Kylie smiles bigger than I’ve seen her smile in weeks.
I hold the microphone under his mouth. “Well, Richard Lewis has made me feel like a tool because I’ve realized I can’t dance.”
“No, you can’t!” Richard cries from the kitchen where he and Panda are reenacting a scene from the play for some of the people in there. I can tell it’s from a scene where Bottom has been changed into a donkey. Tank lifts me up and hugs me and when he puts me down says, “It’s good to have you back, Berne.”
I glance back at my friends in the kitchen. May has joined Richard and Panda. I check my cell once more for Wes, but there’s nothing. Over their heads, I see a glass door looking out to the patio and backyard. I want to go down to the pool. I can’t even explain why, but I want to go to the site where I nearly lost my life.
“I’m just gonna go down to the pool a second,” I say, and rezip my leather bomber jacket.
“The scene of the crime,” Tank says. “Don’t get struck by lightning,” he calls when I’m by the door.
May gestures silently, asking me if I want company outside. I shake my head. “I need a second,” I say. She nods and I walk down the stairs to the pool. I check for the snow but it hasn’t started yet. Instead, the fireflies in the trees light my way.
When I get to the edge of the pool, it’s covered up in a blue tarp for the season. I close my eyes and let the tips of my sneakers hang over the edge. The wind throws my hair around. I push my sleeves up because I want the vines exposed.
Someone call an ambulance!
If I let my mind go, I can replay much of the strike.
But someone squeezes my right hand gently.
Kylie’s expression is warm. I can tell from the glint in her eye that she absolutely knows. She lifts one eyebrow, waiting for me to tell her the truth.
“Since earlier tonight,” I say without her needing to ask. “How did you know?”
“Oh come on. Holding a microphone up to Tank. Asking how he feels about the Midsummer cast being at his party? Classic Penny Berne. You’re back, babe.” She laughs. “My number one bitch.”
I laugh. “I missed you, Ky.”
“I missed you too!”
We watch the hovering fireflies a moment and when I look up to find the stars, it’s cloudy up in the sky. “Why so glum?” Kylie asks. “Didn’t you get everything you wanted?”
“Not quite. There’s still something I feel like I’m missing.”
Kylie thinks it over and digs her hands deeper into her parka. I like the fur trim of the hood and think that it would be fun to go shopping together. Maybe she can help me figure out a look that’s all mine—not just copying hers. I think I’ll always find Kylie the most fashionable girl I know.
She keeps thinking over what I’ve said.
“What?” I say.
“Well, something must have happened, right? Something must have triggered it. You didn’t get your memory back when you were just eating a bowl of cereal or something.”
Why must you make my life so difficult! You wonder why I need to cope this way! Who can live like this?
“Well, my mom and I had a really big fight and she said something super fucked-up—shocker—and then I remembered.” There’s a beat of silence and I add, “I think she needs rehab again.”
“What did she say?” Kylie asks. “What was the fucked-up thing?”
“That I’m the reason she drinks. That I make her depressed.”
“God, what is wrong with people!” Kylie cries. She’s about to go off on one of her rants. “It’s like when people said, ‘Penny is so different now that she hangs out with you, Kylie. You make her act like a different person.’ You can’t make anyone do anything. You wanted to change.” She pulls back, reading something from my expression. “You believe her? I can see it in your face.”
I’m too ashamed to admit it.
“Did you pour the liquid down her throat? Did you force her to drink? Did you demand it?”
“No.”
“Did you go into her brain and change her serotonin levels?”
“Um, no.”
“You can’t make anyone do anything. It’s not your fault.”
A surge of love for Kylie shoots through me and I grab her hand again and hold on tight. She’s right. I never thought about it like that—never thought about what kind of control I actually had. Mom chose to drink. Mom chose to blame me instead of blame herself. Kylie and I stay at the edge of the pool like that for a minute or two and she turns to me and says, “I’ll miss the fireflies, won’t you?”
