Brave

by Jennifer Li Shotz

  “That’s your dad,” she said. “Can you grab it?”

  Dylan swiped at the screen, and after a short delay, a video window popped up.

  “Hi, Dad!” He sat down at the table and held the phone in both hands.

  “Hey, bud! Good to see your face.”

  “Good to see your face too.”

  Brave jumped up and stuffed his face under Dylan’s arm and into the frame, curious to see who Dylan was talking to.

  “Hey there, mister,” Dylan’s dad laughed.

  “Brave, say hi to Dad.”

  Brave ran his nose over the screen.

  “Okay, okay, you’ve had your sniffs. Now it’s my turn to talk to him,” Dylan said to the dog. “Brave, off.” He pointed at the floor, and the dog put all four paws back down.

  “Nice,” his dad said. “He’s really responding to you, huh?”

  “Dylan was just about to tell me how it went today,” his mom said, putting the food on the table and sitting down next to him. She gave her husband a little wave.

  “It was incredible,” Dylan told his parents. “I rode Rey—that’s Grace’s horse—”

  “You did what!” His mom’s jaw dropped open. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to see it.”

  “Me too,” his dad chuckled. “I’d pay good money to see you on a horse, kiddo.”

  “It was super cool,” Dylan went on, his words starting to spill out in a rush. “I mean, not at first—at first it kind of sucked, but I got better at it and learned how to steer him. And Grace was amazing—she helped us so much. We think Brave’s scared of loud noises, so she figured out what to do about that. And look at this.” Dylan reached into his pocket and took out the cash that Mr. Garcia had given him for the day’s work. “If I add this to the money I’ve already made to pay for the couch and for Brave—”

  “Wait, Dyl. Rewind for a second,” his mom said. “What was that about Brave being scared of loud noises?”

  His parents exchanged a look. “That doesn’t sound normal, does it?” his dad asked.

  Dylan knew he had to answer carefully. He didn’t want to lie to his parents, but he didn’t want them to think there was anything really wrong with Brave either. “We think it could be because of the hurricane. Like maybe he was outside while it was happening.”

  His mom considered that for a moment. “That would explain it. But is that something that can be fixed in a dog?”

  “Grace thinks so. We started trying to get him used to noise, like the horses on the ranch. He did great.”

  “You two are really dedicated to this, huh?” his dad said.

  “We are. He’s such an amazing dog—we just want him to be okay.” Dylan regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. The air in the room changed, and Dylan held his breath.

  “Dyl . . .” His dad shook his head and looked off camera for a second. “We understand that, but if you’re not even sure the dog is okay, then I don’t know.”

  “He’s totally okay!” Dylan jumped in. “Really—he’s fine.”

  “I want to believe you,” his dad said with a sigh. “But just remember that taking care of a rescue dog like Brave is a lot of work.”

  “Right. I know, Dad. And I promise I can do it.” Dylan fumbled for the right words. “And I want Brave to be better than okay. I want him to be as great as we know he can be.”

  “We know you do, Dyl,” his mom said. “You said you were committed to this and you have been.”

  “And you’re still keeping up with your homework and everything?” his dad asked.

  “I am.” Dylan nodded for emphasis. “I’m really trying, guys.”

  His dad had a funny look on his face that Dylan couldn’t place at first. He was sort of smiling, and his eyes crinkled up at the sides.

  And that’s when it hit Dylan—his dad was proud of him. He looked from his dad, framed on the tiny phone screen, to his mom, who sat right next to him, and felt his chest swell. He loved when it felt like they were all together—even if it was just for a few minutes.

  And now that Brave was there too, sitting by Dylan’s knee, their family felt so complete.

  Dylan and his mom ate while they chatted with his dad. The whole time, Brave’s ears were up and forward and his eyes were locked on Dylan’s plate as he waited not so patiently for a bite. Dylan shook his head at the dog and silently jerked a thumb toward the living room, willing him to go away and not look like a beggar. Brave just stared at him and swept his tail back and forth across the kitchen floor.

