Johnny is being held at the Gene Forrester Jail at the foot of the East Wall in Nine. Reginald Washington and Sandy Goldberg are on their way there now with the intent of identifying Johnny. Sandy claims to have the facts from back in America, but the fact is that I distrust the facts in this land I now live in. The facts of America do not apply here. The fact is that an unplugged lamp should not turn on. The fact is that thirteen-year-olds should not stay thirteen for decades on end. The fact is that people should not vanish into thin air when they die. So I will need more proof of Johnny’s guilt than so-called facts from a newly passed girl from Schaumburg.

“Listen to reason,” Thelma says when I suggest the nut girl’s memories might be faulty.

“But there is no rhyme or reason here,” I reply. “If there were, heaven would not exist.”

“Oh, Oliver, if you think hard about what she says,” Thelma insists, “you’ll see it all makes sense.”

I always think hard. I am thinking hard, and nothing at all in this Zigforsaken place makes sense.

According to Thelma, Sandy Goldberg got her facts from kids at her own school in Schaumburg. Sandy swears that the shooting at Helen Keller involved only two boys, not three. She does not remember names, but she does remember faces, and she had seen ours in the newspaper. One kid was “a freak” and one kid was “a mental case,” Sandy said. The mental case was suicidal and had spent the summer in a “psycho ward.” As for the shooting, she could not remember a motive, or even any other details beyond the fact that “One kid was weird and the other was nuts.”

Thelma tells me there was an all-points bulletin out on Johnny here in heaven. Benny Baggarly, friend of the comatose hypnotist, spotted Johnny and me at the gymnasium and reported us. It was Reginald Washington’s idea to arrest Johnny in the middle of the night.

“Reginald wanted the two of you separated,” Thelma tells me. “Being friends with Johnny, he said, would harm your mental health.”

“That is bullsh*t!” I shout, and Thelma looks surprised because I usually do not shout and I usually do not swear.

“My mental health is hunky-dory,” I lie.

“But, Oliver, your friend Johnny, he’s…” She pauses, trying to find the right word, but there is no right word, so she simply says, “He killed you.”

“The jury is still out on that.”

Thelma and I are sitting on the bed in my temporary room. She is hugging a pillow tightly. The pillow is a stand-in for me.

“Reginald and the do-gooders are planning a trial.”

“A trial?”

“They’re all fired up because heaven never had a murderer before. They think Zig goofed. They want to fix his terrible mistake.”

“Do you think Zig made a terrible mistake, Thelma?”

My face has probably gone even whiter, even more ghostly, because she looks at me with a mix of pity and concern, just as Sandy Goldberg did. Thelma passes me the pillow to hug. I hold it limply in my lap.

“Oliver, you know how Zig changes some townies? Like retarded kids come here a bit smarter, right? And blind kids can see. Well, maybe Zig made Johnny less crazy so he could live peaceful here in Town. Is that a terrible mistake? Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t.”

She is saying that just as Zig may have lowered my intelligence quotient a notch or two, he may have raised Johnny’s level of sanity enough to let him function here.

“Maybe Zig changed Johnny’s memories of the events,” Thelma suggests. “Or maybe Johnny erased them when he shot himself in the head. Or maybe his sister lied to him when he was in his hospital bed.” Thelma puts a hand over her heart. “Jiminy Crickets, I don’t know what to believe, Oliver. But I don’t believe what Reginald and some of them do-gooders do. They think Johnny’s faking his amnesia and remembers what he did.”

I push the pillow aside and stand. My legs feel wobbly, as though I have been bicycling all day. “I have to see Johnny,” I say.

Thelma does not want me going to the Gene. “You’re dead tired and in shock,” she says. “Besides, Reginald and the do-gooders won’t let you see Johnny. They won’t even let me. Esther took off for the Gene, but she won’t get permission either.”

“I will not be deterred,” I say.

She acquiesces, but only after forcing me to eat a bran muffin, a banana, and a handful of almonds. She then gives me her map of the zones, wishes me luck, and tells me to meet her back at the Frank and Joe tomorrow.

I hurry out of the Rhoda Penmark Dormitory, jump on a ten-speed, and pedal like mad, wishing I had thirty speeds so I could reach the jail before Reginald and Sandy do.

First, I make a quick detour to the Marcy to look for Blaberus craniifer. I spend fifteen minutes combing the janitor’s office, even checking the Monopoly game box, but to no avail. Rover has disappeared. I hope the roach was not trampled to death in the melee last night.

I rush back outside and hop on my bike. The trip ahead will be a long jaunt requiring me to wind through a labyrinth of streets and to cross four zones (Five, One, Two, Nine). I tell myself to focus on the road. I must not become careless and smash into a streetlamp or another cyclist. I do not want to end up in an infirmary with a concussion, which, according to my notes, takes from four to six days to heal.

Still, my mind does wander. I keep picturing the hallway of Helen Keller in the first seconds after the gun went off and everybody in the hall—except the boy who pulled the trigger and the boy who was struck by the bullet—turned toward the bang. What did my classmates and teachers see?

My mind’s eye imagines everyone and everything frozen in the moment. Henry Axworthy bends over the drinking fountain, an arc of water suspended before him. Jermaine Tucker drops his math book, but it does not hit the floor. Patsy Hyde’s lips peel back in a scream, exposing the braces she usually keeps hidden. Cynthia Orwell dribbles a basketball that hovers a foot from her hand. The art teacher, Mr. Huston, holds a still-life drawing he is set to tape to the wall outside his classroom. Helen Keller, as always, sits posed with a mortarboard on her head in her portrait hung across from locker No. 106.

Their eyes are all turned in the same direction.

There seems to be a blind spot in my imagination, because though I see everything else perfectly, even my crumpled body at the foot of my locker, there is one thing my mind’s eye cannot make out in the hallway: the face of the boy holding the gun.