Chapter 1
Chapter 1
14 year-old Alice was sitting on her front steps, enjoying the early fall weather. Her dog, Dough, came running up to her, barking loudly. She jumped up and knelt down next to him, scratching behind his ears.
“Did the mail come? Did the mail come, boy? Yes it did, didn’t it? Did you see if there was the letter? Did you boy? Come on, let’s go see.”
She ran barefoot down the driveway, her light pink, knee-length dress streaming behind her, golden- colored hair shining golden in the sunlight, her blue eyes sparkling with excitement. She dashed to the mailbox and opened it, pulling out the mail. Dough barked, as if asking if the letter had come.
“It came! They’ve accepted me! Come on boy, let’s go show the parents! Ladies’ school here I come!” She ran towards the house, Dough running behind her and barking.
“And here we are!” Her father announced as they stepped off the train.
Alice was dressed in the school uniform, a blue-and-white striped dress with tank-top sleeves, buttons down the front, and a white T-shirt underneath. She had put a white sweater over it, and had put on a straw hat to protect her eyes from the sun.
“Well, we can’t go in with you, but we can say goodbye here. We’re so proud of you!” Her mother said, hugging her.
After they said their hugs and goodbyes, Alice walked excitedly up to the school and knocked on the door. A tall, slender lady answered it.
“Oh hello there. Are you Alice? I heard you were coming today.” She said, kindly.
“Yes, that’s me.” She held out the letter.
The lady read it briefly, then let Alice in. Then Alice heard someone shout, “NEW GIRL’S HERE!” and heard a lot of thumping come down the stairs.
Three girls came tumbling down the stairs. The lady rolled her eyes and walked away.
“Hi! Are you the new girl, Alice?” One of them asked, breathlessly.
“Yeah! Who are you?”
“We’re your roommates. I’m Lotte.”
“I’m Grace.”
“And I’m Therese.”
“Come on, we’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”
Alice followed the girls into a room. It was modest yet pretty. There were six beds of different pastel colors.
“You can have the purple one!” Lotte said, happily. She was about Alice’s age, and had soft brown hair. Therese and Grace looked like they were nine or ten.
After setting away her luggage and taking off her sweater and hat, she walked around with the other girls. Soon, they bumped into a group of well-dressed girls. They were wearing dresses of deep blue, and their shoes seemed to be from a very fancy shop. At the head of the group was a girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years old. Her hair was softly curled, and it had a color between white and blonde. She seemed the best-dressed of the group. While the others had their dresses as just a deep blue, hers had delicate patterns on it, and it had small frills at the end. Her face was smooth, and her eyes were the same shade as her dress. She would have looked pretty if it didn’t look like she spent half her day making her face look the way it did.
“New scum.” She said in disgust, as if that was a proper way of greeting someone into a school. “Another peasant.”
Something flickered across Alice’s face. The other girls saw that it wasn’t anger, it was stubbornness.
“Well, at least I know that there’s a difference between scum and peasants. I’m Alice.”
“I’m Marrissa. But only the people who are closer to my status can call me that. You, peasant, must call me what everyone else beneath me calls me: Ma’am or Madam.”
“Is that code for ‘I’d rather die’? Because I would rather die than call you that, Marrissa. I don’t treat my peers as if they’re teachers.”
“Ohhhhh, so we’ve got a feisty one, girls! Well, she’ll be handled with soon enough. The boys’ll show her who’s boss.”
“Wait, boys are allowed at a girl’s school?”
“Ha! She’s not just feisty, she’s also stupid! Of course there’s boys allowed here.”
“I’ve fought boys before. And girls, for that matter.”
“Oh really? Well, I suppose that’s the reason you survived without money. After all, uniforms that are actual clothes-” here she flounced her skirt “-aren’t free. The kinds that are rags are minimum price. And beauty isn’t cheap.” She looked Alice up and down in disgust. “By the looks of it, your family must be broke. It explains the ugliness and the rags.”
