The Brave

by James Bird

  As a result, I now have muscles in places that I didn’t even know muscles could be. And in a certain kind of light, I resemble Aji more than the kid I was when I first arrived here.

  Strictly out of habit, I find myself looking for a reason to dislike Ronnie—but the truth is, he’s a really great guy. The more I get to know him, the more I hope to be like him when I grow up. I guess that’s what a dad should be to a son. I even accidentally called him Dad this morning when he dropped me off at school. We both looked at each other in shock, mostly me. But I can tell he liked hearing it, and a bit of me kind of liked saying it.

  I didn’t really learn anything new today. Well, at least not at school. But I did learn something when I got home. I learned to make a lot of noise when I enter the house. I learned it the hard way. I walked in and saw Ronnie and my mom making out on the couch. They sprang up like startled rabbits when they saw me. Then they burst out laughing. I’m glad they found it funny because I most certainly did not.

  Now it’s nine o’clock, and I’m in Orenda’s tree house. I come up here sometimes just to sit. It feels better than sitting alone in my room. I feel closer to her in here.

  As I lie in her bed and think about her, a noise from outside makes me sit up. I rush over to the window and hope to see their truck pull into the driveway with Orenda sitting in the passenger seat, but it’s not them. It’s actually the second-best scenario. It’s my grandma and Seven walking up the road. Finally! They’re home!

  I run down the ramp and race through the yard to meet them in the driveway. Before I can run to her, Seven runs into my arms. The force knocks me back, and I fall on my butt. Seven kisses me for every minute we were apart. Which is in the thousands. I wrap my arms around her and give her half as many kisses in return. My grandma, her dress in purple now, watches us, smiling.

  “We had quite the journey,” she says.

  “You sure did. I was worried sick,” I say back to her.

  “Is Mama home?” she asks.

  “Yes, but knock before you go in.”

  My grandma clasps her hands together in joy. She loves affection. The thought of her daughter finding happiness again makes her equally happy, maybe even more. She walks off and leaves me alone with Seven.

  “Wait. How is Orenda?” I ask before she enters our yard.

  “Ask her yourself,” she says, and continues walking.

  “What? How?” I shout as I rise to my feet.

  Just then, two headlights hit me full blast. I turn around and see their pickup truck turning into the driveway. It’s too dark to see inside, so Seven and I rush up to them. As I reach the truck, I see Orenda.

  She sits in the passenger seat, smiling like she always does. Our eyes meet and do a quick little flutter dance before I open the door for her. Foxy flashes me a smile. He looks so tired. I can’t imagine what he’s feeling right now.

  “I’ll give you two some time to catch up,” he says and exits his truck.

  “I missed you, too,” Orenda says before I have a chance to tell her how much I missed her.

  I try not to give her any indication that I notice the shift in her voice. She talks even slower now, and there’s saliva sneaking out the corners of her lips, like the words are heavy bags of water that she has to drag out of her mouth and her teeth are tearing holes in the bags, causing them to leak.

  “Thirteen,” I say, and move in for a hug, but her arms and hands don’t move to receive it. At all. They just lie completely still on her lap. I hug her anyway.

  “My human limbs aren’t working too well these days,” she says, and instead returns the hug with her wild eyes.

  “Forty. You can use mine,” I say, and unfasten her seat belt for her.

  “And I can’t fly yet,” she says.

  “Fourteen. Then I shall carry you,” I say, and lift her into my arms.

  Either I am getting much stronger or she weighs much less than she did the last time I carried her. Maybe both.

  Her head rests against my neck as I walk through her yard and up her ramp. She takes in a deep sniff as the breeze hits us and smiles. “You’ve been feeding the butterflies,” she says, somehow picking up the scent of sliced peaches.

  “Every day,” I reply as we enter her tree house.

  I set her softly into her cocoon bed. I read that sometimes massaging the limbs can feel good for people with ALS. So I begin rubbing her arms, up and down, and it works. As soon as I begin, she relaxes a bit and breathes easier.

