Author Notes: I'm very excited to finally upload this fic as my first story on here. In time, I will draw this as a comic, but for now, I wanted to share it in this form. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have been when writing it. Please be gentle...

Chapter 1

Beginnings

"My name is Lydia Deetz and I am currently a miserable, utterly depressed twelve years old.

My life is a very lonely one and you'll find I'm nothing like the others in my school. I have not one friend and everyone, including my dad and his wife, think I'm weird.

Why, you may ask? Then I guess I should explain a few things about myself first.

When I was six years old, my family was in a car accident.

It was late, snowy, December night and we were coming home from a fun day full of Christmas shopping. My father hit a patch of black ice and lost control of the car. In the blink of an eye, our car went off the road, and tumbled down into the woods. When the car finally stopped rolling my dad woke to discovered that my mother and I had been flung from out of the vehicle. I was told that my mother must have died instantly but I'm not sure if I totally believe that. He found us not too far from each other and when he came upon my little body in the snow; he feared the worst and rightfully so. I was dead.

But, unlike my mother, I was more fortunate… My father was able to bring me back. He carried me for miles, in the freezing weather and snow, until he could flag down a passing vehicle.

I was in the hospital for four months.

My father held onto what little sanity he had left, in the hope that I would come back to him.

While I was no longer dead; I was in a purgatory known as a coma. For two months, he paced by my hospital bed, too afraid to leave me for one second in the fear that I would be gone once he did.

He told me once, that when I woke up from the coma, it was one of the happiest days of his life.

Although, he was overjoyed I was back, he was never the same after the accident. His nerves were shot and he struggled every day to find a way to try to cope. He focused on me and my happiness to distract himself from the anxiety that threaten to completely consume him.

When I was in the hospital, I was able to make friends with other little kids who would come to visit me. This made the grownups very nervous and they forced me to go through more tests than I could count. Finally, I understood why they were upset and worried. They couldn't see the other children like I did.

I learned very quickly how most people are afraid of things they can't see.

The future being another invisible beast that some people would fear just as much of the idea of a ghost haunting them.

As time went on, I became more and more isolated from other people except for my father. It was partially because those "scary" things fascinated me and most of society was repulsed by it. I slowly pulled away from the ugliness of that society and I immersed myself in the things that gave me joy. I found comfort in the in the scary, supernatural, and the unusual. Things, like the dead, were honest and true to their nature at all times… even if they were trying to deceive the living.

I became obsessed with trying to seek out the scary things, the macabre, and mysteries in life. I began to feel a kinship with them. As time went on, I felt more and more like the walking dead or even a spirit because most people either ignored me or completely avoided me.

Which leads me to who I am now… a depressed preteen who struggles to find any shred of happiness in the mundane life around me. I admit, there were so many times I've fantasized about ending my life and it would be so much easier if I did. Only, I knew I couldn't do that to my father. I couldn't take him down with me.

Still, I had my own little self-destructive habits, like often forgetting to eat. It was just too easy to do when I was completely consumed by my depression. The days that I didn't forget, were filled with forcing myself to eat. It was hard to find the will to do so.

In school, I was totally isolated, so not many people would have even notice my eating habits… well, until one day; the day I collapsed when I got up to sharpen my pencil.

The rumors spread quickly and I couldn't escape them. I was accused of being anorexic and bulimic. They began to relentlessly tease me about that, and with my naturally petite build, it only fueled the rumors further. I just couldn't win.

My dad decided we needed a change, a quieter life, a fresh start for me, and moved us to Peaceful Pines. I started going to an all-girls school but this didn't fix any of the teasing. I was still the creepy girl. Still the easy target."