The Gray House

THE HOUSE

INTERLUDE

Stuffage welcomed them with jeers and giggles.

“Blind’s Tail is back!” Muffin shouted.

Whiner and Crybaby played a drumroll on the bottoms of leaky pails.

“Blind’s Tail! Blind’s Tail!” they sang mockingly.

Their voices did not express hostility. It was more surprise. As if the month Grasshopper spent in the hospital wing had erased him from their lives.

Wolf was greedily lapping up the scene.

“And . . . And Grayhead is with him,” Muffin added hesitantly.

Almost the entire group was wearing sweatshirts with loud, garish messages. Grasshopper figured that those had become fashionable while he was away. The sweatshirts were declaring:

I’m on Fire!

Life Is One Big Disappointment

Keep Off!

The colorful slogans made the faces above them seem more grown up.

Sportsman was lounging on his bunk, legs dangling, and flipping through a magazine. He didn’t even glance in the direction of Grasshopper and Wolf. Not a Slave to Circumstances, Grasshopper observed the slogan on Sportsman’s sweatshirt. Wolf put down their bags.

“Hi, Blond!” he said to Sportsman.

Whiner and Crybaby immediately ceased the racket. Sportsman paid them a brief look over the magazine.

“Muffin, tell those two that I’ve been Sportsman for ages now.”

“He’s been Sportsman for ages, he’s not Blond,” Muffin repeated dutifully.

Wolf made an incredulous face.

“He’s not? And somehow his hair isn’t any darker.”

Muffin turned around in search of a clue, but was ignored by Sportsman, who was engrossed in the magazine.

“Sport’s hair is none of your business,” Muffin said significantly. “Or yours!” he snapped at Grasshopper, even though Grasshopper hadn’t mentioned hair at all. With him, Muffin felt himself on firmer ground.

Plump and rosy cheeked, he was pacing back and forth, preventing them from coming in. They waited at the door for him to get tired of it.

“So.” Muffin stopped and adjusted his pants. “You, mama’s darling. Your bed belongs to the newbie now. To Magician. So you’re going to sleep in that room. And be grateful that at least we’re not sending you to the wheelers.”

Grasshopper had already noticed someone else’s stuff on his bed but didn’t say anything.

“We don’t need sissies like you here,” Muffin said. “Or like him!” Muffin’s finger pointed at Wolf now. “Especially his kind we don’t need at all.”

“Was that Sportsman’s idea?” Wolf asked.

Sportsman didn’t deign to respond. He just stretched out on his bed, yawned, and flipped another page.

“Tail’s got arms now,” he said, still not looking up from the magazine. “I wonder . . .”

Grasshopper looked at his prosthetics and blushed. Wolf’s eyes narrowed.

Muffin bustled about, completely oblivious.

“Now beat it. This is the Pack’s room. Not for the sissies crawling around the Sepulcher.”

Wolf shoved him away.

“All right, I’m a sissy,” he said with disgust. “And you’re all tough guys here. Especially you and Champion. Or whatever he calls himself today. Blond. So. Since you’ve thrown us out of here, we’re going to live in that room now, and we’re going to have our own sissy rules, so the tough guys like you better keep out. Got that?”

Grasshopper couldn’t wait to leave. He furtively stepped on Wolf’s foot.

“Wolf. That’s enough. Let’s go.”

Wolf picked up the bags.

“We’re going,” he said. “To our room. And whoever doesn’t feel like a tough guy can come with us. There’s plenty of space.”

Whiner and Crybaby banged on their drums, a bit uncertainly.

“Hey!” Bubble protested, wheeling up to them on his skates. “What do you mean, your room? I sleep there too!”

“Not anymore,” Wolf declared. “You’re a tough guy, aren’t you?”

Bubble looked himself over.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“Enough of this,” Sportsman said, putting away the magazine and raising himself off the bed. “You heard. Beat it, before it gets beat for you. Bubble is going to sleep wherever he wants, and you just shut up!”

The pack was silent. The newbie, the one on crutches who could do magic tricks, was looking at Grasshopper sadly. He’d like to come with us, Grasshopper realized. But he’s got my bed now, they’ll never let him go.

They went out into the hallway. Someone belatedly whistled behind their backs.

Grasshopper laughed.

“That’s exactly what I wished for.”

