Room (14 page)

“No.”

“I bet Jack the Giant Killer would put a hot bag on his face if he had to. Come on, just a bit longer.”

“Let me.” I put the bag down on the pillow, I scrunch up my face and put it on the hotness. Sometimes I come up for a break and Ma feels my forehead or my cheeks and says,
“Sizzling,” then she makes me put my face back. I’m crying a bit, not about the hot but because of Old Nick coming, if he’s coming tonight, I don’t want him to, I
think I’m going to be sick for actual. I’m always listening for the
beep beep.
I hope he doesn’t come, I’m not scave I’m just regular scared.

I run to Toilet and do more poo and Ma stirs it up. I want to flush but she says no, Room has to stink like I’ve had diarrhea all day.

When I get back into Bed she kisses the back of my neck and says, “You’re doing great, crying is a big help.”

“Why’s—?”

“Because it makes you look sicker. Let’s do something about your hair. . . . I should have thought of that before.” She puts some dish soap on her hands and rubs it hard all on
my head. “That looks good and greasy. Oh but it smells too nice, you need to smell worse.” She runs over to look at Watch again. “We’re running out of time,” she says,
all shaky. “I’m an idiot, you have to smell bad, you really—Hang on.”

She leans over Bed, she makes a weird cough and puts her hand in her mouth. She keeps making the weird sound. Then stuff falls out of her mouth like spit but much thicker. I can see the fish
sticks we had for dinner.

She’s rubbing it on the pillow, on my hair. “Stop,” I shriek, I’m trying to wriggle away.

“Sorry, I have to.” Ma’s eyes are weird and shiny. She’s wiping her vomit on my T-shirt, even my mouth. It smells the worst ever, all sharp and poisonous. “Put your
face on the hot bag again.”

“But—”

“Do it, Jack, hurry.”

“I want to stop now.”

“We’re not playing, we can’t stop. Do it.”

I’m crying because the stink and my face in the hot bag so I think it’s going to melt off. “You’re mean.”

“I’ve got a good reason,” says Ma.

Beep beep. Beep beep.

Ma grabs the bag of water away, it’s ripping off my face. “Shh.” She presses my eyes shut, pushes my face down into the awful pillow, she pulls Duvet right up over my back.

The colder air comes in with him. Ma calls out right away, “There you are.”

“Keep your voice down.” Old Nick says it quietly like a growl.

“I just—”

“Shh.” Another
beep beep,
then the
boom.
“You know the drill,” he says, “not a peep out of you till the door’s shut.”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just, Jack’s really bad.” Ma’s voice is shaking and for a minute I nearly believe it, she’s even better pretending than me.

“It reeks in here.”

“That’s because he’s had it coming out both ends.”

“Probably just a twenty-four-hour bug,” says Old Nick.

“It’s been more like thirty hours already. He’s got chills, he’s burning up—”

“Give him one of those headache pills.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying all day? He just pukes them up again. He can’t even keep water down.”

Old Nick puffs his breath. “Let’s have a look at him.”

“No,” says Ma.

“Come on, get out of the way—”

“No, I said no—”

I keep my face in the pillow, it’s sticky. My eyes are shut. Old Nick’s there, right by Bed, he can see me. I feel his hand on my cheek, I make a sound because I’m so scared,
Ma said it would be my forehead but it isn’t, it’s my cheek he’s touching and his hand isn’t like Ma’s, it’s cold and heavy—

Then it’s gone. “I’ll get him something stronger from the all-night drugstore.”

“Something stronger? He’s barely five years old, he’s totally dehydrated, with a fever of God knows what.” Ma’s shouting, she shouldn’t shout, Old
Nick’s going to get mad.

“Just shut up for a second and let me think.”

“He needs to go to the ER right now, that’s what he needs and you know it.”

Old Nick makes a sound, I don’t know what it means.

Ma’s voice is like she’s crying. “If you don’t bring him in now, he’ll, he could—”

“Enough with the hysterics,” he says.

“Please. I’m begging you.”

“No way.”

I nearly say
Jose
. I think it but I don’t say it, I’m not saying anything, I’m just being limp all Gone.

“Just tell them he’s an illegal alien with no papers,” says Ma, “he’s in no state to say a word, you can drive him right back here as soon as they’ve got some
fluids into him . . .” Her voice is moving after him. “Please. I’ll do anything.”

“There’s no talking to you.” He sounds like he’s over by Door.

“Don’t go. Please, please . . .”

