The Odds of Lightning

by Jocelyn Davies

  Gus exited the highway at Chambers Street and pulled to a stop at the corner of West Broadway.

  “You are safe, where you need to be?” he asked, scratching his beard and smiling. They looked at one another and nodded.

  “Thanks, Gus,” said Tiny. “We owe you.” This time, they all pooled together their money and paid him for the trip—both trips—and gave him a big tip.

  “You guys remind me of my own kids,” Gus said as he got out of the cab. “They’re all grown-up, got kids of their own now. Had a rough go of it in high school. They figured it out. You will too.” He put a hand on Tiny’s shoulder. Then he got back into the cab, turned off the on-duty light, and drove off in the direction of Queens.

  Tiny looked down at herself. She was going to stop fading. If Gus could see it, so could she.

  The four of them stood on the sidewalk.

  The school loomed above them, all twelve stories, staring down through eyelike windows like some giant multieyed beast. The deserted street was a stark 180 from the usual throng of students. It was weird to look at something so normal in such a totally bizarre context.

  Tiny tried the front door. It was locked.

  “Amateur,” Lu said. “I know the security code to the theater entrance. Come on, this way.”

  They snuck around the side of the building, to the back door used to load and unload sets from the theater department productions. Lu punched in the code. It beeped twice, and when she tried the knob, it opened effortlessly.

  “If that didn’t work, I was going to use a bobby pin.”

  Seconds later they were standing in the darkened scene shop under the stage. They picked their way gingerly over half-painted stools, two-by-fours, and a giant automatic saw.

  “Freaky,” Will said. “It’s like a medieval torture chamber down here.”

  They walked through an archway and found themselves suddenly on the stage, staring out at the empty house. A sea of red velvet seats stared back at them.

  Their phantom audience, witness to all this chaos.

  Lu skipped to center stage. “You guys want to hear my monologue from A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

  The three of them walked out of the theater.

  “Aw, come on! Guys? Guys!”

  * * *

  The elevator doors opened onto the darkened twelfth floor.

  Tiny could hear thunder rumbling outside in the not-so-distance.

  “It looks weird in the dark, with all the lights off,” she said. “Doesn’t it?” Her voice sounded too loud in the empty hallway.

  “The whole school does,” said Nathaniel.

  “It’s like we’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Uh, Tiny. We’re not supposed to be here.”

  Tiny shrugged. “Right. Well, according to the law, anyway.”

  At the end of the hall, they pushed open the doors to the library. It smelled like books and sweat and dust and tears and a little blood.

  “I love this place,” Tiny said as Lu was saying “Ugh, the library.”

  “The student archives are in the back,” said Nathaniel. “In the sealed-off area where they don’t usually let you go.”

  In the sealed-off area where they didn’t usually let you go, student works were bound in leather and shelved alphabetically by the student’s gold-foil-stamped last name.

  “I can’t believe this is it,” Tiny whispered. “I hope Tobias knew what he was talking about.”

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Lu said. “No scary librarians are here to yell at us.”

  “Of course he knew what he was talking about,” Nathaniel added. “Not just every high school paper is published in The Journal of Academic Science.”

  They made their way down the rows of leather-bound books, to the Ss, until they reached a slim empty space between two books. It was gone. The paper wasn’t there.

  “This is it,” Nathaniel said. “This is where it would be. Why isn’t it here?”

  “Maybe there’s a reason,” Tiny offered.

  Nathaniel was hyperventilating. “Where is it? This can’t be happening. We came all this way. It has to be here!”

  “Maybe someone took it out and they haven’t reshelved it yet. Maybe there’s another copy somewhere in the school.”

  “No, no, you can’t check out documents from the student archives. You can only access them by special permission, and all physical copies have to stay in the library.”

  “Maybe it’s online too?” Will offered.

  “No, the Almquist Foundation is old school, they don’t believe in that. Everything is bound in a physical copy.” Nathaniel sat down, his back against the stacks. “It’s . . . gone.”

