One (One Universe)

letters blend together and run through the checklist of steps I have left before my application is complete. I already got my freshman year transcript, sat for hours completing the tests until it felt like my stylus would rub my finger raw, and typed the essay. Only two pieces left. Signatures from Mom and Dad — which I would fake if they weren’t fingerprint verified — and a recommendation from Mr. Hoffman.
    I sit there, gnawing on the candy and pretending I don’t notice Mom raising her eyes from the feed. She looks sad.
    “What?” I snap.
    “I didn’t know that still happened, sweetie.”
    I look down and groan. The stool is now about three inches below me, and I can see down into Mom’s lap over the screen. I make myself heavy again and plunk down, scowling.
    It happens when I lose control. Emotional control, that is.
    It started three years ago in junior high, when I used to get teased for being so tiny. Before I knew it, I’d be freaking floating six inches above my seat, and everyone would laugh at me even more.
    That day, I got home and Mom had the talk with me. Because she works at the Biotech Hub, she knows all the science behind it, and she talked me through it like most other moms talk to their daughters about boyfriends and birth control.
    I would have killed to have been talking about boyfriends and birth control at that moment.
    What I got was this: Supers have a genetic mutation that makes them do one awesome thing — lift twelve times their weight, light on fire, create or control electricity, stuff like that. The rest of their genes have to adapt to compensate or allow for that — be indestructible, conduct the spark. It’s like in-person, real-time evolution. Normally, these adaptations show up by puberty.
    In Ones, they don’t show up. Ever. So there’s basically a hole in our genetic code. That makes it — the One — kind of unstable. It could manifest any time we’re freaked out, scared or depressed.
    That was when I first figured out that having one power was way worse than having none at all.
    Mom closes the news feed and reaches out to touch me. Her fingers half-rest, half-hover over my wrist, feather-light. She’s always danced around me like this, like I’m a weak little baby bird that never quite got the guts to fly out of the nest.
    Last spring, I saw one of those baby birds. It kind of flopped down from the tree, but it was really determined. It kept hopping from its safe little nest to the street. Then it hopped all the way across, and it didn’t get hit by a car. That bird couldn’t fly, but it ended up okay.
    I don’t think that’s inspirational — in fact, I think it’s really sad. And I think that damn baby bird was really lucky. I wonder if it ever did learn to fly, there on the other side of the street, while its family sat around eating fat worms and trying to ignore it.
    I’m not that determined. I don’t think.
    The little girl on the poster grins at me, and I stare at her, too tired to glare. The slogan makes my heart burn. “Saving the world,” my ass. I hadn’t heard that language at Superior ever. More like, “Building a better world for the poor Normals,” even though no one would say as much. Not out loud, anyway.
    Dad walks over from the stove where he’s getting dinner ready. “Want to tell us about your first day?” Dad’s smile is weird. Plastic and cautious. Like he doesn’t expect it to be good news.
    I wouldn’t want to disappoint him, I guess. I launch into a diatribe about how ridiculous everything at Normal was, from the hologram teachers to the rusty lockers to the idiot calc students to the disgusting vomit-colored walls.
    He’s quiet for a moment. Then he asks, “So what really happened?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Oh, come on. You don’t expect me to believe that for a second. Not with that look on your face.”
    I go to my default — not saying anything.
    “Were the other kids nice?” he asks gently.
    I shrug. “They were just kids. I mean…there was this one guy in that sorry excuse for an art class. And…in the hallway.” I rush the next sentence. “But I wouldn’t say he was nice.”
    Dad looks at me, crinkling his eyebrows into a questioning expression.
    “I don’t know. Whenever he looked at me, all I wanted to do was leave the room. It’s nothing. I’m just moving seats next class.” Or skipping class. Or moving classes altogether.
    “Doesn’t sound like ‘nothing’ to me.”
    I grimace.