One (One Universe) (12 page)

“Or do you want to go behind me?” He shifts his balance, looking everywhere but at me.

I wrinkle my nose more at that image. I’d be…riding on his back? I can tell he’s picturing the same thing because we both laugh, then say at the same time, “No.”

“You know,” he says, “we don’t even really know how it works. We don’t know if we’ll be able to make it happen again.”

I put my hand out, palm toward him, and sure enough, it buzzes with the same electric energy I felt between us when our hands swung innocently in the twilight blue, three days ago. I nod my head, look at him boldly.

“We will,” I say.

He puts his hand out, too, his palm facing mine, and a puff of air gusts against my palm.

“That is incredible,” I say.

“You know what’s incredible?” he asks. He clasps our hands together, closes his eyes, and his feet hover off the ground, even as mine are still firmly planted there.

“How are you doing it?”

“I don’t know,” he smiles. “There’s a buzz, like I told you, and I kind of let it…go through me. I don’t know.”

I reach up, snag his waist with my arm, and imagine myself weightless, just like every other time I’ve ever practiced, and then I’m at eye level with him. He hugs me to him, and I grin.

God, this feels so good. So good. The floating, of course, but most of all being smooshed up against him. His scent is so heady that it almost makes me forget everything.

It doesn’t hurt that he’s so cute.

We hover there, grinning at each other again, and suddenly I feel the need to make some small talk. “Are your glasses going to be okay?”

“Oh, yeah. They got a little messed up last time.”

Feeling bold, I unhook them from behind his ears, fold them up, and put them in the front pocket of my hoodie.

“Thanks,” he whispers.

I close my eyes and imagine myself as a balloon — or even something lighter and more ethereal, like a cloud. We float up, up, up, twice as fast as we did outside the cornfield, and I hold back a shriek, gasping instead.

Elias screws his face up in concentration, and I feel it again, that bubble-like feeling around my skin, but this time it’s so tense I can feel it actively pushing air away from me. We move, staying below the treetops, but just as fast as the last time.

But we’re only up for a couple of minutes this time before a tremble rumbles through my limbs, along with an edge of the aching pain from the day after.

“Do you feel that too?” I say in his ear, my neck stretching to put lips right up against it. It’s the only way he’ll hear me against the roaring of the wind.

“Yeah. We should get down.”

How will I ever tell the difference between feeling weak and feeling the way it feels to be close to him?

Our feet pound down on the ground, and immediately my head starts to throb. My legs feel like rubber. I double over, elbows on my knees, and then my legs give out completely. I plunk down on my bottom right there in the tall grass, which rasps against my arm and face while Elias does the same right next to me.

Elias peers at me, his brow furrowed. “You okay?” Then he says, “Whoa,” and lays flat on his back.

I close my eyes and tilt my head back, trying to calm the spinning and throbbing. When I open my eyes, I see two silhouettes tromping toward us through the tall grass.

“Hand check!” a low boy’s voice calls, and Elias laughs.

“Daniel. Jerk,” he mumbles. Then he calls, “Did you drag Leni out here, too?” Leni’s laugh rings out like a bell in the clear, cooling night.

When they reach us, Leni stretches her hand down to help me up. “Yes, moron, I’m here. There’s nothing I love more than ditching our class, in the dark, when my mom’s the chaperone, to make sure you’re not getting in trouble.” I grunt and wince as I get to my feet, and Leni eyes Elias, who pushes himself to sitting, then to standing. “But, really, what were you two doing out here?”

“Check this out,” Elias says, and I see his whole body tremble a little. He grabs my hand, and his feet hover off the ground a few inches, maybe a foot. Then he lands and takes a deep breath.

Daniel’s eyes narrow. “What is going on, Elias? What have you two been…?”

I beam. Elias’s gaze shifts between the tree line and me. He seems on edge.

“Is it okay if we show them?” I ask.

“Uh…yeah. I just…let’s do it fast. I don’t want anyone to see…that we’re not with the class.”

I nod. “His One is pushing air and mine is floating, right?” I say to Leni and Daniel, bouncing with energy now. “So when we touch…” I loop my arm around his waist and look up at him.

Elias stops looking so worried and flashes me that damn dimple. I can’t help but smile back.

