Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Grasshopper sat down next to her. He knew about Ginger's friend. Death was the boy who never left the Sepulcher. The counselors, when talking among themselves, always said that he wasn't “long for this world.” Death was a bed case. He never walked. He never even used a wheelchair. He'd lived in the Sepulcher since time immemorial, and Grasshopper always imagined this permanent resident to be greenish-pale, almost like a corpse. There was no other way to imagine someone who hadn't been long for this world for so many years now. But Death turned out to be a small, tender boy, with eyes occupying a good half of his face, and long dark-red hair that looked varnished. Grasshopper was staring at him while Ginger was picking cards off the blanket.

“Wanna play?” she asked.

She and Grasshopper climbed onto Death's bed.

For the next hour they became fortune-tellers. They prophesied to each other happy futures and all wishes coming true. Then the cards went flying to the floor and Ginger pulled up her pajama top and showed Grasshopper the tattoo she had on her stomach. The tattoo was made with a ballpoint pen and already a bit smeared, but one could still recognize something vaguely eagle-like, with a human head.

“What's that?” Grasshopper asked.

“I don't know,” Ginger said. “Death thinks it's a harpy. I was shooting for a gryphon, actually. What do you think?”

“Could have been worse,” Grasshopper said politely.

Ginger sighed and wiped the fuzzy parts off with her finger.

“It had been,” she admitted. “The previous couple of times. Honestly? A great artist I'm not.”

They sat in silence for a while. Death was fiddling with an orange. Grasshopper was searching for a topic to discuss.

“Is it true there are ghosts here, in Sepulcher?” he asked.

Ginger rolled her eyes.

“You mean White? He's never a ghost. He's just a halfwit. Which is not to say that there aren’t. Except they don't walk into people's rooms mumbling nonsense, the way they tell it in your Stuffage.”

“What do they do, then?” Grasshopper said.

Ginger directed a demanding look toward Death.

“What do they do, Death?”

“Nothing much,” he said shyly. “They just walk the corridors sometimes. You'd be lucky to notice them, really. They're very quiet. And very beautiful. And White is the opposite of that. He ran in once when it was dark, stumbled, made this awful racket, and then started howling like a dog. I almost died I was so scared.”

“White was one of the seniors,” Ginger explained. “He would stick two lit cigarettes in his nose, wrap himself in a sheet, and sneak around scaring kids. They caught him and sent him away somewhere. He was really nuts.”

Grasshopper imagined a really nuts, sinister senior in a sheet and looked at Death with a newfound respect.

“I'd surely die if I saw something like that,” he said. “Or at least wet my pants.”

“I did wet them.” Death smiled. “doesn't mean I was going to just admit that.”

Death was growing on Grasshopper by the minute.

“What about those, the real ones?” Grasshopper asked. “Have you seen them?”

“They're not scary at all. I saw them and I wasn't afraid. They don't hurt anybody. They had enough trouble themselves in their time.”

Grasshopper realized that Death wasn't making this up, and felt butterflies waking up in his stomach. Death was either crazy himself, or really had seen ghosts.

“He's not making it up,” Ginger confirmed. “He's a Strider, by the way.”

“He's a who now?” said Grasshopper, confused.

“Stri-der,” Ginger repeated slowly, looking disappointed. “You mean you don't know who they are?”

Grasshopper was overwhelmed with a desire to lie that he did. But then he remembered that he had actually heard the word used. Once, Splint the counselor had grabbed him in the hallway. They were walking together, the three of them—Splint, Elk, and Black Ralph—arguing about something. Grasshopper said hello and wanted to go past them, but Splint seized hold of his shirt collar.

“Hold still, child!” he shouted. “Tell me, quickly, do Jumpers and Striders exist in nature?”

“Who are they?” Grasshopper asked politely.

The counselor's face was now very close to his own. The eyes behind the thick glasses were darting back and forth. He seemed scared of something.

“You really don't know?”

Grasshopper shook his head.

Splint let him go.

“There,” he exclaimed. “Out of the mouths of babes! He has no clue!”

“That is not a valid argument,” R One said sourly, and the three of them went on walking and arguing.

Grasshopper had forgotten all about this incident. Counselors sometimes acted no less mysteriously than seniors. So much so that sometimes it was hard to understand what they were talking about.

“Are they the same as Jumpers?” he asked Ginger carefully, risking ridicule.

“Of course not!” she said indignantly. “So you do know?”

“Only the words,” Grasshopper admitted.

Ginger looked at Death. He nodded.

“Jumpers and Striders,” she said in a schoolmarm voice. “Those who visit the Underside of the House. Except that Jumpers are kind of thrown there, while Striders can get there by themselves. And also go back whenever they want. Jumpers can’t, they have to wait until they're thrown back. Clear now?”

“Yeah.”

It wasn't clear to Grasshopper at all, but he decided he'd rather die than admit it. “What about you? Are you a Strider or a Jumper?”

Ginger's face darkened.

“I'm neither. Yet. But I will be. One day, you’ll see.”

She started flipping through a magazine she picked up from the pillow, as if she was suddenly bored by the conversation.

Death just smiled.

“How did you like Wolf?” he asked. “He's something else, isn't he?”

“You know about Wolf?” Grasshopper said in astonishment.

Ginger put down the magazine.

“We know everything about everybody. Even about those who aren't here. And those who are, we know more about them than anyone else. You did great to hide him. I filched those flowers for you from one senior girl. She didn't need them anyway, she has like hundreds more of them. And they would at least make you less lonely, and your room won't look so empty. Except we forgot to put them in water. They’ll go all wilted before you get back.”

“I thought you invited me just because.”

“There's no such thing as an invitation just because.” Ginger smiled. She was silent for a while before saying, “And not only because of that either. Also because you're a bit ginger too, like Death and me. We gingers need to stick together. We're a gang, get it? We are different, not like everyone else. They always try to blame us for everything, and nobody likes us. Well, most of them don't—there are exceptions, of course. That's because we’re descended from Neanderthals. I mean, we're their children, and those who are not ginger are descended from Cro-Magnons. It's all there in this one magazine, scientific. I can show it to you if you want, I stole it from the library.”

Grasshopper wasn't sure about the “gang” business. Or that it was the right word. But he was ready to be descended from anything if it meant so much to Ginger. Her mind and her words were jumping around too fast, the topics changed too abruptly for Grasshopper to catch up, but he did notice that Ginger was admitting to theft a bit too often and that she wasn't too bothered about it. He tuned out for a moment and stopped listening to her, which turned out to be a mistake since she started talking about Wolf.

“I let him out. And I’ll do it again if need be. I hate it when people are being locked up, especially kids, that's just cruel, that is ...”