“Go to hell,” Humpback says, shoving him in the chest. “Get out of the way. I don’t have time to stand here listening to your garbage. How’s that lighter doing, burning your butt yet?”
Lary carefully studies the egret in the center of his shirt, the biggest one, afraid that Humpback might have stained it. Then fingers the fabric.
“What’s with the shoving?” he says. “I call them as I see them, if you don’t want to listen—fine, don’t. Still no reason to go shoving. You think I’m not happy they brought him back? I too am happy! But there is this concern, you see, and I’m just saying. Because all those stories about changelings, they’re not for nothing, you know. Food for thought is all I’m saying.”
Humpback moves for his collar, but Lary wiggles away and runs into the classroom. Humpback and I exchange glances.
“Pitiful excuse for a human,” he says. “I should have smacked him one.”
I fiddle with my earring, turning it around and around.
“Probably. He’s always asking for it. But there is something in what he’s babbling. I noticed too. Noble did change. A lot.”
Humpback frowns, surprised.
“Of course he did. Grown up, that’s all. And also he missed us. Lary is a nitwit, he doesn’t get it, but I would have expected more from you. Where’re your eyes? And ears and everything else?”
He pushes me inside and retreats to his seat. I sidle up to the desk and take out my notes. The ear is burning because I tugged at the earring, but the cheeks do because of Humpback’s words. I stare at Noble. He’s right here, at the next desk, and I can stare to my heart’s content. He’s already hard at work over my notebook, correcting something in my scribbles. I hadn’t asked him to, but he did that before, too, without being asked. Refined aquiline face, unnaturally beautiful, bent over the grubby pages. Even the bald spots and the entire disgusting haircut are powerless to ruin the impression. The hair is not yellow like before, but more on the milk-chocolate side, the way it used to show near the roots. And a barely suggested shadow of a beard. A ghost of a beard. Because of it, or maybe because Humpback’s words are starting to have an effect, I can see that Noble has indeed grown up. Is that all it is? Only this and nothing else? I spend the whole class thinking about it.
The snow is a curtain outside the window. It falls and it falls, easing up only by dinnertime. The entire yard is now only bumps and folds under the white sugary blanket. Very beautiful. Even the Outsides is not quite itself, and it’s completely quiet, as if the House had been transported to a wintry forest. Pity it’s dark, or it all would have glistened and sparkled.
After dinner everyone rushes out. I drive down too. I like snow, even though wheelchairs have a habit of getting completely stuck in it, which is unpleasant, but on the bright side there are many delights that are only available when it’s been snowing.
I pick out a convenient spot and dump myself out into the snowbank. Then I assemble a store of snowballs, and then everyone passing by gets a snowball to the head. My aim is perfect, as usual; as long as I have things to throw, they always land where I want them. Noble soon joins me. The two of us give a good thrashing to the walkers of the Sixth and to Lary and his gang. Logs are uniformly clad in striped pom-pom hats, so aiming at them is ridiculously easy.
By the time the girls come out, everyone is fairly warmed up and wound up. The first barrage greets them right on the porch. They don’t even have time to step down. But there’s enough snow on the porch too, and it offers better opportunities for hiding, so they recover pretty soon and answer with an avalanche of their own. Noble and I are in a completely open spot and cannot run away, so most of it arrives our way. I am flattened against the snowbank and temporarily incapacitated, and by the time I manage to crawl out, the battlefield is strewn with half-exploded ordnance and Noble is wounded in the mouth. He barks out curses mixed with snow.
“What was that word you used to describe them?” I inquire. “‘Tender’? Or was it ‘charming’?”
Before Noble has a chance to answer, a girl in a blue parka gets him right on the bridge of the nose. He yelps and proceeds to prepare the snowball of vengeance, the size of a melon. While he’s thus busy I provide cover for him, picking off the hats that poke above the railing, but the blue parka girl manages to plonk him twice more. Finally Noble rises up and tosses his deadly missile at her feet. An explosion of snow and screams. The blue parka goes down like a bowling pin. I was doubtful that this thing would fly at all, so I’m amazed and humbled, and say so to Noble. He looks at me askance.
“You don’t think I hurt her too much, do you?”
“I think she only fell to flatter you,” I say. “It’s unlikely she got hit that badly.”
