Alice’s mind was miles away from Father Stephenson’s lecture on the Trail of Tears during 8th period. She’d been an exemplary student all her life, but since turning 18 at the beginning of the school year, she’d been unable to focus on anything but her escape from St. Ignace’s. She might have felt guilty not paying attention to such a horrific story before, but she couldn’t help but watch the second hand of the clock abov...

Alice leaned her head on her pale, freckled hand and looked out the window of her classroom on the 3rd floor of St. Ignace’s Academy for Young Women, longing for adventure. It was three weeks from Christmas and the Cincinnati snow floated down ever so slowly, almost as slowly as her senior year was going by. Somehow turning eighteen at the beginning of the school year only added to the torture of waiting to leave. Sister...