Herbert Singletary
Herbert Singletary is the school bully who lives in the Castle, which is the actually just a large apartment building. His preferred means of bullying is the tease: making fun of someone else’s appearance or personality quirks. One of Stuntboy’s super-powers is obstruction of such bullying:
“This is NOT what he was going to say. But before he could get out whatever mean joke he was going to say, Portico came jumping off the bus. And once Herbert Singletary the Worst saw Portico his face went from regular mean to jokey-jaw, teasy-teeth, haha-head mean. The worst.”
Behind the Half-Door
Herbert’s mean streak derives from something that is not immediately evident to those he terrorizes. Like most bullies, there is something driving the urge to be cruel toward others going on inside Herbert. Portico and best friend Zola do not set out to discover this hidden mechanism unleashing the fury of a bully, but once they stumble across the strange circumstances of Herbert’s circumstances of living in the the Castle—in a mysterious room behind a strange half-door, revelation becomes inevitable:
“Herbert opened the half door wide, revealing a room that looked like the inside of a robot. Tubes and tanks and bigger tubes (pipes). `It’s a boiler room,’ Herbert said…He went on and on about the perks of the boiler room. The rumbling sound was like a purring cat, cozy, like the building snoring. He also said the steam was like one of those fancy rich people places that blow steam all over your body, and it makes you feel brand new.”
“We’re all hiding from something.”
The central bit of imagery which controls the narrative is this assertion by Mrs. Brawner, Zola’s mom. According to the narrator, she is always saying things like that, but in this case it really is imagery and it really is central to the unfolding of the story. Secreted away in his robot-like boiler room behind the half-door, Herbert the bully is clearly hiding from something of major significance. Portico’s adoption of Stuntboy is a way of hiding from the Frets (anxiety) engendered by his constantly bickering parents on the precipice of divorce. Other characters that call the Castle home are also hiding from certain things in their lives: even Portico’s grandmother is hiding from the effects of aging with her purple hair.
Anxiety
Anxiety hangs heavy over Portico, but its presentation is anything but melodramatic. One of the things Portico is hiding from is having to fully confront the cause of his anxiety and one of the easiest ways to facilitate that escape is by not treating the word itself seriously. Fortunately, imagery is just the ticket for pulling off this magic trick:
“What? You’ve never heard of the frets? You’re kidding, right? The un-sit-stillables? The worry wiggles? The bowling ball belly bottoms? The jumpy grumpies? (Or the grumpy jumpies, depending on who you ask.) The hairy scaries, or worse, the VERY hair scaries? No? Maybe it’s because your mom probably calls it what Portico’s grandma calls it—`anxiety.' (That X is tricky, ain’t it? Might cause some anxiety."
