Title character Leonard Peacock serves as narrator and protagonist. He is a blond teenage boy with long hair he cuts off the morning of his 18th birthday. Occasionally, he dons a suit and travels from his home in South Jersey to Philadelphia on “practice-adulthood days” (49), attempting to find happy adults who can give him hope for his future. A capable but negligent student, Leonard spends free time rereading Shakespeare’s Hamlet and watching Humphrey Bogart films with his elderly neighbor Walt. 

An antihero, Leonard plays against what readers might expect of a main character, because he plans a murder-suicide on his birthday. He directs most of his rage at the object of his murder plot, Asher Beal; his mother Linda; and his peers at school. His narration also exposes Leonard’s sense of humor and feelings of depression. Although he longs for more friends, Leonard enjoys being different and outsmarting others.

Herr Silverman praises Leonard for a writing assignment that is “‘empathetic’ beyond [his] years” (42), a trait Leonard barely conceals beneath murderous soliloquies. Leonard wants to kill former friend Asher Beal after surviving years of sexual abuse at his hand. Leonard carries deep pain from these events and says he was “boring, nice, and normal” (3) before they occurred.