One (One Universe)

of glowing green. This is just like a movie, it’s so perfect and magical. Which makes it all the more impossible that this is actually happening.
    We look at each other for a long minute, grinning like idiots, like the people in the movies do when they’ve just kissed for the first time. Not that I would want to do anything like that.
    Except, now that I think of it, I really, really would.
    He looks at me with mischief in his eyes, and I wonder how I look, with my hair even more messed up than usual. I’m sure my cheeks are red. I know I’m blushing, but hopefully, he just thinks they’re windchapped.
    He looks right into my eyes for a moment, then nods, like he’s decided I’ll be able to handle what he’s about to say. “I push the air. Only from around me which is why it’s my One. I can’t control it from far away.”
    “But you floated,” I say. I furrow my eyebrows, glare at him. “You flew.” But that doesn’t make sense because, in order to take me with him, he would have to be super strong, too. Or maybe I’m so light that my weight doesn’t matter at all.
    He shakes his head, still looking right at me, and I swear his gorgeous freaking eyeballs are going to burn a hole right through me. “Only with you. I saw you go up, and I…I wanted to touch you. Again.” He looks down, then back at me, his eyes wide. “And when I did…” He makes a swooping motion in the air.
    The buzz from the ground moves up through my body, and it feels so good, I know if I stand here any longer I’ll get addicted. I won’t be able to get enough of this beautiful boy and the beautiful power he can give me.
    All I’ve ever wanted is to be more than a One. But no matter how fun it is to finally, finally fly, and how good it felt to hold onto Elias while I did it, this is not okay.
    It feels so incredible to fly, but it’s not okay to need him to do it.
    I wonder if he’s doing his air-pushing thing right now because all I can feel is the tension of the space between us. He steps in and brushes the hair off my forehead, looking at me in that infuriatingly patient way he does.
    I reach up to touch his face, brushing my thumb across his cheek because I have no idea what else to do with it. All I know is that I have to touch him. He circles his arm around my waist, pulling me in to his body and my face up toward his, and I push up on my tiptoes.
    He kisses me, and I’m even higher and farther away from everything than I was when we flew.
    His lips are soft and warm, and I ache for wanting to be closer to him. My feet lift off the ground again, but this time I don’t care because now our eyes are even. I sigh, realizing how badly I needed that. His lips part against mine, and I gasp, and I’m so excited that I bite the bottom one a little bit. He kisses me deeper, wrapping his fingers around my waist, and my hands rake through his hair, palms hugging the sides of his face. He pulls back and looks into my eyes, then down past our feet, and laughs.
    “You’re doing it again,” he says, his voice lower than it was a minute ago. “Um, we are.” I look down and sure enough, we’re a good four feet off the ground. Terror rushes through me. Not because I’m floating — he already knows all about that now.
    It’s because now that he’s gone and kissed me, I might need him for more than flying.
    We sink down, down, down, and by the time, my feet touch solid ground again, I’m torn between tackling him in the cornfield and getting away from him as soon as possible.
    He looks down at me, smiling a gentle smile that tells me he’d appreciate the tackle. I look at him for one second, two, five. I open my mouth and stammer something that doesn’t make sense.
    And then I do the only thing that does make sense — I turn around and run home.

NINE
    I know that most girls would cry at this point. Most girls would sprint down the dirt road, running so fast they kicked up a cloud of dust around them, stopping when they were out of the boy’s sight. Most girls would crouch down and weep in the middle of corn fields under a canopy of painted sky, feeling sorry for themselves.
    But I speed down the path as fast as my legs will carry me, desperate to feel the wind whip against my face again, willing to do anything to relive the dream of soaring through the air. I am fast for a Normal. The air breezes against my face, through the tunnels made on either side of my body between my arms and torso, but it’s not fast