Scurry

The sky quickly grows alarmingly dark and full of thunder, and the three of us run downstairs to sit on the stoop and watch the storm come in.

Our landlord comes out of the appliance store that he runs on the first floor to load a dishwasher onto his hand truck, and, seeing us perched on the front stairs grinning like idiots, he shakes his head.

“Just don’t hold hands,” he says, half-joking, and we laugh, as though the idea of lightning striking us here, in Brooklyn, in 2018, were even something that could possibly happen.

There’s a sudden flash of light that turns the entire world into a negative, washed-out version of itself, followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder that seems to fill the universe, and we scurry back upstairs to the safety of our apartment.