“More men are struck than women, so you’re already fucked,” Nico said. “You’re outnumbered two to one.”

Nico and Rani were arguing again. Taran was ignoring them. He was looking up into the sky. It was happening now—the clouds were beginning to congregate. Rani thought they looked like frothy bubbles sitting on the surface of the bathwater, making her a sunken toy. She remembered how her plastic dinosaurs had always fallen through the bubbles and hit the metal of the tub with a thud.

“That’s not how statistics work, Nico,” she shot back. “Besides …”

She pulled out the high-quality, metal-spiked umbrella, which had been riding in her backpack and had slid down between her spare jumper and her water bottle whilst they walked. Rani brandished the umbrella at Nico, who scowled. Taran checked his watch. He brought up the atmospheric pressure app. Before he’d even taken in the numbers there was a quiet rumble from somewhere near the horizon.

The sky darkened.

Nico opened his own backpack and took out his World War I Brodie helmet. It was a tarnished conker brown and shone similarly. He gave Rani the middle finger. She rolled her eyes and sat down on the hill crest, pulling her knees up to her chest.

Rani gazed out at the horizon. A ribbon of white light hung above the edge of the land. The sky was ashen dark now. The ground underneath was black. A fat raindrop hit her head and ran down the path between her braids.

Nico did up the strap of his helmet tightly under his chin. His pasty skin gleamed in contrast. His light grey eyes made him look unnatural in the failing light.

“You look like a zombie soldier,” Rani muttered.

Nico frowned. “Thanks.”

Taran zipped up his waterproof as the rain began to put in a little more effort. He pulled up his hood and his face was lost to shadow. He paced up and down, away from them, and then back. Nico stayed standing simply to avoid sitting down next to Rani. After a few minutes, he got bored and relented. The sky grumbled again and the three of them became watchful, waiting for the first flash. This was the third time they had been out together. The first time had been a bust—the promised storm had never materialised. The second time Nico had lost his nerve, panicked, and fled, locking himself in the car. Without really understanding why, Rani and Taran had wordlessly followed him, knocking on the window until the hysterical Nico had let them in. Having made this plan together, it didn’t seem right not to see it through together.

They had met months ago in a chatroom. Taran was the only one with any right to be there—Nico and Rani were lurkers to the conversations about lightning and storm chasing. Eventually the three of them had begun chatting privately. They had agreed to meet in a pub called the Rose and Crown, which Nico worked out was about equidistant from all their homes. Nico had joked that crowns would be good conductors. Taran had wondered if royals wore them for that reason. Rani and Nico had smiled but wondered what he meant. Rani had disliked Nico immediately. The feeling had been mutual. It didn’t matter though; they both needed Taran.

Taran put his hands in his pockets and then took them out. He glanced at his watch again for no particular reason. Nico lit a fag. He didn’t offer one to Rani, which robbed her both of the chance to say no and to tell him smoking was bad for him. She told him anyway.

“Smoking's bad for you, Nico.”

Nico sneered. “Said the girl waiting to be struck by lightning.”

Rani looked away from him. She opened her umbrella, lifted the point to the sky, and shuffled away from him a little. If she was chosen, she didn’t want Nico to steal any of her lightning.

Another roll of thunder circled around the sky above them, like something huge and alive stirring above the clouds.

“There!”

It was Taran, looking the other way from Nico and Rani. They both twisted around and saw the second strike of lightning. Rani beamed, her eyes glittering. Nico stubbed out his cigarette and got up fast, like a kid caught by the headmaster behind the bike sheds.

They all counted in hushed voices.

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5 …“

 The wind was picking up.

“6, 7 …“

Another growl of thunder, louder this time, and then the beam of the first ground-flash lightning.

“1, 2, 3, 4 …“

Crash. The storm was almost on them.

Taran whooped and threw his hands into the air. He only grew animated like this when the lightning started. They had seen it last time. Before, he was sullen and quiet. Almost sulky. Now his eyes went bright and feverish. Nico’s hands were shaking as he tried to light another cigarette. Rani glanced at him, wondering if he was going to run again. Taran seemed to have forgotten them both. He was hopping up and down, talking to no one in particular.

“We won’t see them,” he was saying, “but right now positively charged upward leaders are sort of reaching up from the earth, trying to make contact with the negative step leaders coming down from the clouds and then—“

The energy was incredible. Rani had felt it last time, crackling, building, almost like an orgasm. That was when Nico had run, just as she had felt her body tingling. This time, she thought, let him run. She was staying.

Another stab of lightning met the ground about a mile ahead of them.

“God’s veins!” yelled Taran, insensibly.

He unzipped his coat and threw it on the ground. The rain pelted his T-shirt. He pulled that off too, exposing his skinny chest. Rani and Nico both stole glances at him. From his neck, spreading like ferns across his shoulders and down his back, were his burns. He told them they were called Lichtenberg figures—a name which did them no justice whatsoever.

It was as if the lightning had licked him, starting at his neck and winding downwards. It had tattooed him. It had set up home just under his skin, or been trapped there.

In the Rose and Crown, Rani had been transfixed by Taran’s stories of his first few months after he had been struck. The dreams, strange powers. Precognition. The trauma of the hospital stay and nearly dying had been nothing, he said, to what the lightning had shown him. Taran was cagey though, saying so much and no more.

Nico had been on the edge of his seat too; for once he had nothing to say. Taran had said he was willing to take both Rani and Nico with him. Ever since his powers had dwindled nine months after he had been struck, he had been storm chasing.

Lightning struck again. A tree—only meters from them—appeared to explode in slow motion. Rani screamed. So did Taran. Her heart was racing, but Taran was laughing.

