One (One Universe)

flight is brutal at first. It’s a slicing feeling, like a knife shimmying beneath the skin on my back, all the way up through my arms and neck, then a pounding in my head, and an aching heaviness. The first few days, we have to lie down to recover. After that, we just stagger a bit or have to bend over to catch our breath. After a couple of weeks, it’s like shaking off a trip and a skinned knee. Elias thinks that whatever makes the powers of Ones work together forces our bodies to grow and stretch — maybe even all the way down to the genes. I’ve studied some stuff on epigenetics, the adaptability of existing genes for in-generation evolution, and that makes sense to me. The fact that the pain lessens each time is proof, at least in my head.
    I can’t remember the last time I’ve been pissed off. I haven’t slammed a door in weeks. I shuttle Michael and Max to soccer practice without complaining because most of the time Elias sits in the front seat next to me. I play the drums sometimes — the ones in my garage, if I don’t mind Elias standing there looking at me. If I want him to play, we hang out in the VanDyne concert hall, but when we do that I normally play slower, softer, so I can hear him play, too. Now it’s happiness driving the sticks instead of anger.
     
    Over the next few weeks, I scan the news feed every morning for any information about what they’re doing at the Hub. When nothing about Fisk shows up for a while, my eyes perk up at anything that could refer to the internship — an experiment, a new hire, the gap program…anything.
    But after so many weeks of him showing up on the front page at the beginning of the year, nothing does now.
     
    I meet with Mr. Hoffman twice a week during lunch. I never hear him enter the library, and he always slips out again without anyone else noticing.
    All this time, I never get an official communication from the Hub. Not one. I ask questions, try to clarify things. Mr. Hoffman tells me that everything is under wraps, that what we’re doing still isn’t official. That even exactly what they’re doing at the gap program, for the Supers only, isn’t public, and that the board barely approved that.
    The exercises seem pointless, at first — more organic chem problems to work, more models to build, more theoretical situations to run each molecule through. What would its characteristics be in the various spectra: Mass spectrometry? UV? IR? NMR? I jot down the answers faster than Mr. Hoffman can get new questions to me, with such intense concentration my fingers ache from holding the stylus so tightly.
     
    Late summer turns into fall, and by early October, we’re solidly into hot chocolate and hayride season.
    When I finally get sick of flying over fields, now mostly harvested, we go to Lincoln Park and fly there after closing hours. It’s small, but the blur of red and orange and yellow and green from the trees takes my breath away. When the sky dims to a dark enough blue for twinkling pinholes to cover it, I tilt my head back and try to count the stars, knowing I never can, reveling in how luxurious it feels.
    I let Mom take me shopping and buy lots of cute sweaters and fitted jeans, swinging skirts and tights. I can tell she wants to ask if this is about a boy. I know she knows it’s about Elias. Mom and Dad tell each other everything. But she never does ask about him, and because of that, it’s not annoying to be around her, because I’m happy and she’s not meddling. For the first time in my life, I can just be with Mom.
    I still practice my One. Now, instead of imagining only weightlessness, I also think of Elias, of being with him, when the buzz is strongest. It’s when there’s tension between us — the delicious kind of tension, like when he’s going to kiss me, which is amazing, or when he’s going to grab me and shoot off into the sky, tugging and lifting me until I catch the buzz and fly along with him.
    Now, instead of just floating, I drift a little, so slightly that it might be the wind.
     
    One night, we walk from my car in his driveway to the edge of our cornfield, silently, like we always do when we know we’re about to fly.
    “What’s the backpack for?” I ask.
    “Surprise.” Elias bends down to kiss the top of my head, breathing in deeply.
    “Why are you always doing that?” My voice sounds annoyed, but I lean into him. In the couple weeks Elias and I have been together, he’s learned to read my body language