Transcend Read online

  TRANSCEND

  Book One

  by Jewel E. Ann

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Jewel E. Ann

  ISBN: 978-1-7320897-1-6

  Kindle Edition

  Cover Designer: ©Sarah Hansen, Okay Creations

  Photo: ©Wong Sim

  Cover Model: Elias Chigros

  Formatting: BB eBooks

  Dedication

  For Shauna, Queen of Names

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Also by Jewel E. Ann

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nevaeh. It’s Heaven spelled backwards and the name of the girl to my right with her finger five stories up her nose. I grimace while readjusting in my chair. It has nothing to do with her disgusting habit. One of the wings to my pad is stuck to my pubic hair. Mom worries about tampons and toxic shock syndrome. It can’t be more painful than this.

  The receptionist keeps glancing at us through her owlish glasses, tapping the end of her pen on her chin. “Nevaeh, do you need a tissue?” she asks.

  My parents are not the weirdest parents in the world after all. Lucky me.

  Roy.

  Doris.

  Cherish.

  Wayne.

  With over ten thousand baby names in the average name book, how does one settle on such horrible names?

  Backwards Heaven glances over at me as if I have the answer to the receptionist’s question. I’m not the tip of her finger. How am I supposed to know what it feels like up there? After inspecting her size—smaller than me—and her yellow hair in a hundred different lengths that looks like something my mom calls a DIY, I give the receptionist a small nod.

  Without moving her finger, because it might be stuck, Nevaeh mimics my nod. The receptionist holds out a box of tissues. They both stare at me. When did I get put on booger duty?

  “Swayze, do you need to go potty before we leave?” Mom asks, coming out of the office where I took my tests.

  Swayze. That’s me. Worst name ever—until five minutes ago when Nevaeh introduced herself and offered me a gluten-free, peanut-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, taste-free snack from her BPA-free backpack. My uncle thinks the millennials are going to ruin the world because they have no common sense, and all of their knowledge comes from the internet. He may be right, only time will tell, but then what’s my parents’ excuse? Or Nevaeh’s parents’ excuse? Common sense says you give your child a good solid name. Kids don’t want to be unique. It’s true. We just want to fit in.

  I grab the box of tissues and toss it on my empty chair, turning before Nevaeh’s finger slides out. Some things I don’t need to know, like why it smells like cherry vomit in the waiting room, why there is a water dispenser but no cups, and what’s up Nevaeh’s right nostril.

  “Restroom,” I mumble, tracing the toe of my shoe over the red and white geometric patterns of the carpet.

  “We can’t hear you when you talk to your feet, Swayze,” Dad says like he’s said it a million times. Maybe he has.

  I lift my head up. “No, I don’t need to use the restroom! Or potty. Do I still look four to you?”

  His blue eyes, which match mine, ping-pong around the room before landing on me. “Shh … you don’t need to be so loud.” He smooths his hand over the top of his mostly bald head, like I ruffled his feathers, what few he has left.

  “Let’s just go, dear.” My mom reaches for my hand.

  I jerk away.

  “Swayze.”

  As if giving me such a stupid name wasn’t enough, she has to draw it out. “Swaaayzeee.” Who wants a name that rhymes with lazy and crazy?

  “Well, you said you can’t hear me when I talk to my feet. Can you hear me now?!”

  They hear me. The guy who tested me peeks his head out the door, squinting at me. He hears me too. I can’t find my inside voice. Something has tripped my volume and it’s stuck on playground voice.

  “Potty is what toddlers do. I’m not a toddler! I’m eleven. And I know stuff that other eleven-year-olds don’t know. So what? That doesn’t mean something is wrong with me. You keep bringing me to places like this to take stupid tests and sit in stinky waiting rooms with weird kids who have crazy names and like to chant unsolvable riddles, pull their hair, and pick their noses!”

  Balling my hands, I resist the rare urge to pull my own hair. My parents each take one of my arms and drag me out of the office. Just before we reach the door, I give Nevaeh a small grimace of apology. She slides her finger back into her nose.

  “Am I a genius yet?” I ask in a much calmer voice as my parents rush me to the elevator and down fifteen stories like someone’s trying to kill the president. Next to our blue hybrid car is a red convertible. Maybe it belongs to Nevaeh’s parents. Then again, that car is a little too cool for people who would name their child Heaven backwards. Heaven in the opposite direction … wouldn’t that be Hell?

  After checking my seatbelt, as if an eleven-year-old can’t be trusted to listen for the click and give it a tug, my dad glares at me, jaw clenched. He’s too mad to talk. That’s fine. I’ll know when he’s ready to talk; his first demand will be an explanation. There really isn’t anything more I can say. My words, although louder than necessary, were self-explanatory.

  After long minutes of some self-imposed timeout on himself, my dad looks at my mom and nods.

  “Swayze?” She glances over her shoulder at me, curling her dark hair behind her ear. I don’t detect any anger in her voice. It’s sweet and juicy like the Starburst candy I get at the movies.

