Room: A Novel

Unlying

In the morning we’re eating oatmeal and I see marks. “You’re dirty on your neck.” Ma just drinks some water, the skin moves when she swallows.

Actually that’s not dirt, I don’t think.

I have a bit of oatmeal but it’s too hot, I spit it back in Meltedy Spoon. I think Old Nick put those marks on her neck. I try saying but nothing comes out. I try again. “Sorry I made Jeep fall down in the night.”

I get off my chair, Ma lets me onto her lap. “What were you trying to do?” she asks, her voice is still hoarse.

“Show him.”

“What’s that?”

“I was, I was, I was—”

“It’s OK, Jack. Slow down.”

“But Remote got snapped and you’re all mad at me.”

“Listen,” says Ma, “I couldn’t care less about the jeep.”

I blink at her. “He was my present.”

“What I’m mad about”—her voice is getting bigger and scratchier—“is that you woke him up.”

“Jeep?”

“Old Nick.”

It makes me jump that she says him out loud.

“You scared him.”

“He got scared at me?”

“He didn’t know it was you,” says Ma. “He thought I was attacking him, dropping something heavy on his head.”

I hold my mouth and my nose but the giggles fizz out.

“It’s not funny, it’s the opposite of funny.”

I see her neck again, the marks that he put on her, I’m all done giggling.

The oatmeal’s still too hot so we go back to Bed for a cuddle.

This morning it’s Dora, yippee. She’s on a boat that nearly crashes into a ship, we have to wave our arms and shout, “Watch out,” but Ma doesn’t. Ships are just TV and so is the sea except when our poos and letters arrive. Or maybe they actually stop being real the minute they get there? Alice says if she’s in the sea she can go home by the railway, that’s old-fashioned for trains. Forests are TV and also jungles and deserts and streets and skyscrapers and cars. Animals are TV except ants and Spider and Mouse, but he’s gone back now. Germs are real, and blood. Boys are TV but they kind of look like me, the me in Mirror that isn’t real either, just a picture. Sometimes I like to undo my ponytail and put all my hair over and worm my tongue through, then stick my face out to say boo.

It’s Wednesday so we wash hair, we make turbans of bubbles out of Dish Soap. I look all around Ma’s neck but not at it.

She does me a mustache, it’s too tickly so I rub it off. “What about a beard, then?” she says. She puts all bubbles on my chin for a beard.

“Ho ho ho. Is Santa a giant?”

“Ah, I guess he’s pretty big,” says Ma.

I think he must be real because he brung us the million chocolates in the box with the purple ribbon.

“I’m going to be Jack the Giant Giant Killer. I’ll be a good giant,

I’ll find all the evil ones and knock their heads off smush splat.”

We make drums different from filling up the glass jars more or waterfalling some out. I make one into a jumbo megatron transformermarine with an antigravity blaster that’s actually Wooden Spoon.

I twist around to look at the Impression: Sunrise. There’s a black boat with two tiny persons and God’s yellow face above and blurry orange light on the water and blue stuff that’s other boats I think, it’s hard to know because it’s art.

For Phys Ed Ma chooses Islands, that’s I stand on Bed and Ma puts the pillows and Rocker and chairs and Rug all folded up and Table and Trash in surprising places. I have to visit every island not twice. Rocker’s the trickiest, she’s always trying to catapult me down. Ma swims around being the Loch Ness Monster trying to eat my feet.

My go, I choose Pillowfight, but Ma says actually the foam’s starting to come out of my pillow so better do Karate instead. We always bow to respect our opponent. We go Huh and Hi-yah really fierce. One time I chop too hard and hurt Ma’s bad wrist but by accident.

She’s tired so she chooses Eye Stretch because that’s lying down side by side on Rug with arms by sides so we both fit. We look at far things like Skylight then near like noses, we have to see between them quick quick.

While Ma’s hotting up lunch I zoom poor Jeep everywhere because he can’t go on his own anymore. Remote pauses things, he freezes Ma like a robot. “Now on,” I say.

She stirs the pot again, she says, “Grub’s up.”

Vegetable soup, bluhhhhh. I blow bubbles to make it funner.

I’m not tired for nap yet so I get some books down. Ma does the voice, “Heeeeeeeeere’s Dylan!” Then she stops. “I can’t stand Dylan.” I stare at her. “He’s my friend.”

“Oh, Jack — I just can’t stand the book, OK, I don’t — it’s not that I can’t stand Dylan himself.”

“Why you can’t stand Dylan the book?”

“I’ve read it too many times.”

But when I want something I want it always, like chocolates, I never ate a chocolate too many times.

“You could read it yourself,” she says.

That’s silly, I could read all them myself, even Alice with her old-fashioned words. “I prefer when you read them.” Her eyes are all hard and shiny. Then she opens the book again. “ ‘Heeeeeeeeere’s Dylan!’ ”

Because she’s cranky I let her do The Runaway Bunny, then some Alice. My best of the songs is “Soup of the Evening,” I bet it’s not vegetable. Alice keeps being in a hall with lots of doors, one is teeny tiny, when she gets it open with the golden key there’s a garden with bright flowers and cool fountains but she’s always the wrong size. Then when she finally gets into the garden, it turns out the roses are just painted not real and she has to play croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs.

We lie down on top of Duvet. I have lots. I think Mouse just might come back if we’re really quiet but he doesn’t, Ma must have stuffed up every single hole. She’s not mean but sometimes she does mean things.

When we get up we do Scream, I crash the pan lids like cymbals. Scream goes on for ages because every time I’m starting to stop Ma screeches some more, her voice is nearly disappearing. The marks on her neck are like when I’m painting with beet juice. I think the marks are Old Nick’s fingerprints.

After, I play Telephone with toilet rolls, I like how the words boom when I talk through a fat one. Usually Ma does all the voices but this afternoon she needs to lie down and read. It’s The Da Vinci Code with the eyes of a woman peeking out, she looks like Baby Jesus’s Ma.

I call Boots and Patrick and Baby Jesus, I tell them all about my new powers now I’m five. “I can be invisible,” I whisper at my phone, “I can turn my tongue inside out and go blasting like a rocket into Outer Space.”

Ma’s eyelids are shut, how can she be reading through them?

I play Keypad, that’s I stand on my chair by Door and usually Ma says the numbers but today I have to make them up. I press them on Keypad quick quick no mistakes. The numbers don’t make Door beep open but I like the little clicks when I push them.

Dress-up is a quiet game. I put on the royal crown that’s some bits gold foil and some bits silver foil and milk carton underneath. I invent Ma a bracelet out of two socks of her tied together, one white one green.

I get down Games Box from Shelf. I measure with Ruler, each domino is nearly one inch and the checkers are a half. I make my fingers into Saint Peter and Saint Paul, they bow to each other before and do flying after each turn.

Ma’s eyes are open again. I bring her the sock bracelet, she says it’s beautiful, she puts it on right away.

“Can we play Beggar My Neighbor?”

“Give me a second,” she says. She goes to Sink and washes her face, I don’t know why because it wasn’t dirty but maybe there were germs.

I beggar her twice and she beggars me once, I hate losing. Then Gin Rummy and Go Fish, I win mostly. Then we just play with the cards, dancing and fighting and stuff. Jack of Diamonds is my favorite and his friends the other Jacks.

“Look.” I point to Watch. “05:01, we can have dinner.”

It’s a hot dog each, yum.

For TV I go in Rocker but Ma sits on Bed with Kit, she’s putting the hem back up on her brown dress with pink bits. We watch the medical planet where doctors and nurses cut holes in persons to pull the germs out. The persons are asleep not dead. The doctors don’t bite the thread like Ma, they use super sharp daggers and after, they sew the persons up like Frankenstein.

When the commercials come on Ma asks me to go over and press mute. There’s a man in a yellow helmet drilling a hole in a street, he holds his forehead and makes a face. “Is he hurting?” I ask.

She looks up from sewing. “He must have a headache from that noisy drill.”

We can’t hear the drill because it’s on mute. The TV man’s at a sink taking a pill from a bottle, next he’s smiling and throwing a ball on a boy. “Ma, Ma.”

“What?” She’s doing a knot.

“That’s our bottle. Were you looking? Were you looking at the man with the headache?”

“No.”

“The bottle where he took the pill, that’s the exact one we’ve got, the killers.”

Ma stares at the TV, but it’s showing a car speeding around a mountain now.