Something falls down. I’m so scared I’m never opening my eyes.

Ma’s wailing. The
beep beep
.
Boom,
Door’s shut, we’re on our own.

It’s all quiet. I count my teeth five times, always twenty except one time it’s nineteen but I count again till it’s twenty. I peek sideways. Then I lift my head off the stinky
pillow.

Ma’s sitting on Rug with her back against Door Wall. She’s staring at nothing. I whisper, “Ma?”

She does the strangest thing, she sort of smiles.

“Did I mess up the pretending?”

“Oh, no. You were a star.”

“But he didn’t take me to the hospital.”

“That’s OK.” Ma gets up and wets a cloth in Sink, she comes to wipe my face.

“But you said.” All that burning face and vomit and him touching me. “
Sick, Truck, Hospital, Police, Save Ma.
”

Ma’s nodding, she lifts my T-shirt off and wipes my chest. “That was Plan A, it was worth a try. But like I figured, he was too scared.”

She’s got it wrong. “
He
was scared?”

“Just in case you’d tell the doctors about Room and the police would put him in jail. I hoped he’d risk it, if he thought you were in serious danger—but I never really
thought he would.”

I get it. “You tricked me,” I roar. “I didn’t get to ride in the brown truck.”

“Jack,” she says, she’s pressing me against her, her bones hurt my face.

I push away. “You said no more lying and you were unlying now, but then you lied again.”

“I’m doing my best,” says Ma.

I suck on my lip.

“Listen. Will you listen to me for a minute?”

“I’m sick of listening to you.”

She nods. “I know. But listen anyway. There’s a Plan B. Plan A was really the first part of Plan B.”

“You never said.”

“It’s pretty complicated. I’ve been puzzling over it for a few days now.”

“Yeah, well I’ve got millions of brains for puzzling.”

“You do,” says Ma.

“Way more than you.”

“That’s true. But I didn’t want you to have to hold both plans in your head at the same time, you might get confused.”

“I’m confused already, I’m one hundred percent confused.”

She kisses me through my hair that’s all sticky. “Let me tell you about Plan B.”

“I don’t want to hear your stinky dumb plans.”

“OK.”

I’m shivering from having no T-shirt on. I find a clean one in Dresser, a blue.

We get into Bed, the smell is awful. Ma shows me to breathe through my mouth only because mouths don’t smell anything. “Can we lie with our heads the other way?”

“Brilliant idea,” says Ma.

She’s being nice but I’m not going to forgive her.

We put our feet at the stinky wall end and our faces at the other.

I think I’m never going to switch off.

•   •   •

It’s 08:21 already, I slept for long and now I’m having some, the left is so creamy. Old Nick didn’t come back I don’t think.

“Is it Saturday?” I ask.

“That’s right.”

“Cool, we wash our hair.”

Ma shakes her head. “You can’t smell clean.”

I was forgetting for a minute. “What is it?”

“What?”

“Plan B.”

“Are you ready to hear it now?”

I don’t say anything.

“Well. Here goes.” Ma clears her throat. “I’ve been going over it and over it every which way, I think it just might work. I don’t know, I can’t be sure, it
sounds crazy and I know it’s incredibly dangerous but—”

“Just tell me,” I say.

“OK, OK.” She takes a loud breath. “Do you remember the Count of Monte Cristo?”

“He was locked up in a dungeon on an island.”

“Yeah, but remember how he got out? He pretended to be his dead friend, he hid in the shroud and the guards threw him into the sea but the Count didn’t drown, he wriggled out and
swam away.”

“Tell the rest of the story.”

Ma waves her hand. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, Jack, that’s what you’re going to do.”

“Get thrown in the sea?”

“No, escape like the Count of Monte Cristo.”

I’m confused again. “I don’t have a dead friend.”

“I just mean you’ll be disguised as dead.”

I stare at her.

“Actually it’s more like a play I saw in high school. This girl Juliet, to run away with the boy she loved, she pretended she was dead by drinking medicine, then a few days later she
woke up, ta-da.”

“No, that’s Baby Jesus.”

“Ah—not really.” Ma rubs her forehead. “He was actually dead for three days, then he came back to life. You’re not going to be dead at all, just pretending like the
girl in the play.”

“I don’t know to pretend I’m a girl.”

“No, pretending you’re dead.” Ma’s voice is a bit cranky.

“We don’t have a shroud.”

“Aha, we’re going to use the rug.”

I stare down at Rug, all her red and black and brown zigzag pattern.

