“We told the jailers not to allow the Grade F that pie,” Tim Lu says, “but did they listen to us? No, as usual, they did not.”

“And they suffered the consequences,” Tom Lu adds.

“Oh, what a brouhaha!”

“A real hullabaloo!”

The twins are watching us from their reception desk. I am back in the Gene’s lobby, sitting between Esther and Thelma on a bench. The girls are trying to calm me down. I became wheezy while recounting what had happened, so Esther passed me the paper bag she keeps in her sunflower purse to treat my attacks. Now I am breathing in and out to restore my levels of carbon dioxide.

I take the bag away. “Rover has helped him find a portal,” I whisper. “He is going home. Or so he claims.”

“I don’t trust Rover,” Esther says. “When we had the chance, we should have flushed that turd down the toilet.”

“Johnny hasn’t ate in over a week,” Thelma says. “He might just be hallucinating a portal. The boy ain’t himself.”

“Well, who the hell is the real himself? That’s what I wanna know,” Esther replies.

I do not mention my vow to agree with whatever Johnny says at his trial, which starts in three days. I am unsure about what my promise may mean. What foolish claims is he planning to make?

The girls and I shuffle out of the Gene, our faces woebegone, our thoughts dark. We climb on our bikes. Esther and Thelma plan to go back to their dorms in Eleven, but I want to head to Curios to do some work. When I arrive there more than an hour later, a cardboard box awaits me in my office. In it are new curious objects freshly delivered from Two for me to appraise. I am glad for the distraction: it gives me a break from thinking about the madness of the past weeks and the madness that lies ahead.

I open the box and spread the items across my desk. I pick up a spray bottle of a perfume called Tigress. The stopper is designed in fake tiger fur. The bottle is half full, and I spritz some of the amber-colored perfume into the air. It smells like cinnamon.

A windup music box is another of the items. When I open it, instead of a ballerina, there appears an ugly little gnome astride a broken witch’s broom. The figurine sits on a spring and wobbles while the music to the children’s song “The Wobblin’ Goblin” plays. This song is close to my heart because when I was a child, you would sing it to me, Mother. I let the music box play as I examine the other new objects.

There is a paperback book titled A Glossary of Accounting Terms, one of the closest things to a dictionary that has been seen in heaven. I flip through the pages but find the book of little interest. After all, townies need not understand the concept of “cash flow statements” and “merit salary adjustments.”

There is a half-finished tube of anti-acne cream. I screw off the cap and press out a dab of the stuff. It is flesh-colored and smells of sulfur (No. 16, abbreviated as S).

I am examining a meat tenderizer resembling a small hammer when there is a knock on my open door. I look up to see my boss, Peter Peter.

“Anything of note in the new batch?”

I hold up a box of Lucky Charms cereal. Usually Zig sends us wholesome cereal like bran flakes and shredded wheat. Though Peter Peter came to heaven long ago, he has kept up with developments in America, thanks to newbies, whom he regularly interviews. Hence he knows about anti-acne creams and cereals containing miniature marshmallows in assorted colors.

“I’m surprised a warehouse worker didn’t wolf those down,” Peter Peter says. Often the edibles do not arrive at our offices intact.

“It is fortified with eight essential vitamins,” I say.

“Is that so?” Peter Peter replies.

I study the ingredients list for a moment, and when I look up, Peter Peter is still there, smiling sadly.

“Oliver, may I have a word in private?”

I nod. I wonder what he means by “in private.” Nobody else is around. Still, when Peter Peter steps into my office, he shuts the door behind him. He drags a chair in front of my desk and fiddles with his necktie, which he wears in a thick Windsor knot over his T-shirt. “I have something to propose to you,” he says, “something I’ve touched on in our past discussions. You recall our talk on last-minute edits?”

I nod. Like many other townies, Peter Peter speculates that a person who died a vile death does not recall all the details. He may recall the basics. He knows, for example, that he leaped out a fifth-story window during a fire that engulfed his family’s apartment, but he does not remember the searing pain as his clothes caught fire, the horrific panic, the sickening plunge, or the brutal impact with the sidewalk. I use this example because it is the one Peter Peter used with me. He died in this manner in the thirties on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

“You mentioned I may not remember the nitty-gritty of the shooting at my school,” I say. “That certain images, sounds, and feelings might be forever buried in my brain.”

“I never said ‘forever.’ ”

I throw him a questioning look.

“There’s a way to recover some of our lost memories, son. I know because I recovered some of mine long ago.”

I point the meat tenderizer at him. “So you do remember the sickening plunge and the brutal impact?”

“Regrettably, yes,” he says. “Zig does us a favor with last-minute edits. If you die a death like mine, you shouldn’t know all the details. That’s why I don’t often talk about the method for retrieving memories. But, in your case, knowing all the facts might help.”

I lean across my desk toward Peter Peter and ask how he recovered his memories.

“I had the help of a specialist decades ago. Somebody who’s now an old boy like me.”

“Will you introduce me to him?”

Peter Peter swallows, and his Adam’s apple seems to get caught in his Windsor-knotted tie. He looks almost pained when he says, “You already know him.”

“I do?”

“He’s a hypnotist.”