History I'd Rather Forget—Age Seventeen—August (Last One)
- On the night in question, Vera ends up going to Zimmerman's Pet Shop at 7:00PM because Charlie asked her to.
- When she opens the door to the pet store, the first thing that hits her is the overwhelming smell of gasoline; she calls out Charlie's name hoping that he's in there somewhere.
- Then she sees Jenny Flick going through the pet store and dripping a trail of gasoline throughout. She's even putting it into the pet cages, like some kind of evil horror movie villain.
- She wants to save the animals, but then she realizes that Jenny has left the store and is going to set it on fire, so Vera hightails it out of there and immediately calls Charlie.
- When he picks up, she knows that he's drunk and gets mad at him for not being at the store with her.
- Vera drives away, thinking that she'll call the cops when she's gotten a little distance from the pet shop. But as she drives, she hears cop sirens already coming to the mall, and decides not to get more involved than she already is.
- Vera goes home and tries to go about her normal evening routine, but she can't stop thinking about what she saw. When she wakes up in the morning, her dad is crying on the couch. He tells her that Charlie is dead.
- She and her dad go over to the Kahns' house to offer sympathy, but it's pretty awkward. Vera goes up to the tree house and just cries.
- From what the Kahns told them, they found Charlie on the front lawn, and he either died from alcohol poisoning or asphyxiation. They also thought that he was involved in the fire at Pagoda Mall.
- Afterward, the story that people believe is that Jenny broke up with Charlie, and that he was so angry and troubled that he burned down the store to kill her. That's not the most flattering way to be remembered.