  “He does seem like a sweet dog,” Dylan’s dad said.

  “Even though he’s got terrible table manners,” his mom piped in. “Do we have enough dog food for him?”

  “We could use some more, actually.” Dylan sensed an opportunity. “And I was thinking, maybe I could use some of the money I made to buy him a toy, too?”

  As if he recognized the word “toy” and knew who he had to convince, Brave turned his attention to Dylan’s mom. He looked up at her with a glint in his big amber eyes, tipped his head to the side, and let out a little yowl. He was going for maximum cuteness.

  “You are a handsome fellow, aren’t you,” she said, reaching out to stroke Brave’s head. “And your fur is really soft.” She sat back in her chair. “Okay, you two. Let’s clean up the dishes and run to the pet store before they close.” She turned to the phone. “We’ll call you later, sweetie.”

  “Over and out,” Dylan’s dad said. “Love you two.”

  “Love you, Dad. Miss you.”

  “Miss you too, pal. Bye.” The screen went black.

  Dylan hopped out of his seat and wrapped his mom in a huge hug. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “You’re welcome.” She laughed into his shoulder. “Is this what I have to do to get a hug around here?”

  “Yup.” Dylan squeezed her harder.

  * * *

  The pet store was cavernous and bright, and dogs casually strolled the aisles alongside their people. Brave, on the other hand, was practically beside himself with excitement. His tongue hung out of his mouth, and his entire back half swung left to right as his tail wagged as steadily as a windshield wiper. He hopped up on every shelf, sniffing to take in the thousands of new smells, then exhaling sharply to clear his nostrils so he could sniff again.

  “Easy, Brave,” Dylan said, shortening the slack on the leash so Brave couldn’t jump up as easily. Brave looked over his shoulder at Dylan, as if to say Seriously? This is the coolest place I’ve ever seen and you want me to take it easy? But the dog seemed to settle down.

  “He listens to you,” Dylan’s mom said.

  Dylan took that as a good sign. Keep it up, Brave, he thought, sending the dog a silent message.

  They filled their cart with a big bag of kibble, two stainless steel bowls for water and food, and some high-value training treats. To replace the things Grace had loaned them, Dylan picked out a red collar that would look great on Brave’s dark fur, and a new leash that felt like a horse’s reins in his hand. Brave watched everything go into the basket, his eyes alight with anticipation. Finally they came to the toy aisle.

  “All right, pal, this’ll be fun,” Dylan said. “Sit.” Brave hesitated, distracted by the rows of brightly colored balls and ropes and flying discs and stuffed animals in the shape of squirrels, raccoons, and even a teddy bear. It was overwhelming.

  Dylan waited a moment to give Brave a chance to respond, then repeated the command and held out an upside-down closed fist over his head. Brave sat. Dylan’s mom nodded, impressed.

  “Stay,” Dylan said, holding out a palm to Brave. “I’ll show you a few things, and you pick, okay?” Brave’s ears flicked. “Good.”

  Dylan grabbed a tough leather hedgehog, a spiky rubber ball, and a long braided rope in a rainbow of colors. He held each one in front of Brave’s nose while the dog sniffed and snorted, eyeballed, and even—when no other customers were looking, thankfully—tasted them.

  Brave seemed equally thrille
d by all of them, so Dylan tried again with a double-handled tug-of-war toy and a squeaky rabbit. When Brave still couldn’t decide, Dylan held them all up again, one after the other. When he got to the hedgehog, Brave hopped up on his back legs and put his paws on Dylan’s arm. He let out a high-pitched yip.

  “Hedgehog for the win!” Dylan’s mom laughed.

  “Good call, Brave.” Dylan hung all the other toys back on their pegs. He held the hedgehog in his hand as they made their way to the register, but Brave kept jumping up on him impatiently. Finally, Dylan pulled off the tag and gave it to him to carry.

  Dylan used his cash to pay for everything, and the three of them headed for the parking lot. Brave walked with his head up, gently holding his new, precious toy in his mouth.

