The Rowers are two super-buff, six-foot-plus varsity crew girls who live at the end of our hallway. Mary Kate is terrified of them. And, honestly, so am I. They’re basically Death Eaters in sweatpants.

‘They’re gonna bench-press me!’ Mary Kate was wailing. ‘They’re gonna do weird, giant exercise stuff to me, I know it!’

I stood face to face with her.

‘Mary Kate, I’m not gonna stay in some fascist regime so you don’t have to room with people you don’t like.’ My voice was rising. ‘It’s been pretty clear from the beginning that I don’t belong here, the school doesn’t want me here and, most importantly, I don’t want to be here. So, if I get kicked out, well, GOOD! ST MARY’S CAN SUCK MY MOTORCYCLE BOOTS!’

Suddenly we realized how loud we were being. We stopped, breathing heavily in the new silence. We turned towards the wall we shared with Sister Hellda and listened. Nothing. She was probably down the hall, flagellating someone for leaving their flip-flops outside the door. We looked at each other for a second and hurried over to the window, elbowing each other out of the way to stick our heads out first.

The Long Huggers were still hugging.

I checked my phone. Thirty-one minutes. Then I looked up at Mary Kate. ‘Quarter dogs?’ I suggested cheerfully.

‘Quarter dogs,’ she agreed.

Quarter dogs are hot dogs that cost – you guessed it – a quarter. They sell them at the student center the last hour before curfew. I’m pretty sure it’s the school’s way of getting rid of questionable meat before it expires, but they taste fine, and anything is better than staying in your dorm room finishing that summer essay on Germinal (leave it to a French dude to make a book where a bunch of women cut off a guy’s dick and parade it around on a stick boring).

We walked down the hallway – tiptoeing past the Rowers’ room, like we always do – and pushed open the heavy front door. The Long Huggers were – you guessed it – still hugging, so as we stepped out into the warm August evening, swinging our ID chains on our wrists, we walked in the damp grass to avoid them. I restrained myself from hissing, ‘Blue ballssss …’ as we passed, but I did flick Long Hugging Boy on the back of the neck.

Mary Kate’s attitude had changed. When she’d been gazing at the Long Huggers before, she’d had a sweet, mushy look on her face, like you have at the midpoint of a Nicholas Sparks movie when they’re still collecting shells on the beach and no one has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s yet; now the look was a mix of nausea and bitterness.

‘The Long Huggers make me sad I don’t have a boyfriend,’ she explained.