Eight-year-old Liam Parker was late again. It had almost become his signature trait at school. His small legs carried him across the grocery store parking lot with desperate speed, the straps of his backpack bouncing wildly with each stride. He knew the consequences of being late—his teacher, Mrs. Grant, had warned him sternly. One more tardy slip and she would be calling his parents. That thought alone was enough to send a shiver down his spine, urging him to push harder despite the sting of sweat on his brow and the ache in his knees from an earlier fall.
Liam wasn’t a troublemaker. He wasn’t defiant. He was simply a boy with an imagination too big for his own good, a mind that found wonder in the smallest details of life. A butterfly drifting by could captivate him for minutes. A rustle in the bushes might send him searching for adventure. To many adults, his distractions looked like carelessness, but to Liam, the world was too fascinating to ignore.
That morning, however, his usual tendency to get sidetracked would become the very thing that placed him at the right place, at the right time, for an act of extraordinary courage.