Spinning. Maybe not the most productive way to spend the day. But I couldn't think of anything better.

At least not when I was 6. So those lazy summer days were spent spinning whenever I could. Falling down in the leaves just made it happy bonus time.

Of course, that was well before the incident. I was spinning down what I thought was an empty street. Spinning because I knew that would make the daily trip to the store more fun. Because one of the perks of living that close to school and being friends with the principal was that I could leave when the first group of kids was let go. Shit, all I had to do was cross the street. They could watch me go in the door. Once that happened I wasn't the school's problem anyway.

So anyway I was spinning down the street. The colorful cars whirling toward and past me or sneaking up on me since I was trying to see everything at once.

There's no way I could have seen the hole in the sidewalk. The construction workers had left a weighted down piece of plywood over it for weeks. I'd forgotten it was even there. To me, that was just another bump in the road. Something that I instinctively knew was there and how to avoid it.

But today things were different. Instead of gliding over the wood and making that cool creaking sound my foot went down. I'd already started my next rotation and before I knew it there was a giant cracking sound and mor