  “I have an idea,” Tiny said. She ran to a bank of computers on one wall that were all powered down for the night. She booted one up. “Let’s look it up in the library system and see where it is.” She keyed around a bit. “Okay, here . . . it says . . .” She read quietly to herself, then looked up at Nathaniel.

  “Maybe you should read it for yourself,” she said.

  So Nathaniel did. He swallowed.

  “Well, that’s it then,” he said. “It’s gone. This was all for nothing.”

  “Where is it?” Lu asked. Tiny glanced at Nathaniel. Nathaniel looked down.

  “They took it out,” he said quietly. “For his memorial.”

  The four of them sat there on the uncomfortable standard-issue school library chairs. No one said anything for a long time. The library was dark, and so was the mood.

  “What are we going to do now?” Will asked. It was the quietest Tiny had ever heard him.

  Nathaniel leaned back in his chair and covered his face with his hands. “I’m so tired,” he said. “I’m really tired of trying so hard.”

  Tiny put her hand on his back.

  “Tobias was always the genius in our family. I was just the raptor tagging along at his side.”

  “I know,” she said softly.

  “I wanted to be like him so bad. I did everything he did and went everywhere he went. Every decision I’ve made in my life has been because he made it first. But I know I’ll never be good enough to fill his shoes. He left them for me to fill. I owe it to him. In some way, the whole thing is my fault.”

  “You don’t have to fill his shoes,” said Tiny. “You don’t have to be Tobias. It’s been three years since he . . .” She trailed off. After all these years, she still couldn’t say it out loud. “Your parents will understand.”

  “They might. But I won’t. I’ve never been as extraordinary as he was. I thought if I worked at it, worked really hard, I could be. But tonight I realized something.”

  “What?”

  “Tonight I’m more than ordinary. Tonight I have a shot at being extraordinary. I know I have it in me now. Maybe I had it all along. But just because I can, doesn’t mean that’s how I have to be, you know? I thought I had no choice but to be super. But I do have a choice. I don’t have to be perfect. No one is really perfect. No one has to be. The only one who really expected me to be perfect was me.”

  “Maybe you’re afraid of following your own path because it might be so different from Tobias’s?”

  “That shouldn’t scare me.”

  “But it does,” Tiny said. “I know you, Nathaniel. It scares you because you’ve spent so long trying to be Tobias that you don’t even know who you are. You can be every bit as extraordinary as him. Even more so. In different ways.”

  “No, I can’t. I’ve spent the past three years working so hard and planning to prove that I can be. I got my whole Anders Almquist application ready and everything. I just . . . I didn’t turn it in by the deadline. I was up all night, working on it, and I didn’t even finish. I overslept. I missed the deadline.” He made a face. “I overslept for my own future.”

  “Or maybe,” Tiny said, “somewhere inside, you knew that wasn’t what you wanted. You don’t have to be super. You don’t have to be Tobias. You just have to be you. Screw being su
per.”

  “Screw being invisible.”

  Tiny smiled.

  “Screw wanting to be other people,” Will said.

  “Fuck wanting to protect myself from feelings!” Lu cried, throwing her fist in the air. “Feelings are fucking great!”

  “All these things that happened to us started after we got struck by lightning,” Nathaniel said.

  “So you really think it was magic lightning.” Lu looked skeptical.

  “I think I do.”

  “But that’s crazy!”

  “Crazier than any other ideas?”

  “I guess not,” Tiny said. “So, what does this mean?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Will. “I’m still hung up on the ‘lightning changed us’ part. I mean, can lightning even do that? Nathaniel?”

  “Lightning is more powerful than you think,” he said. “Some studies even show lightning could have triggered the evolution of the world’s first living organisms. Like, lightning maybe caused the Big Bang and woke up all that primordial soup.”

  “But how is that possible?”

