The Gray House

I was sure he’d tell me that I was going to be stuck here in the Sepulcher until graduation. That really was worse than being sent home, because it was much more dull. But apart from that, he didn’t have anything else with which to threaten me.

He stood up. Took a thick notebook out of his package, put it on my bed, and went over to the window. Looked out, then came back.

“Nothing is going to happen to you,” he said. “Either way you’ll be discharged tomorrow.”

I couldn’t understand what the catch was. That didn’t sound threatening at all.

“What would be the point of me agreeing to snitch, then?” I said. “For the sheer joy of it?”

He was silent for a while. Then sat back on the chair. Took the notebook and thumbed through it. It was completely blank.

“I’m not very good at stories,” he said. “But I’d like to tell you the story of the last graduation. And the one before that. If, after hearing them, you still refuse to help me, I’m not going to insist. You’ll go back to the Fourth and try to forget we ever had this conversation.”

He didn’t ask if I agreed to listen. Simply started to talk. Without going into detail, pointedly detached and tedious, but it made what he was talking about even scarier. Like an article in the paper—no emotions, just facts.

“Is that true?” I said when he finished.

I already knew that it was. It was all true. I saw Blind kill Pompey. I saw Red on the night when they tried to kill him. And I saw how everyone reacted, or rather did not react, in both cases. I knew that no one in the House called Blind a murderer, because no one thought of him that way. Except me. No one stopped talking to him, no one felt uneasy being next to him. I made myself look like an idiot when I refused to put on his shirt the night of the murder. A lot of things that were beyond the pale for me, they took completely in stride. So yes, I believed that those who had been here before them, who were a bit like them, really could massacre each other in the grand finale of their Great Game. I haven’t abandoned that word, just acknowledged that the Game is not a game, that it is for real, and a “for real” ending for it would probably look something like what Ralph described.

“It is true,” he said.

And then asked if I kept a diary.

Everyone kept a diary in the First. Reading them must have been even more of a chore than writing in them.

I said that I still had my old diary, but I only used it for drawing.

“You can draw in this,” he said. “Except you’ll have to write some too. No one would be surprised when they see that you picked up the diary again in the Sepulcher. It can be pretty boring in here.”

“But I haven’t agreed yet,” I said.

“No?” He felt his cheekbone again. “And here’s me thinking that I was reasonably persuasive.”

I took his notebook.

I am sitting in my old place, between Tabaqui and Noble. The lights are out, the boombox is moaning on the other end of the bed, and everyone’s silent. That’s how it’s been for two hours already. Maybe that’s a silent Fairy Tale Night. How would I know? Or are they all simply enjoying the music? It’s better not to ask questions, because either you’re one with the pack and know everything about everything, or you aren’t and you don’t, in which case you’re just getting on everyone’s nerves.

So I am dutifully listening to the music, admiring the blinking red lights of the boombox, and smoking. I’ve already smoked more this evening than in all of my days in the Sepulcher combined.

One of the indistinct shadows slinking around the bed sits down next to me.

“How are you feeling, Smoker?”

It’s Blind. Unusually courteous.

“All right. I mean, pretty good,” I say.

“What happened to you, exactly? If you don’t mind, of course.”

I do, that’s the problem.

“My parents asked them to run a full checkup on me,” I say. “Since classes are over and there’s going to be no exams. And I had this low blood count, so . . .”

At that moment someone switches on the lights. When I open my eyes, everything I was planning to say goes right out of my head.

Because this is my first good look at Blind after my return from the Sepulcher and he looks like someone enthusiastically took a sander to him. To his cheeks, his chin, his neck. In short, it’s me who should be asking how he’s feeling, not the other way around. Which I don’t, of course. I collect the tattered remains of my thoughts and pick up the story about the blood count, but Blind gets up in the middle of the sentence and leaves. As in leaves the room. If he didn’t care about getting an answer, why ask at all? Or is it that he suddenly remembered he was contagious? I light up again, to calm the nerves.