‘No. I told him St Mary’s was different from St Luke’s. I told him all the stuff I thought freshman year – that we were all like a family, and the dorms were like the houses from Hogwarts. And I told him about the Monologues, too, and Feminist Club, and how the school was changing.’ She sighed. ‘So now I have to go to confession for getting him here on false pretenses.’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘St Mary’s might suck a snowman’s balls, but it’s definitely better than St Luke’s. That place is like a gulag with prom. Here we have a few good things at least …’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah! Like when we convince Father Brian to let us have philo class outside in the spring. Those shirtless southern guys with the glow-in-the-dark Frisbee. The big Christmas tree on Academic Quad. Oh, and Fajita Friday.’

‘I do really love the big Christmas tree,’ Mary Kate had to admit, resting her head on my shoulder. ‘And Fajita Friday obviously.’

Looking across the lake, I took a deep breath and inhaled the crisp winter wind blowing off the water. I felt suddenly sentimental, with the golden Mary statue atop the main building looking down on us.

‘Of course,’ Mary Kate continued, ‘a half-hour after I told Dom how progressive and welcoming St Mary’s was, I was being catcalled by a bunch of shirtless guys leaning out into a snowstorm to watch me sneak out of a second-story window. And, five minutes after that, I was falling to certain death in the whirling blizzard after losing my grip on the windowsill.’

‘Hey, that’s how I fell in August! Second-story window, St Ambrose Hall! Same thing! Those windows are crazy slippery.’

‘Yes! It’s a total health hazard! They need to fix that.’

‘If they’re gonna set such a strict curfew, they really need to make sure we have a safe means of sneaking out when we break it. It’s only fair. Let’s get Health and Safety Standards on it.’

‘We should sue.’

‘Seriously.’

‘This place –’ Mary Kate narrowed her eyes critically, surveying the lake, snowy woods, the bare branches – ‘needs a lot of improvement.’

‘Oh, definitely,’ I agreed, musing.

But, in the distance, a faint silver moon and stars were shimmering now in the lavender twilight sky. They looked like the sequins on the puffy eighties prom dress my mom tried to make me wear to a middle-school dance, which at first I thought was totally tacky before I realized it was SO tacky it actually came around to being vintage cool again. It was pretty.

We were still holding hands.

‘But right now, with no priests around, no nuns spying on us with binoculars in the bushes, no homework, douchey jocks or hairy backs, and the prospect of three peaceful weeks of free and unfettered sin ahead of me … it actually looks kinda badass,’ I said.