One (One Universe)

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