Long Way Down: Five Summary & Analysis

The elevator feels like a box of smoke. Buck and Dani puff and puff on their cigarettes, but Will expects the smoke to rush out when the doors open. It doesn’t. He thinks that cigarette smoke isn’t supposed to feel like a wool blanket or a blizzard—it can be thick, but it shouldn’t be solid enough to hold onto Will. Will coughs and fans the air, expecting the person outside to take the next elevator instead. Even if other people can’t see the ghosts or their smoke, nobody wants to get on an elevator with a teenager who seems to be going crazy. However, the person does decide to get on Will’s elevator, so Will steps back to make room. He’s close to Dani and Buck, but he can’t feel their breath.

Two big hands reach through the smoke, grab Will’s shirt, and hold him by the neck as the doors close. Will can barely breathe and can’t see anything. Suddenly, the hands release Will and grab him again in a headlock, just like Shawn used to do. Will hears laughter, but it feels like he’s being held underwater and is drowning while the ocean laughs. He wonders how to tell this water that drowning isn’t funny. When the hands release Will, he looks to Buck and Dani for help. They move to the corner, laughing and smoking.

Will yelps and puts one hand on the gun. The newcomer asks Will what he’s reaching for and why. He calls Will “nephew.” Will repeats the word in his head as a question, and the newcomer asks if Will still hasn’t learned to fight back yet. There are lots of pictures of Uncle Mark at Will’s apartment. He’s always impeccably dressed in suits, with jewelry and a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He was handsome like Shawn, and always ready for the camera. Will thinks that he “foreshadow[ed] the flash.” Will asks if he’s going insane as Uncle Mark calls Will forward. As Uncle Mark towers above Will, Will remembers that his uncle is supposed to be dead. Uncle Mark puts his hands on Will’s shoulders and says that he looks just like Pop.

According to Will’s mother, Uncle Mark videotaped everything, from dance battles to gang fights, with a camera that Mark’s mom bought him for his 18th birthday. He dreamed of making a movie and had a script idea, in which an uncool boy met his landlord’s young girlfriend. The girl taught the boy everything about how to woo and treat girls, so the boy used his new skills to woo the girl. When the landlord found out, he kicked the boy out. The boy and the girl were in love, homeless, and happy. Will finds this silly. The boy is Uncle Mark’s little brother, Will and Shawn’s Pop. The girl is Will’s mother.

In the elevator, Uncle Mark pulls Will into a hug, but Will can’t figure out how to hug a ghost. He thinks it’s weird to know a person he doesn’t know, but he also thinks it’s weird to not know this person he knows. Will asks Uncle Mark why he’s here as he looks his uncle up and down. At this, Uncle Mark looks sad, and Will figures that Uncle Mark expected Will to be excited to see him. Will is kind of excited, but seeing Mark’s ghost is weird. Uncle Mark straightens wrinkles in his shirt, brushes his impeccably tailored pants, and squats to inspect his shiny leather shoes. He puts a finger in his mouth and scrubs at a nonexistent smudge on the toe.

A better question, suggests Uncle Mark, is why Will is here. Will thinks that one should always be skeptical of someone who answers a question with a question, because it’s usually a setup. He offers another anagram: “cool=loco,” and asks Uncle Mark what he means. Will wants to avoid talking about the coldness in his heart and the gun in his pants. Uncle Mark stands up and repeats Will’s question. He cracks his knuckles and warns Will to not play around—Will needs to tell the truth now.

Will agrees to tell the truth and says that “they” killed Shawn last night. Uncle Mark interjects and asks if Will woke up today ready to fix things because he suddenly realized he could kill someone. Will nods, but Uncle Mark loudly asks Will again if he’s correct. Will confirms that Uncle Mark is right, but says that the Rules are law. Uncle Mark huffs and closes his eyes. Will wonders if Uncle Mark thinking about the Rules— he knows they were passed to Mark and that he passed them to Pop, who passed them to Shawn, who passed them to Will. Will tells the reader that the Rules have always ruled, and they will rule forever.

Uncle Mark purses his lips, opens his eyes, and very seriously says that they’re going to “set the scene” and talk through how Will’s plan is going to go down. In Uncle Mark’s “scene,” Will stands over Shawn’s bloody body. He takes his mother inside, and then finds Shawn’s gun. Will thinks about the Rules, and the next day, he decides to find Rigg—the guy who he knows killed Shawn. Will gets into the elevator, goes down to the lobby, and walks the nine blocks to Riggs’s apartment. He pulls the gun out. At this point, Will gets stuck and can’t say anything else. He hopes that Uncle Mark will call “cut.”

Uncle Mark encourages Will to finish. Will thinks that up until now, things were going well—the last part is just tripping him up. Uncle Mark demands that Will finished while Dani whimpers and Buck laughs. Will says again that he pulls the gun out, but he can’t say what happens next. His mouth dries out and it almost feels like an allergic reaction to the thought of killing. Buck finishes the scene for Will by saying, “and shoots.” Finally, Will can say the words himself. To the reader, he says that this movie would’ve been better than the one Uncle Mark was trying to make when he was alive. It wouldn’t be as happy, but it’d be better.

At some point, Uncle Mark lost his camera and couldn’t afford another one. He could’ve asked his mom, but Will says that would’ve been pointless. He could’ve stolen one, but that would mean he’d have to run and sweat. He also could’ve gotten a job, but Uncle Mark wasn’t into having a job. So for one day, Mark did what lots of people in Will’s neighborhood do:  sold drugs. In an hour, Uncle Mark had enough money to buy a new camera, but he decided to finish out the day. Will is sure that the reader can tell where this is going. Uncle Mark held his corner for a month and made lots of money, but he became a target for a young hustler. Will’s mother can never remember that hustler’s name.

That hustler shot and killed Uncle Mark in order to take the corner from him. Everyone on the street ducked and hid, and then pretended like the yellow tape was a “neighborhood flag.” Will thinks that Uncle Mark should’ve bought his camera and shot his movie after his first day selling drugs, but he never shot anything again. Will’s Pop did, though. Will offers the anagram “cinema=iceman” and says that he’s not sure what an iceman is, but it makes him think of cold-blooded bad guys. In the elevator, as Will says, “and shoots,” it seems like the words go right into Will’s body and cut him inside.

Uncle Mark reaches into his pocket and pulls out two cigarettes. Will is annoyed and hopes the second cigarette isn’t meant for him—he doesn’t smoke, and he reasons that people who are alive, like him, can’t get away with smoking in elevators. Uncle Mark rolls a cigarette between his fingers and asks what happens next in Will’s movie. Will says nothing else happens—it ends when he shoots. As Uncle Mark puts the cigarette in his mouth and motions for a match, he chuckles and says that’s never the end. Buck lights the match and the elevator stops.