One (One Universe) Read online

I tell him all about last year’s incident in the hallway. When I mention the bruises, he stiffens and shakes his head, glaring off into the distance. His grasp on my waist becomes protective, and he draws me close to his side, hugging me there until the tears stop.

  “But this is okay,” I finish, looking up into his waiting eyes. “This is different.”

  Elias gives me another gentle kiss. “This,” he says, “is just you and me and whatever both of us are one hundred percent comfortable with. And, it’s dinner.”

  Elias pulls cheddar cheese and crackers, some slices of tart green apples, and a loaf of bread out of the backpack. My shoulders relax, and I know that I’ll never worry about anything like that with Elias ever again.

  “Come on. Dinner’s getting cold.”

  I laugh at that because it was always cold. “You know I don’t eat any of that junk anyway,” I say, and he nods, leans forward, reaches into the bag.

  “Which is why I brought these.” He brandishes two jars, one with hot fudge and one with caramel topping. “These should at least make the apples edible for you.”

  “Oh, don’t underestimate me,” I say, reaching for the caramel. “Now I can eat the bread, too.”

  He laughs and makes himself an apple-and-cheddar sandwich, then leans back on the roof. I sit forward, seeing how high I can push the caramel-to-bread ratio, and we gaze at the deepening colors of the sunset together.

  “Basketball starts soon,” I say. Elias has already been in practice most school nights and half of Saturday, just enough time to force me to spend my free hours with Michael and Max and sometimes Leni and Daniel, too. Enough to keep me from being that girl who everyone thinks is obsessed with her boyfriend.

  He sighs. “Yeah. Weekend away games. Tournaments. And, uh…my dad set up some private coaching for me, too.”

  I can’t read his expression at that last one. “Are you hiding, like, some secondary One that makes you awesome at basketball? That you’re not telling me about?” I tease, trying to hide my sadness that our weekends together are pretty much going to be gone between basketball and homework. Trying to make it sound like I’m not curious about the private sessions.

  He sits up and looks at me, right into my eyes. “I would never hide anything from you. Over the last few weeks… You’re my best friend here. My best friend ever. I’m so glad you transferred to Nelson, so glad I found you. Mer, I…” But then he trails off and stares at his hands, shakes his head like he’s frustrated.

  My heart races again because part of me knew what he was going to say, what he decided not to say. A peace floods me because I know it, but I don’t have to deal with it. Not yet.

  I don’t know what I would say back.

  “Me too,” I say. Nelson High would suck without him. I don’t let a second of dead air pass because neither of us wants it. “I’m so glad you refused to quit stalking me.”

  He smiles, takes my hand, squeezes it, and leans in to kiss me, softly, teasing me with the combination of his nearness and distance. I turn toward him, swing my leg over, and settle myself on his lap, facing him. He holds his hand a few inches from my face, and a pretty good puff of air comes from it and brushes my hair out of my eyes, away from my lips.

  “Showoff,” I say. I grab his hands, which he’s still keeping carefully outside my shirt, and remove them. He looks at me with one eyebrow up, and I float up and away from him. The wind takes me backwards, and I check that there’s still roof below me. I don’t want to make him jump off to get me or anything.

  “Yes, I get it.” Elias rolls his eyes, grinning. “You’re very impressive, too, Miss One.”

  I smile back, but something twinges in my heart. I know I’m still a One, but something about being with Elias has always made me forget it. I don’t need anyone to remind me, especially not him.

  He stretches his arms up toward me, his smile softening. “Now come back down to me before I have to make camp up here for the night and call someone to get me down in the morning.” His fingers curl in, beckoning me, and weirdly, the wind blows in another direction now, bringing me right to him when I let myself descend.

  He draws me close. The feel of his arms against mine makes my skin warm all over, and when he buries his face in my neck and breathes hot against it, I feel warm on the inside, too.

