When Lightning Strikes 1-1 Page 2

  I watched him go, trying not to notice how nicely his jeans hugged his perfectly contoured butt.

  His butt wasn't the only thing that was perfectly contoured, either.

  Oh, calm down. I'm talking about his face, okay? It was a good one, not habitually slack-jawed, like the faces of most of the boys who go to my school. This guy's face had some intelligence in it, at least. So what if his nose looked as if it had been broken a few times?

  And okay, maybe his mouth was a little crooked, and his curly dark hair was badly in need of a trim. These deficiencies were more than made up for by a pair of eyes so light blue they were really pale gray, and a set of shoulders so broad, I doubt I would have been able to see much of the road past them in the event I ever did end up behind them on the back of that bike.

  Ruth, however, did not seem to have noticed any of these highly commendable qualities. She was staring at me as if she'd caught me talking to a cannibal or something.

  "Oh, my God, Jess," she said. "Who was that?"

  I said, "His name is Rob Wilkins."

  She went, "A Grit. Oh, my God, Jess, that guy is a Grit. I can't believe you were even talking to him."

  Don't worry. I will explain.

  There are two types of people who attend Ernest Pyle High School: the kids who come from the rural parts of the county, or the "Grits," and the people who live in town, or the "Townies." The Grits and Townies do not mix. Period. The Townies think they are better than the Grits because they have more money, since most of the kids who live in town have doctors or lawyers or teachers for parents. The Grits think they are better than the Townies because they know how to do stuff the Townies don't know how to do, like fix up old motorcycles and birth calves and sniff. The Grits' parents are all factory workers or farmers.

  There are subsets within these groups, like the JDs—juvenile delinquents—and the Jocks—the popular kids, the athletes, and the cheerleaders—but mostly the school is divided up into Grits and Townies.

  Ruth and I are Townies. Rob Wilkins, needless to say, is a Grit. And for an added bonus, I am pretty sure he is also a JD.

  But then, as Mr. Goodhart is so fond of telling me, so am I—or at least I will be, one of these days, if I don't start taking his anger-management advice more seriously.

  "How do you even know that guy?" Ruth wanted to know. "He can't be in any of your classes. He is definitely not college-bound. Prison-bound, maybe," she said with a sneer. "But he's got to be a senior, for Christ's sake."

  I know. She sounds prissy, doesn't she?

  She's not really. Just scared. Guys—real guys, not idiots like her brother Skip—scare Ruth. Even with her 167 IQ, guys are something she's never been able to figure out. Ruth just can't fathom the fact that boys are just like us.

  Well, with a few notable exceptions.

  I said, "I met him in detention. Can we move, please, before the rain starts? I've got my flute, you know."

  Ruth wouldn't let go of it, though.

  "Would you seriously have accepted a ride from that guy? A total stranger like that? Like, if I weren't here?"

  I said, "I don't know."

  I didn't, either. I hope you're not getting the impression that this was the first time a guy had ever asked me if I wanted a lift or anything. I mean, I'll admit I have a tendency to be a bit free with my fists, but I'm no dog. I might be a bit on the puny side—only five two, as Mr. Goodhart is fond of reminding me—and I'm not big into makeup or clothes or anything, but believe me, I do all right for myself.

  Okay, yeah, I'm no supermodel: I keep my hair short so I don't have to mess with it, and I'm fine with it being brown—you won't catch me experimenting with highlights, like some people I could mention. Brown hair goes with my brown eyes which go with my brown skin—well, at least, that's what color my skin usually ends up being by the end of the summer.

  But the only reason I'm sitting at home Saturday nights is because it's either that, or hanging out with guys like Jeff Day, or Ruth's brother Skip. They're the only kind of guys my mother will let me go out with.

  Yeah, you're catching on. Townies. That's right. I'm only allowed to date "college-bound boys." Read, Townies.

  Where was I? Oh, yeah.

  So, in answer to your question, no, Rob Wilkins was not the first guy who'd ever pulled up to me and asked if I wanted a ride somewhere.

  But Rob Wilkins was the first guy to whom I might have said yes.