I nod and say, “Yeah, but they’re done here. They’ve moved on to someone else.”
She smirks at me and says, “Yes, they have, because you’re all lit up inside.”
I shove her and laugh. There’s a flicker of lightning deep in the clouds. It’s not dangerous, but it’s high up, near the atmosphere. We both point to the sky at the exact moment. I love that we’re both still wearing our matching rings.
There’s a crackle of thunder in the air, and a few snowflakes begin to fall softly around us. “Cool! Thunder snow!” Kylie says just as a crash of thunder booms in the sky. I step back, a white bursting light explodes in my eyes, as blue and hot as the day I was struck.
I grip onto Kylie’s shoulder as she lifts up her palm to catch the first flakes lightly floating down from the sky. My whole body shakes.
One last memory falls into place. The one I’ve been hoping for.
Wes and I are at the marina, at our dock.
“I haven’t wanted to be friends for a long time,” he says. And suddenly, I know what I want. And I know who I am.
“Kylie. I gotta go. Tell May.”
“Go? Go where?”
I smile big and turn to run around the side of Tank’s massive house.
“Go get him!” Kylie calls.
But I barely hear her—I’m already taking off.
NINETEEN
I JUMP IN MY CAR. I’M RECKLESS AS I ZIP AROUND corners and honk at pedestrians to get out of the way. People walk all over Main Street, excited about the first snow, but I am on a mission.
I have to find Wes.
I send him a bunch of texts, but he never answers. I’m at a stoplight at the bottom of the hill that leads up to school. If his car is in the lot, that means he’s up in the auditorium, working on sets.
The air is still thick with fireflies that hover around the streetlamps. More lie like moths against the houses, emitting tiny bursts of light. Halloween decorations and oversize pumpkins line the streets and storefronts. The air is getting colder. Snowflakes continue to fall.
I zoom up to the parking lot but I don’t see the Mustang. I pull past his house, my house, Panda’s house, and even the woodshop place where he gets his supplies.
As I sit at a traffic light three blocks from Main Street, it occurs to me where I should have looked from the start.
I may have stopped going to the dock, our dock—but maybe Wes hasn’t.
I slam on the brakes at the end of the block nearest the marina. I think I’m parked illegally but I don’t care.
“Wes!” I yell his name even though I’m not quite at the marina yet.
I run past the harbor, past people putting up stupid witchy decorations and buying Halloween candy. I wipe snow out of my eyes as I run faster and faster, like I did before the strike. I want to hold him in my arms, tell him thank you, thank you for coming back to me. For believing in me. For wanting to read the journal my dad gave me and for helping me piece together my life.
For forgiving me even when he didn’t have to.
I stop at the end of the dock. The snow makes patterns of swirls in the air.
And there. Sitting at the edge of the dock with a closed sketchbook in his hand is Wes. I step down the ramp slowly, digging my hands deeper in my pockets. I want him to know that yes, I am me, the girl he knew, but I am different now too. I am the girl who finally gets that no one else gets to define who I am or wha
t kind of person I am on the inside.
At the sounds of my feet on the metal ramp, Wes turns.
Confusion crosses his face and he shakes his head.
“Shouldn’t you be at the party with everyone?” he asks.
I sit on my knees and nod.
“What’s going on, Penny?” he asks.
I cup his strong face in my hands. We are inches from kissing when I whisper, “I had to see you. It’s always been you. I can say it now.”
“What are you saying?” he says, trying to catch up, but he presses his hand on my thigh.
“It’s okay to kiss me now,” I say. “See? I’m not crying.”
His eyes brighten in realization but I lean in to kiss him before he can say anything else.
It’s everything I thought it could be. His chest rises at the connection of our lips. I press my hands into Wes’s strong back and I know with certainty that I have never loved anyone so much.
Wes accepts me for who I am. He loved me with my memory, and without it, and everywhere in between. I will love him forever for that lesson.
