Transcendent (2 page)

“I
CAN'T BELIEVE
you convinced me to do this, Iris,” Ethan said, eyeing the crowds all around us warily as he unrolled his yoga mat next to mine. “It's nine o'clock on a
Saturday
morning. And besides that, I can barely even reach my knees when I bend over, let alone do any downside dogs.”

“It's down
ward
dog,” Ari corrected him, already stretching, head pressed against her shins as she latched her fingers around her toes. Her long, strawberry blonde braid dangled, grazing the mat as she swayed side to side. “And a little yoga would be good for you. A little of any physical activity besides lugging around textbooks and comic books would be good for you.”

Ethan flushed, pushing his thick, horn-rimmed glasses farther up the bridge of his nose as he plunked down on his mat. He closed his eyes, like a little Buddha with his
plumpish belly and crossed legs, searching for some sliver of Zen to rise above Ari's abuses.

“I'm glad you came,” I said, squeezing Ethan's shoulder. “I'm glad we all did.” I craned my neck, checking Ethan's other side. “Are you good, Delia? Do you have room?”

She nodded as she pulled her thin black braids into a bun. Her light brown eyes, almost golden against her dark skin, scanned the long rows of mats behind us and in front of us. “This is pretty awesome,” she said quietly. Delia was an artist, a painter mostly, and I could see her etching the scene into her mind, the faces and the colors, the tiniest details my eyes would always miss.

It
was
awesome. It was Times Square as we'd never seen it before—packed with human bodies as per usual, but today the bodies were barefooted and dressed in yoga pants, lined up in neat rows, mats side by side, so close they were nearly touching.

I had known the event would be popular—September was National Yoga Month to begin with, but more important, this was the one-month anniversary of the Disney attack. In honor of the victims and the survivors, the city had planned a massive open yoga class right in the middle of Times Square. It was supposed to be a morning for New Yorkers to come together and at least try to think positive thoughts, to breathe out a little of the crushing anxiety that had, in one way or another, affected us all.

I would have done yoga regardless that day—I tried to do it every day, even if it was only ten minutes of stretching and breathing on the mat—but today was special. Today I had dragged along my three best friends to do it with me, even Ethan, despite his worries about causing any humiliating public displays.

I settled on my mat, lying back so that I could see everything above me. The famed Times Square signs blinking, flashing down at all of us. But the signs, they were very different today. Businesses had replaced their ads with the faces of Disney. I watched a particularly massive sign high up on the Times Tower, one face fading out as the next appeared, a string of heartbreaking eyes and smiles. Little kids, teenagers, adults. There were victims of all ages that day, though it was always the faces of the children that stung the most.

The bombs may have erupted in Florida, but New York City had not gone unscathed. No place anywhere in America had gone unscathed. Countless families from our city had been down at Disney World that day, several from my own neighborhood in Brooklyn. I hadn't known any of them personally, but now, staring up into the flat blue eyes of the faces posted right in front of me—a brother and sister, both no older than four or five, their identical dark curls shining in the white lights of a small Christmas tree—whether I had ever met them or not didn't matter at all.

Ten thousand three hundred and eighty-nine.

Ten thousand three hundred and eighty-nine lives destroyed, and countless thousands of others injured—scarred inside and out, shells of who they once were
before
. Ten thousand three hundred and eighty-nine people who had, by random chance, by destiny, by some kind of fate I could never comprehend, simply walked into Disney World that morning. People who had expected dreams and were handed nightmares instead.

A new photograph filled the screen, and I gasped. This boy looked to be about ten or so, with wild, dark curls, deep golden brown eyes, and a big, gap-toothed grin. He could have been my brother Caleb's twin, a miniature version of my father. Had this boy had a big sister, too? A big sister like me, who had maybe survived, and who would never for the rest of her life fall asleep without first seeing this precious face burning behind her eyelids?

I shuddered, squeezing my eyes shut as I rested one hand on my heart, the other on my stomach, breathing deep to steady my pulsing nerves.

It had been a month, and we still had so few answers. The wondering made it worse. Most people were pointing their desperate fingers squarely at the Middle East—but there was no solid proof. All we knew for sure—or at least all the public knew at this point—was that a message had rained down over the destruction, small sheets of paper
dropped from a single plane that no one could seem to locate.

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.

I couldn't get those lines out of my head. None of us could, I don't think.

And we couldn't stop worrying, either—what next? What more? The terror alert for New York City was especially high, given what an attractive target we made. There were uniformed security guards all along the perimeter of Times Square today, hovering, buzzing, their massive guns waiting at their fingertips—reminding us all that even here on our yoga mats, we weren't necessarily safe. There were no guarantees.

“Do you feel guilty sometimes?” Ethan asked, his soft voice almost lost in the murmurs of the crowd around us.

I opened my eyes, tilting my head to see him staring up at the signs.

“Guilty about what?” I asked.

“Guilty because none of us lost someone that day. Everywhere we look, there's so much grief and pain. But
the four of us at least . . . the four of us escaped it. It doesn't seem fair, really.”

“None of this is
fair
,” Ari cut in from my other side. “This whole thing shows how completely freaking messed up our world is. We're all screwed.”

“Ari.” I sighed. “Don't say that. It's not
all
messed up. Look at everyone here today. Lots of people still want to do good.”

“Aren't we really just here to help ourselves, though?” Ari asked. “We're here to feel better, feel like we're a part of something.”