“Here!” he yelled. “I’m here!”

He’d shown them his burns in the pub. He’d seemed reluctant, but then Nico had implied that maybe it was all bullshit; maybe Taran had never been struck at all. Rani had recognised that hardening in Taran’s eyes—she’d seen the same look in the eyes of the boys at school. A vying for hierarchy. Taran had pulled his top halfway off and twisted his neck up so they could see the marks.

“It looks like frost,” Nico had breathed, only just stopping himself from tracing the burns with his fingers. “Red frost.”

Nico had been lurking on the chatrooms for months before he’d had the courage to message Taran. At night he dreamed of the storms. He imagined the moment of contact while he was at college, zoning out, doodling in the margins of his notes. He drew little muscled men with raised fists, lightning zigzagging away from each tiny, sketchy hand.

“Do you think it’ll be soon?” Nico asked Taran. “So many fucking safety warnings and here we are breaking the lot and it turns out to be impossible to get hit.”

“Well, it is if you run away and hide behind a Faraday cage,” Rani shot at him.

“I just lost my nerve, alright?” he snapped, “You’re practically pissing your pants now, so don’t give me all that shit.”

“There’s no car this time Nico,” she hissed.

Her words sounded nasty in her ears and she flushed.

“No, no, no,” murmured Taran. “You’re both going to repel it. You’ve got to be quiet. You’ve got to make yourself a conduit.”

The other two fell quiet, chastised. The storm continued, but it seemed to be teasing them. It was all around the hill, never on it, always just out of reach, though it was frighteningly loud.

Rani thought of her bedroom at home as the rain began to soak into her shoes. She thought of her X-Men poster of Storm—electricity emanating from the character, white hair flying, eyes glowing—and felt a ripple of embarrassment. She glanced at Nico as if he would somehow know. She resolved to take the old poster down when she got home. If she got home. If it happened, would she even go home? Her dreams all ended at the moment of the strike hitting her.

“I wonder how wide it is.” Nico was rambling. “Like, the actual beam of the lightning? The shaft? Like, how thick is it?”

“Are you thinking about lightning or dicks, Nico?” Rani sneered.

Nico glared at her and turned his back, trying again, without success, to get Taran to re-engage with him. He must be freezing, Nico thought, watching Taran’s pale body, which seemed to float without legs—an illusion caused by the darkness and the rain. Nico felt exposed without Taran. His sullen presence was better than this manic absence. Nico wanted them to be together in this; well, maybe not Rani, but he’d pictured them united. Taran seemed to have forgotten they were there. He was muttering under his breath. He’d walked quite a few paces away from them now.

All of a sudden, the rain stopped.

The lightning-struck tree was glowing a soft, hot orange from inside itself. Its inner core was full of burning embers. The embers peeped through cracks in the bark, which was mostly intact. The pattern in the bark was sort of like the shape of the lightning. The color reminded Rani of ice lollies at the beach, and she thought again of her bedroom at home. It seemed strange that her room and this storm-encircled hill could exist in the same reality. The hot tree was hissing steam in the chill rain. Droplets fell from the ends of Rani’s forty-quid umbrella. The truth was, she felt protected under its canopy, even as she courted the storm with its spike above her. The umbrella obscured her vision, and she could pretend she was at a bus stop or something. She wanted it, but she wanted it to sneak up on her. She didn’t want to see it coming.

Nico was standing closer to her again.

“What’s your problem with me anyway?”

She didn’t look at him.

“What? What are you talking about?”

He shook his head and made a scoffing sound.

“Ever since we met,” he said, keeping his voice quiet so that Taran didn’t hear him. “You’ve had this look on your face like I’m a bad smell.”

“You do smell. You need to get off your computer once in a while and take a damn shower.”

“Fuck you, Rani.”

They fell silent again. As they did so, they noticed there was a lot of silence. It was spreading out from the point where they were standing, like something invisible covering the landscape in front of them. Taran was still pacing in circles, gesturing to the sky.

“Storm’s dropped.”

“Yeah.”

“He looks like a mad wizard.”

Rani glanced at Nico.

“Yeah,” she agreed quietly.

They looked away from each other, smiling a little, savouring this secret mockery of their leader. It was something new.

“Why are you doing this anyway?” Rani asked Nico.

He scuffed the earth with his foot. They were both whispering now. The silence around them seemed to demand it. Everything was so quiet.

“I dunno. It just …” he said, chansing a glance at her, “I just want something …”

“To happen?”

Nico nodded. He tried to pass her the fag but she wrinkled her nose and waved it away.

“Nothing ever happens,” Rani said, more to herself than to Nico. “Nothing that feels real.”

Nico thought of his silly drawings.

“Yeah.”

He drew on his cigarette and let the smoke flow out from his nostrils.

“Well,” he said eventually, undoing the strap on his helmet, “this is officially a bust.”

He tossed the helmet onto the ground. It rolled away from them on its rim. Rani put down her umbrella and dropped it onto the floor next to her feet.

“Oh my god, Nico,” Rani said, laughter in her voice. “That’s the worst hat hair I’ve ever seen.”

Nico put his hand up to his head. His hair was on end, standing away from his head. A tremor of fear ran through him. He felt tight in his body, like he was filling every part of it for the first time in his life. He could feel his ears. He was aware of his toes pressing into his boots. He could feel his heart beating.

Rani was giggling. “You look like a dandelion.”

From across the hill, they heard Taran shouting something. He was running towards them.

“Not hat hair,” Nico whispered.

The smile froze on Rani’s face.

They both watched Taran getting closer, his face alive with some emotion. Whether with joy or terror or something else, it was hard to say.