Transcendent (21 page)

“You're not really done with me. After all, I know where Zoey goes to school,” Anthony said, smiling. “If I can find her, I think I can find you.”

“Fuck you,” Zane said, his eyes burning with fury. He took a step closer to Anthony. I squeezed Zoey tight, wondering if we should run. But I couldn't move.

“Do I have to remind you why you owe me?” Zane asked, towering over the sofa.

“Now, I don't think we have to get into that right here,” Anthony said, his voice suddenly sounding much less confident.

“I think now is the perfect time. Because let me remind you that if you make me angry—if you do anything to upset Iris—I have a whole lot more serious damage I can do.”

“That's
our
business, Zane,” Anthony said, standing up. “We had a deal. You kept it all under wraps, and I'd help you and your sister when you needed me.”

“Well, guess what?” Zane laughed then, the sound so frigid, so raw, I felt myself edging farther away. “I don't want your help. Ever again.” Even with Anthony standing,
too, Zane seemed to dwarf everything else in the room. “I'd rather be on the street than have a thug like you providing another damn thing for me. I have too much pride for that.”

“Stop, Z, just stop right there,” Anthony said, putting his hands up as he took a step back. “It doesn't have to come to this. I won't say anything about the girl, okay? Photos are deleted, done. Let's just pretend none of this ever happened. Our secret.”

“I can't trust that. I can't trust you,” Zane said, sneering down at him, shaking his head. Zane turned then, those flaming eyes directed straight at me.

“Iris, I'm telling you this so that you know. Just in case Anthony should decide to change his mind and do anything to out you, or try to make it look like he has some role in all this.”

“Zane, no—”

Zane put a hand up, silencing him. Anthony turned to face the wall, his shoulders sagging with defeat. “Zoey,” Zane said, turning to his sister, “go to the bathroom and close the door.”

She didn't fight it—I don't think anyone would have disobeyed Zane in that moment. She scrambled to the bathroom, shutting the door quickly behind her.

Satisfied, Zane turned back to me. “Uncle Anthony's son used to be my best friend. Tony. We grew up together.
He was older, like a big brother to me and Zoey. A few years back, though, Tony and I were hours late to pick up Zoey after school. It was getting dark, and she was outside of the school the whole time waiting for my stupid ass to get there. And there was a guy . . .” Zane paused, his shaking hands balling into fists at his sides. “There was a guy there, hassling Zoey. Had his arm around her, was talking in her ear. Tony and I . . . we lost it. Beat him up bad. Really bad.”

This was the story I'd been so scared to hear. The start of the rumor.

“I caught myself, remembered that my little sister was there, screaming and crying for us to stop. So I went to her, but Tony . . . he kept pounding on the guy. We heard a siren then, and Tony took off. But I couldn't run, not with Zoey. So I took the rap. The cops had some security footage, saw I wasn't alone. But it was dark—they couldn't ID him. And I wouldn't give a name. That guy, he lived, but he's out of it . . . can't even speak anymore, just sits in a chair all day. I went to juvie for a while, but Tony, he was eighteen, so he wouldn't have got off so easy. I paid the time, but I will never forgive myself for letting her see me go off like that. And if I hadn't been late, none of it would have happened. That's why now . . .” He bowed his head, lifted his hands to cover his face. “That's why now I just try to be the best big brother I can be,” he said, the words
muffled behind his hands. “That's why I don't deserve anything, not even Zoey.”

“Where's Tony now?” I asked. It was the only question I could process.

“He went to live with his mom in Atlanta after that,” Zane said, his face still hidden behind his palms. “Never saw him again. He never said anything to me, no apology for letting me be the only one to go down for what we did. He was defending my sister, yeah, but still—he took it too far. We both took it way too far.”

“He was a good kid, Zane,” Anthony said, turning back to us. He sounded so broken, I almost pitied him. Almost. “You know he was. It was just a mistake, that's all . . .”

“Zoey,” I said, the word breaking my heart as I said it aloud. To have seen that, and when she was so young—I couldn't imagine, I just couldn't.

I stood up and walked to the bathroom, opened the door. I pulled Zoey in and hugged her more tightly than I'd ever hugged anyone in my life. And then I grabbed her hand, leading her back to the living room.

“We're leaving,” I said. I couldn't look at Anthony. I couldn't look at Zane either. “It's time to go see Abby. It's time to
do something
.”

Z
ANE'S KN
UCKLES TAPPED
against the door marked 3B and I steeled myself, squeezing my sweaty hands into tight balls.

This was happening.

The door swung open almost instantly. A short but sturdy, powerful-looking man stared at us from just behind it, his dark brown eyes scanning from Zane to Zoey. To me. They stayed on me, penetrating with an intensity that made hairs prickle along the back of my neck.

After a long pause he blinked and stepped back, motioning us inside. He remembered to smile then, though his eyes stayed just as focused on my face. My cheeks burned under his scrutiny.

“I'm Iris,” I said, though it was clear I needed no introduction. He nodded slowly, a few seconds passing before he remembered to reciprocate. “I'm Sam Henry,” he said, his voice booming, a shock in contrast to his initial silence.

