Hazel and Amelia Amelia the trafficked girl about 12 years old. She has worked for the family since she was 8. Lynch family, Diane (Mom), Kate and William are twins, also 15 holding Amelia without pay. Dad is Bill. Biggest house. They are the popular kids. Fanciest clothes. Hazel, the reader/decoder/puzzle solver She's 15. She lives in an apartment building next to the sprawling house of the Lynch family. Hazel's family are landscapers. Plot: Chapter 1 Hazel goes to school. Humble clothes, glasses, strong and wiry but not on any team because she has to help her family. A friendly smiling face. Other kids like her but she keeps to herself, talks little, doesn't care about being cool. She loves all the academic subjects and is very strong at math and woodworking. Her best friend Ethan is from woodworking class. Ethan's family are mechanics. They repair police cars and emergency vehicles. Ethan stutters a bit. Every day the Lynch family kids William and Kate [deliberately named after the royal couple in England] come to school on hoverboards. Always the latest models. They are good looking and on all the teams. Their clothes are never rumpled They look good and are very popular. Their family owns a sneaker import business that does business with the Philippines and elsewhere where labor is cheap. Kate is somewhat friendly to Hazel when they are in study hall because Hazel helps her with her math homework. When Kate is with other friends, Kate treats Hazel as if she were invisible. William teases Ethan about his stuttering, effectively shutting him out of most groups, but Ethan is a strong track and field athelete. Especially pole vaulting which is his passion. William is the quarterback of the football team. Ethan's friends are police. Chapter 2: William and Kate leave the house kissing their Mom goodbye but without even acknowledging Amelia who's left behind with a mountain of dishes and lots of chores. We see her washing dishes and ironing and fetching things for Diane [another royal name]. She also cleans the kids' rooms. She stashes away some of their early reading books which she hides in her own room so she can learn to read. She goes outside to sweep the deck chairs. Diane calls to her. "The Landscapers are here. Come quickly girl." Amelia has an electronic strap attached to her ankle that will shock her if she goes out of range. She had tried to run away in the past. While the landscapers are there, Diane does not want Amelia to be seen so she turns down the range of the strap. When they leave, she goes out to sweep the chairs and the deck of any grass and dirt they left. When the Lynch kids come home, they track in dirt and drop their sweaty clothes on the floor, knowing that Amelia will pick them up, clean and iron them. William particularly enjoys throwing dirty socks at Amelia and telling her to "fetch". "Yes, Mr. William." Amelia replies. If she is not fast enough William hits her and not kindly. Kate is not physical but simply ignores Amelia. Chapter 3: Flashback to a younger Amelia: Amelia sounds out words and gets better and better at reading. As she takes out the trash, she starts to read the advertisement text which she recognizes as similar to what she hears in the TV ads. Diane has Amelia help her with cooking. Diane assumes Amelia can't read but one time Amelia puts in an ingredient that is in the recipe that Diane didn't ask her too. Diane looks at her with suspicion. Amelia instinctively realizes she shouldn't reveal she knows how to read and tell her "Madame Diane, you told me." Someone gives William a present of a book of Sherlock Holmes stories. Amelia reads a few pages now and then and comes across "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" in which a code of stick figures of men dancing carries threatening messages. Amelia begins to copy the sticks and their meanings. She steals a pad and one day she sees the landscapers. Hazel is with the laborers and works alongside them. Amelia decides Hazel is ok. A gardener asks Hazel where she goes to school and Hazel tells them Brookfield High. Amelia knows this is where William and Kate go to school because of their sweatshirts. Further Amelia also hears that Hazel loves Sherlock Holmes. Amelia knows she can't leave a direct message to Hazel because it might be intercepted. Instead, she leaves a series of stick figure messages. Not the same code as in the story but just a bunch of lines, vertical and horizontal crossing different numbers of times. dear hazel, my name is amelia i am filipina. i am 12 years old. i want to go to school, but i cannot leave this house. they keep me strapped at the ankle. Here it is in code: --|- -|| - |-| __ --| - --- -|| -||| ,|-|- -|- __ || - |-|- -|| __ ||-- -|-- __ - |-|- -|| -||| ||-- - __ ||-- __ - |-|- __ ---| ||-- -||| ||-- |--- ||-- || - . __ ||-- __ - |-|- __ 12 __ -|- -|| - |-| -|-- __ -| -||| --|- .