“No, before,” I say. “He actually had our bottle of killers.”

“Well, maybe it was the same kind as ours, but it’s not our one.”

“Yeah it is.”

“No, there’s lots of them.”

“Where?”

Ma looks at me, then back at her dress, she pulls at the hem. “Well, our bottle is right here on Shelf, and the rest are . . .”

“In TV?” I ask.

She’s staring at the threads and winding them around the little cards to fit back in Kit.

“You know what?” I’m bouncing. “You know what that means? He must go in TV.” The medical planet’s come back on but I’m not even watching. “Old Nick,” I say, so she won’t think I mean the man in the yellow helmet. “When he’s not here, in the daytime, you know what? He actually goes in TV. That’s where he got our killers in a store and brung them here.”

“Brought,” says Ma, standing up. “Brought, not brung. It’s time for bed.” She starts singing “Indicate the Way to My Abode” but I don’t join in.

I don’t think she understands how amazing this is. I think about it right through putting on my sleep T-shirt and brushing my teeth and even when I’m having some on Bed. I take my mouth back, I say, “How come we never see him in TV?”

Ma yawns and sits up.

“All the times we’re watching, we never see him, how come?”

“He’s not there.”

“But the bottle, how did he get it?”

“I don’t know.”

The way she says it, it’s strange. I think she’s pretending. “You have to know. You know everything.”

“Look, it really doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter and I do mind.” I’m nearly shouting.

“Jack—”

Jack what? What does Jack mean?

Ma leans back on the pillows. “It’s very hard to explain.”

I think she can explain, she just won’t. “You can, because I’m five now.”

Her face is turned toward Door. “Where our bottle of pills used to be, right, is a store, that’s where he got them, then he brought them here for Sunday treat.”

“A store in TV?” I look up at Shelf to check the bottle’s there. “But the killers are real—”

“It’s a real store.” Ma rubs her eye.

“How—?”

“OK, OK, OK.”

Why is she shouting?

“Listen. What we see on TV is . . . it’s pictures of real things.”

That’s the most astonishing I ever heard.

Ma’s got her hand over her mouth.

“Dora’s real for real?”

She takes her hand away. “No, sorry. Lots of TV is made-up pictures — like, Dora’s just a drawing — but the other people, the ones with faces that look like you and me, they’re real.”

“Actual humans?”

She nods. “And the places are real too, like farms and forests and airplanes and cities . . .”

“Nah.” Why is she tricking me? “Where would they fit?”

“Out there,” says Ma. “Outside.” She jerks her head back.

“Outside Bed Wall?” I stare at it.

“Outside Room.” She points the other way now, at Stove Wall, her finger goes around in a circle.

“The stores and forests zoom around in Outer Space?”

“No. Forget it, Jack, I shouldn’t have—”

“Yes you should.” I shake her knee hard, I say, “Tell me.”

“Not tonight, I can’t think of the right words to explain.”

Alice says she can’t explain herself because she’s not herself, she knows who she was this morning but she’s changed several times since then.

Ma suddenly stands up and gets the killers down off Shelf, I think she’s checking are they the same as the ones in TV but she opens the bottle and eats one then another one.

“Will you find the words tomorrow?”

“It’s eight forty-nine, Jack, would you just go to bed?” She ties the trash bag and puts it beside Door.

I lie down in Wardrobe but I’m wide awake.

Today is one of the days when Ma is Gone.

She won’t wake up properly. She’s here but not really. She stays in Bed with the pillows on her head.

Silly Penis is standing up, I squish him down.

I eat my hundred cereal and I stand on my chair to wash the bowl and Meltedy Spoon. It’s very quiet when I switch off the water. I wonder did Old Nick come in the night. I don’t think he did because the trash bag is still by Door, but maybe he did only he didn’t take the trash? Maybe Ma’s not just Gone. Maybe he squished her neck even harder and now she’s—

I go up really close and listen till I hear breath. I’m just one inch away, my hair touches Ma’s nose and she puts her hand up over her face so I step back.

I don’t have a bath on my own, I just get dressed.

There’s hours and hours, hundreds of them.

Ma gets up to pee but no talking, with her face all blank. I already put a glass of water beside Bed but she just gets back under Duvet.

I hate when she’s Gone, but I like that I get to watch TV all day. I put it on really quiet at first and make it a bit louder at a time. Too much TV might turn me into a zombie but Ma’s like a zombie today and she’s not watching even. There’s Bob the Builder and Wonder Pets! and Barney. For each I go up to touch hello. Barney and his friends do lots of hugs, I run to get in the middle but sometimes I’m too late. Today it’s about a fairy that sneaks in at night and turns old teeth into money. I want Dora but she doesn’t come.

Thursday means laundry, but I can’t do it all myself and Ma’s still lying on the sheets anyway.

When I’m hungry again I check Watch but he only says 09:47. Cartoons are over so I watch football and the planet where people win prizes. The puffy-hair woman is on her red couch talking to a man who used to be a golf star. There’s another planet where women hold up necklaces and say how exquisite they are. “Suckers,” Ma always says when she sees that planet. She doesn’t say anything today, she doesn’t notice I’m watching and watching and my brain is starting to be stinky.

How can TV be pictures of real things?

I think about them all floating around in Outside Space outside the walls, the couch and the necklaces and the bread and the killers and the airplanes and all the shes and hes, the boxers and the man with one leg and the puffy-hair woman, they’re floating past Skylight. I wave to them, but there’s skyscrapers as well and cows and ships and trucks, it’s crammed out there, I count all the stuff that might crash into Room. I can’t breathe right, I have to count my teeth instead, left to right on the top then right to left on the bottom, then backwards, twenty every time but I still think maybe I’m counting wrong.

When it’s 12:04 it can be lunch so I cut a can of baked beans open, I’m careful. I wonder would Ma wake up if I cutted my hand and screamed help? I never had beans cold before. I eat nine, then I’m not hungry. I put the rest in a tub for not waste. Some are stuck to the can at the bottom, I pour water in. Maybe Ma will get up and scrub it later. Maybe she’ll be hungry, she’ll say, “Oh Jack, how thoughtful of you to save me beans in a tub.”

I measure more things with Ruler but it’s hard to add up the numbers on my own. I do him end over end and he’s an acrobat of a circus. I play with Remote, I point him at Ma and whisper, “Wake up,” but she doesn’t. Balloon is all squishy, she goes for a ride on Prune Juice Bottle up near Skylight, they make the light all brownly sparkly. They’re scared of Remote because of his sharp end, so I put him in Wardrobe and fold the doors shut. I tell all the things it’s OK because Ma will be back tomorrow. I read the five books all myself only just bits of Alice. Mostly I just sit.

I don’t do Scream because of disturbing Ma. I think it’s probably OK to skip one day.

Then I switch the TV on again and wiggle Bunny, he makes the planets a bit less fuzzy but only a bit. It’s racing cars, I like to see them go super fast but it’s not very interesting after they do the oval about a hundred times. I want to wake Ma up and ask about Outside with the actual humans and things all zooming around, but she’d be mad. Or maybe she wouldn’t switch on at all even if I shake her. So I don’t. I go up very close, half her face is showing and her neck. The marks are purple now.

I’m going to kick Old Nick till I break his butt. I’ll zap Door open with Remote and whiz into Outside Space and get everything at the real stores and bring it back to Ma.

I cry a bit but no noise.

I watch a show of weather and one of enemies are besieging a castle, the good guys are building a barricade so the door won’t open. I nibble my finger, Ma can’t tell me to stop. I wonder how much of my brain is gooey yet and how much is still OK. I think I might throw up like when I was three and had diarrhea too. What if I throw up all over Rug, how will I wash her on my own?

I look at her stain from when I got born. I kneel down and stroke, it feels sort of warm and scratchy like the rest of Rug, no different.

Ma’s never Gone more than one day. I don’t know what I do if I wake up tomorrow and she’s still Gone.

Then I’m hungry, I have a banana even though it’s a bit green.

Dora is a drawing in TV but she’s my real friend, that’s confusing. Jeep is actually real, I can feel him with my fingers. Superman is just TV. Trees are TV but Plant is real, oh, I forgot to water her. I carry her from Dresser to Sink and do that right away. I wonder did she eat Ma’s bit of fish.

