The Odds of Lightning

by Jocelyn Davies

  “Want to find the wedding?”

  “Uh, yeah,” said Lu. “I am wearing my wedding finest, after all.” She flashed her neon Band-Aid. Will grinned and dusted off his—well, Jasper’s—hoodie. He held out a hand to her. She hesitated a beat before taking it.

  “You’re not going to catch cooties, you know,” Will said.

  “Can you not ruin the moment, please?”

  “I’ll try my best, but I can’t make any promises.”

  As they walked down the hall, their shoes clicking against the marble floors, Lu couldn’t stop thinking about how weird it felt to be holding Will’s hand. Weird, but good, too. Weird and good on the inside, because Lu still couldn’t feel anything on the outside.

  For the first time in a long time, she felt like someone was looking out for her. Like she wasn’t in it alone. Will had fought Owen for her. He had led them all on a detour across town just to reunite two people who had lost each other. Will was a good guy. He had always been good. She wished he could see that too, instead of being so confused. Will’s hand was big and wrapped perfectly around hers. She let herself hold it just a little bit tighter. Will glanced at her out of the corner of his eye but said nothing.

  They made their way past the barosaurus and his raptor buddy, and through the main entrance, where they saw a sign that said, FOR THE SWANSON WEDDING, PLEASE FOLLOW THE SIGNS TO THE MILSTEIN HALL OF OCEAN LIFE.

  “The whale room,” Lu said excitedly. “It’s my favorite room in the whole museum.”

  “You used to hate it.”

  “Yeah, well, I grew up.”

  They ran down the stairs to the first floor and followed the signs to their left. Adults in black tie roamed the hall, glittering and tuxed.

  “Fancy,” said Lu.

  “We fit right in,” Will agreed.

  They stopped under a scattering of giant fireflies glowing in a diorama that hung from the ceiling. “Bioluminescence,” Lu said quietly.

  “Bio what?”

  “Bioluminescence. It means the biochemical emission of light from living organisms. My dad used to take me here when I was little. We always stopped at the fireflies. I could say bioluminescence before I could say dog.” Lu swallowed. “We could stand here for hours. I kept trying to make my butt glow. If the fireflies could do it, why couldn’t I? Why couldn’t I be bioluminescent too? But I couldn’t glow. I was just a normal, nonglowing kid. I wasn’t special. And my dad”—Lu’s voice quavered—“he would just wait there with me while I kept trying. He never told me I couldn’t do it.” She closed her eyes. “He should have stopped me.”

  Lu felt the rest of the world fall away, the sounds of the party and the clacking of heels on the tiled floor, and for a minute it was just her and those fireflies, and her hand in Will’s, and the sound of his breathing next to her. With her eyes closed, she could just barely remember standing here with her dad, her little hand in his bigger one, feeling like the safest, most loved girl in the world. Like she could glow, like she could do anything. She could almost pretend that the illusion hadn’t been shattered six years later, when she’d come home to the moving truck pulling away and the note on the coffee table. A note she still, to this day, had never read. She didn’t want to know the reason. Maybe if she’d been able to make her butt glow, he wouldn’t have left.

  “Earth to Lu,” Will whispered. Lu opened her eyes. She pulled her hand away, abruptly, and the sounds came rushing back at her. Will raised his eyebrows. “Want to go in?”

  She didn’t look at him. Just in case her eyes had gotten all teary or something.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Lu always felt a sense of vertigo when she walked into the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life. It was the one place in all of New York City—even more than standing at the foot of the Empire State Building, or the Freedom Tower—that made her realize just how small she really was. Standing under the massive model of the blue whale, which ran the entire length of the hall’s ceiling, the enormity of that other living creature overtook her. Usually she felt too big, too much for any one to handle. Here, she felt bitten down to size. There were bigger animals out there than her.

  A dance floor had been built across the middle of the hall, and a DJ spinning hits of the eighties, nineties, and today had been set up over by the killer whales. The dance floor swirled with color and light, dresses of all hues twirling under a canopy of twinkle lights.