  I fear her words will feel like the cavities I get from eating too much sugar.

  “How would you feel about trying a new school?”

  Yep. She’s drilling without numbing anything first. I’ve attended four different schools. Every educational psychologist and child development expert in a fifty-mile radius has evaluated me. They figured out I’m gifted, but not in a typical way. Smart. But not necessarily a genius.

  My random recollections of historical events, that are not at all noteworthy, are most puzzling. I’m not playing Chopin or speaking fluent Spanish. I enjoy talking with adults, but I fit in just fine with my peers as well. I can’t name that many famous war generals. Even naming the presidents in order is a challenge. But random things that happened in Madison, Wisconsin, a few years before I was born seems to be my specialty.

  “Move? Again?” I sigh as we pass the UW-Madison Arboretum, one of the places I like to go in the summer.

  “We just want to find a good fit for you.”

  “I fit fine where I’m at.”

  “But they’re not challenging you enough.”

  I shrug. “What does it matter? If I already know what they’re telling me, then I don’t have to do as much homework as my f
riends.”

  “It’s wasted potential.” Dad shoots me a quick look in the rearview mirror. He, too, has lost his fight over my outburst.

  “Potential means—” Mom starts to explain.

  “Possibilities, prospects, future success. I get it.” I’m fairly certain other eleven-year-old kids in sixth grade have heard the word potential before. It’s not exactly a word I’d see on my word of the day calendar.

  “You know, Swayze, the Gibsons are sending Boomer to a private school only an hour from our house. If we send you there, you’d already have one friend.”

  Boomer. Another hideous name. Sounds like a Rottweiler. Nice boy though. I like him, but not the way he likes me. At least I don’t think so. He carries my backpack to the bus for me after school, but he also snaps my bra in class. The bra I don’t need. My mom pressured me into getting one after several of my friends got them. I don’t have breasts. Nope. Nothing there yet. Still, I wear it to feel like all of the other girls, and apparently Boomer’s need to snap it during math every day means he likes me. At least that’s the story my mom tries to sell.

  Not buying it.

  “I like my school.” I twist my blond hair around my finger then slide it through my lips curled between my teeth.

  Mom frowns. She has a thing about hair near the mouth. A hair in her food triggers her gag reflex to the point of vomiting, and then she can’t eat that type of food for months. Dad always threatens to plant a hair in the ice cream she likes to sneak—his ice cream.

  “You’ll be in middle school next year. It’s a good time for a change. The transition will be easier.” Dad nods as if he only needs to convince himself and my mom.

  “I like my friends.”

  “You’ll make new friends,” Mom says, shaking her head and scowling at the hair in my mouth.

  I pull it out and flip it over my shoulder. “Why can’t I just be normal and you be happy with that?”

  “Swayze, if you just give this a try, I promise we won’t ask you to switch schools again, even if it doesn’t work out.” Mom flinches like something’s caught in her throat, probably bile from seeing hair in my mouth.

  One last move. One last school. I’ll do it. But I won’t believe it’s truly the last.

  CHAPTER TWO

  10 Years Later

  “Swayze, what makes you think your parents gave up on you?” Dr. Greyson asks.

  Carlton Greyson. That is a well-thought-out name. Strong. Manly. Intelligent.

  My father died of a heart attack last year. I’m good, but my mother suggested we use some of his life insurance money to help deal with the loss. I suggested a trip to Costa Rica. She decided on shrinks.

  Again, I’m good. However, it appeases her to know that I’m expressing my emotions to someone since it’s not her. I’ve been through a handful of psychologists and psychiatrists, looking for someone who doesn’t annoy me.

  This is my first visit with Dr. Greyson. It’s too early to make any conclusions, but his name doesn’t piss me off so there’s that.

  “My mom likes antiques. She used to watch this roadshow on public television. There’s such excitement—high hopes—for people who think they have a hidden gem. I felt like that hidden gem for most of my life. We waited, visiting one expert after another, going from one private school to another, waiting for someone to tell them my gift—my worth. I imagined that lottery-winning look on their faces.”

  “What happened?”

  I stare at his interlaced hands on his lap—the skin of a man who has never had an ounce of grease stuck in the wrinkles and crevices. Who knew manicured nails and the occasional steepled index fingers could be so enthralling? I find his command of the room both intimidating and comforting. Deep-set eyes almost silver in color match his graying hair that’s receded into a sharp widow’s peak. He reminds me of Liam Neeson. It makes me wonder if he has a “particular set of skills.”

  Meeting his gaze, I smile. “At my final evaluation, five years ago, my parents were told I was a perfectly normal sixteen-year-old girl with above average test scores but nothing at that point that exceeded all of my other peers. I was smart, but not a genius. They recommended I take as many AP classes as I could, but there was no mention of skipping grades or even testing out of classes. However, I did have my first year’s worth of college credits by the time I graduated high school.”