When we pull apart, Wes leaves his hand on my cheek.
“Took you long enough,” he says softly.
I move in to kiss him once more, but Wes stops me, pulling at the collar of my leather bomber. “Look,” he says.
I unzip the jacket fully to my button-down shirt. My fingers fumble to get it off as fast as I can. I don’t care that it’s freezing. I twist and turn in my cami to look at my skin. The Lichtenberg figures. The branches and vines that have crawled up my arms and to my chest and my collarbone for months.
They are gone.
The doctor said they would fade eventually.
“I want to tell you. The whole thing,” I say to Wes.
I launch into the whole story. From tonight, and before tonight, and even before the strike.
He knows me. He knows me better than anyone.
When I finish, I stand up and Wes follows. “You want to go back to the party? I’ll go with you,” he offers.
“I think I need to go home,” I say. I need to hug Mom. For me and for the past I’m just beginning to figure out.
We walk back to Main Street together and stop at my car.
“I guess there’s a lot more we have to talk about,” I say, turning to face him.
He leans into me, sliding his hand onto my cheek again. “We have time,” he whispers, bringing his mouth to mine again.
When I get home, the kitchen smells like a cinnamon candle, which means Bettie came earlier to check in. Dad is asleep or in the basement working. I blow the candle out and find Mom in the living room—her feet resting on an ottoman. She sips tea. Alice Berne business cards surround her on the couch. She’s working, and from what I can tell she looks relatively sober.
I lean in the doorway.
“Is this for the Cenberry wedding?” I ask.
She sighs and eyes me over the top of her magnifiers. “Of course,” she says, and the agitation of our fight is still in her voice.
I sit down on the edge of the ottoman. I watch her and the deliberate curve of her French-manicured nails. She smells like Chanel but it’s faded after a whole day.
I get up and sit down next to her on the couch, drawing my arms around her and pulling her close to me.
“Don’t sit on the cards,” she says.
“Mom . . .” I say, and hug her even harder.
I hold on and squeeze and don’t let go. She keeps the pen in between her fingers but eventually slips her arms around me too.
I hug her for the little girl in my bedroom.
I hug her for the times I wished she had looped her arms around me and did not.
I hug her for the times she will fail me in the future.
“What’s going on?” she asks. She runs a hand up my arm and gasps. “They’re gone. The figures.”
I let her think this is about my figures. I let her think whatever she wants.
I squeeze her just a little bit tighter.
I don’t let her go.
Nearly three weeks later—on opening night of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—the lightning bug population disappears for good.
The TV reports all say the same thing: “In a strange migration, the lightning bug infestation that nearly incapacitated the small state of Rhode Island has moved south. Dying out along the way, many of them didn’t make it, but some states are reporting an influx of them as far south as South Carolina.”
“Twenty minutes, twenty minutes!” Taft cries, and her hair is coming out of its bun. She points to a couple of the stagehands as they carry Wes’s gorgeous trees to ready them for the scene change between the first and second act. “There should be two more,” she yells.
I stand by the door of the fitting room in full costume as Queen Hippolyta. My gown is lace like a wedding dress, with a long train. Panda walks by behind me, bringing with him the familiar scent of cheddar cheese chips. I finish the tight bun on my head with one last spritz of hairspray.
Mom and Dad are in the audience, sitting next to Bettie and her family. While I know Mom will make any acting program I get into a part of her “success” and Dad will struggle to get Mom the help she needs, I am okay with it. I have to be because they love me, but are never going to change. And I don’t have to be the one to fix everything. I can have help.
I need to change—I already have.
Panda throws an arm over my shoulder. He offers me a chip. “Kylie is in the audience. She’s sitting with Tank in the third row.”
“She’s my biggest fan.”
“She’s totally my biggest fan. She wants me to do an interview about the OSTC internship on her radio show,” he says. “I agreed, for a small fee.”
“What’s that?”
