“It’s called a filtrum,” the man says, and he sounds just like when the teacher says, “This is important, so be quiet and hear it,” and everybody says, “Oh no,” with their hands on their faces, like in the Christmas movie, because it will be boring. “In fact,” he says, “there’s a whole story about it.”

“Is it boring?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, and then tells a kind of long story that’s a little boring about how people know everything before they get borned and then an angel comes along and mashes her finger on your lip to make you forget it all.

“That sucks,” Harvey says, and holds his mustache in place. “She mashed me way too hard.”

“You must have known more than most,” the man says. “And now you get to spend a whole lifetime remembering.”

“I do know a lot of junk but she still hurt me,” he says. “Somebody ought to mash her up hard too.”

“I’m sure she didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Well, I think she’s a stupid shitty doo-doo bitch,” Harvey says, and waits to see if the man is going to keep acting like a teacher and get after him, but he doesn’t. He just laughs.

“What’s that other note you got?” Harvey asks.

“Oh, just something I keep in my wallet—a little reminder my wife wrote me.” He puts it in his pocket and goes back over to lift that lid Jason told Harvey never, ever to touch.

“Be careful,” Harvey says, but doesn’t go any closer. “What do you see? Skeletons? Half-eat animals and blood?”

“No.” He shakes his head, one hand on that torn-up knee. “All I see is a backpack and some textbooks, a few beer cans, some old newspapers.”

“Beer?” Harvey says. “Ghosts drink beer?”

“This one does. Eats granola bars and has a calculus book too. I see part of an old empty jar. That’s all.”

Harvey wants to see but is scared of falling in. He wants to be with Peggy, who’s snoring in the sun, but he doesn’t want to hear his mom say don’t tell jokes, like the one about that doll fartin’ and flyin’ out the window. Peggy can’t hear nothing, but Super Monkey can hear that old man breathing and something ticking like a clock, but the train will come soon and even Super Monkey has trouble hearing anything when that happens. The train is the best part of the day.

Shelley