I frowned. I wasn't a religious person—I didn't pray or believe in the rules or traditions of any kind of church. But I did believe that there was something divine about this, all of these people together, honoring the victims of that horrific day—putting aside work, errands, brunch dates, normal routines to be
here
. I turned to Ari, meeting her piercing amethyst eyes, her contact color of choice since she'd moved to my neighborhood during our freshman year. Those eyes scared most of our classmates away, but that was probably Ari's intention.

She'd never scared me, though. I had spotted her in the music room on her first morning, and then again later that day in the cafeteria, all alone, looking miserable and stranded with her tofu dog and tater tots, and I'd invited her to sit at our lunch table. She'd shrugged and acted
indifferent, but she'd sat there the next day, and the day after that, and then every day since. We had orchestra to talk about, the four of us—the one passion we all had in common, the obsession that kept us together no matter how different the rest of our personalities could be. Music. Me on the violin, Ethan the clarinet, Delia the flute, and Ari with her drums, beating and crashing and speaking with so much more than just her words. I'd loved her edge from the beginning—her daily uniform of black T-shirts promoting all her many eclectic causes. Today's shirt said
Straight Against Hate
, a regular in the rotation. Because no matter how tough she seemed on the outside, I knew it was mostly surface—deep down she cared about everything. She cared too much, maybe.

Ari and her mom had moved to Brooklyn to live with her grandparents after her dad was killed serving in Afghanistan. I always wondered what the old Ari had been like before all of that, if she'd smiled more, fought less. I would never know for sure.

“Iris?”

I snapped back to the moment, Ari's eyes squinting at me with curiosity—two sparkling jewels set against her pale, freckled face. But before I could reply, a voice rose out from the speakers, calling all of us to attention. I stood with the thousands of other bodies around me, lifting my hands high to the sky as we began our salute to the sun.

For the next hour, I would focus on all the positives in the world.

Because after Disney, it wasn't always easy to remember the good.

The bad was what we saw, what we heard, what we felt.

The bad was what slowly, alarmingly . . . was beginning to feel like normal.

•   •   •

After yoga, Ethan suggested a trip to Asia Palace, our go-to spot for bubble tea and dumplings after school. I passed, though, saying I had violin practicing to do. I had new pieces to start learning for the school's fall recital, and I still had college auditions to master. Ethan offered to rehearse together, but I needed to work through the new music on my own. That was how I always learned best; it was how the song became mine. I was glad to have spent the morning with my friends, but now I felt the pull to be alone, just me and the violin, my jaw nestled against the chin rest, bow in my hands.

“Mom? Dad? Caleb?” I called out, throwing my mat down as I stepped inside the foyer of our brownstone. No response. I started up the stairs, pausing after the first flight outside of my mother's office door. “Mom?” I tried again.

“Oh! Come in, sweetie,” her voice called out. “I didn't realize anybody was home.”

I pushed the door open, stepping into her cozy lair of books—everywhere I looked, the floor, the walls, the love seat behind her desk. Books and more books, printed manuscripts, mock-up covers, fan letters. This tiny room was my mother's kingdom.

Or not quite my
mother's
kingdom—it was Clemence Verity who reigned in here. Clemence Verity, her pen name for every single book she'd ever written—a total of fourteen, the last time I'd counted, all dark and enchanting historical fiction. I'd been allowed to start reading them after my twelfth birthday, and I'd devoured every story—the more recent ones in multiple drafts. Her words were magical, transformative. She had a gift. A powerful gift.

When my mom was here, in this room, she became someone else. Distant and mysterious, untouchable almost. She spent most of her days locked away, with no one but her colorful, crazy characters to keep her company.

Clemence Verity was an enigma, an idol. But as soon as she stepped outside these walls, into the hallway, down the stairs, she became my mom again. She became Noel Spero.

“Where is everyone else?” I asked.

She looked up at me, her eyes still blinking away the hazy stardust of her imaginary world. “Who? Where's who?”

“The rest of your family, as in . . . the people who live here? Dad? Caleb?”

“Oh, yes,
them
, of course.” She smiled. “Dad's still on deadline for the Brooklyn Bridge documentary. They're doing some of the underwater reshooting today. He took Caleb to hang around the set so I could get some work done. Can I get your opinion on something?” she asked, motioning toward her computer screen. I nodded and moved toward her, hugging my arms around her shoulders as I leaned in close.

“You know I hate getting new author photos done, but my editor kept insisting. Apparently the last one was a decade old, and she thought I could use something new. Which do you like better?”

I squinted at the photos. They looked nearly identical to me, both black-and-white and shadowy, showing my mom's profile as she gazed off to her left at something or someone only she could see. The only difference I could pinpoint was the shape of her lips—in the first one, they were straight across, somber; in the next, they tilted upward, though just barely. But even with her face obscured, I could see why strangers sometimes assumed that she was my older sister. We had the same thick brown wavy hair, the same petite frame and rosy, dimpled cheeks. But my green eyes, bright and piercing, were nothing like her more subtle blue ones. She was young for a mom—she'd had me when she was still a teenager, a fact that she rarely discussed and probably never would have divulged at all
if I hadn't done the math on my own when I was younger.
We were high school sweethearts, your dad and I. We loved each other very much, and I don't regret a thing.
That was all she'd say, the full story.