Kele Moon - Crossing the line

“Have you lost your dang mind?” he murmured into her ear. “You just kissed the piglet.”

“He gives us cookies,” Tabitha said in a defensive whisper.

“I don’t like you, Powers,” Wyatt suddenly growled, reminding them both he was still there. “You ain’t the boss of her.”

Clay responded by flipping Wyatt off and then standing up to walk to the doors. Tabitha sat next to Wyatt quietly for a few seconds, feeling embarrassed and awkward. Then she hopped up and followed after Clay.

* * *

The thing about Clay Powers was, he had a reason to be mean. Tabitha understood it even if none of the other kids did. He didn’t have uncles who would buy pizza sometimes like Tabitha did. Her mom had a lot of sober moments. If it lasted long enough, she’d clean the house when she started to get paranoid about the state coming over. Sometimes she bought food and stocked the pantry.

Clay didn’t have that. His mother never got paranoid about the state. She just didn’t care anymore. One night, when Sheriff Conner showed up at the trailer park, Clay flushed all her drugs down the toilet and woke her up and managed to make things look almost normal before the sheriff knocked on their door.

His mama didn’t go to jail, but when the guy who was staying with them found out Clay flushed all their drugs away, he beat Clay so bad he had to miss a full week of school. So all things considered, Tabitha thought Clay was pretty darn nice. He wasn’t cruel like Brett or his friend Vaughn, who’d beat her every day for the cookies Wyatt had been giving her if they found out about it. Mean was the wrong word for Clay; he was just shy in a growly sort of way.

Clay’s last report card said he had socialization issues.

He asked Tabitha what that meant, since she was the only one who read the darn thing for him. She wasn’t real sure, but she thought it meant Clay had a hard time making friends.

To which Clay had mused, “I guess you don’t count.”

And Tabitha had laughed. “Probably not.”

It was really too bad Clay hated Wyatt so much, because Tabitha was starting to think she had socialization issues too, and she found herself considering the idea of trying to be Wyatt’s friend. She sort of liked the way he talked all the time and filled in the empty space left by her shyness.

Plus, he did neat things like karate.

He was like a safer Jules Conner, who was easily the most popular girl in the class. Around Wyatt she didn’t feel ugly in her old clothes, with her red hair and freckles and all the things that made her a runt. Jules Conner was so tall she stood at the back of the class with the boys when they took their class picture. Tabitha was always in the front row holding the sign.

“Tabitha, did you hear me?”

Tabitha turned from looking out the window, snapping her attention to the front of the class. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Do you know whose birthdays we celebrate on Presidents’ Day?”

“George Washington?” she guessed.

Mrs. Hatly arched an eyebrow. “And?”

“Thomas Jefferson?”

“No.” Mrs. Hatly pointed to the open book in front of Tabitha. “If you were reading your social studies, you would’ve known it was Abraham Lincoln.”

The class laughed. Tabitha’s cheeks burned, and she sank down lower in her seat as she focused her attention back on the book.

“I didn’t know it either.”

Tabitha turned around, seeing Wyatt lean against his desk to make her hear him from two seats over and one back. She smiled.

“Mr. Conner, do you have something you’d like to add?”

He shook his head, looking undisturbed by the attention. “Not really.”

The teacher might have said more if the door to the classroom hadn’t opened. The principal came in, with her eyes bloodshot and watery. Everyone in the classroom just looked at her as she walked over to Mrs. Hatly and said something under her breath the rest of them couldn’t hear.

Mrs. Hatly cupped a hand to her mouth. “Oh no!”

She didn’t say more. The principal nudged her and then cleared her throat. “Wyatt and Jules. Gather your belongings for the day. Your father is here to take you home.”

“Why?” Wyatt’s voice cut across the silent room, and Tabitha turned around to see his gaze darting from Jules to the teachers standing at the front of the room looking horror struck. “What happened?”

“Grab your things, Wyatt,” she said a little more firmly, but the command lacked authority, as if she really wanted to hug Wyatt instead of reprimand him.

Wyatt and Jules collected their school bags and books. Tabitha saw that Jules was already crying, and she ran out the door first, leaving it wide open for the entire class to see. She stopped when her father stepped away from the wall, and there must have been something in the look on his face, in the slump of his shoulders as he stood there in his tan deputy’s uniform.

Jules let out an ear-piercing scream that Tabitha knew right then would haunt her for the rest of her life, especially when Tabitha turned around and saw the look on Wyatt’s face. He wasn’t crying. He wasn’t screaming, but it was as if Jules was verbalizing what he didn’t know how to express.

In that moment, Wyatt and Jules Conners’s perfect life tarnished in her eyes. How could they know without words what had happened unless there was an undercurrent of fear already? Maybe being in the sheriff’s family wasn’t as easy as Tabitha and Clay thought it was.

“Where is he?” Jules’s wail echoed in the halls. “Where’s my grandpa? I want my grandpa!”

“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.”