Transcendent by Katelyn Detweiler

Author:Katelyn Detweiler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2016-09-02T15:58:16+00:00

UNCLE ANTHONY’S APARTMENT was a strange mix of spare and cluttered; he didn’t seem to own much, but what he did have was thrown into haphazard heaps across the sticky, stained wooden floors. Besides an oversized, scuffed leather couch in the living room—Zoey’s and my “bed,” according to Zane—most of the furniture was a random assortment of recycled goods. Plastic crates stacked as shelves for books and DVDs and old records, a few pieces of wood balanced over cardboard boxes for a coffee table, a TV propped on cement blocks. It wasn’t much, but it was functional, more or less.

Anthony disappeared back into his bedroom, and Zane left soon after we’d settled in—he had work to do, he said, but wouldn’t look me in the eye when I pressed for more details. I couldn’t help but think that, whatever his “job” was, it wasn’t aboveboard. Drugs? Some kind of stolen goods?

I shook the thoughts off. It wasn’t my business. He wasn’t prying into my life, and I shouldn’t pry into his. And besides, he did what he had to for Zoey—I didn’t doubt he’d do whatever necessary, no matter how many laws he had to break.

With Zane gone, that left just me and Zoey, who refused to acknowledge my existence, and an entire day together. She plunked down on the sofa with a handful of Oreos and some cheese crackers from Anthony’s shelves, flipping through the channels. I found the two granola bars from the shelter at the bottom of my purse, now only slightly smashed, and allowed myself to eat one. I’d have to look for a deli at some point to pick up more food, but I didn’t want to leave Zoey all alone—even if she would have clearly preferred that I did.

She looked mesmerized by the TV. Even commercials had her transfixed, wide-eyed and motionless. I settled in at the opposite end of the sofa, leaving as much distance between us as I possibly could. I didn’t know Zoey all that well, but I could already tell that trying to change her mind would have the opposite effect; she’d have to forgive me on her own terms.

A few episodes deep into some painfully sweet and unfunny kids’ sitcom—unfunny to me, at least, but Zoey couldn’t stop giggling—I started dozing. My eyes shuttered, the lids suddenly too heavy to force open, and I burrowed more deeply against the soft, worn leather of the sofa. Zoey’s happy laughter lulled me. I slipped away to the sound of it, eased into a deep sleep with the peace that Zoey was still capable of being a kid, at least sometimes.

The laughter seemed to twirl through my mind, shimmering, sparking in the darkness as it reached out and made contact with another laugh, another cheerful sound. But it was as if this one laugh multiplied, like a happy virus spiraling out of control—because it was a whole chorus of laughing now, breathy giggles and gigantic, ringing laughs, so lovely, so perfect. A light went on, but I still couldn’t see clearly.

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