Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

Ma nods. “Rivers, lakes . . .”

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

“Lots of faucets.”

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

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

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

“But—”

“Nobody’s going to rescue us.”

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

Her face is the strangest I ever saw.

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

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

Ma finally stops rocking.

“Can I have some?”

“Sure,” she says, “come here.”

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

“All done?” she says in my ear.

“Yeah.”

“Listen, Jack. Are you listening?”

“I’m always listening.”

“We have to get out of here.”

I stare at her.

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

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

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

“Like what?”

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

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

“The cat did it on Tom and Jerry —”

“It’s great that you’re brainstorming,” says Ma, “but we need an idea that’ll actually work.” “A really big explosion,” I tell her.

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

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

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

I think so hard it hurts.

“Any other ideas?”

“You say no to all of them.”

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

“Which ideas are realistic?”

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

“Oh yeah, that’s a cool idea.”

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

“Yes way.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Like what?”

“Like, maybe like when you were a student and he tricked you into his truck with his dog that wasn’t a real dog.” Ma lets out her breath. “I know you’re trying to help, but maybe you could hush for a while now so I can think?” But we were thinking, we were thinking hard together. I get up and go eat the banana with the big brown bit, the brown is the sweetest.

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

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

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

“What kind of sick?”

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

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

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

Ma shakes her head. “Forget the cough.”

“I can do it even bigger—”

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

I let out the biggest horriblest cough ever.

“I don’t know,” says Ma, “maybe coughing is just too hard to fake. Anyway—” She slaps her head. “I’m so dumb.” “No you’re not.” I rub where she hit.

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

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

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

“Why I can’t talk?”

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

“Me riding in the brown truck?”

Ma nods. “To the hospital.”

I can’t believe it. But then I think about the medical planet. “I don’t want to be cutted open.” “Oh, the doctors won’t do anything to you for real, because you won’t actually have anything wrong with you, remember?” She strokes my shoulder. “It’s just a trick for our Great Escape. Old Nick will carry you into the hospital, and the first doctor you see — or nurse, whatever — you shout, ‘Help!’ ” “You can shout it.”

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

“Where will you be?”

“Right here in Room.”

I have a better idea. “You could be pretend-sick too, like that time we had diarrhea both at the same time, then he’d bring both of us in his truck.” Ma chews her lip. “He won’t buy it. I know it’ll be really weird to go on your own, but I’ll be talking to you in your head every minute, I promise. Remember when Alice was falling down, down, down, she was talking to Dinah her cat in her head all the time?”

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

“It’s a bad idea.”

“Actually—”

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

“Jack—”

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

“OK, calm down. Forget it.”

“Really?”

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

She still sounds cranky.

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

She says, “Would you like some?”