Tale of the Coveted Shoes

Beth wanted more than anything to hate Whitney. Whitney with her shiny blonde hair, two missing front teeth, a pack of older brothers and sisters who adored her, and two parents who were still happily together. But mostly she hated that Whitney had a perfect pair of black and white saddle shoes.  

What Beth didn’t realise was that they were Whitney’s only pair of shoes—in fact, only piece of clothing—that wasn’t handed down from an older sibling. She’d saved money from her paper route every day for three months during the summer so she’d have the shoes when school started in the fall. After school, she cleaned and buffed the shoes until they looked new again.

When Beth begged and whined for a pair of her own saddle shoes, her mother reminded her that she already had a perfectly good pair of sneakers that she had picked out just two weeks ago. Besides, she’d have them ruined in a week or would get tired of them.

“Remember the jean jacket you had to have? Remember when you used it as a rope to climb a tree and ripped the arm off?  Go play outside and leave me alone. I don’t want to hear another word. Got it?”

Beth stormed out of the house, making sure to slam the door and giving an “I hate you” as a parting farewell.  She then went and jumped in every mud puddle she could find and rubbed grass all over the sides of her sneakers. But her mother didn’t budge.

In late October, Whitney’s family hosted a Halloween party for all the neighbourhood kids. Though Beth and Whitney didn’t talk much at school, they rode bikes around the block and played gymnastics on an old mattress in Whitney’s backyard. Beth always felt out of place with Whitney’s funny friends, but she was too bored not to go.

The night of the party, the house was decorated with fake cobwebs, candles, posters of witches and skeletons, and scary noises were coming from a scratchy boom box somewhere in the kitchen. Whitney’s mom made the kids put on blindfolds and touch eyeballs, brains, and teeth which turned out to be grapes, spaghetti, and chiclets.

The boys were dressed as pirates, cowboys, and vampires, and the girls, princesses, black cats, and witches. Beth was covered in a white sheet that had two holes cut out for eyes. Her mother had made two large circles around the holes, using her liquid eyeliner. She liked that nobody could see her face and she didn’t have a mouth cut out, so she didn’t need to talk.

At one point, they were herded up to go out to the “haunted garage” which involved Whitney’s dad and older brothers jumping out from behind stuff and scaring the living bejesus out of everyone. The kids squealed and ran out to run and hide behind trees, which as it turned out, sheltered more scary brothers. They ran around and around, laughing and dizzy on their own fear until Whitney’s mom told them to come back inside.

“And take off your shoes this time! There’s a lot of mud out back”

Beth was one of the last to add her shoes to the growing pile near the backdoor. As she threw hers down, she noticed the saddle shoes sitting neatly and pristinely apart from the others. The kids all went into a large family room that had two worn sofas and several pillows on the floor. Whitney’s mother had made popcorn balls and was setting up the VCR to watch “It’s A Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”.  Beth wanted to plop down with the others but there was something she wanted even more.

Heart pounding, she quietly went out of the room and towards the back entrance. She grabbed the white and black prizes and stuffed them down her pants under the white sheet. As she put on her own shoes, Whitney’s dad came in and said, “What you up to, Kiddo?” She said that her tummy hurt, politely refusing the Dad’s offer of escorting her the half-block to her house.

Once outside, she started running, feeling the soles of the shoes scraping her skin, the dangling laces tickling her thighs. The air was colder and the trees much taller and more menacing than before. She felt if she turned around, she would see Whitney chasing her.

Her mother wasn’t surprised to see her home early. Beth often had enough of social events before other children. She was glad that Beth had gone at all.

Beth shoved the shoes in between the box spring and the mattress and didn’t sleep at all for fear they would somehow walk out into plain sight. When her mother was in the shower the next morning, Beth was horrified to find that they were too small. It hadn’t occurred to her that Whitney’s feet would be so much smaller than her own even though she was about three inches shorter.

She thought about bringing them back to Whitney’s and saying she put them on by mistake, but realised they would ask about her own shoes, which she hadn’t left behind. She thought about just putting them on their porch but was terrified someone would see her. With the kind of logic that only comes from childhood panic, Beth decided to throw them in the gutter on the corner.

The next Monday, Whitney arrived at school, wearing grey canvas shoes that were probably once white. After school, they rode bikes around the block and Whitney didn’t say a word about the shoes.

At night, whenever the phone rang, Beth’s heart nearly exploded, so convinced was she that the shoes with her fingerprints were discovered in the gutter. Each day she crouched down and peeked into the dark hole and saw the white tip of a lone shoe. The stab of guilt and fear became a part of her daily routine, even after the spring rains washed the evidence away.