"THE BRIGHT BIRDS LEAVE HER"

Noelle Underwood was born in Mesa as the middle child of three. Always quiet, always shy, Noelle had trouble breaking out of her shell; and the looming divorce of her parents was no help at all. She thought getting out of Mesa would help her, a place where no one really knew her, and she could find space to simply be. It didn't help. She felt just as alone at school in Phoenix as she did in home.

But life moves on. Noelle graduated, got a job, and found a place to live. The catch was roommates, of course. But this time was different. Getting out of her head and knowing them was hard, but she overcame it. For what felt like the first time in her life, she finally had friends. Ashton, Kensley, and Avery were companions for life. The kind of family she wanted for all her life.

But everything she wanted was taken from her in one night. It was on a night out on the outskirts of the city when Noelle and her friends heard something. Following the noise lead them to two men dressed in black, digging holes in the desert. They were dragging bodies from a truck and throwing them in the hole. Someone gasped, and the men noticed in the quiet desert air. The two men looked at one another as if to say "No witnesses." The last thing Noelle remembers hearing is one of the men mentioning a "Boss Marconi." The last thing she remembers is hot metal ripping through skin and bone.

And that should have been the end of Noelle Underwood. And for a moment, maybe it was the end of Noelle Underwood.

She woke up surrounded by darkness, and filled with dread. Dread gave way to adrenaline, giving her the strength to rip through the darkness. Digging herself out from the desert, she found herself cold to the touch. Her heart was still, and she carried no pulse. Noelle was dead. She and her friends were all dead. But she came back alone. Loneliness gave way to rage, and so she set off on finding the men who killed her and her friends, acclimating to her lonely existence as a wraith among the living.