We’d counted down toward the holiday as eagerly as we had the end of school. We made packing lists as early as April, when we were supposed to be revising, passed each other cartoons of us on the beach surrounded by Julios, we fantasized about our tans, our freedom, what to save “for holiday,” and what to have now. Of course, the reality of the holiday was quite different. Jessica quaked with fear the whole flight there as she’d never been on an airplane before. My parents’ constant presence made the freedom quite restrictive. They expected us to eat breakfast and dinner with them, knocked on our door regularly to “see what you are up to,” and complained about how messily we were keeping the room. But we evaded them in the daytime by refusing to partake in any of their planned boat trips to boring old towns and historical ruins. Four days in and we were still more than happy to baste ourselves like turkeys, pretending we didn’t mind we weren’t in Newquay, getting fingered and puked on.

I flickered my eyes open and tortured myself by glancing at Jessica’s body while she read. Her curves filled her bikini so well it looked as if it’d been drawn around her. I’d spent a lot of my Saturday job money on a pricey striped one, but it bunched where my chest should be, and the metal hoop detail on the bottoms left an imprint in my thighs. Those weren’t the only unfavorable comparisons. Jessica’s hair morphed into long effortless beach waves, whereas mine frizzed into an impenetrable tangle. Jessica waltzed around with hardly a scrap of makeup on, wearing a kaftan she got off a market stall, clashing it perfectly with the free sunnies and flip-flops that came with our magazines. Me? Despite blowing my savings on an assortment of beach dresses, expensive sunglasses, and sandals, I still looked frumpy, awkward, and like I was trying way too hard.

It was no matter, however, as there was not a boy to be found on the complex. Julio and Julio had failed to materialize, and we were all the happier because of it. I’d never laughed as hard. Daily sunstroke had turned us slightly bonkers, and, if we weren’t shoving dollops of damp sand onto our bodies and pretending they were spa treatments, we were watching bizarre Greek television on our stiff-sheeted beds, during the heat of the day, speaking over it in a variety of crazy accents. We’d survived school, exams, the clichéd predictability of the Leavers’ Ball, and, during our siestas, we turned our holiday masterplan into a sixth-form college masterplan, plotting our reinventions as if they were diamond heists.