Skateboards are TV and so are girls and boys except Ma says they’re actual, how can they be when they’re so flat? Ma and me could make a barricade, we could shove Bed against Door so it doesn’t open, won’t he get a shock, ha ha. Let me in, he’s shouting, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down. Grass is TV and so is fire, but it could come in Room for real if I hot the beans and the red jumps onto my sleeve and burns me up. I’d like to see that but not it happen. Air’s real and water only in Bath and Sink, rivers and lakes are TV, I don’t know about the sea because if it whizzed around Outside it would make everything wet. I want to shake Ma and ask her if the sea is real. Room is real for real, but maybe Outside is too only it’s got a cloak of invisibility on like Prince JackerJack in the story? Baby Jesus is TV I think except in the painting with his Ma and his cousin and his Grandma, but God is real looking in Skylight with his yellow face, only not today, there’s only gray.

I want to be in Bed with Ma. Instead I sit on Rug with my hand just on the bump of her foot under Duvet. My arm gets tired so I drop it down for a while then put it back. I roll up the end of Rug and let her flop open again, I do that hundreds of times.

When it gets dark I try and eat more baked beans but they’re disgusting. I have some bread and peanut butter instead. I open Freezer and put my face in beside the bags of peas and spinach and horrible green beans, I keep it there till I’m numb even my eyelids. Then I jump out and shut the door and rub my cheeks to warm them up. I can feel them with my hands but I can’t feel them feeling my hands on them, it’s weird.

It’s dark in Skylight now, I hope God will put his silver face in.

I get into my sleep T-shirt. I wonder am I dirty because I didn’t have a bath, I try to smell myself. In Wardrobe I lie down in Blanket but I’m cold. I forgot to put up Thermostat today, that’s why, I only just remembered, but I can’t do it now it’s night.

I want some very much, I didn’t have any all day. The right even, but I’d rather the left. If I could get in with Ma and have some — but she might push me away and that would be worse.

What if I’m in Bed with her and Old Nick comes? I don’t know if it’s nine yet, it’s too dark for seeing Watch.

I sneak into Bed, extra slow so Ma won’t notice. I just lie near. If I hear the beep beep I can jump back in Wardrobe quick quick.

What if he comes and Ma won’t wake up, will he be even more madder? Will he make worse marks on her?

I stay awake so I can hear him come.

He doesn’t come but I stay awake.

The trash bag is still beside Door. Ma got up before me this morning and unknotted it and put in the beans she scraped out of the can. If the bag’s still here, I guess that means he didn’t come, that’s two nights he didn’t, yippee.

Friday means Mattress time. We flip her over front to back and sideways as well so she doesn’t get bumpy, she’s so heavy I have to use all my muscles and when she flomps down she knocks me onto Rug. I see the brown mark on Mattress from when I came out of Ma’s tummy the first time. Next we have a dusting race, dust is tiny invisible pieces of our skins that we don’t need anymore because we grow new ones like snakes. Ma sneezes really high like an opera star we heard one time in TV.

We do our grocery list, we can’t decide about Sundaytreat. “Let’s ask for candy,” I say. “Not even chocolate. Some kind of candy we never had before.”

“Some really sticky kind, so you’ll end up with teeth like mine?”

I don’t like when Ma does sarcasm.

Now we’re reading sentences out of no-pictures books, this one’s The Shack with a spooky house and all white snow. “ ‘Since then,’ ” I read, “ ‘he and I have been, as the kids say these days, hangin’ out, sharing a coffee — or for me a chai tea, extra hot with soy.’ ”

“Excellent,” says Ma, “only soy should rhyme with boy.”

Persons in books and TV are always thirsty, they have beer and juice and champagne and lattes and all sorts of liquids, sometimes they click their glasses on each other’s glasses when they’re happy but they don’t break them. I read the line again, it’s still confusing. “Who’s the he and the I, are they the kids?”

“Hmm,” says Ma, reading over my shoulder, “I think the kids means kids in general.”

“What’s in general?”

“Lots of kids.”

I try and see them, the lots, all playing together. “Actual human ones?”

Ma doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then, “Yeah,” very quiet. So it was true, everything she said.

The marks are still there on her neck, I wonder if they’ll ever go away.

In the night she’s flashing, it wakes me in Bed. Lamp on, I count five. Lamp off, I count one. Lamp on, I count two. Lamp off, I count two. I do a groan.

“Just a bit more.” She’s still staring up at Skylight that’s all black.

There’s no trash bag beside Door, that means he must have been here when I was asleep. “Please, Ma.”

“In a minute.”

“It hurts my eyes.”

She leans over Bed and kisses me beside my mouth, she puts Duvet over my face. The light’s still flashing but darker.

After a while she comes back into Bed and gives me some for getting back to sleep.

On Saturday Ma makes me three braids for a change, they feel funny. I wave my face to whack myself with them.

I don’t watch the cartoon planet this morning, I choose a bit of a gardening and a fitness and a news, and everything I see I say, “Ma, is that real?” and she says yeah, except one bit about a movie with werewolves and a woman bursting like a balloon is just special effects, that’s drawing on computers.

Lunch is a can of chickpea curry and rice as well.

I’d like to do an extra big Scream but we can’t on weekends.

Most of the afternoon we play Cat’s Cradle, we can do the Candles and the Diamonds and the Manger and the Knitting Needles and we keep practicing the Scorpion except Ma’s fingers always end up stuck.

Dinner is mini pizzas, one each plus one to share. Then we watch a planet where persons are wearing lots of frilly clothes and huge white hair. Ma says they’re real but they’re pretending to be people who died hundreds of years ago. It’s a sort of game but it doesn’t sound much fun.

She switches the TV off and sniffs. “I can still smell that curry from lunch.”

“Me too.”

“It tasted good but it’s nasty the way it lingers.”

“Mine tasted nasty too,” I tell her.

She laughs. The marks on her neck are getting less, they’re greenish and yellowish.

“Can I have a story?”

“Which one?”

“One you never told me before.”

Ma smiles at me. “I think at this point you know everything I know. The Count of Monte Cristo?”

“I’ve heard that millions of times.”

“GulliJack in Lilliput?”

“Zillions.”

“Nelson on Robben Island?”

“Then he got out after twenty-seven years and became the government.”

“Goldilocks?”

“Too scary.”

“The bears only growl at her,” says Ma.

“Still.”

“Princess Diana?”

“Should have worn her seat belt.”

“See, you know them all.” Ma puffs her breath. “Hang on, there’s one about a mermaid . . .”

“The Little Mermaid.”

“No, a different one. This mermaid is sitting on the rocks one evening, combing her hair, when a fisherman creeps up and catches her in his net.”

“To fry her for his dinner?”

“No, no, he brings her home to his cottage and she has to marry him,” says Ma. “He takes away her magic comb so she can’t ever go back into the sea. So after a while the mermaid has a baby—”

“—called JackerJack,” I tell her.

“That’s right. But whenever the fisherman’s out fishing she looks around the cottage, and one day she finds where he’s hidden her comb—”

“Ha ha.”

“And she runs away to the rocks, and slips down into the sea.”

“No.”

Ma looks at me close. “You don’t like this story?”

“She shouldn’t be gone.”

“It’s OK.” She takes the tear out of my eye with her finger. “I forgot to say, of course she takes her baby, JackerJack, with her, he’s all knotted up in her hair. And when the fisherman comes back, the cottage is empty, and he never sees them again.”

“Does he drown?”

“The fisherman?”

“No, JackerJack, under the water.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” says Ma, “he’s half merman, remember? He can breathe air or water, whichever.” She goes to look at Watch, it’s 08:27.

I’m lying in Wardrobe for ages, but I don’t get sleepy. We do songs and prayers. “Just one nursery rhyme,” I say, “please?” I pick “The House That Jack Built” because it’s the longest.

Ma’s voice is yawny. “ ‘This is the man all tattered and torn—’ ”

“ ‘That kissed the maiden all forlorn—’ ”

“ ‘That milked the cow with the crumpled horn—’ ”

I steal a few lines in a hurry. “ ‘That tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that—’ ”

Beep beep.

I shut my mouth tight.

The first thing Old Nick says I don’t hear.

“Mmm, sorry about that,” says Ma, “we had curry. I was wondering, actually, if there was any chance—” Her voice is all high. “If it might be possible sometime to put in an extractor fan or something?”

He doesn’t say anything. I think they’re sitting on Bed.

“Just a little one,” she says.

