I ran.

There were no subways operating by now anyway so instead of catching one home I ran through the streetlamp-lit darkness of the boroughs.

As I ran I started to cry, sobbing and moaning between breaths, water and mucus streaming off my face. I couldn’t think about what I had just done or about Ali. I could only think about the running. I focused on the pain of it. I wasn’t used to feeling pain these days, but the strain of the running made me feel it.

I ran until my lungs burned and my thighs and buttocks ached in protest. And then I kept running. I ran until the sidewalk under my feet felt like it was hammering up at my super strong legs. And then I kept running. I ran until my body was lathered in sweat and the sweat started to turn cold in the chill night air and made my clothes stick to my back. I didn’t care. I kept running. I added the feel of the damp cold to the pungent smell of the sweat and the squeezing pain in my chest and focused on them, losing myself in them.

At first I was running past the red-brick houses of Sam’s suburb in Queens. I headed for home largely on instinct but my eyes flicked up whenever I passed a sign, to make sure I was heading vaguely towards Brooklyn. To begin with I meandered around all over the place in my hysteria, but eventually the semi-detached houses and tree-lined sidewalks began to give way again to the greyer, grubbier apartment blocks and high rises of the neighbouring borough. Eventually the apartment blocks and high rises flanked the road that led to my own. That road led to my own shabby, box-like apartment block.

I found myself with my hands on my thighs panting and gulping for air back in front of its dirty-glassed double door entrance. I have no idea how long I ran for. I ran all the way from the edge of Queens to Williamsburg.

I stood for some time in front of my building. My legs still ached but as the burning in my lungs began slowly to subside I was no longer in enough pain to block out the questions that had been trying to force themselves into my mind.

Will anyone ever give me a college place now, let alone a scholarship? Did Ali mean what she said about me? And last but not least: Did she ever believe me about my powers?

I clumsily tapped in the entry code for our building and stumbled through the doors into the dingy foyer. (Ours was not the kind of building to have a doorman.) I paced down the ground-floor corridor, trying not to make enough noise to wake anybody up, and made my way to my door, a ‘3’ painted in black on its dishevelled wooden form. I fumbled in my jeans for my keys and let myself in.

The front door opened onto our kitchen. The light was still on, revealing our small circular table and the meatloaf Mom had said she would leave out for me to eat. I hadn’t quite worked out how I was going to explain that still being there when Mom got home. I had been going to go with ‘I wasn’t hungry after detention’, but my cover was blown now anyway as I had come home from the party earlier than I planned rather than sneaking back in after Mom had gone to bed. But that didn’t matter now. The telling off I would get from Mom for going to a party without her knowledge was nothing compared to what had just happened. I needed to talk to her.

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The corridor light was on too. I sat down at the table and called out.

“Mom! Mom, I’m in here and I need your help!” There was no immediate reply, so I carried on. “I did something stupid, Mom. I used my powers. I hurt some people... I think I’m going to be in trouble… I think I’ve completely ruined any chances I had of getting a college scholarship…” I listened out for a response, bracing myself internally.

There was no reply from anywhere in the apartment.

I knew Mom was going to be out late tonight at her Hebrew writers’ group, which she would have had to leave to get to while I was still in my detention. That was why I had risked breaking my grounding and going to the party after the detention.

But she should be back by now. Maybe she was so angry she was starting with the silent treatment? She must be really mad at me.

“Mom?”

I stood up from the table and passed through the kitchen doorway into our poky corridor. The light was on in here too. She must be home. She was always telling me to turn the lights off when I left the apartment to save money.

The door to Mom’s bedroom was shut.

Ah, OK. So she is giving me the silent treatment.

“Mom?” I said again through the door. I took a deep breath and wiped some of the gunk from my face with the back of my hand. “Mom, I know you must be really really mad at me. I’m really sorry that I went out for the evening when I was still grounded. I know I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry Mom, but there’s something I have to tell you now that’s more important than that. Something happened when I was out, Mom, something happened and I think...I think I’m going to be in deep, deep trouble...” My words echoed around the corridor.

I listened, wincing. I expected her to at least say something, even if she wouldn’t come out straight away.

“Mom?!” Why wasn’t she replying? “Mom, I’m coming in.”

I took hold of the plastic doorknob and turned it carefully.

The door to Mom’s room creaked open; inside was dark. I thought she must be lying on her bed. But when I turned on the light switch, there was her little single bed with its floral-patterned duvet, without her in it. Some books and notebooks littered its surface, open at different pages, but that was normal—she would have flicked through a few of them in order to find what she wanted to take to her writing group that night. Everything was undisturbed. There was her bookshelf, full of Walmart historical romances, library books and Hebrew poetry. There was her dressing table, sprinkled with an assortment of tubs and tubes I didn’t understand. And there was her little wardrobe full of her secretary outfits and, I knew, one pretty dress that my Dad had given her once upon a time.

But where the hell was Mom?

Her group must be running late. I took out my crappy dumbphone and started writing a text to her. I thought about ringing her, but if she was still in her group there was no point—she wouldn’t pick up as her phone would be on silent.

‘Please call me.’ I tapped into the screen. ‘Need to talk to you asap. Lolo.’

As the text sent I walked further down the corridor to my own room, thinking that I could check to see if the pillows I had propped up were still in their place or not. Maybe Mom had come back early, discovered them and then gone out looking for me. If that had happened, I was in even more trouble. But she would have rung me by now if that had happened, wouldn’t she?

I opened the door to my bedroom and when I turned the light on I was greeted by a man down on one knee pointing a silenced rifle barrel at me.