Maybe We’re Electric Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Val Emmich

  Cover art © 2021 by Alessandra Olanow. Cover lettering by Dirty Bandits. Cover design by Karina Granda. Cover copyright © 2021 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Poppy

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  First Edition: September 2021

  Poppy is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. The Poppy name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Emmich, Val, author.

  Title: Maybe we’re electric / Val Emmich.

  Other titles: Maybe we are electric

  Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2021. | “Poppy.” | Audience: Ages 14 & up. | Summary: In Edison, New Jersey, in a museum devoted to the inventor Thomas Edison, a loner sixteen-year-old girl with a limb difference and the seemingly coolest boy in school spend the night during a snowstorm, growing close until a shameful secret threatens everything.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020043348 | ISBN 9780316535700 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316535694 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316499132 (ebook other)

  Subjects: CYAC: Self-acceptance—Fiction. | People with disabilities—Fiction. | Secrets—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.E475 May 2021 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043348

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-53570-0 (hardcover), 978-0-316-53569-4 (ebook)

  E3-20210804-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  The Day of the Storm 5:52 PM

  6:39 PM

  6:54 PM

  7:31 PM

  3:23 PM

  8:02 PM

  8:37 PM

  9:22 PM

  9:43 PM

  10:31 PM

  4:46 PM

  10:50 PM

  11:27 PM

  12:12 AM

  12:54 AM

  1:02 AM

  1:19 AM

  10:47 AM

  1:30 AM

  12:26 PM

  1:52 AM

  2:21 AM

  4:24 PM

  2:39 AM

  3:04 AM

  5:13 PM

  3:42 AM

  Weeks Later 8:23 AM

  8:52 AM

  1:35 PM

  4:11 PM

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Also by Val Emmich

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  You are seeing what nobody else ever witnessed before tonight or outside of this room.

  —Thomas Edison

  You don’t want to be a monster. Not anymore. You don’t want to feel ugly. Inside or out.

  Thomas Edison said that failure is guaranteed. The part that matters is what you do after. You used to doubt this, but now you believe. Which is why you’re going back to retrace your steps. Maybe there’s still a way to fix the damage you’ve done. To face the ugly and make a more beautiful after.

  5:52 PM

  I’m huddled on the hard floor of the museum, back pressed to a slow-warming baseboard, waiting for the shivering to stop.

  The checkered floor beneath me is cracked in places, and this cracks me in places, the reminder that everything begins new and near perfect but eventually cracks in places.

  Around me are a hundred faces, each in black and white, most belonging to the man of honor, the inventor who once turned this unremarkable spot in New Jersey into a worldwide destination and later had the whole town named after him.

  Along with these photos of Thomas Edison are working models of his many inventions. Incandescent bulbs. Sound devices. Telephone transmitters. A dozen of the four hundred patents developed in Menlo Park cover the wall. Inside a glass tank is a model of the laboratory that once stood on these grounds. It’s all crammed into a space no bigger than my living room.

  But it’s better than my living room. I don’t want to be anywhere near home right now. I just wish I had grabbed a few essentials before storming out of the house earlier. Mainly my phone. A jacket, too, would have been smart.

  I compose an email in my head to my dad: She’s the worst. I mean it. She ruined everything. Please don’t take her side right now. I don’t need that. I can imagine his reply: Mom’s doing her best. Not taking her side, I promise. Yes, she can be the worst. We all can be.

  I hug my knees and drop my wet face into the abyss I’ve made in between. I shake quietly—for a minute, an hour.

  I’m startled by a familiar beep. Everyone who works here knows that annoying beep. It yanks our attention away from whatever we’re doing and alerts us that someone has entered the museum.

  I forgot to lock the door behind me.

  Maybe Mom chased after me in the snow. It can’t be Charlie; he already left for his gig and missed the drama at home. If it is Mom, she’s got me cornered. The Thomas Edison Center possesses a lot of things, but space isn’t one of them. There’s the front room, back room (where I am now), bathroom, and tiny utility closet. A back door leads outside, to a shed and the memorial tower, but opening it will sound another beep.

  “Hello?” says a voice that definitely isn’t my mom’s.

  I keep still, hoping the voice and whomever it belongs to will leave as quickly as they came.

  A shadow spreads down the hall and into the back room. It stops, and I lift my eyes. A hooded figure looms above. Snow sheds onto the floor as the hood comes off.

  I know him. He’s in my grade, a fellow sophomore. His name is Mac Durant. Mac Durant, as in list whatever desirable attribute you can think of—gorgeous, bright, charming, popular, star athlete, too-good-to-be-true heartthrob cliché from every teenage rom-com you’ve ever seen—with the absurdly appropriate name to go with it, Mac Durant. What the hell is he doing here?

