‘Pretty sure it’s going to be nothing but homework and this project,’ Chloe replies. ‘Dad’s letting me use the spare room at his house.’

‘Will you send me updates?’

Chloe’s phone beeps. She checks it with one hand.

‘Is that your secret lover?’

‘Ha! Nice try.’ She puts her pillaged burger down and wipes her fingers. ‘Actually, it’s my friend Katie. She’s worried that she’s pregnant. I have to go over to hers and watch her pee on a stick tonight.’

Her face doesn’t even change expression as she says this. If one of my group got preggers, you’d better believe there’d be an instant world summit. The disturbing image of Sarah, Ally, Marley and I wearing those dorky baby carriers on our fronts flashes at me, uninvited. It’s horrific.

Chloe laughs at my appalled face. ‘It’s a false alarm. She’s on the pill, but she’s a stress-head. Sometimes I think she wants it to be true, because then she wouldn’t have to finish school.’ Chloe finally lets one half of her burger bun rest in peace. ‘What would you do if you got pregnant?’

The question takes me by surprise so much I answer truthfully. ‘Well, I think I’d have to have sex for that to be an issue.’

‘What do you—oh. Oh, right.’ Chloe looks embarrassed. She suddenly pays enormous attention to her thickshake.

‘Yes,’ I confirm. ‘You may say it out loud. I am the sluttiest-looking virgin in town.’

‘No! I wasn’t thinking that.’ Chloe has flushed adorably red.

‘I’m joking,’ I say. ‘It’s not a precious gift I’m saving. My sister says I shouldn’t be so heteronormative and that I’ve done enough stuff with enough people to consider myself not a virgin. I’ve done everything but it—what about you?’

‘Everything but? Nah, I’m not into that butt stuff.’

It takes me a moment to catch her drift, and then I can see she’s barely holding herself together.

‘Filthy harlot!’

I throw fries at her and she grows hysterical. Finally, someone with their head as much in the gutter as me.

‘TELL ME, LITTLE CHLO-CHLO.’

Eventually she relents.

‘Okay, okay. I did it a few times, and I shouldn’t have. This guy Brandon at my old school really liked me, and I knew I wanted to. I wasn’t in love with him or anything. I thought it would be a good opportunity to…get it out of the way? That sounds awful, doesn’t it?’

‘No, I get it.’

‘Afterwards I didn’t know why I’d been in such a rush to do it. And I also figured out way too late that he’s got a thing for Asian girls. I felt…like I should have realised.’