  Dr. Greyson glances at some papers in my traveling file. I’ve learned to travel with my file of test results and records of my academic achievements. “You scored a thirty-one on your ACT and graduated with a three-point-nine GPA. That’s really good. And you just graduated from college.”

  I shrug. “I wasn’t valedictorian of my class. I didn’t receive a full-ride scholarship to any college. No write-up in any medical journals. No national television appearances. No lottery ticket. No hidden gem. But, yes, I did just graduate from college. That’s good, right? Not everyone has a college degree. I’m hoping to get a teaching job for this school year. Otherwise, I’ll substitute teach.”

  “And now?”

  “I do graphic design: websites, banners, book covers. That sort of stuff.”

  “Do you like to design?”

  No one has ever asked me that. It’s always been an assumption that I must like it because I do it. Since when did everyone love their job?

  “Not particularly. But I’m good at it. It’s a job for now.”

  We talk about random stuff—a getting-to-know-me session. By the time we finish, I agree to make another appointment. A first for me.

  Turning from the receptionist’s desk and grabbing several chocolates from a ceramic bowl that looks like something a young child made in school, I see Nate. He’s aged quite a bit, but I’d recognize that wavy, ginger hair anywhere. I’ve always had a thing for guys with wavy hair, especially the ones who don’t fight it and just say “Fuck it.” Really, there’s nothing more appealing than unruly, fuck-it hair.

  He’s filled out too. No longer a boy, but a man with broad shoulders and a strong jaw. And a thick layer of stubble. Testosterone looks good on him. I smile when he looks up with those unmistakable blue eyes.

  “Hey, how are you?” I ask just as his gaze diverts to the ground, arms resting on his sturdy, jean-clad thighs, hands folded in front of him.

  He glances back up with no recognition on his face. His eyes shift side to side before focusing on me again.

  “Nate?”

  “Yeah?” he says in an uncertain tone.

  “Wow, you’re all grown up.”

  His eyes narrow. “You’ll have to excuse me, but how do we know each other?”

  “You lived on Gable Street. Faded green house. You played hockey. That’s how you got that scar along your hairline. Remember? You and some other kids were playing on the pond, no helmets or protective gear.”

  Nate’s hand moves to his head, tracing the scar hidden behind his wayward locks. “What is your name?” he asks, narrowing his eyes even more.

  “Swayze Samuels.” How can he not know me? I know he likes pineapple and jalapeños on his pizza, extra butter on his popcorn at the movies, which is just soggy and gross, and he tells all of his friends that he likes video games, but secretly his passion is chess. Or … was. I still can’t get over how much he’s grown up.

  He shakes his head. “Do you have older siblings?”

  “No.” This is crazy. I know he’s an only child, so how does he not know the same thing about me? He’s a huge Chicago Bears fan which pisses his parents off because everyone who lives in Wisconsin should be loyal to their Packers.

  “Do I know your parents?”

  “Nate Hunt, how can you not remember me, we …” I tuck my shoulder-length hair behind my ears and sigh. “We …”

  He’s my captive audience; even the older lady sitting two chairs to his right, pretending to read a magazine, gives me a curious glance. This is ridiculous. It’s clearly been years; he has a few wrinkles by his eyes to prove it, but … I know him.<
br />
  “How old are you?” he asks, breaking my stuttering that’s doing little to formulate words that explain how I know him.

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Well, I got this scar when I was fourteen. That was twenty-two years ago. You must know someone who knew me when I was a child.”

  I return a single nod, not really agreeing with anything.

  “Um … my parents … Travis and Krista Samuels? My dad passed away a year ago.” I don’t remember ever talking about Nate with them, but we must have.

  “The names are familiar.” Nate nods slowly, lips pursed to the side. “But I’m not completely placing them. Then again, I’ve been a bit off lately.” He nods to the door to Dr. Greyson’s office. “Obviously, if I’m here, something must be off, right?” He chuckles, but more pain than humor radiates from it.

  I know him, as in really know him, not a simple we met or someone I know spoke of him. It’s more. Skin crawling, chills causing the hair on my neck to stand erect type of more.

  “Good to see you.” I leave him with a stiff smile and skitter out before he has a chance to say, “Wish I could say the feeling is mutual,” because he has no clue who I am.

  *

  What if it’s a brain tumor? I think about this more than I should. However, it might explain a lot of the unique, brilliant, advanced, inconsistent, often times meaningless thoughts that go through my head.

  “Nate Hunt,” I chant his name, pulling out of the parking lot, heading back to my apartment.

  It’s déjà vu in overdrive. Vivid thoughts and memories reside in my head, clear and detailed. Dreams leave gaps and push past the realm of reality. These aren’t recollections of dreams. I know Nate Hunt.

  After a shower and a burnt grilled cheese, thanks to Nate consuming my mind, I text my mom to let her know I won’t be able to have dinner with her tonight—our Thursday night tradition. On my way down to my car, my phone rings.

  “Job interview, Mom. I’m not ditching you for anything better.”