Room: A Novel

Living

I’m in the house with the hammock. I’m looking out the window for it, but Grandma says it would be in the backyard, not the front, anyway it’s not hung up yet because it’s only the tenth of April. There’s bushes and flowers and the sidewalk and the street and the other front yards and the other houses, I count eleven of bits of them, that’s where neighbors live like Beggar My Neighbor. I suck to feel Tooth, he’s right in the middle of my tongue. The white car is outside not moving, I rode in it from the Clinic even though there was no booster, Dr. Clay wanted me to stay for continuity and therapeutic isolation but Grandma shouted that he wasn’t allowed keep me like a prisoner when I do have a family. My family is Grandma Steppa Bronwyn Uncle Paul Deana and Grandpa, only he shudders at me. Also Ma. I move Tooth into my cheek. “Is she dead?”

“No, I keep telling you. Definitely not.” Grandma rests her head on the wood around the glass.

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true. “Are you just playing she’s alive?” I ask Grandma. “Because if she’s not, I don’t want to be either.”

There’s all tears running all down her face again. “I don’t — I can’t tell you any more than I know, sweetie. They said they’d call as soon as they had an update.”

“What’s an update?”

“How she is, right this minute.”

“How is she?”

“Well, she’s not well because she took too much of the bad medicine, like I told you, but they’ve probably pumped it all out of her stomach by now, or most of it.” “But why she—?”

“Because she’s not well. In her head. She’s being taken care of,” says Grandma, “you don’t need to worry.” “Why?”

“Well, it doesn’t do any good to.”

God’s face is all red and stuck on a chimney. It’s getting darker. Tooth is digging into my gum, he’s a bad hurting tooth.

“You didn’t touch your lasagna,” Grandma says, “would you like a glass of juice or something?”

I shake my head.

“Are you tired? You must be tired, Jack. Lord knows I am. Come downstairs and see the spare room.”

“Why is it spare?”

“That means we don’t use it.”

“Why you have a room you don’t use?”

Grandma shrugs. “You never know when we might need it.” She waits while I do the stairs down on my butt because there’s no banister to hold. I pull my Dora bag behind me bumpity bump. We go through the room that’s called the living room, I don’t know why because Grandma and Steppa are living in all the rooms, except not the spare.

An awful waah waah starts, I cover my ears. “I’d better get that,” says Grandma.

She comes back in a minute and brings me into a room. “Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“To go to bed, honey.”

“Not here.”

She presses around her mouth where the little cracks are. “I know you’re missing your ma, but just for now you need to sleep on your own. You’ll be fine, Steppa and I will be just upstairs. You’re not afraid of monsters, are you?”

It depends on the monster, if it’s a real one or not and if it’s where I am.

“Hmm. Your ma’s old room is beside ours,” says Grandma, “but we’ve converted it into a fitness suite, I don’t know if there’d be space for a blow-up . . .”

I go up the stairs with my feet this time, just pressing onto the walls, Grandma carries my Dora bag. There’s blue squishy mats and dumbbells and abs crunchers like I saw in TV. “Her bed was here, right where her crib was when she was a baby,” says Grandma, pointing to a bicycle but stuck to the ground. “The walls were covered in posters, you know, bands she liked, a giant fan and a dreamcatcher . . .”

“Why it catched her dreams?”

“What’s that?”

“The fan.”

“Oh, no, they were just decorations. I feel just terrible about dropping it all off at the Goodwill, it was a counselor at the grief group that advised it . . .” I do a huge yawn, Tooth nearly slips out but I catch him in my hand.

“What’s that?” says Grandma. “A bead or something? Never suck on something small, didn’t your—?”

She’s trying to bend my fingers open to get him. My hand hits her hard in the tummy.

She stares.

I put Tooth back in under my tongue and lock my teeth.

“Tell you what, why don’t I put a blow-up beside our bed, just for tonight, until you’re settled in?” I pull my Dora bag. The next door is where Grandma and Steppa sleep. The blow-up is a big bag thing, the pump keeps popping out of the hole and she has to shout for Steppa to help. Then it’s all full like a balloon but a rectangle and she puts sheets over it. Who’s the they that pumped Ma’s stomach? Where do they put the pump? Won’t she burst?

“I said, where’s your toothbrush, Jack?”

I find it in my Dora bag that has my everything. Grandma tells me to put on my pj’s that means pajamas. She points at the blow-up and says, “Pop in,” persons are always saying pop or hop when it’s something they want to pretend is fun. Grandma leans down with her mouth out like to kiss but I put my head under the duvet. “Sorry,” she says. “What about a story?”

“No.”

“Too tired for a story, OK, then. Night-night.”

It goes all dark. I sit up. “What about the Bugs?”

“The sheets are perfectly clean.”

I can’t see her but I know her voice. “No, the Bugs.”

“Jack, I’m ready to drop here—”

“The Bugs that don’t let them bite.”

“Oh,” says Grandma. “Night-night, sleep tight . . . That’s right, I used to say that when your ma was—” “Do it all.”

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

Some light comes in, it’s the door opening. “Where are you going?”

I can see Grandma’s shape all black in the hole. “Just downstairs.”

I roll off the blow-up, it wobbles. “Me too.”

“No, I’m going to watch my shows, they’re not for children.”

“You said you and Steppa in the bed and me beside on the blow-up.”

“That’s later, we’re not tired yet.”

“You said you were tired.”

“I’m tired of—” Grandma’s nearly shouting. “I’m not sleepy, I just need to watch TV and not think for a while.” “You can not think here.”

“Just try lying down and closing your eyes.”

“I can’t, not all my own.”

“Oh,” says Grandma. “Oh, you poor creature.”

Why am I poor and creature?

She bends down beside the blow-up and touches my face.

I get away.

“I was just closing your eyes for you.”

“You in the bed. Me on the blow-up.”

I hear her puff her breath. “OK. I’ll lie down for just a minute . . .”

I see her shape on top of the duvet. Something drops clomp, it’s her shoe. “Would you like a lullaby?” she whispers.

“Huh?”

“A song?”

Ma sings me songs but there’s no more of them anymore. She smashed my head on the table in Room Number Seven. She took the bad medicine, I think she was too tired to play anymore, she was in a hurry to get to Heaven so she didn’t wait, why she didn’t wait for me?

“Are you crying?”

I don’t say anything.

“Oh, honey. Well, better out than in.”

I want some, I really really want some, I can’t get to sleep without. I suck on Tooth that’s Ma, a bit of her anyway, her cells all brown and rotten and hard. Tooth hurted her or he was hurted but not anymore. Why is it better out than in? Ma said we’d be free but this doesn’t feel like free.

Grandma’s singing very quietly, I know that song but it sounds wrong. “ ‘The wheels on the bus go—’ ” “No, thanks,” I say, and she stops.

Me and Ma in the sea, I’m tangled in her hair, I’m all knotted up and drowning—

Just a bad dream. That’s what Ma would say if she was here but she’s not.

I lie counting five fingers five fingers five toes five toes, I make them wave one by one. I try the talking in my head, Ma? Ma? Ma? I can’t hear her answering.

When it starts being lighter I put the duvet over my face to dark it. I think this must be what Gone feels like.

Persons are walking around whispering. “Jack? ” That’s Grandma near my ear so I curl away. “How are you doing?” I remember manners. “Not a hundred percent today, thank you.” I’m mumbly because Tooth is stuck to my tongue.

When she’s gone I sit up and count my things in my Dora bag, my clothes and shoes and maple key and train and drawing square and rattle and glittery heart and crocodile and rock and monkeys and car and six books, the sixth is Dylan the Digger from the store.

Lots of hours later the waah waah means the phone. Grandma comes up. “That was Dr. Clay, your ma is stable. That sounds good, doesn’t it?” It sounds like horses.

“Also, there’s blueberry pancakes for breakfast.”

I lie very still like I’m a skeleton. The duvet smells dusty.

Ding-dong ding-dong and she goes downstairs again.

Voices under me. I count my toes then my fingers then my teeth all over again. I get the right numbers every time but I’m not sure.

Grandma comes up again out of breath to say that my Grandpa’s here to say good-bye.

“Tome?”

“To all of us, he’s flying back to Australia. Get up now, Jack, it won’t do you any good to wallow.” I don’t know what that is. “He wants me not born.”

“He wants what?”

“He said I shouldn’t be and then Ma wouldn’t have to be Ma.”

Grandma doesn’t say anything so I think she’s gone downstairs. I take my face out to see. She’s still here with her arms wrapped around her tight. “Never you mind that a-hole.”

“What’s a—? ”

“Just come on down and have a pancake.”

“I can’t.”

“Look at you,” says Grandma.

How do I do that?

“You’re breathing and walking and talking and sleeping without your Ma, aren’t you? So I bet you can eat without her too.” I keep Tooth in my cheek for safe. I take a long time on the stairs.

In the kitchen, Grandpa the real one has purple on his mouth. His pancake is all in a puddle of syrup with more purples, they’re blueberries.

The plates are normal white but the glasses are wrong-shaped with corners. There’s a big bowl of sausages. I didn’t know I was hungry. I eat one sausage then two more.

Grandma says she doesn’t have the juice that’s pulp-free but I have to drink something or I’ll choke on my sausages. I drink the pulpy with the germs wiggling down my throat. The refrigerator is huge all full of boxes and bottles. The cabinets have so many foods in, Grandma has to go up steps to look in them all.

She says I should have a shower now but I pretend I don’t hear.

“What’s stable?” I ask Grandpa.

“Stable?” A tear comes out of his eye and he wipes it. “No better, no worse, I guess.” He puts his knife and his fork together on his plate.

No better no worse than what?

Tooth tastes all sour of juice. I go back upstairs to sleep.

“Sweetie,” says Grandma. “You are not spending another entire day in front of the goggle box.” “Huh?”

She switches off the TV. “Dr. Clay was just on the phone about your developmental needs, I had to tell him we were playing Checkers.” I blink and rub my eyes. Why she told him a lie? “Is Ma—?”

“She’s still stable, he says. Would you like to play checkers for real?”

“Your bits are for giants and they fall off.”

She sighs. “I keep telling you, they’re regular ones, and the same with the chess and the cards. The mini magnetic set you and your Ma had was for traveling.” But we didn’t travel.

“Let’s go to the playground.”

I shake my head. Ma said when we were free we’d go together.

“You’ve been outside before, lots of times.”

“That was at the Clinic.”

“It’s the same air, isn’t it? Come on, your ma told me you like climbing.”

“Yeah, I climb on Table and on our chairs and on Bed thousands of times.”

“Not on my table, mister.”

I meant in Room.

Grandma does my ponytail very tight and tucks it down my jacket, I pull it out again. She doesn’t say anything about the sticky stuff and my hat, maybe skin doesn’t get burned in this bit of the world? “Put on your sunglasses, oh, and your proper shoes, those slipper things don’t have any support.” My feet are squished walking even when I loose the Velcro. We’re safe as long as we stay on the sidewalk but if we go on the street by accident we’ll die. Ma isn’t dead, Grandma says she wouldn’t lie to me. She lied to Dr. Clay about Checkers. The sidewalk keeps stopping so we have to cross the street, we’ll be fine as long as we hold hands. I don’t like touching but Grandma says too bad. The air is all blowy in my eyes and the sun so dazzling around the edges of my shades. There’s a pink thing that’s a hair elastic and a bottle top and a wheel not from a real car but a toy one and a bag of nuts but the nuts are gone and a juice box that I can hear still some juice sploshing in and a yellow poo. Grandma says it’s not from a human but from some disgusting dog, she tugs at my jacket and says, “Come away from that.” The litter shouldn’t be there, except for the leaves that the tree can’t help dropping. In France they let their dogs do their business everywhere, I can go there someday.

“To see the poo?”

“No, no,” says Grandma, “the Eiffel Tower. Someday when you’re really good at climbing stairs.”

“Is France in Outside?”

She looks at me strange.

“In the world?”

“Everywhere’s in the world. Here we are!”

I can’t go in the playground because there’s kids not friends of mine.

Grandma rolls her eyes. “You just play at the same time, that’s what kids do.”

