The Gray House

SPHINX

I am stretched out on the damp grass, feet up on the bench, face turned to the sky, which has just finished weeping. My feet in muddy sneakers are crossed up there on the seat of the bench, and the mud on them gradually lightens in color as it dries out, flaking off onto the rickety slats. Too fast. The summer sun is relentless. In another half hour there won’t be any trace left of the short rain, and an hour later anyone who’d want to lounge here would do well to bring sunglasses. But I still can look at the sky with impunity for a while. It’s bright blue behind the spiderweb of the oak branches. Below them is the gnarly trunk, a jumble of interwoven ropes turned to stone. The oak is the most beautiful tree in the whole yard. Also the oldest. My gaze slides down from its top, from the thinnest twigs all the way to the fat roots. I notice a thin, faded scrawl scratched into the rutted bark just above the back of the bench: “remember” something and also “lose.” I raise my head to see better. I’ve learned to decipher writings much less legible than that.

Remember L. N. and never lose hope.

L. N. The Longest Night.

Apparently for some people it means hope.

I’d laugh if it weren’t so sad. To flee from the House, where similar writings snake along the walls, intertwining and twisting themselves into spirals, biting their own tails, each of them a scream or a whisper, a song or an indistinct muttering, making me want to cover my ears as if they were really sounds and not simply words—flee them only to end up here admiring this very small but very scary sentence.

I am a tree. When I am cut down, make a fire with my branches.

Another one. Also cheerful.

Why do they have this effect on me? Maybe because they’re out here, not in there on a wall, lost within the tangled web of other words. Here, unfettered, they sound more sinister.

And I really wanted to get some rest—from the House, from the words. From the exhortations to make merry—“WHILE YOU STILL HAVE TIME!” . . . From the hundred and four questions of the “Know Thyself” test (each one more vapid than the one before it, and don’t even think of skipping subparagraphs). I ran away from it all. Out of the chaos and into the world of silence and of the old tree. But someone came here ahead of me, dragging along his fears and hopes, and mutilated the tree, forcing it to whisper now to anyone who comes close: “Make a fire with my branches.”

The oak spreads those knobby branches majestically toward the sun. Ancient, beautiful, serene, like all its brethren ready to suffer the worst of the indignities inflicted on it by humans, without fear and without reproach. I suddenly get this picture very clearly in my head, of it standing amid the ruins of the demolished House, up to its knees in brick rubble. It stands there, still stretching upward. The letters scored into it still implore not to lose hope.

A cold shiver runs down my spine.

“Do you sometimes experience an irrational fear of the future?” This is question number sixty-one. They told us that all questions on the test were significant. That each added important detail to the psychological profile. In our case they could’ve very well started and ended the test with this one.

The crunch of gravel underfoot. I close one eye.

The sky . . . The branches . . . The legs in black trousers.

“You comfortable?”

Ralph, his jacket unbuttoned, the knot of his tie askew, sits down on the bench and lights a cigarette.

“Very.”

I don’t get up. I’ve already said I was comfortable, so now I have to look up at him from where I’m lying. Ralph is cool with that. He puts the lighter back in his pocket and takes out a folded piece of paper. Unfolds it and puts it under my nose. It’s a list. Six names.

I know three of them well. Squib, Solomon, and Don—the Rats who split from the House, went to the Outsides. The first time they did it was back in the winter, after the Longest, but were caught quickly and brought back. They ran away again almost immediately. Over the next month they got returned twice more. For thirty days the inhabitants of the House gleefully ran a pool on how long they’d manage to hold out. Their names on “Wanted” posters became a fixture on the first floor. It was as if Shark finally cracked, went totally nuts and started to equate the first floor with the street, imploring the imaginary passersby from its walls: “Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of the above-mentioned youths . . .”

Then they brought back Squib, alone. What happened to the other two “above-mentioned” no one had ever found out. Squib couldn’t muster the courage to run away by himself and remained in the Den, a grotesque shadow of his former self, shrinking from even the youngest Ratlings.

“Yes?” I say. “The first three names are Squib, Solomon, and Don, and I’ve never seen the rest. Have they also run away?”

“Not exactly.”

Ralph turns his list over and studies it carefully, apparently trying to make sure he’s got it right.

“The rest are from the First,” he says. “They haven’t run away yet, but are rather keen to try, for some reason.”

I sit up. Warm and toasty from the front, damp and freezing from the back. All covered in sand and ants. I brush them off, trying to get my spinning head under control.

“They call their parents,” R One continues, eyes buried in the list. “They write letters to the principal. They demand to be released from the House immediately. One might assume that, were they not so . . . limited in terms of movement, they already would have followed the example of those first three. Almost like they are being terrorized. You wouldn’t know anything about that?”

“No,” I say. “First I’m hearing of it.”

Ralph puts the list in his pocket and leans back. He is clearly not happy with my answer. But I really have no idea why all of a sudden three Pheasants simultaneously have decided to get as far from the House as possible. In fact, from what I know of the First, the question is what took them so long.

Ralph admires the view of the sky through the branches, enjoying the dappled sunlight on his face. He’s got this face of a cartoon villain. No one who’s really evil would have a face like that. Only in the old movies. And not even a trace of gray in his hair, not a hint of a bald patch, even though he’s been working here for . . . what, thirteen years? At least. Iron Man.

“All right,” he says. “Let’s assume you don’t know. Let’s hear what you think. What is it they fear? What are they trying to run from?”

I shrug. “I don’t think it’s a question of fear. They’re being squeezed out. The First is good at that. And not only the First . . .”

I can’t stop myself in time because I remember Smoker. His name could have been right there on that piece of paper without even that much of an effort from us. But then, we’re not Pheasants.

“Who are you thinking about?” Ralph perks up. He has this goofy look, like a bloodhound that finally has picked up the scent.

“Smoker. You can add him to your list if you’d like.”

“Oh. I see . . .”

R One goes silent and pensive.

I probably shouldn’t have told him about Smoker. Counselors are unpredictable creatures. You never know how they are going to interpret the information you give them. On the other hand, I doubt that my mentioning Smoker could do us any real harm.

“Do you remember much of the last graduation?”

I wince. There are things that just aren’t mentioned. Rope in the hanged man’s house and all that. Ralph knows this as well as I do.

“No,” I say. “Very little. Only the night in the biology classroom. We were locked in it. Almost nothing of the morning. Bits of it. Here and there.”

He flicks away the cigarette.

“Were you expecting something different?”

“Probably. I myself wasn’t expecting anything at all.”

To get up and leave now would be impolite. Even though it’s the most logical thing to do. I’m very uncomfortable with the whole setup, my head being at the level of his knees. So I move onto the bench next to him.

“You are a Jumper, aren’t you?”

I look Ralph in the face. He is completely out of all imaginable and even unimaginable bounds. What did I do to provoke this? Actually answered his questions? That might be it. Anyone else in my place would just tell him to get lost. There are countless ways of doing it without resorting to open insolence. Ralph wouldn’t bat an eye if I were to say “What was that? A jumper? How do you mean? Do I look like a kangaroo to you?” He’s most likely expecting exactly that. But as I run through the possible responses in my head, each feels more repulsive to me than the last. It’s better to simply tell him to go to hell. But I can’t do that, now can I. Because last winter when we sent Blind to him, asking him to find out at least something about Noble, he didn’t tell us to go to hell. He didn’t feign surprise. He didn’t even tell us off for being impertinent. He went who knows where and did so much more there than we ever could have hoped. If I played dumb right now and started prattling about kangaroos I’d lose all respect for myself, however much I have left of it.

“Yes, I’m a Jumper. Why?”

Ralph is stunned. He looks at me with his mouth hanging open, searching for words.

“You sound very calm about it.”

“I am not calm,” I say. “I’m nervous. I’m just not showing it.”

“But other . . . ,” he stumbles and continues, “people like you never talk about it.”

“Because I’m a bad Jumper. Defective.”

Ralph freezes, his eyes glinting hungrily. He thinks he’s found something incredibly valuable while rummaging in a dumpster, and can’t quite believe his luck.

“Bad, what’s that mean?”

That’s when I realize that I probably need this conversation even more than he does. Because no one ever asks you about obvious things. Or things that seem obvious.

I lean back and close my eyes. The sun is directly in my face. A good excuse for not looking at the person you’re talking to.

“I don’t like it.”

I don’t need to look at him to see how surprised he is, and I answer his next question before he gets it out.

“I don’t Jump. You don’t have to do something only because you can. And you don’t have to like doing it either.”

I open my eyes and see him not even breathing, as if his breath might somehow spook me.

“It happened to me on that very morning,” I say. “For the first time, and for six years. When I woke up and they brought me a mirror, it wasn’t that I got scared of my bald head, as everyone assumed. I was scared to see a little boy there. Because I was no longer him. If you can imagine that, you’ll understand why I haven’t Jumped since then.”

“Are you saying that ever since that time . . .”

“Yes, ever since that time. I haven’t and I’m not planning to. Unless it happens by itself. A nervous shock, a sudden fright. That kind of thing leads to Jumping sometimes. Isn’t it the same with you?”

“I’ve never . . . ,” he begins.

“Of course you have. You just forgot. People forget it very quickly.”

There we go. Now he’s choking. And I’m not handy with the taps on the back. It’s very hard to gauge the strength of a slap with prosthetics. This ruins many friendly gestures for me. I pull my legs up on the bench, put my chin on my knee, and watch him coughing spasmodically. A child playing with matches. Makes a fire, imitating his daddy lighting them, and then is honestly surprised when real firemen show up in a real fire truck. You’d think he had those books when he was a kid where this causal relationship was featured in big letters, short words, and colorful pictures.

“And now you’d like to go away,” I say to him. “Or at least for me to stop talking. Everyone gets that, so don’t worry.”

Ralph is hunched over, fingers buried deep in his hair. I can’t see his face, but the posture tells me that he’s not feeling too good.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “And I would like you to continue.”

Resilient, isn’t he?

“Too bad,” I say. “I like this conversation less and less the longer it goes on. Besides, I’m waiting for my date.”

He doesn’t believe me. I lean back again and close my eyes.

We banged the hell out of that door. We almost smashed it to splinters. If they hadn’t let us out I’m sure we would have. Because by morning nothing was holding us back anymore. We had sat there through the night, docile and patient, respecting the will of the seniors and their big reasons. We knew we were too little to be taking part in the proceedings. The snub made us want to cry, but we held on. That night wasn’t the last for us, but it was for the seniors. It belonged to them. We spent it on two mattresses on the floor of the biology classroom. They had remembered to bring in the mattresses. And a bucket.

“There were fourteen, fifteen of us,” I say to Ralph. “They hadn’t given us time to dress or put on shoes. Siamese, Stinker, and Wolf they took away separately. Must have figured that a mere locked door never would have stopped those guys. And no one had been able to locate Blind. He’d disappeared before they came. The only one of us who hadn’t been locked up that night. The pajamas we were in, Magician’s crutch, and a pack of candies were all we had. We’d gone through the entire pack in the first half hour, and the crutch we used in the morning to bash the door. We threw everything at that door trying to break it, because by then it was obvious that they’d forgotten about us being there, and that we could only rely on ourselves if we ever wanted to get out.”

The unpleasant memories make Ralph cringe. He was there too. Most likely he was among those who did come to let us out. They tried to corral us, but it would have been easier to hold on to fourteen streaking meteors. We swept away our saviors and tore down the hallway, screaming hoarsely. Some of us were already bawling, even as we ran. Simply because we were scared. We did not yet know what had happened. Where it was we were in such a hurry to get to, I still cannot understand. But I remember well what did manage to stop us. The puddle. A small pool, richly crimson, right at the Crossroads. And in the middle of it, a half-submerged white sail. A handkerchief. It still comes to me in my dreams. Was that puddle really as boundless as it seemed to us then? Anyway, it made one thing absolutely clear: no one could lose that much blood and live. I looked at it, transfixed, and all the time I was being jostled from behind by those who kept arriving. They shoved me in the back, forcing me to take tiny steps in its direction. A step, then another, and another. Until I realized that my socks were soaked through. I don’t remember anything after that.

After six long years I returned and finally learned what had come to pass that night. But it forever remained for me something remote, out of the distant past. I hadn’t lived through it with the others. One of the most horrible nights of the House begins and ends for me with the crimson puddle, the half-submerged sail of the handkerchief, and my own cold and sticky socks.

When I awoke, after six years by my time and a month for everyone else, I saw a strange creature in the mirror. Bald, scrawny, much too young, staring wildly . . . I realized that I was going to have to start my life all over again. And cried. Because I was tired, not because I had no hair. “An unknown virus,” they explained. “You are most likely no longer contagious, but we’d like to keep you quarantined for just a while.” The days spent in the quarantine saved me. Gave me time to adapt. To get rid of some of my grown-up habits, to get used to the new skin. The Sepulcher staff dubbed me Prince Tut. The transformation from Prince Tut to Sphinx took me another six months.

Ralph is silent. An eternity passes.

“Curious,” he says. “There was blood everywhere. The floor, the walls. Even the ceiling, I think. But your memory only managed to hold one single puddle.”

“Oh, it was enough,” I assure him. “More than enough. My puddle contains the whole of that Night, and all of the days that followed.”

“And then . . .”

“And then nothing. I’m not telling. It’s irrelevant.”

