Sam and I were becoming more than friends. We grew up down the street from one another and had been walking home together from school since fifth grade. However, it took until the beginning of 9th grade to get up the courage to ask her out and it took a brush with death to find the courage I needed.
“Is that a mustache?” Sam said to me on our first day walking home from our first day at Bandon High School. We live on the coast in a small town in Oregon. It used to be a popular place for beach vacations, but the water is cold and the shoreline is rocky, except for the point. It’s a place I used to go fishing with my dad. We would talk and watch the sunset over the ocean, blue water covered in electric pink.
“No”, I said, embarrassed, instinctively covering my upper lip.
“It’s not too bad. I mean it kind of makes you look like your dad in that picture you have in your room.”
“Yeah, that’s what my grandma said.”, I grinned and felt the hair stand up on my neck. We walked on and I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to someone you already know everything about?
“Are you going to play baseball this year?”Sam asked after a while. I frowned and wasn’t sure what to say. I tried to put last season out of my head. I had quit halfway through and didn’t want to talk about it much.
“I don’t think so”, I managed to say.
“Why not?”, she asked hesitantly.
“Can’t hit anymore.”, blurted out. I was embarrassed again.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I used to be good…at hitting and a decent fielder, but…” I trailed off without finishing.
“But you’re really fast, right?”, Sam said, trying to cheer me up. She was right. I am fast. There is no one in my grade that I haven’t beat in a foot race. The trouble was that in baseball you needed to be able to hit to get on base and do damage with your speed. Ever since my dad died. I couldn’t hit a baseball to save my life. I would get up there and just strike out. I just couldn’t see the ball. My dad had been a star athlete at Bandon High and he was my coach. After he got sick and died, I couldn’t focus on what I was doing with anything, let alone play baseball.
As I felt a lump come to my throat, I realized Sam had stopped dead in her tracks. She was three paces behind me and looking back the way I was headed.
“What?” I said, looking where her eyes were pointed and I saw what had stopped her. It was an all-black beat up-looking german shepherd walking towards us, but slowly and with its eyes pointed straight ahead, not seeing us. Half of its face was eaten away, so that we could see all its yellow teeth rotting away along its swollen jaw. It was only using its front left paw and its back legs. Something was very wrong with it. The black dog stalked towards us, closer and closer.
I looked over to Sam and she was ghost white. All the color had drained from her face, but she was starting to back away, very slowly. I backed towards her quickly and she grabbed my arm and looked at me with the most serious look I have ever seen. She mouthed the word “rabies” to me.
“Let’s go!” I whispered and I made to run, but she held on to my forearm so tightly that I couldn’t. “Stay here and back away slowly”, she said through her teeth.
I started to panic, knowing that a bite from an animal with rabies means death. There is no cure. I wanted to run more than anything in the world, but I remembered what my dad had told me years before.
The only time you can truly be brave is when you are truly scared.
“Stay with me, Chuy. Not even you can out run a mad dog, even with three legs.” Sam breathed and narrowed her eyes. So I did as she said, even though everything inside me was yelling at the top of its lungs to run for it.
It was a long while that we spent backing down that street. Step…step…wait. Until we finally hid behind an old work van that was parked behind a pool hall. Not a single car passed since peak season was over. The sun was setting behind the silhouette of the dog as it lumbered past us towards the pacific ocean.
As I watched him disappear, I thought about my dad and how he would have done the same as Sam did. He seemed to always know what to do in a tight spot.
“Will he live?” I asked Sam.
“He’s already dead. It’s just his body doesn’t know it yet.”
I told her what my dad said about being brave. She grinned and looked back to where we had first seen the black dog. I guess she already knew about being scared and brave. The moon hung low in the air like some cheese ready to be hit out of the sky.
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