Chapter 1: tear it down

13-year-old Merridy Dean's life is falling apart. After a sudden and traumatic end to her parent's marriage, her family, her life, she moves to a new town to live with her grandparents. As if being the new kid at a new school in the middle of the school year wasn't hard enough, having her classmates realize that her grandparents are the town's local undertakers and that she is living in the town's funeral home - only assures her outcast status. Hearing strange noises nightly and seeing strange things by day at the funeral home, leaves Merridy struggling to accept her new life and place in it, until she is befriended by the shy and equally strange, Chester. When she is invited to a house party with a group of girls known to be trouble, Chester cautions her against it, but eager to be accepted Merridy attends and becomes a witness to murder. Already struggling with the ghosts of her past, Merridy soon finds herself pursued by a newer ghost - and their killer...