Three dots appeared. Then: “Was anyone filming? Could be your big break.”

The April sun was a liar. It poured honey-gold light over the cracked sidewalk, made the new daffodils nod their heads like sleepy children, promised warmth. Leo fell for it every single time.

His phone buzzed. A text from his sister: “First allergies of the season! My eyes feel like they’re full of sand. gottaluvapril”

He’d left his jacket at home.

“You okay there, champ?” called a kid from a passing pickup truck.

It wasn’t even ripe.

Now, at 4:47 PM, the sky had turned the color of a week-old bruise. The wind had teeth. And Leo was standing in the parking lot of a grocery store, shivering, holding a single bag of frozen peas—not for dinner, but for the egg-sized lump forming on his forehead.

The story: a rogue shopping cart, a patch of black ice that had no business existing in April, and a physics-defying face-plant into a concrete wheel stop. He’d been trying to rescue a lady’s runaway cantaloupe. The cantaloupe, naturally, was fine.