The young adult novel was published on August 1, 2008, by Little, Brown and Company, and hit the New York Times Bestseller list, Chapter Books, on September 14, 2008.

Meanwhile, Scarlet is feeling insecure about her long-distance relationship with Damen just as Petula, who is repeating her senior year, goes into a coma after contracting staph from a pedicure.

However, Pam and Prue have come after Charlotte, and they meet up with Scarlet and help her to find Petula's soul by getting directions from Green Gary to the hospital intake office.

When Damen arrives in town for a job at the local radio station and enters one of Scarlet's songs, she feels that he is pressuring her and getting to be mad and furious.

Meanwhile, Petula's coma has left her feeling uncharacteristically philanthropic, and she has begun to donate her old clothes to the homeless, confusing the Wendys.

A new girl called Darcy begins to steal her status, holding a mock trial which ends in Petula being made an outcast.

Scarlet wins the radio competition and chooses as her prize to perform her song at Prom, which she redecorates as a Fantasy Funeral for Charlotte.

Because Maddy technically died from the seizure, she must now attend Dead Ed, while Darcy awakens confused and with no memory of the Wendys or anything else about Hawthorne High.

[3] The cover art shows the silhouette of a girl – used throughout the book's illustrations to represent Charlotte – in a coffin with a banner saying "Rest in Popularity".

The book is unusual in that the pages' proportion of height to width is much larger than usual, making it taller and thinner than most novels.

Inside the book, each chapter begins with a full-page illustration, including a quotation and a border of black and pink roses.

The illustration usually shows Charlotte's silhouette, as shown on the cover, and forms a chain of actions as the reader progresses through the book.

The page afterwards includes a short summary paragraph of a lesson Charlotte learns in the chapter, written in reverse color.

ghostgirl: Homecoming's is similarly laid out, but with slightly different floral borders, and purple replacing pink in the color scheme.