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“It’s a really long story. What’s going on? How’s your mom?”

“My mom’s,” Lacey said, then inhaled and exhaled deeply, “here. They’ve got a room for families, if no one else’s is going to hell in a handbasket now.” She pulled me down the hall and Darius followed at a polite distance. She opened the door for me to go in and then looked at him sourly. “Why are you here?”

“She asked me to come,” he said, looking to me for instruction.

“He helped me save your mom’s life,” I said, as her eyebrows rose. “Unless we didn’t. Then I am totally cool with him going back out to his car and getting some things for the next three to four hours.”

Lacey made an exasperated sound. “It’s just that—I can’t talk to you about it in front of him.”

Darius stepped firmly into the room. “Yeah you can. I already know everything.”

Her head pulled back like she’d been slapped. “You didn’t,” she said flatly, as Darius quickly talked over her.

“That’s how Jessie saved her—with her electrical powers—I know all about them.”

Lacey’s jaw froze open and I could almost see all the words that were trapped inside.

“Yeah, Darius, she doesn’t really know about that,” I said, tapping lightly on his arm so he’d be quiet.

He blinked. “Ohhhhhh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” I took a few bold steps inside the room and sat down on the couch there. “It’s time to talk. I’ll go first, okay? And then you can decide what, if anything, you want to share, and with who, after that.”

Lacey was still frowning, but she sat down in the chair closest to the door.

“First off, is your mom okay?”

“For some values of okay, yes.” Lacey said, crossing her arms.

“Oh thank God.” I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. “Look, Lacey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, but there never seemed to be a good time—mostly because it doesn’t sound real when I say it out loud. That’s what he’s here for.” I looked at Darius. “It’s not the kind of thing you just believe someone when they say it.”

“You don’t say,” Lacey said, her voice dripping with irony. And seeing as half the Redson High student body wouldn’t believe what’d happened to her if it got out, she had a point.

“On the way back from here that night I saw you, there was a storm. I—I got hit by lightning. And ever since then, I’ve been able to do things.”

Her left eyebrow rose high. “Like?”

“Like…accidentally burn down the Shax?”

She dropped the irony and went back to being my friend. “What? That’s not like you, Jessie.”

“I know! I was horrified?—”

“I don’t get it though—you felt compelled to grab matches?”

“No—”

“Just show her,” Darius said, handing over his phone. “Lacey, have you and I ever texted before?”

“No.”

He waved his hand at me. “Show her. Do it.”

I took Darius’s phone and set it in my lap. And without touching any of the keys I sent a message to the phone number I’d had memorized since I was ten.

This is what I’m talking about.

Lacey’s phone chirped, and she looked down. “But you didn’t do anything,” she said, looking at my hands.