By the twilight of this century, unbeknown to parents, the education system has become a dystopian drug-fuelled sham. Children with scintillated eyes attend the high-performing grammar academies of the Central Area. Those who fail the Four-Plus are forcibly displaced to the dilapidated shanty towns of the Periphery.
Zade, a fiercely independent school-refuser, is on a mission to uncover what causes scintillation. She discovers others who secretly share her alarm, combining forces with Central Area School commissioner, Alexandra Essex, with figureheads from the education underground, and with five-year-old, Lucas Patel, whose family has been displaced to the Periphery because his younger brother Noah failed to scintillate.
As Zade's understanding grows, so does her determination to restore empathy and ethics to this dehumanising regime. Can Zade, homeless and powerless, expose the sophisticated 'con-trick' perpetrated by the education elite? Can she, against the odds, end the drug-dependency and end scintillation itself, releasing millions of unknowing families from its grasp?