‘I brought something to burn,’ another offered. ‘A pair of boxer briefs that really ride up.’

‘That does not count as gender-based oppression,’ I snapped.

‘I brought ManSpanx,’ Lundqvist said. We all frowned at him and he mumbled, ‘My mom said I inherited my dad’s pear-shaped figure.’

‘Well, that’s some kind of oppression,’ I allowed. ‘Throw ’em on the fire!’

Sparks rose up in the navy, snow-flecked sky, and a big cheer rose up, too. A whole crowd was gathered around the fire, and growing. So it was no surprise that, as soon as the ManSpanx caught fire, a red snowplow appeared, speeding from the east side of campus, flashing and wailing like a fire engine, with a school maintenance man shouting through a bullhorn:

‘PLEASE CLEAR THE QUAD! STUDENTS, EVACUATE THE QUAD!’

I rubbed my fingerless gloves together with glee and turned to Katie Casey. ‘Ready to get in trouble?’ I asked her.

Her freckled face looked anxious – a deer-in-the-snowplow-lights look. And she was about to get more anxious because the snowplow dude wasn’t the only authority figure rolling our way. A second later, a senior came running up to the crowd and shouted: ‘Father Hughes is coming! The banquet for Mama and Papa Beast just ended, and he’s coming back this way!’

The crowd scattered, all the little snow bunnies scampering away, dropping random mittens in the snow in their haste to escape. At the same time, a new group of tall dudes came jogging towards us.

‘What’s up?’ Pat greeted one of them, clasping his hand and pulling him in for a chest bump. ‘What happened to the recruit party?’

‘Busted,’ the tall dude replied. ‘Someone fell off the pool table and the dorm priest broke it up.’

‘What happened to the Beast?’ Pat asked. ‘Where is he?’

‘He left with a girl. Took her back to a room. Actually, it was that girl you were talking to before. Little brunette, real cute?’

Pat looked at me. I looked at Pat.

‘Mary Kate!’ I gasped.

We both looked up at the sky.

‘Oh my God!’ My shocked breath froze in the air between us. ‘The first snow! Mary Kate! She went back to a dorm room with the Toothless Beast? Oh my God, it’s the first snow, she’s desperate, she’s not thinking clearly!’

‘Alex!’ Katie Casey was tugging on my coat sleeve. ‘Look!’

A golf cart was speeding towards us. It was charging up the main avenue, clearly coming from the Mendoza Banquet Hall where St Mary’s had hosted the welcome dinner for the Toothless Beast’s parents. A young priest was driving the golf cart with one hand, holding a bullhorn in the other, shouting, ‘STUDENTS! BACK AWAY FROM THE FIRE!’

And in the passenger seat was Father Hughes.