The Odds of Lightning

by Jocelyn Davies

  He glanced at Luella. But then she might not ever speak to him again. She was barely speaking to him now. She was the last person he expected to show up at his party. But she was the one he was happiest to see.

  She had said to prove it.

  But what did that even mean?

  Girls were so confusing.

  The green light of the subway glowed brightly ahead of them. Will felt the ground rumble beneath his feet. He looked up at Lu, Nathaniel, and Tiny. His old childhood friends. The three people who used to know him better than anyone else in the world.

  “Is that thunder?” he said. Nathaniel’s pupils dilated and his ears almost visibly perked. He looked like a wise owl.

  “No,” he said, breaking into a run toward the subway entrance. “A downtown train!”

  The four of them ran down the steps. The train was just pulling into the station. He reached for his MetroCard, but—

  “No!” Will slapped his forehead. “I left it at home!”

  “Just jump!” Nathaniel yelled. And then, as Will watched, his mouth gaping open, Nathaniel launched himself like a pole jumper over the turnstile without paying. Actually, launching himself wasn’t really the right word for it. It was more like leaped. Floated. Flew. “Whoa,” he said when he landed.

  “Dude,” said Will.

  Lu grinned. She ducked under and scooted her way through. Lu was always one devious suggestion away from being a criminal.

  “Hurry!” Nathaniel yelled.

  Tiny followed Lu, swiping her MetroCard.

  The conductor was announcing the next stop.

  “Will!” called Lu.

  Will tried to squeeze under the turnstile, but he didn’t fit. The train doors were closing. Nathaniel held them open with both hands.

  “How is he doing that?” Lu asked.

  “I don’t know, but it won’t matter if Will can’t get through!” Tiny said.

  Then Will tried to jump, but it wasn’t as easy as Nathaniel had made it look.

  Finally Nathaniel let go of the doors and ran back to Will. He pulled the turnstile clean off the hinges. Will burst through just as the train was pulling away.

  “Come on!”

  He stepped back, cursing under his breath.

  “It’s okay,” said Tiny. “We’ll wait for the next one.”

  Will stole a glance at Nathaniel. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.

  The seconds ticked by. Then minutes. He fidgeted and paced. “Attention.” A tinny voice crackled over the speaker system. “Due to inclement weather, for the safety of our passengers, subway service is being preemptively suspended until further notice. . . .”

  They all groaned. Will balled his hands into fists.

  The four of them turned back toward the stairs. It was going to be a long night. But Will would sooner drown than give up.

  Nathaniel

  “Okay, it’s okay. It’s just a minor setback.” Nathaniel paced. They were on the street again, in the dark. “We’ll figure something out.”

  They’d only been underground for five or ten minutes, but somehow the street seemed even more deserted now than it had before. All the sane people were looking for shelter. They were going home, and the four of them were getting farther and farther away from it.

  Nathaniel took out his phone to find the screen was full of alerts.

  SUBWAY SERVICE: SUSPENDED.

  BUS SERVICE: SUSPENDED.

  METRO-NORTH AND LONG ISLAND RAILROAD SERVICE: CANCELED.

  ALL FLIGHTS IN AND OUT OF JFK, LAGUARDIA, NEWARK: CANCELED.

  REDUCED TAXI SERVICE.

  TRAFFIC BAN: STAY OFF THE ROADS!

  HURRICANE WARNING: IN EFFECT FOR THE TRI-STATE AREA.

  FLOOD WARNING: IN EFFECT FOR NEW YORK CITY.

  “Shit,” Nathaniel said. “These alerts all came in the last hour. The weather reports must be getting worse.”

  “I knew I should have listened to the news,” Tiny muttered.

  The others crowded around his phone as Nathaniel pulled up Weather.com.

  “The rain is supposed to start tonight and continue through Sunday evening. It’s no longer being considered a hurricane. It’s now being called a superstorm.”

  “Jeez. I was just kidding about the whole Stormpocalypse thing,” said Will.

  “Superstorm Eileen,” Lu said. “Who comes up with these names? Sandy? Gloria? Iris? They all sound like grandmas.”