Noble doesn’t believe me and crawls to see for himself. “Crawls” is the wrong word here. It’s a slow word. Noble moves very fast. Well, right now he’s hampered by all the snow. By the time he reaches the porch, the girl’s already up and shaking the snow out of her hair. He asks her something from below. She laughs, shakes her head, and plops down into the snowbank next to him—so that he doesn’t feel himself awkward next to her standing. That’s how they continue the conversation—wet and plastered with snow. Like a comedic duo that just climbed out of a gigantic cream pie. But I don’t have time to observe them—someone is shelling me from behind the railing. I have to respond, even though the adversary is hidden and all my snowballs dash futilely against the porch. I wait for the someone to peek out, but she’s smart and keeps down. Which interferes with her aim, so her snowballs miss too. You might say we’re missing each other.
Then I accidentally look up and see Sphinx’s outline in the window of our dorm. It doesn’t matter that it’s just an outline, and it doesn’t matter that his mouth, invisible to me, is almost certainly smiling. I still know what he’s thinking when he looks over our snow battles. Half of my life was spent on windowsills staring down and dying from envy. So one look at his distant shadow is enough for me to lose the desire to frolic.
I toss the lovingly prepared snowball aside and crawl toward Mustang. After an eternity of being pelted from all sides I finally reach it, only to discover that Mustang is wet and slippery. Some clown had the bright idea of using it to shield himself. I try to climb in but keep slipping. Takes me three tries. Then I realize that the snow around me is so trampled that there’s no way to drive through. Mustang lists to one side, stalled irretrievably. A gloomy sight. Horse and Bubble, kindhearted Logs of the Third, offer help. They roll me up the porch ramp, and we are immediately mobbed by the girls begging me to play with them just a bit more. That’s unexpected and flattering, and I perspire anxiously all the way up to the second floor and to the doors of the dorm, recalling how they dubbed me “William Tell” and asked me to stay. And that’s considering that the yard was fairly swarming with guys. Every walker of the House plus the wildest of the wheelers.
The hallway is empty. Only Blind’s out, shuffling to and fro and kicking wet sawdust with his feet. When I wheel into the dorm, Sphinx is still by the window, inquiring testily of Alexander who Noble is cavorting with, buried up to his neck in snow, and who’s that girl running circles around Black, eyeing him salaciously.
“How is it possible, Sphinx,” Alexander says, “to see the salaciousness in the eyes from up here?”
Now warm and dry in my dressing gown, I sit over the chessboard. Sphinx is right across from me. Knitting his brow, demonstrating to the world how the little gray cells are working overtime, but in fact engrossed in the sounds filtering from the yard.
“Put the kettle on,” he tells Alexander. “They’re going to barge in soon and start whining and demanding tea. You’ll be running off your feet.”
Alexander plops the kettle on the hotplate and joins us on the bed. I have this ambush brewing, hidden in the corner of the board, and on no occasion should Sphinx notice it, so I sing the distracting Confusion Song and pointedly stare at the other corner, where a decoy attack is being prepared. B
lind is sitting with his feet on the table, yawning and rummaging in the tool chest, already half-gutted. The screams in the yard grow less and less loud, then migrate to the hallways. Squeals, thundering feet: someone’s galloping down the corridor while being destroyed with snowballs.
I feign great interest and turn toward the door, but when I glance back at the board, the inventive attack is in ruins and Sphinx is pushing my queen off with the rake-prong.
Queen in the ashtray means the game’s all but over.
“The snow’s coming here,” Alexander says.
The door screeches and here they are, white as a gaggle of snowmen: Black, Humpback, Noble, and Lary, and two girls with them, the blue parka and the purple one. They’re all in hysterics. Lary, giggling moronically, smashes a large snowball in the center of the board.
The pieces scatter. Sphinx, scowling, uses his knee to wipe his face. The scowl is quite a friendly one, but Lary thinks better of dumping the second snowball on us and with the same idiotic grin breaks it over his own head.
Black and Humpback help the girls with their heavy clothes. Coats are tossed on the windowsill, hats are taken off, and scarves unwound. The blue parka turns out to be fiery red. It’s Ginger, of course—sharp face and inky eyes. And the purple one is Fly, swarthy and toothy, covered in moles. Now that I’ve identified them I’m free to jump up and down on the pillows and screech invitingly.
