The Odds of Lightning

by Jocelyn Davies

  Tiny wondered where she would end up.

  The truth was, she didn’t fit in anywhere, and if she could choose one group to fit into, she didn’t even know which one it would be.

  It was why she was always grateful to be friends with Lu. She admired Lu, she really did. Lu didn’t want to fit into any of the groups. Lu said “fuck you” to groups. Except that meant if she didn’t have Lu, she had no one left.

  “You’re, like, the only person I can be strange with,” Lu told her on the last day of sixth grade. They had been sitting outside the Guggenheim Museum and gulping down ice cream and the promise of summer. Ahead of them stretched infinity more warm breezy start-of-summer days like this. Even then Tiny knew exactly what Lu meant, because she felt it too.

  In The Great Gatsby, which was fast becoming her favorite book, Nick Carraway says this thing: The rock of the world was founded securely on a fairy’s wing.

  When Tiny read it, her heart stumbled a little. It made her think of how a person’s whole life could be anchored to something so intangible. A crush. A grade. A college. An image of yourself you have in your head. A best friend.

  I have to find Lu.

  Tiny blinked, standing in the middle of Central Park. She looked down at herself under the orange glow of a streetlamp. Her skin flickered in and out. She hesitated.

  She realized in that moment that she had a choice.

  If she fled the park and ran for home, she would only continue to fade into nothingness. She would dry up and float away with nothing more than a little pop. She’d fizzle out like a lightbulb in a power outage.

  Or she could smack her berry-glossed lips, stand a little straighter, and keep going down the path ahead. She might have been fading away, but she hadn’t lost sight of herself just yet.

  The risk in the decision lay, not in making the right choice, but just in taking the leap to choose. In the act of choosing itself.

  She didn’t know what would happen at Hurricane Fest, or the rest of the night, but she knew something would. As Lu would say, What if?

  And for once in her life, she wanted to find out badly enough to risk choosing.

  Lu

  Hurricane Fest was festive.

  A hidden corner of Central Park was transformed into a strange nighttime urban park wonderland. Strings of white twinkle lights and colorful paper lanterns were woven through the trees, and someone had strewn oriental rugs across the grass so it felt like they were in an elaborate outdoor bohemian living room. Lu was impressed that the cops hadn’t discovered it yet. It was for sure not sanctioned by the parks department.

  Everyone was dancing. A pile of wooden pallets formed a makeshift stage on one side, and the band was rocking out. A huge generator buzzed in the corner, powering the whole operation. It was almost possible to forget when and where you were. It could have easily slipped her mind that Superstorm Eileen was bearing down on them, and that the SATs were less than nine hours away.

  Lu tilted her head back and looked up: the clouds still churned, dark gray against the dark black sky, no moon, no stars, just the rumble of thunder and the currents of lightning. It didn’t look like they were touching the ground right now, just shooting out horizontally, suspending between the clouds themselves like ionic spider webs.

  No one cared about the storm. They just wanted to dance, and party, and ignore things like safety and not dying. That was the weird thing about New York. There were all those buildings, all those places for people to hide. When the streets were empty, all those eight million people had to be somewhere. And it looked like a lot of them were here. This was a pocket of the city that existed in an alternate dimension.

  Lu felt her way in the twinkle-lit park, through the crowd. The thunder was so loud that she should have been able to feel the vibrations running through the ground, through the rugs beneath her feet. But she didn’t. She couldn’t feel anything at all.

  She stood on her tiptoes and tried to see through the ridiculous crowd. She thought she saw the familiar-looking back of his head up by the stage. So she barreled through. She wanted to make a scene, but she kept it in and tried to be cool. People shoved her and elbowed her and stepped on her with pointy-toed shoes. But Lu couldn’t feel any of it. She was numb.

  She was invincible.

  She grinned.

  But when she pushed through the crowd, there he was—with his arm around another girl.

  * * *

  Earlier, in the subway, Lu had seen through the windows of the subway cars as they’d passed her and the others by. Their best chance at getting downtown, hurtling away from them into the dark underground tunnels of Manhattan. But she’d gotten a glimpse. She’d seen what life could have been.

  Everyone else on the train seemed like they were in full-on storm-panic mode. Everyone was wearing some kind of raincoat or carrying an umbrella or had bags of groceries because they had thought ahead and were now on their way home to hunker down and wait out the storm.

  Everyone had looked prepared.

  It only made the strange numbness surrounding Lu feel worse. It had started in her fingers and toes, coating the skin on her arms. But now she couldn’t feel her face, her feet, her legs, the tips of her ears. It was seeping in under her skin, too. What if it reached her lungs? What if she stopped breathing? What if it reached her heart? What if it stopped beating?

  So when Tiny, Will, and Nathaniel weren’t looking, she had turned on her platform heels and run like the wind currently howling between the trees of Central Park.

  Lu’s usual MO when faced with feeling (any kind of feeling) was to run. And now was no exception.

  The sky was black and blue and so was her heart, but she couldn’t feel the bruise.

  She pictured a forcefield around her, a bubble of energy no one could fight their way through.