  Nathaniel groaned. “They just need a Superstorm Bubbe, and my grandma will be happy.”

  “Should we go home?” said Tiny. “Maybe we should all go home. We’ll be safe there, and maybe by the morning these weird side effects will have gone away. We can all FaceTime and check in.”

  “I don’t know,” said Will. He still looked like Jon Heller, complete with the purposefully messy prep school hair and the perpetually squinty, kind of stoned look that girls were always saying made him look like James Franco. “The party’s still going on. What if I run into the real Jon? Or someone else mistakes me for him?”

  “Yeah,” said Lu. “Plus, it’s just really creepy.”

  “And I want to get to the bottom of this,” Nathaniel said. “Figure out what’s going on.” What he didn’t say was: it’s what Tobias would have done. Tobias wouldn’t have run home. He would have led the four of them downtown and he would have done the math and made it right. He would have used his superbrain to figure out how to fix things.

  Nathaniel turned to face the empty street. No subway. No buses. No cabs.

  “Should we hitchhike?”

  “No way, dude. I may be big, but that’s how people get straight-up murdered.”

  “Uh, guys,” Tiny said. “Where’s Lu?”

  Lu wasn’t standing with them. She wasn’t down the block, in one direction or the other. Lu was gone.

  Will looked stricken. “Where did she go?” He turned to Nathaniel and grabbed the neck of his T-shirt so tightly in his fist that he lifted Nathaniel off the ground. “Nathaniel! What should we do?”

  Nathaniel had no idea what to do, to be honest. He wasn’t a leader, deep down. He couldn’t even wake up in time to turn in his scholarship application. Everyone was suddenly turning to him because he was the smart one, because tonight he had some kind of weird superpowers, and he felt like he had to live up to them. What they didn’t know was that he didn’t feel worthy of having them.

  One minute he’d been getting ready to take the most important test of his life, and he got suckered into being at this party because he didn’t have the guts to say no.

  And then the next minute there he was on the roof, wanting so badly to make someone smile. Hoping for something. It was something he hadn’t felt in so long.

  The feeling of wanting to be a hero.

  Because when the lightning had lit up the night so brightly like that, all of them, faces upturned, and he had looked over at Tiny—who had been just standing there, her eyes closed, all bathed in light—he’d thought for a moment that it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. It was like he’d never really seen her before, not ever, and then all of a sudden there she was, like the lightning had cut a path through the darkness on the roof right to her, and he could see her so clearly, it was like her insides were lit up and there were her kidneys and her lungs and esophagus and liver and heart beating wildly like she was an X-ray that had been electrified.

  She’d seemed so lonely up there on that roof, so tired of being invisible. And he suddenly had the weird feeling, small but persistent, pushing its way to the surface of his mind, that he needed her to understand she wasn’t alone. And maybe he needed to know for sure he wasn’t alone, either.

  Where could Lu have gone? He felt responsible now, for the group. He had to lead them to the answer. Even if it took all night. And tomorrow. And the next day. They would make it through the storm, and they would come out the other side.

  It was what Tobias would have done.

  11:00 P.M.

  (9 HOURS
LEFT)

  ATMOSPHERIC DISTURBANCE

  Tiny

  The wind was starting to sound operatic.

  “Where could she be?” Will was frantic. “She’s all alone out there in the storm!”

  “She can handle it,” Tiny said. “If anyone can, it’s Lu. She’s scrappy.”

  Will considered this. “That’s true.”

  “She’s tough. She’ll be okay. And she’d be super pissed if she knew you were talking about her like she’s some princess who needs to be rescued.”

  Will/Jon’s face turned pale, probably at the thought of Lu being super pissed at him again.

  “Besides,” said Tiny. “I know where she is.”

  Will and Nathaniel turned to her. “You do?” they said in unison.

  Tiny nodded. They weren’t as close as they used to be, but Tiny knew Lu almost as well as she knew herself.

  “She went back to Central Park. To Hurricane Fest.”

  She had gone to find Owen.

  They took off in the direction of the park. Lu hadn’t been missing for that long, so she couldn’t have gotten too far. Tiny watched her reflection in the windows of stores and apartment buildings as they ran, flickering in the dark between each brightly lit streetlamp.

