Neal Moss

Neal is the older brother of Harriet and the younger brother of Anthony. He struggles with his role as the middle child, suffering the all-too-common troubles of never being the nor the last to advance through life stages. He is also vastly overshadowed by his siblings accomplishments: His older brother is something of a star performer on multiple school sports teams, and his younger sister has a genius-level IQ. Neal, on the other hand, is just Neal.

If Anthony is the muscle and Harriet is the brain, Neal is the heart. Soulful, emotional, and entirely ignored by most people his age. He demands to be noticed through his sense of humour, comedy, and his antics. The more of a fool he makes of himself, the more inappropriate the jokes he tells are, the most frequently he gets kicked out of class, the bigger laughs he gets from his classmates. Neal is satisfied with being the funny one at school, but he can't make his parents laugh so easily. They find his antics embarrassing at best, and while he might get his dad to laugh when he's half drunk at night, his mother frowns at him when he reaches the punchline.

As a child, Neal was bullied by Anthony for no reasons beyond his being smaller and paler and younger. As the two have grown older, Anthony has largely grown out of the habit, but Harriet has taken her brother's place. She tries to be patient with him, but Neal is no mental powerhouse, and his often leads to Harriet giving him cruel jabs towards his intelligence. He rarely retorts, since he often doesn't even understand the insults she throws at him.

Despite all of this, Neal does manage to maintain a small circle of close friends, and does manage to attend social events like parties and dances.

He has been deeply infatuated with Tonya Alvarado ever since he first laid eyes on her, but he can't bring himself to even talk to her. They've shared multiple classes together, but he doesn't think she even knows that he exists.