This time, when she sat down in the grass again, I sat down next to her.

‘You know, Alex, I’ve always wanted to get to know you better,’ she confided. ‘I always thought you seemed super cool and original. I know a lot of times we were, like, coming from different places for the event, but I also feel like we’re so similar.’

‘Similar?’ I raised an eyebrow, holding my hands in their fingerless gloves out to the fire.

‘Kinda like … I’m here on campus trying to save people’s hearts,’ she said sweetly. ‘And you’re here, like, saving the vaginas.’

That wasn’t the same at all to me. But Katie Casey had just said the word vaginas in the shadow of the Virgin Mary statue, and she’d also kept me from freezing my tits off tonight. Plus, I kinda liked the idea of myself as some kind of vagina superhero. The Wondervulva. Clitwoman. So I took a deep breath of cold, smoky air and said something I never, ever thought I’d say to Katie Casey.

‘I guess you might be kinda … partly … right.’

Then I changed the subject. I asked her why she didn’t like recruit parties, and she told me.

‘Freshman year, this guy in my Latin class invited me to a recruit party in his dorm,’ she began. ‘It was for that basketball player from Wisconsin – remember, the really tall guy with the thyroid problem everyone was so excited about? Before they got him good medical treatment and he stopped growing, of course,’ she added.

‘Yeah,’ I recalled. ‘What a bummer. I heard he shrank back to six foot four.’

‘So I show up to the party,’ Katie continued. ‘And I’m super excited because it’s my first real party at St Mary’s, and I love basketball because I always watch the college tournaments, so I’m looking forward to meeting everyone. And right away this senior basketball player starts talking to me, and telling me how only the prettiest girls are invited to recruit parties, to make a good impression on the recruit.’

‘What a pig!’ I exclaimed, and threw a handful of grass on the fire for emphasis.

‘The senior says the party is too loud, and he wants to go somewhere quiet so we can talk. So we go back to his room …’ Katie looked at the fire, her eyes shining. ‘We were on the futon, and he kept trying to kiss me and get me to lie down. It made me super uncomfortable, and finally I said I was super uncomfortable, so he walked me out. Nothing actually really happened, so I guess I’m lucky, but …’