It is a sound he cannot forget, the echo of a bullet exploding from a gun barrel.

The noise lurks in his dreams, startling him awake every few hours. A newspaper box slamming shut, the sharp gunfire from a video game are reminders of the November afternoon when Denny Staubs killed his best friend.

Denny and Jared Sala were smoking in a woods in Pasadena, sitting on leaves and talking about how to break the news to Denny's parents that he had been suspended from school for talking back to his teacher.

Jared, a reedy 15-year-old who loved to fish, took out a .38-caliber handgun he said was unloaded, Denny remembers.

Denny says he clutched it, pulled the trigger and launched a bullet into Jared's skull.

"I just flipped out when I realized what happened," said Denny, 15, a lanky sophomore at Chesapeake High School with tousled blond hair.

"My mind went blank. I started throwing the gun. I ran to the red house and told them to dial 911. Then I walked back to Jared and covered him with a jacket. I kept telling him he'd better be all right. I just talked to him. I had no clue he was going to die."

In the wake of a fatal shooting Nov. 11, the life of the traumatized shooter is irrevocably altered. A split-second of stupidity has a lifetime of consequences.

Kids at school call Denny "murderer" and point him out as "the one who killed his best friend." County police are still investigating and have not filed criminal charges against Denny.

"There is not a whole lot written about the kids who find themselves on the other side of the gun," said Dr. Paramjit Joshi, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins.

"When kids have homicidal ideations -- then before you know it they have done it," she said. "That is a very different child than the one who accidentally kills a best friend. How do you ever come to terms with that?"

Denny and Jared were like "peanut butter and jelly," said Jared's sister, Jodi. They dressed as twins for Halloween and spent afternoons shooting hoops or watching movies.

The boys bonded last summer over the Sony PlayStation video game "Gran Turismo." They set their alarms to get up in time for a full day of play on the stock car racing game.

Denny and Jared were neighbors in a Pasadena waterfront community on the Broadneck Peninsula. They were in the same grade until this school year, when Jared transferred to Chesapeake and was one credit short of advancing to 10th grade.

Jared belonged to the Junior Bass Club and spent his free time at the dock near his home. He wanted to play football and lacrosse, but low grades kept him off the teams, his mother says.

At Grays Creek, he befriended David Petrisko, who also has a passion for fishing and crabbing. Jared introduced Petrisko to his mother.

"He idolized David," said Nancy Sala, who asked Petrisko to move in with her and Jared three years ago. "They were pretty much a team. Jared took great pride in hooking us up."

In the four months since her son's death, Sala has heard from many young people in the neighborhood. They have written her, sent flowers at Christmas and called her on Valentine's Day.

"These are wonderful gestures of compassion by these kids," she says. "But has Denny been one of them? No."

The day Jared died, his sister Jodi, 18, picked up both boys at school. She took Jared to get a haircut and pick up his uniform for the job washing dishes that he was to start the next day at the Edelweiss Bakery-Cafe in Pasadena.

The boys walked from the neighborhood to a nearby wooded ravine for a cigarette. Jared showed him the gun and a watch he planned to give a 25-year-old woman he had a crush on, said Denny. She is the woman who gave Jared the weapon, Denny said.

Police are investigating how the weapon was obtained. If it was Denny's, police could bring handgun charges against him.

After the shooting, Denny told police he had "heard this loud bang" from his home a block away. But police recovered the gun yards from where Jared died. There was one bullet left in the chamber.

Two days later, Denny fell to his knees in his living room and confessed to his father, Michael, that he had shot Jared.

"Denny couldn't tell me," said his mother, Cindy, a homemaker who was away during her son's confession. "But as soon as I saw tears in my husband's and Denny's eyes I knew. I just cried."

"It was eating away at my insides," Denny said last week, tugging at his baggy blue jeans. "I had to tell the truth for me and for Jared. It had to be known that I had the gun, and it wound up being me who took his life."

His parents took him to the police station.

"I felt like ripping my chest open so that I could bleed," said Denny. "My best friend was dead because of a stupid decision by me. I wanted to die."

The next day, Detective Jay Clark told Jared's mother that Denny had shot her son.

"How one reckless act could result in such a senseless tragic loss is just inconceivable, I guess," said Sala, a radiology technician. "I saw my world in all these brilliant colors and all of a sudden those colors are gone, and everything is black and white."

"It was a great shock for her," said Cindy Staubs. "Even though you know it is an accident, to look at the person who had taken your child's life is very hard."

The afternoon the detective talked with Jared's mother was the wake. His older brother and sister walked to the Staubses' home and told Denny he was welcome to attend, Denny said. Jodi brought him flowers so Denny could add to the bouquets other friends had brought.

"They were so kind to us," said Denny's mother. "I felt like I did not deserve that. Jared's grandparents, aunts and uncles, everyone hugged us and told us they were sorry.

The Sala family, however, later asked Denny to leave the wake because he was laughing and seemed to show no remorse, Denny said. Out of discomfort, he said, he hasn't visited the Salas since.

The next day, his parents checked him into Taylor Manor, a psychiatric hospital in Ellicott City. He spent a week in group and individual therapy.

The last week of November, two weeks after the shooting, Denny returned to school.

Even before then, Denny had struggled in school. He talked back to his teachers and refused to do his work.

Upon his return, schoolmates called him a "murderer." Others threatened to "blow his head off," he said.

"It made me feel lower than I already was," he said.

Denny cried a lot. He had shared a locker with Jared and they used to meet after each class. Jared's textbooks were still crammed onto the top shelf of the locker. Denny felt as if he had no one to talk with.

He was suspended his first week back for fighting with a substitute health teacher.

While he was in the hall cussing, throwing books and hollering, he met Christina Knight. She was walking to the bathroom but stopped to comfort him, and then she slipped him her telephone number.

"For people to be calling him a murderer, I felt like he needed someone to be there for him," said Christina, now his girlfriend. "I was friends with Jared, too. I didn't want to believe it had happened or that Denny had shot him. It never crossed my mind that he might have done it on purpose."

It feels "weird" for Denny to hang out with kids, almost as if he is cheating on Jared. He had a nightmare the other night, that a new friend had died in a car accident. Denny woke up screaming.

He walks to the ravine where Jared died sometimes to talk to him. A cross, dried flowers, cigarettes and signs adorn the spot.

"He is dead, not gone," said Denny, who hopes to become a geologist, business owner or professional baseball player.

"I am still here, and I should take advantage of the time.

"Jared lives on in me."

Pub Date: 3/11/99