One (One Universe) Page 2

  I have no idea what to expect from these Normal kids. Will they suspect that I’m not like them? Can they see that I can float if I want to?

  I manage to keep my head down all the way to my locker. All I want is to get there to ditch my sweatshirt, retreat to the girl’s room — if I can figure out where it is — lock myself in a stall for a few minutes, and take a deep breath for the first time since I got here.

  And maybe eat my lunch in there. Just for today.

  I wiggle the handle of my locker, but it won’t open. I bend down to take a look at it. No jerk’s poured superglue in there or anything.

  Before I know it, I’m shaking the stupid locker handle so hard that it’s making a racket, and a few people standing near me look over and cock their heads. When I almost whack my own face with my struggling hand, I give up, resting my head against the cool, solid metal for a second, breathing in through my nose.

  I am seriously losing it. Over a locker.

  Half a second later, a shoulder taller than my head pushes into the metal door, and a large hand with long, thin fingers jiggles the handle side-to-side a couple of times and wrenches it up, letting the locker pop open.

  I feel the warmth of his nearness against my cheek, countering the chill of the locker, like a shock on my skin.

  The guy clears his throat, and says quietly, “They’re tricky.”

  I barely glance at him before I look down at the floor, but I do catch that he has blond hair and glasses.

  “You new here?”

  Before I can answer, some guy halfway down the hall hollers, “E! Coming?”

  The guy at my locker — “E” — gives his head half a shake, smiles a little, then turns to walk away.

  And now everyone’s staring at me. Great.

  As soon as I find my way to the bathroom, I place both hands on the rim of one of the sinks, steadying myself there. After a few seconds, I splash my face with water and reach over to the soap dispenser. Everything about this place feels dirty.

  As I’m lathering my hands, I notice the logo on the soap dispenser. Hub Technology — it appears on every product they make. It’s four arcs, one for each Hub, intersecting in the shape of a circle. Someone has crossed out the “Hub” in “Hub Technology” and written “Freak” next to it.

  Suddenly I can’t get enough air into my lungs. I duck into a stall, sit on the toilet, bury my face in my hands, and take one, two deep breaths.

  I hope with everything in me that all the other kids actually eat in the cafeteria.

  TWO

  I loathe the idea of art class. Something about the idea of ripping out part of my soul, translating it into colors and materials, and putting it on paper or canvas for everyone to gawk at and misinterpret is completely horrific to me. For self-expression, I’ve always loved my drums. Drumbeats dissolve on the air — they’re out in the world for a moment before they go away. No one knows whether there was anger or frustration or passion or excitement behind them. They don’t give anyone else the time to mess with them. Drumbeats are all mine — the only things I’ve ever had that are.

  There are ten of us in the class: three jocks, a couple of girls in tight jeans and new shoes who reek of hairspray, a handful of others. There’s no orange-shirted adult coming in, though. When the bell rings, everyone scoots their seats to a place at one of the wide, black tables.

  The sound of metal legs scraping against the floor makes me cringe. I whip my head around, and that blond boy from the hallway scoots his stool a little closer to my desk.

  Well, “boy” isn’t an accurate term. It’s even clearer now — with him sitting right next to me outside of the hustle and confusion of the hallway — that he’s a giant. He’s easily six foot two, with a shadow of stubble running across his jaw. My feet barely reach the bottom rung of the art stool, while his slide comfortably on the floor.

  “You’re a freshman?” he asks, and looks right into my eyes. For a second, I can’t look away.

  He is 100 percent generic looking. He could be anyone. Except for those eyes. I see his irises right through the thick lenses of his glasses — light brown sparked with streaks of green and flecks of blue. I have never seen so many colors in someone’s eyes before.

  Then I feel like an idiot because I have spent exactly two seconds too long thinking about the color of some guy’s eyes. I cast my gaze downward, trying to focus on anything but his face.

