The Odds of Lightning

by Jocelyn Davies

  Slowly, he pulled the beaten-up précis out of his back pocket. He spread it out on the table in front of them.

  Tension hung in the air over all of them like a cartoon raincloud.

  There was barely any time left. The test was supposed to start right downstairs in the cafeteria in what, a couple of hours?

  “What was your hypothesis?”

  “It’s kind of weird.”

  “Tell us.”

  “Well, okay. I guess, um, that big cities, like New York, for example, have their own gravitational pull, and give off their own electric charge. That, combined with the poorer air quality, thinner atmosphere, and increasingly erratic weather due to climate change made me wonder if lightning that strikes in big cities can change the property of matter in unusual or unexpected ways.”

  “Do you think it can?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I couldn’t prove it. Not until all this happened.” Nathaniel took a deep breath. He furrowed his eyebrows and studied the page. “E equals MC squared is Einstein’s theory that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. It shows how a small amount of mass can release a big amount of energy. So basically, hidden inside a very small object could be enough energy to wipe out an entire city. But I argue that it can also interact with that city.”

  Nathaniel wasn’t looking at them. It was like the gears in his superbrain were working on high speed.

  “Matter can’t be created or eliminated. It can’t disappear. It can only be redispersed or converted into something else. The amount of energy and mass in the universe is constant.”

  Tiny was beginning to put the pieces together. She was beginning to understand.

  Nathaniel had this superintense look on his face. “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I hope it’s not the craziest thing that’s happened tonight. What if somehow, when the lightning struck us back on that roof, it, like, reacted with the high electrical charge of the city and the energy we, ourselves, were already emitting, and it . . . well, it reconfigured us?”

  He turned to them, finally. There was fire in his eyes. Fire and stars and planets.

  “Think about it. It changed all of us. It took who we were, and it redistributed our energy in ways we never could have imagined. It changed our bodies and our brains. It turned us into our fears.”

  Tiny glanced at Will and Lu, afraid they we going to look skeptical or roll their eyes. But they were hanging on Nathaniel’s every word.

  He swallowed. “I wonder, if our energy combined with lightning again, I mean, maybe it would convert back into its original form. We’ve been running from the lightning. It’s been following us. Well, actually, it’s been following you, Tiny.”

  It was something, on some level, she’d known all along.

  Nathaniel’s eyes found hers. “Maybe it’s time to stop running.”

  “What do you mean?” Tiny whispered. But she knew. Of course she knew.

  Nathaniel ran his fingers through his wild hair. “You’re a small person. But there’s a lot of energy inside you. Energy that affected all of us when the lightning struck us the first time. If we let lightning strike us again, there’s a chance it would reconfigure us—the matter that makes us who we are, the energy inside us—back to the way we were at the beginning of the night. We’d go back to normal. We could all be happy.”

  “But we’d have been hit by lightning,” Will pointed out.

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Twice.”

  “Yeah.”

  “On purpose.”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you know how insane this sounds?”

  “I’m not saying we should actually do it! It’s a totally untested theory. Every inanimate object I’ve ever studied has blown up or been burned to a crisp. It would probably kill us. But in theory, it could work.”

  Tiny realized something, then. In that moment. That Tobias hadn’t been the only person who saw her for her. Nathaniel had too. This whole time. And she’d never noticed.

  Tiny watched Nathaniel scan the paper again. His eyes went wide.

  “What?” she said. “Did you think of something else?”

  Nathaniel coughed. “No. Nothing. Nothing important.” She wasn’t sure she believed him, but she let it go—for now.

  Tiny put her hand on his shoulder. She could feel his heart beating through his T-shirt. He looked up at her. And in that moment she understood how this had to end.

  “We have to do it anyway,” Tiny said finally.

  Lu looked up at her sharply. “Tiny, no.”

  “We have to, Lu.”

  “We don’t. There has to be another way!”

  “There isn’t. We have no time left, and no other answers. This is the only way.”

  “But how—?”

  “Tiny,” said Nathaniel. “All my test subjects essentially blew up. There’s no scientific proof that this is going to work. It’s not worth it. We’ll find another way.”

  “When?” Tiny said, panic rising in her. “When will we find another way? How? I’m disappearing, Nathaniel! I’m almost gone! I’m hanging on as hard as I can, but we’re running out of time! I mean, maybe we don’t need scientific proof. We just have to believe that some things can’t be explained with facts. The world is big and mysterious. I attracted that lightning earlier on the roof.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Tiny thought about that night on the bridge with Tobias, and how it had seemed like she’d attracted the lightning then, too, just because of everything she was thinking and feeling and wanting inside. “It doesn’t matter how I know. But I got lightning to strike me before. We just have to believe I can make this happen again.”

  “I don’t know about this,” said Nathaniel. “I don’t know about this at all.”

  “Shit,” said Will. “This could actually kill us, you know.”

  “Will, stop,” Lu hissed, shooting a glance at Nathaniel.

  “Sorry,” Will said. “Sorry, man.”

  “It’s okay,” said Nathaniel, although it clearly wasn’t.

  “On the other hand,” said Tiny, “it could save us. We won’t know unless we try.”

