- Time to meet yet another character! He's Gerry Thompson. Oh hey, you might want to bookmark this page, because Gerry is going to disappear after this for about forty pages or so.
- We meet Gerry when he is six and learn he is surrounded by hunger, loneliness and, above all, hatred, his one certainty. His memories are long and painful.
- We are told that Gerry begins to accepts a long wait to make a decision that will define him. This is a pretty serious six-year-old.
- His decision, at age eight, is to run away from the state orphanage, to live alone, to kill if cornered, and to hate. Yikes!