One (One Universe)

His sleek blue car isn’t in the driveway, and neither is anyone else’s.
    Perfect.
    Suddenly, I feel very brave. I crank up the brake on the car and trudge toward the step we walked down last night.
    I plunk myself down and let my hand wave through the grass, resting my chin on my knees. I can see my drum set gleaming in there. I look up at the handprint sensor panel and wipe my palms against my skirt to wipe off the sweat. But I can’t make myself go in. It doesn’t feel right somehow. Not without him.
    My chest aches, and it feels like loneliness and emptiness and missing something, which I suppose are all kind of the same thing.
    The swaying blades of grass make breathy rustling noises in the late afternoon breeze — it must be five o’clock by now — and I can almost hear them talk to me. You don’t belong here , they say.
    Yeah, I think. Except I don’t belong anywhere else either.
    The sound of a rolling crunch interrupts my conversation with the freaking weeds. Dammit. Someone’s here. I look up and see a flash of blue. It’s Elias.
    The tension in my chest deepens to a knot, and now it feels something like excitement. I tamp it down, willing it not to push my face into a smile. Last night with Elias was a dream world, and I’m still not sure whether I can imagine it into a reality.
    I watch him unfold himself from the car’s seat, see me sitting there, and grin. The slowly setting sun throws a sharp shadow of him across the driveway, exaggerating his height. As he gets closer, the shadow almost touches me. When it does, I stand up.
    “Hey,” I say.
    “Hey,” he says back, still smiling and watching me. “I see you came prepared today.” He reaches out and flicks the hood of my sweatshirt. He doesn’t stand that close to me, but his arms are so freaking long it’s easy. Not threatening.
    “Oh. Yeah,” I say, motioning toward my car. “Yours is in there.”
    “Keep it,” he says.
    “Uh…” I really don’t know what to say to that.
    “My parents aren’t here.” He says it tonelessly, implying nothing. Just wanting to let me know.
    I shrug.
    “Want something to drink?” he asks.
    I smile, relieved, and nod.
    “Good.” He grins. “Wait here.”
    The sun dangles over the horizon, orange and glowing. It protests like a kid who doesn’t want to go to bed, angrily flinging its light at anything it can.
    Elias walks out with something in mugs. The steam coming from it wafts, fruity and spicy, toward me — hot cider. He’s framed in bright-against-dark shadows that make me blink into the sky and tent my hand over my eyes to look at him. Something about his fingers wrapped around the handle of a mug for each of us makes my heart swell.
    We sit there, blowing ripples across the surface of the cider and letting the mugs warm our hands.
    “You weren’t in school today,” I say. Thank you, Captain Obvious.
    “Doctors’ appointments. Uh, physicals. For basketball. Starting practice soon.” He eyes me curiously.
    Then I feel brave. “Well, come back tomorrow, okay? Leni’s friends are a pain in the ass.”
    He laughs again, and this time the smile lingers for a second. Then he nods, looking out across the farmers’ fields that stretch miles and miles in front of his house. Like he knows what I mean.
    “They don’t matter,” Elias says, staring at his hands, his fingers gripping each other. “I learned that a long time ago.”
    Suddenly, I’m angry at his passivity, like I want to shake him by the shoulders and scream some sense into him. He’s a One. He’s a freak. He should be suffering just as much as I am.
    “Yeah? Well, if your One doesn’t matter and they don’t matter, what does matter?” I clench and unclench my jaw over and over again, wavering between feeling bad about saying that to him and feeling powerful for finally unleashing this on anyone besides my poor parents.
    He doesn’t respond right away. Oh, God, he must hate me. But then he speaks, and his voice is soft and patient. “There’s something beyond Superior and the Hub, Merrin. Someplace where no one expects anything from me. From people like us. Somewhere I could be myself, without the One and without the stupid school and basketball team. Those are just things I’m using to get by. Leni…she really fits in there at Nelson. But I don’t.”
    “Somewhere you can be just like a Normal, you mean. But your One will never leave you.” The words come spilling out, like I couldn’t stop them