Room

  The cartoons are over already, kids are coloring eggs for the Runaway Bunny. I look at each different kid and I say in my head: You’re real.

  “The Easter Bunny, not the Runaway Bunny,” says Ma. “Me and Paul used to—when we were kids, the Easter Bunny brought chocolate eggs in the night and hid them all around our backyard, under bushes and in holes in the trees, even in the hammock.”

  “Did he take your teeth?” I ask.

  “No, it was all for free.” Her face is flat.

  I don’t think the Easter Bunny knows where Room is, anyway we don’t have bushes and trees, they’re outside Door.

  This is a pretty happy day because of the heat and the food, but Ma’s not happy. Probably she misses Plant.

  I choose Phys Ed, it’s Hiking, where we walk hand in hand on Track and call out what we can see. “Look, Ma, a waterfall.”

  After a minute I say, “Look, a wildebeest.”

  “Wow.”

  “Your turn.”

  “Oh, look,” says Ma, “a snail.”

  I bend down to see it. “Look, a giant bulldozer knocking down a skyscraper.”

  “Look,” she says, “a flamingo flying by.”

  “Look, a zombie all drooling.”

  “Jack!” That makes her smile for half a second.

  Then we march faster and sing “This Land Is Your Land.”

  Then we put Rug down again and she’s our flying carpet, we zoom over the North Pole.

  Ma picks Corpse, where we lie extra still, I forget and scratch my nose so she wins. Next I choose Trampoline but she says she doesn’t want to do any more Phys Ed.

  “You just do the commentary and I do the boinging.”

  “No, sorry, I’m going back to Bed for a bit.”

  She’s not much fun today.

  I pull Eggsnake out from Under Bed real slow, I think I can hear him hiss with his needle tongue, Greetingssssss. I stroke him especially his eggs that are cracked or dented. One crumbles off in my fingers, I go make glue with a pinch of flour and stick the pieces on a ruled paper for a jaggedy mountain. I want to show Ma but her eyes are closed.

  I go in Wardrobe and play I’m a coal miner. I find a gold nugget under my pillow, he’s actually Tooth. He’s not alive and he didn’t bend, he broke, but we don’t have to put him down Toilet. He’s made of Ma, her dead spit.

  I stick my head out and Ma’s eyes open. “What are you doing?” I ask her.

  “Just thinking.”

  I can think and do interesting stuff at the same time. Can’t she?

  She gets up to make lunch, it’s a box of macaroni all orangey, delicioso.

  Afterwards I play Icarus with his wings melting. Ma’s washing up real slow. I wait for her to be done so she can play but she doesn’t want to play, she sits in Rocker and just rocks.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Still thinking.” After a minute, she asks, “What’s in the pillowcase?”

  “It’s my backpack.” I’ve tied two corners of it around my neck. “It’s for going in Outside when we get rescued.” I’ve put in Tooth and Jeep and Remote and an underwear for me and one for Ma and socks too and Scissors and the four apples for if we get hungry. “Is there water?” I ask her.

  Ma nods. “Rivers, lakes . . .”

  “No, but for drinking, is there a faucet?”

  “Lots of faucets.”

  I’m glad I don’t have to bring a bottle of water because my backpack’s pretty heavy now, I have to hold it at my neck so it doesn’t squish my talking.

  Ma’s rocking and rocking. “I used to dream about being rescued,” she says. “I wrote notes and hid them in the trash bags, but nobody ever found them.”

  “You should have sent them down Toilet.”

  “And when we scream, nobody hears us,” she says. “I was flashing the light on and off half the night last night, then I thought, nobody’s looking.”

  “But—”

  “Nobody’s going to rescue us.”

  I don’t say anything. And then I say, “You don’t know everything there is.”

  Her face is the strangest I ever saw.

  I’d rather she was Gone for the day than all not-Ma like this.

  I get all my books down from Shelf and read them, Pop-Up Airport and Nursery Rhymes and Dylan the Digger who’s my favorite and The Runaway Bunny but I stop halfway and save that for Ma, I read some Alice instead, I skip the scary Duchess.

