Nothing much to report today, except that...well, I'll get to that part later. It's the second to last day before spring break, and I received a plane ticket in the mail from my parents to go home for the holiday. Everyone at Lakewood is excited to go places, and, since they're all rich kids (excluding scholarship students like me), they're all off to exotic places, not the boring Midwestern town I grew up in, where people as wealthy as Edmund and Adam were but legends.

Speaking--or, I guess, in this case, writing--of Adam Carter, his club, the Four Lords, was not as exciting as yesterday, but less strange. We played video games, like Guitar Hero and Dead or Alive. There were no lightsaber fights.

At dinner, Neil told us all that he would run away if his family was going to make him climb any more mountains. Edmund gave us the details of what he was going to do back in England, such as attending dinner parties and local charity events, like any good baron should do. It was an enjoyable evening, until, that is, we retired to our rooms and I realized just how much homework I had.

All the teachers seem to coordinate tests, so all the big ones are on the same day. Consequently, the night before is spent in lucubration, and, in the morning, the mass of sleep deprived zombies--I mean students--stumble into the classrooms, forget everything they tried so hard to remember, and fail all the tests that day. Tomorrow would have probably been like that for me, if not for Neil.

Chemistry was my worst subject, and stoichiometry was definitely not my forte. After a heavy sigh on my part, my roommate came around behind me, took my pencil from my hand, and rewrote my equation. It took just a little under an hour to learn exactly what I needed for the test.

"Thank you." I said to Neil gratefully.

He brushed it off with that casual "Don't mention it," and left for the showers.

Since Neil had one of those nasty, boyish habits of not washing anything until one couldn't stand the smell of it, I took it upon myself to do the laundry for both of us. I hauled our unwashed clothing to the laundry room, and ran a cycle of his and my clothes. When I returned to the room with stacks of neatly folded uniforms, I opened the door to see a shirtless Neil.

Now, if I had a weakness that was neither chocolate nor ice cream, then it would have to be my penchant for abs, and if anyone had abs, this guy did. His six pack rippled as he turned to look at me, and I felt my face flush. The thoughts that I had been thinking were definitely not in accordance with the laws of roommating, especially when they don't know your real gender.

"Hey." He said.

Oh God. I remember thinking. He is so hot.

But the moment passed when Neil put on a t-shirt and told me, his voice dripping in sarcasm, that I better stop gaping or he'd announce tomorrow on the intercom that I was a fag.

"I was not gaping." I retorted, locking the door and avoiding his saphire eyes.

"You so were." Neil streatched his arms up, like he was sleepy. "Should I take my shirt off again to prove it?"

"That won't be necessary." I sat down on my bed, grabbed my laptop, and played several games of solitare until I got the image of half-naked Neil out of my mind.

Though I must admit that Neil is way above the average when it comes to good looking boys, I promise that I won't fall for him. I swore last semester that I will never fall in love again. Broken hearts never fully heal, do they? And mine still aches where the stitches couldn't reach.

But, enough with the melodramatic symbolism. I have a test tomorrow.

Now, I should have probably been prepared for the worst when I knocked on the door to room 222. I should have been suspecting something was up when Adam's sweet baritone called "Come in, young Padawan." And when I opened the door to see all four lords dressed like Jedi knights, I knew that this was no normal club.

It took them about five seconds to push me into a curtained off area, costume in my arms. I emerged, dressed like I had just stepped out of Star Wars, and noticed that room 222 was a large, high ceilinged room, big enough to fit a volley ball court. It has shiny tile floors and a wall of mirrors.

"Welcome." Adam said, seated in a throne-like chair.

"Why are you dressed like Jedis?" Was the first of my many questions that found its way to my lips.

"If you don't like my clothes, sweetheart," Damien said, "You can help me take them off."

"I'll pass." I replied flatly.

"Every day, we do different things in our club. Today, we decided to welcome you by lightsaber fight." Adam stood up proceeded to unsheath (I wonder if that's the word for it) a bright blue lightsaber and pointed it at me. "You'll find your weapon strapped to your thigh."

Now this wasn't your everyday, plastic lightsaber. I was pretty sure it was glass, and a glowing light filled the tube with that great "idle hum" sound. (You can get them at thinkgeek.com. I looked it up.)