  "Yeah," I said to Ruth. "Probably I would have. Taken him up on his offer, I mean. If you weren't here and all."

  "I can't believe you." Ruth started walking, but let me tell you, those clouds were right behind us. Unless we went about a hundred miles an hour, there was no way we were going to beat the rain. And the fastest Ruth goes is maybe about one mile an hour, tops. Physically fit she is not.

  "I can't believe you," she said, again. "You can't go around getting on the back of Grits' bikes. I mean, who knows where you'd end up? Dead in a cornfield, no doubt."

  Almost every girl in Indiana who disappears gets found, eventually, half-naked and decomposing in a cornfield. But then, you guys already know that, don't you?

  "You are so weird," Ruth said. "Only you would make friends with the guys in detention."

  I kept looking over my shoulder at the clouds. They were huge, like mountains. Only, unlike mountains, they weren't stationary.

  "Well," I said, "I can't exactly help knowing them, you know. We've been sitting together for an hour every day for the past three or four months."

  "But they're Grits," Ruth said. "My God, Jess. Do you actually talk to them?"

  I said, "I don't know. I mean, we're not allowed to talk. But Miss Clemmings has to take attendance every day, so you learn people's names. You sort of can't help it."

  Ruth shook her head. "Oh, my God," she said. "My dad would kill me—kill me—if I came home on the back of some Grit's motorcycle."

  I didn't say anything. The chances of anybody asking Ruth to hop onto the back of his bike were like zero.

  "Still," Ruth said, after we'd walked for a little while in silence, "he was kind of cute. For a Grit, I mean. What'd he do?"

  "What do you mean? To get detention?" I shrugged. "How should I know? We're not allowed to talk."

  Let me just tell you a little bit about where we were walking. Ernest Pyle High School is located on the imaginatively named High School Road. As you might have guessed, there isn't a whole lot of stuff on High School Road except, well, the high school. There's just two lanes and a bunch of farmland. The McDonald's and the car wash and stuff were down on the Pike. We weren't walking on the Pike. No one ever walks on the Pike, since this one girl got hit walking there last year.

  So we'd made it about as far down High School Road as the football field when the rain started. Big, hard drops of rain.

  "Ruth," I said, pretty calmly, as the first drop hit me.

  "It'll blow over," Ruth said.

  Another drop hit me. Plus a big flash of lightning cracked the sky and seemed to hit the water tower, a mile or so away. Then it thundered. Really loud. As loud as the jets over at Crane Military Base, when they break the sound barrier.

  "Ruth," I said, less calmly.

  Ruth said, "Perhaps we should seek shelter."

  "Damned straight," I said.

  But the only shelter we saw were the metal bleachers that surround the football field. And everyone knows, during a thunderstorm, you're not supposed to hide under anything metal.

  That's when the first hailstone hit me.

  If you've ever been hit by a hailstone, you'll know why it was Ruth and I ran under those bleachers. And if you've never been hit by a hailstone, all I can say is, lucky you. These particular hailstones were about as big as golf balls. I am not exaggerating, either. They were huge. And those mothers—pardon my French—hurt.

  Ruth and I stood under these bleachers, hailstones popping all around us, like we were trapped inside this really big popcorn popper. Only at least the
popcorn wasn't hitting us on the head anymore.

  With the thunder and the sound of the hail hitting the metal seats above our heads, then ricocheting off them and smacking against the ground, it was kind of hard to hear anything, but that didn't bother Ruth. She shouted, "I'm sorry."

  All I said was "Ow," because a real big chunk of hail bounced off the ground and hit me in the calf.

  "I mean it," Ruth shouted. "I'm really, really sorry."

  "Stop apologizing," I said. "It isn't your fault."

  At least that's what I thought then. I have since changed my mind on that. As you will note by rereading the first few lines of this statement of mine.

  A big bolt of lightning lit up the sky. It broke into four or five branches. One of the branches hit the top of a corn crib I could see over the trees. Thunder sounded so loudly, it shook the bleachers.

  "It is," Ruth said. She sounded like she was starting to cry. "It is my fault."

  "Ruth," I said. "For God's sake, are you crying?"

  "Yes," she said, with a sniffle.

