Page 34 of Electricity

I ran past someone retching into one of Mrs. Lewis’s rosebushes and out into the night, until I was standing in the middle of the street, breathing hard, surrounded by nothing but cicada-song and the lingering sense of my failure.

What would I have done if I had found photos?

Deleted them, that’s for sure. I’d been so close to his phone—I could have zapped it if I’d thought about it, hopefully cost him a few hundred dollars.

But the whole night had been a wash—Liam probably thought I was easy, Darius probably thought I was a liar, and who the hell knew what Danny thought, oh God.

I turned to look back at the glowing lights of Liam’s house.

Everyone in there was having fun, they all knew how to have fun but me.

Well me and Lacey.

The only thing I’d learned tonight was that I wasn’t good enough yet. Which was something I already, deeply, knew.

I stomped out to my car and drove my stupid ass home.

Allie was waiting for me at the door.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” I asked her.

“Shouldn’t you be a boogerhead?”

My younger sister occasionally tried to learn insults. She wasn’t very good at them. I sighed aloud. “I’d go with idiot.”

“Why?”

“Because. I am.” I kicked off my shoes and walked to the bathroom with her following me.

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.” I stared at myself in the mirror. I’d done everything right, as right as I could.

“You can’t be an idiot.”

“Why not?” I pulled some toilet paper off the roll and started smearing away my lipstick.

“Because. You’re the smartest person I know.”

“Nothing personal, but you only know fourth graders.” I looked down at her. “Come on. You need to get to bed.”

“K,” she said, and let me shoo her with a minimum of fuss.

After that, I washed my face for real, brushed the hairspray out of my hair, and walked into my bedroom. I’d take a shower tomorrow before—well, who knew if Darius and I were going to meet up again now. I plugged my phone into its charger and a string of firefly words zipped by.

Hey.

From Darius.

I texted back.

Hey.

You doing that with your thumbs or your mind powers?

Thumbs only. For the rest of forever.

I imagined him showing his phone to whomever he was standing nearest at Liam’s, explaining to them that I was some sort of freak. But his next text confirmed he was not:

I’m pissed you lied to me.

That’s fair.

Did you at least have a good reason?

Yes.

A long pause.

Feel like telling me?

I did. I wanted to tell someone else. Knowing what’d happened to Lacey was a big burden to carry alone, but:

I can’t.

A longer pause.

What about in person?

And I felt hopeful about one thing for the first time tonight.

Tomorrow?

Right now. I’m outside.

I stared at my phone and then I really did use my mind:

Come around back.

My window’s the furthest one on the left, facing the trailer.

I hauled my clothes back on—normal ones, not party ones, and then raised my blinds quietly as he came into range. I knew he was there, because Razor was barking up a storm. His owners might curse at him if they were at home on a Friday, but I knew they wouldn’t bother looking outside.

“Your front door is broken?” he asked quietly as I raised the window up.

“My sister has ears like a bat and her room’s by it.” I worked my fingers against the bottom of the screen and it popped out, falling to the weeds and dirt outside in a metallic rush. “Want to come in?”

Darius put his hands on the sill in answer and boosted himself up.

I moved anything he might land on out of the way in a hurry and he didn’t take anything out with him when he fell in. “Where’d you park?” I asked in a whisper.

“Down the street.”

“Not in front?” Because if my mom came home to a boy’s car outside—he shook his head. “Good.”

By then he’d angled himself up to sitting, a long tangle of limbs, his face sharply framed by the light of my desk lamp, now sitting on the floor. “Now can you tell me?”

The weight of everything I knew pressed on my tongue, but I shook my head, which made it hurt even more.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not my secret.”

His eyes searched my face, looking for some sign I was lying. “Are you ever going to be able to tell me?”

“Not unless they say it’s OK.”

He started back toward the window, and I moved to block his path, placing my hands on both his shoulders to stop him.

“I want to. Please believe me,” I whispered, embarrassed by how earnest I sounded but then it was too late. “I trust you. But until they say I can tell anyone else, I can’t, not and still be a good friend.”

“I sort of thought friends didn’t lie to one another?”

“That was a mistake. I’m sorry. But I had to be there tonight.”

His head tilted. “Did you find it? Whatever you were searching for?”

“No.” I rocked back, taking my hands off of him before it became weird. Probably too late. “And I don’t know if it’s because it wasn’t there—or if I’m just not good at all this yet. Which is why I still need your help tomorrow. Please.”

