Character Analysis
Lady Magnet
Sean, Frannie's older brother, is kind of an amazing dude. He's athletic, smart, a good cook, and wicked cute. When he goes out, all the teenage girls notice him and try to catch his eye:
"Huh, pretty boy?" the girl said again. "You with the pretty hair and eyes."
I didn't know if I was more shocked by what she was saying or by the fact that they had just come up on us like that. I mean, girls looked at Sean all the time. And sometimes he tried to talk to them. But nobody had ever just walked up to us like that. (13.2-3)
But his good looks and amazingness alone aren't enough to keep girls interested in him. Unfortunately, Sean is deaf, and all the girls who hit on him disappear when they realize that he has a disability. This frustrates Sean to no end, because he just wants girls to like him for who he is, despite the fact that he cannot hear. Is that so much to ask?
Bridge Builder
Because Sean feels like there is an actual physical barrier between him and the rest of the world—especially the hearing world—he's always looking for ways to bridge that gap with a, um, bridge. Metaphorically speaking, that is. When Frannie asks him why he's so into girls who can hear (as opposed to the deaf girls at his school), he says it's because the hearing girls are a bridge to a world where he doesn't belong:
It's like that, Frannie. The hearing girls are the bridges. They're the other worlds. They're the worlds I can't just walk across and into, you know. (13.26)
Sean isn't just interested in understanding the hearing world. He's also stuck on the idea of building a bridge all the way to the other side of the highway, to see how the white side of town lives:
If someone did build that bridge, Sean, I said, who do you think would be the first to cross it? Someone from that side? Or somebody from our side?
I'd cross it, Sean said. I don't mind being the first. (3.20-21)
Sean's sick and tired of being kept in the dark about other parts of the world and other communities. He's isolated enough by his disability, and he doesn't want anything else to hold him back from experiencing the full magnitude of the world. As much as Frannie needs to learn to be content with life in the moment, Sean is a reminder that there are things to strive for as well.