I could hear the light drizzle of rain shift into a hard downpour on the roof of the grocery store. Hurrying to get our items, my mom and I made squeaky noises with our wet shoes. The empty store echoed with every sound. Most people were probably tucked away in bed, it was getting late and there were floods all around the city.

Earlier that day, my sisters’ car had broken down, so my mom offered to pick her up from work. The grocery store was really close to her workplace, and we needed milk. Any other rainy night, we would’ve stayed home. I went with my mom to keep her company.

Walking out of the store, we stopped in the doorway. The rain was getting faster and heavier every second. I was huddling into my sweatshirt to keep warm, and then my mom asked, “Should we run for it?” With a moment of consideration, I nodded. Yanking my hood up over my head, my mom and I darted out into the crosswalk. It took no more than a second for the rain to soak through my clothes.

We slipped and slid in every direction. I just about fell on my face, but I grabbed a handicapped sign and managed to stay upright. Finally, we reached the car. Quickly realizing it was locked, my mom fumbled with the keys. Water was rising above our toes, soaking the inside of our sneakers and socks. Once the car was unlocked, I jumped into the car so fast that it made me dizzy. I swept some stray hairs out of my face. “Well, that was fun,” I said sarcastically. We laughed quietly, out of breath.

After a minute of sitting in the car, we pulled out of the parking lot and continued up the giant hill of the exiting road. We expected nothing odd. We expected to pull out onto the highway, off of the hill, and be on our way. But that’s not how it turned out.

Halfway up the hill, water blinded us. We didn’t know what was happening. The water was all around the car. At first we thought the rain just got heavier. But then the water slid off of our windows, just long enough for us to see the overflowing storm drain at the top of the hill. So much water came out of that storm drain, so fast and hard that it brought rocks with it. My mom shifted the car just at the right time; if she were a second later, we would’ve been taken away in the water.

The large rocks fortunately avoided our windows; and with that, we were extremely lucky. My mind was racing with confusion and fear. I didn’t know where we were on the road; I couldn’t tell if there were any other cars nearby. All I knew was that we were in a flash flood. It was one of those things that is so uncommon, but so dangerous and sudden. I heard about them happening in Colorado, where my family almost moved to. I remember my cousin telling me about a story that was on the news in Denver, Colorado. A woman was pushing her child in a stroller, trying to get home and out of the rain, but then a flash flood took her child away so quickly she didn’t have a chance to do anything.

We were so lucky. Our lives depended on that single second of shifting the car. A second sooner or later, and we would have floated away with the water. We slowly came to the top of the hill and I sighed. The rain had stopped.