“I know,” Wolf said.

They entered the room next door. Wolf turned on the lights. The room was bare and ugly. Steel cots in two rows, with rolled-up mattresses on them. Only three had linens. Blind was sitting by the wall and raised his head as they entered. He hadn’t grown at all—or he just didn’t look like he had. His hair had gotten longer. The fashion for sweatshirts with messages apparently hadn’t reached him. He was wearing a checkered flannel shirt, an adult one. Elk’s shirt, much too long for him.

“Hey, Blind!” Grasshopper said happily. “It’s me. And Wolf. They threw us out. And here you are!”

“Hey,” Wolf said, putting down the bags.

“Hello.” Blind rustled.

“A sad sight,” Wolf said, looking around the room. “But we’ll soon transform this into Gardens of Paradise.”

Grasshopper perked up.

“Can I do the transforming too?”

He couldn’t wait to try his new prosthetics.

“I said ‘we.’” Wolf nodded. “We, living here. Blind, is that OK with you?”

Blind was listening intently, with his head slightly to the side.

“Yes. Do all the transforming you want.”

Wolf went up to the tucked-in beds.

“Which one is Bubble’s bed?”

“Second from the window.”

Wolf grabbed everything from that bed and hauled it to the door. Then he returned for the linens.

“Are we going to evict Crook as well?” Grasshopper asked hopefully.

Wolf stopped.

“Don’t know. I guess he can decide for himself.”

Wolf deposited Bubble’s things in the hallway and came back.

Behind the wall, Stuffage was alive with voices and stomping feet. Wolf ran up to the windowsill and plopped onto it, paying no attention to the dust.

Grasshopper sat down beside him. Wolf was devouring the scene down in the yard. He had a proprietary look on his face. Grasshopper was used to seeing Blind look that way, but never Wolf. How are they going to get along? he thought apprehensively and looked back at Blind.

Blind was still sitting at the wall and listening. He wasn’t listening to the noises of Stuffage. He was listening to Wolf. Guardedly and inconspicuously.

Were it not for Wolf, he’d talk to me. Tell me what’s been happening while I was away. Show that he’s glad I came back. Like really show, not the way he did now—everything on the inside and nothing visible.

Grasshopper felt sad.

“Blind,” he said. “Do you know what it says on Whiner’s and Crybaby’s sweatshirts? Leave the Loner Alone. Both of them.”

Blind smiled.

Wolf snorted from the windowsill, “One loner and one loner make two loners. And ten more loners would make for an entire ocean of loneliness.”

“They called us sissies,” Grasshopper explained. “And said that there was no place for us there.”

“I heard,” Blind replied.

Grasshopper went to sit next to him. Elk’s shirt covered Blind down to his knees. The rolled sleeves looked like tubes around his wrists. The corners of his lips were covered in something white. He must have been eating plaster off the walls again. Grasshopper moved closer to Blind and inhaled the familiar scent of plaster and unwashed hair. He’d missed him, but he didn’t know how to express his happiness and how to make Blind feel it too. He could only sit next to him in silence. Blind remained still, but now he was listening to Grasshopper. Without turning his head he inhaled forcefully through his nose and then licked off the white residue.

I must have my own scent too, Grasshopper realized. Everything did. People, houses, rooms. Stuffage certainly had it. This room did not smell of anything yet. But that would soon change.

Grasshopper stretched his legs and closed his eyes. This is my home, he thought. Right here. Where Wolf and Blind are going to wait for me and worry if I’m away for too long. This is what they call Gardens of Paradise.

The next morning, Wolf started working on the room. He dashed off to Elk and to seniors, then went down to the yard, returning each time with heaps of this and that and laying it out along the walls. Grasshopper never went out. He and Blind were guarding the room. Wolf procured paints, both liquid and spray, an old easel, a stepladder, and some fraying brushes. He also arranged empty paint cans and stacked old, yellowing newspapers on the floor. Grasshopper was getting tired of the commotion and of Wolf running around holding all these items, but then Wolf declared everything ready for the work to begin.

Grasshopper helped him spread out the newspapers. Wolf mounted the stepladder and started painting the wall white. The old portable radio was belting out slow blues, coughing and making unfunny jokes between the songs. Grasshopper walked over the newspapers, anticipating the multiple colors of the Gardens of Paradise and singing along softly whenever the tune turned out to be familiar. Blind was scrubbing the windowsill, grayish water flying everywhere.

