A Love Like Lightning

9

Her:

"Lyric." I hear Elliot say behind me.

"Did you find him?" I ask.

"Yeah," Elliot says.

I turn around and see Lake.

He smiles and waves, "Hey Lyric."

"Hey," I smile.

"Okay. Well, I'll leave you two to talk about... stuff." Elliot says.

Elliot walks out of my bedroom and Lake sits down next to me on my bed.

"Lyric, what's going on?" Lake asks.

"I should start at the beginning. So, before you moved to Harlem High there was an accident. I'm sure you heard about the car crash. One night I was at a party and I got drunk. It was 2:00am in the morning and I didn't have anyone to drop me off back home. The party was pretty far, so I couldn't just walk home. I tried calling Elliot to pick me up, but he didn't answer. I called my dad and he picked me up. He was scolding me for being at a party without him knowing. There was a massive storm that night as well. Lightning and thunder. My dad took his eyes off the road for one second to look at me, and then we crashed into a tree. I flung out of the car and into a puddle. I couldn't hear or see anything.

I opened my eyes and a bolt of lighting came onto me and was supposed to kill me. But it didn't. It saved me. I was so numb, I couldn't feel the pain. The next time I opened my eyes, I was in a hospital room. Elliot told me that our father died during the crash. My mother had already died when I was 3. We didn't have any parents, so Elliot became mine. 5 days after I came out of the hospital I touched my cat and kind of killed it. I then touched the light switch and electrocuted myself.

I then learnt that everything I touch I will electrocute or cause lightning. So I wear gloves to make sure that I don't accidentally kill something. But when you touched me, you didn't die. You just got that thing on your arm. The same thing as my hand."

Lake soaks it all in.

He doesn't say anything for a while and I get nervous.

"Lyric, that's freaking awesome! I mean not about your dad dying and all that, that's awful, but you can control lighting! And now I can control thunder!" Lake says.

I laugh so hard that I nearly fall off the bed.

Lake catches me and thunder erupts.

We look at each other for a long time.

"It's not all fun and games, Lake. I wish it was. But messing with the weather will get us killed. There are people out there who want people like us killed. I don't know why or who they are. But they're not coming near me." I say.

"I'll make sure they won't." Lake smiles.

And I fall in love with his smile... again.

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