True Heroes

by Shannon Hale

  Finally! She made it past the very last tree and into the open. Train tracks ran alongside the woods as far as she could see in both directions. And standing right in front of the tracks was a very large bad guy.

  His hair was as black as a spooky cave at nighttime, and it stuck out in all directions. Big bushy eyebrows scrunched down between his eyes, and his long skinny nose seemed to point right at Braelyn. His shoulders and stomach were so broad that she could barely see around him.

  “You’re too late to stop my plan,” the bad guy said. Then he laughed an evil laugh that bounced off the mountains in the distance and echoed back.

  He stepped to the side so Braelyn could see what he had been hiding. Her stuffed friends were tied up on the train tracks! She glanced to the right and saw a train barreling its way down the tracks in their direction. It would reach them at any moment! She needed to save them quickly.

  No matter which way she moved to get to her stuffed friends, though, the bad guy stepped the same direction and blocked her. His arms were spread out wide, ready to stop her if she got close. Left and right and left and right they both moved. She couldn’t get around him, and she didn’t know what she was going to do to save her stuffed friends in time.

  The train rumbled like thunder as it got closer, and the Wooooooo-wooooooo! of the horn rang in Braelyn’s ears as it warned them to move away from the tracks. She was so worried about her friends, though. If she couldn’t find a way to get past the bad guy, there would be no way to save them.

  She had to find a way.

  Braelyn stopped trying to get past the man and looked around. There was nothing nearby to help her—nothing but rocks and dirt and train tracks and weeds and trees. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed that the bad guy had brought a lot of rope, but he hadn’t used very much to tie up her stuffed friends. The rest lay looped in a circle on the ground at the edge of the woods.

  She darted toward the rope, moving at her fastest superspeed, grabbed it, and raced back to the man. Around and around him she ran, twisting the rope as she went. Before the bad guy even realized what was happening, Braelyn had him tied up from his ankles all the way to his neck, his arms trapped close to his sides.

  He tried to take a step toward her, but with his feet tied together, he fell back onto his rear. The man wiggled and wiggled, unable get free. He was trapped and couldn’t stop her now.

  But there was no time left! The train was almost to her friends, and they were in great danger. Braelyn ran toward them as the train’s horn blared and the wheels rumbled and the big hulking train barreled closer, its shadow falling on Braelyn and her stuffed friends. With one motion she scooped her friends into one arm and threw her other arm toward the sky.

  She leaped into the air, flying them up, up, up.

  Just as Braelyn got them high enough, Woosh! went the air as the train sped past, barely missing them.

  “That was close,” Braelyn said to her stuffed friends as she glided to the ground as gently as a feather falling.

  The train made a clunk, clunk, clunk sound as each car sped past in a blur, blocking the bad guy from Braelyn’s view. The train roared down the tracks and out of sight, and when she could once again see him, Braelyn smiled a gigantic smile and did her Sassy Pants dance in triumph.

  The bad guy tried to shake a fist at her, but couldn’t while he was tied up. “You ruined my plans!” he shouted.

  Warmth spread through Braelyn. “I saved my stuffed friends, and your days of evil plans are over!” She gave her stuffed friends a tight squeeze, then put her arm into the air and leaped into the sky.

  This time she flew over the tops of the trees and across the fields, feeling the wind in her face as she flew. Up here, nothing held her down. She soared on the air, feeling it rush all around her.

  A little bluebird changed its course and flew right next to her, chirping a happy chirp that sounded a lot like “Good job, good job” before flying away. Braelyn was so high in the air that all of the trees and houses and cars and people below her in the distance looked like little toys.

  When she reached the place where the fields ended and the sidewalk began, Braelyn glided to the ground, making sure to give her stuffed friends a soft landing.

  With her feet once again touching the ground, she tucked her stuffed friends tightly into her belt and grabbed hold of the handles on her scooter. She turned on her superspeed and pushed her foot on the sidewalk as fast as she could, making the scooter rocket forward.

  In no time at all, she was steering her scooter back into its parking spot on her driveway. “Thanks for getting us home so fast, Trusty Scooter,” Braelyn said as she patted the handles.

  She carried her stuffed friends into the house and tucked them safely into bed. After such an adventure, they must be exhausted!

  When she shared with her family the story of everything that had happened, her mom called the police and told them where to pick up the bad guy. Then her dad, her mom, and her big sister all wrapped her into a hug as big as the sky and as tight as a warm blanket.

  Her dad kissed her on top of the head and said, “You saved the day, my little superhero.”

  Braelyn looked at her sleeping stuffed friends and smiled. She had saved the day.

  Peggy Eddleman

  Peggy Eddleman is the author of Sky Jumpers (a Bluebonnet Nominee, a Beehive Nominee, a Golden Sower Nominee, a South Carolina Book Award Nominee, an American Booksellers Association’s ABC Best Book of 2013, a NYPL’s 100 Books for Reading and Sharing selection, and a Kids Indies Next selection) and its sequel, The Forbidden Flats. Peggy lives at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Utah with her husband and their three kids, who are all busy creating their own adventure stories.

  http://peggyeddleman.com/

  Braelyn

  “A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” —Christopher Reeve

  Breann

  (Osteosarcoma)

  Meet Bre! When Bre was fourteen, she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. Her tumor was in her tibia, below her right knee. Before cancer, Bre was a talented dancer and typical teenager. After the doctors removed the tumor, Bre and her family were faced with a serious decision. Either amputate her right leg below the knee or attempt an experimental procedure to save the leg. They chose to try to save the leg!