||-- __ ---- - || |- __ |- -| __ |-|| -| __ |- -| __ -|-- --|| --| -| -| -||| , __ -|-| -- |- __ ||-- __ --|| - || || -| |- __ -||| -|| - |||- -|| __ |- --| ||-- -|-- __ --| -| -- -|-- -|| .|- --| -|| -|- __ -||- -|| -|| |--- __ |-|- -|| __ -|-- |- |-| - |--- |--- -|| --|- __ - |- __ |- --| -|| __ - || -||- -||| -|| . Hazel picks up a note but doesn't know what the characters mean. She hasn't gotten to that story yet. But she keeps the note. Chapter 4: The next time at the Lynch house, Hazel looks inside a basement window and sees a girl working there. Hazel knocks at the window and waives. Amelia looks up and passes her a picture of more stick figures Now, Hazel knows the source of the note. "What a funny game!" One day, Hazel is looking at her book and she sees "The Adventure of the Dancing Men". She starts to read it and realizes that the girl in the Lynch house might be sending her something in code. She starts to use the same decoding technique that Sherlock Holmes uses. The most frequent letter should be "e". Next comes "t". She realizes that whoever has written these messages has written them for her Hazel, so she tries to fit her name in the second word. Then she sees "12" and thinks that might be about the age of the girl so fits the next two words to "years" and "old". When she finishes decoding, she reads the whole thing and is horrified. Hazel's parents are Mexican and so don't want to go to the police. She talks to Ethan. Ethan is sympathetic, but says there must be more evidence to get a warrant. She needs to be invited inside the house. As if reading her thoughts, Kate comes up to her and says, "Hazel, could you come over today after school. I need your help with something." Chapter 5: Kate and her friends are planning a "Color Uncoordinated" party. The idea is that every girl will wear a solid color hat, a solid color blouse, a solid color skirt, and solid color shoes. The allowed colors are pink, pale blue, bright green, and sun yellow. No girl should wear the same color twice and no two girls should have more than two pieces of clothing the same color. So, Kate and Tiffany can have the same color shirt and hat, but then they should have different color skirts and different color shoes. Kate needs Hazel's help to figure this out. So Hazel goes to Kate's house and sees how neat and ironed everything is in Kate's closet. Kate facetimes her friends. She helps Kate and her friends pick out their wardrobes as if this is the most important thing in the world. pink, pale blue, bright green, and sun yellow. Friend 1: pale blue, pink, sun yellow, bright green Friend 2: pink, pale blue, sun yellow, bright green Friend 3: pink, sun yellow, pale blue, bright green Friend 4: pink, sun yellow, bright green, pale blue Friend 5: bright green, sun yellow, pale blue, pink Kate: pale blue, bright green, sun yellow, pink In the process Kate pulls clothes out of her closets and lays them around the room. Hazel asks Kate. When will you have time to clean this mess up? Kate: "On, Ame... I mean I'll do it later." Hazel knows. Because Hazel is a minor, her word might not rise to the bar of probable cause. Have to get a member of the family to admit to Amelia's existence and then they could check that she wasn't declared as a dependent by the Lynch. Hazel writes back to Amelia in code: amalia, leave a smudge on william's shirt In code this comes out to: - |-|- -|| -||| ||-- - ,-||| -|| - |||- -|| __ - __ -|-- |-|- -- --|- |-|| -|| __ -| || __ ---- ||-- -||| -||| ||-- - |-|- '-|-- __ -|-- --| ||-- |-| |- Chapter 6: William makes fun of Ethan for stuttering. Ethan shoots back "Haha. At least my shirts are clean. Look at that stain." William "Damn stupid Amelia." Hazel records the whole thing. The police go in allegedly to check for illegals. They find Amnlia with her ankle strap. They see that it's electrified. The Lynch parents get arrested. The kids must go off to relatives. Hazel's family adopts Amelia. Chapter 7: Amelia starts school. She struggles but Hazel helps her. Maybe they're going to solve other mysteries together.