Summary

Chapter 8 (The Present) – At the local diner, Silas waits for Angie to arrive for their lunch date. When she finally gets there, their first conversation is about Larry – how he’s still unconscious, how French believes he shot himself, and how Angie believes he might have done so either because of lingering guilt about killing Cindy and/or Tina Rutherford or because of everybody suspecting him of doing so.

This leads Silas to confess his friendship with Larry to her; to tell the story of how he and Alice came to Chabot; and how the friendship between him and Larry grew despite his apparent weirdness (his constant reading, his fondness for snakes) and his being rejected by everyone at the school where they went. He tells a story of how Larry was invited to be part of a haunted house party because of a...