“She gets me Blue Indigo tickets for Carl’s birthday. He has the night off from the 7-Eleven and they’re his favorite band.”
I don’t ask Panda if his parents are in the audience because we both know the answer to that question. I do know that Carl is in the row behind my parents.
“It’s a full house,” May breathes, and loops her arms around my waist. She looks amazing as Hermia. We have a similar updo and I offer her the hairspray. She takes it and Panda checks his Bottom costume in the mirror. He has to wear a dirty shirt and tights so I guess it doesn’t matter that he cleans his fingertips of the cheddar cheese on his black tunic.
Richard walks by and holds up a hand like a visor. “I am going to pretend I didn’t see that!” he cries.
“Penny?” Wes’s voice. When I turn to him, he’s got a little sweat on his forehead. His hair has grown out so it’s nearly in his eyes.
“Remind me not to build sets again,” he says. May and Richard pass us.
“Until this summer?” I say, knowing full well he’ll be working at OSTC again. Hopefully, we both will. Ms. Taft runs by with an armful of playbills.
“They need more!” she says to us. “Can you believe it? Sold out!” Wes and I laugh because her headset is askew and her bra strap is nearly hanging off her shoulder as she uses her butt to push open the door to the hallway.
Once Richard and May are past us and Wes’s back is facing May, she turns around and wags her eyebrows up and down. Richard makes a kissy face and I swear we’re all nine years old trapped in high school seniors’ bodies.
Wes has a little brown shopping bag in his right hand.
“Come outside with me, dollface?” he asks.
I make a sweeping motion down the front of my dress. “I’m in costume, Gumby.”
He does the same sweeping motion. “So am I,” he says, except all he has on is the blue gauzy shirt he has to wear as Oberon. He’s still in jeans.
“This will only take a second,” he says.
Wes leads me out to the hallway. In the opposite direction of the tickets and refreshments table is a second door that leads out to the far side of the football fields. It’s cold outside. Wind blows through the lace sleeves of my costume
, and the grass crunches under our feet from the recent frost. We stop in the center, near where we stood a few weeks ago, and face one another again. This time, the sky is filled with stars and I look for any evidence of the fireflies, but don’t see a single one.
Wes bends down to the brown bag and pulls out a book and hands it over to me. I take it between my hands and feel with my fingertips the deep grooves of an engraving on the cover.
“I’m still learning how to use the engraving tool,” he says, and points at the quote he has carved into the cover of a brand-new leather journal. The quote reads:
“Hear my soul speak: The very instant that I saw you, did my heart fly to your service.”—William Shakespeare
“I love it,” I say, and hug the journal to my stomach. “You made this?”
He laughs a little. “Yeah, Penny. I made it.”
I step to him, closing the space between us. He reaches for me, sliding his hands around the small of my back and drawing me near.
Our breath escapes in little white puffs. Our noses are almost touching.
He examines me and an expression, almost like pain, crosses over his face.
“I missed you,” I say.
“You have no idea,” he whispers. I place my hand at the back of his head and draw him deeper. His arms tighten around me.
The lightning bugs are gone but this kiss is fire.
The door slams open behind us and Richard cries, “Get a room!” We pull apart but remain entangled in one another’s arms. Panda and May follow Richard out onto the chilly football field. “Taft is asking for you,” Richard says to Wes.
“Ten minutes until curtain,” May says.
“Besides hooking up, what are you guys doing out here?” Panda asks, and as he’s about to peer into the bag, Wes and I step apart. Wes reaches inside and lifts something out.
Cupped between his hands is a Mason jar. Inside, two fireflies pulse and buzz inside the glass.
“No way,” I say.
“How did you find them?” Panda asks.
“They were zooming around backstage,” Wes replies.
“The last two fireflies,” Richard says, and the pin-size lights illuminate the pupils of his eyes behind his thick glasses.
Wes hands over the jar. “You do the honors,” he says in that familiar deep voice.