So we set up camp near Theology John, who, in my eyes, was a pretty generic preppy dude with floppy brown hair – other than the fact that he was wearing boat shoes with no socks, a sin which, to my agnostic eyes, should rank waaay higher in the Ten Commandments than all that nonsense about boning your neighbor. He was standing in a circle with a bunch of his bros, who I’ll call the Apostles. Most of them were dressed like him, also in blue button-downs and boat shoes without socks, and the only remarkable thing about the group was that the Cherry Cokes they were drinking smelled like rum. They had somehow found a senior with a fake ID and paid him to get them alcohol. That, or the Jesus of the group had performed that water-into-wine miracle.

I figured it wouldn’t take long for Theology John to notice Mary Kate. I mean, he was drinking so his pretty-girl radar would kick in any second, right?

Unfortunately, I had ignored one crucial detail: the guys were talking about hockey.

Crap on a crucifix, I thought. We’re gonna be here all night!

‘C’mon, Mary Kate,’ I whined. ‘Can’t you make SOME kinda move? You don’t have to say hi to him, just … brush up against him.’

‘No.’

‘C’mon, a little brush!’

‘No!’

‘Nudge?’

‘No way.’

‘Spank? Slap? Wet willy?’

Mary Kate did not even dignify those suggestions with an answer. She just gave me a look.

‘If I make the first move, I throw off the power balance in the relationship,’ she explained. ‘He’s emasculated and forced into a passive position, and has no incentive to make any moves. We never make any progress, and the relationship is stalled in one place.’

I looked at the snack table we’d been standing next to for thirty-five minutes now. ‘Yeah, you wouldn’t wanna be stalled in one place.’

My next tactic was sneaky. Inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter, I forced Mary Kate closer to Theology John. It was a really careful, calculated move on my part – like when I used to covertly nudge the pointer-thingy on the Ouija board at my eighth-grade sleepovers to spell out messages from my friends’ dead grandparents. Patient, subtle, devious. Now Mary Kate and Theology John were practically butt to butt, but he still didn’t turn around.

I can’t take this anymore! By now we had listened to ten bleeped-out Rihanna songs, three bleeped-out Ed Sheeran songs (really?), and musically relived the entire relationship and break-up of Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber. I couldn’t stand around all night with Mary Kate playing the coy Jane Bennet to Theology John’s Mr Bingley in boat shoes. There was a senior somewhere with a flask of rum that could actually make this night interesting, and I was going to hunt that sucker down.

So I took action. I reached out and shoved Mary Kate.