I lost my mother when I was seven years old to ovarian cancer. My sister was five. My parents were divorced by the time I was three and my dad lives on the other side of the country. At one point I had a grandmother, but she died when I was thirteen, just because she had the bad luck of being old and I had the bad luck of being young and an orphan.

When I was eleven, one of the popular girls found a trinket at a fair and thought it would be a good idea to force me to wear it. They said it was ugly, so it would fit me perfectly. They didn't like me, I think, because it was easy to pick on a girl with no parents. No one to back you up, you know? No one to go to the principal to complain.

I like to fight, but I didn't want to do it much back then. People without parents don't have a lot of ways to get home from detention without the bus.

Maybe I should have tried harder to get them off my case.

It was a pendant, with a silver chain and a drop-shaped glass on the end with a strange green light inside. I don't know how the girl got it – maybe it dropped onto the merchant's table through a random portal to the Ghost Zone. I don't know why she chose to wait to put it onto me without trying it on herself. But she did.

She and her friends forced it around my neck, maybe because I let them. It was really painful after that, and I'm not exactly sure what happened. The other girls screamed, because I screamed. I remember a bright green light, and I remember that it felt like something had cut my neck open over and over and over. It probably only lasted about a minute, and then the pain went down into my chest, and I cried and cried, and it was done.

People had run away while this was happening, which was good. I was just about alone when I woke up. I think must have I passed out until after the pain stopped.

The first thing I tried to do was take the necklace off, of course. And wouldn't you know, it just wouldn't budge. I didn't know what to do. I pulled harder, and suddenly the pain in my chest was back, like I was pulling something straight up.

The table at the fair had a little mirror on it, so I took a look. The necklace had wound its way into my neck, and was actually going into the skin. I pulled on it – there was no bleeding, no injury. I suppose it just phased itself in, the stupid cursed necklace. I didn't know this at the time. I was too busy panicking.

I almost died, trying to get the necklace out. Turns out that the chain had wound itself around my heart. Yeah, cliché, I know.

It's still there.

I don't remember how Neil got to be my friend, but somehow he knew I was missing, and that first time I almost died, pulling my heart out through my throat, he found me.

Neil knows a lot of things about ghosts and ghost powers and such, even at age eleven. He saw the necklace on my neck and freaked out. I don't think he knew the swears that he would have wanted to use.

"You'll never get it off," he said, once he got me home and his mom and dad looked at it. "If you try, you'll die." Neil never was one for mincing words, even back then.

I wasn't exactly unfamiliar with death, but it never felt that real before as when I felt the chain squeezing my heart.

When I got older, and I got curious, I did some research on the necklace. Apparently, some sorceress in olden times had fallen in love with a prince, or something, but he rejected her for a fair maiden. Some fairy tale nonsense, because they always fall for fair maidens. Anyway, the sorceress killed the maiden and turned her into the necklace, or maybe put her into the necklace, or her ghost started haunting the necklace. I'm not sure. That's the legend, anyway. It's probably false, but the necklace does seem to have some sort of entity inside it, because it almost speaks to me sometimes, as it pulses around my neck. I think that it disagrees with me now and again, because it will send jolts through the chain, make me jump. It'll even glow more when I'm angry, sad. Changes color with my emotions, but I don't notice it anymore, and now I've learned to put it under my shirt so that no one can tell if I'm mad or where I am in the dark.

I guess I should be happy that I have this necklace, anyway, because if I didn't I wouldn't have my powers.

I mean, they're pretty basic powers, so far. Flight, invisibility. My guess is that all the time I spent with a radioactive jewel around my neck mutated me, or something. Whatever. It's a part of me now, and I've accepted that fact, so I just deal with it, learn to use better techniques, help out Rose and Neil.

I'm glad those two are around, because if they weren't, I don't know what I'd do with my life. Rose just sort of showed up at our door one day, when my grandmother was still alive, asking to be taken in. We think she ran away from home, but no one could pry the information out of her, so we let it be. All she would tell us was that she was from Alabama, and that she didn't have parents anymore, and she would do chores if she could just stay here.

