Shadow Heros

The Price of Kindness

The fluorescent lights at the university admin building still burn behind my eyes as I trudged down the sidewalk.

"Fired." The word tasted like copper in my mouth. Three years of working in the campus room of records, of going over every file and archiving everything in a way that worked better, and they let me go because funding was down, as if that was somehow my fault.

"The last to be hired, the first to be fired."

My phone buzzed. Another tuition payment reminder. I shoved it back in my pocket without reading the amount. What was the point? Without a paying job, I had exactly zero ways to pay for next semester, let alone rent that was due next week. Would they even pay me correctly, or will they cut corners?

Four blocks from home and the crosswalk light ahead turned red. I stopped, watching the traffic blur past. I was just a nobody. I have heard that my whole life: basic looks, basic build, underweight, glasses, and messy black hair. I didn't stand out. I wore baggy thrift shop clothes. I was a ghost.

A mother with a stroller walked up and waited beside me, scrolling through her phone. The autumn wind picked up, scattering leaves across the intersection. That's when I saw him. A little boy, maybe four years old, wandering into the street past his mother. His dinosaur backpack bounced as he walked, his attention fixed on something in his hands. A toy car. The mother hadn't noticed, too absorbed in whatever was on the screen. The little boy made car noises as he pretended that his car was driving.

I looked from the boy, to say something to the mother, but a truck came around the corner, fast. I didn't think. My body moved before my brain caught up, feet pounding against the asphalt. The driver's horn blared, as his breaks screeched. I reached the boy in three strides, swept him into my chest, and threw myself backwards. Almost made it.

The impact hit like a wall of sound and force. We hit the ground hard, and I felt the boy leave my arms, heard him crying, heard the mother screaming.

I saved him, I thought. He's ok.

I laid there, eyes unfocused, faces around me blurred, voices a distance hum. I could feel the wetness pooling under me, but I didn't feel any pain. Like my body was still pumping adrenaline through me.

I was a nobody and here I am, bleeding out, dying like a nobody, but maybe, just maybe, I just saved a future somebody. That's all that mattered. Even if I was only put here to save that one life. I saved him. I became someone's hero, even if he grows up forgetting me. For one single moment, I was a somebody. A hero.

Then there was light, so bright it burned away everything else, and a sensation of falling, but without knowing where or life you where going to land.