I can see through the fence in the diamonds of wire. It’s like the secret fence in the walls and Floor that Ma couldn’t dig through, but we got out, I saved her, only then she didn’t want to be alive anymore. There’s a big girl hanging upside down off a swing. Two boys on the thing I don’t remember the name that does up and down, they’re banging it and laughing and falling off I think on purpose. I count my teeth to twenty and one more time. Holding the fence makes white stripes on my fingers. I watch a woman carry a baby to the climber and it crawls through the tunnel, she does faces at it through the holes in the sides and pretends she doesn’t know where it is. I watch the big girl but she only swings, sometimes with her hair nearly in the mud, sometimes right side up. The boys chase and do bang with their hands like guns, one falls down and cries. He runs out the gate and into a house, Grandma says he must live there, how does she know? She whispers, “Why don’t you go play with the other boy now?” Then she calls out, “Hi there.” The boy looks over at us, I go into a bush, it pricks me in the head.

After a while she says it’s chillier than it looks and maybe we should be getting home for lunch.

It takes hundreds of hours and my legs are breaking.

“Maybe you’ll enjoy it more next time,” says Grandma.

“It was interesting.”

“Is that what your ma says to say when you don’t like something?” She smiles a bit. “I taught her that.” “Is she dying by now?”

“No.” She nearly shouts. “Leo would have called if there was any news.”

Leo is Steppa, it’s confusing all the names. I only want my one name Jack.

At Grandma’s house, she shows me France on the globe that’s like a statue of the world and always spinning. This whole entire city we’re in is just a dot and the Clinic’s in the dot too. So is Room but Grandma says I don’t need to think about that place anymore, put it out of my mind.

For lunch I have lots of bread and butter, it’s French bread but there’s no poo on it I don’t think. My nose is red and hot, also my cheeks and my top bit of my chest and my arms and the back of my hands and my ankles above my socks.

Steppa tells Grandma not to upset herself.

“It wasn’t even that sunny,” she keeps saying, wiping her eyes.

I ask, “Is my skin going to fall off?”

“Just little bits of it,” says Steppa.

“Don’t frighten the boy,” Grandma says. “You’ll be fine, Jack, don’t worry. Put on more of this nice cool after-sun cream, now . . .” It’s hard to reach behind me but I don’t like other persons’ fingers so I manage.

Grandma says she should call the Clinic again but she’s not up to it right now.

Because I’m burned I get to lie on the couch and watch cartoons, Steppa’s in the recliner reading his World Traveler magazine.

In the night Tooth is coming for me, bouncing on the street crash crash crash, ten feet tall all moldy and jaggedy bits falling off, he smashes at the walls. Then I’m floating in a boat that’s nailed shut and the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out—

A hiss in the dark that I don’t know it then it’s Grandma. “Jack. It’s OK.”

“No.”

“Go back to sleep.”

I don’t think I do.

At breakfast Grandma takes a pill. I ask if it’s her vitamin. Steppa laughs. She tells him, “You should talk.” Then she says to me, “Everybody needs a little something.”

This house is hard to learn. The doors I’m let go in anytime are the kitchen and the living room and the fitness suite and the spare room and the basement, also outside the bedroom that’s called the landing, like where airplanes would land but they don’t. I can go in the bedroom unless the door’s shut when I have to knock and wait. I can go in the bathroom unless it won’t open, that means anybody else is in it and I have to wait. The bath and sink and toilet are green called avocado, except the seat is wood so I can sit on that. I should put the seat up and down again after as a courtesy to ladies, that’s Grandma. The toilet has a lid on the tank like the one that Ma hit on Old Nick. The soap is a hard ball and I have to rub and rub to make it work. Outsiders are not like us, they’ve got a million of things and different kinds of each thing, like all different chocolate bars and machines and shoes. Their things are all for different doing, like nailbrush and toothbrush and sweeping brush and toilet brush and clothes brush and yard brush and hairbrush. When I drop some powder called talc on the floor I sweep it up but Grandma comes in and says that’s the toilet brush and she’s mad I’m spreading germs.

It’s Steppa’s house too but he doesn’t make the rules. He’s mostly in his den which is his special room for his own.

“People don’t always want to be with people,” he tells me. “It gets tiring.”

“Why?”

“Just take it from me, I’ve been married twice.”

The front door I can’t go out without telling Grandma but I wouldn’t anyway. I sit on the stairs and suck hard on Tooth.

“Go play with something, why don’t you?” says Grandma, squeezing past.

There’s lots, I don’t know which. My toys from the crazy well-wishers that Ma thought there was only five but actually I took six. There’s chalks all different colors that Deana brought around only I didn’t see her, they’re too smudgy on my fingers. There’s a giant roll of paper and forty-eight markers in a long invisible plastic. A box of boxes with animals on that Bronwyn doesn’t use anymore, I don’t know why, they stack to a tower more than my head.

I stare at my shoes instead, they’re my softies. If I wiggle I can sort of see the toes under the leather. Ma! I shout it very loud in my head. I don’t think she’s there. No better no worse. Unless everybody’s lying.

There’s a tiny brown thing under the carpet where it starts being the wood of the stairs. I scrape it out, it’s a metal. A coin. It’s got a man face and words, IN GOD WE TRUST LIBERTY 2004. When I turn it over there’s a man, maybe the same one but he’s waving at a little house and says UNITED STATES OF AMERICA E PLURIBUS UNUM ONE CENT.

Grandma’s on the bottom step staring at me.

I jump. I move Tooth to the back of my gums. “There’s a bit in Spanish,” I tell her.

“There is?” She frowns.

I show her with my finger.

“It’s Latin. E PLURIBUS UNUM. Hmm, I think that means ‘United we stand’ or something. Would you like some more?” “What?”

“Let me look in my purse . . .”

She comes back with a round flat thing that if you squish, it suddenly opens like a mouth and there’s different moneys inside. A silvery has a man with a ponytail like me and FIVE CENTS but she says everybody calls it a nickel, the little silvery is a dime, that is ten.

“Why is the five more bigger than the ten one if it’s five?”

“That’s just how it is.”

Even the one cent is bigger than the ten, I think how it is is dumb.

On the biggest silvery there’s a different man not happy, the back says NEW HAMPSHIRE 1788 LIVE FREE OR DIE. Grandma says New Hampshire is another bit of America, not this bit.

“Live free, does that mean not costing anything?”

“Ah, no, no. It means . . . nobody being the boss of you.”

There’s another the same front but when I turn it over there’s pictures of a sailboat with a tiny person in it and a glass and more Spanish, GUAM E PLURIBUS UNUM 2009 and Guahan ITano’ ManChamorro. Grandma squeezes up her eyes at it and goes to get her glasses.

“Is that another bit of America?”

“Guam? No, I think it’s somewhere else.”

Maybe it’s how Outsiders spell Room.

The phone starts its screaming in the hall, I run upstairs to get away.

Grandma comes up, crying again. “She’s turned the corner.”

I stare at her.

“Your ma.”

“What corner?”

“She’s on the mend, she’s going to be fine, probably.”

I shut my eyes.

Grandma shakes me awake because she says it’s been three hours and she’s afraid I won’t sleep tonight.

It’s hard to talk with Tooth in so I put him in my pocket instead. My nails have still got soap in. I need something sharp to get it out, like Remote.

“Are you missing your ma?”

I shake my head. “Remote.”

“You miss your . . . moat?”

“Remote.”

“The TV remote?”

“No, my Remote that used to make Jeep go vrumm zoom but then it got broke in Wardrobe.”

“Oh,” says Grandma, “well, I’m sure we can get them back.”

I shake my head. “They’re in Room.”

“Let’s make a little list.”

“To flush down the toilet?”

Grandma looks all confused. “No, I’ll call the police.”

“Is it an emergency?”

She shakes her head. “They’ll bring your toys over here, once they’ve finished with them.”

I stare at her. “The police can go in Room?”

“They’re probably there right this minute,” she tells me, “collecting evidence.”

“What’s evidence?”

“Proof of what happened, to show the judge. Pictures, fingerprints . . .”

While I’m writing the list, I think about the black of Track and the hole under Table, all the marks me and Ma made. The judge looking at my picture of the blue octopus.

Grandma says it’s a shame to waste such a nice spring day, so if I put on a long shirt and my proper shoes and hat and shades and lots of sunblock I can come out in the backyard.

She squirts sunblock into her hands. “You say go and stop, whenever you like. Like remote control.”

That’s kind of funny.

She starts rubbing it on my back of hands.

“Stop!” After a minute I say, “Go,” and she starts again. “Go.”

She stops. “You mean keep going?”

“Yeah.”

She does my face. I don’t like it near my eyes but she’s careful.

“Go.”

“Actually we’re all done, Jack. Ready?”

Grandma goes out first through both doors, the glass one and the net one, she waves me out and the light is zigzaggy. We’re standing on the deck that’s all wooden like the deck of a ship. There’s fuzz on it, little bundles. Grandma says it’s some kind of pollen from a tree.

“Which one?” I’m staring up at all the differents.

“Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”

In Room we knowed what everything was called but in the world there’s so much, persons don’t even know the names.

Grandma’s in one of the wooden chairs wiggling her butt in. There’s sticks that break when I stand on them and some yellow tiny leaves and mushy brown ones that she says she asked Leo to deal with back in November.

“Does Steppa have a job?”

“No, we retired early but of course now our stocks are decimated . . .”

“What does that mean?”

She’s leaning her head back on the top of the chair, her eyes are shut. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.” “Will he die soon?”

Grandma opens her eyes at me.

“Or will it be you first?”

“I’ll have you know I’m only fifty-nine, young man.”

Ma’s only twenty-six. She’s turned the corner, does that mean she’s coming back yet?

“Nobody’s going to die,” says Grandma, “don’t you fret.”

“Ma says everybody’s going to die sometime.”

She squeezes up her mouth, it’s got lines around it like sun rays. “You’ve only just met most of us, mister, so don’t be in a hurry to say bye-bye.” I’m looking down into the green bit of the yard. “Where’s the hammock?”

“I suppose we could dig it out of the basement, since you’re so keen.” She gets up with a grunt.

“Me too.”

“Sit tight, enjoy the sunshine, I’ll be back before you know it.”

But I’m not sitting, I’m standing.

It’s quiet when she’s gone, except there’s squeaky sounds in the trees, I think it’s birds but I don’t see. The wind makes the leaves go swishy swishy. I hear a kid shout, maybe in another yard behind the big hedge or else he’s invisible. God’s yellow face has a cloud on top. Colder suddenly. The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it’s going to be the next minute. The cloud looks kind of gray blue, I wonder has it got rain inside it. If rain starts dropping on me I’ll run in the house before it drowns my skin.

There’s something going zzzzz, I look in the flowers and it’s the most amazing thing, an alive bee that’s huge with yellow and black bits, it’s dancing right inside the flower. “Hi,” I say. I put out my finger to stroke it and—

Arghhhhhh,

my hand’s exploding the worst hurt I ever. “Ma,” I’m screaming, Ma in my head, but she’s not in the backyard and she’s not in my head and she’s not anywhere, I’m all alone in the hurt in the hurt in the hurt in—

“What did you do to yourself?” Grandma rushes across the deck.

“I didn’t, it was the bee.”

When she spreads the special ointment it doesn’t hurt quite as much but still a lot.

I have to use my other hand for helping her. The hammock hangs on hooks in two trees at the very back of the yard, one is a shortish tree that’s only twice my tall and bent over, one is a million times high with silvery leaves. The rope bits are kind of squished from being in the basement, we need to keep pulling till the holes are the right size. Also two of the ropes are broken so there’s extra holes that we have to not sit in. “Probably moths,” says Grandma.

I didn’t know moths grow big enough to break ropes.

“To be honest, we haven’t put it up for years.” She says she won’t risk climbing in, anyway she prefers some back support.

I stretch out and fill the hammock all myself. I wriggle my feet in my shoes, I put them through the holes, and my hands, but not my right one because that’s still agonizing from the bee. I think about the little Ma and little Paul that swinged in the hammock, it’s weird, where are they now? The big Paul is with Deana and Bronwyn maybe, they said we’d go see the dinosaurs another day but I think they were lying. The big Ma is at the Clinic turning the corner.

I push the ropes, I’m a fly inside a web. Or a robber Spider-Man catched. Grandma pushes and I swing so I’m dizzy but a cool kind of dizzy.

