The barefoot child approached my motorcycle at midnight holding a ziplock bag full of quarters and begged me to buy her baby formula.
She couldn’t have been more than six, standing there in a dirty Frozen nightgown at a 24-hour gas station, clutching what looked like years of saved coins while tears carved clean lines through the dirt on her face.
I’d stopped for gas after a 400-mile ride, exhausted and wanting nothing more than to get home. But this little girl was shaking as she held out that pathetic bag of change toward me. The scary-looking biker she’d chosen instead of the well-dressed couple pumping gas two pumps over.
“Please, mister,” she whispered, glancing nervously at a beat-up van parked in the shadows. “My baby brother hasn’t eaten since yesterday. They won’t sell to kids, but you look like someone who’d understand.”
I looked at that van. Then at her bare feet on the cold concrete. Then at the convenience store where the clerk was watching us with suspicion.
