Portico Reeves

Portico Reeves is the main character of the novel. Portico lives in an apartment building called Skylight Gardens with his mother, Sasha, father, Marvin, grandmother, Gran Gran, and cat, A New Name Every Day. His best friend is Zola Brawner. Portico loves his life at Skylight Gardens, and sees it like “living in a television where behind every door is a new TV show” (6). Portico’s vivid imagination helps him to see the world in a magical way and to deal with his life’s more difficult problems. Portico lives with anxiety, which he calls the frets. Whenever Portico gets the frets, he goes to see Zola, as she is “the only person who ever seems to be able to help [him] get unnervous” (10). Though Portico has not known Zola very long, the two are very close. They meet on the first day of school and Portico...