The last time Lucy had poked around the kitchen, Cole’s misguided financing of prom night was her biggest problem. Ah, to be young again. Was it only Friday?
Squash and chicken salad definitely didn’t appeal.
When she’d activated her new phone, all of Cole’s messages from the past weekend came flooding in. He must have sent the first right after her phone smashed.
I miss you. Followed a couple hours later by: I want to hear your voice.
Nothing on Saturday night, but the texts on Sunday grew progressively more frustrated and sad, ending with: This has been the worst weekend of my life.
Hers too.
Lucy had hoped he would text her this evening. So far, nothing. She hadn’t texted him either, though. She didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell Cole why she was acting so distant and she had reached her daily quota of lies. The only messages she’d received were from Claudia, brimming with excitement that Jess had asked for her number. Lucy was glad that at least Claudia’s love life wasn’t in free fall.
She slammed the fridge door with more force than necessary and huffed. Not even ice cream—sugar-free and organic, obviously—tempted her. Lucy grabbed a package of Jiffy Pop from the cabinet above the sink but didn’t plan on eating it. The instant popcorn was for experimental purposes only.
Lucy’s dad wasn’t nearly as health conscious as her mom and he said making popcorn on the stovetop reminded him of his college days when he survived on ramen and nearly set his fraternity house on fire with his culinary pyrotechnics. This didn’t convince her mother as to the logic of stovetop popcorn, but she’d relented.
Removing the paper wrapper, Lucy listened for the it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night chord progressions of Beethoven.
Check. Safe to proceed.
When Lucy was eight, her dad had turned his unhealthy eating habits into a science lesson. The popcorn kernels came in a frying-pan-shaped aluminum container filled with oil. When heated on the stove, the aluminum conducted the energy necessary to cook the kernels. Leave it too long and the expanding aluminum explodes. Lucy’s dad would do that sometimes because she liked it and her mom would complain about the mess while nibbling on the end product.
Lucy didn’t plan on using the stove.
She set the pan on the countertop, then carefully removed her Medic Alert bracelet and shoved it in her pocket. She didn’t want anything interfering with the parameters of the experiment.
Her fingers twitched as she placed her right hand flush against the cold, smooth aluminum.
The test was simple. Empirical.
The incidents with the bracelet, the stapler, and the iPad all seemed to suggest that Lucy was creating large electric and magnetic fields, and that they were somehow tied to her emotions. In physics, one of the most fundamental laws was that energy couldn’t be created or destroyed. Almost two hundred years ago, Michael Faraday—the same guy who designed the cage in Tesla’s lab—had discovered that changing a magnetic field induces electric current.
Therefore, if Lucy really was generating her own magnetic fields, and if she could control them, she should be able to induce electricity in any handy piece of metal: such as the popcorn pan. By running this current through aluminum, which, like all metals, had a natural resistance, it should produce the heat required to pop the kernels.
It was a totally straightforward, totally illogical experiment.
Lucy closed her eyes and drew in a steadying breath. The aluminum crinkled beneath her fingertips.
Concentrate.
When she’d toasted the iPad, she’d been alarmed. Panicked. And when Megan had taunted Lucy about Cole, she’d been afraid the Mean Girl was right. Lucy needed an adrenaline jolt and because she was clearly a masochist, she focused on re-creating those conditions.
One by one, she scrolled through her catalogue of fears. She conjured the memory of standing alone on the playground, the other kids laughing and pointing at her helmet. Her body tensed with the phantom throbbing in her temples that preceded a seizure.
Not enough.
She pictured the blanket of blackness that covered her mind when a seizure gripped her. That paralyzing moment before her conscious mind gave up the fight while she knew what was coming. The inevitable surrender.
Still not enough. Maybe surrender had become too familiar.
Dig deeper.
Lucy forced herself to relive the fear that had plagued her for months after she started dating Cole: the potential humiliation of succumbing to a seizure while having sex for the first time. He hadn’t pushed the issue; Lucy had been the one to suggest it. Their one-year anniversary and Lucy’s eighteenth birthday had been fast approaching and she’d told Cole he could do better than an Amazon gift card.
The Coke he’d been drinking nearly spurted through his nostrils.
I love you, Lucy Phelps, he’d said.
Nevertheless, the thought of messing up their first time together had terrorized her. She was too embarrassed to talk to Dr. Rosen about sex, but she reasoned if she couldn’t play sports because of her heart rate, then sex might also be a trigger. Nor did Lucy want to tell her parents she and Cole were taking things to the next level. Yes, they were East Coast liberals but even they had their limits.
