While I was raging, Mary Kate had put the lid back on her little tub of Vicks VapoRub, picked up the green flyer off the floor and slowly uncrumpled it.

‘Has it snowed yet?’ she asked me.

Pacing the room in annoyance, I glanced at the window vaguely. ‘No, not yet. It was friggin’ freezing this morning, though. I forgot my bra and my nipples almost sliced through my sweatshirt. Why?’

Then I turned around and saw my room-mate smoothing out the green flyer on the blanket in her lap.

‘Mary Kate, no!’ I protested.

‘Recruit Party, St Ambrose Hall Common Room, Friday night,’ she read aloud.

‘HAH!’ I ran over and shoved a triumphant finger in her face. ‘You can’t go even if you wanted to! You just said you’re coming to The Non-Vagina Monologues, and The Non-Vagina Monologues are Friday night.’

She shook her head. ‘Nope. Everything is canceled this weekend.’

‘What are you talking about?’

She handed me the flyer. At the bottom it said: All school events are canceled for this weekend’s special pep rally and speech by Father Hughes.

‘No way they’re canceling the Monologues,’ I said. ‘We’ve been working on this for months! No way would the school just …’

Cancel an event they were completely morally opposed to and had tried to stop, sanitize or virginize at every turn? Choose sports over a sensitive, nuanced expression of the female experience?

OF COURSE THEY WOULD.

‘This is BULLSHIT!’ I raged, tearing the green flyer to shreds. ‘Do you remember how much actual effort I’ve put into this thing? Do you remember how many teachers I’ve had to negotiate with? Do you remember how many nuns I’ve had to say vagina in front of?’

‘Too many.’

‘And all the anal-retentive bullshit I had to put up with! All the dumb hoops I had to jump through, all the stupid patriarchal red tape! Not to mention everything I had to give up. Forget about the stirrups – there is not ONE F-bomb in this show. And now they’re CANCELING it because some French-Canadian human bumper-car deigns to set one of his size-fourteen sweatshop sneakers on this campus? Oh HELL, no! St Mary’s, I am so done with you!’

Storming over to my desk, I slammed my hand against the windowpane so it rattled. ‘I am going to burn this place to the ground!’

I was still fuming, smoke practically hissing out of my ears, when Mary Kate stood up, casting off her blankets and sending a thousand used tissues cascading to the ground. ‘I’m gonna go,’ she announced.

I whirled around. ‘WHAT did you say?’

‘I’m gonna go to the party,’ she said.

‘Hell, no, you aren’t!’ I told her.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Mary Kate simply. ‘I made a vow to get a boyfriend before it snows, and this recruit party will have lots of guys. This is my last chance.’