The lunch bell came unexpectedly for all of them. Wolf stayed back while Grasshopper and Blind went to the canteen. Sportsman’s eyes were shooting daggers, Muffin made faces, blue-eyed Magician looked at them plaintively and forlornly. This was the first time Grasshopper was using his prosthetics in full view of others, and the embarrassment was making him eat very slowly.

“Sportsman is looking at us weird,” he whispered to Blind.

“He’d do better to look after his own.”

“Why?”

“Wolf has more cunning than he,” Blind replied cryptically.

He squeezed a piece of meat loaf between two slices of bread and shoved the resulting sandwich in Grasshopper’s pocket. Another sandwich just like that one weighed down the other pocket. On the way back they bestowed two greasy stains on Grasshopper’s jacket.

In addition to Wolf sitting on the stepladder, they also found Humpback and Beauty in the room. Humpback’s hamster was running around in the tub installed on one of the beds. Its glass bowl, spotlessly clean, was drying out on the windowsill. Beauty, his tongue hanging out from the effort, was diligently, if inexpertly, rubbing a wet rag on the lampshade. Humpback, hunched over, was drawing an unidentified animal on the wall. Its legs rose up like columns. When Grasshopper and Blind entered, he nervously straightened up and hid the pencil. All that was near the floor. Higher up, the white wall exploded in green and blue triangles, red spirals, and orange splashes. Blind can’t see this, Grasshopper thought with disappointment.

“What do you think?” Wolf asked from up on the stepladder.

“Yes!” Grasshopper said. “This is exactly it!”

“And these”—Wolf pointed with the brush at Beauty and Humpback—“are fresh Poxy Sissies. Now we are five. And the hamster.”

That’s why Sportsman was so mad, Grasshopper thought.

“Can I finish this now?” Humpback asked no one in particular.

He turned back to his monster and started putting stripes on it. His head was covered in orange drips too, making him seem a continuation of the wall.

“We brought food,” Grasshopper said. “Runny meat loaf.”

They all skipped dinner. By evening they’d painted the entire wall. The upper part bristled with the flying spirals and triangles, while the bottom was taken over by bizarre animals. Humpback’s striped creation was there, as was a slender-legged wolf with teeth like a buzz saw—Wolf’s contribution. Also a smiling hamster. Beauty painted a red blob, then smeared it and started crying. They all pitched in and teased it into an owl.

Grasshopper couldn’t hold a brush. Wolf wrapped a rag around one of the fingers on his prosthetic hand and dipped it into the can, and a giant porcupine with slightly crooked quills joined the parade of animals. Blind drew a giraffe. It was empty inside and resembled a tower crane, so Humpback colored it in. When they stopped, paint was everywhere. On the newspapers, the clothes, their hands, faces, hair, even the hamster—everything. Elk came by to ask why they didn’t show up for dinner and froze as he opened the door.

“Oh,” he said. “This is something else.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it,” Beauty whispered. “We did everything ourselves.”

“I can see that,” Elk said. “But you are spending the night in my room.”

“No,” Grasshopper said, agitated. “We can’t! If we leave here, Sportsman and all the rest of them are going to come and ruin this. We can open the windows, to air it out. There’s hardly any smell at all! Please?”

Elk gingerly stepped inside and immediately got stuck to the newspapers.

“A rebellion?” he asked Wolf.

Wolf nodded. “They threw us out themselves.”

Elk studied their stained faces, the floor and the cans of paint, then the wall.

“I think I see a vacant space right there,” he said.

A green dinosaur shaped like a kangaroo came to live in the vacant space, and Elk’s suit acquired beautiful emerald spots.

“Yes, well,” Elk declared, getting up from his knees. “It is indeed contagious. And now we go and wash up.” He shoved the brush into the paint can. “Are the other walls destined for the same fate?”

“We’ll think of something,” Wolf promised.

“No doubt,” Elk said. “Go open the windows.”

