Electric Summer Nights

The pool party at Jessica's house was supposed to be Lila's chance to finally talk to Tyler — the boy who'd been haunting her dreams since seventh grade science when he'd let her borrow his pen and their fingers had brushed. Now, two years later, she was still thinking about it.

Noah, her ride-or-die since kindergarten, was already three sodas deep and vibrating with chaotic energy. "Dude, you gotta get in the pool! Tyler's literally doing a baseball slide into the water right now."

Lila adjusted her oversized t-shirt over her swimsuit. "I'm not ready. What if I look stupid?"

"You're being dramatic," Noah said, already pulling her toward the deck. "Everyone's either in the pool or being awkward on the sidelines. Pick your struggle."

The pool was chaos — splashing bodies, floaties shaped like pizza slices, someone's little brother crying about his lost goggles. Then someone shouted "PYRAMID!" and suddenly everyone was stacking on shoulders, wobbling and laughing. Tyler was at the bottom, his face pressed against someone's knee, looking ridiculous and perfect.

Lila felt it then — that lightning strike feeling, electric and terrifying, like the moment before you jump off something high and you can't take it back.

"Your mom's vitamin gummies aren't gonna help with this," Noah teased, catching her staring.

Then the sky cracked open. Real lightning, white-purple veins through darkness. Rain came down like the sky was dumping out all its secrets at once. Everyone scrambled toward the covered patio, laughing and shrieking.

Lila found herself squeezed next to Tyler under the narrow overhang, shoulders touching, both wet from rain and pool water. His hair was dripping onto his nose.

"Hey," he said, like they talked every day. "You're Lila, right? From Mr. Henderson's class?"

Her heart did something stupid and dramatic. "Yeah. You're Tyler. The guy who fell asleep during the mitosis video."

He laughed, and it was better than she'd imagined. "Guilty. I was thinking about baseball tryouts. Which I bombed, by the way."

The rain kept falling, washing away all the carefully practiced lines Lila had memorized. In the end, she didn't say anything smooth. She just said, "This is actually kind of nice? The storm, I mean."

"Yeah," Tyler said, leaning just a little closer. "It really is."

Noah caught her eye from across the patio and gave the tiniest thumbs-up. Some nights, Lila thought, the lightning doesn't strike at all. And some nights it hits you exactly when you're ready to burn.