Tree of Life

Book I Chapter 09

TREE OF LIFE BOOK I

CHAPTER 09

When Julian got to school the next day, he found that he didn’t have to dial in the combination to his lock to open his locker. That was because the lock that had been on the door was not on the door at all. It was gone. The door was still closed, but the lock was missing. Julian reached up and swung the door open. He peered inside. And there it was. The lock that he had left on the door when he went home last night, was now sitting inside the locker, but it had been pried open and was now torn to pieces and useless. He rifled through his other things. Nope. Nothing seemed to be missing—all his books and binders were still there, and stacked exactly the way that he had left them last night.

Julian shut the door again. He frowned. Now, who would do something like that? And why? Why would anybody break open someone else’s locker and then not take anything from it?

Julian began wandering down the hall to the general office. He would need a new combination lock, that’s for sure. All the way there, he scratched his head and couldn’t understand it at all. He thought of Big Bobby, but on second thought, no. If it had been Big Bobby, his things would have been, at the very least, left strewn about the floor, or better yet, halfway flushed down the toilet in the boys’ room. Well, it was probably some other kids and their prank for no apparent reason. High School kids could be so weird. At least nothing went missing. There was that.

~~~

After school, Julian reported to the science lab as usual. It was Thursday.

He was barely through the door before Mr. Cohen called out to him. “Hey, Julian! You won’t believe this!” Mr. Cohen raced over and took the boy by the shoulders. Rushing him over to the hamster cage, he stopped and pointed. “Look!”

Julian examined the cage. And there inside his little domain, Lucky, the previously terminal hamster, was now no longer terminal and scurrying from one end of the cage to the other, busy in his normal, scavenging behaviour. He looked wonderfully happy, with no sign of fatigue or tiredness anymore, and definitely no sign of the huge tumour that had been jutting out of his left side only a few days ago.

“Can you believe it?” Mr. Cohen was all smiles. “I can hardly believe it myself! How do you think that could have happened?”

Julian smiled back. He shook his head. “I don’t know…I really don’t…”

The teacher put his arm around Julian’s shoulders. “…it’s like a miracle…”

Julian turned and peered up into Mr. Cohen’s face. He adjusted his glasses. “Sir, do you believe in miracles?”

Mr. Cohen furrowed his forehead. “Miracles? You mean, like what happened here? Like miraculous healing?”

“Yeah. Like that there might actually be something like that in the world. Like magic potions and stuff.”

Mr. Cohen shrugged. “I don’t really believe it myself, but I know the idea of magical healing and healing powers, in special herbs and plants and other things is very common. In fact, this notion of healing and long life is quite an ancient belief. It’s been around for a long, long time.” He planted one hand on his hip and reached up with the other one to scratch his head. “I remember reading some articles on the subject a while back, just curious, you know? And a…” He began to sidestep toward his office at the back of the room. “…actually, why don’t we go and look it up now?”

Julian joined him and they headed to his desk. They eased aside the mountains of papers that Mr. Cohen had still to mark and dug out his laptop from the bottom. Mr Cohen sat down in front of it in a swivel chair. Julian found another chair and planted himself beside his teacher. They woke the computer from sleep and brought up the browser on it. They searched under ‘tree of life’.