The first-day-at-a-new-school jitters were already getting to me, and I knew that if I didn't find some quiet place to hide and freak out in soon, I'd probably have a meltdown right there in front of the entire senior class. Everything here at Disney Academy is bright, colorful, and somewhat magical. Music plays in the hallways in between classes. The classrooms are painted in outrageous themes. No one room or hallway is identical to another. And the entire school looks like one big castle with stained-glass windows, towers, a moat, and all. Mother said the first day would be the hardest, but I don't think she had any idea exactly what this high school would be like at all.

I've been homeschooled my entire life, and since I didn't have to leave the house to go to school, I didn't really leave much at all. For the first few years of my life, I was entirely content with cleaning house, playing guitar, and blogging right inside the comforts of my own little abode. But after finishing my junior year still cooped up inside my room, I told Mother it was time for a change. Following many late-night arguments, begs and pleadings, and a whole lot of online research, Mother and I settled on signing me up for Disney Academy, the prestigious boarding school where she could keep a close eye on me as the new Home Ec. teacher.

Now here I am, trying desperately to find my room as other students bump past on the way to the "Welcome Back" party in the Dining Hall. I tap someone's shoulder as they pass, but she keeps walking, totally unaware of my presence. "Um, can you help me?" I ask to another, but she seems busy talking to her friend. In indignation and quite a bit of frustration, I drop my bags with a huff. "Alright, somebody please help me!"

Someone must hear me because they start chortling. I look around until I find the source of the snorting laughter and see a girl with the most unruly red hair. Her blue eyes flash in the sunlight streaming in through the stained-glass window she's standing under. "I see. You must be the new girl that we were expecting. Here." She walks over, picks up one of my heavier bags like its nothing, and totes it across the hall to the door of room number A113.

"Oh, my name is Merida, by the way." She bangs one fist against the dark wood of the door. "Violet, open up!" Another voice behind the door shouts something back, but I don't make out what she says before the door swings open. Merida chunks my bag inside, and I cringe when I hear the crunching noise it makes when it hits the ground in the room beyond her. A girl with long, dark hair and big eyes stands inside the room, and she looks rather annoyed. Merida gestures to the girl with both hands and smiles. "This here is one of my roommates, Violet Parr."

"Hi," Violet nods to me, "and your name is?"

"Oh." I push my bangs behind one ear and offer her my hand. "I'm Rapunzel. Nice to meet you, Violet." She shakes my hand. "And you too, Merida." Merida snorts and shakes my hand as well.

"Rapunzel? I'm just gunna call ya Punzie. You can call me Mer for short, and don't bother with Violet. Just call her Vi." She spreads her arms wide. "Welcome to our humble home!"

I look past her into a room that is anything but humble. What I can see from the entrance is just the common room that links four bedrooms. Mer shows me my bedroom, which is twice the size of the one I have at home, and leaves me to unpack my stuff. "Make yourself at home, Punzie. I'm sure our other roommate, Ariel, will be back sometime, but ya never know when with her."

Mer shuts the door behind her, and I can't help but wonder what a Scottish girl is doing here in the middle of Maine at Disney Academy. I fall down onto my bed and sigh, wishing that I could stay here all night and not have to meet all these new people. A moment later, Violet sticks her head in the door. "Hey, um, we're going to go ahead and head down to the party. Merida wanted to know if you'd like to walk down there with us, since you don't really know the way."

I shake my head. "I don't think I'm up for a party. Maybe some other time." Violet shrugs and closes the door. After I hear Merida shout some indiscernible good-bye, I fish around in my bags for my laptop, pull it out, and set it on my bed beside me. "Maybe I should go to the party," I mumble to myself. "I mean, it wouldn't be so bad." I grab the little card from my purse, the invitation to the party. It says semi-casual wear. But what does "semi-casual" even mean? I try to think back to what Violet was wearing when she left, but I remember only her head.

My laptop screen begs me not to go, but I can't help myself. This is my first chance to really meet people. I can't turn it down now. So I grab the tote with my best clothes in it, find a semi-casual looking, light pink cocktail that is vintage, covered with lace, and falls just to the top of my knees. I pull on my strappy, brown sandals and look at myself in the long mirror attached to my closet door. My hair flows long and freely down my back, but it's looking a little ratty since I did it this morning. With deft fingers and quite a bit of practice, I weave my impossibly long hair into a thick braid that falls down to my lower back. I finish it all off with my flower barrette and walk out the door. Right into another girl.

Despite the red hair, she isn't Merida, and she certainly isn't Violet. So she must be Ariel, the almost always absent Ariel that Violet was talking about. When we collide, a purse falls out of her hands, and the contents scatter across the floor. There are all sorts of things like: kitchen utensils, used soda cans, bottle caps, and even a man's smoking pipe. "Oh!" She leaps to pick up the items and shove them back in her purse. I try to help her, but she just yanks the things from my hands as I pick them up. "Those are mine. I'm terribly sorry that I bumped into you like that. You must be the new girl, Marigold? Or was it Rose? It was some flower name, right?"

"Rapunzel," I say softly.

Ariel snorts and winks at me. "Gesundheit." She bursts into a tizzy of giggles. "Oh, that's all we need, isn't it? Another girl that's named after some plant. Hi, I'm Ariel." We both stand at the same time, and she thrusts a hand at me. I shake it timidly and wonder if all red-haired people are as sure of themselves as my two roommates are. Ariel looks me up and down. "Oh! Are you going to the party? I forgot all about it! I promised Eric that I would go!" She grabs my hands in hers and looks right into my eyes. "Please, wait just a moment, and I'll walk with you!" I nod, my mouth hanging open a little. She smiles brightly and her blue eyes glitter. "Thanks! I'll be right back!"

