Mateo

One of the main characters of the novel, Mateo is an eighteen year-old boy who recently graduated from high school. He is shy, quiet and scared of life. In the opening pages, the reader learns that he does not have “more friends than [he does] fingers” and that most of his time is spent indoors, playing Xbox, doing puzzles and reading (7). When he finds out that it is his End Day, Mateo laments all of the “wasted opportunities” of his life (9); he laments the fact that he was always too scared to life because of the possibility of death. For the first half of the novel, the reader sees Mateo as a boy too scared to leave his room on his End Day, spending it cleaning and playing video games. Even when he first meets Rufus, he continues to cling to his fears and shyness, refusing to join...