One (One Universe)

by LeighAnn Kopans

  And then we drove into the downtown area.

  A large yellow sign reading “Welcome to Oak Ridge” greeted us, bearing the symbol of an atom surrounded by ellipses. A few kids on skateboards hung around the main square park, doing kick flips and ollies on the stairs. I watched one try to nail a landing, but he slipped instead. I sucked in my breath, thinking for sure he’d land on his butt. But the board flipped on its own at the last minute, a tiny jet of fire moving it to land beneath the kid’s feet.

  I gasped. It was a freaking hover board!

  A thrill of excitement made my skin prickle with goose bumps. Maybe Quantum Technologies wasn’t just a research facility. Maybe this whole trip wouldn’t be completely wasted. If I could bring one of those back with me to school...

  Mom stopped at the light in the middle of the downtown area and I scanned the rest of the street. A young couple picnicked under one of the large oak trees, while across the green, a kid was playing catch with her golden retriever. I smiled as the dog leaped and bounded after the ball.

  And then ran right through a big blue mailbox like it wasn’t there, catching the ball on the other side. The dog’s plumed tail wagged frantically as it trotted back to the little girl. Through the mailbox again.

  I pressed a hand to my eyes. No. Not possible. I looked again and the image of the dog flickered briefly, pixelating before it snapped back together.

  Oh my god. A hologram.

  “Mom?” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “Yes, dear?” her eyes stayed focused on the line of slow moving traffic through town, but a muscle jumped in her jaw.

  “What is this place?” my voice quivered and she looked up with a small smile. The one she used when she was trying not to freak out herself.

  “Oak Ridge is a very…interesting place. Quantum Technologies develops a lot of really new inventions you won’t see anywhere else.”

  My head had started to pound and I rubbed the back of my neck. My headache was back. But a headache was the least of my worries right now.

  I still hadn’t told Mom about the weird flashes of knowledge that popped into my head, or being able to solve problems I didn’t even know I’d been thinking about.

  What was the air-speed velocity of that swallow’s flight? Ten meters per second.

  It was amazing and scary at the same time. I knew things I had no idea I’d even learned. Had I read it somewhere once, and now it was popping into my brain at random? Unexpected photographic memory maybe?

  But whatever it was, it was freaky enough that the metal security robots patrolling the sidewalk and talking to the people sitting at the outdoor café almost seemed normal. Like dining with freaking Cylons was perfectly ordinary.

  I winced as I got another brain jolt and blurted, “Mom, why did they design the robot’s ankle bolts like that? The angle’s all wrong.” With just one glance, a series of images and plans had popped into my head and shown me the bolts should be cut differently to optimize movement.

  A whimper escaped my lips as panic reached up and tightened the muscles in my shoulders.

  Mom’s eyebrows rose to her hairline and she squeezed my knee. “It’s okay, Lexie. Relax. Everything’s going to be all right. We just need to get to your dad’s and we’ll explain.” She followed the signs toward Quantum Technologies headquarters, but turned off the main road into a small subdivision of post-war track housing before I could get a glimpse of the facility.

  She pulled up in front of a shabby ranch-style house and parked the car. I stared at the empty flower boxes and overgrown front garden and tried to breathe. The place looked abandoned.

  “This is Dad’s house?” My voice rose in shock. Evidently, his neglect didn’t just extend to his only child.

  Mom’s lips thinned but she nodded. “Just remember your dad’s very busy at work. He doesn’t have time to focus on gardening.”

  “He could have gotten a Cylon to do it,” I muttered.

  I pushed open the car door and a wave of sticky heat instantly turned my dark hair frizzy and coated my skin with sweat. I tugged at the strap of my tank top and slowly turned in a circle to check out the rest of the neighborhood. It was full of houses just like my dad’s, though most of them looked neat and tidy. Half a dozen kids played basketball in a driveway down the block, but otherwise, the hot, humid afternoon was silent. Even the trees felt like they were asleep, their leaves heavy and still.

  “Grab your bag.” Mom struggled up the front walk with my suitcase. She’d packed light, just an overnight bag, and I frowned at it sitting on the back seat before gathering the rest of my things.