She rushes off into her room, and before I know it, is back in a flash, dressed in a sleeveless, sea-blue gown that shimmers all the way down to where it brushes the floor. "Come on! We'll be late!" Ariel loops her arm through one of mine and drags me to the door of our dorm. The walk there is a rush, and I can't even slow down long enough to get my bearings so that I might find this place tomorrow before we're already standing at the door, waiting to go in.

"Tickets, please." The large man at the door holds out his hand to me and Ariel. Ariel reaches inside the little purse that she brought and pulls out her ticket, but I suddenly realize that I left mine in the room.

"I'll be right back. I just have to go my ticket from my room." And before she can protest, I scamper off down the hallway. A few minutes later after walking down plenty of empty halls, I find myself completely lost and with no way to get back. "Hello? Is there anybody here? I'm a little lost." My voice echoes through the hall as I look up at the incredibly high ceilings painted with all manner of fairytales. While gazing up at the pictures on the walls, I bump right in to a young man with dark brown hair.

"Whoa there, Blondie. Watch where you're going." He places his hands on my shoulders and backs me away from where I was pressed to his chest. After a few more moments of him staring at me in curiosity and me staring at him in terror/horror, he cocks his head and smiles. "Do I know you?"

There's a little bit of stubble on his chin, and his eyes are the color of chocolate. I like chocolate. His hair. Oh my gosh, his hair. And that smile? I think I squeak more than answer, "No." I clutch the purse in my hands until my knuckles turn white.

"Hey, the name's Flynn." He runs his fingers through his somewhat messy hair and smiles. "What's your name?"

"Rapunzel."

His eyebrows quiver for a moment, but the smile never fades. "I'll just stick with, Blondie." He takes a deep breath. "I don't know how you ended up in the boy's dormitory hall, but may I just say, you look stunning in that dress. Do you model?"

I give him a questioning look, and suddenly, I start to wonder if maybe I was better off lost. "Um, no?"

He nods and looks me up and down as if appraising me as Ariel, Merida, and Violet did earlier. "You should. Is there anything I can help you with, Blondie? I mean anything?"

I swallow hard and try to look determined and confident like Merida. "I'm lost, and I need someone to show me how to get back to my room. After that, you can show me to the Dining Hall."

"Blondie," he says as he puts his arm across my shoulder, "that sounds delightful. So, let me tell you about the time I stole Merida's bow…" As he shows me to my room, he regales me with the hilarious tale of how he took my roommates bow, the kind you shoot arrows with and not the one that you put in your hair apparently, but when we reach the door to my room, Flynn puts a hand in front of me before I can enter. "Hey, Blondie. Who says we have to go to that party anyway? We can slip out and go see a movie or something."

I wasn't sure what "or something" meant, but I had a bad feeling that this wasn't going to end well. Mother told me about the dangers of being around men, and I had decided to stay away from them as much as possible. Flynn had seemed alright until right now when he kept trying to wrap his arms around me. So, I do the sensible thing and whack Flynn in the head with my purse as hard as I can. Flynn falls backwards and lands on his butt. "What on Earth do you have in that purse? A frying pan?"

I slam the door to the room shut behind me, and a few minutes later, I hear him stand and leave, grumbling about that being the fourth time this week. Once he's gone, I slide down the door and heave a sigh. This is shaping up to be a horrible first day. Something crashes in one of the rooms, and then Merida emerges from behind the door that must lead to her dorm. "Punzie? When I came back to change shoes, you weren't still in your room. Did you just get here?" I don't answer.

Merida, clad in a high-low, red plaid skirt and white blouse, plops down on the floor next to me. "What's wrong?" I explain to her the whole story of meeting Ariel, forgetting my ticket, and meeting Flynn. Merida nods along with the story and groans when I mention Flynn's name. "That's Flynn Rider alright. I'd stay away from him if I were you, Punzie. He's trouble, always getting caught for stealing and such. He's broken the heart of nearly every girl in the Academy. You'd do well to avoid him." She finishes lacing up her black, combat boots. "Shall we be off then?"

I smile at her and nod. "Just let me get my ticket, ok?" Once I'm back with the ticket in hand, Merida opens the door, and we walk to the Dining Hall, slower this time so that I can get a good look at the place. "So did Flynn really steal your bow?"

Merida snorts. "Oh, yeah. He regrets doing that, mind you. I taught him a lesson he'll have a hard time forgetting. Posted pictures of him everywhere, but I used Photoshop to make his nose look all wrong. He's got something about that nose of his that I'll never understand, but he left me alone after that." Mer laughs and shakes her head, as if remembering the incident fondly. "That was a hoot."

We hand our tickets to the man at the door, and he ushers us in. The party started an hour ago, so everything is in full swing when we enter. The music pounds in my head and chest and many of the people around me sing along loudly. Almost everyone at Disney Academy seems to have three things: the ability to sing, the ability to dance, and very nice clothes to do all this in. Merida nods her head along with the beat but only murmurs the words. When she sees me glancing around nervously, she grabs my hand, pulls me along, and starts introducing me to people.

Everything seems to be going great until, out of the blue, all the lights and the music shut off. There is almost no light to filter in through the giant windows at this time of night, and a chill settles around the room. Then, a single spotlight turns on the stage at one of the far ends of the room. A lone figure, a boy, stands in the spotlight with a microphone in hand. His hair is glistening white, and he wears simple jeans and a blue hoodie. "Hello, Disney. My name is Jack Frost, and we're crashing your party."