Summary
At the sound of his mother in the hallway, Will turns off his light and pushes the pistol under his pillow. He can’t sleep for a while. But he does eventually. Upon waking, Will feels guilty for being alive. He wraps his fingers around the gun, placing his prints over Shawn’s like they are holding hands.
Will looks like a zombie in the mirror. He puts the pistol in the back of his waistband, handle up. He plans to shoot Riggs outside his building. He and Shawn used to visit Riggs there before Riggs joined the Dark Suns. If Will goes in the morning, none of his gang will be out yet. He can buzz Riggs, get him to come down, and then do it.
Will leaves without waking his mother, who fell asleep at the table. He takes the elevator. A man gets on. When Will senses he is being watched, he asks the man, “Do I know you?” The man smiles, adjusts the chains around his neck, and asks in a deep, familiar voice if Will doesn’t recognize him. Will is shocked when he sees the man’s T-shirt, which has a memorial photo of Buck, someone Will used to know. Will stutters and stumbles. Buck confirms that Will thought he was dead. Will says he did. Buck says, “I am.”
Will pinches himself to wake up, but he isn’t dreaming. Buck was like an older brother to Shawn, but Will is still scared. Buck says he came to check on his gun. Buck says Shawn was around Will’s age when he taught him The Rules and gave him the gun. Buck asks what he’s gonna do with it, and Will tells him about the murder, the Dark Suns, and Riggs.
Will panics that the elevator is moving too slowly. He says he has work to do. Buck laughs at Will. He presses Will’s chest and tells him he doesn’t have it in him. It was in Shawn, but not in Will. Buck asks if he checked to see if the gun was loaded. Buck takes the gun and checks, finding fourteen rounds in the clip and one slug in the chamber. He holds it out to Will but won’t let go, laughing at Will. Will stumbles into the corner like a clown. Buck repeats that Will doesn’t have it in him and lights a cigarette. The elevator stops when he strikes the match.
On the sixth floor, Will quickly puts the gun back in his waistband before a girl steps in. She is around Will’s age and “fine as heaven.” Her perfume cuts through the smoke. He checks her out, leaning back to get a view of her cleavage. She sarcastically comments that she didn’t know smoking was allowed in elevators. Will is surprised she can see Buck.
She tells Will she didn’t know guns were allowed either. She brushes against Will’s hand and asks what he needs the gun for. He says that’s not the kind of question you ask someone you don’t know. She says she does know him. She shows him a photo of Will and her as eight-year-olds hanging from the monkey bars. It’s Dani.
Dani reminds Will of the day there were gunshots while they were playing on the monkey bars. Will remembers Shawn screaming for them to get down, and how he lay on top of them, covering them. Will remembers the brightness dimming in Dani’s eyes, her mouth full of blood and bubble gum. Will says he cried all night when she died, and over breakfast the next morning, Shawn taught him Rule One: no crying.
Analysis
Intending to follow The Rules, Will sets out while his mother is asleep. He plans to use Shawn’s handgun as a tool for revenge, believing he can shoot Riggs, a Dark Suns gang member. However, his plan encounters an unexpected hurdle when the novel takes a surreal turn.
With Will’s encounter with the ghost of Buck, Reynolds builds on the themes of grief, gun violence, and masculinity while introducing another major theme: mentorship. Will quickly learns from Buck that the gun in his waistband once belonged to him, and that he gifted it to Shawn around the same time he taught him The Rules. With this reveal, Reynolds makes it clear that while Shawn was Will’s mentor as the primary male authority figure in his life, Buck served the same role for Shawn.
Although Will tries to put forward a masculine front and impress Buck with his commitment to The Rules, Buck is quick to challenge Will’s certainty, going as far as humiliating Will by pointing out that he is so unprepared to carry out a revenge killing that he doesn’t know if the gun is loaded. Buck’s solitary exchange with Will ends with him holding the gun back from Will, reminding the teenager that he may be taking on more than he can handle.
The mood in the elevator changes when an attractive young woman steps on. Will admits that when he flirts, he is doing his best impression of Shawn, which is Shawn’s best impression of Buck—a humorous line that further emphasizes the theme of mentorship. However, the woman turns out to be another ghost. The eerie reunion with Dani brings Will back to the day he saw her die on the playground, the victim of a stray bullet from a botched murder attempt.
This traumatic early encounter with gun violence initiated Will into a world where even the innocent are at risk of being caught up in gang conflicts. The reader also learns that the tears Will shed after Dani’s death were what prompted Shawn to teach him The Rules. With this revelation, Reynolds shows how the masculine ideals of toughness and stoicism bound up in The Rules were ingrained in Will during a moment of emotional vulnerability that Shawn sought to suppress.