Lucy screwed her eyelids tighter, pulse accelerating, and thrust herself further into the memory.
Shortly after Cole’s declaration, they’d picked a night to be “The Night.” He often had the house to himself because Mr. Hewitt was a software sales rep and Cole’s mom traveled with him to wine and dine clients. Claudia had been in on the plan, of course, providing the cover of a sleepover for Lucy’s parents. Lucy would’ve disabled the GPS tracker on her phone that night, but it didn’t matter because her phone conked out hours before the big event.
Standing in the kitchen, perspiration began to dot Lucy’s hairline. She recalled sweating all through the romantic dinner Cole had made as well. He burned the steaks but it was the thought that counted. There were candles and a bouquet of pink carnations on the table. He watched her avidly, sensing something was off as Lucy had grown quieter and quieter.
By the time Cole served up a Sara Lee chocolate cake, he dragged his chair next to hers, resting his hand on top of hers and saying, “We don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for.” His tone was relaxed and Lucy knew he really would be okay to wait, but she confessed, “It’s not that.”
What had really scared Lucy was the possibility that if she told Cole she might seize during sex, he wouldn’t want to touch her. Ever again. But in that moment she decided if she trusted him enough to sleep with him, she had to trust him with the truth.
His response couldn’t have been more perfect. He tucked a hair behind her ear, and looked her directly in the eye. “I want to be with you,” he said. “All of you. I’m not scared.” The words convinced Lucy that what she’d been feeling for Cole really was love. It was why she’d forgiven him for selling the test answers.
So why couldn’t she trust him with the truth about this?
A faint crackling noise filled the kitchen. It grew louder by the second and her heartbeat skittered.
Lucy didn’t want to tell Cole the truth because now she really might be something he should be scared of—something that scared her too.
Warmth spread from her hand to her elbow as the aluminum wrapping began to unfurl.
It was working. Holy crap. It was working!
Dread iced her from within as heat surged from her fingers. She didn’t want to open her eyes but there was no avoiding it.
Ouch! Hot. Lucy lifted her hand so it hovered just above the Jiffy Pop. Apparently her skin wasn’t fireproof. Inconvenient.
The aluminum swelled, larger and rounder, until it became a balloon.
Lucy’s hand was glowing. But not with sunlight like this morning. An emerald-green aura comprised of thin, radiant streaks of light. Jellyfish-like tentacles. She had a distinct sense of déjà vu.
The aura continued to burn more intensely but the temperature in Lucy’s hand remained constant. As long as she didn’t touch the metal, it didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt good. The zap that killed the iPad had been a short burst of energy, a shock. This was different. The slow burn was making her giddy.
The bag stretched to bursting.
All the fear at what she was capable of vaporized and Lucy laughed.
Popcorn suddenly sprayed everywhere and the bang made Lucy lurch, jolting backwards, bashing her skull against the cabinet. Double ouch. There was only so much head trauma she could take in one day.
Her gaze returned to her hands. The green glow was gone.
If she wasn’t mistaken, the glow had been St. Elmo’s fire—a greenish-bluish light that appeared around the masts of ships before a storm due to the electricity in the air. During the age of Columbus, sailors viewed it as a bad omen because it could disrupt compass readings. Her mouth fell open.
Lucy had interfered with Cole’s car radio in the same way.
St. Elmo’s fire was an incandescent plasma, like in the Tesla lamp, caused by an electrical discharge adjacent to a metal conductor. The aluminum foil had probably done the trick. Oh no. What if Lucy had made the stapler glow in the library this morning? What rumor would Megan have started then? Lucy had never believed in the paranormal, but … how else could she explain what had just happened?
The only person who might have an explanation had been dead since 1943.
In. Out. Just breathe, she commanded herself.
The strains of Beethoven ceased and Lucy heard footsteps on the stairs.
There was no explaining this away. The kitchen looked like a junk-food war zone.
A second later, her mom appeared in the entryway.
“Oh, Lucy.” Her name became a lament. More than annoyance, there was sympathy in her mother’s eyes.
“Sorry,” Lucy choked out.
Her mom sighed. “You and your father.”
“I’ll clean it up.”
Nodding, her mother shuffled back toward the living room and Lucy noticed her withdraw a pack of cigarettes from her sweater pocket.
Acid churned in Lucy’s gut as she gauged the damage. Popcorn she could clean up. Her life? Not so much.