Later that evening, after everyone has left curios, I am sweeping the floor in Johnny’s room when I hear footsteps in Zoo. The red velvet curtain is pushed aside, and there stands Esther Haglund in the doorway. She is wearing a shiny white dress, and her hair is piled atop her head in ringlets.

“Wow, you look just like an angel, Esther,” I say. I have not seen her since my early days at the Deborah.

“I want to show Johnny I made an effort,” she says, smoothing out the front of her dress. “It’s taffeta, but not real silk. Unfortunately, that b*stard Zig is stingy with his silk.”

I heard from Thelma that Esther moved to Three, where she now makes clothes for other townies, with help—believe it or not—from former jailer Ringo, who finally quit his job at the Gene to become a tailor.

Thelma must have told Esther about Zoo and its main attraction. My old friend goes over and sits on the side of Johnny’s bed and, with a deep sigh, touches a finger to the bridge of his nose, just as I once did to dearly departed Uncle Seymour.

I wonder if Esther was in love with Johnny Henzel. Perhaps that is why she needed time away from him and me. I picture the broken plastic heart from the Operation game in her chest, and my eyes tear up, something they have not done in some time. I turn away so Esther does not see me.

“Excuse me a minute, Esther. I need to fetch something from my office,” I say, to give her time alone with Johnny.

In my office, I sit at my desk. A blank sheet of paper is in my typewriter. I have been working again on the story of my afterlife. I have finally reached the present day and am not sure where the story goes next.

No one has read my story yet. I wanted you to be the first, Mother and Father. The pages of my manuscript are in a three-ringed binder kept in a locked drawer of my desk. I fetch the drawer key from inside the base of the Wobblin’ Goblin music box, open the drawer, and take out the binder. On my way out of my office, I also grab the box of Lucky Charms from a crowded shelf. Peter Peter will be cross if we eat the cereal, but so be it. Given all we have been through, Esther and I deserve this gift from Zig.

She and I sit on threadbare armchairs we drag into Johnny’s Zoo room. We share the box of cereal, our hands digging in search of the marshmallows in the shapes of hearts, moons, stars, clovers, and diamonds. Esther finds the prize at the bottom of the box: an elf figurine. She gives it to me. “Elves are my f*cking bête noire,” she says. “Back in Utah, I was always asked to play one in the Christmas pageant.”

As we snack, I read the story of my afterlife aloud. To Esther, but also to Johnny. My blood brother still has a concentrated look on his face as though he is trying to figure out what our story means.

Sometimes during my reading Esther stops me to make a correction or clarify some aspect of our adventures. She nods her head a lot and even says “Amen,” the way I imagine Christians do in church when ministers read from their Bible.

I read up to the part where Esther arrives at Zoo. It is three fifteen by this time. My voice is going hoarse. Esther’s eyes are blinking shut, and her ringlets have come undone. “It’s time you put this baby to bed,” she says.

I assume she means she is the baby who is ready for bed (we will have to sleep on sofas at Curios tonight), but then she clarifies: “Go finish this chapter and then come read it to me.”

So that is what I do.