- Zach's pushing his soggy cereal around his bowl. His mother has on an air of false cheer and tells Zach that his father tried to recover the toys from the dump, but it didn't work.
- Zach is so depressed he barely even takes this information in; nothing matters to him now. Yeah, Zach has gone full goth.
- Zach's mom is making excuses for his dad—you know, like his own father was strict—but Zach could care less. He walks out into the cold morning and head to school by himself. He enjoys the solitude on account of how he's goth now.
- Briefly, he contemplates skipping school and running away. But he doesn't. Instead he goes to school and has a miserable day.
- He skips basketball practice and walks home. Alice catches up with him, but Zach is feeling so goth he can barely talk.
- A kid named Leo joins them, and he tells the group that Poppy will be joining them shortly, too. Alice and Leo notice that Zach doesn't seem like himself.
- Poppy catches up and regales the gang with several creepy stories.
- For his part, Zach is still halfway thinking about running away, but he can't really imagine living anywhere else.
- Now Leo's telling a ghost story, too, and the gang is walking by a graveyard. Zach rises out of his depression long enough to get a serious case of the creeps.
- Eventually Leo peels off to walk home, so now it's time for the conversation Zach has been dreading.