  “If it works,” Nathaniel said, “this will prove everything I’ve been working on for the past three years, right? Even if I can’t win the scholarship anymore. At least I’ll know.”

  “Wait.” Lu put her hand on Tiny’s almost-gone arm.

  “What?” Tiny said. Lu swallowed. She looked at Nathaniel and then back at Tiny.

  “How will we know when—if!—the lightning is going to strike? How will we be ready?”

  “We’ll know,” Tiny said quietly. “I’ll know.”

  Lu’s eyes got watery. For the first time all night, she looked scared.

  “What if this doesn’t work? Or . . . what if it does, but . . . not in the way we want? What if we go back to normal, and life is just the same as it was?” She paused and then swallowed. “What if you get hurt this time?”

  Tiny remembered standing at the entrance to Central Park earlier that night, almost paralyzed by choice. She remembered standing on the Brooklyn Bridge three years ago, making a wish that never came true.

  “The thing is,” Tiny said slowly, “Tobias was right. The one constant in this world is that things change and nothing stays the same. You change too, or you get left behind. We all have. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just life. And there’s no way to know how it will all turn out until we get there.”

  They could take the future in their hands and change things. She could make her life what she wanted it to be. Every second, as it unfolded from now until forever, was just a question mark. A whole series of them.

  The impossible really could happen. And if it happened once, it could happen again. It could keep happening, every day, as long as they believed it could.

  “We’ll go to the Brooklyn Bridge. That’s a surefire place to get struck by lightning.”

  “Getting struck by lightning t
wice in one night,” Lu said. “Pretty impossible odds, if you think about it.”

  “So,” Tiny said. “Let’s defy the odds.”

  Lu

  Someone grabbed her hand.

  “Come on!”

  She ran with Tiny down the hall in the dark, Nathaniel and Will right behind them, toward the glowing red exit sign.

  Instead of rolling her eyes, Lu couldn’t help but smile. Tiny always said Lu was the brave one, that Lu was the optimist who went for the things she wanted. But Tiny was the optimistic one. Lu didn’t know how she could think she didn’t matter. She mattered to Lu. She mattered so much. She was the most important person in Lu’s life, and Lu had taken her for granted. Tiny always made Lu feel lighter, happier, better about everything. She couldn’t believe she couldn’t see how awesome she was. She would do everything she could from now on to let Tiny know it.

  And that was how Lu ended up running down the twelfth-floor hallway at six in the morning, with only the red glow of the exit sign to guide her, screaming into the void of the school.

  Their voices bounced off the lockers twice as loud.

  Downstairs in the lobby was a stack of boxes labeled COLLEGE BOARD: DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 10/15.

  “You guys, stop!” Will said. They came crashing to a stop. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Holy shit,” said Lu. “It is. That’s the SATs.”

  Nathaniel walked over and placed a reverent hand on one of the boxes. He placed his cheek up against it and whispered something.

  “Dude,” Will said. “Are you communing with the boxes?”

  “Shhh,” Nathaniel said.

  Lu put a hand on her hip. “Well?”

  “Well, what?” Tiny said. “He’s having a moment.”

  “Should we open it? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to look at the answers without anyone knowing it was us.”

  “Open it?” Nathaniel was aghast. He stroked the box. “Don’t listen to her, girl. We wouldn’t do that to you.” To the group he said, “Some things are sacred. You can’t just go opening every box of SAT booklets you find.”

  “I don’t know,” said Will. “I kind of want to open it.”

  “Me too,” said Lu. “I didn’t study a whole lot.”

  “Guys,” Tiny interrupted. “If we don’t leave now, it won’t even matter if you’ve studied or not, because we won’t make it to the test.” Nathaniel was whispering to the boxes again. “Nathaniel!”

  “Fine.” He pulled himself away. “See you in a few hours,” he said to the boxes. “I hope.”

  “Come ooon.” Tiny dragged them with her. “It’s more fun to make the answers up as you go along, anyway.”

  Lu led them back out through the theater, the way they came in.

  The four of them ran down the street. Lightning slashed against the sidewalk just behind them, and the sirens bellowed after. Thunder shook the concrete, set off car alarms along the street, but they kept running. Somewhere along the way, Lu heard a police siren.

  “Do you guys think that’s for us?” Lu said, her heart pounding hard. “For breaking into the school?” She made a face. “Do you think they know we almost opened the SATs?”

  “I don’t know,” said Will, grabbing her hand and running faster. “But let’s not find out.”

  In the midst of everything, Nathaniel turned to Tiny and grinned. She grinned back. He grabbed her hand, and they ran faster.

  Eventually, the sirens receded into the background of the city, blending into the howling of the wind and the car alarms and their feet pounding against the pavement and the beating of their hearts that was the soundtrack to the night. It was like music. One great, big, fucking gorgeous mess of sound. A mad symphony. But somehow it made sense.

  “Hey.” Lu put a feeler hand out in the darkness as she ran. “Tiny. Where are you?”

  “Here,” said her friend’s voice. A hand slipped into hers. After getting Gus to take them to school, after making them all run to the Brooklyn Bridge and become human lightning rods, Lu could have sworn Tiny was beginning to come back. Not a lot. But bit by bit. It really was in their hands. The lightning would take them the rest of the way.