  “It’s beautiful,” Lu said before she could stop herself.

  “Why, Luella.” Will flashed her a grin. “Is it possible you’re a hopeless romantic after all?”

  “Uh, no,” said Lu. “It’s possible I’m distracted by shiny things.” She turned back to face him. “Let’s go look at some dead animal dioramas.”

  She and Will passed the sea lions, frozen forever on their desolate hunk of ice, and the dolphins suspended in graceful arcs beneath a choppy green sea. Lu stopped in front of a sea otter.

  “This one used to give me nightmares,” she said.

  Will raised his eyebrows. “This cute little guy gave you nightmares? Why?”

  “On the surface it looks cute and happy, but if you look closer you can tell it’s all tangled in the seaweed, under the water where you can’t really see. It’s stuck there. And it can’t get itself out of the mess it’s made.” She looked at Will. “I know it sounds weird to be so freaked out by a plaster model of an otter.”

  Will swallowed. “No,” he said. “I understand.”

  Lu shuddered, and they kept walking. They passed the shirtless man diving for pearls, and found themselves in a dark alcove. Above them loomed the giant squid, its tentacles wrapped tightly around the head of a sperm whale. Two great beasts of the deep, submerged in inky blackness hundreds of thousands of feet below the surface.

  “Hey,” said Lu. “It’s us!”

  Will laughed. “This is the one that used to freak me out,” he said. “You can hardly see what’s going on. Just a flash of white where the whale is—a glow of orange over there for the squid. I used to wonder what else was lurking in there.”

  “Ooooh,” said Lu. “Did it give you the heebie-jeebies?”

  “At least I wasn’t scared of an adorable sea otter.”

  The dance song that was playing faded into an indie love song. Lu turned instinctively toward the dance floor, but Will grabbed her hand and she stopped short, spinning around to face him. He put his other hand on her waist.

  “Dance with me,” he said.

  “I—”

  “Come on,” said Will. “You can’t say anything snarky in such a romantic setting.” Lu closed her mouth. She didn’t like being bossed around, but she didn’t want to say no, either. She let him lead her to the center of the vast room.

  “Do you know why I wanted to come here?” Lu asked.

  “I think I can hazard a guess.” His voice was serious. She was trying not to look at him. Her eyes wandered across the room, lingering on the other couples, on the little girls in flouncy dresses clustered together, giggling, off to one corner. Anywhere but at Will.

  “Lu,” he said. “I would take back that night—if it would mean things could be okay between us—”

  “I wouldn’t,” she jumped in.

  Will looked surprised. “You wouldn’t?”

  “No,” she said. “Will, that night—I’ll never get over it. I’d never . . . I’d never felt that way before.” She looked over his shoulder, at the dancers. “I haven’t since.”

  “You really mean it?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  He caught her eyes this time. “I don’t regret that night either,” he said. “I regret what came after. I should have been stronger. I was just really . . . confused. About who I was. What I wanted. I think I still am. I don’t know why it took me until tonight to fight for you.”

  “And I was just afraid of getting hurt.”

  And then, before her eyes, Will morphed again. But this time he morphed into someone she knew. Someone familiar, even
though she hadn’t seen him in a long time. Instead of the tall, proud, athletic soccer star who ruled the school, who threw massive parties that everyone showed up at, and who girls gossiped about in the backseats of taxis, the guy who stood there now was a little chubbier, his shirt a little bigger, his jeans a little baggier. Instead of Jasper’s cool asymmetrical ’do, Will’s hair was brown and rumpled—and not in a cool, purposeful way. More like he hadn’t bothered to look in a mirror before leaving home. It was all wrong. But somehow, it felt right.

  “Will?” She pulled back.

  “Listen,” he said. “I—” A little flower girl darted between them, and the DJ spun “Baby Got Back.”

  “I better see all of you on the dance floor,” the DJ said. “They paid me to go all night, and I’m not stopping until the sun comes up and the rain finally comes down.”

  “I can’t think in here,” Will grumbled. “Come on.”

