Chapter 1 - The Third Hit
The first time I hit the window, the rock bounced back into my hands.
The glass cracked but did not break.
Inside the black sedan, the little boy barely moved.
His face was bright red.
Wet hair stuck against his forehead.
One small hand rested against the window as if he no longer had enough strength to bang.
“Again,” I whispered.
I was six years old.
My name was Maya Ortiz.
That morning I had three dollars and forty cents in my pocket and a cardboard candy box hanging from a string around my neck.
Mom thought I was downstairs playing with Mrs. Alvarez’s granddaughter.
I had lied.
Mom had been sick for weeks, coughing until her whole body shook. The fever medicine was nearly gone, and the refrigerator held half a loaf of bread and mustard.
So I took the candy bars a neighbor had given me and walked toward downtown Atlanta.
I planned to come home with twelve dollars.
Maybe fifteen.
Enough for cough syrup.
Instead I found a child dying inside a car.
Smoke curled from beneath the hood.
Thin flames flickered near the front wheel.
“Hey!”
A security guard ran from the parking booth.
Gray uniform.
Heavy belt.
Angry face.
“Get away from that car!”
“There’s a boy!”
“I said move.”
I pointed through the glass.
“He can’t breathe!”
The guard looked at the child.
Then at me.
And did something I would remember years later.
He did not look surprised.
“That’s Mr. Caswell’s vehicle.”
“Then get Mr. Caswell!”
“Go home.”
I searched the gravel and found the largest rock I could lift.
The guard stepped in front of me.
“You break that window and I’ll have you arrested.”
I raised the rock.
He lowered his voice.
“Walk away, street trash.”
Then came the words I did not understand.
“Or I’ll ruin your mother too.”
My hands froze.
“How do you know my mom?”
His expression changed.
Only for a second.
That was enough.
Inside the car, the boy’s head rolled sideways.
I swung.
Crack.
The second hit spiderwebbed the glass.
The guard grabbed for my shoulder.
Someone across the street yelled.
The smoke thickened.
“No!”
I twisted away.
High above us, behind twenty floors of clean glass, Edward Caswell was shaking hands over a contract he believed would save his company.
Below, his five-year-old son was losing consciousness.
Then the tower doors burst open.
“BENJI!”
A man in a navy suit sprinted toward us.
The guard turned.
I didn’t.
I raised the rock a third time.
Every muscle in my arms hurt.
I thought about Mom telling me:
Good people don’t wait for permission to do right.
I brought the rock down.
May you like
The rear window exploded inward.
And before Edward Caswell reached his car, a six-year-old girl he had never seen was already reaching through broken glass for his son.
