One (One Universe)

he says, watching his hand too, not moving closer. “Yeah, you’re cute and smart. Everyone knows that. You’re also angry, and I get that. But I want to know more.”
    He stops dead in his tracks, and so do I, turning to face him as if by instinct.
    “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he whispers.
    I can’t tell if it’s a tease or a challenge, so I press my lips together, waiting for his face to tell me what to say next.
    He looks down, right at me. There’s this weird feeling in my chest, and I’ve honestly never felt it before. It seems ridiculous, even to me, that a sixteen-year-old girl never felt her heart beat like crazy, but I am not kidding, this is the first time. I stare back at him. My mouth hangs open, waiting for my heart to fly out of it.
    He drops his gaze to the ground. I thought that was all I wanted him to do because at least it would stop my heart from running circles inside me, but now the damn thing thuds to a stop and drops into my stomach. Now I’d give anything for him to look back at me, say anything. I honestly think my life depends on it.
    “I float,” I say, and he turns to look at me again, but oh my God, now he’s looking up at me because I’m freaking floating. This is the first time this has happened in forever, and it’s because I let my stupid head get away from me and my stupid heart drop into my stomach and this stupid, stupid boy get to me. “I just…”
    And then he reaches his hand up to me. His fingers make a ring around my wrist. They barely touch my skin, but where they do, there’s this electricity, warm and melting and vibrating through my skin. And then my face follows his up because now he’s floating, too.
    My heart really pounds now, so hard that blood thrums through my veins. The sensation is so horrific and so energizing at the same time that I can hardly stand it.
    “Another One who floats?” I whisper.
    He shakes his head, staring at the place where his fingers meet my wrist. He breathes in so deeply that his chest pushes out, making him even closer to me, and brushes the underside of my forearm with his fingers.
    He wraps one arm around my waist, then the other, and pulls me close to him. His heart races against mine.
    And then we’re moving. The wind brushes my cheek so gently it’s a whisper, but I watch as the gravel moves a foot below us. The pebbles all blend together, into stripes, then into a big gray blur. The wind pushes out from my face, making a bubble all around my skin, and the tension of it pushes my body to the side, so gently that if it weren’t for the gravel stripes I wouldn’t believe it was happening.
    We go higher — four feet off the ground, then six, then ten — but now we’re really moving, too. My hair whips around my face, and we start going so fast the corn stalks blur into a striped gold-and-green backdrop.
    I hold onto him so tight, my arms around his waist and my fingers bunching up his shirt. It’s not because I’m afraid or even because I need to. It’s because that’s what my body wants to do.
    I start laughing, and I haven’t laughed like this in so long, not since I was a little kid, that we fly even higher, so high the air tastes thin.
    Then I shriek like a freaking sixteen-year-old girl, and when I stop to realize that’s exactly what I am, I laugh even harder.
    Elias whoops, and my heart stops pounding and soars with his joy. His sad smile is gone, replaced with the real Elias smile. This is really him, I know, suddenly and completely.
    He’s taken us in a circle, around a corn field that must have been four miles square at least, and my skin buzzes from the feel of the air whipping against it, like when I was a kid and I stuck my hand outside the car window on the highway. I used to imagine that’s what it felt like to fly. I laugh one more time when I realize that, aside from his body keeping mine from the wind on one side, I was right.
    When we land, the ground underneath my feet buzzes, too, like it’s too solid to handle me, like I don’t even belong there. Not anymore.
    We’re standing so close together. His shirt is bunched together at the sides, right above his hips. The wrinkles are lined with sweat from where my hands held on to him. I should feel mortified, but I don’t.
    It’s getting dark. Since we walked out here, someone’s painted the sky with broad, bright strokes of cotton candy pink, glowing amber, and deep purple. Fireflies dot the musty air with bursts