Three months later, a new exhibition is set to begin its run at Curios. It is simply called Zoo, like the name of the pet shop Johnny had planned to open one day.

My posters for the exhibition mention that Zoo will pay tribute to the late animals that once called Town their home: the gerbil Lars, the budgie Gloria, the kitten Crappy, the roach Rover, and the sea monkeys, which we never bothered to name.

Over the past week, townies have written their names on our sign-up sheet for a guided visit of Zoo to be held on Sunday evening. For the event, places are limited to thirteen and reserved on a first-come, first-served basis.

When Sunday evening arrives, I gather my audience in front of the door leading into the exhibition hall that houses Zoo. Above the door is a sign painted with a big red Z, a big white O, and a big blue O (the colors are Thelma’s idea; she is patriotic). An ornate old bureau is set in front of the door so nobody can slip into Zoo before I am ready. When a boy in an NBC peacock T-shirt tries sliding the bureau away, Czar, who now serves as the security guard at Curios, yells, “Get your dirty paws off that, you motherf*cking, assl*cking ignoramus!”

I feel bad for the peacock boy because he and all my visitors tonight are the kind of avid pupils, bookworms, and loners who would spend their lunch hours studying in the library at Helen Keller. In other words, they are versions of yours truly.

When Casper the Friendly Ghost reads eight o’clock, I emerge from a table in the corner, where I have been quietly polishing Susan B. Anthony coins with a toothbrush dipped in white vinegar. I introduce myself as Oliver Dalrymple, their Zoo guide this evening.

“Hey, you’re that kid!” says a girl who—oddly enough—has the end of her arm shoved inside a sock puppet of a tabby kitten, possibly a likeness of Crappy. When she talks, she makes the kitten’s mouth move. “You’re Gunboy, aren’t you?” she asks.

Townies have begun to call me Gunboy.

“There’s a little Gunboy in all of us,” I reply.

I nod toward Czar. He begins dragging the bureau away from the door with help from Peter Peter, who has come out of his office to assist.

My guests eye me warily, now that they know who I am. They seem to fear I may draw a revolver and shoot them down.

I open the doors to the exhibition hall and lead them inside. Around the rectangular room are displays commemorating Town’s animal life. The gerbil display, for instance, is Lars’s former terrarium with its little exercise wheel and water bottle and even a few of his half-chewed toilet rolls, all of which Peter Peter saved because he is a pack rat (or perhaps a pack gerbil, ha-ha).

Now that I, too, am an artist of sorts, I made a faux gerbil using scraps from a leatherette handbag and the brown bristles of old hairbrushes. Posted on a bristol board beside the gerbil display is the story of Lars, mentioning such details as his Latin name (Meriones unguiculatus), the zone he was discovered in (Three), the date of his discovery in a crate of tennis balls (September 25, 1974), his favorite food (parsnips), and his life span in heaven years (two years, one month, four days).

Around the room are similar displays for the other creatures. I made a tabby out of felt and fabric, and a budgie out of yellow and green feather boas.

As for Blaberus craniifer, we have plenty of Johnny’s drawings, from thumb sketches in India ink to full-page sketches in colored pencil. I made a life-size figurine of the cockroach out of clay and painted a detailed black blotch on its head to replicate the death mask that gives the insect its name.

I still do not understand why Rover vanished instead of Johnny, but perhaps it had simply reached the end of its natural life in heaven. Or perhaps it died of a broken heart (a cockroach’s heart, by the way, has thirteen chambers).

My guests listen politely as I give my talk about Zoo and the creatures in it. I try to pique their curiosity by telling amusing anecdotes: for example, that Crappy was so named because she was separated from her mother too young and thus took a long time to learn how to use the litter box containing playground sand as her kitty litter (an example of which is on display).

A gloomy-looking fellow, whom somebody called an old boy, says, “We were all separated from our mothers too young.”

After I finish my talk, I lead my visitors to the end of the exhibition hall, where, hanging from the ceiling, is a red velvet curtain.

“What’s behind it? The Wizard of Oz?” says a smart aleck.

I shake my head and draw the curtain to reveal a door leading into a smaller exhibition hall (formerly a storage room). I open the door and guide my visitors inside. It is dark in this second room, and so nobody sees at first what is on display. With the light from Casper the Friendly Ghost, I find the floor lamp and click it on.

“Behold the star attraction,” I say.

At the back of the windowless room, lying on a single bed, is a boy. We all approach his bed.

“It’s just a kid sleeping,” the smart aleck says. “Big whoop!”

“Rise and shine!” says puppet girl, and snaps her free fingers in his face.

“He won’t wake up,” I tell her.

We all continue staring at the boy in the bed. Nobody makes a sound.

