Fatima Moss
Fatima Moss is the glue that holds everything together. This is as a consequence of a suffering from a non-specific obsessive-compulsive disorder which impels her to keep a highly detailed—an excessively detailed—account of her day. In fact, the first couple of pages of the chapter devoted to Fatima is comprised of a checklist of 37 different details of this particular day that she has noted. Item number 1 on the checklist details that the school bell rang for precisely five seconds. Number 7 thru 10 tracks a failure to get her locker combination right. Number 29 indicates the extent of the repetitive nature of her disorder “One way sign. Right at the beginning. Always there. I still look both ways.”
Satchmo
Satchmo Jenkins is a bit obsessive-compulsive in his own way, but a way that is quite distinct from Fatima. Satchmo’s compulsion traces back to a horribly unlikely but nevertheless very real incident involving an attempted football reception, a rottweiler, a missing chunk of his leg and an instantly engendered fear of dogs. And now that Mr. Jerry has gotten himself a brand new pet, Satchmo has had to come up with a master plan on how to get down Nestle Street without getting eaten alive.
Mr. Munch
Mr. Munchy is the school custodian. He is referenced a few times in early chapters, but does not become a significant figure in the story until the very last one in which he becomes an unexpected figure of consolation and empathy in his relationship with a boy named Canton whose crossing guard mother had collided with a bus as she moved quickly to save the same fate from befalling a young student.
“The Low Cuts”
Or, as they are individually known: John John Watson, Francy Baskin, Trista Smith, and Britton “Bit” Burns. But a group such as these are never really known as individuals because everything they do is dependent upon the collective. Collectively, their stock in trade in stealing. They will try to steal just about anything, even pennies from the “Take a Penny” dish at convenience stores. Bad dudes, them Low Cuts. Except that…well, the Low Cuts have a secret about what they do with all the money they steal that they don’t like to talk about because, you know, reputations are everything in a school.
Pia
Pia is a skater girl who decides on this particular day to leave school through the back door with a friend so they can walk to her sister’s gravesite and Pia can get some useful information about boys. But her story isn’t really about today. It is a story of all the “maybe ifs” that might have happened yesterday involving a large cast of characters all working in unison with fate to predetermine the choice that Pia made today.
