One (One Universe) (11 page)

Didn’t want to wake you. Your fever seems to have broken. Water, Tylenol, snacks on your nightstand. Call if you need anything. Love, Mom.

I roll my eyes at Mom’s assumption that I wouldn’t realize my own fever had broken but smile when I see what she left me. Cupcakes and brownies and some licorice. She must be worried if she’s leaving me all the stuff she normally bristles at me eating. I see that she left some protein bars for good measure. My cheeks feel like they’ll crack when I grin at that.

I manage to scoot my body out of bed and get to the bathroom. Then I come back and lie down right in the middle of my bed, where the sun shines so brightly that it warms my whole body, and sleep more.

Sometime in the late afternoon of the third day, Mom comes and sits on the edge of my bed again. I manage a small smile and say, “Hey.” I’m surprised that my voice sounds clear and strong, and from the look on Mom’s face, she is, too.

“I got an email from Professor Fitzsimmons just now,” Mom says.

“Who?”

“Your science class coordinator. Honestly, Merrin, you could bother to learn her name.”

Oh. That must be the freaking holo-teacher in my sorry excuse for a science class. “Why? With a thousand students, there’s no way she knows mine.”

Mom sighs. “Well, she’s very interested in her Nebraska students today. It’s going to be an exceptionally clear night, and the National Weather Service is predicting a…geomagnetic storm, I think? Which means…”

“The aurora,” I gasp.

“That’s what she said.” Mom grins. “The whole school’s meeting out near Blakely Creek tonight to see it.”

An anxious energy vibrates through my chest and arms. “I’ve gotta get ready.” My hand flies up to my hair, which is a greasy mess after two days of lying around without a shower. I swing my legs out of bed, but they wobble beneath me and Mom has to catch me by the forearm. I shake her off after a couple seconds, give her an obligatory smile, and say, “Thanks,” on my way out of my room.

“Dad’ll drive you,” she calls after me.

“Yeah, okay!” I say as I wave her off. I’m seeing the Northern Lights — in freaking Nebraska, which never happens —
and
Elias tonight. I really don’t care how I get there.

I still feel weak the whole car ride out to the clearing in the next township where all the science classes are meeting to gather around radio telescopes and watch the aurora borealis. Dad keeps glancing at me but doesn’t say a word. The car glides soundlessly down the country road. I lean my head against the window, pretending to watch the horizon as usual. Instead, I close my eyes and try to steady myself.

When we pull up to the clearing, Dad unclicks his seatbelt. I roll my eyes. “Dad, you can stay in the car.” I open the door and find the ground with my feet — still unsteady.

“Do you even know where your class is?”

Looks like Dad’s more than making up for his lack of overprotective parenting skills from the other day. Weird. But okay.

“Really, Dad, it’s fine. In fact,” I pull back my sleeve and tap my cuff, “I’ll call you when we’re done. Okay?” He raises an eyebrow at me. “There are chaperones, Mom said. We’re fine.”

Dad nods and re-clicks his seatbelt but still scans the crowd through the car window. I put a hand on either side of the door frame and take one deep breath before a gentle touch brushes the inside of my arm and a strong grip closes around my hand so quickly it startles me. My head pounds again, and I stand upright to see Elias smiling down at me.

He cranes his neck down to look at Dad. “I can bring Merrin home, sir, if you’d like.”

I haven’t seen Dad look so pleased in a very long time. “If that’s okay with you, Merrin,” Dad says as he turns the key in the ignition.

“Um…” I check Elias’s expression, and he gives me the slightest nod and smile. I’m short of breath for a moment. “Yeah, okay. See you at home, Dad. We might be here for a while — we don’t know when the lights’ll start, and they can last for hours.”

Dad drives away, and Elias and I are once again standing together under the sunset. Leni and Daniel are with the rest of the students about 50 feet away, talking to a lady with mocha skin and a shock of short, kinky hair.

“Is that some teacher I haven’t met?”

Elias laughs. “No, that’s Leni’s mom.” I raise my eyebrows and look at pale-skinned, bright-haired Leni. “Stepmom, I guess. Her mom died when she was little — five, I think. Her dad remarried a couple years later — she’s been mom to Leni as long as I can remember.”

