‘THE ICEMAN!’ I cried. ‘This is EXACTLY what happened to the Iceman! He was out after curfew, it was snowing and he DIED! Mary Kate is gonna be a ghost! She’s gonna be the Icewoman! Which would actually be kind of badass and feminist if we had a female ghost, too, but …’

‘You don’t believe in the Iceman,’ Pat reminded me.

But I didn’t care. I was going back into the blizzard to find Mary Kate. I was going to save my best friend.

Just as I was climbing onto my desk, there was a crisp rap at the frost-covered window. I reached for the sash and yanked it open, letting in a gust of icy wind and a flurry of snow. Then, blinking, I saw … an enormous monster carrying Mary Kate!

Okay, so it wasn’t a monster – but the dude WAS enormous, and his red varsity jacket set off stranger-danger alarm bells in my head. That wasn’t a St Mary’s jacket! Where was his green plaid? Who the hell was this guy?

Although actually his face did look a little familiar … Did I know him?

No time to find out. In the wild swirl of the snowstorm, in the stranger’s arms, Mary Kate was whimpering and holding her left snow boot. ‘It’s her ankle – I think it’s broken,’ the stranger cautioned me as I reached through the window to grab her, pulling her inside so fast I almost smashed her head on the window.

I was shouting in her face, ‘Mary Kate! Are you okay?’ then staggering to climb down from the desk and carry her over to the bunk bed, apologizing profusely the whole time.

‘I’m sorry! I don’t care if we fought about feminism and unicorn buttholes, I didn’t mean for you to end up frozen in the snow after curfew. I thought you were gonna die like the Iceman and come back and haunt me by hiding the gummy bears –’

But suddenly I was interrupted when Pat strolled to the window, shaking his still-soaked hair, and crowed, ‘DOMINIC!’

Dominic?

‘Oh my God!’ I cried out in sudden recognition, turning around. ‘You’re the Toothless Beast!’

There he stood, in the snow, his famous face floating outside our window like he was the BFG – the most talked-about celebrity on this campus for months, the notorious enemy-turned-hero, the royal baby himself: Dominic LeClair.

I whipped my head back to Mary Kate, who was sitting on my bed, struggling to get her soaked pea coat off, and hit her with a barrage of questions.

‘What the hell happened to you tonight? Why are you with the Toothless Beast? What happened at the recruit party? How did you miss curfew?’

At the same time, Pat was urging Dominic to get inside.