Olivia “Ollie” Adler is an 11-year-old girl who lives in the small town of East Evansburg, Vermont. As the story opens, Ollie can’t wait for school to end so she can ride her bike and enjoy the rest of a late-October afternoon. She barely listens to her teacher, Mr. Easton, but easily solves a math problem that stumps everyone else. After class, Mr. Easton calls her aside and hints that the chess club would appreciate more of her coaching, but Ollie shrugs off the idea of rejoining the group.

Outside the school building, Ollie notices a disturbance. A boy named Phil Greenblatt has taken the notebook of a girl named Coco Zintner, a transfer student. Ollie thinks, “Coco would not have been out of place in a troop of flower fairies. Her eyes were large, slanting, and ice-blue. Her strawberry-blond hair was so strawberry that in the sunshine it looked pink” (6).

Coco is desperately trying to grab her notebook, which contains a sketch of her with a boy named Brian Battersby. Brian is embarrassed when he sees the heart drawn around their image. Coco pleads to have her notebook back, but Phil refuses.