Mattyboy

I have this guess of a theory, and its nothing more than that. My Only Escape might have been more important to Comsie, and I'm really glad he was able to bring that to a conclusion. New Kid was his first story and first characters, and maybe he wanted to leave Randy and Ryan as an ongoing thing. My thought is that New Kid as a story is basically finished and the climax was Randy coming out to his Mom in episodes 67-68. Time has started moving really slowly in NK; Monkey Blowtorch Day (NK #47) was written 14 years ago, but it's only been a couple of weeks over spring break in NK time. Comsie really loved the frisson of desire and the tension of what-will-happen-if-they-know, that's kind of all sorted out now in New Kid. Randy and Ryan have Tyler and Ariel, and don't seem to depend much on people at school outside that. Coming out isn't all that scary any more. The only thing left seems to be "what if Hailey throws a fit?" and while chapters have been worked up out of less than that, I don't feel that's really what we're all waiting for. So what's left? The boys eat lunch in the cafeteria again? Hailey acts up? Sean something something ? Ariel has some unfinished business alright, and I've poked at @MrM over whether he feels he could work that out, but Ryan and Randy? They seem to have landed on solid ground. We might be done here

Sheriff is handling this is in a pretty A+ manner. He's managing to balance Colt's two premeditated attempted murders and also recognizing that there's not much prospect of a jury convicting Colt and /or Noah of anything here. And bonus points for one of the victims was his son and he's treating Colt fairly (as he should , of course, but that ups the degree-of-difficulty here).

Yes, that's my guess about Pam (at least at the emotional abuse + intimidation level) but I don't have any particular claim that my guess is better than anyone else's.

I'll put a token down on the text is from Pam, and yes, Noah's in the car and yes really in danger.

Well, that's one ex-wife-subplot sorted out. One to go.

Almost there. Maybe Colt can think of just not doing it. Crawl under the car, make a snipping sound and crawl back out.

That is indeed a fine revelation.

Except it's being planned by a 15 year-old with anger-management issues and a traumatized 14 year-old. Who don't even read a lot of murder mysteries or anything. I mean, it's a bad plan, for sure, but it's pretty realistic for these characters. And the better path via Amy and figuring out how to talk to the sheriff or some neutral cop is an open door, but they just keep not looking in that direction.

My understanding is that this is an older story that is being rebooted and revised, so I believe our author does in fact know how it ends at this point. No one's been commenting like they read an earlier version, that I can detect, but DrP has been around long enough that he could have done.

Noah's been putting holds on library books Brett hasn't finished yet so he can't renew them.

Perhaps Brett knew the previous residents? Yes, you're over-analyzing (and so am I) but I agree there's something going on there. The story is titled "Revelations," so maybe there will be some coming up.

A tire iron? Evidence that Noah has a vendetta against Brett? In the course of that they might find what that George has set up in the basement amounts to a torture chamber.

I'm slightly intrigued that Brett knows about the treehouse arson. Michelle didn't report it (and I'm not certain she knows about it). I guess Amy told him. But he's also fending off Colt who briefly looked like an option for his girlfriend, and is deflecting from anyone putting together "last year Brett threatened to burn down Noah's stuff" and "Noah's stuff just burned down." I'm not sure I'd mind a warrant being issued to search Noah's house of evidence of crimes.

There's not a lot Rylee's mean-girl act can do without a gang of henchmeanies. Pretty much everybody that Colt knows in this town knows and says they're ok. Perhaps Amy can work on Brett and Brett's Dad.

Yeah, the problem is that Colt and Noah have to believe that for themselves first. The rest seems pretty reasonable; especially if you cycle through an EMT plus a state trooper finds naked kid in the basement tied up with cock ring on.