One weekend in November, Gretel Morewell invited the whole year level to her fourteenth birthday party. She lived on a five-acre property, and her parents were there to supervise, but they holed themselves upstairs, and fifty or so of us spread out through her house and yard. There was a fire pit, and she’d put speakers in her windows so you could hear the music outside. There were endless boxes of pizzas laid out on the counter, and we had free rein until 10 pm.

It was the first real party I’d been to that wasn’t a sleepover with three or four other girls, and I went mostly out of curiosity. I knew everyone there, but the air crackled with the thrill of possibility of being with your classmates at night-time, away from school. I drifted from group to group, until I found myself sitting next to Jesse on the couch inside. We chatted for a while, and when there was a lull in the conversation, and I turned to him, about to tell him how much I loved the song that was playing (‘Sign of the Times’ by Harry Styles, which had come out six months earlier and I was still listening to it semiobsessively every night). Jesse turned to me at the same time, our eyes met and he leaned down towards me. It took me a second to realise he was leaning in to kiss me. I was about to be kissed. I sat up straighter, thrilled and nervous, ready for my life to change.

It wasn’t, by any definition, a good kiss. It was barely a kiss. He leaned down way too fast, then hesitated, then kept going at the same time as I leaned in too, so we almost bumped heads. Our lips fumbled together, and the angle of our heads was all wrong. It occurred to me as it was happening that I had no idea what exactly you were supposed to do when you were kissed. One of my hands hovered awkwardly in the air, because I was too afraid to put it down anywhere in case it was wrong.

But still. My first kiss. With a cute boy. While my favourite song was playing. This was the stuff dreams are made of.

After a few seconds, we broke apart. I blinked and looked up at him, willing him to do it again, but slower, so I could improve, or at least figure out what to do with my hand. I started to lean in towards him, then panicked that I looked too eager, so I jerked backwards just as he was moving in to meet me. His face went red and he mumbled something that I couldn’t hear.

A burst of laughter interrupted us, and I turned and saw Gretel and a bunch of boys from our class standing in the doorway.