The Gray House

“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.”

Humpback went around the trunk and knocked on it.

“What do you have here? A matching furniture set?”

Beauty peeked inside.

“Oh wow. There’s like a bulldozer in there,” he said.

“That’s not a bulldozer! It’s a juice maker,” Stinker said, visibly hurt. “I made it myself. A very useful appliance to have around.”

Grasshopper wiped his runny nose on his knee and smiled.

“What about this?” Humpback fished out a scary-looking steel contraption.

“A bear trap,” Stinker said proudly. “My own design as well.”

“Also a useful appliance to have around,” Blind said acidly.

Wolf and Humpback were diving inside the trunk, producing more and more stuff. Beauty was afraid to touch any of it, lest he break something. Blind examined everything with his fingers before setting it down on the floor. Stinker was providing a running commentary.

“Kettle. Photographic trays. Tool set. Stuffed horned viper. Portable coatrack. Guitar . . .”

“Wait,” Wolf interrupted. “You can play guitar?”

Stinker scratched himself and looked at the ceiling.

“Not really, no.”

“Why do you have it, then?”

“It was a parting gift. From former roommates.”