In Your Shoes

by Donna Gephart

  Would she ever find her way to that happily-ever-after now? Amy didn’t believe it was possible without her mom.

  She wanted, needed, her mom back. Period. End of sentence.

  But that was never going to happen.

  Amy held her breath and concentrated, hoping for a few whispered words from her mom to float through her mind.

  Silence.

  She checked her phone in case her dad had found time to text her back.

  Nothing.

  There was a gaping hole inside Amy that she felt would never, ever be filled.

  Amy was like one of the desperate princesses from the fairy tales her mom used to read to her. Those princesses always needed rescuing by a prince, and it annoyed Amy that the female character needed a male character to save her. Girls in stories, she knew, were perfectly capable of rescuing themselves, thank you very much. And sometimes, princes needed rescuing, too.

  Amy inhaled and decided she would find a way to rescue herself from this big emptiness. She’d figure out how to rewrite the pages of her own story. There was no prince riding into the funeral home to rescue her, so she’d do it herself.

  Amy would find a path to her own happily ever after.

  She pulled her body off the bed that smelled like mold and found one of her writing notebooks in the desk drawer, along with her favorite purple pen that she used for creating stories.

  Then Amy did the only thing she knew to craft calm from the chaos of her unpredictable life.

  She wrote.

  A FAIRLY HAIRY TALE

  (Fiona the Fantabulous*)

  BY AMY IRIS SILVERMAN

  Fiona was not a princess. She was not a queen. She was not any fancy thing. Fiona was a peasant girl whose mom had died, and who had to take care of the hardscrabble farm and the ramshackle home where she lived with her aging father, Marcus, and her three-legged dog, Lucky.

  Fiona, as usual, was in the field, working her way through a row of purple cabbages, picking off weevils (snout beetles), minding her own peasant-y business, when a shoe came flying out of nowhere and hit her square in the forehead.

  Clonk!

  Seriously? A shoe!

  Fiona fell to the ground, holding the bottom of her tattered apron to her forehead. It came away red. “Oh no,” she groused. “Now I’ll be behind in my chores because I’ll have to scrub this apron in the river.”

  Among the beetle-infested cabbages, Fiona rose on shaky legs and spied some boys laughing and running off.

  Then something shiny caught her eye.

  She saw that the shoe was a lavish one. Most peasants didn’t even own footwear, but this shoe had shiny black sides and a polished brass buckle on top. Fiona wondered what the brass on that buckle was worth at market. The shoe surely belonged to someone of great importance. Interestingly, when Fiona pushed her dirty foot into the shoe, it fit perfectly.

  She felt a tingle radiate from her foot up to her forehead.

  Then Fiona came up with a different idea, smarter than trying to sell the brass buckle at market to her neighbors, who had little more than she did and often traded food rather than coin.

  With her loyal dog by her side and a few hard biscuits in her apron pockets, Fiona decided not to wash her apron, but to find the owner of the shoe. She hoped there would be a reward for returning the lost shoe, because even a small pile of coins would make life much easier for her and her father, who had been having a hard time since Fiona’s mother died. Any extra coins would help as they faced another winter with little food to share.

  Shoe in hand, Fiona set off with Lucky, past the field she was so familiar with, past the small road that was rarely used, past her neighbor’s puny plot of land, heading toward the town of Bumbershoot, where she’d never before been.

  What would she find there? Who would greet her? Would it be safe for a peasant girl and her dog? So many things weren’t safe when one wandered far from one’s own village.

  Most importantly to Fiona, how would she locate the owner of the mysterious flying shoe, and would she be offered any reward for her efforts?

  Amy realized Uncle Matt had called her for dinner a few times before she was able to pull herself from her story and respond. “Be right down!”

  Her hot chocolate had grown cold while she wrote, and her stomach growled.

  When Amy placed her notebook and purple pen on the desk and stretched her cramped fingers, she noticed a few texts on her phone.

  Three from Kat.

  Hey girl.

  Hello? Where are you?

  Amy!!! Were you abducted by aliens?

  Amy wrote back.

  Sorry. Was writing. Not abducted by aliens. This time.

  She knew Kat would understand her getting lost in writing a story, just like Amy would understand if Kat got lost in playing her saxophone. If Amy had stayed in Chicago, she and Kat would have auditioned for the arts high school together. Now Kat would audition without Amy.

  There was one more text on the phone, from Amy’s dad.

  Hi Pumpkin. Another looooong day of learning. Sorry to be gone during the week. Wish I’d been there for your first day of school. How’d it go? Can’t wait till this weekend. Let’s do something fun together. OK?

  Amy was angry with her dad for hauling her to her uncle’s funeral home in Buckington, Pennsylvania, where she knew no one. She was angry that her dad had to spend every Monday through Friday, for an entire month, away at some dumb training program to get certified so he could help Uncle Matt with his business, which meant they’d probably be staying in Buckington.

  But the thought of spending the whole weekend with her dad, doing something fun together, melted Amy’s anger.

  As she headed downstairs to join Uncle Matt for dinner, she texted her dad a one-word reply:

  Definitely!