He sighs and pulls out the cigarettes again.

“All right. Anyway, thank you. You are the first to talk to me about these things at all. The first in thirteen years. I probably shouldn’t be asking you any further?”

“You shouldn’t. The less talking about . . . these things, the better.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“I am,” I say. “Trying, that is. But you are too headstrong to get properly scared. That’s not good. The House demands a reverent attitude. A sense of mystery. Respect and awe. It can accept you or not, shower you with gifts or rob you of everything you have, immerse you in a fairy tale or a nightmare. Kill you, make you old, give you wings . . . It’s a powerful and fickle deity, and if there’s one thing it can’t stand, it’s being reduced to mere words. For that it exacts payment. Now, with you duly cautioned, we can continue.”

“Risking . . . what?” he asks carefully.

“Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better than mine. You know much more than you think.”

That seems to annoy him.

“Would you stop playing with words!”

Silly man.

“Oh, I don’t think you’ve ever heard real wordplay,” I say. “There are grand masters in the House. I am not worthy of being in the same room with them.”

That’s when Mermaid finally appears. Comes down from the girls’ porch and shuffles across the yard toward us. Flared jeans, crocheted vest, and impossible hair, almost down to her knees.

Ralph squints. Looks at her. Then at me. It’s an odd look. One I’m very familiar with. Mermaid is sixteen, but she looks all of twelve. With her looks you’d expect her to still play with dolls and believe in Santa Claus. Which is why any adult who sees me and her together looks at me as if I’m a pervert. It rubs Mermaid the wrong way. It doesn’t bother me.

She stops a fair distance from us, not wanting to interrupt. Just stands there looking at us. Those aren’t the eyes of a child at all. They’re too big for her small triangular face.

Ralph gets up. Gives his pockets a few slaps, checking that everything’s still in place. Has the good sense not to say “So, that’s your date, huh?” Mermaid lip-reads phrases like that from very far away.

“I guess that’s it, then,” he says. “Thanks again. I’ll go and digest what you said.”

“Good luck,” I say. “And be careful. We can walk in circles around those mysteries, write poems and sing songs, call ourselves Jumpers or Striders, but we’re not the ones who decide here. It’s all being decided for us, however scary that sounds.”

Ralph is reluctant to go, aware that we are unlikely to ever return to this conversation.

“You be careful too,” he says finally, and walks away.

When he passes Mermaid he nods to her and says something. Then cuts straight across the grass, and the hunched crows jump away, grumbling about the violation of their personal space. Humans made the pavement, they should keep to it.

Mermaid runs over and plops down on the bench next to me.

“Wow. Why is it I’m so afraid of him? He’s harmless!”

“Really?”

“Don’t laugh.” She frowns. “Yes, I know it sounds silly, but you should have heard the stories they tell about him.”

Mermaid dives into her thoughts, then shakes her head resolutely.

“Yes, it is silly. He’s nice.”

I laugh.

“He said hello to me and didn’t call me baby, imagine that.”

My imaginary hat is off to Ralph.

“What were you discussing for so long? I thought he’d never leave.”

“It’s a secret,” I say. “A sinister mystery. Go, tell that to those who were spying on us from the windows.”

“Sure, I’m so gone,” she snorts. “They can’t wait. Already waving messages to me in code and preparing the recording equipment.”

She shifts closer to me, completely unconcerned that she won’t be learning the details of my conversation with Ralph, and begins wrapping my leg in her hair. Wrapping and tying each strand with knots.

“That’s new. Some kind of sorcery?” I say. “It’s not like I was going anywhere.”

“Tabaqui gave me this book,” Mermaid explains. “Very interesting. It’s called Kama Sutra.”

“Oh boy,” I sigh.

“Says there that to attract your beloved you need to bind him with fragrant hair, adorn him with flower garlands, and wreathe him in clouds of incense. It’s all described very convincingly. Oh, right, and also anoint him with aromatic oils.”

“You don’t say. What does it recommend to do with the oily bodies of the suffocated beloveds, still wrapped in hair and garlands? Put them out on the porch to serve as a warning to passersby?”

“Nothing.” Mermaid shakes her head as she ties the knot on another loop under my knee. “It does not mention those weaklings at all.”

Then we just sit on the bench, or rather lie on it. Quite likely in accordance with the wisdom of ancient texts regarding the appropriate behavior for lovers. The oak shuffles from root to root and shifts so that we end up in its shadow. Of course, it might just be the sun moving in the sky. But I prefer to think it’s the oak.

I fall asleep, for real this time. Mermaid’s presence, her hugging my knee—it acts like a sleeping pill. She has this catlike ability to induce calm and drowsiness, and also to sleep herself in the most uncomfortable places. If only I had fingers I could have conjured sparks out of her hair, the kind cats give off when someone strokes their fur. I sleep and not sleep at the same time. I am on the bench here and now but everything else moves away—the writing on the bark, the conversation with Ralph. Everything except me, asleep, and my girl. The girl who wears my old shirts, sleeps curled up on my legs as if they were an easy chair, wraps herself in the sleeves of my jacket, disappears at the first rumble of a thunderstorm and reappears again once the sun is back out. It’s her most incredible feature, that limitless capacity for empathy, for picking up someone else’s mood, for dissolving into thin air when that’s what is needed.

Someone’s voice on the wind. I startle and open my eyes. My leg is free of hair, and Mermaid’s face is looking down at me, very somber and intense. She’s only like that when she’s sure no one can see her.

“Every little thing wakes you up,” she says. “The tiniest peep. I don’t like that. You should sleep calmly and soundly.”

“Snoring and heaving my broad hairy chest,” I say. “Except I wouldn’t call those Hound howls tiny peeps. I wonder what’s gotten into them. Probably the freshly minted Leader flexing his muscles?”

“Not freshly at all. You just can’t get used to it.”

It’s true, I’m having a hard time accepting the fact of Black becoming the Sixth’s Leader. Even though upon reflection that’s exactly the place for him. Pompey’s throne didn’t even need adjusting for size, and Hounds received what they constantly crave—a strong, steady hand on the collar.

“You know what’s funny?” Mermaid says. “The way your voice changes when you talk about Black. It’s not even yours anymore. I can’t understand why you hate him so much.”

“Didn’t I explain about a dozen times already?”

“You did. But I don’t believe your explanations. You aren’t that vindictive, to keep hating someone just because he bullied you a long time ago. It’s not like you at all.”

She sounds so sure of what she’s saying that it makes me uneasy. I am not the flawless, ideal Sphinx she fell in love with. And that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that I would very much like to be him. That just, kind, magnanimous guy she likes so much. If I were like that I’d probably have acquired a halo by now. Shined with divine light and trailed heavenly fragrance, like a saint.

“It is too like me. It is me. My true evil nature!”

Mermaid doesn’t even argue, just bites on her finger and goes pensive. She detests arguments. Having to prove and defend her point of view. Which does not make her position any weaker. Not in the slightest.

I bump her lightly with my forehead.

“Hey. Don’t go too far. I can’t see you all the way over there.”

“Tell me something interesting,” she says immediately. “Then I’ll stay.”

“What about?”

Mermaid’s face lights up. It’s amazing how she loves stories. All kinds, it doesn’t matter. Lary’s tedious laments, stumbling over each syllable, Jackal’s epics, convoluted and branching in all directions—nothing fazes her. She’s ready to spend hours listening to anyone who’d have an urge to unburden themselves in her company. This to me is her most unusual quality, one the least common in her gender.

“So, what kind of story?” I ask, unable to resist her infectious eagerness.

“Tell me how Black became Leader.”

“Not Black again! What’s so special about him?”

“You offered a story and asked what kind. I’m interested to hear about him because to me he’s interesting. As someone you dislike.”

“Dislike, now there’s an understatement.”

“You see? How can that be not interesting?”

I can only sigh in response.

“So you don’t want to tell me a story anymore?” she asks, or rather clarifies. “Just as I thought.”

“No, that’s not it. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. I don’t really know how it happened. I think I can guess. He and Blind were stuck in the Cage. Nothing to do. Blind got this bright idea to send Black to the Sixth as Leader. That wouldn’t be the most bizarre thing that someone came up with while in there. So he suggested it, and miracle of miracles, Black agreed, even though it’s completely against his principles to agree when he can refuse. And that’s how it came about. It might not have been exactly this way, but I wasn’t there, and no one was, apart from the two of them, which means that only they can know for sure what really happened.”

“How come they were stuck there together?”

“That’s a different story altogether. One I don’t much like to recall. It started back on the Longest, and I don’t particularly . . .”

“Wow, the Longest!”

Mermaid tugs at my shirt imploringly.

“Please tell me, please? The Longest—that’s so exciting! All those tales . . .”

“That you’ve heard a thousand times already. Ask Tabaqui. He’ll read you the two-hundred-line poem he composed in honor of that night. And sing you any of the ten songs on the subject. Ginger was with us that night too. Let her tell you all about it. Why should I repeat something that you know by heart? That everybody knows?”

“Ginger is Ginger, and you are you. I’m not asking you for a retelling of Tabaqui’s songs and poems. But if you’re so uncomfortable with this, don’t say anything at all, of course. I just don’t understand. They all like to remember that night . . .”

“Ginger included?” I say, sure of the answer.

“No, not her. She cringes and changes the subject. Like you.”

“All right. Come up here. Listen, and maybe you’ll understand why it is that I don’t like to recall that night when everyone else does.”

Mermaid quickly clambers up on the bench and makes herself comfortable against my side. Her long, loose vest is crocheted so that the rows of fluffy knots running across the whole width of it can move freely, with the openings then exposing any writings on the shirt underneath that Mermaid feels like sharing with the world. She has more than a dozen different shirts with scribbles on them, fit for any occasion. When she sits the way she does now the only message that’s visible is on her left shoulder: I remember everything! What this everything includes is not clear. It could be that other messages help clarify the situation, but I can’t see them.

She wraps the stained sleeve of my sweater around her neck and hangs her tiny backpack on the back of the bench.

“Now you may begin.”

I sigh and dive into the vortex of blood that is the Longest, into its impenetrable darkness, the stuff of House legends. I dive in and swim through its muck and gore, invariably the favorite subject of those legends.

I begin where the Longest began for me. Anticipating the gasps from the audience along the lines of “Are you saying that you were simply asleep before that?” I even pause dutifully to give Mermaid the necessary space for expressing her indignation, but she does not avail herself of it, and so I stumble forward—after Humpback, who is lighting my way as we search for Tubby.

Truly “The Hunting of the Snark” has nothing on “The Hunting of Tubbs,” especially the way Jackal performs it. “Tenderly passionate lover, lover who conquers darkness, scratching through walls of stone, gnawing through doors of iron . . .” And so on, in the same breathless key. With slight variations, where, on the narrator’s whim, Tubby morphs from a tender lover into a libidinous maniac and back, while the finding of him by Sphinx, “he who at length discovered,” changes by degrees from one stanza to the next so that I perform progressively impressive feats, ranging from digging Tubby out from an avalanche of bricks, the remains of the wall he destroyed (listening to this version I picture myself as a huge shaggy Saint Bernard, complete with the Red Cross bag across my chest), to extracting him (using my teeth) from the boudoir of the innocently sleeping stark-naked tutoress. My teeth generally play a decisive part in the proceedings while Humpback’s participation is mostly glossed over, so it is I, with Tubby hanging down from my jaws, who crosses the interminable hallways, somehow capable at the same time of holding an extended conversation with him, chiding him gently while he whines contritely. The reality is so colorless and dull, so paltry compared to that elaborate nightmare, that I race through it in double time, through my entire stumbling night journey, up the stairs with Humpback, down the same stairs with him and Tubby . . . Noble, Vulture, Blind . . . And here we are, back in the dorm, where Tabaqui is already rehearsing the early drafts of the tales and songs he is going to dedicate to this L. N.

“Now you see, this stripling was hell-bent on going for a stroll in the dark. You realize, don’t you, what would have inevitably transpired were I not by his side? We moved in pitch-darkness, but nevertheless we moved, and I turned to him and said, ‘Be it as it may, my friend, but you’re definitely crazy!’ ‘If only I could have known!’ he replied.”

Electric light assaulting the senses, faces in sleepy torpor. Lary clucks excitedly, kindling into the fire of Jackal’s imagination. The House is tightly wrapped in the blackest blanket up to its roof, making me wonder how much air we still have left here, inside it, and what is going to happen when it runs out.

The pajama-clad, crazy-eyed pack, the dying embers of the feast in honor of Ginger, who is sitting between Noble and me, I count the minutes, the hours, and even allow myself to hope that maybe, just maybe there is enough air for all, enough night straight on till morning, but here comes the gaunt, doleful silhouette, Vulture holding a coconut, nothing but mourning in his clothes, his eyes, and his voice, he looks like a somber Hamlet with Yorick’s skull all withered from a long stint in the grave. With his arrival, all hopes of time finally getting unstuck are on hold, at least until we get to hear the dismal news he’s about to impart.

Vulture rolls the woolly orb around in his hand.

“I am loath to have to tell this to you, I really am, but there is no one else I can turn to at this juncture, so . . . Long story short, there’s a stiff in our bathroom. I have just discovered him there.”

Jackal’s harmonica squeaks forlornly.