“When Old Nick comes back—tonight, or tomorrow night, or whenever—I’m going to tell him you died, I’m going to show him the rug all rolled up with you inside
it.”

That’s the craziest thing I ever heard. “Why?”

“Because your body didn’t have enough water left, and I guess the fever stopped your heart.”

“No, why in Rug?”

“Ah,” says Ma, “smart question. It’s your disguise, so he doesn’t guess you’re actually alive. See, you did a super job of pretending to be sick last night,
but dead is much harder. If he notices you breathing even one time, he’ll know it’s a trick. Besides, dead people are really cold.”

“We could use a bag of cold water . . .”

She shakes her head. “Cold all over, not just your face. Oh, and they go stiff as well, you’ll need to lie like you’re a robot.”

“Not floppy?”

“The opposite of floppy.”

But it’s him that’s the robot, Old Nick, I have a heart.

“So I think wrapping you up in the rug is the only way to keep him from guessing you’re actually alive. Then I’ll tell him he has to take you somewhere and bury you,
see?”

My mouth’s starting to shake. “Why he has to bury me?”

“Because dead bodies start to get stinky fast.”

Room’s pretty stinky already today from not flushing and the vomity pillow and all. “ ‘The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out . . .’ ”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t want to get buried and gooey with the worms crawling.”

Ma strokes my head. “It’s just a trick, remember?”

“Like a game.”

“But no laughing. A serious game.”

I nod. I think I’m going to cry.

“Believe me,” says Ma. “If there was anything else I thought had a chance in hell . . .”

I don’t know what a chance in hell is.

“OK.” Ma gets out of Bed. “Let me tell you how it’s going to be and then you won’t be so scared. Old Nick will tap in the numbers to open the door, then he’ll
carry you out of Room all rolled up in the rug.”

“Will you be in Rug too?” I know the answer but I ask just in case.

“I’ll be right here, waiting,” says Ma. “He’ll carry you to his pickup truck, he’ll put you in the back of it, the open bit—”

“I want to wait here too.”

She puts her finger on my mouth to shush me. “And that’s your chance.”

“What is?”

“The truck! The first time it slows down at a stop sign, you’re going to wriggle out of the rug, jump down onto the street, run away, and bring the police to rescue me.”

I stare at her.

“So this time the plan is
Dead, Truck, Run, Police, Save Ma.
Say it?”

“Dead, Truck, Run, Police, Save Ma.”

We have our breakfast, 125 cereal each because we need extra strength. I’m not hungry but Ma says I should eat them all up.

Then we get dressed and practice the dead bit. It’s like the strangest Phys Ed we ever played. I lie down on the edge of Rug and Ma wraps her over me and tells me to go on my front, then
my back, then my front, then my back again, till I’m all rolled up tight. It smells funny in Rug, dusty and something, different from if I lie just on her.

Ma picks me up, I’m squished. She says I’m like a long, heavy package, but Old Nick will lift me easily because he has more muscles. “He’ll carry you up the backyard,
probably into his garage, like this—” I feel us going around Room. I’m scrunched in my neck but I don’t move one bit. “Or maybe over his shoulder like this
—” She heaves me, she grunts, I’m being pressed in half.

“Is it a long long ways?”

“What’s that?”

My words are getting lost in Rug.

“Hang on,” says Ma, “I just thought, he might put you down a couple of times, to open doors.” She sets me down, my head end first.

“Ow.”

“But you won’t make a sound, will you?”

“Sorry.” Rug’s on my face, she’s itching my nose but I can’t reach it.

“He’ll drop you into the flatbed of his truck, like this.”

She drops me
thump,
I bite my mouth to not shout.

“Stay stiff, stiff, stiff, like a robot, OK, no matter what happens?”

“OK.”

“Because if you go soft or move or make a single sound, Jack, if you do any of that by mistake, he’ll know you’re really alive, and he’ll be so mad he—”

“What?” I wait. “Ma. What’ll he do?”

“Don’t worry, he’s going to believe you’re dead.”

How does she know for sure?

“Then he’ll get in the front of his truck and start driving.”

“Where?”

“Ah, out of the city, probably. Somewhere there’s no people to see him digging a hole, like a forest or something. But the thing is, as soon as the engine starts—it’ll
feel loud and buzzy and shaky like this”—she blows a raspberry on me through Rug, raspberries usually make me laugh but not now—“that’s your signal to start getting
out of the rug. Try it?”