  She held back the rest of what she wanted to write to him—the complaining parts—because she knew if she started, she might never stop.

  * Fantabulous = Fantastic + Fabulous

  At the snack counter, Miles picked tomato wedges from his salad and dumped a heap of sour cream and chives on his steaming baked potato.

  “Hey, eat those tomatoes.” His dad knocked on the counter with two knuckles. “They’re full of lycopene.”

  “Lyco…what?” Miles asked.

  George Spagoski flipped a thin hand towel from one shoulder to the other. “It’s a phytochemical, and…Oh, just eat ’em. They’re good for you.”

  Miles thought sometimes his dad sounded like Bubbie Louise. She used to read science magazines for fun and would share random physics or astronomy facts, like how a two-hundred-pound person on Earth would weigh only seventy-six pounds on Mars because of the difference in gravity. And Bubbie Louise totally had a crush on astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Miles figured if his bubbie hadn’t ended up owning a bowling center, she’d have become a scientist, like Marie Curie, who won two Nobel Prizes for her studies of radioactivity. Of course, Miles found the most fascinating part of Marie Curie’s life to be her death, which was ultimately caused by her exposure to the radioactive isotopes she studied.

  Miles forced himself to eat one of the tomato wedges. He squeezed his eyelids tight as he swallowed the squishy lump. “Lyecopee tastes disgusting.”

  At the end of the counter, Miles’s dad ignored him and poked at a piece of paper in front of Miles’s grandfather. “Pop, we’ve got to make improvements around here. This place is starting to fall apart.”

  Grandpop Billy held up his right hand like a stop sign. “We’re not changing anything, George. This place is good just the way it is.” He turned to the wall where a bulletin board full of photographs hung and he addressed the center photograph. �
�Isn’t that right, Louise?”

  Miles’s dad shook his head. “Mom wanted improvements, Pop. You know that. She wasn’t afraid of change.”

  “I’m not af—” Grandpop Billy lifted his drink and slammed it onto the counter.

  George Spagoski let out a breath and wiped up something that was nothing.

  Miles hated when his dad and grandfather argued about the bowling center, so he tried to change the subject. “Did you guys ever hear about the French undertaker Marc Bourjade?”

  “Huh?” his dad asked, looking annoyed.

  His grandfather simply raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “Well, glad you asked,” Miles said, even though they hadn’t. “Marc Bourjade, the undertaker, was in his workshop one day when a pile of caskets fell on top of him and crushed him to death.”

  “Ouch,” Grandpop Billy said, but he was grinning.

  “That’s not the most interesting part,” Miles told them.

  “Well, what is?” his dad asked.

  Miles was so excited to tell this part of the story that he accidentally popped another tomato wedge into his mouth. He grimaced and swallowed fast. “Well, it turns out Marc Bourjade was buried in one of the caskets that fell on him and killed him. Isn’t that crazy—to be buried inside the thing that killed you?”

  “Yeah, that’s fascinating.” Grandpop Billy ran a hand through his thinning gray hair.

  “Where do you get this stuff, Miles?” His dad shook his head.

  Miles shrugged. “Just thought it was interesting.”

  George turned to his father. “Dad, please consider making some changes. I have all these great ideas. We could have a weekly dance-and-bowl party on Friday nights with a DJ and one of those balls that hang from the ceiling and make rainbow light patterns. You know what I’m talking about?”

  Grandpop Billy took a long, slow breath. “No dance party. No rainbow lights. No fixing things up. No changes!”

  Tyler, the bowling center’s mechanic, strode over. “Hey, Mr. S.” He gave Miles a playful punch in the shoulder. “I’m done with all my work and the lanes are pretty empty tonight. Mind if I head out early? I promised Delilah I’d take her to the movies.”

  Miles swiveled around and saw that only three of the forty-eight lanes were occupied. He hadn’t thought about how empty the lanes had been lately. He’d never really considered that the bowling center could be in trouble. Maybe his dad was right. Perhaps they needed to fix it up and try new things to get more people to come in.

  “Go ahead, Tyler,” George said. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Bye, Mr. Spagoski,” Tyler said to Grandpop Billy. “Later, Miles.” He gave Miles a fist bump and headed out.

  “Dad?” George Spagoski looked at his father.

  “No.”

  Miles’s dad grabbed the papers from the counter and stormed into the kitchen.

  Grandpop Billy swirled the ice in his glass and let out a long sigh.

  Miles took his plates into the kitchen and rinsed them in the sink, dumping the rest of the tomato wedges into the garbage disposal before his dad could see. “I’m heading home, Dad. Thanks for dinner.”

  “No problem.” Miles’s dad shook his head. “I’ve got to learn not to let your grandfather get to me.”

  “Right?”

  Miles’s dad ruffled his hair. “Okay, then. I’ll see you back home.”

  At the doorway between the kitchen and the snack counter, Miles stopped and looked at his grandfather, hunched over his drink. Miles thought about how sad his grandfather must feel without Bubbie Louise around.

  His grandfather glanced up. “What’re you lookin’ at?”

  “Nothing, Pop. I was just…you know, thinking about stuff.”

