So fast it was like someone pulled the rug out from under me, like, literally. Before I could catch myself, my left skate skidded out from beneath me, then my right, and I landed hard on my butt.

The butt, the softest but hardest landing of them all.

I don’t know if you’ve ever landed on your butt on roller skates. It is discombobulating. First, I was dizzy, with this weird whooshing sound that took over all the space inside my brain, then the whooshing was replaced by another sound. . .laughter.

Not happy fun laughter, the laughter of joy and joining, the laughter of beach balls and lollipops. No. Unhappy laughter, which only comes at someone else’s expense. As my butt throbbed, I looked up and spotted the source of the chortles.

It was a group of kids, but I saw the boy first, tall with spiky brown hair. He was wearing a green soccer jersey and shorts. A girl with bright, but I think natural, red hair tied into pigtails, dressed entirely in baby pink, was balanced on his shoulders.

I blinked.

They were ripping my disco balls off the lampposts!

“HEY!” I scrambled to my feet, or tried to, but it is hard to scramble to your feet in roller skates, which is the only uncool thing about them.

A wave of heat rose up through my jumpsuit and turned my neck into a ring of fire. “HEY!”

The boy with spiky brown hair grinned a big toothy grin, as the girl on his shoulders wrenched the disco ball free and held it over her head, triumphant.

“HEY!” she screeched back, waving the ball like a broken flag, “YOU GOT A PERMIT FOR THIS TRASH?”

“HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!” The boy’s face was turning red.

But the laughter wasn’t just coming from him.

I swiveled as best I could and spotted the other pair, at another lamppost closer to the fountain. This pair had one shorter boy with curly hair, also in a soccer jersey, who was almost eclipsed by the girl on his shoulders, who was long like spaghetti with equally long blond hair. She had ripped two of my disco balls free and was holding them in her hands like deflated cheerleader pom-poms.

“CUT IT OUT!” I finally got to my feet. “THOSE ARE MINE!”

“HO-HO!” the curly-haired boy laughed as he bent forward and the girl vaulted off.

As I (finally) got my skates under me, all four kids were off like a shot. Laughing and waving my disco balls in the air as they ran.

“STOP!” I screamed, catching the eye of the girl with long blond hair.

She slowed down, just a little, like there was suddenly something in my voice worth paying attention to. Maybe because my voice had reached the pitch of a fire engine.

“THOSE! ARE! MINE!” I howled.