In Your Shoes

by Donna Gephart

  She. Could. Not. Go. Inside.

  What if she heard people wailing/keening, and it ripped her heart to shreds? What if Amy accidentally saw the dead body when she was walking past the main viewing room? What if every single part of being in the house—even upstairs in her bedroom—during a funeral reminded her of one of the most painful days of her life?

  Nope.

  As Amy stood outside, shivering, she wondered how her dad could choose to be involved with this. How could he want to be part of the death care industry? How could he agree to expose himself to this kind of pain on a regular basis? How could anyone?

  Amy knew she couldn’t. She wouldn’t!

  Even though she was practically frozen and needed to get inside somewhere warm, Amy turned back toward school. Maybe she could return to the library, where Mr. Schu would be, and she’d stay there until…

  But the library would be closed now. Everyone would be gone. Tate would definitely be gone. Amy wished she’d thought to get Tate’s number.

  Not knowing what else to do, Amy turned in a different direction and put as much distance as she could between herself and the funeral home. She’d stay away for hours to make sure the funeral was over when she returned. Maybe she’d walk the 765 miles back to Chicago.

  If only it weren’t so cold.

  Seeing all those cars, the people dressed in black, the hearse filled with flowers—all of it—triggered memories Amy didn’t want to think about. Memories she tried to shove into the darkest corners of her mind.

  But the memories wouldn’t be forced back this time.

  Memories of standing graveside as her mom’s casket was about to be lowered into the ground. Her dad beside her, looking so lost, his shoulders hitching up, like he was about to crumble and land down there in the hole with her mom.

  Memories of herself reaching out and slipping her fingers into her father’s hand, to keep him there with her, to keep him together and solid for her. Her dad squeezing her fingers in reply. That was enough to know they’d somehow get through this. Team Silverman: now a team of two, instead of three.

  She remembered the waves of people who approached her in the funeral home after the service—old ladies who were practically sweating sickly sweet perfume, telling Amy how much her mom meant to them. Amy wanted to scream that her mom meant everything to her. To Amy. She wanted every person in the funeral home to know that no one was hurting more than she was, except maybe her dad, who was hunched over on a chair with people patting his shoulders.

  Amy remembered wishing it was all a nightmare, but no matter how many times she blinked, blinked, blinked she didn’t wake, so she’d had to admit it was real. She wasn’t going to wake from this one. All she could do, she knew, was turn the page and hope the next one contained an inkling of happiness.

  By the time Amy stopped thinking about her mom’s funeral, she was lost. She’d made too many turns and hadn’t been paying attention. On an unfamiliar street corner, Amy scanned the row of nearby stores: an auto parts place, a kids’ consignment clothing shop, a bagel shop that was closed, a Chinese restaurant, a knitting-supply store called Knit Wits, which she thought was clever, and a UPS store, which looked a lot like USPS and reminded her of her mom again.

  Amy remembered her mom in the blue uniform she wore when she delivered mail. She remembered the uniform hanging in her mom’s closet when her mom had gotten too sick to keep working. And she remembered the uniform folded and placed in a box of clothing her dad gave away before they moved.

  Amy sniffed.

  Exhausted and numb, she leaned on a pole and sank down to the sidewalk. She pressed her back against the pole, liking how solid and strong it felt against her spine.

  She thought about texting her dad but knew he wouldn’t be able to answer until his day of classes was over. Why did he have to start training as soon as they moved to Buckington? Didn’t he realize how much she’d need him?

  She thought about texting her uncle but knew he was busy coordinating the funeral for some sad family. She couldn’t bother him now. Amy hoped it was the funeral of someone who was very old and had lived a good life.

  She thought of texting Kat but didn’t have the energy anymore.

  Mostly, Amy wished she could text her mom. Talk to her mom. Hear her mom’s voice. Feel the touch of her mom’s hand.

  Amy shivered as wind whistled and whispered around her.

