What rain can bring
By Bárbara Boavista
It was a dark, stormy night and I was studying for an important test, it was already nine o’clock and I still had a lot of work to do.
The lights went off and forced me to leave my books. I went to the balcony and watched the rain falling. Suddenly I saw a boy standing in front of my door, he seemed to be six years old and the most beautiful child I’d ever seen. He wasn’t doing anything, just looking at me like someone who needed help. I thought he was probably lost, and opened the door and he came in. I gave him a warm bath, clean clothes and some hot soup, but he still didn’t say anything, he just looked at me in the same way he had done before. I thought that he was tired, so I put him on my bed, and I slept on the sofa. When I woke up in the morning, late for the test as usual, the boy wasn’t there. There was nothing to prove that he had ever been there besides a little piece of paper written in childish hand-writing with an address and the following words: " I’ve already left, but you can save the others."
I did the worst the test of my life, and after it I went straight to the address left by the boy. It was a very old house; I went in and saw an old lady and several children still wet from the rain. They were trying to fix the holes in the ceiling. I asked about the boy, and the lady said he had died four years previously from pneumonia; after a storm exactly like the one night before.
I took everybody to my house, and took care of them as I had done with the other boy. I had got a new family.