Fifteen-year-old Ryan Kettering has spent his young life in a series of mostly abusive foster homes. But his luck has changed. He is now in the Preston house, where he has a budding romance with fellow foster child Lyssa. But something strange is going on in the basement. Maddy is a slow nine-year-old girl who is kept in the basement. Sometimes she talks in a gravelly adult voice. Sometimes she seems to know things about others that she could not possibly know . . . and predicts things that always come true. And sometimes people from the government come by to spend time with Maddy down in the basement. Maybe Ryan's luck has not changed as much as he thinks.