When twelve-year-old Jeri McKane's friend and biology lab partner, Abby Wright, is injured in a lab accident, Jeri and her friends try to find the firebug at Landmark School.

When the Landmark School for Girls' van carrying an art teacher and six students disappears near an ice-covered lake on the way back from a field trip, twelve-year-old Jeri desperately wants to help but everything she tries seems to make the situation worse.

Fourteen-year-old Morgan alienates her friends and family when she spends all of her time online talking to strangers in various chat groups.

Alex is unhappy living with her mother's parents in Indiana while her mother and alcoholic father remain in Texas, and her life becomes more complicated when she uses her computer to act on her suspicions about her grandparents' new neighbor, who Alex is certain is a criminal.