Grace walked down the sidewalk, kicking the leaves aside from the chalk drawings she’d made the night before. Another school year, another set of new teachers, assignments, activities. Her old green messenger bag already felt heavy and she already had an essay and an “intro blurb” to write, two worksheets to do not to mention those countless syllabi she needed signatures on. Ah well. It always seems to turn out okay in the end. There are the night spent staying up way too late to finish that paper but they are balanced out by the days spent wandering around with a friend, stopping at all the places you always meant to go to and just enjoying yourself. Wandering in to a coffee shop, meeting up with many people, going to all the quirky stores on Applegate Hill. Mmm. She hoped there’d be some times like that too. Some of her best memories of last year were her, Amanda and Alena wandering around Applegate Hill, visiting all the stores. She’d really like to go to the Emporium especially. It was so wonderful will all the bins filled with craft supplies in the basement, the vintage and thrift clothes on the main floor and antiques and old books upstairs. You could find so much stuff there that had been forgotten, abandoned by those who do not, cannot or have chosen not to remember what you can find in the little things that have seeped through the cracks in time. She’d actually found her favorite sweater there, the one that was grey green blue, almost the color of the sea. Lost in this train of thought, Grace absently almost walked straight into the bike path, nearly crashing into someone. Figuring the unfortunate person was a bicyclist, Grace mumbled a sorry and was about to move on when she actually looked up towards her almost accident partner and realized she was actually pedaling a unicycle. She was getting back up on her unicycle, long auburn hair dangling as she arranged her things when Grace really registered a few things. First, that she had never seen this girl around her neighborhood before. Second, that the girl was riding along a path that led directly from her school. Thirdly, that she had a bright colored backpack resting on her back. Grace supposed that this made sense as the unicycle didn’t especially have much room for storage.
“Excuse me?” Grace said tenitivly, not quite sure of what she was doing, “excuse me, are you coming from Crowell school?”