Finally, a fat girl exclaims, “Jeez, it’s the half-deader!”

The other twelve visitors also arrive at the same conclusion: before them lies the body of Johnny Henzel.

Johnny Henzel is my splendid idea.

Let me tell you, Mother and Father, that nobody was initially receptive to my plan. I first had to persuade Peter Peter and Thelma, who found the idea a little ghoulish. As for Reginald Washington, well, he wanted me confined to the Deborah for an extra six months simply for suggesting my idea. I explained, however, that tucking Johnny away in an infirmary and forgetting about him would do no one any good. We need to remember him. We need to talk about his life here and in America to better understand his story. As a result, we can be better prepared should Zig one day send us another boy like Johnny Henzel.

My aim, you see, is to honor my friend, but also to avoid another bricking of another sadcon.

In the end, Reginald and the do-good council gave my Zoo the green light, at least on a trial basis, thanks partly to support the project obtained from warden Lydia Finkle. When I asked Reginald what he meant by “trial basis,” he replied, “We’ll shut you down, Mr. Dalrymple, if you go mental again.”

For opening night, Johnny is wearing cutoff jeans and a tank top printed with Tony the Tiger of Frosted Flakes fame. The blue bauble sits atop the bullet wound. On his feet, he wears gym socks whose bumblebee stripes (yellow and black) are the Helen Keller colors.

His eyes are closed. He does not look peaceful, nor does he look in pain. He looks absorbed, as if he is figuring out a tricky arithmetic problem in his head.

Czar comes into the hall and warns visitors not to get too close to Johnny. “Don’t smother the guy, folks,” he orders. “Give him some air.”

“We can’t smother somebody who isn’t alive,” say the girl and Crappy 2.

“Hello there, Johnny,” I say, leaning over the bed. “How are you doing this fine evening?” I do not expect an answer. If he did blink open his eyes and say, “Hunky-dory,” thirteen townies might develop their own holey hearts (ha-ha).

Around the room, I posted all of Johnny’s drawings and paintings that I could gather together. He had done portraits and caricatures of Esther, Thelma, and me, as well as his parents and Brenda, his jailer Ringo, his basset hound—and of course Gunboy. He drew dorms (the Frank and Joe), trees, bicycles, warehouses, jungle gyms, basketball nets, dandelions, even a row of urinals.

I give my thirteen visitors the facts that I recall from Johnny’s life in Hoffman Estates and from his afterlife in Town. I do not hide embarrassing details. I tell them I now suspect that the camp (the infamous Squeaky Fromme) he attended in the summer before our passing was actually a kind of mental asylum like the Deborah.

Since it is too late for mercy, I try to elicit sympathy for my friend. I tell my audience that a troubled mind can cause a boy to do strange things. “He had an illness as serious as the cancer that felled certain thirteen-year-olds before they came to Town,” I say.

I allow the visitors to touch Johnny’s arms and legs. “Gross!” the fat girl cries, but the others take turns running a hand along his limbs. They tell me his skin is cool.

“Does he have rigor mortis?” the old boy asks.

“Good question,” I say. “But no, he does not.” To prove this, I lift one of his arms and bend it back and forth at the elbow.

“Is he in a coma?” asks a boy with a walleye (strabismus).

“No, the comatose still have functioning hearts, whereas Johnny’s is as quiet as a piece of lapis lazuli.” I refer to lapis lazuli in particular because its name translates as “stone of heaven.”

“Is the bullet still in him?” the same boy asks.

I move the fake topaz away from his dented wound. The dried blood is almost black.

“The bullet hasn’t resurfaced,” I tell my guests.

The hand-puppet girl suggests that Johnny’s bullet may have dissolved, and I admit she may be right. “Can we see the gun?” she asks.

There are drawers that slide out from beneath the bed. Two are used to store extra clothes because I change Johnny’s tank top, shorts, socks, and boxers weekly, with Czar’s help. Even though Johnny no longer sweats, he retains an oniony odor, but it is so faint I have to put my nose almost against his scalp to detect it.

Another drawer contains the revolver. I open it and pull out the gun. Several of the visitors gasp. The fat girl clasps her hands over her mouth.

The smart aleck says, “It ain’t loaded, I hope,” but he has an excited look that says otherwise.

I pass the revolver around. Some of my guests take it as though it were a hot potato or a grenade set to go off.

The puppet girl holds Crappy 2 close to my face. One of its button eyes is coming loose, the black thread hanging like an optic nerve. “When you pointed that gun at your friend’s chest,” Crappy 2 says, “what was going through your mind?”

“It may sound strange for me to say so,” I answer, “but I thought I was saving Johnny.”

“Maybe when he shot you,” Crappy 2 replies, “Johnny thought he was saving you too.”