“My sincere apologies,” Vulture sighs. “I am truly sorry about this.”

Crab, whom we are carrying to the first floor an hour later, in life was a greedy but discreet creature, with but two fingers on each hand. Then he, who knows why, quietly found himself within the realm of the Nesting and quietly met his death there from who knows what. And became the mystery of the Longest, one that was never unraveled.

We would carry him, wrapped in the Crossroads window curtain (the off-white train ostentatiously dragging on the floor behind the procession), to the lecture hall and leave him there, surrounded by lighted candles in tin cans, very festive and very alone, and on the way back Black would feign insanity. Or maybe really go nuts. Yes, I know how it feels to play a patient observer and wait, wait until that singular moment when you can finally act. Anyway, he’d loudly and unequivocally proclaim his opinion of the situation. The impossible night would be ripped in two, and into that gash in the blackness would pour the swarm of fireflies, the flashlights in the trembling hands, and the raging creature in the middle of the hallway would crouch and scream, his squeals penetrating through walls and ceilings, up and down and in all directions, piercing the immovable Time itself. I thought then, and remain sure now, that it was this clamor that started the seconds flowing, as if someone, jostled by it, woke up in a world that has domain over this one, stretched sleepily, banged on the clock that was stuck and got it going again.

It is possible that Black should be thanked, for that if for nothing else, but I somehow don’t have the slightest inclination to do so. It would become a matter of habit for many, when remembering the Longest, to mention the frayed nerves of poor little Black. What exactly happened to his nerves to make them so much more frayed than anyone else’s, including my own, I do not quite understand. As for his lost marbles . . . I’ve never before chanced to see the marbles that, having been lost, were then found so quickly and restored to their proper place without any visible detriment to the owner. It might even be argued that by pitching that suspiciously convenient fit he made the first step in the direction of the throne vacated by Pompey, though at the time it looked more like a quick saunter toward the tender embrace of a straitjacket. I understand, it’s comforting to shake one’s head sadly and point out the tough guys, like, say, Black, snapping under pressure—implying, of course, your own mental toughness that’s quietly superior to his. “We’ve seen things worse than that. Yeah, rough night, that one was. Poor Black . . .” Luckily, I don’t have an elevated opinion of my own toughness, so I’m naturally doubtful when I see Black’s nerves snap, especially when it happens so unexpectedly and so dramatically, but all that would come later. Back then, when I heard his squeals, I felt only numbness and an overwhelming desire to extinguish that sound. Many would share it at that moment. The human mass, clinging to Black like ants to a caterpillar—“Murderers! Enablers of murderers!”—would roll down the hallway, muffling the screams. By our doors he’d manage to shake us off and even stomp on some, increasing the amount of loud cursing in the dark even more.

As I make my way toward Black (to disrupt, to seal, to stamp out forever and ever that screeching orifice!) I would stumble, knock out someone’s tooth with my shoulder, and bite my own lip clean through. By the time I reach the door to our dorm there would be no Black, or his victims. They’d all have filtered inside, and there, on the territory that’s been out of bounds for strangers since the beginning of time, the Night would unspool another loop of its interminable tail while Black and Blind entertain the assembled public by staging a “delectable rumble,” kicking dust and blood out of each other. The spectacle that would inspire certain Logs, Jackals, and other sundry historians to reach unsurpassed levels of excellence. Tabaqui, to pick a name at random, would in all seriousness claim that the most damaging blow Black delivered was with the words “Love me, love my dog!” To which Blind, though busy parting the floorboards with the back of his head, still managed to yell “Dream on!”—prompting Black to thump his chest, roar, bend the iron bars of the headboard, and bark, “In that case, prepare to die!” Fascinating, isn’t it. The bending of the bars especially. No one bothers to inquire to what possible end Black might have wanted to do that, they just open their mouths and take it all in rapturously. And so do I. I don’t recall Black specifically banging Blind’s head against the walls, but it is possible that when Blind fell a couple of times he might have bumped his head. I emphatically do not recall Blind tearing Black’s jaws (that scene is obviously borrowed from Greek myths). And I am pretty sure Black did not tumble down with a cry of “I’m finished,” and Blind did not then place his foot on the fallen body before wearily lighting a cigarette.

I too feature in those stories, quite prominently. I’m always somewhere close, beside myself with rage (that’s actually a realistic touch) and “waiting for the most opportune moment.” I wonder which moment that was. I guess I expected Blind to quickly lay him out (or the other way around, though far less likely), and then I’d jump in and throw them all out of the room, all those scowling, drooling gawkers, most of whom at any other time would not even dare dream about entering our place, but once there immediately felt themselves at home, covered the floor in spit, and even started rummaging in the back cabinets under the radar. This made me break out in horrible nervous hives right then and there. We never could find some of the tapes, cups, and ashtrays after, to say nothing about cigarettes—those were swept clean. I anticipated that, and wasn’t much surprised. I also anticipated the outcome of the fight. No one has ever managed to lay out Blind one-on-one, so I wasn’t too worried until it became obvious that he was ending up on the floor more often than Black was, and was taking more time to get up, too. That’s when I remembered he’d already taken damage from Ralph that night, and became really nervous. Time after time Black pounded his leaden fists into Blind, and Blind doubled over, and Black waited until he straightened up to pound again. The third time around, Blind crashed to the floor. There wasn’t much more noise from him falling than there would be if a bar stool fell, but the spectators gave out an almighty yell that continued all through Pale One’s attempts to restore the supply of oxygen to his system. I tried to picture in my head the nightmare that living under the Leadership of Black would be, failing utterly, which convinced me that if I couldn’t even imagine it, then it couldn’t exist in this universe. I flogged my imagination, scratching myself with my chin in all places I could reach, while all around me handkerchiefs and beer-bottle caps went flying, tossed by the ecstatic audience. I’ve never seen anything more disgusting. Blind got his breath back and stumbled a bit while getting up, grabbing the headboard of the bed near where I was sitting.

“Horror and shame, isn’t it?” he whispered in my ear.

“Wake up,” I pleaded. “Fight, or he’ll break you.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “I seem to be a bit out of practice lately.”

While we were thus conversing Black decided to finish the job. He took a step toward Blind and aimed a swing at him so hard that, had it landed, we’d have had to haul Blind down to the first and put him next to Crab. Blind ducked and appeared to lightly touch Black in return. Black gasped and fought for breath for at least a minute, and after that it was all over. I didn’t even have to look to know how it would end.

I see . . .

Blind tiptoeing away from Black, hunched, eyes half-closed, lips fixed in a grin. He’s not circling, he’s not stepping. It’s more of a dance. A soft, silent dance of Death. There is an exceedingly beautiful and fascinating quality about it, which I’ve observed dozens of times and never could figure out where it came from. It’s that leap into a different world, a world without pain, without blindness, where he stretches time, making each second last an eternity, where everything is just a game, even though it’s the kind of game where he could flay someone alive or turn him inside out with a flick of a finger. I know that for a fact even though I’ve never seen him actually do it. I feel the scent of madness on him in those moments, too pronounced not to scare me half to death. In that strange world of his he turns into something that is not human, something that creeps closer, slinks away, flies on rustling wings, spits poison, seeps through the floor. And it laughs. It’s the only game Blind knows how to play with someone else. Black has no hope of catching him. Black has been left on this side. His time is too slow.

I see . . .

Black crumpling. Falling down on his back, like a big doll on a string. Pale One materializes next to him and yanks the string, jerking him upright, then dropping him, again and again. He’s playing. Having fun. Except it’s too creepy to be funny. He doesn’t even seem to touch Black, and at the same time smears him across the floor, from the door to the window. Everything is covered in Black. In his teeth, in his skin. Laughter glints from under Blind’s hair. Humpback and I jump into action simultaneously, he off the bed, I off my perch above it. The rest of our guys were seemingly waiting for the signal and now join us. While we’re busy scraping Black and Blind off each other, Tabaqui notices the opened cabinets and the beer puddles on the floor.

“What the? I count to three, then I start shooting!” he screams, frantically searching for something in the pillow mound. The guests bolt for the door, tripping over each other, and I almost expect Tabaqui to snatch a machine gun from under the covers and make mincemeat out of a couple of straggler Logs, but by the time he emerges from there, with only a harmonica in his hands, there is no one left in the room but us. He grumbles and stuffs the harmonica back, postponing the dark revenge until a more convenient time.

I sit down on the floor. Someone pushes Blind in my direction. He crawls over, shaking and coughing, buries his face in my shoulder, and freezes. His sweater stinks of a garbage dump, with whiffs of a sewer. I am immovable, like a statue. Alexander and Ginger artfully decorate Black’s body with surgical tape. Lary shuffles around the room, scraping a broom across the floor. It’s quiet. Dead quiet, if you don’t count Jackal’s fevered muttering. Mona decides for some reason that Sphinx is the only safe place left in the room and jumps on my knees. Saunters back and forth, twice, brushing my shirt with her tail, kneads me gently with her paws, and lies down. I still haven’t moved. Smoker, his hands shaking, puffs on a cigarette over my ear. My shoulder is propping up Blind, my knees are a cat’s bedroom. Now I only need Nanette to land on my head, and it’s a perfect shot for Blume: “Sphinx at rest.”

Alexander and Ginger finish tending to Black and look at Blind uncertainly. Tabaqui crawls closer and also gawks.

“Horrible,” he whispers. “Look at him. Vampire, pure and simple.”

I look out of the corner of my eye. Blind is asleep, his face calm and peaceful. He never has a face like that when he’s awake.

Lary drops the broom and stares at Blind in shock.

“He’s right, you know. Why would he be so blissful all of a sudden? He shouldn’t be blissful. And he shouldn’t be sleeping. I don’t like this.”

Tabaqui revels in it.

“That’s exactly how they are, Lary my friend. Lying in their caskets, happy and rose cheeked, grinning from ear to ear. That’s how you tell their ilk. A stake through the heart!”

From the corner of the room where Black is located suddenly comes a sound, half moan and half roar. Noble is fussing over the swollen, eyeless head with alcohol pads, while Nanette peeks at his hands from behind the pillow.

“A stake,” Tabaqui keeps muttering. “This, you know, sharpened thing . . .”

Black groans again and pushes away Noble’s hand.

“We should drive one through your tongue,” Noble snaps. “Can’t you give it a rest, Tabaqui? Aren’t you tired at all?”

“Right. Where was I? I seem to have lost the thrust of the narrative . . .”

“Look,” Ginger cries all of a sudden, pointing at the window. “There, look!”

Humpback and Alexander run to the window. We turn around and look there too. Into the blue-black sky where a feeble sliver of the morning is trying to part the darkness.

“Morning!” Lary exclaims majestically, waving the broom. “The sun!”

There is, of course, no sign of the sun. Lary straightens up and salutes with the broom in the direction of the window. Smoker and I receive a shower of slowly falling gray clumps of dust mixed with cigarette butts.

And that was how that disgusting night ended. Not at the exact moment when we noticed the first glimpse of the coming morning, of course. And not even when the morning finally came. I mean, we realized that what surrounded us wasn’t the night anymore, but it was hardly possible to call that gray substance “morning.” A transition between one night and the next, that would be more accurate. Especially considering that none of us managed to either go to sleep or wake up properly. I don’t even remember if we had any breakfast that day. I don’t remember much at all, really.

Myself, at certain moments. Blind with the guitar next to me, and it’s dusk in the room again, must have been evening. Rows of empty bottles on the nightstand, even though I can’t recall anyone drinking. Lary’s angry yelp, as he lifts a bottle: “So that’s what they’ve been doing here, while we worry about them and stock up on provisions there.” By “there” he most likely meant the canteen, but was that lunch or breakfast? And “they” must have included me as well, because I don’t remember leaving the room or eating anything, which means I was among the drinkers.

Noble, pulling the blanket over sleeping Ginger. Black, in a cloud of smoke on his bed. Not much of him visible, just one eye and the cigarette, everything else covered by the crisscrossing white stripes of tape. Blind nodding to his own song. He’s grayish blue, the color of faded jeans. This must be how Lazarus looked right after having been told to rise up and walk. Still in the remains of the white sweater, reeking of wine and alcohol pads. Hunched over the guitar, twanging the strings, mumbling indistinctly. Something about a forest, empty paths, and the streams made bitter by the grass growing along them.

Ginger, sleeping with her hands tucked between her knees, curled up in the pillows. Hair like the scarlet feathers of a woodpecker shot through the heart, and everything else mundane and commonplace in comparison. Her lying there also feels routine, like something that’s always been thus, no one gives her a second look except for one person, who’s wrapping her in the blanket, like a miser hiding his treasure from prying eyes.

Lary picks up a bottle and shakes it indignantly.

“So that’s what they’ve been doing here, while we worry about them and stock up on provisions there!”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Black says. “It’s not worth it.”

I listen. I listen very carefully to the tone of his voice, almost gloating, and I wonder what could he, beaten, tired, and hungry, be gloating about. Then I look at Blind and understand what it is that’s making him gleeful there under the bandages. His happiness looks like Blind’s face with a swollen eye and a split lip. That on the day when they found a corpse. On the day when any scratch is a mark of involvement. Involvement and guilt. He doesn’t care that he’s completely covered with those marks, the important thing is that Blind’s got them.

Forest . . . Dark and fragrant, smelling of mint . . . Sweet songs, lures for the strangers . . .

