The Brave

by James Bird

  “The threat has been resolved,” he says aloud, and gives two thumbs-up.

  Resolved? What does that even mean? Does it mean it was a prank? Was someone arrested? Resolved only makes me more nervous. Are they sure?

  As everyone starts filing back to class, I find myself walking through the parking lot, away from school. I know I should go back to class, but too many scary images have filled my head. I need to leave school and be as far away from guns as possible. Plus, if I manage to find my way home, I get to see Orenda much sooner. My mom will understand. Safety always comes first.

  I walk off campus and down the main road. The parking lot is jammed with cars driving in. I guess parents were notified and have come to pick up their kids and take them away from danger. I wonder if my mom was notified? If she was, and is on her way to get me, she’ll see me walking home. At least I hope so.

  * * *

  Thirteen songs later, I enter the reservation. It’s pretty windy, so I muster up all the energy I have in me and speed walk to the house. I’m skipping the forest adventure again. Not only because it’s cold, but also because I don’t see Grandma waiting for me on the road.

  But as the house comes into view, a warmth replaces all the coldness clinging to me. Who would have ever thought I’d feel so much joy from seeing my grandma? But there she is, fixing the screen door on the porch. This time her color-changing dress is blue.

  “Hey, Grandma,” I say, and head over to see if she needs a hand.

  She dusts her hands off and extends them for a hug. I wrap my arms around her and squeeze. She must have been outside for a while, because she’s as cold as ice cubes. “Do you need some help?” I ask.

  “Oh, because you’re so good at fixing things,” she says, laughing.

  She has a point. I have broken more than I’ve fixed since I’ve been here.

  “I can try?” I say.

  “No. I enjoy fixing things. You’re still a kid. Go break stuff. You’ll be old as me before you know it,” she says, and gets back to work.

  “All right. Let me know if you change your mind.” I head to the backyard.

  After I give Seven a kiss and wrestle her for a few minutes, I squeeze through the opening to Orenda’s yard. It’s a feeding frenzy. There are more peaches and even more butterflies fluttering above the grass, dipping and diving like a dance.

  Her wheelchair is under the tree. I grab hold of the rope and begin my ascent. My arms are sore and weak, but the thought of seeing her propels me to the top quicker than I have thus far. How about that? I am getting stronger by the day.

  I crawl into her tree house through the opening, but before I can get to my feet, something presses against the back of my head.

  “Did you read the book?” she says, and nudges me with whatever she’s holding. Her voice sounds a little different, almost as if she was out of breath, but I don’t bring it up. Instead I count her letters.

  “Seventeen. I’m halfway done. It’s great so far. I mean, I had to check under my bed for ghosts before I went to sleep, but—”

  “Prove it. Are you Team Jaxon or Team Elijah?” she asks.

  I count her letters and give the best British accent I can. “Elijah, obviously,” I say.

  She releases me. I turn around and see it was her cane being held to my head. Strange. This morning at school there was a gun threat, and then miles away, she does this.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” she asks.

  “There was a gun threat, so I left.”

  Her eyebrows rise, but not in surprise.

  “And now you’re here,” she says.

  “And now I’m here.”

  I stand up and notice her legs are shaking a bit more than usual.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “I just need to sit,” she says, and leans on her cane as she slowly walks over to her bed.

  I follow her.

  I sit beside her and wait. She knows what I want. She holds strong for a few moments, then breaks into a smile.

  “Fine. You can hear a little more. But you’re not ready for all of it just yet.” She reaches under her pillow, pulling out her earbuds.

  “I’m ready.”

  I close my eyes as she hits PLAY. My brother’s voice makes me immediately smile. It’s smooth and rough at the same time. I sink into Orenda’s bed as he pulls me back into his story.

  Life as a wolf was very difficult for the human baby. He was far more dependent than the other cubs and relied on the mother wolf for even the most basic things. But time crawled on, and soon he was no longer a baby, but a little boy. He was getting better at wolf life, but was still far from that of the other wolves. When they played, he was often the last one chosen. When they ate, he was often the last one fed, and when they learned to hunt, none of the wolves wanted to be teamed up with the boy—he was far too slow and far too loud.

