‘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?’