“Huh, there’s an idea,” says Old Nick. “Let’s start all the neighbors wondering why I’m cooking up something spicy in my workshop.” I think that’s sarcasm again.

“Oh. Sorry,” says Ma, “I didn’t think—”

“Why don’t I stick a flashing neon arrow on the roof while I’m at it?”

I wonder how an arrow flashes.

“I’m really sorry,” says Ma, “I didn’t realize that the smell, that it, that a fan would—”

“I don’t think you appreciate how good you’ve got it here,” says Old Nick. “Do you?”

Ma doesn’t say anything.

“Aboveground, natural light, central air, it’s a cut above some places, I can tell you. Fresh fruit, toiletries, what have you, click your fingers and it’s there. Plenty girls would thank their lucky stars for a setup like this, safe as houses. Specially with the kid—”

Is that me?

“No drunk drivers to worry about,” he says, “drug pushers, perverts . . .”

Ma butts in very fast. “I shouldn’t have asked for a fan, it was dumb of me, everything’s fine.”

“OK, then.”

Nobody says anything for a little bit.

I count my teeth, I keep getting it wrong, nineteen then twenty then nineteen again. I bite my tongue till it hurts.

“Of course there’s wear and tear, that’s par for the course.” His voice is moved, I think he’s over near Bath now. “This seam’s buckling, I’ll have to sand and reseal. And see here, the underlayment’s showing through.”

“We are careful,” says Ma, very quietly.

“Not careful enough. Cork’s not meant for high traffic, I was planning on one sedentary user.”

“Are you coming to bed?” asks Ma in that funny high voice.

“Let me get my shoes off.” There’s a sort of grunt, I hear something drop on Floor. “You’re the one hassling me about renovations before I’m here two minutes . . .”

Lamp goes out.

Old Nick squeaks Bed, I count to ninety-seven then I think I missed one so I lose count.

I stay awake listening even when there’s nothing to hear.

On Sunday we’re having bagels for dinner, very chewy, with jelly and peanut butter as well. Ma takes her bagel out of her mouth and there’s a pointy thing stuck in it. “At last,” she says.

I pick it up, it’s all yellowy with dark brown bits. “Bad tooth?”

Ma nods. She’s feeling in the back of her mouth.

That’s so weird. “We could stick him back in, with flour glue, maybe.”

She shakes her head, grinning. “I’m glad it’s out, now it can’t hurt anymore.”

He was part of her a minute ago but now he’s not. Just a thing. “Hey, you know what, if you put him under your pillow a fairy will come in the night invisibly and turn him into money.”

“Not in here, sorry,” says Ma.

“Why not?”

“The tooth fairy doesn’t know about Room.” Her eyes are looking through the walls.

Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they’re real, they’re actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they’re all really in Outside. I’m not there, though, me and Ma, we’re the only ones not there. Are we still real?

After dinner Ma tells me Hansel and Gretel and How the Berlin Wall Fell Down and Rumpelstiltskin. I like when the queen has to guess the little man’s name or else he’ll take her baby away. “Are stories true?”

“Which ones?”

“The mermaid mother and Hansel and Gretel and all them.”

“Well,” says Ma, “not literally.”

“What’s—”

“They’re magic, they’re not about real people walking around today.”

“So they’re fake?”

“No, no. Stories are a different kind of true.”

My face is all scrunched up from trying to understand. “Is the Berlin Wall true?”

“Well, there was a wall, but it’s not there anymore.”

I’m so tired I’m going to rip in two like Rumpelstiltskin did at the end.

“Night-night,” says Ma, shutting the doors of Wardrobe, “sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.”

I didn’t think I was switched off but then Old Nick’s here all loud.

“But vitamins—” Ma is saying.

“Highway robbery.”

“You want us getting sick?”

“It’s a giant rip-off,” says Old Nick. “I saw this exposé one time, they all end up in the toilet.”

Who ends up in Toilet?

“It’s just that, if we had a better diet—”

“Oh, here we go. Whine, whine, whine . . .” I can see him through the slats, he’s sitting on the edge of Bath.

Ma’s voice gets mad. “I bet we’re cheaper to keep than a dog. We don’t even need shoes.”

“You have no idea about the world of today. I mean, where do you think the money’s going to keep coming from?”

Nobody says anything. Then Ma. “What do you mean? Money in general, or—?”

“Six months.” His arms are folded, they’re huge. “Six months I’ve been laid off, and have you had to worry your pretty little head?” I can see Ma too, through the slats, she’s nearly beside him. “What happened?”

“Like it matters.”

“Are you looking for another job?”

They stare at each other.

“Are you in debt?” she asks. “How’re you going to—?”

“Shut your mouth.”

I don’t mean to but I’m so scared he’s going to hurt her again the sound just bursts out of my head.

Old Nick’s looking right at me, he takes a step and another and another and he knocks on the slats. I see his hand shadow. “Hey in there.” He’s talking to me. My chest’s going clang clang. I hug my knees and press my teeth together. I want to get under Blanket but I can’t, I can’t do anything.

“He’s asleep.” That’s Ma.

“She keep you in the closet all day as well as all night?”

The you is me. I wait for Ma to say no, but she doesn’t.

“Doesn’t seem natural.” I can see in his eyes, they’re all pale. Can he see me, am I turning to stone? What if he opens the door? I think I might—“I figure there must be something wrong,” he’s saying to Ma, “you’ve never let me get a good look since the day he was born. Poor little freak’s got two heads or something?”

Why he said that? I nearly want to put my one head out of Wardrobe, just to show him.

Ma’s there in front of the slats, I can see the knobs of her shoulder blades through her T-shirt. “He’s just shy.”

“He’s got no reason to be shy of me,” says Old Nick. “Never laid a hand on him.”

Why would he laid his hand on me?

“Bought him that fancy jeep, didn’t I? I know boys, I was one once. C’mon, Jack—”

He said my name.

“C’mon out and get your lollipop.”

A lollipop!

“Let’s just go to bed.” Ma’s voice is strange.

Old Nick does a kind of laugh. “I know what you need, missy.”

What Ma needs? Is it something on the list?

“Come on,” she says again.

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners?”

Lamp goes out.

But Ma doesn’t have a mother.

Bed’s loud, that’s him getting in.

I put Blanket over my head and press my ears so not to hear. I don’t want to count the creaks but I do.

When I wake up I’m still in Wardrobe and it’s totally dark.

I wonder if Old Nick is still here. And the lollipop?

The rule is, stay in Wardrobe till Ma comes for me.

I wonder what color the lollipop is. Are there colors in the dark?

I try to switch off again but I’m all on.

I could put my head out just to—

I push open the doors, real slow and quiet. All I can hear is the hum of Refrigerator. I stand up, I go one step, two step, three. I stub my toe on something owwwwwww. I pick it up and it’s a shoe, a giant shoe. I’m looking at Bed, there he is, Old Nick, his face is made of rock I think. I put my finger out, not to touch it, just nearly.

His eyes flash all white. I jump back, I drop the shoe. I think he might shout but he’s grinning with big shiny teeth, he says, “Hey, sonny.” I don’t know what that — Then Ma is louder than I ever heard her even doing Scream. “Get away, get away from him!”

I race back to Wardrobe, I bang my head, arghhhhh, she keeps screeching, “Get away from him.”

“Shut up,” Old Nick is saying, “shut up.” He calls her words I can’t hear through the screaming. Then her voice gets blurry. “Stop that noise,” he’s saying.

Ma is going mmmmmmm instead of words. I hold my head where it banged, I wrap it up in my two hands.

“You’re a basket case, you know that?”

“I can be quiet,” she says, she’s nearly whispering, I hear her breath all scratchy. “You know how quiet I can be, so long as you leave him alone. It’s all I’ve ever asked.”

Old Nick snorts. “You ask for stuff every time I open the door.”

“It’s all for Jack.”

“Yeah, well, don’t forget where you got him.”

I’m listening very hard but Ma doesn’t say anything.

Sounds. Him getting his clothes? His shoes, I think he’s doing on his shoes.

I don’t sleep after he’s gone. I’m on all the night in Wardrobe. I wait hundreds of hours but Ma doesn’t come for me.

I’m looking up at Roof when suddenly it lifts off and the sky rushes in and the rockets and the cows and the trees are crashing down on my head — No, I’m in Bed, Skylight’s starting to drip down light, it must be morning.

“Just a bad dream,” says Ma, stroking my cheek.