Leni grins and waves at us, and Elias raises a hand in greeting but doesn’t move toward them. Neither do I. He looks back at me, and my mouth feels like cotton.

I want to ask if he noticed I was gone the last few days. Want to tell him that I hate how I ran away that night. Want to tell him how he makes my heart pound, even now when we’re not alone.

Most of all, I want to ask him to fly with me again.

Instead, I say, “Hey,” and stand there staring up at him like an idiot while my stomach flips and twists. “Um…thanks for waiting for me. I mean…were you waiting for me? I mean… Wow, I sound stupid.”

The corner of his mouth teases upward. “Hi.”

I grin, unable to break my gaze from his. “Hi.”

My heart races again, begging me to move, to join the rest of the students. But instead of propelling me away, like my head wants it to, it pulls me closer to him, so close that the buzz between us raises the hairs on my arms.

And then he is kissing me, lacing his fingers through my hair, and oh my God, it is so nice and warm and sweet and totally not what I wanted at all.

Suddenly, it hits me: why there was ever a minute I didn’t want him. I wanted to blend in, wanted to be all alone in my Oneness forever, because that’s what I was used to. There’s no way I can blend in if I’m with Elias because he is so handsome my heart breaks when I look at him.

My Oneness has always been the only thing I’ve thought about, stressed about, fought against, and now — when I’m standing here with his arms around me — it’s the last thing on my mind.

His fingers loop around my wrist lightly. This touch is tender and somehow so much more intimate than holding my hand, and I want his fingers to run up my arm and down my back and…

There are a few low wolf whistles from the crowd of students, and some guy shouts, “Hey, E, who’s your girl?” but they all sound like they’re worlds away because Elias is so close to me, resting his forehead against mine and grinning, even though I’m just a pale, plain girl whose only real superpower is playing the drums louder than anyone can stand.

Finally, he pulls away.

“Why did you do that?” I’m trying really hard to look away from him and not let him see my face because I’m pretty sure I look like an idiot, twitchy and half-smiling.

“It was the only way to get you to stop.”

“Yeah. Well, next time you kiss me, make sure no one else is watching,” I say.

As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I regret them. I look at him, expecting him to look hurt. But instead, a slow smile creeps across his face, his shoulders begin to shake, and then he’s laughing.

“What are you laughing about?” I ask, indignant.

“You said
next time
I kiss you.”

This is not the time to hold anything back, I realize. “Look, I’m just pissed off because you wouldn’t…if we were…”

“You mean I wouldn’t have kissed you if we were both Normals?”

I flush when he says “kissed.” A lot. “Yeah,” I say to the ground.

“That’s ridiculous,” he says.

“You’re ridiculous,” I huff, even though I can’t hide the smile that has touched my cheeks along with the blush. He touches my arm, and the buzz stops me dead in my tracks, pulls my gaze back up to his.

“I would be nice to you if we were Normals, yeah… I’m nice to all the new kids ‘cause I’m a nice guy. Especially the transfers because…I know what it’s like. To be an outsider. But I’d never kiss you, Normal or One, unless…”

I look up at him, and his smile is gentle, and he’s looking at me like I’m a rainbow after a thunderstorm, a breath of fresh air, a promise of hope. Like I’m the best thing ever. And I think he’s probably the best thing ever, too. I try to look him square in the eye, but he’s so tall and so freaking beautiful, and there goes my stupid palpitating heart again. I want to say something, but all I can do is smile.

He grins and reaches down to weave his fingers with mine. I let him.

And I know, right then, that he would do anything for me, and that I can trust him. And that right there is my breath of fresh air. If being attached to him is the price of being able to fly —
if
it is — I may be willing to pay it.

“I missed seeing you the last couple days,” he says.

I really can’t get my head around how boldly he says it, like he either knows what my response is going to be or it doesn’t affect him in the least what I say.

But I know from the way he kissed me three days ago, floating above the cornfields, that he must care what I say. At least a little. I want to stand on my tiptoes and touch his jaw, stare at his eyes some more, check them for reassurance that this is real.

“I would have called,” he says, “but I don’t have your number. Besides, the first day I could barely get my head off the pillow.”

“Wait. You were sick, too?”

“Too? What happened to you?”

