On Will’s way down to the apartment building lobby, he is very confused when Shawn’s ghost gets on the elevator at the second floor and greets all the other ghosts warmly, but won’t speak to Will or answer any of Will’s questions about what he should do. Because Shawn passed “the Rules” of the neighborhood down to Will, Will knows he’s expected to avenge Shawn’s death by killing Carlson Riggs (who he believes killed Shawn) using Shawn’s gun hidden in the middle drawer. After killing a man named Frick, Shawn was shot on the street coming home from fetching his mother special soap for her eczema, presumably by whomever was trying to avenge Frick’s death. Though Shawn kept his side of the room tidy, Will suggests that the middle drawer of Shawn’s dresser (which seemed broken on purpose) represented the dark streak that ran through the otherwise kind and loving Shawn. After Shawn turned 18, he became even wilder than he was as a minor. Despite Will’s idolization, he allows that Shawn had a dark side. Shawn’s own mentor was a man named Buck, who took Shawn under his wing after Pop died and taught him everything he knew-including how to use his gun. From the time of the boys’ father, Pop’s, death when Shawn was seven and Will was three, Shawn took over as a kind of stand-in father figure for Will. To Will, Shawn always seemed extremely mature-years ago, Shawn took Will’s preteen attempts to look cool seriously and coached him on how to be a man.
Shawn was cool and considered the king of the neighborhood, since he could do both backflips and Penny Drops (a monkey bars trick). Will idolizes Shawn, as he was Will’s only brother and his beloved mentor. Shawn is about 19 or 20 at the time of his death in a gang-related incident the day before the novel begins.
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