What Is a Character Blog?
Some of the blog posts are excerpts from my books; others are scenes that may or may not have made it in the books. All are intended for readers to get to know Ruthie (Queen of the Late Bloomers) and Charlie (Mad Dog Madson) better. No spoiler alerts needed because they won’t give away either books’s ending.
For the rest of the night, I hibernate in my room. I stay up super late watching baseball bloopers on YouTube.
Breathing hard, I unlock the back door and drop my backpack in the laundry room. I feel like I might have a collapsed lung after sprinting all the way home from the train tracks. I’m not gonna lie. I am. Freaking. The. Hell. Out. I can handle hearing my own voice, but hearing Pete’s voice – that’s way, way, WAY different.
It was just Pete and me riding bikes home the day he died, almost three months ago now. The fact that John wasn’t with us might seem weird, but it wasn’t. Pete hung out with John and me a lot, especially over the summer. John hated having Pete tag along, but honestly I didn’t mind.
Those damn train tracks. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I cross them now – twice a day, five days a week – I hear the sound of my own stupid voice haunting me with, “Hey, Pete, wait up.”
I wake up groggy with puffy, scratchy eyes, but thankful when I remember it’s Friday.