  The rest of the bread and apples roll down the steep slope of the roof for the birds and ants to eat tomorrow. Elias kisses my eyelids, my nose, and I let my head fall back so he can kiss my throat, too. We sit there for a long while, kissing eyes and lips and ears and necks, until he squeezes me against him, his signal that we’re going to take off. And we do, and it’s perfect, and maybe better than it was the night before.

  Mr. Hoffman and I have been meeting for months now. Slowly, it’s changed from me doing lots of written work to him quizzing me orally. He drills me on theories about mutations, which gene components match up with which, which chemicals and treatments would push further mutation. When we talk about these things, especially, my arms and legs fidget with excitement. During these sessions, the words I want so badly to say sit on the tip of my tongue. I know, firsthand. Elias and I can fly. We’re Ones who have been Seconded.

  As amazing as Elias is, though, he can’t give me the Hub. He can give me some of what I’ve always wanted, but not all of it. Flying around Nebraska with my high school boyfriend is fine, but what happens when we have to grow up, want to go to work, make a difference?

  I want to know how it works — the One-plus-One-equals-Super mystery. I want to figure out what it is about Elias and me that makes us work together, makes us absorb each other’s powers so seamlessly. I’ve always wanted to find out about the Oneness, and this adds a whole new layer, a whole new mystery.

  A hundred years ago a kid in my position would have raided my parents’ files from work or some books they had lying around. But no one’s had paper books or files for decades, and my parents always have their readers with them. Even if I could snag one, they’re password-protected, especially the work stuff. I’m sure there are some really old books on what I’m looking for somewhere, but they’ve got to be locked down at the Hub.

  Freshman year, they took our class on a field trip there, but I pretended I was sick that day. I couldn’t stand to look at it and know that I could never really see it — not the parts I cared about, anyway.

  The whole time I meet with Mr. Hoffman — doing pointless exercises; answering rapid-fire questions; staying up so late working the exercises he’s given me that I fall asleep in English class and yawn on walks with Elias; keeping everything from my parents; and worse, keeping it from Elias — one thought keeps piercing my mind. This is how I’m going to do it. This is how I’m going to get there. And the one comfort in the whole thing (or the rationalization — I don’t know which is which anymore) is that when I get there, I’m going to take Elias with me.

  And we’re going to be the first Ones who get fixed.

  THIRTEEN

  That night, Elias and I head to his house after school and basketball. Elias hops in the shower while Mrs. VanDyne feeds me some kind of Chinese food dish that I suspect she’s asked Rosie to doctor to make it healthier. She talks to me about my classes and my grades, what books I’ve been reading, what TV I’ve been watching, but she never asks any questions about Elias and me. Good form, Mrs. VanDyne.

  Unfortunately, I don’t have such tact. “I haven’t seen…uh, Mr. VanDyne around here. Like, ever,” I say between bites.

  She smiles, exactly the same sad smile Elias has. “He’s preparing for the Symposium, dear. Being the Vice President and all… I thought Elias would have mentioned it.”

  “Elias isn’t really one to brag. About anything.”

  A fondness sweeps over her face. “No, he isn’t. Well, anyway, Andrew is the Vice President of the Hub and oversees experimental operations. Between the Symposium and keeping an eye on the girls after hours, he’s been working quite a lot.” Her gaze sweeps over the rest of the ho
use, which is, as usual, dark except for the kitchen and her office off the corner of the living room area.

  She nods toward my plate, clean after two huge helpings — her plan to get some nutrition into me worked, but not unnoticed — and I say, “Thanks.” She takes it away and turns to put it in the sterilizer, saying, “Speaking of Elias, he seemed very…happy after your class met to see the Northern Lights. Did you four make some earth-shattering discovery or something?”

  I look at her curiously. Maybe he said something to her about the flying. With his dad being Vice President of the Hub and all…

  “Did Elias tell you what we can do?” I ask, scrunching my eyebrows together.

  “What you can do?”

  “Yeah. We figured out that if we stand close together…”

  “The image from the radio telescope looks different to each of us,” Elias’s voice interrupts from the other side of the kitchen.

  “Oh,” his mom says, as if she was only half paying attention to begin with. “Very interesting.”

