The Gray House

Even though graduation is never discussed (apart from the bus and those Jerichonies), the inevitability of it is in the air. Girls, for example, cry often. Their eyes are red and swollen, at least from what I notice on the three girls I see every day. Mermaid lives in our room and Ginger sometimes spends the night. Needle comes in the evenings to borrow the coffeemaker for Logs. And they’re all really touchy, so that I’m afraid to say even one word to them. Ginger especially. Everywhere she goes she drags this ancient teddy bear with her, with one glass eye and a shirt button in place of the other. If you jostle it you’ll get a cloud of brownish dust, and it smells so old that it is immediately clear that this must have been her great-grandmother’s favorite toy, and even back then it was already the way it is now. This nightmarish teddy always ends up lying next to me, and if I ask her to put it somewhere else she gets this miserable look, like I’ve just deeply offended her.

The House is in mourning, on the occasion of the repairs that they were threatening us with for as long as I can remember. Stepladders everywhere, and the plasterers are hard at work scraping the drawings and the messages off the walls. People apparently can’t stand such a blatant violation of their living space and have retreated to the rooms. The wave started from the hospital wing and is slowly rolling toward the Crossroads. I ventured out to have a look. Don’t know what it looks like, but definitely not like our corridor. The walls are all dirty and feel somehow injured, covered in great gouges. If they thought this would make the atmosphere brighter, it didn’t. It’s even more depressing than before.

“Blood! Revenge and blood!” Tabaqui screams at regular intervals. Just as I finally calm down and start thinking about something.

Everyone’s busy packing. They drag the backpacks out into the hallways and back to the rooms, take everything out and put it back in. Whoever it is, you can be sure that they’re packing. The weather is hotter and hotter.