One (One Universe)

if I tried. Still, I don’t look at him, focusing instead on twisting a long blade of grass into a knot over and over. “You can always leave Superior, leave other Supers, but you’ll always be half like them.” I can’t keep my voice low and measured like he can. “You’ll always be doing…whatever it is you can do…and wondering if there’s more. Don’t tell me you would ever give it up, that you’d give up practicing whatever your One is. We’re meant for more than Normal life.”
    A smile teases at his lips, like he wants to tell me about his One but knows there’s no point. Like he doesn’t even care whether I know or not. And because of that, I really do want to know. Finally.
    I can’t stop my legs from fidgeting. They bounce up and down, making my skirt swing against my calves. But I can’t make myself leave him. Even though he makes me feel like screaming at him and sobbing into his shoulder at the same time.
    A few lone fireflies flit around a bit too early. The top three-quarters of the sky are only slightly dark. I reach out to swipe one from the air and watch as it staggers across the back of my hand, testing its legs after a stretch of flight.
    I wish walking felt more foreign to me than flying.
    It flicks its wings out, and they tremble. Green-yellow light sparks at its back end. It pulls them back in, waits to be encouraged by the slightest bit of wind. A breeze curls through the air. The bug pushes its wings out and is off, victorious.
    Nice work, I think at it.
    I look over at Elias, and he’s doing the same thing, catching lightning bugs and letting them go. The tendons in the back of his hand flex lightly, coaxing the one teetering there to fly. He looks up at me, his eyes gentle.
    “Hey. You know how to smile,” Elias says, and there’s something different about his voice, something distracted.
    “You knew I could smile,” I say, leaning and nudging into him with my shoulder. I sit up straight, my back rigid, as soon as I realize what I just did.
    “You’re right. The drums made you smile for sure. Now I just have to figure out how I can do it.”
    For a second, I can’t find my breath. A few ideas flit through my head about how he could make me smile, but they are vague and terrifying — Elias’s arm around me, his lips against my skin, his voice speaking softly in my ear.
    Our breathing is the only sound besides the crickets’ chirps, and I try to force my breaths into a steadier, slower pattern, one that shows a calmer me than my erratic heart rate would betray.
    We sit silently for a while. The harsh shadows have softened into a burning golden light that sets the tips of Elias’s hair on fire and casts a glow over everything — the porch, the glass walls of the house, and the waving wheat and rigid cornstalks in the fields beyond.
    “Wanna walk?” Elias asks.
    No. I want to fly. “Yeah,” I say and hoist myself up from the step before he can help me up because I feel like touching him, just having his skin against mine, would really put me over the edge. What edge, I don’t exactly know. But I’m terrified of finding out.
    “Let’s head down this road. The fields are beautiful this time of year.” Elias motions down the dirt road that passes his house, framed in barbed wire that I always thought was ugly. But now that it’s glinting gold-orange, it’s actually breathtaking.
    The fields call to me, too. I’ve imagined soaring over them a million times, how the burning gold of the sun would scoop down into the husks and bounce back in curves, how the lazily turning turbines would shrink to the size of pinwheels.
    Someone’s bonfire, miles away, scents the air with a sharp smokiness. A chill settles over everything as the sun retreats, making way for frost. For the first time this year, I realize it’s solidly autumn, and I shiver, fighting it.
    He’s so close to me, so very close. Maybe a foot away. I really feel it — his closeness — but it’s not scary. The slender shape of his body feels familiar, feels just like mine. Only a foot and a half taller.
    “Is there a reason you still won’t tell me?” he asks.
    Our hands swing past each other as we walk, not brushing but close. I want to memorize the arcs they make through the darkening light.
    “What else do you really need to know about me besides my mad drumming capabilities?” I push my eyebrows up at him and smile a tight-lipped smile.
    “There’s more to you than being a drummer,”