Read Online Transcendent by Katelyn Detweiler - Free Book Online

sighed, pinching her eyes shut. “I think this is about all you can probably take for right now. You’ve always been different, Iris—maybe even you realized that? You’ve always been so special. The way you treat others, people that everyone else ignores. Remember Johnson? Even then you were so fearless, I was proud, but—”
    â€œStop!” I scrambled farther back against the love seat, farther away from my mom. “Just stop!” I was saying it more to myself than to them, trying to snap myself out of whatever bizarre enchanted fog I’d been trapped inside of. I wanted to get out. I wanted real life back. “This isn’thappening,” I said, grinding my palms against my eyes. “None of this is happening.”
    â€œIris.” It was my dad this time. Or, not my
dad
, according to this dream, anyway. My stepdad? My earth father? I laughed again before I could stop myself.
    He stepped around my mom and crouched on the floor in front of me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “You need time to let these ideas all settle. Okay?” He pulled my head in to his chest, hugging me tight. “You can ask us anything you need to. You can talk to your grandparents, your aunt Gracie, Izzy and Hannah. We’re all here for you, sweetie. And we have a video we can show you, too, a video I made of all of us back then, that we sent out to be aired on the news . . .” He paused, rocking me gently from side to side. “We were going to tell you, you know. Soon. I swear we were. But now that Kyle knows—the stranger who showed up to see your mom earlier—”
    â€œI know,” I said, cutting him off, my words muted against his soft flannel shirt. I pulled back, separating myself. “I was listening from your window. I heard what he said. That he thought Mom could help his kid somehow, that
I
could help . . .” The words trailed off, the bitter truth of it sinking in. Kyle had come here because he wanted
me
. He thought that I could make a difference—that I could actually save his daughter somehow. That I was some kind of solution.
    â€œI’m so sorry that you heard that, sweetie,” my mom said. “Because we certainly never wanted you to find out from anyone but us. I learned eighteen years ago how quickly stories spread, and how far they can go. I didn’t want that to ever happen. Not again. Not with you.” She shook her head, any last remaining color in her cheeks completely drained out. She was pure white, almost glowing in her translucence.
    â€œKyle Bennett,” she continued, “he was a bully at my high school. He was never nice to me, called me Menius—for ‘Mina the Genius’—because I was the Goody Two-shoes, the overachiever, and he held a permanent grudge after I’d gotten him in trouble for cheating once. And when I . . . when I was pregnant, he told the whole school the news. In the nastiest way possible, in front of the entire cafeteria. He blared ‘We Three Kings’ on a stereo and threw things at me, with his friends—condoms and baby oil . . .” She was shaking now, her thin wrists trembling against her knees. “And now he regrets that. He regrets how he treated me. And he’s so determined to make up for it—because of Disney. He blames himself now, for the bad that’s happened to him.”
    â€œYou can’t,” I started, pushing myself up to stand, “you can’t expect me to believe any of this. I’m some kind of miracle? I have no real dad?” I saw my father flinch, and I almost regretted saying it. But wasn’t that what they weretelling me? Wasn’t that what they wanted me to believe?
    â€œI’m still your father, Iris,” he said, his voice low and rasping. I could tell that he was fighting to sound strong, to keep the tears from spilling down his cheeks. “I will always,