Bravery is
facing the truth
ignoring the risk
taking the first blow

My friend Faye was the bravest person I ever knew. She was pretty, funny, a varsity cheerleader and pretty smart. Maybe she wasn´t honor roll material or anything, but she never failed any of her classes. She took good care of her baby sister too. See, her mom ran off with another man when Faye was six, so it was just her, Mr. Grahm, and Nellie in the apartment. After his wife left, Mr. Grahm started drinking. It wasn´t bad at first, but as Faye got older, he got worse. No body liked to talk about it. You know how people are. If something is uncomfortable, they just pretend it doesn´t exist. But Faye never ignored it. She never denied it. When she was late to school because she´d had to stay up late with Nellie, waiting for her dad to staggar in drunk, or when she had to tell the teachers that her father couldn´t come to parent teacher conferences, she always did it with her head held high. I don´t think I or anyone else could have done the same.

When we were juniors it got really bad. He was arrested once that summer for DUI, but his brother bailed him out and he started going to AA meetings. We thought that it was getting better, but then, one night, he came home so drunk. Faye had her boyfriend over just for company while she watched Nellie. They weren´t making out or anything, just doing homework in the kitchen while Nellie watched cartoons. But Mr. Grahm flipped out. Called her a slut and physically threw poor Tim, the boyfriend, out of the apartment. He said he´d only been going to the AA meetings ´cause it was better than jail, but if this was how his daughter was behaving when he was gone he wasn´t going to do it anymore. Faye knew he was drunk. She knew he´d gotten into fights before, and that he could be violent after he´d been drinking. But she stood up to him anyway. She told him he had to go to the AA meetings or next time he left, she´d lock him out. They were screaming at eachother when Nellie came into the room. She was so scared. She asked "Faye, Faye, what´s wrong with Daddy?" Her father told her to go to her room, but she couldn´t move. She wanted to help him. "I want to make you better, Daddy." When she didn´t obey, Mr. Grahm went berserk and lifted his hand to hit her. And that´s when Faye moved. She jumped in front of Nellie and took the blow herself. Mr. Grahm hit her so hard that she went reeling backwards and hit her head on the stove, fell, and didn´t move. At this point Nellie started screaming, and Tim, who´d been standing outside the door trying to get back in, called the police. They came within 10 minutes, with paramedics and everything, and they arrested Mr. Grahm. He won´t be coming out of jail for a long time now. But they were too late for Faye. She died. She was 16 years old.