Fit In My Shoes Quotes

My name is all but lost to antiquity while his legend is told and retold around the world. Yet I am a god and he is nothing but a bastard seed not even fit to inhabit Olympus. (Priapus) Get your hands off her, you worthless footnote. You’re not fit to wipe her shoes. (Julian)

All of them had been give a makeover. Leo was wearing pinstriped pants, black leather shoes, a white collarless shirt with suspenders, and his tool belt, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a porkpie hat. “God, Leo.” Piper tried not to laugh. “I think my dad wore that to his last premiere, minus the tool belt.” “Hey, shut up!” “I think he looks good,” said Coach Hedge. “’Course, I look better.” The satyr was a pastel nightmare. Aphrodite had given him a baggy canary yellow zoot suit with two-tone shoes that fit over his hooves. He had a matching yellow broad-brimmed hat, a rose-colored shirt, a baby blue tie, and a blue carnation in his lapel, which Hedge sniffed and then ate. “Well,” Jason said, “at least your mom overlooked me.” Piper knew that wasn’t exactly true. Looking at him, her heart did a little tap dance. Jason was dressed simply in jeans and a clean purple T-shirt, like he’d worn at the Grand Canyon. He had new track shoes on, and his hair was newly trimmed. His eyes were the same color as the sky. Aphrodite’s message was clear: This one needs no improvement. And Piper agreed.

Today I wondered why my eyelashes aren't thick enough and why my feet aren't small enough. Then it hit me. Why do we take these insignificant things like millimeters on lashes and shoeboxes and then try to fit ourselves into those stupid molds? Why do I take the beauty that is me, and measure it up to a shoe size? A length of hair on my eyes? Am I not the more wonderful creation, far more great than those stupid things? Why do we take ourselves and desecrate ourselves daily? Pushing ourselves into cubicles because we think we are supposed to fit into them? Are we ice cubes? And suddenly I just don't understand the inadequacies anymore! Because they're not even inadequacies, at all! I will laugh and be beautiful.

I'll show up at every classroom open house and teacher conference,' she said, now in a voice that was almost frightening in its intensity. 'I'll bake brownies. My child will have new clothes. Her shoes will fit. She'll get her shots, and she'll get her braces. We'll start a college fund next week. I'll tell her I love her every damn day.' If that wasn't a great plan for being a good mother, I couldn't imagine what a better one could be.

I told him what my dad had said. That got him laughing and as we pulled into the school parking lot, even the sight of Rafe waiting for me only made him roll his eyes. We got out. I glanced at Daniel. He sighed. "Go on." "You sound like you're giving a five-year-old permission to play with an unsuitable friend." "If the shoe fits..." I flipped him off. "Watch it or I won't marry you," he said. "Truck of no truck." I laughed and jogged over to Rafe. "Did he just say...?" Rafe began.

Buckley followed the three of them into the kitchen and asked, as he had at least once a day, “Where’s Susie?” They were silent. Samuel looked at Lindsey. “Buckley,” my father called from the adjoining room, “come play Monopoly with me.” My brother had never been invited to play Monopoly. Everyone said he was too young, but this was the magic of Christmas. He rushed into the family room, and my father picked him up and sat him on his lap. “See this shoe?” my father said. Buckley nodded his head. “I want you to listen to everything I say about it, okay?” “Susie?” my brother asked, somehow connecting the two. “Yes, I’m going to tell you where Susie is.” I began to cry up in heaven. What else was there for me to do? “This shoe was the piece Susie played Monopoly with,” he said. “I play with the car or sometimes the wheelbarrow. Lindsey plays with the iron, and when you mother plays, she likes the cannon.” “Is that a dog?” “Yes, that’s a Scottie.” “Mine!” “Okay,” my father said. He was patient. He had found a way to explain it. He held his son in his lap, and as he spoke, he felt Buckley’s small body on his knee-the very human, very warm, very alive weight of it. It comforted him. “The Scottie will be your piece from now on. Which piece is Susie’s again?” “The shoe?” Buckley asked. “Right, and I’m the car, your sister’s the iron, and your mother is the cannon.” My brother concentrated very hard. “Now let’s put all the pieces on the board, okay? You go ahead and do it for me.” Buckley grabbed a fist of pieces and then another, until all the pieces lay between the Chance and Community Chest cards. “Let’s say the other pieces are our friends?” “Like Nate?” “Right, we’ll make your friend Nate the hat. And the board is the world. Now if I were to tell you that when I rolled the dice, one of the pieces would be taken away, what would that mean?” “They can’t play anymore?” “Right.” “Why?” Buckley asked. He looked up at my father; my father flinched. “Why?” my brother asked again. My father did not want to say “because life is unfair” or “because that’s how it is”. He wanted something neat, something that could explain death to a four-year-old He placed his hand on the small of Buckley’s back. “Susie is dead,” he said now, unable to make it fit in the rules of any game. “Do you know what that means?” Buckley reached over with his hand and covered the shoe. He looked up to see if his answer was right. My father nodded. "You won’t see Susie anymore, honey. None of us will.” My father cried. Buckley looked up into the eyes of our father and did not really understand. Buckley kept the shoe on his dresser, until one day it wasn't there anymore and no amount of looking for it could turn up.