  “Where?” But he was taking her hand and pushing through the crowd without another word.

  Together they escaped the whale room, passing the otter trapped among the seaweed, and the squid and the whale fighting, forever in their dark abyss. They ran up the stairs and out the door, past the fireflies emitting their soft light down the hall.

  The room they entered was dark, almost pitch black. They were surrounded by large, hulking shadows.

  “The meteor room,” Will announced. “My favorite room.” He walked ahead and was soon swallowed up by the dark. “In space, no one can hear you scream.”

  “Will?” Lu whispered. She picked her way between the shadows, which, when they loomed closer, she could tell were giant meteor rocks, craggy and ancient. “Will?”

  “In here!”

  She kept going until the room opened up into another room, still dark but dotted with bright pinpricks of color like phosphorescent stars. As Lu’s eyes adjusted, she could see that they were tiny minerals and gemstones, fixed in cases on the walls and backlit to shine in the darkness. Glittering rocks of pyrite and geode halves in a rainbow of colors sprouted from the carpeted ground like stalagmites.

  In the middle of the room was something Lu remembered well: a big slab of smooth, shiny jade, tilted at an angle against a small set of carpeted steps. She used to play on it with her friends after school when she was a little kid. It had looked a lot bigger then.

  Will was sitting at the top, like it was a slide. He was grinning at her.

  “Come here!” he called.

  “We’re not five anymore,” Lu said. She rolled her eyes but was already walking toward him. He motioned for her to sit in front of him. She gave him her famous raised eyebrow.

  “Oh, come on, Lu. No one can see you. It’s okay.” Sighing, she took a seat between his legs, facing forward. He wrapped his arms around her waist. “Ready?” Before she could answer, he pushed off. It took them all of a half second to slide from the top to the bottom.

  “That used to be a lot more thrilling,” Lu said. “Didn’t it used to be bigger?”

  “I think you used to be smaller.”

  She started to laugh, and Will started laughing too. He leaned back on the flat green surface, and after a second Lu leaned back against him.

  “This is more comfortable,” she said, resting her head against his stomach. Her head rose and fell with his breathing. “I wish I could feel this.” She meant this, as in everything. As Lu said it, she realized it was the first time she’d felt that way in a long time. She wanted to feel his arms around her. She wanted to feel his hand around hers. She wanted to feel what it was like to forgive Will. To let herself open up to someone again.

  “We’ll fix it, Lu. We’re going to fix this. We’re not going to be this fucked up forever.” He looked at her and drew in a breath. She looked up at him. Will took Lu’s shaking hands in his so she couldn’t stop him this time. She knew her heart was beating. She could sense the rhythmic pressure in her chest. But she couldn’t feel it. And then he leaned in. And he kissed her.

  She really wished she could feel that.

  “You make me feel bioluminescent, Lu,” he whispered.

  “You can’t feel bioluminescent,” Lu said softly. “It’s a biochemical mechanism. You just are. You can’t help it. Fireflies don’t think about glowing in the dark. They do it because they were meant to be seen.”

  “Don’t ruin the moment,” Will said, and kissed her again. But after a second or two he pulled away. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “No,” Lu said, tears pricking her eyes. She couldn’t feel them stinging. She couldn’t feel that uncomfortable swelling in your throat that happens when you’re about to cry. She only knew it was happening because a couple of tears plunked onto Will’s T-shirt, forming dark wet spots. She didn’t even know why she was crying. “No, I am obviously not okay. This is a really bad time for all this. I have so much to—and I feel so—so—actually, I don’t feel anything!”

  “Hey,” said Will. “Me too. It’s okay.”

  “No, you don’t get it. I just don’t want to—”

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. I wouldn’t let us mess this up again.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You can’t make a promise like that. Nobody ever sets out to hurt anyone. It just happens. We as members of the human race are innately selfish. How do you know I won’t hurt you?”

  “I don’t, I guess.” He paused. “You did the first time.”

  “Then how can you be so calm about this? How can you trust me?”

