Inside Out by Terry Trueman

I am blogging about the book, Inside Out by Terry Trueman. I have read up to the fourth chapter in this book. From what I've read so far the main character is a young high school boy named Zach is suffering from a mental disease called Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disease that messes with your brain and tells you bad things or to cause harm to yourself. In Zach's head there are two mean voices named Dirtbag and Rat. Dirtbag and Rat tell Zach to kill himself or to do bad things and Zach has to take medication to keep these voices away. Everyday after school Zach goes to a local coffee shop across the street and waits there for his mother to come pick him up because she can't get off of work early enough to pick up Zach from school. One day two young boys around Zach's age come busting through the doors armed demanding for money. Someone from outside the coffee shop saw the incidents occur and called the police as the robbers panicked they held the shoppers and workers in the coffee shop hostage including Zach. Normally at the time Zach's mother comes to pick him up with his medication to take but as Zach is trapped in the coffee shop he is unable to get his medication to stay in reality and keep the voices away. I think the book is very good so far and attention grabbing. The book has an interesting plot and the way the author describes the situation, it's almost like your there in the coffee shop. I'm not sure why the author wrote it but maybe the author was in a situation like this before and he wrote about it. The theme of this book is to give the readers another look on how hard it is to deal with a mental illness and what challenges Zach goes through. I think the best character is Zach because he is facing many struggles in his life but when the level of anxiety rises Zach seems to stay calm. Here is a quote from the book, "I came home and found Zach sitting on the porch with a riffle to his head, he just looked at me and said, "I wanna die mom." At that moment i just bursted down into tears." I chose this passage from the book because it really shows the struggles that Zach and his mother have to face with his mental illness. Although Zach is mentally disabled, he is also very smart. Some questions i have about the book so far from what I've read are, Is Zach and all the other hostages going to be able to make it out alive from the coffee shop? Will the robbers go to jail for the crime they've committed?