The next infirmary the girls and I visit, the Sal Paradise Infirmary in Five, is not a mental hospital. This comes as a relief because broken bones and concussions are easier for a researcher to study than sadness and confusion. My research assistant, Esther, and I check healing times with the do-good nurses. In one bed lies a comatose girl who fell off a roof in a skateboard accident. Unlike Willa Blake, she did not disappear in a bed of black-eyed Susans.

“Revoke everybody’s rooftop privileges,” says Esther. “We klutzy angels shouldn’t be trusted up there.”

Afterward, we go to the main office, where we find Thelma at a desk thumbing through a rebirthing book bound in red leatherette.

“Bingo,” Thelma says. She has come across the name of a girl who passed in Illinois not so long after Johnny’s own passing. “Is Schaumburg close to Hoffman Estates?” she asks.

“They’re practically twin cities,” I reply.

I glance over Thelma’s shoulder at the ledger. Typed on the page are the names of newbies, along with their place of origin, date of passing, cause of passing, and zip code in Town. Thelma points to the name Sandy Goldberg. In the Cause of Passing column is written the word “peanut.”

“She was done in by a nut, Boo,” Esther says. “You have that in common.”

“Peanuts are no joking matter,” I tell Esther. “If you’re allergic, even a lick of peanut butter can trigger anaphylactic shock. Your throat swells shut and you suffocate.” I hold my hands to my throat.

“Rest in peace, poor sweet girl,” Thelma says as she jots down Sandy’s particulars on a slip of paper.

“How do you know she’s sweet?” Esther says. “She might be a b*tch. Maybe Sandy ate a peanut on purpose just to get attention.”

Thelma huffs and says, “Why do you always think the worst of people?”

“Because people are the worst,” Esther says.

Thelma looks up. “Zig give me strength,” she says as though he is twirling overhead on a blade of the ceiling fan.

“Do you think Zig listens to you?” I ask.

“I hope so,” Thelma says, closing the book. “But he probably has bigger fish to fry.”

“He isn’t our daddy to go running to when the going gets tough,” Esther says. “He wants us to figure things out ourselves.” She picks up a snow globe paperweight from the desktop and shakes it. Inside are a tiny boy and girl sitting side by side in a sleigh and wearing matching earmuffs.

“We expect certain things from him,” Esther goes on. “A place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear. And he expects certain things from us.”

“What kind of things?” I ask.

“That we make do with what we have. That we show one another a little respect. That we don’t let loose the worst in us.”

While Thelma is returning the rebirthing book to a filing cabinet, Esther gives me a wink and slips the snow globe into Thelma’s knapsack.

After we leave the infirmary, I suggest lunching in Buttercup Park, which is close by. We order takeout from a local cafeteria and then wander into the park. Thelma and Esther sit on either end of a seesaw. Given the difference in their weights, Thelma’s end remains grounded and Esther’s end stays lifted in the air. We eat peanut butter sandwiches, which we chose in honor of Sandy Goldberg.

Despite their argument the other day, Esther and Thelma seem good friends again. They are joking and laughing together, and Thelma is even touched when she discovers the snow globe. “North Carolina never got much snow, and Town never gets none, so this snow is all I’m ever gonna get.” Still, she thinks we should return the stolen globe to the infirmary, but Esther insists it will never be missed.

I am unfamiliar with the art of friendship: the teasing, quarreling, and reconciling. How many days should a person remain upset, for example, when a friend utters an insensitive comment or shows disloyalty? These are figures I should jot in my ledger.

How many days will Johnny remain cross with me?

After I eat my sandwich, dried apricots, and wheat crackers, I make a display of picking up litter in the park and dropping it in a trash bin. In reality, I am looking for a portal. I even move the bin aside to see if a portal is hidden beneath. I find nothing.

The afternoon is spent on a wild-goose chase in search of Sandy Goldberg. Using her zip code, we track her down to her assigned dorm, where her roommate tells us she is taking a still-life painting class at the Charlie Gordon School, but at the school, the teacher tells us she dropped the class in favor of a badminton workshop at the Marcy Lewis Gymnasium. At the Marcy, a gym teacher tells us Sandy excels at the vertical jump smash and was sent on tour with the local badminton team. She will be back later in the week.

During all these travels, my bicycle chain falls off twice. Now I really miss Johnny, because he is an expert with bicycles, whereas I end up with grease smeared over my hands and T-shirt.

That night in my room at the dorm, I try to do a drawing of my friend, a wanted alive poster, to show to the portal seekers attending tonight’s haunting. I am no portraitist, so my sketches in my notebook look amateurish. They look like any brown-haired boy. They could even be Gunboy.

It is frustrating that the image I see in my head is not recreated on the page. I crumple up drawing after drawing and then go into the hallway to pitch them all down the garbage chute.

It is now a quarter after midnight. In two hours, I leave for the haunting, and I will not sleep tonight. No matter. I have done without sleep countless times in my life, and I will make do this time as well. Yet when I lie on my bed and look up at the twirling ceiling fan, I feel a kick of anxiety in my stomach. Though I do not believe that Zig is watching over me, I find myself repeating Thelma’s words: “Zig give me strength.”