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Characters in the
Skeeter Kitefly Books
(presented more-or-less in the order of their appearance)
Page One
The Ups and Downs of
Skeeter Kitefly
Skeeter Kitefly's Sugardaddy Confessor
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Skeeter Kitefly's
Titular Assets
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COMPACTIFICATION
behind the scenes
RoBynne O'Ring's
GRUNTS OF
PASSION
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Last Updated
February 05, 2010
Kelly Rebecca (Skeeter) Kitefly
Our compactified 4'11" 101-pound Heroine.
(Also known as the Madgirl Wonder, Mosquito
Mouth, Daffy, Puckish Pookie,
Whuddababe,
Pee-wee, Li'l Bit, Tweety, Tweeter, "Vicki Lee,"
Bubbles the
Party Chick, Miss Happyhazard,
and the Daughter of the Whirling Dervish—
among other names.)
...Her face, like Scarlett O’Hara’s, might not be beautiful, but it could seldom fail to impress. Small and round and winsomely pink. Pointed chin, pointed buttony nose. Great big whomp of hair, the color and fuzziness of a prime-time peach. Glasses wide as coffee mugmouths, making her minuscule eyes appear even tinier. And those eyes: like baby-blue M&M’s set afire by some confectionery pyrotechnic...
Bert and Addie Otto
Skeeter's grandparents, with whom she lives
in Marble Orchard. Grampa Otto works for
Nilnisi Power & Light; Gramma
Otto is an
ex-RN.
...On the one hand, you had your burdens; on the other, your blessings; and it was up to you to count the blessings if you wanted to count on them. So: if Bert Otto hadn’t stayed on in Booth County, he would never have met Addie Wunderlich, wouldn’t have charmed and wooed her with his ways. Big for
his age he was and remained. Everything he did had a sort of expansive flair...
Carrie Kitefly Benison and
Gower Kitefly USMC
Skeeter's divorced
parents. Gower wants to
be an astronaut; Carrie turns from military
spouse to cocktail waitress to
Republican
ward heeler.
...Not that she’s a ding-a-ling—she was the first in her family to get a college education; wanted to be Brenda Starr Girl Reporter and scoop the world, but got tied up instead with this Jimmy Cagney look-alike who turned out to be my dad-to-be. And my mom—well I got my eyes and boobs and blonditude from her,
so BAM! ‘Nuff said. Whirlwind courtship...
Emmy Wunderlich
Gramma Addie's sister: longtime copyreader
on the Demortuis Daily Memorial.
...Fully retired now, high time too at sixty-nine, and if Emmy never had to read another reporter’s gobbledegook it’d be double soon enough for her...
Ollie and Walt Hungerford
Carrie's older sister and her laconic
trucker
husband.
...Aunt Ollie for her twittery part was deeply moved, having been bothered all day by Kelly’s showing no great curiosity as to where her father was or why her mother was spending so much time indoors upstairs...
Mickey, Dougie, and Jerry
Hungerford
Their three boisterous sons: the Grunt, the
Kook, and the Creep.
...One of my truly deep regrets is that the Hungerfords never cherry-bombed the old chicken coop at Gramma and Grampa’s —they were forever saying they were going to, but never got around to doing it. (Is that a distillation of men, or what?...)
Buddy-Buzz Otto
Skeeter's theatrical uncle, younger brother
of
Carrie and Ollie; a set designer in Chicago.
...Buddy Otto stood out among the mob. He and Skeeter both started hopping up and down when they spotted each other, Uncle Buddy hopping with what he called True Effect since he now weighed upward of 250...
CHARACTERS:
Page
One
Page Two
Page Three
Page Four
Page Five
Page Six
The Wunderlichs
Two Timmys and Rusty Bugs
Skeeter's childhood companions: an invisible
horse, a half-stuffed horse,
and a no-longer-
white rabbit.
...Kelly galloped back on Invisible Timmy, not to be confused with Real Life Timmy, who at that moment was shedding his meager stuffing on Kelly’s pillow upstairs, next to a bunny rabbit so discolored by distemper that it was known as Rusty Bugs....
The Wunderlichs
The original tenants of the House With All
The
Porches in Marble Orchard: Addie and Emmy's
family. (Click
here for more about them.)
...Meanwhile here’s me in Marble Orchard with these old family pictures all over the house, and a double extra helping in my room—up high where I couldn’t get at them. I mean here I am sitting at my desk, pretending to do my arithmetic homework or whatever, and if I glance up there’s someone like “Aunt Claudia” or “Uncle Stanley” glaring down at me...
Bagelanna and the Gobbogoki
Heroine
and nemesis of Skeeter's favorite
storybook (which The Author hopes to
produce at full-length, one of these days).
Check out a Bagelanna excerpt
in "Two
Points"
...When last
we left our heroine she was still a-wandering in the Forest of Galagonya,
a-carrying her emptying bagelbag. (Skeeter wished she had that bagelbag
right here and it full of savory bakery munchables, and them in her mouth in
place of Gramma’s thermometer. You could pretend it was a cigarette
for only just so long...)
Whippy (Ann-Margret)
Skeeter's put-upon cat in Marble Orchard.
...So strap yourself into the cockpit knot-seat, draping Whippy around your neck like a pilot’s scarf—a very much alive scarf with pins still in it or rather in you, owweee owweee owweee—
Janey Orrick
Skeeter's very best friend in Marble
Orchard.
—so then she took this sheet of paper and made like a black border around it and wrote, “If that’s the way it’s going to be, what’s the point of being alive?” And then she swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin. But it only made her throw up a jillion times, all white...
Ruthie Mundt
Skeeter's role model in Marble Orchard.
...Ruthie was the coolest girl in Marble Orchard—the first one I knew personally who got talked about for “putting out,” which Janey and I thought meant French-kissing. (Well it involves putting out your tongue, doesn’t it?...)
Jeff Scolley
Skeeter's first boyfriend in Marble
Orchard.
...Jeff looked exactly like Jonny Quest, only with brown hair and an overbite. Which I got thoroughly acquainted with, har har. No, it was all very innocent, mostly ‘cause I left town before my eleventh birthday. (Just as well too, ‘cause Jeff was getting fitted for braces at the time...)
Supertimmy, New Junebug, and William
Skeeter's other Marble Orchard livestock:
a
pinto, a sorrel, and a guinea pig.
...Then there’s this guinea pig named William, I was going to call him Billy Boy ‘cause I thought he’d be great to play hide-‘n’-seek with, you know, “Ohh-ohh where have you been, charming Billy?,” but he’s really dull even for a guinea pig and won’t eat anything but graham crackers...
Others in Marble Orchard
include Skeeter's friends Laurie and Amy, and Cathy Sue Hoopleman;
the Reverend Hall and "General" Mills
the choir director; Agnes at
Sidney's Diner; Miss Gibson
the second grade teacher; Mrs. Dittwilmer the
tap-dancing teacher; the
driven-insane Brownie troop leader who taught the girls how to bump 'n'
grind;
and Clem the scarecrow.
The Skeeter Kitefly Website
Copyright © 2002-2010
by P. S. Ehrlich; All Rights Reserved. Proceed to Characters: Page Two Return to Top