They opened the windows and threw away the newspapers. Elk took Grasshopper and Beauty to the bathroom. He washed them by turns. As soon as the scrubber left Grasshopper to attack Beauty, Grasshopper would fall asleep. Surrounded by the white tiles, under the thundering hot waterfall, swaying and grabbing the bars of the drain with his toes to stop himself from falling down. Beauty’s squeals, muffled by the noise of the shower, faded into the distance, then Elk’s hands came back and jostled him, the soapy brush reappearing, and Grasshopper woke up again. Then he was being carried, swaddled in a towel, and he still kept his eyes shut even though he wasn’t asleep anymore, because he didn’t feel like walking. He only peeked out of his fluffy cocoon once deposited in the room.

Humpback, Blind, and Wolf were sitting side by side on a bed. The wall stretched before them in its drying splendor, and Grasshopper again became sad that Blind could not see it. Elk covered him with the blanket, and Grasshopper snuggled in the warm burrow. The voices rolled over him, bubbling indistinctly, but he couldn’t make out the words. He was sinking into sleep but managed to call out.

“Blind . . .”

Someone smelling of paint appeared silently by his side.

“You know what,” Grasshopper whispered. “The dinosaur . . . It’s raised off the wall a bit. You could see it when it dries up . . . If you touch it . . .”

The paint-smelling apparition answered something, but Grasshopper did not hear it. He was asleep.

The next morning, Wolf changed the lightbulbs for brighter ones. They made shades for two of them out of colored craft paper, and Wolf covered them with Chinese characters. The third one occupied the shade Beauty had been washing. After Beauty left, Humpback washed it all over again, but Beauty didn’t know that and so every time he walked under it his face was illuminated by a smile, itself like a lightbulb under the dark bangs.

They guarded the room in shifts all day. The wall was almost completely dry now. The Stuffage Pack was suspiciously quiet. From time to time one of them would sneak out and shuffle outside the door, trying to peek through the lock. Or they would knock and run away before someone could open. Wolf and Grasshopper were on guard during lunchtime. Wolf sat on the windowsill looking out into the yard. Grasshopper lay on his bed. The hamster scratched in its bowl. The room on the other side of the wall was silent. Then someone knocked. Wolf had been jumping up and down all morning, opening the door only to find emptiness behind it and hear the sound of running feet, so he didn’t even move.

“You’d think they’d give it a rest during lunch, at least,” he said.

The knocking resumed. Grasshopper got up.

“May I?” a squeaky voice said, and a big-eared head insinuated itself into the crack.

Grasshopper closed his eyes. Then he opened them again.

“This can’t be a wheeler?” he said.

“It is,” the visitor said. “Amazing, huh?”

And he rolled into the room.

Stinker the wheeler was known far and wide. Grasshopper had heard a lot about him, even though he’d never met him in person. Those who had, all confirmed that Stinker was the nastiest wheeler in the House. The walking juniors considered all wheelers whiny and nasty, but even the other wheelers had branded Stinker as such. That’s probably because he was. The mere sight of him made seasoned counselors wistfully count the years remaining until retirement. His roommates harbored secret desires to throttle him in his sleep. Stinker was nine, but he’d already managed to pack a lot of achievements into his life. His fame, or rather infamy, preceded him.

“I came to have a look,” Stinker said. “Are you going to throw me out?”

“Look,” Wolf said, “if you’re really interested.”

Stinker stared at the wall. Grasshopper and Wolf stared at him. Stinker was small and ugly looking, with incongruously big ears and round eyes. His pink shirt sported greasy stains. Grasshopper had never seen such dirty hands. Still, it was nice of the wheeler to have come all the way here to look at their wall.

“Like it?” Grasshopper asked.

Stinker turned away from the wall.

“Dunno. Maybe I do. And maybe I don’t. Are you a separate pack now? With your own separate room?”

He knows already, Grasshopper thought with surprise.

“We’re not a pack,” Wolf said. “We are Poxy Sissies. We spread disease. If someone asks, you tell them that.”

“Oooh!” Stinker’s large eyes lit up with excitement. He now resembled an owl out to hunt. “That’s a good one. I’ll remember that.” He looked around. “You are only using five beds. Sort of too few of you for this whole room.”

“So? Quite enough for disease-spreading.”

“That’s true.” Stinker picked bashfully at his dirty hand. “Here’s what I thought . . . Could you maybe use one more Poxy Sissy? I’d volunteer. I can spread disease too. I’m really good at that.”

Grasshopper looked at Wolf. Wolf looked at Grasshopper.

