“You would be forgiven for thinking Alex Morningside was a boy. In fact she would be the first to laugh at this, because, for one thing, she wasn’t, and for another, she didn’t mind people thinking otherwise. This was because she had an Excellent Sense of Humor. It wasn’t that she wanted to be a boy or anything, it was simply that she didn’t see much difference in being treated as a girl or boy. Because, after all, everyone is just people.

One of the reasons people thought she was a boy was her haircut. Her haircut looked like someone had put a bowl on her head and cut around it. Which is exactly what her uncle did. Also, they thought she was a boy because her name was Alex. Of course, Alex was short for Alexandra but neither Alex nor her uncle liked that very much, so they shortened the name. They could have shortened it the other way, I suppose—Andra—but she and her uncle preferred Alex.

Anyway, as you may already have guessed, Alex lived with her uncle, and her uncle lived above his shop. The shop was very special because it was on the side of a bridge. It was also very special because it was very useful. A useful shop is a shop that sells something like fruit and vegetables because you need fruit and vegetables to stay healthy and therefore they are necessary. Whereas a non-useful shop is a shop that sells things like antiques or jewelry, which are both lovely things, but are definitely not something you need to stay healthy, no matter what people tell you.

Alex’s uncle’s shop was useful because Alex’s uncle sold doorknobs, and what could be more necessary than that? If you didn’t have doorknobs you would find yourself trapped in your own home, or worse, unable to get into your own home, and you’d have to sleep outside on the street. And then your own home itself would become useless. Which would be horrible. At this point in her life Alex could only imagine the horribleness of not having a home to return to. Unfortunately, she would learn all too soon what being without a home was really like.

But back to the doorknobs because there is so much more to tell about doorknobs. For example, your personal favorite kind of doorknob might be brass because you like the smell of brass, and the fact that it’s always cold, but Alex’s favorite kind of doorknob was crystal because when the sun shone through it, it would make rainbows. Her uncle had all other kinds of doorknobs as well, though. Some looked like clear glass balls with butterflies trapped in the middle and some were shaped like letters from the alphabet and some were made of fluffy fabric. And because it was a small shop, there was barely any room for all the different types of doorknobs, so it looked rather magnificent, and Alex would always feel very special that she lived with her uncle in his shop.

To be perfectly accurate, Alex didn’t live in the shop, but above it. And even better, she lived in a tiny turret at the very top. And even though it was tiny, Alex just loved her turret, and would spend much time up there developing photographs. Alex was a keen photographer— she had been ever since she was really little. She also liked making up stories, though she wasn’t sure if the Alex in her stories was as brave as the Alex in real life. Well it didn’t matter, because her imagination was her own, and she could do with it whatever she wanted. Except of course when she had to go to school. Which I would like to tell you about . . . Now.

This school Alex attended was called The Wigpowder-Steele Academy, and it was very prestigious. What made it so prestigious was the fact that it had the word “Academy” in the title and the fact that it was one of those schools you pay to go to. This ensured a Higher Quality of Education and more importantly a Higher Quality of Pupil, because if you spend all that money it means that your child is therefore really special. Of course “special” doesn’t always mean “intelligent,” and in this case, as Alex had most definitely concluded after careful research, “special” seemed to mean, simply, “rich.” Anyway, because The Wigpowder-Steele Academy was so prestigious, it had a board of directors who got to meet and discuss things and eat iced pastries around a large wooden table. Alex’s uncle sat on this board. And for this reason, even though she and her uncle wouldn’t otherwise have been able to afford it, Alex got to go to Wigpowder-Steele for free.

As much as she enjoyed learning, which she did—a lot—Alex did not enjoy Wigpowder-Steele. She didn’t enjoy wearing a uniform with a skirt. She didn’t enjoy her teachers, who were all very old and smelled funny and didn’t seem to know about any of the developments that had happened in the world in the last thirty years. And she most definitely did not enjoy her peers,who were more concerned with how their hair looked than listening in class, and who were quite simply ridiculous. However, that was okay because her peers didn’t enjoy her much either, and she spent most of her time on her own. So you can understand why, on her first day back at school, despite her fondness for all things educational, Alex remained ever so slightly tentative....”