They immediately plop down on the floor. Sphinx sidles up, or down, to them, while Black and Humpback proceed to bustle, putting out the plates, cups, and ashtrays. They all leave wet squelching footsteps that Alexander keeps surreptitiously running the rag over.
I slither down to the floor too. We sit in a semicircle. Most of me is under the bed, only my head is peeking out. Tea’s served. A compelling installation of wet socks on a string stretches over our heads all across the room, spreading fragrant dampness. Drying boots stick out of the heater. Ginger and Fly are both wrapped in blankets, with smoke curling upward from under the makeshift hoods.
Lary is engrossed in excavating his nostril, imagining that he’s doing it discreetly. Noble and Humpback also put on blankets. Alexander roams the room offering tea, and the boombox is burbling unobtrusively. In short, a nice evening of pleasant domesticity. Not quite the way we would have done it by ourselves, though, or even with the Old Sissy Guard, because girls are girls and their presence is somewhat limiting. It’s one thing to imagine yourself sparkling with wit, but the wit itself does not readily present itself. Only stale, belabored jokes, not worthy of being thought of, much less enunciated. Better to keep silent. So I’m silent for a spell. Breathing in and listening to others.
They’re rehashing the snow battle. Can’t seem to get enough of it. Ginger’s bare feet peek from under the blanket. The feet are milky white and scratched, the curled-up toes move when she speaks. Fly makes faces, sways, and giggles. Then she chokes on the smoke and sweeps the corner of the blanket off her head, so we now see her sharp teeth and the metal rings in her ears, five in each. Eyebrows dusted with glitter. She looks like a thieving ragamuffin. Maybe because she constantly pouts, or maybe because she keeps flaring her nostrils. Takes no great leap of imagination to picture her doing something like stealing horses. Also, she talks too fast. Even for me.
Ginger is silent. Either smoking or gnawing at her nails. Looking at the two of them, an outside observer would say: now here’s a shy and quiet girl, and here’s a gregarious and talkative one. All nice and clear, choose whichever one suits you better. But those of us who knew them from a tender age know that it’s not so simple. Because Fly was the one who never said a single word for five straight years, from age six to age eleven. She was neither deaf nor mute, but she’d flee under the bed anytime anyone tried to approach her. Whereas Ginger had been at one time dubbed Satan by the counselors. Not even I have distinguished myself with a nick like that. So she’s about as humble and mild mannered as I am. And she’s grown quieter and quieter each year.
I pull at the edge of her blanket.
“Hey, Gingie, do girls still get sent to the Cages?”
She leans closer to me.
“Of course. But to the ones in our hallway, not those on the counselors’ floor. Godmother never allows Cases near us. They’re always drunk and tend to let their hands wander too much. So she does the honors herself. Locks us in and lets us out. She’s the only one with the keys.”
“Wow,” I say. “That sounds just like her.”
Counselor Godmother is the House’s Iron Lady. Looking at her you start imagining that she must be jangling and clanking as she walks, like the Tin Man. But the only sound you actually hear is those heels clicking.
Lary inquires about Blondie, the new counselor. Girls’ counselors are a favorite topic with Logs, and they absolutely adore Blondie. Ever since they first laid their eyes on her.
“Still feeling out the place,” Fly says. “She’s kinda cute, but on the nervous side. I don’t think she’s going to take an entire shift. Running errands for others is just about her speed. And that hair, it’s real, imagine that. A natural strawberry blonde. Gorgeous shade.”
Lary swallows and lets out a wistful sigh. As far as I’m concerned, blondes like that are better off being buried alive. Well, this one might be cute, I wouldn’t know. I’ve only seen her twice, and both times I could only look at the watch she had. Huge thing, the size of a large onion. Ticking like a bomb. Disgusting. So her hair was the last thing on my mind.
“Our Tubby is totally in love with her,” Sphinx says. “I was walking him down on the first. And she’d just left Shark’s office, straight at us. Tubby tossed himself out of his wheelchair and made a beeline for her. At a ridiculous speed. No one could’ve expected that.”
“And?” Fly says, opening her eyes wide.
“Nothing,” Sphinx scowls. “Gummed her a bit, that’s all. But you should have heard the screams.”