I have some but not much, the yummy left.

Then I remember, and I wriggle up in Bed to check her for new marks on her but I don’t see any. “I’m sorry I came out of Wardrobe in the night.”

“I know,” she says.

Is that the same as forgiving? I’m remembering more. “What’s a little freak?”

“Oh, Jack.”

“Why he said something’s wrong with me?”

Ma groans. “There’s not a thing wrong with you, you’re right all the way through.” She kisses my nose.

“But why he said it?”

“He’s just trying to drive me crazy.”

“Why he’s—?”

“You know how you like to play with cars and balloons and stuff? Well, he likes to play with my head.” She taps it.

I don’t know to play with heads. “Is laid off like lying down?”

“No, it means he lost his job,” says Ma.

I thought only things could get lost, like one of our pins from the six. Everything must be different in Outside. “Why he said don’t forget where you got me?”

“Oh, give it a rest for one minute, will you?”

I’m counting on mute, one hippopotamus two hippopotamus, all the sixty seconds the questions are bouncing up and down in my head.

Ma is filling a glass of milk for her, she doesn’t do one for me. She stares into Refrigerator, the light’s not coming on, that’s weird. She shuts the door again.

The minute’s up. “Why he said don’t forget where you got me? Wasn’t it Heaven?”

Ma is clicking Lamp but he won’t wake up either. “He meant — who you belong to.”

“I belong to you.”

She gives me a small grin.

“Is Lamp’s bulb used up?”

“I don’t think that’s it.” She shivers, she goes over to look at Thermostat.

“Why he told you not to forget?”

“Well actually, he’s got it all wrong, he thinks you belong to him.”

Ha! “He’s a numbskull.”

Ma’s staring at Thermostat. “Power cut.”

“What’s that?”

“There’s no power in anything just now.”

It’s a strange kind of day.

We have our cereal and brush teeth and get dressed and water Plant. We try and fill Bath but after the first bit the water comes out all icy so we just wash with cloths. It gets brighter through Skylight only not very. TV doesn’t work too, I miss my friends. I pretend they’re coming on the screen, I pat them with my fingers. Ma says let’s put on another shirt and pants each to be warm, even two socks each foot. We run Track for miles and miles and miles to warm us up, then Ma lets me take off the outside socks because my toes are all squished. “My ears hurt,” I tell her.

Her eyebrows go up.

“It’s too quiet in them.”

“Ah, that’s because we’re not hearing all the little sounds we’re used to, like the heat coming on or the refrigerator hum.” I play with Bad Tooth, I hide him in different places like under Dresser and in the rice and behind Dish Soap. I try and forget where he is, then I’m all surprised. Ma’s chopping all the green beans from Freezer, why is she chopping so many?

That’s when I remember the one good bit of last night. “Oh, Ma, the lollipop.”

She keeps chopping. “It’s in the trash.”

Why he left it there? I run over, I step on the pedal and the lid goes ping but I don’t see the lollipop. I’m feeling around the orange peels and rice and stew and plastic.

Ma takes me by the shoulders. “Leave it.”

“It’s my candy for Sunday treat,” I tell her.

“It’s garbage.”

“No it’s not.”

“It cost him maybe fifty cents. He’s laughing at you.”

“I never had a lollipop.” I pull out of her hands.

Nothing can hot on Stove because the power’s cut. So lunch is slippery freezy green beans which are even nastier than green beans cooked. We have to eat them up because otherwise they’ll melt and rot. I wouldn’t mind that but it’s waste.

“Would you like The Runaway Bunny?” Ma asks when we’ve washed up in all cold.

I shake my head. “When the power’s getting uncut?”

“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

We get into Bed to warm up. Ma pulls up all her clothes and I have lots, the left then the right.

“What if Room gets colder and colderer?”

“Oh, it won’t. It’s April in three days,” she says, spooning me. “It can’t be that cold out.”

We snooze, but me only a bit. I wait till Ma’s all heavy, then I wriggle out and go look in Trash again.

I find the lollipop nearly in the bottom, it’s a red ball shape. I wash my arms and my lollipop too because there’s yucky stew on it. I get the plastic right off and I suck it and suck it, it’s the sweetest thing I ever had. I wonder if this is what Outside tastes like.

If I ran away I’d become a chair and Ma wouldn’t know which one. Or I’d make myself invisible and stick to Skylight and she’d look right through me. Or a tiny speck of dust and go up her nose and she’d sneeze me right out.

Her eyes are open.

I put the lollipop behind my back.

She shuts them again.

I keep sucking for hours even though I feel a bit sick. Then it’s only a stick and I put it in Trash.

When Ma gets up she doesn’t say about the lollipop, maybe she was still asleep with her eyes open. She tries Lamp again but he stays off. She says she’ll leave him switched on so we’ll know the minute the power cut is over.

“What if he comes on in the middle of the night and wakes us up?”

“I don’t think it’ll be the middle of the night.”

We do Bowling with Bouncy Ball and Wordy Ball, and knock down vitamin bottles that we put different heads on when I was four, like Dragon and Alien and Princess and Crocodile, I win the most. I practice my adding and subtracting and sequences and multiplying and dividing and writing down the biggest numbers there are. Ma sews me two new puppets out of little socks from when I was a baby, they’ve got smiles of stitches and all different button eyes. I know to sew but it’s not much fun. I wish I could remember my baby me, what I was like.

I write a letter to SpongeBob with a picture of me and Ma on the back dancing to keep warm. We play Snap and Memory and Go Fish, Ma wants Chess but it makes my brain floppy so she says OK to Checkers instead.

My fingers get so stiff I put them in my mouth. Ma says that spreads germs, she makes me go wash them again in the freezy water.

We do lots of beads of flour dough for a necklace but we can’t string it till they’re all dry and hard. We make a spaceship out of boxes and tubs, the tape’s nearly gone but Ma says “Oh why not” and uses the last bit.

Skylight’s going dark.

Dinner is cheese that’s all sweaty and melting broccoli. Ma says I have to eat or I’ll feel even colder.

She takes two killers and a big gulp to make them go down.

“Why you’re still hurting even though Bad Tooth’s out?”

“I guess I’m noticing the others more now.”

We get in our sleep Tshirts but put more clothes back on top. Ma starts a song. “ ‘The other side of the mountain—’ ”

“ ‘The other side of the mountain—,’ ” I sing.

“ ‘The other side of the mountain—’ ”

“ ‘Was all that he could see.’ ”

I do “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” all the way down to seventy.

Ma puts her hands over her ears and says please can we do the rest tomorrow. “The power will probably be back then.”

“Good-o,” I say.

“And even if it isn’t, he can’t stop the sun coming up.”

Old Nick? “Why would he stop the sun?”

“He can’t, I said.” Ma gives me a hug hard and says, “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?”

She puffs her breath. “It’s my fault, I made him mad.”

I stare at her face but I can hardly see it.

“He can’t stand it when I start screaming, I haven’t done it in years. He wants to punish us.”

My chest is thumping really loud. “How he’s going to punish us?”

“No, he is already, I mean. By cutting the power.”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

Ma laughs. “What do you mean? We’re freezing, we’re eating slimy vegetables . . .”

“Yeah, but I thought he was going to punish us too.” I try to imagine. “Like if there were two Rooms, if he put me in one and you in the other one.”

“Jack, you’re wonderful.”

“Why I’m wonderful?”

“I don’t know,” says Ma, “that’s just the way you popped out.”

We spoon even tighter in Bed. “I don’t like it dark,” I tell her.

“Well, it’s time to sleep now, so it would be dark anyway.”

“I guess.”

“We know each other without looking, don’t we?”

“Yeah.”

“Night-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.”

“Don’t I have to go in Wardrobe?”

“Not tonight,” says Ma.

We wake up and the air’s shiverier. Watch says 07:09, he has a battery, that’s his own little power hidden inside.

Ma keeps yawning because she was awake in the night.

I’ve got a tummy ache, she says maybe it was all the raw vegetables. I want a killer from the bottle, she gives me just a half. I wait and wait but my tummy doesn’t feel different.

Skylight’s getting brighter.

“I’m glad he didn’t come last night,” I tell Ma. “I bet he never comes back, that would be super cool.”

“Jack.” She kind of frowns. “Think about it.”

“I am.”

“I mean, what would happen. Where does our food come from?”

