“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.