Black stubs out his cigarette against the six-pack abs of the bodybuilder on a poster above his bed.

“What do I say to Ralph when he asks about the shiners?”

Beaten, tired, he earnestly solicits his packmates’ opinion regarding correct behavior in a tight spot. Not a reason at all for someone to break out in hives from the cheeks all the way down to the navel, the kind that are going to still itch a week later, yet I feel them coming, the tiny burning gnats spreading like wildfire, bitey and sticky-footed, as if someone has thrown a handful of them under my collar.

“Say whatever you were planning to when you kicked off the hysterics,” I suggest. “Or don’t say anything at all. Both of those choices work fine for your purposes.”

The sparks of rage directed my way seep through the strata of tape.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just that I wouldn’t be in such a rush to return to normal after a bout of insanity, if I were you. Didn’t you go nuts, Black? As recently as yesterday, if the memory serves. So hold on a bit with the reasonable questions. That would definitely look more natural.”

I talk and talk, can’t stop talking, my speech sounds more and more like a sermon, and I even remember it being eloquent and not simply protracted. But then again, maybe that’s just wishful thinking, because I also vividly recall a finger that I waved in front of Black’s Band-Aided nose, and where would I have found a thing like a finger on my body? I presented a broad outline of the classic descriptions of madness, from Ophelia to Captain Ahab, discoursed on pig tails peeking from under the skirts and on lovers jumping out of windows to escape jealous husbands while leaving their pants behind. I expounded extemporaneously and convincingly, interrupted only by Tabaqui’s rapturous applause and the attacks of my biting gnats, and when I was finished Black asked, “What was that crap supposed to mean?”

Tabaqui advises Black to “let the sleeping dogs lie,” because “it’s obvious he’s extremely, and I mean extremely, tense, isn’t that enough for you?”

“Listen to the voice of the people,” I say to Black. “You, Ophelia who somehow stopped just short of the river.”

Upon hearing the mention of a river, the actual candidate for the madhouse, our beat-up Leader and Forest pilgrim, nods and imparts, “Rivers are a tricky substance . . . You never know if you can drink out of them. Best bet is to lie down and listen for a while, until you’re sure that there are frogs in it. Then drink all you want, it’s not going to be poisonous.”

“Thank you,” I say to Blind. And then to Black, “There. Learn from the masters.”

Then, without listening to his aggressively barking repartee, I leave, the scratchy bugs having almost finished eating me alive. I bump into Ralph on the way out, also grayish in color from the sleepless night, and also wearing surgical tape on his face.

What happens next is easy to predict, and I do predict it. The Cage for Blind and Black, where they quite probably are going to tear each other to pieces from boredom and mutual antipathy; interrogations and investigations into the circumstances of Crab’s death; state of confusion among Rats temporarily left without their Leader; and many other things, both related and unrelated to those mentioned above. What I totally fail to predict is that, after a long time spent in the Cage, Black and Blind are going to come to an agreement regarding the Sixth. I can’t imagine either how bored they were for Blind to come up with an idea like that, or how much Black loathed returning to the pack to accept it. It’s possible that if they had spent a little more time in there, Blind would have thought of something even better. The Cages are conducive to introspection, unless you’re stuck there for too long. The longer you sit in them, the harder it becomes not to give in to fear, and that kicks all the thoughtfulness right out of your head. But that’s if you’re alone; for two it wasn’t unheard of to last a week. The detention of Black and Blind smashed all Cage records—eleven days and change. Good thing I’m bald, or my head would have acquired that exact number of snowy-white hairs, one for each day of their absence. We have Ralph to thank for it, or rather his concern for the Rat runaways. He got it into his head that Blind was going to squash them as soon as he had a chance, so he did his best to make sure Blind didn’t get that chance, leaving Blind with plenty of time for all kinds of novel ideas. He’d discuss them with Black, and the rest of the time they spent playing chess and peeling the upholstery off the walls, looking for the secret cigarette stash. That was a traditional endeavor for visitors to the Cage ever since that time when Wolf had announced publicly that he’d sewn a carton’s worth into its walls somewhere. It was most likely a joke and treated as such by everyone. Except that after two days in the Cage, the sense of humor is usually the first thing to go, and then people start looking. That’s why the chintz featured rips and gashes, marking the places where the prisoners’ fingernails and razors had gone to work. There already wasn’t an untouched patch more than four inches square. It was customary to sew back up the checked-out places, for which purpose there was always a threaded needle left stuck right above the door. Black and Blind didn’t need it, because they went past the upholstery, past the foam, and even past the plasterboard, all the way to the brickwork.

Shark sincerely suspected them of trying to tunnel into the Outsides. After Squib, Solomon, and Don, he became very jumpy in that regard and spent a lot of time questioning Black about where they would have gone if they had managed to get out. He must have imagined that this way he’d be able to track those three, as if the Grayhouse folk, like spawning salmon, were only capable of moving in one direction. I haven’t personally witnessed the devastation the merry couple wreaked, but judging by how long the repairs took, the Cage sustained some serious damage.

I realize with a start that I’ve been talking for a while now without hearing any response, and look suspiciously at Mermaid’s head, which has slipped down from my shoulder.

“Hey. You didn’t doze off, by any chance, great lover of stories? I’ve been full of sound and fury especially for you, you know . . .”

“Of course not,” a pointedly alert voice replies, slightly muffled by the sweater sleeve. “I’ve been listening all this time. And thinking.”

“What exactly were you thinking about, sleepyhead?”

She gently pushes away, and I again see that she “remembers everything” in the gaps of her vest.

“I’m thinking how the same story comes out completely differently depending on who’s telling it. And for all that, none of you is really lying.”

“Because whoever’s telling the story creates the story. No single story can describe reality exactly the way it was. I told you that I personally prefer Tabaqui’s version.”

“And I prefer to listen and compare.”

Groaning, she straightens her legs. The sneakers, in service for so long that they’re now uniformly gray, have been darned with thread where the canvas meets the rubber. Baby shoes. So touching I can’t look at them without misting up. When Mermaid shifts, the knots on the vest shift too, exposing a different slogan. Hate to the grave!

“What’s with the hate?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Just in case. I thought I needed something sinister too.”

“And I don’t think you do. At all.”

The Hate to the grave slides back under the knots, and my mood lightens. I know it’s all child’s play, but I take these things seriously. Maybe because I happen to know that the games are never just games in the House.

Mermaid pulls up her knees and hugs them. No slogans, no shape anymore, just a flowing mass of hair.

“You think that I’m not cut out for strong feelings. That they don’t really suit me, right?”

I’ve trodden on the favorite toe. I keep forgetting the Gray Mouse Complex.

“You see, I don’t have a personality. I’m so dull inside. Faded . . .” It’s no use fighting it, and it drives me mad with the unassailability of its tenets. “Take Ginger, for example . . .” That is, take someone for whom controlling her emotions is a daily losing battle, who bursts into fireworks at the slightest touch or even without it, jumps from laughter to tears and back with nothing in between, wears all her loves and hatreds on her sleeve: now that’s beautiful, that’s feminine, that’s attractive, like bright patterns of a butterfly’s wing, it’s a whirlwind, a torrent, a trap; but very few people can stand Ginger’s flamboyant personality for more than a couple of hours at a time, even when her feelings are directed not at them but elsewhere. Long live Noble, Noble’s patience and everything else that he has and I don’t, I guess this is something that he knows and understands, because he used to be that way too, until he went in for a stint where the real crazies live, and yes, they do look great together, this couple always at the point of combustion, fire-haired Isolde and sapphire-eyed Tristan, both on the edge, both wide open, breathe in deeply and hide the breakables, but one thing I don’t understand in all of this is why should anyone envy it and agonize about it, I could never understand this and in my attempts to convince Mermaid rose almost to the Noble-Gingerish heights of passion, except it always ended up the same. “It’s nerves, simply nerves, and in this case they hang out like live wires, so anyone passing by trips them; it’s got nothing—nothing—to do with personality and its richness, you silly little girl!” But instead of a reply I get only pursed lips, and all my gnashing of teeth and banging of head against the wall do nothing, the matter is closed and not subject to negotiation.

And then there’s Rat, a predator, as like Blind as a twin sister, except less friendly, no comparison with Mermaid, thank God, except that my sincere “thank God” is a cold comfort for Her Mousy-Walking Grayness.

I look at her, hidden under hair all the way down to her shoes, then close my eyes and embrace her tightly with my nonexistent arms. Mermaid readily leans on me as if I really did that, and I am struck again by her sensitivity. She always responds to the touch of my ghostly hands, even when she’s upset and has other things on her mind. Like now.

“We’re not going to discuss exceptional personalities, right? Remembering them one by one, marveling at how beautiful and special they are?” I whisper to her. “If you don’t mind, of course. Do you mind?”

“Of course not.”

She shifts, throwing back her head to better read the expression on my face, but I move my chin to block her view, again and again, until she abandons her attempts and curls up in a tender catlike knot, so familiar to my touch. “You must hate me for constantly bringing this up. You had such a miserable voice just now. I’m talking about it too often.”

“No. Often is not the problem here. It’s just that I detest this entire subject: ‘Wouldn’t you like it if I were more like . . .’ No, I wouldn’t like it. And I never will. It’s possible that sometime, on a beautiful day filled with divine wisdom, you’ll understand this. Then I’ll go to Tabaqui and ask him to commemorate it by adorning me with festive ribbons and colorful tattoos.”

She pulls a long cord out of her vest, or maybe it’s a thread, and brings it to her mouth. Now she’s going to gnaw on it until it almost dissolves into a sloppy mess.

“I guess I’ll have to give this shirt to you now. You’ve got people to hate until the grave, so it should be yours by rights.”

“Who are you talking about?” I say suspiciously, lightly tapping my chin against her part. “It’s not Black again, is it? Would you like to tell me something I don’t know, or is it just that his manly charm has you in its grasp? I don’t remember us ever spending so much time discussing him.”

“What if I do want to tell you something? About him?”

Now it’s my turn to crane my neck, trying to look her in the eye.

“Just promise me you’re not going to say you’re madly in love with him. Everything else I think I can handle.”

She pushes away, shaking her hair.

“Picture him in your head. It shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Why?”

“No reason. Just get the picture of him as you remember.”

I straighten up and dutifully imagine Black. In all the shiny glory of his splendid muscles. It really is not hard.

“All right. Now what?”

“Now tell me, who is he trying to look like?”

“He’s trying to look like an idiot. Who else?”

“No, that’s not it. Someone you are very familiar with. You’re going to be surprised when you get it.”

I am already surprised by what she’s saying, so I carefully study the image of Black in my head. My imaginary Black is a carbon copy of the real one. I’ve lived side by side with him long enough to get full measure of the man.

“I don’t understand,” I have to admit. “He looks like only one man, himself. There are no others like him.”

“I’m not talking about his looks. It’s about his style. Like, for example, the way he started dressing after becoming a Leader. Did you notice any changes in that?”

Black did change his style since assuming the responsibilities of the Alpha Hound. He abandoned tank tops, shaved his head, and stopped wearing suspenders over baggy pants. Those made me want to throw up for many long years. You could even say that his taste in clothes underwent a marked improvement. It didn’t help to make him look like anyone other than himself, of course. All that I relate to Mermaid.

“All right, then tell me who else, among those now living in the House, shaves his head, drapes jackets over his shoulders, wears bandanas, and wraps the ends of shoelaces around the ankles?”

“Jackets—only me. As for the shaved head . . .” I suddenly get what she’s driving at. “You’re crazy! I do not shave my head! And I only started wearing a bandana because you gave it to me! You can’t be serious. He hates me with a passion! He’s made it a point never to go in the shower after me!”

“Maybe so.” Mermaid shrugs. “It’s just that all this jumps out at anyone who cares to give an unbiased look. He imitates your walk, your attire, he even started talking like you. And all of that began when he moved to the Sixth. That is, to where you can’t see how he looks and what he does every day.”

“And what does that prove?” I ask dumbly.

Mermaid is silent. Eyes like two green grapes with the pips showing through the semitranslucent skin. Very somber and serious eyes.

“Oh god, that’s horrible!”

I cringe and glance up at the windows of the Sixth, shining silver in the reflected sun. Almost fearing that behind each of them hides Black, a grotesque facsimile of me, shaven headed and frowning, in a pirate-like head scarf covered with skulls and bones. It’s a nightmare.

“And besides, my bandana is unquestionably more beautiful, tending as it does more to floral motifs. But it’s a matter of taste, naturally.”

“You should be ashamed, Sphinx.” Mermaid laughs. “Next thing, you’re going to be saying your legs are longer . . .”

“And they are! You mean they aren’t? And my head is of a much more dignified shape. He can’t even dream . . .”

“Stop being such a baby! Or I’ll have to get you a bib and a onesie. You’d think he’s doing something bad to you.”

We go silent and study the surrounding landscape for a while. No, that’s not a fight at all, we never fight, just a sensible time-out for processing of new information. Usually people smoke in pauses like this one, but Mermaid is a nonsmoker and I don’t have any on me, so I bravely do without, only allowing myself to sweep the ground with my eyes, because it’s in places like this where the good cigarette ends like to hide.

“Should we go now? I think I’m getting sunburned on my nose,” Mermaid says. “Was it very upsetting, what I just said?”

