by Jon Lymon
Wesley dipped his head under the duvet then looked up again, just to make sure this wasn’t a dream.
This wasn’t a dream.
But if it wasn’t a dream, then what was it? Where was he?
He jumped out of the bed and scampered over to the desk against the far wall, climbing up onto a pink padded chair. There was a small computer on the desk, some pens (not all of them pink) and a photo of a really small cat with a pink collar in a silver frame.
Wesley was about to see if he could smell the cat when the bedroom door opened and in walked Freya.
She screamed when she saw Wesley sitting on the desk. Her scream meant he didn’t stay on that desk for long. He flew back in fright, knocking over the photo frame and falling off the side of the desk and down into the bin.
Freya gasped, worried that her little bear might be hurt.
‘Is everything OK up there?’ Freya’s dad called up from downstairs.
The bear looked up at Freya with sad eyes, his feet and tummy stuck in the waste paper bin.
‘Freya?’ her dad repeated.
‘I’m fine Dad, thanks,’ she called down.
She quietly shut the bedroom door and marvelled at the sight of a living, breathing bear in her bin.
She walked toward Wesley but he cowered away, tipping the bin over backwards until it leant against the wall.
‘It’s OK. I’m not going to hurt you,’ she said softly.
Wesley stopped leaning back.
‘Are you a real bear?’ she asked.
Wesley nodded.
‘I want my mummy,’ he said softly.
Freya gasped. ‘You’re a boy,’ she said. ‘And you can talk,’ she cried out.
‘Can’t all bears?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so. Although I don’t know for sure. You’re the first bear I’ve ever really met. What’s your name?’
‘My mummy calls me Wesley.’
‘Then I shall call you Wesley too, and you can call me Freya.’
Wesley nodded, glad that was settled. Now it was down to business. ‘Have you seen my mummy?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure I would have remembered seeing her if I had.’
‘I want my mummy,’ Wesley said.
Freya felt sure he was about to cry. ‘I can be your mummy,’ she offered, reaching her arms out to him.
Wesley started to shake his head then stopped. What if Freya did pretend to be his mummy for a bit? Would that be so bad? Her room was nice and warm and way more colourful than his cage. And apart from the window, there was nowhere for people to stare at him and point and laugh.
Freya pulled Wesley out of the bin and held him so tight he struggled for breath and had to push himself away from her a little bit.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said in the most pathetic voice he could muster.
Freya looked around. She had some chewing gum in her school bag, but she was fairly sure that wasn’t the sort of thing bears ate.
‘Wait there,’ she said and rushed out of the room.
Seven
While she was gone, Wesley laid back on the bed and smiled to himself. Things had turned out pretty well, he thought to himself, considering where he was this time yesterday. Could have been worse, he thought. Would have been better if his mother and Joel had been there, but he wasn’t sure there was room for all three of them and Freya in the bed.
After thinking a bit more about how they’d all fit in, Wesley sat up and flicked his legs over the edge of the bed. Then he hopped down and ran across the floor, touching the desk with a paw then running back again and jumping up onto the bed. That was fun.
He tried to climb up the walls but couldn’t get a grip with his claws and kept ripping the paper and sliding down. He leapt off the bed and onto the chair then onto the desk and up onto the shelf where he reached out for a toy bunny…but missed, knocking over the biggest of the books which fell onto the next book which fell onto the next book and the next, until all the books tumbled down onto the desk and over the floor and into the bin, making such a noise that Wesley had to put his paws over his ears.
He was about to run and hide in the bed when the bedroom door opened.
She was quick, he thought. What a great service.
Only it wasn’t Freya standing in the doorway. It was her dad. And he didn’t look particularly pleased to see Wesley in his daughter’s bedroom.
In fact, he looked totally shocked to see Wesley in his daughter’s bedroom, pointing and stuttering like some of the really young kids who came to see him at the zoo.
Freya’s dad gulped as Wesley stared at him, the bear unable to stop his paws from twitching, he was that scared. Wesley couldn’t stifle a yawn either, exposing his teeth and wet tongue.
Freya’s dad looked afraid and quickly pulled the door shut. Then he opened it again, saw Wesley still there, and shut it again, even more quickly than the last time.
After that, Wesley heard all kinds of commotion outside. Freya’s dad shouted at Freya who screamed at her dad who called to her mum who shouted out ‘what’s wrong?’ then screamed when she heard the answer from Freya’s dad who frantically fumbled his mobile phone and tapped in a number for the police who were quick to answer and slow to believe what they were being told. ‘A bear, sir? There’s a bear in your daughter’s bedroom?’
‘There’s a bear in my daughter’s bedroom. Send someone quick,’ Freya’s dad shouted. ‘What shall I do?’
“Ummm, arrrrr.’ The man on the other end of the line didn’t know what to do. He hadn’t had a call like this before and didn’t much want one like it again.
Freya had started crying and was trying to squeeze past her dad on the landing with the chocolate bar she’d gone down to get for Wesley.
‘You’re not to go in there,’ her dad shouted. ‘No, not you,’ he shouted at the man on the other end of the phone line who was still wondering what to do.
Freya’s dad picked up Freya and carried her to the top of the stairs.
‘He’s hungry, the bear’s hungry,’ she told him, kicking her legs.
‘Bears are always hungry,’ he said. ‘And that’s why you’re not going back into your bedroom.’
Freya looked along the landing and saw her dad had jammed the chair from the bathroom under the door handle.
Freya’s dad carried her downstairs where her mummy was waiting. She took Freya and carried her into the kitchen.
‘Are you OK, honey?’ she kept asking.
‘I want to go and see Wesley,’ Freya told her. ‘He’s hungry.’
