In the text, Firegirl, by Tony Abbot, the narrators best

friend Jeff has a zany personality. He always seems to be

saying or doing silly things. For example, the first thing
he says to Tom when they get home from school is, You
ever smell blood? (p.2). This quote demonstrates that
Jeff likes to ask Tom random questions to shock him. Jeffs
craziness is further shown by the way he drinks the
cranberry juice when he knew Tom thought it was blood.
The author writes, His shirt had little blots of red
spreading down the front as he was dripping juice and
laughing and watching me, until I laughed, too, at the
whole thing (p.3). It is evident that Jeff likes to play
jokes on Tom and puts in a lot of effort to make him laugh.
Even though Jeff likes to mess with him, Tom seems to like
the excitement of having such a strange friend.
However, after further reading, my understanding of
Jeff has changed. In Chapter 2, I learned that Jeffs father
went away and he only lives with his mom. I wonder if
Jeffs silliness is a way of him acting out to deal with his
sadness. Maybe he does crazy things to keep his mind off
his dad. For instance, the text states, Jeff seemed to get
mad a lot more since his father went away (p.8). This
quote illustrates that Jeff is not always the class clown. He
has real struggles that he is dealing with, which is evident
by the anger Tom notices in him.