David Wong

[close] Best friend of John. David is in his early 20's and we don't get much of a physical description of him in the book, except that he is not Asian. He and John are in a band called Three-arm Sally.

David and John met in high school, in a computer class. John was kicked out of the class for making an ASCII picture of a vagina.

David says that his birth mother was bipolar and couldn't take care of him, so he was adopted when he was about eight. Toward the end of the book, a psychic creature calls David "son of an insane prostitute and a mentally challenged Amway salesman," but it's unclear if this is fact or if the creature is exaggerating details to try and insult him.

David lives alone in an apartment, but not in the same building as John's apartment. He is shy and scholarly and rather socially awkward, but smart and quite brave.

In high school, David was frequently targeted by a group of bullies, headed by a guy named Billy. They used to take him into the locker room and do things to him ("S--- that would get an adult put in a straight jacket" ... "Like, prison yard crazy"), and the coach knew that this was happening and deliberately ignored it. One day David brought a knife to school and fought back. He ended up stabbing Billy's eyes out. Billy killed himself a few weeks later. David was charged with aggravated assault but was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and for his senior year of high school was sent to Pineview, a school for students with special needs. He was in a class with Amy Sullivan.