In Your Shoes

by Donna Gephart

  Fiona couldn’t help giggling at this image. She covered her mouth with her hand, so as not to appear rude.

  “It’s okay,” Prince Harry said. “You can laugh. I meant it to be funny.”

  Fiona lowered her hand.

  “Anyway, it was one of the best days of my life,” Prince Harry said. “Until…” The prince stared off into whatever lay beyond the tower window.

  “Until what?” Fiona needed to know.

  Lucky barked. Maybe Lucky wanted to know, too.

  The prince shook his head. “Until I came upon a bunch of boys. They thought it was hilarious that I was half human, half beast.”

  “Oh, you’re not any part beast,” Fiona said. She hadn’t meant to interrupt the prince’s story.

  The prince smiled. “I wish you could have told that to those boys. They tackled me and…” Harry looked down, unable to go on.

  Fiona gasped. “But…but…you’re a prince!”

  “They didn’t know nor care who I was.”

  “Idiots!”

  “Indeed. And one of them yanked off my shoe and threw it as hard as he could. It flew in a great arc.” Prince Harry let out a long breath. “Once they finally left me alone, I searched for it, but I couldn’t find my missing shoe. I knew it would get dark in a couple hours. So, half shoeless, I hobbled all the way back to the castle. In fact, I arrived here only an hour before you showed up. Just long enough for the king to…” Prince Harry didn’t finish his sentence.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Fiona said. “That must’ve felt terrible. People can be so cruel.” She ran up to the prince and hugged him tightly. His hair was soft and smelled nice.

  “Not…everyone…is…” The prince hiccupped and swiped at his eyes. “Cruel.”

  Fiona wiped his tears away with the edge of her apron, making sure not to use the part with dried blood on it.

  “Your kindness…” The prince sniffed. “Kindness isn’t something I experience often. How do I return the favor?”

  The question startled Fiona. She couldn’t believe someone as exalted as a prince wanted to do something for her. She thought of the reward she’d hope to earn from returning the shoe with the shiny buckle, then looked at her surroundings and knew she needed something more basic. “Would you set me free?” Fiona looked at Lucky and had to hold in her own sniffles. “I have to get home to my father. He’s all by himself.”

  The prince made a small gasp. “Have you no mother?”

  Fiona shook her head.

  “Nor do I,” the prince said softly. “She passed a couple years ago. And she was like me.” He motioned to the hair all over his face and body. “But she had her attendants remove the hair daily. I think it hurt her, but my father insisted. He felt she was beautiful only when her facial and body hair were gone. My mother told me many times to be proud of exactly who I am, but that’s hard when…when…Well, I miss her every day.”

  “Oh,” Fiona said, “I understand.” And she did. “You can see why Lucky and I must get home to my father.”

  “I do,” the prince said. “And I’m sorry, but that’s one thing I can’t make happen. That’s up to the palace guards, and I know they’ll let you go only when they’re good and ready.”

  “But you’re the prince,” Fiona said. “Can you do nothing to get us out of here?”

  Prince Harry shook his head. “After my escapade of running away, my father said he’d boil me alive if I broke another rule. I think he meant it, Fiona. He was…he was…Is there anything else I can do for you? Anything at all?”

  Fiona turned her back to the prince for a moment to hide her disappointment. She was so worried about her father…but then a thought flickered. An idea. A possibility. It filled her with hope and a renewed sense of determination. Fiona whirled around. “Yes, there is something you can do for me.”

  “Oh, I’m pleased,” the prince said, moving closer. “What is it?”

  “You can get my dog and me a hearty meal and some drink. It’s been a long journey. We’re both famished.”

  “I can do that,” the prince said. “They’re usually good to me in the kitchen, as long as I don’t get my hairy self too close to the food they’re preparing.”

  “That’s wonderful. Thank you. I’d like to do something for you,” Fiona said, thinking of her idea.

  “But…but…,” the prince sputtered. “Your kindness is enough.” He looked down. “I couldn’t let you do anything else for me. I don’t deserve any more than that.”

  Fiona boldly tipped the prince’s hairy chin up so he had to look at her with his brilliant green eyes. “Yes, I must do this one thing for you. And you must allow me to do it. It could change everything.” Then Fiona thought: It could change everything for both of us.

  “Well, what is it? What is this thing you want to do for me that might change everything?” He looked at Fiona with a burning intensity.

  Fiona recognized that look, that desperate need for things to change, for things to get better. She took the prince’s hairy hand into her own. “I’ll tell you everything, Prince Harry, after you bring us something to eat and drink. We’re practically starving and so, so thirsty. Right, Lucky?”

  The little dog looked up and whimpered.

  “Well then, let me attend to those things.”

  And with those words, the prince left Fiona and Lucky alone in their tower prison.

  Amy felt exhausted when she unclenched her right hand and placed her pen and notebook on the desk. She loved the way this story was unfolding and couldn’t wait to return to it and discover what Fiona’s bright idea was. Amy knew that by the time she sat down to write again, her subconscious would have done the heavy lifting and figured it out.

  When she checked her phone, she couldn’t believe how late it was, how she’d lost track of time while writing. That happened sometimes.