  She felt a weird mix of fear and elation. She was disappearing. She definitely was.

  At the entrance to the park, they stopped. “Which direction is Hurricane Fest?” Tiny muttered.

  “You got me,” Will said. “Weren’t you and Lu going to go there anyway?”

  “Lu was the one who knew where we were going—not me.”

  And that’s when Tiny realized something.

  Going out tonight, it had never been about her and Josh.

  Lu’s plan was always to go find Owen. Tiny had just been her excuse.

  The boys were watching her. She couldn’t even meet their eyes.

  She wondered: If she stopped holding on to this friendship, would Lu miss her? It was the last connection she had to her old life, before the night Tobias—

  A pair of figures emerged from the dark.

  “What the hell is that?” Will whispered. “We probably shouldn’t just stand around here so late at night.”

  “Don’t make eye contact,” Tiny whispered back.

  “Good thing Nathaniel is strong as fuck.”

  “Just because I can tear a door off its hinges doesn’t mean I can take on two guys who are fighting back,” Nathaniel said.

  As the figures drew closer, Tiny realized it wasn’t two big guys. It was a guy and a girl, maybe a few years older than they were. The guy was short, with a jet-black asymmetrical haircut, and a beard. The girl was ethereal and flowy, her long, shocking red hair swirling in the wind. They half danced, half slunk toward them. It was hard not to notice them—they looked like they were in a movie, floating dreamily along the path between the streetlights and weaving between the trees.

  They were like an indie prince and princess.

  “Hey,” Tiny said. “I recognize them.”

  “Those kids went to Daybrook?” Will made a face. “I’ve never seen them before.”

  “Yeah,” Tiny said. “They graduated last year.”

  “They don’t look familiar.”

  “They did theater,” Tiny explained. “And since I’m sure you wouldn’t dare step foot in the theater for any reason other than assembly . . .”

  Will glowered. “I’ve seen school plays.”

  The princess skipped past, unknowingly knocking Tiny backward as she found a lamp pole to lean against, sighing.

  It felt stupid to have been brushed aside by such an incredibly beautiful person. Tiny wondered if the princess had even seen her. She pulled back and looked down at herself. Tiny looked like someone had tried to erase her with a not-very-good eraser. Still there, but just a little bit less there than she’d been before the girl had pushed her out of the way.

  The guy shouted: “Ladies and gentlemen!”

  Tiny looked around. It was just the three of them.

  “If the world ends tonight, let it to go out in a blaze of art and beauty! Let the last thing you remember be Shakespeare! On this dark and stormy Friday night, we are proud and honored to present to you: Shakespeare in the Park!”

  “I’ve always wanted to see Shakespeare in the Park!” Tiny said.

  “More like Shakespeare at the Park Entrance,” muttered Will.

  “Hey,” the girl said, opening her eyes. “This is no amateur performance. We go to Tisch School of the Arts. Can we continue?”

  The guy got down on one knee and put a hand over his heart. Will snorted.

  “But, soft!” Romeo stage-whispered. “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

  Juliet sighed and twirled around a lamppost like a hipster Elizabethan stripper. Tiny half expected her to pirouette away on a breeze.

  “O, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

  “Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?”

  “Speak at this!” Will shouted.

  Tiny gave him a look, but she wasn’t sure he could see it.

  Inside, she couldn’t help resenting them, though. Just a little bit. Sure, they looked all romantic and cool, and everyone was smiling like Romeo and Juliet weren’t going to have a tragic miscommunication and kill themselves in a few acts. But there was no such thing as a happy ending. That kind of stuff didn’t happen in real life. Star-crossed lovers weren’t meant to be together—that was why they were star-crossed and not just regular lovers.

  Tiny knew this better than anyone. She knew it in her heart and lungs and on the underside of her skin—places it was hard to get it out.

  “Oh, come on,” she snapped. “Romeo and Juliet die at the end.” She didn’t realize she’d even opened her mouth until she looked up and saw that the actors had paused between lines. Her voice echoed in the awkward silence.