  But there was one advantage to having him around. When the mouse or squirrel evaded the young wolves and scurried up a tree, the boy climbed the tree and shook the little snack out. No other wolf could do this, so in time, they allowed him to join their hunting parties. That is, if he could keep up with them.

  And even though he was technically a part of the pack, the boy didn’t really have any friends. The other wolves were too busy being wolves. He often felt left out and unwanted. The only love he got was from the mother wolf that took him in. But even she knew that there’d come a day when the boy would become a man. And wolves feared men. In fact, all the animals feared men. But for now, he was a boy, and all boys need love.

  One day, years later, when the boy was a teenager, he—

  It stops playing. I open my eyes and see Orenda’s face so close to mine that I nervously swallow. I can smell her breath. She must have just eaten a peach. A peach that was raised by strawberries. She smells so good.

  “That’s it for today,” she says, and stuffs the earbuds back under her pillow.

  “He was a really good storyteller,” I say.

  “Is. Not was. He’s telling you a story now, not then,” she shoots back to me like I somehow offended her.

  “Sorry. Is.”

  And even though I was the one listening to Aji, it is Orenda who looks on the verge of tears.

  “Are you ready for your rematch with the punching bag?” she asks, changing the subject.

  “I am, but I don’t think my arms are ready yet.”

  “Well, let’s see if they follow you to the garage. If they do, they’re ready,” she says.

  “Sounds like a plan. And after boxing, I was hoping you could do something else for me.”

  “What?”

  “I was hoping you’d introduce me to your mom.”

  Her eyes go wide, and it looks like she is forgetting to breathe. Should I tell her to inhale? Exhale?

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “You want to see my mom?”

  “I do.”

  And just like that, her eyes are smiling. She walks over to the opening and grabs hold of the rope.

  “We’ll punch the bag tomorrow. Let’s go see my mama,” she says, and climbs down.

  I’m not really sure what I just got myself into, but as long as I get to go through it with her at my side, I’ll go anywhere and do anything. I follow her out of the tree house where she is waiting for me, sitting patiently in her wheelchair.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  KALEIDOSCOPE   (27)

  Orenda wheels herself through her backyard and stops at the gate. She pulls out her cane and opens the latch. The door swings open, and she wheels herself out. I close it behind me and try to catch up to her.

  She’s heading toward her dad’s truck.

  “We just got to find the keys to this horse,” she says as she taps her cane against the passenger door, signaling me to begin searching.

  “Wait, what? Huh? You can drive?” I ask.

  “No, I can’t drive. I was hoping you knew how,” she says.

  “No
pe,” I say, and wonder if this is where I should be more of a warrior and less of a wimp. “But how hard could it be?” I say, which sends a huge smile across Orenda’s face.

  I climb in and search the truck. After a few failed attempts at finding them, I flip the visor down. The keys fall right into my lap. On the set of keys is a key chain. It has two words on it. Seven letters total. BE BRAVE. I can’t believe how much this little key chain applies to me right now. I must be brave. For her.

  “Got ’em,” I shout.

  Orenda hops out of her wheelchair and climbs like a monkey into the passenger seat. I stick the key into the ignition, and the engine roars to life.

  “Now what?” I ask.

  “Seriously? You really don’t know how to drive at all?” she asks.

  I tally up her letters and answer her. “I’m almost thirteen. All my driving experiences have just been as a passenger.”

  She laughs. “Throw the gear in D and step on the gas. Oh, and steer.”

  I yank the gear lever down to D. It locks in, and I slam on the gas. The truck flies forward, and we barrel into three empty trash cans near the curb.

  Orenda reaches over and shifts the gear to PARK. In between snort-filled laughs, she pulls the key out of the ignition.