At that he finally broke his gaze, turning to look back over at Zane and Zoey. “It's good to see you kids again. It's been . . . it's been a long time. Too long.”

Zane put out his arm, and Sam latched on, shaking his hand. They nodded at one another, unspoken words seeming to pass between them. Zoey reached out, too, after the men broke apart, wrapping her arms around Sam's waist.

“I miss Abby so much,” she said, the words muffled against Sam's striped button-up, the shirt faded but still crisp and fastened at the wrists.

“We all do,” Sam responded quietly. He closed his eyes for a moment, patting Zoey's shoulder.

“You're here,” a woman's voice said from behind us. I turned to see her rushing toward me—a blur of blue cotton and gold earrings and curly black hair, the deep brown of her arms as they reached out and pulled me tight against her chest. “I am so glad you came. Praise Jesus for bringing you here to us. To our Abigail.”

Hearing that word again—hearing
Jesus—
made every last drop of my blood go cold. I had nothing to do with Jesus. Jesus had nothing to do with me. How could I be letting this woman, this family, believe that for even a second?

“I'm not . . .” I started, but the words got choked off against the thick, perfumed curls that crushed against my
face. Our bodies were pressed together so close I could feel her trembling against me, feel the rapid beating of her heart.

I couldn't finish that sentence.

She pulled back, beaming at me. “I'm Janelle,” she said. “And it is a grand honor indeed to meet you, Iris Spero.” She clasped her fingers firmly around my palm. “I told Abigail you were coming earlier, and it was the first time I've seen her smile in . . . first time in weeks! First time since all of this began, maybe. I've been telling her about you ever since I first saw you on the news. First heard about who you are. Now, I'd heard a little about your mom back then, everybody did, but I was a stupid teenager, didn't pay it any attention. I've been reading up about her now.”

I nodded, my panic swallowing me up entirely. Before I could say or do anything to halt the momentum, Janelle was pulling me along behind her, glancing back with those eager eyes, that hopeful smile. All I could do was walk, one step at a time.

And then we stopped, Janelle and me—the rest of them somewhere behind us, I supposed, or nowhere at all, because it didn't matter, nothing else mattered—in front of a closed door. The door was blank, solid white, except for one little glittery purple
A
sticker placed right in the center.

Janelle squeezed my hand, so warm and alive against my rigid, icy fingers—and then she let go. She reached for the knob, twisted, pushed. Every gesture, every movement forward, was like a crashing cymbal, each louder, more shocking than the last.

The door opened and Janelle put her hand on my back, nudging me inside. “We're here, sweetie. Iris and me.”

I took a few steps, eyes still on the old parquet floors, before I looked up—before I looked at the bed. At Abigail.

The second I saw her, the tiny, broken girl propped up against a mountain of pillows, my heart shattered—thousands of tiny, jagged pieces, all ripping and tearing through the rest of me, slicing open every organ, every vein in their path.

I stood like that, bleeding on the inside, staring. Staring at the white bandaging wrapped around the top of her head, ending just below her eyes; and the lower half of her face that was uncovered, but still red and rippled with burns. Her mouth, though, her pink lips, seemed to somehow have gone entirely untouched. And on those lips, despite the bandages, the burns, the eyes that would never see again, even if they were uncovered—there was a smile.

She was smiling because I, Iris Spero, was now in the room with her.

“I'll leave you two alone,” Janelle said softly. I heard the click of the door behind me.

A moment passed in silence before I could force my mouth to speak. “Hi, Abigail,” I said, the words so soft I worried that she wouldn't be able to hear, not under the gauze that partially covered her ears. I felt relieved, suddenly, that she couldn't see my face, couldn't see the fear and the heartbreak—and then, just as instantly, I felt utterly guilty for having had that thought at all, even for a second.

This was a little girl who would never see again.

I walked, crossing over the rest of the space between us. “Hi, Abigail,” I said again, louder this time, as I sank onto the old wooden chair set right next to her bed. The chair where, I had no doubt, her parents had taken constant shifts since Abigail had come home from the hospital. “I'm Iris.”

“I know,” she said, her voice fuller, more animated than I would have expected. It was hard to imagine anything lively at all emerging from such a frail, damaged-looking body. “My mama told me all about you. Even before she knew that you were with . . .”
Zoey and Zane,
it seemed like she was about to say, but she trailed off. The names were still too hard, maybe, too much a reminder of the past. Of Brinley. “You can call me Abby, though.”

I nodded for a moment before realizing that she couldn't see me.

What was I supposed to say next? What was I supposed to do?

Nothing—there was nothing to say, nothing to do. I was stupid to have come there at all, to have pretended that there was any real purpose besides my selfish motive to prove myself right. To prove that I was no one special.

“I'm really sorry,” I said. She'd probably heard those words too many times already, more times than she needed for the rest of her lifetime. But still, I
was
sorry. I was so much more than sorry. “Do you want to . . . to talk about anything?”

