Thomas makes no move to go find this Chuck person, Chuck just shows up, conveniently sparing our hero from having to do any actual exploring. 

a kid standing nearby, short and pudgy, staring at him. He was young—probably the youngest of any in the group he’d seen so far, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. His brown hair hung down over his ears and neck, scraping the tops of his shoulders. Blue eyes shone through an otherwise pitiful face, flabby and flushed.

Wow.  It’s bad enough that you’re clearly copying Piggy here, but this was published in 2009.  There’s no excuse for the fact that his weight is tied multiple times to some intrinsic pathetic quality.

“Don’t know,” the chubby boy replied

And until we learn Chuck’s name, his weight is continually pointed out, because according to the narration that’s literally the most defining feature about him.  He’s fat.  He’s fat and that’s all that matters.  He’s fat and that’s all we’re going to talk about.  He’s fat and that makes him pathetic and YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO FORGET THIS FACT.

Fuck you, book.

They talk about the boy who’s screaming, and Chuck says it’s Ben who is sick, but he’ll be fine.  Apparently whatever this is, it’s an all or nothing deal, you either die from it or you get all the way better, it just hurts in the interim.

“Who are They?”

 “Better hope you never find out,”

…What?  Really?  …what?

This doesn’t make any kind of sense.  Clearly the “they,” the ones that injured Ben, are going to be central to the plot and clearly they are known to the general population of boys, so why on earth would you both hiding it?  It’s not a mystery and it’s not going to be a mystery and WE CAN TELL THAT EVEN AS YOU’RE TRYING TO HIDE IT FROM US.

Somehow that’s even more annoying than realizing this after the ‘reveal.’  It’s like he’s letting us know upfront that he’s going to slap us in the face, and he just doesn’t care.

Oh, and ‘Greenbean’ means ‘newest Newbie’ which just begs the question of “why don’t you fucking call him newbie instead of making up a word?

Thomas doesn’t know how old he is, so he asks Chuck to guess, because I guess we’re done talking about the plot.  He looks about 16.

Sixteen? He was sixteen? He felt much older than that.

Yeah, that’s what most 16 year-olds say.

“Klunk’s another word for poo. Poo makes a klunk sound when it falls in our pee pots.”

JUST CALL IT SHIT, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?  SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!  THERE IS NO REASON FOR THIS, FUCK YOU BOOK, IT’S SHIT.  Or crap, if you’re really concerned about the cursing.

He stood up and walked past Chuck toward the old building; shack was a better word for the place. It looked three or four stories high

Multiple stories requires some amount of structural integrity or else it all falls over so I really, really doubt that a ramshackle made it to four stories.  Two, maybe.

Also, it has glass windows.  When I think ‘shack,’ I do not think ‘specialty material that takes specific materials and skills and equipment to produce.’

Chuck follows after Thomas and promises to take care of him and show him around, and this randomly makes Thomas angry.

“You can’t even tell me anything. I wouldn’t call that taking care of me.”

Fuck off, Thomas.  There is no reason to think that he “can’t” tell you stuff, and he’s talked about plenty of stuff you don’t know about because you just got done thinking about how his conversation about Grievers and “they”s was making you confused.

There is no rhyme or reason to this, no logic to what’s being said or withheld or dropped, no point to the subject changes or the mood swings, we are literally looking at word vomit.  It’s just regurgitated out on the page and left there in a mess of random thoughts.

Where this sudden courage and resolve came from, he had no idea.

IT CAME FROM YOUR HACK OF AN AUTHOR WHO CAN’T BE BOTHERED WITH ACTUAL CHARACTERIZATION.

My god, we could start a new drinking game based on how many times Thomas “suddenly” or “for some reason” has an emotion.

And ‘suddenly’ getting mad at Chuck counts.

\~/\~/

Thomas brushes off Chuck rudely without knowing anything about him and runs inside.  There he runs across the kind from before who brushed Thomas off rudely without knowing anything about him.  But this guy is a bully and Thomas is the hero.

