It wasn't a graceful fall. It was a tangle of limbs, a flailing of pigtails, a cartoonish thump-whoosh as she landed bottom-first on the soft carpet. The block tower, of course, chose that exact moment to enact its own dramatic demise, exploding into a rainbow avalanche of plastic.
Piper sat in the ruins of her civilization. Her lower lip began to tremble. Her big brown eyes welled up with genuine, world-ending tears. This was not a simple fall. This was a betrayal by physics, by her own feet, by that stupid Hot Wheels car. The wail was coming—the kind of wail that rattles windows and summons mothers from three rooms away.
“Dad, you’re so silly,” she sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. piper perri fall down dad
And when it eventually fell again—as all towers do—they fell with it, laughing on the way down.
The tower had reached an impressive eighteen blocks. It was a structural marvel, leaning slightly to the left but held together by sheer willpower and the hope that gravity would take the day off. Her father, David Perri, sat on the nearby beige sofa, a cup of lukewarm coffee in one hand and a well-thumbed mystery novel in the other. He was supposed to be reading, but really, he was watching Piper. Watching her was his favorite hobby. It wasn't a graceful fall
He lay sprawled on his back on the carpet, one leg bent awkwardly, his glasses askew, arms spread out like he was making a snow angel in the beige fibers. He let out a groan of exaggerated, Shakespearean suffering.
“What cure?” Piper asked, leaning closer. Piper sat in the ruins of her civilization
It happened in a fraction of a second, yet Piper’s mind would remember it as a slow-motion cascade of doom. Her left foot, clad in a fuzzy slipper shaped like a frog, betrayed her. It slipped on a rogue Hot Wheels car that had been lying in ambush on the carpet. Her body tilted. The tower shivered. Piper’s arms windmilled like a tiny, panicked weather vane.