The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors by Michele Young-Stone

spurts. Bo whined outside and pawed at the screen of the basement window. Grandma Edna shut the window and went back to her bedroom to watch TV.
    Becca went upstairs and watched the storm through the curtainless dining room windows. She was sweating badly, and as the thunder grew louder, she worried that the lightning had come for her. Was that possible? She needed Bo. She needed him safe.
    The lightning lit the mountains a soft purple and split the sky in two. Becca’s hands were clammy and cold. She wiped the sweat from her lip and moved a few feet back from the window. There had been thunderstorms and lightning since the day she was struck, but nothing like this. With a sharp cracking sound, the lightning parted the sky, illuminating the barbed-wire fence in the distance.
    The front door to the farm house had double doors and required a skeleton key. She needed that key. Becca found her mother in the abandoned kitchen, reading a book. She said, “Mom, I need your help.”
    “I love a good thunderstorm,” she said, “though I know you’re not a big fan.” Her mother put down the book. “Aunt Claire’s going to be all right, Becca. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.” Mary seemed gleeful sitting in an old recliner with her calves tucked under her thighs. Now it was clear that Aunt Claire was the crazy one. Not her. She continued: “Claire will need someone to talk to, a therapist … what your dad calls a head doctor. But that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t mean that she’s weak-minded. Not really.” Mary smiled. “It’s understandable, when you think about it, considering she’s a grown woman still living with her mother in the middle of nowhere with no job.”
    Becca had other concerns. “Do you know where the key that unlocks the front door is?”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Mary rolled her eyes and picked up her book.
    “Because Bo needs to come inside.”
    “Bo will be fine, Becca. He’s weathered plenty of storms.” Mary turned the page.
    “No. He’s not safe. I can feel it.”
    “I’m trying to read, honey. Find something to do.”
    “Mom, please.”
    “Bo can’t come inside, Becca. Your grandma doesn’t want a wet dog in her house, not even in her basement kitchen.”
    “But I’ve seen him in the house.”
    “On rare occasions. He’s an outside dog, a country dog.”
    “Please, Mom. Please.”
    Mary sighed. “All right.” She set down her book.
    Becca followed her mother to the library, where Mary pulled a skeleton key off a gold hook. Mary said, “If your grandmother asks, I had nothing to do with this.” Mary unlocked the double doors where the pine coat rack once stood—where her work boots had once rested. She hated this place.
    No one used this main door anymore, and when Mary pushed the one door open, there was a loud sucking noise. Mother and daughter stood in the cramped doorway, Becca calling for Bo, the rain beating down. She walked out onto the covered porch to look for him. “Maybe he’s still by the kitchen window.” The wind gusted and swirled, lifting a pointed holly leaf off the porch. She called his name again: nothing. “Come on, Bo. Come on.”
    “He’s got sense, Becca. He’s probably under the house or under a tree or something.”
    Becca paced the porch. The bursts of rain blew sideways, sprinkling her shirt. “Bo!” Lightning touched down across the yard, and she spotted Bo heading their way. “Good boy. Here he comes.” Her mother patted the pockets of her jeans, feeling for her lighter.
    As Mary turned the lighter’s flint, thunder exploded and the black sky flared white. Becca did not see the lightning clobber his head, but as she rushed toward Bo in that second of white stillness,never pausing, not suspended this time, not in shock this time, refusing to lose time
again
, she knew he was hit. Her mother was fixed on the porch, leaning with her shoulder against a column, the lighter in her right hand, an unlit