One (4 page)

SIX

O
n the drive over to Elias’s house, I take a lot of deep breaths through my nose. I feel like there’s no space in my lungs, or maybe there’s no breathable air in the car. I try blasting something metal with a heavy drum line through my speakers, but that only makes my thoughts skitter around in my head, banging on my brain and making my limbs jittery.

I roll the window down and try to steady my arm on the door. The sun beats down on it, warming my chilled skin with its light. A whisper of humidity lingers in the air, a fleeting remnant of summer. It weighs everything down.

Exactly what I need right now.

My breathing slows, and I can think again. Elias’s house for studying. Two other kids there. Pizza. Totally normal. Nothing to worry about.

I believe these self-reassurances while I drive through the suburb where everyone in Superior lives, where the houses all crowd together like an army lying in wait. When we cross through the suburb with the newest, largest houses, on the outskirts of town, my mind goes wild again. Where does this guy live?

I follow the caravan — Elias in his car, and Leni and Daniel riding together — over some rolling hills until we’re surrounded by cornfields. The sun makes them look golden too, and for a minute, I really love Nebraska. Even though I still think I would love it more if I could fly over and out of it.

I wish I had given Dad Elias’s address when I talked to him or even known one myself. No one really lives out this way, and there are no malls or groceries or anything out here, so I’ve actually never driven down this road out of Superior. Which is pathetic.

Anyway, Dad’s text sounded so freaking happy that I was doing anything with anyone after school, I didn’t want to kill his buzz. He didn’t even ask Elias’s name, which means he failed the overprotective parent test when I probably most needed him to pass it.

Elias’s bright blue sports car and Leni’s rattling station wagon turn into a long gravel driveway, which, when I check my odometer, is actually just a mile or so from our school. A sprawling ranch stretches out at the end of it. The central part of the house has the frame of an old farmhouse, but it’s been given a facelift to look far more modern. Aside from the slick black solar panels that line the roof, there are long extensions on either side of it, each of them about the width of our little house back in the Superior suburbs. All the outer walls are made of glass, and it almost doesn’t even look like a home — more like an office building or a lab. The dipping sun glints off its surface, and the whole damn house looks like it’s winking at me.

The driveway outside his house, protected by a large, domed carport, is the size of a small parking lot, which it certainly looks like right now. One of the seven cars is Leni’s and one’s mine, which leaves five cars belonging to Elias’s family. And they’re all late model and high model — I don’t even recognize some of the symbols they bear.

Elias’s family is swimming in cash.

“Okay, there, Merrin?” Elias looks up at me after bending down to plug his car into the charger strip, a fancy one that’s built into the concrete instead of the wire-jumbled hack job Dad rigged on the side of our garage. Once again, I can’t make anything come out of my mouth.

When I finally pull myself together, I swallow and say, “Never really driven out this way, I guess.”

Leni and Daniel are halfway up the driveway. They stop at the door to hug a middle-aged lady who I assume is Elias’s mom. Her cardigan matches the sweater underneath, and she’s wearing khaki pants and loafers. She’s even got a string of pearls and a perfect bob. When I get close to her, she smells so good, flowery and sweet, that I can almost see the perfume wafting off of her.

Along with the cash-swimming, Elias’s family also looks like a freaking department store ad.

Elias waits for me to walk all the way up to the house and then falls in step beside me. He puts his arm out behind my back, guiding me up to introduce me without actually touching me. In theory, I really appreciate him not being presumptuous, but as he walks closer to me, that stupid warm buzz is back. My instincts tell me to slow, half a step even, to make his arm touch my back.

Instead, I speed up.

“Mom? This is Merrin,” Elias says, and his mom flashes me a smile with the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen, especially on a lady her age.

“Merrin…” She’s still smiling.

She wants my last name. Okay, I’ll play. “Merrin Grey,” I say, trying hard to maintain eye contact with her.

“Yes, we’ve heard about you. Just transferred to Nelson?” Her smile continues but looks more inflexible.

“Yeah, I…”

“Hey, I want to introduce her to Dad. Is he on his way?”

“Oh, honey. He called and said he’d be home very late tonight.”

