Puberty hit me hard and weird. While most girls can only complain about cramps and bloating when they get their first period, I, hypersensitive Heather Tildy, got an added feature. A ghost. I'm the middle child and already damaged. I didn't need to fly my freak flag higher. Until that fateful day, the only person in our family who was weirder than me was my mom's sister Geneva, an artist whose constant companion was-you guessed it-a ghost. Yeah, it's genetic. The very day my period arrived (at last!), a ghost, or haint as we sometimes refer to them in the South, appeared in the grapevines and just about made me pee in my pants. She claimed she was looking for fun, (okay, more like whined for me to play with her, like I'm some kind of spectral babysitter), but I suspected there was more to her hanging around the backyard. Not that I cared all that much about her at the moment. I was more fixated on how interacting with a ghost was going to change my life. I knew it wouldn't be for the better.