Heartwarming / Skippy Dies

• Skippy and Lori's first date, when they leave the Halloween Hop and go to the donut house and the park and just have a great time with each other. Even if you know what happens later in the book, and even if they're both high, considering this book it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy to read a moment in Skippy's life where he's truly happy, and he and Lori are happy together.
  • At the end of the night, Lori kisses Skippy outside her house, and Skippy's reaction is beautiful to read.
  • There's also their second and final date, where she invites Skippy to her house and he gets along great with her parents, and everything is going good. Until Carl calls and ruins the mood.
• In a slightly dark way, a freaked-out Lori calling Skippy when she finds out he's going to fight Carl and basically telling him, "Don't you dare, Carl is dangerous, I don't want you to get hurt." She makes him promise to just duck out of the fight and come right to her house after school like they planned. He does, but he's lying - he's still not backing down.
  • And after he wins, there's the end of the chapter where he goes triumphantly to Lori's house:
  The rain has cleared and the clouds given way to a sunset that blushes deep and fiery, lush pinks and warm reds piled on top of each other in a breathy rushed jumble like a heart in love; and as he weaves out weightlessly into traffic, leaving [his friends'] final words of advice - 'Full hardcore sex!' 'Just don't puke on her!' - to disappear into the evening, the euphoria blossoms inside him at last, and with every yard travelled, continues, star-like, to grow. The grave canopies of the trees overhead merge with the incoming dusk; the dual carriageway hooshes by him, its tall streetlamps seeming to sing through the twilight; the chain and wheels hum at his feet, the chocolates swing from their bag on the handlebars, as he turns down her road, past the old stone houses with their ivy veils, to arrive at her gates; and there, at the end of the driveway, just as he imagined it, she is - in the lamplight, on the doorstep, laughing like he's just told the greatest joke in the world.
• The ending, when Lori is on the brink of suicide but talks Ruprecht (and herself) into loving life again anyway is heartwarming considering the sheer amount of despair these kids have been through. This scene also promises a blossoming Odd Friendship between the two.