  Ma finally stops rocking.

  “Can I have some?”

  “Sure,” she says, “come here.”

  I sit in her lap and lift up her T-shirt and I have lots for a long time.

  “All done?” she says in my ear.

  “Yeah.”

  “Listen, Jack. Are you listening?”

  “I’m always listening.”

  “We have to get out of here.”

  I stare at her.

  “And we have to do it all by ourselves.”

  But she said we were like in a book, how do people in a book escape from it?

  “We need to figure out a plan.” Her voice is all high.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, do I? I’ve been trying to think of one for seven years.”

  “We could smash down the walls.” But we don’t have a jeep to smash them down or a bulldozer even. “We could . . . blow up Door.”

  “With what?”

  “The cat did it on Tom and Jerry—”

  “It’s great that you’re brainstorming,” says Ma, “but we need an idea that’ll actually work.”

  “A really big explosion,” I tell her.

  “If it’s really big, it’ll blow us up too.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. I do another brainstorm. “Oh, Ma! We could . . . wait till Old Nick comes one night and you could say, ‘Oh, look at this yummy cake we made, have a big slice of our yummy Easter cake,’ and actually it would be poison.’

  Ma shakes her head. “If we make him sick, he still won’t give us the code.”

  I think so hard it hurts.

  “Any other ideas?”

  “You say no to all of them.”

  “Sorry. Sorry. I’m just trying to be realistic.”

  “Which ideas are realistic?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Ma licks her lips. “I keep obsessing about the moment the door opens, if we timed it exactly right for that split second, could we rush past him?”

  “Oh yeah, that’s a cool idea.”

  “If you could slip out, even, while I go for his eyes—” Ma shakes her head. “No way.”

  “Yes way.”

  “He’d grab you, Jack, he’d grab you before you got halfway up the yard and—” She stops talking.

  After a minute I say, “Any other ideas?”

  “Just the same ones going around and around like rats on a wheel,” says Ma through her teeth.

  Why rats go on a wheel? Is it like a Ferris at a fair?

  “We should do a cunning trick,” I tell her.

  “Like what?”

  “Like, maybe like when you were a student and he tricked you into his truck with his dog that wasn’t a real dog.”

  Ma lets out her breath. “I know you’re trying to help, but maybe you could hush for a while now so I can think?”

  But we were thinking, we were thinking hard together. I get up and go eat the banana with the big brown bit, the brown is the sweetest.

  “Jack!” Ma’s eyes are all huge and she’s talking extra fast. “What you said about the dog—actually that was a brilliant idea. What if we pretend you’re ill?”

  I’m confused, then I see. “Like the dog that wasn’t?”

  “Exactly. When he comes in—I could tell him you’re really sick.”

  “What kind of sick?”

  “Maybe a really, really bad cold,” says Ma. “Try coughing a lot.”

  I cough and cough and she listens. “Hmm,” she says.

  I don’t think I’m very good a
t it. I cough louder, it feels like my throat’s going to rip.

  Ma shakes her head. “Forget the cough.”

  “I can do it even bigger—”

  “You’re doing a great job, but it still sounds pretend.”

  I let out the biggest horriblest cough ever.

  “I don’t know,” says Ma, “maybe coughing is just too hard to fake. Anyway—” She slaps her head. “I’m so dumb.”

  “No you’re not.” I rub where she hit.

  “It has to be something you picked up from Old Nick, d’you see? He’s the only one who brings in the germs, and he hasn’t had a cold. No, we need. ..something in the food?” She looks all fierce at the bananas. “E. coli? Would that give you a fever?”

  Ma’s not meant to ask me things, she’s meant to know.

  “A really bad fever, so you can’t talk or wake up properly . . .”

  “Why I can’t talk?”

  “It’ll make the pretending easier if you don’t. Yeah,” says Ma, her eyes all shiny, “I’ll tell him, ‘You’ve got to take Jack to the hospital in your truck so the doctors can give him the right medicine.’ ”

  “Me riding in the brown truck?”