  There are so many questions I want to ask, but she looks so peaceful lying in her bed, with her eyes slowly closing.

  “Do you want me to leave so you can sleep?” I ask.

  “Stay.”

  She scoots over as best as she can, which is hardly any movement at all. But it’s more than I need to understand what she wants. I lie down beside her and wrap my arm around her, pulling her frail body against mine.

  “Four,” I say, and kiss her forehead.

  I kick my shoes off and get comfortable. I take notice of all the changes her body has gone through since I’ve met her. She’s much thinner now. Her ribs are visible, and her arms look like they would snap off if someone were to tug at them. She catches me staring. “What is it?” she asks.

  “I just wish you could be normal again,” I say.

  “I was never normal. And I never will be,” she slurs.

  “I meant normal as in, you know, normal.”

  “Ugh. That word.”

  “What’s wrong with it? I wish I was normal.”

  “No! Normal is just another word for boring. Don’t be boring. You know what’s the opposite of being normal?” she says, so passionately that she needs to catch her breath.

  “No. What?”

  “Being yourself.”

  I chew on her words, swallow them, and digest them. She’s right. Orenda is not normal. There’s no one like her. And that’s because she is always being herself. We share a smile. I could spend the rest of my life right here, just like this, so I try to. I close my eyes and hold her, feeling her heart beat against my body.

  “Life is tough,” I say, not knowing why that slipped out of my mouth.

  “Life is tough,” she agrees, “but we’re tougher.”

  Even now, Orenda is braver than I am. “I’m scared,” I say, with my eyes closed.

  “I am too … But … when I passed my test that night, I learned something about being scared that made me feel a lot better. I learned how to be brave. Want to hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I learned that it’s okay to be afraid. It’s even okay to be very afraid. But it’s never okay to be too afraid.”

  “You can be brave and scared at the same time?” I ask.

  “Yes. If you’re scared to fight but fight anyway, that makes you brave,” she says.

  I think about all the times in my life when I was so afraid that I did nothing. I was defeated before any fight began. I lost before I even started. But the one time I was afraid and stood my ground got me to where I am now. I fought back, and fighting back led me to Orenda. I decide from this day forward, I will never be too afraid of anything. I will be brave from now on, just like her.

  “Orenda?” I say, but she has fallen asleep. I hope in her dreams, she’s flying.

  * * *

  My eyes burst open! My heart pounds so hard that I actually grab my chest to make sure it didn’t rip through my chest as I jolt up. Orenda is screaming. I’m not sure why. Her eyes are wide open, and she’s covered in sweat.

  “Where are you hurt?” I ask, but she is in too much pain to hear me.

  Her screams are haunting, like there’s an invisible man randomly stabbing her with a sharp, thin sword in different parts of her body. If I could see him, I’d throw him headfirst out of this tree house. But I can’t.

  Another pounding competes with my heart. But this time, it’s her father’s footsteps running up the ramp. He swings the door open, and in two long strides, he’s beside us. Ma
ybe he can see the invisible man?

  Foxy scoops up his daughter and wraps the sheet around her. Before he takes her out of the tree house, he turns to me.

  “Don’t worry. This happens,” he says, and carries Orenda through the doorway. And even though she is in a lot of pain, her hand reaches out and grabs the door frame. They stop. Orenda looks back at me, and then her eyes scan her room, searching for the invisible man. “Is that all you got?” she mumbles before her dad continues carrying her down the ramp.

  Even now, feeling as horrible as she does, she’s still so brave. She’s still fighting. She’s still challenging death. “Is that all you got?” Her words repeat in my head.

  I look down and see that my hands are still shaking. I press them against my thighs to stop them, but the force pulsates my legs. I don’t remember ever being this scared before. I try to remember Orenda’s words. “It’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to be very afraid, but it’s never okay to be too afraid…” But it’s easier said than done.

