The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors By Michele Young-Stone doc

The
Handbook for
Lightning Strike
Survivors
a novel
MICHELE YOUNG- STONE
Shaye Areheart Books New York
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Michele Young- Stone
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www .crownpublishing .com
shaye areheart books with colophon is a registered trademark of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Young-Stone, Michele.
The handbook for lightning strike survivors : a novel / by Michele
Young-Stone. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Lightning—Fiction. 2. Life change events—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3625.O975H36 2010
813'.6—dc22
2009016611
ISBN 978- 0- 307- 46447- 7
Printed in the United States of America

Design by Lauren Dong
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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90% of lightning strike victims survive.
—THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS
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The Handbook for
Lightning Strike Survivors
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A fish
She was a girl like you or like someone you knew— from
a cracked home, a fault line between her parents, for which she
felt responsible. A pretty girl with red hair: too curly to contain in
barrettes or under headbands, twisting free, needing to spiral and
curl like the ocean waves to her right.
The sun was hot, turning her back pink. She took great
strides, walking faster, nearly running, her shadow mixed with the
surf. Sanderlings scurrying to and fro mixed with her shadow. Ex-
cept for the birds, she was alone with her thoughts, with hopes to
caulk the crevice between her mother and father, the way she’d
seen her mother do, wearing latex gloves, smoothing slow- drying
putty around the bathtub’s perimeter. How she set her highball
on the tub’s edge, digging out the old grout using a flat- head
screwdriver. Mother was always drinking, and Dad was always
working, but cracks can be mended so long as you let the caulk
dry. They were here at the beach, weren’t they? There was plenty
of time to let that stuff dry. At home, Becca would mess it up, run-
ning the bathwater too soon, but here, she had hope. Here, she
spotted a live fish with a fanlike tail, its gills opening and shutting,

silver window blinds. Maybe the fish- on- the- sand happened to
you or to someone you knew, but for Becca, it cemented her belief
that anything is possible. She carried the fish through Atlantic surf,
watching it swim away, running to tell her parents she had saved
a life.
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out of water
Buckley loved everything about his mother, from the
strawberry bumps on her legs where she dry- shaved with her
Gillette to the way her black hair knotted at the nape of her neck.
When the mean boys, the ones with fathers who taught them to
fight before they could walk, jumped him from behind or from
the front, Buckley counted himself a survivor. Knocked hard to
the dirt, he got back up. It had everything to do with his mother.
She was there for him, and he’d always be there for her. He could
run fast.
It seemed that he was always running from someone stronger,
bigger, and meaner— but not faster, and that was a very good thing.
Today he was tired of running. The angry boys called, “Bastard!”
That word didn’t touch him anymore. He’d heard it so often, it’d
lost its meaning. He walked, hearing footsteps at his heels and
falling to the dirt. Maybe he needed a beating. Covering his head
with his hands, he felt the blows to his ribs and legs. Always protect
the head. He breathed in the dirt.
Much later, when he was sixteen, he met Clementine. She
smelled like dirt too. Like the earth. Like he could bury his face
there between chin and collarbone and be protected. Maybe that’s
why he loved her.
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When the beating was over, the bullies toed dirt on Buckley’s
backside and touted, “Crybaby.” As they left, he struggled to his
feet.
The thing was, he didn’t cry. Not then. Hardly ever. They
could’ve kicked and punched until his ribs cracked and his lip
split. It didn’t make a difference. He wouldn’t have cried for them.
Maybe that was part of what was wrong with him. He was eleven
years old, unable to cry, trying not to run from the world.
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[ 1 ]
Lightning, 1977
The wind shifted and Becca stopped running. Her dad was
taking her for a chocolate- dipped soft serve, but first she needed a
bath. He wouldn’t be seen with her this way. Her knee, bloody
from tripping over a knobby root during hide- and- seek, had that
sticky- tight feeling, and the other knee, scraped from tumbling
on the sidewalk, burned. She needed to be more careful. How
many times had her dad told her “Stop picking those scabs or you
will scar, and scars last forever”?
The wind picked up— a rare cold wind. From her driveway,
she watched the willow tree’s branches, like charm- laden arms,
sway back and forth, and thought about her ice cream, about her
dad. She thought about the summer’s end, another boring school
year about to begin, about the dried blood caked on her knee—
and her world exploded. It cracked open and Becca fell inside a
whiteness that erased everything: the driveway, the tree, the long
summer’s day, the blood, the ice cream. For a time, the world was
blank. She was still.
She woke up, her fingertips tingling, her head full of static,

