Trouble in the Trees (3 page)

“Oh, hi, Ethan. Could I, uh, speak to your mom?” I stammered.

“Sure, Bree,” Ethan replied. “Do you wanna go out and play catch after?”

“Maybe,” I said, trying to look past Ethan into the house. I'd been here lots of times. I'd probably been inside every townhouse in Cedar Grove. The ones with kids anyway. But I'd never felt nervous about it. Until now.

Ethan gave me a funny look and then yelled up the stairs, “Mom!”

“Don't yell at me, Ethan!” Ms. Matheson yelled back.

“Bree's here and she wants to talk to you!” Ethan yelled again, louder this time.

“Who?”

“BREE!”

“Okay. I'll be right down.”

Ms. Matheson clomped down the stairs, wearing her work clothes—a suit and uncomfortable-looking high-heeled shoes. Poor Ethan. Not only was his mom the president of the council, she was also the principal of the local high school.

“Hi, Brianna,” Ms. Matheson said. She didn't look very welcoming, but she didn't look like she would bite either. “What can I do for you?”

I cleared my throat. “Um, Ms. Matheson, it's about the, um, ban on tree climbing?”

“Yes?” As she lowered her chin and narrowed her eyes, Ms. Matheson suddenly reminded me of our school principal, Mr. Lee. How she managed it, I don't know. There could not be two people on earth that looked less alike than Ms. Matheson and Mr. Lee.

“I'd really like to talk to you about the, um, the tree-climbing bylaw,” I mumbled.

“Okay, Brianna,” Ms. Matheson replied with a sigh, “but I don't have time right now. Why don't you come and speak to the council? Our next meeting is on Tuesday night at seven thirty. I'll set aside ten minutes to address your concerns.” And with that, Ms. Matheson turned and clomped back up the stairs.

I stood there in silence. An image of me standing in front of a huge crowd of grown-ups, giving a PowerPoint presentation full of statistics and technical details, flashed through my head. What had I gotten myself into?

Ethan's voice brought me back to earth. “Can we play ball now, Bree?”

“What?” I looked at Ethan, who was still standing by the door. At some point, he must have dropped the Magic Bag. Now he was holding his ball glove and looking at me expectantly.

“Ball. Do you want to play ball?” Ethan said loudly.

“No baseball, Ethan!” Ms. Matheson yelled down the stairs again. “Your elbow hasn't healed yet!”

“Elbow?” I looked at Ethan, my eyebrows raised.

“It's no big deal, Bree,” Ethan said quickly. “Guess I gotta go.”

And before I could say another word, he shut the door in my face.

Chapter 4

The next week was torture. The prospect of making a presentation to the Cedar Grove Neighborhood Council turned me into a nervous wreck. And I couldn't climb trees, which is what I normally do to relax.

It wasn't just the size of the council that made me nervous. Or the fact that it was made up of grown-ups who didn't seem to like kids. Or even the fact that my favorite pastime was at stake. Truthfully, the thought of giving any presentation filled me with dread, no matter who was watching or what was at stake.

Part of what made me nervous was the accent I'd picked up from Mom, who immigrated to Canada a year before I was born. She'd met Dad while he was in England playing hockey with the Sheffield Steelers. Mom had always dreamed of leaving England, so she asked her engineering firm for a transfer to their Canadian office. By the end of that hockey season, Mom and Dad were married and living in Cedar Grove. Now my dad was a hockey scout for the NHL.

Mom's accent was so strong when I was baby that I ended up sounding British too. My accent, like Mom's, had slowly disappeared, but there were still times when I pronounced things like a proper English schoolgirl. I got teased about it a lot, and when it came to presentations, the accent was harder to control. I wasn't sure whether the nerves created the accent or the accent created the nerves.

In grade three, I got so nervous about presenting my science project that I couldn't sleep the night before. When I talked to Mom about it, she suggested that dressing up might help me feel more confident.

I arrived at school the next day wearing khaki capri pants with a blouse and sandals instead of my usual T-shirt, shorts and running shoes. I think I even wore my hair loose instead of pulling it back into a ponytail or stuffing it under a baseball cap.

But it didn't make me feel more confident; it made me feel like I was pretending to be someone else.

Halfway through my presentation, the fire alarm went off. I felt so relieved as I marched across the schoolyard that I forgot I was wearing those stupid sandals instead of my running shoes. As soon as we were far enough from the building to see that it wasn't on fire, everyone in the class started running around the baseball field. As I turned to try and catch Sarah, I slipped on the wet grass and landed in the batter's box, which had been transformed by a spring shower into a huge mud puddle.

As soon as I stood up, I heard one of the boys shout, “Look! Bree's crapped in her capris!” The entire class rushed over to see. It seemed everyone in the class had something to say about my muddy bum.

