Chapter 1

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DEDICATION

For every child who has learned that the most valuable things in the world can't be bought, sold, or traded — only given and received.

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Seven-year-old Deshawn Carter had exactly 247 trading cards.

Each card had a picture on the front — drawn in colored pencil, Deshawn's preferred medium — and stats on the back. Not the kind of stats you'd find on a sports card (batting average, touchdowns, goals scored). These were PEOPLE stats.

Deshawn had been making the cards for two years. He'd started in kindergarten, when his art teacher, Ms. Fleming, told the class to draw someone important to them. Most kids drew their parents. Deshawn drew Mrs. Abrams, because Mrs. Abrams greeted him every morning with "Good morning, KING!" and it made him feel like he could do anything.

After that first drawing, he couldn't stop. Every person who made his day better, who showed him kindness, who had a story worth telling — they got a card. His mom got one. His dad got one. His grandmother, his teacher, the school nurse, the mail carrier, the man at the ice cream truck, the teenager who helped him find his lost dog — all of them, captured in colored pencil with stats on the back.

247 cards. 247 people. 247 acts of being seen.

He kept them in a shoebox under his bed, organized alphabetically, with dividers made from cardboard. It was his most prized possession — not because the cards were valuable in any monetary sense, but because they were a record of every person who had ever made the world feel kinder.

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The cards were private. Deshawn had never shown them to anyone — not even his best friend, Jordan. They felt too personal, too weird, too likely to be laughed at. What kind of seven-year-old drew portraits of the crossing guard and rated her kindness level?

But in October, Jordan came over to play and found the shoebox.

"What's this?" Jordan asked, pulling it from under the bed.

Deshawn's stomach dropped. "Nothing. Don't—"

But Jordan had already opened it. He pulled out a card — Card #12, Mr. Park from the grocery store — and stared at it.

"Dude," Jordan said. "Did you DRAW this?"

"Yes. Give it back."

"Please give it back."

But Jordan was pulling out more cards, his eyes getting wider with each one. "Mrs. Abrams! Coach Rodriguez! The ice cream truck guy! You drew EVERYONE!"

"Not everyone. Just people who are... important."

"Important how?"

"Important like... they make things better. They're kind. They notice you. They do things that matter even if nobody pays attention."

Jordan looked at Deshawn with an expression that was not mockery or confusion but something closer to awe. "These are the coolest cards I've ever seen."

"Really?"

"REALLY. You made trading cards for REAL PEOPLE. Not athletes or superheroes — REAL people. With REAL superpowers. This is incredible."

Deshawn felt the knot in his stomach unwind. Not laughed at. Not teased. Seen — the way his cards saw the people on them.

"Can I have one?" Jordan asked.

"Which one?"

"Mrs. Abrams. She calls me 'sweet baby' every morning and it makes my whole day."

Deshawn hesitated. The cards were his collection. He'd never given one away. But he thought about what Mrs. Abrams would say — she'd say "Share the love, King!" — and handed Jordan the card.

Jordan held it like it was a diamond. "I'm putting this on my wall."

And just like that, the cards stopped being private.

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Jordan told Mia. Mia told Aisha. Aisha told half the second grade. By Monday, Deshawn had a line of kids at his desk asking to see the cards.

"Show me the one for the lunch lady!" "Is there a card for Mr. Abernathy? He taught me to tie my shoes!" "Can you MAKE me one? Of my grandma?"

That last request stopped Deshawn cold. Make one? Of someone else's important person? He'd only ever drawn people from his own life — people he knew, people he'd observed, people whose superpowers he could identify firsthand.

But the girl asking — a first-grader named Rosa — was looking at him with such hope that he couldn't say no.

"Tell me about your grandma," he said.

Rosa talked for five minutes straight. Her grandmother, Abuela Rosa (Rosa was named after her), was seventy-three, lived in the apartment downstairs, made the best tamales in the universe, sang opera while cooking, and could fix absolutely anything with duct tape and determination.

"What's her superpower?" Deshawn asked.

"She makes you feel like the most important person in the world. When she looks at you, it's like nobody else exists."

"Kindness level?"

"A million out of ten."

He gave it to Rosa the next day. Rosa looked at the card, looked at the drawing of her grandmother, and burst into tears.

"That's HER," Rosa whispered. "That's exactly her."

Three more requests came that day. Then five. Then ten. Deshawn was swamped — an assembly line of kindness cards, each one requiring a conversation, a drawing, and a set of stats that captured what made that person special.

He needed help.

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The team worked during recess and after school. They set up in the art room, which Ms. Fleming happily opened for them ("This is the best use of this room I've ever seen," she said). Orders piled up — twenty, then forty, then over a hundred.