  Bre was told that with this experimental procedure it would take her two years to walk and she would likely never run or dance again. Within a year of the surgery, Bre was walking like a champ! She now walks without any help at all and is working on being able to dance again. This image is meant to inspire her and give her the strength to keep working toward her goals. Scan the QR code below to see how we created Bre’s image.

  www.anythingcanbeproject.com/dream-blog/2014/11/17/bre-hatfield-dancer

  The Drop-Off

  Ally Condie

  The worst part of every dance,” Anna’s friend Tani tells her as they’re out shopping for dresses together, “is the drop-off. Even if you’ve had the best date, you’re like, Do we kiss? Hug? And then if one of you moves in and the other one moves back . . . awkward.”

  They’re going to the Sweethearts Dance, which is girls’ choice, so at least they got to choose their dates. Anna’s picked wisely. She’s chosen someone hot and nice and interesting. Because Anna does not like to be bored. She has no time for that.

  Some people think it’s because of the cancer that Anna doesn’t like being bored. They think it’s because she has a clock ticking away in her mind now, like her life is borrowed time or stolen time or special time. But the truth is, Anna has always been like this. Cancer didn’t change her, not in that way.

  Anna has never liked to waste time.

  When she was little, she liked the movie Finding Nemo. Her favorite part was always when Nemo finally went to the drop-off, that part in the ocean where safety gave way to the unknown and the real adventure be
gan. That’s how she likes to live her life—like it’s an adventure.

  “Maybe the way to handle it is to tell him what you want when you’re walking to the door,” Anna says to Tani. “I’ll just say, ‘We’re going to kiss when we get to the top of the steps,’ and then we’ll both know what to expect.”

  Tani shrieks with laughter. She looks at the dress Anna’s wearing. “You look hot.”

  “I know,” Anna says. She does. “So do you.”

  Tani grins.

  The mirrors make dozens of Annas. A bunch of Tanis.

  Anna’s dress is short and sleeveless and black. The top has little gold embellishments, and the skirt is lace. The dress looks kind of like a figure skater and a rock star got together and designed it.

  It is a great dress.

  She’s not wearing tights or nylons. She’s used to both; she wore them for years when she was on her dance team, before the surgery. A few weeks ago she threw them all away, all the fleshy-colored ones and the sparkly ones, and it looked like a bunch of snakes had shed their skin in the trash.

  “Oh, Anna,” her mom said when she saw them in the garbage. “Those were still in great condition. And you know how much they cost.”

  “Nope,” Anna had said. “I’m not giving my skin to someone else.”

  Although she probably actually would give her real skin to someone else if they needed it really badly.

  She gave it to herself, after all.

  That was where she’d felt the pain first, after the surgery. She had three options with her kind of bone cancer—osteosarcoma.

  Rotationplasty. That meant having part of her leg removed while the part below the involved point was rotated and reattached. She’d need part of a fake leg, but she’d still have her own knee.

  Amputation. Leg gone.

  Limb salvage. The diseased part of her bone would be taken out and replaced with metal rods.

  All of the options meant she would never dance again. Not competitively. Not with huge leaps and bounds and motion, motion, motion, the way she used to dance. She had dreams of being on television, choreographing for the stars. Crowds loved her. She lit them up. It wasn’t just that she was good, although she was. So, so good. It was also that she brought them in, made them notice her.

  Look at me, she used to think. Look at me dance. And they always did.

  She chose limb salvage.

  That meant they’d had to take skin from her hip. And that’s where she’d felt the pain first when she woke up. Not in the rest of her leg, which had had its insides removed, the bones replaced, the skin sewn, every gutting and hard thing you could think of done to it. No, it was her hip, where they’d pulled away the skin to help out her leg.

  Whiner, she said to her hip. It’s my leg that really has it bad. You suck. Shut up. That cracked her up a little. But not much. The pain that first month went on and on. This will end, she told herself, because it has to.

  And it did. They’d said it would take her two years to learn to walk again.

  It took eight months.

  She’s proud of that.

  Her scar is purple, wavy, impossible to hide even if she wanted to. She doesn’t. What’s to hide?

  She has great legs even with the surgery scars.

  Her legs are where her date, Cole’s, eyes go. Not first. First his eyes go to her eyes, which makes her happy, and then he looks down at her legs and she knows he’s checking them out, even though he’s seen them before. He’s seen the scar before, too.

  “Wow,” he says. “You look great.”

  Anna’s dad raises his eyebrows. He’s huge and strong as steel and scares every guy who likes Anna, but he’s a mushy teddy bear where she’s concerned. When they first found out about Anna’s cancer, he couldn’t talk about it without crying.

  “Be back by midnight,” he says to her.

  “One,” she says.

