I barely noticed. I was too busy running around, doing a million things for The Non-Vagina Monologues. There were rehearsals to direct, playbills to write, flyers to print, Katie Casey to annoy as much as possible without Pat dropping a spotlight on my head. So I dug my fleece-lined tights out of my army duffel bag, pulled a beanie on my head, even though it crushed my lady-fauxhawk, and got on with things. And, as much as I hate to admit this about a school-approved event – especially one involving a whole club of doe-eyed Bible thumpers, Sister Winnifred and four dozen virginal doughnuts – I was actually getting excited about it. I even thought about making a Vagina Advent Calendar counting down the days to the show, with a different happy, dancing vagina hiding behind each little cardboard door, but I was way too busy.

Mary Kate was busy, too. But, while I was running around campus with three sweatshirts on, she was shut up inside our room, deeply and obsessively focused. My room-mate was transforming.

You know that part in every superhero movie where the young pre-hero, reeling from the tragedy of witnessing their parents murdered in cold blood, must travel to the remote mountains to find a wise and ancient Zen master? And then there’s a whole training montage with the young hero blindfolded, sword-fighting with sticks, hiking mountains and all that crap? And, at the end, they emerge a powerful warrior with ripped biceps and cheetah-like reflexes and usually a bandana, finally ready to seek bloody revenge on their enemies?

That was sort of what Mary Kate was doing right now, except her end goal wasn’t bloody revenge. Which is kind of a shame – bloody revenge would have been way more interesting and I definitely would have lent her my duvet to drag a body down to the lake. But no, Mary Kate’s goal was a boyfriend, and she was transforming herself into a master seductress.

How exactly was she doing this? Well, the girl was a friggin’ nerd, so mostly she was reading. I mean, she was always reading, but now, instead of the historical novels she loved where a feisty heroine overcame a deadly cholera outbreak armed only with her underrated female brain and her trusty embroidery needle, her desperation had driven her to self-help and dating books. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus to understand the oh-so-complex male mind (barf); The Rules for archaic 1940s dating tips and Taylor Swift’s Guide to Mass Mind Control. (Okay, I may have made that one up.) Beyond that, she was watching TED Talks on body language and make-up tutorials on YouTube. Also, she had learned the entire fan dance from Memoirs of a Geisha and ordered pheromone attraction perfume from a sketchy online herbalist named Madame Moon.