Lisa Frehling and her family have just moved to the rural village of Weyland, nestled near the looming foothills of towering Silverface Mountain. She's finishing the last half of the school year now, at Coldbrook Elementary. 

No problem for Lisa, she's quickly becoming known as the class brain. Being smart is not odd, but do some of her classmates think she's a little strange? With her lazy eye, one can not be sure if she's looking at you or off to the side. And with one blue eye and one green eye...    

The Sixth Graders at Coldbrook are the Kings and Queens of the school, as high as one goes before graduating to Junior High, a long bus trip to the city and a new way of life.  

Cory Scarwid is the creep who's bothering her on the way home. He's calling her 'Loony Lisa!" and running by, he likes to push her books to the ground. 

But she teams up the Jeanne Bonds, and spies a shiny charm bracelet laying in the grass one day on the way home from school. She picks it up. "Finder, Keepers," Jeanne pronounces and Lisa feels doubly blessed, to wear a magical bracelet and to have, finally, for her, that rarest of wonders, a real friend.

Then the bad things start to happen...