One (17 page)

TWENTY-ONE

I
wake with a start, my legs tangled in the sheets. My breaths seize my chest, quick in-and-outs, and I scan the room for something, though I have no idea what.

Not something. Someone. Elias. I want to be near him so badly it hurts. I fall back on my pillow, staring at the ceiling.

Then my cuff on the nightstand buzzes its notification that I have a message. I strap it to my wrist, squint away from it when its light glares at me the darkness. I blink hard, straining to see. Five missed calls. One message. I punch in the code and listen.

It’s Elias. His voice chokes out short sentences. “I’m not gonna be around for a while, Mer.” He takes in a sharp breath, and my heart wrenches. “I’m sorry.” And then he hangs up.

I feel like the entire world stops around me, like I have to work hard against its frozenness to blink or breathe or think.

What the hell? Where is he going? Are his parents transferring him to Super? That wouldn’t be such a big deal; I could still see him. Are they moving out of town?

I’m sorry, too. I’m so, so sorry. I’m sorry for a lot of things, and I’m a little ashamed. That clouds my thoughts so much that I can’t imagine what I’d say to him, especially over the phone like this, not in person. I’m not mad at him; now I just wish I could see him.

I’m still wearing one of his sweatshirts from bedtime — threw it on over the camisole, t-shirt, and long-sleeved shirt I was already wearing — because the smell of him is one of the only things that can calm me, even when I’m angry at him.

I toss on some jeans, socks, and my Chucks, and then push out the door in the dark, heading to my car even though it’s only 4:15. All the better — the next shift is probably just getting into the station or maybe grabbing their morning donuts.

I race the whole way to the VanDyne house. Elias’s car reflects blue from my headlights, and I sigh with relief.

I want to wiggle into bed next to him, wrap my arms around his waist, bury my head in his chest and forget the rest of the world exists. Whisper to him in the dark that I’m sorry, tell him we’re in this together, that we’ll figure out this whole stupid backpack thing and the Hub thing, and if we can’t, we’ll run away together, anywhere, anytime, just like he wanted, as long as we’re together.

I knock on the door right after I realize how freaking early it is, how normal people aren’t even awake at this hour. No one answers, of course. I run down the side of the house and start chucking gravel pebbles at Elias’s window. After a few minutes of that, there’s still no movement from inside. I know I’m definitely not supposed to be here, with his weird curfew and all, but still. Elias would know it was me, would open his window.

I hook my fingers onto the window sill and float up just a tad to peer inside. It’s still dark in there, but the blue glow of his alarm clock illuminates the room enough for me to see that his bed is empty.

My arms shake, so violently that I almost can’t hold on to the sill anymore. My stomach twists painfully. I dash all the way to the other side of the house, right outside the music room door.

I raise my palm up to the smooth black panel and whisper, “Hey, Rosie.” Just as I’m about to press my hand to it, I spot something sticking out of the narrow gap where the panel meets the house’s outer wall — a scrap of paper. I tug it out and unfold it with trembling hands. When I read what’s written there, my stomach twists even more.

M —

Knock knock.

— E

My heart stops, and I can’t fill my lungs. He’s at the Hub. Oh my God, they’ve taken him to the Hub, and they’re going to try to get him to fly.

I push my sleeve up to look at my cuff, but it loosened in my scramble to get dressed, and it flops off into the garden. I scrabble around among the plants, leaves scraping my arms, soil caking under my fingernails, trying to find it. But it’s dark, and under the shadows of the plants, I can’t see anything. Hot tears stream down my face. Finally, kneeling in the dirt, I find it and search for his call in the log. He called me at 3:30 AM.

“Dammit!” I scream at the house, at all the shit that Elias has gone through, at all the more he’ll go through on account of me. I slam my palm against the scanner, open the music room door, and streak past the drum set that two months ago I thought was the most awesome thing in the world.

I’m already in the hallway by the time Rosie has finished saying, “Welcome, Merrin Grey,” and my heart nearly stops. Why does the damn house have to announce every person who walks through the door?

“Rosie, go silent,” I hiss, hoping that command works.

I tear into the main area of the house. All the lights are off, except in the kitchen, like always. Frantically, I run my hands along the counters, looking for a note, a key, anything that will help me think of how to get to Elias, tell me what to do. Anything.

