The Odds of Lightning

by Jocelyn Davies

  “You meant to do that?” said Will. “Is juggling part of your summer curriculum?”

  “Shut up, math geek.”

  “See ya, Keebler.”

  “Yeah, see ya never.” Luella picked up the apple, rubbed it on her shirt, and skipped off toward a group of kids wearing lots of black. “Also, wrong elves!” she called over her shoulder. “Those are the cookie elves! You mean Snap, Crackle, Pop.”

  “Too hard to say,” Will called without missing a beat. “You’re Keebler—deal with it.”

  After that, they hung out all the time. It was weird; usually they hung out in a group of the four of them—Will, Luella, Tiny, and Nathaniel—but this was the first time Will could remember when he and Luella had actually hung out alone.

  One afternoon in particular, they had been standing outside the Hunter College theater. The parts had just been announced for Luella’s theater program’s production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

  “Yeeeeeeeeees!” she cried, pumping her fist in the air. “Maggie the Cat! Maggie the Cat!”

  “Is this a good thing?” Will asked, dubious. “Are we happy about this? The cat sounds like a small part.”

  “The cat,” Luella said breathlessly, “is the best”—breath—“part”—wheeze—“in”—cough—“the modern. Literature. Canon.”

  “Wow.”

  “Arguably.”

  “And you don’t even have to memorize any lines. You just get to meow.”

  Luella smacked him on the arm. “Shut up. It’s not a real cat.” She jumped up and down and squealed. “I am happy!”

  “Uh,” said Will. “I bow out at squealing.” He paused. “What are you doing?”

  Luella’s body was twitching and convulsing in the most ridiculous way. She dipped her hips to the right and then to the left, rotating her fists in a counterclockwise direction. The bottom half of her legs seemed disconnected from the top half.

  “What,” Will said as they began walking outside, “was that?”

  “What?” Luella said.

  “That thing you just did?”

  “My happy dance?”

  “Was that that thing with your hips and your knees?”

  “My happy dance,” Luella confirmed.

  “Your what now?”

  “Come on—don’t you have one?” They turned a corner and walked out the door and into the daylight. Luella smiled wide, her braces glittering like small diamonds in the sunlight.

  “Uh, no.”

  “That’s so depressing. You have to have one! What do you do when you’re happy?”

  “Uh,” Will said. “I smile? I laugh?”

  “No, no, but what do you do when you’re, like, so happy you’re going to burst?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “I mean, so happy that all your happiness just has nowhere else to go?”

  Will thought for a minute, chewing absently on the inside of his cheek.

  “Yeah, I don’t really get that way so much.”

  Luella flipped her hair over her shoulder. “What? You seem happy sometimes.”

  Will felt himself turning red. “Well, now, I guess. I mean, when we hang out.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to look at him. He took an involuntary step back. She cocked her head and looked him square in the eye. She looked like she was thinking really hard. Will felt like she was maybe trying to guess how many folds were in his temporal lobe.

  He suddenly felt self-conscious. He shouldn’t have said anything.

  “We’re really going to have to work on this,” Luella said finally.

  They flung themselves down on a shady patch of grass in the park. Luella stared at him.

  “Now?” Will asked.

  “Oh sorry, does now not work for you? Are you too busy whining about how depressed you are, like you’re the star of some black-and-white French movie, to have time for trivial things like, I don’t know, self-expression?”

  “Fine, I—”

  “Because I can take out my iCalendar and figure out a time that works for both of us. You know, maybe next Tuesday . . .”

  “Okay, okay, shut up. Now is fine.”

  They got to work. Luella was a demanding coach.

  “What’s up with your arms there?” Luella was asking. “It doesn’t look like you’re happy; it looks like you broke your shoulder.”

  It was lunchtime, and while the rest of the kids in their respective programs were crowded around tables in the cafeteria, Will and Luella had fallen into the habit of bringing their lunch to the park. Secretly, Will was relieved to have a friend like Luella. He was glad to not have to sit with the guys in his program every day, listening to more jokes about his “wiggle in the middle.” They thought it was hilarious. They had even made up this absurd dance about it. At first it was kind of funny, and Will joined in, humoring them, doing the dance with his arms up over his head just so he didn’t have to ask them to stop. But soon the dance got old. It made him feel like he should lose weight or something. It was a relief to hang out with Luella, who didn’t seem to notice. Or care.