“Phone.” That’s Steppa on the deck, shouting.

Grandma runs up the grass, she leaves me all on my own again in the outside Outside. I jump down off the hammock and nearly fall because one shoe gets stuck. I pull my foot out, the shoe falls off. I run after, I’m nearly as fast as her.

In the kitchen Grandma’s talking on the phone. “Of course, first things first, he’s right here. There’s somebody wants to talk to you.” That’s me she’s telling, she holds out the phone but I don’t take it. “Guess who?”

I blink at her.

“It’s your ma.”

It’s true, here’s Ma’s voice in the phone. “Jack?”

“Hi.”

I don’t hear anything else so I pass it back to Grandma.

“It’s me again, how are you doing, really?” Grandma asks. She nods and nods and says, “He’s keeping his chin up.” She gives me the phone again, I listen to Ma say sorry a lot.

“You’re not poisoned with the bad medicine anymore?” I ask.

“No, no, I’m getting better.”

“You’re not in Heaven?”

Grandma covers her mouth.

Ma makes a sound I can’t tell if it’s a cry or a laugh. “I wish.”

“Why you wish you’re in Heaven?”

“I don’t really, I was just joking.”

“It’s not a funny joke.”

“No.”

“Don’t wish.”

“OK. I’m here at the clinic.”

“Were you tired of playing?”

I don’t hear anything, I think she’s gone. “Ma?”

“I was tired,” she says. “I made a mistake.”

“You’re not tired anymore?”

She doesn’t say anything. Then she says, “I am. But it’s OK.”

“Can you come here and swing in the hammock?”

“Pretty soon,” she says.

“When?”

“I don’t know, it depends. Is everything OK there with Grandma?”

“And Steppa.”

“Right. What’s new?”

“Everything,” I say.

That makes her laugh, I don’t know why. “Have you been having fun?”

“The sun burned my skin off and a bee stinged me.”

Grandma rolls her eyes.

Ma says something I don’t hear. “I’ve got to go now, Jack, I need some more sleep.”

“You’ll wake up after?”

“I promise. I’m so—” Her breath sounds all raggedy. “I’ll talk to you again soon, OK?”

“OK.”

There’s no more talking so I put the phone down. Grandma says, “Where’s your other shoe?”

I’m watching the flames dancing all orange under the pasta pot. The match is on the counter with its end all black and curly. I touch it to the fire, it makes a hiss and gets a big flame again so I drop it on the stove. The little flame goes invisible nearly, it’s nibbling along the match little by little till it’s all black and a small smoke goes up like a silvery ribbon. The smell is magic. I take another match from the box, I light the end in the fire and this time I hold on to it even when it hisses. It’s my own little flame I can carry around with me. I wave it in a circle, I think it’s gone out but it comes back. The flame’s getting bigger and messy all along the match, it’s two different flames and there’s a little line of red along the wood between them—

“Hey!”

I jump, it’s Steppa. I don’t have the match anymore.

He stamps on my foot.

I howl.

“It was on your sock.” He shows me the match all curled up, he rubs my sock where there’s a black bit. “Didn’t your ma ever teach you not to play with fire?”

“There wasn’t.”

“There wasn’t what?”

“Fire.”

He stares at me. “I guess your stove was electric. Go figure.”

“What’s up?” Grandma comes in.

“Jack’s just learning kitchen tools,” says Steppa, stirring the pasta. He holds a thing up and looks at me.

“Grater,” I remember.

Grandma’s setting the table.

“And this?”

“Garlic masher.”

“Garlic crusher. Way more violent than mashing.” He grins at me. He didn’t tell Grandma about the match, that’s kind of lying but not getting me into trouble is a good reason. He’s holding up something else.

“Another grater?”

“Citrus zester. And this?”

“Ah . . . a whisk.”

Steppa dangles a long pasta in the air and slurps it. “My elder brother pulled a pot of rice down on himself when he was three, and his arm was always rippled like a chip.” “Oh, yeah, I saw them in TV.”

Grandma stares at me. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had potato chips?” Then she gets up on the steps and moves things in a cabinet.

“E.T.A. two minutes,” says Steppa.

“Oh, a handful won’t hurt.” Grandma climbs down with a scrunched bag and opens it out.

The chips have got all lines on them, I take one and eat the edge of it. Then I say, “No, thanks,” and put it back in the bag.

Steppa laughs, I don’t know what’s funny. “The boy’s saving himself for my tagliatelle carbonara.”

“Can I see the skin instead?”

“What skin?” asks Grandma.

“The brother’s.”

“Oh, he lives in Mexico. He’s your, I guess, your great-uncle.”

Steppa throws all the water into the sink so it makes a big cloud of wet air.

“Why is he great?”

“It just means he’s Leo’s brother. All our relatives, you’re related to them now too,” says Grandma. “What’s ours is yours.” “LEGO,” says Steppa.

“What?” she says.

“Like LEGO. Bits of families stuck together.”

“I saw that in TV too,” I tell them.

Grandma’s staring at me again. “Growing up without LEGO,” she tells Steppa, “I literally can’t imagine it.” “Bet there’s a couple billion children in the world managing somehow,” says Steppa.

“I guess you’re right.” She’s looking confused. “We must have a box of it kicking around down in the basement, though . . .” Steppa cracks an egg with one hand so it plops over the pasta. “Dinner is served.”

I’m riding lots on the bike that doesn’t move, I can reach the pedals with my toes if I stretch. I zoom it for thousands of hours so my legs will get super strong and I can run away back to Ma and save her again. I lie down on the blue mats, my legs are tired. I lift the free weights, I don’t know what’s free about them. I put one on my tummy, I like how it holds me down so I won’t fall off the spinny world.

Ding-dong, Grandma shouts because it’s a visitor for me, that’s Dr. Clay.

We sit on the deck, he’ll warn me if there’s any bees. Humans and bees should just wave, no touching. No patting a dog unless its human says OK, no running across roads, no touching private parts except mine in private. Then there’s special cases, like police are allowed shoot guns but only at bad guys. There’s too many rules to fit in my head, so we make a list with Dr. Clay’s extra-heavy golden pen. Then another list of all the new things, like free weights and potato chips and birds. “Is it exciting seeing them for real, not just on TV?” he asks.

“Yeah. Except nothing in TV ever stinged me.”

“Good point,” says Dr. Clay, nodding. “ ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’ ”

“Is that a poem again?”

“How did you guess?”

“You do a weird voice,” I tell him. “What’s humankind?”

“The human race, all of us.”

“Is that me too?”

“Oh, for sure, you’re one of us.”

“And Ma.”

Dr. Clay nods. “She’s one too.”

But what I actually meant was, maybe I’m a human but I’m a me-and-Ma as well. I don’t know a word for us two. Roomers? “Is she coming to get me soon?” “As soon as she possibly can,” he says. “Would you feel more comfortable staying at the clinic instead of here at your Grandma’s?” “With Ma in Room Number Seven?”

He shakes his head. “She’s in the other wing, she needs to be on her own for a while.”

I think he’s wrong, if I was sick I’d need Ma with me even more.

“But she’s working really hard to get better,” he tells me.

I thought people are just sick or better, I didn’t know it was work.

For good-bye, me and Dr. Clay do high five, low five, back five.

When I’m on the toilet I hear him on the porch with Grandma. Her voice is twice the high of his. “For Pete’s sake, we’re only talking about a minor sunburn and a bee sting,” she says. “I raised two children, don’t give me acceptable standard of care.”

In the night there’s a million of tiny computers talking to each other about me. Ma’s gone up the beanstalk and I’m down on earth shaking it and shaking it so she’ll fall down—

No. That was only dreaming.

“I’ve had a brainwave,” says Grandma in my ear, she’s leaning down with her bottom half still in her bed. “Let’s drive to the playground before breakfast so there’ll be no other kids there.”

Our shadows are really long and stretchy. I wave my giant fists. Grandma nearly sits on a bench, but there’s wet on it, so she leans against the fence instead. There’s a small wet on everything, she says it’s dew that looks like rain but not out of the sky, it’s a kind of sweat that happens in the night. I draw a face on the slide. “It doesn’t matter if you get your clothes wet, feel free.”

“Actually I feel cold.”

There’s a bit with all sand in, Grandma says I could sit in that and play with it.

“What?”

“Huh?” she says.

“Play what?”

“I don’t know, dig it or scoop it or something.”

I touch it but it’s scratchy, I don’t want it all over me.

“What about the climber, or the swings?” says Grandma.

“Are you going to?”

She does a little laugh, she says she’d probably break something.

“Why you’d—?”

“Oh, not on purpose, just because I’m heavy.”

I go up some steps, standing like a boy not like a monkey, they’re metal with rough orange bits called rust and the holding-on bars make my hands frozen. At the end there’s a tiny house like for elves, I sit at the table and the roof’s right over my head, it’s red and the table is blue.

“Yoo-hoo.”

I jump, it’s Grandma waving through the window. Then she goes around the other side and waves again. I wave back, she likes that.

At the corner of the table I see something move, it’s a tiny spider. I wonder if Spider is still in Room, if her web is getting bigger and bigger. I tap tunes, like Hum but only tapping and Ma in my head has to guess, she guesses most of them right. When I do them on the floor with my shoe it’s different-sounding because it’s metal. The wall says something I can’t read, all scribbled and there’s a drawing that I think is a penis but it’s as big as the person.

“Try the slide, Jack, it looks like a fun one.”

That’s Grandma calling at me. I go out of the little house and look down, the slide is silver with some little stones on.

“Whee! Come on, I’ll catch you at the bottom.”

“No, thanks.”

There’s a ladder of rope like the hammock but flopping down, it’s too sore for my fingers. There’s lots of bars to hang from if I had more stronger arms or I really was a monkey. There’s a bit I show Grandma where robbers must have took the steps away.

“No, look, there’s a fireman’s pole there instead,” she says.

“Oh, yeah, I saw that in TV. But why they live up here?”

“Who?”

“The firemen.”

“Oh, it isn’t one of their real poles, just a play one.”

When I was four I thought everything in TV was just TV, then I was five and Ma unlied about lots of it being pictures of real and Outside being totally real. Now I’m in Outside but it turns out lots of it isn’t real at all.

I go back in the elf house. The spider’s gone somewhere. I take off my shoes under the table and stretch my feet.

Grandma’s at the swings. Two are flat but the third has a rubbery bucket with holes for legs. “You couldn’t fall out of this one,” she says. “Want a go?” She has to lift me, it feels strange with her hands squeezing in my armpits. She pushes me at the back of the bucket but I don’t like that, I keep twisting around to see, so she pushes me from in front instead. I’m swinging faster faster higher higher, it’s the strangest thing I ever.

“Put your head back.”

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

I put my head back and everything flips upside down, the sky and trees and houses and Grandma and all, it’s unbelievable.

There’s a girl on the other swing, I didn’t even see her coming in. She’s swinging not at the same time as me, she’s back when I’m forward. “What’s your name?” she asks.

I pretend I don’t hear.

“This is Ja — Jason,” says Grandma.

Why she’s calling me that?

“I’m Cora and I’m four and a half,” says the girl. “Is she a baby?”

“He’s a boy and he’s five, actually,” says Grandma.

“Then why is she in the baby swing?”

I want to get out now but my legs are stuck in the rubber, I kick, I pull at the chains.

“Easy, easy,” says Grandma.

“Is she having a fit?” asks the girl Cora.

My foot kicks Grandma by accident.

“Stop that.”

“My friend’s little brother has fits.”

Grandma yanks me under my arms, my foot goes twisty then I’m out.

She stops at the gate and says, “Shoes, Jack.”

I try hard and remember. “They’re in the little house.”

“Scoot back and get them, then.” She waits. “The little girl won’t bother you.”

But I can’t climb when she might be watching.

So Grandma does it and her bum gets stuck in the elf house, she’s mad. She Velcros my left shoe up way too tight so I pull it off again and the other one as well. I go in my socks to the white car. She says I’ll get glass in my foot but I don’t.

My pants are wet from the dew and my socks as well. Steppa’s in his recliner with a huge mug, he says, “How did it go?”

“Little by little,” says Grandma, going upstairs.

He lets me try his coffee, it makes me shudder.