“No. But I need some time to adjust. Let’s go find cigarettes and something for your nose before it starts peeling.”

We get up. Mermaid looks at me, squinting a bit. How long was I here, on this bench? Not too long. Why does it seem like hours, then? Could be that it’s bewitched, this innocuous-looking bench. Someone has placed an enchantment on it, and now it provokes anyone who sits on it to speak their mind.

We shuffle back to the House, pushing our shadows in front of us, headless and almost round at this hour.

“At least now I know why you dislike the Longest so much,” Mermaid says.

The porch meets us with the suffocating scent of geraniums. Pots with those flowers, which I can’t stand, have been placed all along the length of the railing.

“Curious. Not a single face in the windows. Something must have distracted all those people from spying on us. I wonder what,” I say. “By the way, your Hate until the grave is of the exact same color as this geranium.”

“I’m going to throw away that shirt,” Mermaid says thoughtfully, mounting the stairs. “You are obviously against it.”

“Could you bleach it out or paint over it or something?”

The stairs are completely empty, not a soul, neither on the landing above nor below. I have no idea where everyone is, but it explains why they weren’t ogling us from the windows. There’s an all-hands going on somewhere in the bowels of the House. Mermaid listens intently and comes to a decision.

“Kiss me while no one’s around.”

We get comfortable on the landing, leaning against the railing, and seize our moment amid the lull of the House. Quite short, or maybe it only seems that way. When we resume walking, my head is spinning slightly, and my stride is less self-assured than usual.

The hallway is empty. If they all did gather somewhere, it’s not on this floor. Then at the other end we see two lonely, straggling silhouettes and make our way toward them. Blind and Rat. Such a beautiful couple, it makes your heart skip a bit. Both pale like corpses, shading to bluish under the eyes, identically emaciated, bordering on dystrophy. Blind also seems to be split open from the neck down to his navel. His shirt hangs in strips, exposing skin covered in long scratches. A sinister sight, especially considering that Rat’s fingernails have traces of blood on them.

“There you go,” I say to Mermaid. “Something like your Kama Sutra, only with selected chapters from Marquis de Sade thrown in. Doesn’t look too nice, does it?”

Mermaid looks at me reproachfully (translation: “You didn’t have to do that”) but I’m already wound up, so on the way to the dorm I expound on sexual deviations, with Rat and Pale One listening politely and in silence. That makes me a dozen times madder than if one of them just told me to shut up.

The four of us barge into the dorm, finding no one there except Jackal, totally absorbed in purring into a tangle of colored wires. The wires grow out of the wall and disappear back in it, most of them dangle idly, not going anywhere and not connecting anything, but about a dozen or so form the trunk snaking all the way to the walls of the girls’ dorms, and some of them even as far as rather specific sets of ears. This is Jackal’s generous gift to all the lovers out there who are “separated by the circumstances,” to quote Jackal himself, except the gift is absolutely useless without his active participation, he being the only one who can make heads or tails of the jumbled mess.

We walk in on him in the middle of a direct contact with someone from “over there,” and he’s just communicated that “Well then, I guess you’re even dumber than you look!” Upon seeing us he nods excitedly, shielding the mic, and rolls his eyes, miming terminal exhaustion.

“Where’s everybody?” I ask.

He doesn’t hear me, of course, and continues to bow and smile.

Mermaid goes through the contents of the nightstand to find a first-aid kit for Blind. Rat sits down on the floor and freezes, head in hands, bloodied nails buried in her hair. She has on a leather vest, leaving arms and shoulders bare, and badges hang around her neck. An outrageously skinny girl, the kind you don’t often meet, thankfully. It could be that she really can get satisfaction only when kissing is accompanied by disemboweling, that she needs strong emotions that are not accessible to her except through refined methods. Who the hell knows, but the thought that Blind is encouraging her in this gives me the creeps.

Pale One slowly divests himself of the remains of the shirt. Mermaid passes the vial of something mediciney to him and looks compassionately at the process of anointing the wounds.

“Why don’t you go there yourself, darling, and don’t stop until you’ve reached the Outsides,” Jackal recommends to someone and pulls out the earbud. “Is it ever hard to hold a conversation with certain personalities! Labors of Hercules! And where have you all been hiding, if I may be allowed to ask?”

Tabaqui then takes a look at our appearance, nods to himself, apparently having come to some sort of conclusion, and says, “They’re all downstairs, by the way. Shark’s preaching again, aren’t you interested to find out what that’s about?”

Tabaqui has been in his Button Period ever since the last masked ball. He’s covered in them, as iridescent and multicolored as an acid trip. The permanent collection of the button museum has as its backdrop a scarlet tailcoat with wide lapels (that way there’s more space for them), but the jeans are relatively undecorated (or it would interfere with crawling), which vexes Tabaqui so much that, once ensconced in place, he flips the coattails to the front and starts fidgeting, trying to catch the reflection of the electric lamps in the countless pieces of shiny metal, and he’s not content until he resembles an eye-watering imitation of an oversized Christmas-tree decoration.

“Who was that you were just squabbling with? Not Catwoman, by any chance?” Mermaid asks Tabaqui as she pulls the wet, mud-encrusted sweater off me.

“Of course not. With Catwoman it’s never that trivial. And who said I was squabbling? I am simply keeping up the fighting spirit in some people. Providing both human contact and an occasional shake-up to those in need of it. It wouldn’t do to sink into benign complacency and lose the edge only because you couldn’t find anyone to tick you off at the right moment.”

“So who were you ticking off?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Tabaqui sticks the earpiece back in and chooses a wire from the bundle. “You do agree with the principle, though, don’t you? Calling the party, over.” He scowls into the mic. “Feral Wolfdog here. Talk to me, my mysterious and lonely friend!”

The buttons shine next to the rainbow tangle of the wires. I glance past them to the open doors of the cabinet, to the carefully folded sweaters, shirts, and vests. I can’t complain of a particular paucity with regards to my wardrobe, but to find something in there that would be uncommon enough to be inaccessible to someone with a desire to imitate it suddenly seems a challenge. Almost enough to consider becoming a human display case, in the manner of Lary or Jackal. Then at least I can be sure of being unique in my ugliness.

Mermaid reads my thought again.

“I can make you a vest out of colored rope. I have this huge skein, grass-green. Unless Catwoman’s kids got to it.”

Tabaqui seems to be listening in, even through the earbuds. He turns sharply around and stares.

“Keep it down,” I say to Mermaid. “Or you’ll end up doing ten of them, and then sewing a hundred buttons on each. And that would be child labor.”

Tabaqui leans precariously in our direction and cocks one ear. Mermaid grabs the closest shirt and drapes it over my shoulders.

“I think I better go to our side and see if there’s anyone lying there prostrate with a heart attack,” she says with concern. “Some people have really peculiar notions of charity.”

“Sure, go ahead. I’ll go down to the first, find out what’s the buzz. I’ve been separated from society ever since this morning. Also from food and cigarettes.”

Blind, already in a fresh tee, stuffs a pack of Camels into my breast pocket.

“What was all that long talk with Ralph about?” he asks. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

“Potential runaways. People being slowly squeezed out of the House. He’s got them all on a list, those who’d like to bolt as soon as they can.”

“Those counselors sure like their pieces of paper,” Sightless One says, astonished. “Could it be that they all suffer from memory problems?”

He picks up his backpack, also emaciated.

“Let’s go listen to Shark. He’s been at it for half an hour already, must be just about getting to the point by now. And he’s got a whole mound of paper.”

“Could you take that thing off my head, please,” I say. “It’s starting to get on my nerves.”

Blind sweeps the bandana off me. Mermaid is waiting for us outside the door, peeking in when she thinks we’re not looking. Rat is still on the floor, face buried in her hands. She doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave.

“Oh, hello,” Jackal breathes beguilingly, hugging the mic. “Could this be number fourteen oh-one? It has been a while. How are you doing, oh-one? I’ve missed you. Hope the feeling is mutual?”

Blind and I appear in the lecture hall and immediately find ourselves in the thick of action. Shark, sweating from heat and indignation, shouts into the mic that periodically cuts out, the audience is partly listening, partly dozing off, and the aisles between the rows closest to the lectern are strewn with paper, as if someone clumsy was trying to film a snowstorm.

I crouch down and slip into the center row. Blind copies my movements step for step, even pinching the bottom of my shirt to steady himself. Shark notes our being late but is too busy to comment. He’s about to move to “documentary evidence of the above-mentioned,” in the form of a pile of paper delivered by obsequious Pilotfish. Blind and I position ourselves on the ugly metal chairs and join the listeners. There aren’t many of us—those who really are listening. Mainly the first rows, occupied by the teachers.

“The results of the mandatory testing . . .”

The pack is in a state of drowsy apathy. The perkiest around here are Tubby, gnawing on a carrot, and Needle, counting the stitches of her next knitted masterpiece. Humpback is nodding halfheartedly to the song playing through his earphones. Alexander is using a safety pin to extract a splinter out of his finger. I look a bit farther out, into the Hound rows, where Black’s pink shaved head looms. Four Hounds next to him mimic his pose exactly—arms crossed, one foot on the seat of the chair in front. In their desire to be like their Leader they put even Logs to shame, but if what Mermaid said is true, I shouldn’t be the one laughing. Especially considering that I almost shoved my own foot on the next seat in the same fashion, and now can only sit like a statue and stew silently. Because, after all, who’s supposed to be copying whom?

“Almost no one managed to score even a fifty! Which is the bare minimum for an average numbskull!”

Shark furiously tosses a pack of the pernicious “yes-no” sheets into the air. They flutter and settle down, forming another layer of the fake snow. So that’s how it got there.

“Let me explain to you what this means! It means that the vast majority of you are not qualified to fill any position that requires a functioning brain! You are outside the boundaries defined by your peers!”

The teachers’ row, second from the podium, turns around as one, to look at us reproachfully. The counselors don’t bat an eye. We have long ceased to be capable of surprising them. The mic cuts out again. Shark continues his harangue, not noticing it, then pauses and starts screaming even louder than before.

“You’re basically imbeciles! Explain to me, will you, who do you think you’ve dealt this devastating blow by your stupid tricks? Me? You think I’m going to cry over it? Try to convince someone up there that you’re smarter than this? You maybe think I care where you end up when you get out of here? Or what you’re going to do there? It’s your own lives you flushed down the toilet, you halfwits!”

I realize that I did sneak the foot onto the next seat. I let it stay there. I refuse to sacrifice the basic necessities of life only because I don’t want to be copied.

Blind yawns and hides inside his palm. The lemur-like fingers easily swallow his entire face, including both his forehead and chin. A simple gesture, sure, but one that can’t be copied by anyone present. I sit there, consumed by dumb envy. All right, enough. Time to shake off the paranoia. I suddenly realize that it’s not Blind’s hands I envy, not his independently alive fingers, but merely the gesture that I can’t appropriate. Am I really as stupid as I often appear to myself to be?

Shark’s latest “maybe you think” is unexpectedly picked up and amplified a hundredfold. The soundest sleepers wake up with a start. Tubby drops his carrot. Humpback winces and stuffs his earbuds farther in. Even Shark himself cringes up there at the lectern.

“Therefore,” he continues more calmly, “all the exams that were to take place this month have been canceled, along with the general evaluation, even though you’re supposed to have been preparing for it since the end of last semester. Both have now lost any modicum of significance. The results of your testing are not going to allow you to enter any institution of higher learning. Not that you had any chance of that before.”

Noble turns his face, curtained by the silver-colored dark shades, to me and stretches his lips in a wide grin. I smile back and then see, to my horror, that he’s surrounded by sloppily made copies as well. I shake my head but the ghosts refuse to disappear. A couple of Logs on both sides of Noble, the High Keepers of Noble’s crutches, one per person. Both are wearing mirrored glasses and Noble-style goatees. With no time off for chewing, gossiping, or Shark’s speeches, Zit and Termite polish the crutches with their handkerchiefs and scrape dirt off the rubber tips. A ridiculous, risible sight. I can’t help but smile. Noble lifts his eyebrows quizzically. I nod at his retinue. He shrugs—“What are you going to do?” Ginger’s colorful crest is flaming by his elbow, her translucent chin sunk into the hands is positioned a little lower, and then the slanted front teeth and devoted eyes of the crutch-bearers, proud of their assignment. I again note with surprise how much Noble grew up during his trip to the Outsides. It only took him six months to learn to accept stoically the things that still push me over the edge.

“I shall now announce the names of those few who passed the tests with reasonably high scores . . .”

Into Shark’s expectantly snapping fingers Pilot inserts another file. Shark grabs it and grumbles threateningly.

“So . . . In the First . . .”

The teachers’ row hums and whispers. Humpback produces an ashtray from his pocket, flicks it open, and puts it down on the floor. There isn’t anyone actually seen to be smoking, but the telltale gray cloud hangs thick overhead. Shark reads the first batch of names. I whisper them after him, recollecting vaguely that I seem to already have encountered them recently.

“Strange,” I say. “I would have thought there’d be more Pheasants. But it’s their own business, of course.”

“Of course,” Blind confirms right over my ear, laughing softly, his maddening insane laugh.

His Adam’s apple performs a dance on the bare neck, his eyes are mirrors, each containing a Sphinx, just like the puddles of Noble’s glasses.