He’s going to agree, Grasshopper thought, horrified. He might not know what Stinker is. They held him in the Sepulcher for too long.

But it looked like Wolf did know.

“We don’t need anyone else,” he said.

Apparently this was the answer Stinker expected. But he continued to stare at Grasshopper. His round owlish eyes were too big. They seemed boundless if you looked into them for a while. They glowed with a strange inner light, drawing you in, like a sky bristling with stars. Grasshopper looked for a bit longer than was safe.

“You can come,” his unwieldy lips said by themselves. “If you want to.”

Stinker blinked, and the glow of the faraway stars was extinguished. He wiped the nose with the back of his dirty hand. Then sniffled and exposed the picket fence of his sharpish teeth.

“I’ll just go grab my things. Won’t be a minute.”

He turned around and rolled out. Surprisingly quickly. The door slammed behind him. His victory song filled the hallway. Grasshopper took a step backward, staggered, and sat on his bed.

“What have I just done?” he said.

“Oh, nothing much,” Wolf said, still looking at the door. “Only invited the most famous dirtbag in the House to live with us.”

Grasshopper was ready to cry.

“Wolf. I swear, I didn’t want to. I don’t know what happened. He was looking and looking, and I said . . .”

“It’s all right. Don’t worry.” Wolf sat down next to him. “When he comes back we’ll just tell him we changed our minds. By a majority of votes. I never agreed to anything, after all.”

Grasshopper buried his face in the pillow. He felt awful. This most horrible, nasty person, the nastiest ever, and he’d invited him here, into his home, his very own room. It was like he wanted to spoil everything.

The noise of many returning feet rolled down the corridor, gradually subsiding as their owners filed into the rooms. The Stuffage Pack thundered by, roaring, banging on their door as they ran. Then Humpback entered, with a big packet of food. Blind came next, carrying two bottles of milk. Beauty timidly brought up the rear, and his hands were empty.

“We got hot dogs,” Humpback started brightly, then stumbled. “What happened? Why are you sitting all miserable like that?”

“Stinker the wheeler’s just been here,” Wolf explained. “And Grasshopper said he could move in with us. It just happened. He didn’t want to.”

“Stinker?!” Humpback and Blind exclaimed in unison.

Grasshopper stood looking down at the floor.

“We could say it was a joke,” Humpback suggested. “Say that Grasshopper was joking. You were joking, weren’t you?”

Grasshopper was doing his best to fight back tears.

“We’ll think of something,” Wolf said uncertainly. “Maybe he was joking himself. Maybe he wouldn’t come anyway. This has never happened, for a wheeler to join the walkers. We’d just say we said it by accident. Whatever. Just to make him go away.”

Beauty was looking forlornly up at the ceiling. At his lightbulb. Or, rather, at his lampshade.

They sat in silence for a while. The food was going stale on the floor. Grasshopper, with his eyes closed, was picturing Stinker. How he was packing his things. Opening all of his secret places in front of everybody. Telling the other wheelers that he was moving to the colorful room. And they were laughing at him, not believing him. “Who needs you there?” they would say. “The walkers were joking.” And Stinker would continue to pack.

Grasshopper imagined this so vividly it almost knocked the breath out of him. He opened his eyes.

“No,” he said. “I can’t do this. I told him he could come. He knows it’s not a joke. He’ll run here with all of his stuff . . .”

Grasshopper went silent. There was something in his throat that wasn’t letting him continue. He buried his face in his knees, and the knees immediately became wet.

“Hey. Stop this,” Wolf said. “We are going to talk to him ourselves. What’s come over you?”

Humpback sniffled loudly into his clenched fist. Grasshopper lifted up his face, tears streaming down, and looked at Wolf.

“You are going to talk to him and throw him out. And I’m going to sit silently and pretend it has nothing to do with me? He believed me. Me, not you. And now it turns out my word means nothing. What does that make me?”

Wolf looked away.

“Let’s do it the way he wants,” Blind said. “Let him keep his word. Just don’t let him cry. By the way, this Stinker guy, is he heavy like a tank?”

Grasshopper didn’t have enough time to be surprised by Blind’s words. They all heard the strange grinding noise and jumped up together. The door flew open. There was a trunk looming behind it.

“Help!” came the voice from the other side. “I can’t push it in alone!”