raindrops only now wetting her legs. She knew she’d been struck
by lightning. There was never a question. She stood up, feeling pe-
culiar, seeing herself from a distance as someone else might: wild
hair, freckled nose, pink lips, pony T-shirt, corduroy shorts and gray
sneakers; gangly arms and legs.
She hobbled inside to the den. With blood trickling down
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her shin, her voice shaky, she said, “Dad, I got struck by light-
ning.”
He sat on the sofa. “If you got struck by lightning, you’d be
dead.” He didn’t look up.
The den’s gold drapes were parted. The sky was black. Becca
shivered, waiting for her dad to say something more like We need
to get you to the hospital! or Oh my God! I’ll call an ambulance!, but
instead he picked up Yachting Today. He was in love with sailing
then. He was in love with all things that required large sums of
money, and Becca was in love with him.
Becca said, “It knocked me down.”
“Who knocked you down? Did you knock them down first?”
He looked at her then. Finally.
The rain streaked the front window. She said, “I think I got
struck by lightning.”
“Well, you seem fine now.” He was used to seeing her blood-
ied and bruised. Like her mother, she lacked balance. “Get cleaned
up.” He returned to his magazine.
Upstairs, she undressed, leaving the bathroom door open. She
looked at her watch before stepping in the tub. The hands had
stopped at five- fourteen. That must’ve been when the lightning struck.
Or, maybe Dad is right: Who gets struck by lightning and walks away?
She knew the answer: Me. I do.

In the bathtub, with her big toe up the spigot, the water turned
gray. Becca smelled bleach. She was trembling again. Shutting off
the cold, she turned up the hot. She closed her eyes and took deep
breaths to stop from shaking. She imagined hovering, twirling in
the sky, shooting lightning bolts from her fingertips like a gun-
slinger before dropping, landing cold and wet in the driveway. She
opened her eyes and felt sick. Her hands and feet ached. She used
to ask her mother, “How can I turn off my imagination?” Back
then, she didn’t pronounce the i, saying, “ ’magination” instead. It
was back then that she’d started painting, to give her “ ’magination”
something to do. Maybe the prickling in her feet and the headache
6 MICHELE YOUNG-STONE
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were imagination. Maybe she’d bumped her head falling down
somewhere earlier today but didn’t remember. More deep breaths.
Her mother, who took smoke- filled breaths, said that deep breaths
calmed the nerves. Becca, taking the deepest breaths possible, felt
light- headed. She pulled the tub’s stopper.
Looking at herself in the mirror, she decided to curb the breath-
ing. She was pale. She might pass out, and she’d been through
enough today.
Downstairs, she toweled her hair and waited for her dad to get
off the phone. He said, “I’ll be there,” smiling at Becca, holding
up his pointer finger to indicate Be with you in a second. He often
held up his pointer finger. Sometimes when he wanted Becca to
do something like fold laundry, he’d look at her and point to the
full basket. He was a man of few words. Into the phone he said, “I
told you: I’ll be there.”
Becca, having waited patiently, said, “I’m ready.”
Covering the mouthpiece, he said, “Ready for what?”

“Ice cream. We’re supposed to—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Sorry. Another night.” Returning to
his phone conversation, he said, “I won’t be later than eight.”
Becca pulled the towel from her head and dropped it on the
kitchen floor. She went upstairs to her room to paint a picture of a
girl getting struck by lightning. She was certain that her father was
in the kitchen pointing at the wet towel and waiting for someone to
pick it up. Later, when he’d gone, she’d come back downstairs and
the towel would still be there. It wasn’t his responsibility to clean up
after them.
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Excerpt from
THE HANDBOOK FOR LIGHTNING STRIKE SURVIVORS
An estimated 80% of people struck by
lightning are men. This is not, as you
might think, because men are too
stubborn to come in out of the rain;
rather, it’s because men tend to engage
in outdoor sports and professions more
than women.
Regardless of a victim’s gender,
doctors and scientists concur that the
surviving victim needs support from
family and friends to recover.
Immediate effects include cardiac
arrest and brain damage. Chronic effects
include anxiety disorders, memory loss,
stiff joints, numbness, and insomnia. For
years following a strike, the victim

might feel tingling throughout his body.
Because it’s often difficult for a
victim to describe what happened, it’s
important that there is a support group
to listen.
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