Bouncer Post #52

Title: ONE
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction
Word Count: 76,000 words

Query:

Sixteen-year-old Merrin Grey can float, but she can’t make herself
fly. When almost everyone else is a Super, with at least two powers,
or a Normal, with none, being a One is the worst kind of in-between.

All Merrin wants to do is land an internship at the Supers’ Biotech
Hub, where she might finally figure out how to fix herself. But when
she meets Elias VanDyne, son of the Vice President of the Hub – and
another One – all of her plans fly out the window. Literally. When the
two of them touch their Ones combine to make them fly, and when
they’re not soaring over the Nebraska cornfields, they’re busy falling
for each other.

When Elias disappears, leaving only a panicked note, Merrin knows
exactly where he’s been taken. The Hub’s been conducting experiments
on him since he was a little kid, and now it’s up to her to save him.
But if she chooses to break into the Hub to save the boy who helps her
soar, she’ll have to abandon her dreams of ever flying solo – of ever
being more than a One.

First 250:

Most Ones start with an ability everyone thinks will turn into a
superpower. A really fast runner might have muscles that can’t take
the strain after a few seconds. Or a kid who can stretch an arm out
really far will wait days for it to pull back into place. They put up
with getting teased at Superhero High, waiting for their Second – in
those cases, enhanced muscle power or elasticity - to show up. While
they do, that One power starts to fade. There are still shimmers of
it, but after a while the kid quits trying and the One fizzles into
nothingness.

Then their parents ship them off to Normal High, like mine did.

Here’s my secret: I never quit trying.

Most nights at dusk and some mornings before sunrise, I practice. I
push myself off the ground, telling my body to go weightless, and
hover there, an inch, two, six, then a foot. I stay there for seconds,
then minutes.

I can’t generate enough tension between my body and the air to take a
step - can’t even make myself drift. I’d give anything to be able to
float along like a freaking ghost.

For a long time, I tried to move. Once I tried so hard my muscles
strained, then burned, then ached, then trembled, and I hovered there
behind the shed, weeping and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, until
I heard Dad come out the back door to look for me. Then I collapsed on
the grass.

That was almost a year ago.