Electric at the County Fair

The summer air smelled like cotton candy and desperation. I stood there, phone clutched in my sweaty palm, watching Jake Hernandez lean against the fence near the mechanical bull like he owned the place. My best friend Priya nudged me, her eyes doing that frantic what-are-you-waiting-for thing.

"Just talk to him, you literal zombie," she whispered, adjusting her crop top. "You've been crushing since freshman year."

I swallowed the weird flutter in my chest. Jake was laughing with his friends, all varsity jackets and easy confidence. I was just—well, I was still figuring out who I even was. Some days I felt like I was sleepwalking through high school, just going through the motions until something real happened.

Then the first flash of lightning cracked across the sky, purple-white and terrifying. The crowd gasped. Thunder rumbled like the sky itself was growling.

"Ride's shutting down!" someone yelled. The mechanical bull sputtered to a halt mid-buck, leaving some poor guy hanging sideways.

Everyone scrambled toward the exits, phones abandoned, social hierarchies dissolving into chaos. Jake's group got separated in the rush. And suddenly he was there, right next to me, rain starting to fall in big fat drops.

"Hey," he said, like we talked every day. "Want to share cover under the snack stand?"

We huddled together under the narrow awning, watching the storm light up the night. My heart was doing something completely unhinged. We talked about everything and nothing—his anxiety about football, my secret obsession with horror movies, how neither of us felt like we fit in with our supposed friend groups.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slightly squashed orange lollipop. "Want it? I stole it from my little sister's Halloween stash."

I laughed. The rain poured down, lightning kept flashing, and for the first time, I didn't feel like a zombie going through the motions. I felt awake.

"I've been wanting to talk to you forever," Jake admitted, looking at the lollipop instead of me.

The storm lasted twenty minutes. We stayed under that snack stand for an hour.