The Odds of Lightning

by Jocelyn Davies

“Wow,” said Will. “My parents are going to kill me dead.”

  “They never have to know,” said Nathaniel. “I’ll come over Sunday, help you clean. Just like I was going to come over tonight and help you study.”

  “Let’s hope Sunday goes better.”

  Will started down the street again, then stopped, and turned around. “Thanks,” he said. “For coming over. Sorry things got so out of hand. Tonight, but also in life, too.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Nathaniel. “We just went separate ways.”

  “It was my fault. I should have been there for you after . . .”

  Nathaniel looked down and didn’t say anything.

  “I just got so wrapped up in my own shit. I don’t know why it was so important for me to join the soccer team. I just wanted to be . . . different than I was.”

  “I get it. Trust me.”

  Will looked up at Nathaniel. “You know, you’re really brave.”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah. It’s not just tonight, Nathaniel. You’ve always been braver than I am.”

  Nathaniel let that sink in. “Huh.”

  “You know,” Will said, huffing as they walked quickly down Chambers Street. “You were really good at explaining that science stuff.”

  Nathaniel grinned. “I was really good, wasn’t I? I’ve had a lot of time to study the last three years.”

  “I bet you really could have won that same scholarship Tobias did. You deserve it. I think you do, anyway.”

  “Thanks. But you know, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking. Maybe it’s a good thing I missed that deadline. Maybe it’s time to find my own path. One thing I realized tonight is I have a choice in all this. I don’t have to be the best just because my brother was. I’m going to be okay with just being myself.”

  “Well, if you did apply, obviously you would win. It’d be some bullshit if you didn’t.”

  “If I do, just make sure your idiot friends don’t talk too loud in assembly, okay?”

  “Eh, I don’t think they’re going to be my friends after tonight. That video’s going viral.”

  “I’m glad you don’t want to be someone different anymore,” Nathaniel said. “Welcome back, Will.”

  Will was thinking about how Nathaniel was a good friend, and about how you don’t know what the path will look like until you walk down it—or run down it, in the middle of the night. There’s no way to know if the path you choose will be the wrong one. But sometimes you just have to choose, and trust that both paths will lead you back to where you’re supposed to be, eventually.

  Nathaniel

  A few blocks away, a row of Citi Bikes came into view, shiny and blue and locked firmly in place. “Nathaniel,” Tiny said. “Can you use your superstrength to steal us a couple of bikes? We’ll get there faster.”

  Nathaniel grinned.

  They rode across town through the night, the four of them. The wind howled around them. It still hadn’t rained, but the sky pressed down on them like a fist, making it hard to breathe.

  Every few seconds thunder roared, angry, like a lion descending from the sky. And then the lightning would crack closer, closer, ever closer.

  Nathaniel kept turning around to check on Tiny.

  “I’m still here!” She would say. “Stop checking on me. I’m fine!”

  “Good! Hang on! Don’t disappear yet—we’re almost there!”

  “How much farther?” Will groaned.

  “A couple of minutes!”

  Nathaniel pushed on through the atmospheric pressure and the wind. At this point the streets were nearly deserted. The subways were boarded up. The buses had stopped running. All the cars had made their way home. Everyone in the city was inside, waiting for the flooding rain to come. Waiting for Stormpocalypse.

  The city was shut down.

  They had the road to themselves.

  That was when the sky lit up, and the first bolt of lightning came crashing into the street itself, zapping down just behind Nathaniel’s bike.

  He heard Tiny scream, and whipped around in time to see her veer automatically to the curb and onto the sidewalk to avoid the seared black hole now smoking in the street. He narrowly missed another bolt of lightning as it came shattering down just ahead of him.

  “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!” Lu yelled. “We’re all going to die!”

  “No!” Nathaniel called over his shoulder. “This is a good thing! We need the lightning!”

  “That’s crazy, Nathaniel!”

  He threw a wild smile over his shoulder.

  “Good crazy, or bad crazy?”

  “There’s only one kind of crazy!”

  “Lu!” Tiny called. “The lightning is our friend, now!”

  Sparkling phosphorescent light was streaking down around them on all sides.

  “Keep going! We’re almost there!”

  They wove together and apart in the street. Sometimes Nathaniel lost sight of Tiny amid the streaks of too-bright light.

  “Nathaniel!” Tiny called. “It’s following us. You were right!”

  “Is it bad that I wish it weren’t?” He dodged another bolt of white heat.

  Up ahead was the on-ramp to the bridge. A big flashing road sign said: CLOSED TO TRAFFIC DUE TO STORM.

  They all dropped their bikes in the street.

  Nathaniel couldn’t help but wonder if it was the same place where his brother had dropped his own bike, three years ago.

  He stopped.

  “Guys,” he said. Tiny turned around, then Lu, then Will. Nathaniel looked at his bike lying on its side. He looked up at Tiny, who came over and laid her bike in a right angle against his. Then Will did the same thing. Then Lu. Their four bikes formed a square at the base of the bridge.

  “To Tobias,” Nathaniel said. “Thanks for everything, brother.”

