Ivy and her group of unusual companions live in a house on the beach. Wanting little more than a playful wrestling match and a good meal, the teenaged Ivy is rather self-centered and does not see a reason to look beyond her own little world. All that changes when Adele, a wiser housemate, sends her into the outside world to meet a seven-year-old prodigy named Nina Fairchild.

Ivy has always known she's a little bit different; no one else she's ever met has her unusual features or her telekinetic powers. But none of this has ever been an issue to Ivy; when she even noticed that her quirks were unique, she simply didn't care. Once Nina is in the picture, however, she begins to see that the world might have more to offer her, and she starts to wonder where her place is. And at the same time, she has to help Nina find her purpose by bringing her into her own little utopia. Their relationship with each other causes waves on both sides of the lake.

Ivy's attempts to get closer to Nina raise the suspicions of her school and family, and though the two just want to learn about each other's world, circumstances make it difficult. Ivy finds herself dealing with feelings of self-consciousness and inferiority for the first time in her life, and doesn't know how to deal with it. And Nina, for her part, discovers she has some unusual abilities of her own. Eventually, with help, the two resolve their purposes and experience a little eye-opening, but not before a lot of soul-searching and misunderstanding. Ivy's is a personal story that filters society through the eyes of an outsider, revealing the nonsensical as well as the worthwhile.

THTIB #2

Ivy and her housemate Bailey are incurable pranksters. When Ivy is told that her services as the house roommate finder are indefinitely suspended, she decides to focus on making pranks an art by engaging in a competition with Bailey. Balancing that, another roommate convinces Ivy to combat boredom by trying to go to a regular high school and learn about the world.

Strings are pulled and Ivy is allowed to enter ninth grade unofficially. She makes some tentative friends and a couple immediate enemies, and finds herself bewildered by but interested in the knowledge of the human world. She finds it difficult to reconcile her act as a normal human girl with her behavior at home; after all, she's engaged in a contest that glorifies the use of those very abilities she's trying so hard to hide while in school.

After her closest friends wiggle in through some chinks in her armor, Ivy finds that not all humans are as judgmental as she thought. However, some are downright mind-boggling (such as teenage boys). At one point Ivy finds out about a woman named Miss Margaret who used to take care of her before she remembered anything; this woman is the closest thing Ivy has to a mother, and she feels she's found a bit of her roots. In any case, life seems to be good, with Ivy learning about customs such as Halloween and high school sleepovers, until one day she unwisely mixes the prank war with her schooling and recoils from the mess she's left behind.

Again, Ivy deals with the theme of "where do I belong, and what do I even want from this world?" During her trials and tribulations, she discovers an awful lot about herself, and throws herself into celebrating an unexpected musical talent. It is in this book that Ivy also first experiments with a whole host of new activities: Learning to make artistic winds, relating to a roommate she's mostly ignored before, balancing social activities and homework, and learning (unfortunately) to lie very well. Eventually she comes to a conclusion about what she can do with the information she's gathered from the academic and social world, and learns to use it to make herself a more complete person.

THTIB #3

This book has Ivy in a difficult situation: She has brought the house an unauthorized roommate, and she wants to keep him AND her new music lessons. The problem is, they don't have the money to do both, so Ivy has to find a way to earn money.

The first part of this book has Ivy doing various activities in exchange for payment, balanced with her music lessons and her attempts to understand Zeke, who is pressuring her for a romantic relationship. On top of that, a fellow music student named Ami becomes partial to some of Ivy's secrets and raises questions in her mind about religion. Ivy struggles to understand more of the world than she feels she can.

After much cajoling, Zeke gets Ivy's permission to take her to a Christmas party, and though she doesn't understand Christmas she has a good time until someone has the bad idea to give her champagne. The alcohol affects her telekinetic abilities in a way that makes her uncomfortable, and when she's trying to convey the situation to Zeke, he tries instead to create a romantic interlude. Ivy does not respond well and ends up passing out, only to awaken in a room she's destroyed in her sleep. After that she needs to get away, and stays with her friend and guardian Miss Margaret.

