𝖢𝗁𝖺𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖲𝗍𝖺𝗋𝗌 || 𝖣𝖺𝗇𝖼𝖾 𝖬𝗈𝗆𝗌

Nia Risks It All

You're on top of the world when you're young.

I was the youngest child for most of my life, so it meant that I managed to get away with a lot of things, both good and bad. However, I was also taught about responsibility, and my grandpa did say that the police would take me away if they caught me lying, so I got scared and stopped doing bad things.

But when you're a child, you think everything is possible and everyone has good intentions. There is no way someone could be mean. What did they get from being mean? Didn't that make them feel sad? It was something that my six-year-old head couldn't wrap around, and she was desperate for answers. Why were there bad people in the world?

And then, you are convinced you can change those people for the better with a pout and puppy eyes. It worked most of the time for me, but there were still bad people in the world and people you couldn't change by simply doing those two things.

I never liked it, but hey, there was one time Morgan and I were convinced we were real-life superheroes.

I was in second grade while she was in third, and we were on the typical field trip to the zoo, but we had grown bored of the tour, so we did what any responsible child does: disobey the adults.

We had left the group ― including Maddie and Paige ― behind to do our own thing. Our original plan was to get something to eat, but for that, we needed to know where we could go to eat, so we spent the next twenty minutes looking for a map. Once we found one, we spent another thirty minutes because we somehow always ended up in the same place, and it was soon going to become obvious that we were both lost and without any adult supervision.

When we found the place, it was perfect: it was an area specifically for kids, and maybe we could blend in with some other group while we ate. It was very simple until we remembered that to eat you have to, you know, have food, so we left to get some. The final stop of our grand escape took place at a drink vending machine and happened when we saw a guy ― who wore a black uniform, including a cap ― taking drinks from the inside.

At first, I was shocked. I had never seen the inside of a vending machine in my seven years of life, but Morgan brought me back to real life when she nudged me on the right shoulder and I sharply turned my head to look at her with a scowl on my face.

Ignoring it entirely, the brunette whispered: "That guy is stealing the drinks."

"I know." I agreed, rubbing my right shoulder softly. "What do you want to do about that?"

"Well, we have to stop him from doing that." Morgan answered in an "isn't it obvious?" tone.

Both pairs of eyes then fell on the man, who looked like he was in his late thirties to early forties. He wore a black polo shirt, black shorts, and black and white Nike sneakers. He also wore a black cap and there was something red on his polo, but I couldn't figure out what it was exactly supposed to be. I narrowed my eyes at the man, pushing away a strand of hair that had fallen right in front of my face. I tucked it behind my right ear and continued staring at him, trying to figure out what to do. Obviously, we couldn't make a huge scene- But I was also a huge Spider-Man fan.

So we started making a plan. Sitting on a wooden bench near the vending machine, we theorized about what we could do to stop the thief during the robbery. We would also need a security guard nearby to take care of him once we confronted him, but, for some reason, there weren't any around. The only thing that we were a lot around were moms with toddlers and kids no older than six, and probably two or three teenagers who had been roped along.

It was almost as if it wasn't an actual robbery.

But that was so ridiculous. Of course, it was an actual robbery; We were seeing it happen in front of our very own eyes, and no one else cared enough about it! No one ever cares! Just like Hope when I stood up for all the children around the world for my Halloween candy cause!