  His jeans don’t have a single rip or fray, but they’re not pristine, either. His gray t-shirt hugs his waist, letting me see how thin he is. Even though he’s two heads taller than me at least, he probably doesn’t break 160 pounds.

  “No. Sophomore. I transferred from Superior.” The words come out of my mouth almost before I can think them. “My parents — uh…I thought I’d try something new. They bought a house on the border when I was nine,” I explain, like he should care. Like he needs to know.

  For an instant, he looks surprised, and then his eyes sparkle at me when he gives a little smile. “Well. For the electives — music, art, architecture, film, whatever — we just scan our cuffs into the tabletop and pick an assignment. Then it records whatever we do.” I raise an eyebrow. “It probably doesn’t teach us much, I know, but at least no one hassles us.”

  “Yeah, okay.” I press my cuff into the input section of the tabletop and choose Option 1: Draw a picture of what you did this summer. Lame, but at least it’ll be over with soon. The blond guy chooses the same option on his half of the table.

  “I didn’t get to introduce myself. I’m Elias — I’m a junior.” He sticks out his hand, and I stare at it. It’s so huge — strong but thin, tendons showing in the back of it. If I put my hand against his, palm to palm, my fingertips probably wouldn’t reach his first knuckle.

  “I started out at Superior Public,” he says. “Parents took me out after first grade.”

  My heart jumps. Is he another One? No, he can’t be. He wouldn’t have transferred away that early unless his parents were absolutely sure he wasn’t going to go Super, and six or seven years old is too young. He must be a Normal.

  It would make sense for me to mumble some comment or even get up and walk away, but the space between us suddenly feels weird — charged or something. The fine hairs on my arm stand on end, and I can swear I feel my skin prick. It’s like a magnet, keeping me there, even though I know it’s probably not the best idea to keep talking to this guy because I will waste even more time thinking about his eyes.

  I can’t speak to him, but I can’t make myself move away either.

  He drops his hand, smiles that slight smile again, and looks down at the blank tabletop in front of him. He pulls a stylus out of his bag. In bold handwriting, all caps, he writes at the top of the screen: “What I Did Over Summer Vacation.” He draws a stick figure lying on a hill in the sunshine, staring up. Then he draws an arrow pointing at it and writes, “Bored,” beside it.

  He draws a vertical line to make a new frame and then swipes the old one out of view. Next, he draws a stick figure with a backpack on and a massive building in the distance with a huge sign that says, “Normal High.” A dotted line with an arrow at the end shows him walking in. He motions for me to move my arms off the surface in front of me, and I lean back without thinking. In front of me, he draws a room with long rectangles for chairs and circles for stools and a handful of bodies filling them. He writes “Art Class” at the top, the quotation marks greatly exaggerated. I hold a giggle back in my throat.

  I never giggle.

  He sketches two stick figures sitting closer to each other than any of the other ones, one much smaller than the other. He labels one “Elias” and the other “Girl Who Won’t Tell Me Her Name.” Then he writes, “(Pretty blue eyes.)”

  Well, that does it. This doesn’t feel like the only attention I got from a boy last year — the kind I definitely didn’t want — but I still can’t tell whether it’s good or bad. My stomach does flips, and I have to get out of there. Have to. I
hoist my body off my perch on the stool with my left hand, hop down and grab my backpack with my right, and walk toward the door.

  I scan my cuff at the door, mumbling, “Bathroom.” The door registers my exit, and I get the hell out of there as fast as I can, not even looking back at his — Elias’s — stupid lanky frame and ridiculous sparkling eyes.

  THREE

  I pace the hall. I tremble from my core and all the way out to my limbs.

  In one short year there, I’d seen a few new girls come to Superior High, girls who got shipped in from across the country for the “community” and hadn’t been around those asshole boys for their whole lives, so they didn’t know any better. I heard the jeers of, “Hey, sweetie, you know I’ve got X-ray vision, right? Might as well take it all off right now.” I saw superhuman strength used in threats against girls, veiled or not-so-veiled.