  "Why? It's just a stupid thunderstorm. We've been stuck in thunderstorms before." I leaned against one of the poles that held up the bleachers. "Remember that time in the fifth grade we got stuck in that thunderstorm, on the way home from your cello lesson?"

  Ruth wiped her nose with the cuff of her sweatshirt. "And we had to duck for cover in your church?"

  "Only you wouldn't go in farther than the awning," I said.

  Ruth laughed through her tears. "Because I thought God would strike me dead for setting foot in a goyim house of worship."

  I was glad she was laughing, anyway. Ruth can be a pain in the butt, but she's been my best friend since kindergarten, and you can't exactly dump your best friend since kindergarten just because sometimes she puts on sweatbands or starts crying when it rains. Ruth is way more interesting than most of the girls who go to my school, since she reads a book a day—literally—and loves playing the cello as much as I love playing my flute, but will still watch cheesy television, in spite of her great genius.

  And, most times, she's funny as hell.

  Now was not one of those times, however.

  "Oh, God," Ruth moaned as the wind picked up and started whipping hailstones at us beneath the bleachers. "This is tornado weather, isn't it?"

  Southern Indiana is smack in the middle of Tornado Alley. We're number three on the list of states with the most twisters per year. I had sat out more than a few of them in my basement; Ruth, not so many, since she'd only spent the last decade in the Midwest. And they always seemed to happen around this time of year, too.

  And, though I didn't want to say anything to upset Ruth any more than she already was, this gave all the signs of being twister weather. The sky was a funny yellow color, the temperature warm, but the wind really cold. Plus that wacked-out hail …

  Just as I was opening my mouth to tell Ruth it was probably just a little spring storm, and not to worry, she screamed, "Jess, don't—"

  But I didn't hear what she said after that, because right then there was this big explosion that drowned out everything else.

  C H A P T E R

  2

  It wasn't an explosion, I figured out later. What it was was lightning, hitting the metal bleachers. Then the bolt traveled down the metal pole I was leaning against.

  So I guess you could say that, technically, I got hit by lightning.

  It didn't hurt, though. It felt really weird, but it didn't hurt.

  When I could hear again, after it happened, all I could hear was Ruth screaming. I wasn't standing in the same place I'd been a second before, either. I was standing about five feet away.

  Oh, and I felt all tingly. You know when you're trying to plug something in and you're not really looking at what you're doing and you accidentally stick your finger in there instead of the plug?

  That's how I felt, only about times three hundred.

  "Jess," Ruth was screaming. She ran up and shook my arm. "Oh, my God, Jess, are you all right?"

  I looked at her. She was still the same old Ruth. She still had on the sweatband.

  But that was the start of me not being the same old Jess. That was when it started.

  And it pretty much went downhill from there.

  "Yeah," I said. "I'm fine."

  And I really felt okay. I wasn't lying or anything. Not then. I just felt sort of tingly and all. But it wasn't a bad feeling. Actually, after the initial surprise of it, it kind of felt good. I felt sort of energized, you know?

  "Hey," I said, looking out past the bleachers. "Look. The hail stopped."

  "Jess," Ruth said, shaking me some more. "You got hit by lightning. Don't you understand? You got hit by lightning!"

  I looked at her. She looked kind of funny in that headband. I started to laugh. Once, when I went to my Aunt Teresa's bridal shower, nobody was paying attention to how many glasses of pinot grigio the waiter poured me, and I felt the same way. Like laughing. A lot.

  "You better lie down," Ruth said. "You better put your head between your knees."

  "Why?" I asked her. "So I can kiss my butt good-bye?"

  This cracked me up. I started laughing. It seemed hysterically funny to me.

  Ruth didn't think it was so funny, though.

  "No," she said. "Because you're white as a ghost. You might pass out. I'll go try to flag down a car. We need to take you to the hospital."

  "Aw, geez," I said. "I don't need to go to any hospital. The storm's over. Let's go."

  And I just walked out from underneath those bleachers like nothing had happened.

  And, really, at the time I didn't think anything had. Happened, I mean. I felt fine. Better than fine, actually. Better than I'd felt in months. Better than I'd felt since my brother Douglas had come home from college.