“Why are places to eat called coffee shops?” I ask him.

“Well, coffee’s the most important thing they sell because most of us need it to keep us going, like gas in the car.”

Ma only drinks water and milk and juice like me, I wonder what keeps her going.

“What do kids have?”

“Ah, kids are just full of beans.”

Baked beans keep me going all right but green beans are my enemy food. Grandma made them a few dinners ago and I just pretended I didn’t see them on my plate. Now I’m in the world, I’m never going to eat green beans again.

I’m sitting on the stairs listening to the ladies.

“Mmm. Knows more math than me but can’t go down a slide,” says Grandma.

That’s me, I think.

They’re her book club but I don’t know why because they’re not reading books. She forgot to cancel them so they all came at 03:30 with plates of cakes and stuff. I have three cakes on a little plate but I have to stay out of the way. Also Grandma gave me five keys on a key ring that says POZZO’S HOUSE OF PIZZA, I wonder how a house is made of pizza, wouldn’t it flop? They’re not actually keys to anywhere but they jingle, I got them for promising not to take the key out of the liquor cabinet anymore. The first cake is called coconut, it’s yucky. The second is lemon and the third is I don’t know but I like it the best.

“You must be worn to the bone,” says one of the ladies with the highest voice.

“Heroic,” says another.

Also I have the camera on borrow, not Steppa’s fancy-schmancy one with the giant circle but the one hidden in the eye of Grandma’s cell phone, if it rings I have to shout to her and not answer it. So far I have ten pictures, one of my softy shoes, two of the light in the ceiling in the fitness suite, three of the dark in the basement (only the picture came out too bright), four of my hand inside with its lines, five of a hole beside the refrigerator I was hoping it might be a mouse hole, six of my knee in pants, seven of the carpet in the living room up close, eight was meant to be Dora when she was in TV this morning but it’s all zigzaggy, nine is Steppa not smiling, ten is out the bedroom window with a gull going by only the gull’s not in the photo. I was going to take one of me in the mirror but then I’d be a paparazzi.

“Well, he looks like a little angel from the photos,” one of the ladies is saying.

How did she see my ten photos? And I don’t look a bit like an angel, they’re massive with wings.

“You mean that bit of grainy footage outside the police station?” says Grandma.

“Oh, no, the close-ups, from when they were doing the interview with . . .”

“My daughter, yes. But close-ups of Jack?” She sounds furious.

“Oh, honey, they’re all over the Internet,” says another voice.

Then lots are talking all at once. “Didn’t you know?”

“Everything gets leaked, these days.”

“The world’s one big oyster.”

“Terrible.”

“Such horrors, in the news every day, sometimes I just feel like staying in bed with the drapes closed.”

“I still can’t believe it,” says the deep voice.

“I remember saying to Bill, seven years back, how could something like this happen to a girl we know?”

“We all thought she was dead. Of course we never liked to say —”

“And you had such faith.”

“Who could have imagined—?”

“Any more tea for anyone?” That’s Grandma.

“Well, I don’t know. I spent a week in a monastery in Scotland once,” says another voice, “it was so peaceful.” My cakes are gone except the coconut. I leave the plate on the step and go up to the bedroom and look at my treasures. I put Tooth back in my mouth for a suck. He doesn’t taste like Ma.

Grandma’s finded a big box of LEGOs in the basement that belongs to Paul and Ma. “What would you like to make?” she asks me. “A house? A skyscraper? Maybe a town?”

“Might want to lower your sights a little,” says Steppa behind his newspaper.

There’s so many tiny pieces all colors, it’s like a soup. “Well,” says Grandma, “go wild. I’ve got ironing to do.” I look at the LEGOs but I don’t touch in case I break them.

After a minute Steppa puts his paper down. “I haven’t done this in too long.” He starts grabbing pieces just anyhow and squishing them together so they stick.

“Why you haven’t—?”

“Good question, Jack.”

“Did you play LEGO with your kids?”

“I don’t have any kids.”

“How come?”

Steppa shrugs. “Just never happened.”

I watch his hands, they’re lumpy but clever. “Is there a word for adults when they aren’t parents?”

Steppa laughs. “Folks with other things to do?”

“Like what things?”

“Jobs, I guess. Friends. Trips. Hobbies.”

“What’s hobbies?”

“Ways of spending the weekend. Like, I used to collect coins, old ones from all over the world, I stored them in velvet cases.” “Why?”

“Well, they were easier than kids, no stinky diapers.”

That makes me laugh.

He holds out the LEGO bits, they’ve magically turned into a car. It’s got one two three four wheels that turn and a roof and a driver and all.

“How you did that?”

“One piece at a time. You pick one now,” he says.

“Which?”

“Anything at all.”

I choose a big red square.

Steppa gives me a small bit with a wheel. “Stick that on.”

I put it so the bump is under the other bump’s hole and I press hard.

He hands me another wheel bit, I push that on.

“Nice bike. Vroom!”

He says it so loud I drop the LEGO on the floor and a wheel comes off. “Sorry.”

“No need for sorry. Let me show you something.” He puts his car on the floor and steps on it, crunch. It’s in all pieces. “See?” says Steppa. “No problemo. Let’s start again.”

Grandma says I smell.

“I wash with the cloth.”

“Yeah, but dirt hides in the cracks. So I’m going to run a bath, and you’re going to get in it.”

She makes the water very high and steamy and she pours in bubble stuff for sparkly hills. The green of the bath is nearly hidden but I know it’s still there. “Clothes off, sweetie.” She stands with her hands on her hips. “You don’t want me to see? You’d rather I was outside the door?” “No!”

“What’s the matter?” She waits. “Do you think without your ma in the bath you’ll drown or something?” I didn’t know persons could drown in baths.

“I’ll sit right here all the time,” she says, patting the lid of the toilet.

I shake my head. “You be in the bath too.”

“Me? Oh, Jack, I have my shower every morning. What if I sit right on the edge of the bath like this?” “In it.”

Grandma stares at me. Then she groans, she says, “OK, if that’s what it takes, just this once . . . But I’m wearing my swimsuit.” “I don’t know to swim.”

“No, we won’t actually be swimming, I just, I’d rather not be naked if that’s all right with you.”

“Does it make you scared?”

“No,” she says, “I just — I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

“Can I be naked?”

“Of course, you’re a kid.”

In Room we were sometimes naked and sometimes dressed, we never minded.

“Jack, can we just get in this bath before it’s cold?”

It’s not nearly cold, there’s still steam flying off it. I start taking off my clothes. Grandma says she’ll be back in a sec.

Statues can be naked even if they’re adults, or maybe they have to be. Steppa says that’s because they’re trying to look like old statues that were always naked because the old Romans thought bodies are the most beautiful thing. I lean against the bath but the hard outside is cold on my tummy. There’s that bit in Alice,

They told me you had been to her

And mentioned me to him,

She gave me a good character

But said I could not swim.

My fingers are scuba divers. The soap falls in the water and I play it’s a shark. Grandma comes in with a stripey thing on like underwear and T-shirt stuck together with beads, also a plastic bag on her head she says is called a shower cap even though we’re having a bath. I don’t laugh at her, only inside.

When she climbs in the bath the water gets higher, I get in too and it’s nearly spilling. She’s at the smooth end, Ma always sat at the faucet end. I make sure I don’t touch Grandma’s legs with my legs. I bang my head on a faucet.

“Careful.”

Why do persons only say that after the hurt?

Grandma doesn’t remember any bath games except “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” when we try that it makes a slosh on the floor.

She doesn’t have any toys. I play the nailbrush is a submarine that brushes the seabed, it finds the soap that’s a gooey jellyfish.

After we dry ourselves, I’m scratching my nose and a bit comes off in my nail. In the mirror there’s little scaly circles where some of me is peeling off.

Steppa’s come in for his slippers. “I used to love this . . .” He touches my shoulder and suddenly there’s a strip of all thin and white, I didn’t feel it go. He holds it out for me to take. “That’s a goody.”

“Stop that,” says Grandma.

I rub the white thing and it rolls up, a tiny dried ball of me. “Again,” I say.

“Hang on, let me find a long bit on your back . . .”

“Men,” says Grandma, making a face.

This morning the kitchen’s empty. I get the scissors from the drawer and cut my ponytail all off.

Grandma comes in and stares. “Well, I’m going to just tidy you up, if I may,” she says, “and then you can get the brush and pan. Really we should keep a piece, as it’s your first haircut . . .”

Most goes in the trash but she takes three long bits and makes a braid that’s a bracelet for me with green thread on the end.

She says go look in a mirror but first I check my muscles, I still have my strong.

The newspaper at the top says Saturday April 17, that means I’ve been at Grandma and Steppa’s house one whole week. I was one week in the Clinic before, that equals two weeks I’ve been in the world. I keep adding it up to check, because it feels like a million years and Ma’s still not coming for me.

Grandma says we have to get out of this house. Nobody would know me now my hair’s all short and going curly. She tells me to take my shades off because my eyes must be used to Outside now and besides the shades will only attract attention.

We cross lots of roads holding hands and not letting the cars squish us. I don’t like the holding hands, I pretend they’re some boy else’s she’s holding. Then Grandma has a good idea, I can hold on to the chain of her purse instead.

There’s lots of every kind of thing in the world but it all costs money, even stuff to throw away, like the man in the line ahead of us in the convenience store buys a something in a box and rips the box and puts it in the trash right away. The little cards with numbers all over are called a lottery, idiots buy them hoping to get magicked into millionaires.

In the post office we buy stamps, we send Ma a picture I did of me in a rocket ship.

We go in a skyscraper that’s Paul’s office, he says he’s crazy busy but he makes a Xerox of my hands and buys me a candy bar out of the vending machine. Going down in the elevator pressing the buttons, I play I’m actually inside a vending machine.

We go in a bit of the government to get Grandma a new Social Security card because she lost the old one, we have to wait for years and years. Afterwards she takes me in a coffee shop where there’s no green beans, I choose a cookie bigger than my face.

There’s a baby having some, I never saw that. “I like the left,” I say, pointing. “Do you like the left best?” But the baby’s not listening.

Grandma’s pulling me away. “Sorry about that.”

The woman puts her scarf over so I can’t see the baby’s face.

“She wanted to be private,” Grandma whispers.

I didn’t know persons could be private out in the world.

We go in a Laundromat just to see. I want to climb in a spinny machine but Grandma says it would kill me.

We walk to the park to feed the ducks with Deana and Bronwyn. Bronwyn throws all her breads in at one go and the plastic bag too and Grandma has to get it out with a stick. Bronwyn wants my breads, Grandma says I have to give her half because she’s little. Deana says she’s sorry about the dinosaurs, we’ll definitely make it to the Natural History Museum one of these days.

There’s a store that’s only shoes outside, bright spongy ones with holes all over them and Grandma lets me try on a pair, I choose yellow. There’s no laces or Velcro even, I just put my foot in. They’re so light it’s like not having any on. We go in and Grandma pays five dollar papers for the shoes, that’s the same as twenty quarters, I tell her I love them.

When we come out there’s a woman sitting on the ground with her hat off. Grandma gives me two quarters and points to the hat.

I put one in the hat and I run after Grandma.

When she’s doing my seat belt she says, “What’s that in your hand?”

I hold up the second coin, “It’s NEBRASKA, I’m keeping it for my treasures.”

She clicks her tongue and takes it back. “You should have given it to the street person like I told you to.” “OK, I’ll—”

“Too late now.”

She starts the car. All I can see is the back of her yellowy hair. “Why she’s a street person?”

“That’s where she lives, on the street. No bed even.”

Now I feel bad I didn’t give her the second quarter.

Grandma says that’s called having a conscience.

In a store window I see squares that are like Room, cork tiles, Grandma lets me go in to stroke one and smell it but she won’t buy it.

We go in a car wash, the brushes swish us all over but the water doesn’t come in our tight windows, it’s hilarious.

In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa don’t have jobs, so I don’t know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter over all the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there’s only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.

Also everywhere I’m looking at kids, adults mostly don’t seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don’t want to actually play with them, they’d rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there’s a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn’t even hear.

