While disruption can often be portrayed in a negative light, script disruption is a powerful cognitive tool when it comes to combating gendered stereotypes. Script disruption has been shown to engage the brain, which makes readers more aware of what they are reading – and therefore they are more likely to remember it. Here I analyze Tamora Pierce’s fantasy novel First Test, as it closely focalizes one female character who refuses to be hemmed in by what is expected of her gender. I hypothesize that books that depict empowered female characters, who are portrayed as such through disrupting scripts, offer implied adolescent readers’ real-life coping strategies that they can transmute from page to reality.