Alice raised her eyebrows. “Well, you certainly seem to be wearing expensive clothes. I hope you have spare outfits, that kind’ll break if a speck of dust lands on it. Is it made out of scrap trash?”
Marrissa tossed her hair. “Well, at least my parents can afford for me to look good. My mother said that I’m the most beautiful girl in the world, and right in front of everybody! She said everybody’s ugly compared to me!”
“Hm, well your mother would naturally think you pretty if she’s so ugly that a swamp monster would pass her by in disgust.”
“At least I can afford a proper living!”
“And at least I don’t have the inclination that I have to do a trillion steps to look ‘pretty’.”
“Well, I see someone doesn’t respect their superiors. I’ll contact Caleb. He’ll set her right.”
“Fine then. Call Caleb, whoever he is. We’ll see if he can beat me- doubt he can.”
Marrissa tossed her hair and whirled on her heel. Alice stuck out her tongue, about-faced, and marched away.
“So what is it about boys coming to a girl’s school?” She asked, once they were out of earshot.
“Oh yeah, boys are allowed all the time.” Lotte replied. “We basically just learn one class each day. I don’t know what the teachers expect us to do with only an hour of class each day and certain restrictions about going into town. But they probably noticed it, because now they’re allowing boys to hang out. They can literally walk in at any time. So yeah. But watch out, they all follow Marrissa around. And if someone’s a rebel, like you, they’ll be tailing you to find an excuse to ‘punish’ you.”
“Well, they can’t punish students, can they?”
“They do it without the teacher’s knowing. They really can’t punish anybody, but they’re all on Marrissa’s team: Popular, disgusting, prideful, and trying -to -be -pretty. It’s how Marrissa gets everybody else to do as she says.”
“But shouldn’t you tell the teachers?”
“Oh no, the boys threaten to beat us up if they do. Besides, the teachers think they’re handsome, nice boys who would make perfect friends for their students. They would never believe they would fight us because the ‘popular’ girl told them too.”
“Dang. So anyways- what do you guys do around here?”
“Just calm stuff. Nothing crazy. Nothing big really happens here. Ever.”
“That sounds unbearably annoying.”
“Yeah, it kind of is.”
That afternoon, Alice was outside playing with the girls, when she heard, “Ah yes, this is the disrespectful one Marrissa was telling us about.”
She turned around. Four boys, by the looks of it were in the 12-15 range, were standing there, surveying the scene. The tallest one had black hair and was tall and looked strong. The two who were a little shorter had fairer hair, and they too looked strong, but they looked a little less strong and a little more agile. The smallest had brown hair and looked less strong, but very much like fighting with him would be interesting.
“Oh yeah, Marrissa said that you would- what- ‘sort me out’?”
“Yeah that’s right.” The lead boy said. “I’m Caleb. This is Peter, this is Harry,” He indicated the two younger boys, “and this is Emmitt.” He gestured to the smallest. “Marissa told us you were showing disrespect. We’re her bodyguards, so we punish anyone who shows her that.”
Alice gave a little chuckle. “I doubt you could really beat me. Maybe I can’t beat you, but I’m not that worried.”
“That’s ridiculous! Emmitt’s twelve and he beat up one of the girls last time.”
“Was the girl younger than him?”
“Same age!”
“Fine. I challenge you. Emmitt versus me. We’ll see who wins.”
Caleb smirked. “Fine then. Suit yourself, little squirt.”
Emmitt stepped forward and the other boys stepped back. The girls stepped back too, worried that they would see their new friend be beat up.
“Seriously? Why’d you pick him? He’s like a foot shorter than me!” Alice said, loudly. This was exaggerating, but it did release the tension just a tad.
Emmit pounced. Before anyone could process anything, Alice had knocked Emmitt over and was attacking him with the force of a mad cat. In a few seconds, Emmitt resigned, saving his arm from being broken. The other boys ran off, terrified. Alice felt triumphant. She would have been worried for the boys, though, if she knew what would happen to them because she did this.
