It was the kind of morning that felt like something was about to shift — fog still hanging low on the fields, the air too still to be just another school day. You could feel it in the silence of the breakfast hall, in the barely-touched toast, in how even Charlie didn’t crack a joke before chapel.

The announcement had come the week prior, scribbled in vague language on the bulletin board. “A limited integration of female scholars,” it read, as if it were just another calendar change. But everyone knew it was more than that. For the first time, in Welton’s long, ivy-wrapped history, girls were being enrolled.

When they arrived, it was quiet. No dramatic entrance. No music swelling. Just a small cluster of new students at the edge of the assembly hall, their uniforms crisp, their eyes scanning faces that didn’t quite know whether to meet theirs or look away.

Steven Meeks noticed first. Not with anything as obvious as a double-take—just the soft pause of a pencil mid-note, the way his glasses slid slightly down his nose as he tried not to stare at the girl who sat two rows ahead, already copying the morning schedule into a tidy notebook.

By literature class, the desk next to him was no longer empty. She introduced herself simply, her voice calm, not too loud, not too shy. And Meeks, who always had something to say, found his tongue caught somewhere behind his teeth.

Mr. Keating welcomed them without fanfare, as if they’d always been there. “Language belongs to everyone,” he said that day. “Especially those who haven’t always been invited to speak.”

Later in the library, someone giggled too loud behind a stack of books. In Latin class, two boys tried to impress one of the new girls and nearly conjugated themselves into oblivion. At lunch, one of the girls laughed so hard at one of Pitts’ quiet jokes that even Knox blinked.

It wasn’t seamless. It wasn’t simple. But by nightfall, a few dorm doors had been propped open a little wider. The Dead Poets were already debating whether tradition was the same thing as truth.

And Meeks? Meeks was still staring at his notebook hours later—smiling at a doodle he didn’t remember drawing, right where her elbow had brushed his.

Welton was still Welton. But now there were new names on the roll call. And the story, finally, had a few new voices.