  “You said to get height,” he said.

  “Yeah, height as in the soaring heights of bliss, not popping your shoulder out of its socket.” She made a sucking noise with her mouth. “It was a metaphor.”

  “If I popped my shoulder out of its socket, it’d be dislocated, not broken,” Will shot back. “Plus, you have chocolate pudding stuck in your braces.”

  Luella made the sucking noise again. “Shut up.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the attitude of someone who does happy dances on the reg.”

  “Look, I can’t help it if my braces are like a magnetic strip for food and other things.”

  “Other things?” Will sat down, his legs splayed in the grass.

  “Yeah, like toothpaste and stuff.”

  Luella sat down too.

  “Toothpaste is a food.” The corners of Will’s mouth were telling themselves to behave, not to curve up too much.

  “Uh, no. Do you eat toothpaste?”

  “Well, no,” Will started, “but—”

  “Do you rely on it for vital nutrients?”

  “I guess not, but—”

  “Then it’s not a food,” Luella said, waving her hand dismissively.

  A bird walked between them, beat its wings, and then flew a few feet away to where the remains of a cookie lay, unsuspecting. They looked at each other and grinned. Then stopped very suddenly, as if embarrassed that they both thought to do that at the exact same time.

  “I gotta get back,” Will said, standing up, his stomach sinking for reasons that were beyond him. “I have important numbers to crunch.”

  “Yeah, hop to it, math nerd!”

  “Oh, I will, drama geek.”

  “Get your ass in shape, Kingfield,” she said, standing up and brushing off her jeans. “You have to just let go, you know? Forget what other people think and just allow yourself to look a little dumb.” She sucked on her braces again, and this time when she smiled at him, all the chocolate pudding had vanished. “You’re too uptight, is what your problem is,” she said. “You think too much.”

  “And you’re a lunatic,” Will shot back, annoyed.

  “And you,” Luella said, “are my favorite.” She kissed him on the cheek and ran off ahead of him.

  * * *

  Will blinked away the memory. “Yo!” Luella was yelling now, laughing as she made her way across the field to where Will and Nathaniel were kicking the ball around. “Don’t let me distract you!” Too late. Will knew for sure he was red. But somehow he didn’t care.

  Nathaniel

  The three of them lay on the grass in Sheep Meadow, watching clouds roll across the hazy blue sky.

  “Know what’s cool about cumulous clouds?” Nathaniel said.

  “That one looks like a unicorn eating an ice cream cone,” Luella said, pointing.

  “When they’re greenish-blue, like that one over there that’s roll
ing in, it means they’re holding an extremely high amount of water.”

  “That one looks like a polar bear giving another polar bear a piggyback ride.”

  “Lightning originates in cumulonimbus clouds,” Nathaniel said. “Warm air mixes with cold air and creates these atmospheric disturbances that are like collisions of opposite charges in the cloud. Then negatively charged electrons flow down to earth in this downward stroke called a stepped leader. But these positive charges called upward streamers are coming up from the ground at the same time, and when they collide, it causes this massive electrical discharge called a return stroke. What’s interesting”—Luella coughed—“is that’s the only part we see—the luminous flash. It’s going back up, not down, like everyone thinks!”

  “Nathaniel,” Will said. “Why does everything have to have a reason? Why can’t we just appreciate that cloud over there that looks like a T. rex throwing a baseball?”

  “Oooh, good one,” said Luella, laughing.

  “Everything has a reason, Will. Everything in the known world is rooted in scientific fact.”

  “Want to know a fact?” Luella said, wiping sweat off the back of her neck. “It’s hot as balls. I want an ice pop.”

