Fourteen-year-old Beatrix Voght has always felt like an outsider. And no wonder. Unable to remember anything from before her adoption, she is plagued by a series of strange occurrences-her AirPods fail to pair, hands-free faucets don't respond to her movements, her Wi-Fi keeps dropping, and peculiar songs keep playing in her head. Then there's her eye color, which changes daily.

Living on the Upper West Side of New York, Beatrix attends Festermunder Academy, a notorious private school where whispers circulate about students mysteriously disappearing under the watchful glare of the cruel Headmistress Grunnion-Paltine. On her way home from classes one day, Beatrix encounters a duplicate of herself, which vanishes in a burst of light. Soon after that, her adoptive father, who has become obsessed with a secretive project involving a plethora of conspiracy theories, disappears before her very eyes.

Determined to find him, Beatrix's search leads her to the basement library at Festermunder, referred to as the World Under the Clock, where it's rumored a time-bending wormhole might be located. Her quest to find her foster father soon puts Beatrix and her companions on a globe-trotting, mind-boggling adventure, during which they realize that Earth and the entire universe could be destroyed by a sinister force. And to top it all off, Beatrix might be the only person who can stop it.

If only she can get those AirPods to pair . . .