  I’m a hot mess. I’m two-day-old hair. I’m a ratty sweatshirt. I’m worn-out leggings and mismatched socks. It’s not like I’m super thrilled with my presentation even on full-effort days, when I’m actually expecting to be seen, but this look I’ve got going on right now, complete with puffy red eyes, is next-level tragic.

  I wipe my face with my sleeve and do my best impersonation of a stable person. His giant golden eyes stare in confusion. He’s probably trying to remember my name. Who is this girl I pass by daily but with whom I never interact? And why is she curled up in a shaky ball on this dirty cracked floor?

  “I need your phone,” Mac Durant says. “It’s an emergency.”

  These are not the words I prepared for, or the voice I imagined delivering them. Hearing distress in a person who only ever oozes confidence rattles me even more.

  The museum is closed, I want to say. He
’s not supposed to be here, and neither am I.

  “Please,” Mac says, polite but desperate.

  My right hand rises and my finger points. He turns in a hurry, his shadow trailing. I get up and step into the hallway, a spy at the corner. He reaches for the old phone, but he doesn’t lift the receiver. That’s when I notice the blood on his hand.

  He looks up and sees me.

  “You do it,” he says.

  I struggle to speak.

  He lifts the receiver. “I need you to make the call. I’ll tell you what to say.”

  His eyes show no malice, only urgency.

  I watch his bloody hand press three numbers. Any call that can be made with just three numbers is a call I want no part of.

  I’m about to advise him of this new and unwritten policy of mine, but he beckons me with rapid waving and the use of my name. “Tegan,” he says. His saying my name, knowing my name—it’s too much.

  I let him pass me the receiver.

  A faint voice: “911. What’s your emergency?”

  Mac gestures for me to lift the receiver to my ear. It’s like he has to teach me how to use a device I’ve never seen before, as if I’m back in Edison’s time. This is what a person does when making a call on a telephone. She places the top of the receiver to her ear and the bottom to her mouth and she speaks.

  But what does she say?

  “I’d like to report something,” Mac whispers, instructing me what to tell the dispatcher.

  I can’t. I’m mute. He implores me with his giant stare, and sure enough I hear myself repeat his words verbatim: “I’d like to report something.”

  Mac squints achingly before giving me my next line. “There’s a man inside a garage.”

  “There’s a man…” I say.

  “Inside a garage,” Mac says.

  “Inside a garage.”

  “His car is running. Inside the garage.”

  “His car is running inside the garage,” I repeat.

  “I think he might be trying to hurt himself,” Mac says.

  I pause. Mac nods. It’s okay. All of this is okay. His eyes promise me: We’re in this together.

  I tell the dispatcher, “He might be trying to hurt himself.”

  Mac gives me two thumbs up. I hold the receiver away from my mouth and tell Mac that the dispatcher wants an address.

  “Eighty-eight Anchorage Road,” Mac says.

  I give the address to the dispatcher, and only afterward does the information register. Mac lives on Anchorage, walking distance from here, the opposite direction from where I live. The museum is roughly midway between our houses.

  The dispatcher asks for my name. Mac hears this and mouths for me to hang up. I hesitate. He takes the receiver and hangs up for me.

  The museum is silent, still.

  I notice his bloody hand on the receiver. He shoves it into his coat pocket.

  Mac Durant takes a deep breath, his shoulders lifting, and exhales. All the tension he entered the museum with fades away. A transformation. He’s the guy I’ve always observed, trouble-free dimple, gooey golden eyes, swagger for days, and he’s staring at me, me, saying the most straightforward word in the most non-straightforward of situations:

  “Thanks.”

  6:39 PM

  The phone lies quiet between us. We stare at it like it’s a body dumped in a dirt hole. I wrestle with the realization that I’ve just participated in something major and I have no idea what it is.

  Mac begins to explain. “It was weird. I was walking and I see this guy. He’s sitting in his car, in his garage.”

  I wait for the rest of the story, but he just smiles, as if to say, Well, that was fun. What should we do next?

  Hold on. After what he made me do, he owes me a proper explanation. He was walking where? In a snowstorm? What made him think the guy was trying to hurt himself? Wouldn’t the garage door need to be closed? Then how did Mac see him? Also, if he was so close to home, on his own street, why didn’t he call from his house? And, oh yeah, what happened to his hand?

  Too bad I can’t say any of this out loud. It doesn’t work like that. Talking here means bending the laws of our shared universe in which he imposes his will and I silently obey.

  My wonder only worsens when Mac reaches into his coat pocket and lights up his phone. His phone! The one he could have used to call for help on his own.

  I can’t let this slide. Universe be damned. “Cool phone,” I blurt out.

  He examines the phone, searching for what’s so cool about it. “Thanks,” he says, looking at me like I’m the weird one here.