In the library live millions of books we don’t have to pay any moneys for. Giant insects are hanging up, not real, made of paper. Grandma looks under C for Alice and she’s there, the wrong shape but the same words and pictures, that’s so weird. I show Grandma the scariest picture with the Duchess. We sit on the couch for her reading me The Pied Piper, I didn’t know he was a book as well as a story. My best bit is when the parents hear the laughing inside the rock. They keep shouting for the kids to come back but the kids are in a lovely country, I think it might be Heaven. The mountain never opens up to let the parents in.

There’s a big boy doing a computer of Harry Potter, Grandma says not to stand too near, it’s not my turn.

There’s a tiny world on a table with train tracks and buildings, a little kid is playing with a green truck. I go up, I take a red engine. I zoom it into the kid’s truck a bit, the kid giggles. I do it faster so the truck falls off the track, he giggles more.

“Good sharing, Walker.” That’s a man on the armchair looking at a thing like Uncle Paul’s BlackBerry.

I think the kid must be Walker. “Again,” he says.

This time I balance my engine on the little truck, then I take an orange bus and crash it into both of them.

“Gently,” says Grandma, but Walker is saying, “Again,” and jumping up and down.

Another man comes in and kisses the first one and then Walker. “Say bye-bye to your friend,” he tells him.

Is that me?

“Bye-bye.” Walker flaps his hand up and down.

I think I’ll give him a hug. I do it too fast and knock him down, he bangs on the train table and cries.

“I’m so sorry,” Grandma keeps saying, “my grandson doesn’t — he’s learning about boundaries—”

“No harm done,” says the first man. They go off with the little boy doing one two three whee swinging between them, he’s not crying anymore. Grandma watches them, she’s looking confused.

“Remember,” she says on the way to the white car, “we don’t hug strangers. Even nice ones.”

“Why not?”

“We just don’t, we save our hugs for people we love.”

“I love that boy Walker.”

“Jack, you never saw him before in your life.”

This morning I spread a bit of syrup on my pancake. It’s actually good the two together.

Grandma’s tracing around me, she says it’s fine to draw on the deck because the next time it rains the chalk will all get washed away. I watch the clouds, if they start raining I’m going to run inside supersonic fast before a drop hits me. “Don’t get chalk on me,” I tell her.

“Oh, don’t be such a worrywart.”

She pulls me up to standing and there’s a kid shape on the patio, it’s me. I have a huge head, no face, no insides, blobby hands.

“Delivery for you, Jack.” That’s Steppa shouting, what does he mean?

When I go in the house he’s cutting a big box. He pulls out something huge and he says, “Well, this can go in the trash for starters.” She unrolls. “Rug,” I give her a huge hug, “she’s our Rug, mine and Ma’s.”

He lifts up his hands and says, “Suit yourself.”

Grandma’s face is twisting. “Maybe if you took it outside and gave it a good beating, Leo . . .”

“No!” I’m shouting.

“OK, I’ll use the vacuum, but I don’t like to think what’s in here . . .” She rubs Rug between her fingers.

I have to keep Rug on my blow-up in the bedroom, I’m not to drag her all around the house. So I sit with her over my head like a tent, her smell is just like I remember and the feel. Under there I’ve got other things the police brung too. I give Jeep and Remote especially big kisses, and Meltedy Spoon. I wish Remote wasn’t broken so he could make Jeep go. Wordy Ball is flatter than I remember and Red Balloon is hardly at all. Spaceship is here but his rocket blaster’s missing, he doesn’t look very good. No Fort or Labyrinth, maybe they were too big to go in the boxes. I have my five books, even Dylan. I get out the other Dylan, the new one I took from the mall because I thought he was my one but the new is way shinier. Grandma says there’s thousands of each book in the world so thousands of persons can be reading the same at the same minute, it makes me dizzy. New Dylan says, “Hello, Dylan, nice to meet you.”

“I’m Jack’s Dylan,” says Old Dylan.

“I’m Jack’s one too,” says New.

“Yeah, but actually I was Jack’s first.”

Then Old and New bash each other with corners till a page of New rips and I stop because I’ve ripped a book and Ma will be mad. She’s not here to be mad, she doesn’t even know, I’m crying and crying and I zip away the books in my Dora bag so they don’t get cried on. The two Dylans cuddle up together inside and say sorry.

I find Tooth under the blow-up and suck him till he feels like he’s one of mine.

The windows are making funny noises, it’s drops of rain. I go close, I’m not very scared so long as the glass is between. I put my nose right on it, it’s all blurry from the rain, the drops melt together and turn into long rivers down down down the glass.

Me and Grandma and Steppa are all three going in the white car on a surprise trip. “But how do you know which way?” I ask Grandma when she’s driving.

She winks at me in the mirror. “It’s only a surprise for you.”

I watch out the window for new things. A girl in a wheelchair with her head back between two padded things. A dog sniffing another dog’s butt, that’s funny. There’s a metal box for mailing mail in. A plastic bag blowing.

I think I sleep a bit but I’m not sure.

We’re stopped in a parking lot that has dusty stuff all over the lines.

“Guess what?” asks Steppa, pointing.

“Sugar?”

“Sand,” he says. “Getting warmer?”

“No, I’m cold.”

“He means, are you figuring out where we are? Someplace me and your Grandpa used to bring your ma and Paul when they were little?” I look a long way. “Mountains?”

“Sand dunes. And in between those two, the blue stuff?”

“Sky.”

“But underneath. The darker blue at the bottom.”

My eyes are hurting even through my shades.

“The sea!” says Grandma.

I go behind them along the wooden path, I carry the bucket. It’s not like I thought, the wind keeps putting tiny stones in my eyes. Grandma spreads out a big flowery rug, it’s going to get all sandy but she says that’s OK, it’s a picnic blanket.

“Where’s the picnic?”

“It’s a bit early in the year for that.”

Steppa says why don’t we go down to the water.

I’ve got sand in my shoes, one of them comes off. “That’s an idea,” says Steppa. He takes his both off and puts his socks in them, he swings them from the laces.

I put my socks in my shoes too. The sand is all damp and strange on my feet, there’s prickly bits. Ma never said the beach was like this.

“Let’s go,” says Steppa, he starts running at the sea.

I stay far back because there’s huge growing bits with white stuff on top, they roar and crash. The sea never stops growling and it’s too big, we’re not meant to be here.

I go back to Grandma on the picnic blanket. She’s wriggling her bare toes, they’re all wrinkly.

We try to build a sand castle but it’s the wrong kind of sand, it keeps crumbling.

Steppa comes back with his pants rolled up and dripping. “Didn’t feel like paddling?”

“There’s all poo.”

“Where?”

“In the sea. Our poos go down the pipes to the sea, I don’t want to walk in it.”

Steppa laughs. “Your mother doesn’t know much about plumbing, does she?”

I want to hit him. “Ma knows about everything.”

“There’s like a big factory where the pipes from all the toilets go.” He’s sitting on the blanket with his feet all sandy. “The guys there scoop out all the poo and scrub every drop of water till it’s good enough to drink, then they put it back in the pipes so it pours out our faucets again.” “When does it go to the sea?”

He shakes his head. “I think the sea’s just rain and salt.”

“Ever taste a tear?” asks Grandma.

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s the same as the sea.”

I still don’t want to walk in it if it’s tears.

But I go back down near the water with Steppa to look for treasure. We find a white shell like a snail, but when I curl my finger inside, he’s gone out. “Keep it,” says Steppa.

“But what about when he comes home?”

“Well,” says Steppa, “I don’t think he’d leave it lying around if he still needed it.”

Maybe a bird ate him. Or a lion. I put the shell in my pocket, and a pink one, and a black one, and a long dangerous one called a razor shell. I’m allowed take them home because finders keepers, losers weepers.

We have our lunch at a diner which doesn’t mean just have dinner but food anytime at all. I have a BLT that’s a hot sandwich of lettuce and tomato with bacons hidden inside.

Driving home I see the playground but it’s all wrong, the swings are on the opposite side.

“Oh, Jack, that’s a different one,” says Grandma. There’s playgrounds in every town.”

Lots of the world seems to be a repeat.

“Noreen tells me you’ve had a haircut.” Ma’s voice is tiny on the phone.

“Yeah. But I still have my strong.” I’m sitting under Rug with the phone, all in the dark to pretend Ma’s right here. “I have baths on my own now,” I tell her. “I’ve been on swings and I know money and fire and street persons and I’ve got two Dylan the Diggers and a conscience and spongy shoes.” “Wow.”

“Oh and I’ve seen the sea, there’s no poo in it, you were tricking me.”

“You had so many questions,” says Ma. “And I didn’t have all the answers, so I had to make some up.” I hear her crying breath.

“Ma, can you come get me tonight?”

“Not quite yet.”

“Why not?”

“They’re still fiddling with my dosage, trying to figure out what I need.”

Me, she needs me. Can’t she figure that out?

I want to eat my pad thai with Meltedy Spoon but Grandma says it’s unhygienic.

Later I’m in the living room channel surfing, that means looking at all the planets as fast as a surfer, and I hear my name, not in real but in TV.

“ . . . need to listen to Jack.”

“We’re all Jack, in a sense,” says another man sitting at the big table.

“Obviously,” says another one.

Are they called Jack too, are they some of the million?

“The inner child, trapped in our personal Room one oh one,” says another of the men, nodding.

I don’t think I was ever in that room.

“But then perversely, on release, finding ourselves alone in a crowd . . .”

“Reeling from the sensory overload of modernity,” says the first one.

“Post-modernity.”

There’s a woman too. “But surely, at a symbolic level, Jack’s the child sacrifice,” she says, “cemented into the foundations to placate the spirits.” Huh?

“I would have thought the more relevant archetype here is Perseus — born to a walled-up virgin, set adrift in a wooden box, the victim who returns as hero,” says one of the men.

“Of course Kaspar Hauser famously claimed he’d been happy in his dungeon, but perhaps he really meant that nineteenth-century German society was just a bigger dungeon.” “At least Jack had TV.”

Another man laughs. “Culture as a shadow on the wall of Plato’s cave.”

Grandma comes in and switches it right off, scowling.

“It was about me,” I tell her.

“Those guys spent too much time at college.”

“Ma says I have to go to college.”

Grandma’s eyes roll. “All in good time. Pj’s and teeth now.”

She reads me The Runaway Bunny but I’m not liking it tonight. I keep thinking what if it was the mother bunny that ran away and hid and the baby bunny couldn’t find her.

Grandma’s going to buy me a soccer ball, it’s very exciting. I go look at a plastic man with a black rubber suit and flippers, then I see a big stack of suitcases all colors like pink and green and blue, then an escalator. I just step on for a second but I can’t get back up, it zooms me down down down and it’s the coolest thing and scary as well, coolary, that’s a word sandwich, Ma would like it. At the end I have to jump off, I don’t know to get back up to Grandma again. I count my teeth five times, one time I get nineteen instead of twenty. There’s signs everywhere that all say the same thing, Just Three Weeks to Mother’s Day, Doesn’t She Deserve the Best? I look at plates and stoves and chairs, then I’m all floppy so I lie down on a bed.

A woman says I’m not allowed so I sit up. “Where’s your mom, little guy?”

“She’s in the Clinic because she tried to go to Heaven early.” The woman’s staring at me. “I’m a bonsai.” “You’re a what?”

“We were locked up, now we’re rap stars.”

“Oh my go — you’re that boy! The one — Lorana,” she shouts, “get over here. You’ll never believe it. It’s the boy, Jack, the one on TV from the shed.”

Another person comes over, shaking her head. “The shed one’s smaller with long hair tied back, and all kind of hunched.” “It’s him,” she says, “I swear it’s him.”

“No way,” says the other one.

“Jose,” I say.

She laughs and laughs. “This is unreal. Can I have an autograph?”

“Lorana, he won’t know how to sign his name.”

“Yes I will,” I say, “I can write anything there is.”

“You’re something else,” she tells me. “Isn’t he something else?” she says to the other one.

The only paper is old labels from the clothes, I’m writing JACK on lots for the women to give to their friends when Grandma runs up with a ball under her arm and I’ve never seen her so mad. She shouts at the women about lost child procedures, she tears my autographs into bits. She yanks me by the hand. When we’re rushing out of the store the gate goes aieeee aieee, Grandma drops the soccer ball on the carpet.