I lifted the skirt of the robe, grabbed the lightsaber, and spent about a minute trying to figure out how to get the blade to light up. Finally it did, with a sound like from the movies, and what I'd like to call an epic battle followed, with me losing to Adam and his gang. Damian and Butterfly dragged my sore and bruised body to the foot of Adam's throne, and I took up a position of surrender, looking up at the angelic face of the sadist.

"Alright. Alex, tend to her wounds. Butterfly, prepare a new clothes. Damian, bring refreshments." He turned to me. "Now, club dog. What should we do now?"

Kill you slowly and painfully, I thought. Alex grabbed an ice pack and held it to my arm, where Damian's lightsaber had come down on it. "Is this club always like that?" I asked Alex.

"Sometimes." He replied. "Usually, we don't really do anything, but I guess this is like your welcome party."

"Some party."

"No kidding."

Now, maybe it was just the way he looked, but, when talking to Alex, I felt a little like I was talking to a girl. His voice, word choice, and inflection all made him sound rather...girly. "Alex, are you gay?"

"I'm an equal opportunity lover." He replied. "Technically, though, I'm more like 60-40 straight, so its not exactly equal, but you know what I mean."

"Then you'll understand when I say that practically all the guys at this school are really hot?" I asked.

"Yeah, and I totally agree."

"What are you two talking about?" Damian asked, holding Sprites and handing one to Alex and I.

"Hot guys." Alex said.

"Like me?" Damian flashed us that expensive smile of his.

"You wish." I said, but he was definitely up there on the hot guy list.

After that, Adam and Butterfly joined our conversation, and we spent the rest of the time talking. Butterfly, however, with his steely gaze and emotionless face, said a total for three words, and only replied to questions asked directly at him. Damian, I learned, is a egotistical megalomaniac, and Adam switched expertly between the characters of a gentleman and demon.

.....and you think your high school is weird.....

"Whatcha thinking about?" Neil asked, dropping a small pile of textbooks onto the table, inches from my blank sheet of paper.

"Nothing." I replied. How do you explain to anyone, roommate or not--that you've been blackmailed into the position of "club dog" for a group of rich boys because they found out that you weren't the gender you were pretending to be? And from there, how do you explain the reason you're a girl at an all-boys' school, or that the reasons the Four Lords found out was because of a girly laugh and a Twilight conversation?

"Liar." Neil sat down beside me. "You seem to have a lot on your mind."

"You don't know the half of it." I murmured under my breath.

"I guess not." He opened one of his books. "You know, you don't have to keep everything to yourself. You can rely on your friends."

I shook my head and changed the subject. "Are you going anywhere for spring break?" It started after school on Wednesday, and lasted until Tuesday morning, when we had belated classes and started school again at noon. Way too short, in my opinion, but lots of students were going places like Europe and the Caribbean.

"Yeah. I'm going on a business trip with my father." He made a face like he was in pain. "I guess it can't be as bad as last year, though."

"What happened last year?"

"We went to Colorado and climbed mountains for 'fun'. What about you? Got any plans?"

Truthfully, I had only briefly considered going home, because all my siblings had school that week and Cecelia was at her grandmother's until next Friday. "Maybe I'll go home." I told him. "I might just stay here though."

"I see."

I tried to concentrate on my homework, but today's events kept popping into my mind when ever I paused to check an answer in the back of the book, or had to look up an equation. After about five minutes, in which I completed half of a problem, I asked, "Neil, what do the Four Lords do?"

He laughed, closing his book. "That's a good one. I'm pretty sure that they don't do anything, but no one knows for sure. They might sneak girls into the school, or just watch movies, but nothing productive ever comes from that club, and the only thing it produces are four arrogant boys with delusions of grandeur."

"You sure aren't complementary." I joked.

"I know." Neil set down his pencil. "I was asked to join it at the beginning of the year. After I rejected them, they asked Edmund, who also refused. They finally found a fourth member, Alex, I think his name was. But why do you ask about them?"

"No reason." I didn't know why I was lying to him, only that I didn't want him to think less of me because I was forced into that club. I closed my textbook with a snap, gathered up my TI-84 and pencils, and tucked them under my arm. "See you."