When Theo gave Carl his card, the garbage truck driver sat on the curb and stared at it for five minutes. Then he carefully placed it in his wallet, behind the photo of his kids.

"Nobody's ever made me a card before," Carl said.

"Nobody else waves like you," Theo said.

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She offered a wall in the main hallway — a long, blank stretch between the office and the cafeteria — for a display. Not the originals (those belonged to the requesters), but copies. High-quality color copies, enlarged and mounted, covering the wall from end to end.

The display went up in November. One hundred and fifty-three cards, arranged in a grid, covering every inch of the wall. Every face was different. Every superpower was unique. Every kindness level was at least 8 out of 10 (because, as Deshawn explained, "anyone who gets a card is already at least an 8").

The effect was immediate.

Kids stopped in the hallway and found people they knew. "There's my mom!" "That's Coach Rodriguez!" "CARL'S on the wall!" Teachers found themselves featured and were visibly moved. Mrs. Abrams — Card #1, the very first card Deshawn had ever made — saw her portrait and pressed her hand to her heart.

"You see me," she said to Deshawn.

"Everyone sees you, Mrs. Abrams. You're the first person we see every morning."

"But you SEE me. Not just the orange vest. ME."

Parents came for pickup and lingered in the hallway, reading the cards. Some found their own cards and took photos. Some read other people's cards and were moved by the descriptions of strangers' kindness. The wall became a conversation piece — families standing in the hallway, pointing, reading, discovering that the school was surrounded by quiet heroes whose superpowers were attention, patience, warmth, and the simple act of showing up.

Principal Darko called it "the most meaningful art project this school has ever produced."

Deshawn stood in front of the wall one afternoon after everyone had gone. One hundred and fifty-three faces. One hundred and fifty-three people who had made someone's world better. The crossing guard, the librarian, the grandmother, the garbage truck driver, the teacher, the neighbor, the stranger who held a door.

The world was full of superheroes. You just had to look closely enough to draw them.

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In December, another school heard about the cards.

Westside Elementary made forty-two cards. Their heroes were different from Oak Street's — different neighborhoods, different faces — but the superpowers were the same. Patience. Warmth. Attention. The simple act of showing up.

"They have a crossing guard too," Deshawn said, studying the Westside cards. "Ours is Mrs. Abrams. Theirs is Mr. Diaz. Different people, same kindness level."

"Same superpower," Jordan said.

"Which means kindness isn't about WHO you are. It's about WHAT YOU DO."

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Not one of his cards — a card made BY someone else. A hand-drawn portrait on cardstock, colored in pencil, laminated with clear tape. The drawing showed a boy with short hair, a big grin, and a pencil tucked behind his ear, surrounded by floating cards.

He turned it over.

Deshawn looked around the classroom. Twenty-three faces looked back at him, every one of them smiling. Jordan. Mia. Emeka. Rosa. Every kid in Mrs. Okoye's class. They'd made the card together — Jordan's lettering, Mia's coloring, Emeka's portrait, everyone's words.

"You made cards for everyone else," Jordan said. "We thought it was time someone made one for you."

He didn't cry. But his eyes got very shiny, and his smile got very wide, and he held the card against his chest like it was the most valuable thing in the world.

Which it was. Because it was proof that the thing he'd spent two years giving — the gift of being seen — had come back to him. Not as a reward, but as a reflection. The kindness you put into the world doesn't disappear. It circulates. It returns. It finds you.

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That summer, Deshawn made one more card. Card #313 — the last card he'd make before third grade, before the project grew even bigger, before the network expanded to ten schools and then twenty.

Card #313 was different from all the others. It wasn't about one person. It was about everyone.

Deshawn looked at his shoebox under the bed — 312 cards, organized alphabetically, each one a portrait of someone who mattered. 312 superpowers. 312 kindness levels. 312 people who had made the world better by doing small things with big hearts.

He picked up his colored pencils and a fresh piece of cardstock. Third grade would bring new people, new stories, new heroes. The collection was never finished, because kindness was never finished. There was always another person to see, another superpower to name, another card to draw.

He started sketching. The pencil moved, the colors flowed, and another hero appeared on the page — not famous, not powerful, not extraordinary by any measure the world usually used. Just a person. Just a human being. Just someone who deserved to be seen.

And Deshawn saw them. The way he always did. The way he always would.

One card at a time. One person at a time. One act of seeing at a time.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Crimson Ark Publishing publishes fiction for readers of all ages, drawing on the spiritual principles and rich cultural heritage of the Bahá'í Faith. Our stories explore themes of unity, justice, courage, and the transformative power of love — through characters and communities that reflect the beautiful diversity of the human family. Every book is an invitation to see the world not only as it is, but as it could be.

Visit us at crimsonarkpublishing.com