She looked up at the sky, which was now growing light. It was always darkest right before the dawn. And dawn was here.
She was back on the Brooklyn Bridge. The last time she’d been here was the beginning of everything. For so long Tobias had been everything. He was her bright star. Her compass. But letting go of Tobias had been like trying to forget the direction you were walking in.
At least, until now.
“I lived tonight,” she said to herself. “I really lived.” Then she started talking louder, turning around to face her friends. “I took risks, real risks, in the real world. For the first time in so long I know what it’s like to show people the real me. To be seen. I’m not ready to give up on that.” She looked at Nathaniel. Real life didn’t have to be a letdown. It didn’t have to be any less than you imagined it could be. You just had to give it a chance to prove you wrong. You had to go out on that limb alone, even if it scared you half to death. And if you were lucky, if you were really lucky, maybe you would find you weren’t out there alone. And if you fell, someone would be there to catch you.
“Me neither,” said Lu.
“Me too.” Will took her hand. “We’ve come this far.”
Tiny turned to Nathaniel. “Nathaniel?”
Nathaniel took her hands in his. They were shaking. “This whole night. You wanted to be seen so badly you caused a lightning storm to follow you around the city.” She was laughing and crying like a crazy person. “I was a superhero tonight because of you. You’ve already lit up the sky for me.”
There were so many what ifs. What if the real world took them in different directions? What if grief and longing followed them wherever they went? What if they applied to different colleges? Wanted different things in life, went different places? What if they cared about where they were going in life more than they cared about one another? What if this was over before it even had a chance to begin? What if they started out all great and then somehow messed it up?
Lu was right: you had to ask the what ifs.
But she was wrong, too.
Sometimes you had to ignore them.
You can’t expect someone to see you if you can’t even see yourself.
Thunder began to rumble again, deep and ancient and all knowing. Thunder that knew everything about you. All your terrible secrets, and your good ones too. Tiny looked around at Lu, at Will, at Nathaniel. She’d known them her whole life, but she felt like she hardly knew them at all before tonight. She had always been quiet. She’d always been shy. But she had always believed in magic. And now, because of her, they did too.
She had trusted them with parts of herself she couldn’t with anybody else, and they had done the same. She wouldn’t give that up for anything. It was important. It was the most important thing. This night had changed her life, and she never wanted to forget it.
“Let’s not get hit,” she said. “Let’s stay this way. We don’t need magic or science to be okay. Maybe if we believe hard enough, we’ll be fine.”
At first they all looked at her like she was crazy.
“Maybe the answer isn’t in the lightning. Maybe it’s in ourselves! If we believe, we can make all of these strange things superpowers, not burdens. We don’t have to let them weigh us down. We can use them to make us stronger. They’re part of us now—part of what makes us who we are.” She looked around them. “Will,” she said. “You can choose to be you. Lu, you can choose to let the right things in. Nathaniel, you can choose to forge your own crazy superpath in life.” She smiled. “I can choose to be seen.”
They were all quiet for what felt like a long time.
“Okay,” said Will. “What the hell? I’m in.”
“Me too,” said Lu, grabbing his hand. “Those what ifs. They’re important, you know.”
Nathaniel looked at her. “You’re sure about this?”
“If I am—are you in?”
He reached out and took her hand.
“I’m all in.” He grinned. “It’s all just one big science experiment, anyway, right?”
Will helped Lu to stand, and Lu grabbed Tiny’s hand, and Tiny grabbed Nathaniel’s.
The sky was purple, black, and gray. The wind wipped around her, threatening to draw her up into the clouds with it.
Life, she realized, was kind of like lightning. Sometimes you had to go out into the storm and risk getting struck.
And then, the clouds burst as if they just couldn’t wait any longer.
For the first time that night, finally, finally, it began to rain.
For a minute they just stood there. All four of them, their heads tilted to the sky, letting the rain wash over them. After twelve hours of waiting, it had finally come.
Tiny began to laugh. And then so did Nathaniel, and then Lu, and then Will. They were all laughing hysterically, their heads thrown back, the water running into their eyes and mouths and soaking their hair and their clothes.
Tiny felt something swell up in her that she’d never felt before. She was alive in this world and she had been quiet for too long.
So she started to dance. She jumped up and down in a circle. Then Lu joined in, laughing, throwing her arms up in the air and jumping up and down, kicking her feet. “Why are we dancing?” Lu called.
“I don’t know!” Tiny called back.
“Come on, Will!” Lu shouted.
Will grinned, his hands in his pockets. “No.”
“Come on!”
“Definitely no.”
“Chicken,” said Lu.
“There isn’t even any music.”
“Then you’re not listening! Come on. Show us your happy dance.”
Will shook his head. He looked away. But slowly, his feet started to move. He did the Charleston, then the hand jive.
“That’s it, Kingfield,” Lu said.
Will jumped into a puddle, splashing Lu.
“Hey!”
“It needs some work,” said Will, “I’m still getting the hang of it.” He grabbed her and lifted her off her feet.
“Ow, put me down!”
And Tiny felt the laughter bubbling up inside her with no way out. She just wanted to laugh and laugh and laugh until she was crying and screaming and there was nowhere else for her to go other than staight ahead without thinking. Just charging forward into the night and straight on into the rest of her life.
“Come dance with me, Nathaniel!” she called. She reached for Nathaniel’s hand. “Come on!” she said. “Dance!”
He took her outstretched hand and he started jumping up and down with them too. She grabbed Nathaniel’s hand and spun him around, and he laughed and spun her back. He dipped her so low that the invisible ends of her hair probably grazed the concrete and came away dirty with soot at the ends. It was a good thing no one could see it.
In the midst of everything, Tiny felt something stirring and crackling inside of her. She looked down at herself. For a strange, surreal moment, she could make out small pinpricks of light extending from each of her fingertips. Now that she was envisioning all that energy roiling inside her, she couldn’t shut it off.
Tiny thought about the energy flowing through that first lightning bolt of the night, her body dissolving from solid mass into some form of crazy, psychotic energy—the energy of chaos.
And then she threw her hands to the sky, flattened her palms against the air above her, and pushed forward with all her might, unleashing this crazy electrostatic magic into the world.
All she wanted was to be seen. That was all she’d ever wanted.
And it was at that exact moment, as the others were dancing and laughing, not expecting it, not expecting a thing, that lightning came forking through the sky, right in their direction, and the blinding white light eclipsed everything else.