The Odds of Lightning by Jocelyn Davies Read Free Book Online

first thought he’d wake up to in the morning, and the last first face he’d think about as he slipped off into a doomed sleep. Someone he hadn’t really spoken to since the night before freshman year of high school. A night he wished so hard that he could take back. Or do over. Or obliterate from existence. Or all of the above.
    Luella Jane Austen. His first and last love.
    And the one person in the world who hated his guts.
    â€œKingfield, you’re up,” Kenji said.
    Will blinked. Everyone around the big kitchen table was staring at him, the beer pong game momentarily suspended as they waited for him to take his turn. He stepped up to the edge of the table and took the Ping-Pong ball from the cup of water on his right.
    He took his shot. And in the moment of silence between when the small white ball left his fingers and when it dropped with a small plunk into a cup of beer not four feet away—
    In that silence, the doorbell rang.

Nathaniel
    The doorbell jolted Nathaniel out of his thoughts. He was standing in the corner, holding his beer, trying to figure out how to get himself out of the mess he’d gotten into. The beer was warm. The party was loud. Nathaniel was pissed off.
    He told himself it was at Will, for luring him over with the promise of studying, then throwing a party instead. But really it was at himself, mostly:
    For not having the guts to say no.
    For not turning in his application on time.
    For not trying to salvage his life by studying for the SATs like he knew he should.
    But no time seemed like the right time to leave. And there was part of Nathaniel—a secret part that made him totally ashamed—that was having fun. And part of him that thought if he stayed, if he enjoyed his beer and forgot about the application and the test and had some fun, then maybe he and Will could be friends again. Real friends, not the kind of friends who ignored each other at school and then sometimes needed help studying when no one else was around to care.
    Nathaniel had been studying for the SATs for months. He’d even gotten a tutor, paying for it with the bar mitzvah money he’d never spent and that had been languishing in some bond his grandfather had set up for him when he was thirteen. Tobias had gotten a perfect score. He’d won the Anders Almquist Scholarship. He’d gotten into MIT EAPS early admission. Nathaniel couldn’t settle for anything less.
    His brother had always been smarter. Cooler. And knew exactly what he wanted. Ever since Nathaniel was old enough to have memories, Tobias was the one calling the shots and Nathaniel followed along like some of his brother’s magic might rub off on him.
    Girls, especially, were really into him. One girl in particular. The only one who mattered.
    Tobias’s magic had never rubbed off on that particular area of Nathaniel’s life.
    Nathaniel wanted to be a geophysicist. He wanted to study energy and the way it moved through the earth. He wanted to one day stand at the tops of mountains, the sky expanding above him and the wind blowing through his hair, and conduct lightning through lightning rods and feel the phantom movement of ancient lava beneath his feet. He wanted to experience something bigger than himself. Energy was the biggest thing there was. Energy was everywhere.
    But the Anders Almquist Earth Science Scholarship felt like a mountain he couldn’t climb. And Daybrook had a reputation for producing winners, like his brother. He’d been working on his project for months, but even up until the night before it was due, something just didn’t feel right. Something was missing. That magic zing. That spark. And he couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
    He wished he didn’t care so much. Life would be easier if he didn’t care about everything so intensely. If he could just be like Will, who didn’t seem to care at all. Half the senior class was here now, and no one seemed to care