Things haven't been the same since Lila died. She was the sweetest girl I have ever known and she didn't deserve it. But at the same time, the world didn't deserve her.

I was walking down the hallway of Hillwood High with the sole purpose of making it to class on time. The school was littered with posters about teenage mental health. "You are not alone," they read. But they were just words. Nothing could bring Lila back from the dead. And I doubted a few well-placed poster by our lockers were going to prevent other student's from killing themselves.

Admittedly, I was zoning out. So when I walked into Sid, it was definitely my fault.

"Watch it, Arnold," he hissed, pronouncing my name like it was a swear word.

"I'm sorry," I said quickly and tried to get out of there.

"Dear, sweet Arnold could never do anything wrong, huh?" he sneered sarcastically. His puffy, red eyes suggested that he may have been smoking something earlier this morning. "I don't care what she says about you. You're at just as much fault as the rest of us."

Against my better judgement, I raised an eyebrow and asked,"She?"

Before he could say anything else, Mr. Simmons walked up toward us. He had probably sensed some sort of tension between us. "Now, now, boys. Schools are for learning, not for fighting. I'm sure we could all work out our problems in my office if we need to," he said with his awkward smile.

"I gotta get to class," I said, breaking away from the scene. As I was walking away, I could hear Mr. Simmons still talking to Sid. Something about coming to his office to talk about Lila.

Hearing her name sent a shiver down my spine. But why did Mr. Simmons need to talk to Sid about Lila? She had killed herself three months ago. The case was closed and even the police were done investigating it. I knew that Sid and Lila had a thing, but that was like a year before she died. Did they even talk to each other after the incident?

I went to homeroom with a sick feeling in my stomach that didn't seem to go away, no matter how hard I tried.

When I went home, there was a strange box sitting on my porch. It didn't have a return address nor anything else on it, except for a note card taped on it that read, "Arnold".

I took it up to my room and locked the door. It was a series of tapes and a map. I knew for sure that my grandpa would own a cassette player, so I left the tapes in my room and decided to ask him for it.

After a couple minutes of us going back and forth, he finally told me that the player was in the storage somewhere. Shuffling through a dozen of boxes, I found the cassette player, collecting dust. I grabbed it and ran back to my room as fast as I could.

I got the first tape and placed it in. Nothing could prepare me for what I would hear when I pressed the play button. I heard a voice that I thought would only haunt me in my dreams. I heard...

"Hey, it's Lila, Lila Sawyer. That's right. Don't adjust your... whatever device you're listening to this on. It's me, live and in stereo. No return engagements, no encore. And this time absolutely no requests. Get a snack. Settle in. 'Cause I'm about to tell you the story of my life."

Author's note:

Hey everyone. It's been a long, long time since I posted something. I've been really busy with school and starting at a new university and what not. I also went on vacation for the first time in forever, so that was great. Anyways, enough about me. This chapter is kind of just a teaser. I really liked the 13 Reasons Why series and decided to make my own Hey Arnold edition. Some of it will follow the Netflix series, like the infamous first line and some of the plot, but it's going to be a bit different. I wanted to keep the Hey Arnold characters as close to the original as possible. I probably will keep writing it regardless of whether or not people read this or leave me reviews, but hey, let me know what you think anyways. It'd make me feel good if I was writing something that people want me to continue. That's all for now! Ta-ta!