  “I’m driving! You drive as good as you fly,” she says, and climbs across to the driver’s side.

  “Okay, but at least I kept my clothes on this time,” I say, and try not to realize I just reminded the both of us about my epic naked fall out of the window. We both laugh as we switch seats.

  I can hear Seven barking from the backyard. Of course she’s worried about me. I yell out that I’m okay as loud as I can, and just as if she understood me completely, her barking stops. But still, we’ve got to move quick before all this noise brings adult human attention to us.

  “You know what you’re doing, right?” I ask.

  She grips the wheel and turns to me. “We shall see,” she says, and gives a sinister laugh.

  She flips the truck into reverse and we speed backward. She slams on the brakes. Our bodies jolt forward. She shifts to D and steps on the gas again, trying to turn in time before we hit the trash cans again … But … We crash into the already toppled-over trash cans once more.

  We laugh so hard we can’t breathe. Seven starts barking again. Orenda parks the truck, pulls the keys out, and places them back behind the sun visor like none of this ever happened.

  “New plan … So, my grandpa was the size of four regular men,” she says.

  “Super random, but good to know,” I say.

  “When he got too old to walk, he refused a wheelchair. Mainly because he couldn’t fit into one … So my dad had a great idea. And his idea is now my idea.” She hops out of the truck.

  I walk as slow as she does, but try to make it look perfectly natural, which I think she appreciates because she doesn’t say anything about our snail’s pace. I hope we get where we’re going before her dad sees our destroyed trash cans. And as if she read my mind, she turns to me and says, “Go clean up our mess, then meet me in my garage.”

  Already a few of the other neighbors have gathered outside to see what all the commotion is about. I need to move quickly.

  I reach the trash cans and set them back up onto the curb. There. Good as new. I ignore the neighbors’ eyes and run to Orenda’s garage. Halfway to it, I see my grandma standing at our house, watching me. She doesn’t look upset; in fact, she looks quite amused.

  “Am I in trouble?” I ask her.

  “You will be if you two don’t hurry up and hit the road,” she says with a smile, and walks back into the house, not waiting to hear how many letters she just tossed me.

  I quietly sneak into Orenda’s garage. It’s dark. Where is she? I flip on the light. It flickers to life and hums. The space is neatly organized and way too clean to be a garage. At the back wall, Orenda stands in front of a large object that is completely hidden by a blue tarp.

  “What is it?” I approach her.

  “I call her the Beast,” Orenda says, and pulls off the tarp with one single yank.

  It falls to the floor, revealing a white golf cart. I laugh.

  “She’s terrifying,” I say jokingly.

  “Fear not. This Beast and I have history,” she says as she steps inside of it, gliding her hands across the frame.

  “We’re in the belly of the Beast now,” I say, and climb into the passenger side.

  “Yes we are. Hold on tight.” She presses the button on the clicker attached to the golf cart.

  The garage door slowly lifts, letting in the sunlight. Orenda grips the steering wheel and turns the ignition button on. It rumbles to life like a vending machine on wheels.

  I grip the bar in front of me and read the bumper sticker plastered onto the dashboard. It says WHEN TIMES GET BAD, DON’T GET SAD—GET MAD.

  Orenda kisses her index finger and shoots it like a gun toward the sky. “That’s my grandpa. He was a madman,” she says.

  I tally up her letters. “Was he a wise man too?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says, and points to an enlarged framed photograph mounted on the garage wall. It shows a heavy man with the same eyes as her, smiling at the camera. His long black and silver hair drapes down toward his belly. He wears a shirt that has a red alien on it. The alien has two feathers sticking out of its huge head and is holding up two long skinny fingers: a peace sign. On the shirt it reads I DRUM IN PEACE.

  “Very wise,” she says.

  “He looks full of … wisdom,” I say, which causes Orenda to laugh.

  Her grandpa looks like a very happy man. I wish I could have met him.

  We’re interrupted as the door that connects to the house opens.

  “Orenda, that you in there?” a man asks. Her dad?

