‘Nah.’ A flying Cheeto landed on our table, and I debated throwing it back or eating it. I ate it. ‘I’m not really a goals-and-vows person. I’m more a go-with-the-flow kinda gal.’

But, in reality, I did need a plan. My go-with-the-flow attitude hadn’t worked so far. I needed something creative and shocking to make sure Father Hughes kicked me out.

And, little did I know, in less than twenty minutes, I would find my inspiration.

It would all come about because of the tampons and the Hint of Lime tortilla chips.

5

Our school store is a mini supermarket stocked with the emergency essentials: first-aid supplies, toiletries, and those microwave brownie bowls you eat to cheer yourself up after you fail your physics final. On our way out of the student center, I paused in front of the store and said, ‘Hold on a sec. I’ve gotta grab some tampons.’

Mary Kate stopped short. Her brown eyes widened. ‘In there?’

‘Uh … yeah?’

‘Alex,’ she hissed. ‘You can’t buy … things … in there. Look who’s inside!’

Three guys were heaping gummy worms into plastic bags at the candy wall: a tall, burly ginger Viking, a douchey blond who looked like a prom date from an eighties movie and a skinny dude with shaggy brown hair.

‘Undercover tampon police?’ I suggested.

‘They’re hockey players.’ Mary Kate spoke with hushed awe, as if pronouncing the name of a god capable of striking her down with thunder and lightning.

You have to understand: at St Mary’s, ice hockey is a religion. And religion is already a religion here, so that means a lot. I mean, we have a chapel in every dorm. We’re forced to go to mass every week. They practically cancel classes every time the pope sends a tweet. But hockey is damn near sacred. At St Mary’s, the Holy Trinity is more like a foursome, and the fourth part is a sweaty French-Canadian dude with a dislocated collarbone.

As a result, hockey players get their asses kissed all over campus. Teachers give them extensions on papers when they have away games. Prefects look the other way when they break curfew. And, whenever a really good hockey player who’s thinking about playing for St Mary’s comes to visit, the students throw these ‘recruit parties’ in the dorm common rooms with more half-naked teenage girls than the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, which the staff pretend not to know about, even though they totally do. It’s gross.

‘Oh, they’re hockey players,’ I said. ‘Pardon me! I didn’t realize we were in the presence of friggin’ royalty. How dare I even consider occupying the same space as these Herculean heroes in order to purchase a product that will staunch the flow of blood from my lowly, non-hockey-playing vagina.’

‘Alex!’ Mary Kate gasped.