The Odds of Lightning (18 page)

“It's my study snack.”

“I know! I remember!”

“Want to go find some food?”

“What is there to even eat in here?”

“Let's go raid the snack aisle.” Nathaniel grinned. “There has to be at least one perk to getting stuck in a Kmart. Unlimited free snacks.”

Will nodded, even though Nathaniel couldn't see.

“We'll figure it out,” Nathaniel said. “I really think we will.”

“You don't know that. There is no factual evidence to support that theory.”

Nathaniel looked surprised.

“That's true,” he said. “Huh.”

Will knew he was talking about figuring out the weird lightning powers, but he hoped Nathaniel also meant everything else. He'd forgotten what it was like to have a friend who cared how you felt, and if you were okay. It was something he didn't want to let go of anytime soon.

“Come on,” he said. “I'm hungry too.”

They walked down the aisles, which grew darker the farther away they got from the light streaming in through the front doors.

“This is going to sound crazy,” Nathaniel said. “But hear me out. What if we got a frozen pizza from the freezer aisle and heated it up in one of the display microwaves in the electronics aisle?” He raised his eyebrows. “Amazing, right? I would kill for a pizza right now.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the science expert,” Will said. “Don't we need electricity to run a microwave?” He gestured at the darkness. “If we had that, we could get out of here.”

“Oh,” Nathaniel said. “That's embarrassing. You're right.”

“I can't tell if you're more upset about being wrong or not getting to eat pizza.”

“Both, I think. Pizza is my all-time favorite food. If I could eat one food for the rest of my life, it would be pizza.”

“Even microwave pizza?”

“Oh my god, yes, especially microwave pizza. There's some preservative in the sauce that I swear is like crack.”

Will laughed. “I haven't had pizza in three long years,” he said. “It's basically empty calories. Like, a lump of carbs and dairy and sugar. Nothing about pizza is good for you. I never let myself eat it.”

Nathaniel stared at Will in the dark. “I literally cannot compute anything you're saying right now. It's like words are coming out, but you're speaking a foreign robot language.”

“That's not funny.”

“Beep, boop, boop, beep.”

“I had to give up a lot of things I love to stay in shape, Nathaniel. You think I could have gotten to where I am now by eating pizza?”

“I knew Soccer Star Will was in there somewhere. You're not so different, even though you look it.”

“Soccer Star Will wouldn't be Soccer Star Will if he didn't work hard at it.” He paused. “I used to love pizza though.”

“What about beer? You drink that, and that's just empty calories.”

“That's different,” said Will. “Beer is social currency. Pizza is just delicious for no reason.”

“What's the point of giving up something you love to be someone you maybe kind of hate?”

They had found the snack aisle. As their eyes adjusted further to the dark, the various bags and labels came into focus.

Nathaniel tossed a bag of Doritos to Will.

Will felt the familiar weight of the bag. He opened it, and the smell of nacho cheese wafted over them.

“Life's too short,” Nathaniel said. Even though he vastly preferred Cool Ranch, Will was starting to agree.

“Hey,” a voice said in the dark.

A girl-size shape materialized next to him, and Nathaniel realized it was Tiny. But the shape never fully came into focus. He could just make out the blurred edges of her face, enough to see the scared look in her eyes. “Want to come find a flashlight with me?” she said.

Nathaniel looked at Will. “You okay to stay here and wait for Lu?”

“It's my lot in life, Nathaniel.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Yeah, I'll wait for her.”

“Keep checking for a way out.”

Nathaniel followed Tiny deeper into the dark store, away from the light filtering in through the glass doors. He could just make out her faint silhouette ahead of him. His heart pounded at being so close to her, this girl he used to think about so much, in the dark. He hadn't felt this way in so long. He hadn't felt not alone in forever.

Eventually they found the camping aisle. Nathaniel's eyes had almost fully adjusted to the darkness now, and he could see tents and backpacks and camping stoves and Frisbees and coolers all around them. There was a whole section of flashlights. Tiny took one off the wall.

“Do you think with everything going on, they'd mind if we opened this and used it before paying?” Tiny looked legitimately concerned, and Nathaniel laughed.

“I would literally be shocked if those cashiers were even there when we get back. There's going to be, like, a cashier-size hole in the glass doors, and we'll be able to climb right through it. I think you're fine.” Tiny fumbled in the dark; he heard the sound of tearing plastic and then something clicking into place. Then the space between them was flooded with light.

He could see her a little better now.

“You can see it,” she whispered. “Can't you?” Nathaniel swallowed hard, and nodded.

“You're disappearing,” he said.

Tiny slid to the floor, and the circle of light descended with her.

“No one has seemed to notice tonight. Lu and Will are too wrapped up in their own problems.” She clicked the flashlight off and on again, fidgeting. “I always felt like I could talk to you, Nathaniel. I wish we were still friends.”

“We can still talk,” Nathaniel said, sitting next to her. The light enveloped him again. “We're talking now.”

“I don't want to disappear,” she said. “This the first time I've ever said that out loud.”

“What do you mean? Not just tonight?”

“No. I used to want to. I just wanted to be invisible. I actually tried to be. After that summer, I just felt so . . . like I didn't want anyone to see me or talk to me. Like I didn't deserve to be loud or myself or alive. Like who I was wasn't good enough somehow. And now . . .”

Nathaniel looked down. The flashlight illuminated a circle of soft light around the two of them. He knew what she meant. He had spent his whole life trying to be a certain way, and it wasn't enough. He always kept trying, though. He always had to try.

But tonight it was easy. He was everything he had always wanted to be.

He was like his brother. Larger than life. He wished Tobias could see him right now.

