At five in the morning on September 7 (my rebirthday), I slink out to a supply warehouse to filch some clothing for Johnny. It has been about five weeks since he began to grow. I hope to find him some extra-large gym shorts and tank tops, the kind made for the biggest boys among us. As a precaution, I fill my flashlight with rocks. Zig knows what type of enemy I may encounter in these strange and uncertain times. I still do not understand how Johnny’s wrists bled. His scabs have healed, but deep zigzag scars linger.

I head off to the warehouse, one hand on my flashlight, the other holding Pierre’s leash. The dog scurries down the sidewalk, tugging surprisingly hard for such a small creature.

As I approach the warehouse on Carrie White Street, the two quarter-pie windows above the warehouse doors go from dark to bright. Whenever a delivery comes in, Zig automatically turns on the lights as a kind of beacon to us townies. Perfect, I think. I will have first dibs before the sorters arrive at eight thirty.

Outside the warehouse are two security guards sitting on overturned buckets and playing crazy eights on a wobbly card table. They are used to my visits. As curator at Curios, I have a special pass to visit warehouses in search of curious objects. The guards barely glance up from their game, despite the presence of Pierre, who usually elicits so much cooing and fussing from passersby that I tend to walk him only early in the morning or late at night.

I grasp the metal door handle, heave the door open, and slip inside the warehouse. I unhook Pierre from his leash so he can scramble over the hoard of goods Zig has bestowed on us. As usual, the delivery looks like a yard sale of unwanted, unloved items: used desks, mattresses, and stoves; piles of secondhand T-shirts; a jumble of compact discs; boxes of paperback books, their corners curled with age; even a half dozen scratched, tarnished tubas, their mouths all facing one another as though they are conversing.

I am on my knees riffling through a box of secondhand gym shorts when I hear Pierre’s sharp yaps coming from the other side of the warehouse.

Pierre can do a trick whereby he throws back his head and imitates the wee-ooo-wee-ooo sound of a European police siren. We tell ourselves he learned this in the streets of Paris. Everybody loves it when he does his trick. I myself find his howl grating, and so when he starts up in the warehouse now, I put down my armful of gym shorts and go to shut him up.

I spot him in front of an old school locker that stands upright between a refrigerator and a photocopier. He is pawing the locker between howls. Pierre arrived in a cardboard box of throw cushions himself, and perhaps this locker contains another dog or a cat or even Town’s first raccoon. As I approach the locker, however, I realize there is something familiar about it: a dent halfway up its army green surface, as though a student’s head was once butted against its door.

It is then I notice the number on the metal plate near the top. It is 106. “Holy smokes,” I say to Pierre, who finally stops his barking.

“What kind of tomfoolery are you up to, Zig?” I say aloud as I touch a palm against the locker’s cool surface. What will I find inside? The periodic table? Photographs of Richard Dawkins and Jane Goodall? My old gym clothes? My protractor?

As I inch the locker door open, its rusty hinges let out a series of squeaks that, considering my nerves, could also be coming from me.

Inside the locker is a face I have not seen in thirteen years.