Read The Odds of Lightning for Free Online

week before. Tiny was pretty sure it had been about sex, but it was hard to tell. She’d used a lot of fruit metaphors, and on top of that, Tiny had never had sex, so she had nothing to compare it to.
    Josh was scribbling something in a black moleskin notebook. He didn’t look up when he said, “I dunno. I like it. It feels emotionally authentic.”
    â€œWell, should we vote on it?” Malin didn’t so much suggest as command. Malin was in top form, presiding over the committee as she perched cross-legged on the table. She wore denim cut-off shorts over bee-yellow tights, black Converse high-tops, and a large, white, men’s undershirt cinched at the waist with a black belt. Her multitonal hair (Tiny counted four but was sure there were more: auburn, honey, gold, strawberry-blond . . .) dangled defiantly in her face, perfectly contrasting with her dark brown skin.
    There was a flourish of pencils, pens, and people ripping the corners off notebook pages. The results were never announced at the meeting—that would have been too humane. You had to wait agonizingly until the issue came out at the end of the year to see if your piece was accepted.
    Malin collected the shreds of paper, marking cryptically in her notebook one tally mark for each vote. When all the votes were in, she looked up and smiled grimly.
    â€œNext,” she said . . .
    Josh didn’t look at Tiny once.
    Maybe he knew , maybe he could just tell , because they shared some mind connection he hadn’t even realized yet. If Tiny wished it hard enough, maybe she could make him notice her in the way she wanted to be noticed.
    It’s just that no one noticed her, not really. Not since that night three years ago.
    There wasn’t anything worth noticing, anyway.

Lu
    The black lacquered door to Will’s brownstone loomed before them like the gateway to Dante’s Inferno. His family owned all three floors, and the whole school probably could have fit in there if they’d been stalking him on Facebook and knew about the party too. Or maybe they did. Lu had no idea how these things worked, and she didn’t care.
    â€œAre you sure we should be here?” Tiny’s voice came out of the dark beside Lu. For a minute she’d forgotten Tiny was there.
    â€œOf course,” Lu said. She threw her shoulders back. Before Tiny could stop her, Lu reached over and readjusted the crop top, where Tiny had been tugging it down. “Look, it’ll be fine—it’s a party. Everyone will be drunk. You can talk to Josh.”
    â€œI’m not making any promises about that, by the way—”
    â€œYes, you are—”
    â€œIt’s a fact-finding mission.”
    â€œNo, it’s not.”
    Lu didn’t understand people like Tiny, who wanted things to be different but refused to do anything about them. Lu was a doer. Sometimes she was impulsive and did things without thinking, but at least she did them at all. She didn’t settle for the status quo. She changed things. She got her way.
    â€œDo you think anyone will even be here? Maybe everyone’s stayed home to study.”
    â€œOh, seriously, fuck the SATs! I am so sick of that being all anyone can talk about!”
    Lu had a mouth like a trucker. She cursed inappropriately all the time.
    Lu, realizing she didn’t have enough change for a soda from the vending machine: “Fuck!”
    Lu, knocking over a canister of pens in the fifth-floor quiet study lounge: “Fuck!”
    Lu, banging her funny bone on a bus full of old ladies: “Fucking shit!”
    â€œLu,” Tiny said quietly. “Are you okay?”
    â€œFine,” Lu snapped. “I’m fine.” She hadn’t told Tiny about Owen. There wasn’t anything to tell. “Sorry.” Lu sighed. “Look,” she said, leaning against the front door and absently fiddling with the leaves on one of the cone-shaped shrubs. “I’m