“They were on the list that Ralph had,” I explain. “The list of students wishing to bolt as soon as possible.”

“Now we shall see,” Blind says, overjoyed for some reason, “how well they are going to manage that. And who else besides them.”

“You mean you knew about them?” I ask suspiciously.

“You crazy?” Blind says, aghast. “You just told me yourself.”

I did, didn’t I? But he wasn’t very surprised when I did. Or he hid the surprise very convincingly. At least he didn’t ask any questions, or demand clarification.

Shark, in the meantime, has moved to the geniuses of the Second. That doesn’t take too much time, because the Second boasts just a single outcast—poor unfortunate Squib.

“Take that! Yeah . . . that’s the way,” Rats drone two rows ahead of us, after the “interpreter,” forcibly divested of the earphones, attracts their attention by gesticulating wildly and then relates the news to them. “Keep on it, listen, you’ll tell us all later,” they encourage the interpreter before the entire pack plugs the phones back in. Well, not the entire pack, rather a dozen of its imprisoned representatives, but for Rats that’s a lot when we’re talking about a function as dull as an all-hands meeting.

Red loudly cracks a nut with his teeth and spits out the shell. Ringer, the interpreter, sighs and turns back toward the lectern. Squib, the immediate beneficiary of the whole business, does not react, doesn’t even move at all, indifferent and self-absorbed, the bill of his cap lowered all the way to his nostrils.

Having skipped over the Third, who flunked the tests in their entirety, Shark declares, “The Fourth . . . ahem. Congratulations! It’s Zimmerman!”

Smoker’s death sentence flies up and flutters between the rows like a small graffiti-covered kite, and in the counselors’ row R One’s sharp-beaked head turns around and stares at me.

“One way or another,” I whisper. “Somehow we do rid ourselves of them.”

“Were you discussing Smoker with Ralph?” Blind wonders. “Why would you do a thing like that?”

Ten rows ahead of us, Ralph grimaces as if he heard what Blind just said, and turns away. He slightly resembles Smoker at that moment. They seem to have temporarily swapped their eyes, to better confuse me. Shark is done with the Sixth, all of three names, and is now talking about the girls.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” I ask Blind.

“Oh, that’s just my bright, logical mind,” Blind says proudly. “It’s come to this conclusion.”

“Your bright mind appears to be malfunctioning lately.”

This is my freshest and most persistent nightmare—Blind, lost forever in the ghostly forests and swamps of the Other Side of the House, a vegetable here, a person who-knows-where. Blind, who’s abandoned me to deal with all those faces and nicks alone, all their fears and hopes, the most horrendous outcome I can possibly imagine—and also the only one, as far as I know, that would satisfy Blind himself. My fear should be evident to an ear much less fine-tuned than his, but he just laughs, even though this isn’t funny at all.

“Must be from overwork,” he says, meaning the bright mind. “All things need rest.”

“Not at my expense,” I say. “Please.”

Blind immediately assumes a solemn expression.

“Of course not,” he says. “Who do you think I am? I will never leave you here alone. Neither you nor the others.”

I close my eyes, trying to get a handle on the spinning head that’s making the objects around me elongate, flow, and merge into colorful stripes. He will never leave us, wouldn’t you know! I am familiar with that smug self-assuredness in his voice all too well. But will he allow us to leave him? I doubt it, at least not those of us who have already been touched by the House.

“Hey, what’s that?” Blind grabs me by the collar and jostles lightly. “What’s going on?”

“Go to hell!” I whisper back.

“Tomorrow!” Shark thunders, shaking the lectern like King Kong on a rampage. “Tomorrow we are saying good-bye to our esteemed teachers, departing on their well-earned break. Since the exams have been canceled, it is going to begin a full month earlier than was planned.”

The entire teachers’ row stands up and turns around to face us. A sustained ovation. They earnestly put on a display of being touched, but the elation in their faces shines clean through even from afar. Conversely, the counselors’ row sinks further into depression as they are coming to the realization that soon they alone are going to be left with us face to face. The audience applauds, the teachers bow, Shark melts with delight. Through all this Blind keeps a firm hold on the back of my neck, seemingly concerned that as soon as he lets go I’m going to faint right there and then. He’s not far off in that, and he’d get even closer should he attempt to soothe me in the manner that he’s already tried just now.

“Now we are going to hear from those of our teachers who wish to say a word to all of you,” Shark says, blotting the sweat behind his ears with a tissue. “I would only like to add, in closing, that on this Saturday as well as the next one, the parents of students who have completed the testing successfully are invited to visit, and if they’d like to take their children away at that time in order to provide an opportunity for them to apply to various colleges and universities, they are certainly welcome to do so.”

The audience claps lazily, celebrating the end of Shark’s oration. One of the more ebullient Hounds even shouts “Bravo!” and whistles, but is quickly suppressed, so Shark departs the podium amid scattered feeble applause, and his place is taken by the biology teacher, a slight old man burdened by the massive scroll of his prepared remarks.

“Your nervous system,” Blind remarks, “seems to be rather shaky.”

“Thanks in part to you,” I snap back. “And get your hand off my scruff, I’m not planning to fall down.”

“Sorry,” he says, removing his hand obediently. “It’s just that I got this impression that you were.”

His smile is missing a tooth and lacking kindness, but he’s intent on bestowing it on me. I look at him closer and notice certain changes. Sightless One used to walk around in a black jacket, so long that it resembled a turn-of-the-century frock coat, directly over his bare skin. Today he’s got a tee under it, and also something ringlike hanging on a string around his neck, catching on the buttons.

“What’s that?” I ask. “On your neck.”

“This?” he says, showing me a steel ring. “Oh, I keep forgetting to tell you. I’m engaged.”

“Oh boy. Who to?”

“Rat. Last night.”

“Congratulations,” I sigh. “I realize there’s no use in trying to debate this after the fact, but could you maybe have considered someone more . . . sane?”

“Yeah, right,” Blind sneers. “Like I was going to consult you about it. After you’ve torn my first love away from me. In a cold-hearted manner, I might add.”

“You can’t mean that maypole Gaby? For goodness’ sake, Blind, you don’t even come up to her shoulder.”

“On the bright side, Rat and I are the same height.”

He slips the ring under his shirt, but immediately winces and pulls it back out. It must have scratched at his wounds.

“So the decorations on your hide are kind of an engagement present?”

Blind’s face hardens.

“Enough,” he says. “This matter is closed for discussion.”

“Yes, sir!” I bark and turn my attention back to the podium, where the biologist already has been supplanted by surly Chipmunk, reading his own farewell sermon. I can’t make out a single word of it because neither Shark nor Ralph is present, having retired temporarily from the hall to have a smoke, and the discipline is deteriorating rapidly. Many are already puffing out in the open, the din of voices grows in intensity, certain individuals run between the rows to converse with the neighbors. Rats turn up the volume on their music.

“With all our hearts . . . blaze the trail . . . bright future . . . in spite of . . . the honor of our school . . . in high esteem . . . ,” Chipmunk drones unenthusiastically, stopping only to take a hopeful sniff at the empty water carafe.

I shove my other foot on the chair in front of me and assume an almost horizontal position, even though the chairs here seem to be designed specifically to prevent people from getting comfortable. Humpback clicks off the Walkman, sighs, and puts it into his backpack.

“What just happened?” he says.

“Our dear teachers are saying their good-byes. They’re taking off, tomorrow or maybe the next day.”

“Really?” Humpback goggles at Chipmunk in surprise. “You serious? We’re not going to see them anymore?”

“Guess not. So if you feel the need to hug any of them and burst into tears, you better hurry. Oh, and by the way, our Leader is engaged. You can hug him too.”

Blind makes a vicious face. Humpback clears his throat. We’re prevented from a further exchange of information by Red, cigarette in his mouth, filtering to us from the front row and sidling next to Blind. Our row is suddenly teeming with visitors, crowding and shoving each other.

“What do you say we move?” Humpback says. “It’s getting a bit busy here.”

I nod. He grabs his stuff, throws his backpack on his shoulder, and we migrate three rows back to put some distance between ourselves and the pack that is acquiring guests and hangers-on at an alarming rate.

“Who’s Blind engaged to?” Humpback asks.

“Rat, who else.”

“Could have been anybody,” Humpback says. “He’s like that, you know. Unpredictable.”

Very true. Only the people who rarely voice their opinions are capable of doing it in such a deadly straightforward way. It still doesn’t cheer me, though.

“Rat’s better than Gaby,” Humpback insists.

“Depends,” I say, remembering the gashes on Blind’s chest.

My mood crashes even further. Humpback lights a cigarette and stretches out on the chair. From the general direction of Birds a radio cuts in suddenly, so loud as to drown out everything else, but is hurriedly hushed.

“Good luck to you on your journey, my dear children, the journey into your adult life and the pursuit of your dreams! I wish you all the best!”

Chipmunk scurries off the podium, replaced by Mastodon. His appearance is met with unhealthy excitement. Also Shark and Ralph return. The last defectors, in the rush to take advantage of the pause created while they cross the aisle, are stomping loudly and moving chairs around. I look at Mastodon and miss the moment when someone sits next to me. Humpback’s greeting makes me turn to the side and notice that someone is in fact Black.

He doesn’t look half as imposing without his customary retinue of Hounds. You might even say he looks harmless and familiar. Still I tense up. Of course, a courteous greeting is a matter of habit, and then I turn back to look at Mastodon. Otherwise I’d be brazenly ogling Black.

“Well, what can I say . . .”

Mastodon, the checker-coated rectangle with the flattened boxer’s nose and the lips to match, stares at us over the scrap of paper with his notes.

“A good machine gun in your hands,” prompts someone in the audience, rather loudly. “And for the first two rows to hit the floor!”

Mastodon turns livid and tries to move his neck, seeking out the offender.

“You down there,” he rasps, “shut up!”

The assembly goes quiet. But not for long.

“Like the other teachers talking here, for me it’s been blood and sweat and . . .”

Black is telling Humpback of Nanette visiting him this morning.

“And then I see her trying to climb through the crack in the window. All by herself, I didn’t call her or anything. I didn’t even realize at first how unlike her that was. You should know, she never came to me before, not even when she was a chick, but there you go.”

Black is staring at Mastodon while saying that, and Humpback does as well. They barely move their lips, but I still hear everything. This makes me uncomfortable for some reason, as if I’ve been eavesdropping. Except that I absolutely have not. It’s not my fault they are sitting so close to me. And if Black didn’t want me to listen it’d be easy for him to catch Humpback any other place.

“Tried to get you a little bit stronger,” Mastodon’s voice muscles its way into my head. “Can’t say it worked too well.”

“Sure would be handier with that machine gun,” comes the voice again.

Mastodon holds a pregnant pause. The audience giggles.

“But as I told you time and time again . . .”

“The only good cripple is a dead cripple!” an entire chorus sings in unison.

Of course. Mastodon’s maxims are classic. Quoting them from memory is something even Elephant can do.

“You bloody bastards!” Mastodon roars, slamming both of his fists against the top of the lectern. “Waste of genetic material! Human debris!”

A cloud of dust floats up in the air. The audience howls and applauds furiously.

“I wish I had a hand grenade, screw the gun . . .”

He is being dragged off the podium. The entire counselors’ row pitches in. Shark, out of range in the back, flaps his fins miserably.

Black turns to me and asks, “What’s going to happen to Smoker now?”

“Same as the others, I guess. His parents will come and take him.”

He nods, thoughtfully rubbing the chin.

“I’ve got two of those in my pack, too. And still I worry more about him than about them. Strange, huh. I guess that’s what’s best for them, but I still feel like a traitor. Wonder why that is.”

“Because it’s true. We have betrayed them.”

Black glowers at me. The tiny skulls on the scarf wrapped around his head do their black-and-white dance.

“How so?”

“By failing to change them.”

Black takes a pack of cigarettes from his backpack, shakes out one, and stashes it in the front pocket of his shirt.

“Too bad. He’s a nice guy. You just got to him with your tricks, no wonder he’s flipped. I know how that works.”

“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you,” I say politely.

Humpback steps on my foot while continuing to study the ceiling nonchalantly. But strange as it seems, Black doesn’t take offense. Leadership certainly has effected some positive changes in his demeanor as well.

“You’re a meanie, Sphinx,” he says.

And that’s it. I wait for the follow-up, but it never comes.

Shark announces that “one of our students expressed a desire to address us” and a proud Pheasant is being wheeled out to the podium, indistinguishable in his black-and-white fatigues from any other representative of the species.

“Every pack,” Black says, “has its own black sheep. Even Pheasants. We only notice them if one gets kicked out and lands on our territory, the way they did it with Smoker. Hounds are no different. Snapping at each other until they concentrate their attention on one person. Then for him it’s curtains.”

I open my mouth, catch Humpback’s eloquent look, and shut it back up. Black, however, manages to read a lot in my expression.

“You were going to say something about me again? Go ahead, say it. Except it’s not exactly the same. I wanted to be a black sheep. I was goading you. Maybe I did become it, though not to the extent I wished.”

“Whose degree of blackness concerns you at this moment, yours or someone else’s?” I say. “What is it exactly we’re discussing here?”

