Vera Dietz Timeline and Summary

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• When the book opens up, Vera is at her former best friend Charlie's funeral and she says that she lost him a long time ago, when he stopped being her friend.
• Flash forward to a few months later when Vera is working as a pizza delivery driver and doing a lot of flirting with a twenty-three-year-old coworker even though she's eighteen and still in high school.
• She also has a drinking problem and keeps a bottle of vodka under her car seat.
• In flashbacks, we learn about Vera's past: Her mother left their family when she was twelve and she now lives with her dad, who is a cheapskate and into lots of New Age self help stuff (which Vera thinks is stupid).
• We also see flashbacks to her relationship with Charlie. They were best friends all their lives and grew up next door to each other, and even built a tree house together.
• All her life, Vera knew that Charlie's dad was abusive but she never reported it or even talked to Charlie about it. She also never said anything about the fact that Charlie sold his used underwear to some creep.
• Charlie ended up betraying Vera slowly… first by disappointing her on Valentine's Day (by asking her out and then doing nothing about it), and then by hanging out with a whole new group of friends and ditching her for a toxic girlfriend, Jenny Flick.
• In the present day, we see that Vera is trying to live out her life while ignoring the army of dead Charlies that follow her everywhere, constantly asking her to clear Charlie's name (even though he's dead).
• She starts kind of seeing the twenty-three-year-old guy at work, James. They go up to the pagoda one night to make out and drink, but on their way back, they get pulled over by the cops.
• The cops drop Vera off at home and she's in huge trouble with her dad, who is a recovering alcoholic and scared that Vera will become addicted, too (he doesn't know about her everyday drinking).
• Her dad picks her up from school the next day and Vera has to talk to her mom on the phone for the first time in years; she yells at her mom for lecturing her when she doesn't even know what's going on in Vera's life.
• Eventually, Vera goes back to work and continues flirting with James, even though she knows her dad won't approve. She also continues to ignore the dead Charlies because she still harbors a lot of anger toward Charlie for being such an awful friend near the end.
• Vera's dad lets her go to her work holiday party as long as she is responsible—so she goes and gets pretty drunk with James, then decides that she wants to leave.
• Her coworker's neo-Nazi boyfriend gets upset that they're going to go so early, though, and ends up beating up on Vera. She passes out, and when she wakes up, she has a big gash on her head.
• Vera drives home and her dad makes her go to the hospital right away. He also signs them up for family therapy.
• Vera starts going to therapy sessions with her dad, where they talk about how neither of them has truly moved past her mom leaving. She also finally reveals to her dad that she knows the truth about Charlie's death and the pet shop fire that he supposedly caused.
• In a flashback, we see that Vera went to the pet shop to meet with Charlie the night he died, since he told her that Jenny Flick was going to do something bad.
• When Vera got there, though, Charlie wasn't there and Jenny Flick was already in the process of lighting the place on fire. Vera got out of there and called Charlie to chew him out for not coming to meet her; the next day, she found out he was dead.
• Vera eventually gathers the strength to go clear Charlie's name. She goes to the Master Oak—the tree where his tree house is—and finds documents and notes that he left behind for her.
• The documents reveal that he and Jenny made a video for the pervert because Jenny wanted to make money, and when Charlie wanted to stop and broke up with her, she said she'd kill him and burn down the pet shop.
• Along with her dad, Vera goes to the police and turns over all the evidence she's found.
• Then they go on a spontaneous road trip together in order to have fun as a family—finally.