After unexpectedly stopping a crime in Margaret's business that night, Ivy begins to ponder her usefulness. Miss Margaret sponsors her on a find-your-purpose tour, where Ivy goes off on her own and answers a newspaper ad for a special effects designer for a play. There she meets director Ruben Redwing, and her whole life changes.

Though she's using extraordinary abilities to participate, Ivy learns more about the regular human world as she becomes part of something bigger than herself: The tech team of Ruben's new play Imagination. And she and Ruben become fast friends and roommates, with Ruben being fascinated by her but not in a way that makes her feel objectified. She becomes frustrated because after all her experiences with Zeke she's stuck thinking if she *likes* a guy this much she should have some romantic interest, and none has surfaced on her part.

Eventually, Ivy learns enough about the art of theater to feel like she's part of something grand and worthwhile, something that lets her use what she's good at as something more than a parlor trick, and beyond that she finds what her relationship with Ruben really does mean. Things get settled between Ivy and Zeke, and they decide they're happy being friends. And Ivy moves more or less officially out of the house to live with Ruben, becoming partners in art and fashioning the beginning of an identity for Ivy.

THTIB #4

No longer involved in any theatrical productions, Ivy makes herself useful playing housemaid for Ruben and wishing she could do anything to cheer up her depressed roommate. Ruben wants to do something meaningful and begin to teach creativity workshops for children, but they lack the funds. Ruben finds an offer by the Grant Institute on the Internet to just give a million dollars away, but there's a catch: They're offering the money in exchange for proof of some sort of psychic phenomena.

After arguing with Ivy for a while about whether she "counts" and whether she's willing, Ruben convinces her to make the trip to California and satisfy this deal. Ivy desperately wants to please Ruben—she's at the point where she really wants to do anything to make him happy—but this scenario makes her very wary. Nevertheless, they board a bus and Ivy goes off to satisfy the contract.

Obviously, Ivy has what it takes and convinces Mr. Grant of the existence of telekinesis, and she receives a fat check in return. While waiting to do this, though, Ivy meets some interesting characters, most notably a janitor named Drew who pretends to be stupid but is actually interested in helping her find other people like herself. Files he has snooped through reveal that another person applied for the prize claiming her same ability, but he couldn't perform it on purpose so he was disqualified. Ivy gets Drew to give her the name and address so that she can at least have a chance.

Ruben starts his creativity workshop with much success, and Ivy and he get a house together. Ivy begins to feel useless, and finally decides to look up this guy who's supposed to have her power, even though she's afraid. The guy's name is Max, and after a phone conversation revealing that he sometimes "does things" when he doesn't mean to, the two decide they want to meet. Ivy flies to New York to meet Max, and ends up teaching him to use his ability better. It's a huge change of perspective for Ivy to find someone similar to herself, though his abilities are nowhere near as strong as hers. He can't even fly, and that disappoints her.

Then something big rocks Ivy's world: She finds that a tabloid did a story on what she did at the Grant Institute, and as a result a woman who believes herself to be Ivy's birth mother has contacted her. At this, Ivy goes through huge bursts of denial and curiosity, and finally after being encouraged by mentors at her beach house and by Max as well, Ivy calls the phone number in the contact letter and becomes acquainted with her brother.

During a family dinner, Ivy also meets her father and mother, and gets a lot of her questions answered. However, none of them know what caused her to look the way she does or what gave her her powers, and no one in her family shares her odd traits. It's disappointing. She searches for bits of identity she's lost even though finding her family picks up other pieces she'd never found before.

Other issues also begin to plague Ivy: She misses Ruben, as she's been staying with Max and her own beach house instead of going back there, and Ruben seems to have found a new best friend in her absence. Ivy also misses her relationships with Nina and with Bailey, and struggles to reconcile. When trying to gather together contact information for everyone she misses, Ivy ends up accidentally discovering a man named Nicholas, who has her ability to create wind. They share some artistic pieces and she takes him home with her to meet her "family."

Meanwhile, Max is having issues with adjusting to mastering his powers—he has hit a deep depression, unsure of how to think of himself. During her attempts to counsel him (as well as similar attempts to counsel Nina and Bailey and Nicholas on issues related to each of THEIR special abilities), Ivy decides she wants to start her own support group for people like them, and does so, establishing the meaning of "family" in her own mind.