My Gramma was a very nice, caring woman, and I like to think that she still is, wherever she ended up after she died. She let Rose stay, and she's been with me ever since, at my side. We even help take care of my little sister, Jen, since we're alone now.

Then, of course, Gramma died, and I didn't have anywhere to go, so Neil's family took us in. He just lives with his dad right now. His mom was sort of a secret for a while. We got older, though, the three of us in the one house, and Neil finally told us. We were probably around nine years old, and wow! Our best friend had superpowers! That was so cool!

And then, a few years later, Rose finally confessed that she had powers too. Her parents were scientists, she'd been in a lab accident, something something giant vat of radioactive ectoplasm. She didn't know, though, that they were going to show up, until she hit puberty. Then, BAM. All of a sudden, one morning, she woke up sleeping on the ceiling.

I'll have to admit, I was a little jealous that both of my best friends could do cool things, like turn intangible and shoot lasers from their hands. If I could change everything, though, I would never have put that necklace on, because all it did was cause me trouble. It hasn't been worth it, so far.

Neil's dad is nice, and his mom is really caring and doting when she's not hiding from the neighbors, so I like living with them. Our little trio and my sister feel like a family, you know? I consider Rose a sister, and Neil... Well... I guess it isn't a secret that I like him. Everyone knows but him. Well, everyone has TOLD me that they know, but him. He probably does know, because I think he likes me too. Actually, I know he does. He's just a little too shy to admit it. But me? I'm not shy, and hopefully that kiss I planted on him yesterday after dinner will prove it.

I'm 16 years old, and I could die any day, is what I think. I don't have the opportunity to wait around for a stupid boy to say something. I have a job, right now, fighting supernatural creatures that are constantly out to get me, my friends, my family. I'm glad that Danny Phantom is around to help us. He's nice, I've met him at school a couple of times. I worked with him once in biology.

And don't ask me how I know who he is. Come on. It wasn't hard to figure it out. If I was going to give the credit to someone, actually, it would be Rose. She took one look at him and told us on the spot. "That kid's got ghost powers," she said. We were on the bus – Danny's a year older than us, so we were in the 8th grade when he got them as a freshman, but the same bus serves both the middle and high school. He walked past us, all nervous, one day, because high schoolers sit in the back, and boom.

I still don't know how she knew. Rose knows a lot of strange things, though. I've stopped questioning it. It's just what Rose does. Besides, we all made sure to study Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom's faces and it is so obvious that they are the same.

Pretty soon I'll be out of this school, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my life. Danny and his gang are all graduating in a few months, and here I am, still sixteen. Stupid June birthday. But you shouldn't have to decide on the rest of your life when you're this young, especially since I have no idea whether I even want to reveal my secret identity to the world. Not that it's much of a secret, since Danny's out. Either I stop hanging out with him completely (because, you know, two similar looking people hanging around Danny Fenton and Phantom? People will suspect) or everyone finds out about me, Rose, and Neil. I don't think that I would mind if it were the latter. It's not like I have a family to worry about, other than Jen, and between the six of us hybrids, I think that we can take care of her. I've taught her how to shoot an ectogun, anyway. She carries it all the time. She just started high school, too, so I made sure that she can take care of herself.

I think that I want to be a personal trainer, or something. You know, for people at the gym. I like working out and I like fighting ghosts, now that I don't have to worry about this stupid necklace killing me. It's good stress relief, but I get kind of numb to things after I shoot a ghost off into oblivion.

Neil came up to me today, after I kissed him. He was confused and rubbing the back of his head. He only does that when he wants to say something important, or a few somethings. Me? Well, I was scared, you know? He may have kissed me back yesterday, but that could just have easily have been a knee-jerk reaction.

It turned out that it was two important somethings.

"What?" I asked him. He looked just a little bit too sheepish to be talking about... us.