  He strides up to me and takes my hand in his. “Thanks for waiting around for this long. What did Mom do to you?”

  “Horrible things,” I say. “She fed me lo mein. But I think it was whole wheat. Right, Rosie?”

  “No, Merrin,” Rosie responds.

  I narrow my eyes. “What were those noodles made of then?”

  “Technically, they were a sixty percent wheat blend.”

  “She got you there.” Elias laughs, but it sounds hollow. “We’ve got a bunch of calc to finish up, Mom. Can I take a plate of that back with me?”

  “Rosie already made one up for you.” She hands it to him, and he leans in to kiss her on the cheek.

  “Oh! I almost forgot,” she says as we turn toward Elias’s room. “From the twins.” She hands him a long white envelope addressed to him by hand.

  I wrinkle my nose. “Snail mail?”

  “They’re not giving any of the gap year participants computer access, not yet,” she explains.

  When we reach Elias’s room, I whisper to Elias through tight lips, “What gives? Why didn’t you want me to tell your mom? About the flying?”

  Elias smiles down at me, and this is one I’ve never seen. Some cross between genuine and faking it. Tense and strange. He shrugs.

  “I don’t know. We don’t really know what’s going on, you know? Why it even works.” His voice is even weirder — the tone is assertive, but the words are not. “And I kind of wanted it to be just ours, I guess. For now.”

  “Just ours” is something I understand. Keeping secrets as delicious as ours makes sense to me, in a way. So I nod slowly, say, “Okay.”

  “Besides,” he says, pulling me close to him, his scent distracting me for a split second, “we don’t want them to mess it up.”

  “Them who?”

  He shrugs and plunks down in his desk chair, turning his attention to opening the letter. Clearly he doesn’t want to talk about this.

  I fall backward on his bed, doing a quarter-turn to bury my face in his pillow. I know my expression shows how upset I am, even though his explanation makes sense to me, I guess. I don’t want him to see it. I try to think of something that makes me happy. Flying over a field with Elias, the wind whipping through my hair. The burning recedes from my chest a bit.

  Then I remember I didn’t practice a damn thing that day, power-wise. I go light, levitating over the bed. Here in his room with his scent, I can imagine what it would be like right next to him, without him holding on to me. It feels awesome, being completely untethered to anything and anyone. Even imagining it. I can almost hear the slap of tree branches whipping by and the sound of cars or animals or people or whatever is around, distorted by my motion.

  Elias murmurs, “Hey, Floating Beauty,” and pecks me on the lips.

  My eyes snap open, and I shriek, plunk down onto the bed, and slap at him playfully. He interrupted my daydream and scared the crap out of me.

  He sits down, puts a hand on either side of my face, closes his eyes, and kisses me properly, slow and lingering for a few seconds, then pulls away with a satisfied, “Mmmmm.”

  “Me too,” I say, and he smiles.

  He glances at the time on his cuff. “You’ve gotta get out of here in a few,” he says, bringing his lips to mine again, the intensity of his kiss not matching his words.

  I sit up next to him and swing my legs over the side of the bed because I am dangerously close to offering to hide under the covers until lights-out time. And as much as that idea attracts me, I know I’d probably just have another Homecoming night-style freak out and embarrass the both of us.

  I stand up, and Elias does, too, slinging his bag onto his desk. I step into my shoes, and Elias shrugs out of his sweatshirt, handing it to me. “Got cold out there, Mer.”

  I roll my eyes. “Yeah, and the drive home is so long.” My collection of Elias sweatshirts, nightgown-length on me and used for just that purpose, grows by the week.

  I pull the sweatshirt down over my head and smooth the static from my hair. “What’d your sisters have to say?”

  His face falls, but then he gives me a smile. The sad one again, with a hint of worry. The faking-it one.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Elias. I haven’t known you for that long, but I know that look.”

  He eyes me for a minute, then says, “The girls and I thought security might be tight at the Hub. We were right. No internet, no TV, no calls. So…it’s an inside joke.” He holds the paper out toward me and points at something on the back corner.