  Mom grabbed the key from under the front mat and went inside. A bead of sweat trickled down my back and I squared my shoulders to follow her. Then I paused. She knew where the key to Dad’s house was? Robot security guards weren’t the only freaky things going on in this town.

  Inside, the house seemed nice enough, if a little bare. The front door opened directly into the living room, with a long hallway off to one side leading to what I assumed were the bedrooms.

  “Your room is the last door on the left.” Mom glanced around the house and shook her head before dumping my suitcase on the floor and heading back outside for the last load.

  It smelled of cologne and stale air, like Dad was only here often enough to shower. Maybe he was. Yet another thing I didn’t know about him. I tucked my hair behind my ears and tightened my grip on my bag. I wasn’t going to find my room just standing here.

  The first door was open, and a quick peek inside at the navy bedspread and sparse decorations confirmed it was my dad’s bedroom. My heart did a little flip at the picture of me and Mom on his nightstand. The next room was empty, though it seemed to be a decent size. Might be nice for an office or something. I didn’t pay it too much attention; I was already drawn to the last door on the left.

  My hand shook as I turned the knob and pushed open the door. I don’t know what I expected, but it looked just like any other room. Full sized bed, a large wooden dresser, plain vanilla walls. Empty of personality. Dad obviously hadn’t gone to any trouble to make me feel welcome here. To make his daughter feel at home. I tried to ignore the disappointment clogging my throat and dumped my suitcase on the bed.

  Then I heard Dad’s voice floating in from the hallway. I was tempted to wait for him to come to me, but instead I squared my shoulders and headed toward the kitchen.

  For more information on Jamie Grey and her books, please visit http://www.jamiegreybooks.com/

  Wavecrossed

  by Andrea Colt

  Available Summer 2013

  Chapter 1

  Midnight is the perfect time to eat a turtle.

  Submerged in an icy river, I focused briefly on the thought, then let it go. My brother should be close enough to hear, and it would make him come running, so to speak. Mentally, I grinned.

  My lungs craved air, so I flicked my hind flippers to propel me upwards. As my head broke the surface, I spun to scan both sides of the forested shore. No human faces peered back in the moonlight, but I pivoted in the water to check again as I sucked in a breath. Not that a nighttime fisherman would see anything odder than a seal poking her head out of a coastal Maine river—which wasn’t a totally crazy sight, though most seals kept to saltwater—but it wasn’t random humans I was worried about. It was the other kind, the kind who knew what I was. The lying-in-wait kind.

  But if anyone lurked in the shadows, I couldn’t see them. Or, I noted as I drew another breath, smell them. So I was safe. Probably.

  Letting my muscles relax, I lifted my nose further into the air to let the crisp breeze ruffle my whiskers. I spun in the water again, this time for fun. Despite the danger, I loved these nights, these escapes. For a while I could lose myself in motion and instinct, forget the problems waiting for me ashore. Here, I didn’t have to pretend to be a normal teenage girl, didn’t have to smother my anger and growing desperation. Here, weightless in the river, the world felt right.
For a moment, at least.

  The water around me shifted as my brother surfaced two feet away. The seal version of my twin was darker than my dappled cloud coloring; he was gunmetal spotted with shadow, his eyes round wells of midnight as he huffed out a breath.

  Cass, you can’t eat turtles. Brennan’s thought was tinged with outrage. What would Nicky say?

  Nicky was the snapping turtle Brennan had found injured in a pond when we were in middle school. He’d taken him home and kept him in the basement bathtub for a week until his leg healed. Now whenever we met a snapping turtle, Brennan claimed it was Nicky’s uncle, or grandmother, or sister-in-law.

  Nicky can’t talk, so he wouldn’t say anything. I dove, abandoning the moonlit surface. Water pressed against my fur and skin; from below came the faint clicks and rustlings of crayfish scuttling over rocks.

  The bottom of the river beckoned, a fascinating murky dark, and as always a part of me wanted to paint it. But if I tried, the result would probably look like a squid threw up on canvas—oils could never capture the life and motion of an inky midnight river.