He considered this for a long moment. “All right.”

“Good.”

And then we were alone in my bedroom in the mostly dark, and maybe I was insane but there was more than electricity in the air.

Then a green firefly blew in toward Darius’s phone.

U coming back?

Amy, gorgeous Amy. Of course.

I scooted back even further and shook my head at myself, my life, anything me-related. “You might need to get that,” I said at the same second his phone buzzed.

Darius glanced at his phone, then looked at me. “You see that?”

“Yeah.”

He inhaled like he was going to tell me something—and then kept it to himself, whatever it was and stood. “Okay. Tomorrow,” he said instead, business-like.

“If my mom asks, we’re studying for history class, okay?”

Darius nodded and put one leg through the window, sending Razor into fits again.

I listened for any sounds of Allie waking.

When I didn’t hear any I relaxed—until I heard something give in our neighbor’s yard, the crack of a fence board—and saw-felt-feared a red dog-sized charge racing toward Darius in the dark.

“Razor, no!” I shouted. In that moment, I saw Darius not as the image of him that light bounced off of, but the faint traces of his existence, the electromagnetism of his life, heart-pumping, blood surging, neurons firing, as Razor raced rabidly for him.

I threw myself out of the window at the dog and reached him just as he reached Darius. I didn’t know what I was going to do, only that I had to do something and –

Power surged through me. Like when I’d charged up Darius’s car, white and hot, I felt it crackle and Darius and Razor fell at the same time.

“No no no no?—”

I got to my knees and crawled over to Darius. “Are you okay?”

He seemed stunned. “That fucking hurt,” he whispered roughly.

Oh my God, had I hurt him? “I didn’t mean to shock you,” I said, my voice rising in panicked apology.

“Not you—the goddamned dog.” He pushed himself up to sitting and I could see a wet slash down the side of his leg. He grit his teeth together and pulled his knee up to his chin.

“ Oh-my-God-we-have-to-clean-that-are-you-gonna-need-stitches? ” I didn’t have anything to press on it with—what could I get bloodstained and my mom not care?

I looked to him for answers and saw him staring bleakly behind me.

I turned slowly, horror-movie-style, and saw what he was looking at—Razor, lying stiffly on his side.

“Oh no—” My hands went to my mouth.

“Don’t scream.” Darius warned.

“Only on the inside,” I whispered. “What the fuck, Darius—what the actual fuck? Did I do that?”

“You do need practice.” He took his shirt off and winced as he lashed it tightly around his bleeding calf as I watched him. “Boy Scouts.”

“Sure. Why not.” I crawled to a stand and dusted myself off. “What do we do?”

He grunted softly as he stood, then pointed at the dog. “You grab those paws, I’ll get these ones.”

“And?”

“We’ll put him in the street. He did get out—it’ll make it look like he got hit by a car.”

It was a good plan, even if it was disgusting. “Sounds like you’ve covered up murders before,” I said darkly.

“There’s a reason my parents exiled me to Kansas. I can smear some of my blood on him, if you want to make it look more realistic.”

“I hope that’s a joke,” I said, as I grabbed my assigned paws.

“Kind of,” he said, grabbing his.

Together we hefted Razor down the street and somehow no other neighbors came out or cars came driving by.

“Disgusting,” I muttered, looking at Razor there, not sure if I was talking about the dirt covering my hands, what we’d done, or just plain old me.

“Practical. But yes, also gross.” Darius was lean in the moonlight, the wiry muscles on his arms and chest easy to see. “This isn’t how I thought my night was going to go.”

“Welcome to knowing me.”

“This wasn’t your fault, Jessica. And if you hadn’t done that, I don’t think I’d be able to walk right now.” He stepped closer. “Thanks for saving me.”

My heart raced and my throat got tight. In other non-dog-murdering circumstances parts of me knew what they would do with parts of him, given half-the-chance. “You’re—you’re welcome,” I managed to stammer out.

He waited for another half a moment, during which I wasn’t sure what I wanted him to do, but was desperately hoping he’d do something, and then he took a step back and unlocked his car. “See you tomorrow. At ten.”

I nodded and waved weakly as he drove away in the opposite direction of Razor’s corpse, then I slunk back to my bedroom. Allie’s light was still off, thank God—I hitched myself into my window, closed it and closed the blinds.

And for what felt like the first time in five years, the neighbor’s motion sensitive porch light turned off.