Not all the students were comfortable with the outpouring. "Some people thought, 'Get over it. Don't keep bringing it up,' " says Nifia Medley, 18. "Other people felt, 'Bring it up, because that's what I need to get over it. It'll soothe my heart.' "

It also moved many of them to take action, joining the march in Harrisburg and plunging into projects against violence.

For Martel, who visits Terrence's sister Tasha "to let her know I'm still here for her," a cherished friend is gone. "You can never be the same after that," he says. "Sometimes I need to laugh, but it's hard because you're not laughing with all the people you're used to. You're missing this one laugh."

It's also a reminder of the world they inhabit, where the smallest slights can bring on bullets.

"Our generation," says Martel, 17, "lives from TV, what they see, what they hear, what they think is cool. And that's being a gangster, being a hood, having street credibility."

He and his classmates say that, in Philadelphia, being in a neighborhood not your own can make you a target - and that's just the beginning.

"I'll fight if I feel threatened, but not over stupid stuff, like a girl, or an argument, or somebody's sneakers," Martel says.

Since Terrence's death, he's loath to do battle at all, "because you don't know what the other person's going to do."

Nifia, too, is amazed at the ease with which her peers shoot each other. "Back in the day," she says, "drugs were the reason for everything. But it's not even about drugs now; it's about the dumbest things ever."

Fury and forgiveness

Augustus Favors wasn't worried about Gussie and guns.

"I talked to my son about drugs, about smoking, about getting high," the father says sadly of his 15-year old, killed in a gun accident in Northeast Philadelphia in February.

"I didn't think I had to talk to him about guns."

Gussie Favors was at Sadir Reddy's house that day with Evens Occean, and the three friends were about to go shopping downtown.

According to court testimony, Sadir, 16, had been showing off his prized .380 semiautomatic for weeks. The question was: Who would carry the gun to the Gallery?

Gussie volunteered because he had the biggest coat. He started "twirling" the weapon - a weapon shared so often among the friends that during Sadir's trial it was referred to at least once as "a community gun."

According to Evens, Sadir had taken the pistol back to adjust the safety when the gun fired into Gussie's chest.

Gussie's dad doesn't buy it. "I think he meant to do it," Augustus Favors says of Sadir, although he acknowledges that "if that was my son that shot him, I might be thinking a different story."

Immediately after the shooting, Sadir called 911 to say a mysterious gunman had shot Gussie. Then he ran from the scene where his friend lay dying.

"His lack of character, integrity and basic decency could not be clearer," said Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner, adding at one point: "And I don't care that there are other idiots who wanted to carry his gun!"