One (One Universe) Read online

  “Do I look like a quarterback?” He motions to himself, his hands running the length of his long, thin torso. He’s right. He’s much too thin to be a quarterback — or a football player at all, actually. But, I notice, his chest does curve his fitted shirt out slightly.

  I narrow my eyes.

  Elias laughs again. “And do you even know anything about sports? It’s football season now. I would have been on the field every morning.”

  “Do you think I’ve been paying attention to what you’re doing in the mornings?”

  He quits smiling so widely, and his expression softens. He looks down at the floor. “No. Uh…no. I play basketball. I like this sweatshirt, that’s all.”

  “Why do you keep looking at me? And talking to me?”

  “I can’t look at you? Or talk to you?”

  I shake my head. “You’re, like, everywhere I am. Classes…and…locker.” I know I’m acting like a child, but now that I’ve started, I can’t stop myself. I swing my arm up, and my knuckles scrape against the vent on the front of the locker. It hurts like hell. I push it down at my side and clench my teeth for a second, swallow hard, and say, “And I’m just the stupid new girl. Don’t you have any friends?”

  “So, let me get this straight,” he says, the corner of his mouth tugging up. “We randomly get lockers next to each other, and you’re smart enough to be in some of my classes, and this makes you think I’m — what — stalking you?”

  I stare down at my shoes, shake my head to one side, then the other, slowly. I have nothing to say, but I can’t move. It’s like Elias is magnetic or something. I look up at him, hoping he’ll say something to make me feel like I wasn’t being a jerk to him for no reason.

  “Hey.” He raises his hand up like he’s going to touch my shoulder, pauses it in midair, then lets it drop again. “There’s a good energy coming off you or something. I feel this buzz. I don’t know.” He shrugs.

  A warmth floods me. Slowly, the anxiousness starts to turn to relief, the feeling that I can suddenly take a deep breath.

  “I just want to get to know you.” He flashes me a smile that must work really well on all the other girls who are probably all over him all the time.

  Okay, so I feel it, too.

  Is that because it’s real, or because I really, really do want to hang out with him? My eyes flash up to his face, and my cheeks warm faster than I can cover them with my hands.

  “You felt it, too! You just did!” The excitement on his face at my expression does not match what he’s supposed to be — a high school jock who hangs with the cheerleaders and only cares about getting a seat at the right lunch table.

  “You sound like a hippie.” I shut my locker and tear myself away from him, walking out the exit and all the way to my car without saying a word. But he catches up. When I unlock the door with the stupid manual key — the remote broke a long time ago — Elias reaches down and pulls the door open. Our fingers brush, and I swear a shock of electricity travels all the way up to my shoulder, fast as lightning.

  I turn to thank him, but when our eyes meet, I can’t get any words out. The sun pours into the parking lot in angled rays. Sunlight glints off the rims of his glasses, and he looks at me, patient. Waiting.

  I want to tell him how I’ve been pretending to be okay but really I’m not at all — can’t everyone see how I’m not okay? — but now that I’m looking at him, really looking at him, I can see my sadness reflected back in his eyes.

  It’s humbling.

  It reminds me that I’m not the only One around. There are hundreds of us, for all I know, on a farm somewhere or going to soccer practice or walking right beside me through the halls of Normal High.

  I can’t be the only One who feels so wrecked because she’s only half of what she’s supposed to be.

  I take a deep breath. “My brothers walk on water. Speed on water, actually.”

  He nods, still listening, waiting for me to say something else. I don’t.

  After a few seconds, he says, “My sisters can teleport.”

  “Whoa. Are you serious?” It occurs to me that I never knew what those girls’ Super was. They were really popular, so I assumed it was something awesome. That power actually involves more than two abilities. Seeing where you’re supposed to go by either clairvoyance or seeing through the walls. Breaking your body into molecules. Sending them where they’re supposed to go. Putting the pieces back again.

  “Yeah.” That look is back in his eyes, the one that’s telling me that he wants me to think he’s doing okay. Nice trick, but I don’t believe it for a second. I know how it feels to have Supersibs when you’re not. It sucks.