I tried to leave, but Neil grabbed my wrist. "Seriously." He said, "Friends have to be there for each other, don't they?"

Yesterday, when I was enjoying the first day of my weekend and practicing the piano in one of the music rooms, the intercom came on with a high pitched beep and called me to the office. I gathered up my sheet music and trudged through the maze of halls until I arrived at the office door. Wondering why I was called here, I knocked twice and opened the door.

Four very handsome high school boy sat on or stood around the huge principal's deck, Adam Carter held the intercom microphone, and I recognized the one holding a stack of papers as the dark haired boy who had overheard my conversation with Cecelia. Another, with very pale blond hair, leaned against the desk, and the last boy, with chestnut hair, looked so much like a girl that I would have sworn he was one, if he wasn't wearing his button down shirt unbuttoned.

Adam gestured to the dark haired boy, and he began to read aloud from his stack of papers.
"Name: Ethan Smith
Age: Fifteen
Status: Scholarship student
Plays piano, violin, and flute. Speaks English, French, and Spanish fluently, three years of German, Japanese, and Arabic.
Favorite book: Harry Potter
Favorite song: A draw between Billy Joel's Vienna and Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #4 in G
Hobbies: Bonsai training, attending renaissance fairs, gardening, and cooking"
He looked up at Adam, who finished with "Deepest secret: the fact that he's a girl."

I, pale with fear, backed up against the door. "What are you talking about?" I asked, but my voice was shaking.

"Don't worry." Adam smiled. "We won't tell anyone."

I swallowed. "How did you get all that information about me?" I questioned.

"It's because we're the Four Lords." Adam replied. "I am the leader of our club, and that's Damian Pierce." He pointed to the one with the papers. "The one that looks like a girl is Alex, but we call him Allie. The one with silver hair is called Butterfly. Together, we are the Four Lords, with extra privileges that come with being within the top ten richest and top four handsomest at Lakewood Academy."

I had stopped really listening after Butterfly's name was mentioned.

"Butterfly?" I inquired. "Is he gay?"

"No." Butterfly replied in a low voice.

"At least, rarely." Damian nudged Butterfly with his elbow.

Adam threw another winning smile my way. "We are the leaders of this school. Damian's father is the superintendent, so even the teachers have to honor our club. And with our recent acquisition of the knowledge that you're a girl, we have decided to make you our club...." He paused for dramatic effect, "our club dog."

"But--" I began to protest, but Adam shook his head, tisk-ing in a very patronizing way.

"You don't want us to spill your secret, do you?" He asked knowingly. "I could tell everybody in the school right now." He held up the intercom.

"No, please. Please don't." I cried and stepped forward. "I can't tell you why I have to go to this school, but please, please, don't tell anyone."

"Alright." Adam agreed. "From now on, you're the Lord's dog."

All four boys smiled at me in unison. It was more than a little bit creepy. "Alright, but you can't tell anyone."

"Lord's honor." Adam promised. "We meet in room 222 right after classes. Be there tomorrow."

I resigned myself to my fate, and nodded. I could feel that my strange high school life was just about to get a little bit weirder.

At lunch, Cecelia, my best friend, called. I was in the middle of an exciting conversation with the three Zacks about Lord of the Rings, when my phone sang out the beginning of the Queen of the Night's aria from Mozart's The Magic Flute. I answered it hastily.

"Nathalie!" Cecelia exclaimed. "Oh, I forgot, you're Ethan now. Ethan!" She re-greeted me.

"Hi, Cecelia." I replied and stood up from the table and walked toward the hall.

"How are things at school? You haven't called me in ages."

"Fine." I found an empty corridor and leaned against the wall. "I'm doing pretty good."

"Has anyone found out yet?" she asked conspiratorially. "About your identity?"

"No, I'm safe for now. What about you? Is anything happening back home that I should know?"

Cecelia launched herself into a detailed account on the last ten days, but got distracted halfway through, and we got to talking about Edward Cullen and the Twilight books.

"I think my favorite character would have to be Aro, you know." I said. "He's just got that great, joking attitude about everything, like, 'hey, I'm going to kill you now. No hard feelings, alright.'"

"Edward is still the coolest." Cecelia argued. "He's hot, immortal, and perfect."

