The Odds of Lightning (6 page)

He wished he didn't care so much. Life would be easier if he didn't care about everything so intensely. If he could just be like Will, who didn't seem to care at all. Half the senior class was here now, and no one seemed to care about anything except getting drunk.

When they were little, he and Tiny and Will and Lu used to play Science Club together. They performed experiments with magnets and grew potatoes in soil and mixed solutions in beakers.

Sometimes Nathaniel still felt like a kid playing at science.

Tobias had made it look easy.

Then the doorbell snapped him out of it.

What was he doing here?

He had worked so hard. He couldn't just throw everything away now. Being at this party was not going to get him any closer to being the best he could be. He was only wasting time. He should leave.

Nathaniel put the beer down on a table and slung his backpack full of SAT workbooks over his shoulder. Will was taking his turn at beer pong; Nathaniel wouldn't even bother saying good-bye. He made his way through the crowd. He opened the door—

And came face-to-face with Tiny and Lu. His two childhood friends.

“Nathaniel,” Tiny said, surprised.

“Uh, hi,” Nathaniel said, the tips of his ears turning an involuntary shade of red.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

What was he supposed to say? Will had asked if they could study together, then had thrown a party instead? How pathetic would that make him look?

“Um, what are
you
doing here?”

Maybe this, though—maybe it was a good thing. He had just been thinking about them, and there they were. His last link to the past. To that last summer he was really happy. His former fellow Science Club members. Right as he was about to leave.

Nathaniel didn't believe in signs. They weren't based in anything scientific. Signs had to do with faith and belief and the unknown. They weren't rooted in fact.

“See?” said Lu, turning to Tiny. “If this isn't a sign that we should be at this party, I don't know what is. Nathaniel.” Lu grinned. “Lead us to the alcohol.”

And so he put his backpack down. And he did.

They followed Nathaniel inside, and the past came rushing back around Tiny as loud and vivid as the party itself.

The vaulted ceiling of the two-story main foyer towered above them. Tiny hadn't been there in a long time, not since the four of them used to hang out. The wall to her right was made of exposed brick, stretching so Everest-like above her head that there were, like, clouds obscuring the top. Right in the middle was a real working fireplace—a total rarity in a New York City apartment (Tiny's family kept stacks of books in their nonworking one)—and over the mantel hung a series of Picasso paintings that looked suspiciously like real paint—not like the framed prints her parents brought home from museum gift shops. Through the crowd, toward the back of the large open room, a wrought-iron spiral staircase curved seductively, like a beckoning finger, upstairs.

“It's like the fucking MoMA in here,” Lu muttered under her breath.

To their left, the wall was made entirely of white custom bookcases, stacked with huge glossy art books and strategically placed decorative stoneware. In the center of the bookcases was a swinging door, and when someone barreled through it, Tiny could just make out a kitchen table cluttered with a rainbow of liquor bottles.

The giant foyer was packed with upperclassmen. It looked the way parties did in movies—except the music didn't stop abruptly, and it didn't feel like she and Lu were walking in slo-mo or anything. No one even noticed Tiny as she stood by the kitchen door, pulling at her crop top, staring nervously into the madness. A handwritten sign with the words
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT AND I FEEL FINE
scrawled in red Sharpie was taped to the wall above the couch. A couple of kids were wearing pith helmets, and one had a parachute. Down the hall, someone was wearing a snorkel. Because a snorkel is the first thing you reach for in case of an emergency.

There was no sign of Josh.

“Lu . . . ,” Tiny whispered.

“Don't worry,” Lu said before she could even hear the rest. She linked a reassuring arm through Tiny's, and smiled grimly. “We'll be fine.”

Outside the living room window, lightning flashed bright across the sky.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three—

Thunder rumbled ominously.

“Nathaniel!” Lu cried like a war general. “Onward to the drinks!”

