Now that sentence might sound pretty simple to you. She sat down. Subject, verb … okay, whatever, I’m not a grammar dweeb, but it’s simple: the chick sat down. At a normal school, that would be a normal thing to happen. At a normal school, she could have sat for the next forty-five minutes, staring at people’s butts, unable to see a friggin’ minute of the game action, but perfectly content and left alone.

But here’s the problem: St Mary’s hockey, like everything else at this school, has rules. At a St Mary’s hockey game, you don’t sit down. And this is a long-established, widely believed, sacred superstition, like walking around the lake. You cannot sit down at a hockey game or the team will lose. So our whole student body stands on the bleachers for the whole length of the game. It can be negative twenty degrees in the arena, you can be numb in every extremity going into triple overtime and so weak from exhaustion that your legs are like string cheese, but no matter what happens: You. Do. Not. Sit. Down.

So when one of the guys in front of us – the Shirtless M, to be exact – turned around and saw Mary Kate sitting down on the bleachers, he did not take it well.

‘We stand with the team!’ he reminded her. ‘If you sit down, you let the team down!’

‘Oh, c’mon,’ I said. ‘Leave her alone.’

He ignored me and hit the guy next to him – the Shirtless T – on the shoulder. The Shirtless T was even more outraged.

‘How DARE you sit down at a hockey game!’ he roared. ‘I don’t pay fifty thousand dollars a year in tuition so you can sit DOWN at a hockey game!’

My room-mate stared straight ahead and refused to reply.

‘Hey!’ I snapped. ‘She has a broken ankle! If she needs to sit down, she gets to sit down!’

‘I’ve failed three scoliosis tests, but you don’t see me complaining!’ the Shirtless T said self-righteously, puffing out his scrawny painted chest.

‘Yeah, and besides …’ The Shirtless M narrowed his eyes and pointed his finger at Mary Kate. ‘We all know exactly HOW she broke her ankle.’

‘Do you?’ I asked eagerly, without thinking. ‘Because I’d really like the details …’

But then my loyal indignation came rushing back and I pushed the Shirtless M, who was getting all up in our personal space. ‘It doesn’t matter HOW she broke her ankle. The point is, the girl needs a second to sit down!’

Unfortunately, just then the other team scored a goal, putting them ahead by two. A huge boooo went up from the crowd.

‘See?’ the Shirtless M exploded, his man-nipples pointy with rage. ‘THAT’s what happens when you sit down!’