The Boy Who Dreamt of Lightning

Ethan’s sneakers scuffed against the cracked sidewalk as he hurried home, the taunts of his classmates still ringing in his ears. Freak. Weakling. Nobody. Their laughter was a storm he couldn’t outrun. At 13, he’d learned to shrink into silence, his shoulders perpetually hunched as if carrying the weight of every cruel word. But in his dreams, he was colossal.

At night, Ethan would lie awake, tracing the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, imagining lightning coursing through his veins. He’d picture raising his hands and summoning tempests, scattering bullies like leaves, or shielding himself with a crackling aura no fist could breach. His parents nurtured these fantasies, leaving comics on his pillow and praising his sketches of electric heroes. “You’ve got a storm inside you, kiddo,” his dad would say, ruffling his hair. “One day, you’ll let it out.”

But storms felt distant in the harsh daylight of Crestwood Middle School. Especially when Lila Chen smiled at him.

Lila sat two rows ahead in homeroom, her laughter like wind chimes in a quiet room. She’d once lent him a pencil when Tyler Tripp snapped his in half, her fingers brushing his with a kindness that left him breathless. Ethan vowed to repay her—to be the hero she deserved.

The reckoning came on a gray Tuesday.

Tyler and his cronies cornered Lila at her locker, snatching her notebook—a leather journal brimming with her poetry. “Give it back!” she pleaded, her voice trembling. Ethan froze, his heart a trapped bird. Do something, he begged himself. You’re not powerless.

And then he heard it: a hum, faint but undeniable, like distant thunder.

It started in his chest, a current racing up his spine. His hands trembled—not with fear, but with a strange, surging heat. Before he knew it, he was moving, his body a live wire. “Stop,” he said, louder than he’d ever spoken. Tyler turned, sneering.

“Or what, Static Boy? You’ll zap me?”

The cafeteria fell silent. Ethan’s palms prickled. This is it, he thought. The lightning. The epic moment.

But no sparks flew.

Instead, he stepped forward, voice steady. “Give. It. Back.” Tyler flinched, startled by the fire in Ethan’s eyes. For a heartbeat, the world hung suspended—then Tyler shoved him hard. Ethan stumbled, cracking his elbow against the tiles. Pain blazed, but so did triumph: Lila’s journal lay safely in her arms.

Later, in the nurse’s office, Lila appeared, her eyes red-rimmed but bright. “You were brave,” she whispered, pressing a folded sketch into his hand. It was him, rendered in her graceful strokes, lightning arcing from his fingertips.

That night, Ethan’s parents bandaged his scrapes and held him close. “You found your power,” his mom murmured. He almost believed her.

The bullying didn’t end. But sometimes, when the jeers grew loud, Lila would meet his gaze and smile—a secret, radiant thing. And Ethan would curl his fingers around her drawing, feeling the storm inside him stir, not as a weapon, but as a promise.

He wasn’t a hero. Not yet. ut he was alive. And that, he realized, was its own superpower.