A sudden, loud, rasping noise startles the hell out of me, and I whip around, waiting to see Elias’s dad — or worse, some Hub official — waiting there in the for me. Then a pungent, familiar scent hits the air, and I calm down the tiniest bit. It’s the damn coffee maker, automatically starting to brew first thing in the morning. Like this is a normal freaking day.

Of course it’s not a normal day. The tears start up again.

Then it hits me. I have my cuff. I’m such an idiot. I’ll just call him, see where he is, at least let him know I’m trying to get to him. At least text him. I call first, jittery as I listen to the ringer once, twice.

Another sound makes me jump, a harsh trill from three doors down. Elias’s room. His freaking cuff is still here.

I run back outside to my car, barely able to see through the black after my eyes have adjusted to the house’s low light.

Just last night, Elias told me the very reason he’s gone now. The fear in his voice was of something real. His dad’s been waiting for him to fly, pushing for this.

Whatever he’d been letting them do to Elias there at the Hub, they think it’s working. They took him because they think they’ve finally made him fly.

They wouldn’t think that if he hadn’t lied to protect me. And we wouldn’t be in this situation if I’d really believed he was trying to keep me from harm instead of keeping me down.

Tears slip freely from my eyes now, as if they’re part of my face, a normal part of my being. My body doesn’t even react to them anymore, doesn’t heave with sobs. My determination keeps it from doing that because if there’s anything I’m going to do, it’s going to be the one thing Elias tried to do for me — save me. And I can’t do that if I’m doubled over my freaking steering wheel and weeping.

I swipe at my cheeks with a sleeve. I have to pull myself together — it’s all up to me now. I’m the only one who cares enough to try to do anything to stop what’s happening to Elias and to my brothers, whatever it is.

If I don’t find him, step up, and tell the truth, what are they going to do to him? What are they going to do to all the Ones? Will Daniel disappear in the middle of the night? Will Leni?

Just as I think her name, my cuff beeps, and I jump in my seat, swerving. I look down at the glowing screen and see Leni’s name there.

I hit the speaker button. “Hello?” I’m sure my voice sounds as panicked as I feel.

“Merrin?” Leni’s voice is a little gravelly. “Is everything okay? Daniel got this weird text from Elias this morning…”

“Wait. He texted Daniel?”

“Yeah, at like quarter to four. But it was weird.
M will need you.
Or something. Hold on.” Her voice muffles a bit. “Is that right?”

“Is he there?” I ask.

“Yeah, he, um…yeah, he’s here. Anyway. What’s going on? It had better be important for before dawn on a Sunday.”

“Where are your parents?” I ask, my mind racing. If I have the two of them, we might have a chance of getting somewhere with the Hub.

“Soccer tournament with the kids. I had to stay back for the cheerleading meet tomorrow.”

“Len?” I ask, my heart aching when I use the nickname only Elias uses for her. “How big of a deal is it if you miss that meet?”

“Merrin, you are freaking me out.”

“Just…get ready to go. Both of you. Okay? Drive by my house in half an hour, and I’ll explain everything.”

My thoughts run through my head in a loop — what I have to do, where I have to go, how I’m going to get there. I know Elias is at the Hub and that I have to get in and get him. My parents aren’t going to be any help. They’re all rallying around the Hub and its experiments, even Dad. Maybe they’re even pulling my brothers in with them.

Then a whole new panic strikes me. How am I going to even get in? I know if I can break into the Hub’s main entrance and if I have Leni and Daniel, somehow we’ll figure out how to find Elias, get him out of there. Maybe use their firepower or my One somehow. At this point, I don’t care how we do it — I only care that I see Elias again, in one piece. Hopefully get him out of there.

The only thing I have to my name besides my cuff is a few thousand dollars’ worth of rolled-up bills from summer jobs. If we’re going to run, we’re going to need some cash.

I kill the headlights a couple houses from mine and roll to a stop in front of it. Through our front window, I see a yellowish glow from deep inside. Mom must be up making coffee already. She likes to go for a run on Sunday mornings and needs a cup as soon as she gets out of bed.

I sneak around to the side door and duck beneath the windowsill, peeking up so I can watch Mom. I want to sneak in the minute she leaves.

She moves so slowly I can barely stand it. A slight whine escapes from my throat, and I realize that, while the tears have stopped streaming down my cheeks, I’ve started to bounce my knees, crouched like that, so that my whole body vibrates. I hold myself back from springing for the door handle the second Mom walks out of the kitchen and wait till I hear the front door slam.

