Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

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

The knocking resumed. Grasshopper got up.

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

Grasshopper closed his eyes. Then he opened them again.

“This can't be a wheeler?” he said.

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

And he rolled into the room.

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

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

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

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

“Like it?” Grasshopper asked.

Stinker turned away from the wall.

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

He knows already, Grasshopper thought with surprise.

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

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

“So? Quite enough for disease-spreading.”

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

Grasshopper looked at Wolf. Wolf looked at Grasshopper.

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

But it looked like Wolf did know.

“We don't need anyone else,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

“What have I just done?” he said.

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

Grasshopper was ready to cry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grasshopper stood looking down at the floor.

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

Grasshopper was doing his best to fight back tears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wolf looked away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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