  “Twelve-thirty,” her mom says, “and you’re welcome for that.”

  Her mom is not mush. Her mom is also steel like her dad, just at different times and in different ways. They take turns.

  In the hospital, Anna hated the food, and so her mom became Anna’s personal delivery person. Her mom got salads from Café Rio and breadsticks from The Pizza Factory and peppermint shakes from JCW’s and anything else Anna wanted. Only certain things, the exact right thing. Anna would close her eyes and think about it. What is the only thing in the world that sounds good to me right now? And then it would pop up in her mind, and she’d tell her mom what she absolutely had to have to eat that day.

  “This reminds me when I was pregnant with you,” Anna’s mom said. “I could only eat certain things or I’d throw up.”

  “A turkey sub from Jimmy John’s is what I need today,” Anna said. “With avocado.”

  “I think you were easier when you were inside of me instead of outside,” her mom said, rolling her eyes, but she went and got the food anyway.

  “I’ll be back by twelve-thirty,” Anna says now. She gives her parents each a hug and tries to get out of the house, but there’s no escaping taking a few more pictures before she and Cole are finally on their way.

  “What are you laughing about?” Cole asks her after dinner as they drive to the dance. Their group went to a McDonald’s wearing their best outfits because for Sweethearts the girls are supposed to pay, and she doesn’t have a ton of money. Neither do her friends.

  Plus, it was great to watch the other customers’ faces when they came in, dressed to the nines.

  “Nemo,” she says. “From the movie. What if you ate him tonight?”

  Cole had ordered a fish sandwich, which was a gutsy move on a date. So far his breath smelled fine. He had gum.

  “I probably did,” Cole says, and that cracks her up.

  “Have you seen the movie?” she asks.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. Then he surprises her because he does an impression of the little squid who gets scared and does the squid equivalent of peeing its pants: “You made me ink!” His voice goes high and squeaky, so different from how deep it usually is.

  And then she’s laughing so hard she can’t stop.

  “Maybe they’ll make another movie someday,” he says, his voice back to normal.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Eating Nemo.”

  This makes him crack up.

  This is it, she thinks for a second as they walk inside the decorated school gym. I’m at a dance. I’m alive.

  And she can still dance. Two years haven’t passed yet—she’s not even supposed to be walking according to the doctors—but here she is, slow dancing just fine.

  Cole dances close, but not gross-close. Just good close. She can feel the muscles in his back move and she likes it. He smells good. He makes her laugh. Above the two of them the ceiling sparkles, it’s dark, and the student council has strung up lights that look like stars. Sort of. Good enough.

  People asked her after her surgery, “So what’s your dream now? Now that you can’t dance?”

  They don’t seem to get that life is her dream now. All of it. The big stuff. The little stuff.

  Great dress. Glittering lights. Snow coming down outside. Cute boy laughing with her. Heart pounding, laughter in the car, friends waving at her from across the dance floor.

  Look at me, she thinks, the way she used to when she danced in front of a crowd. But now she thinks, Look at the way I live. This is my dream now. All of this. And everything to come.

  The night has been perfect, and she and Cole walk to the door together. He holds her hand because the snow is a little slippery underfoot but not bad.

  So, she thinks, this is the drop-off. The night is cold and full of stars. Her dress feels light, swishes around her when she walks. When she breathes in, she smells cologne and snow and mint.

  It turns out that she doesn’t tell him they’re going to kiss at the top of the steps.

  But somehow, he knows.

  Ally Condie

  Ally Condie is the author of t
he New York Times best-seller Atlantia and of the Matched trilogy, a #1 New York Times and international best-seller. Matched was chosen as one of YALSA’s 2011 Teens’ Top Ten and named as one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Children’s Books of 2010. The sequels, Crossed and Reached, were also critically acclaimed and received starred reviews, and all three books are available in more than thirty languages.

  A former English teacher, Ally lives with her husband and four children in Utah. She loves reading, writing, running, and listening to her husband play guitar.

  http://allycondie.com/

  William

  (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia)

  Meet William! I first met William at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. This was his second bout with cancer, and things were progressing as normal—well, as normal as things can be when fighting cancer—and William was in pretty good spirits despite having being confined to a tiny hospital room for two weeks.

  That day we discussed William’s dream of becoming a dragon rider. I knew I wanted to do something really fun for him during our shoot.

  We traveled to a secluded office building a couple miles up Big Cottonwood Canyon. The plan was to explore the woods and hills near the building. We were going to search for William’s dragon! William and I had a great adventure searching for dragon hideouts. It was the first time I was able to see William just being a boy, full of life and adventure! And, as luck would have it, William was able to find a dragon.

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIo6WuPCUk0

  William and the Dragon

  J. Scott Savage

  William stared at the side of the mountain as three of the city’s most skilled knights stumbled from the entrance of a large cave and through the yellow mist that floated outside the dark opening like an evil cloud. The men’s armor—normally the bright gold and red of the city’s colors—was covered in black soot. One of the knight’s swords had been melted into a shape like a large letter J. Coughing and gasping for breath, the men pulled off their helmets and revealed faces red from exhaustion . . . and fire.