  “They’re away right now, actually. Gap year at some top secret program at the Hub, I guess.”

  I feel at this moment like I really truly know him, and I know that he needs to talk to me.

  And somehow, Elias needing me is a bigger threat than if he had grabbed me by the shoulders, held me against a locker, and tried to kiss me.

  “Listen. A couple of my friends are sitting over at one of the picnic tables. Let me introduce you.”

  I stare at him like he just asked me go skydiving or eat worms with him.

  He smiles again. “Just come sit with us.”

  I eye him suspiciously. “You mean, the team?” No way I’m about to hang out with a bunch of jocks who all tower over me. No way in hell.

  I look up, and he’s doing it again, that smile, closed-lipped. Dear God, that dimple. I still haven’t figured out my reaction to most of this, but I do know how that dimple makes me feel. Generous.

  He gestures back toward the school and there’s a cheerleader — an actual, honest-to-God cheerleader in the ridiculous blue and white uniform with the pleated skirt and pristine white sneakers and everything — sitting at one of the concrete tables outside next to a guy in designer jeans and a button-down shirt. The girl waves like she’s on a freaking parade float, and the guy jerks his head upward, acknowledging Elias.

  “Right out there. We’re studying for calc after school — don’t you have Davis, too? — and you should come with us. Tuesday is pizza night. Rosie is great at pizza.”

  Rosie? Who the hell is Rosie? I know what I want to do and what his expression makes me want to say. The girl smiles at me, and when she does, I roll up my sleeve and punch Dad’s number into my cuff.

  “Let me text my Dad,” I grumble.

  He looks at me with a smile behind his eyes and walks toward his friends at the table. I trail behind him, tapping a quick message to Dad into my cuff.

  The cheerleader is beautiful, the sort of beautiful that knows it can stop anyone in their tracks. She’s tall, with strawberry-blonde hair so brassy-bright it almost glows. Her skin is touched with gold and dotted with a thousand freckles.

  She looks like the freaking sun itself blew kisses at her. She is the kind of girl that guys like Elias want to be with, always are with. She is a prize.

  Elias beckons to her, his fingers bending in at the end of an outstretched arm, and she bounces over, her orange ponytail swinging level with Elias’s shoulder, her perfect, glossed lips beaming. A funny burning feeling creeps up through my chest, and I try desperately to make my mouth smile, though I know it turns down anyway.

  I hate her.

  “Len, this is…uh…”

  “Merrin,” I say, acknowledging his cleverness with a humoring smile.

  He grins back at me, triumphant.“Merrin is new, and she’s gonna tag along to study.”

  “Hi, Merrin.” She leans forward and shakes my hand, smiling warmly. Why is this girl being so nice to me? At Superior High, she would have raised her eyebrows and sniffed.

  Theoretically, I don’t care, so I force the full-on smile I rehearsed on my first day and stick my hand out, play the fake voice I rehearsed in my head. “Nice to meet you.”

  “And this is Daniel,” Elias says and walks over to clap his friend on the back.

  Daniel, nearly as tall as El
ias, sits at the concrete table with pebbled legs and looks up from his textbook, jerking his chin up in greeting again. His hair is jet black, and his skin is the color of cinnamon mixed with coffee. His eyes are black, too, but they flash fiercely when they look at me.

  “Hey, Merrin. Welcome to Nelson.”

  SIX

  On the drive over to Elias’s house, I take a lot of deep breaths through my nose. I feel like there’s no space in my lungs, or maybe there’s no breathable air in the car. I try blasting something metal with a heavy drum line through my speakers, but that only makes my thoughts skitter around in my head, banging on my brain and making my limbs jittery.

  I roll the window down and try to steady my arm on the door. The sun beats down on it, warming my chilled skin with its light. A whisper of humidity lingers in the air, a fleeting remnant of summer. It weighs everything down.

  Exactly what I need right now.

  My breathing slows, and I can think again. Elias’s house for studying. Two other kids there. Pizza. Totally normal. Nothing to worry about.