  I look out the window and see that the lights to my house are on. Her screams must have woken everyone up. Before I leave her tree house to go home, I take swings at the air, just in case the invisible man is still in here. I throw as many punches as my body allows before I drop to my knees in exhaustion. I hope I hit him. I hope I shattered his nose and blackened his eyes. I hope I hit him so hard that he stumbled out of the tree house, fell off the ramp, and broke his invisible neck when he landed. Yes, I hope I killed him. Because he hurt Orenda.

  I raise my head and look around. The room is still. I hit nothing. In fact, if there was a fight in here with me and him, I just lost it. Because Orenda is still hurt and I’m on my knees, sobbing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  LIFE IS BUT A DREAM   (32)

  Last night was the worst night of my life. I hardly slept. I just lay in bed and worried about her until the sun woke up. Seven didn’t sleep much either. She could tell something was bothering me. She was sprawled across my chest all night, protecting me. Maybe she thought there was an invisible man with a broken nose and a twisted neck out for revenge.

  One look at me from my mother this morning made her immediately tell me that I didn’t have to go to school today. She and Ronnie left early to go into town for some groceries, but I have the sneaking suspicion that they just knew I needed time to myself to process everything that is going on. “Sometimes, time alone is good medicine,” she said before they left.

  I know I should try to get some sleep, or maybe eat something, but I can’t. I need to make sure Orenda is all right. I take a quick shower to get all the dried panic-sweat off of me and get dressed.

  After I feed Seven, I head out of the house and knock on Orenda’s front door. I don’t think I’ve ever used this entrance before. But somehow, going through their backyard feels invasive today. Maybe they need the time alone medicine. I can’t stay away, though. I need to see her.

  Foxy answers the door. Heavy sandbags line the curbs of his tired eyes. He hasn’t slept a wink either.

  “How is she?” I ask.

  But instead of answering me, he opens the door wider, allowing me to see for myself. I enter their home and head toward her bedroom. The door is slightly open, so I push it just enough to fit through.

  Her room has fully transformed to look like her tree house. It’s completely white. There are no more plants, no more flowers. It is just a white cocoon. I wonder where all her things went, but the answer is obvious. She gave them all away. That’s what she does.

  Orenda lies in bed. Her eyes are closed. I step toward her softly, trying not to make a sound. Her chest moves up and down, but it’s forced. I sit down beside her and place my hand on hers. Her eyes slowly open. The moment she sees me, she smiles.

  “Hey, you,” I say.

  Her mouth opens, but no words fall out. She just takes a deep, quiet breath and shifts her eyes toward the window. I follow her eyes and see that there is a beautiful butterfly on the other side of the glass. It looks like the same one that landed on my nose. The same one that she called Mama.

  It’s flapping its brown-and-yellow wings wildly, looking directly at us. It immediately brings me back to the butterfly I saw in my room before I moved here. I remember what she wanted. She wanted the outside. She wanted freedom.

  I look back at Orenda, and her eyes are hopeful that I understand what she wants.

  “You want to go outside?” I ask.

  Her smile stretches even further, nearly to her ears.

  “Just be careful,” Foxy says from behind me.

  I turn to him and see the pain in his eyes. Not from a lack of sleep, but from seeing his little girl slowly withering away.

  Even still, he will allow her to do whatever she wants, even go play outside with the weird neighbor dork that crashed her wheelchair into the fence not too long ago.

  “We will be,” I say, and walk over to her wheelchair.

  It looks different. The wheels are larger and thicker again.

  “I made it easier for you to push it through the forest,” Foxy says.

  The best dad in the entire universe prize goes to Foxy, hands down. “Forty-three. Thank you,” I say, and wheel it over to her bed.

  He helps me put Orenda in it and secures her with a seat belt, which he also added to it. He watches me wheel her out of their house, and as soon as the sunlight hits her skin, she lets out a sigh, like a caged bear that was just freed into the wild.

  The moment we leave the road and enter the forest, Orenda smiles.

