Skye had been diligently honing her throw since she was six years old. Every single afternoon after school, she would head to the wall behind the building and throw for hours on end. She had the skill to hit a soda can from a distance of thirty feet. She could knock a bottle clean off a fence post without even trying hard. But this? This felt fundamentally different. This wasn’t just practice. This was a matter of life or death. “Please work,” she whispered. “Please, please work.”
She wound up, pulling her arm all the way back. She felt the comfortable weight of the ball in her hand—not heavy, but solid. Real. Then, she released it. The ball sliced through the cold night air like a silent, precision missile. Fast. Quiet. Perfect.
Crack.
It slammed into the side of the big man’s temple with such force that the echoing sound reverberated off the alley walls. He dropped instantly, as if a puppet master had simply cut his strings. One second he was standing, the next he was sprawled flat on his back, clutching his head and letting out a deep groan. “What the—?” The second attacker spun around frantically, his eyes darting everywhere. “Who did that?” The third man grabbed his dazed friend. “Yo, where the heck did that thing come from?”
Skye immediately ducked back from the window, her heart pounding so intensely she feared it might burst from her chest. Her hands were shaking now. Her legs felt like liquid. But she wasn’t done yet. She snatched her backup ball—an old, slightly worn tennis ball she kept on the windowsill—and leaned out again. The two remaining standing attackers were now milling about like confused, cornered dogs, desperately trying to figure out the source of the sudden assault. The big guy was still on the ground, moaning, a tiny trickle of blood seeping from where the ball had split his skin.
Skye aimed for the second guy. She threw. Smack. It hit him squarely in the back of the head. He stumbled forward, yelled a curse, and grabbed his skull. “Somebody’s throwing stuff at us!” he shrieked.
That’s when the neighborhood began to light up. Windows all along the block suddenly glowed yellow. People were waking up. People had heard the commotion. People started peering out. “Yo! What’s going on down there? Is that blood? Somebody call the police!” Doors creaked open. More voices joined the chorus. More people appeared. The alley, which had been dark and desolate mere seconds ago, was suddenly surrounded by a growing gallery of witnesses. The three attackers exchanged nervous glances. The big one finally staggered to his feet, still clutching his bleeding head. “We gotta jet, man,” the second one muttered. “Now,” the third confirmed, his voice tight with fear. They ran. Fast. Stumbling over one another, abandoning the bleeding man, and vanishing into the shadows like cockroaches when a light switch is flipped.
Skye remained at her window, breathing hard, watching their frantic escape. Then, she looked down at the man on the ground. He wasn’t moving. “No, no, no,” Skye whispered, tears welling up. “Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.” She snatched up her original ball, the one that had just saved his life, and bolted. Out of her apartment door. Down three flights of creaking stairs. Her untied shoelace flapped wildly. Her heart was a painful lump in her throat.
By the time she reached the alley, a small crowd had already gathered. Mr. Chen from the corner store was there. Miss Rita in her old bathrobe. The Johnsons with their teenage son. And right in the middle of the small gathering, the man. Still lying on the ground. Still bleeding profusely. But he was breathing. She could see his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Skye, small enough to slip through the gaps between the adults, pushed her way to the front. Her ball had rolled to a stop right next to his outstretched hand. She picked it up, holding it tightly against her chest.
That’s when his eyes fluttered open. Barely. Just tiny slits. But he was looking directly at her. “You,” he whispered, his voice as raw as broken glass. “You threw that ball.” Skye nodded, unable to speak a single word. The man attempted a small smile, but his split lip made him wince instantly. Blood smeared his teeth. “Thank you,” he exhaled, the words fragile.
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing louder, closer. Red and blue lights began to flash and dance off the brick buildings. The crowd grew louder, more people arriving, everyone talking at once. But Skye simply stood there, staring down at the man whose life she had just saved, clutching her ball as if it were the most precious object in the universe. Because in this moment, it was. That single, unassuming rubber ball had just changed two lives forever. She just couldn’t possibly imagine the true extent of that change yet.
The paramedics arrived precisely six minutes later, though it felt like an eternity. Skye stood frozen at the edge of the crowd, watching intently as two EMTs rushed toward the bleeding man with a stretcher and medical bags. Their radios crackled with emergency codes she couldn’t comprehend. Their movements were swift and expert: checking his pulse, shining penlights in his eyes, wrapping a thick bandage around his head. “Sir, can you hear me?” one of them asked loudly. “Sir, what is your name?” The man’s eyes fluttered open again. His mouth moved, but only a faint sound emerged. “Gavin,” he mumbled through swollen, bruised lips. “Gavin Parker.”