"Sam's pregnant."

I don't exactly remember what I was doing at the time, but I do know that it stopped really quickly. "WHAT?!"

"Yeaaah... I think it's my fault."

For a split second, I wondered if he'd been sleeping with her behind my back... or, rather, behind Danny's back... but he didn't look nearly guilty enough for that, and Neil was too nice to not feel horrendous about sleeping with another man's girlfriend.

Neil sat down on the couch. We were in the living room. I was probably just reading, or something. I didn't say anything to him. I wanted an explanation first.

"She was asking me about if ghosts and humans could have babies, and could ectoradiation make you infertile, and... I don't know." A sigh. "I guess I put the idea in her head?"

Ugh. That stupid girl, letting her uterus do the talking. "She came to you right?" He nodded. I settled back into the couch cushions. "She already wanted the baby."

"She did?" God. That look of surprise on his face was so cute. "Oh."

I smiled at him. Aww, he was so clueless sometimes. Naïve, and always thinking that things were his fault. It's part of the reason why I liked him, even if it was annoying from time to time.

"But really, though," he continued, with a shake of his head. "She's pregnant. She's having a baby. Graduation is weeks away, and she's having a baby."

I guess out of all of us, Sam would be the one best suited to having a baby. She was rich, she was smart, she was dedicated. But in these times? I can't imagine bringing a baby into the world when your boyfriend has ghost powers and is being attacked all the time. There could be assassins, soldiers, convicts, all sorts of things. And there was a war going on! And college... didn't she worry about any of this stuff? "She's probably freaking out," I said, finally. She had to be, right? That crazy woman.

"I know I am." Another head shake. "I would never want to have kids." Then, quickly, "I mean, not this soon." Oh. Did he see my face fall, just then? Oops. I must not have recovered fast enough.

Awkward silence.

"Chaiya," he said, but then seemed to decide against whatever it is. Of course, that wasn't going to fly with me.

"What?" No response from that one. Ugh, boys. "Neil, what is it?" Still nothing. I slid closer to him on the couch. "NEIL. Talk to me, please!"

I have a bad habit when I'm comfortable with a guy, and by comfortable I mean flirting with a guy, that whenever he does something that annoys me, my first instinct is to take a swing at him. I don't know why. Maybe I spent too much time hanging out with boys as a little kid. Unfortunately, though, because Neil is the guy I'm closest to, I take swings at him a lot. We've talked about it, over the years, and he knows I don't mean much by it, and he knows that I won't actually hurt him on purpose, and besides, I can rarely hurt him anyways, with his reflexes and durability. But, fortunately, Neil's first response is either to not react at all, or get me to stop.

Today, he decided to stop my arm headed toward his shoulder by grabbing my wrist. Now, my first instinct when a wrist is grabbed is to use the other hand to go for the other shoulder, and when I swung at him again, I found myself nice and trapped. In his arms. Three inches away from his face.

Now, given that I had kissed him out of the blue the day before, Neil's first response was to turn a very lovely shade of red. I love when he blushes like that, and I probably would have smiled, or something, but I was suddenly very distracted by how Neil's upper lip was so full looking, and a little bit chapped, and how his blue eyes were suddenly wide, with dilated pupils that meant that he liked what he saw, and how he'd started to breathe like he'd taken a jog up the street, and how my heart was, all of a sudden, beating fast.

"Neil," I murmured, like some shy little schoolgirl. "Tell me what it is."

He didn't hesitate, this time, which surprised me. "I want to kiss you again."

And if I said that didn't make my heart flutter in my chest, I'd be lying. Neil bit his lip, and I don't know exactly what came over me, or came over him, but the romance was gone, and all of a sudden he'd pushed me back against the couch and had tightened his grip on my wrists and was kissing me like it was his last day on earth. And I was kissing him back, and trying to get my hands loose so that I could wrap them around his shoulders or fist them in his hair or slide one underneath his shirt. Or his jeans. Or something, anything. I just wanted to touch him, but the more I struggled, the more he pinned me down.