  “Define possible,” said Nathaniel. “I mean, according to Arthur C. Clarke—”

  “Who’s that?” said Lu.

  Nathaniel looked peeved. “He wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey! And he said, ‘The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.’”

  Will rolled his eyes. “Oh my god, you’re such a nerd. Were you always this big of a nerd?”

  “Will,” Nathaniel said. “Just listen. Have you thought about how we’ve changed? If you think about it, the lightning turned me into the thing I’ve always been afraid of.”

  “And the thing you’ve always wanted, too,” Tiny said. “The same thing happened to me. I wanted to be invisible, but I was afraid of it too.” Tiny glanced up at Lu. “And, Lu, sometimes I feel like you’re the strong one in our friendship. Like you know where we’re going and I’m just along for the ride. I’m so scared that if we weren’t friends, I’d just . . . disappear. No one would see me at all.”

  “Tiny—” Lu started to say.

  Tiny looked up at Nathaniel, and he felt his heart dip in his chest. “The lightning is turning us all into the thing we want—and what we’re most afraid of becoming.”

  Will coughed. “Well, if that’s true, I think mine’s obvious,” he said. “Three years ago I was so self-conscious about my weight. I was so sick of feeling like it defined me, like it was the first thing about me everyone saw. Everyone thought of me as a goofy friend and nothing else. And most of all, I was afraid Luella was embarrassed to be with me. I was so wrapped up in it, I didn’t stop to ask if it was even true. All I wanted was to be somebody different.” He looked at Lu. Lu looked down at her hands. “I’m afraid I still don’t know who I am.”

  “Well, I’m glad you can admit that, Will,” said Lu.

  Will looked at her. “What about you, Lu?”

  “What about me? I’m fine.”

  Will looked at her. But it was Tiny who said, “What are you afraid of, Lu? Just tell us. It’s okay.”

  “I’m just . . . It’s just that.” She sucked in a breath. “Shit.”

  “Oh,” said Will. “I get it.” He leaned back and slapped a hand to his forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t put it together before now.”

  “Oh, you think you have me all figured out, huh, King?”

  “Actually, Luella, I do. You’re afraid of being vulnerable. Of getting hurt. And now. You. Can’t. Feel. Anything. Oh my god, I’m an idiot.”

  “Is that my fault?” Lu said, her voice rising. “People are always leaving me! My mom and I took care of my dad for, like, two years when he was sick. It took over our whole lives! And then the minute he got better, he left us for that stupid cancer nurse. Now they’re all shacked up and married, and my mom and I are totally miserable and alone.” She sighed. “And Owen was hooking up with someone else, did I tell you that? And it’s not like he’s the best guy, or that I liked him soooo much or whatever. I just didn’t want to be the dumpee. Maybe it was me; I don’t know. Like I wasn’t all the way in it. I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t looking for someone who would let me be myself, because then I could be one foot out the door. Because I don’t want to get hurt again.”

  Tiny thought about her best friend, about this philosophy she’d sort of never realized before. Things were always “all cool” for Lu. Tiny never saw her get upset, not really. If everything was all cool for Lu, she wondered just how much her friend was bottling up. What was going on with Owen that Tiny didn’t know about? What had happened years ago with Will, during that last summer before high school? How much did they hide from each other every day? Tiny always thought Lu was the one who never listened to her, but maybe Tiny was guilty of doing it too sometimes.

  Otherwise, how could Lu not see how desperate Tiny was to be seen, and how scared she was now that she was going to be lost forever?

  She guessed it took almost being forgotten to make you realize how much you want to be memorable.

  They were all kind of quiet for a while.

  Then Nathaniel spoke.

  “I’ve had enough.”

  “Enough of what?” Lu asked, her eyes narrowing.

  He fingered the application in his pocket.

  “Nathaniel?” Tiny prodded.

  “We shouldn’t have to keep running. Let’s show the lightning who’s boss.”

  “How?” Tiny asked.

  Nathaniel grinned.