“Everything concerns me.” Black takes out the stashed cigarette and starts rolling it between his fingers. “The Sixth has its own rules. It’s in the Sixth that I understood how the nonconformist, the ‘other,’ is bullied. Whatever was going on in the Fourth is child’s play compared to that. Once you see what real hazing looks like you recognize it anywhere. It’s not a pretty sight.”

“I’m so happy,” I say, “that you finally saw something like that. As for me, I lived through it when I was ten. As I remember, with your help. And enthusiastic participation.”

“Hey!” Humpback throws up his hands. “Sphinx, don’t . . .”

“No, wait.” I’m angry now, and it’s hard to stop. “He says he’s never seen anything like it until he ended up in the Sixth. So I’d like to know what exactly was it he saw when his gang was chasing me all over the House like a plague-ridden rat!”

Black torments the still-unlit cigarette without looking at me. I am slowly cooling off and beginning to regret my outburst. This is probably the first time ever that we’ve had a normal conversation. Or at least tried to.

Black tosses the gutted cigarette.

“All right, I’ll tell you what I saw. If you want. You’re not going to like it, mind you. But it’s probably better that way. Because I’d really like you to understand. It was not about you. Absolutely not. It was about Elk.” Black takes the bandana off and stuffs it in his pocket. “You see, I ended up in the Sixth, and then it took me a while living there to finally understand what was going on with me in the Fourth. I was even asking myself afterward how I could be so stupid and not see it right there. But then I figured that if I didn’t make that step away, didn’t look from a distance . . . I mean . . . Try to do the same thing. Picture all of us back then. The House. Elk. Imagine that you’re that squirt, ankle biter, and there are all those grown-ups around, and they never have any time for you, none of them, except one. And that one you can’t just share among everybody. So we’re all jumping out of our skins to be special, to be noticed, to have him say something only to you, to ask something only of you. But all of that is on the inside, you never show that, because it’s embarrassing when you’re a big guy, ten years old already and so on. Blind wasn’t bothered about that and tagged after him like a mutt, but he was the only one. And Elk never fussed around over him more than with anyone else. He never played favorites. Until you. Yes, laugh all you want, it may sound funny now, but just imagine yourself in our place!”

“I’m sorry, Black,” I say, fighting the giggles, “please understand, but it’s been such a long time since I’ve last heard that. ‘Elk’s pet.’ And to think how much grief that nick caused me. Honestly, I would never have thought I was his favorite. Or that it would look like I was.”

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”

Black is very red, and it looks dangerous, though much more familiar than his newfound serenity. I’m bracing for the explosion, so it’s hard for me to concentrate on what he’s saying.

“. . . as soon as we stepped off the bus. He was waiting for us in the yard, in the corner. He assembled us around him and then told us about you. And that we shouldn’t touch you. And that we had to help you.”

“What? That’s a lie!” I scream, springing up from the chair as if someone hooked it up to an electric socket. “That never happened! It couldn’t have!”

Humpback pulls at my sleeve.

“Hey, what’s gotten into you? Shark’s looking.”

I crouch down next to his chair, and Humpback whispers in my ear, looking sideways at the podium, “That’s how it was. The way Black’s telling it. It’s true. I was there too when he said that.”

“You never told me!”

“In the back row!” Shark thunders. “Stop that commotion!”

I lower myself back on the chair, trying my best to look calm. Humpback stares ten rows ahead, all rapturous attention.

“What for?” he whispers. “What difference would it have made?”

“You were the first newbie we had to help,” Black presses on. “We were helping each other anyway, with anything we could. Some more, some less. But before you came in no one had ever told us we had to do it.”

“Damn,” I say. “Was he that much of an idiot?”

At the word “idiot” Humpback and Black both wince.

Humpback says, “Watch it, Sphinx.” Black doesn’t say anything, but his silence is so expressive that I understand: not only am I a favorite, I’m a favorite who doesn’t appreciate his privilege. Who treads on the most sacred. Now I need some time to come to grips with the Joseph complex that these two have managed to force on me, with being that one guy who always rubs his brothers the wrong way. And to accept that the disgusting blond youth whom I remember being tall as a tower, muscle-bound, and completely, utterly free of the need to be loved by anybody could have been tormented by jealousy. Him and the others. Him and Humpback, the proud loner. Him and possibly even Solomon née Muffin, who is no longer with us. All of them.

I need time to look at them from a distance. To understand and to forgive. I am stretching out that time, slowing it down, erasing their faces from the album of childhood memories and allowing the photographs to develop anew. I realize that there still won’t be enough time for me to do it here and now, that the work is too involved to fit into a few minutes. I also understand that I’ve just hurt both Black and Humpback, and that I’m lucky it’s them sitting next to me and not Blind.

“That was some favor Elk did for his favorite,” I say, trying to smile. “Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

“Drop it, please,” Humpback hisses. “Leave it alone. It was long ago, and it ended long ago. Silly to still be talking about it now.”

“We wouldn’t be talking about it now if it really had ended,” Black says glumly. “Look at Sphinx. You see something that’s ended? I see something that’s only beginning. He’s pissed off like it was yesterday he got beat up. Any one of us would have given an arm to be in his place even for a moment. But he’s the one pissed!”

At this moment the mental dusting off of the childhood pictures arrives at Blind, and I freeze uncertainly. I have a reasonably good idea what Blind’s jealousy looks like. Why didn’t I see any traces of it back then? Why Black, why Humpback even, but not him?

“Was Blind present at that event?”

“Oh jeez.” Black leans back in the chair and bares his teeth. “Blind! You can rest easy as far as he’s concerned. Gods and jealousy don’t mix. It’s a completely separate disorder.”

“What was it you just said?”

“Look, we’re going to come to blows over this,” Humpback says desperately. “It’s all right for you, you’re used to it, but how’s that my fault? I’m going to sit somewhere else.”

I shake my head.

“No, you’re right. We should drop it. I have made my few steps away and looked at it from there. Thank you, Black. It was indeed useful, albeit a tad painful.”

After that we’re silent.

Black is darker than a storm cloud, his meat hooks folded over his chest. Humpback is ruffled and miserable, like a raven that’s been ambushed by a bird catcher. I shudder to think how I look.

Counselor Godmother recites some sort of schedule. Minutes pass before I’m able to figure out what it’s about, and all that time I’m fleeing the image of Elk that keeps catching up with me. Twice every year, at these all-hands meetings, he stood approximately where Godmother is now standing and made short announcements, smiling with his eyes. The same kinds of announcements she’s making. Someone’s achievements or setbacks, someone’s health progressing or not. The physicals calendar. Except unlike with Godmother, everyone listened to him no matter what he was saying. Every single one of us in the audience. With bated breath. Because he was born the Catcher of Little Souls. You could grow up, free yourself, but even those who had gone into the Outsides long ago carried traces of his glances, his touches, may still be carrying them for all I know. Did a man like that have a right to be wrong? He least of all, not with all the hungry, yearning eyes on him. He had no right to make mistakes, to have favorites, or to die.

Godmother reads the list of those who have been prescribed vitamin shots. Then another list, much longer, of those whose body-mass index is not simply low, but shamelessly so. That marks the end of the ceremonies. The departing throngs file past us, walking and riding, rattling the chairs as they go. Up on the podium they cover the lectern and the portable screen that they’d hauled out for some reason. Then we’re alone.

Humpback, Black, and I. We seem to have already said everything that needed to be said, and it’s not entirely clear what we’re waiting for and why none of us left with the others. I mean, I understand why Humpback hasn’t, he’s busy being a lightning rod, but why do Black and I keep sitting here like we’re stuck? Humpback waits, frets, tries to pretend he’s dozed off. Black and I are still silent. Finally Humpback’s patience snaps.

“How about we get going?” he asks plaintively. “Everyone’s left already.”

Tacking between the upended chairs and avoiding the shoals of spit and cigarette butts, we reach the hallway. Huge blue letters stretch along the wall: GOOD NIGHT SWEET TEACHERS! The dot on the exclamation mark drips like a tear.

“Was it really painful? What I told you about Elk?” Black says, keeping pace.

“Not too much. It certainly explained a lot. I could have guessed myself, if only I’d given it enough thought. When you’re little you imagine the grown-ups to be these flawless beings. And then you learn that it isn’t so.”

“Sometimes you learn it not only about the grown-ups,” Black mumbles to himself, without elaborating who or what he means. “I guess you took my bodybuilders off the wall?” he asks suddenly, changing the subject abruptly, and I remember that it used to drive me nuts, this habit of his—jumping suddenly from one subject to the next, as if someone switched him off and then back on, but tuned to a different station.

“No, why?” Humpback says, surprised. “Still there, where you left them. Why would we want to take them off?”

“Revenge, Humpback. Revenge,” I cut in eagerly. “Not only take them off, but also stomp on them and rip them to little pieces. Like you need such simple things explained?”

“Sphinx, sometimes I really want to smack you one,” Black says. “So much that I have to grab myself by the arms.”

We go around a chair that someone sneaked out of the lecture hall but abandoned on the way. Black stops.

“There’s one thing I need to tell you. If you promise not to laugh. It’s about getting out.”

Humpback shrinks and hunches down, tightly gripping his backpack, as if preparing to fight someone who is about to push him into the Outsides.

Black bites his lip, trying to muster the courage. Looks at the walls, then up, then down at the floor, and finally at me.

“Whatever,” he says. “I guess you can laugh if you want. I happen to know where to get a van. Used, but in decent shape. And also I know how to drive. Learned it recently. Because I had an opportunity.”

We gape at him silently.

“Yes, I know it’s bullshit,” he says quickly. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m not a baby. What I just said sounds funny to me too, but I had to say it. I don’t care if you die laughing now. I’m only asking you to keep it in mind, OK? That’s all.”

He turns around and walks away, more runs away, eager to put as much distance between us as he can, as if pushed by the imagined tide of our laughter at his back.

“Black, we’re not laughing,” I call after him.

He waves his hand without turning around and disappears up the stairs. A panicked retreat, there are no other words for it. Humpback and I exchange puzzled glances.

“Now this is something,” Humpback says. “There was this one guy in the entire House who dreamed about getting to the Outsides, and look what happened to him.”

“Good-bye, bull terriers in checkered vests,” I sigh. “There won’t be much space in the van, even without them.”

“Stop it,” Humpback says. “It’s not funny. That’s why he ran away, because he didn’t want to hear the lame jokes.”

“I would never tell them with him around. I’m not laughing, Humpback. How can I laugh at things like that? It’s Tabaqui’s kite, the one that he says the seniors used to fly away, except Black seems to have mastered the art of driving it.”

Humpback shakes his head.

“Don’t do it with me around either. Don’t laugh. Don’t say anything. At all.”

He kicks away the chair, even though it would have been easier to step around it, and plows ahead, shoving his hands into his pockets with such force that I imagine hearing the sound of the lining being ripped. Terminally upset, either by Black’s words or by my reaction to them.

I follow him, turning this sad fairy tale over and over in my head. The one Black is trying so hard to believe. The magical mystery van. The children of the House rushing toward dawn, in a stolen car with Black at the helm, tearing down the highway, exuberantly belting out road songs. In the real world this trip is going to last for about an hour, tops. Pity. Because this fantasy is even more beautiful than having the seniors depart to the hidden world beyond the clouds by means of a kite. More beautiful and more touching exactly for the fact that it was invented by Black, the staunchest realist.

When we return to the dorm, only Ginger and Smoker are left there, sitting at the opposite corners of the bed and annoying each other. The tension is palpable enough for Humpback to immediately get out of the way and hide on his top bunk. I go to sit between those two, doing my best to disrupt their line of sight. Oh well, that’s fair, now it’s my turn to be the lightning rod. Even though Tabaqui is so much better at it than I am.

Ginger smokes, studying the smoldering end of her cigarette intently. Smoker peers now at her dirty sneakers, now at the ash she’s shaking all over the place—a Pheasant to the core, all but writing notes about it in a diary. Ginger’s irritation barely registers, but Smoker’s is throwing sparks all the way across the room. My presence interferes with his indignation, so he shifts on the bed to better see her—dirty-uncouth-repellent, but something else too, more personal, I can’t quite put my finger on it. Did she tell him off or pour soda in his precious sneakers while we were out? He’s blushing every time he looks at her, gazes away but then looks again, almost forcing himself, and I become more and more curious. What was it she managed to do? I am clearly not cut out for the role of the lightning rod, so I rejoice when Jackal returns, whistling something cheerful and out of tune.

“There we go,” he says after climbing up to join us. “Gaby is shouting to the four winds that she’s pregnant, can you imagine that?”

“By Blind, of course,” Ginger says. She doesn’t seem too excited.

“Not at all! She never said that. None of the ‘Long live the young dauphin,’ not even a peep. Supposedly by Red or by Viking. Something indeterminate with a pronounced Rattish slant.”

“She’s lying,” Ginger concludes, throws away the cigarette, and walks over to Tubby’s box. Fishes him, still sleepy, out of there, puts him on her back, bending double under the weight, and walks out. Tubby burbles something incoherent but looks generally content.

“Hey, where are you taking the Insensible?” Jackal asks, astonished.

“For a walk,” comes Ginger’s voice from the anteroom, then the outer door slams, and it’s quiet again.

“Aww,” Jackal sighs. “And we were doing so well.”

We weren’t doing well at all, but Tabaqui’s optimism stores are inexhaustible, and no one takes the bait.

