One (One Universe)

One? No, he can’t be. He wouldn’t have transferred away that early unless his parents were absolutely sure he wasn’t going to go Super, and six or seven years old is too young. He must be a Normal.
    It would make sense for me to mumble some comment or even get up and walk away, but the space between us suddenly feels weird — charged or something. The fine hairs on my arm stand on end, and I can swear I feel my skin prick. It’s like a magnet, keeping me there, even though I know it’s probably not the best idea to keep talking to this guy because I will waste even more time thinking about his eyes.
    I can’t speak to him, but I can’t make myself move away either.
    He drops his hand, smiles that slight smile again, and looks down at the blank tabletop in front of him. He pulls a stylus out of his bag. In bold handwriting, all caps, he writes at the top of the screen: “What I Did Over Summer Vacation.” He draws a stick figure lying on a hill in the sunshine, staring up. Then he draws an arrow pointing at it and writes, “Bored,” beside it.
    He draws a vertical line to make a new frame and then swipes the old one out of view. Next, he draws a stick figure with a backpack on and a massive building in the distance with a huge sign that says, “Normal High.” A dotted line with an arrow at the end shows him walking in. He motions for me to move my arms off the surface in front of me, and I lean back without thinking. In front of me, he draws a room with long rectangles for chairs and circles for stools and a handful of bodies filling them. He writes “Art Class” at the top, the quotation marks greatly exaggerated. I hold a giggle back in my throat.
    I never giggle.
    He sketches two stick figures sitting closer to each other than any of the other ones, one much smaller than the other. He labels one “Elias” and the other “Girl Who Won’t Tell Me Her Name.” Then he writes, “(Pretty blue eyes.)”
    Well, that does it. This doesn’t feel like the only attention I got from a boy last year — the kind I definitely didn’t want — but I still can’t tell whether it’s good or bad. My stomach does flips, and I have to get out of there. Have to. I hoist my body off my perch on the stool with my left hand, hop down and grab my backpack with my right, and walk toward the door.
    I scan my cuff at the door, mumbling, “Bathroom.” The door registers my exit, and I get the hell out of there as fast as I can, not even looking back at his — Elias’s — stupid lanky frame and ridiculous sparkling eyes.

THREE
    I pace the hall. I tremble from my core and all the way out to my limbs.
    In one short year there, I’d seen a few new girls come to Superior High, girls who got shipped in from across the country for the “community” and hadn’t been around those asshole boys for their whole lives, so they didn’t know any better. I heard the jeers of, “Hey, sweetie, you know I’ve got X-ray vision, right? Might as well take it all off right now.” I saw superhuman strength used in threats against girls, veiled or not-so-veiled.
    In junior high, Patrick Ryan, who could make people do anything he wanted by talking to them, convinced a girl to drive away with him in his car. The next day, she came to school dressed in the same clothes as the day before, and everyone knew what had happened with her. Her brother kicked the shit out of Patrick, but still.
    I was relatively normal when I got to Superior High. Even tried to dress cute for my first day. Sean Cooper, the quarterback, started watching me, and a few days later, he was talking to me kind of a lot. Everything was fine until I realized his Super was strength.
    One afternoon in an emptying hallway, he stood so close he forced me back against my locker and put his hand on my shoulder, and I realized everyone else was gone. He leaned down to kiss me, and everything closed in on me, and I told him to stop, but…
    His thumb pressed on my cheek, and his breath steamed in my face, suffocating me. I tried to struggle away from him, but I guess he was angry that I didn’t want to kiss him because rage flooded his face, and he glared straight into my eyes as he dug his thumbs into my shoulders. The only way I stood a chance against his iron grip was a swift knobby knee to the balls.
    Sometimes I still feel the bruises he left there, like they’ve been pressed into my bones.
    Michael and Max were only in the third grade and too young to kick his