Room by Emma Donoghue Read Free Book Online

she used to be as big as Ma’s head and pink and fat, now
she’s small like my fist only red and wrinkly. We only blow up one when it’s the first of a month, so we can’t make Balloon a sister till it’s April. Ma plays with Tank too
but not as long. She gets sick of things fast, it’s from being an adult.
    Monday is a laundry day, we get into Bath with socks, under-wears, my gray pants that ketchup squirted on, the sheets and dish towels, and we squish all the dirt out. Ma hots Thermostat way up
for the drying, she pulls Clothes Horse out from beside Door and stands him open and I tell him to be strong. I would love to ride him like when I was a baby but I’m so huge now I might break
his back. It would be cool to sometimes go smaller again and sometimes bigger like Alice. When we’ve twisted the water out of everything and hanged them up, Ma and me have to rip off our
T-shirts and take turns pushing ourselves into Refrigerator to cool down.
    Lunch is bean salad, my second worst favorite. After nap we do Scream every day but not Saturdays or Sundays. We clear our throats and climb up on Table to be nearer Skylight, holding hands not
to fall. We say “On your mark, get set, go,” then we open wide our teeth and shout holler howl yowl shriek screech scream the loudest possible. Today I’m the most loudest ever
because my lungs are stretching from being five.
    Then we shush with fingers on lips. I asked Ma once what we’re listening for and she said just in case, you never know.
    Then I do rubbings of a fork and Comb and jar lids and the sides of my jeans. Ruled paper is smoothest for rubbings, but toilet paper is good for a drawing that goes on forever, like today I do
me with a cat and a parrot and an iguana and a raccoon and Santa and an ant and Lucky and all my TV friends in a procession and I’m King Jack. When I’m all done I roll it again so we
can use it for our butts. I take a fresh bit from the next roll for a letter to Dora, I have to sharpen the red pencil with Smooth Knife. I squeeze the pencil hard because it’s so short
it’s nearly gone, I write perfectly only sometimes my letters go back to front. I am five the day before yesterday, you can have the last bit of cake but there is no candles, bye love
Jack. It only tears a little on the of . “When will she get it?”
    “Well,” says Ma, “I’d imagine it’ll take a few hours to reach the sea, then it’ll wash up on a beach . . .”
    She sounds funny from sucking an ice cube for Bad Tooth. Beaches and sea are TV but I think when we send a letter it turns them real for a bit. The poos sink and the letters float on the waves.
“Who’ll find it? Diego?”
    “Probably. And he’ll take it to his cousin Dora—”
    “In his safari jeep. Zoom zoom through the jungle.”
    “So tomorrow morning, I’d say. Lunchtime at the latest.”
    The ice cube is making less bulge in Ma’s face now. “Let’s see?”
    She puts it out on her tongue.
    “I think I have a bad tooth too.”
    Ma wails, “Oh, Jack.”
    “Really real for real. Ow, ow, ow.”
    Her face changes. “You can suck an ice cube if you want, you don’t have to have a toothache.”
    “Cool.”
    “Don’t scare me like that.”
    I didn’t know I could scare her. “Maybe it’ll hurt when I’m six.”
    She puffs her breath when she’s getting the cubes out of Freezer. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
    But I wasn’t lying, only pretending.
    It’s rainy all the afternoon, God doesn’t look in at all. We sing “Stormy Weather” and “It’s Raining Men” and the one about the desert missing the
rain.
    Dinner is fish sticks and rice, I get to squirt the lemon that’s not an actual but a plastic. We had a real lemon once but it shriveled up too fast. Ma puts a bit of her fish stick under
Plant in the soil.
    The cartoon planet’s not in evenings, maybe because it’s dark and they don’t have lamps there. I choose a cooking tonight, it’s not like real food,