  He pockets the phone and scans the room. “I’ve never actually been inside this place. I walk by it all the time but…”

  He’s on the move now, a dashing figure even in crisis: baggy chinos, white trainers, and a puffy winter coat with a faux-fur hood. He approaches the Thomas Edison bust that greets all visitors when they enter the museum. The Wizard of Menlo Park, they call him. Edison, not Mac Durant. Although, honestly, the name works for both.

  “So this is him,” Mac says, casual as can be. “The man. The myth. The legend.”

  “The myth,” I say, my own voice surprising me.

  Mac shows off his deep dimple. “Not a fan?”

  I shrug. Like my dad, I was fond of Thomas Edison once, but now I find him pretty overrated.

  Anyway, what are we even talking about? Why is Mac smiling as if he finds this amusing? I’m simultaneously shaken with fear over the unfamiliar gravity of the situation and put off by the gross predictability of it. Am I in serious danger or simply trapped in the same tireless high school reality show I live through daily? Because in a way it’s so typical for a guy like Mac Durant to barge in here as if he owns the joint, every door on god’s playground swinging open for him, every girl he deems worthy of his golden gaze doing his random bidding, even becoming his accomplice in possibly criminal acts. And what now? We’re just hanging out having an innocent chat?

  My eyes fall to the floor. Added to the checkered pattern are new imperfections: red dots. I trace the trajectory up to Mac’s hand, which was just touching the Edison bust.

  “No,” I say.

  “What’s up?”

  “No, no, no.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I point: Thomas Edison has a bloody nose.

  “Shit,” Mac says. “My bad.”

  I rush off and return with paper towels and cleaning spray. I wipe the floor and tend to Mr. Edison while Mac tries to plug up his rude wound. He does a bad job of it.

  I retrieve the first-aid kit from behind the front counter. I’ve seen it used only once (for a bee sting). Judging from the yellowed Band-Aids, the kit may predate the artifacts it shares space with.

  I place the kit on the counter, open the lid, and give a dramatic sigh. “Come here,” I say.

  Mac brings his hand over to the glass display counter. The display holds Thomas Edison merchandise. Light bulb key chains. Light bulb stress balls. Light bulb notepads. Light bulb light bulbs. Genius Water sells for one dollar—a steal. An Edison bobblehead stands on the case. Mac gives it a poke and the head nods yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

  I gesture to Mac’s hand. He seems unsure. Again, it’s hard to fathom what I’m seeing: The guy who seems always to float while the rest of us walk two-footed is grounded. Not grounded as in steady. Grounded as in unable to freely fly.

  I know the feeling better than anyone; there’s nothing more vulnerable than showing your hand.

  “Normally I’d let you bleed as much as you want,” I say. “But right now isn’t a good time for me.”

  He grins. It’s a smile to break atoms.

  He uncurls his fist and places his hand flat on the counter.

  I use my own hands, both of them, to reach into the kit and grab supplies. Bandage, scissors, cream. First, alcohol. I dab a cotton ball and press the soaked side to Mac’s skin. He winces.

  “This will sting a little,” I tell him.

>   “I think you’re supposed to say that before you do it.”

  Fair enough.

  I dab at his pink-and-purple bruise, his raw inside. Reality seeps in. The thought of what I’m doing and with whom. How’s my breath? My hair? My eyebrows? Not that it matters. When people look at me, their focus is usually elsewhere. On the counter are four hands, and one is clearly not like the others. My left hand has only two fingers. I guarantee Mac is staring at it. To test my theory, I drag my left hand away from the action and track Mac’s eyes to see whether they follow. They do.

  I pull my hand away, and he catches himself, tries to act natural. At least he doesn’t apologize. That’s the worst—when people apologize as if they’ve just walked in on you naked and seen a part of you that’s meant to be hidden away.

  I grab a tube of cream. “Rub this on yourself,” I say, realizing too late how that sounded. I squeeze, and the tube farts out cream onto his unharmed hand. Not awkward at all. Now I’m the one trying to act natural. “Have fun,” I say.

  He laughs softly and applies the cream to his wound. It spreads into a thin, transparent glisten, his skin slippery. He covers the tender area, fingers gently massaging. This should be happening in private, whatever this is.

  Mac lifts his hand to his nose and sniffs. He throws his hand at me. “Smell this.”

  “No,” I say, leaning away.

  “Can this stuff go bad?”

  I inspect the hard-crinkled tube. “It expired in 2003.”

  He takes another whiff and recoils.

  Curiosity overtakes me. “Fine, let me smell.”

  He presents his hand. There’s definitely a scent. He’s not imagining it. I sniff the tube to see if it’s a match, but the cream barely has a smell.

  “I think it’s you,” I say. “It’s your blood.”

  “What do you mean, my blood?”

  “You have bad blood.”

  “My blood is not bad,” he says confidently.

  “I mean, from like, whatever happened.”

  He looks down at his hand, his atomic smile disarmed. I must have said the wrong thing. Meanwhile his poor wound lies there undressed.