And that is the last you ever see or hear of that crazy book you found in the bookstore.
Frank and Joe tell you that they looked around the neighborhood but never saw anything. They try to make you some amends by buying you a new backpack, which is a thoughtful gesture, you suppose, though they have to drop it off at your house instead of giving it to you at the party, because your dad came down on you hard after your being out late on Sunday, and took away your truck keys so that you had to ride the bus to and from school all week.
After your grounding was over, though, Joe tried nudging you and Trixie together, and you do go out on a date with her the following week. But it's hard keeping in contact with each other when you go to different schools. You don't want to bother her with a lot of texts, so you don't send very many. Later you learn that she thought you just weren't interested in her, which is why she started dating another guy, one who goes to Eastman.
Only a week after you met them, Joe calls you up to say that he and his brother will be pulling out of school and moving out of town in a few days: that week-long trip of their dad's was to investigate a new job, which he took. He invites you out for one last "kick-ass, blow-out party" with him and his friends. You demur, though wishing him the best of luck.
There is one curious epilogue to the whole affair, which puts your loss in some perspective. Though you never pay much attention to the local news, your ears perk up at dinner one night when your dad mentions a "professor of archaeology" at the university, and the mystery surrounding his disappearance. That piques your interest, so you look it up online. The gist is that a few days after Halloween, the house of Aubrey Blackwell, a professor at the local college, burned down under mysterious circumstances. This would have been news enough, as the house was of local historical significance. More sinister was the evidence that the fire was the result of arson, with suspicion focusing on the professor, who vanished at around the same time. Whether he set the fire himself, for unknown reasons of his own, or was another victim of those who did, is not clear, and you never do find out what the story was.
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