  Nathaniel chose not to say it out loud, but it was too hot. The earth’s atmosphere was breaking down. Tobias was working on a proposal for an interdisciplinary course for his freshman year at MIT EAPS, and had been talking about it a lot at family dinners. It was a further exploration of his Anders Almquist project, on the relationship between climate change and electrical storms, with a specific focus on the relationship between big cities, the atmosphere, and lightning.

  “It’s time for lunch,” he said. “We have to go meet Tiny at the Alice in Wonderland statue.”

  They peeled themselves off the grass and started walking down the path.

  Nathaniel couldn’t wait to meet up with Tiny. She liked his weird science facts. Besides, Will was different when he was around Luella, especially lately. He made fun of Nathaniel a lot more. Nathaniel knew it was a loveable kind of making fun, but still. He wished they’d take him a little more seriously sometimes.

  Nathaniel understood what Will was saying, about not wanting the next four years to be defined by the last four. Will might not think so, but he did.

  There had been something he’d been wanting to say to Tiny, actually. Something that couldn’t wait anymore.

  Maybe he’d do it tonight, when they went with Tobias to track the lightning.

  Tiny was waiting for them by the turnoff to the statue, bags of new school supplies at her feet. Nathaniel waved.

  “Talulah!” Luella called. “You are prepared for the year ahead!”

  Tiny grinned. “My mom kind of went overboard.”

  They got hot dogs and cold soda from a vendor, the cans dripping with melted ice. Then the four of them climbed up the statue and sat on the mushroom. The Cheshire Cat leered down at them.

  “It like he knows school’s about to start,” Tiny said, grimacing. “Here, have a pencil.” She extracted a brand-new, unsharpened pencil from one of her plastic shopping bags and stuck it behind his ear. “Good-bye, pencil.”

  “Good-bye, freedom,” said Will.

  “Good-bye, short shorts,” Luella pouted.

  “Good-bye, afternoons at the park,” Nathaniel said.

  “Guys,” said Tiny, taking her phone out of her pocket. “Let’s take a picture, to commemorate this momentous rite of passage. On this day in history, four friends said good-bye to their childhoods and embarked on the epic journey known as high school.”

  “There’s a reason you’re our spokesperson,” said Luella. “You talk good.”

  “Come on—squeeze.”

  “Say E. coli poisoning!” Will said, holding up his hot dog and mugging for the camera.

  “E. coli poisoning!” they said in unison.

  “Let me see!” Luella leaned over and snatched the phone. “Nice. You have ketchup on your face, Will.”

  “Want to lick it off?” He moved toward Luella.

  “Ew!” she squealed. “Get off!”

  Nathaniel caught Tiny’s eye, and she smiled.

  He never got to say the thing he found the coolest about lightning. That the two necessary conditions were:

  1) High electrical potential between two regions of space, and

  2) High resistance standing in its way.

  It made him think of high school, for some reason. He, Tiny, Will, and Luella were full of potential, creating all these atmospheric disturbances. And there was so much standing in their way.

  It also made him think of Tiny.

  Everything was changing. Part of him wished it could stay this way forever. The rest of him knew that was scientifically impossible.

  NOW

  10:00 P.M.

  (10 HOURS LEFT)

  ENERGY CURRENTS AND ORIGIN STORIES

  Tiny

  Tiny opened her eyes. It was quiet, except for the wind, which still whipped her hair in all directions. It had been so bright, blindingly bright, just seconds ago. But now it took a few seconds of blinking to adjust to the darkness.

  Her feet felt all tingly and weird. Quickly, she slipped off her sneakers. On the soles of each of her feet was a burn mark. A perfect charred circle where the lightning had entered her body. It shimmered a little in the dark. Whoa.

  She had been struck by lightning!

  She had felt it, felt the heat and the surge of electricity, the blinding brightness.

  And she was alive.

  “Guys?” she said tentatively. She still felt weird, light-headed. No one answered her. “Lu? Nathaniel?”

  Moments ago the roof had been a wild, loud, cacophonous place. Now it was deserted. “Guys?” she said again.

  No answer. Had they all left? No, the door to the roof was locked.

