Thunderstruck

Kai's bedroom was basically a shrine to their lost friendship. The Ethernet cable still dangled from the wall where Maya had pulled it out during their last fight, frayed and useless like everything between them now. Three months of radio silence because Kai had finally said the quiet part out loud: that he maybe-sorta-definitely had feelings beyond the friend zone.

Outside, the summer storm was going full supervillain mode. Kai pressed his face against the window, watching lightning fracture the sky into electric spiderwebs. His phone buzzed — probably another group chat blowout about back-to-school parties he wasn't feeling. Being sixteen was mostly just performance art anyway, everyone playing characters they'd barely invented.

His mom popped her head in, holding out the familiar orange bottle. 'Don't forget your vitamin D, honey. Dr. Patel said your levels were basically non-existent.' Kai swallowed it dry, another thing to fix about himself. His mom meant well, but sometimes it felt like his whole existence was just a checklist of deficiencies.

A massive crack of thunder shook the house. Lights flickered, died. The familiar hum of his computer vanished.

'Great,' he muttered, reaching for his phone to doomscroll through the blackout.

But then another buzz. Maya.

'Power's out at my place too. You seeing this?'

Kai stared at his screen like it might bite him. Then typed back, 'Yeah. Lightning hit something down the street.'

'Your room still got that glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling?'

Kai almost smiled. 'Yeah. The constellations are wrong, though. I never fixed them after we rearranged everything that time.'

'My parents are at a dinner thing. I'm bored and kinda scared tbh. Can I come over? We can just... chill. No talking about it.'

'Sure,' Kai wrote. 'Bring snacks?'

When Maya arrived, her hair was damp from the rain, wearing that oversized hoodie she'd stolen from him ages ago. They sat on his floor in the dim light from the window, backs against his bed, passing a bag of pretzels back and forth. The cable TV was dead, his computer was dead, but somehow everything felt more alive than it had in months.

'So,' Maya said, breaking the silence. 'My friend Riley says you're avoiding the whole group because of... you know.'

'Not avoiding,' Kai said. 'Just processing. Or whatever.'

'Miss you though,' she said softly. 'Even if things are weird.'

'Yeah,' Kai said, his heart doing that stupid skip thing. 'Miss you too.'

Another flash of lightning illuminated the room. For a second, he could see her expression — uncertain, maybe something else underneath.

'My therapist says I need more vitamin people time,' Maya joked. 'Less doomscrolling, more actual connection.'

Kai laughed. 'That the technical term?'

'Shut up,' she said, shoulder-bumping him. 'I'm working on it.'

They sat there as the storm rolled through, the space between them filled with everything they weren't saying yet. But the cable wasn't broken anymore. Maybe some things could be rebooted.