The Odds of Lightning (11 page)

“What about Tobias's paper?” she said. “The one he wrote for that scholarship?”

“The Anders scholarship?” Nathaniel asked.

“Yeah. Could we get that? It might have answers.”

“Where would it be?” Lu asked.

Nathaniel paused. “School,” he said. “It's bound and published in the school academic archives.” Something sparked in his eyes. “Actually, yeah, this could work. Tobias was storm chasing, kind of. His paper was on the relationship between climate change and electrical storms, specifically on the question of whether the atmosphere of big cities is more conducive to lightning. If we can get down there and find it, we may be able to figure out what to do without having to go to a hospital or tell our parents.”

“Uh, what?” Will looked disgusted. “It's a Friday night, and you want us to go back to
schoo
l
?”

“You don't have to come with us,” said Lu. “You can just stay that way forever.” She turned back to Nathaniel. “Okay, so it's settled. We're going to school to find the answers in your brother's paper.”

Tiny closed her eyes just as another flash of lightning lit up the sky behind the clouds. The storm seemed to be hovering right above her. For one brief, eerie moment, Tiny had the feeling that it was waiting for her to decide what to do.

She could walk through that roof door and go home. Take off this stupid outfit and put on her oversize T-shirt dress. Crawl under the covers and wait, against all odds, to reappear.

The SATs were tomorrow. Only the single most defining moment of her high school life.

But it was hard to care about a stupid test when you were kind of disappearing.

“Let's go,” she said. “If we hurry, we can beat the rain.”

She wasn't cold.

It wasn't even that cold out. And yet Lu could hardly feel her fingers. The skin on her arms felt numb, like her mouth felt that time she'd had a cavity filled.

Would they think she was crazy if she said something? Wasn't lightning supposed to hurt? Was it possible that it had made her numb instead? Or was she imagining it? It's not like there was something outwardly wrong with her, like Will. Or that she'd done something totally crazy, pulling a door off its hinges like Nathaniel. She just felt kind of weird.

Or actually, she didn't feel anything at all.

But they were already making their way through the door Nathaniel had muscled open, and Lu felt like the time for saying something had passed. Maybe it was better to just get downtown to school, find Tobias's paper in the archives, and get the answers they needed as soon as possible. Maybe if she were lucky, the numbness would wear off by then and she wouldn't have to say anything at all.

It was just as dark inside as it was outside.

The power was out.

The couple was still making out on the couch as if nothing had happened. The four of them kept going, back through the upstairs hall, the many rooms, down the stairs, through the party. What a fucking castle.

Inside, the place was in total chaos, and people were squealing and huddled together in clusters across the vast foyer. Every few seconds a lighter flicked open or a flashlight turned on, throwing pinpricks of light across the apartment like stars at a planetarium. Lu grinned at how fucking poetic she was sometimes.

When they passed through the living room, Will/Jon muttered, “Crap. I hope it's dark enough that no one goes mistaking me for the real Jon.”

Lu shot a sidelong look at Will, and felt a twinge of satisfaction. Will got everything he wanted. So let him struggle for once.

Except Will wasn't exactly struggling. It wasn't
that
dark, and people were definitely mistaking him for the real Jon Heller. As in, full-on moving out of his way to let him pass. There was some Red Sea–level parting going on. Lu gawked. Was this what life was like for Will, too? No wonder he'd wanted to be cool.

As he squeezed between two brunette sophomores to get to the front door, one of them turned and put a hand on her hip, all like,
Ex-
cuse
me
. When Will moved out of a shadow, she instantly flashed him a smile. “Oh, hey, Jon!”

Will looked freaked. “Uh, hey,” said Will. “Sorry, who are you?”

The girl burst out laughing. “You are so
funny
!” she said, and turned back to her friends.

Lu caught Will's—or Jon's—eye.

“Shut up, Luella,” he said.

Lu grinned. “I didn't say a word!”