  Ma nods. “To the hospital.”

  I can’t believe it. But then I think about the medical planet. “I don’t want to be cutted open.”

  “Oh, the doctors won’t do anything to you for real, because you won’t actually have anything wrong with you, remember?” She strokes my shoulder. “It’s just a trick for our Great Escape. Old Nick will carry you into the hospital, and the first doctor you see—or nurse, whatever—you shout, ‘Help!’ ”

  “You can shout it.”

  I think maybe Ma didn’t hear me. Then she says, “I won’t be at the hospital.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Right here in Room.”

  I have a better idea. “You could be pretend-sick too, like that time we had diarrhea both at the same time, then he’d bring both of us in his truck.”

  Ma chews her lip. “He won’t buy it. I know it’ll be really weird to go on your own, but I’ll be talking to you in your head every minute, I promise. Remember when Alice was falling down, down, down, she was talking to Dinah her cat in her head all the time?”

  Ma won’t be in my head really. My tummy hurts just thinking about it. “I don’t like this plan.”

  “Jack—”

  “It’s a bad idea.”

  “Actually—”

  “I’m not going in Outside without you.”

  “Jack—”

  “No way Jose no way Jose no way Jose.”

  “OK, calm down. Forget it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, there’s no point trying this if you’re not ready.”

  She still sounds cranky.

  It’s April today so I get to blow up a balloon. There’s three left, red, yellow, and another yellow, I choose yellow so there’ll still be one of each red or yellow for next month. I blow it up and let it zoom around Room lots of times, I like the spluttery noise. It’s hard to decide when to tie the knot because after, the balloon won’t zoom anymore, just slow flying. But I need to tie the knot to play Balloon Tennis. So I let it go splutterzoom a lot and blow it up three times more, then I tie the knot, with my finger in it by accident. When it’s tied right, Ma and me play Balloon Tennis, I win five times of seven.

  She says, “Would you like some?”

  “The left, please,” I say, getting onto Bed.

  There isn’t very much but it’s yummy.

  I think I snooze for a while but then Ma’s talking in my ear. “Remember how they crawled through the dark tunnel away from the Nazis? One at a time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s how we’ll do it, when you’re ready.”

  “What tunnel?” I look all around.

  “Like the tunnel, not an actual one. What I’m saying is, the prisoners had to be really brave and go one at a time.”

  I shake my head.

  “It’s the only workable plan.” Ma’s eyes are too shiny. “You’re my brave Prince JackerJack. You’ll go to the hospital first, see, then you’ll come back with the police—”

  “Will they arrest me?”

  “No no, they’ll help. You’ll bring them back here to rescue me and we’ll be together again always.”

  “I can’t rescue,” I tell her, “I’m only five.”

  “But you’ve got superpowers,” Ma tells me. “You’re the only one who can do this. Will you?”

  I don’t know what to say but she’s waiting and waiting.

  “OK.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  She gives me an enormous kiss.

  We get out of Bed and have a tub of mandarins each.

  Our plan has problem bits, Ma keeps thinking of them and saying oh no, but then she figures out a way.

  “The police won’t know the secret code to get you out,” I tell her.

  “They’ll think of something.”

  “What?”

  She rubs her eye. “I don’t know, a blowtorch?”

  “What’s—?”

  “It’s a tool with flame coming out, it could burn the door right open.”

  “We could make one,” I tell her, jumping up and down. “We could, we could take the vitamin bottle with the Dragon head and put him on Stove with the power on till he’s on fire, and—”

  “And burn ourselves to death,” says Ma, not friendly.

  “But—”

  “Jack, this is not a game. Let’s go over the plan again . . .”

  I remember all the parts but I keep getting them the wrong way around.

  “Look, it’s like on Dora,” says Ma, “when she goes to one place and then a second place to get to the third place. For us it’s Truck, hospital, Police. Say it?”

  “Truck, Hospital, Police.”

