Johnny Henzel did not die immediately. After he was shot, he was taken to the Schaumburg Medical Center, where he lay in a coma and never awoke. He tells Thelma and me that despite being unconscious, he could sometimes hear what people said to him.

“The doctors even told my folks to talk to me,” Johnny says. “They never mentioned the shootings, though. They thought if they did, I wouldn’t get better.”

It was his ten-year-old sister who told him about his murder. When their parents were out of the room fetching some lunch, she leaned in close to Johnny’s head, swathed in its turban of bandages, and whispered, “Gunboy got you!”

“Brenda said my folks refused to say the killer’s name out loud. They’d just call him ‘the boy with the gun.’ She told me not to worry ’cause Gunboy couldn’t get me no more. He’d shot himself dead.”

“He is dead too?” I say, astounded.

Johnny makes one hand into a pistol and holds it to his own temple. He nods and pulls the trigger.

He and Thelma are sitting Indian-style on the opposite bed. I sit on my own bed, hugging my pillow. I think I am in shock: I did not die from the over-excitement of learning 106 elements by heart.

“Who was Gunboy?” I ask Johnny, whose eyes are still bloodshot from crying.

“I don’t know for sure,” he replies. “Brenda never mentioned him again. She just kept pleading with me to wake up. ‘Open your eyes, Johnny! Please open your eyes!’ ”

“If Gunboy is a true boy, he must have been a student at our school,” I say. “Oh, goodness, he may be thirteen. He may have been reborn here in Town!”

“I doubt it,” Thelma says. “Zig may be a dope, but I can’t figure he’d ever let in a killer.” She turns to Johnny. “You didn’t get a look at him?”

“No, not the day of the shooting. I just remember walking down the hall minding my own business. I saw Jermaine Tucker and Cynthia Orwell and Larry Schultz and Oscar Stanley,” he says. “I saw you, Boo, standing at your locker. And then nothing.”

“If we die in a real horrible way, Zig erases the very last seconds of our deaths,” Thelma says. “It’s for our own good.”

“Gunboy probably shot me in the back of the head,” Johnny says. “And got you, too, Boo. You didn’t see nothing?”

“I was facing my locker,” I say. “But I may remember the sound of a gunshot and even a scream. I am not sure, though. It is all very fuzzy.”

“Who at your school would want to shoot you boys?” Thelma asks.

Many a former classmate of mine took pleasure in hassling me and hurting me, but would any of them actually shoot me in the back?

Johnny narrows his eyes. “I think Gunboy was a new kid at school.”

“Why do you think that?” I ask.

“I see the b*stard’s face. He comes to me in my nightmares.”

“Your nightmares?”

“All the nightmares I had at the hospital when I was in my coma. Gunboy haunts me, man. He won’t leave me the f*ck alone.”

“Maybe you did catch a glimpse of him,” Thelma says.

“The kid in my dream has an ugly mug, evil eyes, big ears, and messy hair like a punk rocker. I think I might have even seen him around in the months before we got shot.”

I try to picture such a boy. But I died on only the fourth day of the school year, so I might not have noticed any new boys. Perhaps he was not in my classes. “It’s possible Gunboy killed other thirteen-year-olds,” I say. “Other classmates of ours may be here too.”

“We can check the rebirthing books at the different infirmaries,” Thelma says. “We’ll see if Zig sent us any more packages from Hoffman Estates, Illinois.” She gets up from the bed and pats Johnny’s shoulder. “We’ll talk more in the morning, honey. You need to get some sleep.”

“Why does he need sleep?” I say. “He was just in a coma for five weeks.”

Thelma ignores my comment. She comes over and tries hugging me to her big, soft body, but I have had my fill of hugs tonight, so I move away and climb under the covers. She sings a few bars of “In the Still of the Night” as she tucks in my blanket.

After Thelma leaves, I watch Johnny shuck his clothes and don the striped pajamas Thelma stuffed into his knapsack. As he slides into bed, I wonder if he is afraid to go to sleep in case he falls back into a coma or has a nightmare about Gunboy. But I do not ask. I reach over and turn off the light on my desk. We lie in the dark in silence.

Finally, Johnny says, “I’m glad you’re here.”

When I do not reply, he goes on: “I don’t mean I’m glad you’re dead, or passed or whatever the hell they say. I’m just glad I’m not alone. I’m glad a friend’s here with me.”

A friend. He called me a friend. Odd. We seldom spoke back in America, but then again, Johnny was shot in the head, so perhaps he does not remember things exactly as they were.

“Good night, Johnny.”

“Good night, Boo.”

But it is not a good night because not for one minute do I sleep.