The Secret Place (29 page)

‘I’m not going because everyone else is, genius, I’m going because I actually
want
to. Because it’s
fun
, you’ve heard of that, right? If you’d rather sit here doing self-esteem exercises, knock yourself out. I’m going.’

‘Oh, thanks, thanks a lot – you’re supposed to be my
friend
—’

‘Right, which doesn’t mean being your bitch—’

Becca is up on her knees on the bed, fists clenched and hair crackling with fury. ‘I never
fucking
asked you to—’

The light bulb spits a furious sizzle, pops and goes out. They all scream.

‘Shut up!’ the second-floor prefects both yell from down the corridor. A breathless ‘Jesus—’ from Julia, a thump and ‘Ow!’ as Selena knocks her shin off something, and then the light flicks back on.

‘What the
hell
,’ Holly says. ‘What happened?’

The bulb is burning innocently, not a flicker.

‘It’s a sign, Becs,’ Julia says, with that breathless note almost under control. ‘The universe wants you to quit whinging and go to the dance.’

‘Ha ha, so very funny,’ Becca says. Her voice isn’t under control at all; it sounds like a kid’s, high and wobbly. ‘Or the universe doesn’t want
you
going, and it’s annoyed because you said you were.’

Selena says, to Becca, ‘Did you do that?’

‘You are shitting me,’ Julia says. ‘Right?’

‘Becsie?’

‘Oh,
please
,’ Julia says. ‘Come
on
. Don’t even go there.’

Selena is still looking at Becca. So is Holly. In the end Becca says, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Oh, God,’ Julia says. ‘I can’t even.’ She falls flat on her stomach on her bed and slams her pillow over her head.

Selena says, ‘Do it again.’

‘How?’

‘However you did it before.’

Becca is staring at the light bulb like it might leap at her. ‘I didn’t. I don’t think. I don’t know.’

Julia groans, under her pillow. ‘Better do it fast,’ Holly says. ‘Before she suffocates.’

‘I just
.
.
.’ Becca holds up one thin palm, wavering. ‘I was upset. Because of
.
.
. And I just
.
.
.’ She closes her fist. The light goes out.

This time none of them scream.

‘Turn it back on?’ Selena’s voice says, quietly, in the darkness.

The light comes back on. Julia has taken the pillow off her head and is sitting up.

‘Oh,’ Becca says. She has her back pressed against the wall and a knuckle in her mouth. ‘Did I
.
.
. ?’

‘No, you fucking didn’t,’ Julia says. ‘It’s some kind of electrical thing. Probably the snow.’

Selena says, ‘Do it again.’

Becca does it again.

This time Julia doesn’t say anything. All around them the air is shivering, bending the light.

‘Yesterday morning,’ Selena says. ‘When we were getting ready, and I was getting something off my bedside table. My hand went up against my reading light, and it turned on. When I stopped touching it, it went off.’

‘Cheapo piece of crap malfunctions,’ Julia says. ‘News at nine.’

‘I did it a bunch of times. To check.’

They all remember Selena’s light blinking on and off. The bad weather was already on the way, tarnished sky clashing with the electric lights to give the school a tense battened-down feel: they thought it was just that, if they thought about it at all.

‘So how come you didn’t say anything?’

‘We were in a hurry. And I wanted to think about it. And I wanted to wait and see
.
.
.’

If it happened to anyone else. Becca remembers to breathe out, in a quick burst.

Holly says, almost unwillingly, ‘This afternoon. When I went to the jacks, during Maths? The lights in the corridor: they turned off when I went under them, and then they turned back on again once I was past. Like, all of them. I thought it was just a thing. The snow, or whatever.’

Selena lifts her eyebrows at Holly, and glances up at the light bulb.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ says Julia.

‘It won’t work,’ Holly says.

Nobody answers her. The air still has that waver to it: heat over sand, mirage-ready.

Holly holds up her palm and makes a fist like Becca did. The light goes out. ‘Jesus!’ she yelps, and it comes on again.

Silence, and the thrumming air. They don’t have ways to talk about this.

‘I’m not psychic,’ Holly says, too loudly. ‘Or whatever. I’m not. That thing in Science, remember, guessing the shapes on the cards? I was crap.’

Becca says, ‘Me too. This is because of
.
.
. you know. The glade. That’s what’s changed.’ Julia flops back down on her bed and bashes her forehead off her pillow a few times. ‘OK, so what do you think just happened, smarty?’

‘I told you. There’s snow in some transponster somewhere in Ballybumcrack. Now can we go back to fighting about how I’m not your real friend? Please?’

Selena does the light bulb. ‘Stop!’ Julia snaps. ‘I’m trying to read.’

‘I thought you thought it was snow,’ Selena says, grinning. ‘Why are you telling me to stop it?’

‘Shut up. I’m reading.’

‘You try it.’

‘Uh-huh, right.’

‘I dare you.’

Julia gives Selena a withering look. ‘Scared?’ Selena asks.

‘There’s nothing to be scared
of
. That’s my whole
point
.’

‘Then
.
.
. ?’

Julia is crap at turning down a dare. She sits up again, reluctantly. ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ she says. Lifts her hand, sighing noisily, and closes it. Nothing happens.

‘Ta-da,’ Julia says. To her huge irritation, a part of her is viciously, painfully disappointed.

Selena says, ‘Doesn’t count. You weren’t concentrating.’

‘When the lights in the corridor did it,’ Holly says. ‘This afternoon. Naughton had been giving out to me, remember? Cliona was talking and she thought it was me? I was well pissed off. And
.
.
.’

‘Fuck’s
sake
,’ Julia says. She focuses on Becca being a contrary cow about the dance, and tries again. It works.

