‘I know that hockey is really exciting,’ she continued, sitting up straighter in the chair, ‘and the school spirit is really great – all the pep rallies and the marching band and everything. But, just because one group of people may be louder than another, it doesn’t mean their voices are more important.’

‘HELL, YEAH!’ I burst out, jumping out of my chair, all my tension exploding in sudden surprise and excitement. Father Hughes gave me a look and I sat back down, mumbling to Katie Casey, ‘No – you keep going.’

‘Alex and I were super frustrated,’ said Katie Casey, ‘because an event which was important to us – and which we thought should also be important to the St Mary’s administration – was canceled suddenly, with barely any notice, and no apology. We thought it was right to protest. And I get that our protest was dangerous – but maybe it was extra dangerous because so many staff were at the banquet. I mean, the first fire on Academic Quad went out and we started a whole other bigger one before anyone noticed! We basically had no supervision.’

‘Well, let’s not complain about that right now,’ I cautioned her. ‘Personally, I think a little less supervision could be healthy for us. Give us some space, inspire some independence, we can make our own mistakes … anyway, you guys can talk about that later …’

Katie Casey concluded: ‘I don’t think what Alex and I did was right. But I don’t think what the school did was right, either.’

Wow.

Did Katie Casey seriously just tell off Father Hughes? Had she actually helped me set the quad on fire and then told Father Hughes he was wrong?

I looked up at screaming Joan of Arc. Even she looked impressed.

Father Hughes lifted the mahogany stamp over the incident report. I braced myself for the resounding thud, the authority of it, the finality. But he hesitated and, when he did, Katie Casey picked up something else from his desk: my burnt bra strap.

‘I can’t help thinking,’ she said, ‘about the burning bush.’

I frowned at her in total confusion, and not just because of all the ‘smoldering loins’ jokes running through my head.

‘In the Book of Exodus,’ Katie Casey explained to me, ‘God talked to Moses through a bush. The bush was on fire, but it didn’t actually burn, and no one got hurt.’ She turned to Father Hughes. ‘Because the burning bush wasn’t an act of destruction; it was an act of communication.’

Father Hughes considered this. He looked at Katie Casey; he looked at me; he looked back at Katie Casey.

And then – miraculously – he set the stamp down.

‘I do hope,’ he cautioned sternly, ‘that all future acts of communication on this campus take a less … incendiary … approach.’

But that was it. He put my bra strap back in the Ziploc bag, gave it to me and stood up to shake our hands.