  “Crapola! Let’s go!” she says, and steps on the gas.

  We don’t fly out of the garage—it’s more of a cruise at a comfortable, safe speed, which makes the situation even funnier.

  We exit the garage and joyride down the street at about the same pace as a speed-walker. In fact, her dad could easily catch us, but when I look back, he’s standing with his hands on his hips, smiling. I have yet to get a good look at him. And this time is no different, him being cast in the shadow of the doorway.

  Orenda, on the other hand, is treating this whole excursion like she’s the getaway driver and we just robbed a bank. We pitch from side to side as we approach the main road.

  “Is your dad going to be super pissed at you for this?”

  “No. The good thing about being a rebel is acts of rebellion are expected from you. He’ll huff and he’ll puff, but he won’t blow the house down. Don’t worry about Foxy. He may be big and strong as five men combined, but when it comes to me and my shenanigans, he’s a total softy.”

  “Your dad’s name is Foxy?” I ask.

  “Yep. Don’t tease him, though, he hates being called the foxy fox named Foxy,” she warns.

  “Good to know,” I say, but I didn’t need her warning. Teasing a man that size is the last thing I’d ever do.

  Every car passes us as we ride on the shoulder. Even a few horses trot by, but Orenda doesn’t seem to care. She looks so happy. It’s freezing, but her eyes look like she sees an open road on a sunny day. She’s tasting freedom. She is drinking air and eating light. I watch her in awe. This is the most free I’ve ever seen her, ever seen anyone, and it’s contagious. I howl up at the sky that’s watching us. Orenda howls too.

  “Is that all you got?” she shouts to the strong breeze fighting against us in our little motorized golf cart.

  “Bring it on!” I chime in and challenge the wind with her.

  And almost as if it heard us and admired our courage, the air relents. Orenda smiles in victory as we drive smoothly down the road on a now calm and sunny—but still cold—afternoon.

  I am fully aware that no one is perfect, but Orenda is the closest any of us humans will ever get. She reaches over and f
lips on the radio. Her eyes ignite when a song comes on. She turns the volume way up, and just like my mom does, Orenda sings along, loud enough for all the birds flying above the clouds to hear.

  I don’t sing along. Instead, I watch her as she serenades the sky and everything under it. I want to know what it would feel like for my lips to be pressed up against hers. I’ve never really wanted to kiss anyone before, so this feeling is new to me, but it feels like the most obvious thing in the world. Like my lips were made to feel hers. Like we were both born for our lips to one day meet and grow old together. Humans only have lips because one day a boy named Collin and a girl named Orenda would meet, and when they did, they’d need a way to show how they felt about each other. So lips were fastened to our mouths to act as cushions for when our faces inevitably collide. Just for us … She just doesn’t know it yet.

  Orenda snaps me out of my daze by elbowing me in the shoulder and raising one eyebrow. “What are you looking at?” she asks.

  “Just … nothing.”

  “Oh, I’m nothing?”

  “No, you’re not nothing. You’re everything. I was just looking at you. Not in a creepy way. I swear.”

  She smiles, and with her free hand, she grabs mine and holds it. My heart nearly beats out of my chest as her palm rests into my palm. I am sweating. We are holding hands. Orenda and I are holding hands. This is why hands were made too. For this moment right here, right now. There’s no use trying to hide the happiness on my face, but I’m glad each end of my smile is not sticking out both sides of this golf cart.

  Our hand holding is short-lived, though. Safety first. She places both hands on the steering wheel and focuses on the road ahead of us.

  I try to calm my heart, but it’s at a theme park right now. It’s running past the long lines and jumping into the fastest roller coaster on earth.

  “We’re here,” she says, and veers the golf cart right as we take an exit marked ANISHINAABE.

  “Anishinaabe. That’s our people. In our mother tongue,” she says as we drive out of the forest area and into a green clearing. I focus on the word. It’s eleven letters. Sounds like ten, but the last a has a twin.