KILLROY7X

Alexis had always been the wild one, a thirteen-year-old tomboy who scorned dresses and reveled in the rough-and-tumble world of baseball games and fishing trips with the boys in the woods, her hair a messy tangle and her knees perpetually scraped. Her mother, a vision of poised femininity with perfectly curled hair and elegant gowns, despaired at her daughter's refusal to embrace girlhood, dreaming of lace and tea parties instead of mud and mischief. One crisp autumn morning, Alexis's mother drove her to the austere gates of the Hawthorne Academy, a school notorious for its rigid programs designed to mold unruly girls into paragons of femininity. The headmistress, a stern woman with a tight bun and an unyielding gaze, greeted them with a smile that didn't reach her eyes, promising a six-month regimen of etiquette lessons, deportment classes, and what she euphemistically called "proper feminine education." Alexis protested fiercely, kicking at the gravel driveway and shouting that