‘We are! I mean, we want to. And you could help make it happen – all you have to do is sign your name.’ I held out the clipboard.

She took it, and I saw a henna tattoo on the inside of her wrist. Jackpot! Then, suddenly, she wavered. She looked at the mostly blank page, including the scribbled green mess that was Seymour Butts on the third line, and handed back the clipboard, withdrawing her hand so her white uniform sleeve covered her tattoo.

‘Actually, I don’t know if I should,’ she said. ‘My parents don’t even let me watch PG-thirteen movies. If they saw my name on this …’

Don’t let her slip away, Alex! Close the deal! Sweet-talk her, Alex! Woman up and sweet-talk her ass into a signature!

‘Your parents won’t see your name on this,’ I told her. ‘Because guess what? Your parents aren’t here. I know it’s weird to try to comprehend that when you first go away to boarding school, but you’re basically an adult now. No one can tell you what to do.’

A look of wonder came into Henna Wrist’s eyes. Amazement – an epiphany: she was on the threshold of adulthood. Of independence. Of total liberty. She had just taken the clipboard when a balding priest stopped at my table.

‘Ms Heck!’ he called out. ‘Please do not forget to submit your summer reading reports. When I said extension, I did not mean two weeks.’

‘Yeah, sure, Father Flanagan, I will,’ I grumbled dismissively, then turned back to the girl. ‘What I’m saying is this. No one can tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. This is your time to grow, to develop your own social conscience. You need to make your own decisions now!’

‘Ms Heck!’ Sister Hellda strode over. ‘Please do not forget to sign your substance-free dorm pledge. As you know, the pledge is mandatory, and I will need it under my door, tonight.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I growled. I whipped back to Henna Wrist, who was looking doubtfully at the clipboard. ‘My point is,’ I continued feverishly, ‘YOU are your own person, and –’

‘Dress code, Ms Heck,’ Sister Carroll admonished me in passing. ‘Please keep all buttons buttoned.’

‘GODDAMMIT!’ I burst out, and Sister Carroll chastised me drily.

‘First Commandment, Ms Heck.’

‘You know what?’ I snatched the clipboard back from Henna Wrist. ‘Just go. Everything I said was a lie. You can’t make your own choices, you are not free, no one is free, freedom is an illusion and Jean-Paul Sartre was full of crap. Just go!’

She went. She never signed the petition. But I did spot her a little later browsing brochures at the Philosophy Club table, and I like to think I had something to do with that.

Hardly anyone stopped by after that. I heard a girl with a unibrow and crucifix earrings hiss to her friend, ‘That’s obscene.’