  She squinted and looked around. On the other side of the roof, under a metal structure for an old water tower, was a lumpy silhouette. Tiny ran to it.

  “Lu.” She shook it. “Lu!”

  Lu sat up groggily. “What? Is it time for the test already?”

  “No. Lu, we’re still at the party.”

  Lu rubbed her eyes. “We are? But I was having a really good dream.” She blinked a few times and then looked up at Tiny. Her eyes went wide, and she jumped up. “Dude. What is going on?”

  “We were struck by lightning,” Tiny said breathlessly. “I felt it. And look.” She showed Lu the bottom of her foot.

  Lu studied her. Tiny couldn’t help but notice the worry in her eyes.

  “Tiny . . .”

  “I know, I know, but—”

  “You sound like one of the Spencer brothers.”

  “Lu,” Tiny said quietly. “Just check your feet.”

  Reluctantly, Lu tore off her platform booties and inspected her feet. On the bottom of each were two black burn marks that shimmered in the faint ambient glow of the city lights.

  “Oh my god,” said Lu. “We got struck by lightning!”

  Tiny could hardly believe the words. She hadn’t even wanted to come out tonight. This was all Lu’s fault. This never would have happened if she’d stayed home to study.

  But she could never say that.

  “This can’t be happening.” Lu’s voice was high-pitched and breathy. “How are we alive?”

  A shiver ran down Tiny’s spine. “I don’t know. We shouldn’t be.” Tiny looked around. “Where’s Nathaniel? Where’s Will?”

  “Ugh, Will,” Lu muttered. Tiny gave her a questioning look but didn’t ask.

  They put their shoes back on and split up. On the other side of the roof, Tiny saw something move in the shadows.

  “Nathaniel!” She ran toward the shadow and knelt next to him. “Hey. Wake up.”

  Nathaniel’s eyes were closed. He groaned and rolled over. Tiny breathed a sigh of relief. He was alive. He was breathing. He was groaning in his sleep. He wasn’t dead.

  “Nathaniel.” Tiny shoo
k him gently. “Are you okay? Wake up. I think—I think we all got struck by lightning.” Nathaniel’s eyes blinked open.

  “Huh?”

  “Can you sit up?” He did, leaning against the side of the entry. “Can you see me?”

  Nathaniel looked at her. Recognition suddenly dawned on his face. “Tiny. I think—but you’re all blurry. What happened?”

  “Check your feet,” Tiny answered. Nathaniel looked uncertain, but he unlaced his hiking boots and peeled off his socks.

  “What are—” He looked up at her. “Those are burn marks.” Tiny nodded. “It was really bright, and then”—his eyes got wide—“the lightning.”

  “Yeah.”

  He grabbed her arm. Something passed between them. A charge, a shock, something. Tiny pulled away in surprise. Her hands started to shake.

  “Are Will and Lu okay?” he whispered.

  “Well,” Lu said, approaching them. She looked like she’d just seen a ghost. “I’m okay.”

  Someone else was with Lu. It should have been Will. It had only been the four of them up there on the roof. But it didn’t look like Will. It looked, instead, like Jon Heller—Will’s soccer co-captain, co-most popular boy in school, co-jerk.

  “How did he get here?” Tiny said, pulling back a little. Jon always made her uncomfortable, like he had made up his mind ahead of time to make fun of whatever she was going to say. “Where’s Will?”

  “I’m Will,” Jon said. He blinked at them. “Guys, it’s me. What are you talking about?”

  They stared at him.

  “Jon,” said Nathaniel. “Quit screwing around. Where’s Will?”

  Jon’s eyes were getting wide. “Guys, this isn’t funny. I’m Will.”

  Lu looked around, her eyes landing on the polished steel door to the roof. She grabbed Jon’s arm and dragged him toward it.

  “There,” she said, coming to a stop in front of the door. Jon stared at his reflection in the shiny metal.

  “What the hell is happening?” he whispered.

  “You’re pulling a prank,” Lu said, her eyebrow raised. “An elaborate one. What, is this some kind of joke, making fun of us because we don’t belong here? Did you two plan this out in advance?”