One (One Universe)

crying.
    “Leni? Helen. You okay?” Daniel’s voice is soft, concerned. He pulls the arm she’s been inspecting from her hands and loops it around her neck, hugging her to him. She covers her laughing mouth with her other hand, then hiccups. She falls into him and throws her arms around his neck. His grin is so wide, probably a bigger smile than I’ve ever seen from him, and then he closes his eyes and turns his face into her neck.
    Suddenly, I feel like I’m intruding on something. I know Elias feels the same way because he looks down at the ground and grabs my hand at the same time. For a second, the warmth of his skin distracts me, and I don’t care one bit about Leni and Daniel, and then I hear Daniel say, in such a low voice, “Let’s try it again.”
    Leni pulls back, arms still around his neck, like they’re slow dancing or something. She steps back and holds both his hands in both of hers.
    For the first few seconds, it’s a low burn, orange-red flames snaking up their arms again. Then the flames start to get lighter and brighter and jump out from their elbows. Bright yellow flames tinged with white and blue heat shoot up three, four, five feet above them, forming wide columns in the air.
    The fire roars, but above it I can hear Leni’s laugh, taking on a new tone from deep in her belly. Daniel’s laughing, too, and they look at each other like nothing and no one else exists in the whole world.
    Elias squeezes my hand and says in my ear, “Let’s get out of here.”
    I can’t tell whether it’s his warm breath or the way he says the words, but either way, I totally melt with his lips that close to my ear, especially when we’re not flying, when they don’t need to be.
    All I can think about is how I want to take this straight to the Hub, to see if they could make it stick. Then I remind myself that my fantasies about the Hub could be just that — fantasies, stories I’ve been telling myself even though Mom’s told me a million times they’re impossible. I don’t even know if the Hub has thought about Ones combining.
    What I do know is that the space where my arm touches Elias’s still feels charged, and the buzz that made us fly is only a small part of that. The rest is warmth, excitement. Wanting to be nearer to him.
    Hundreds of bright white stars pin a black velvet curtain to the great arching dome of sky. All of a sudden, my eye catches a ripple of emerald green at the corner of the horizon.
    “Elias!” I gasp, tugging at his hand. When he sees it, the biggest grin spreads across his face, and his hand wraps around mine, warm and steady.
    The Northern Lights stretch and twist upward, like lazy coral, jade, and crimson flames from an impossible fire somewhere below the horizon. I clear my throat.
    “It’s that geomagnetic storm thing,” I say. “A big solar wind — when a stream of charged particles breaks away from the Sun’s gravity. When they run into the Earth’s thermosphere…”
    “The oxygen and nitrogen atoms de-excite at different frequencies. The unique combinations make unique colors.”
    “Yeah.” I grin. “You’re a sky geek too, huh?”
    “You could say that.” He laughs. We watch for a while, smiling stupidly at the Lights. “I really don’t know anything more about this whole Ones combining thing than you do,” he says. “But I do like you. I mean, I like being with you.”
    I fight to keep the corners of my mouth from turning up. I count five breaths in and out, then say, “I’ve wanted to fly my whole life. Dreamed about it.”
    “Me too. And also about being not so alone at Nelson High. So this has been a pretty good week, personally.”
    I start laughing, full-on laughing, even though it brings the headache back and makes my ribs ache. Before I can even think about what I’m doing, I turn and smile at him.
    When our eyes meet, it’s like I’m looking into his soul. I’m a goner. I reach out and grab his waist, which feels so natural now I can hardly believe it, and pull myself toward him. We alternately press our lips together and smile at each other, cheeks pushing against cheeks, until our headaches are gone, or at least forgotten.

TWELVE
    T he next couple of weeks fly by in a haze. Go to school. Rush through homework at lunch. Suffer through every other art class, sitting close to Elias but never close enough. Skip one every other week to fly. And kiss. And fly some more. Skip study hall every day to do the same.
    The afterpain of