  “I don’t know. Because I know you’re a good person, I guess, and you didn’t mean it. It’s just that, if there’s even a chance that this could work out, that we could try again, I would risk getting hurt again to see. Wouldn’t you?”

  “You’re so infuriating.”

  “Lu,” Will said. “Breathe.”

  She swallowed hard. “Do you ever feel like we’re like that otter? Trapped no matter what we do?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, lacing his fingers through hers. “I think we’re like the fireflies. We”—he rested his hand on her chest, above her heart—“can’t help but glow. We’re different. And we’ve been hiding it for too long.” Lu stared at him, his warm brown eyes, and the way his hair was growing just a little too long.

  “I guess feeling things isn’t so bad,” she said.

  In that one second she was fourteen again, and she couldn’t imagine him belonging to anyone else but her.

  THEN

  THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER BEFORE HIGH SCHOOL

  THREE YEARS AGO

  5:00 P.M.

  THE FLOW OF ELECTRONS

  Luella

  Luella was avoiding going home. Her mom kept texting to ask where she was. OUT WITH TINY was all she wrote back. Eventually her mom stopped texting.

  She wasn’t out with Tiny. After they left the park, Tiny went home to drop off her school supplies before having a last-night-of-summer dinner with her family. Tiny’s family was like that. They actually enjoyed spending time together. Like a sitcom family.

  So Luella just wandered around from one air-conditioned spot to the next. She popped into Barnes & Noble and read a book on method acting without buying it. She spent four stupid dollars of her allowance on a Frappuccino at Starbucks. Finally she gave in and texted Will.

  GELATO FOR DINNER?

  Will wrote back immediately.

  WHAT ABOUT THE TRADITION? WE HAVE TO WAIT FOR EVERYONE.

  I DON’T FEEL LIKE WAITING. COME ON. THEY’LL UNDERSTAND. WE’LL MEET THEM AFTER.

  Will paused.

  GELATO AND BILL MURRAY MARATHON?

  Luella met Will at a fancy gelato place on the Upper East Side that had flavors like blue cheese and basil. Luella got the olive oil flavor, and Will got mushroom, but he threw his out after a single bite and proceeded to share Luella’s. “That tasted like feet,” Will said.

  “This is gelato, not ice cream,” Luella retorted. “Your palette is clearly not as sophisticated as mine.”

  They
walked side by side, not touching. Every now and then their shoulders would bump and Luella would leap away like she’d touched an ignited stove. Will had changed a lot over the course of the summer. He was more confident, or something. Now when she looked at him, she wondered if she was starting to think he was maybe, kind of, sort of, well, hot.

  Luella concentrated with every inch of her being on not making any slurping or sucking noises while eating her gelato, keenly aware that it looked like she was making out with a dairy product. Which made Luella think of making out. Which made her nervous. Which was not good.

  What was happening? Will was her second best friend (after Tiny, of course), and now she couldn’t even talk to him!

  If Will noticed, he did a good job of hiding it.

  It was like some bizarre parallel universe.

  So Luella just started saying words.

  “I’m thinking of officially going by Lu now, when school starts,” she said suddenly. “What do you think?”

  “I like Luella,” Will said into the dark.

  “Yeah, I don’t know. All this stuff with my dad. It’s been a rough year. I just need to start over. So I thought, you know, new school year, new name. Something different. A change.”

  “It’s okay,” Will said. “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  “It is cool, right? It sounds kind of rock star.”

  “You’re not even in a band, Luella.”

  “Lu.”

  “Sorry, Lu.”

  “I could be in a band.”

  Instead of the funny, easy vibe they’d had all summer, the conversation felt tense. It had a weird edge to it, like they were both anticipating something would happen.

  “Soccer tryouts are tomorrow,” Will said quietly, as if he half expected Lu to not be listening.

  “Or as I like to call it, fun with balls.”

  “Why does everything have to be a joke with you?” He turned to gauge her reaction.

  Lu looked surprised. “Everything’s not a joke with me.”