  “Or maybe it’s five steps, actually. Sick, Truck, Hospital, Police, Save Ma.” She waits.

  “Truck—”

  “Sick.”

  “Sick,” I say.

  “Hospital—no, sorry, Truck. Sick, Truck—”

  “Sick, Truck, Hospital, Save Ma.”

  “You forgot Police” she says. “Count on your fingers. Sick, Truck, Hospital, Police, Save Ma.”

  We do it over and over. We make a map of it on ruled paper with pictures, the sick one has me with my eyes closed and my tongue all hanging out, then there’s a brown pickup truck, then a person in a long white coat that means doctors, then a police car with a flashing siren, then Ma waving and smiling because of being free, with the blowtorch all fiery like a dragon. My head is tired but Ma says we have to practice the being sick bit, that’s the most important. “Because if he doesn’t believe it, none of the rest will happen. I’ve had an idea, I’m going to make your forehead really hot and let him touch it . . .”

  “No.”

  “It’s OK, I won’t burn you—”

  She doesn’t understand. “No him touching me.”

  “Ah,” says Ma. “Just one time, I promise, and I’ll be right beside you.”

  I keep shaking my head.

  “Yeah, this could work,” she says, “maybe you could lie against the vent . . .” She kneels down and puts her hand in Under Bed near Bed Wall, then she frowns and says, “Not hot enough. Maybe . . . a bag of really hot water on your forehead, just before he comes? You’ll be in bed, and when we hear the door going beep beep I’ll hide the bag of water.”

  “Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter.”

  Ma looks at me. “You’re right, we have to figure out all the details so nothing messes up our plan. I’ll drop the bag of water under the bed, OK? Then when Old Nick feels your forehead it’ll be super hot. Will we try that?”

  “With the bag of water?”

  “No, just get into bed for now and practice being all floppy, like when we play Corpse.”

&nbs
p; I’m very good at that, my mouth hangs open. She pretends to be him, with a really deep voice. She puts her hand over my eyebrows and says all gruff, “Wow, that’s hot.”

  I giggle.

  “Jack.”

  “Sorry.” I lie extra still.

  We practice a lot more, then I’m sick of being pretend-sick, so Ma lets me stop.

  Dinner’s hot dogs. Ma’s hardly eating hers. “So do you remember the plan?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Tell me.”

  I swallow my end of roll. “Sick, Truck, Hospital, Police, Save Ma.”

  “Wonderful. Are you ready, then?”

  “For what?”

  “Our Great Escape. Tonight.”

  I didn’t know it’s tonight. I’m not ready. “Why is it tonight?”

  “I don’t want to wait any longer. After he cut the power —”

  “But he switched it back on last night.”

  “Yeah, after three days. And Plant was dead from the cold. And who knows what he’ll do tomorrow?” Ma stands up with her plate, she’s nearly shouting. “He looks human, but there’s nothing inside.”

  I’m confused. “Like a robot?”

  “Worse.”

  “One time there was this robot on Bob the Builder—”

  Ma butts in. “You know your heart, Jack?”

  “Bam bam.” I show her on my chest.

  “No, but your feeling bit, where you’re sad or scared or laughing or stuff?”

  That’s lower down, I think it’s in my tummy.

  “Well, he hasn’t got one.”

  “A tummy?”

  “A feeling bit,” says Ma.

  I’m looking at my tummy. “What does he have instead?”

  She shrugs. “Just a gap.”

  Like a crater? But that’s a hole where something happened. What happened?

  I still don’t understand why Old Nick being a robot means we have to do the cunning plan tonight. “Let’s do it another night.”

  “OK,” says Ma, she flops down in her chair.

  “OK?”

  “Yeah.” She rubs her forehead. “I’m sorry, Jack, I know I’m rushing you. I’ve had a long time to think this through, but it’s all new to you.”

  I nod and nod.

  “I guess another couple of days can’t make much difference. So long as I don’t let him pick another fight.” She smiles at me. “Maybe in a couple of days?”

  “Maybe when I’m six.”

  Ma’s staring at me.