  “To Tobias,” the others echoed. The wind blew between them, rattling the bikes, pushing their hair in their faces.

  They turned to the bridge.

  “Here goes,” Nathaniel said, and took the first step.

  It was the superpowers talking, he knew. But maybe it wasn’t. He had been brave before tonight. Just maybe in his own, slightly weird, Nathaniel-ish way.

  The wind was blowing so hard, they had to hold on to the bridge cables so they didn’t get blown away. Thunder shook the pavement, and lightning sprayed across the sky, brighter than the city lights below. Ahead of them, through the twin arches of the bridge, was Brooklyn. To their right, the glittering lights of downtown Manhattan. To their left, the famous Midtown city skyline. Below them, the black water of the East River churned furiously, spitting up white caps of foam.

  They were the only living, breathing things standing on that bridge.

  His heart was pounding.

  It was pounding for his genius brother, who tried so hard to understand the unexplainable. It was pounding for what they were about to do. It was pounding because there was something he knew—something he’d realized back there in the library at school—that he hadn’t told anyone yet.

  The thing he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since then.

  The lightning would course through them. It would change them. The charge in lightning had changed the properties of the subjects he studied drastically—sometimes unrecognizably. If the lightning was following them—following Tiny, really—and if it struck them, however impossibly, again, it was true that there was a chance what happened earlier would work in reverse. Every particle would realign, every cell would go back to the way it was. They would all go back to normal.

  But here was what bothered him about that.

  If their cells were completely reconfigured to revert back to their starting state, then everything about this night would rewind. To the way things were before they got hit. It would be like a time machine, basically. Everything about them would go back to the way it was. Exactly how it was. Their bodies—and their minds.

  Their memories.

  They would for
get this night had ever happened.

  If this really did work—if it proved Nathaniel’s research right, everything he’d been working so hard on—if he surpassed Tobias—if it did change them back—

  He wouldn’t remember it.

  What’s more, Nathaniel didn’t want to forget the rest of the amazing things that had happened to him tonight. The things and people that had led him to stop believing so much in facts and to learn to finally believe in magic.

  To learn, really, to start believing in himself, instead of trying so hard to be someone he wasn’t.

  But he was maybe beginning to realize something. There were some things from your past you couldn’t hold on to. Tobias was one of them. Tiny was another.

  You had to let go of the past in order to keep trekking forward in your hiking boots into the future.

  He didn’t want to forget about this night. But he didn’t want Tiny to disappear. And he didn’t want Lu to be numb forever. And he wanted Will to be himself again.

  So which was worse? Was it worth it?

  Maybe, if he wanted it bad enough . . .

  Nathaniel grabbed Tiny’s hand tighter in his.

  If he willed hard enough . . .

  “Whatever happens,” Tiny said, looking into his eyes, “this night was worth it.”

  He could make himself remember . . .

  “If we have to go, we’re going out in a blaze of smog and electricity.”

  He could hold on . . .

  They stood there. Waiting.

  He looked down at Tiny, almost completely part of the darkness now. He needed to believe that life could be different if he let it. He needed to believe there were some things in this world that couldn’t be explained with facts and research.

  He needed to believe that some things were just magic.

  He couldn’t promise that everything would turn out the way they wanted. He couldn’t tell her that they were going to fix things. He couldn’t ask her why she’d felt so ignored for so long—so desperately invisible that she attracted the most powerful energy force out there. He reached out, trying to pick her hand out of the night. Near-invisible fingers squeezed his. She was still there. She was still there. And maybe if he believed they could find each other again, he could finally let go.

  Tiny

  She looked up at the sky, which was now growing light. It was always darkest right before the dawn. And dawn was here.

  She was back on the Brooklyn Bridge. The last time she’d been here was the beginning of everything. For so long Tobias had been everything. He was her bright star. Her compass. But letting go of Tobias had been like trying to forget the direction you were walking in.

  At least, until now.

  “I lived tonight,” she said to herself. “I really lived.” Then she started talking louder, turning around to face her friends. “I took risks, real risks, in the real world. For the first time in so long I know what it’s like to show people the real me. To be seen. I’m not ready to give up on that.” She looked at Nathaniel. Real life didn’t have to be a letdown. It didn’t have to be any less than you imagined it could be. You just had to give it a chance to prove you wrong. You had to go out on that limb alone, even if it scared you half to death. And if you were lucky, if you were really lucky, maybe you would find you weren’t out there alone. And if you fell, someone would be there to catch you.

  “Me neither,” said Lu.

  “Me too.” Will took her hand. “We’ve come this far.”

  Tiny turned to Nathaniel. “Nathaniel?”

  Nathaniel took her hands in his. They were shaking. “This whole night. You wanted to be seen so badly you caused a lightning storm to follow you around the city.” She was laughing and crying like a crazy person. “I was a superhero tonight because of you. You’ve already lit up the sky for me.”

  There were so many what ifs. What if the real world took them in different directions? What if grief and longing followed them wherever they went? What if they applied to different colleges? Wanted different things in life, went different places? What if they cared about where they were going in life more than they cared about one another? What if this was over before it even had a chance to begin? What if they started out all great and then somehow messed it up?