  “Well, quit thinking about stuff or you’ll end up like your dad. His head’s filled with too much stuff. Bunch of foolish ideas.”

  Miles didn’t think his dad’s ideas were foolish. He thought they were smart and made a lot of sense. Miles shrugged. “G’night, Pop.”

  Billy held out an arm, and Miles went over and let his grandfather squeeze his shoulders. “You know I love you. Right, kid?”

  Miles nodded.

  “Don’t pay attention to anything I say. I’ve got a big mouth is all.”

  “Amen to that!” Stick called from the billiards table.

  “Mind your own business,” Grandpop Billy said, and squeezed Miles tighter.

  Miles ducked out of his grandfather’s grip. “See you back home, Pop.”

  Billy raised his glass.

  Then Miles did the same thing he did every night before leaving the bowling center. He stood in front of the bulletin board—the one covered with photos—where a banner with big black letters read “The Greatest Stories Ever Bowled.”

  His bubbie Louise had created that bulletin board a long time ago to hold photographic memories of the people and events from the bowling center. There was a photo of a couple on their wedding day because their first date had been at Buckington Bowl. There was one of Miles, age three and a half, rolling a bowling ball down a purple dinosaur ramp, and a similar one of Mercedes at the same age doing the same thing. There was a photo of a woman cradling a newborn baby—a baby that was nearly born on lane 23, according to Miles’s mom. She’d had to call an ambulance, and the pregnant woman barely made it to the hospital before her baby was born, three weeks early.

  One photo had been on the board since the beginning.

  The first photo.

  The center of everything.

  Miles focused on that photo—the one of Bubbie Louise when she was only twenty-two, sitting on Pop’s lap. Miles’s grandfather was in a wheelchair even back then. The accident had happened before he met Bubbie Louise. She looked so happy in that photo. Grandpop Billy looked impossibly young and happy, too.

  Miles snuck a quick look at his grandfather now. He was still hunched over his drink, muttering to himself.

  What had happened?

  Death happened, Miles knew. It changed everything. Miles made sure no one was looking, then kissed his fingertips and pressed them to the photo. “G’night, Bubbie Louise,” he whispered. “I still love you to the moon and back.”

  Miles paused, waiting for her to say the same thing to him, like she had hundreds of times before, especially when he was little.

  But Bubbie Louise didn’t respond.

  She never would.

  Death was awful like that.

  * * *

  •••

  Miles trudged to the front counter to grab his backpack and coat.

  His mom looked up from her magazine. “Hey, Miles. Heading home already?”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t you want to wait till we close up so we can all go home together?”

  Miles shook his head. He needed quiet time to himself to think.

  His mom came from behind the counter with Miles’s backpack, and he let her hug and kiss him. “Everything okay, bud?”

  Miles shrugged.

  “Dad and Grandpop going at it again?” She nodded toward the snack counter. “Thought I heard them arguing.”

  “A little bit,” Miles said. “I think Grandpop’s still sad about Bubbie Louise.”

  She put a hand on Miles’s shoulder. “I think Pop’s sort of stuck.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Miles felt a little stuck himself on his bubbie’s being gone.

  “Maybe the surprise party will snap him out of it,” his mom whispered.

  “Hope so.” But Miles wasn’t sure his grandfather was going to like a big fuss for his birthday. And he definitely worried about him having another heart attack. Surprises couldn’t be good for people who’ve had heart attacks not too long ago. Could they? To calm his worried mind, Miles thought again about the gift he planned to give his grand
father the night of his party—the all-expenses-paid trip to Texas to visit the International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame. Miles knew his grandpop would love the gift, especially when he found out Miles would join him and help with everything, like getting onto and off of the planes. It would be a great trip, maybe a chance to talk about Bubbie Louise so they could both start feeling better.

  “Don’t forget your coat.” Miles’s mom dashed behind the front counter and came back carrying it. “It’s cold out there.”

  It was cold. Hypothermia-level cold.

  Miles hurried home so he wouldn’t be exposed to the cold too long. Didn’t want to take the chance of freezing to death, because that would totally ruin his chances of bowling a perfect game someday.

  As soon as Miles stepped into his dark house, he felt a strange vine of anxiety creep inside him. What if some crazed killer were in the house with him? He ran straight upstairs, busted into his bedroom and turned on the light. Miles wished his family were home. He should have waited until the bowling center closed and gone home with them.

  Miles took off his bowling shoes and stowed them under his bed. He was soon in his pjs and under the covers, with only small beams of light shining under his bedroom door from the hallway. That was when his mind did that thing it did when he tried to fall asleep.

  First he remembered that poor French undertaker being buried under his own caskets and then inside one of them. Then his mind wandered to a dark, scary place. He remembered what his bubbie looked like in the casket at her funeral at Eternal Peace Funeral Home. Miles imagined what it would feel like to be dead and got so panicked he couldn’t move. He wanted to run out of his bedroom, screaming, but literally couldn’t move. It was like his body was frozen solid, but he wasn’t cold. Was he actually dead? He knew he couldn’t be dead, because his heart pounded like a jackhammer inside his stone-still body. Was this what death felt like, minus the beating heart?