Norbett Rhodes

Norbett Rhodes was Beany's first romance.

From Image Cascade:

Undeserving as he may have been, Beany fell captive to Norbett's neediness for an honest, caring friend. Beany was compelled to save Norbett from himself and from those who misunderstood him. Both of Norbett's parents were killed when he was very young and the responsibility of the boy was dropped upon his relatively unfeeling uncle and aunt. An excerpt from Beany Malone showing some of Norbett's less endearing, yet most prominent show-off qualities, "...And Martie Malone was viciously berating Norbett's uncle, N. J. Rhodes, safety manager, for his indifferent enforcement of traffic laws. It was this uncle and his wife with whom Norbett made his home at the big Park Gate Hotel.

Norbett was still at Harkness High and was vindictively bitter and resentful about being there. Norbett's enemies - and unlike Johnny he had a goodly number - said he had been so busy being a big shot his senior year that he had overshot himself and failed to graduate. Norbett was school reporter for the Tribune, rival paper of Martie Malone's Call. During the winter, when he had covered a ski meet and had been overanxious for a good picture shot, he had climbed a high ledge and slipped and torn a ligament in his ankle. He had missed many chemistry classes because the chem lab was on third floor. . . . ("Old show-off Norbett," Mary Fred always said. "Old hot-stuff himself!")

In the drugstore Norbett had been just a moody, studious, too-thin boy of eighteen or nineteen in a loud sport jacket. But in his red flash of car he took on a reckless, man-about-town swagger. He shot out from the curb. He jabbed a perilous fender-grazing course through the traffic headed for the football game.

"Be careful, Norbett," Beany cried out once, as he barely missed an elderly woman, carrying two bulging sacks of groceries.

"Pedestrians have eyes and legs," he said. "What's to hinder them from being careful?"