“You're still very bossy,” Nathaniel said. Tiny snorted. Lu frowned. Nathaniel pulled the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands. “They're in the kitchen,” he said. Tiny noticed the tips of his ears were red. “This way.”

Lu unlinked her arm from Tiny's and followed Nathaniel through the swinging door, but Tiny paused. Her heartbeat sped up. She wanted to tell Lu to stop, that she just wanted to go home. She felt awkward in Lu's crop top and cut-offs, and what if she really did see Josh? It's not like she was actually going to talk to him. She was beginning to think this whole night was a terrible mistake. She should have just stayed home.

But she forced herself to push through the kitchen door behind them.

She hated herself for being so nervous, for losing herself so completely in the wanting that she wasn't even sure what it was she wanted.

Lu immediately marched up to the bar table and began pouring some kind of mixture of vodka and lemonade, while Nathaniel hovered by the wall between the door and the table. Tiny watched as people milled around the edges of the kitchen in small clusters, brushing up against the chrome refrigerator, the marble countertops, the shelves of expensive-looking copper pots and pans. It looked like the kind of kitchen that was more for show than for actually cooking in. All of the appliances looked spotless. Like a movie set.

She reminded herself that she wanted this. She had needed to go out tonight; she had agreed to it. If she'd stayed at home, she would have melted into that puddle of water on the floor, and no one would ever have seen her again.

“Here.” Lu broke into her thoughts by shoving a red cup in her face. Tiny was still feeling woozy from the courage shots they took before they'd left her apartment, but when it came to Lu, she had to pick her battles.

So, she drank. She drank and drank because she didn't know what else she should do. Then she grabbed Lu's cup and drank that down too. She didn't taste a thing.

Lu's mouth hung open.

“Whoa,” she said. “There was a lot of vodka in there.” She eyed Tiny carefully. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Tiny said, her smile bright and her speech only slightly slurred.

“Do you want some water?”

“Yes,” Tiny said. “I love water.”

“Ooookay.”

The tap was running. A new red plastic cup was shoved into her hands. The water was cold and tasted slightly like lemonade.

“Sorry,” said Lu. “There were no clean ones left.”

Tiny shook her head. “It's okay. It's fine.” The room tilted on its side, then righted itself. She blinked. She was going to be brave tonight. She was.

“Ready?” Without waiting for a response, Lu turned and pushed her way back through the swinging kitchen door.

Tiny sighed. She wondered where she would be without Lu and her
what ifs
, but sometimes that also came along with some impossible expectations.

She turned to follow—everything swaying sort of imperceptibly—but as she did, the swinging door smacked into her from the other side.

“Ow,” said Tiny. “Hey!”

“Oh shit,” a voice said at the same time. “I'm so sorry. I—”

Tiny looked up and then realized she was staring, her mouth open, at Josh. His black, black hair, his dark brown eyes. Those broody eyebrows. His mouth that turned up slightly on one side, maybe judging you, maybe smiling at some secret joke—it was impossible to say. It was the first time he had ever looked directly at her.

“Hey,” she said. She was doing it! She was talking to him. It was like riding a bike for the first time without training wheels, exhilarating and terrifying and—

“Uh, hi.” He scratched his stubble. He had
stubble.
“Are you okay? Did I hit you hard?”

“I'm okay,” Tiny said, venturing a smile. “Possibly concussed, but . . .”

Josh frowned. “How many fingers?”

“Four.”

“Nailed it. You're fine.”

He patted her on the shoulder and then started to walk away.

“Oh, um!” Tiny basically shouted at him. “What did you think of lit mag today?”

Josh squinted at her. “You're in
Calamity
?”

“Uh,” she said, waiting for him to recognize her. The pause grew unbearable. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, well, listen, you should write something good for us. The quality of submissions is really going downhill lately. Today was brutal.”

Tiny felt a jolt rip through her.

“I thought you liked today's poem? You said—you said it felt emotionally, um, authentic.”

