Eddy had never cared much for time. It was just something that happened while you weren’t looking. But as he learned that day – Reagan’s first day at her new school – it had a way of knowing what you wanted most and then doing all it could to pull it away from you. It was sort of like Grandma Daisy on that front.
Take, for instance, the time between watching Reagan walk out of her front door and down the street and old Mrs Elsdon doing her daily round of the neighbourhood with her fluffy little dog and gnarled walking stick. That particular patch of time would usually fly by. There were some days when it felt like Mrs Elsdon literally followed the kids down the road. Today though, well, today it took an age. At first Eddy figured the old lady was calling it quits for the day and was giving it a rest. After all, he reasoned, she did walk awfully slow, and one day she was likely to stop altogether. But sure enough, just when he’d given up on her, there she was, shuffling along the pavement, her ball-of-fur dog doing its business on just about every second front garden along the way.
Yep, today was going to be a very long day.
At one stage, Grandma Daisy blew on in with a clean set of sheets for his bed. Usually he didn’t care much for that because it meant she stayed a bit longer in his room than normal. But it did pull the day out of neutral for a few minutes so, while she chopped away at the sheets, he did his best to show her he was indeed reading his learning books. He even showed her the letters he understood and how they matched up with some of the pictures. If she was at all interested she didn’t show it, which didn’t make sense really. As far as Eddy could tell, she hadn’t wanted him to go to the mean school either, so she should be happy.
When she exited the room without so much as a word, Eddy placed his book down and considered his tired, boring options. More books and some tatty old jigsaw puzzles. Eddy sighed, resigning himself to the brick wall of time, and wandered over to the side window, where, in about a million years from now, he would revel in Reagan’s triumphant return from her brand-new school.
The street was quiet, the house was quiet, even the birds seemed to be holding their collective breaths today. The whole world had been put on hold. Sitting down on the foot of his bed (and reminding himself to push out the creases when he got back up), he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the window ledge. In doing so he unconsciously fiddled with the burgeoning twig under his right armpit. He hadn’t forgotten that wonderful experience full of colours and sensations. That had been shortly after his ugly scene with Bert and Ernie. That’s right. And it had made him feel better too. It had relaxed him and that had taken some doing after Grandma Daisy had finished with him that horrid day.
Eddy took hold of the budding twig in his left hand, closed his eyes and let those tingling, soothing vibrations massage him into a deep and colourful sleep.
And that became the pattern from then on. He’d get up nice and early to be sure to catch Reagan before she left for the day. Most mornings that meant he had a good fifteen minutes with her. Then he’d watch her, backpack-clad, as she sauntered down the street away from him, keen and ready to wave if she so much as glanced back. After that he’d have a shot at his learning books and, once Mrs Elsdon and her motley mutt had finally done her rounds (he could tell how close she was by the click, click, click her walking stick made on the pavement) he’d shift over to his bed, take gentle hold of his magical, mystical tree branch and let the sensations envelope him.
Over the course of a week he could be under the spell of Mr Tree for fifteen or twenty hours easy. The great thing about it was, despite the fact he would almost instantly drop into a bottomless, blissful unconsciousness, he always seemed to wake up as soon as Grandma Daisy laid her heavy feet on those creaky stairs. He knew it was strange (and he certainly wouldn’t mention it to anyone – including Reagan) but sometimes he could swear it was the tree that woke him up in time. Like it was calling out to him. Warning him that Grandma Daisy was coming in for a landing.
But trees couldn’t do that. Even stupid boys like Eddy knew that much.
Anyway, whether it spoke to him or not, whatever it did do to him felt really, really good. He’d wake up full of beans and refreshed, like the inside of his head had been given a great big spring clean. The kind of top to bottom that Grandma Daisy got herself into every now and then, when she’d lug brooms and buckets from one end of the house to the other and threaten Eddy that if he so much as left a speck of dust in his room after she slaved for him, she’d only cook him Brussels sprouts for a week.
All he really knew was, when he sat with Mr Tree like that, it cleared his cobwebs away.
And the one other great thing about it . . . it made a long, long, long, long day seem that much shorter.