“This storm makes me think of him,” Nathaniel said. “He should be out there in it, tracking lightning, collecting data, talking about the electromagnetic forces at work in the sky, not even caring that he might get hit. He should be out there. The least I can do is be out there too.”

“Me too,” said Tiny.

“I should have been there that night. I think about it every day. I stayed home for such a stupid reason.”

“It wouldn't have changed anything,” Tiny said. “Besides, you couldn't have known. Everything seems easier in hindsight. But nothing really is.”

Somewhere on the other side of the store, they could hear Lu and Will yelling. Tiny shone the flashlight straight ahead. It cut through the darkness like a knife.

“I guess we should find them,” she said. They stood up.

“This Kmart seems ill-equipped for emergency situations,” Nathaniel remarked. “You'd think they'd have a backup generator or floodlights or something.”

Tiny pointed the flashlight toward the sound of their friends. In the dark, she fumbled for his hand.

“Come on,” she said. “All we can do is keep going forward and take it one step at a time.” He might have been imagining it, but he thought he saw her smile. “At least we have each other.”

Nathaniel was grateful for the dark, because there was no question he was blushing. “Well,” he said. “This is better.”

They half stumbled, half flash-lit their way through the aisles, two bodies in space. For now, all they could do was follow the voices in the darkness.

The four of them sat in the snack aisle. They were stuck. The cashiers had vanished into the darkness, not even leaving cashier-shaped holes in the glass doors for them to escape through. They couldn't leave until the power came back on. But sitting here, in the dark, made the lost time all she could think about.

“It's weird,” Tiny said, to distract herself. “Being back together again. The founding members of Science Club. Did you guys ever think this would happen?”

“Ha,” said Lu. “No.”

“Me neither,” said Nathaniel.

“If the soccer guys could see me now,” Will said. “Hipster hair and skinny jeans and hanging out with a bunch of misfits in a Kmart in the middle of the night.”

“Is that how you think of us, Will?” Lu asked. “Just a bunch of misfits? Is that why you abandoned us?”

“I abandoned you?” Will looked genuinely shocked. “I abandoned
you
?”

Lu just looked at him pointedly.

“You're the one who's gotten all judgy,” he said.

“Judgy!”

“Yeah, with your weird slogan T-shirts and big boots and eyeliner and crazy theater friends. Dating a delinquent musician who probably broke a hundred laws tonight by putting on that show. Do you think he had a permit for those generators? No. And do you think those fires would have started without the generators?
No
!
”

“What about that makes me judgy? If anyone's being judgy here, Will, it's you.”

“This is ridiculous,” Nathaniel said. “I know why we grew apart. It's because we're all too self-absorbed to see what anyone else is going through. No one's even asked me how I'm doing. Do you think it's been easy for me tonight? After everything that happened with my brother, and now having some kind of weird superpower that's basically turning me into him? Do you guys even know what kind of pressure I'm under? You think my parents will expect anything less than perfection after raising a son like Tobias first?” He paused. “Do you think
I'll
expect anything less?”

“Nathaniel,” Will said. But he left the word hanging there without finishing the sentence.

“Right. You were too busy thinking about pizza and soccer and Lu and your hair.”

“Lu?” said Lu.

“You say you're not happy with who you are. You say you want to be someone different. But who you look like is only a start; you have to change on the inside, too, Will.”

“Lu?” Lu said again. “You were thinking about me?”

“So not the time, Lu,” said Will.

Tiny realized she was guilty of it too. They all were. She let how other people saw her rule her life. First Tobias. Now Josh. The lit mag committee. Her parents and Lu and her teachers. All the things people said to her every day that made her feel not good enough or special enough or pretty enough or talented enough. It wore you down after a while.

You started to believe them.

“Wow,” Lu was saying. “I feel like I'm learning a lot about boy friendships tonight.”

“That's not funny,” said Will.

“We don't make fun of
your
friendships,” Nathaniel said.

“That's because our friendship is perfect,” said Lu.

Before tonight Tiny would never have said anything. But now—

“Stop,” she said. “Just stop.”

Lu spun around.

“Sorry, what?”

Tiny turned red. “Lu. Our friendship is
not
perfect. We aren't best friends. We're just two people who coexist near each other more often than other people.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Best friends actually
talk
about things! Real things! They tell each other the truth!”

Lu's mouth fell open.

“And, Will, no one cares about your hair or your skinny jeans. In fact, no one cares what you look like at all.”

“Hey!” Will sat up straighter.

“Nathaniel,” Tiny said. “If you don't want to be like your brother, don't be like your brother. And if you do, then do it, and be even better than he was. It's up to you.”

“Wow,” said Nathaniel. “Don't sugarcoat it.”

Tiny felt a weird, familiar feeling. Energy buzzing around inside her, needing to burst out. Her hands started to shake, and she balled them into fists at her sides.

“And I never stand up for myself. I never say what I really think or feel. I'm afraid to be myself. So now I'm going to be myself. And maybe if I do, I'll stop disappearing.”

She started off down the aisle.

The floor began to hum, and then the walls began to vibrate, and then the lights zapped back on throughout the store. She squinted against the harsh fluorescence.

It was like the lightning knew. Like it could hear her.

“Whoa,” Lu said, running after her. “What just happened?”

“Did she make the power turn back on?” Nathaniel was running after them too.

“Guys,” said Will. “Where are you going? The door is that way. We can leave now!”

But Tiny was already walking away.

It was time for her to take this night and her fate into her own hands.

She walked down the brightly lit aisles until she saw the sign for school supplies. She found a pad of lined paper and a black Magic Marker. Then she sat down on the floor, and in big bold swipes she wrote her poem from memory—the one Josh Herrera had totally panned at the party earlier. Whatever. Fuck him. She wrote her name at the top. Her real name.

She sat back and looked at her work.