  I lean in to read the tiny, perfect cursive writing, which does not match the print on the other side. I read aloud, “Doris locked. You’ve got to break it down.” I look back up at him. “What the hell?”

  “Inside joke. Uh, knock-knock joke,” he says, taking off his glasses and pressing the heel of his hand against his right eye. “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Doris. Doris who? Doris locked, that’s why I’m knocking.”

  I still look at him, one eyebrow in the air. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  He smiles. “It was always kind of our code. Because they can teleport in, you know? So if they wanted to let me know they were coming in, it would be, ‘Doris locked, but I’m coming in.’ Or whatever. They’re the ones who started the joke a few letters back, in little writing like this, on the flipside of the paper. Barely caught it the first time. And now…this answer…I don’t know. Worries me. That’s all.”

  I want this look on his face to go away. His love for his sisters is coated in worry, and I want to make it go away. I walk a few steps to him, stand on tiptoes, and tug on his arm so he’ll bend down to kiss me. He does, but it’s distant, distracted.

  “I’m sure they’re fine. Just want a visit, probably. Right? And you’ll see them soon at the Symposium.”

  “Yeah.” He forces another smile. If he thinks he’s getting away with that without me noticing, he either thinks I’m stupid — and I know he doesn’t — or he doesn’t realize how much I care about him.

  He glances at his cuff again and then pulls me toward him by the waist for another hug. I squeeze his hand and smile at him as he walks me down the hall and out the front door. But instead of smiling back at me, he trains his eyes on the horizon. He’s not normally this quiet — doesn’t usually focus on anything but me, kissing me goodbye.

  “You okay?” I finally ask.

  “Oh. Um, yeah. Just preoccupied.”

  “About what? The girls?”

  “No. I mean, yeah. But…”

  “What? What’s going on?” I search his face.

  “The other night we…uh… The police came to my house.”

  My breath catches in my chest. “Why?”

  “The local police found my backpack, Mer. From Homecoming night. Still on that roof we landed on.”

  “How did they even know…?”

  “I had an old flash drive in there with my name o
n it. Stupid. Anyway, they brought it to the house and talked to my dad because he’s my dad, you know, VP at the Hub and all, and they didn’t want to press charges against me.”

  “Okay. So what’s the big deal?”

  “They thought I was climbing it, you know, vandalizing it. But they…they don’t know.”

  “About your One?”

  Elias nods.

  “Okay. So?”

  “So my dad does. And he’s still watching me to see when I’ll develop that second power. He’s been dying for it to manifest for the last 10 years. And now he thinks this is it.”

  “So…maybe this is it, Elias. Maybe this is our chance to…”

  “No,” Elias says, his mouth set in a hard line. He shakes his head quickly, then stares into my eyes. “No, we’re not telling them about you.”

  “What’s the big deal, Elias? We’re amazing. Maybe they could figure us out, you know? Why we work. Maybe they could…”

  Maybe they could fix us.

  He shakes his head to each side sharply. “I don’t…” He trails off for a second, looks off in the distance. “I don’t know what’s going on with Nora and Lia. I haven’t heard from them for a while, until now. I don’t know if what’s going on over there is good. And until I know…” He draws me to him, squeezing me tightly to him.

  “You don’t want them to know about me.”

  “I don’t want them to know about you.” He nods and presses a kiss to the top of my head.

  A burning acidic feeling creeps around my stomach and floods my chest. Elias is worried about me being at the Hub, the one place I’ve always wanted to go, where Mr. Hoffman thinks I belong.

  Elias rubs my upper arms, whispers, “I’ll deal with it. I promise. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

  The warmth of his words tamps the burning down and makes my heart jump in the way that reminds me that, at least for now, he’s more important than all that.

  I get in my car to head home, and Elias bends down to toss his sweatshirt on my lap and kiss me while I put my seatbelt on. He shuts the door for me while I start the car, turns, then looks over his shoulder and flashes me that dimple and wink. But I can’t shake the memory of the cloudiness to his eyes instead of the sparkle I love.