I burst in, rushing to the mudroom bench in our front hallway where we’re supposed to hang our jackets and put our bags up every night. My chest squeezes when I see only three of the five hooks filled. Everything’s pristine without Michael and Max here to throw their stuff everywhere — not even a stray soccer ball in the corner. My heart flips a little when I realize I never told Elias the boys had gone to the Hub. Would that information have told him something? Would it have been a warning to him?

I shake my head. I can’t think of that stuff right now.

I grab my bag from its hook and step over to the hall closet where I hid my cash. I would have stuffed it in my sock drawer, like a normal kid, but Michael and Max would have found it there in five seconds — they’d never think to look in the family closet. As soon as I open the door, Dad’s work bag falls out, and his gigantic key chain clinks against the ground. I suck in a breath, waiting to hear him stir upstairs. After a few seconds, he doesn’t.

I stand on a folding chair, almost collapsing it when I step too close to the back of the seat. I curse, then regain my balance and stick my arm to the back of the high closet shelf, letting loose a sigh of relief when my fingers brush my old beat-up wallet.

When I pull my arm back out, my fingers brush a box. I curse at Mom for shoving boxes of junk all over the place in the name of keeping a clean living room. The folding chair creaks, and as I reach down to steady myself, I knock the box off the shelf, spilling its contents everywhere.

TWENTY-TWO

I
scramble down from the chair and start to put everything back. There’s a bunch of random stuff — a faded movie ticket, a worn out twist-tie, a hospital bracelet so tiny it can only be from one of our births.

Then I spot the crinkled edge of a photograph — an old-fashioned print. It’s of me as a little kid, sitting on the grass in a cotton summer dress, fine hair still faintly curly, my fingers bearing a hint of baby pudge.

In the photo, preschooler-me tosses an apple in the air. On the back of the picture, Mom’s handwriting says, “Apple picking, Merrin, 4 years old.”

Mom has every picture ever taken of the three of us printed, catalogued, and filed in albums that line the bookshelf in our living room. It’s something my grandfather, who was in the internment camps, made her promise to do, she told me once. The government seized all the Supers’ computers when they shoved them into the camps, and most of them never recovered the files.

When we were little, we loved to leaf through the albums. I could narrate my infancy and toddlerhood just from having seen the snapshots. But I have never seen this picture. I look like I’m two instead of four, so miniature next to Dad’s shoe planted on the ground beside me.

The grass pokes up around my bare legs, and the path behind me stretches on and on, out of frame, lined by thin-trunked trees. It’s the apple orchard, I realize, the one we’ve gone to every year, except this one, when I made excuse after excuse why I couldn’t go. Why I had to hang out with Elias instead.

Mom must have taken this photo. She’s the photographer in the family, or at least, she was until we all pushed our indignant palms into the lens — me first, and then, more quickly, the boys. The oval leaves of the apple trees, browned at the edges, flutter down diagonally in the background. Even that young, I must have been so happy to feel that wind on my face.

In the photo, I’m tossing an apple in the air. Mom’s gotten such a clear shot that it looks like the apple’s not even moving. I lean in to take one last look and realize — there’s no movement to that apple. None. No blur at all. Which would mean that Mom had a really fast shutter speed. Except for how blurred the wind has made the leaves in the background.

My thumb senses a little bump in the back corner of the picture where I’m holding it. I lift it and see a tiny rectangular sticker: “Hub submission 497870c.”

What would the Hub have wanted with this? And why would Mom have given it to them? I shove it in my bag.

I pick up the box, which lays overturned and empty on the floor, and start tossing the stuff back in. My nails hit the inside base in my rush to stuff everything back in there, and the solid surface shifts down, ever so slightly.

There’s a false bottom to this box.

I wedge my nails into the sliver of an opening, breaking one of them. It still doesn’t pull up. I swear and suck at my fingertip, then try again to wedge it into the gap and pry up the false bottom. The space underneath is so shallow that it would be impossible for the casual looker to realize that any of the box’s space was missing. Inside is a single file folder, about an eighth of an inch thick. The top tab is labeled, “Grey, M — 497870.”

It’s a damn paper file.

My hands shake so hard now. I will them to steady so the papers inside won’t fall out onto the floor. Every paper reads in stark black-and-white.

Mom must have made a copy of this folder and smuggled it out.

