The Gray House

No one remembered how their war had started. But they were now divided into Moor people and Skull people, into red and black, like chess pieces. On the eve of their rumbles, the House froze and waited with bated breath. The juniors would be locked in their dorms, and that’s why for them the rumbles were always a burning, itching secret behind the two turns of the key. Something beautiful, something into which, someday, they would grow themselves. They waited for the battles to end, desperately scraping at the locks and pressing their ears to the doors. The ending was always the same. The seniors would forget to unlock them, and the squirts would remain prisoners of their dorms until morning, when the counselors returned. Once liberated, they would rush to the battlefield, sniffing around for the traces—of what, they didn’t know, for there never were any. They would learn the details later, from the overheard snippets of conversations. Then the Great Game entered into their little games in the backyard, teased and twisted until they grew tired of it.

Once he reaches the doors of the Fifteenth, Grasshopper tiptoes like an enemy infiltrator. There are voices coming out of the room. Suddenly they stop, and all he can hear is soft rasping. Grasshopper peeks into the half-opened door.

Purple Moor sits with his back to the door, not two steps away. Grasshopper is mesmerized by the sight of his neck. If someone were to be covered with myriad little tattoos, and then they all mingled and ran together, it would look like this neck. The ears seem tacked on above this strange neck. Moor is wheezing softly, and the prickly words bubble out of him with each jerk of his head. The small pink rat ears move out of sync, as if of their own volition. Grasshopper looks at Moor, at the back of his wheelchair, which sports an umbrella holder and also some kind of hook and many other strange protuberances and implements he’s never seen on other wheelchairs. He also tries to listen to the wheezing more closely but still cannot make it out. A bespectacled wheeler in pajamas talks back, respectfully holding a hand to his mouth. Then he notices Grasshopper and his eyes open wide; his lips form the word “Out!”

Moor’s curly-haired head starts turning. Grasshopper shrinks away from the door and flies down the hall like the wind. He is the only one among the walking juniors who is barred from Moor’s rooms. Numbers 15, 14, 13. Others can enter, but not he. In the Moor’s room one can serve—carrying this and that, boiling water, shining shoes, or washing dishes. Or slicing bologna for sandwiches that Purple One consumes in enormous quantities, one after another. This is the price of socializing with the seniors. For those who fail at their duties, Moor keeps a belt somewhere in his wheelchair. This belt features prominently in the juniors’ nightmares. Moor’s belt, Moor himself, and his voice—the rasping wheeze of Livid Monster. The boys curse Purple One when returning from his rooms and parade the welts his belt left on their hands.

Grasshopper secretly envies them. Their wounds, their stories, and their complaints—everything that unites them in their hatred of Moor. It’s their adventure, their experience. He’s not a part of it.