“Is your ma in this picture?”
“She’s down at the bottom having a nap.”
The real Ma laughs a bit and blows her nose. That remembers me to do mine because it’s dripping.
“What about the man you call Old Nick, is he anywhere?”
“OK, he can be over in this corner in his cage.” I do him and the bars very thick, he’s biting them. There are ten bars, that’s the strongest number, not even an angel could burn them open with his blowtorch and Ma says an angel wouldn’t turn on his blowtorch for a bad guy anyway. I show Dr. Clay how many counting I can do up to 1,000,029 and even higher if I wanted.
“A little boy I know, he counts the same things over and over when he feels nervous, he can’t stop.”
“What things?” I ask.
“Lines on the sidewalk, buttons, that kind of thing.”
I think that boy should count his teeth instead, because they’re always there, unless they fall out.
“You keep talking about separation anxiety,” Ma’s saying to Dr. Clay, “but me and Jack are not going to be separated.” “Still, it’s not just the two of you anymore, is it?”
She’s chewing her mouth. They talk about
“The very best thing you did was, you got him out early,” says Dr. Clay. “At five, they’re still plastic.”
But I’m not plastic, I’m a real boy.
“. . probably young enough to forget,” he’s saying, “which will be a mercy.”
That’s
I want to keep playing with the boy puppet with the tongue but time’s up, Dr. Clay has to go play with Mrs. Garber. He says I can borrow the puppet till tomorrow but he still belongs to Dr. Clay.
“Why?”
“Well, everything in the world belongs to somebody.”
Like my six new toys and my five new books, and Tooth is mine I think because Ma didn’t want him anymore.
“Except the things we all share,” says Dr. Clay, “like the rivers and the mountains.”
“The street?”
“That’s right, we all get to use the streets.”
“I ran on the street.”
“When you were escaping, right.”
“Because we didn’t belong to him.”
“That’s right.” Dr. Clay’s smiling. “You know who you belong to, Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“Yourself.”
He’s wrong, actually, I belong to Ma.
The Clinic keeps having more bits in it, like there’s a room with a ginormous TV and I jump up and down hoping
In the corridor I remember, I ask, “What’s the
“Huh?”
“Dr. Clay said I was made of plastic and I’d forget.”
“Ah,” says Ma. “He figures, soon you won’t remember Room anymore.”
“I will too.” I stare at her. “Am I meant to forget?”
“I don’t know.”
She’s always saying that now. She’s gone ahead of me already, she’s at the stairs, I have to run to catch up.
After lunch. Ma says it’s time to try going Outside again. “If we stay indoors all the time, it’s like we never did our Great Escape at all.” She’s sounding cranky, she’s tying her laces already.
After my hat and shades and shoes and the sticky stuff again, I’m tired.
Noreen is waiting for us beside the fish tank.
Ma lets me revolve in the door five times. She pushes and we’re out.
It’s so bright, I think I’m going to scream. Then my shades get darker and I can’t see. The air smells weird in my sore nose and my neck’s all tight. “Pretend you’re watching this on TV,” says Noreen in my ear.
“Huh?”
“Just try it.” She does a special voice: “ ‘Here’s a boy called Jack going for a walk with his Ma and their friend Noreen.’ ” I’m watching it.
“What’s Jack wearing on his face?” she asks.
“Cool red shades.”
“So he is. Look, they’re all walking across the parking lot on a mild April day.”
There’s four cars, a red and a green and a black and a brownish goldy. Burnt Sienna, that’s the crayon of it. Inside their windows they’re like little houses with seats. A teddy bear is hanging up in the red one on the mirror. I’m stroking the nose bit of the car, it’s all smooth and cold like an ice cube. “Careful,” says Ma, “you might set off the alarm.”
I didn’t know, I put my hands back under my elbows.
“Let’s go onto the grass.” She pulls me a little bit.
I’m squishing the green spikes under my shoes. I bend down and rub, it doesn’t cut my fingers. My one Raja tried to eat is nearly grown shut. I watch the grass again, there’s a twig and a leaf that’s brown and a something, it’s yellow.
A hum, so I look up, the sky’s so big it nearly knocks me down. “Ma. Another airplane!”
“Contrail,” she says, pointing. “I just remembered, that’s what the streak is called.”
I walk on a flower by accident, there’s hundreds, not a bunch like the crazies send us in the mail, they’re growing right in the ground like hair on my head. “Daffodils,” says Ma, pointing, “magnolias, tulips, lilacs. Are those apple blossoms?” She smells everything, she puts my nose on a flower but it’s too sweet, it makes me dizzy. She chooses a lilac and gives it to me.
