Room: A Novel

“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.