"He may be hot, but he's a jerk in the second book."

"Are you one of those Team Jacob girls?"

"No, I'm not into bestiality." I joked. "I told you, I'm for Aro." Then, as I was about to go into my speech on how great he was, I heard a footstep from abound the bend. "I got to go." I said quickly and hung up, feeling like a bad best friend.

An older boy rounded the corner, smiling an expensive smile. I felt a sick lurch of fear in my stomach. When speaking with Cecelia, I hadn't bothered to lower my voice, and, to top that off, we had been talking about Twilight, enough evidence to convict me of my crime.


"You're Ethan Smith?" He asked. He had dark hair and broad shoulders, and reminded me that most of the guys at this school were quite attractive. (I used to wonder where all the hot guys were, since they weren't at my old school. Little did I know that they all went here.)

"I am."

The boy's smile widened. "Have you heard of the Four Lords?"

"No." I said truthfully.

"You'll hear of it soon." He stated, like he could tell the future. He turned to leave. "We'll be contacting you."

He left, and I didn't know if I got off easy or in even worse trouble.

Last night, Hans and Frans decided to throw a party. At ten o clock, they arrived outside Neil's and my room, each holding a six pack of beer and dragging Edmund, the three Zacks, and Taki Nakamura.

A brief histoy before we continue.

There are three Zacks: Zach, Zack, and Zaak. They hang out together most of the time, discuss time machines, life, and, occasionally, DragonBall Z. Zach is the most science-geeky, as I like to call it. Zack is Chinese with a great reverence toward math, and Zaak may or may not someday destroy the world with his crazy inventions and bad drawings.

Taki Nakamura is half Japanese and spent the first decade of his life over there. Sometimes, he forgets to speak English and often addresses everybody by honorifics. He dyed his hair golden blond, the color mine is naturally, and either wears colored contacts or has a screwed up gene pool, because his eyes are bright green.

Well, all six of them found found places on the floor or beds to sit.

"Did you invite them?" I asked Neil, who shook his head. But there was no stopping the twins when they got crazy ideas like this, I suppose.

It was eleven o clock when the Zacks left, slightly tipsy.

"Aren't you tired yet?" I asked Edmund and Taki.

"No." Taki stretched his arms behind his back. "I have a pretty high alcohol tolerance." He burped and laughed.

"I don't drink cheep beer." Edward stated matter of factly. "I won't touch it."

"That's what she said!" Taki replied.

"But 'she' can't say anything." Neil argued. "There is very little female interaction at this place. Only four teachers are women, and three of them are old and ugly, and the other is married."

I couldn't help smiling at the irony.

We ended up passing the time by watching the fourth Star Wars (the old one) while passing around cell phones. Edmund had an iPhone, Taki owned a Blackberry, and Neil wouldn't let us touch his super slim silver phone whose brand I can't identify.

"Wow." Taki exclaimed, staring at the screen of my Palm Treo. "She is so hot."

I leaned over, wondering which of my friends he was looking at. "That's Cecelia."

"Your girlfriend?"

"No." I don't swing that way, I thought, but didn't say aloud.

Taki gave a low whistle. "Cecelia-chan, you are so cute."

The other boys took their time checking out the picture of my best friend, dressed up for the dance at our old school. With her hair and makeup done by none other than moi, she looked even prettier than she did normally. I missed Cecelia the most out of everyone I left back at home.

Around one in the morning, Edmund dragged an intoxicated Taki out of our room, apologized for his behavior, and went to his dorm. I sighed heavily, briefly tidied up my room, throwing away both Neil's and my untouched beers, and fell asleep on my bed, not even bothering to change my clothes.

So concluded another strange day a Lakewood Academy.

Today, when I was skipping gym class, I tripped over a root and literally ran into boy in the north garden. I landed ungracefully in his arms, and then, with a girlish yelp I couldn't quite disguise, I jumped backward, tripped over the same bloody root, and landed on the ground with a thud. I was lucky I didn't bruise my tailbone.

"Are you OK?" The boy asked, holding out a hand to help me up. He was a tall, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes. He was--and still is--very hot.

"Yeah. I'm fine." I replied, taking his hand, and he helped me up.