Wolf and Humpback hauled in the trunk. They had to turn it lengthwise. It was followed by Stinker, hugging a bloated backpack and clad in a parka. A striped knit hat with a pom-pom on top crowned his head.

“Here! I brought you all this,” he proclaimed. “Look . . .”

Then Stinker saw Grasshopper’s tearstained face and went red. Very slowly, from the tips of his enormous ears down.

“Oh,” he said and pulled off the multicolored hat. “Oh. I see.”

“You see what?” Wolf said gruffly. “Squeeze in and close the door. Or the entire Stuffage is going to be here any minute.”

Humpback went around the trunk and knocked on it.

“What do you have here? A matching furniture set?”

Beauty peeked inside.

“Oh wow. There’s like a bulldozer in there,” he said.

“That’s not a bulldozer! It’s a juice maker,” Stinker said, visibly hurt. “I made it myself. A very useful appliance to have around.”

Grasshopper wiped his runny nose on his knee and smiled.

“What about this?” Humpback fished out a scary-looking steel contraption.

“A bear trap,” Stinker said proudly. “My own design as well.”

“Also a useful appliance to have around,” Blind said acidly.

Wolf and Humpback were diving inside the trunk, producing more and more stuff. Beauty was afraid to touch any of it, lest he break something. Blind examined everything with his fingers before setting it down on the floor. Stinker was providing a running commentary.

“Kettle. Photographic trays. Tool set. Stuffed horned viper. Portable coatrack. Guitar . . .”

“Wait,” Wolf interrupted. “You can play guitar?”

Stinker scratched himself and looked at the ceiling.

“Not really, no.”

“Why do you have it, then?”

“It was a parting gift. From former roommates.”

“Ah. You mean you took all you could. Was there anything left at all?”

Stinker sighed.

“Nightstands. And beds, too.”

He stared at the floor with a guilty look on his face. Grasshopper and Humpback laughed.

“I see,” Wolf said. “So in the morning they’re going to come for the trunk.”

“No, they won’t,” Stinker said firmly. “They wouldn’t dare. I warned them that I’d move right back if they tried.”

Humpback slipped on the bear trap and landed in the salad bowl. Grasshopper doubled over on the bed.

“Hey! Hey,” Wolf said. “I’m not allowed to laugh like that!”

Then all was hysterics and moans. Even Blind was laughing. Stinker squeaked loudest of all.

“Move right back! Blackmailer! Former roommate!”

“You haven’t seen all of it!” Stinker yelled. “There’s still a lot left!”

They yelped, shaking the beds with their laughter.

Suddenly Wolf straightened up and said, “Shhh! Hear that?”

They stopped and listened to silence. The silence of Stuffage listening intently to them laughing.

Stinker couldn’t play guitar, but he could play the harmonica. He knew nineteen songs, happy as well as sad, and he played them all. And the trunk did contain a lot more fun stuff. For example, a jumbled mass of wires in which Humpback managed to entangle himself.

“Security system,” Stinker explained. “With alarm.”

“Great,” Wolf said. “Certainly useful to have around. For us I’d say even indispensable. Let’s connect it.”

The door was soon crisscrossed by wires so thickly it was scary to look at. Then it turned out that the alarm didn’t work.

“No problem,” Stinker said. “Probably a break in the current somewhere. I’ll have a look later.”

Grasshopper took Stinker’s failures personally. But the security system was so far the only major setback. The trap definitely worked. They found out when Blind stepped in it. The juice maker worked too. They installed the coatrack in the corner, where it accepted the weight of two jackets and one backpack. Stinker was knocking himself out making a good impression. He didn’t miss any opportunity to show that he was capable of doing everything by himself, and to prove it, he would flop out of the wheelchair and crawl briskly around the room. He demonstrated his skills at climbing on the bed and back into the wheelchair, and even attempted to scale the windowsill, but crashed down halfway. He rubbed the mark on his chin, and his eyes looking at Grasshopper seemed to say: Can you see how hard I’m trying?

Wolf went to his bed with the guitar and tried to play it, without much success. Beauty sat mesmerized before the juice maker, regarding his own reflection in its shiny sides. Blind was listening to Stuffage, sitting by the wall with his injured leg held aloft.

