One (One Universe)

awards for it freshman year, but now I wouldn’t touch a brush if you paid me.
    Brennan fell in beside me as I swam upstream.
    Maybe turtles can talk. Like we do.
    Mind-speaking reptiles? I snorted, bubbles betraying my mirth. I started to tell Brennan how ridiculous that was, then paused. Three years ago, when I thought I was just an ordinary high school freshman, I’d have called the idea of creatures like us ridiculous too.
    They can’t talk to us , I pointed out instead.
    Brennan swam above me, a shadow against the pale surface, then butted my shoulder with his snout.
    Well, in any case, selkies don’t eat turtles. Weaving through the water, he sped on ahead.
    I frowned. Says who? Not our parents, for sure. They found the ways of our people too painful to talk about. And in the two and a half years since Brennan and I discovered the truth about ourselves, we’d never met another selkie.
    Without opposable thumbs, how would they get through the shell? Brennan’s logic floated back to me as he somersaulted through the water.
    They could eat them while in human form. Turtle soup is a delicacy in France, right?
    Gross. Brennan paused to nose under a submerged log. I surfaced to snatch another breath, then ducked safely down before continuing upriver. My whiskers caught vibrations through the water: I sensed fish milling about below, tasty swimming morsels, but they’d get a pass tonight. It was late.
    After another thirty seconds, I realized my brother had fallen behind. I paused, twisting in the water, but the moonlight only penetrated a few inches; I couldn’t see him in the darkness. The river’s weak current tugged at me, the flow undisturbed by another seal-sized body nearby.
    I sent a thought out like a beacon: Come on, Brennan, let’s go home. Tomorrow’s shift is going to suck even more if we don’t get any sleep. We were scheduled to work the Sunday brunch rush at the Golden Fish, our older brother Declan’s restaurant. I’d rather roll in needles, but skipping wasn’t an option.
    In my mind, I heard a monumental sigh. Then, hardly more than a shudder of a thought:
    What if we just left, tonight?
    My stomach clenched. Whirling, I swam upstream without answering. Maybe Brennan hadn’t meant me to hear, and didn’t realize I had—sometimes the line between musing and directed thought was thin. Usually we laughed at apparent non sequitors from stray thoughts, but this one wasn’t funny.
    Selkies belonged at sea. I knew that. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to bid Granite Harbor, Maine, a thoroughly un-fond farewell. Frankly, staying on land sucked. It meant rules and bargains and danger, and being forced not to spit upon faces that desperately begged to be spit upon.
    But selkies couldn’t become their true selves without their sealskins, and my parents and older brother were trapped apart from theirs, forced to stay ashore in human form. Until three years ago Brennan and I had been trapped too; we hadn’t even known of our true natures then, so we’d grown up like normal kids, or near enough.
    Now that we knew the truth, and had our sealskins—a gift with a price I hated to think about—we should be at sea. It was unnatural for selkies to stay on land. But though Brennan and I were free, the rest of our family wasn’t. I couldn’t leave them behind, not without a fight—and despite his possibly-unintentional comment, I knew Brennan wouldn’t either. If I looked back, he’d be following.
    He’d better be following.
    When I reached the stretch of bank where we’d left our clothes I finally turned to check, but no torpedo-shaped shadow darkened the water.
    Brennan? I called mentally, but there was no response. My heart seized. Brennan? If thoughts could sound shrill, I’d certainly accomplished it. For an agonized second I thought he’d left us behind after all, but then I heard a faint snap, as if of teeth.
    Just let me eat this catfish, will you?
    At my brother’s happy distracted tone, relief surged in like the tide. Brennan was my twin, and my best friend. My only friend, if you wanted to split hairs; we couldn’t trust any of our classmates with the truth about ourselves. Brennan still went to parties, but I found it next to impossible to socialize with classmates when my paranoid side branded the word THREAT invisibly on their foreheads. If any of them found out what we really were … Disaster. So if Brennan ever did leave, I’d be alone in my fight.
    But he was