‘Yeah, good. We won, obviously. Hooray, go Panthers, go football, so on, so forth. But honestly, it was probably for the best you didn’t go, because it was freezing, firstly, and it went on forever. Like, overtime. I thought I was gonna have to get some toes amputated. Oh, and they did the homecoming court stuff. Heath Alderman and June Copeland won king and queen, obviously.’ Olivia had a tendency to insist upon the obviousness of non-obvious things, but she wasn’t exaggerating this time; Heath Alderman and June Copeland might have actually been bred to be homecoming royalty, like some sort of champion line of miniature schnauzers. ‘I have no idea how June did it,’ Olivia continued, ‘but she was standing out in the field in this beautiful dress which had no sleeves. Zero sleeve. The wind chill was, like, minus three, but she didn’t even have a single freaking goosebump. Oh, so, speaking of homecoming things, are you sure you’re OK with me going tonight? For real. I don’t have to. Miles will get over it. We can just stay in –’ she nudged me with her elbow – ‘watch a movie or something. Even one of your weird ones.’

Honestly, I didn’t want her to go. It was nice to have access to sound, some sort of stimulation, but I would have felt guilty asking her to stay. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Bring me back, uh, a fish cupcake, or something. That’s the theme, right?’

‘Oh, all right, let me tell you about the theme.’ Apparently, it was a whole thing that student council was split between Roaring Twenties (event coordinator extraordinaire Olivia’s idea) and Under the Sea (not Olivia’s idea; also, apparently, a horrible idea), and they ended up going with Under the Sea, and Olivia went on an admittedly well-constructed tirade about how democracy doesn’t work because most people are too stupid to pick the right answer. Fine. Maybe we did have something in common.

Eventually, Rick called out from the main room that the ceremony was starting. Olivia went back to her parents plural and I sat with Mom in the front row, which was reserved for us. Phew. I was worried we’d be stuck in the cheap seats. I said this to Mom, who told me under her breath to stop it.