Hometown hero

“Hometown hero” names one of the book’s most revealing expressions: it is at once Tabitha Moore’s improvised answer to a question about her future, the title of a civic display in Springton, and an attempted bridge between Tabitha and Alicia Brooks. The phrase matters because its meaning is never fixed by conventional heroism. It moves between private uncertainty, public recognition, and the difficult work of identifying with another person.

First Use: An Uncertain Future

The phrase first appears when Tabitha Moore is speaking with two older students about school and adulthood. After one of them suggests that she take bus technology and perhaps obtain an easy secretarial job, he asks what she plans to do when she grows up. Tabitha finds the wording absurdly premature because she is only thirteen until December, even though she is already in high school and knows that she is unusually young for it. Her response, “I’ll be a hometown hero, I guess,” is therefore less a settled career plan than a deflecting, half-serious formulation.

The answer also exposes Tabitha’s unusual position in the conversation. The tall student has a concrete ambition to run a video store, while Tabitha offers a title rather than an occupation. “Hometown hero” describes a kind of public identity without explaining the work that would produce it. The phrase allows her to imagine a future in which she will matter to Springton, but the tentative “I guess” keeps the aspiration protected from scrutiny. It is both a declaration and an admission that she does not yet know what the declaration means.

Civic Recognition in Springton

The expression later acquires a literal institutional form in Springton’s town hall. In a scene introduced by the temporal marker “A lifetime ago,” Sharon presents Tabitha Moore with a display labeled “Springton’s Hometown Heroes.” The town hall’s large glass case normally holds seasonal decorations, but during a lull between major holidays Sharon devises a permanent-looking tribute to prominent residents of the small city. The phrase thus changes from Tabitha’s spontaneous fantasy into a civic category.

Tabitha’s display contains copies of Goblina and Goblin Princess beside a large, unflattering office photograph. Sharon insists that Tabitha belongs there because she is a published author. Tabitha resists the honor by distinguishing publication from success: she says that she is “A published author—not a successful author,” and recalls that no one read the old books. Her discomfort is intensified by the visual presentation. The paperback covers show cartoonish green goblins baring their teeth, and Tabitha has never been satisfied with the artist commissioned by her publisher, one of the problems that eventually destroyed their unstable partnership.

The arrangement of the case creates a deliberate contrast between different forms of local achievement. Three central displays honor veterans of the Iraqi war with service medals and photographs of men in uniform. Tabitha feels that placing her picture beside theirs and calling her a hero borders on sacrilege. Sharon answers that military heroes are not the only figures with whom residents can identify, and points to Alicia Brooks at the other end of the display. The town hall therefore broadens heroism beyond combat while still leaving Tabitha uncertain about whether authorship can carry comparable public weight.

Alicia Brooks’s section supplies a second artistic version of the title. Her portrait shows her smiling softly behind oversized glasses, while the accompanying works include ink drawings of sorrowful faces and a finely rendered naked back, with muscles, hair, light, and shadow defined through etched lines. Sharon proudly identifies Alicia as “Our artiste” and lists her work for Sports Illustrated, People magazine, and Playboy. In the display’s structure, Alicia’s professional art gives the civic label a more established cultural legitimacy than Tabitha feels her own books possess.

From Civic Label to Interpersonal Appeal

Tabitha later carries the phrase from the public display into her attempted friendship with Alicia Brooks. Alicia asks why Tabitha would want to be friends with her, and Tabitha replies that they might be “kindred spirits” and “Hometown heroes.” Here the expression no longer means a person officially selected by a town hall committee. Tabitha uses it to propose a relationship between two girls whose creative work has made them visible, or potentially visible, within Springton.

Alicia does not immediately accept this interpretation. She repeats “Hometown heroes” in disbelief and asks what it means. Tabitha cannot provide a definition: she laughs, shrugs in exasperation, and admits, “I never really knew. It means us, I guess?” That admission is crucial. The expression’s emotional force exceeds Tabitha’s ability to explain it. It is an intuition of kinship before it becomes a coherent social idea.

The exchange also reveals the risks of Tabitha’s language. Alicia is bewildered by the proposal and regards Tabitha as strange, while Tabitha recognizes that she has said something awkward and apologizes. She then offers a concrete alternative to the grand phrase: Alicia can talk with her, spend time with her, or show her drawings, because Tabitha hides in the library at the corner table every lunch period. “Hometown heroes” therefore ends not as a triumphant slogan but as an imperfect opening toward friendship, translated into a practical invitation.

Meaning and Narrative Function

“Hometown hero” joins public honor to private vulnerability. In the town hall it is a formal label applied by Sharon, who sees value in Tabitha’s published work even when Tabitha sees only failed books, poor cover art, and an unsuccessful professional partnership. In the school conversation it is an evasive answer from a very young girl facing a question about adulthood. In the conversation with Alicia Brooks it becomes a hopeful but unstable attempt to name shared creative identity.

The expression also revises the usual scale of heroism. The town hall places military service, professional illustration, and children’s fiction within the same five-display framework. Tabitha resists that equivalence because she measures herself against veterans, yet Sharon’s insistence suggests that a community’s heroes need not all perform the same kind of service. The phrase makes room for people whose influence is local, cultural, or personal rather than spectacular.

Its repeated use gives the wording a movement from performance toward honesty. Tabitha first performs confidence by offering an impressive-sounding future title, later rejects the title when it is publicly attached to her, and finally admits that she does not really know what it means when Alicia challenges her. What remains is not a stable definition but a desire: to belong to Springton, to have one’s creative life witnessed, and to discover another person who might understand that desire. “Hometown hero” is consequently less a completed identity than a provisional name for becoming visible. algod