The Odds of Lightning by Jocelyn Davies

Luella? The door’s locked.” Will pointed. They all turned suddenly to the door. Nathaniel scratched his head and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose. Then he walked over to the door and jiggled the handle. “See?” Will said. Nathaniel pulled on it harder. “It won’t—”
    The heavy metal fire door came flying off. Like, literally, flying off in his hand. Tiny ducked. Nathaniel looked shocked as he chucked this big and heavy and solid piece of metal across the roof as if it weighed nothing more than a feather.
    â€œWhoa,” said Nathaniel, pushing up his glasses.
    â€œWhat the hell?” said Will. “How did you do that?”
    Nathaniel blinked in shock. “I have no idea.”
    â€œYou just threw that thing away like the Hulk!”
    â€œIt wasn’t that heavy,” Nathaniel said. “I just kind of tugged it a little, and it came off.”
    Tiny glanced at Lu, who was rubbing her arms as if she were cold.
    â€œHey,” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
    â€œYeah,” said Lu. “I just—I can’t feel anything.”
    â€œWhat?” Tiny asked.
    â€œI feel . . . I feel kind of . . . numb.”
    â€œMaybe you’re just cold?”
    â€œI think it’s the lightning,” Lu said darkly. “It’s still inside me. I can tell.”
    Tiny felt overwhelmed. She felt small. Mostly, she felt relieved that the lightning hadn’t seemed to affect her in the same bad way it had the other three. The shiny metal door lay at her feet. It sure looked heavy. She bent down to try to lift it herself.
    But when she saw her own reflection in the polished metal, her stomach jolted.
    Her image, pale as it was, especially now, was more than that—more than just pale, more than just easy to overlook. More than just another anonymous girl floating through the halls of school. No—this was something else. It flickered in and out, once, twice, like a winking flame. It didn’t look like she was really there. It didn’t look like she was solid.
    There was a distant rumble of thunder and a restless flash of lightning right above her, like someone was taking a picture. The sky flickered, the light casting shadows on her skin, playing tricks on her eyes in the middle of the night. Tiny stood up quickly, watching the light dance across her arm.
    No, she realized with a start. She watched it dance through her arm.
    It was like looking down at your body in a dark room. Like just being able to make out the faintish glow of skin. A rogue finger. The bony curve of an elbow. Everything just shy of translucent.
    That was what her hand looked like. Just shy of translucent. She could see through it. Right through her skin and bones to the roof below. For just a minute her hand looked like heat coming off the sidewalk in the dead of August.
    She looked almost—but no, it was too crazy to even think. She looked almost like she was turning invisible.
    This couldn’t have been happening. Just because Tiny felt invisible, didn’t mean she actually was. It had to be a trick of the light. She was just freaked out. That was it.
    She breathed in and out, trying to steady herself. It was nothing. It was just the wind and the lightning flashing steadily from beyond the clouds, and the contagious fear that something terrible had happened to them. It was just the light and her mind. Just her own mind.
    Could it be possible that somehow she was really, truly, in real life, turning invisible? That everything she had always secretly wanted and yet been so afraid of was coming true?
    â€œWell,” said Nathaniel. “Door’s open. I guess we have a way off the roof now.”
    â€œSo, where do we go?” Will asked. “What do we do now?”
    â€œWhat? Why do I have to come up with a solution?” Nathaniel took his glasses off and wiped them nervously on his T-shirt.
    â€œBecause you’re the smart