Blurb：
When **Tess Galloway**, **Ayla Dunn**, and **Jenna Carmichael** skip **The Foundry Academy**’s brutal **Grit Test** due to debilitating **period cramps**, literature teacher **Lorna Harding** escalates cruelty into warfare. Harding’s threats of **physical verification** and forced **5,000-meter punishment run** leave Ayla unconscious with a **menstrual hemorrhage** - until Jenna’s **ambulance call** exposes the academy’s rot.
Now branded liars by **Headmaster Crawford**, the girls weaponize their biology – slapping bloodied pads on Harding’s desk in a **#MeToo moment** that ignites **Title IX lawsuits** led by Tess’ powerhouse attorney aunt **Camille Devereaux**.
This explosive **boarding school thriller** pits:
- **Trauma-bonded teens** vs **sadistic faculty**
- **Menstrual health stigma** vs **"grit" propaganda**
- **Rich elite coverups** vs **forensic evidence**
For fans of **female rage** narratives like *Moxie* and **dark academia** systems in *Bunny* or *Ninth House*.
Content：
§01The Foundry Academy had a special kind of hell reserved for girls.
It was called the Grit Test.
An eight-hundred-meter run designed to forge character, or so the brochure claimed.
For me, Ayla, and Jenna, it was just torture.
“Mr. Keane,” I said, my voice barely a whisper against the sharp wind whipping across the athletic field. “We can’t run today. We’re… not feeling well.”
I used the code, the one our old health teacher, Ms. Adler, had taught us back in public school. The quiet signal for when the world inside your body turns into a war zone. Period cramps.
Mr. Keane, young and kind-eyed, nodded with an understanding that felt like a glass of cool water in a desert. “Go on back to the dorms, then. Rest up.”
We were halfway back when Ayla Dunn, pale as a ghost, stumbled. “I can’t make it to the dorms, Tess. It’s too far.”
“The classroom, then,” Jenna Carmichael suggested, her own face tight with pain. “It’s empty during electives.”
It seemed like the only option.
A sanctuary.
We were wrong.
Sanctuaries don’t exist at The Foundry.
Only crucibles.
§02
We had been in the supposed safety of Ms. Harding’s literature classroom for ten minutes when the door creaked open.
It wasn’t a creak.
It was a judgment.
Ms. Lorna Harding stood in the doorway, her shadow falling long and cold across the floorboards.
She was a woman built from sharp angles and disappointment, the senior literature teacher who believed suffering was the only true path to enlightenment.
Her eyes, small and hard as river stones, swept over the three of us.
“Well, well,” she began, her voice a low, menacing purr that always preceded a storm. “What have we here? The three little mice who couldn’t run.”
Jenna flinched, instinctively pulling her knees to her chest.
“We… we felt sick, Ms. Harding,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Sick,” she repeated, savoring the word like a piece of bitter chocolate. She took a slow step into the room, the door clicking shut behind her with an air of finality. “That’s a convenient word, isn’t it? A catch-all for laziness. For weakness.”
She stopped in front of my desk, leaning in so close I could smell the stale coffee on her breath.
“Your gym teacher, a young man too polite to question a girl’s delicate sensibilities, told me you claimed to be unwell. But I passed the athletic field on my way here. And I heard a different story whispered among the boys.”
Her lips curled into a sneer.
“A story about cramps. About your monthly… inconvenience.”
The air in the room turned to ice.
“So,” she hissed, straightening up and surveying us like a hawk circling its prey. “Let’s have the truth. Are you sick, or are you just bleeding?”
§03
The silence that followed her question was thick and suffocating.
Jenna started to cry, silent tears tracing paths down her pale cheeks.
Ayla, who looked like she might faint at any moment, just stared at her hands, her knuckles white.
“I asked you a question,” Ms. Harding snapped, her voice cracking like a whip.
“It’s… it’s true, Ms. Harding,” Ayla whispered, her voice trembling. “My stomach hurts. Really bad.”
“Oh, it hurts?” Harding’s tone was mocking, dripping with theatrical pity. “The poor, delicate flower. Does the pain of being a woman prevent you from the simple task of putting one foot in front of the other?”
She picked up the massive Norton Anthology of American Literature from a nearby desk. It was thick enough to stop a bullet.
“I’ve had my period for thirty-five years, girls. Do you think I don’t know what it feels like? It’s a mild discomfort. An excuse. And at The Foundry, we do not tolerate excuses.”
With a sudden, violent movement, she slammed the anthology down on the desk right next to Ayla’s head.
BAM!
The sound exploded in the quiet room.
We all jumped. Ayla let out a small, terrified squeak.
“You are here to be forged into leaders,” Harding seethed, her face flushed with a righteous fury. “Not to coddle your minor biological functions. You think the world stops for a little blood? You think a boardroom will postpone a meeting because you’re feeling bloated?”
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