“He’s home very late every night lately,” Elias says under his breath. He clears his throat and turns his head, but I don’t miss the frustrated shake of his head. “Anyway, we’re swamped tonight, Mom,” Elias says, and he brushes the outside of my shoulder, so lightly, to signal that I should go in. I feel his touch across my shoulder blades, down my back, and in the base of my spine.

Yeah, there’s a buzz. But what the hell is it? Whatever it is, and as much as I hate to admit it, I really like it.

When Elias crosses over the threshold ahead of me, a pleasant voice rings, “Welcome home, Elias. Who’s your friend?”

“Oh! Rosie, meet Merrin.”

I look around and don’t see a soul.

“Welcome, Merrin,” the voice says.

Then it dawns on me. My mouth gapes open. “Rosie is…your house?”

Elias chuckles. “Yeah. R-O-S-I-E. Stands for ‘Residential and Office Service and Identification Engineer.’ Mom’s working on it for the Hub. The one over there doesn’t talk, yet, but we get the prototype. You’ll get used to her.”

I seriously doubt that.

The inside of the house gleams nearly as much as the outside. Not a scuff anywhere, not a smudge on a mirror or the perfect, shining glass walls. I smell something warm and yeasty and completely wonderful. Of course — Rosie’s great at pizza.

His mom calls behind us, “Mr. Davis hitting you with the homework already?”

Elias calls back, “Yeah. Be down for dinner.” We head down the hallway to the right where I can already hear Leni and Daniel settling in.

Elias’s room feels more comfortable than the rest of the house. Instead of white walls against mahogany trim on wood floors, his room has high-piled carpet and posters on the walls. Giant throw pillows are scattered on the floor. There are a couple sweatshirts strewn at the foot of the bed, and I like it. It makes me feel at home.

He settles himself on his bed but doesn’t offer me a place to sit, so I just stand. Now I’m only a head taller than him.

“Can she… Can Rosie hear what we say?” I ask.

“Only if you ask her to listen,” Elias says as he grabs a folding chair and sets it out for me. “You have to address her.”

Somehow that information makes me feel better. I sit down and start pulling my tablet and reader out of my bag.

“So,” Leni says from the desk chair, “Why did you transfer?”

Normally I would have frozen at a question like this, but her smile is so genuine and she looks so much more normal now, especially since she changed out of those ridiculous white shoes and pleated skirt and into yoga pants and a hoodie.

But I still can’t come up with an answer, not one that sounds normal anyway. So I glance over at Elias.

He jumps in, saving me. “Leni, can you show her your, uh…”

“Wait, what? She’s a One?” She turns her head up to look at me. “That’s a late transfer.” She’s still smiling, but her look is even more knowing now. I’m in some club of secrets that I really, really don’t want to be in. Even if it does mean, for the first time in my life, that I’m — well,
in
.

He eyes me meaningfully. “I didn’t say she was a One. But she’s spent all this time at Superior as a Normal and come out relatively unscathed. And now she’s here.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. This is what he thinks “unscathed” looks like?

“And she thinks I’m creeping on her, but really I’m just trying to be nice.” Did I see his cheeks flush red?

“But, um…” I interrupt. “I am. A One. My parents…or I thought…maybe a second would show. Obviously it didn’t.” I try to keep my face from falling. “No big deal.”

Except that it’s the biggest deal ever.

“Oh. Yeah.” Leni nods knowingly. Her eyes aren’t sparkling quite so much now, but still she turns around, unzips her hoodie and lets her shirt dip down off her shoulder an inch. An ugly, puckered, white and pink scar, about two inches wide, snakes from her neck, across her shoulder, and down the back of her arm.

“What…” I ask, my head shaking, suddenly feeling sorry for this bright girl I hated only seconds ago.

“I have combustibility. But not indestructibility or regeneration. Or that skin-oozing-plasma thing that some combustible Supers have. Even though that’s slower, it would have been… Anyway. Learned that the hard way in second grade,” she explains, her smile the same sad smile that Elias first gave me a few days ago when we first met. The idea of flames ripping through my flesh, and it not healing or protecting itself… I fight against a horrified shudder.

“Whoa,” I say, a lump rising in my throat. The question’s out of my mouth before I can keep myself in check. “How do you keep from — you know — ” and I make a flaming motion with my hand in the air. “When you’re upset, or whatever?” I finish in a lowered voice.