Freya’s dad waited at the bottom of the stairs, looking up several times, not quite able to believe what was up there in his daughter’s bedroom.
‘Was it really a real bear?’ he kept asking himself. ‘Has a toy shop sold me a genuine, real, living and breathing bear?’
Eight
Wesley was takenaback by all the noise and fuss that had taken over the rest of the house. He’d never heard such a lot of shouting and screaming, except from the hyenas back at the zoo.
He’d taken cover under Freya’s bed in case her dad decided to come back in and shout and scream at him.
As he waited under there, Wesley realised he was still hungry and had been looking forward to whatever Freya had planned to bring upstairs for him. After a while, he crawled out from under the bed.
He walked over to the door and reached up for the handle, but it was too high.
Then he heard a siren outside and knew that meant trouble.
He ran to the window but wasn’t tall enough to see out or strong enough to pull himself up onto the window ledge.
A police car pulling up outside Freya’s house was enough to get the neighbours who were home out of their houses, and they gathered around Freya’s house in various states of undress, muttering to each other about the possible reasons behind the policeman’s visit.
Freya’s dad
answered the door before the policemen knocked and said ‘There’s a bear in my daughter’s bedroom,’ before the policeman had a chance to say "Ello, I’m here about the bear in your daughter’s bedroom’.
‘A real bear?’ the policeman asked after he’d removed his helmet.
Freya’s dad beckoned him in, not very happy that everyone from their street and possibly a few others seemed to be trying to get a look inside his house.
‘Well, I’d hardly call you in if it was a teddy bear, would I?’ said Freya’s dad.
The policemen didn’t look very happy with that. ‘OK, sir. Let’s not get excited.’
Freya’s mum rubbed Freya’s dad’s back to try and calm him down, while Freya wondered why no one was comforting her. After all, it was her bear locked in the bedroom, going hungry.
‘So what are you going to do,’ Freya’s dad asked.
‘We’ll have to wait for the experts to get here, sir. They’ll know what to do.’
‘I don’t want any guns in the house,’ said Freya’s mum, suddenly worrying about her house being on the news as she hadn’t cleaned for a while.
Freya gasped at the mention of guns and felt tears welling up.
‘It’s only a baby bear,’ she said, running toward the policeman and grabbing his trouser leg.
The policeman didn’t quite know what to do with Freya hanging off his trouser leg and he was thankful when Freya’s mum pulled her away.
An awkward silence followed, broken by a knock at the door.
‘That’ll be the experts now, I expect,’ the policeman said.
Nine
Wesley was desperate to see what was going on outside. So he clambered up onto the shelf that was now empty of books and looked down at the street that was now full of people. None of them were looking up at him, but some of them had cameras that they were pointing at the house, something that reminded him of his cage, of his mother, of Joel.
‘Wesley? Wesley?’
The voice was familiar and it was coming from the other side of the bedroom door. He jumped off the shelf, landing on the desk with a thump. Then he jumped off the desk, landing on the bedroom floor with a thud. He scampered over to the door and scraped his paw against it as it slowly opened.
A familiar face peered round and smiled.
It was the zookeeper.
‘Wesley,’ she said, and he could see that she had been crying.
Wesley couldn’t stop himself squealing in delight.
Freya’s dad, who was standing behind the keeper with the policeman frowned and stepped back from the bedroom door, fearing that something bad was going to happen. He was shocked to see the keeper disappear into the room and shut the door.
Freya’s dad didn’t know what to do or say when the keeper reappeared holding Wesley, whose arms were wrapped around her neck, and who kept leaning into her and licking her face.
Freya’s dad followed them and the policeman slowly down the stairs to the bottom where Freya’s mother stood, hugging her daughter. Freya looked at the keeper and the bear open mouthed. Wesley could see she’d been crying too, and could see she was still holding the chocolate bar she’d wanted to bring upstairs for him to eat.
He felt like crying himself, and then thought about shouting out ‘thanks’ to Freya for being so kind, but he suspected if the grown-ups around found out he could speak, there’d be even more trouble than there already had been, so he said nothing and let his keeper carry him out of the house.
Ten
When Wesley was carried outside, the muttering neighbours were replaced by gasping neighbours and clicks of cameras, even the odd scream from a child.
The keeper walked a bit faster and gently lowered Wesley into a cage in the back of her van. Wesley didn’t want to go inside another cage, especially one as small as that, but he certainly didn’t want to stay around here with all these strange people staring and the dogs barking, and people wanting to get a picture of him.
He didn’t really understand what all the fuss was about and still didn’t as the van slowly pulled off, the keeper having to wait for people to clear out of the road, some of them slapping their palms against the side of the van or trying to peer in through the back windows to get a look at the bear who had turned up on their street and turned out to be real.
Freya watched the van drive away from the doorstep, fighting back the tears, her dad standing behind her, still not quite able to understand how he’d let a real bear into his house and how he’d paid thirty pounds for the pleasure. He checked his pockets, wondering where he’d put the receipt.
Wesley knew where he was going. The place he’d been so eager to escape from was now the place he couldn’t wait to get back to.
There were a few more people with cameras waiting there as the van stopped. Some cars had even followed them from Freya’s house and people rushed out of them with cameras around their necks.
The keeper opened the van door and then the small cage door and Wesley let her slip a collar around his neck and attach a lead.
Wesley jumped out and instantly felt at home. He could smell his mother, he could smell Joel and couldn’t wait to see them and tell them all the things he’d seen, all the adventures he’d had, and all the people he’d met.
He ran with his keeper back to the cage, glad to be home, and not so sure he liked the idea of being free so much anymore.