‘You know why I’m here? I’m on a hockey scholarship because my parents have five kids and no money. Which means I have to get up at five a.m., when it’s negative thirty-five-degree wind chill, and jog until I throw up. Which means I spend hours every week in a locker room that smells like a rat burrowed into a ballsack and died there.’

‘Oh, poor Pat,’ I began. ‘Poor popular jock. Let’s whip out the tiny violin –’

But he had anticipated me.

‘And I don’t complain about it! Have you ever heard me complain about it before now? Because I’m still luckier than ninety-nine point nine percent of people in the world. And you’re even luckier than me, because you’ve got me helping you, you’ve got Mary Kate running around campus at your beck and frickin’ call … you’ve got Katie Casey helping you, even though you’re a total asshole to her, too. So you know what you should do, Alex? I’m gonna mansplain for a second here and tell you what you should do: get down on your knees, pray to whatever vegan tree god you believe in and for once – ONCE in your shitty, spoiled life – say thank you!’

He was panting, flushed and furious under his sweaty hair. That hot, tangled ball was in my throat now, choking me so I couldn’t speak. But I realized that he was off balance – easy, graceful, athletic Pat off balance – so I saw my chance. I reached up with both hands and pushed him into the fountain.

A huge cry rose from the crowd with the splash. ‘Oh my God!’ People were gasping, and laughing, and whistling, and taking pictures. A few of the nicer hockey guys ran over to help him, but, when he came up, gasping in the cold, he waved them away. Instead, he pulled himself up easily onto the marble ledge and shook his wet hair like a dog, his grey sweats dark and waterlogged, dripping.

I looked back one last time before I walked away. ‘You are privileged,’ I told him. ‘Because, if you were Mary Kate, you would’ve gotten barfed on first.’

17

That Thursday was my weirdest, loneliest day ever at St Mary’s.

When I first came to Minnesota, I divided my life into two parts: there was my St Mary’s life, then there was my real life when I went home. I had Mary Kate, who was my St Mary’s best friend, but my ‘real’ best friends were in San Francisco. But every school break I went back, things changed a little, and over time they changed a lot. Three years into boarding school, I barely spoke to anyone from California.

And now I realized, maybe too late, that Mary Kate was my ‘real’ – my only – best friend.