We are silent for a while, out of respect for Tubby’s broken heart. Ginger has emerged from under her veil. Humpback’s red shirt and her own fiery hair—the impression here is of a flaming torch. You just can’t go and set black eyes into a face like that. It’s scary. The skin does not exactly crawl, but definitely feels scratchy.
Fly keeps turning her head this way and that, looking for something.
“Where’s your crow? I heard you had a crow living here. I’d love to take a look!”
Humpback goes to take out Nanette. The poor bird, already tucked in for the night.
“How’s Mermaid doing?” I ask. “You know, the small one with the longest hair,” I clarify, because I’m still not sure about the nick.
“Ask her,” Fly says, pointing at Ginger. “They’re from the same room. The Dreadful Dorm.”
Ginger’s eyebrows jerk up. She’s not looking at Fly; her chin is buried in her knees, finger sweeping the lips distractedly.
“I mean, distinctive,” Fly backpedals. “The most unusual, I mean . . .”
Humpback returns with sleepy Nanette in an irritated torpor and parades her before the girls. Fly carefully pets the gunmetal feathers. The bird startles and pulls the translucent film over her eyes. Were she in a bit more conscious state, the enemy’s fingers already would have been pecked to a bloody mess.
“Isn’t she a darling . . . Beau-utiful . . . ,” Fly coos obliviously. “So cute.”
The cute darling looks daggers and is already starting to wheeze threateningly, so Humpback whisks her away back to the perch.
“Such a sweetie,” Fly persists. “I could’ve just eaten her up!”
“Before you do, make sure you have a spare set of eyes handy,” Black says. “It’s not a darling at all, really.”
“Nah,” Fly pouts, not taking her eyes off departing Nanette. “She’s a sweet girl, she can’t be a meanie.”
“So, how’s Mermaid?” I ask again. “I had a little talk with her yesterday.”
Ginger looks at my vest and smiles.
“Mermaid’
s doing fine,” she says. “She’s one of those people . . . Well, maybe they only look like that, I don’t know. But anyway, they’re rare, those people who never have any problems. Or at least behave as if they don’t have any.”
We all look at Alexander. He blushes and gets tangled in the coffeemaker’s electric cord. We turn away, giving him time to untangle.
I have a strange aftertaste in my mouth after this exchange. As if I, too, know how she is, the girl who creates the most wonderful vests in the world and then gives them away to the first stranger she meets. This conversation calls for a smoke. Ginger and I light up in unison, except her cigarette, unlike mine, gets six lighters thrust at it from all directions, and the most insistent of them belongs to Noble, and I suddenly realize that he’s been kind of strangely bright red of color, and the looks he’s been giving Ginger are also strange. Probing and fiery. Predatory, one might even say. It is so obvious that I grow uncomfortable, and throw a sideways glance at Sphinx: Has he noticed yet?
Well, if he has, he’s not letting it show. He’s twirling the ashtray with the rake, all sleepy like. He and Wolf always looked like that when something piqued their interest. Deceptively relaxed.
“I tried my best to protect the ear.” Lary wades in with a non sequitur. “And still it got walloped. A nasty one, too. Hope it’s not going to get infected like the last time.”
He feels his ear and then examines the fingers. As if, when he touched it, the infection could have fallen out.
“You don’t look like your ears would be giving you trouble,” Fly notes kindly.
Lary considers this. Should he take it as a compliment?
We discuss the latest Gallery. The actual paintings there could be counted on one hand, but Lizard from the Third exhibited himself, painted. That was a sight to behold. Looking at Lizard is a scary proposition even under normal circumstances. But body-painted . . . Talking about the Gallery shakes Smoker out of his funk and he tells us about a couple of exhibitions he happened to attend back in the Outsides. Then we discuss the Fortune-Telling Salon. I worked there for a week as Madame Zazu, fortune-teller and palmist extraordinaire, and can impart some inside info. Fly and Lary proceed to gossip about the girls’ counselors—that is, Fly gossips while Lary nods excitedly. Ginger and I get into an argument about Richard Bach, also in a gossipy way. We both agree that he isn’t too bad as a writer, but as far as women in his life are concerned, he behaved like a complete bastard. Take, for example, his search for the One, where the aspiring girls more or less had to pass a private pilot’s exam at some point.