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.’