We shoot up 10 feet and zoom around in a little circle. We land quickly, just as my muscles start to twinge, right in front of Leni and Daniel. Something glints in Leni’s eyes — tears I can’t make sense of. She kind of leans against Daniel, like she’s having trouble standing up on her own.

Elias watches the tree line for another long moment. “Okay, guys,” he says, his voice hushed. “I want you to try something. Hold hands.”

“Okay…” Leni shakes her head slowly, but she turns and reaches her hands out to Daniel’s waiting ones. Of course she trusts Elias — they’ve been friends forever. Daniel bobs his head, smiles, and takes Leni’s hands.

“Do you feel something?” Elias asks, his eyebrows high.

“A…it’s like a tingling?” Daniel says, but his black eyes flash warmly at Leni.

She smiles back and then gasps. “Oh! Yeah. I feel it.”

“Like, a buzz?”

Daniel nods.

“Okay.” Elias beams. “Now don’t let go, okay?”

“Elias? What do you want me to do?” Leni knows — I can tell by the tone of her voice. She knows what he’s going to ask of her, and she’s asking herself how much she wants to trust him, how much she wants to believe in this guy she loves like a brother.

“Flame on, Len.”

“Elias, I haven’t…you know…for a while now. Weeks.”

Daniel looks at her, his eyebrows scrunching up. I know what she means. She’s just about given up on her One.

“Use that feeling, okay? The buzz. Just picture it moving through you, making you do it, okay?”

She shakes her head again, stands up a little taller, and breathes in deeply through her nose. I gasp as wisps of smoke rise from the place where she’s touching Daniel. They twist themselves around the point where their skin touches, then curl upward, disappearing into the air. Then, with a quiet whoosh, their hands light on fire.

Leni’s arm shakes and her voice along with it. “Daniel?” she says, and Daniel has a smile playing at his lips, and then the flames fully engulf his hand and snake up his arm, licking through the knit of his sweater.

Leni gives a gasp, breaks contact, jumps back, and stares at her hand. It’s not red, not raw, not burned. She touches it to her own face and doesn’t pull it away immediately. It’s not even hot. Leni pitches forward and grabs Daniel’s forearm, inspecting it for sizzling skin.

“Oh, man,” Daniel says, shaking his head at Elias, the same smile on his lips. “Oh, man. How did you…”

Elias takes a long breath, in and out, and then answers, “I have a theory. I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” he says.

Of course he has. While I’ve been basking in sunlight, eating brownies, and having dreams of flying. Without him.

“I don’t think Ones are just Ones. I think there’s, like, this hole. In the code maybe. There’s a hole because there’s something we could fill it with.”

Daniel nods. “Keep going.”

I listen just as attentively as he does. This reminds me of the talk with Mom.

“The genetic code. And the hole sends out signals to someone whose code is close to what is supposed to be filling it. Compatible Ones. Normal people — or normal Supers, I mean — would have both the powers needed. But we’re not normal Supers. So our bodies are looking for another body that it can adapt to. Combine powers with, I guess.”

“So she completes you? You’ve gone all soft, man,” Daniel teases, even though his voice sounds uncertain.

Leni shuffles her feet and smiles at the ground, biting her bottom lip. I’m pretty sure that if it wasn’t so dark I could see her cheeks turning bright red.

My heart rushes, but it’s not from excitement. It’s more panicked this time. I’ve known Elias for a week and a half. I am sixteen years old, and he is handsome and kind, but if someone told me that for sure he was my other half, I would throw up.

“I don’t know. I suspect that another One who could make herself weightless might have this effect on me. Just like another One who pushes air or can create a pressure vortex might make Merrin fly, or another indestructible could make our girl Len into a human blowtorch.”

I don’t say a word. I’m trying to decide if I want to be the only One who affects him in that way. And whether I want him to be the only One who does the same for me.

Thankfully, Leni breaks the silence with a sniffle, then a short laugh. She’s smiling and crying.

“Leni? Helen. You okay?” Daniel’s voice is soft, concerned. He pulls the arm she’s been inspecting from her hands and loops it around her neck, hugging her to him. She covers her laughing mouth with her other hand, then hiccups. She falls into him and throws her arms around his neck. His grin is so wide, probably a bigger smile than I’ve ever seen from him, and then he closes his eyes and turns his face into her neck.

Suddenly, I feel like I’m intruding on something. I know Elias feels the same way because he looks down at the ground and grabs my hand at the same time. For a second, the warmth of his skin distracts me, and I don’t care one bit about Leni and Daniel, and then I hear Daniel say, in such a low voice, “Let’s try it again.”

