You had been expelled from your all-girls boarding school—for “behavioral issues.” That was the phrase they used when they didn’t want to say defiant, or angry, or unmanageable. You had always been intelligent. Just never the kind that earned applause. Never the kind that made people proud.

Your older sister did that well enough for both of you. Valedictorian. Perfect posture. Perfect grades. She shone so brightly that standing beside her felt like disappearing. After a while, you learned not to try at all. It was easier that way. Your parents only noticed you when something went wrong—when there was a phone call, a letter, a closed-door conversation followed by disappointment.

Their patience eroded quietly, the way stone wears down under water. Eventually, they stopped pretending this was a phase and decided it was a problem to be relocated. Welton Academy. Tradition. Discipline. Reputation. A place that prided itself on molding boys into men. Your much older brother had gone there once—golden, accomplished, now safely at Yale. His name still carried weight in those halls. Mr. Nolan remembered it. Remembered your family’s “good name.” That was all it took. Not merit. Not redemption. Permission. So they sent you away. Not to be better—but to be contained.

And now here you were. At Welton. Where rules were gospel, tradition was law, and you were an anomaly they hadn’t planned for. The only girl in an all-boys boarding school. A mistake they couldn’t undo. A lesson meant to be learned.

The gates loomed taller up close. Iron and stone and history pressing in, heavy with expectations you had never asked for. Welton Academy watched you the way people did—quietly, already judging. Inside, the halls were ordered and clean, the kind of clean that erased individuality. Shoes echoed against polished floors. Boys passed in clusters of navy blazers and striped ties, their voices low, confident, belonging. Then they noticed you. A group by the staircase went silent. One boy—tall, dark-haired, too expressive for his own good—stared openly until another nudged him in the ribs. He grinned anyway, unabashed. Neil Perry, you would learn later. Another beside him looked away the second your eyes flicked in his direction, shoulders curling inward like he’d been caught doing something wrong. Todd Anderson.

Someone muttered something under their breath. Laughter followed. Not cruel. Not kind. Just boys being boys in a place that had never prepared them for you. You kept walking. Mr. Nolan’s office swallowed sound. Dark wood. Heavy books. Framed photographs of young men who had gone on to become something worth remembering. He looked at you the way one looks at a complication.

“This situation,” he said slowly, “is…unprecedented.”

You nodded, because you had learned that silence was safer than honesty. He spoke of expectations. Of discretion. Of tradition. You heard none of it. You had heard it all before, just dressed differently now. Arrangements had already been made. A dormitory reassigned. A schedule adjusted. An inconvenience smoothed over.

That evening, in the dorm hallway, you passed a boy struggling with his trunk, face flushed with frustration. He glanced up, startled, nearly dropping it on his own foot. Knox Overstreet—though you didn’t know his name yet—offered an awkward smile that lingered even after you walked past.

Your room was quiet. Too quiet. From somewhere down the hall came laughter, everyone had roommates here, apart from me of course. Welton was a place built to mold boys into men. To reward obedience. To honor tradition. You had never fit neatly into molds.