  In junior high, Patrick Ryan, who could make people do anything he wanted by talking to them, convinced a girl to drive away with him in his car. The next day, she came to school dressed in the same clothes as the day before, and everyone knew what had happened with her. Her brother kicked the shit out of Patrick, but still.

  I was relatively normal when I got to Superior High. Even tried to dress cute for my first day. Sean Cooper, the quarterback, started watching me, and a few days later, he was talking to me kind of a lot. Everything was fine until I realized his Super was strength.

  One afternoon in an emptying hallway, he stood so close he forced me back against my locker and put his hand on my shoulder, and I realized everyone else was gone. He leaned down to kiss me, and everything closed in on me, and I told him to stop, but…

  His thumb pressed on my cheek, and his breath steamed in my face, suffocating me. I tried to struggle away from him, but I guess he was angry that I didn’t want to kiss him because rage flooded his face, and he glared straight into my eyes as he dug his thumbs into my shoulders. The only way I stood a chance against his iron grip was a swift knobby knee to the balls.

  Sometimes I still feel the bruises he left there, like they’ve been pressed into my bones.

  Michael and Max were only in the third grade and too young to kick his ass, though they would have loved the chance. I never told them about it. Never told Mom and Dad either. They only thought I was having some pretty serious popularity problems, which, if they noticed how I started dressing after that day, made perfect sense.

  Ever since then, I’ve hated to look right into a guy’s eyes. No matter how beautiful they are.

  When I hop back in the car with Dad after last bell, I finally feel like I can take a deep breath. Even though I’ve always hated having to remember to plug in the damn electric car, I do love that it lets us ride home in silence. I park myself at the kitchen counter while Dad starts dinner.

  My eyes flash to the vintage Public Super Service poster on the kitchen wall. A little girl flies up to a tree branch to rescue a kitten. Below the pigtailed heroine and the unbearably cute kitten, the poster reads, “Supers: Making the World a Better Place.” I know that Mom and Dad bought that poster 10 years ago, when I first went light, and had it framed for our kitchen. Probably hung it with tears in their eyes. That girl was supposed to be me.

  “Do you want to talk about it? Your first day?” Mom calls as she enters the house, carefully setting her briefcase on the big bench in the hall. The boys’ shouts fill the back of the house. Mom sighs and walks over the kitchen counter, looking as exhausted as I feel.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I say, shoving a piece of licorice in my mouth and a pack of snack cakes in my bag for tomorrow. I don’t mention history class. As awful as that holo-lecture was, it wouldn’t be as bad as going back to Superior. And besides, I know how to think for myself. My grandparents met in one of those camps. I already know they were less than comfortable, less than humane. I don’t need to sit in a school where I really don’t belong so a teacher can tell me the same thing.

  The boys tromp in, dropping their gear all over the floor, which Mom hates. But instead of yelling at them, she just watches them jostling through the front hallway, punching each other on the shoulders.

  “Mom, you okay?”

  My words break her gaze. She shakes her head and looks at me for a second before answering. “Oh, yeah. Yes. Just thinking about…just some things at work.” She reaches out to pat my hand, and my shoulders stiffen.

  Max tumbles into the kitchen dribbling a basketball and punches me on the shoulder. “D’you have to redo freshman year, Merrin?”

  I snort and cuff him on the head. “Yeah, just like you need to go back to kindergarten.” He laughs, grabs a bag of chips from the cabinet, and heads toward the stairs. Michael strolls in after him and leans in to smack a kiss on my cheek.

  “Glad to see you made it through in one piece,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I mutter, squeezing his shoulder and swallowing hard. Michael darts his hands out in front of him to catch the basketball, which Max has hurled at him so quickly I barely had time to notice.

  “What have I said about no sports in the house?” Mom growls.

  The boys stifle laughs and head up to their room.

  Mom sighs and opens the newsfeed on the touchscreen countertop. Julian Fisk, the head of the Biotech Hub, wearing his trademark impeccable suit, waves from the picture, flashing a grin back at me. The headline reads: FISK ANNOUNCES RENEWAL OF YOUTH OUTREACH INTERNSHIP PROGRAM.

