OK. I admit it. I got mad. Hey, I’d put a lot of work into this thing.

‘Oh, no you don’t,’ I growled. I strode up to Heather and grabbed her. Round the neck, I’m afraid.

‘Get back in there,’ I said, from between gritted teeth. ‘Get back in there right now.’

Heather only laughed. I had the girl by the throat, and she only laughed.

Behind her, though, the locker doors started humming again. More loudly than ever.

‘You,’ she said, ‘are so dead. You are so dead, Simon. And you know what? I’m going to make sure that the rest of them go with you. All of your little freaky friends. And that stepbrother of yours, too.’

I tightened my grip on her throat. ‘I don’t think so. I think you’re going to get back where you were and go away like a good little ghost.’

She laughed again. ‘Make me,’ she said, her blue eyes glittering like crazy.

Well. If you put it that way.

I hit her hard with my right fist. Then, before she had a chance to recover, I hit her the other way with my left. If she felt the blows, she made no sign. No, that’s not true. I know she felt the blows because the locker doors suddenly started opening and closing. Not closing, exactly. Slamming. Hard. Hard enough to shake the whole breezeway.

I mean it. The whole breezeway. was pitching back and forth, as if the ground beneath it was really ocean waves. The thick wooden support pillars that held up the arched roof shook in ground that had held them steady for close to three hundred years. Three hundred years of earthquakes, fires, and floods, and the ghost of a cheerleader sends them tumbling down.

I tell you, this mediation stuff is no damned fun.

And then her fingers were round my throat. I don’t know how. I guess I got distracted by all the shaking. This was no good. I grabbed her by the arms, and started trying to push her back towards the circle of candles. As I did so, I muttered the Portuguese incantation under my breath, staring at the swaying rafters overhead, hoping that the hole to that shadowy land would open up again.

‘Shut up,’ Heather said, when she heard what I was saying. ‘Shut your mouth! You are not sending me away. I belong here! A lot more than you!’

I kept saying the words. I kept pushing.

‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ Heather’s face was red with rage. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a planter packed with geraniums levitate a few inches off the stone balustrade on which it had been resting. ‘You’re no one. You’ve only been at this school two days. Two days! You think you can just come in here and change everything? You think you can just take my place? Who do you think you are?’

I kicked out a leg, and, pulling on the arms I held at the same time as I swept her feet out from under her, sent us both crashing to the hard stone floor. The planter followed, not because we’d knocked it, over, but because Heather sent it hurling through the air at me. I ducked at the last minute, and the heavy clay pot smashed against the locker doors in an explosion of mulch and geranium and pottery shards. I grabbed fistfuls of Heather’s long, glossy blonde hair. This was not very sporting of me, but hey, the geraniums hadn’t been very sporting of her.