Hurricane Fest was festive.
A hidden corner of Central Park was transformed into a strange nighttime urban park wonderland. Strings of white twinkle lights and colorful paper lanterns were woven through the trees, and someone had strewn oriental rugs across the grass so it felt like they were in an elaborate outdoor bohemian living room. Lu was impressed that the cops hadn’t discovered it yet. It was for sure not sanctioned by the parks department.
Everyone was dancing. A pile of wooden pallets formed a makeshift stage on one side, and the band was rocking out. A huge generator buzzed in the corner, powering the whole operation. It was almost possible to forget when and where you were. It could have easily slipped her mind that Superstorm Eileen was bearing down on them, and that the SATs were less than nine hours away.
Lu tilted her head back and looked up: the clouds still churned, dark gray against the dark black sky, no moon, no stars, just the rumble of thunder and the currents of lightning. It didn’t look like they were touching the ground right now, just shooting out horizontally, suspending between the clouds themselves like ionic spider webs.
No one cared about the storm. They just wanted to dance, and party, and ignore things like safety and not dying. That was the weird thing about New York. There were all those buildings, all those places for people to hide. When the streets were empty, all those eight million people had to be somewhere. And it looked like a lot of them were here. This was a pocket of the city that existed in an alternate dimension.
Lu felt her way in the twinkle-lit park, through the crowd. The thunder was so loud that she should have been able to feel the vibrations running through the ground, through the rugs beneath her feet. But she didn’t. She couldn’t feel anything at all.
She stood on her tiptoes and tried to see through the ridiculous crowd. She thought she saw the familiar-looking back of his head up by the stage. So she barreled through. She wanted to make a scene, but she kept it in and tried to be cool. People shoved her and elbowed her and stepped on her with pointy-toed shoes. But Lu couldn’t feel any of it. She was numb.
She was invincible.
She grinned.
But when she pushed through the crowd, there he was—with his arm around another girl.
* * *
Earlier, in the subway, Lu had seen through the windows of the subway cars as they’d passed her and the others by. Their best chance at getting downtown, hurtling away from them into the dark underground tunnels of Manhattan. But she’d gotten a glimpse. She’d seen what life could have been.
Everyone else on the train seemed like they were in full-on storm-panic mode. Everyone was wearing some kind of raincoat or carrying an umbrella or had bags of groceries because they had thought ahead and were now on their way home to hunker down and wait out the storm.
Everyone had looked prepared.
It only made the strange numbness surrounding Lu feel worse. It had started in her fingers and toes, coating the skin on her arms. But now she couldn’t feel her face, her feet, her legs, the tips of her ears. It was seeping in under her skin, too. What if it reached her lungs? What if she stopped breathing? What if it reached her heart? What if it stopped beating?
So when Tiny, Will, and Nathaniel weren’t looking, she had turned on her platform heels and run like the wind currently howling between the trees of Central Park.
Lu’s usual MO when faced with feeling (any kind of feeling) was to run. And now was no exception.
The sky was black and blue and so was her heart, but she couldn’t feel the bruise.
She pictured a forcefield around her, a bubble of energy no one could fight their way through.
On her way to the park she passed Hunter College. Where she first became close with Will, three years ago. Where she took her very first acting class.
It had come in pretty handy all this time.
* * *
“Owen?” Lu tapped him on the back.
He turned around.
“Lu!” he said. “You came!”
“Uh, you asked me to.” Lu glanced at the girl behind him. She had a blond pixie cut and was giving Lu the side eye. “What’s going on?” Lu said.
Owen glanced at Pixie Girl. “I’ll be right back, Jess.” He touched Lu’s elbow. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s find somewhere quieter.” She used to love it when he touched her elbow like that. It was calm, reassuring, like he knew where he was going. Now she couldn’t feel a thing. Except, well, kind of embarrassed.
They found a spot near a tree farther back from the stage. Lu pushed her black bangs out of her eyes and looked up at him. They stood there on one of those stupid Persian rugs in the middle of the park, some stupid orchestral indie band playing in the background like they were in some movie, and all the while thunder was rumbling closer and closer. For a second Lu let herself wonder if he was going to apologize, to tell her she misunderstood the whole thing.
“Hey,” she said.
“Lu,” Owen said now, on this night, on this rug, in the middle of this park. “Hey. I’m glad you came.” Then he hugged her.
She couldn’t feel his arms around her. She couldn’t feel the warmth of his neck against her cheek.
She pulled away.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“What?” he said, grinning his stupid crooked grin. “I can’t hug you?”
Lu pushed herself away. “No. I got your texts.”
“Yeah,” he said, “listen—”
“I think we should end this.” Lu cut in early, before he could say anything else.
“You do?” he said, surprised.
“Yeah, I do. And you’re clearly busy, so I’ll let you get back to Pixie, or whoever—”
“Who, Jess? That’s my friend from band camp.”
“Band camp?”
“Uh-huh, she came to the show. But listen, don’t end this. We were having fun, right?”
“Yeah,” Lu said, narrowing her eyes. “Fun. In secret.”
“Come on, Lu. It’s us! We don’t need all those labels and restrictions. Those are for boring uptight people.”
Lu hesitated. She paused to consider what she felt. Right now it was hard to feel much of anything. And maybe it was because of that that she wasn’t afraid when she said:
“What if I said I do want those things?”
Owen furrowed his eyebrows. He put his hand on her shoulder.
“You’re great,” he said. “But I can’t have a girlfriend right now. Things are really taking off with the band, and, like—that’s where all my energy needs to be.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Can’t we just keep hanging out like this?”
“So wait,” she said. “You’re not breaking up with me?”
Owen laughed. “Of course not! You’re the coolest!”
“But you don’t want to be my boyfriend.”
“Right,” said Owen. “Got it.”
“So what did you mean when you said you wanted to talk?”
“Oh,” said Owen. “I just wanted to make sure it was all good. Because I’m kind of hanging out with Jess, too, and—”
“What?” Lu took a step back.
“Are you upset? I thought we were cool.”
Lu thought for a minute. Maybe she should pretend that it was. But then, suddenly, she thought of Will. And she surprised herself.
“No,” she said. “It’s not cool. Nothing about this is cool.”
Lu realized something: She might have been invincible on the outside, but it still hurt on the inside.
“Aw, Lu.” The wind was whipping his floppy hair around, and he had this weird look on his face, like when someone else has this horrible accident you are in no way part of and you feel helpless and small and sorry and wish you could help, but the truth is there’s nothing you can do. “Friends though, right?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again.
Nothing hurts you.
You are an impenetrable fortress.
You are a renowned goddamn warrior.
“Friends?” Lu said. “I don’t want to be your—”
“Fuck you!” someone shouted. “You’re not Lu’s friend!”
Lu’s head snapped up just in time to see a fist connect with Owen’s face.
And he fell down.