  Ruth chased after me, looking all concerned.

  "Jess," she said. "Really. You shouldn't be trying to—"

  "Hey," I said. The sky had gotten much lighter, and underneath my feet the hailstones were crunching, as if someone up there had accidentally overturned some kind of celestial ice cube tray.

  "Hey, Ruth," I said, pointing down at the hailstones. "Look. It's like snow. Snow, in April!"

  Ruth wouldn't look at the hailstones, though. Even though she was up to the swooshes of her Nikes in them, she wouldn't look. All she would do was look at me.

  "Jessica," she said, taking my hand. "Jessica, listen to me." She dropped her voice so that it was almost a whisper. I could hear her fine, since the wind had died down and all the thunder and stuff had stopped. "Jessica, I'm telling you, you're not all right. I saw … I saw lightning come out of you."

  "Really?" I grinned at her. "Neat."

  Ruth dropped my hand and turned away in disgust.

  "Fine," she said, starting back toward the road. "Don't go to the hospital. Drop dead of a heart attack. See if I care."

  I followed her, kicking hailstones out of the way with my platform Pumas.

  "Hey," I said. "Too bad lightning wasn't shooting out of me in the cafeteria today, huh? Jeff Day would've really been sorry, huh?"

  Ruth didn't think this was funny. She just kept walking, huffing a little because she was going so fast. But fast for Ruth is normal for me, so I didn't have any trouble keeping up.

  "Hey," I said. "Wouldn't it have been cool if I'd been able to shoot lightning at assembly this afternoon? You know, when Mrs. Bushey got up there and dared us to keep off drugs? I bet that would've shortened that speech of hers."

  I kept up in that vein the whole way home. Ruth tried to stay mad at me, but she couldn't. Not because I am so charming or funny or anything, but because the storm had left some really cool damage in its wake. We saw all these tree branches that had been knocked down, and windshields that had been shattered by the hail, and a few traffic lights that had stopped working altogether. It was totally cool. A bunch of ambulances and fire engines went by, and when we finally got to the Kroger on the corner of High
School Road and First Street, where we turned off for our houses, the KRO had been knocked out, so the sign just said, GER.

  "Hey, Ruth, look," I said. "Ger is open, but Kro is closed."

  Even Ruth had to laugh at that.

  By the time we got to our houses—I mentioned we live next door to each other, right?—Ruth had gotten over being scared for me. At least, I thought she had. When I was about to run up the walk to my front porch, she heaved this real big sigh, and went, "Jessica, I really think you should say something to your mom and dad. About what happened, I mean."

  Oh, yeah. Like I was going to tell them something as lame as the fact that I had been hit by lightning. They had way more important things to worry about.

  I didn't say that, but Ruth must have read my thoughts, since the next thing she said was, "No, Jess. I mean it. You should tell them. I've read about people who've been struck by lightning the way you were. They felt perfectly fine, just like you do, and then, wham! Heart attack."

  I said, "Ruth."

  "I really think you should tell them. I know how much they have on their minds, with Douglas and all. But—"

  "Hey," I said. "Douglas is fine."

  "I know." Ruth closed her eyes. Then she opened them again and said, "I know Douglas is fine. All right, look. Just promise me that if you start to feel … well, funny, you'll tell somebody?"

  This sounded fair to me. I swore solemnly not to die of a heart attack. Then we parted on my front lawn with a mutual "See ya." I It wasn't until I was almost all the way into the house that I realized that the dogwood tree just off the driveway—the one that had been in full, glorious bloom that morning—was completely bare again, as if it were the middle of winter. The hail had knocked off every single leaf and every single blossom.

  They talk all the time in my English class about symbolism and stuff. Like how the withered old oak tree in Jane Eyre portends doom and all of that. So I guess you could say that if this statement of mine were a work of fiction, that dogwood tree would symbolize the fact that everything was not going to turn out hunky-dory for me.

  Only of course, just like Jane, I had no idea what lay in store for me. I mean, at the time, I totally missed the symbolism of the leafless dogwood. I was just like, "Wow, too bad. That tree was pretty before it got ruined by hail."