She was silent—considering, I thought, based on the way she pressed her lips together. It was hard to know, I realized, without seeing her eyes, what she was really thinking in response, how she was really feeling. I was so used to having eyes tell me what I needed to know about a person—whether their smile was real, whether they were bored or angry or tired or distracted. Without eyes, I felt stranded.

“Have you talked to Brinley?” she asked, the words floating out from those soft, miraculously untouched lips.

“Have I . . . have I what?” I asked, confused.

“Brinley. Have you talked to her since . . . since it happened?”

Abby knew, didn't she, that her best friend had died? She must have—that was why she had refused to let Zoey visit, after all, wasn't it? “I never met Brinley,” I started. “I didn't know Zane and Zoey until just—”

I gasped, choking around my own words as the real meaning of her question crashed down on top of me.

She was asking if I'd talked to Brinley
after
she died.

She was asking if I'd talked to her dead best friend. In heaven, probably, because that was where she thought I was from, where I
belonged
.

“No, I . . . I . . .” I couldn't speak. I could barely breathe.

“Darn,” she said, her lips turning into a tiny frown. “But I guess you're here on earth right now instead of being up there.”

Up there
.

“You're here helping
us
.” She paused, sucking in a tiny breath of air. “Right?”

“I'm not . . . I'm not exactly sure what I'm doing right now,” I said, the only answer that I could possibly give. “I'm kind of new at this whole thing.”

“Oh.” Those perfect lips turned down in disappointment. She was silent as her little chin began to quiver. Were there tears under those bandages?

Could she even still cry? Through the wounds, the scars around her eyes?

To not be able to
cry
 . . .

“Abby,” I started, gripping my quaking hands against the sides of the chair. “There is nothing more in the world that I would rather do than help you get better right now. To help everyone who was hurt at Disney be completely
better again. But I don't think . . . I don't think it works that way.”

“Then why are you here?” she asked quietly.

I opened my mouth, about to say again that I didn't know, that I didn't have a single clue about how to be the person that she needed me to be. But I couldn't, I couldn't say it again—not without at least
trying
first. Not without making some kind of effort to prove the words true, doing rather than saying.

Before I could stop myself, I uncurled my fingers from around the seat of my chair and reached out toward her. I laid one hand, then both, along the sides of her face—half of each palm resting along the rippled burns of her exposed skin, the other placed lightly on top of the gauze covering her eyes.

We sat like that, perfectly still, for our own private eternity. I was waiting for—I don't know what I was waiting for, because nothing could possibly happen. The burns wouldn't magically wiggle and stretch and smooth themselves beneath my fingers, new skin washing over the old, as perfect and pristine as the day she was born. She wouldn't suddenly start tearing off the bandages, proclaiming that her eyes had opened and she could
see
!

But I couldn't bring myself to pull away, couldn't bear facing Abby's realization that I was completely useless. I was a
fraud
. And so I kept my hands pressed against her,
waiting for something, anything else to interrupt and put an end to our misery.

Finally, Abby spoke.

“I'm not . . . I'm not sure if I feel anything.” Her mouth was pursed in concentration, the just barely exposed tip of her nose scrunching beneath the bandages. “But I don't know. Your hands are so soft. And so cold. They feel so nice against my face. I don't feel different, though, really. But do I look different to you?”

Even now, even after my pathetic hands had proven themselves completely powerless . . . she still had hope. I could hear it there, fighting on regardless of the total lack of proof or cause.

“No,” I whispered. “You look the same to me.”

“Maybe it takes time,” she said. “Maybe it's not something that happens right away.”

Stop!
I wanted to shout.
Stop trying to find truth in this! Stop believing in the impossible—stop believing in
me
.

“Maybe,” I said back.

Coward's words. I hated myself for saying it, but I couldn't stand to watch her crumble right in front of my eyes. I wanted to run away and never have to see her again—never have to witness up close the total loss of her faith in me, in
miracles
, in good things still existing in this sad, empty world the Judges had left behind.

She smiled. Abby smiled, because of a single word—
because of my false promise. She looked amazingly peaceful and content, despite everything.

My deceitful skin crawled in agony, waves of heat scorching me from the inside. I couldn't stay in this room. I needed to go.

Before I lifted my hands—before I severed myself from Abby entirely—I prayed. I didn't pray to God, to any god, because I had never believed in one and I still didn't now. But I prayed in the way my mom had prayed all those years ago—the way she and my dad still prayed today, their whispered appeals behind closed doors.

I prayed to Iris. The
real
Iris. The first Iris, and the Iris who really mattered.

Please
, I screamed on the inside, that one word rattling through my head like a deafening clap of thunder. But how—I cut myself off—how could a
thought
, a silent, invisible spark of the brain, go anywhere at all?

It didn't matter, though, not now. I had to try. For Abby, I had to try.

Please, Iris. Please talk to me. Please let me know what my purpose is here. Because if I can't help this girl, if I can't help anyone, why was I even born? Why am I here at all?

I wanted it to work, I realized. The desperation coursed through my veins, my heart thudding faster, louder with every beat.

I want to be the person Abby needs me to be.