  “Tiny.” Lu squeezed. “I’m so sorry. About everything. If I had any part in making you feel ignored. I know”—she gulped—“I know I can be bad at the whole feelings thing. I should have tried to talk to you more about Tobias, about everything after. Looking back, I don’t really know why I didn’t, except for that I didn’t know how, which doesn’t feel like a good enough reason, but that’s the truth.”

  “Thanks, Lu,” Tiny said. “But it wasn’t only you. I have to get better at trusting myself. I ignored myself too. But . . .”

  Lu swallowed. “Yeah?”

  “You do keep a lot of secrets from me. If you keep doing it, I feel like we’re not going to be best friends for much longer. We’re not going to be best friends at all. And the idea of life without you as my best friend is—is—lonely!”

  “And you’re not keeping things from me?” Lu said softly. “You could have come to me back then. You could have said you needed me. You could have said you needed someone.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m here, you know,” Lu said. “Now. It’s a little late, but—”

  Tiny looked around. The boys were out of earshot.

  “We kissed,” she blurted.

  “What?”

  “We kissed that night.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lu was trying so hard to keep it together. “That counts more than anything! Why did you go along with my Josh Herrera plan if you’d already had a first kiss with the guy you really wanted to have your first kiss with? I was just trying to make you feel better!”

  “I don’t know,” Tiny said. “I wanted to believe it, I guess. I wanted to try to move on. It didn’t work, though. Josh Herrera is kind of a jerk.”

  “What! No. But those soulful eyes! And that hair!”

  “I know!”

  “What a waste of good hair.”

  “I missed you so much, Lu. I felt so alone.”

  “I know this is going to sound weird, but so did I. There was so much I wanted to tell you!”

  “We can start now. Right?”

  “Okay, here’s the truth,” Lu said, and then the rest just came pouring out. “That summer before high school, Will and I . . . I think we were kind of in love, or whatever. That last night, instead of coming to meet you, I went over to his place and I guess we kind of ended up . . .”

  Tiny’s jaw dropped about five feet. “You and Will? I knew it!”

  Lu rolled her eyes. “Yeah. And it was really weird and embarrassing.”

  “Lu.” Tiny gasped. “Did you have sex?”

  “No! But almost. Like, really almost. I freaked out.”

  Tiny’s mouth opened involuntarily. “What happened?”

  Lu sniffed. “It was sooo awkward. I wanted to talk to you about it, but, Tiny, I felt so guilty for ditching you. And with everything else that happened that night, I just felt like it wasn’t as important. I was afraid he didn’t like me as much as I liked him. So I told him it was a mistake. We never spoke again. Until tonight.”

  “Oh, Lu. I’m so sorry.”

  Lu smeared black mascara gunk across her cheek with the back of her hand. “It was a bad summer. The worst of my life, maybe. There was my dad, and then Will, and then Tobias—and then after that, you and I . . . I mean, it’s never really been the same. I never wanted to feel so torn on the inside again. I promised myself I would never get so attached again. To anyone. So I would never let myself get that hurt ever again. . . .” She trailed off and looked at her shoes. “Or whatever.”

  “How could you not tell me any of this? There’s this whole gaping backstory of your life I didn’t know. I’m your best friend. Or at least, I was.”

  “No,” Lu said. “You still are. You’ll always be.”

  They walked along the dark sidewalks, punctuated every now and then b
y the orange halo of light from the streetlamp. The boys were still up ahead. “I don’t know why I brought us to the party tonight. I just felt like it was calling me. Like it was time. Maybe it was the lightning. Maybe I just had things I needed to say and I finally couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore. I don’t know.”

  “Do you need a reason?”

  “I guess not.”

  And then Lu threw her arms around Tiny’s neck and hugged her so hard, Tiny almost couldn’t breathe.

  “You’re the best fucking friend in the world. I love you, Tine.”

  “I love you too, Loozles.”

  They crossed under a streetlamp, into the light.

  Wi1l

  Will and Nathaniel walked side by side. Will looked up at the sky, then down at his watch. The edges of the sky were beginning to fade. The sun would rise soon.

  His phone chimed with a notification. He’d forgotten all about the video.

  He opened the link.

  There was a stream of comments on the video he’d posted. Not very nice ones. He couldn’t blame them.

  The last one was a video.

  A door swung open; a vast dark living room stretched out before the camera, like the set of an abandoned movie.

  It was his living room!

  There were empty and half-empty red plastic cups scattered across the floor like grass seeds, flipped on their sides, perched on end tables, the mantelpiece, the coffee table, like they were struggling to grow. They were lined up along the hall credenza, single file. A sticky film covered the hardwood floors.

  The place was trashed.

  On the wall above the couch, someone had written LOSER in something brown and sticky. Will was officially an outcast now. Everything he’d worked so hard for had been for nothing.

  He didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved.

  “Gross,” Lu said over his shoulder.

  “Wow,” said Tiny, on his other side. “I can’t believe people would do that to you. They were supposed to be your friends.”

  “People are the worst,” Nathaniel said.