Because…reasons?

Actually, the other kid does have a reason for glaring at Thomas!  Through a process of mumblejumbogobbldygook, he actually recognizes Thomas!  He finds this highly suspicious so he doesn’t trust Thomas.

I get why that makes him suspicious of what’s going on, but not why that makes him hostile towards Thomas.  He’s getting all up in Thomas’s face to tell him this, kind of spitting it at him in an accusatory tone, but there’s no actual accusations going on.  On the other hand, of all the bullshit “because reasons” stuff that’s been going on, this is at least something people do all the time.  It makes no sense logically, but it still happens.

However, the  boy is referred to as “the bully” every time, and I take issue with that.  Nothing he’s done counts as being a bully, especially since this “the bully” shit started as soon as Thomas walked in the room.  Being mad at someone and confronting them directly and addressing the reason you are mad is not a bullying action.

You know what is a bulling action?  Telling someone they’re useless when they’re just trying to help you.  Thomas.

The other kid’s name is Gally, and he claims to be the ‘real’ leader around these here parts.

He smiled for the first time; his teeth matched his disgusting nose. Two or three were missing, and not a single one approached anything close to the color white. His breath escaped just enough for Thomas to get a whiff, reminding him of some horrible memory that was just out of reach. It made his stomach turn.

Subtle.

Thomas mocks Gally’s claim of authority by saluting him, which makes the other boys laugh and cements Gally as the bullshit fake-bully antagonist of the book.

Thomas starts to head upstairs and Gally taunts him by shouting “the changing.”

No, really.

“The Changing!” Gally shouted from below.

…I’m just as confused as the rest of you, and I’m actually reading the book!

As if the taunting gave Thomas a sudden burst of courage

DRINK! \~/

He goes upstairs and finds Newt and Alby attending to the sick kid, who is pale and writing and covered in bruises and weird green marks.

Alby notices him and throws him out, threatening to kill him if he doesn’t obey, and you know what would help in this situation?  FUCKING TELL HIM WHAT’S GOING ON, THE ONLY REASON HE’S LOOKING AROUND IS BECAUSE NO ONE WILL TALK TO HIM!

Thomas goes downstairs and decides he hates everyone \~/ except for Chuck. \~/

“Get me away from these guys,” Thomas said. He realized that Chuck might actually be his only friend in the world.

Oh, so now that he’s useful to you you’re going to be his friend?  Wow, so genuine and not the least bit like A COMPLETE SHIT OF A HUMAN BEING, THOMAS YOU CANNOT JUST PICK UP AND DROP FRIENDS DEPENDING ON WHAT’S CONVENIENT TO YOU, MY GOD YOU ARE THE WALKING TEXTBOOK DEFINITION OF BAD NEWS YOU ARE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATES PEOPLE WITHOUT EVEN TRYING BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT YOUR HEAD SO FAR UP YOUR ASS YOU DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT HOW YOUR ACTIONS AFFECT OTHERS AND I WANT TO PUSH YOU IN FRONT OF A TRAIN BUT I WON’T BECAUSE THE RESULTING DELAY WOULD BE TOO MEAN TO THE PASSANGERS!

FREE DRINK JUST FOR ALL THAT CAPS LOCK I NEED ONE  \~/

“You got it,” Chuck replied, his voice chipper, as if thrilled to be needed.

You’d better not try and play this off like a good thing, book, this is really, heartbreakingly sad.  This is how people with low self esteem get sucked into being ‘friends’ with selfish assholes who walk all over them.

Thomas goes to sulk under a tree and think about how life is so hard for people who have only been aware of it for less than a day.

The Changing. Gally had called it the Changing.

It wasn’t cold, but Thomas shuddered once again.

…it?  What is it?  Did Thomas figure something out while I was blinded by rage, because this came right the fuck out of nowhere.  Is his arrival ‘the changing’?  Is ‘it’ the sick kid?  What?