From the bestselling author of Alice and Lost Boy comes this chilling dark fantasy Lauren and Miranda have been best friends forever, best friends since they were little girls. Almost every day they would call each other on the phone and one of them would say, "Meet me by the old ghost-tree" and then they would have adventures in the woods, even though there were some parts of the woods they weren't supposed to go. But in the last year things don't seem to be the same as they used to be.Miranda's a lot more interested in boys, for one thing, and Lauren can't stop being angry at her mother since her father died the previous year. Lauren's mother doesn't know what to do with a daughter she never understood, and Miranda's mother is too self-involved to realize what her not-yet-adult daughter is getting herself into. And then there is the town itself - a town where every year one girl dies mysteriously, but no one ever talks about it. A town that has experienced exceptional luck when all the towns around it died as industry and jobs left. A town cursed long ago by something that lingers in the empty house on top of the hill, and in the woods all around, and in the very soil the homes are built on.