When they were kids, the only person who could cheer Tiny up was Tobias. He would sit with her, sometimes talking and sometimes in silence, until she was smiling again. She always did eventually. Nathaniel used to watch and wish it were him who could make Tiny smile again.
In the kitchen, he watched that stupid scruffy hipster guy leave Tiny standing there bewildered and sad. He felt the same familiar pull to make her smile. He hadn’t felt it in so long—he’d pushed it away with everything else he’d felt that summer—but the muscle memory was there. It snapped right back into place.
Tiny ran through the door on the other side of the kitchen. And so Nathaniel followed her.
By the time he made it across the kitchen, winding his way between people, and through the door, he could see a red Converse sneaker turning left at the second-floor landing. And by the time he’d made it to the landing, a door was closing at the end of the hall. On the other side of that door was some kind of rec room–type lounge. Across the room, another door hadn’t been closed all the way, and it was squeaking back and forth on its hinges in the wind, banging into something, so that the swath of moonlight splicing through the crack winked on and off, like disco lights. There was a couple making out on the couch, and a coffee table with a bong resting on it. A cool wind ruffled his hair. He walked toward the light, and pushed open the door.
Nathaniel blinked. He was standing on the roof, and beyond him, the expansive twinkling lights of the city breathed in and out like stars. The moon was huge and full and orange.
You had to be crazy to sit on a high open point like a roof in the middle of a lightning storm. You didn’t have to be a geophysicist to know that. What was Tiny thinking? Nathaniel should have just gone back downstairs. Maybe even walked straight out the door and made his way back home.
But he couldn’t do that. Now, if something happened to her, he’d blame himself.
So he stayed.
Tiny was sitting, her back against the side of the roof, her knees pulled up to her chest. Nathaniel took a step forward, but his sneaker hit something solid and he tripped and went sprawling. The door slammed shut behind him. Her head snapped up.
“Sorry!” Nathaniel shouted. “Uh, sorry.”
“Are you okay?” said Tiny.
“Me? Oh yeah. Fine.” He brushed himself off and grinned. “Ow, though.”
She laughed, and he breathed out.
“Are, um. Are you okay?” He adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. “Because you seem maybe”—he tried to think of the right word—“not.”
She looked down, and a swath of brown hair fell across her face like a curtain. He felt a hiccup in his heart. She angrily wiped away a tear.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Do you want some company?” He took a step forward. “For old time’s sake?”
Tiny didn’t say anything. But she nodded. Nathaniel sat down next to her and crossed his legs.
“Hey,” he said, nudging her a little with his elbow. “Want to know why the moon’s like that?”
She looked at him like maybe he was a little crazy. But she said: “Yeah. Why?”
“It’s the atmospheric pressure. From all the wind and the storm clouds.”
“Cool,” she said. She smiled, wiping away another tear. “Tell me more cool earth science facts.”
“Really?” He sat up straighter. “You really want to know more weird arcana?”
She laughed. “Yes. I really want to know more weird arcana.” She looked at him. “That is a total SAT word, by the way. You’ve been studying, too.”
“Busted.”
“Totally busted.”
Nathaniel glanced over at her, but he didn’t say anything.
Lightning flashed. One Mississippi . . .
Thunder rumbled.
“Whoa,” she said. “It’s getting really close.”
“Well,” Nathaniel said slowly. “Do you want to know why there’s thunder and lightning but no rain?”
“I don’t know,” Tiny said. “Do I?”
“It’s probably better that you know. In case it comes up on the test tomorrow, or something.”
“Right,” Tiny said. “I should be prepared.”
“Yeah. You could use the extra studying, since you’re at a party tonight and everything.”
“Ugh, don’t remind me.”
“Sorry,” said Nathaniel. “Well, it’s a dry storm. They get them all the time out west, but they’re really rare on the East Coast because of the climate. It’s because we’ve been having an Indian summer.”
“What’s that?”
“An unseasonably hot, dry fall.”
“Oh, Nathaniel.” Tiny patted him on the knee. “You really did grow up to be a scientist.”
He grinned and hoped she couldn’t see the back of his neck turn pink in the dark. “We haven’t had rain in months, right? It’s why everyone’s freaking out about all the rain we’re supposed to get tonight.” Nathaniel paused and tugged at his sweater sleeves. Was he rambling? Did he sound dumb? She wasn’t telling him to stop. “That, and the lightning. There are some powerful electrical currents in the air tonight.”
“Aren’t the odds of getting struck by lightning really small, though?”
“Oh yeah,” said Nathaniel. “They’re, like, this big.” He held up two fingers. “You have a greater chance of dying from getting hit in the head with a falling coconut.”
Tiny laughed. “Is that a real statistic, Bill Nye?”
“Totally real. Besides, when lightning is grounding a foot in front of you, you run like hell or else—”
“You’re forked?”
Nathaniel looked at her. She was smiling. Her cheeks were dry.
“Sitting on this roof probably isn’t doing much to decrease our chances, though.”
Another bolt of lightning zigzagged between the buildings. Nathaniel felt the muscles in his chest clench. He pushed away the memories; he was sure she was doing the same. He turned to her and grinned.
“One more?”
She nodded.
“Okay, this one’s cool. Lightning follows the path of least resistance. It forks because it’s finding its way through the spaces in the atmosphere that allow it to pass.”
Tiny stared at the sky, so he looked up too, and together they watched as the beautiful bright forks found their way in the night.
