To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.
Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.
arrow flashes. “I’m really sorry,” says Ma, “I didn’t realize that the smell, that it, that a fan would—” “I don’t think you appreciate how good you’ve got it here,” says Old Nick. “Do you?” Ma doesn’t say anything. “Aboveground, natural light, central air, it’s a cut above some places, I can tell you. Fresh fruit, toiletries, what have you, click your fingers and it’s there. Plenty girls would thank their lucky stars for a setup like this, safe as houses. Specially with the kid—” Is that
put my hand down and downer. “Something metal, are you there?” “Yeah.” Cold, all smooth, I grab it in my fingers. “When he was turning the shed into Room,” says Ma, “he hid a layer of fence under the floor joists, and in all the walls and even the roof, so I could never ever cut through.” We’ve wriggled out now. We’re sitting with our backs against Bed. I’m all out of breath. “When he found the hole,” says Ma, “he howled.” “Like a wolf?” “No, laughing. I was afraid he’d hurt me but that
dark. “Not too tight?” I try if I can get my arms up above my head and back, scraping a bit. “OK?” “OK,” I say. Then we just wait. Something comes in the top of Rug and rubs my hair, it’s her hand, I know without seeing even. I can hear my breathing that’s noisy. I think about the Count in the bag with the worms crawling in. The fall down down down crash into the sea. Can worms swim? Dead, Truck, Run, Somebody—no, Wriggle Out, then Jump, Run, Somebody, Note, Blowtorch. I forgot Police
shape on Floor is a black C. “Hey, look, I can do a there-and-back in sixteen steps.” “Wow. When you were four it was eighteen steps, wasn’t it?” says Ma. “How many there-and-backs do you think you can run today?” “Five.” “What about five times five? That would be your favorite squared.” We times it on our fingers, I get twenty-six but Ma says twenty-five so I do it again and get twenty-five too. She counts me on Watch. “Twelve,” she shouts out. “Seventeen. You’re doing great.” I’m breathing
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