  A little girl riding in a cart pointed at Brave as she passed. “Look, Daddy!” She giggled. “That pretty dog is carrying a toy all by himself!”

  “He sure is,” the dad replied. “What a good dog.”

  Dylan’s mom squeezed his shoulder, and Dylan beamed with pride.

  ★ Chapter 16 ★

  * * *

  * * *

  Three more days.

  That’s how long they had before the two weeks was up. That’s how long Dylan had to convince his mom to let him keep Brave.

  If Brave wasn’t well trained enough in three days, he would have to go back to the shelter. The good news was that so far, no one had gone there looking for him. But the bad news was that if Dylan couldn’t keep him . . . there might be no one else to adopt Brave, and then there was no telling what would happen to him.

  Dylan had been spending as much time as possible on the ranch, hoping to put Brave’s training into overdrive. He and Grace had been working hard, in every sense of the word. Day after day, they’d spent long afternoons hauling debris, digging holes for new fenceposts, and taking turns riding Rey. During all of that, they were constantly training Brave, who was working pretty hard himself.

  Every evening, Dylan had come home wiped out—and happier than he’d ever been. As the field cleared and the pile of dead branches grew, or the line of freshly dug post holes stretched farther and farther, it was amazing to see the immediate results of their labor.

  The same thing was happening with Brave. As they trained every day for hours, it was clear that something had changed between them. It was like they were communicating on a whole different frequency—with words and without. Like Brave knew what Dylan wanted him to do before he said a command out loud or gave a hand signal. Brave was attuned to Dylan in a whole new way, and he had become an incredibly calm and well-behaved dog.

  That was, in every way but one.

  No matter how hard Dylan and Grace tried, no matter what they did to help him, they couldn’t totally get Brave past his fear of loud sounds. The dog was making some progress. He could sit quietly in the ring while Rey galloped around him in circles. He didn’t bat an eyelash when Dylan or Grace dumped a heavy tree trunk onto the stack of splintered branches in the field. But those were things Brave had gotten used to—they were familiar. The second something unexpected came up, like a truckload of steel rods being delivered to the barn, or a digger clanging down the ranch road, it was another story.

  When that happened, Brave still cowered like the lost dog Dylan had found that first day, shivering behind a dumpster.

  Dylan wiped his sweaty brow on his shirt and dusted off his work gloves. He stooped down to pick up the shovel and jammed it into the dry dirt. Then he put one cowboy-booted foot down on top of it, pressed it down farther, and scooped out a shovelful of earth. He tossed it onto the mound to his left. As if the spray of dirt were a squeaky toy, Brave and Mustang dove after it. When they couldn’t catch it in their mouths, they dropped to their bellies and rolled around in it.

  “Brave! Mustang!” Dylan said. “Cut it out—you guys are filthy!” The dogs responded by chasing each other up and over the dirt pile and across the field, toward the spot where Grace was chugging from a bottle of water. They tackled each other near her feet, and she jumped out of the way with a laugh.

  Grace hoisted her shovel over her shoulder and walked over to Dylan. They stood side by side watching the dogs as the sun dropped lower in the late-afternoon sky.

  “You ready to call it quits for the day?” she asked him.

  “If you’re tired, sure,” he replied.

  “I just don’t want you to overdo it, that’s all,” Grace shot back.

  “Me?” Dylan laughed. “I could keep digging all night.” He stretched out his arms and winced at how stiff they were.

  “Ha. Yeah, I see that.” Grace grinned.

  Just then Mr. Garcia came rolling up the main road in his six-wheel pickup truck, towing a trailer bed behind him. He waved at them just as he hit a bump. The trailer lifted off the ground, then slammed back down with a startling clatter—and Dylan knew what was about to happen. He spun around toward Brave just as the dog’s head shot up on the other side of the field. Brave let out a terrified howl, then a frenzied, desperate barking that sounded like his very life was at stake. As the truck drove past, Brave hunched over, lowered his tail between his legs, and whined. He looked around frantically, ready to bolt.

