It’s Chris Harper. A while back this would have surprised Selena – Chris Harper is super-cool and she’s not; she doesn’t think she’s ever had an actual conversation with him before. But the last few months have been their own place, lush and waving with startling things Selena knows she doesn’t need to understand. At this point she expects them.

‘Hi,’ she says.

Chris says, ‘I like your dress.’

‘Thanks,’ Selena says, looking down to remind herself. The dress is confusing. She tells herself: 2013.

‘Huh?’ Chris says.

Crap. ‘Nothing.’

Chris looks at her. ‘Are you OK?’ he asks. And, like he thinks she might be dizzy, before she can move away, he puts out a hand to cup her bare arm.

Everything slams into focus, bright colours inside sharp outlines. Selena can feel her feet again, tingling fiercely like they’ve been asleep. The prickle of her zipper down her back is a tiny precise line. She’s looking straight into Chris’s eyes, hazel even in the dimness, but somehow she can see the hall as well and the lights aren’t signals or lost things, they’re lights and she never knew anything could be so red and so pink and so white. The whole room is solid, it’s vivid and humming with its own clarity. Chris – light glossing his hair, warming his red shirt, catching the small puzzled furrow in between his eyebrows – is the realest thing she’s ever seen.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Sure?’

‘Totally.’

Chris takes his hand off Selena’s arm. Instantly that clarity blinks out; the hall turns jerky and messy again. But she still feels solid and warm all over, and Chris still looks real.

He says, ‘I thought . . .’

He’s looking at her like he’s never seen her before; like some ghost of what just happened found its way into him, too. He says, ‘You looked . . .’

Selena smiles at him. She says, ‘I felt weird for a second. I’m OK now.’

‘Some girl fainted earlier, did you see? It’s boiling in here.’

‘Is that how come you’re not dancing?’

‘I was, before. I just felt like watching for a while.’ Chris takes a swallow of his punch and makes a face at the cup.

Selena doesn’t move away. The handprint on her arm is shining red-gold, floating in the dark air. She wants to keep talking to him.

‘You’re friends with her,’ Chris says. ‘Right?’

He’s pointing at Becca. Becca is dancing like an eight-year-old but the kind of eight-year-old who barely existed even back when they were eight, the kind who’s never even seen a music video: no booty-shake, no hip-wiggle, no chest-thrust, just dancing, like no one’s ever told her there’s a right way; like she’s doing it just for her own fun.