The cover page reads:
“Testing Group (in order of age): Merrin Grey, Britton Murdock, Matthew Grimm, Helen Summers, Addison Parker, Daniel Suresh, Erik Prince, Sarah Danvers, Rebecca Banner, Elias VanDyne.”

My name was highlighted — I can tell from the light gray sweep over it — but all I can see is the names that surround it: Sarah Danvers, a One who I heard, when she was young, could stretch her body but not control it or bring it back into shape once she did; Britton Murdock, whose amplified hearing went so out of control, drove her so crazy, they say she drowned herself when she was eight. Daniel. Leni. Elias.

I flip to the next page, and my heart races. I can’t tear my eyes away from the chart headed, “Subject: Merrin Grey — 5 years old — Spontaneous lightness of body.” The words “transfer of powers” are underlined three times. There is a subparagraph that says, “Testing will attempt to enable transfer of powers to independently animate subjects.”

Humans. They wanted me to try to make people go light as well as apples.

The top of the sheet right below mine reads, “Subject: Elias VanDyne.” There’s a picture of a tall, scrawny little boy, tufts of hair poking up every which way, thick-rimmed glasses, mouth half-curved up in a grin. Dimples. My Elias, eleven years ago. Happy.

I flip the page again. A lump forms in my throat when I read the classification behind the name: “Subject -— Helen Summers — 6 years old — Regeneration.” I shake my head — this has to be a mistake. Indestructible is what Leni is not.

Then, from all the way in the back of the file, out falls a contact sheet of photographs. It’s marked: “Testing Overseer: Katherine Grey.” I gasp at what I see next.

A time-lapse photo of a limp, sleeping, kindergarten-aged Leni going from sliced on the forearm to completely healed in — I add up the seconds — a minute and a half. And that’s just for a little kid.

Maybe this isn’t the same Helen Summers — this can’t be our Leni — although the flaming hair and pale skin splashed with freckles is too much of a coincidence. But something about this must be wrong. Leni’s not indestructable. At least, not without Daniel. On her own, she’s only combustible. Pretty rare power, actually. The only other person I know that can do that is…

Mom. Mom’s combustible. But she never burns. Another picture drops out. Mom with Leni sitting on her lap, Leni’s fragile arms slung around her neck, her face nuzzling into Mom’s. Happy. Relaxed. Mom smiles, too, if a bit more distantly. I wonder, with an ache, if there are any pictures of Mom and me at that age doing something like this.

My heart pains when I remember — Leni lost her mom around this age. Probably right before this, from the way she clings to Mom in the photo.

I can’t decide whether to be most horrified that Mom was the one who tested Leni; that the Hub sedated a six-year-old girl and sliced up her arms to see how fast they could get her to heal; or — possibly the craziest part of this whole thing — Leni used to be indestructible. No mention of the combustibility. Now, she’s combustible with no sign of the indestructibility.

What did they do to her? And how much did Mom have to do with it? Is it possible — even theoretically — that she could have swapped powers with Mom?

My stomach turns, realizing I’m about to see Leni again. Can I ever look at her the same way again, knowing what I know? Does she remember any of it? Does she know the woman who comforted her is my mother?

I slam the lid of the box down and haul myself off the floor. I balance myself on the seat of the folding chair again and shove the box back to the spot where I found it. With one last look at the house, which two days ago felt so full and now couldn’t be more empty, I duck out the front door, closing it softly behind me.

I jog down the street toward the intersection I know Leni and Daniel will pass on the way to the house.

Over the decades-old suburban rooftops, the sun finally begins to rise over Nebraska. The pink clouds sprawling out against a deep purple expanse reflect in a neighborhood’s worth of solar panels, giving the illusion that they’re just within my reach.

Daniel’s car turns the corner. “Where are we going?” His voice slices through the air, sharp and fast, as the driver’s side window rolls down.

“The Hub,” I say, scooting into the back seat and clicking my seatbelt into place.

“How do you know that’s where he is?” Leni asks.

I shake my head and swipe more tears off my cheek. I can’t form words.

“What did he say, Merrin?” Leni’s voice wavers.

“He… There was a letter and…” The more I try to talk about it, the more I feel myself losing control. I swallow, shake my head fast. “I just know. Okay?”

Daniel’s hand hovers over the shift, hesitating to put it into drive. “Merrin, I don’t know if we really should be…”

“Okay,” Leni says. She presses her lips into a hard line, looks at Daniel, and then stares out the front windshield as we drive off.