  The subtitle should say, “For Super-Extra-Gifted Super Kids Only.” They’re the ones who have been enrolling in mainstream Normal colleges like Harvard and Stanford in increasing numbers over the past few decades. Because, Normal or Super, smart kids are smart kids, and they want prestigious degrees in addition to working for the greater good at one of the Hubs.

  It’s not enough anymore for the United States government to pay us for using our Supers, Mom and Dad keep commenting over dinner — now people want to be more integrated into mainstream Normal society than they have been since before the Wars. So the Hub has to do “outreach” — wants to keep our most talented kids close.

  The curve of Fisk’s smile challenges me. It’s like he’s daring me to try for that internship. But if I’m getting that internship, it’s not to impress anyone or meet anyone’s challenge. It’s to save myself.

  I stare at the countertop feed. I think I catch the phrase, “uncovering decade-old research,” but it’s hard to read most of it upside down. I let my eyes glaze over until the letters blend together and run through the checklist of steps I have left before my application is complete. I already got my freshman year transcript, sat for hours completing the tests until it felt like my stylus would rub my finger raw, and typed the essay. Only two pieces left. Signatures from Mom and Dad — which I would fake if they weren’t fingerprint verified — and a recommendation from Mr. Hoffman.

  I sit there, gnawing on the candy and pretending I don’t notice Mom raising her eyes from the feed. She looks sad.

  “What?” I snap.

  “I didn’t know that still happened, sweetie.”

  I look down and groan. The stool is now about three inches below me, and I can see down into Mom’s lap over the screen. I make myself heavy again and plunk down, scowling.

  It happens when I lose control. Emotional control, that is.

  It started three years ago in junior high, when I used to get teased for being so tiny. Before I knew it, I’d be freaking floating six inches above my seat, and everyone would laugh at me even more.

  That day, I got home and Mom had the talk with me. Because she works at the Biotech Hub, she knows all the science behind it, and she talked me through it like most other moms talk to their daughters about boyfriends and birth control.

  I would have killed to have been talking about boyfriends and birth control at that moment.

  What I got was this: Supers have a genetic mutation that makes them do one awesome thing — lift twelve times their weight, light on fire, create or cont
rol electricity, stuff like that. The rest of their genes have to adapt to compensate or allow for that — be indestructible, conduct the spark. It’s like in-person, real-time evolution. Normally, these adaptations show up by puberty.

  In Ones, they don’t show up. Ever. So there’s basically a hole in our genetic code. That makes it — the One — kind of unstable. It could manifest any time we’re freaked out, scared or depressed.

  That was when I first figured out that having one power was way worse than having none at all.

  Mom closes the news feed and reaches out to touch me. Her fingers half-rest, half-hover over my wrist, feather-light. She’s always danced around me like this, like I’m a weak little baby bird that never quite got the guts to fly out of the nest.

  Last spring, I saw one of those baby birds. It kind of flopped down from the tree, but it was really determined. It kept hopping from its safe little nest to the street. Then it hopped all the way across, and it didn’t get hit by a car. That bird couldn’t fly, but it ended up okay.

  I don’t think that’s inspirational — in fact, I think it’s really sad. And I think that damn baby bird was really lucky. I wonder if it ever did learn to fly, there on the other side of the street, while its family sat around eating fat worms and trying to ignore it.

  I’m not that determined. I don’t think.

  The little girl on the poster grins at me, and I stare at her, too tired to glare. The slogan makes my heart burn. “Saving the world,” my ass. I hadn’t heard that language at Superior ever. More like, “Building a better world for the poor Normals,” even though no one would say as much. Not out loud, anyway.

  Dad walks over from the stove where he’s getting dinner ready. “Want to tell us about your first day?” Dad’s smile is weird. Plastic and cautious. Like he doesn’t expect it to be good news.