Luckily for us, it happens pretty often, thanks to the fact that our school’s electrical wiring – like its values system – dates back to the Dark Ages. This has its advantages and disadvantages. I mean, sure, there’s a high risk of us running screaming out of burning buildings with our hair on fire. But there’s also those ninety precious seconds of co-ed pitch-blackness, a rare chance for all these sexually repressed kids to finally let loose and feel each other up a little. People were bumping and grabbing and giggling, and I’m pretty sure I heard at least one khaki zipper being unzipped.

A calm voice – Father Dan, the Bieber priest – was calling out, ‘Everyone be cool! Let’s chill, everyone, shall we?’

My heart was speeding up from the thrill of the velvety darkness, the sweaty bodies of strangers around us, the unknown … Suddenly I was intensely aware of the heat of Hockey Player Pat’s body beside me, his leg pressed against mine on the radiator. His hot breath was on my cheek; my hand fumbled in the dark and I found his sweat-softened collar; my fist closed around it; I pulled him towards me …

And the lights came back on.

I reared back in horror and jumped off the radiator. Now my heart was pounding in panic – even though Pat Number Three was still cute with the lights on. That only freaked me out all the more. What the hell do you think you’re doing, Tampon Terror? You were about to kiss a hockey player! Sure, I’d kissed a lot of people in my day – every guy in my seventh-grade health class without a retainer, a girl the summer before sophomore year, the hipster cashier at Urban Outfitters for a ten percent discount on a crop top. But a hockey player? That was way too far! I had to get out!

But it was a zombie apocalypse in the cafeteria. When the lights come on at a St Mary’s dance, shit gets scary. Suddenly you’re face to face with the guy you’ve been making out with and it’s NOT that cute indie kid from jazz band, but the buck-toothed turd who always asks for more Spanish homework.

But, when you turn to flee, you find yourself swept up in a stampede of horror-stricken faces, bloodshot eyes, crushed in a mob of clammy pale bodies. Everywhere you turn, everyone is pushing and shoving, desperate to bolt from the bad decisions they made in the dark.

‘IT IS TEN FORTY-FIVE P.M.,’ Sister Hellda announced. ‘ALL STUDENTS MUST RETURN TO THEIR DORMS. STUDENTS, PLEASE FILE IN AN ORDERLY FASHION BACK TO YOUR DORMS …’