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.