  What was she going to do here in Buckington without her mom or her dog or her best friend? What was she doing, living above a funeral home? How was she supposed to find her happily-ever-after with all this going against her?

  Even with gloves, Amy’s fingers felt like icicles. She jammed them into her coat pockets, then pulled her right hand out to swipe at her stupid leaky eyes. When she yanked her hand from her pocket, a piece of paper fluttered to the ground.

  It lay there, daring the wind to blow it away.

  Amy picked it up. “Oh.” She almost threw it down again, but she would never litter. It was the small piece of paper Bowling Shoe Boy had given her to wipe the blood off her forehead. Now she saw that it was a coupon for a free game of bowling. Squinting at the printing on the coupon, Amy looked up at the street sign, then back down to the paper.

  She was on the same street as the bowling center, a few blocks down.

  Amy stood. Her legs already ached from the long walk. Her cheeks hurt from the biting wind. She decided she’d go to the bowling center, use the restroom, warm up and maybe buy a hot chocolate. Then she’d call her uncle or use the GPS on her phone to find her way back and hope the funeral was over.

  Well, what are you waiting for? Her mom’s voice floated into her mind, into her heart. Go on, sweets!

  So, with a jolt of renewed spirit, Amy went.

  Buckington Bowl was bright and loud. Music played through the crackly speakers. Video games beeped and blipped. Pins crashed on the lanes.

  It was a good kind of loud to Amy. Different from the grating noise of too many kids in the hallways at Buckington Middle, making her feel small and unwanted. This kind of loud was warm and welcoming.

  “May I help you?”

  Startled, Amy looked up.

  The woman behind the counter closed her magazine and looked at Amy. “Did you want to bowl, sweetheart?”

  Amy felt the word “sweetheart” like a thump in her chest. This woman, she knew, was probably someone’s mom. Lucky them. Amy shook her head and walked closer. “Do you know where, um, the bathroom is?”

  “I do.” The woman grinned.

  “Oh, I…”

  “It’s right down there, honey.” She pointed toward the far end of the bowling center.

  Sweetheart. Honey. Amy hadn’t realized how much she missed hearing someone call her those things. “Thanks,” she said, partly for the directions and partly for the woman’s kindness.

  Walking along the purple carpet with its bowling pins and colorful shapes, Amy took in the video games, billiard table and snack bar. It wasn’t a fancy place, but it seemed comfortable. She had a feeling her mom would have liked it here.

  After using the restroom, Amy climbed onto a stool at the snack counter and grabbed a sticky menu wedged between two napkin holders. She was still wearing her winter coat with her backpack over both shoulders. She didn’t bother taking her backpack off because she knew she wouldn’t be there long.

  “What can I get for you?” asked a man with a thin towel draped over his shoulder.

  Amy peered into his eyes. They looked warm, friendly. “Do you have hot chocolate?” She hadn’t had a chance yet to find it on the menu.

  “We do,” he said.

  “With marshmallows?”

  “That can be arranged.” The man rapped on the counter twice with his knuckles and whistled away.

  Amy nodded toward an older gentleman at
the other end of the counter.

  He nodded back.

  A boy came up and sat on the stool next to her.

  “Hey, Pop,” he said.

  “Hey yourself,” the older man replied.

  Then the boy turned toward Amy, stared at her forehead and nearly fell off his stool. “You’re…you’re…not dead!”

  “Um, of course not,” Amy said, lightly touching the cut on her forehead. “Why would I be?”

  “I’m so, so sorry about that. My friend Randall, he…the shoe…um…” The boy gulped.

  Amy noted that Bowling Shoe Boy didn’t seem very good with words.

  The man with the towel over his shoulder put a root beer in front of the boy. “Your hot chocolate will be right up,” he said to Amy.

  “Thanks, Dad,” the boy said.

  “Dad?” Amy asked, putting the menu back between the napkin holders. She was trying to place the characters in this unexpected setting.

