The party was better than I’d expected, given that it had originated as a joke in the sixth form. A popular pupil made a flippant comment in April about the school having a Halloween Party in October. The headmaster of Archway responded that it wasn’t going to happen, which had been a big mistake. If he’d just ignored the idea, it would have gone away, but once he’d told the kids ‘no’ they started a petition to convince him to say ‘yes’ which snowballed. The sixth form started it for a laugh, but then every year group got involved, appealing to a couple of the softer teachers to help. Someone’s parents phoned someone else’s parents who all agreed it was a ‘pupil’s rights’ issue, and before long the head was in a no-win situation.

Eventually, the headmaster bowed to the pressure, and by that point there’d been so much noise about it that all the pupils were excited.

The Halloween party went from being a casual joke to the school social event of the year.

The school hall was decked out with flashing, multi-coloured lights, and a teacher who fancied himself a DJ was up on the stage playing tunes through his laptop. We walked in to ‘Thriller’ being played.

The hall was filled with a who’s-who of horror film icons and teenage monsters, including zombies, Frankenstein’s monsters, vampires, and a few other types I didn’t recognise. Someone was wandering around in a gorilla suit. There was going to be a prize later on for the best costume. Somehow, I didn’t think Dee and I were in the running.

Around the edges of the hall, tables held refreshments and food. Non-alcoholic beverages, obviously, although some sixth formers were covertly topping up their orange squash with dashes from concealed bottles of vodka. Food was on sale and there were raffle tickets for various Halloween themed prizes. A bunch of teachers and parents were there. They looked like they were all enjoying themselves as much as the kids.

Jess must be loving this, I thought.

In her spare time, when she didn’t have her nose in a book or on a guitar, Jess was continually investigating haunted houses and the like. She had a fascination with the unexplained and the weird, so much so that if her nickname weren’t ‘Legend’ it would have been ‘Little Miss X-files.’ She never found anything, but it kept her entertained. She told me she’d even tried practising witchcraft for a few weeks when she was thirteen, but gave up when nothing happened.

Her interest in the weird and unexplainable made keeping my secrets from her another complication between us, at least from my side. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Jess or Dee. I just didn’t want anyone to know what a freak I was. I had few enough friends as it was and being labelled a dangerous weirdo by Jess and Dee would have been devastating.

So I kept my mouth shut and hid my powers.

“This is, well, quite cool,” Dee said.

“Yeah, it’s not bad, is it? Can you see Jess?”

“Mate I’m not sure I can see anyone underneath all these costumes and makeup.”

“Fair point.”

I scanned the hall, but there were three hundred plus people in it, and the lighting wasn’t helping to make people out either.

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“I’m sure she’s here somewhere,” I said.

We grabbed a couple of glasses of squash and stood at the edge of the hall, failing to look cool. I shifted the plastic teeth in my mouth, tried to relax.

I was just getting into the whole thing when Travis spotted me.

He was dressed up like a zombie, but he didn’t bother slow-shuffling over to me. Instead he marched over, his fake blood-stained face furious. It was obvious by the wobble in his walk that he’d been drinking. He towered above Dee and me, emphasising his three-inch height difference (five in Dee’s case) by puffing his chest out.

“I told you not to show up, shrimp!” he hissed at me.

“Get lost, Travis,” I said.

“Oh, that is it, you are so dead,” Travis said.

He pushed me backwards into a darkened corner of the hall. I stumbled but didn’t fall. I felt anger inside me. Felt the fire.

“Hey!” Dee said, “Leave Ethan alone!”

Dee got between Travis and me.

“Yeah, what are you going to do about it?” Travis said, “You two get lost. I don’t want to see your stupid faces here anymore.”

“We’re staying,” I said, my voice quivering with anger.

My fists clenched of their own accord, and there it was again. The burning fire in my veins, the sense of power and strength way beyond what’s normal for a sixteen-year-old. It was begging me to punch Travis.

The problem was, without exaggerating, one punch from me might kill him.

Travis saw my fists and scoffed.

“Oh, what are you going to do, little man? You want to take a swing? Going to try to Maxwell me? Go on then, take your best shot.”

The word Maxwell caused me a shock.

I unclenched my fists, remembering why I couldn’t hit Travis.

It had been a couple of years since I’d last heard the name Maxwell; the name of the kid I’d almost killed four years earlier.

*

I’d been twelve years old when my power first revealed itself. The day I saw Maxwell bullying Deepak and intervened was the day I realised I wasn’t normal.

Dee was small for his age. In comparison the oversized Maxwell seemed like an ogre. He was a spoiled, ugly kid who got his way by - often literally - throwing his weight around. He had a special dislike for Dee. Dee tried to ignore the bullying, but one lunch break Maxwell went too far.

It was the school’s once-a-term mufti day, when the kids could wear whatever they liked. Dee, ever the merry prankster, had opted to dress up in his sister’s school uniform. He’d gone all out; wig, skirt, stockings, the works. He turned round and grinned every time someone called out his sister’s name at him.

When I found him and Maxwell in an otherwise empty classroom, Maxwell, in amongst a lot of nasty racial slurs, was insisting that Dee clean his shoes.

With his tongue.

“If you’re going to dress like a girl, you little freak, you can learn your place. Shoes. Now.”

How Maxwell equated being a girl with cleaning someone’s shoes with their tongue was anyone’s guess. Either he wasn’t very bright or his family life was deranged.

Maybe both?

Either way, when I saw what was going on, I knew I had to stop it. I hated bullying, and anyway Dee had every right to wear whatever the hell he felt like. Even if he was just doing it to wind his sister up.

I didn’t have a plan but I could feel power inside my body, like nothing I’d ever felt before. I felt this angry heat inside me, my fists clenched and there was a fire in my muscles.

As I said, Maxwell was a big kid for his age, and I was pretty scrawny. The worst my push should have done was sent him back a step or two. At the most it might have caused him to fall over.

Instead, my shove launched Maxwell into the air and sent him flying ten feet across the classroom. His trainers didn’t touch the floor as he hit the back wall with a sickening cracking sound.

Dee got up with a shocked look on his face.

“Dude, what was that?” he asked.

I shook my head, confused. I’d thought the hot, angry fire in me was a normal feeling of, you know, getting angry. I suddenly realised it wasn’t.

“I don’t...” I said, staring in dismay at Maxwell’s prone body.

What if I’ve killed him? I thought.

There’d been something horribly definitive and final about the cracking sound.

I stood staring at Maxwell’s prone body, confused and frightened. I stared at my hands, wondering how I’d pushed him so hard. In amongst the terror at what I might have just done and the and the panic of being found out by a teacher, there was another fact I was suddenly aware of:

Nothing will ever be the same again.