  On her way to the park she passed Hunter College. Where she first became close with Will, three years ago. Where she took her very first acting class.

  It had come in pretty handy all this time.

  * * *

  “Owen?” Lu tapped him on the back.

  He turned around.

  “Lu!” he said. “You came!”

  “Uh, you asked me to.” Lu glanced at the girl behind him. She had a blond pixie cut and was giving Lu the side eye. “What’s going on?” Lu said.

  Owen glanced at Pixie Girl. “I’ll be right back, Jess.” He touched Lu’s elbow. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s find somewhere quieter.” She used to love it when he touched her elbow like that. It was calm, reassuring, like he knew where he was going. Now she couldn’t feel a thing. Except, well, kind of embarrassed.

  They found a spot near a tree farther back from the stage. Lu pushed her black bangs out of her eyes and looked up at him. They stood there on one of those stupid Persian rugs in the middle of the park, some stupid orchestral indie band playing in the background like they were in some movie, and all the while thunder was rumbling closer and closer. For a second Lu let herself wonder if he was going to apologize, to tell her she misunderstood the whole thing.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Lu,” Owen said now, on this night, on this rug, in the middle of this park. “Hey. I’m glad you came.” Then he hugged her.

  She couldn’t feel his arms around her. She couldn’t feel the warmth of his neck against her cheek.

  She pulled away.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “What?” he said, grinning his stupid crooked grin. “I can’t hug you?”

  Lu pushed herself away. “No. I got your texts.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “listen—”

  “I think we should end this.” Lu cut in early, before he could say anything else.

  “You do?” he said, surprised.

  “Yeah, I do. And you’re clearly busy, so I’ll let you get back to Pixie, or whoever—”

  “Who, Jess? That’s my friend from band camp.”

  “Band camp?”

  “Uh
-huh, she came to the show. But listen, don’t end this. We were having fun, right?”

  “Yeah,” Lu said, narrowing her eyes. “Fun. In secret.”

  “Come on, Lu. It’s us! We don’t need all those labels and restrictions. Those are for boring uptight people.”

  Lu hesitated. She paused to consider what she felt. Right now it was hard to feel much of anything. And maybe it was because of that that she wasn’t afraid when she said:

  “What if I said I do want those things?”

  Owen furrowed his eyebrows. He put his hand on her shoulder.

  “You’re great,” he said. “But I can’t have a girlfriend right now. Things are really taking off with the band, and, like—that’s where all my energy needs to be.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Can’t we just keep hanging out like this?”

  “So wait,” she said. “You’re not breaking up with me?”

  Owen laughed. “Of course not! You’re the coolest!”

  “But you don’t want to be my boyfriend.”

  “Right,” said Owen. “Got it.”

  “So what did you mean when you said you wanted to talk?”

  “Oh,” said Owen. “I just wanted to make sure it was all good. Because I’m kind of hanging out with Jess, too, and—”

  “What?” Lu took a step back.

  “Are you upset? I thought we were cool.”

  Lu thought for a minute. Maybe she should pretend that it was. But then, suddenly, she thought of Will. And she surprised herself.

  “No,” she said. “It’s not cool. Nothing about this is cool.”

  Lu realized something: She might have been invincible on the outside, but it still hurt on the inside.

  “Aw, Lu.” The wind was whipping his floppy hair around, and he had this weird look on his face, like when someone else has this horrible accident you are in no way part of and you feel helpless and small and sorry and wish you could help, but the truth is there’s nothing you can do. “Friends though, right?”

  She opened her mouth and closed it again.

  Nothing hurts you.

  You are an impenetrable fortress.

  You are a renowned goddamn warrior.

  “Friends?” Lu said. “I don’t want to be your—”

  “Fuck you!” someone shouted. “You’re not Lu’s friend!”

  Lu’s head snapped up just in time to see a fist connect with Owen’s face.

  And he fell down.

  Wil1

  No one had ever prepared him for the feeling of his fist connecting with someone’s jaw.

  “Ow!” Will shook his hand. He wasn’t sure he liked it.

  But holy shit. He’d punched someone!

  “Take that!” Will crowed over the sound of the electric cello in the background. “You can’t treat Lu that way!” Tiny and Nathaniel were cheering behind him.

  “Will!” Lu shoved him. As much as it hurt, he was glad she realized it was him and not Jon Heller randomly coming to her rescue. “What the hell are you doing? I can take care of myself!” Then her eyes grew wide. “Wait.” Her head whipped back to Owen, lying on the fancy patterned rug, groaning, and then back to him. “Will?”

  Will puffed up his chest. “Yep. You said to prove it so—”

  “First of all, I don’t need saving.” Lu rolled her eyes. “I’m not some dumb damsel in distress.”

  “Told you,” said Tiny.

  “Are you kidding? I can’t believe you like that guy. Is that the kind of guy you want to be with, Lu? Really?”

  “If you think he’s so lame, why did you turn into him?”

  “I—what?”

  “You did it again. You turned into Owen.”

  “I what?”