  “Hey!” Juliet shouted, one hand on her hip.

  “Do you mind?” Romeo said angrily.

  “I mean, seriously?” Juliet flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I think everyone knows that already.”

  “What the hell?” Will said, throwing up his hands. “I didn’t!”

  Nathaniel rolled his eyes. “Dude, really? We read it in freshman English.”

  “No,” said Will. “You read it in freshman English.”

  “Whatever,” Romeo added. “There are, like, a million movie versions. There’s really no excuse.”

  “Well, sorr-ee for having a social life and not spending all my free time with my nose in a book, like some people.” Will jutted his chin at Nathaniel.

  “Listen,” Nathaniel shot back. “It’s because I spend all my time studying that I might be able to help us get out of this nightmare.”

  Tiny let them argue. She turned back to Romeo and Juliet.

  “Sorry,” she said. “We’re having a bad night.”

  “It’s okay,” said Romeo. He looked closer and squinted. “Whoa,” he said. “You’re transparent.”

  “Yeah.” Tiny shrugged, like, What can ya do?

  “What happened?” Juliet asked, wide-eyed.

  “I got struck by lightning.”

  Juliet grabbed Romeo’s hand and gasped.

  “That is literally the most dramatic thing I’ve ever heard,” she said.

  Tiny didn’t know how to respond to that.

  Juliet took a step back and appraised her. “Hmm,” she said. “I might be able to help.” She reached into her purse and extracted a makeup bag. “May I?” Tiny opened her mouth to say no. Then she closed it. Then she opened it again.

  “Okay. Why not try it?” Juliet got to work. She dusted some powder over Tiny’s face and brushed a rosy shimmery blush onto her cheeks. There was a zing of eyeliner and a whoosh of mascara and a slick of berry gloss across her lips.

  “Pucker.”

  Tiny puckered.

  “Look.”

  Tiny looked at her reflec
tion in the little compact mirror. In the movies, putting makeup on the invisible girl always seemed to make people notice her. So was it helping? Was the girl who looked back at her more beautiful than she had been before? Was she someone worth noticing, now that her eyes were lined and her lips were glossed? Her heart lifted at the thought. But then Tiny saw herself fade just a little bit more, behind the blush and mascara, like a waning lunar eclipse. And her heart fell again.

  “Feel any different?” Juliet asked hopefully.

  “No,” Tiny said. “I’m sorry. But thanks anyway.”

  “Man,” said Juliet. “I really thought that would work.”

  Tiny thought of something. “Actually, maybe you can help. We’re looking for Hurricane Fest. Do you know where it is?”

  Juliet beamed. “Yes! We just performed there.”

  “You could hardly hear us over the music,” said Romeo. “I can’t believe it hasn’t been broken up yet.”

  “But the music is good,” Juliet added. “If you go now, you’ll probably make it in time to hear Unsexy Gum. They’re great.”

  Unsexy Gum. That was Owen’s band!

  “It’s just down that path and under the footbridge. You definitely can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks,” said Tiny, grabbing Nathaniel and Will by the sleeves. “We owe you one!”

  “Good luck!” Juliet called. “You were our most enthusiastic audience all night! Except for you.” She frowned at Will. “I don’t know who you think you are, but if you keep making fun of things, you’ll miss out on everything.”

  “On what?” Will asked.

  “On all this.” Juliet spread her arms and twirled. The wind caught her dress and swept her hair up like a Disney character. Tiny thought she might be about to break into song. “Anyway, see ya,” she said. And they started walking down the path out of the park.

  “Godspeed!” Romeo waved. “‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt!’”

  “Whatever that means,” Will muttered. “Whatever any of that means.”

  The night air was heavy, and the wind was still blowing like mad. Juliet’s perfect twirly beauty still taunted her. Despite the makeup, she felt even more invisible. Tiny wondered if, when Juliet saw Romeo at that party, all the decisions were suddenly easy for her. She wondered if Juliet ever really stopped to wonder, wait a minute, if I let this guy into my life, will I end up dead in some mausoleum in Verona somewhere? Probably not. Because there’s no way to know how things will end up until they end up there.