The Brave: Chapters 7–13

“Where’d you go?” my mom asked, snapping me out of my daze.

There are a few pictures of me drawing animals as a little boy, sprawled out on the carpet in my favorite dinosaur pajamas.

My time line ends with my fifth-grade school photo. I remember this day. The photographer nearly had a conniption trying to direct me.

“Excluding all of that, of course. Just the part where everyone in the neighborhood looked up to him. Kids would come to him for advice, sometimes for protection from bullies. And all the girls fawned over him,” she says, sweeping a tear from her eye before it melts into her cheek.

Her letters shuffle in and take their seats inside my head, like they are the audience to the play she’s talking about. But they don’t sit still and enjoy the performance. They are wild and unruly, and pop into numbers and float toward the stage, interrupting everything.

“Seriously? I smell?”
She laughs and turns off the light. “There’s the understatement of the century. And you wonder why Grandma hasn’t come home yet,” she says, holding her nose and exiting the kitchen.

I run the shower, undress, and fill my open palm with the shampoo sitting on the ledge of the tub. I lather it up in my hands and cover my greasy head with it, something I’ve always done to save time since Southern California was in a perpetual water drought.

I quickly douse my entire head under the shower’s mouth and shake, rinsing out my eyes.

And just past the steam, I see the tree house in the next yard. It’s lit by flickering candlelight, and I make out her silhouette. A faint trace of music floats toward me and she is slow dancing to it.

Her eyes squint, like I’m missing something blatantly obvious.

“She did. And now I’m teaching you, so pay attention. Your teacher happens to be an incredibly wise Native American,” she says with a gloating grin.

Everyone is still separated into the cliques—jocks with jocks, nerds with nerds—and the hot popular girls all band together in the center of it all for all the above-mentioned groups to see.

Halfway up the steps that lead to the main building, the bell rings. I realize that here the bell actually means something. Imagine that. Everyone disperses on cue.

This school is much fancier than my previous one, and cleaner. It’s so pristine that I hear the squeaking of my sneakers as I walk over the marbled floors, which makes me almost tiptoe across the hall to avoid being noticed.

I go farther down the hall and pass rooms 8 through 25. I’m getting warmer, both figuratively and physically.

I see a random straggler rushing toward her class. Good. Glad to know someone else here is human.

I guess she is trying to make everyone that sees her stare at her rebellious punk rock appearance, rather than notice the birthmark on her face, but I pay attention to silent details more than most, so I immediately spot it.

It looks like all the freckles on her body united and congregated there.

Nine. Nine. Nine. It keeps bouncing from one temple to the other, nearly giving me vertigo. But I must hold it in. Stay strong.

“Eleven, sixteen, eleven,” I blurt out.
Quick! Think! I need to salvage this. “That’s my locker combination. Yes, I’m Collin.”

I face Mr. Renaldi, who looks quite smug in his victory—although I’m sure he has no idea we just went to battle.

“Seventeen. We should stop this banter soon,” I say.
“Stop? But we haven’t even started,” she says, and signals me to walk back toward home with her.

She lets me ponder that as she continues to walk down the dirt road. I stick my large pencil into my pocket and catch up to her.

We saunter back home in silence.

“Don’t be sorry. This is all part of my metamorphosis,” she says.
“Forty-one. What do you mean?” I ask.
“I'm changing. What else could I mean?” she says.

I’ve heard this from so many doctors that I’ve lost count. Imagine that. Me, losing count. But it’s cute coming from a girl in a tree house that I just met. Naive, but cute.

“You’re so gullible,” the little girl says, and punches me in the arm.

Even though it was technically my first day of school, that was before I had this revelation about not caring what people think.

My mind nearly explodes by the plethora of letters battle-ramming my head, trying to enter like invading Vikings.

“Beats me. I'm following the clouds. They’re so indecisive today,” she says.