  “Yeah,” he said, sipping his root beer. “That’s my dad, and my grandpop Billy is right over there.”

  Grandpop Billy raised his mug in greeting.

  Amy gave a little wave, then held the bowling coupon in front of the boy. “So this is…your place?”

  “Sort of. It’s, um, my grandpop and bubbie’s place. But she…” The boy nodded toward a bulletin board covered with photographs, which made no sense to Amy. “My dad and mom work here.” He pointed toward the kitchen, then to the woman at the front counter.

  “That’s your mom?”

  Bowling Shoe Boy nodded.

  “She seems nice.” Then Amy stuck out her hand, like Tate had done earlier in the library. “I’m Amy.”

  “Um, Miles.” He barely touched her hand, then awkwardly dropped his hand into his lap. “Hey.”

  “Hi. Miles.” Amy liked his name. It reminded her of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which ended with these lines:

  The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

  But I have promises to keep,

  And miles to go before I sleep,

  And miles to go before I sleep.

  Miles looked down and took a long slurp of root beer.

  Amy cleared her throat.

  Miles looked up.

  Grandpop Billy chuckled. “Ah, young love.” He took a swig of coffee.

  Amy felt her cheeks flame. Young love? Yeah, right!

  “Here you go.” Miles’s dad put a steaming mug in front of her. “Lots of marshmallows.” He winked and then rapped his knuckles on the counter again.

  “Thanks,” Amy said, grateful for the interruption. She fished a few dollars from her pocket and placed them on the counter. Not knowing what else to do, she sipped her hot chocolate. It lived up to its name and burnt her lips.

  “So.” Miles let out a breath.

  “So…” Amy wished she were home. Her real home in Chicago—with Ernest on her lap—waiting for her mom to return from work. That home. Before her mom got really sick and could barely get out of bed, much less eat anything. Amy didn’t want to be sitting next to this boy whose stupid bowling shoe had cut her forehead and knocked her onto her butt, even if he was cute in a dorky way and had a name that reminded her of poetry.

  “You know,” Miles said, “your forehead doesn’t look nearly as bad as I thought it would.”

  “Um, okay.” Amy sipped her hot chocolate again. Even though it was still quite warm, she wanted to finish it and get out of there. Why had she even come?

  “I’m just glad you’re okay.” Miles took another long slurp of soda.

  Amy nodded. She understood that Miles couldn’t know how far from okay she felt on the inside.

  “Want something to, um, eat?” he asked.

  Amy shook her head, even though she was hungry.

  “We’ve got some really good desserts.” Miles yanked the sticky menu from between the napkin holders. But he pulled too hard, because the menu knocked into his glass of root beer, making it teeter at the edge of the counter like a bowling pin about to…

  TOPPLE OVER!

  The icy contents of Miles’s glass spilled, splashed, sloshed onto Amy’s lap like an Arctic wave.

  Amy jumped off the stool. “Oh!”

  “Sorry! Sorry!” Miles grabbed a bunch of tiny, flimsy napkins from the dispenser and wiped at Amy’s legs, depositing shreds of paper on her jeans.

  “Stop!” Amy shrieked.

  Miles stopped.

  Amy turned and fled, leaving the marshmallows to melt in her abandoned hot chocolate. As she ran, her sneaker with the heel lift slipped off. She had to stop and pull it back on. Then, without glancing behind her, Amy sprinted through the doors and away from the bowling center faster than Cinderella ran from the ball when the clock struck midnight.

  The only sound Miles heard above the clatter of pins on the lanes and oldies music piped through crackly speakers was coming from Grandpop Billy. He was laughing so hard his shoulders bobbed like a silent jackhammer.

  “It was an accident!” Miles screamed as he ran through the automatic doors and into the parking lot, forgetting to put on his coat. Could someone die of hypothermia from standing in a bowling center parking lot in January for only a few minutes? Probably!

