This is my entry for the prompt "UNLIKELY HERO"
“You are an accessory to the crime, aren’t you?”
Nicky couldn’t find the words to reply to the old vagabond’s allegation. Her dirty white cat purred and struggled to get loose from her greasy arms, which were also covered with five-day-old dead skin and clods.
“Crime? What crime? I’m sorry, but I do not know what you’re talking about,” she replied, averting the old woman’s gaze. Her brown eyes wandered and searched for a familiar face in order to find a pleasant escape. Waiting for her cousins at a bus stop, she wondered what the old woman was mumbling about. As she was contemplating, her cousins could see her from afar, staring blankly into the vast night sky.
They called Nicky out several times, but there was no response. Realizing that something wasn’t right, the group approached her. Josh, her stout but athletic best friend and cousin, grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her awake.
Nicky snapped out of a trance and blinked several times to ensure that she was with her cousins.
“Did you see the old lady with a cat?” she asked them.
“We only see you daydreaming at night at a place with flickering street lights and lots of fast-driving cars passing by,” Josh replied.
“But there was an old woman talking to me.”
“You’re just hungry. Come on, grandma’s waiting for you. She cooked all your favorite food.”
After having their dinner, Nicky went upstairs to sleep because of exhaustion from an eight-hour journey from the city to his grandma's province.
It had been a while since the last time she visited them. She couldn’t sleep, so she went to the garden and sit on the swing to enjoy the fresh province air. But as the icy wind kissed her cheeks while she was swinging, a silhouette outside the gate caught her attention. She got off from the swing and tiptoed to follow it.
As she secretly trudged behind the figure, she found herself on a pavement that enigmatically looked familiar to her. The place brought back fragments of memory from when she was five. There was a cat, cars, and a woman.
While she was occupied interpreting the flashes of past images, a loud honk from a car behind made her jump. She hurriedly went to the safe side to avoid getting hit as the car slid past her and hit the owner of the silhouette she was following earlier.
She rushed to where the car crashed beside the fallen stranger, but to her surprise, the car vanished, leaving the victim bloody at the side of the road.
“Help!” she cried, but no one was around.
Suddenly, two weak hands grabbed her shoulders. She almost had a heart attack when she saw the same old woman from the waiting shed earlier. Her eyes glared widely at her.
“It’s good to see you again,” the woman said and smiled at her. But moments later, blood gushed from the old lady’s mouth and the open wound on her head.
Nicky screamed in terror, but no voice came out. When she opened her eyes, she was back in her bed and couldn’t sleep anymore.
She twisted and turned on the bed made of bamboo that was covered by a sheet of foam on top of three layers of cardboard. Although sleepy, her mind’s eye revisited the waiting shed she was standing on earlier. The vivid face of the bloody woman haunted her dreams, keeping her awake.
She got up and walked to her grandma’s room. She was about to knock on the door when she heard her speak.
“Nicky is back, Belen. Have you seen her? She’s a teenager, now.”
Nicky pressed her ears on the door to eavesdrop, but only sobs filled in the silence, so she knocked.
“Come in,” her grandma said.
She walked in with coy steps and a timid smile. “Grandma, can I sleep with you? And can you please tell me a bedtime story?”
Her grandma smiled and extended her arms for an embrace, which Nicky gladly ran into. “I miss you, grandma. By the way, who were you talking to earlier?”
“Oh, her? Belen, my sister.”
Nicky's eyes traveled to the picture in a glass frame that made her jaws drop.
“It’s her. I saw her when I arrived here. I saw her in my dreams, too.”
“You do?” Her grandma smiled. “She must be happy to see you.”
“But I don’t know her. She seemed angry the first time I saw her while I was waiting for Josh.”
“Are you sure you don’t remember?” Her grandma guided her to the bed, and they sat together. “You said you want to hear a bedtime story, so I guess it’s about time I tell you your story.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were five years old then and my sister was still alive. You used to be a street child. She saw you running after a cat from across the street, and there was this car, so she ran after you. She pushed you on the pavement, but she and the cat were hit. You were unconscious, and my sister was in a critical state when you were brought to the hospital.” The old woman paused and tapped Nicky’s shoulder.
“Nicky, we’re not blood-related. You were adopted. My sister requested I adopt you before she passed away. And she died because of saving you from being hit by a reckless driver.”