The storm had come down hard the night before, the kind of relentless rain that turns familiar streets into unfamiliar terrain. It flooded gutters, softened soil, and left behind a mess no one wanted to deal with. By the next morning, the sun had broken through, but the ground was still slick, puddles pooled in every dip of the pavement, and anything deeper than a few inches was clouded with muddy water.
In the middle of that quiet neighborhood, an 8-year-old boy stepped outside like he had dozens of times before. Kids bounce back fast after storms. Where adults see hazards, children see adventure. The street was wet, but the sky was clear, and the world finally looked inviting again. His family had warned him to stay close. They knew the area had drainage issues and spots that tended to collapse during heavy rain, but kids don’t calculate risk the way adults do. To him, the world was still safe.
A few neighbors saw him walking ahead of his mother, splashing lightly in the shallow water near the curb. He wasn’t doing anything reckless. He wasn’t running into traffic or climbing anything unstable. He was simply being a kid on a wet morning. And then, with no warning, the ground gave out beneath him.
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