  It didn’t matter. Miles had to tell Amy how sorry he was. Had to make her understand he wasn’t usually so clumsy. If only she could see him bowl. Miles looked around desperately, past his parents’ orange van, past the half-dozen cars in the lot, hoping for a glimpse of Amy.

  Miles shivered mightily.

  It was too late.

  She was gone.

  Miles knew there was nothing he could do to fix this now, so he trudged back inside, rubbing his hands together to warm them, and helped clean up the mess he’d made.

  Amy ran down to the block that had the stores and restaurants. There, she caught her breath and put the funeral home address into her GPS. She felt like Hansel and Gretel following bread crumbs through the forest as she followed the walking directions on her phone.

  Amy walked slowly—so slowly—afraid the funeral might not be over yet. The wet root beer on the front of her pants turned icy cold. She was sure she’d have frostbite on her legs thanks to that boy. How did he manage to knock his entire soda over onto her lap?

  Amy thought she should probably avoid Miles in the future. He was dangerous!

  If she walked any slower right now, she’d be going in reverse. She didn’t want to get back to Eternal Peace, even though it was dark outside and so cold. She didn’t want to walk in on someone’s funeral. Why had her dad moved her there? Couldn’t he have found another good job somewhere else? Couldn’t he have—

  Amy stopped.

  She texted her dad.

  Thinking of you. Hope you’re having a good day.

  When her dad didn’t respond, she texted Kat a tiny lie.

  The day was a little better. How are you?

  Kat didn’t answer either.

  Amy stood there on the street, checking her phone every few seconds even though it hadn’t vibrated. When she got so cold she couldn’t stand it, she forced her legs to move forward.

  Back at Eternal Peace, the parking lot was practically empty.

  That meant the funeral was over.

  Amy had stayed out long enough.

  She opened the front door with stiff, aching fingers. She was too cold to walk all the way around to the back door.

  Inside the house, Uncle Matt and a couple other people were cleaning up the room where people went to eat and have coffee and talk about the person who had passed. Uncle Matt and the others were taking white cloths off the tables and sweeping the floor. Amy knew she should offer to help, but she couldn’t. Not now. Instead, she tiptoed past the velvet
rope and went upstairs.

  After taking a long, warm shower and changing into dry pants and a sweater, Amy went to the kitchen and made mac and cheese and broccoli for herself and Uncle Matt. They had mini peach pies for dessert. Then Amy went to her room.

  She texted her dad again.

  How’s it going?

  She pulled out her notebook and purple pen, but her dad responded right away.

  You have no idea how exhausting all this is. Is it the weekend yet?

  Amy texted back.

  Two more days. You can do it!

  Even though she didn’t feel it, Amy tried to be upbeat in her texts to her dad.

  Thanks, Ames. You’re the best.

  She smiled and tapped her phone to reply:

  What she really wanted to reply with was . And maybe even the poop emoji.

  She wanted to crawl under the moldy-smelling quilt and sleep until it was the weekend and her dad came home and made everything better. But Amy knew that before she went to sleep, she had to write. It was a compulsion that had gotten worse since her mom died.

  So Amy did the one thing she knew how to do well—she returned to writing her story. She’d had ideas throughout the day that she had to get down before she lost them to the ether. Amy thought about how many perfectly good ideas were probably floating around in the universe because people didn’t take time to capture them by writing them down. She wouldn’t let that happen to hers. She wasn’t willing to lose another thing, even the scrap of a story idea.

  It took Fiona and her dog, Lucky, until dark to get to the town of Bumbershoot.

  Once there, Fiona realized how hard it would be to find the person the shoe belonged to. Why hadn’t she given enough thought to that before she embarked on this journey? She had been distracted by thoughts of receiving a reward. She knew she’d have to look for someone wealthy enough to own a shoe that fancy. But how would she—a peasant girl—be received at a place of worth?