“You two idiots planned this?” she railed.

“She’s so beautiful when she hates me,” muttered Wes at my side.

“What do you mean we planned this?” I asked her. “What the heck are you doing here?”

“We both realized yesterday that you weren’t going to stop,” answered Patrick as he slammed his own door shut. “No matter what we did. So, in a bid to save your crazy twitterpated ass, she and I cut school and went to get Rastin.”

“He wants to kill you, Lucas,” she said. “And you’re so wrapped up in your feelings for Stephanie that you keep wanting to let him!”

“What else was I supposed to do?” I shouted back at her. “Wes said you were planning to go in there by yourself!”

“Shut up, Lucas,” warned Wes. “I swear to God your whole face needs to shut up right now.”

It was too late. Charlotte veered on him next, actually delivering a shove to his shoulder.

“You!” she snarled at him. “It’s going to be your fault if he gets hurt again, do you hear me? I trusted you.”

“I just . . . didn’t want you getting hurt either,” said Wes.

“So instead of telling me that, you told Lucas? And then staged a fight?”

“Yeah?” he said, suddenly timid in her presence, which presented a funny picture given their drastic difference in height.

“Well, that is how you operate, isn’t it?” she challenged. “You’re so insecure you don’t tell anyone anything that’s real—least of all how you feel about something. Or, God forbid, someone. Instead, you hide behind your jokes and try to scheme and finagle your way around to getting whatever it is you think you want so that you don’t get hurt.”

“That’s . . . not true,” he mumbled back, though without his usual conviction, and seemingly at a loss for any of his customary quick-witted rejoinders.

“Yes, it is!” she hissed. “And, while we’re on the subject, can I just say that I am so sick of waiting for you to actually work up the nerve to ask me out? You’re a tool, Wes.”

With that, she brushed past the both of us, heading up toward the house where Rastin still stood facing the front door.

“Charlotte,” Wes called, taking a step after her. “Uh. W-will you go out with me?”

She rounded on him. “Try not to die and I’ll think about it!”

Suddenly, without warning, Rastin turned to face us. “There’s something wrong,” he said.

“What?” I started toward the porch, terrified he was about to tell us all we were too late.

“His hope,” Rastin said, touching his sternum. “That part of him I’ve harbored for so long. I felt it go from me the moment we entered the lot. But now . . . now that it’s gone, I can’t sense him at all. His spirit. It’s . . . gone.”

“What about Stephanie?” I demanded.

“There’s nothing,” Rastin replied. “Either this is a trick . . . or he is not there.”