Silence, again. Reality feels strange against their skin: it’s rippling and bubbling around them, it’s spinning little whirlpools and shooting up geysers in unexpected places just for fun. They don’t want to move, in case it responds in ways they’re not expecting.

‘Too bad it’s not something useful,’ Holly says, as casually as she can – she feels like making a big deal of this would be a bad idea; like it might draw attention, she’s not sure whose. ‘X-ray vision. We could read the exam papers the night before.’

‘Or not even bother,’ Becca says. She wants to giggle; everything feels like she’s being tickled. ‘If we could just change our marks when the results came in – like, whee, all A’s! –
that
would be useful.’

‘I don’t think it’s like that,’ Selena says. She’s snuggled down in bed, wearing a huge contented grin. She wants to hug all three of them. ‘It’s not
for
anything. It’s just there. Like, it was there all along; we just didn’t know how to get to it. Till now.’

‘Well,’ Julia says. She’s still not at all happy about this. It seems to her for some reason that they should have put up more of a fight, collectively: run screaming, refused to believe this was happening, changed the subject and kept it changed. Just not acted like this is something they can look at, go
Oh, wow, totally weird!
and keep bouncing cheerfully along. Even if that didn’t make a difference in the long run, it would have said they weren’t complete pushovers. ‘At least that settles the Valentine’s dance bullshit. Someone with superpowers had better not be too much of a wimp to wear jeans.’

Becca starts to answer, but she gets hit by a flood of giggles. She falls backwards on her bed, arms spread, and lets the laughter jiggle her whole body like popcorn popping inside her.

‘Nice to see you quit bitching,’ Julia says. ‘So are you going to the dance?’

‘Course I am,’ Becca says. ‘You want me to go in my swimsuit? ’Cause I’ll do it.’

‘Lights out!’ one of the prefects yells, slamming her hand against the door. They all turn the light off at once.

They practise in the glade. Selena brings her little battery-powered reading light, Holly has a torch, Julia brings a lighter. The night is thick with clouds and cold; they have to grope their way down the paths to the grove, wincing each time a branch twangs or a clump of leaves crunches. Even when they come out into the clearing they’re nothing but outlines, distorted and unreadable. They sit cross-legged in a circle on the grass and pass the lights around.

It works. Uncertainly at first: just small tentative flickers, half a second long, vanishing when they startle. As they get better the flickers strengthen and leap, snatching their faces out of the dark like gold masks – a little wondering sound, between a laugh and a gasp, from someone – and then dropping them again. Gradually they stop being flickers at all; rays of light arrow up into the high cypresses, circle and flitter among the branches like fireflies. Becca would swear she sees their trails scribbled across the clouds.

‘And to celebrate
.
.
.’ Julia says, and pulls a pack of smokes out of her coat pocket – it’s been years since anyone asked Julia if she’s sixteen. ‘Who was saying this wouldn’t come in useful?’ She holds up the lighter between thumb and finger, brings up a tall stream of flame, and leans in sideways to light a cigarette without singeing her eyebrows.

They get comfortable and smoke, more or less. Selena’s left her reading light on; it sets a vivid circle of bowed winter grass soaring in mid-darkness, bounces off to catch folds of jeans and slivers of faces. Holly finishes her smoke and lies on her stomach with an unlit one in the palm of her hand, focusing hard.

‘What’re you doing?’ Becca asks, scooting closer to watch.

‘Trying to light it. Shh.’

‘I don’t think it works like that,’ Becca says. ‘We can’t just set random stuff on fire. Can we?’

‘Shut up or I’ll set you on fire. I’m
concentrating
.’

Holly hears herself and tightens, thinking she’s gone too far, but Becca rolls sideways and pokes her in the ribs with a toe. ‘Concentrate on this,’ she says.

Holly drops the cigarette and grabs her foot; Becca’s boot comes off, and Holly scrambles up and runs with it. Becca hop-gallops after her, giggling helplessly and yelping under her breath when her sock comes down on something cold.

Selena and Julia watch them. In the darkness they’re just a trail of rustle and laughter, sweeping a circle round the edge of the clearing. ‘Is this still bothering you?’ Selena asks.

‘Nah,’ Julia says, and blows a line of smoke rings; they wander through stripes of light and shadow, vanishing and reappearing like odd little night creatures. She can’t remember exactly why it bothered her to begin with. ‘I was just being a wimp. It’s all good.’

‘It is,’ Selena says. ‘Honest to God, it is. You’re not a wimp, though.’

Julia turns her head towards her, the slice she can see, a soft eyebrow and a soft hank of hair and the dreamy sheen of one eye. ‘I thought you thought I was. Like,
Here’s this supercool thing happening, why’s she going off on some big emo-fest and fucking it all up?
’

‘No,’ Selena says. ‘I got why: it could feel dangerous. I mean, it doesn’t to me. But I get how it could.’

‘I wasn’t scared.’

‘I know that.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘I know,’ Selena says. ‘I’m just glad you decided to try it. I don’t know what we’d’ve done if you hadn’t.’

‘Gone for it anyway.’

‘We wouldn’t, not without you. There’d be no point.’

Becca has managed to wrestle her boot back and is hopping about, trying to get it on before Holly can shove her off balance. Both of them are panting and laughing. Julia leans her shoulder up against Selena’s – Julia doesn’t do touchy-feely crap, but just every now and then she props her elbow on Selena’s shoulder while they’re looking at something, or leans back-to-back with her on the fountain edge in the Court. ‘You sap,’ she says, ‘you total sappy sap, get a grip,’ and feels Selena meet the weight of her so they balance each other, solid and warm.

They’re moving down the corridor towards their room, boots in their hands, when: