Lightning bolt temporary tattoo sheet on Hot Wheels card

Rhys was crouched by the wheelbarrow, peeling a sheet of transfers off its backing paper with the care of someone defusing something. The bolts were the only thing he had wanted from the village fete, more than the purple car itself, and he had been saving them for a day that deserved them. He licked his thumb and pressed each one onto the bonnet, the starburst last, and the little car suddenly looked as if it had been out in weather already. "They only stick if they're wet," he said, as though that settled something.

They ran the crates down to the lane while the first fat drops hit the leaves with a sound like someone tapping a drum. Dessa counted apples into the cart without meaning to, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and then gave up. Rhys pushed the car along the gutter, letting it roll ahead of him on the slope, and it skidded sideways into a puddle and came out gleaming. The bolts had gone dark and glossy in the rain, bright as paint.

The lightning came down over the far hedge just as they reached the gate, a white crack that split the whole orchard open for a heartbeat. Rhys held the car up to the sky and laughed, and Dessa saw the yellow bolt on its flank and the real one fading above the trees, and for a moment she could not tell which was copying which. By morning the transfers had worn to ghosts on the bonnet. Only one pink bolt stayed, low on the axle, where no one would think to wipe.