One (One Universe)

CENTURY . I flip to the front cover to check the printing date, and it’s just over 40 years old. Why would they have even printed a book so few decades ago when the vast majority was already digital? I shake my head and start to read.
    As soon as I see the words on the page, I’m hooked. This book takes everything Mom, Mr. Hoffman, and Elias ever told me about Ones and elaborates on it times a hundred. I run my finger down the table of contents page and stop at a section called, “The Curiosity of the Single-Powered Individual.”
    The chapter that really catches my eye is: “Malleability of the Gene Structure.” I’ve seen that phrase before — in the title of the lecture at the symposium. The one that made my heart jump and made me feel hope.
    Three layers of marginalia frame the text on this page. I peer closer, examining the handwriting of some of the notes. I’ve seen it somewhere before. In Elias’s room, in the note he sent to his sisters. This is Elias’s handwriting. He’s seen this book, studied it. All the “theories” he spouted to me in the cotton field that second time we flew — this is where he read them all.
    I flip to the last page of the chapter, and my stomach turns at what I see written there. There’s a column of names written in the long white space below the last paragraph: Monroe, Murdock, Wayne, Bavarsky, Grimm, Radd. And then I gasp as I read the last three: Summers, Suresh, and Grey.
    Leni, Daniel, and me.
    Shit. And the last three names, the three of us, are starred. He knew the whole time — knew we were Ones, knew the theories. He grew up with Leni and Daniel, but he must have known about my One way before he met me.
    What do the stars mean? Are we the only ones still in control of our Ones?
    Did he seek me out that first day?
    I stuff the book into my bag even though I know I shouldn’t, even though it’s not mine to read, especially not the notes. I stalk to Elias’s room, plunk myself down on the edge of the bed, and wait.
     
    Five minutes later, Elias walks in, wearing sweats, his hair still damp.
    I spin around. “I found the office. Thought it was another bathroom.”
    He smiles, clearly not getting it. Purple half-circles droop under his eyes. “Can’t believe I didn’t show that to you before. Stupid. I should have known you would love some of those books.”
    “Yeah, it was stupid, Elias.” I sit there with my arms crossed, my heart burning and twisting in my chest. He sits in his desk chair and rolls himself toward the bed, so he’s close. He looks sad and distant and a little worried.
    Seeing him like this was totally not in my plans. I can’t stand it when he looks like that. It breaks my heart as much as it did the first day I met him. That makes me even more pissed off at him. How dare he make me sympathize with him after what he’s done? After all the things he’s hidden from me?
    “Is there something you’d like to tell me?” I ask, with a hard edge on my voice.
    “Um…you’re beautiful? And you’re gonna skip town with me?” Elias says, smiling a slight, confused smile and flashing that stupid dimple again. He leans in for a kiss.
    I roll my eyes and scoot back a little. “Try again.”
    He leans in further to kiss me at my jaw because he knows I’m a sucker for that. “You’re smart?”
    “Dammit, Elias!” I yell, and I push him away from me with both hands. I can’t stand for him to be this close to me, not right now. “Let me ask it another way. What were you not telling me?”
    I yank the book out of my bag, praying I didn’t damage any of the pages. I hold it by its spine, and its pages threaten to flap open against the inadequacy of my tiny hand. He stares at it, eyes flashing dumbly between my face and the book. He knows exactly what I’m talking about. I know he does. He has to.
    I’m suddenly furious at the damn empty look on his face, the opposite of the ones I love, the smiling one and the determined one. This empty one is worse, way worse, than the I’m-okay-but-really-I’m-not one that he always wore when I first met him.
    So now I growl at him. “I found that chapter. I found where you wrote my name. What are you not telling me, Elias VanDyne?”
    And then his face looks sad, so sad, that tears prickle at the corners of my own. I look down at the book because I don’t want him to see I’m so angry that I’m actually freaking crying.
    “Look, Mer.”
    “You can call me Merrin till I’m done being