Now Is Not the Time to Panic

The protagonist and narrator is 16-year-old Frances “Frankie” Budge. She does not offer much physical description of herself, other than to say she “[isn’t] pretty” with a “really plain face” (10). Because she feels different from other teens, she prefers to blend into the background of social settings, such as the Coalfield public pool, where she meets Zeke. Importantly, because her brothers and mother work, she is alone all day during the summer of 1996. While she seems largely unbothered by her lack of friends, she is anxious about common teenage rites of passage, such as kissing and having sex. She assumes all boys to be like her brothers and the other teens she knows and thus initially believes Zeke’s interest in her must be sexual. As it appears this is not the case, she views him as a safe person with whom she can get the physical interactions she dreads over with.

As a teen, she is well-behaved and does not engage in reckless behavior, regarding the drinking and partying other teens take part in as uninteresting. She rarely speaks of her absent father, though she acknowledges that his infidelity and her parents’ subsequent divorce have certainly impacted her.