They made their way through the party, past the leering
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
sign and the guy wearing the snorkel, laughing a sinister, horrible laugh, and out the front door, where Lu paused to take a giant breath. She made up a mantra that she repeated over and over in her head.

I can breathe.

I am not anesthetized.

I am a renowned warrior.

The four of them stood on the stoop for a second. Lu looked at the others.

Flash—

Tiny, her best friend, flickering in and out like she was some kind of hologram.

Flash—

Will, her onetime friend and maybe more, who had changed so much since the years in between, had completely transformed again into a totally different person.

Flash—

Nathaniel, the brains behind the operation, who had disappeared off the face of the planet or at least the high school social scene, and thrown himself into his work, was now, kind of, bizarrely, superhuman.

And then there was Lu, cut off from everything, numb to the heat, the cold, the wind, and anything else that might come her way.

They had been struck by lightning, all right. But the bigger question on Lu's mind was: What the hell had the lightning done to them?

The sidewalk was dark, but it hadn't started raining yet. The clouds rumbled discontentedly, and she knew that it would rain soon. The sky was black, and the clouds were heavy, and she couldn't see the stars. The storm wasn't over.

It was only just beginning.

They walked to the subway, hoping it hadn't been shut down yet.

On the way, Will thought about fear. He mentally cataloged all the things he'd been afraid of since high school started.

Making the soccer team.

Not
making the soccer team.

Lu loving him back.

Lu
not
loving him back.

Staying the same.

Not
staying the same.

All his fears came in twos.

Then Will thought about the thing that plagued him the most:

Turning into someone he didn't recognize anymore.

He'd wanted to be someone different. Well, here he was. It's like the lightning
knew.

Will flinched. He thought about how hard he'd worked the past three years to turn into the person he'd become. The crazy diets, the compulsive workout routines, waking up at five a.m. to run every day just to feel like he deserved his spot on the soccer team. Going along with the team groupthink mentality, letting the guys decide what he did and where he went and who he talked to. Lately the anxiety spirals, the nightmares. Pretending to be someone he wasn't. No, not pretending. Believing.

He turned to Nathaniel.

“Hey, dude?”

“Yeah,” Nathaniel said.

“Even if we did go to a hospital, I don't think . . .” He paused to think about how to phrase this. “I don't think they'll be able to fix the kind of problems we have.”

Nathaniel's expression darkened. But maybe it was just that they were passing between two streetlamps and a shadow had fallen over them.

“I was thinking that too.”

“Do you really think your brother's paper will have the, um, answers?”

“I don't know,” Nathaniel said. “But right now I don't have any other ideas.” He paused. “If anyone has answers, it's Tobias.”

If Tobias had the answers, then Will could get back to his normal self. Everything would be fine. He could return to the party, take the SATs, and then life would go back to the way it always was. Or at least, had been lately.

He glanced at Luella. But then she might not ever speak to him again. She was barely speaking to him
now.
She was the last person he expected to show up at his party. But she was the one he was happiest to see.

She had said to
prove it.

But what did that even mean?

Girls were so confusing.

The green light of the subway glowed brightly ahead of them. Will felt the ground rumble beneath his feet. He looked up at Lu, Nathaniel, and Tiny. His old childhood friends. The three people who used to know him better than anyone else in the world.

“Is that thunder?” he said. Nathaniel's pupils dilated and his ears almost visibly perked. He looked like a wise owl.

“No,” he said, breaking into a run toward the subway entrance. “A downtown train!”

The four of them ran down the steps. The train was just pulling into the station. He reached for his MetroCard, but—

“No!” Will slapped his forehead. “I left it at home!”

“Just jump!” Nathaniel yelled. And then, as Will watched, his mouth gaping open, Nathaniel launched himself like a pole jumper over the turnstile without paying. Actually, launching himself wasn't really the right word for it. It was more like leaped. Floated.
Flew.
“Whoa,” he said when he landed.

