A boy found a girl in a dump… When they found out who she was, their hair stood ON END…
He was scavenging for food in a dumpster. But what he found turned his entire life upside down. A little girl, abandoned, alone, barely breathing.
He didn’t know he’d saved more than just a child….
In a rundown neighborhood on the outskirts of Chicago, a cold morning wind swept through the streets. Dampness rose from the ground, as if nature itself were groaning in pain. The gray sky pressed down, threatening to crush everything beneath it.
A boy named Ethan, dressed in a tattered old coat, trudged along a row of overflowing dumpsters. He rummaged through them, searching for bottles, scrap metal, or scraps of food. His hands were caked with dirt, his fingers numb from the biting cold.
Through the howl of the wind, he suddenly heard an odd sound. Faint, faltering, almost inhuman. He froze.
The sound came again. A cry. Soft, but desperate.
Ethan cautiously approached the dumpster where the sound originated. His heart pounded. He lifted the lid.
And stopped dead. Amid a pile of rags lay a bundle. A child’s blanket, soaked and stained with mold.
He pulled back the edge. A baby’s face. Tiny, red, with tear-streaked eyes.
Her lips trembled from the cold. Her tiny fingers clenched and unclenched, seeking warmth. Ethan gasped and glanced around.
No one. Just the wind and scattered trash. He pressed the baby to his chest.
The blanket was drenched, but he wrapped her in his jacket. He felt her tiny body shiver. He felt himself tremble, too.
He ran. Through alleyways, splashing through puddles, past boarded-up buildings with broken windows. It wasn’t fear pounding in his chest.
It was something else. Something he’d never felt before that day. He reached an abandoned train car where he lived.
He lit a fire from scavenged boards and held the baby close to the warmth. Nearby sat a single bag of crackers and a bottle of water.
He broke off a piece, dipped it in water, and fed it to the girl. She coughed but then whimpered softly and swallowed. Something glinted around her neck…