  In any case, I didn’t paint anymore. Not even in human form. I’d won schoolwide awards for it freshman year, but now I wouldn’t touch a brush if you paid me.

  Brennan fell in beside me as I swam upstream.

  Maybe turtles can talk. Like we do.

  Mind-speaking reptiles? I snorted, bubbles betraying my mirth. I started to tell Brennan how ridiculous that was, then paused. Three years ago, when I thought I was just an ordinary high school freshman, I’d have called the idea of creatures like us ridiculous too.

  They can’t talk to us, I pointed out instead.

  Brennan swam above me, a shadow against the pale surface, then butted my shoulder with his snout.

  Well, in any case, selkies don’t eat turtles. Weaving through the water, he sped on ahead.

  I frowned. Says who? Not our parents, for sure. They found the ways of our people too painful to talk about. And in the two and a half years since Brennan and I discovered the truth about ourselves, we’d never met another selkie.

  Without opposable thumbs, how would they get through the shell? Brennan’s logic floated back to me as he somersaulted through the water.

  They could eat them while in human form. Turtle soup is a delicacy in France, right?

  Gross. Brennan paused to nose under a submerged log. I surfaced to snatch another breath, then ducked safely down before continuing upriver. My whiskers caught vibrations through the water: I sensed fish milling about below, tasty swimming morsels, but they’d get a pass tonight. It was late.

  After another thirty seconds, I realized my brother had fallen behind. I paused, twisting in the water, but the moonlight only penetrated a few inches; I couldn’t see him in the darkness. The river’s weak current tugged at me, the flow undisturbed by another seal-sized body nearby.

  I sent a thought out like a beacon: Come on, Brennan, let’s go home. Tomorrow’s shift is going to suck even more if we don’t get any sleep. We were scheduled to work the Sunday brunch rush at the Golden Fish, our older brother Declan’s restaurant. I’d rather roll in needles, but skipping wasn’t an option.

  In my mind, I heard a monumental sigh. Then, hardly more than a shudder of a thought:

  What if we just left, tonight?

  My stomach clenched. Whirling, I swam upstream without answering. Maybe Brennan hadn’t meant me to hear, and didn’t realize I had—sometimes the line between musing and directed thought was thin. Usually we laughed at apparent non sequitors from stray thoughts, but this one wasn’t funny.

  Selkies belonged at sea. I knew that. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to bid Granite Harbor, Maine, a thoroughly un-fond farewell. Frankly, staying on land sucked. It meant rules and bargains and danger, and being forced not to spit upon faces that desperately begged to be spit upon.

  But selkies couldn’t become their true selves without their sealskins, and my parents and older brother were trapped apart from theirs, forced to stay ashore in human form. Until three years ago Brennan and I had been trapped too; we hadn’t even known of our true natures then, so we’d grown up like normal kids, or near enough.

  Now that we knew the truth, and had our sealskins—a gift with a price I hated to think about—we should be at sea. It was unnatural for selkies to stay on land. But though Brennan and I were free, the rest of our family wasn’t. I couldn’t leave them behind, not without a fight—and despite his possibly-unintentional comment, I knew Brennan wouldn’t either. If I looked back, he’d be following.

  He’d better be following.

  When I reached the stretch of bank where we’d left our clothes I finally turned to check, but no torpedo-shaped shadow darkened the water.

  Brennan? I called mentally, but there was no response. My heart seized. Brennan? If thoughts could sound shrill, I’d certainly accomplished it. For an agonized second I thought he’d left us behind after all, but then I heard a faint snap, as if of teeth.

  Just let me eat this catfish, will you?

  At my brother’s happy distracted tone, relief surged in like the tide. Brennan was my twin, and my best friend. My only friend, if you wanted to split hairs; we couldn’t trust any of our classmates with the truth about ourselves. Brennan still went to parties, but I found it next to impossible to socialize with classmates when my paranoid side branded the word THREAT invisibly on their foreheads. If any of them found out what we really were … Disaster. So if Brennan ever did leave, I’d be alone in my fight.

