Chase Ambrose
The protagonist of the story is an eight-grade student who has awoken from a coma with no memory of the fact that he is a bully capable of instilling fear into the student population on the one hand and disgust at his narcissistic flair for self-centered appreciation of his greatness on the other. Hence, he is presented with the exceeding rare opportunity to “restart” his life from a brand new origin point.
Shoshanna and Joel Weber
Shoshanna is not quite ready to allow Chase simply to restart life as a nice guy simply because he does not remember being such a bad guy. After all, in his first start he gained massive enjoyment from targeting her twin brother Joel as the object of his reign of terror. Such was intensity of the bullying that eventually Joel was sent away to a boarding school just to put an end to his misery. An enforced pairing with Chase for a school video club project begins to change things for both Weber siblings, however.
Brendan Espinoza
Brenda Espinoza is the external catalyst which facilitates Chase’s success at restarting his life. After coming out of his coma, Chase is warned about the nature of the kinds of things he is going to hear about himself that he, of course, cannot remember and proceeds through a series of revelations that shock him to the core about what a horrible person he was. Brendan is the first to believe that Chase really is not the bully he used to be and his role as head of the video club becomes instrumental in offering irrefutable evidence supporting this belief.
Mr. Solway
Julius Solway is an elderly resident at the assisted living center where Chase must carry out his community service sentence as punishment for acts committed before the coma. As part of Chase’s desire to fully restart his life, he is dedicated to finishing the original terms of the sentencing even though he received a court-ordered sentencing reduction as a result of his health issue. Upon learning of the extraordinary bravery shown by Mr. Solway during the Korean War, Chase is initiated into his first real relationship bonding in either his first or second life due the unexpectedly similar circumstances of their lives: like Chase, Mr. Solway cannot remember the events for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Mr. Solway will eventually become, through the mediation of Brendan and the video club, the agency which begins to chop away at Shoshanna’s fierce zeal for recrimination against Chase which ultimately climaxes with Joel returning home from boarding school.
Aaron and Bear
All bullies need their toadies (just ask Scut Farkus and his crummy little toady, Grover Dill) and the toadies who had gleefully taken on the role of submissive betas to Chase’s alpha are his two oldest, best and possibly only friends. Acting as an inseparable trio of terror before Chase’s restart, the two are left hanging without someone to boss them around and have little choice but to conspire against the new and improved Chase by doing everything they can to bring him back to his real self.
