Marion Munch awoke with that strange taste in her mouth again. She’d had such a lovely dream. That she was at home, that her parents were there, and that everything was back to normal. She opened her eyes only to discover that she was still trapped in the small, chilly white room. Still wearing the same stupid, bulky dress. She curled up under the thin duvet and started to cry. She did not know how long she’d been there now; it was difficult to tell because the light never went off. She had looked for the switch, but there was no switch to be found, just cold walls and no windows or doors. Marion had cried so much that her eyes had almost run out of tears. She’d banged on the walls, screamed and shouted, but no one had come. At first she couldn’t understand why. They always came when she cried. Her parents, they would always come. Like the time she’d had a temperature and dreamed that Pooh bear had turned into a giant monster that was trying to eat her. At that time both her parents had come immediately. But no one was coming now. Not to this room. No one took care of her. She was all alone.
Marion Munch stuck her thumb into her mouth and curled into a tiny ball on the bed. She had stopped sucking her thumb sometime ago, but now she’d started again. She pressed her tongue hard against her thumb—it felt safe and good. Licked her thumb. The nail felt rough. She took her thumb out of her mouth and stared at it in surprise. Someone had scratched something onto her fingernail. There was a dent there, almost like a letter. Like Vivian’s initial at nursery school: V. She had a V on her thumb. Marion stuck her thumb into her mouth again and traced the sharp edges in the nail letter with her tongue.
At the start she had drawn pictures. Or tried to draw pictures—it hadn’t been easy. There was no one she could show her drawings to; there was just her. She had drawn pictures of her parents and her grandfather. Then she drew a superhero. The superhero was a woman she could talk to and who would look after her, and since then being here had felt a little easier. There seemed to be no days in the white room. At home it would be morning or day or night—it was easy to know when things happened—but here it was impossible. It was light all the time, and there were no noises anywhere, except when her meals arrived from the hatch in the wall. The one with the noisy, windup monkey inside. The food was strange and not terribly good, but she ate it all up because she was incredibly hungry. Eating and drinking was a mistake, because then she would need the toilet. And there was no toilet in the room, just a wastebasket, and it really stank, it really did all the time. Marion had made a lid out of paper from her sketchpad, and that had reduced the stench a little. But even so, she dreaded every time she had to remove the lid and squat down, because it was getting quite full and it was disgusting.
Even though it was light all the time, she didn’t find it difficult to sleep. Weird, really. The same thing would happen every time: after she ate, she would fall asleep. Even though she hadn’t felt tired at all. It was almost as if the food made her sleepy. As if the food were magic. She remembered Alice in Wonderland, who had felt strange after eating something. First she turned big, then she grew small, so magic food probably existed. Was it possible for food to be magic even though it tasted bad? Marion ran her tongue across the dent in her nail just as she heard the wall starting to hum again. Brr, vrr, the magic food was coming, traveling down to her through the wall. She got up and went over to the hatch. Stood there waiting for the food to land. She recognized the sounds now. Brr, vrr, brr, vrr and a clonk. Then she could open the hatch to see what she’d gotten. It was mostly mashed potatoes and carrots and that stuff she didn’t like. Cauliflower. No, broccoli. Never pizza or sausages or tomato soup, never her favorite things. Marion waited for the clonk, still with her thumb in her mouth. Come to think of it, she never heard the elevator go back up again. It only ever came down. She would take out the food, eat it, and then the elevator would come back down again. Because she’d been asleep, was that it? It probably was. The magic food made her sleep, and then the elevator would go up through the wall again while she was asleep—that had to be how it was.
There was a clonk. Marion Munch opened the hatch to see what she’d gotten. A bottle of soda this time, that was good. But the food looked revolting. There was something made from potatoes and that green stuff again. Broccoli.