In the car she won’t look at me in the mirror. I ask, “Why you threw away my ball?”

“It was setting off the alarm,” says Grandma, “because I hadn’t paid.”

“Were you robbing?”

“No, Jack,” she shouts, “I was running around the building like a lunatic looking for you.” Then she says, more quietly, “Anything could have happened.” “Like an earthquake?”

Grandma stares at me in the little mirror. “A stranger might snatch you, Jack, that’s what I’m talking about.” A stranger’s a not-friend, but the women were my new friends. “Why?”

“Because they might want a little boy of their own, all right?”

It doesn’t sound all right.

“Or to hurt you, even.”

“You mean him?” Old Nick, but I can’t say it.

“No, he can’t get out of jail, but somebody like him,” says Grandma.

I didn’t know there was somebody like him in the world.

“Can you go back and get my ball now?” I ask.

She switches on the engine and drives out of the parking lot fast so the wheels screech.

In the car I get madder and madder.

When we get back to the house I put everything in my Dora bag, except my shoes don’t fit so I throw them in the trash and I roll Rug up and drag her down the stairs behind me.

Grandma comes into the hall. “Did you wash your hands?”

“I’m going back to the Clinic,” I shout at her, “and you can’t stop me because you’re a, you’re a stranger.” “Jack,” she says, “put that stinky rug back where it was.”

“You’re the stinky,” I roar.

She’s pressing on her chest. “Leo,” she says over her shoulder, “I swear, I’ve had just about as much—” Steppa comes up the stairs and picks me up.

I drop Rug. Steppa kicks my Dora bag out of the way. He’s carrying me, I’m screaming and hitting him because it’s allowed, it’s a special case, I can kill him even, I’m killing and killing him—

“Leo,” wails Grandma downstairs, “Leo—”

Fee fie foe fum, he’s going to rip me in pieces, he’s going to wrap me in Rug and bury me and the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out—Steppa drops me on the blow-up, but it doesn’t hurt.

He sits down on the end so it all goes up like a wave. I’m still crying and shaking and my snot’s getting on the sheet.

I stop crying. I feel under the blow-up for Tooth, I put him in my mouth and suck hard. He doesn’t taste like anything anymore.

Steppa’s hand is on the sheet just beside me, it’s got hairs on the fingers.

His eyes are waiting for my eyes. “All fair and square, water under the bridge?”

I move Tooth to my gum. “What?”

“Want to have pie on the couch and watch the game?”

“OK.”

I pick up branches fallen off the trees, even enormous heavy ones. Me and Grandma tie them into bundles with string for the city to take them. “How does the city—?”

“The guys from the city, I mean, the guys whose job it is.”

When I grow up my job is going to be a giant, not the eating kind, the kind that catches kids that are falling into the sea maybe and puts them back on land.

I shout, “Dandelion alert,” Grandma scoops it out with her trowel so the grass can grow, because there isn’t room for everything.

When we’re tired we go in the hammock, even Grandma. “I used to sit like this with your ma when she was a baby.” “Did you give her some?”

“Some what?”

“From your breast.”

Grandma shakes her head. “She used to bend back my fingers while she had her bottle.”

“Where’s the tummy mommy?”

“The — oh, you know about her? I have no idea, I’m afraid.”

“Did she get another baby?”

Grandma doesn’t say anything. Then she says, “That’s a nice thought.”

I’m painting at the kitchen table in Grandma’s old apron that has a crocodile and I Ate Gator on the Bayou. I’m not doing proper pictures, just splotches and stripes and spirals, I use all the colors, I even mix them in puddles. I like to make a wet bit then fold the paper over like Grandma showed me, so when I unfold it it’s a butterfly.

There’s Ma in the window.

The red spills. I try and wipe it up but it’s all on my foot and the floor. Ma’s face isn’t there anymore, I run to the window but she’s gone. Was I just imagining? I’ve got red on the window and the sink and the counter. “Grandma?” I shout. “Grandma?”

Then Ma’s right behind me.

I run to nearly at her. She goes to hug me but I say, “No, I’m all painty.”

She laughs, she undoes my apron and drops it on the table. She holds me hard all over but I keep my sticky hands and foot away. “I wouldn’t know you,” she says to my head.

“Why you wouldn’t—?”

“I guess it’s your hair.”

“Look, I have some long in a bracelet, but it keeps getting catched on things.”

“Can I have it?”

“Sure.”

The bracelet gets some paint on it sliding off my wrist. Ma puts it on hers. She looks different but I don’t know how. “Sorry I made you red on your arm.” “It’s all washable,” says Grandma, coming in.

“You didn’t tell him I was coming?” asks Ma, giving her a kiss.

“Ithought it best not,incase of a hitch.”

“There’s no hitches.”

“Good to hear it.” Grandma wipes her eyes and starts cleaning the paint up. “Now, Jack’s been sleeping on a blow-up mattress in our room, but I can make you up a bed on the couch . . .”

“Actually, we better head off.”

Grandma stands still for a minute. “You’ll stay for a bit of supper?”

“Sure,” says Ma.

Steppa makes pork chops with risotto, I don’t like the bone bits but I eat all the rice and scrape the sauce with my fork. Steppa steals a bit of my pork.

“Swiper no swiping.”

He groans, “Oh, man!”

Grandma shows me a heavy book with kids she says were Ma and Paul when they were small. I’m working on believing, then I see one of the girl on a beach, the one Grandma and Steppa took me there, and her face is Ma’s exact face. I show Ma.

“That’s me, all right,” she says, turning the page. There’s one of Paul waving out of a window in a gigantic banana that’s actually a statue, and one of them both eating ice cream in cones with Grandpa but he looks different and Grandma too, she has dark hair in the picture.

“Where’s one of the hammock?”

“We were in it all the time, so probably nobody ever thought of taking a picture,” says Ma.

“It must be terrible to not have any,” Grandma tells her.

“Any what?” says Ma.

“Pictures of Jack when he was a baby and a toddler,” she says. “I mean, just to remember him by.”

Ma’s face is all blank. “I don’t forget a day of it.” She looks at her watch, I didn’t know she had one, it’s got pointy fingers.

“What time are they expecting you at the clinic?” asks Steppa.

She shakes her head. “I’m all done with that.” She takes something out of her pocket and shakes it, it’s a key on a ring. “Guess what, Jack, you and me have our own apartment.”

Grandma says her other name. “Is that such a good idea, do you think?”

“It was my idea. It’s OK, Mom. There’s counselors there around the clock.”

“But you’ve never lived away from home before . . .”

Ma’s staring at Grandma, and so is Steppa. He lets out a big whoop of laughing.

“It’s not funny,” says Grandma, whacking him in the chest. “She knows what I mean.”

Ma takes me upstairs to pack my stuff.

“Close your eyes,” I tell her, “there’s surprises.” I lead her into the bedroom. “Ta-da.” I wait. “It’s Rug and lots of our things, the police gave them back.”

“So I see,” says Ma.

“Look, Jeep and Remote—”

“Let’s not cart broken stuff around with us,” she says, “just take what you really need and put it in your new Dora bag.” “I need all of it.”

Ma breathes out. “Have it your way.”

What’s my way?

“There’s boxes it all came in.”

“I said OK.”

Steppa puts all our stuff into the back of the white car.

“I must get my license renewed,” says Ma when Grandma’s driving along.

“You might find you’re a bit rusty.”

“Oh, I’m rusty at everything,” says Ma.

I ask, “Why you’re—?”

“Like the Tin Man,” Ma says over her shoulder. She lifts her elbow and does a squeak. “Hey, Jack, will we buy a car of our own someday?” “Yeah. Or actually a helicopter. A super zoomer helicopter train car submarine.”

“Now, that sounds like a ride.”

It’s hours and hours in the car. “How come it’s so long?” I ask.

“Because it’s all the way across the city,” says Grandma. “It’s practically the next state.”

“Mom . . .”

The sky’s getting dark.

Grandma parks where Ma says. There is a big sign. INDEPENDENT LIVING RESIDENTIAL FACILITY. She helps us carry all our boxes and bags in the building that’s made of brown bricks, except I pull my Dora on its wheels. We go in a big door with a man called the doorman that smiles. “Does he lock us in?” I whisper to Ma.

“No, just other people out.”

There’s three women and a man called Support Staff, we’re very welcome to buzz down anytime we need help with anything at all, buzzing is like calling on the phone. There’s lots of floors, and apartments on each one, mine and Ma’s is on six. I tug at her sleeve, I whisper, “Five.” “What’s that?”

“Can we be on five instead?”

“Sorry, we don’t get to choose,” she says.

When the elevator bangs shut Ma shivers.

“You OK?” asks Grandma.

“Just one more thing to get used to.”

Ma has to tap in the secret code to make the elevator shake. My tummy feels odd when it ups. Then the doors open and we’re on six already, we flew without knowing it. There’s a little hatch that says INCINERATOR, when we put trash in it it’ll fall down down down and go up in smoke. On the doors it’s not numbers it’s letters, ours is the B, that means we live in Six B. Six is not a bad number like nine, it’s the upside down of it actually. Ma puts the key in the hole, when she turns it she makes a face because of her bad wrist. She’s not all fixed yet. “Home,” she says, pushing the door open.

How is it home if I’ve never been here?

An apartment’s like a house but all squished flat. There’s five rooms, that’s lucky, one is the bathroom with a bath so we can have baths not showers. “Can we have one now?”

“Let’s get settled in first,” says Ma.

The stove does flames like at Grandma’s. The next to the kitchen is the living room that has a couch and a low-down table and a super-big TV in it.

Grandma’s in the kitchen unpacking a box. “Milk, bagels, I don’t know if you’ve started drinking coffee again . . . He likes this alphabet cereal, he spelled out Volcano the other day.”

Ma puts her arms on Grandma and stops her moving for a minute. “Thanks.”

“Should I run out for anything else?”

“No, I think you’ve thought of everything. ’Night, Mom.”

Grandma’s face is twisted. “You know—”

“What?” Ma waits. “What is it?”

“I didn’t forget a day of you either.”

They aren’t saying anything so I go try the beds for which is bouncier. When I’m doing somersaults I hear them talking a lot. I go around opening and shutting everything.

After Grandma’s gone back to her house Ma shows me how to do the bolt, that’s like a key that only us on the inside can open or shut.

In bed I remember, I pull her T-shirt up.

“Ah,” says Ma, “I don’t think there’s any in there.”

“Yeah, there must be.”

“Well, the thing about breasts is, if they don’t get drunk from, they figure, OK, nobody needs our milk anymore, we’ll stop making it.” “Dumbos. I bet I can find some . . .”

“No,” says Ma, putting her hand between, “I’m sorry. That’s all done. Come here.”

We cuddle hard. Her chest goes boom boom in my ear, that’s the heart of her.

I lift up her T-shirt.

“Jack—”

I kiss the right and say, “Bye-bye.” I kiss the left twice because it was always creamier. Ma holds my head so tight I say, “I can’t breathe,” and she lets go.

God’s face comes up all pale red in my eyes. I blink and make the light come and go. I wait till Ma’s breathing is on. “How long do we stay here at the Independent Living?”

She yawns. “As long as we like.”

“I’d like to stay for one week.”

She stretches her whole self. “We’ll stay for a week, then, and after that we’ll see.”

I curl her hair like a rope. “I could cut yours and then we’d be the same again.”

Ma shakes her head. “I think I’m going to keep mine long.”

When we’re unpacking there’s a big problem, I can’t find Tooth.

I look in all my stuff and then all around in case I dropped him last night. I’m trying to remember when I had him in my hand or in my mouth. Not last night but maybe the night before at Grandma’s I think I was sucking him. I have a terrible thought, maybe I swallowed him by accident in my sleep.

“What happens to stuff we eat if it’s not food?”

Ma’s putting socks in her drawer. “Like what?”

I can’t tell her I maybe lost a bit of her. “Like a little stone or something.”

“Oh, then it just slides on through.”

We don’t go down in the elevator today, we don’t even get dressed. We stay in our Independent Living and learn all the bits. “We could sleep in this room,” says Ma, “but you could play in the other one that gets more sunshine.”

“With you.”

“Well, yeah, but sometimes I’ll be doing other things, so maybe during the day our sleeping room could be my room.” What other things?

