One (One Universe)

don’t mind being stuck with you,” I murmur between kisses because I don’t, I really don’t.
    Most of life isn’t flying, I remind myself. Most of life is about the people you love. I know that. Flying hasn’t made me forget.
    I swing my legs out from between his and hop down off the table, standing so I look curviest in my dress. I’m not going to be dressed up like this again for awhile, so I need to milk it. I stretch my hand out, smiling an apology.
    “Show me everything,” I say. And we spend the next hour looking at supersonic accelerators and fireproof cubes and electron-neutralizing gel.
    And I am happy.
     
    The next day, Elias seems like himself again. I try to hide my sigh of relief that my boyfriend is back and that we can enjoy the rest of the Symposium together, even if he is mostly humoring me.
    I have no idea what Michael and Max are doing — Dad’s keeping track of them today since his ultra-boring presentation is over. It was something about home safety for families with early-displaying Supers — how to keep your electricity-emitting baby from blowing the house up, for example.
    The biggest problem my parents ever had with the twins was that it was hard to bathe them. That’s how Dad got into this field in the first place, actually — my brothers were born, and what with my being a One and all, Mom and Dad had never really faced the challenges of having Super kids to take care of.
    I’m all excited to go to Mom’s demonstration today, but I see it’s marked “Authorized Personnel Only” when I read the listing closely on my schedule. I blow it up on my cuff’s screen and shove it in Elias’s face.
    “What the hell?” I grouse.
    He looks at the listing, too. “Yeah. And it’s the only thing in the training arena at that point. What does your mom do?”
    I shrug. I’ve never asked Mom exactly what she does — never cared enough. I mean, I know that she combusts and that she’s indestructible — never had a match in the house. But she’s never bothered to talk to me about it. Dad’s always clued me in on what he’s doing at the Hub, but Mom? Never. If I think about it, I never thought it was because her work was too awesome or important. I just thought it was because she thought I wasn’t awesome or important enough to hear about it.
    “What’s the matter?” Elias nudges me. I would tell him, but I know he’s excited because he finally gets to see his sisters today. I’m not about to ruin anything for him, especially after all I said last night.
    “Nothing.” I shake my head and give a closed-lipped smile. “I just… I’m really glad you showed me the arena last night. Otherwise I would never have seen it.”
    “Never say never, Mer.” He reaches an arm around me and squeezes my shoulder, pulling me close to him.
    We go to a couple presentations, including one for a pressure-enhancing suit to make some flier kid — the air-blowing kind, like Elias should be — push the air so hard and fast that she’s nearly supersonic. “While we had hoped to break the sound barrier this time,” the announcer intones, “this gap year student strengthens her abilities daily, and we have every confidence that by the next symposium she’ll be far past supersonic status.”
    “Supersonic,” I whisper. Elias gives me a sad smile. The girl, her skin the color of coffee glowing almost golden from the exhilaration and the sheen of sweat, runs a hand over her head, which has hair cropped so close it’s nearly shaven. For speed, I think.
    Elias looks at me, and I swear it’s another instance where he knows what I’m thinking. “Don’t get any ideas,” he says, and he rolls the end of some of my hair between his fingers lightly.
    Yep. He knew.
    “It wouldn’t be the same,” he leans in to whisper, and whether he’s talking about flying or kissing or something else, I don’t know and I don’t care. But I silently vow to keep my hair just like it is.
    There’s a big lunch with more milling around and networking. I sit at a table with Elias and Leni and Daniel, and for a few minutes, this feels like some surreal, awesome, alternate-dimension high school. I can tell that Daniel’s just as thrilled as I am by this whole thing — Daniel’s a lot like me, now that I think about it — but Leni looks pretty much the same as always. Slightly less on edge, but then, she’s looked like that since the two of them figured out the whole “flame on” thing.
    Then Mom