I know this one. “From Baby Jesus in the fields in Outside.”

“No, but — who’s the bringer?”

Oh.

Ma gets up, she says it’s a good sign the faucets are still working. “He could have turned the water off too, but he hasn’t.” I don’t know what that’s a sign for.

There’s bagel for breakfast but it’s cold and mushy.

“What happens if he doesn’t switch the power on again?” I ask.

“I’m sure he will. Maybe later today.”

I try the buttons on TV sometimes. Just a dumb gray box, I can see my face but not as good like in Mirror.

We do all the Phys Eds we can think to warm up. Karate and Islands and Simon Says and Trampoline. Hopscotch, where we have to hop from one cork tile to another one and never go on the lines or fall over. Ma picks Blindman’s Buff, she ties my camouflage pants around her eyes. I hide in Under Bed beside Eggsnake not breathing even, flat like a page in a book, and it takes her hundreds of hours to find me. Next I choose Rappelling, Ma holds my hands and I walk up her legs till my feet are higher than my head, then I dangle upside down, my braids go in my face and make me laugh. I do a flip and I’m right side up again. I want it lots times more but her bad wrist is hurting.

Then we’re tired.

We make a mobile from a long spaghetti and threads tied with things pasted on, tiny pictures of me all orange and Ma all green and twisty foil and tufts of toilet paper. Ma fixes the top thread on Roof with the last pin from Kit, and the spaghetti dangles with all the little things flying from it when we stand under and blow hard.

I’m hungry so Ma says I can have the last apple.

What if Old Nick doesn’t bring more apples?

“Why he’s still punishing us?” I ask.

Ma twists her mouth. “He thinks we’re things that belong to him, because Room does.”

“How come?”

“Well, he made it.”

That’s weird, I thought Room just is. “Didn’t God make everything?”

Ma doesn’t say anything for a minute and then she rubs my neck. “All the good stuff, anyway.”

We play Noah’s Ark on Table, all the things like Comb and Little Plate and Spatula and the books and Jeep have to line up and get into Box quick quick before there’s the giant flood. Ma’s not really playing anymore, she’s got her face in her hands like it’s heavy.

I crunch the apple. “Are your other teeth hurting?”

She looks through her fingers at me, her eyes are huger.

“Which ones?”

Ma stands up so sudden I’m nearly scared. She sits into Rocker and holds out her hands. “Come here. I have a story for you.”

“A new one?”

“Yeah.”

“Excellent.”

She waits till I’m all folded into her arms. I’m nibbling the second side of the apple to make it last. “You know how Alice wasn’t always in Wonderland?” That was a trick, I know this one already. “Yeah, she goes in White Rabbit’s house and grows so big she has to put her arm out the window and her foot up the chimney and she kicks Bill the Lizard out kaboom, that bit’s funny.”

“No, but before. Remember she was lying in the grass?”

“Then she fell down the hole four thousand miles but she didn’t hurt herself.”

“Well, I’m like Alice,” says Ma.

I laugh. “Nah. She’s a little girl with a huge head, bigger than Dora’s even.”

Ma’s chewing her lip, there’s a dark bit. “Yeah, but I’m from somewhere else, like her. A long time ago, I was—”

“Up in Heaven.”

She puts her finger on my mouth to hush me. “I came down and I was a kid like you, I lived with my mother and father.” I shake my head. “You’re the mother.”

“But I had one of my own I called Mom,” she says. “I still have.”

Why she’s pretending like this, is it a game I don’t know?

“She’s . . . I guess you’d call her Grandma.”

Like Dora’s abuela. St. Anne in the picture that the Virgin Mary’s sitting in her lap. I’m eating the core, it’s nearly nothing now. I put it on Table. “You grew in her tummy?”

“Well — actually no, I was adopted. She and my dad — you’d call him Grandpa. And also I had — I have — a big brother called Paul.” I shake my head. “He’s a saint.”

“No, a different Paul.”

How can there be two Pauls?

“You’d call him Uncle Paul.”

That’s too many names, my head’s full. My tummy’s still empty like the apple isn’t there. “What’s for lunch?”

Ma’s not smiling. “I’m telling you about your family.”

I shake my head.

“Just because you’ve never met them doesn’t mean they’re not real. There’s more things on earth than you ever dreamed about.”

“Is there any cheese left that’s not sweaty?”

“Jack, this is important. I lived in a house with my mom and dad and Paul.”

I have to play the game so she won’t be mad. “A house in TV?”

“No, outside.”

That’s ridiculous, Ma was never in Outside.

“But it looked like a house you’d see on TV, yeah. A house on the edge of a city, with a yard behind it, and a hammock.”

“What’s a hammock?”

Ma gets the pencil from Shelf and does a drawing of two trees, there’s ropes between them all knotted together with a person lying on the ropes.

“Is that a pirate?”

“That’s me, swinging in the hammock.” She does the paper side to side, she’s all excited. “And I used to go to the playground with Paul and swing on the swings as well, and eat ice cream. Your grandma and grandpa took us on trips in the car, to the zoo and to the beach. I was their little girl.”

“Nah.”

Ma scrunches up the picture. There’s wet on Table, it makes her white all shiny.

“Don’t be crying,” I say.

“I can’t help it.” She rubs the tears over her face.

“Why you can’t help it?”

“I wish I could describe it better. I miss it.”

“You miss the hammock?”

“All of it. Being outside.”

I hold on to her hand. She wants me to believe so I’m trying to but it hurts my head. “You actually lived in TV one time?”

“I told you, it’s not TV. It’s the real world, you wouldn’t believe how big it is.” Her arms shoot out, she’s pointing at all the walls. “Room’s only a tiny stinky piece of it.”

“Room’s not stinky.” I’m nearly growling. “It’s only stinky sometimes when you do a fart.”

Ma wipes her eyes again.

“Your farts are much stinkier than mine. You’re just trying to trick me and you better stop right this minute.”

“OK,” she says, all her breath hisses out like a balloon. “Let’s have a sandwich.”

“Why?”

“You said you were hungry.”

“No I’m not.”

Her face is fierce again. “I’ll make a sandwich,” she says, “and you’ll eat it. OK?”

It’s peanut butter just, because the cheese is all gooey. When I’m eating it, Ma sits beside me, but she doesn’t have one. She says, “I know it’s a lot to take in.”

The sandwich?

For dessert we have a tub of mandarins between us, I get the big bits because she prefers the little ones.

“I wouldn’t lie to you about this,” Ma says while I’m slurping the juice. “I couldn’t tell you before, because you were too small to understand, so I guess I was sort of lying to you then. But now you’re five, I think you can understand.”

I shake my head.

“What I’m doing is the opposite of lying. It’s, like, unlying.”

We have a long nap.

Ma’s already awake, looking down at me about two inches away. I wriggle down to have some from the left.

“Why you don’t like it here?” I ask her.

She sits up and pulls her T-shirt down.

“I wasn’t done.”

“Yes you were,” she says, “you were talking.”

I sit up too. “Why you don’t like it in Room with me?”

Ma holds me tight. “I always like being with you.”

“But you said it was tiny and stinky.”

“Oh, Jack.” She says nothing for a minute. “Yeah, I’d rather be outside. But with you.”

“I like it here with you.”

“OK.”

“How did he make it?”

She knows who I mean. I think she’s not going to tell me, and then she says, “Actually it was a garden shed to begin with. Just a basic twelve-by-twelve, vinyl-coated steel. But he added a soundproofed skylight, and lots of insulating foam inside the walls, plus a layer of sheet lead, because lead kills all sound. Oh, and a security door with a code. He boasts about what a neat job he made of it.”

The afternoon goes slow.

We read all our books with pictures in the freezing kind of bright. Skylight’s different today. She’s got a black bit like an eye. “Look, Ma.” She stares up and grins. “It’s a leaf.”

“Why?”

“The wind must have blown it off a tree onto the glass.”

“An actual tree in Outside?”

“Yeah. See? That proves it. The whole world is out there.”

“Let’s play Beanstalk. We put my chair here on top of Table . . .” She helps me do that. “Then Trash on top of my chair,” I tell her. “Then I climb all the way up—”

“That’s not safe.”

“Yeah it is if you stand on Table holding Trash so I don’t wobble.”

“Hmm,” says Ma, which is nearly no.

“Let’s just try, please, please?”