  I believe these self-reassurances while I drive through the suburb where everyone in Superior lives, where the houses all crowd together like an army lying in wait. When we cross through the suburb with the newest, largest houses, on the outskirts of town, my mind goes wild again. Where does this guy live?

  I follow the caravan — Elias in his car, and Leni and Daniel riding together — over some rolling hills until we’re surrounded by cornfields. The sun makes them look golden too, and for a minute, I really love Nebraska. Even though I still think I would love it more if I could fly over and out of it.

  I wish I had given Dad Elias’s address when I talked to him or even known one myself. No one really lives out this way, and there are no malls or groceries or anything out here, so I’ve actually never driven down this road out of Superior. Which is pathetic.

  Anyway, Dad’s text sounded so freaking happy that I was doing anything with anyone after school, I didn’t want to kill his buzz. He didn’t even ask Elias’s name, which means he failed the overprotective parent test when I probably most needed him to pass it.

  Elias’s bright blue sports car and Leni’s rattling station wagon turn into a long gravel driveway, which, when I check my odometer, is actually just a mile or so from our school. A sprawling ranch stretches out at the end of it. The central part of the house has the frame of an old farmhouse, but it’s been given a facelift to look far more modern. Aside from the slick black solar panels that line the roof, there are long extensions on either side of it, each of them about the width of our little house back in the Superior suburbs. All the outer walls are made of glass, and it almost doesn’t even look like a home — more like an office building or a lab. The dipping sun glints off its surface, and the whole damn house looks like it’s winking at me.

  The driveway outside his house, protected by a large, domed carport, is the size of a small parking lot, which it certainly looks like right now. One of the seven cars is Leni’s and one’s mine, which leaves five cars belonging to Elias’s family. And they’re all late model and high model — I don’t even recognize some of the symbols they bear.

  Elias’s family is swimming in cash.

  “Okay, there, Merrin?” Elias looks up at me after bending down to plug his car into the charger strip, a fancy one that’s built into the concrete instead of the wire-jumbled hack job Dad rigged on the side of our garage. Once again, I can’t make anything come out of my mouth.

  When I finally pull myself together, I swallow and say, “Never really driven out this way, I guess.”

  Leni and Daniel are halfway up the driveway. They stop at the door to hug a middle-aged lady who I assume is Elias’s mom. Her cardigan matches the sweater underneath, and she’s wearing khaki pants and loafers. She’s even got a string of pearls and a perfect bob. When I get close to her, she smells so good, flowery and sweet, that I can almost see the perfume wafting off of her.

  Along with the cash-swimming, Elias’s family also looks like a freaking department store ad.

  Elias waits for me to walk all the way up to the house and then falls in step beside me. He puts his arm out behind my back, guiding me up to introduce me without actually touching me. In theory, I really appreciate him not being presumptuous, but as he walks closer to me, that stupid warm buzz is back. My instincts tell me to slow, half a step even, to make his arm touch my back.

  Instead, I speed up.

  “Mom? This is Merrin,” Elias says, and his mom flashes me a smile with the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen, especially on a lady her age.

  “Merrin…” She’s still smiling.

  She wants my last name. Okay, I’ll play. “Merrin Grey,” I say, trying hard to maintain eye contact with her.

  “Yes, we’ve heard about you. Just transferred to Nelson?” Her smile continues but looks more inflexible.

  “Yeah, I…”

  “Hey, I want to introduce her to Dad. Is he on his way?”

  “Oh, honey. He called and said he’d be home very late tonight.”

  “He’s home very late every night lately,” Elias says under his breath. He clears his throat and turns his head, but I don’t miss the frustrated shake of his head. “Anyway, we’re swamped tonight, Mom,” Elias says, and he brushes the outside of my shoulder, so lightly, to signal that I should go in. I feel his touch across my shoulder blades, down my back, and in the base of my spine.

  Yeah, there’s a buzz. But what the hell is it? Whatever it is, and as much as I hate to admit it, I really like it.

  When Elias crosses over the threshold ahead of me, a pleasant voice rings, “Welcome home, Elias. Who’s your friend?”