"You have really small hands." The boy commented.

I forced a laugh. "Really?"

"You also have a rather girly laugh."

Crap. I thought, though I am pretty sure I wasn't thinking crap. I told my premeditated lie. "Yeah, I guess so. It's all because of my mother. She really wanted a girl, so she dressed me like one until I turned twelve." I laughed again. "It really sucks when you have girlish conditioned responses to everything."

The boy looked shocked. "Wow. I'm really sorry."

"And I'm sorry for running into you." I dusted off the back of my pants.

"What's your name?" The boy asked.

"Ethan Smith."

"Adam Carter." He stated his own. "I'm a junior here. You're a..."

"Freshman."

We said our good byes and went separate ways.



Later, when I was eating dinner with my small group of friends, I asked Neil, my roommate, about Adam Carter.

"What's he to you?" Neil said over his tacos.

"Nothing. I just ran into him today during fifth period."

"Isn't that gym class?" Edmund asked in his faint English accent.

"Yeah." Hans and Frans (German twins) confirmed concurrently. "It is."

"I wasn't feeling very well." I lied through my teeth. I couldn't actually tell them that I couldn't go to PE because I'm a girl.

"Well, Adam Carter is just the richest guy in this place." Neil said.

"I thought that was Edmund." I said sheepishly.

"I'm actually the fifth richest attendee at Lakewood Academy." Edmund corrected. "Elliot Hanson, Peter Gates, and Cornelius Blake are also in higher economic standing then I."

I'd like to take a moment here to talk about the four people I was dining with.

Hans and Frans come from a wealthy German family with "strong ties to the housing market" as they like to say. Neil told me that this means that they own over half a dozen houses. They both have light brown hair that could be called dirty blond, and they remind me a lot of Fred and George from Harry Potter. They definitely have that mischievous streak.

Edmund inherited the title of Baron of Devonshire when his father died two years ago. He's a sophomore, came from England a few years ago, and has been lying low in America. So far, I've never seen him act basely, and his brown hair is always brushed, his clothes always ironed, and his countenance is always perfect.

Yes, I go to a school full of rich kids.

And there's Neil, my roommate. I don't know about his past, other than that he came here to get away from his overbearing parents. He has dark hair, worn longer than school rules allowed (though no one seemed to mind) and eyes so blue that it seems almost unnatural, like he had sapphires implanted in his irises. He plays the violin, or, at least, he keeps one under his bed, and has an impressive collection of swords ranging from broadswords to katanas to light sabers.

Alright, back to the conversation.

"So he's the richest." I tried to scope Adam out in the dining hall, but couldn't find him. He hadn't seemed like a rich brat when I met him earlier.

Hans and Frans got up at the same time. "We're off." They said together and left.

After a short while, Edmund followed them out of the hall. I got up to leave too, having eaten my fill, but Neil grabbed my arm. "You stay and eat." He said, piling taco meat onto my plate and opening a large bag of Doritos.

"But I'm full." I argued.

"Eat." He pulled me back into my chair. "You eat so little. Like a girl. You're also really weak." He released my upper arm. "Maybe you shouldn't be skipping gym."

I ate until I felt like a balloon. I really will have to go on a diet when this is all over.

I am not a sheep. I do not bleat, I am not stupid, and I refuse to make wool. The only thing I have in common with the animal is that I am surrounded by wolves. Except a sheep among wolves is soon a dead sheep, and I am obviously neither dead nor a sheep.

But it's only a matter of time.

It has been one week to date since I started attending Lakewood Academy, the exclusive all-boys' school. I'd like to tell you where it is, but, in order to protect my identity and those of my peers, I have changed everyone's name. The school isn't even called Lakewood.

Whatever its name may be, this school is beautiful. Brick and old looking, it stands nobly at the base of a large hill. A clear lake, with waters so serene that they look made of glass, is only a ten minute walk from the main building, the grounds seem to spread on forever. Even the students look dignified, dressed in the uniform of black slacks, white button-down shirts, black shoes, and red ties. To an outsider, and even most insiders, Lakewood is a perfect place, turning boys into men and preparing them for life. There's only one problem. I'm not a boy. And, even after a week, nobody knows it.

Like I said, it's only a matter of time.