  “Does anyone have a mirror?” Lu yelled into the crowd. A girl who was standing nearby, filming the whole thing on her phone, pressed a button that made the screen go shiny and reflective. She offered it to Lu, and Lu shoved it in Will’s face.

  Will’s jaw dropped.

  He didn’t look like Jon Heller anymore. He didn’t look like himself, either. His cheeks had sunken in, and his cheekbones were sharp, and his hair had grown long and shaggy and swept across his eyes. He pushed it away and saw the face looking back at him clearly.

  “You transformed into Owen?” Lu was pointing between them. She turned her face upward and shouted at the sky: “What the hell, lightning? I don’t get you!”

  At the sound of his name, Owen groaned loudly and sat up. “Hey, what’s going on? Some asshole punched me!”

  “Don’t talk to him that way!” Lu yelled. She punched Owen too, and he fell back down.

  Will beamed at her.

  “Look at you!” Will said. “Defending my honor.”

  “Shut up.” Lu pushed him.

  “You shut up!” He pushed her back.

  “Ugh, I can’t believe you turned into Owen,” she groaned. “Of all people. Seriously, Will!”

  “It’s not like I can control it! It just . . . happens!”

  That was only partly true, Will was starting to realize. He wasn’t able to control when and where he changed—that part was true. But both times he had been thinking about that very person before he morphed into them. On the roof, he had been thinking about how much like Jon Heller he was becoming. And here, in the park, he had been wondering what Lu—his Lu—could see in a guy like Owen. Would Lu like him better if he were more like this band hipster? Was that more her type, or whatever?

  Would he be happier that way?

  And then boom. He was that band hipster.

  It was a very weird feeling.

  Tiny came bounding up and threw her arms around Lu. “You totally showed him! I’m so proud of you, Loozles!”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Lu turned red, but she was kind of smiling. Will loved to see her smile like that. It was a rare, unguarded moment. She turned to him. “Did you come all the way here just to do that?” She nodded her chin at Owen, still lying unconscious on the rug.

  “Well,” said Will. “I mean, yeah.”

  Lu’s smile deepened into something more than a smile. Something Will couldn’t describe.

  “Thanks,” she said. This time he was the one who turned red.

  It had been a long time since he had felt this way. But being here with her tonight calmed the inner voices telling him he was the worst, that he was doomed, that he wasn’t the same person he used to be. The voices that told him he’d turned everything in his life into a big worthless mess. And that he was one too. Lu made him feel like a better person somehow.

  He looked around him for the first time. He was surrounded by lights and music, and kids dancing and laughing and having fun. No one was overthinking things or paralyzed by fear. No one thought they might get struck by lightning or drown in the rain that was supposed to come pouring down at any minute. They were just living. Will was living too. He hated the way Lu and Owen looked together. He hated imagining her with anyone else but him. He’d been feeling this way for three years, and just kept pretending it away. But tonight he was having a hard time pretending.

  Maybe tonight was a night for second chances. Maybe it was a way of reclaiming who he used to be.

  Maybe the lightning had been a good thing.

  “What?” he said. Nathaniel was saying something.

  “I said, we actually came here to get Lu so we could make it down to school and figure out whatever it is the lightning did to us,” he said. “But if you want to stay here and be a hero . . .”

  Will stopped listening. He grabbed Lu’s hand. “Hey,” she said, squirming away. “What are you doing?”

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s dance!”

  “Owen! I mean, Will!” She looked at him. “Are you insane?”

  “Maybe,” said Will. “Maybe I am.”

  “Everything is so easy for you,” Lu said, looking up into his new, weird face.

  He couldn’t get used to this different facial architecture. He couldn’t make the same expressions he used to
. He didn’t feel like himself. Whoever that was. Maybe that was the point. That was what the lightning was trying to tell him.

  Will shook his head. Talking like the lightning really was magic. He was starting to sound like Luella.

  “You have no idea,” said Will, “how very untrue that is.”

  And then there was a flash that lit up the sky above the trees. It turned the inky sky to day.

  And then thunder. A booming so loud that it shook the concrete.

  And then the snapping of a tree trunk. Will looked up. They were standing under a massive towering oak strung with lights and paper lanterns that had caught fire in the lightning and was beginning to burn.

  It took a second for him to realize that the burning tree was falling. It was falling toward them.

  Nathaniel

  No one wakes up in the morning expecting to be a hero that day.

  In fact, the more Nathaniel read about heroism, the more he began to think that people who did heroic things were wired that way. Like, they didn’t think about it; it wasn’t a conscious decision they made ahead of time. They just acted on instinct and a sense of right, and then later history and context framed them as heroes.

  Nathaniel wondered how history would frame him now. He was standing in the middle of Central Park, surrounded by the chaos of a major atmospheric disturbance, holding an oak tree above his head with his two not particularly muscly arms.

  Will, Tiny, and Lu were staring at him, incredulous.

  “Dude!” yelled Will. “You saved us!”

  Nathaniel grinned. Because here was what had happened:

  1) He felt a deep rumbling coming up from the core of the earth and through the soles of his sneakers

  2) He sensed a change in the electrical charges that were colliding and zapping around like supercharged bees in the cloud above him