The Time Is Up

"Oh, the time is up," Jonner said. "My little boy has gone to bed. What a sleepyhead." He caught himself mid-thought. "But I am a sleepyhead too. Best place to end up is Grandpa's chair, or Grandma's lap when Grandpa isn't in it. My favorite human only comes by now and then, and half those times he's napping just like Grandpa."

Here is how it works for Jonner. He only wakes up when the boy comes to visit. The rest of the time he waits wherever the boy let go of him, unless Grandma tidies him away into the glass cabinet with the other animals. Hours crawl by in there. Thinking and dreaming are about all a stuffed animal can do behind glass.

The size of Jonner's whole life depends on one small imagination. He moves only when the boy plans a move in his head and then makes it happen with his hands. That is how Jonner flies through the air and tucks himself into hiding spots: the half-open drawers of a bedroom dresser, the cupboards back in the kitchen.

However fast the boy thinks is however fast Jonner goes. One minute he's a fireman, then a cowboy, then a soldier. Sometimes he gets hurt and needs a veterinarian, or one of Grandma's kisses so he knows he'll mend. Grandpa's advice never changes: keep going, you're not hurt that bad. The boy scoops him up in a fist, and off they go to play again.

That boy already has his future figured out. He is going to be a cat herder, and he wears the proof on his head, a cap from his aunt that reads "Cat Herder." The year he started school, his mom drove him to the shelter to pick out a kitten of his own, so the new room downstairs wouldn't feel so empty at night. What he didn't know was that his parents had slipped a little camera in there, a way to watch him sleep and hear him if he cried. Their room sat right above his. Anything went wrong, they'd be down the stairs in seconds. He'd outgrown sharing a room with the babies upstairs anyway; he needed real sleep, and they kept him up.

He had dreams, but none of them scared him. The kitten was there, and Jonner was there too. Some nights, by whatever logic dreams run on, the two of them flew together and looked down at the ground far below. His one small regret up there was that the kitten couldn't fly along. He could see, as they drifted straight through the walls of his grandparents' bedroom, the glass cabinet and the stuffed animals shut inside it.

He'd left Jonner behind at the grandparents' house. When he looked over, what he found was the kitten curled asleep on his bed, right on the spot where he usually put his head. So he lay back down and slept and decided to keep the dream to himself. Even the Christmas elf, the one reporting back to Santa, probably wouldn't mind that he'd snuck off for a while. He knew he'd do it again some other night. He let out a long sigh, yawned enormously, and remembered nothing more until it was time to get dressed, eat, and run for the bus.

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