Leni pulls back, arms still around his neck, like they’re slow dancing or something. She steps back and holds both his hands in both of hers.

For the first few seconds, it’s a low burn, orange-red flames snaking up their arms again. Then the flames start to get lighter and brighter and jump out from their elbows. Bright yellow flames tinged with white and blue heat shoot up three, four, five feet above them, forming wide columns in the air.

The fire roars, but above it I can hear Leni’s laugh, taking on a new tone from deep in her belly. Daniel’s laughing, too, and they look at each other like nothing and no one else exists in the whole world.

Elias squeezes my hand and says in my ear, “Let’s get out of here.”

I can’t tell whether it’s his warm breath or the way he says the words, but either way, I totally melt with his lips that close to my ear, especially when we’re not flying, when they don’t need to be.

All I can think about is how I want to take this straight to the Hub, to see if they could make it stick. Then I remind myself that my fantasies about the Hub could be just that — fantasies, stories I’ve been telling myself even though Mom’s told me a million times they’re impossible. I don’t even know if the Hub has thought about Ones combining.

What I do know is that the space where my arm touches Elias’s still feels charged, and the buzz that made us fly is only a small part of that. The rest is warmth, excitement. Wanting to be nearer to him.

Hundreds of bright white stars pin a black velvet curtain to the great arching dome of sky. All of a sudden, my eye catches a ripple of emerald green at the corner of the horizon.

“Elias!” I gasp, tugging at his hand. When he sees it, the biggest grin spreads across his face, and his hand wraps around mine, warm and steady.

The Northern Lights stretch and twist upward, like lazy coral, jade, and crimson flames from an impossible fire somewhere below the horizon. I clear my throat.

“It’s that geomagnetic storm thing,” I say. “A big solar wind — when a stream of charged particles breaks away from the Sun’s gravity. When they run into the Earth’s thermosphere…”

“The oxygen and nitrogen atoms de-excite at different frequencies. The unique combinations make unique colors.”

“Yeah.” I grin. “You’re a sky geek too, huh?”

“You could say that.” He laughs. We watch for a while, smiling stupidly at the Lights. “I really don’t know anything more about this whole Ones combining thing than you do,” he says. “But I do like you. I mean, I like being with you.”

I fight to keep the corners of my mouth from turning up. I count five breaths in and out, then say, “I’ve wanted to fly my whole life. Dreamed about it.”

“Me too. And also about being not so alone at Nelson High. So this has been a pretty good week, personally.”

I start laughing, full-on laughing, even though it brings the headache back and makes my ribs ache. Before I can even think about what I’m doing, I turn and smile at him.

When our eyes meet, it’s like I’m looking into his soul. I’m a goner. I reach out and grab his waist, which feels so natural now I can hardly believe it, and pull myself toward him. We alternately press our lips together and smile at each other, cheeks pushing against cheeks, until our headaches are gone, or at least forgotten.

TWELVE

T
he next couple of weeks fly by in a haze. Go to school. Rush through homework at lunch. Suffer through every other art class, sitting close to Elias but never close enough. Skip one every other week to fly. And kiss. And fly some more. Skip study hall every day to do the same.

The afterpain of flight is brutal at first. It’s a slicing feeling, like a knife shimmying beneath the skin on my back, all the way up through my arms and neck, then a pounding in my head, and an aching heaviness. The first few days, we have to lie down to recover. After that, we just stagger a bit or have to bend over to catch our breath. After a couple of weeks, it’s like shaking off a trip and a skinned knee. Elias thinks that whatever makes the powers of Ones work together forces our bodies to grow and stretch — maybe even all the way down to the genes. I’ve studied some stuff on epigenetics, the adaptability of existing genes for in-generation evolution, and that makes sense to me. The fact that the pain lessens each time is proof, at least in my head.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve been pissed off. I haven’t slammed a door in weeks. I shuttle Michael and Max to soccer practice without complaining because most of the time Elias sits in the front seat next to me. I play the drums sometimes — the ones in my garage, if I don’t mind Elias standing there looking at me. If I want him to play, we hang out in the VanDyne concert hall, but when we do that I normally play slower, softer, so I can hear him play, too. Now it’s happiness driving the sticks instead of anger.