And there was no avoiding the issue now. I mean, the Toothless Beast was coming to campus! Were they going to be friends? Were they going to DATE? Were they going to awkwardly avoid each other because they’d hooked up? Had they hooked up? Well, whatever the truth was, now that he was coming to campus, she would have to tell me, right?

She didn’t.

December

20

Study days are tense. The whole week had basically been one metaphorical clenched butthole.

But that Saturday the entire school got a big stress reliever. It was a special occasion guaranteed to relieve the tension that had been building all week: it was the first varsity hockey play-off game, and the Toothless Beast was playing.

The whole campus was lively and buzzing, with cheering and laughter on the quads and everyone bustling around in hockey sweatshirts, painting their faces green. Dominic LeClair had arrived at St Francis Hall that morning, and would be putting on his St Mary’s jersey for the first time that afternoon.

Everyone was getting into the spirit. Even Mary Kate had put away her textbooks and shelved her flashcards. I dug out the green pompon hat I’d bought in the bookstore freshman year to cover my illegal cartilage piercings; Mary Kate pulled her hair back into a ponytail with a big green bow. We took turns drawing the St Mary’s logo on each other’s cheeks with my Wicked Bitch of the West green eyeliner.

As I traced the logo on Mary Kate’s cheek, I asked casually, ‘So, has Dominic told you anything about the game? Is he nervous?’

(I had decided that maybe Mary Kate was insulted when I called him ‘the Toothless Beast’, and a personal approach would be better.)

But Mary Kate turned her head away instantly, which really messed up my face-painting. ‘Nope. Hasn’t said anything.’ And her lips tightened into that straight line again.

I pushed a little. ‘But have you talked to him at all? Do you have his number?’

‘I have his number,’ she said pertly. ‘We text sometimes.’

They TEXTED sometimes? What the hell! In the past, when Mary Kate got a Candy Crush invite from a guy on Facebook, we’d spend hours bent over her phone like two greedy British archeologists decoding an ancient tablet they’d stolen. Now she was texting a guy! Without me! This was too much!

‘Mary Kate,’ I said sternly, ‘what happened between you and the Toothless Beast?’

Nothing. That’s what I expected her to say. That’s what she was going to say. Of course nothing had happened. This was Mary Kate!

Instead, she pursed her lips, avoided my eyes and said very primly: ‘I don’t kiss and tell.’

‘Kiss?’ I squawked. ‘So you KISSED him?’

My room-mate just tilted her chin up and looked away, which drove me even crazier.