It was almost frightening, how intent he was on not letting me get away from him, except that when he broke our kiss long enough to catch a breath, I saw the look in his eyes. He was excited, that was for sure, but concerned and a little scared. I think he must have been scared of himself, of how he was reacting. I knew that he'd had girlfriends in the past, but I also knew that they'd never been passionate. I could look at him with his little flings and there was no feeling between them. No love, no care, none of the sexual tension that clouded the air between him and me.

And if he was experiencing the same thing I was, where there was some strange part of him that was rising up, yelling at you to do more, to go further, to stake a claim on what was yours, then I knew why he could have been scared. I knew this part of me, strange as it was. It was the part of me that came out of the necklace – the ghost part. And Neil, being half ghost himself? He was probably getting yelled at by all of his ghost instincts to mark, mark, mark. Because mine? They were saying, Chaiya, let him take you, let him mark you forever, let him be with you. You can have him, like you'd always wanted.

I'd talked to Neil's parents a few times, especially Neil's mom, the ghost. After Rose and I had our powers manifest, she sat us down in her kitchen with some hot chocolate to explain some facts of life.

Ghosts have an obsession, she said, that they wanted with every fiber of their being. It wasn't so bad, she said, for people who were only part ghost. But haven't you felt it? Haven't you felt the need, when you were in your ghost form, to have your one thing and hold it tightly and protect it with all you had? And, she said, didn't you feel more confident about having that one thing? More able to act on everything you were feeling? Did it scare you? Did it make you want to become human again, to get away from those strong urges?

I understood what she meant perfectly. And now, there was nothing but an urge to change, change, change into my ghost form and listen to it, and have it walk me through everything that was happening.

"Do you feel that?" I whispered to Neil, against his lips. He pulled away from me, confused, conflicted.

"The need to take you?"

I never thought that those words would come out of his mouth, and I was surprised at how badly they made me want to go ahead with... this. All of this. I swallowed, because it was either that or let out some strange moaning noise that was bubbling in my throat. "Yeah."

Neil took a deep breath, and with what looked like great effort, removed his hands from my wrists. "Yeah, I feel it." He shrunk back, which displeased me greatly. "We should stop."

"No!" It had come out before I had even realized it was there, and I was propping myself up with my newly freed hands, trying to get his body warmth back.

There was a strange look in his eye, one that was unfamiliar, intense, smouldering. "We have to stop. It will ruin everything, and if you don't get away from me... " Another one of those deep breaths. "I'm not going to be able to make the urge go away, Chaiya. I'm going to listen to it, and you might not want me to do that."

Was this it? Was this what I had been waiting for, this whole time? Well, I had kissed him earlier, and he'd kissed me today, and the ball was in my court. What did I want? What was smart? Well, I wanted Neil, and I'd wanted him almost my entire life, and I was sixteen, dammit, and that was old enough, wasn't it? And he was seventeen, now, just barely, and didn't we already plan on spending our lives together? Before now, admittedly, that had only been a platonic sentiment, and now it was looking like... more.

I took a shaky breath. Was I going to be okay with this, if it went as far as my body wanted it to go?

"Neil," I said, and I tried to cover up the nerves that had suddenly found their home in my stomach. "I want you to do whatever you want to me."

He stared at me for a moment, and I wasn't sure if he'd heard me. I was about to ask when he whispered, "Are you sure about that?"

"Yes."

That was all he needed, and he clearly let his human rational thought fly out the window, because I saw his eyes flash red and his skin started to crackle and he was kissing me, and both of my wrists were in one of his hands above my head, and his fingers had closed over the back of my neck, and he was kissing me, and I forgot that I wasn't supposed to give into my ghost side, and the voice said change, change, change, because he had, and then his hand on my neck was cold as death, and the change just burst out of me, and his hand was warm again, because we were cold together.

