Excerpt from Chapter 1 (“Ordinary Joe”):
Joe was a middle child. He lived in the middle bedroom in the middle house on a street in the middle of Middletown, Kansas. This was just about in the middle of a state that was nearly in the middle of the country. Even his last name was somewhere in the middle. Not Black. Not White. Just Gray.
Joe Gray.

Joe knew kids with names like Mario and Herman and Rashaan and Max. He had classmates who were called Billie Jean and Samantha and Amerika. He knew a Filipe. He knew a Talia. He even knew a kid named Rhythm. But Joe was just Joe.
The Gray family lived at 555 Central Avenue. Their house wasn’t painted gray. It was brown with white shutters, a red door and green trim. Of course, Joe thought, if you mix all those colors together, you’d probably get gray…

Excerpt from Chapter 4 (“Meet Freddy”):
Freddy stood up to his full 8-inch height and pointed a miniscule finger in Joe’s face. “First of all, you’re not nobody,” he nearly shouted, in that gruff-squeaky sort of way. “If you were nobody, how could we be having this conversation? I’d be talking to myself right now. And I’m clearly not talking to myself because if I were, I wouldn’t have to shout. In fact, I wouldn’t even have to whisper. You can talk to yourself without even talking. You just have to think to yourself. But I’m not thinking. I’m talking. Got it?”
“Well…”
“Now, you’re not nobody, but you’re not everybody, either. If you were everybody, how could you possibly fit in your kitchen? Everybody amounts to several billion people. And that doesn’t even include all the hyenas, giraffes, sea cows and ladybugs. Personally, I’ve never seen a giraffe open a refrigerator. So that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Ummm…”
“So you’re not nobody and you’re not everybody,” said Freddy. “That means you must be somebody.”
“I’m somebody?” asked Joe, who had always wanted to be just that…