Ma pours us our cereal, not even counting. I thank Baby Jesus.

“I read a book at college that said everyone should have a room of their own,” she says.

“Why?”

“To do their thinking in.”

“I can do my thinking in a room with you.” I wait. “Why you can’t think in a room with me?”

Ma makes a face. “I can, most of the time, but it would be nice to have somewhere to go that’s just mine, sometimes.” “I don’t think so.”

She does a long breath. “Let’s just try it for today. We could make nameplates and stick them on the doors . . .” “Cool.”

We do all different color letters on pages, they say JACK’S ROOM and MA’S ROOM, then we stick them up with tape, we use all we like.

I have to poo, I look in it but I don’t see Tooth.

We’re sitting on the couch looking at the vase on the table, it’s made of glass but not invisible, it’s got all blues and greens. “I don’t like the walls,” I tell Ma.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re too white. Hey, you know what, we could buy cork squares from the store and stick them up all over.” “No way Jose.” After a minute, she says, “This is a fresh start, remember?”

She says remember but she doesn’t want to remember Room.

I think of Rug, I run to get her out of the box and I drag her behind me. “Where will Rug go, beside the couch or beside our bed?” Ma shakes her head.

“But—”

“Jack, it’s all frayed and stained from seven years of — I can smell it from here. I had to watch you learn to crawl on that rug, learn to walk, it kept tripping you up. You pooed on it once, another time the soup spilled, I could never get it really clean.” Her eyes are all shiny and too big.

“Yeah and I was born on her and I was dead in her too.”

“Yeah, so what I’d really like to do is throw it in the incinerator.”

“No!”

“If for once in your life you thought about me instead of—”

“I do,” I shout. “I thought about you always when you were Gone.”

Ma shuts her eyes just for a second. “Tell you what, you can keep it in your own room, but rolled up in the wardrobe. OK? I don’t want to have to see it.” She goes out to the kitchen, I hear her splash the water. I pick up the vase, I throw it at the wall and it goes in a zillion pieces.

“Jack—” Ma’s standing there.

I scream, “I don’t want to be your little bunny.”

I run into JACK’S ROOM with Rug pulling behind me getting caught on the door, I drag her into the wardrobe and put her all around me, I sit there for hours and hours and Ma doesn’t come.

My face is all stiff where the tears dried. Steppa says that’s how they make salt, they catch waves in little ponds then the sun dries them up.

There’s a scary sound bzz bzz bzz, then I hear Ma talking. “Yeah, I guess, as good a time as any.” After a minute I hear her outside the wardrobe, she says, “We’ve got visitors.”

It’s Dr. Clay and it’s Noreen. They’ve brought a food called takeout that’s noodles and rice and slippery yellow yummy things.

The splintery bits of the vase are all gone, Ma must have disappeared them down the incinerator.

There’s a computer for us, Dr. Clay is setting it up so we can do games and send e-mails. Noreen shows me how to do drawings right on the screen with the arrow turned into a paintbrush. I do one of me and Ma in the Independent Living.

“What’s all this white scribbly stuff?” asks Noreen.

“That’s the space.”

“Outer space?”

“No, all the space inside, the air.”

“Well, celebrity is a secondary trauma,” Dr. Clay is saying to Ma. “Have you given any further thought to new identities?” Ma shakes her head. “I can’t imagine . . . I’m me and Jack’s Jack, right? How could I start calling him Michael or Zane or something?” Why she’d call me Michael or Zane?

“Well, what about a new surname at least,” says Dr. Clay, “so he attracts less attention when he starts school?” “When I start school?”

“Not till you’re ready,” says Ma, “don’t worry.”

I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.

In the evening we have a bath and I lie my head on Ma’s tummy in the water nearly sleeping.

We practice being in the two rooms and calling out to each other, but not too loud because there’s other persons living in the other Independent Livings that aren’t Six B. When I’m in JACK’S ROOM and Ma’s in MA’S ROOM, that’s not so bad, only when she’s in other rooms but I don’t know which, I don’t like that.

“It’s OK,” she says, “I’ll always hear you.”

We eat more of the takeout hotted again in our microwave, that’s the little stove that works super fast by invisible death rays.

“I can’t find Tooth,” I tell Ma.

“My tooth?”

“Yeah, your bad one that fell out that I kept, I had him all the time but now I think he’s lost. Unless maybe I swallowed him, but he’s not sliding out in my poo yet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Ma.

“But—”

“People move around so much out in the world, things get lost all the time.”

“Tooth’s not just a thing, I have to have him.”

“Trust me, you don’t.”

“But—”

She holds on to my shoulders. “Bye-bye rotten old tooth. End of story.”

She’s nearly laughing but I’m not.

I think maybe I did swallow him by accident. Maybe he’s not going to slide out in my poo, maybe he’s going to be hiding inside me in a corner forever.

In the night, I whisper, “I’m still switched on.”

“I know,” says Ma. “Me too.”

Our bedroom is MA’S ROOM that’s in the Independent Living that’s in America that’s stuck on the world that’s a blue and green ball a million miles across and always spinning. Outside the world there’s Outer Space. I don’t know why we don’t fall off. Ma says it’s gravity, that’s an invisible power that keeps us stuck to the ground, but I can’t feel it.

God’s yellow face comes up, we’re watching out the window. “Do you notice,” says Ma, “it’s a bit earlier every morning?” There’s six windows in our Independent Living, they all show different pictures but some of the same things. My favorite is the bathroom because there’s a building site, I can look down on the cranes and diggers. I say all the Dylan words to them, they like that.

In the living room I’m doing my Velcro because we’re going out. I see the space where the vase used to be till I threw it. “We could ask for another for Sundaytreat,” I tell Ma, then I remember.

Her shoes have laces that she’s tying. She looks at me, not mad. “You know, you won’t ever have to see him again.” “Old Nick.” I say the name to see if it sounds scary, it does but not very.

“I’ll have to just one more time,” says Ma, “when I go to court. It won’t be for months and months.” “Why will you have to?”

“Morris says I could do it by video link, but actually I want to look him in his mean little eye.”

Which one is that? I try and remember his eyes. “Maybe he’ll ask us for Sundaytreat, that would be funny.” Ma does not a nice laugh. She’s looking in the mirror, putting black lines around her eyes and purple on her mouth.

“You’re like a clown.”

“It’s just makeup,” she says, “so I’ll look better.”

“You look better always,” I tell her.

She grins at me in the mirror. I put my nose up at the end and my fingers in my ears and wiggle them.

We hold hands but the air is really warm today so they get slippy. We look in the windows of stores, only we don’t go in, we just walk. Ma keeps saying that things are ludicrously expensive or else they’re junk. “They sell men and women and children in there,” I tell her.

“What?” She spins around. “Oh, no, see, it’s a clothes shop, so when it says Men, Women, Children, it just means clothes for all those people.” When we have to cross a street we press the button and wait for the little silver man, he’ll keep us safe. There’s a thing that looks just concrete, but kids are there squeaking and jumping to get wet, it’s called a splash pad. We watch for a while but not too long because Ma says we might seem freaky.

We play I Spy. We buy ice cream that’s the best thing in the world, mine is vanilla and Ma’s is strawberry. Next time we can have different flavors, there’s hundreds. A big lump is cold all the way down and my face aches, Ma shows me to put my hand over my nose and sniff in the warm air. I’ve been in the world three weeks and a half, I still never know what’s going to hurt.

I have some coins that Steppa gave me, I buy Ma a clip for her hair with a ladybug on it but just a pretend one.

She says thanks over and over.

“You can have it forever even when you’re dead,” I tell her. “Will you be dead before I do?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Why that’s the plan?”

“Well, by the time you’re one hundred, I’ll be one hundred and twenty-one, and I think my body will be pretty worn out.” She’s grinning. “I’ll be in Heaven getting your room ready.”

“Our room,” I say.

“OK, our room.”

Then I see a phone booth and go in to play I’m Superman changing into his costume, I wave at Ma through the glass. There’s little cards with smiley pictures that say Busty Blonde 18 and Filipina Shemale, they’re ours because finders keepers losers weepers, but when I show Ma she says they’re dirty and makes me throw them in the trash.

For a while we get lost, then she sees the name of the street where the Independent Living is so we weren’t really lost. My feet are tired. I think people in the world must be tired all the time.

In the Independent Living I go bare feet, I won’t ever like shoes.

The persons in Six C are a woman and two big girls, bigger than me but not all the way big. The woman wears shades all the time even in the elevator and has a crutch to hop with, the girls don’t talk I think but I waved my fingers at one and she smiled.

There’s new things every single day.

Grandma brought me a watercolor set, it’s ten colors of ovals in a box with an invisible lid. I rinse the little brush clean after each so they don’t mix and when the water goes dirty I just get more. The first time I hold my picture up to show Ma it drips, so after that we dry them flat on the table.

We go to the hammock house and I do amazing LEGO with Steppa of a castle and a zoomermobile.

Grandma can come see us just in the afternoons now because in the mornings she’s got a job in a store where people buy new hair and breasts after theirs fall off. Ma and me go peek at her through the door of the store, Grandma doesn’t seem like Grandma. Ma says everybody’s got a few different selves.

Paul comes to our Independent Living with a surprise for me that’s a soccer ball, like the one Grandma threw away in the store. I go down to the park with him, not Ma because she’s going to a coffee shop to meet one of her old friends.

“Great,” he says. “Again.”

“No, you,” I say.

Paul does a huge kick, the ball bounces off the building and away in some bushes. “Go for it,” he shouts.

When I kick, the ball goes in the pond and I cry.

Paul gets it out with a branch. He kicks it far far. “Want to show me how fast you can run?”

“We had Track around Bed,” I tell him. “I can, I did a there-and-back in sixteen steps.”

“Wow. I bet you can go even faster now.”

I shake my head. “I’ll fall over.”

“I don’t think so,” says Paul.

“I always do these days, the world is trippy-uppy.”

“Yeah, but this grass is really soft, so even if you do fall, you won’t hurt yourself.”

There’s Bronwyn and Deana coming, I spot them with my sharp eyes.

It’s a bit hotter every day, Ma says it’s unbelievable for April.

Then it rains. She says it might be fun to buy two umbrellas and go out with the rain bouncing off the umbrellas and not wetting us at all, but I don’t think so.

The next day it’s dry again so we go out, there’s puddles but I’m not scared of them, I go in my spongy shoes and my feet get splashed through the holes, that’s OK.

Me and Ma have a deal, we’re going to try everything one time so we know what we like.

I already like going to the park with my soccer ball and feeding the ducks. I really like the playground now except when that boy came down the slide right after me and kicked me in the back. I like the Natural History Museum except the dinosaurs are just dead ones with bones.

In the bathroom I hear people talking Spanish only Ma says the word for it is Chinese. There’s hundreds of different foreign ways to talk, that makes me dizzy.

We look in another museum that’s paintings, a bit like our masterpieces that came with the oatmeal but way way bigger, also we can see the stickiness of the paint. I like walking past the whole room of them, but then there’s lots of other rooms and I lie down on the bench and the man in the uniform comes over with a not-friendly face so I run away.

Steppa comes to the Independent Living with a super thing for me, a bike they were saving for Bronwyn but I get it first because I’m bigger. It’s got shiny faces in the spokes of the wheels. I have to wear a helmet and knee pads and wrist pads when I ride it in the park for if I fall off, but I don’t fall off, I’ve got balance, Steppa says I’m a natural. The third time we go, Ma lets me not wear the pads and in a couple of weeks she’s going to take off the stabilizers because I won’t need them anymore.

Ma finds a concert that’s in a park, not our near park but one where we have to get a bus. I like going on the bus a lot, we look down on people’s different hairy heads in the street. At the concert the rule is that the music persons get to make all the noise and we aren’t allowed make even one squeak except clapping at the end.

Grandma says why doesn’t Ma take me to the zoo but Ma says she couldn’t stand the cages.

We go to two different churches. I like the one with the multicolored windows but the organ is too loud.

Also we go to a play, that’s when adults dress up and play like kids and everybody else watches. It’s in another park, it’s called Midsummer Night. I’m sitting on the grass with my fingers on my mouth to remember it to stay shut. Some fairies are fighting over a little boy, they say so many words they all smoosh together. Sometimes the fairies disappear and persons all in black move the furniture around. “Like we did in Room,” I whisper to Ma, she nearly laughs.

