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  We had a party after that, and it wasn’t just cookies and decaf. It was laughing and joking and Mom getting mad at me for the bull riding. “How could you do that, Cam? You knew I said no.”

  Grandma Jean spoke right up. “He did it for Ben. You raised a good boy there. He’s got a whole lot of ‘try’ in him, and some good sense too—usually. It’s time you trusted him.” Then Grandma Jean put her arms around Mom and hugged her until she relaxed.

  It was the Giannis toasting Ben, and Favi’s dad sitting down with my dad to plot out how to house new bucking stock. It was Ben talking about tomorrow for the first time since they’d put him out of rehab and the Marines. And it was the look on Grandpa Roy’s face when he talked about my bull ride. “You should have seen it, Ben. It was like that O’Mara magic just kicked in.”

  Finally, the company went home, and Dad put Lali to bed. The rest of us sat down at the kitchen table. I looked at Ben. Except for the scar on his skull, he looked the same as he did before he left for Iraq. But I knew how much everything had changed. “I just wish I could fix the rest of it,” I said, nodding toward his walker. He teared up the way he does nowadays and punched my shoulder.

  “You were stupid to ride that bull. You could have got killed, you know,” Ben said. “I still can’t figure how you did it. You just started riding. It’s not possible.”

  “It’s the salt.” Grandpa winked at us.

  “Maybe,” Grandma Jean said. She went over to the pile of photo albums that Mom kept by the piano and came back with an old one. She thumbed through the fading pages and set it down in front of me and Ben. A young, dark-haired kid stared at the camera from his bike.

  I stared back. “That’s the kid who yelled at me from the stands tonight.”

  Ben fixed on the snapshot, then looked around the table, finally resting his eyes on Mom. “I remember now, how it happened. I was in the road after the bomb exploded. I was lying there, playing dead, and this kid came out of nowhere and pulled me off the road. He stayed till my guys came for me.” He turned, puzzled, to Grandma Jean. “That’s the kid.”

  “Can’t be,” Mom said. “Don’t you remember, Ben? That’s your cousin, Adam Carl.”

  And just then, I believed in all the possibilities. I believed I’d get my brother back one way or another. I believed in Ben’s new bull business and in family and the land. And somehow, in that moment, I believed in Grandma’s angels.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Salt Lick, Nevada, is a fictional town, and the characters in Bull Rider are fictional as well. But there have been a few real bucking bulls called Ugly. I saw Ugly (DK825) walk off a cattle truck and into the Reno Events Center in 2006. He was impressive, and I borrowed his name for the book. There is no “Ugly Challenge,” although companies occasionally give cash prizes to cowboys who successfully ride certain bulls on a given night. Like the cowboys from Salt Lick, some bull riders are working cowboys who compete in rodeo on the side, while others are professional rodeo cowboys of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association or the Professional Bull Riders. There is a Nevada High School Bull Riding Champion—the National High School Rodeo Association sponsors events in forty-five states and provinces in the United States, Canada, and Australia. And there are family ranches, like the O’Maras’, where people are committed to preserving their traditional way of life—often working both on the ranch and in outside jobs to make ends meet.

  Like the fictional O’Maras, thousands of real families have suffered the death or injury of loved ones during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, which started in 2001 and 2003. Body armor and improved medical techniques have saved a great number of soldiers and Marines’ lives, but many of them come home having lost arms or legs or with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Some suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or mild forms of brain injury, and you would not know from looking at them that they are victims of the war.

  As of early 2008, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America reported that veterans’ advocates believe between 150,000 and 300,000 troops have returned from these wars with some level of traumatic brain injury. They also estimate that one in every three of the approximately 31,000 wounded (through January 2008) have TBI. Some of these men and women will live with the effects of their injuries for years to come. It is up to us to support them, now and in the future.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I depended on many people to inspire and inform me as I wrote Bull Rider. I did my best to listen carefully, and I thank them for sharing their stories and their expertise. My deepest thanks to:

  Eric Skogsbergh—for a year of e-mails from Iraq

  Chris Shivers, Sevi Torturo, and Jake McIntyre, Professional Bull Riders, and Bob Allen and Tuffy, photographers—for interviews and inspiration

  Joe Clark, JJJ Bull Riding, Washoe Valley, Nevada—for letting me get up close to the bulls

  The Henningsen family—for sharing experiences of ranch life

  Todd Gansberg, rancher/bull rider—for ranching expertise

  Sandra Musser—for her knowledge of the AI business

  Dr. Claire Hall and Rick Riley—for their medical and prosthetic expertise

  VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California, especially Patricia Teran-Matthews, Public Affairs Officer; Harriet Straus, Nurse Manager, Polytrauma Unit; and Keleen Preston, TBI Coordinator, Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Disability, Carson City, Nevada—for all their insight on TBI patients

  Stanley Williams—for sharing his experiences in the Can Do Unit

  Alyen Contreras, Cassie DeSalvo, and Jacob Kavanaugh—for checking skateboarding tricks

  Ugly—for inspiring my own Ugly

  Emma Dryden—editor and friend

  Stephen Barbara—valued agent

  Carol Chou—for her editorial insight

  Terri Farley and Ellen Hopkins—authors, fellow Nevadans, and friends—and the many friends from SCBWI who supported me through the years

  My family.