  Feeling quite satisfied with her writing self, Amy let out a long, slow breath. She thought again about what a fun time she’d had at the bowling center with Miles earlier.

  Then, for the first time in a while, Amy let herself relax completely and slip into a deep and peaceful sleep.

  Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new…but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design? —PARACELSUS

  We each have 86,400 seconds in a day, give or take an attosecond.*

  But what does that mean? What does time really mean?

  Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein offered theories to explain time. I’m sure you’ve studied them and come to your own confusions, er, conclusions.

  Then tell me this, smarty pants: How does one explain the feeling that time moves at a glacial pace when one is sad and suffering? Or how time seems to pass in a blink when one is fully absorbed in an activity? Why does time seem to move too slowly when one is young and too quickly when one is old? And not at all when one is waiting for the school day to end on the Friday afternoon of a holiday weekend?

  Time represents change. The planet keeps spinning, our bodies keep aging. Things keep changing, whether we notice or not.

  That is the nature of time and also the mystery of it.

  All this is to say, dear reader, time has passed in the story. Things have changed…even if the characters don’t quite realize it yet.

  * Attosecond = one quintillionth of a second. An attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 32 billion years. Isn’t science fun?

  Amy couldn’t believe she’d made it to Friday night. She couldn’t stand spending every day and night with her dad so far away.

  When he walked in, smelling of the cold and of stale coffee, she lost herself in his bulky arms, his tight embrace.

  “You know,” her dad said, “we have only one more week of this baloney. Then I’ll be done with training. I
mean, as long as I pass the exam next Friday.”

  Amy looked into her father’s tired eyes. “Oh, you’ll pass.”

  “Is that so, Miss Ames?”

  “No doubt.” Amy hugged him again. “You have to pass, or all this work will have been for nothing. Right?”

  Her dad tugged at his earlobe. “Right. Hey, did I tell you we spent one whole day this past week learning death care vocabulary?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Different terminology used in the industry. Like calling a burial an ‘interment’ or a coffin a ‘casket.’ Sounds nicer, I suppose. And we spent an entire day on it, then had a test.”

  “How’d you do on the test?”

  “Hundred percent.”

  “See, I told you you’ve got this. The final test will be a breeze for you. Now, on to the important question: Do you want popcorn or Popsicles for movie night?”

  “Popcorn,” her dad said. “It’s too cold for Popsicles. Let me take off my coat, say hi to Uncle Matt and put my stuff away first.”

  “I’ll get the popcorn started.” Amy skipped through the hall of Eternal Peace Funeral Home to the kitchen, where she grabbed the biggest pot she could find and placed it on a burner. She rummaged through the pantry until she found the bag of popcorn they’d bought especially for Friday movie nights.

  As she was heating oil in the pot, she looked up, as though she could see through the ceiling to the floor where her dad was putting his stuff away.

  She took a moment to appreciate that her dad was home. Finally.

  They were going to cuddle on the couch and watch a movie together.

  She’d begun making friends.

  She was writing a cool fairy tale.

  She even had a new, fuzzy purple blanket, a soft sheet set and a fluffy pillow that felt like clouds and smelled like lavender, all because Uncle Matt took her shopping at Target the other day for “some things to make you feel more at home in your bedroom.”

  Everything, Amy knew, was as right as it could be.

  Until, Dear Reader, it wasn’t.

  Because you don’t need to be Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein to understand that time has a way of changing things. Even good things. And that the changes can happen during any one of those 86,400 seconds in a day, whether you are ready for them or not. We tend to think the way things are right now is the way they will be in the future, but that is faulty reasoning.

  You are changing.

  The world around you is changing.

  And our story world, Dear Reader, is changing, too.

  Even the ghosts of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein could have told you that.

  Friday evening, things were happening at Buckington Bowl.

  Stick had taken Grandpop Billy to the Dining Car, down the street, as planned. After dinner and several cups of coffee, Stick rolled his wheelchair to the restroom to call Miles’s mom and let her know the check had arrived and he wouldn’t be able to keep the birthday boy there much longer.

  “Okay,” she said to the people assembled at the snack bar and in the billiard area. “I’ll turn off the lights. We can all duck down, and when Billy rolls up, we’ll jump and shout ‘Surprise!’ ”

  Miles gripped his sister’s fingers entirely too tightly.

  “Ow!” Mercedes shook her hand loose.

  “Sorry,” Miles muttered. He was still worried that shouting “Surprise!” at his seventy-five-year-old grandfather was a lousy idea. He thought about telling this to his mom for the hundredth time, but instead inhaled deeply and admonished himself to knock it off. Miles was trying to get a grip on his anxieties. His grandfather would be fine, he told himself. The surprise would make him happy. Miles’s gift would make him even happier.

  Then why did Miles feel anxious?

  Randall nudged Miles’s shoulder. “Hey, man, you really should ask the new girl to the dance.”

  “Amy?”

  “Yeah.” Randall straightened the lapel on his suit jacket, then gave his thin black tie a quick adjustment. “The girl we nearly knocked out with your bowling shoe.”

  “You mean the girl you nearly knocked out.”