It works perfect, I don’t fall at all. When I’m standing on Trash I can actually hold the cork edges of Roof where they go in slanty at Skylight. There’s something over her glass I never saw before. “Honeycomb,” I tell Ma, stroking it.

“It’s a polycarbonate mesh,” she says, “unbreakable. I used to stand up here looking out a lot, before you were born.”

“The leaf’s all black with holes in it.”

“Yeah, I think it’s a dead one, from last winter.”

I can see blue around it, that’s the sky, with some white in it that Ma says are clouds. I stare through the honeycomb, I’m staring and staring but all I see is sky. There’s nothing in it like ships or trains or horses or girls or skyscrapers zooming by.

When I climb back down off Trash and my chair I shove Ma’s arm away.

“Jack—”

I jump onto Floor all on my own. “Liar, liar, pants on fire, there’s no Outside.”

She starts explaining more but I put my fingers in my ears and shout, “Blah blah blah blah blah.”

I play just me with Jeep. I’m nearly crying but I pretend not.

Ma looks through Cabinet, she’s banging cans, I think I hear her counting. She’s counting what we’ve got left.

I’m extra cold now, my hands are all numb under the socks on them.

For dinner I keep asking can we have the last of the cereal so in the end Ma says yeah. I spill some because of not feeling my fingers.

The dark’s coming back, but Ma has all the rhymes in her head from the Big Book of Nursery Rhymes. I ask for “Oranges and Lemons,” my best line is “I do not know, says the great bell of Bow” because it’s all deep like a lion. Also about the chopper coming to chop off your head. “What’s a chopper?” “A big knife, I guess.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell her. “It’s a helicopter that its blades spin real fast and chop off heads.”

“Yuck.”

We’re not sleepy but there’s not much to do without seeing. We sit on Bed and do our own rhymes. “Our friend Wickles has the tickles.” “Our friends the Backyardigans have to try hard again.”

“Good one,” I tell Ma. “Our friend Grace winned the race.”

“Won it,” says Ma. “Our friend Jools likes swimming pools.”

“Our friend Barney lives on a farm-y.”

“Cheat.”

“OK,” I say. “Our friend Uncle Paul had a bad fall.”

“He came off his motorbike once.”

I was forgetting he was real. “Why he came off his motorbike?”

“By accident. But the ambulance took him to the hospital and the doctors made him all better.”

“Did they cut him open?”

“No, no, they just put a cast on his arm to stop it hurting.”

So hospitals are real too, and motorbikes. My head’s going to burst from all the new things I have to believe.

It’s all black now except Skylight has a dark kind of brightness. Ma says in a city there’s always some light from the streetlights and the lamps in the buildings and stuff.

“Where’s the city?”

“Just out there,” she says, pointing at Bed Wall.

“I looked through Skylight and I never saw it.”

“Yeah, that’s why you got mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

She gives me back my kiss. “Skylight looks straight up in the air. Most of the things I’ve been telling you about are on the ground, so to see them we’d need a window that faces out sideways.”

“We could ask for a sideways window for Sundaytreat.”

Ma sort of laughs.

I was forgetting that Old Nick’s not coming anymore. Maybe my lollipop was the last Sundaytreat ever.

I think I’m going to cry but what comes out is a huge yawn. “Good night, Room,” I say.

“Is that the time? OK. Good night,” says Ma.

“Good night, Lamp and Balloon.” I wait for Ma but she’s not saying any more of them. “Good night, Jeep, and Good night, Remote. Good night, Rug, and Good night, Blanket, and Good night, the Bugs, and don’t bite.”

What wakes me up is a noise over and over. Ma’s not in Bed. There’s a bit of light, the air’s still icy. I look over the edge, she’s in the middle of Floor going thump thump thump with her hand. “What did Floor do?”

Ma stops, she puffs out a long breath. “I need to hit something,” she says, “but I don’t want to break anything.”

“Why not?”

“Actually, I’d love to break something. I’d love to break everything.”

I don’t like her like this. “What’s for breakfast?”

Ma stares at me. Then she stands up and goes over to Cabinet and gets out a bagel, I think it’s the last one.

She only has a quarter of it, she’s not very hungry.

When we let our breaths out they’re foggy. “That’s because it’s colder today,” says Ma.

“You said it wouldn’t get any colder.”

“Sorry, I was wrong.”

I finish the bagel. “Do I still have a Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Paul?”

“Yeah,” says Ma, she smiles a bit.

“Are they in Heaven?”

“No, no.” She twists her mouth. “I don’t think so, anyway. Paul’s only three years older than me, he’s — wow, he must be twenty-nine.” “Actually they’re here,” I whisper. “Hiding.”

Ma looks around. “Where?”

“In Under Bed.”

“Oh, that must be a tight squeeze. There’s three of them, and they’re pretty big.”

“As big as hippopotami?”

“Not that big.”

“Maybe they’re . . . in Wardrobe.”

“With my dresses?”

“Yeah. When we hear a clatter that’s them knocking down the hangers.”

Ma’s face is flat.

“I’m only kidding,” I tell her.

She nods.

“Can they come here sometime for real?”

“I wish they could,” she says. “I pray for it so hard, every night.”

“I don’t hear you.”

“Just in my head,” says Ma.

I didn’t know she prays things in her head where I can’t hear.

“They’re wishing it too,” she says, “but they don’t know where I am.”

“You’re in Room with me.”

“But they don’t know where it is, and they don’t know about you at all.”

That’s weird. “They could look on Dora’s Map, and when they come I could pop out at them for a surprise.”

Ma nearly laughs but not quite. “Room’s not on any map.”

“We could tell them on a telephone, Bob the Builder has one.”

“But we don’t.”

“We could ask for one for Sundaytreat.” I remember. “If Old Nick stops being mad.”

“Jack. He’d never give us a phone, or a window.” Ma takes my thumbs and squeezes them. “We’re like people in a book, and he won’t let anybody else read it.”

For Phys Ed we run on Track. It’s hard moving Table and the chairs with hands that feel not here. I run ten there-and-backs but I’m still not warmed up, my toes are stumbly. We do Trampoline and Karate, Hi-yah, then I choose Beanstalk again. Ma says OK if I promise not to freak out when I can’t see anything. I climb up Table onto my chair onto Trash and I don’t even wobble. I hold on to the edges where Roof slants into Skylight, I stare hard through the honeycomb at the blue so it makes me blink. After a while Ma says she wants to get down and make lunch.

“No vegetables, please, my tummy can’t manage them.”

“We have to use them up before they rot.”

“We could have pasta.”

“We’re nearly out.”

“Then rice. What if—?” Then I forget to talk because I see it through the honeycomb, the thing so small I think it’s just one of those floaters in my eye, but it’s not. It’s a little line making a thick white streak on the sky. “Ma—”

“What?”

“An airplane!”

“Really?”

“Really real for real. Oh—”

Then I’m falling on Ma then on Rug, Trash is banging on us and my chair too. Ma’s saying ow ow ow and rubbing her wrist. “Sorry, sorry,” I say, I’m kissing it better. “I saw it, it was a real airplane only tiny.”

“That’s just because it’s far away,” she says all smiling. “I bet if you saw it up close it would actually be huge.”

“The most amazing thing, it was writing a letter I on the sky.”

“That’s called a . . .” She slaps her head. “Can’t remember. It’s a sort of streak, it’s the smoke of the plane or something.” For lunch we have all the seven rest of the crackers with the gloopy cheese, we hold our breaths not to taste it.

Ma gives me some under Duvet. There’s shine from God’s yellow face but not enough for sunbathing. I can’t switch off. I stare up at Skylight so hard my eyes get itchy but I don’t see any more airplanes. I really did see that one though when I was up Beanstalk, it wasn’t a dream. I saw it flying in Outside, so there really is Outside where Ma was a little girl.

We get up and play Cat’s Cradle and Dominoes and Submarine and Puppets and lots of other things but only a little while each. We do Hum, the songs are too easy to guess. We go back in Bed to warm up.

“Let’s go in Outside tomorrow,” I say.

“Oh, Jack.”

I’m lying on Ma’s arm that’s all thick in two sweaters. “I like how it smells there.”

She moves her head to stare at me.

“When Door opens after nine and the air whooshes in that’s not like our air.”

“You noticed,” she says.

“I notice all the things.”

“Yeah, it’s fresher. In the summer, it smells of cut grass, because we’re in his backyard. Sometimes I get a glimpse of shrubs and hedges.” “Whose backyard?”