“Dude,” said Will.

Lu grinned. She ducked under and scooted her way through. Lu was always one devious suggestion away from being a criminal.

“Hurry!” Nathaniel yelled.

Tiny followed Lu, swiping her MetroCard.

The conductor was announcing the next stop.

“Will!” called Lu.

Will tried to squeeze under the turnstile, but he didn't fit. The train doors were closing. Nathaniel held them open with both hands.

“How is he doing that?” Lu asked.

“I don't know, but it won't matter if Will can't get through!” Tiny said.

Then Will tried to jump, but it wasn't as easy as Nathaniel had made it look.

Finally Nathaniel let go of the doors and ran back to Will. He pulled the turnstile clean off the hinges. Will burst through just as the train was pulling away.

“Come on!”

He stepped back, cursing under his breath.

“It's okay,” said Tiny. “We'll wait for the next one.”

Will stole a glance at Nathaniel. He hadn't even broken a sweat.

The seconds ticked by. Then minutes. He fidgeted and paced.
“Attention.”
A tinny voice crackled over the speaker system.
“Due to inclement weather, for the safety of our passengers, subway service is being preemptively suspended until further notice. . . .”

They all groaned. Will balled his hands into fists.

The four of them turned back toward the stairs. It was going to be a long night. But Will would sooner drown than give up.

“Okay, it's okay. It's just a minor setback.” Nathaniel paced. They were on the street again, in the dark. “We'll figure something out.”

They'd only been underground for five or ten minutes, but somehow the street seemed even more deserted now than it had before. All the sane people were looking for shelter. They were going home, and the four of them were getting farther and farther away from it.

Nathaniel took out his phone to find the screen was full of alerts.

SUBWAY SERVICE: SUSPENDED.

BUS SERVICE: SUSPENDED.

METRO-NORTH AND LONG ISLAND RAILROAD SERVICE: CANCELED.

ALL FLIGHTS IN AND OUT OF JFK, LAGUARDIA, NEWARK: CANCELED.

REDUCED TAXI SERVICE.

TRAFFIC BAN: STAY OFF THE ROADS!

HURRICANE WARNING: IN EFFECT FOR THE TRI-STATE AREA.

FLOOD WARNING: IN EFFECT FOR NEW YORK CITY.

“Shit,” Nathaniel said. “These alerts all came in the last hour. The weather reports must be getting worse.”

“I knew I should have listened to the news,” Tiny muttered.

The others crowded around his phone as Nathaniel pulled up Weather.com.

“The rain is supposed to start tonight and continue through Sunday evening. It's no longer being considered a hurricane. It's now being called a
superstorm
.”

“Jeez. I was just kidding about the whole Stormpocalypse thing,” said Will.

“Superstorm Eileen,” Lu said. “Who comes up with these names? Sandy? Gloria? Iris? They all sound like grandmas.”

Nathaniel groaned. “They just need a Superstorm Bubbe, and my grandma will be happy.”

“Should we go home?” said Tiny. “Maybe we should all go home. We'll be safe there, and maybe by the morning these weird side effects will have gone away. We can all FaceTime and check in.”

“I don't know,” said Will. He still looked like Jon Heller, complete with the purposefully messy prep school hair and the perpetually squinty, kind of stoned look that girls were always saying made him look like James Franco. “The party's still going on. What if I run into the real Jon? Or someone else mistakes me for him?”

“Yeah,” said Lu. “Plus, it's just really creepy.”

“And I want to get to the bottom of this,” Nathaniel said. “Figure out what's going on.” What he didn't say was: it's what Tobias would have done. Tobias wouldn't have run home. He would have led the four of them downtown and he would have done the math and made it right. He would have used his superbrain to figure out how to fix things.

Nathaniel turned to face the empty street. No subway. No buses. No cabs.

“Should we hitchhike?”

“No way, dude. I may be big, but that's how people get straight-up murdered.”