“Oh,” says Leni, “You know. Antidepressants. They tend to, uh…dull things.”

Everyone’s quiet, watching me.

Daniel starts the round of nervous laughter, changing the subject. I wonder how often he comes to her rescue like this, how many times he’s saved her from comments by jerks like me.

“Are you the only three?” I ask.

Now Leni’s mouth turns down even more. “There are other Ones, but they won’t admit it. We’re the only Ones we know of around here who have kept trying.”

A wave of intensity throbs through my chest. I’m not the only one who hasn’t stopped practicing my One in my free time?

I turn to Leni, asking the question that I don’t want to put words to. “Wait, so you…you still can…”

“Yeah.” She smiles, and there is a glisten to her eyes. She kind of rubs her fingers together, then flings them open. I see the hint of a dancing orange glow hover above her whole hand, centered on her palm. One second later, she winces, sucks in a breath, and claps her hand shut, putting out the fire. She shows me the redness of her fingertips and the scald in the dip of her hand. “Still hoping the Second will manifest kind of. I really don’t have any fingerprints left. So, if it never does, I can always turn to a life of crime.”

“That’s my girl,” says Elias, and her eyes turn from sad to grateful.

Yeah. I hate this girl, even if I really, really like her.

I shake my head, trying to distract myself. “So, wait,” I say, looking over at Daniel, who’s sitting on the floor against the wall, absorbed with something on his cell. “What can you do?” I silently scold myself for talking about these Ones like they’re a freaking parlor trick. I would have spit at anyone who suggested the same to me.

“I’m indestructible.” The tone in his voice is weird, and I’m not sure if he’s trying to make a joke.

“Really? But nothing else?” Every kid I know who’s indestructible also has super-strength or could combust or was super-fast. If Daniel’s telling the truth, his One is like a Second — the physical traits that make the Ones possible.

“Yeah. Pretty lame, huh? I’ve cut myself more times than any of the depressed emos or cheerleaders here, and nothing.” He stretches out his arms, insides up, to show me. He’s right. His skin is completely flawless.

“Shut up about the cheerleaders,” Leni says. Her eyes dart between the floor and her hands, which she twists and untwists over and over again. I can tell that she’s torn between fitting in and being a One, between being loyal to her Normal friends or to this ragtag group of Ones. Whether she wants to take a natural place in the world or fight to make her own.

I’ve never done anything but fight, never even imagined another option. But then again, I’m not like Leni. I’m not beautiful or sweet or smiley. Even if I should be on antidepressants, I’m not.

I’m just Merrin. And my only option is to get that Second. Because the only way I’ll ever be worth anything is if I figure out how to fly.

We don’t study any calc. When Rosie announces, “Fifteen minutes till dinner,” the three of them flip open their readers, and their styluses fly across their tablets, working the problems. I follow suit, plopping myself down on the floor.

Daniel switches off his reader no more than 10 minutes later, and I’m next to finish. He grins up at me, eyes flashing again, and I can’t help but smile back. “Brought us a genius, here, man. And you said she’s a sophomore?”

Elias snorts and looks up at him, his eyes darting to me first. “Your ego’s so huge you don’t think it’s possible that an underclassman is smarter than you?”

“No,” he says, still smiling. “Just because she finished almost as fast as me doesn’t mean she got the answers right.”

“He probably hacked his tablet to work the problems for him,” Leni says, flipping the cover back over her reader.

Daniel snorts. “Please. I could do that, but then I’d have nothing to do while you losers take your sweet time.”

Well, I’m impressed. It took me days to hack one thing about the ID file on my cuff, and I’m not sure it wasn’t a mistake.

Leni smiles at him with an unmistakable fondness, then hoists herself out of her chair and looks down at Elias, who’s still scribbling. “Gotta go,” she says. “Family game night.” She rolls her eyes and smacks Daniel on the head. “Coming, genius? Or are you going to make Merrin drive you home?”

Daniel gives me one look and says, “Nah, she’s had enough of me for one night. And maybe the extra few minutes will keep you from the ‘pick a Monopoly piece’ drama.”

She laughs, the sound of it like a bell. Real, not like the stuttered laugh she gave off at school.