In the last few pages of the book, the gang completes their quest by burying the Queen in her final resting place. A lot of questions are left hanging in the air, though. Was the Queen really possessed? Will the gang stay friends forever? Will Zachary and Alice ever go on that date? There's no way to know these things for sure.
The important thing to note, though, is that when the book closes, the kids see a lot of possibilities for the future. Coming from an economically depressed environment and unhappy home lives, Zach, Alice, and Poppy struggle to see what life can offer them earlier in the book. Watching his parents' dreams get crushed, Zach wonders "whether growing up was learning that most stories turned out to be lies" (6.4). Bummer, right?
By embarking on their adventure, though, and glimpsing of the world beyond their tiny town in Pennsylvania, the kids are able to imagine more possibilities for themselves; they're able to feel hopeful about the future. So when Alice says, "This was a story that we lived […] Maybe we can live other stories too" (16.117), the book ends on a decidedly optimistic note. Yay.