Falling Short

Marco Honeyman is Isaac’s best friend. He lives with his mother, next door to Isaac’s house. Marco is the second protagonist of Falling Short and narrates the chapters that bear his name. Marco loves computer coding, robotics, and comic books. He is highly organized, meticulous, and academically gifted, but he feels inadequate because he has little athletic talent, and his father is much more interested in athletics than academics. Although he is much shorter than most people his age, Marco wants to learn to play basketball and join the school’s team to impress his father. An important part of his character arc is his realization that he should work toward goals that satisfy him instead of worrying about trying to please others, including his father. Notably, after his experience in the basketball tournament, he decides to join the robotics team after all. Despite his father’s interest in his son’s newfound athletic ability, he realizes that his father should support him in all his extracurriculars—regardless of whether they deviate from his father’s interests or expectations of his son.

Despite his academic intelligence, Marco is not adept at picking up social cues and often misunderstands what others expect of him. He does not anticipate how others will react to his rolling backpack, for example, and is hurt when he gets teased about it. When he offers a fist-bump to his new friends, as Isaac has taught him to, they shake his fist, since they are unfamiliar with fist-bumping. Instead of understanding their confusion, he jumps to the conclusion that this is how people greet one another in middle school and repeats the fist-shaking behavior when he greets others. When Isaac tells him to “roll” toward the basket, he somersaults, not understanding that the word must have another meaning in the context of basketball. This element of Marco’s character humanizes him and creates comedic moments in the plot.

Vero Castillo is Isaac’s mother. She is transitioning to being called Vero Anguiano at the beginning of the story because of her separation from her husband, Manuel. Vero works long hours at the Mexican restaurant she owns and operates. These long hours compound the stress of being a newly single parent, but Vero is determined to make things work on her own to protect Isaac from the effects of his father’s alcohol addiction. She is a warm and nurturing mother to Isaac, constantly cooking for him and his best friend, cheering Isaac on at his basketball games, and offering Isaac gentle advice at several points in the story.

However, Vero resents having to “play the villain” in her relationship with Isaac (106). She is always the one to make rules and remind him of his obligations, because his father, Manuel, does not do these things. Vero is the one who is most concerned with Isaac’s academic problems, and she puts pressure on him to do better in sixth grade than he did in fifth. Isaac sometimes feels that she does not understand how hard he is trying, but he is desperate to please her and make her proud of him.

Manuel Castillo is Isaac’s father. He is a jovial, fun-loving man who loves Isaac very much. He thinks of Isaac as his friend, and he always tries to entertain Isaac with junk food, television, and amusing stories about his past. Part of this attitude stems from his difficult relationship with his father and feeling like he wants to be a different kind of father to Isaac than his father was to him. Manuel goes out of his way to show Isaac his support by teaching him what he knows about basketball and attending the tournament to cheer for Isaac despite his doctor’s orders to stay home and rest. He is also generous toward Isaac’s best friend, Marco, doing his best to fill in for Marco’s emotionally absent father.

Unfortunately, Manuel struggles with Feeling Inadequate Versus Being Enough and is someone with an alcohol addiction. After his car accident, he explains to Isaac, “Drinking has a way of hiding who a person is. I didn’t feel there was much of me I wanted the world to see” (246). This feeling of inadequacy plays a role in Manuel’s alcohol addiction. Manuel also struggles to process the deaths of his father and sister. His drinking leads to the dissolution of his marriage, and, as desperate as he is to see his son, he struggles to make it happen because he is also desperate to keep Isaac away from his drinking. He tells Isaac that his greatest fear is that Isaac will grow up to be like him. Because of his drinking, Manuel ends up breaking promises to Isaac and has trouble functioning as a responsible parent. For example, he takes more than an hour to pick Isaac up from the nurse’s office on Isaac’s first day of school, and he seldom gives much thought to Isaac’s homework and other school obligations. Despite these past letdowns, Manuel resolves to do better in the future for Vero and Issac, making the most of the second chance he has been given after his accident.

Mrs. Honeyman is Marco’s mother. Although she only makes a few appearances in the text and is both a static and flat character, she has an important impact on Marco’s well-being. Mrs. Honeyman is a loving and nurturing parent who does her best to make up for her ex-husband’s neglect of Marco. Her ex-husband’s attitude toward Marco upsets her, and she tries to minimize its impact on Marco. When Marco’s father promises to come to the basketball tournament, she calls him to stress how important it is that he follow through and show up for Marco. In some ways, Marco sees her as stuck in the past; she still reminisces about the early days of her relationship with Marco’s father, for instance. Marco comments, “Mom does this a lot. Just about anything starts up her memories” (84).

Mrs. Honeyman takes the time to drive Marco, and often Isaac, to school and cooks homemade meals for him, even though cooking is not her strong suit. She is consistently supportive of Marco. She tells him that he “could have a future in magic if [he] wanted” after seeing him do sleight-of-hand tricks (162). Even after he makes several mistakes in his first tournament game and misses his first free throw opportunity in the final game, Marco’s mother is not disappointed in him or embarrassed like his father. When Marco gets ready to take his second shot, he sees his mother standing with Isaac’s family, excitedly jumping up and down and yelling Marco’s name, displaying her unwavering support for him.

Marco’s father is a flat and static character who Cisneros primarily characterizes through his neglect of Marco. He is an absent father who moved on from Marco and his mother with a new girlfriend, Angie, and her son, Sean. Mr. Honeyman is a former high-school star basketball player, and he cannot relate to Marco’s interests in academic subjects. He can enjoy spending time with Sean because Sean, like him, is an athlete. He is insensitive to Marco’s feelings or his responsibility to him, frequently posting on social media about how much he enjoys his relationship with Sean despite neglecting his role as a father to Marco.

Marco’s mother has even tried bribing Mr. Honeyman to spend time with his son. When Marco was in third grade, she offered to let his father off the hook for alimony and child support if he would spend more time with Marco—an offer he refused. His lack of interest in Marco contrasts sharply with Manuel Castillo’s attitude toward both Isaac and Marco, making him a foil for Manuel.

Byron Miller is another flat and static character who functions as an antagonist for both Isaac and Marco. He is an eighth grader at Mendez and a star basketball player with an aggressive personality and a penchant for bullying younger students. Cisneros first introduces Byron as a “giant of a boy with a jutted chin and chiseled chest, sporting frosted hair tips” who bumps into Isaac on the first day of school (22). He later bullies Marco because of Marco’s size, making rude comments in the locker room and then, after class, bundling Marco into a sweatshirt and carrying him around like a baby. He only stops when Isaac’s and Marco’s friends, Nick and Ryan, confront him.

When his bullying comes to Coach Chavez’s attention, Byron loses his place on the school basketball team. Chavez reminds him that he has a behavior contract in place, which reveals that his bullying has been an ongoing issue, before kicking him off the team. Bryon does not accept this punishment and stays at the school. Instead, he transfers to another school to still play basketball. He appears in the final part of the novel when he leads his new team into the tournament finals. Cisneros shows that Byron has not learned anything from his past experiences as a bully because he is rude and aggressive toward Isaac and Marco during the tournament. His aggression interferes with his judgment even on the court, leading him to make mistakes that contribute to Mendez’s victory over Byron’s new team.