And actually – as much as I hate to admit it – a few of the priests and nuns on this campus are kinda cool. My freshman theology teacher even took the whole class out to Dairy Queen for my birthday. But the vice-principal is not one of them. Father Vincent is the most awkward human being alive. Every conversation with this guy is like a sex talk with your dad.

And, to no one’s surprise, Mary Kate was not thrilled to be accompanying me to discuss The Vagina Monologues with him.

‘I can’t believe you’re making me do this,’ she fumed, stomping brown leaves with her little loafers as we crossed Academic Quad towards the main building with the golden Mary statue on top. It was definitely October. I was wearing a vegan leather jacket I’d found in a San Francisco thrift shop, and Mary Kate had her green St Mary’s fleece tightly wrapped around her and her arms crossed against the cold.

‘Come on, I need you!’ I said. ‘You’re intelligent, you’re insightful, you’re articulate. Plus, look at you. You’re friggin’ adorable! You’re like that YouTube video of Teddy the Porcupine eating corn on the cob. Who’s gonna say no to that face?’

I reached out to pinch her cheek and she slapped my hand away.

‘You better do all the talking. This was your idea – this is your issue. I am not saying a word.’ She shoved her finger in my face. ‘And I am most definitely not saying THE WORD. I’m serious. I’m not in the mood.’

She really wasn’t. Teddy the Porcupine had claws. If I was bumping into obstacles at every turn, trying to put on The Vagina Monologues, Mary Kate seemed to have hit a brick wall in her boyfriend search. She was still sitting next to her original target, Theology John, in class, but he was shy and silent. In over a month since the dance, when they had been on the brink of a St Mary’s make-out, they had had exactly one interaction: she asked him for a pencil (even though she already had one), and he looked away, blushed and shook his head. As far as romantic milestones go, that was about negative twelfth base.

‘And FYI,’ she continued, ‘if Father Vincent doesn’t agree with you, I’m not fighting. At best, I’m sitting there for silent moral support. At worst, I’m taking his side. Because guess what? I’m ON his side. I’m glad Father Hughes told you no when you first asked him! I DON’T think this … play … is appropriate to perform on campus, when some freshmen are thirteen. I am anti!’