‘Even though I stand before you today, I, believe it or not, do not know it all.’ This got a laugh from the audience. ‘Surprising, I know. So I’d like to avoid giving advice –’

I cautiously raised my head to the window, looked down at the graduates clad in bright purple robes below, then up past Heath – that’s where June was, salutatorian, sitting in her rightful spot on the stage. She deserved more. We met eyes and she gave me the faintest nod.

‘OK,’ Leo said. ‘Ready, ready, ready. Go.’

I pressed a switch on the control panel. The screen would only keep physically rolling down if the switch was held in place, so I positioned a stapler on top to weigh it down.

We fled. Rushed back downstairs to absolve ourselves of responsibility and to witness the chaos.

It worked. The video was running. But we needed the sound.

Heath’s speech faltered and he craned his neck up to watch the descending screen; he flashed a smile at the audience. ‘I promise I wasn’t going to bore you with a presentation!’ The audience laughed in that nervous way audiences do when something happens that wasn’t supposed to. Heath gestured up to the booth we’d vacated. ‘Sorry, folks, not sure what’s wrong. Can someone, please …?’ A random administrator nodded, and made their way to the back of the crowd, towards the stairs we’d just come down.

The video itself was mainly just darkness, and seeing it projected, my stomach sank. Nobody would understand what they were looking at. This was a complete waste of time.

But then I heard it.

‘I wanted to ask how it feels to know you’ve singlehandedly ruined everything,’ said Heath’s voice over the speakers. ‘Because you have. None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you. Oh, and your fucking faggot of a dad.’

Everyone froze.

Heath looked up at the screen in disbelief, then back to the audience, then back to the screen. He truly had no idea what to do, floundering, his arms at his sides and then up to his head and then back down, like he was short-circuiting – it was the most delicious thing I’d ever seen. ‘Everyone, there’s clearly some sort of technical …’ he said, as if that wasn’t very obviously him. His car. His voice. ‘His’ June.

The thud of my head bouncing off the dashboard.

‘You stop! You fucking stop! Holy shit, I can’t believe I’ve lost you to some dyke!’

The audience were in a state of disarray. They were one moving person, one collective being, twisting and revolting and shouting.

Heath wailed over the sound of his sins. ‘Folks, I’m sorry, I have no idea what this is!’