“I know how that feels,” she whispered. She shifted to face him. “So why are you at Will’s party tonight, if the SATs are so important to you?”
“Will invited me over to study,” Nathaniel said sheepishly. “So everything is really going according to plan.”
“I didn’t know you guys were still friends.”
“We’re not. Not really. What about you? What are you doing here?”
Tiny paused. “Lu made me come.”
“I didn’t know you guys were still friends.”
“We’re supposed to be. We say we are. But sometimes I think it’s just something we say.” She squeezed her knees in tighter. “I just didn’t feel like being alone. I thought—there’s this guy, and if I could get him to notice me . . .” She looked away.
Nathaniel looked down at his hands. “Is that why you’re crying?”
“No.” Tiny laughed. “He hit my head with the door and it really hurt! And it was just . . . embarrassing, I guess.”
Nathaniel reached out to feel where she was pointing.
“There’s a bump.”
“I know!”
“I think you should have a really great night tonight, just to show him,” Nathaniel said.
“I don’t know,” said Tiny. “The night’s almost over. Something really good would have to happen to turn it all around.”
“Well.” Nathaniel grinned. “I wasn’t going to show you these, but . . .” He pulled a stack of flash cards out of his jeans pocket and handed them to her. “Since you like arcana.”
Tiny smiled without saying anything. She split the stack in half and handed one set to Nathaniel. She’d always had a really nice smile. It just sort of lit everything up.
“Cacophony,” Tiny said.
“The sound of the party downstairs.”
Tiny laughed. “Good one.”
“Thanks. The definition of E equals MC squared,” he said.
“Energy equals mass times the speed of light, squared. Einstein’s theory of relativity.”
“That one was easy.”
“For you, maybe. Um.” She rifled through her deck. “Faith,” she said.
“Faith,” Nathaniel recited, his eyes closed and one hand to his forehead like a tarot card reader. “The firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” He opened his eyes. “In other words, the opposite of science. Did I get it right?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” Tiny said, smiling. “You’re just going to have to have faith.”
He grinned and nudged her with his elbow. She nudged him back.
The sky flashed. A gust of wind came along and whipped the flash card right out of Tiny’s hand.
“Oops,” she said. They watched it spiral away into the night. She shivered.
“Are you cold?” he said. “Here.”
He pulled his sweater off and handed it to her.
“Oh,” she said, turning red. “You don’t have to—”
“It’s okay. I’m warm enough. This is actually a down T-shirt.” He smiled, lopsided, and pushed his glasses farther up his nose with one hand while handing her the sweater with the other. “Superthin. Advanced technology.”
She slipped it on and poked her finger through one of the holes. She smiled at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know. My mom keeps trying to buy me new ones, but this is my favorite sweater. It has character.”
“I remember this sweater.”
“You do? Do you remember its name?”
“Of course!”
“Marcel,” they said at the same time. They smiled in the darkness.
“Well, thank you for keeping us warm, Marcel.”
The pause in conversation grew into a comfortable silence between them.
They stared at the sky.
“Oh man,” said Nathaniel. “This storm is going to be crazy. You can just tell.”
The door swung open with a bang.
“Luella, just listen!”
Lu came bursting onto the roof. “No!” she yelled as Will materialized behind her.
The door slammed shut behind both of them. Will spun around.
“Oh shit,” he said. “No. No!”
“What’s wrong?” said Lu. “What happened?”
“The door,” Will said, his voice rising. “It locks from the inside. Where’s the brick?”
“What brick?”
“The brick that’s supposed to keep it open? Where is it? It’s always right—”
“There,” Nathaniel said, suddenly feeling sick. He pointed to the thing he’d tripped over. “That brick?”
The four of them looked where he was pointing.
“Shit,” said Will. “Shit.” He took out his phone and pressed something, holding it up to his ear. “Jon’s not picking up. It’s too loud down there for anyone to hear us. We’re never going to get back inside! Now we’re stuck out here right as it’s about to storm.” He kicked the brick and it went skidding across the roof.
Lu looked deflated. “Noooo. I have to get to Hurricane Fest! Or else—”
“Or else what?” said Will pointedly.
“None of your business.” Lu crossed her arms.
“We can’t just sit here; we have to find a way out,” Nathaniel said, panic rising in his chest. “What about the SATs?” Now that he’d overslept and missed the scholarship deadline, that was all he had left. “My whole future depends on that test!”
A brilliant flash of lightning lit up the sky, followed immediately by a thunderclap so loud it shook the roof beneath them.
“I’m more worried about the lightning,” Tiny said quietly.
Will yelled and hit the door with his palm. “We’re going to get stuck out here and we’re all going to die.” He crouched by the door, his head in his hands. “This is bad. This is so bad.”
The sky had grown dense with clouds, purple and angry.
Nathaniel couldn’t see the moon anymore.
And the wind howled and the thunder clapped and the storm was coming. Nathaniel could feel it. They all could. The storm was coming, and it was coming for them.
There was another crack of thunder, and lightning coursed through the clouds, flashing bright like the middle of the day, and he could see Tiny and Lu and Will, all of them, their faces turned up toward the sky and the lightning that was crashing down on them, hard and loud and bright.
There was a jarring zappish noise, like when the power goes out.
But they were outside. And there was no power. Only the lightning. It snaked through them like blood, lighting up their bones, electrifying everything.
And then it was dark.
And then it was quiet.