  Randall shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. Tate tells me she really likes dancing.”

  “Amy?”

  “Yes, Amy. Likes dancing.” Randall raised an eyebrow. “Are you all there?” He knocked on Miles’s forehead, and Miles jerked away.

  “Stop!” He was still panicked about his grandfather. Plus, he thought of the heel lift in Amy’s sneaker and wondered how dancing worked for her if she wore shoes without a lift. Was she off-balance, like when she bowled?

  “You told me you two had a good time when you bowled together, and I think you should ask her to the dance. That way the four of us could go together.”

  “Right,” Miles said. “But I don’t like dancing. So there’s that.”

  Tate, who was crouched in front of Randall, swiveled. “But that’s irrelevant, Miles. You should totally ask her anyway. She’s really nice. I hang out with her every day at lunch.”

  “But what if she says no?” Miles whispered, then was instantly sorry he’d let his one true thought slip out.

  “Be brave, Miles,” Tate said, and turned and winked at Randall. “Sometimes it pays off. Besides, Miles Spagoski, how could anyone resist you?” She reached up and pinched his cheek.

  This annoyed Miles. He was too nervous for cheek pinching.

  Randall shoved Miles. “Yeah. Be brave, man.”

  “Quiet!” Mercedes warned. “Pop will be here any second.”

  Miles was sure something terrible would happen to his grandfather, and his brain couldn’t convince his sick stomach otherwise.

  Tate leaned back and whispered: “I’m having a party at my house the night before the dance. You definitely have to come to that, Miles. It’ll just be the four of us.”

  “Four?” For as long as Miles could remember, it had been the three of them hanging out together.

  “Yeah,” Tate said, as though it was no big deal. “You, me, Randall and Amy.”

  “Oh,” Miles said. He liked Amy but wasn’t sure how to feel about this new development. Letting someone else into their group was a big change, and no one had asked him how he felt about it. His stomach clenched.

  “I’ll be there,” Randall said. “For sure.”

  “You’d better be.” Tate punched him in the arm.

  Randall rubbed the place where she’d punched him. “You realize your fists are lethal weapons, right?”

  Tate grinned. “So I’ve been told.”

  Miles felt off-balance. Tate never had parties at her house. When the three of them got together, they always went to Randall’s house or to the lanes to bowl and play video games. Miles imagined hanging out with Amy at Tate’s house. The thought made him nervous and excited at the same time. “I guess it could be fun,” he said.

  “Shhhhh!” Miles’s mom scolded.

  “Sorry,” Miles whispered. And he switched back to worrying about everyone poised to yell “Surprise!” at his grandfather.

  Miles’s mom patted his shoulder. “Everything will be fine.”

  His dad scooted out from the kitchen, whipped off his apron, laid it on the counter and crouched nearby. “Hey there, gang!”

  “Shhh,” Miles’s mom said, but she was smiling and squeezing his dad’s fingers, which rested lightly on her shoulder.

  There was so much happy, nervous energy at the bowling center that when someone’s cell rang, everyone screamed.

  Then laughed.

  “Shhh. Shhhhh!” warned Miles’s cousin Jeanne, who’d been keeping watch at the door. “They’re coming!” she called. “Rolling up right now!” Jeanne ran to the group of family and friends and crouched low.

  It was so quiet at the bowling cent
er that Miles could hear a soft, rattling wheeze coming from Randall. He wished Randall would take a puff from his inhaler, but he didn’t dare say another word for fear his mom would scream at him and ruin the surprise for his grandfather—although Miles thought ruining the surprise might be a good idea. He knew getting a heart attack and dying at your own surprise party wouldn’t be the strangest way someone had died. Recently, he had read about Aeschylus, often called the Father of Tragedy because of the plays he wrote. But Miles thought the description was apt because of how the Greek playwright had died. Aeschylus perished in 456 BC when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head. A tortoise! He’d been staying outdoors because of a prophecy that he’d be killed by a falling object.

  The eagle apparently mistook Aeschylus’s head for a rock that would shatter the tortoise’s shell.

  The tortoise reportedly survived.

  Miles thought that if he did go to Tate’s party—which he probably wouldn’t—he might share the unusual story of Aeschylus with Amy. He had a feeling she’d appreciate it.

  After hearing the automatic doors sliding open and wind whooshing in, Miles heard his grandfather grumble, “What’s goin’ on here? Why’s the place dark on a Saturday night? Did the power go out or something?”

  Miles’s heart beat too fast. Maybe he shouldn’t be worrying about his grandfather’s heart, but about his own. Please be okay, Pop. Please be okay, Pop. Please—

  Then he heard Stick’s voice. “Well, I can’t imagine what the—”

  “SURPRISE!” everyone yelled.

  Miles’s heart jackhammered.

  Someone flipped on the lights.

  Miles’s dad turned on the oldies rock music, which crackled through the speakers.

  Cousin Jeanne threw handfuls of multicolored confetti into the air over Pop’s wheelchair.

  Miles watched his grandpop’s face through the floating bits of confetti. It didn’t look like he was stressed or panicked. He looked…happy, sad and overwhelmed all at once.