Fifth grader Tamaya Dhilwaddi attends Woodridge Academy, a small, private school in western Pennsylvania. The school was once the four-story home of wealthy William Heath, after whom the town Heath Cliff was named. Woodridge Academy is enclosed by heavily wooded areas riddled with rocky hills. Tamaya’s mother doesn’t allow her to walk to school by herself, so for years Tamaya has walked with her neighbor, seventh grader Marshall Walsh. Their walk is two miles long because they must go around the woods. Tamaya’s parents are divorced. Tamaya lives with her mother but spends most of the summer with her father in Philadelphia. She feels left behind by her friends when she returns.

Tamaya and her friends Monica, Hope, and Summer excitedly eat lunch in the school cafeteria with upper grade boys, who regale them with gruesome stories of a mad hermit who lives in the woods. He has a bloody beard and red-eyed, wolf-like dogs who help pre-chew his food. Tamaya thinks the boys are showing off but enjoys their attention. When one rough-looking boy brags that a wolf almost got him, Tamaya protests that students aren’t allowed in the woods. Her comment breaks the

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