reply

Chapter Eight

Is GRK the first author to write a chapter about a math tutor covering integers? And c’mon, Carter: You could’ve at least pretended Lacey was helping you. You might’ve gotten another 15 minutes out of the study session.

Carter is a Grand-Gesture Guy. The pizza, the flowers, showing off the drone… he’s either a little Romeo or a little Lothario.

———-

Glad you’re back, @Jade. Being sick is no fun—but if it kept you homebound, maybe it gives you a better understanding of Carter’s everyday reality. Now be honest: Did you fill your time by observing the camera feeds from your local park?  🙂

@Owen, you nailed it: A lot of the fun of GRK’s books is how seemingly small details end up snowballing and interconnecting until they all collide and explode later in the story.

@Darren: I can report Dumpsters (and occasionally dumpsters) have made appearances in several other GRK novels. Don and Jason sabotage the Peach’s brown bag lunch by filling it with foodstuff found “in the dumpster outside” in LOSING JOE’S PLACE—presumably outside of the Olympiad Delicatessen. One of Meg’s kidnappers dumps her clown suit and Rollerblades (ßnote the capital “R”! I’ll bet you’d prefer “rollerblades”) in a Dumpster in the first KIDNAPPED book. In SON OF THE MOB 2: HOLLYWOOD HUSTLE, Willow’s mysterious rendezvous is behind a Dumpster. Brendan is rescued from his tetherball tie-down by workers arriving to empty the nearby Dumpster in RESTART. Edward “Boots’s little brother” O’Neal tossed his muddied clothes in a Dumpster behind the dorms in SOMETHING FISHY AT MACDONALD HALL. Behind another dorm—Throckmorton Hall in JAKE, REINVENTED—a “very ripe garbage Dumpster” stank up the alley. In a different alley, Dan and Amy hide behind a dumpster while tracking a suspect in THE 39 CLUES: ONE FALSE NOTE (I think you said you haven’t read the series yet but I trust that is not too much of a spoiler!). Luthor isn’t interested in the foods in a Dumpster when searching for the lost Cleopatra in ZOOBREAK. Later in the Swindle series, a Dumpster on the driveway of Ben’s home in JINGLE is piled high with castoffs from his parents’ dueling holiday displays. A decompression tank in DIVE: THE DEEP is described as “about the size of a Dumpster.” Elvis eats out of a Dumpster by the train tracks (a line that makes sense only in the context of SLACKER). An entire shopping bagful of cavity-causing jawbreakers nearly ended up in a Dumpster in SLAPSHOTS: CUP CRAZY. The most recent mention of a refuse repository that I know of was in FAKER, when Trey recognizes that his “argument is a dumpster fire.” Including the titles you mentioned, it seems the editors honored the Dumpster trademark more often than not. I hope this ridiculously long response won’t keep you from further book club check-ins!