Eddie didn’t realize it himself, but the entire interior of the trailer, while neat and orderly, looked like somebody’s childhood room – close and personal and piercingly revealing of the mind or minds responsible for it. There were trophies from school achievements, movie posters Nyssa and Eddie had stolen from the store or which had been thrown out. There were band posters, childhood drawings, one or two knickknacks Nyssa had found in the road and couldn’t bear to part with and so nailed to the wood-paneled wall: A mix CD she’d never  played, a beaten up old baseball cap she had washed, a discarded U-lock for a bike.

There were no family heirlooms or photographs of any kind.

I once told a friend who read through my progress that Ian is who I was as a kid and Eddie is who I wish I had been.

An important dynamic in the story is how we deal with authority. There are “rebels” and there are “sheep” and there are people who in some ways are oblivious to it because of privilege they may not even be aware of. Ian is a loner and an outsider, but he’s compliant, and so it’s important that we have a main character who absolutely is not. Brutal authority doesn’t care about little things like whether or not you comply with it when it has a specific agenda that must destroy you.

This same friend told me she had a bit of a crush on Eddie, but you’ll need to tell me if he’s desirable.

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