The theater was empty now, silent except for the hum of the still-hot spotlights under us. Darkness had fallen outside, and the gold fixtures gleamed in the low light. Pat was looking at me under the hair falling in his dark eyes. My first instinct was to sass him for trying to mansplain compromise and vaginakind to me. But my stronger instinct was: Hey, I’ve never gotten to second base in a lighting booth before. I leaned in very close to Pat, took a deep breath and whispered: ‘You’re still using the Lady Speed Stick, aren’t you?’

‘Hey, they know their stuff,’ he whispered back. ‘Ladies can’t resist the spring blossom scent.’

His mouth curled up in that one-sided smirk and his bright white teeth flashed. I grabbed his sweater and pulled him towards me.

But, before I could kiss him, the heavy door opened downstairs. We heard footsteps, then a familiar voice. ‘Hello? Is anyone still here?’ Katie Casey called out.

‘Get down!’ I hissed to Pat, and we pulled up our legs and crouched at the railing, watching her strawberry-blonde ponytail bob perkily down the aisle.

‘Hello?’ she called out again, and Pat nudged me with a mischievous grin and signaled something. I grinned back.

Cupping our hands around our mouths, we began an ominous hiss, just barely audible:

‘Ice …’

By the time I got back to our room after the dress rehearsal, it was only a few minutes before curfew. Pat and I had stayed so late in the lighting booth that he’d even missed hockey practice. I ran from the McLaughlin back to Girls’ Quad and burst into our room.

‘The Non-Vagina Monologues is ready!’ I announced to Mary Kate, kicking off my motorcycle boots and shoving my feet into my panda slippers. ‘I mean, it’s vanilla as hell and some of those vagina synonyms still make me want to sit on a curling iron, but everyone remembered their lines and no one was murdered, so I think we’ll call it a win. You’re coming on Friday, right?’

Mary Kate was cocooned in six layers of blankets and a sweatshirt on the futon. ‘Yeah,’ she answered halfheartedly.

Then she gave a weak cough and turned back to the bleak British mini-series she was watching about Victorian people suppressing their emotions on a windy hilltop.

My room-mate was in a really sad place. Even Netflix knew it. It had started suggesting categories like ‘Suicidal Scandinavian Films, Black and White’ or ‘Female-Centered Gothic Stories with a Tragic Twist’. Her post-vomit plunge into the fountain on a November night had given her a bad cold, and she had missed two days of classes to curl up on our futon, spooning a box of Kleenex.

But she wasn’t just sick; she had given up hope.