There were some things that I'd always assumed about my first time. For starters, it would be calm and romantic, and a lot of talking, and soft kisses and a little bit of pain followed by intense pleasure, and the way that it was in the movies and the books. It would be in a nice, comfortable, clean bed, with soft sheets and warm comforters, where we were the only ones who were home and I would be with someone that I was dating, and had been dating for a while, and that I loved them with all of my heart and wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with them.

It turned out that none of this was true, except that I loved Neil so much that it hurt. I mean, I wasn't even human the first time that I had sex. And after I changed into my ghost form, there was nothing left telling me that I had to stop, only instinct telling me that I had to keep going, keep going or die. There were no candles and no nice words and no bed. There was an empty soda can on the side table, and hot breathing, and some groans, and first a couch, and then later on, one of us, maybe both of us, couldn't stop ourselves from floating and we somehow ended up on the ceiling, half-clothed and throwing jeans and shirts every which way, both knowing very well that Rose was downstairs in the basement, working on an essay, and we hadn't even admitted to each other that we liked each other yet.

There was pain, though, even though Neil told me that I was the wettest that he'd ever felt a girl, and that it should make it easier for me, even after he'd spent longer than I can handle working me over with his mouth, and I'd never had an orgasm like that before, and he'd moved his head away and I'd rubbed my legs together, missing him, and they were wet and warm, and he smiled up at me like a predator, and I called him a smug son of a bitch, because I had to say something that was more coherent then "Ah..." and "Oh..." and "Neil! Neil!" and because I had phased my arm through the ceiling fan by accident. And he drove into me on a groan, and I cried, because it was painful, and stretchy, and he said sorry, sorry, and it was then that I found out that he wasn't a virgin because I didn't think a virgin could be so smooth and know just what to do to a girl when he was inside her, and the tears dried on my face as I buried my head into his shoulder and sunk my teeth into his collarbone because it was all too much, too fast, too soon and my head was spinning and the floor was so far away and I wouldn't have traded a moment of it.

We left sweat stains on the white ceiling.

It was easier, actually, to phase through said ceiling to get to his bed, rather than float back down to the couch, and either way, after it was done, we both needed to rest.

"What are we, now?" I asked him, as we lay naked and sticky, over the covers, a cool May breeze through the open window.

He looked at me, an awkward smile on his face. "I mean, I guess you know how I feel about you, now."

I had to laugh at that. "No, really? I thought that I was just a fling."

That's the nice thing about Neil. He's easy to laugh with. Everything is familiar and comfortable, even when we are doing new things. Like what just happened, because that was definitely new. Not that I was going to complain about it.

Neil's face suddenly got serious, like he was thinking hard about something, and then he rolled over to look at me. "Chaiya, in case you couldn't tell from that whole... thing... "

"It was an experience, for sure."

He shook his head, smiling. "But, well... I'm crazy about you." He brushed away some of the hair that was stuck to my forehead. "I want to be with you... forever, if possible."

I'm sure that I'd turned a nice shade of red at this point, but it didn't matter all too much, because I was smiling so hard that I thought my cheeks might crack. "So? Are we dating now?" Please say yes, please say yes...

"Absolutely," he grinned, and he kissed me. I might have melted, I'm not sure. It's the same feeling as when you accidentally phase into someone.

We got lucky, because I was on birth control, so nothing happened, which was good. Neil told me, later that day, when the two of us had stopped fooling around and calmed down, that oh god, if I got pregnant, it would end up a ghost by default, not a halfa, and how could he have been so stupid to have forgotten that his mom told him not to have sex with a ghost in ghost mode, because that's how you condemned your children to a life of hiding away from the world, and it was bad enough already that we had, like, a 25 percent chance of conceiving a ghost child even as humans, and I didn't really follow all of the babble.

I think that he was a little overly worried, but it all turned out all right in the end. I mean, there were a few ups and downs, but hey, at least only one of the couples in our friend group was pregnant, right?

Well... for now, at least.