The younger EMT’s eyes went wide with shock. He looked at his partner. “Wait. Gavin Parker? Like the Gavin Parker? The billionaire?” the older one whispered back, incredulous. “Yeah.” They worked with renewed urgency after that. Loading him carefully onto the stretcher. Hooking up an IV drip. Radioing the hospital to prepare for a VIP patient. Two police cars pulled up, officers jumping out with flashlights and small notepads. One of them, a tall woman with her hair pulled back in a tight bun, immediately started pushing the bystanders away. “Everyone step away from the scene. This is now a crime scene. Back up!”
But her partner, a shorter man with genuinely kind eyes, walked straight toward Skye. “Hey there, sweetheart,” he said, crouching down to her level. “Do you live around here?” Skye nodded, still clutching her ball tightly. “Did you see what happened?” She nodded again. “Can you tell me?” Skye’s throat felt constricted. Her voice came out small and shaky. “Three men. They were beating him. Real bad. I saw it from my window.” The officer scribbled in his notepad. “And then what?” “I threw my ball,” she said quietly. “Hit one of them in the head. They ran away.”
The officer paused writing. He looked up at her. He really looked at her. “You threw a ball? From where?” Skye pointed upward toward her window. “Three stories.” The officer’s mouth fell open in disbelief. “From up there? And you hit one of them?” “Yes, sir.” “That’s… that’s incredible.” He glanced down at her ball. “Can I see that for a second?” Skye reluctantly handed it over. He turned it over in his hands, examining it closely. There was a faint smear of blood on one side. “This is evidence,” he said gently. “I’m going to need to keep it for now. Is that okay?”
Skye’s heart sank. That was her ball. Her only ball. The one her grandmother had given her. But she nodded anyway. “Okay.” “We’ll get it back to you. I promise,” he said. “What’s your name?” “Skye.” “Skye what?” “Skye, just Skye.” The officer smiled softly. “All right, Just Skye. You did a really brave thing tonight. Really brave.” But Skye didn’t feel brave. She felt scared. Shaky. As if her legs might give out at any second. Across the alley, the paramedics were loading Gavin Parker into the ambulance. Just before they shut the doors, his eyes found Skye one last time in the crowd. Even through all the blood and swelling, she saw something in his face: Gratitude. Recognition. As if he was trying to commit her to memory. Then the doors slammed shut. The sirens wailed. The ambulance sped away into the dark night.
“All right, everybody,” the female officer shouted. “Show’s over. Go back to your homes.” The crowd slowly began to disperse, people talking in hushed, low voices. Some were shaking their heads, others pulling out their phones to call family members and recount what had happened. Mr. Chen walked over to Skye. “You need me to walk you back upstairs, little one?” Skye shook her head. “I’m okay.” “You sure? That was pretty heavy stuff you just saw.” “I’m sure.” But she wasn’t sure. Not really. Her hands refused to stop shaking. Her heart wouldn’t slow its frantic rhythm. She walked back to her building, climbed the three flights of stairs, entered her apartment, and locked the door securely behind her.
The apartment felt even quieter now. Even colder. Skye walked to her window and looked down at the alley. Police tape stretched across both ends now. Yellow. Bright. Crime scene investigators were taking photographs, meticulously measuring distances, collecting evidence. She sat down on the floor, pulling her knees to her chest, and stared at her empty hands. Her ball was gone. The man was gone. And somehow, everything felt different now. As if she had opened a door that she could never close. As if she had stepped into something far too big for a nine-year-old girl from the South Side to handle. The clock on the wall read 2:47 a.m.. Grandma wouldn’t be home until seven o’clock. Skye wrapped her blanket around her shoulders and waited. For what, she didn’t know. But a deep, quiet part of her knew this night was just the beginning. Something told her that throwing that ball had changed her life in ways she couldn’t even start to imagine. And somewhere across the city, in a hospital emergency room, Gavin Parker was having the exact same profound thought.
By sunrise, Skye’s face was plastered everywhere. She woke up on the floor by the window, having never made it to her bed, to the sound of her grandmother’s key turning in the lock. “Baby girl,” Grandma Evelyn’s voice called out. “Skye. Are you awake?” Skye pushed herself up, her neck stiff from sleeping in an awkward position. “In here, Grandma.” Evelyn walked into the room and stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes were red. Her hands were trembling. She was holding her phone as if it might spontaneously combust…
