He was the expendable one.
He was the funny one, not extremely bright, the one who had just a kidcrush on Norrie Calvert and knew he was never going to get her. Because of Joe, of course, Joe who was his best friend and stood out in a good way and who wasn't going to die.
It was sort of funny, really, that he was the sick one. He was the one that had reacted the most to the poisoned air. Maybe it meant he was the most human or maybe it meant that he was the weakest. He'd guess the latter. He was the weakest and the dumbest and the most expendable. In a story one of the main characters dies to make it more realistic, didn't he know that? Not that he thought he was much of a main character. He was a minor character. A main minor character.
A sidekick. That's what he was. An expendable sidekick, because the other sidekick was Norrie Calvert and who the hell would kill off Norrie? No, he was going to die and they were going to live and, somehow, he was okay with that fact.
They would feel bad, sure, but they had each other and someday they'd grow up and have kids and maybe they'd name one Benjamin Drake McClatchy because they did care about him, he knew that. He'd just hoped that it would turn out to be a Harry Potter type of thing except Ron hadn't died and Hermione didn't end up with Harry and he didn't even have a little sister for Joe to marry, anyway.
He'd be sad to leave his mother. She'd be sad, too, but maybe she'd understand.
The funny guy was always expendable.
don't ever read under the dome
it completely murdered me
