For most St Mary’s students, the September Club Fair is the time to shop for extracurricular activities. For my room-mate, it was the time to shop for a boyfriend. Even though Mary Kate hadn’t asked for his number or seen him again since, our meeting with Jesus Sandals – whose name turned out to be Caleb – had awakened her sense of infinite possibility and optimism.

‘Look! Model UN! There’s always cute guys in that – we should set up next to them,’ Mary Kate said as we turned onto the quad. She was leading the way, practically skipping in her penny loafers. ‘No, wait! Mock Trial! Cute guys in suits …’

‘Just pick a table,’ I told her, dragging behind, weighed down by the big shopping bag of school supplies I was carrying. Somehow I always get stuck carrying stuff with Mary Kate, just like when I ended up putting our futon together with that little Barbie-sized screwdriver. ‘I want to get down to business.’

‘Hmm …’ she pondered thoughtfully, her crazy brain calculating angles and wind velocity and the golden ratio and absolute distance from every attractive guy on the quad. Finally, she pointed decisively. ‘There. Let’s take that one. Model UN is on one side, and there’s an empty table on the other side, so if someone good shows up we can call them over.’

‘Fine.’

Dumping the shopping bag on the table, I yanked out a neon-yellow poster and unrolled it. In big purple letters, it read:

SUPPORT THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES!
SIGN OUR PETITION!

Mary Kate groaned. ‘You can’t put that up at our booth! The Club Fair is for recruiting club members, not signing petitions!’

‘We already have a bunch of club members.’ I pulled a roll of duct tape out of the bag.

‘We have SIX club members. Plus, every teacher in the school is gonna be here! You can’t put that sign up! There’ll be nuns!’

Tearing off a piece of duct tape with my teeth, I slapped it on the sign, securing it to the front of the table.

‘Yup,’ I said. ‘Every teacher on campus is gonna be here, and almost every student. And we need five hundred signatures to move ahead with this thing, so we really need to capture people’s attention.’

‘Alex!’ Mary Kate hissed. ‘There are guys here, too! Smart guys who are involved in extracurricular stuff! You’re gonna scare them away!’

‘If they don’t want to support The Vagina Monologues,’ I said, placing our clipboard on the table, ‘then to hell with them.’

‘Well, I’m leaving then.’ She snatched up the rainbow-colored pens she’d brought with her. ‘I’ll just go recruit freshmen with the Literary Magazine. I’m a member of eight other clubs, you know.’

‘Yes, but you’re not an officer of those clubs. Thanks to me and my nepotism, you’re vice-president of this club, even though you’re just a junior.’