And then, to my horror, the teacher made me finish my presentation when the fire drill was over. For the rest of the year, the chant “
Bree, Bree, crappy capri”
followed me through the playground. Just when I thought everyone had forgotten, someone would start the chant again. I hadn't heard it for a while, but I sure didn't want to give anyone another reason to make up a stupid rhyme about me.

Even so, Sarah still couldn't understand why I was so anxious about the presentation I had to give to the council. Nothing made Sarah nervous, because she truly didn't care what other people thought of her. I wished I could be more like that.

Sarah said I would feel better if I was well-prepared. So I did some research. I googled tree climbing and found a cool website for a group called TCI, which stands for Tree Climbers International. I found out that tree climbing is an actual sport that people compete in all over the world. And that lots of other people— including adults—think it's an awesome recreational activity. The website had tons of pictures of kids using ropes, harnesses and helmets to move from tree to tree up in the canopy. How cool is that?

The TCI website also had lots of great information about tree-climbing classes and a climber finder, so you could find a place to climb and even a buddy to climb with. But there was nothing about tree-climbing bylaws and how to have them overturned. I'd have to figure that out on my own.

Sarah and I also came up with the idea of interviewing the other kids in Cedar Grove so I could prove that I wasn't the only one upset about the bylaw. Unfortunately, this didn't get me very far either.

The first person I talked to was Ashley, the unofficial leader of the Cedar Grove Girly-Girls.

“So what do you think of this new bylaw?” I asked her.

“What bylaw?”

“You know. The new one that makes it illegal to climb trees in Cedar Grove.”

“Oh, that,” Ashley said as she straightened her pink dress. “I guess the Neighborhood Council thinks that tree climbing is dangerous.”

“But what do YOU think?”

“Well, they would know. So I guess I agree. Tree climbing is dangerous.”

“So you have no problem with all these restrictive new bylaws that the council keeps passing?”

“No, not really, Bree.” She fiddled with one of the fancy clips in her hair. “I don't think there can be too many bylaws. Bylaws are important when so many people live so close together.”

I was stunned into silence. Had Ashley been talking to my mom? That was totally something she would say.

“Sorry, Bree, but if you don't have any other questions I should go. It's skipping time.”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Wasn't it always skipping time? “Have fun!” Somehow I managed to say this without rolling my eyes.

The next person I ran into was Ethan. He was sitting on the small patch of grass in front of his townhouse, reading a book.

“What's up, Ethan?” I asked as I plopped myself down on the grass next to him.

“Not much,” he replied. That's when I spotted the Magic Bag. Ethan must have realized I was looking at it, because he immediately tried to cover it with his book. But it was too late. I forgot all about my original line of questioning.

“So…how come you're not playing catch? Or street hockey?”

“Well,” Ethan said slowly, refusing to look me in the eye, “I have to read this book…you know, for school.”

“They make you read
A Brief History of Time
in grade four?”

Ethan's face turned bright red. “Well, they don't
make
you read it, but I kind of wanted to.”

“Come on, Ethan, tell me what's going on. What's with the Magic Bag?” I asked, pointing to it.

“Oh, it's just a relaxation thing.” Ethan picked up the bag and tossed it over to me. “Want to try it?”

“No.” I tossed it back. Ethan winced as he caught it.

“I don't believe you, Ethan. Why were you holding it on your elbow the other day? And why wouldn't your mom let you play ball?”

“Oh, you know my mom. She's always worrying about something.”

“What exactly was she worried about?” I asked. This was like trying to get information out of the mime at the Granville Island Public Market.

“Well, I kind of hurt my elbow.”

“Duh. I figured that out already. The question is, why is it such a big secret?” Kids were always getting hurt. It was part of being a kid. And despite being a bit of a bookworm, Ethan was as active as the rest of us.

And then it hit me. “How did you hurt your elbow?”

“Um…I, uh, I fell,” Ethan stammered.

“Fell how?”

“You know. I fell. From somewhere high to somewhere much lower. I landed on my elbow. But it's almost better.”

“Did you fall from a tree, by any chance?”

“Maybe.”

“Yes or no, Ethan.”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

I was silent for a minute. My brain needed time to catch up.

“Does anyone else know?” I finally asked.

“No,” he replied. “And I really don't want them to find out. They already sort of blame me for all the new bylaws because my mom is president of the Neighborhood Council.”

Ethan was right. It wasn't going to look good if kids found out that Ethan had been injured tree climbing. “Did your fall have anything to do with the new bylaw?”

“I honestly don't know. But Mom was pretty worried when she found out how far I had fallen. She took me to the hospital for X-rays and everything. There was a council meeting that night. The notice about the bylaw came out a few days later.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Well, I'm glad you weren't hurt too badly,” I said. “And don't worry, I won't tell anyone.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Thanks, Bree.”

And that was the end of my interviews.