  Lu was right: you had to ask the what ifs.

  But she was wrong, too.

  Sometimes you had to ignore them.

  You can’t expect someone to see you if you can’t even see yourself.

  Thunder began to rumble again, deep and ancient and all knowing. Thunder that knew everything about you. All your terrible secrets, and your good ones too. Tiny looked around at Lu, at Will, at Nathaniel. She’d known them her whole life, but she felt like she hardly knew them at all before tonight. She had always been quiet. She’d always been shy. But she had always believed in magic. And now, because of her, they did too.

  She had trusted them with parts of herself she couldn’t with anybody else, and they had done the same. She wouldn’t give that up for anything. It was important. It was the most important thing. This night had changed her life, and she never wanted to forget it.

  “Let’s not get hit,” she said. “Let’s stay this way. We don’t need magic or science to be okay. Maybe if we believe hard enough, we’ll be fine.”

  At first they all looked at her like she was crazy.

  “Maybe the answer isn’t in the lightning. Maybe it’s in ourselves! If we believe, we can make all of these strange things superpowers, not burdens. We don’t have to let them weigh us down. We can use them to make us stronger. They’re part of us now—part of what makes us who we are.” She looked around them. “Will,” she said. “You can choose to be you. Lu, you can choose to let the right things in. Nathaniel, you can choose to forge your own crazy superpath in life.” She smiled. “I can choose to be seen.”

  They were all quiet for what felt like a long time.

  “Okay,” said Will. “What the hell? I’m in.”

  “Me too,” said Lu, grabbing his hand. “Those what ifs. They’re important, you know.”

  Nathaniel looked at her. “You’re sure about this?”

  “If I am—are you in?”

  He reached out and took her hand.

  “I’m all in.” He grinned. “It’s all just one big science experiment, anyway, right?”

  Will helped Lu to stand, and Lu grabbed Tiny’s hand, and Tiny grabbed Nathaniel’s.

  The sky was purple, black, and gray. The wind wipped around her, threatening to draw her up into the clouds with it.

  Life, she realized, was kind of like lightning. Sometimes you had to go out into the storm and risk getting struck.

  And then, the clouds burst as if they just couldn’t wait any longer.

  For the first time that night, finally, finally, it began to rain.

  For a minute they just stood there. All four of them, their heads tilted to the sky, letting the rain wash over them. After twelve hours of waiting, it had finally come.

  Tiny began to laugh. And then so did Nathaniel, and then Lu, and then Will. They were all laughing hysterically, their heads thrown back, the water running into their eyes and mouths and soaking their hair and their clothes.

  Tiny felt something swell up in her that she’d never felt before. She was alive in this world and she had been quiet for too long.

  So she started to dance. She jumped up and down in a circle. Then Lu joined in, laughing, throwing her arms up in the air and jumping up and down, kicking her feet. “Why are we dancing?” Lu called.

  “I don’t know!” Tiny called back.

  “Come on, Will!” Lu shouted.

  Will grinned, his hands in his pockets. “No.”

  “Come on!”

  “Definitely no.”

  “Chicken,” said Lu.

  “There isn’t even any music.”

  “Then you’re not listening! Come on. Show us your happy dance.”

  Will shook his head. He looked away. But s
lowly, his feet started to move. He did the Charleston, then the hand jive.

  “That’s it, Kingfield,” Lu said.

  Will jumped into a puddle, splashing Lu.

  “Hey!”

  “It needs some work,” said Will, “I’m still getting the hang of it.” He grabbed her and lifted her off her feet.

  “Ow, put me down!”

  And Tiny felt the laughter bubbling up inside her with no way out. She just wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until she was crying and screaming and there was nowhere else for her to go other than staight ahead without thinking. Just charging forward into the night and straight on into the rest of her life.

  “Come dance with me, Nathaniel!” she called. She reached for Nathaniel’s hand. “Come on!” she said. “Dance!”

  He took her outstretched hand and he started jumping up and down with them too. She grabbed Nathaniel’s hand and spun him around, and he laughed and spun her back. He dipped her so low that the invisible ends of her hair probably grazed the concrete and came away dirty with soot at the ends. It was a good thing no one could see it.

  In the midst of everything, Tiny felt something stirring and crackling inside of her. She looked down at herself. For a strange, surreal moment, she could make out small pinpricks of light extending from each of her fingertips. Now that she was envisioning all that energy roiling inside her, she couldn’t shut it off.

  Tiny thought about the energy flowing through that first lightning bolt of the night, her body dissolving from solid mass into some form of crazy, psychotic energy—the energy of chaos.

  And then she threw her hands to the sky, flattened her palms against the air above her, and pushed forward with all her might, unleashing this crazy electrostatic magic into the world.

  All she wanted was to be seen. That was all she’d ever wanted.

  And it was at that exact moment, as the others were dancing and laughing, not expecting it, not expecting a thing, that lightning came forking through the sky, right in their direction, and the blinding white light eclipsed everything else.

  SATURDAY MORNING

  7:00 A.M.

  A BRIEF THEORY OF (RELATIVELY) EVERYTHING