No one had ever prepared him for the feeling of his fist connecting with someone’s jaw.
“Ow!” Will shook his hand. He wasn’t sure he liked it.
But holy shit. He’d punched someone!
“Take that!” Will crowed over the sound of the electric cello in the background. “You can’t treat Lu that way!” Tiny and Nathaniel were cheering behind him.
“Will!” Lu shoved him. As much as it hurt, he was glad she realized it was him and not Jon Heller randomly coming to her rescue. “What the hell are you doing? I can take care of myself!” Then her eyes grew wide. “Wait.” Her head whipped back to Owen, lying on the fancy patterned rug, groaning, and then back to him. “Will?”
Will puffed up his chest. “Yep. You said to prove it so—”
“First of all, I don’t need saving.” Lu rolled her eyes. “I’m not some dumb damsel in distress.”
“Told you,” said Tiny.
“Are you kidding? I can’t believe you like that guy. Is that the kind of guy you want to be with, Lu? Really?”
“If you think he’s so lame, why did you turn into him?”
“I—what?”
“You did it again. You turned into Owen.”
“I what?”
“Does anyone have a mirror?” Lu yelled into the crowd. A girl who was standing nearby, filming the whole thing on her phone, pressed a button that made the screen go shiny and reflective. She offered it to Lu, and Lu shoved it in Will’s face.
Will’s jaw dropped.
He didn’t look like Jon Heller anymore. He didn’t look like himself, either. His cheeks had sunken in, and his cheekbones were sharp, and his hair had grown long and shaggy and swept across his eyes. He pushed it away and saw the face looking back at him clearly.
“You transformed into Owen?” Lu was pointing between them. She turned her face upward and shouted at the sky: “What the hell, lightning? I don’t get you!”
At the sound of his name, Owen groaned loudly and sat up. “Hey, what’s going on? Some asshole punched me!”
“Don’t talk to him that way!” Lu yelled. She punched Owen too, and he fell back down.
Will beamed at her.
“Look at you!” Will said. “Defending my honor.”
“Shut up.” Lu pushed him.
“You shut up!” He pushed her back.
“Ugh, I can’t believe you turned into Owen,” she groaned. “Of all people. Seriously, Will!”
“It’s not like I can control it! It just . . . happens!”
That was only partly true, Will was starting to realize. He wasn’t able to control when and where he changed—that part was true. But both times he had been thinking about that very person before he morphed into them. On the roof, he had been thinking about how much like Jon Heller he was becoming. And here, in the park, he had been wondering what Lu—his Lu—could see in a guy like Owen. Would Lu like him better if he were more like this band hipster? Was that more her type, or whatever?
Would he be happier that way?
And then boom. He was that band hipster.
It was a very weird feeling.
Tiny came bounding up and threw her arms around Lu. “You totally showed him! I’m so proud of you, Loozles!”
“Yeah, well . . .” Lu turned red, but she was kind of smiling. Will loved to see her smile like that. It was a rare, unguarded moment. She turned to him. “Did you come all the way here just to do that?” She nodded her chin at Owen, still lying unconscious on the rug.
“Well,” said Will. “I mean, yeah.”
Lu’s smile deepened into something more than a smile. Something Will couldn’t describe.
“Thanks,” she said. This time he was the one who turned red.
It had been a long time since he had felt this way. But being here with her tonight calmed the inner voices telling him he was the worst, that he was doomed, that he wasn’t the same person he used to be. The voices that told him he’d turned everything in his life into a big worthless mess. And that he was one too. Lu made him feel like a better person somehow.
He looked around him for the first time. He was surrounded by lights and music, and kids dancing and laughing and having fun. No one was overthinking things or paralyzed by fear. No one thought they might get struck by lightning or drown in the rain that was supposed to come pouring down at any minute. They were just living. Will was living too. He hated the way Lu and Owen looked together. He hated imagining her with anyone else but him. He’d been feeling this way for three years, and just kept pretending it away. But tonight he was having a hard time pretending.
Maybe tonight was a night for second chances. Maybe it was a way of reclaiming who he used to be.
Maybe the lightning had been a good thing.
“What?” he said. Nathaniel was saying something.
“I said, we actually came here to get Lu so we could make it down to school and figure out whatever it is the lightning did to us,” he said. “But if you want to stay here and be a hero . . .”
Will stopped listening. He grabbed Lu’s hand. “Hey,” she said, squirming away. “What are you doing?”
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s dance!”
“Owen! I mean, Will!” She looked at him. “Are you insane?”
“Maybe,” said Will. “Maybe I am.”
“Everything is so easy for you,” Lu said, looking up into his new, weird face.
He couldn’t get used to this different facial architecture. He couldn’t make the same expressions he used to. He didn’t feel like himself. Whoever that was. Maybe that was the point. That was what the lightning was trying to tell him.
Will shook his head. Talking like the lightning really was magic. He was starting to sound like Luella.
“You have no idea,” said Will, “how very untrue that is.”
And then there was a flash that lit up the sky above the trees. It turned the inky sky to day.
And then thunder. A booming so loud that it shook the concrete.
And then the snapping of a tree trunk. Will looked up. They were standing under a massive towering oak strung with lights and paper lanterns that had caught fire in the lightning and was beginning to burn.
It took a second for him to realize that the burning tree was falling. It was falling toward them.