Outfoxed

Twelve-year-old Skye Hunter, a Cherokee girl from Oklahoma, spends every summer in the small town of Verdant, Massachusetts, with her Aunt Lynne, Uncle Pete, 10-year-old brother Leo, and older cousin Braeden. Skye is passionate about plants and has been mapping the undergrowth beneath a roughly 280-year-old eastern hemlock she calls the Grandmother Tree for a school science fair project. On her first visit this summer, she hears desperate cries and discovers a juvenile fox caught in a metal trap with poisoned meat nearby. Braeden, a newly hired park ranger cadet, arrives and helps free the fox. They bring it to the local veterinarian, Dr. Reed, who diagnoses a leg fracture requiring a full summer of recovery. Skye names the fox Kitcat and vows to catch whoever is responsible.

Verdant is still recovering from a severe April storm that flooded properties along the river. Uncle Pete tells Skye and Leo a Cherokee story whose moral applies to the poacher: Cheaters eventually get caught. At the veterinary clinic, Skye meets Dr. B (Dr. Rebecca Shawl, a biologist and Dr. Reed's fiancée) and her daughter Ivy, a guarded girl Skye's age who is Nakoda, an Indigenous nation from Canada. Ivy demonstrates impressive knowledge of fox biology but dismisses her family's old clinic in Saskatchewan as something that no longer matters. Skye senses that beneath Ivy's tough exterior, she is struggling with her mother's upcoming marriage and the move to a new country.

Braeden confides that Warden Trombley, the game warden overseeing the park, dismisses her every suggestion and asks Skye to leave the investigation to the professionals. During a park cleanup, Skye and Ivy begin working together. Afterward, Ivy follows Skye to the Grandmother Tree, where they discover fox prints, an abandoned den under a boulder, and pine wood shavings that are clearly cut rather than natural. On their way out, Ivy spots a business card for Mr. Anton's Emporium, a local oddities and antiques shop, stuck to Skye's shoe.

Ivy proposes visiting the shop, reasoning it would be the likely buyer for fox pelts. Skye hesitates but agrees when she realizes Ivy would go alone otherwise. The shop's owner, Ms. Phillips, dismisses the business card as meaningless. When a storm kills their phone signal and renders Skye's walkie-talkie useless, they take shelter in a small shed in the park. Inside, they find taxidermy books, chemicals used in the taxidermy process, wood shavings identical to those near the Grandmother Tree, and a photograph of a mustachioed man identified on the back as Charles Jones, a name that means nothing to them yet.

Warden Trombley finds the girls near the tree and drives them home, implying Braeden may not be ready for her ranger job. Aunt Lynne grounds Skye for a week. That night, Braeden reveals the poisoned meat contained disodium tetraborate, a taxidermy chemical rather than a typical hunting poison.

During her grounding, Skye worries her friendship with Ivy may be over. When she visits the clinic, she overhears Ivy tearfully telling Dr. B she wants to move back to Saskatchewan. Skye asks Ivy not to leave yet and shares that another trap has been found. Ivy agrees to stay and help.

Ivy proposes returning to the shed, and Skye agrees, bringing Leo along to search faster. They find a second trap identical to the one that caught Kitcat and a locked metal box containing a hunting rifle, which they leave. They bring the trap and the photograph to Mr. Grover at the hardware store, who identifies the man as "Old Man Jones," a retired biologist from the Springfield Science Museum who learned taxidermy for educational displays. Jones died in January, and Mr. Grover confirms he would never have used such traps.

The three present everything to Braeden, taping photos to the attic wall like a crime board. Braeden reveals she has found three additional traps, all bearing the same registration number. The number traces to a deceased family's estate that funded museum scholarships, connecting the traps to equipment Jones used in his professional work. She calls the warden, who curtly tells her to stop being distracted. When they visit the shed the next day, it has been scrubbed clean. At the library, a volunteer confirms Jones's nephew returned the overdue taxidermy books, clearing him as a suspect.

Meanwhile, Skye collects a heart-shaped leaf from a floating heart, a river plant that should not grow under the Grandmother Tree. She recalls seeing the same leaf stuck to the boot of Mr. Hobbes, a local man with a boat-rental business, at the diner, connecting him to both the river and the trap site. When the clinic's roof collapses from storm damage, Kitcat stays at the house and Ivy joins him. That night, the girls share their deepest struggles. Ivy admits she compares everything in Massachusetts unfavorably to Saskatchewan and feels embarrassed that Dr. Reed knows nothing about Nakoda culture. Skye confesses that Ivy is her first real friend, explaining that multiple moves have left her unable to connect with peers. Ivy reassures Skye that a different Indigenous experience does not make her less Cherokee. Skye shares a dream in which her deceased grandmother told her that trees stay connected through their roots across great distances, a message she applies to families separated by geography.

Ivy tells Skye that reading about the Irish Famine with Dr. Reed revealed parallels with the colonization of Indigenous peoples, softening her feelings toward him. When the girls return to the oddities shop with Braeden's knowledge and working walkies, they discover three fox tails hanging in a back window: one adult and two kits, the rest of Kitcat's family. At family dinner, Braeden presents all the evidence. The next day, the entire family meets Warden Trombley at the shop. Skye and Ivy lay out their case: the trap registrations traced to museum equipment, the taxidermy chemicals matching the poison, and the fox tails in the window. Ms. Phillips tearfully produces a photocopy of Charles Jones's hunting license bearing the photograph of William Hobbes, revealing that Hobbes used his deceased friend's credentials to trap foxes and sell the pelts. She paid him triple the pelts' worth to help him survive after the storm destroyed his business.

They find Mr. Hobbes sitting alone beside his wrecked operation along the river. He admits to everything, expressing deep regret. Ivy tells him he needs courage to ask for help. Leo reports finding three small graves marked with floating heart flowers near the house, where Hobbes buried the foxes he killed.

In the final weeks of summer, Kitcat's bone heals and he begins running in an outdoor enclosure visited by a wild vixen. Mr. Hobbes, reformed, now works at the hardware store, and Skye feels her anger fading. At Dr. Reed and Dr. B's wedding, Dr. B surprises Ivy by hyphenating her name to Dr. Becci Shawl-Reed. Ivy tells Skye she has decided to stay in Verdant, inspired by the dream about trees staying connected across distance. Aunt Lynne gives the girls matching beaded bracelets, and Skye's father arrives in army fatigues, surprising her. On her last day, Skye visits the Grandmother Tree, having completed all 30 specimens. The group gathers to release Kitcat from the enclosure. He cautiously exits, picks up the vixen's scent, and trots toward her. He stops once to look back at Skye and Ivy before disappearing into the forest, his tail swishing a final goodbye.