But then the persons sitting near us start calling out, “How now spirit,” and “All hail Titania,” I get mad and say shush, then I really shout at them to be quiet. Ma pulls me by the hand all the way back to the trees bit and tells me that was called audience participation, it’s allowed, it’s a special case.

When we get home to the Independent Living we write everything down that we tried, the list’s getting long. Then there’s things we might try when we’re braver.

Going up in an airplane

Having some of Ma’s old friends over for dinner

Driving a car

Going to the North Pole

Going to school (me) and college (Ma)

Finding our really own apartment that’s not an Independent

Living Inventing something Making new friends Living in another country not America Having a playdate at another kid’s house like Baby Jesus and John the Baptist Taking swimming lessons Ma going out dancing in the night and me staying at Steppa and Grandma’s on the blow-up. Having jobs Going to the moon

Most important there’s getting a dog called Lucky, every day I’m ready but Ma says she’s got enough on her plate at the moment, maybe when I’m six.

“When I’ll have a cake with candles?”

“Six candles,” she says, “I swear.”

In the night in our bed that’s not Bed, I rub the duvet, it’s puffed-upper than Duvet was. When I was four I didn’t know about the world, or I thought it was only stories. Then Ma told me about it for real and I thought I knowed everything. But now I’m in the world all the time, I actually don’t know much, I’m always confused.

“Ma?”

“Yeah?”

She still smells like her, but not her breasts, they’re just breasts now.

“Do you sometimes wish we didn’t escape?”

I don’t hear anything. Then she says, “No, I never wish that.”

“It’s perverse,” Ma is telling Dr. Clay, “all those years, I was craving company. But now I don’t seem up to it.” He’s nodding, they’re sipping their steamy coffee, Ma drinks it now like adults do to keep going. I still drink milk but sometimes it’s chocolate milk, it tastes like chocolate but it’s allowed. I’m on the floor doing a jigsaw with Noreen, it’s super hard with twenty-four pieces of a train.

“Most days . . . Jack’s enough for me.”

“ ‘The Soul selects her own Society — Then — shuts the Door—’ ” That’s his poem voice.

Ma nods. “Yeah, but it’s not how I remember myself.”

“You had to change to survive.”

Noreen looks up. “Don’t forget, you’d have changed anyway. Moving into your twenties, having a child — you wouldn’t have stayed the same.” Ma just drinks her coffee.

One day I wonder if the windows open. I try the bathroom one, I figure out the handle and push the glass. I’m scared of the air but I’m being scave, I lean out and put my hands through it. I’m half in half out, it’s the most amazing—

“Jack!” Ma pulls me all in by the back of my T-shirt.

“Ow.”

“It’s a six-story drop, if you fell you’d smash your skull.”

“I wasn’t falling,” I tell her, “I was being in and out at the same time.”

“You were being a nutcase at the same time,” she tells me, but she’s nearly smiling.

I go after her into the kitchen. She’s beating eggs in a bowl for French toast. The shells are smashed, we just throw them in the trash, bye-bye. I wonder if they turn into the new eggs. “Do we come back after Heaven?”

I think Ma doesn’t hear me.

“Do we grow in tummies again?”

“That’s called reincarnation.” She cutting the bread. “Some people think we might come back as donkeys or snails.” “No, humans in the same tummies. If I grow in you again—”

Ma lights the flame. “What’s your question?”

“Will you still call me Jack?”

She looks at me. “OK.”

“Promise?”

“I’ll always call you Jack.”

Tomorrow is May Day, that means summer’s coming and there’s going to be a parade. We might go just to look. “Is it only May Day in the world?” I ask.

We’re having granola in our bowls on the sofa not spilling. “What do you mean?” says Ma.

“Is it May Day in Room too?”

“I suppose so, but nobody’s there to celebrate it.”

“We could go there.”

She clangs her spoon into her bowl. “Jack.”

“Can we?”

“Do you really, really want to?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

“Don’t you like it outside?”

“Yeah. Not everything.”

“Well, no, but mostly? You like it more than Room?”

“Mostly.” I eat all the rest of my granola and the bit of Ma’s that she left in her bowl. “Can we go back sometime?” “Not to live.”

I shake my head. “Just to visit for one minute.”

Ma leans her mouth on her hand. “I don’t think I can.”

“Yeah, you can.” I wait. “Is it dangerous?”

“No, but just the idea of it, it makes me feel like . . .”

She doesn’t say like what. “I’d hold your hand.”

Ma stares at me. “What about going on your own, maybe?”

“No.”

“With someone, I mean. With Noreen?”

“No.”

“Or Grandma?”

“With you.”

“I can’t—”

“I’m choosing for both of us,” I tell her.

She gets up, I think she’s mad. She takes the phone in MA’S ROOM and talks to somebody.

Later in the morning the doorman buzzes and says there’s a police car here for us.

“Are you still Officer Oh?”

“I sure am,” says Officer Oh. “Long time no see.”

There’s tiny dots on the windows of the police car, I think it’s rain. Ma’s chewing her thumb. “Bad idea,” I tell her, pulling her hand away.

“Yeah.” She takes her thumb back and nibbles it again. “I wish he was dead.” She’s nearly whispering.

I know who she means. “But not in Heaven.”

“No, outside it.”

“Knock knock knock, but he can’t come in.”

“Yeah.”

“Ha ha.”

Two fire trucks go by with sirens. “Grandma says there’s more of him.”

“What?”

“Persons like him, in the world.”

“Ah,” says Ma.

“Is it true?”

“Yeah. But the tricky thing is, there’s far more people in the middle.”

“Where?”

Ma’s staring out the window but I don’t know at what. “Somewhere between good and bad,” she says. “Bits of both stuck together.” The dots on the window join up into little rivers.

When we stop, I only know we’re there because Officer Oh says “Here we are.” I don’t remember which house Ma came out of, the night of our Great Escape, the houses all have garages. None of them looks especially like a secret.

Officer Oh says, “I should have brought umbrellas.”

“It’s only sprinkling,” says Ma. She gets out and holds out her hand to me.

I don’t undo my seat belt. “The rain will fall on us—”

“Let’s get this over with, Jack, because I am not coming back again.”

I click it open. I put my head down and squeeze my eyes half shut, Ma leads me along. The rain is on me, my face is wetting, my jacket, my hands a bit. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just weird.

When we get up close to the door of the house, I know it’s Old Nick’s house because there’s a yellow ribbon that says in black letters CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. A big sticker with a scary wolf face that says BEWARE OF THE DOG. I point to it, but Ma says, “That’s only pretend.” Oh, yeah, the trick dog that was having the fit the day Ma was nineteen.

A man police I don’t know opens the door inside, Ma and Officer Oh duck under the yellow ribbon, I only have to go a bit sideways.

The house has lots of rooms with all stuff like fat chairs and the hugest TV I ever saw. But we go right through, there’s another door at the back and then it’s grass. The rain’s still falling but my eyes stay open.

“Fifteen-foot hedge all the way around,” Officer Oh is saying to Ma, “neighbors thought nothing of it. ‘A man’s entitled to his privacy,’ et cetera.”

There’s bushes and a hole with more yellow tape on sticks all around it. I remember something. “Ma. Is that where—?” She stands and stares. “I don’t think I can do this.”

But I’m walking over to the hole. There’s brown things in the mud. “Are they worms?” I ask Officer Oh, my chest is thump thump thumping.

“Just tree roots.”

“Where’s the baby?”

Ma’s beside me, she makes a sound.

“We dug her up,” says Officer Oh.

“I didn’t want her to be here anymore,” Ma says, her voice is all scratchy. She clears her throat and asks Officer Oh, “How did you find where—?” “We’ve got soil-sensitive probes.”

“We’ll put her somewhere better,” Ma tells me.

“Grandma’s garden?”

“Tell you what, we could — we could turn her bones into ash and sprinkle it under the hammock.”

“Will she grow again then and be my sister?”

Ma shakes her head. Her face is all stripey wet.

There’s more rain on me. It’s not like a shower, softer.

Ma’s turned around, she’s looking at a gray shed in the corner of the yard. “That’s it,” she says.

“What?”

“Room.”

“Nah.”

“It is, Jack, you’ve just never seen it from the outside.”

We follow Officer Oh, we step over more yellow tape. “Notice the central air unit is concealed in these bushes,” she tells Ma. “And the entrance is at the back, out of any sight lines.”

I see silvery metal, it’s Door I think but the side of him I never saw, he’s halfway open already.

“Will I come in with you?” says Officer Oh.

“No,” I shout.

“OK.”

“Just me and Ma.”

But Ma’s dropped my hand and she’s bending over, she makes a strange noise. There’s stuff on the grass, on her mouth, it’s vomit I can smell. Is she poisoned again? “Ma, Ma—”

“I’m OK.” She wipes her mouth with a tissue Officer Oh gives her.

“Would you prefer—?” says Officer Oh.

“No,” says Ma and she takes my hand again. “Come on.”

We step in through Door and it’s all wrong. Smaller than Room and emptier and it smells weird. Floor’s bare, that’s because there’s no Rug, she’s in my wardrobe in our Independent Living, I forgot she couldn’t be here at the same time. Bed’s here but there’s no sheets or Duvet on her. Rocker’s here and Table and Sink and Bath and Cabinet but no plates and cutlery on top, and Dresser and TV and Bunny with the purple bow on him, and Shelf but nothing on her, and our chairs folded up but they’re all different. Nothing says anything to me. “I don’t think this is it,” I whisper to Ma.

“Yeah, it is.”

Our voices sound not like us. “Has it got shrunk?”

“No, it was always like this.”

Spaghetti Mobile’s gone, and my octopus picture, and the masterpieces, and all the toys and Fort and Labyrinth. I look under Table but there’s no web. “It’s gone darker.”

“Well, it’s a rainy day. You could put the light on.” Ma points to Lamp.

But I don’t want to touch. I look closer, I’m trying to see it how it was. I find my birthday numbers marked beside Door, I stand against them and put my hand flat at the top of my head and I’m taller than the black 5. There’s thin dark on everything. “Is that the dust of our skins?” I ask.

“Fingerprinting powder,” says Officer Oh.

I bend and look in Under Bed for Eggsnake curled up like he’s sleeping. I can’t see his tongue, I reach down all careful till I feel the little prick of the needle.

I straighten up. “Where did Plant be?”

“You’ve forgotten already? Right here,” says Ma, tapping the middle of Dresser and I see a circle that’s more coloredy than the rest.

There’s the mark of Track around Bed. The little hole rubbed in Floor where our feet used to go under Table. I guess this really was Room one time. “But not anymore,” I tell Ma.

“What?”

“It’s not Room now.”

“You don’t think so?” She sniffs. “It used to smell even staler. The door’s open now, of course.”

Maybe that’s it. “Maybe it’s not Room if Door’s open.”

Ma does a tiny smile. “Do you—?” She clears her throat. “Would you like the door closed for a minute?” “No.”

“OK. I need to go now.”

I walk to Bed Wall and touch it with one finger, the cork doesn’t feel like anything. “Is good night in the day?” “Huh?”

“Can we say good night when it’s not night?”

“I think it would be good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Wall.” Then I say it to the three other walls, then “Good-bye, Floor.” I pat Bed, “Good-bye, Bed.” I put my head down in Under Bed to say “Good-bye, Eggsnake.” In Wardrobe I whisper, “Good-bye, Wardrobe.” In the dark there’s the picture of me Ma did for my birthday, I look very small. I wave her over and point to it.

I kiss her face where the tears are, that’s how the sea tastes.

I pull the me picture down and zip it into my jacket. Ma’s nearly at Door, I go over. “Lift me up?”

“Jack—”

“Please.”

Ma sits me up on her hip, I reach up.

“Higher.”

She holds me by my ribs and lifts me up up up, I touch the start of Roof. I say, “Good-bye, Roof.”

Ma puts me down thump.

“Good-bye, Room.” I wave up at Skylight. “Say good-bye,” I tell Ma. “Good-bye, Room.”

Ma says it but on mute.

I look back one more time. It’s like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.