Clay had gotten into it with both Brett and Vaughn, and he’d held his own.

Growing up where they did, fighting was just a way of life, but Tabitha liked watching this version of it much better, without the dirt or asphalt breaking their falls. Here there were rules.