Craig
Craig is the first-person narrator and protagonist of the story recalling events that took place he was a young boy living in a town with a population of maybe six hundred people. Starting when he was nine, he began working for a retiree named Mr. Harrigan who, in addition to a five-dollar hourly wage, Harrigan sends Craig cards for his birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day every year containing a one-dollar lottery scratch-off card. After a few years passed, the 2007 arrival of the Valentine’s Day card contains a ticket revealing a $3,000 payout after being scratched off. Craig decides to buy Mr. Harrigan an iPhone to show his appreciation and love.
Mr. Harrigan
Mr. Harrigan could have bought himself an iPhone. In fact, he could have bought an iPhone every day for every person in town since he moved there after retiring from a long career owning many successful businesses which translated into many successful Wall Street investments. Despite this background, the old man is something of a Luddite and initially rejects the offer of the phone from Craig until the boy shows him how the phone can be used to handle his investments, follow the news, and listen to country music. When Mr. Harrigan dies, Craig sneaks the phone into Harrigan’s coffin. Craig later learns Harrigan put nearly a million dollars into a trust to be managed by Craig’s father and Harrigan’s business manager until the boy turns 26.
Kenny Yanko
Craig, missing the company of the old, has been moved to call the iPhone buried with Mr. Harrigan and leave voice messages only to be shocked the day when he receives a text message from the phone. Later on, he learns Mr. Harrigan had a darker side: if you crossed him, you only did it once. Upon starting middle school Craig instantly earns the attention of a bully named Kenny Yanko. When Kenny beats up Craig one day, he is once again moved to call the phone in the grave, this time leaving a voice message all about Kenny. The next day he was greeted with the news that Kenny is dead. He will later learn from a friend whose dad is a local cop that Kenny died of autoerotic asphyxiation which somehow managed to make half the hair on his head turn completely white.
Dean Whitmore
By the time a young man named Dean Whitmore drunkenly plows his car into and kills Ms. Hargensen, a teacher who intervened the first time Kenny tried to get physical with bullying, Craig has gotten a new iPhone which is not capable of connecting with the phone in the coffin. Despite having a long history of drunk driving incidents and because his father is rich, Dean is sentenced to rehab and four years of having to pee into a cup every once in while with advance notice. Outraged, Craig digs out his old iPhone and makes another call to the old man on the ground. Oddly enough, just two days into his rehab, Dean chooses a truly unique way to successfully commit suicide: ingesting shampoo. In response to this incident, Craig receives an important text message from Harrigan’s number.