When Stinker finally wheeled off to the bathroom, assuring everybody and everything that he needed absolutely no help with “things like that,” Humpback said to Wolf, “This Stinker is not a bad guy at all. Why is everyone picking on him? They all say there’s no one nastier in the whole House. And he’s really nice.”

“Yeah,” Wolf said, “he’s fine. A cute little baby who’s a bit into blackmail. Caught Blind in a trap, fell down from the window, and by a complete coincidence gobbled four of our hot dogs.”

“He was hungry,” Grasshopper interjected. “He didn’t go to lunch.”

“I didn’t either,” Wolf sighed. “On the other hand, if no one comes here to claim this guitar by tomorrow, I’ll personally feed him two more lunches.”

Grasshopper exhaled. It’s lucky that Stinker thought of grabbing that guitar, he thought. And it will be lucky if they don’t come for it.

“I wish I had an orange,” said Beauty plaintively. “Or a lemon. Something squeezable.”

He gingerly touched the switch on the juicer and jerked his hand back. He was very afraid of breaking it. Everything he touched broke, for some reason.

“Sportsman is having a fight with Siamese,” Blind said. “They stole his magazine with the naked ladies.”

“That’s sad,” Wolf said. “The moral fiber of that boy leaves much to be desired. You are a regular listening device, Blind. Do they know about Stinker yet?”

Blind shook his hair.

“No. But they did hear the harmonica.”

Stinker came back. He parked by the door and started fiddling with the wires, whistling a tune softly.

“Where can I get an orange?” Beauty asked. “Anybody?”

“Where can I get a guitar tutorial?” Wolf said. “You guys think Elk might have one?”

The piercing wail of the alarm shook them all badly. Beauty pressed his hands against his ears. The alarm raged on for two minutes, then silence returned.

“It’s working,” Stinker said happily, staring with his shameless round eyes.

Leaving for breakfast the next morning, they left the security system armed and also installed the disguised trap by the door.

“Maybe we’ll find someone in it when we get back,” Humpback said.

The presence of Stinker at their table caused a furor in the canteen. Sportsman pointedly got up and went to sit farther away. His pack followed. The long junior table now had a neutral zone in the middle. Even seniors noticed it.

“Look, the squirts are splitting up,” Boar, one of the seniors, said.

“The little shits are growing,” Lame replied dismissively. “Into big shits. Just like us.”

The juniors overheard this exchange, straightened proudly, and blushed. The seniors just compared us to themselves!

The wheelers were regarding Stinker sulkily. But he happily absorbed the attention, all the while creating a pigsty around his plate.

On the way back to the room, Grasshopper stopped before the message board. Separated at Birth. Showing this evening. Both parts. So there wouldn’t be anybody in the Tenth except Ancient. Grasshopper ran to catch up with the rest of them.

Stinker asked permission to draw something on the wall. Wolf dug out the cans of paint and showed him an empty corner. Stinker labored long and hard. He first drew everything in pencil, then used paint—there was nary a peep from his corner all the way till lunch, save for doleful sighs and scratching, representing the throes of inspiration.

Wolf managed to procure the guitar tutorial. He was studying it very closely, but to Grasshopper it looked like he couldn’t quite concentrate on what was before him. Beauty had wheedled an orange from someone and was now sitting in front of the juicer, not daring to switch it on. Grasshopper and Humpback had mounted a typewriter on the nightstand—another gift of the trunk, which no one except Grasshopper took any interest in. Grasshopper realized immediately that this was something he really needed. Hitting a lettered key with the finger of his prosthetic was much easier than trying to draw that same letter so that someone else could guess which one it was. Pens always slipped out of the artificial fingers, and the letters came out all angular and broken. When Grasshopper saw the typewriter, he perked up and asked for it to be placed on his nightstand.

While Humpback was busy feeding paper into it and typing whatever came into his mind, Grasshopper was imagining how he’d write a letter to Death and Ginger and drop it in the hospital mailbox—there was an actual box on the door to the hospital wing.

Stuffage sounded even rowdier than usual.

“Are they planning to attack us?” Humpback said.

“Or already attacking each other,” Grasshopper suggested.

Humpback rattled out the word attack.

“Or maybe this is the sound of Sportsman’s empire crumbling,” Wolf said. “And we are soon going to be hit by its splinters.”

Somebody scratched softly at the door.

“See what I mean?” Wolf said. “The splinters are flying.”