What if she didn’t eat the food? She had no idea where that thought had come from, but suddenly it just appeared in her mind. What if she didn’t eat the food—then what? Would she stay awake? Would she hear the elevator go back up again? She glanced at the hatch in the wall. How did she get that idea? Out of nothing and into her head. Because it was a brilliant idea, wasn’t it? If she didn’t eat the food, would the elevator still go back up? She quickly got up and went over to the hatch. She opened it and peered inside. She could fit inside it, couldn’t she? She had hidden out in much smaller places. Once they’d played hide-and-seek and she hid in the kitchen cabinet where they kept the pots and pans, and no one had found her; in the end she had to give herself up. And that cabinet was really tight. No one had suspected a thing; they’d all been terribly impressed. She was going to trick the elevator, that was her plan. She would pretend to eat the food but empty it into the toilet wastebasket, then put the plate in the corner with the others and lie down on the bed. The elevator must go when she slept. Perhaps it would still do so if she pretended to be asleep. Marion positioned herself with her back to the elevator and picked up the plate from the table. It was important that the elevator not see what she was doing. Or it might change its mind. She carefully raised the paper lid from the wastebasket and tipped the food into it as swiftly as she could. She quickly sat down again and glanced at the hatch in the wall.
“Oh, my tummy is all full now,” she said out loud, and patted her stomach a few times.
The elevator did nothing. It had clearly not noticed that anything was amiss.
“Oh, I feel so tired now,” she said, letting out a fake yawn.
She put the plate in the pile with the others and went to bed. She lay facing the elevator and closed her eyes. She lay very still with her thumb in her mouth. She was good at lying still. That time she hid in the kitchen cabinet, she’d lain still for . . . well, for a long time. So long that her parents had started calling her name. Marion squeezed her eyes shut and lay still now, waiting for the elevator to move. There was no sound. She could feel herself getting a little impatient. This was not like lying in the kitchen cabinet, when she knew that there was someone outside. Knew that someone was looking for her. Who would be delighted to find her. Here there was no one. She felt the tears press against the insides of her eyelids again, but she managed to keep them at bay. If she was crying, then she couldn’t be asleep. The elevator would probably know that. She stuck her thumb even deeper into her mouth and tried to think of something else. When she’d curled up in the kitchen cabinet, she made up a game in her head. A story. A story from Monster High, a story she hadn’t seen on television, one she had invented all by herself. The time had flown by, and there’d been no problems at all. She pretended to be Draculaura, who had forgotten to do her homework. Marion was just about to decide why Draculaura had forgotten to do her homework when she suddenly heard the elevator starting to stir. Brr, vrr. On impulse she leaped out of bed and ran to the hatch. She quickly pulled it open and crept inside the hole in the wall. The elevator was very small, and at first she couldn’t get her foot inside. She pulled it in with a jerk, and suddenly all of her was inside it. She was inside the elevator! And it was going up!
The elevator squeaked and creaked its way upward through the wall, and she couldn’t see a thing. Marion curled into a tiny ball and tried not to be scared of the dark. Her heart pounded inside her small chest. She was almost afraid to breathe. Brr, vrr. It moved slowly, slowly upward, and then, suddenly, clonk. The elevator had stopped. It had stopped without noticing that she was inside it. She carefully nudged the hatch and discovered to her delight that it opened. Marion Munch climbed out of the hatch and stood on the floor and gawked.
She was in a living room. In a house she’d never seen before. There weren’t any windows here either—no, there were, but the curtains were closed. There was a woman in a chair by a table in the middle of the room. Marion looked around and reluctantly walked up to her. She had her eyes closed, and gray tape covered her mouth. A tube with water or something from a bag was going into her hand.
Marion Munch stood in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do while she glanced around frantically. There was a hallway lined with shoes and boots, just like at home. And a door. A front door. Marion tiptoed to the door. The stupid dress made it difficult for her to walk, and it also made a lot of stupid noise. Did she dare open the door? How would she know what might lie behind it? In this house where everything was so strange?
“Stop!”
Marion Munch jumped when she heard the shrill woman’s voice behind her.
“Stop! Stop!”
Marion Munch put her hand on the door handle, pushed open the door, and ran out into the darkness as quickly as her little legs could carry her.