“Old Nick’s. Room is made out of his shed, remember?”

It’s hard to remember all the bits, none of them sound very true.

“He’s the only one who knows the code numbers to tap into the outside keypad.”

I stare at Keypad, I didn’t know there was another. “I tap numbers.”

“Yeah, but not the secret ones that open the door — like an invisible key,” says Ma. “Then when he’s going back to the house he taps in the code again, on this one”—she points at Keypad.

“The house with the hammock?”

“No.” Ma’s voice is loud. “Old Nick lives in a different one.”

“Can we go to his one someday?”

She presses her mouth with her hand. “I’d rather go to your grandma and grandpa’s house.”

“We could swing in the hammock.”

“We could do what we liked, we’d be free.”

“When I’m six?”

“Definitely someday.”

There’s wet running down Ma’s face onto mine. I jump, it’s salty.

“I’m OK,” she says, rubbing her cheek, “it’s OK. I’m just — I’m a bit scared.”

“You can’t be scared.” I’m nearly shouting. “Bad idea.”

“Just a little bit. We’re OK, we’ve got the basics.”

Now I’m even scareder. “But what if Old Nick doesn’t uncut the power and he doesn’t bring more food, not ever ever ever?” “He will,” she says, she’s still breathing gulpy. “I’m nearly a hundred percent sure he will.”

Nearly a hundred, that’s ninety-nine. Is ninety-nine enough?

Ma sits up, she scrubs her face with the arm of her sweater.

My tummy rumbles, I wonder what we’ve got left. It’s getting dark again already. I don’t think the light is winning.

“Listen, Jack, I need to tell you another story.”

“A true one?”

“Totally true. You know how I used to be all sad?”

I like this one. “Then I came down from Heaven and grew in your tummy.”

“Yeah, but see, why I was sad — it was because of Room,” says Ma. “Old Nick — I didn’t even know him, I was nineteen. He stole me.” I’m trying to understand. Swiper no swiping. But I never heard of swiping people.

Ma’s holding me too tight. “I was a student. It was early in the morning, I was crossing a parking lot to get to the college library, listening to — it’s a tiny machine that holds a thousand songs and plays them in your ear, I was the first of my friends to get one.”

I wish I had that machine.

“Anyway — this man ran up asking for help, his dog was having a fit and he thought it might be dying.”

“What’s he called?”

“The man?”

I shake my head. “The dog.”

“No, the dog was just a trick to get me into his pickup truck, Old Nick’s truck.”

“What color is it?”

“The truck? Brown, he’s still got the same one, he’s always griping about it.”

“How many wheels?”

“I need you to concentrate on what matters,” says Ma.

I nod. Her hands are too tight, I loosen them.

“He put a blindfold on me—”

“Like Blindman’s Buff?”

“Yeah, but not fun. He drove and drove, I was terrified.”

“Where was I?”

“You hadn’t happened yet, remember?”

I forgot. “Was the dog in the truck too?”

“There was no dog.” Ma’s sounding cranky again. “You have to let me tell this story.”

“Can I pick another?”

“It’s what happened.”

“Can I have Jack the Giant Killer?”

“Listen,” says Ma, putting her hand over my mouth. “He made me take some bad medicine so I’d fall asleep. Then when I woke up I was here.” It’s nearly black and I can’t see Ma’s face at all now, it’s turned away so I can only hear.

“The first time he opened the door I screamed for help and he knocked me down, I never tried that again.”

My tummy’s all knotted.

“I used to be scared to go to sleep, in case he came back,” says Ma, “but when I was asleep was the only time I wasn’t crying, so I slept about sixteen hours a day.”

“Did you make a pool?”

“What?”

“Alice cries a pool because she can’t remember all her poems and numbers, then she’s drowning.”

“No,” says Ma, “but my head ached all the time, my eyes were scratchy. The smell of the cork tiles made me sick.”

What smell?

“I drove myself crazy looking at my watch and counting the seconds. Things spooked me, they seemed to get bigger or smaller while I was watching them, but if I looked away they started sliding. When he finally brought the TV, I left it on twenty-four/seven, stupid stuff, commercials for food I remembered, my mouth hurt wanting it all. Sometimes I heard voices from the TV telling me things.”

“Like Dora?”

She shakes her head. “When he was at work I tried to get out, I tried everything. I stood on tiptoe on the table for days scraping around the skylight, I broke all my nails. I threw everything I could think of at it but the mesh is so strong, I never even managed to crack the glass.”

Skylight’s just a square of not quite so dark. “What everything?”

“The big saucepan, chairs, the trash can . . .”

Wow, I wish I saw her throw Trash.

“And another time I dug a hole.”

I’m confused. “Where?”

“You can feel it, would you like that? We’ll have to wriggle . . .” Ma throws Duvet back and pulls Box out from Under Bed, she makes a little grunt going in. I slide in beside her, we’re near Eggsnake but not to squish him. “I got the idea from The Great Escape.” Her voice is all boomy beside my head.

I remember that story about the Nazi camp, not a summer one with marshmallows but in winter with millions of persons drinking maggot soup. The Allies burst open the gates and everybody ran out, I think Allies are angels like Saint Peter’s one.

“Give me your fingers . . .” Ma pulls on them. I feel the cork of Floor. “Just here.” Suddenly there’s a bit that’s down with rough edges. My chest’s going boom boom, I never knowed there was a hole. “Careful, don’t cut yourself. I made it with the zigzag knife,” she says. “I pried up the cork, but the wood took me a while. Then the lead foil and the foam were easy enough, but you know what I found then?”

“Wonderland?”

Ma makes a mad sound so loud I bang my head on Bed.

“Sorry.”

“What I found was a chain-link fence.”

“Where?”

“Right there in the hole.”

A fence in a hole? I put my hand down and downer.

“Something metal, are you there?”

“Yeah.” Cold, all smooth, I grab it in my fingers.

“When he was turning the shed into Room,” says Ma, “he hid a layer of fence under the floor joists, and in all the walls and even the roof, so I could never ever cut through.”

We’ve wriggled out now. We’re sitting with our backs against Bed. I’m all out of breath.

“When he found the hole,” says Ma, “he howled.”

“Like a wolf?”

“No, laughing. I was afraid he’d hurt me but that time, he thought it was just hilarious.”

My teeth are hard together.

“He laughed more back then,” says Ma.

Old Nick’s a stinking swiping zombie robber. “We could have a mutiny at him,” I tell her. “I’ll smash him all to bits with my jumbo megatron transformerblaster.”

She puts a kiss on the side of my eye. “Hurting him doesn’t work. I tried that once, when I’d been here about a year and a half.” That is the most amazing. “You hurted Old Nick?”

“What I did was, I took the lid off the toilet, and I had the smooth knife as well, and just before nine one evening, I stood against the wall beside the door—” I’m confused. “Toilet doesn’t have a lid.”

“There used to be one, on top of the tank. It was the heaviest thing in Room.”

“Bed’s super heavy.”

“But I couldn’t pick the bed up, could I?” asks Ma. “So when I heard him comingin—”

“The beep beep.”

“Exactly. I smashed the toilet lid down on his head.”

I’ve got my thumb in my mouth and I’m biting and biting.

“But I didn’t do it hard enough, the lid fell on the floor and broke in two, and he — Old Nick — he managed to shove the door shut.” I taste something weird.

Ma’s voice is all gulpy. “I knew my only chance was to make him give me the code. So I pressed the knife against his throat, like this.” She puts her fingernail under my chin, I don’t like it. “I said, ‘Tell me the code.’ ”

“Did he?”

She puffs her breath. “He said some numbers, and I went to tap them in.”

“Which numbers?”

“I don’t think they were the real ones. He jumped up and twisted my wrist and got the knife.”

“Your bad wrist?”

“Well, it wasn’t bad before that. Don’t cry,” Ma says into my hair, “that was a long time ago.”

I try to talk but it doesn’t come out.

“So, Jack, we mustn’t try and hurt him again. When he came back the next night, he said, number one, nothing would ever make him tell me the code. And number two, if I ever tried a stunt like that again, he’d go away and I’d get hungrier and hungrier till I died.”

She’s stopped I think.

My tummy creaks really loud and I figure it out, why Ma’s telling me the terrible story. She’s telling me that we’re going — Then I’m blinking and covering my eyes, everything’s all dazzling because Lamp’s come back on.