On Monday, Alvin took little Ginny and the others to school.
He thought turning the school into a boarding school had been a very wise decision.
As long as he dropped the kids off at school, he had five days to himself.
The exams were just over a month away, and this was the most stressful time of year at Battle Axe School.
Every May became "stress season" for these unlucky kids...
Old Cage had come up with the creative idea of putting the seventh through eleventh graders under pressure that month, too.
According to Old Cage, it was a warm-up, and they did it every year.
That way, when the kids reached the real crunch time, they'd find that the college entrance exams weren't such a big deal after all.
The atmosphere at school under "high-pressure conditions" wasn't exactly great...
Frank was nearly driven mad with work...
Kids born in Hell's Kitchen always had one problem or another, or you could say they had psychological issues.
Single parents, domestic violence, poverty, a lack of love...
These kids were actually pretty good at handling pressure, but many of them thought Old Cage was deliberately making trouble for them.
The boys and girls who had reached their rebellious phase were bound to react a little.
And those reactions often made all the difference in determining a person's future.
When faced with an environment that wasn't exactly welcoming, how would you respond?
Why could so many middle-class kids handle problems with ease, while some others couldn't?
At times like these, many of the kids at school chose to get into fights or find all sorts of strange ways to vent their frustration.
But Alexis, the novelist Castle's daughter, would make her own banners and organize people to help the older students protest.