“What an incongruous person,” Smoker says.

He probably needs someone to argue with him. Or maybe he said it just to say something.

“Who is? Ginger?” Tabaqui wonders. “Why?”

“No reason. There’s just something missing in her. Many things, actually.”

Tabaqui fiddles with the tuning knob on the boombox and says, “If only you knew how many things you yourself are missing, you’d be a lot more reticent, but since you are not of that kind, do us a favor and elaborate.”

Smoker jumps at the opportunity.

“She’s abrupt,” he says. “Coarse. Unfeminine. The way she behaves would be appropriate for a twelve-year-old, but she’s not twelve, not by a long shot.”

“Oh wow!” Humpback exclaims, leaning down from his bunk.

Seemingly encouraged by his interest, Smoker adds, “She’s also messy. Hopelessly so.”

“Ooh, ooh.” Tabaqui sways, puckering his lips like a nervous chimp. “You’re talking such nonsense, Smoker. Can’t you hear it yourself?”

“She spends her nights in a room with six guys. Walks around the bathroom naked and doesn’t even bother to close the door. And supposedly she sleeps with Noble, except I wouldn’t be surprised if she does it with Blind as well, and I don’t know who else . . .”

Humpback tosses a pillow at Smoker, and Tabaqui immediately jumps on top of it, pushing it down as if he wants to squash Smoker flat. Tamps it thoroughly, lifts it for a bit, making sure Smoker is still breathing, and quickly covers him again. As they are shutting up Smoker in this unorthodox fashion I catch the image of Ginger that has so stunned and infuriated him. A flash—the spare boyish figure. Dark nipples on pink skin over protruding ribs, red tuft of pubic hair. Arms, legs, and almost nothing between them. She’s looking at me, or rather at Smoker, a faraway, completely impassive look. One arm is twisted, and there’s a reddish sore below her elbow. She licks it. Then lowers her arm, not even attempting to cover herself, and walks inside the shower stall. That walk is imprinted on Smoker’s retinas in a sequence of narrow snapshots, one sliding over the next. That’s what was making him blush so painfully. I understand. It’s not what he’s seen that hurt him, but the reaction to his appearance. Or rather the absence of a reaction. It is indeed unpleasant, to be looked at like you’re not even there, like you’re an empty space. This would be discomfiting even to someone much more balanced.

“She’s like an animal,” Smoker says, pushing off the pillow. “Completely shameless.”

“Horror of horrors,” Tabaqui fumes. “Humpback, all our efforts were for naught. He is irredeemable. He can only be exterminated.”

“They’re taking him away this Saturday,” Humpback reminds him from above. “You keep forgetting.”

“I do not. This thought is the only thing that keeps me sane. This one and a handful of others, similarly cheerful.” Tabaqui looks up and inquires plaintively, “Tell me, how is it any of his damn business who she does and doesn’t sleep with? When even Noble keeps out of it?”

“That’s the kind of cantankerous creature he is,” Humpback says as his head disappears over the edge.

Smoker is hugging Humpback’s pillow. The narrow frames with the naked girl walking away unspool before him rapidly, replacing each other as they fall. The last one is the slammed door of the shower stall.

I go out to the yard, to look for Ginger.

There’s this place where the walls of two buildings meet, a nook overgrown with weeds. The beginning of summer usually means stinging nettles up to the knees, but on the other hand they cover up the trash, making it temporarily invisible. Presumably the most private place in the whole House, because neither of the walls has any windows.

They’re there. Sitting in front of a small fire. Ginger made it in the old spot, the blackened, charred scrap of earth marked with a stone circle. This is where seniors always had their fires. It used to be much cozier back then, with chaises and old crates for chairs. No trace of them now. Could be they burned them all.

Tubby sits on top of Ginger’s coat, staring into the fire and droning softly. When the burning branches crackle he startles and grabs his cheeks. Such a cute girlish gesture, half fright, half delight. Ginger is whispering something to him. I can’t make it out. I come up to them and sit down. She just continues her monologue as if I’m not there.

“The important thing was to grab a space somewhere in the back, so they wouldn’t shoo you off, and look. Only look, without listening. That’s important. Because they would sing, play the guitar, bake potatoes in the fire, and so on, and it was very distracting, all that romantic stuff people do when they get together and want to prove to themselves that they’re having a blast. I liked to look at the fire, that’s all. This one time someone snatched a burning stick out of it and wrote something on the wall with the blazing end. I was almost blinded. A word that’s shedding fire. The burning letters of God. All that was left of them the next day was the black outline of a common swearword and a sooty smear, but still it had been a miracle, and I witnessed it.”

She throws a sizable chunk of dry wood on the fire. Sparks fly in the air, reflecting in Tubby’s bugged-out beady eyes.

“Also I would come here to have a good cry,” Ginger says. “Once a week, like clockwork.”

“So would I,” I say. “Until I found out that just about every other inhabitant of the House came here too for the exact same purpose.”

She smiles. The smile transforms her into a completely different person, unfamiliar now, but one that I seem to have known a long, long time ago.

“Yeah,” she says. “I always bumped into one or another of them and had to close my eyes and pretend it didn’t happen. The most freaking private place in the whole House!”

“There are no private places in the House.”

“There sure weren’t back then.”

She opens the backpack and takes out a pack of sandwiches—“Oh, by the way, I’ve got . . .”—and freezes, watching Tubby. He crawls closer to the fire, eyeing it intently, and there’s a wood chip gripped tightly in his clumsy paw. He’s angling to throw it in, a very complicated matter requiring a great deal of effort and concentration. We observe him swaying as he stretches his arm and even his lips forward and carefully drops the chip. And immediately shrinks away in fear, as if the tiny chip would cause the fire to flare up to the skies. It doesn’t flare. Tubby looks sideways at me, then at Ginger, and resumes his monotonous droning, now signifying joy and complete agreement with the world.

The wind is blowing smoke straight at me. I shut my eyes tightly and roll over closer to Tubby. Sit down on the edge of the coat and put my rake over his pudgy shoulders. Then we watch the fire dying down. Ginger settles on Tubby’s other side.

“I’m not giving him the sandwich,” she says.

I voice agreement. Of course we shouldn’t give Tubby any sandwiches. Nothing exists for him now except the fire. Anything we can give to him will immediately end up in it, because no dinner can possibly approach the happiness of feeding another, especially if that other is Fire, a powerful deity of whose actual power Tubby is only dimly aware.

So that he wouldn’t get upset because of the fire dying, Ginger tells him about the embers. How they’re beautiful too—“like little red stars,” she says, and Tubby nods, affirming the similarity.

“I’ll make you another fire tomorrow, just like this one,” Ginger promises.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “He might get used to it.”

Ginger doesn’t answer. So let him, I hear in her silence. I will bring him here every night, and make fires for him. Let him feed wood chips to them and sing. It’s no use thinking about the time when I won’t be able to, when there won’t be any “here.” That’s the last thing I want to think about right now.

“Haven’t you tamed enough people, Gingie?” I say.

There’s nothing but tenderness in my question, I understand her too well. I understand how it must be impossible—not taming when you love being loved, when you acquire little brothers for whom you are then responsible to the end of your days, when you turn into a seagull, when you write love letters on the walls addressed to someone who never would be able to see them. When, despite your complete certainty that you’re ugly, someone still manages to fall in love with you, when you pick up stray dogs and cats and chicks who fell out of their nests, and make fires for those who didn’t ask you to do that.

She gives me a quick glance and looks away. Because I too am one of those who was tamed long ago. I’m lucky that I didn’t end up helplessly and hopelessly in love, needing constant care. That the responsibility for me has been partially shifted to Mermaid, who in a certain sense has managed to outgrow Ginger. But still I’m one of us, of those who are forever under her tattered seagull’s wing.

She leans toward me and we embrace, touching foreheads over Tubby’s head. Just for a moment, then she shifts away.

“You’re mad because of Noble,” she says. “But I can’t . . .”

“I’m not mad.”

“And Smoker . . .”

“Oh, forget it.” I laugh.

She doesn’t care how many people witness her fights with Noble, doesn’t care who Blind is with if he’s not with her. It’s all the same to her whether she’s clothed or naked, a girl or a boy, she’s a social animal, the kind that is best adapted to life in the House. Smoker is right at least in that—Ginger is a monster, like many of us. Like the best of us. I’ll be damned if I’m ever going to hold it against her.

She nods and gets up. It’s almost dark, and the embers are barely smoldering. Tubby must be cold. He fidgets in his romper, grunting quizzically.

“We’re going,” I say. “We’re almost gone.”

Ginger puts him on my shoulders. We don’t have to tie him down, he’s used to riding on someone’s back and usually holds on very tight. She picks up the coat and the backpack and stamps out the last remaining embers.

Tubby coughs significantly.

“Yes,” Ginger says. “I remember what I promised you about tomorrow. But this place needs to rest now. To cool down.”

We walk in the dusk, keeping to the strip of pavement that looks lighter than the surrounding trash. Keys and coins jangle in Ginger’s pockets. Now that the fire is gone I can see that it’s not completely dark yet.

Tubby gently paws my face, mumbles something, and then, uncertainly, launches into a song. Must be the song of this evening. But unlike Tabaqui’s songs on similar occasions, no one will ever understand this one.

On this Saturday the physicals are mandatory for all, so the line to the Spiders’ office stretches all the way back to the Sepulchral landing, and even spills out onto the stairs. We spend so much time in it that Logs manage to haul in blankets and hotplates from the first floor, pitch a camp on the landing, and make at least two rounds of tea before the tail end of the throng slithers inside the Sepulcher.

Once inside, life immediately becomes boring. Can’t smoke, can’t boil water, can’t even talk loudly. Many doze off. Birds lose themselves in a poker tournament, Elephant parades his toys on the linoleum, Noble and Ginger fight and make up, Jackal picks apart a bread roll and stuffs the pieces under the cabinets—for the Sepulchral sprites.

“It’s a mystery how, with an attitude like that, people here are afraid of graduation,” Smoker says. Feeling my stare, he turns and adds, “You are conditioned to make do with so little, wherever you may end up.”

It’s a confrontational statement, but no one thinks to argue.

We’ve been depressingly nice to Smoker ever since this morning.

The line keeps shortening. The white plastic chairs, on which no one ever sits on general principle, mark the stations of our journey. When we’re one chair away from the office it is suddenly announced that Smoker is staying in the Sepulcher.

No explanations, which is the way it is customary with Spiders. They just send for his things and we’re left wondering what could have happened to him in the time since the last physical, that all of us have overlooked. If it were anyone else but Smoker we would have left a scouting party in the Sepulcher to wait for information, but Smoker was going to be taken away by parents in any case, so we don’t protest or make a scene, and return to the dorm.

At lunch we have this stupid argument about wheelers and their abilities. Tabaqui considers those abilities limitless and attempts to persuade us that legs are, if you think about it, a completely extraneous part of the body. That allegedly the only people who need them are soccer players and runway models, and everyone else only makes use of them out of habit. And that once humanity finally comes around to augmenting itself through complete motorization of the lower extremities, this bad habit is going to die off by itself.

Humpback and I mount a halfhearted defense. We like legs, we’re fond of them, we don’t wish to have them motorized. Lary mutters something that mentions sour grapes.

Tabaqui, scandalized, challenges all present leg chauvinists to a contest of speed, tightness of turns, and forward thrust.

Noble says that after a contest like that we’re all going to end up in the Cage. Those of us, that is, who aren’t going to end up in the Sepulcher.

“Et tu, Brute?” Tabaqui whispers, defeated.

After lunch we witness what Jackal terms “The Great Exodus.” There’s nothing great about it. All that happens is that some successful test takers, most of them Pheasants, are released to their parents. The House, however, is good with imbuing any event, however insignificant, with pomp and grandeur.

The first floor is cordoned off beyond the reception area. The role of the sentry falls to R One. Logs immediately crowd in front of the barrier with the intent of storming it and getting to the other side. Black Ralph holds the gate. The other counselors are busy shuttling their charges, along with the luggage.

A skinny girl named Lenses arouses an almost universal admiration. Her worldly possessions take up three huge suitcases, two duffels, and a plastic bag. Jackal declares that he finally found a true soul mate within these walls, but ah! too late, too late, and his heart is now broken forever.

After her burdensome luggage has been delivered, Lenses starts squeaking that she forgot to pack her favorite jacket. Three Reptiles, girl counselors, are sent to retrieve it, and each of the three bears an expression that unequivocally promises Lenses bad news. There’s no trace of the jacket. Lenses screams that she’s not going anywhere without it. Logs burst into applause. Finally the “sweet girl” is hauled bodily, by Shark personally, to reception, and after that nothing more interesting happens, apart from young Pheasant Sniffle crying hysterically and Hound Laurus delivering a farewell speech where he calls all of us shitholes.

We don’t get to see any of the parents of those being taken away. Stands to reason: if we saw them, that would mean that they, in turn, would see us, and Shark still has enough sense not to allow that under any circumstances.

At length the favorably tested are packed and sent out of the House. The barriers are coming down, Reptiles drift off for a soothing cup of herbal tea, and we return to our room.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t have to say good-bye to Smoker in these idiotic circumstances,” Humpback offers.

“Do you think he would have called all of us shitholes too?” Jackal says.

“It’s a possibility,” Humpback says.