“Hm? Oh no. I just had to jump in with something otherwise Jordan Brewster would never have shut up.” He looked right at her again, and smiled.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Tiny,” Tiny said hoarsely.

“Right. Well, seriously, Tiny. Write something good. Save us all.”

Just like that, he was gone, and Tiny was left standing there. It was like someone had ripped the beautiful hardwood floor right out from under her and she was falling through the gaping abyss, down, down, down, beneath the ground into the dark under-depths of the city.

Her one chance to finally get over her first kiss. Crushed.

There was a door on the other side of the kitchen. Leading away from Josh, away from Lu and Nathaniel, away from the rest of the party. She didn't care where it went. She just had to get out of there.

She pushed through it and took the stairs on the other side two at a time, her face burning.

“Tiny?” Lu turned around, but Tiny was gone. She lifted her eyes to scan the room, and her heart froze.

Standing directly across from her, separated by a sea of bodies, was Will. She knew he had seen her because he was frozen too. They locked eyes.

Immediately Lu spun around and began intently studying the framed photographs on the wall behind her. Just her luck, the first one she saw was of baby Will, splashing around in a kiddie pool. Naked.

“Fuck my life,” she muttered under her breath.

“My parents put those up. Embarrassing, right?”

She didn't turn around.

“You really couldn't keep your clothes on as a kid, could you?” Lu tried to smirk, but it was as if she hadn't used her smirking muscles in a while and they kept twitching in the most uncool way.

“Nothing you haven't seen before,” Will said automatically. Then, as Lu's shoulders tensed, he quickly added, “Sorry. I don't know why I said that. I shouldn't have—”

Lu was dying to see his face. Was he sorry? Curiosity got the better of her. Slowly, she turned around. He was just standing there, his hands in his pockets, and when she met his eyes, his cheeks turned pink, which was a weird look on him. Lu fought with every ounce of self-control she had not to let hers do the same.

Will cleared his throat. “So,” he said, regaining some of his swagger. “You're at my party.”

“It would seem that way, wouldn't it?” Lu replied, brushing her hair casually over her shoulder. Will raised an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“I've never seen you at one of my parties before.”

“You've never invited me.”

“I didn't this time either.”

Lu stared longingly back toward the kitchen, and Will followed her gaze, his expression bemused.

“Not that you're not welcome anytime,” he kept going. “But here you are tonight, of all nights. It's the magic of Stormpocalypse. Where are all your theater friends? Couldn't make it?”

“You put a party invite up on Facebook. I wasn't the only one who wasn't in the mood to study tonight.”

“Keebler,” he said. “Come on.”

“It's Lu now, thanks.”

“Lu . . .” He trailed off, getting a look in his eye that Lu hadn't seen in years, and definitely had not thought she'd see ever again. Her stomach flopped over on itself like a humongous pancake.

“Will,” she said, and by this time she was backing and twisting her way through the crowd—Will behind her every step—and into an empty little alcove behind the spiral staircase. “As hard as it may be for you to believe, I'm not actually here to see you.” It was stupid of her to come, she realized for the first time. Impulsive. It was totally like her, to just do something like this without thinking it through first. What had she thought was going to happen? Had she been thinking at all, other than of a way to lure Tiny out on the night before the SATs with the promise of some fantasy moment with Josh that would never happen? She felt a pang of guilt, and fleetingly wondered where Tiny even was.

“So you say.” Will seemed almost amused—delighted even—as he strode effortlessly to keep up with her. God, he had long legs. He had gotten really freaking tall.

His smirk had widened into this full-blown grin, and he had a bounce in his step she was sure she'd never seen at school. Totally weirded out, she ducked under his arm and made a beeline up the stairs.

“Why are you following me?”

“Why are you running away from me?”

“Don't you have more important things you could be doing? Where are all your groupies? Where's your precious
team
? Aren't you like
so embarrassed
to be seen with me?”

“Come on.” He paused mid-staircase, serious. “Hey. Luella. Don't be like that.”