MAYBE WE'RE ELECTRIC

Tegan’s world was unraveling before Mac stumbled into the museum; tonight could change everything.

Tegan misses her father and disdains her mother, now happy with her live-in partner, Charlie. After a fight with her mom, Tegan’s taken refuge after hours at the Thomas Edison Center, where she’s been an intern. Born with just a thumb and ring finger on her left hand and perennially hyperaware of her appearance, she’s shocked and embarrassed when Mac, a classmate and popular jock, arrives—his hand bleeding—and asks her to call 911 to report a potential suicide. Tegan complies, then tends to his wound. She’s been crying and ran outside in old clothes but recognizes Mac is frazzled, too. At a loss, she gives him a museum tour. Over the long, snowy night, they connect. Mac’s trusting willingness to share difficult life events disarms Tegan, awakening a yearning to share her own, more toxic secret despite the risk. Despite unnecessarily schematic plotting (key information is initially withheld), the story and characters will sustain reader interest. Emmich captures the excruciating self-consciousness and lacerating self-talk of adolescence, magnified and relentlessly scrutinized through social media and here exacerbated by Tegan’s limb difference and fractured family. Tegan’s struggles to reconcile her longing both for invisibility and to be seen and understood are compelling, familiar, and moving. Most characters are presumed White; Charlie is Black, and Tegan’s best friend is Indian American.

An immersive, compassionate tale about coming-of-age in a single night.