  But he was still here, and I exhaled a bit, bubbles trickling from my nose up to the surface. I let Brennan enjoy his fish; I’d make sure the shore was safe.

  Edging toward the bank, I raised my head out of the water and scanned the woods carefully. This was always the most dangerous part of our nighttime swims. What if someone had come across our haul-out spot while we were downstream? What if they’d found our clothes? What if they were waiting for Brennan and me to emerge and change back into human form so they could snatch our sealskins?

  That’s what happened to my parents long ago, before I was even born: a human stole their sealskins and hid them so my parents couldn’t return to the sea. They’d had no choice but to follow him home and do as they were told. Two decades later, they and Declan were still slaves, in a country of people who thought they’d eradicated slavery.

  And they’d stay that way unless I freed them.

  Earlier I’d made sure we entered the river on the upwind bank, so now I inhaled deeply, my nose sorting scents: tangy pine needles, rotting fall leaves, a faint trace of fox scat. Nothing human besides our own belongings. I counted silently to thirty, but heard nothing beyond the normal rustling of small birds. As far as I could tell, we were alone. Time to trudge back to my landlubber life.

  Bracing myself, I started the change.

  Bone-deep hurt stabbed my body everywhere, stretching and cracking and reshaping my limbs and flesh. When I was ten I’d broken an arm, and it felt like that—except all my bones at once, while my skin was raked by sandpaper. I kept going, and after an agonizing seven seconds—Brennan and I had timed each other once—my form solidified into one with legs and arms and breasts and hair.

  And, thank God, thumbs. Lack of such miraculous appendages was one of the main downsides to my aquatic form. I never knew how awesome thumbs were until I tried to scratch my nose as a seal.

  I used my lovely thumbs and fingers to grab for my sealskin, now floating like a cape beside me. Still underwater, I wrapped it around my torso before kicking my legs to take me to shore. The shallows here were little more than a two-foot-wide submerged ledge between the deeper part of the river and the earthen bank. I pulled myself up onto the ledge, crouching, and set my feet on the slick rock. The water here was just deep enough to shelter my shoulders in my curled-up position. Steadying myself with one hand on an adjacent boulder, I stood.

  Heavy. That first moment out of the water always felt like being saddle
d with a backpack of granite. Air wasn’t interested in supporting my weight. Though the now thigh-deep water was cold enough to turn a normal human’s toes blue in twenty seconds—it was October, after all, and winter showed up early on Maine’s doorstep—I stayed stock still. My gaze raked the shadowed underbrush for dangers I might have missed from the water, and my ears strained for the sound of a footstep. My muscles were tensed, ready to hurl me back into the river, but after a few moments, the night was still quiet. All clear.

  Bending over, I found two smooth river stones and rapped them four times against each other underwater—the signal to let Brennan know it was safe. Our mind-speech only worked in seal form.

  As I clambered onto the dirt bank, Brennan surfaced mid-river, whiskers gleaming white. Waving, I slipped behind a thick, squat fir tree and found my backpack, nestled among the branches close to the trunk. I pulled out my clothes, then reluctantly unwrapped myself.

  Once I was dressed, my fingers lingered on my sealskin, this strange key to my secret self. Growing up, my sealskin—and I—had been another’s possession, but it was mine now. I was mine now.

  I’d never give that up again, not for anything.

  To the untutored eye my sealskin looked like a dark, misshapen towel. The skin side was rough but supple, the reverse sleek and padded with guard hairs. There were no claws or a face or anything creepy like that, just an amorphous shape roughly twice as long as it was wide.

  Home, I thought. My sealskin was home to me, more so than my bedroom in my parents’ house, or even the ocean. Contact with my sealskin made me feel strong. Cleared my thoughts. I’d been anxious and tightly wound this afternoon, in a mood Brennan classily termed megabitch, but now that I’d had a good swim I felt steadier.

  I folded my sealskin, smoothing down the guard hairs gently, possessively. My whole freedom was tied up in this thing. It killed me to part from it, stow it in one of a dozen hiding places we’d found in the area, but we couldn’t take our sealskins back to the house. It wasn’t safe.