“No, no, no!” Emma kicked the flat tire for the seventeenth time and then cringed as she stubbed her toe, the imminent pain and following hopping around being the only result of her five seconds of rampant anger. 
            She gritted her teeth, and willed back tears. This couldn’t be happening to her. It simply couldn’t. Karma didn’t work this way. She’d already been dealt about a thousand cards of bad luck, which meant that life was supposed to give her a break now. A flat tire, after everything that had happened in the past two weeks, simply wasn’t an option. That would mean that someone up there, literally holding a bowl of popcorn and a cup of soda to boot, was staring down and laughing at her joke of a life and pressing the rewind and play button.