  “That cloud looks like a fish,” I say, and point up to the sky.

  Orenda moves her head slowly and sees the cloud swim across the blue. Her eyes shift to another cloud. I stare at it. “I don’t know … A pelican, maybe?” I say.

  She nods and smiles. We wander through the forest for almost an hour, me pointing out animal clouds, and her nodding and smiling. But when I ask her if the last one looks like a turtle and her head doesn’t move, I step in front of her and face her. She has fallen asleep.

  I wheel her home, where Foxy is waiting patiently at the front door.

  “You two have fun?” he asks.

  “We did.”

  Foxy takes the wheelchair from me and guides her into the house. I follow them in.

  “She should sleep for a bit, but she’ll be in her tree house around sundown,” he says to me.

  “I’ll see her then,” I say, and kneel down to be eye level.

  “I’ll see you later,” I whisper, and kiss her forehead.

  Her eyes flicker open long enough to see my lips move off of her skin. Knowing her, she’d crack a joke or say something extremely clever right now, but instead, she gives me a grin and closes her eyes again.

  I walk back to my house and find another note left on the kitchen table from my grandma. She took Seven on another adventure. That sneaky old Native ninja. I didn’t even see her today, and she left with my companion. Now I’m truly all by myself.

  I go to my room and plop onto my bed. What should I do? I need to keep busy or I’ll drive myself insane worrying about Orenda. I can’t draw any more animals, there’s not a white spot left on my walls. Maybe I’ll read … But this pillow feels so nice. Maybe I’ll just rest here for a bit. maybe I’ll just close my eyes and …

  * * *

  I am lying in a huge field of grass. I open my eyes and see the sun above me, shining down, shouting for me to get up. So, I do, but as I try to stand, I fall. I break the fall with my hands, but my hands aren’t mine. Or at least they don’t look like mine. My arms are covered in fur, and my hands are large paws, with sharp claws where my fingers once were. And weirdly, I feel better in this position, on all fours. I turn my head to see my body. Holy crap! I’m a wolf.

  After a few failed attempts at walking, I get the hang of it. And I run. Fast.

  I sprint through the field as the wind whips through my fur. I’ve never had this kind of energy before. I feel free and strong. Like I c
an do anything. I must run a mile before I enter the forest. I hear birds chirping high above me in the tall trees. I hear bugs scurry away when they realize I’m near. I hear the forest like I’ve never heard it before, through the ears of a wolf.

  I stop before a small stream to take a drink. I bend down and see my reflection. I have a large snout, sharp teeth, thick pointed ears, and intense yellow wolf eyes … Suddenly, twigs crack and leaves crunch directly behind me, and the fur on my back rises. I spring around and see a large squirrel staring at me. It’s as big as I am. Every instinct in me tells me to chase him, but I don’t. I recognize his eyes. I know this squirrel.

  “Aji?” I say in a deep wolfish voice.

  “Hello, brother,” he says back to me.

  I rush up to him and bury my head into his neck. He wraps his little squirrel arms around me and squeezes. I finally get to see my brother. He’s a lot furrier than I expected him to be, but to be fair, so am I.

  “Why am I a wolf?” I ask him.

  “The same reason I’m a squirrel, brother.”

  “This isn’t real. This is a dream. What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on? We are here to save Orenda from the invisible man,” he says.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “He took her. We must go now,” he says.

  “Hop on my back,” I say, and he does.

  He points in the direction we need to go, and I run as fast as I can, deeper into the dense forest. Aji holds on tightly as we zigzag through the trees, hop over ponds, and finally enter a part of the forest that has been razed. All the trees are gone. All the green grass is gone. And the earthy ground has been covered by asphalt. There’s nothing but a small cabin in the center of the deforested lot. He hops off of me and sniffs the air.

  “She’s in there,” Aji says, and points to the cabin.

  We march slowly toward it, being as quiet as we possibly can. But as we’re halfway there, I hear an unpleasant familiar sound: Orenda’s scream.