Beauty quickly hid the orange behind his back.

“Could be someone coming for the trunk,” Blind said.

But it was, in fact, Magician. Sad little Magician in a striped shirt, with a crutch under one arm and a sack of clothes under the other.

“Hello,” he said. “Can I come in?”

He looked like someone who’d narrowly escaped some catastrophe.

“Did something really blow up there?” Humpback asked, alarmed.

“They let you go?” Grasshopper said incredulously. “I thought they never would.”

“Two newbies arrived at once,” Magician explained bashfully. “So I grabbed my stuff and got out. They have other things to worry about now, and I always wanted to move in with you. Can I please stay here?”

He briefly looked at the wall.

“Did you bring anything useful?” Stinker inquired.

“He can do magic tricks,” Grasshopper said quickly. “With cards and with a handkerchief. And with everything.”

“You’re in. Choose a bed,” Wolf said. “Who are the newbies?”

Magician marched to an empty bed, thumping his crutch, and put his things on it.

“One is normal,” he said. “And the other is scary. He’s got this spot. Like someone poured chocolate on him. Almost his entire face.” Magician pressed a hand to his own face. “Oh, wow, a guitar!” he exclaimed and put the hand down, mesmerized by the instrument on Wolf’s pillow. “Where did you get it?”

“Can you play?” Wolf said quickly.

Magician nodded. He couldn’t pry his eyes off it.

“We’re in luck,” Wolf said. “I was going crazy with this tutorial. Come on, play something.”

Magician thumped over to his bed. Wolf shifted to make space for him.

While Magician was getting comfortable with the guitar, he also cleared his throat significantly, as if he was about to sing.

“‘A Taste of Honey,’” he announced.

Grasshopper recalled that he always announced his magic tricks in the same artificial kind of voice.

Magician started playing, and indeed also singing, even though no one had asked him to. He must have decided to showcase all of his talents at once. He had a high-pitched, piercing voice, and he pulled off both playing and singing with confidence. It was obvious that he was really good at both, and that this voice was not an impediment for him. Everyone clustered around, except Stinker, who was still busy with his drawing.

Magician was wailing in his tragic falsetto, swaying back and forth over the guitar, singing along with the licks, pa-dam, pa-dam, shaking his bangs, and staring distractedly at the wall. By the end of the song his voice was hoarse, and he had tears in his eyes. The next song he played without singing or announcing its title. The third one he dubbed “Tango of Death,” and in it he bungled the melody once. Magician’s songs made Grasshopper sad, and not only him but the others too, apparently.

“I can also play the violin,” Magician said after dispatching “Tango of Death.” He added, “And trumpet. And also accordion, a little bit.”

“When did you manage all this?” Wolf said, surprised.

Magician twanged a string a couple of times.

“I just did. Just like that.”

Suddenly his sharp face lost the veneer of self-satisfaction and twisted in a grimace. He turned away.

He must be remembering something from the Outsides, Grasshopper thought. Something good that happened to him there.

“Do the trick with the handkerchief,” Grasshopper said. “You know, your best one.”

Magician started digging through his pockets.

“It doesn’t work every time,” he warned. “I really should be practicing more.”

Stinker wheeled away from the wall and regarded Magician with interest. Behind his back, in the corner that had been assigned to him, something creepy was now visible, with a flattened nose and bugged-out eyes, and covered in spots. Everyone turned to the something and forgot all about the magic tricks. Even Magician quit his search for the handkerchief.

“What is that thing?” Wolf asked, horrified. “What were you trying to make?”

“It’s a goblin,” Stinker explained smugly. “Life-sized. Isn’t he pretty?”

“Yep,” Humpback said. “So pretty we’d better cover him up.”

Stinker took this as a compliment.

“No, really?” he said. “Is it heart-stopping?”

“Certainly is,” Humpback confirmed. “Especially if someone wanders into that corner at night with a flashlight. That’ll stop it for sure.”

Stinker giggled.

“Can you show me how to make juice?” Beauty said and handed him the orange.

Stinker grabbed it and peeled it in a flash. Divided it into sections and stuffed them in his mouth. He then explained to a stunned Beauty, “Not enough for juicing. Much better to just eat it.” He generously handed Beauty the last sloppy, half-squashed section and said, “Here. Have this. It’s good for you. Vitamin C and all.”