“A lot of heaviness,” I say, rolling my shoulder. “And pain, the aching kind. Mostly in my back.”

He nods, like he knew what I was going to say. “And fever?”

“Yeah.”

“My dad was really worried,” he says.

“Oh. Well, my mom thought it was…um…you know.”

He looks at me, puzzled. He has no clue.

“Uh, a girl thing. I think.”

“Oh! Right. Right.” His cheeks blaze red. “Sorry.”

If it were anyone else, I would run from the embarrassment, but I can’t stop looking at him. “Anyway,” I say, “The fever was bad, the end of day one. I think they decided it was the flu. They mostly left me alone.”

“Wish my parents had done that. They just paced in front of my room a lot and talked about me when they thought I couldn’t hear.”

One of the chaperones calls, “We’re expecting things to start in the next few minutes, so gather around a telescope. We only have a dozen or so, and we’ll need to take turns.”

“I think we could see them closer without a telescope if we need to, huh?” A nervous laugh rolls up from my belly and out my nose, and he laughs, too.

He cocks his head toward a cluster of trees silhouetted against the horizon behind us and says, “Come on.”

The air cools by the minute with the setting sun, and I zip up my hoodie a little higher. Elias reaches out his hand, folding it around mine.

He glances at me, wondering if it’s okay, I think. I smile and nod, squeeze his hand, and he beams. He’s so brilliant, I might die.

I fall in step with him, and we don’t speak. As we walk, he shifts his hand to intertwine his fingers with mine, and my heart jumps, flits around in the upper regions of my chest, and it’s almost painful how good it feels. His fingertips, which stretch out across the back of my hand almost all the way to my wrist, brush lightly against the knob of bone there.

This is almost as incredible as flying. Almost.

ELEVEN

T
he sky has darkened to a dusky charcoal gray, and it’s the clearest I’ve seen in a while. I can already count dozens of bright stars. The chatter of the crowd fades into the background, and when I look back to where half of the school has gathered, I realize we’re a quarter of a mile away at least. With the light fading by the minute, I’m sure no one will even notice that there’s someone moving around beyond the tree line.

I still feel weak, but I can’t tell if it’s leftover sickness or from being with Elias or from wondering if he’ll agree to fly with me again. And then it hits me — he might not feel the same way. He might be freaked out.

Or worst, it might all have been a dream.

But the way he looks at me is so intense, even through the thickening dark, that I know he’s thinking the same thing.

He takes a deep breath in, then out again. “Are you okay?”

“Um, besides being knocked on my ass for the last few days? Yeah.”

He doesn’t laugh at my joke. Probably because it wasn’t funny. “No, I mean…the way you left and all.”

“Oh. Oh.” It all comes back to me in a rush now — my shock, my panic, my indecision. I’ve been so focused on flying and so focused on kissing him that I’ve almost forgotten that the two of them are linked. And it was that link that terrified me.

He looks at me, waiting for me to respond. Then he looks down at our hands, still woven together. I smile at them and then back up at him. Even though I don’t know what to say, I hope he gets it.

“Yeah.” I say. “Um…thanks for bringing the car back.”

He swallows hard. “Of course.”

“If you don’t want to, we don’t have to…you know…anymore,” I blurt out.

I actually don’t know exactly which thing I meant — the flying or the kissing. I’m dying to do both but terrified of both at the same time. I look at Elias, and my cheeks flush again. Then, thank God, he raises his eyebrows questioningly and makes that same swooping motion with his hand in the air. My heart wants to burst with excitement. It’s going to happen again.

We’re going to fly.

The slightest breeze rustles the trees’ leaves, pushing their sibilant whisper through the air. It’s like they’re acknowledging that we have this secret and that they’ll keep it safe for us. Between the tree trunks separating us and the growing darkness, I can barely see the crowd.

He turns to face me, and drops my hand. “How should we do this?” His voice wavers, and I’m lost in wanting my face to be closer to his for just a moment.

“Um. The way we did it before, I guess?” I giggle. Again. This giggling is getting ridiculous.

“I mean,” he stammers, “did you want to turn around or something? So you can look down?”

Something like defiance rises up in me. I shake my head, automatically. The image of Elias’s arms around my waist with him behind me is not okay. I don’t want to be carried.