LBDG Commentary 8: The Big Break-In

Local Boy bailed on his previous big break to take the redhead’s ride in a tan van. This break-in is even bigger—directly revisiting a scene from the previous book.

I keep calling Local Boy Done Gone a standalone sequel, but in these commentary posts I also keep pointing out places where the two stories intersect. My guiding principle was to treat these overlaps more like easter eggs. If you read the original you’ll appreciate the continuity nods, but if you didn’t it won’t impact your ability to follow the story here—at which point it becomes an easter egg if/when you read the original book second. (Which came first, the chicken or the easter egg?)

Did it work? That’s for you to decide.

Tidbits:

• Pling pling pling, ding ding ding, even sleepy Local Boys will sing sing sing!
• We’re at Kurt Cobain’s house in the wee hours of April 7, 1994–a full day before his body is found, and a day previously visited by the narrator of TP in Chapter 5 of that book. The redhead calls it a “re-enactment“—a very specific word choice.
• Semi-related: The working title for this chapter was “Lithium, Mix 6”
• The distraction the redhead removed from 1969 relates to the hasty disappearance of Local Boy’s son before he could meddle too much. We’ll revisit this later.

• “What do I have to do?”
• In the original history, Tom Grant & Dylan Carlson search the house but not the garage. In this “re-enactment” it’s Local Boy & Nelson doing the searching—still observed by the ghostly time traveling narrator.
• We saw Local Boy’s son spike the superball in frustration in the original book upon realizing he couldn’t go upstairs to investigate the greenhouse on the Cobain property. In that book we also learned time travelers can only interact with themselves or a same chromosomed descendent. The redhead seeing the son & grabbing the ball shouldn’t be possible based on past precedent—nor should their ability to freely roam the house. Same world, new territory.

Check out Local Boy Done Gone