Dear Father and Mother, I have now lived in Town as long as I lived in America: thirteen years. I am no longer a newbie. It is hard to believe I ever was. Yet I have changed little in the intervening years. After all, we townies idle. Thelma Rudd claims I am now more mature. Perhaps, but I do not feel so.

Over the years, I have continued to live at the Frank and Joe and to do the same work at Curios. I am now the museum’s curator, a position I inherited when dear Peter Peter repassed more than eight years ago.

Thelma held a wake as Peter Peter approached fifty years old. A wake in Town, however, is different from a wake in America. In our wakes, we five-decade-old townies are not yet dead (or redead). Each night as we near fifty, our friends gather in our room. Zig does not necessarily steal us away on the exact date of our fiftieth rebirthday; we may disappear a week or two before or after this date (in the same way that a pregnant lady in America does not necessarily deliver exactly nine months after conception). During his wake, Peter Peter’s friends sat cramped together around his bed and talked. Peter Peter lay under the covers listening. One night he closed his eyes…and poof. No fade-out. No fifty-year aging all at once. Thelma screamed (though she had promised Peter Peter she would stay calm).

The other old boy, Peter Peter’s friend Czar, refused to have a wake. He said it was embarrassing to have people watch you redie. He said it was akin to having people watch you “take a crap.” As a result, he forbade anyone from being present in his room when he repassed, two months after Peter Peter.

Over the years, I have kept myself busy with various projects. I teach a constellation class at the Franny Glass School in Thirteen. After my first five years in Town, Zig changed the night sky backdrop, and thus I needed to start mapping anew. As time passes in heaven, the stars do not change places, not till the day when Zig changes the complete backdrop. I tell my students this is a metaphor for life: we go along thinking nothing will be different, till the day everything suddenly changes at once.

One morning about six years ago, a kite sailed in over the South Wall in Seven. Because the kite is red with one big yellow star and four smaller yellow stars, the design of the Chinese flag, certain townies believed it came from Chinese thirteen-year-olds in a nearby terrarium. Sadly, no note was tied to its tail, so we are unsure of its origin, but at least it gave us proof we are not alone. The “Chinese” kite is now on display in Hall 3 at Curios.

Four years ago, a large upper section of the Southwest Corner in Six crumbled, severely injuring several townies gathered at the bottom of the wall for a folk festival dedicated to the music of Bob Dylan. Was this incident intentional on Zig’s part (perhaps not a fan of Mr. Dylan’s work) or simple neglect? Some think the former; I presume the latter. The damaged wall grew back within sixteen days, by which time all of the injured had been released from the Paul Atreides Infirmary in Seven.

Some changes have been on a smaller scale. Guess what! We have a dog, a French poodle that arrived only two months ago in a warehouse located just down the street from Curios. Pierre (named by Thelma in honor of Peter Peter) has a woolly chocolate coat, which we do not clip, and a little pink tongue, the tip of which often sticks out of his mouth. His favorite foods are black-eyed peas, carrot greens, and butternut squash, and, thank Zig, this carnivore thrives on a vegetarian diet, though of course he will grow no bigger. He will idle like the rest of us.

I could continue citing other interesting developments in Town in the intervening years, but let us move on to the reason I am writing to you again after such a long pause.

Something magical is happening in Town, and it has renewed my faith that I may eventually manage to deliver my story to you.

The magic involves Johnny Henzel.

For many years, Johnny played a much smaller role in my afterlife. Yes, I continued to check on him and change his clothes as needed, but for a long time he did not occupy my thoughts the way he had during my first year or two here.

There is an old wives’ tale in America that hair and fingernails keep growing after a person’s death. In the case of townies, ours do, but in the case of Johnny, this was false. In the years he lay in bed at Zoo, his hair stayed the same length it was on the day I shot him: four inches at its longest. Yet last week, while changing his clothes, I noticed his hair seemed longer. I fetched my ruler and measured: five and a third inches. Then I spotted his fingernails. Before his redeath, he had chewed them down to the quick, so imagine my shock when I saw crescent moons appearing where no nails had been before.

My old friend is growing.

Johnny Henzel goes from five feet three to five feet four, then five five, then five six. The peach fuzz above his lip and on his chin turns into dark whiskers. Dark hair also sprouts along his arms and legs, in his armpits, and in his pubic region.

For a few days, I shave his face with the electric razor displayed in Hall 2, but then I abandon this ploy. Instead, I close off his room at Zoo with a heavy armoire and lie that I am redesigning the space to boost attendance. People believe me because over the years Johnny has drawn fewer and fewer visitors. Most townies have seen him. They know his story; he is old news. Johnny would, however, attract hordes of bedazzled townies if they knew he was the first among us to grow past age thirteen.

“What is this magic?” I ask Johnny as I dab acne cream on a pimple on his cheek. I slip a thermometer into his mouth to see whether there is a change in his normal body temperature of ninety-six degrees. He has never grown cold. He has always felt as though he died only five minutes before, but now his temperature has risen a degree.

I close down Curios altogether, with the excuse that I am planning a major revamp, and do not allow others on the premises at all. I stay here practically around the clock, zipping out only to pick up takeout meals at a cafeteria.

I claim I need my solitude. Only Pierre stays behind to keep me company. When townies ask about my design plans, I remain vague. I speak of flowing creative juices, a visiting muse. The artistic townies eat up such talk, including Thelma, who pats my head encouragingly. Esther, though, looks doubtful. “What are you scheming?” she asks, narrowing her eyes. Yet even she leaves me alone since she is busy planning her wedding. She will marry her tailor partner, Ringo (whose real name, by the way, is Nigel Bell).

Once Curios is closed down, I move sofa cushions into Johnny’s room to sleep on. We are roommates again. Given Johnny’s steady growth, I change his clothes often. I have to wrestle with his big lanky body. His arms and legs are gangly, his feet long, his toes pointy. I clip his fingernails and toenails daily but no longer trim his hair. His hair and beard grow as long as a flower-power hippie’s. His chest fills out, making his bull’s-eye wound look smaller.

I watch him age about a year every two days, and soon he is Town’s first real man. His body grows to six feet one inch and stops. He keeps aging, though. I see the changes mostly in his face; all the baby fat in his cheeks melts away, and his cheekbones stand out. I estimate he is nearing twenty-six years old, the same age he would be if he were still in America.

I think he may be handsome, but I am not sure: I have always had trouble seeing beauty in human beings. What I find beautiful—a crop of pimples in the pattern of an ankylosaur constellation, for example—others find repugnant.

Every day, I lift his eyelids to check his pupils, but they remain dilated and motionless. I put my ear to his chest. His heart offers not one chug.

One evening, as I am examining him, I see something frightening: a red pool spreading out beneath his left palm. I grab his hand, turn it over. His left wrist has been slashed several times. Blood seeps from the gashes and runs down his arm.

Then I notice his right wrist. It, too, is oozing blood.

I yank open the drawer beneath his bed, pull out an old T-shirt, dab at the blood. Within minutes, the gashes on both wrists have scabbed over.

“What in hell’s name is going on?” I say aloud.