I hold up two fingers.
“Two of them? Great. Can you remember what they are?”
They were in the note that he disappeared. I suddenly remember a bit. “He stole us.”
Officer Oh sits down beside me on the ground. It’s not like Floor, it’s all hard and shivery. “Jack, would you like a blanket?” I don’t know. Blanket’s not here.
“You’ve got some nasty cuts there. Did this Nick guy hurt you?”
The man police is back, he holds out a blue thing to me, I don’t touch. “Go ahead,” he says at his phone.
Officer Oh folds the blue thing around me, it’s not fleecy gray like Blanket, it’s rougher. “How did you get those cuts?” “The dog is a vampire.” I look for Raja and his humans but they’re disappeared. “This finger it bit, and my knee was the ground.” “Beg your pardon?”
“The street, it hit me.”
“Go ahead.” The man police says that, he’s talking at his phone again. Then he looks at Officer Oh and says, “Should I get on to Child Protection?” “Give me another couple minutes,” she says. “Jack, I bet you’re good at telling stories.”
How does she know? The man police looks at his watch that he’s got stuck on his wrist. I remember Ma’s wrist that doesn’t work right. Is Old Nick there now, is he twisting her wrist or her neck, is he ripping her in pieces?
“Do you think you could tell me what happened tonight?” Officer Oh grins at me. “And maybe you could talk real slow and clear, because my ears don’t work too well.” Maybe she’s deaf, but she doesn’t talk with her fingers like deafs on TV.
“Copy,” says the man police.
“You ready?” says Officer Oh.
It’s me her eyes are on. I shut mine and pretend it’s Ma I’m talking to, that makes me brave. “We did a trick,” I say very slow, “me and Ma, we were pretending I was sick and then I was dead but really I’ll unwrap myself and jump out of the truck, only I was meant to jump at the first slowing down but I didn’t manage.” “OK, what happened then?” That’s Officer Oh’s voice right beside my head.
I still don’t look or I’ll forget the story. “I had a note in my underwear but he disappeared it. I’ve still got Tooth.” I put my fingers in my sock for him. I open my eyes.
“Can I see that?”
She tries to take Tooth but I don’t let her. “It’s of Ma.”
“That’s your ma that you were talking about?”
I think her brain’s not working like her ears aren’t, how could Ma be a tooth? I shake my head. “Just a bit of her dead spit that fell out.” Officer Oh looks at Tooth up close and her face gets all hard. The man police shakes his head and says something I can’t hear.
“Jack,” she says, “you told me you were supposed to jump out of the truck the first time it slowed down?” “Yeah but I was still in Rug, then I unpeeled the banana but I wasn’t scave enough.” I’m looking at Officer Oh and I’m talking at the same time. “But after the third time stopping, the truck went wooooo—”
“It went what?”
“Like—” I show her. “All a different way.”
“It turned.”
“Yeah, and I got banged and he, Old Nick, he climbed out all mad and that’s when I jumped.”
“Bingo.” Officer Oh claps her hands.
“Huh?” says the man police.
“Three stop signs and a turn. Left or right?” She waits. “Never mind, great job, Jack.” She’s staring down the street and then she’s got a thing in her hand like a phone, where did that come from? She’s watching the little screen, she says, “Get them to cross-ref the partial plates with . . . try Carlingford Avenue, maybe Washington Drive . . .”
I don’t see Raja and Ajeet and Naisha anymore at all. “Did the dog go to jail?”
“No, no,” says Officer Oh, “it was an honest mistake.”
“Go ahead,” the man police tells his phone. He shakes his head at Officer Oh.
She stands up. “Hey, maybe Jack can find the house for us. Would you like a ride in a patrol car?” I can’t get up, she puts out her hand but I pretend I don’t see. I put one foot under then another and I’m up a bit dizzy. At the car I climb in where the door’s open. Officer Oh sits in the back too and clicks the seat belt on me, I go small so her hand doesn’t touch except the blue blanket.
The car’s moving now, not so rattly like the truck, it’s soft and humming. A bit like that couch in the TV planet with the puffy-hair lady asking questions, only it’s Officer Oh. “This room,” she says, “is it in a bungalow, or are there stairs?”
“It’s not a house.” I’m watching the shiny bit in the middle, it’s like Mirror but tiny. I see the man police’s face in it, he’s the driver. His eyes are looking at me backwards in the little mirror so I look out the window instead. Everything’s slipping past making me giddy. There’s all light that comes out of the car onto the road, it paints over everything. Here comes another car, a white one super fast, it’s going to crash into—“It’s OK,” says Officer Oh.
When I take my hands off my face the other car’s gone, did this one disappear it?
“Anything ringing a bell?”
I don’t hear any bells. It’s all trees and houses and cars dark. Ma, Ma, Ma. I don’t hear her in my head, she’s not talking. His hands are so tight around her, tighter tighter tighter, she can’t talk, she can’t breathe, she can’t anything. Alive things bend but she’s bent and bent and—“Does this look like it might be your street?” asks Officer Oh.
“I haven’t got a street.”
“I mean the street this Nick guy took you from tonight.”
“I never saw it.”
“What’s that?”
I’m tired of saying.
Officer Oh clicks with her tongue.
“No sign of any pickups except that black one back there,” says the man police.
“Might as well pull over.”
The car stops, I’m sorry.
“You figure some kind of cult?” he says. “The long hair, no surnames, the state of that tooth . . .” Officer Oh twists her mouth. “Jack, is there daylight in this room of yours?”
“It’s night,” I tell her, didn’t she notice?
“I mean in the daytime. Where does the light come in?”
“Skylight.”
“There’s a skylight, excellent.”
“Go ahead,” the man police says at his phone.
Officer Oh is looking at her shiny screen again. “Sat’s showing a couple houses with attic skylights on Carlingford . . .” “Room’s not in a house,” I say again.
“I’m having trouble understanding, Jack. What’s it in, then?”
“Nothing. Room’s inside.”
Ma’s there and Old Nick too, he wants somebody to be dead and it’s not me.
“So what’s outside it?”
“Outside.”
“Tell me more about what’s outside.”
“Got to hand it to you,” the man police says, “you don’t give up.”
Am I the you?
“Go on, Jack,” says Officer Oh, “tell me about what’s just outside this room.”
“Outside,” I shout. I have to explain fast for Ma, wait Ma wait for me. “It’s got stuff for real like ice cream and trees and stores and airplanes and farms and the hammock.”
Officer Oh is nodding.
I have to try harder, I don’t know what. “But it’s locked and we don’t know the code.”
“You wanted to unlock the door and get outside?”
“Like Alice.”
“Is Alice another friend of yours?”
I nod. “She’s in the book.”
“Alice in Wonderland. For crying out loud,” says the man police.
I know that bit. But how did he read our book, he wasn’t ever in Room. I say to him, “Do you know the bit where her crying makes a pond?” “What’s that?” He looks at me backwards in the little mirror.