As Brave As You

After dinner, with the power still out, the boys go upstairs to bed. Their grandmother escorts them to their bedroom, where she steps on Wood’s model truck that Genie left out on the floor. A wheel breaks, and Genie feels awful about leaving it out. Their grandmother is upset, but she regains her composure. Ernie asks Genie what he thinks about Tess, revealing that he’s interested in her, and then quickly goes to sleep.

Genie can’t sleep, though, and eventually goes downstairs to use the bathroom. His grandfather is up too, and the two talk for a while. Brooke reveals that he doesn’t go outside the house very often because he feels more vulnerable in places where he hasn’t memorized the location of the objects. Brooke is also afraid of falling down the hill in front of the house, as Genie did earlier that day. Brooke takes his revolver apart and puts it back together again. He and Genie talk about Wood, who served in Desert Storm and was killed in the line of duty. Genie’s father blames Brooke for convincing Wood to join the army when Wood actually wanted to be a firefighter. Genie’s dad became a firefighter in Wood’s stead. Eventually, Brooke tells Genie to go back to bed. 

The next morning, the boys’ grandmother tells them that they’ll be following a routine of early wakeup times and chores every day. She tasks them with cleaning up her dog Samantha’s poop and picking peas that she sells at a local market. Tess’s dad, Crab, comes to hunt in the woods behind the house. Crab has a ramshackle car and is dirty, and Genie gets the sense that his grandmother doesn’t like Crab.

After they pick peas, Ernie rushes off to spend more time with Tess. Brooke allows Genie into the mysterious room his grandfather came out of the night before. It’s a sunroom full of birds in cages, houseplants, and fake grass. Brooke likes to sit in the room and feel like he’s outside. He eats apples there and saves the seeds in a coffee can. Crab comes in when he’s done hunting. He pays Brooke for using his land and brings him dead flies from the bar’s bug zapper for Brooke’s birds. Crab also supplies Brooke with liquor. Brooke tells Genie to come down to the kitchen at 10 o’clock that night to talk with him some more.

Ernie is quickly becoming obsessed with Tess, which Genie finds uninteresting—except for the fact that Tess has Internet at her house (his grandparents do not). Genie hopes that he’ll be able to look up answers to his questions on her computer.

That night, Genie meets his grandpa downstairs and Brooke asks Genie to take him outside. The two go out into the yard, Brooke holding on to Genie’s shoulders and following behind him. The two are barefoot, and Genie sees a scar on his grandfather’s ankle. Brooke explains that soon after he went blind, he used to continue going out in the yard. One day, a cottonmouth—a poisonous snake— bit him because he couldn’t see it. Brooke had to be rushed to the hospital, and the scar is a reaction to the bite. Brooke becomes emotional at being outside again after so long, and as he looks at the stars in the night sky, Genie reflects on what it would be like to lose your sight and miss out on so much beauty. These reflections make him more sympathetic toward his grandpa, as does the fact that Brooke asked Genie for help.