  “Let’s face it head on,” he said.

  That was what Tiny had been afraid of.

  THEN

  THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER BEFORE HIGH SCHOOL

  THREE YEARS AGO

  10:00 P.M.

  THE LUMINOUS FLASH

  Nathaniel

  He watched Tobias pack a backpack, loading up notebooks and pens and some kind of weird electrostatistical apparatus that looked like a magic wand with two wiry prongs sticking up on one end like alien antennae. He was trying not to feel those school’s-starting-tomorrow blues. But they were weighing on him. School was starting tomorrow. Things were already changing.

  Tobias looked up.

  “What?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re staring.”

  “I’m just thinking.”

  “Oh yeah?” Tobias straightened up. He had gotten really tall and really lanky, and his curly brown hair looked even more unruly and Einstein-y than ever. Nathaniel already knew he was following the same trajectory, looks-wise. He already had momentum; it was an unstoppable force of physics. “Whatcha thinking about?”

  “Just . . . you know. I’m not ready for school to start.”

  “Do you have your classes all picked out?”

  “Yeah. You’re lucky you’re heading off to college tomorrow. You got your scholarship. You got into your dream school. You know what you’re going to study. You know what you want to be when you grow up. You have your whole life mapped out.”

  Tobias stopped packing and flopped down onto the couch, next to Nathaniel.

  “Listen,” his brother said. “You want to know the truth? I envy you too.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up! It’s true. You have no idea the kind of pressure I’m under.” Nathaniel snorted. “Okay. All my teachers. Mom and Dad. My advisers at MIT”—he ticked them off on his fingers—“they all talk about my promise and potential and the bright future ahead of me. They say I’m cut out for NASA, for government research. All I do is work. If I mess up, I’m letting so many people down.”

  “Yeah,” Nathaniel said. “People who worship you.”

  “Just for once, I kind of want to have some fun. To have a chance to breathe and do something without an end goal in mind.”

  Nathaniel pretended to play the tiniest violin, for the tiniest tragedy. Tobias crossed his arms and huffed.

  “Whatever. You want to know my advice? Think of high school as a fr
esh start. You have the next four years to do whatever you want. Maybe you’ll find out that the way you’ve always looked at the world is changing. Facts and equations and formulas can only take you so far, Nathaniel. But there’s more to life than that.” Tobias’s face darkened. “There has to be, right?” Nathaniel studied Tobias. He wondered if they were even still talking about the same thing. “Being so good at something, it comes with a lot of expectations. What if I don’t live up to them? What if I don’t even want to?”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to?” Nathaniel said. He literally could not comprehend it.

  “I know you want to have it all mapped out like me, but there’s no rush. Maybe you shouldn’t even be a scientist. Take some time to figure it out.”

  “What?” Nathaniel reared back. “What, you don’t think I’m good enough?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I didn’t mean it like that, I just . . . Agh, I’m trying to talk to you like a grown-up, you moron.”

  Against his better judgment, Nathaniel started to feel his temper rising. “Right, because you’re so much more grown up and smarter and cooler and better than I am.” Maybe it wasn’t even all about Tobias. Maybe it was what happened last week with Tiny. Maybe it was just everything.

  He was yelling. That was a fact.

  “I’m just trying to protect you.”

  “I don’t need you to protect me!”

  “I’m your big brother,” Tobias said. “That’s my job.”

  “Then you’re fired,” said Nathaniel. Tobias opened his mouth and then closed it again. He looked almost hurt. Nathaniel wished he could take it back, but it was already out there. He’d never seen his brother look that way before.

  Nathaniel’s hands clenched into fists. For the first time in his entire life, he truly hated his brother. He wished something bad would happen to him. So he could be free. From living in his shadow. From all of it.

  “Come on,” Tobias said. “It’s getting dark. I have work to do. Are you coming or not?”

  Nathaniel turned around and walked out of the room.

  “You can go on without me,” he said.