  “Oh! Rosie, meet Merrin.”

  I look around and don’t see a soul.

  “Welcome, Merrin,” the voice says.

  Then it dawns on me. My mouth gapes open. “Rosie is…your house?”

  Elias chuckles. “Yeah. R-O-S-I-E. Stands for ‘Residential and Office Service and Identification Engineer.’ Mom’s working on it for the Hub. The one over there doesn’t talk, yet, but we get the prototype. You’ll get used to her.”

  I seriously doubt that.

  The inside of the house gleams nearly as much as the outside. Not a scuff anywhere, not a smudge on a mirror or the perfect, shining glass walls. I smell something warm and yeasty and completely wonderful. Of course — Rosie’s great at pizza.

  His mom calls behind us, “Mr. Davis hitting you with the homework already?”

  Elias calls back, “Yeah. Be down for dinner.” We head down the hallway to the right where I can already hear Leni and Daniel settling in.

  Elias’s room feels more comfortable than the rest of the house. Instead of white walls against mahogany trim on wood floors, his room has high-piled carpet and posters on the walls. Giant throw pillows are scattered on the floor. There are a couple sweatshirts strewn at the foot of the bed, and I like it. It makes me feel at home.

  He settles himself on his bed but doesn’t offer me a place to sit, so I just stand. Now I’m only a head taller than him.

  “Can she… Can Rosie hear what we say?” I ask.

  “Only if you ask her to listen,” Elias says as he grabs a folding chair and sets it out for me. “You have to address her.”

  Somehow that information makes me feel better. I sit down and start pulling my tablet and reader out of my bag.

  “So,” Leni says from the desk chair, “Why did you transfer?”

  Normally I would have frozen at a question like this, but her smile is so genuine and she looks so much more normal now, especially since she changed out of those ridiculous white shoes and pleated skirt and into yoga pants and a hoodie.

  But I still can’t come up with an answer, not one that sounds normal anyway. So I glance over at Elias.

  He jumps in, saving me. “Leni, can you show her your, uh…”

  “Wait, what? She’s a One?” She turns her head up to look at me. “That’s a late
transfer.” She’s still smiling, but her look is even more knowing now. I’m in some club of secrets that I really, really don’t want to be in. Even if it does mean, for the first time in my life, that I’m — well, in.

  He eyes me meaningfully. “I didn’t say she was a One. But she’s spent all this time at Superior as a Normal and come out relatively unscathed. And now she’s here.”

  I raise an eyebrow at him. This is what he thinks “unscathed” looks like?

  “And she thinks I’m creeping on her, but really I’m just trying to be nice.” Did I see his cheeks flush red?

  “But, um…” I interrupt. “I am. A One. My parents…or I thought…maybe a second would show. Obviously it didn’t.” I try to keep my face from falling. “No big deal.”

  Except that it’s the biggest deal ever.

  “Oh. Yeah.” Leni nods knowingly. Her eyes aren’t sparkling quite so much now, but still she turns around, unzips her hoodie and lets her shirt dip down off her shoulder an inch. An ugly, puckered, white and pink scar, about two inches wide, snakes from her neck, across her shoulder, and down the back of her arm.

  “What…” I ask, my head shaking, suddenly feeling sorry for this bright girl I hated only seconds ago.

  “I have combustibility. But not indestructibility or regeneration. Or that skin-oozing-plasma thing that some combustible Supers have. Even though that’s slower, it would have been… Anyway. Learned that the hard way in second grade,” she explains, her smile the same sad smile that Elias first gave me a few days ago when we first met. The idea of flames ripping through my flesh, and it not healing or protecting itself… I fight against a horrified shudder.

  “Whoa,” I say, a lump rising in my throat. The question’s out of my mouth before I can keep myself in check. “How do you keep from — you know — ” and I make a flaming motion with my hand in the air. “When you’re upset, or whatever?” I finish in a lowered voice.

  “Oh,” says Leni, “You know. Antidepressants. They tend to, uh…dull things.”

  Everyone’s quiet, watching me.