"Room"

The Outside:

• “Listen. What we see on TV is… it’s pictures of real things.” That’s the most astonishing I ever heard.
• “Princess Diana?” “Should have worn her seat belt.”
• Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they’re real, they’re actually happening in Outside all together.
• Ma holds my hands and I walk up her legs till my feet are higher than my head, then I dangle upside down, my braids go in my face and make me laugh.
• “We’re like people in a book, and he won’t let anybody else read it.”
• Before I didn’t even know to be mad that we can’t open Door, my head was too small to have Outside in it.
• Are you there, Tooth? I can’t feel you but you must be in my sock, at the side. You’re a bit of Ma, a little bit of Ma’s dead spit riding along with me.
• I’m not in Room. Am I still me?
• Ma, Ma, Ma. “It’s all around.” “This room’s in the backyard?” “Yeah.” I made Officer Oh happy but I don’t know how.

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