  “Brave, come!” Dylan called out before Brave could take off. Brave looked like he wanted to run as far from them as he could, but he didn’t. Instead, he did as Dylan commanded and ran to his side. “Good boy,” Dylan said, dropping to his knees and wrapping his arms around the dog, who shook like a leaf. “It’s okay. Shhh . . . it’s okay. It was just the truck, that’s all, buddy.”

  Brave leaned into Dylan, breathing heavily.

  “It’s like every time he takes one step forward, he takes two steps back,” Dylan said grimly.

  “But at least he’s taking the step forward,” Grace said. “So we know it’s possible for him to get past this. We just have to keep working with him.”

  “That would be great,” Dylan said, feeling like a heavy cloud had descended over him, “except we’re running out of time.”

  “Hey.” Grace’s voice was firm. “That’s not how we talk on the Garcia Ranch.”

  “But we are. We only have three days—”

  “That’s right. We have three full days. Look how far he’s come in just a week and a half, Dylan. Brave is so obedient now, and he trusts you. Your bond is amazing.”

  That much was true—Dylan couldn’t deny it. It was almost as if the more Brave trusted him, the calmer and steadier the dog got.

  “That’s what’s going to help him,” Grace continued, sitting down on the ground next to Dylan and reaching out to scratch Brave behind his silky ears. “We can do this—he can do this. Your mom is going to see how great Brave is.”

  Mustang trotted over and lay down by Brave, as if she knew that being there would help her pal. With his arm around his dog, whose heart rate was coming down slowly, Dylan looked out over the grassy field that they had worked so hard to clear. He felt the sun on his face and heard the gentle burbling of the creek nearby.

  Dylan had grown up just down the road from where they sat, but the ranch might as well have been another planet—a planet he had never known he would love so much. Working there made him feel like he could do anything, and he had never felt so at home. For that moment, he wanted nothing more than to believe that Grace was right. That maybe the ranch would change Brave’s life too, and they could do this.

  Maybe they really could stay together.

  ★ Chapter 17 ★

  * * *

  * * *

  Dylan stared at himself in the mirror. His stomach felt squirmy and his palms were clammy.

  He couldn’t do it.

  He took the cowboy hat off and held it in his hands. Then he put it back on.

  Part of Dylan’s mind was always on the ranch. The clatter of machinery and the smells of the fields—and the barns—played on repeat in his head as he lay in bed at night or took notes in Social Studies. He closed his eyes and heard Mr. Garc
ia calling him and Grace inside at the end of the day. Without speaking, he and Grace would finish whatever they were doing and head toward the house to get cleaned up.

  They had become a real team, too. But during the day at school, as if by silent agreement, Dylan and Grace acted like they barely knew each other. She still sat with her friends at lunch, and he sat with Jaxon and the guys. If they passed each other in the hall, they exchanged a quick hello and kept walking. It was almost as if Dylan spent his days on one world and his afternoons on another. And when he was on his own, he was trapped between the two, not sure which direction to go in.

  But that morning, Dylan had woken up with a question heavy on his mind. Why did his two worlds have to be separate? Why couldn’t he bring them together?

  Which is how he found himself standing in front of the mirror, just minutes before he had to leave, spinning a cowboy hat in his hands and debating whether or not to wear it to school.

  Why couldn’t he wear it, like Grace and her friends wore theirs? Of course he’d be polite like they were and take it off during class or when he ate. But the rest of the time, he’d wear it with pride. He put the hat back on his head. It was Grace’s brother’s old one, and it fit him perfectly—just snug enough to stay put when he was riding Rey or bending over in the field. Dylan examined himself in the mirror, tapping on the brim and tipping the front of the hat down, the way real cowboys wore it.

  Brave watched him from the bed.

  “What do you think, buddy?” he asked Brave. “Can I pull this off?” Brave yipped approvingly. Dylan looked at himself again in the mirror, turning from side to side and watching his hat turn with him. “Or am I just asking for trouble?” he said under his breath.

  He sat down on the bed next to Brave, who wore his bandanna, and pulled out his phone to snap a selfie. He captioned it #cowboyduds before sending it to his dad.