“I thought I was f*cking crazy, man. Like maybe I dreamt it all up while I was comatose for all those months. Town, the Great Walls, Thelma and Esther, Zig, the death’s head, the bricking.”

Though still recognizable, Johnny’s voice is much deeper than before. He and I are in the back room of Zoo, the door pushed half-closed. Beside us is a stack of cardboard boxes, and the bored-looking Siamese is now curled up atop them. Inside the boxes are tins of a cat food with an apt name: 9 Lives.

Johnny looks me up and down. “Man oh man, I can’t believe you’re here,” he says. “It’s so awesome, but also real f*cking freaky.”

It is strange seeing him too. He is no longer the boy I knew. He is over six feet tall. He has a beard, which he keeps stroking. He is standing close and smells oniony, perhaps because he has no one here to remind him to shower.

“Where are my parents, Johnny?” I say, my voice squeaky. “I can find neither hide nor hair of them. I just stopped by 222 Hill Drive, but they are no longer there. A fellow with a powdered face lives in their apartment.”

“Oh, jeez, your folks left years and years ago, back when I was in ninth grade. I heard they went to Alaska, but I’m not a hundred percent sure.”

“Alaska!?” I cry. “I have serious doubts Zig will grant me enough haunting time for a trip to the largest state in the union.”

The back room is furnished with a scratched desk that looks much like Johnny’s old desk at the Frank and Joe. Scattered across the top are rubber chew toys for dogs: colorful bones, a plucked rooster, a great white shark. Beside the desk is a door to the outside propped open with, of all things, a brick.

“So you found a damn portal!” Johnny says.

“On my rebirthday, no less,” I say. “Zig has granted me permission to visit you after all these years. But why now? I do not have the foggiest idea.”

“I think I know.” He pushes up the sleeves of his sweatshirt and holds his hands out palms up. Around both his wrists are flesh-colored bandages.

There is shame in his voice when he says, “I did a real stupid thing.”

“Oh, Johnny, why would you do that?”

He smirks at me. “Once a sadcon, always a sadcon.”

I touch one of the bandages with the tip of my finger. I know what lies beneath: the same ugly scars are on his wrists back in Town. It dawns on me that his doppelgänger at Curios probably started aging on the day Johnny sliced through his veins here in America.

“My shrink has me on anti-sadcon pills, but the f*cking things don’t always work.”

He gives me a searching look. “You’ll think I’m nuts, but sometimes I miss Town. Sometimes I put my ear against my tank of roaches, hoping I’ll hear voices from Town. Maybe even you talking to me again, correcting my grammar.”

I do not mention his twin at Curios lest I frighten him. “You can never go back, Johnny,” I say with finality.

He nods his head, looking a little morose, but then he brightens. “Man, you’re so young!” he exclaims. “Or I’m so old. I don’t know which. You’re just a little kid. In my mind, I remembered you older.”

“I am older than I used to be in the mental sense, but of course not in the physical.”

“Whereas I’m old and I’m mental,” he says, and lets out a guffaw.

Though his joke is macabre, I do crack a smile.

“I’ve missed you, man.” He reaches out and gently ruffles my staticky hair the way you used to, Father. “You saved me, Boo. You saved my life. And now here you are again when I need you most.”

The Siamese meows as if agreeing with Johnny. Its eyes are the same sky blue as mine.

“You’re a sign,” Johnny says.

“Of what?”

“Of life,” he says. “The life I’m supposed to hang on to.”

Should I finally ask why he shot me?

Perhaps it is best that I not know.

We are standing near a bulletin board, and a photo thumbtacked to it catches my eye: Johnny with Zoo’s cashier. They wear matching T-shirts, the word NIRVANA written across the chest. Below the word is a kind of smiley face, but the eyes are X’s and the mouth is squiggly. Above their heads Johnny and the girl hold large signs. His reads GRAND; hers reads OPENING.

“Is that your sister?” I ask.

“Yeah, Brenda’s the only one I told about Town. I said the place was probably just some weird, psychedelic dream, but she was like, ‘No, no, Johnny. You died and that’s where you went.’ She believed even when I had trouble believing.”

“There is a family resemblance,” I say. “You have the same coppery eyes. Also the same dimple in your left cheek.”

“Oh, I have to introduce you two. She’ll frigging flip out. Stay put, okay? I’ll be right back.”

Johnny pushes the door open and heads into Zoo. I can hear a customer talking loudly to Brenda about Zig knows what. “Are you sure it clumps?” the lady says. “I need it to clump. And it’s gotta flush. It’s gotta flush and clump.”

Taped to the opposite wall of the back room are dozens of photographs of Johnny and Brenda. I cross the floor for a better look. My eyes dart here and there, seeing Johnny throughout his life. A prom-goer in a baby blue tuxedo with his arm around an older Cynthia Orwell. A seventh-grade track star with a gold medal around his neck. A young driver sitting at the wheel of a convertible, a basset hound beside him in the passenger’s seat. A squinting bearded artist standing beside a swirling abstract mural painted on a brick wall.

Then I see this photo: a hollow-eyed eighth grader sitting up in bed, his head in bandages. Johnny is clutching a heart-shaped throw cushion. Stitched across the heart is a single word: HERO.

An odd gift for a boy who shot another.

“I have customers, Johnny,” Brenda says out in Zoo. “Your surprise can’t wait?”

I turn around as Johnny and his sister walk into the back room. They stop in the doorway.

Johnny grins wildly.

Brenda frowns. “Customers aren’t allowed back here,” she says. Then her frown vanishes, and she gapes at me.

“No, no,” she whispers. “No freaking way.”

“Yes freaking way,” Johnny replies.

Brenda takes a few steps forward, one arm outstretched. She wants to touch me, I think. She wants to see whether her hand passes right through.

“He’s solid,” Johnny says.

“Hello, Brenda Henzel,” I say, backing against the wall. “You have certainly matured since last we met.”

A strangled whimper escapes her mouth. Her arm drops to her side. Her eyes roll backward. Her knees buckle, and she falls hard, slapping against the concrete floor.

“Dear me,” I say to the heap of purple velour.

Johnny hurries over. “Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t,” he mutters as he goes down on his knees to help his sister.

“She experienced a drop in the amount of blood flow to her brain,” I say to explain why a person faints.

Johnny turns Brenda faceup and gently pats her cheek. She is as white as a sliced potato, except for a red mark at her hairline where her head must have bounced off the concrete.

“Have any smelling salts?” I ask, standing over them.

“Smelling salts?” Johnny says. “What the f*ck’s that?”

“Ammonia carbonate.”

The chemical formula is (NH₄)₂CO₃, but I do not say so because now is not the time.

“The only ammonia I got here is Windex,” Johnny says, his voice shriller.

Brenda flutters her eyelids and emits a groan. The Siamese jumps down from its 9 Lives and sniffs her scalp.

“Perhaps I should skedaddle,” I say. “She may black out again if she comes to and sees a ghost hovering.”

Johnny gives me a look of regret. “But where’ll you go?”

“Back home. Back to Town.”

“How’ll you get there, Boo?”

Like a religious fanatic, I say, “Zig will show me the way.”

I undo my Casper the Friendly Ghost wristwatch and hand it over as a souvenir. “So you will always remember the time,” I say.

I mean not only this moment in time, but also our time together in Town.

Johnny’s mouth is smiling, but his eyes still look somewhat doleful. “As if I would’ve forgot,” he says.

“ ‘Forgotten,’ ” I correct.

Then Brenda opens her eyes, focuses on my face, and screams blue murder.