An Accidental Hero
Copyright© 2026 by A Kiwi Guy
Chapter 1
Corey James slept where he could.
That was how he thought of it, rather than saying he lived anywhere in particular. Most nights he slept at his grandmother’s place — a weathered little house at the back of a section that had once been tidy, before age and fatigue crept in. He had a bed there, a narrow one in what used to be a sewing room, with a chest of drawers that smelt faintly of mothballs. Eunice made sure there was porridge in the mornings and stew at night when she remembered. She did her best. Corey knew that. But knowing it didn’t make it home. Home was something that belonged to before.
His parents had been killed three years earlier, when a truck crossed the centre line on a wet stretch of highway. People said it was quick. People always said that, as if it helped. Corey had learned early that adults said things because silence frightened them more than bad words. After the funeral, he had gone to live with his grandmother because that was what you did when there were no better options.
Eunice loved him in the way she understood love: meals on time when she could manage it, clean sheets once a fortnight, reminders to wear a jersey. What she didn’t understand was grief that didn’t talk, and a boy who couldn’t sit still in classrooms full of noise. She assumed school was school, and that if Corey didn’t go, it was because he didn’t want to. She didn’t know how to ask different questions.
Neither did the school.
By fifteen, Corey had learned how to vanish without causing a fuss. He wasn’t truant in a dramatic way. He didn’t bunk with mates or hang around malls. He just didn’t turn up. Or he left early. Or he sat at the back and stared through windows until someone stopped noticing him altogether.
He wasn’t angry at the world. He didn’t feel cheated. Mostly, he felt untethered, like a dinghy that had slipped its rope and was drifting without anyone watching. The world didn’t owe him a place. It just hadn’t offered him one either. So he walked. He walked a lot.
In the evenings, especially, when the house grew quiet and the walls seemed to press in, he took his jacket and headed down towards the beach. The town was small enough that you could cross it in forty minutes if you felt like it. Corey usually didn’t. He liked the long way, the streets where people didn’t ask questions.
The beach sat at the edge of town, a stretch of sand broken by driftwood and the occasional fishing dinghy pulled well above the tide. Corey had grown up around water. His dad had taught him to read waves before he’d taught him to ride a bike. Rips, sets, the way the sea breathed in and out — those things made sense to Corey in a way people often didn’t.
That evening, the light was fading but not gone. The air still held the day’s warmth. Corey kicked off his jandals and walked along the damp sand near the waterline, hands in his pockets, head down.
That was when he noticed the girl.
She was small, nine or ten maybe, with hair pulled back under a towel that was too big for her. He’d seen her around town before — at the dairy, outside the library, walking with a man who looked too busy to notice much beyond his phone. She stood near the water for a moment, looking out, then shrugged off the towel and dropped it in a heap.
Corey stopped.
Swimming alone wasn’t smart. Everyone knew that, even kids. Especially kids, if they’d grown up here. Corey glanced up the beach. No adults. No other swimmers. Just the steady sound of the surf and the gulls settling for the night. He sat down on a low dune and watched.
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