A single day in my own shoe that is comfortable for me is better than 365 days in someone else's shoes that does not fit me at all.

Being brave is one of my biggest pet peeves. When someone calls me brave for going out or wearing a fitted dress or for some other normal thing that every other girl does, what is it really means is: I would be mortified to look like you, but good for you for merely existing even if all I can think about is how fat you are & how I'm terrified I'll one day look like you. SO BRAVE.

There is a pile of clothing on the side of the train tracks. Light-blue cloth—a shirt, perhaps—jumbled up with something dirty white. It’s probably rubbish, part of a load dumped into the scrubby little wood up the bank. It could have been left behind by the engineers who work this part of the track, they’re here often enough. Or it could be something else. My mother used to tell me that I had an overactive imagination; Tom said that, too. I can’t help it, I catch sight of these discarded scraps, a dirty T-shirt or a lonesome shoe, and all I can think of is the other shoe and the feet that fitted into them.

Theologians have by this time stretched their minds so as to embrace the darwinian facts, and yet to interpret them as still showing divine purpose. It used to be a question of purpose AGAINST mechanism, of one OR the other. It was as if one should say "My shoes are evidently designed to fit my feet, hence it is impossible that they should have been produced by machinery.

These magazines could tell me which clothes and shoes to wear, how to have my hair styled in order to fit in. They could show me the right kind of makeup to buy and how to apply it. This way, I would disappear into everywoman acceptability. I would not be stared at. The goal, ultimately, was successful camouflage as a human woman.

Dislinear plotting and noncontiguous prose have their adherents, not the least of which am I, but in the end, my friends, it is character which wins or loses immortality upon the vellum. Haven’t you ever harbored the secret thought that somewhere Huck and Jim are—at this instant—poling their raft down some river just beyond our reach, so much more real are they than the shoe clerk who fitted us just a forgotten day ago?

Hey,” Fitz said, leaning closer. “You trust me, don’t you?” Sophie’s traitorous heart still fluttered, despite her current annoyance. She did trust Fitz. Probably more than anyone. But having him keep secrets from her was seriously annoying. She was tempted to use her telepathy to steal the information straight from his head. But she’d broken that rule enough times to know the consequences definitely weren’t worth it. “What is with these clothes?” Biana interrupted, appearing out of thin air next to Keefe. Biana was a Vanisher, like her mother, though she was still getting used to the ability. Only one of her legs reappeared, and she had to hop up and down to get the other to show up. She wore a sweatshirt three sizes too big and faded, baggy jeans. “At least I get to wear my shoes,” she said, hitching up her pants to reveal purple flats with diamond-studded toes. “But why do we only have boy stuff?” “Because I’m a boy,” Fitz reminded her. “Besides, this isn’t a fashion contest.” “And if it was, I’d totally win. Right, Foster?” Keefe asked. Sophie actually would’ve given the prize to Fitz—his blue scarf worked perfectly with his dark hair and teal eyes. And his fitted gray coat made him look taller, with broader shoulders and— “Oh please.” Keefe shoved his way between them. “Fitz’s human clothes are a huge snoozefest. Check out what Dex and I found in Alvar’s closet!” They both unzipped their hoodies, revealing T-shirts with logos underneath. “I have no idea what this means, but it’s crazy awesome, right?” Keefe asked, pointing to the black and yellow oval on his shirt. “It’s from Batman,” Sophie said—then regretted the words. Of course Keefe demanded she explain the awesomeness of the Dark Knight. “I’m wearing this shirt forever, guys,” he decided. “Also, I want a Batmobile! Dex, can you make that happen?” Sophie wouldn’t have been surprised if Dex actually could build one. As a Technopath, he worked miracles with technology. He’d made all kinds of cool gadgets for Sophie, including the lopsided ring she wore—a special panic switch that had saved her life during her fight with one of her kidnappers. “What’s my shirt from?” Dex asked, pointing to the logo with interlocking yellow W’s. Sophie didn’t have the heart to tell him it was the symbol for Wonder Woman.

I was born, slipping on a symphony of broken melancholy; created of pencils and crayons; i was not supposed to be this way. i guess i am a "disappointment". i paint and draw. i like to write poetry. The things I excel at could fit inside my shoe." Excerpt from the poem,"Pain"written in 1995, by E.H. Cato(my maiden name) featured in Volume 2 of the Rantings & Ravings Series, 2013.

A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity—and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.

Nathan smoothly touched the bottom with a palm. His shirt and shoes were off. When his head and chest rose out of the water, I was in awe of the muscles that were defined in his body. Unlike Silas whose bulk of muscle was smooth, Nathan was a precision machine. The ripples of muscles along his abdomen fit together like a living puzzle. A smile broke on his lips as those penetrating blue eyes fixed on my face. “Did you find out?

(At a health and fitness fair) Though normally superconfident, I am not prepared for the judgmental stares of the ultrafit. They don't know me and have no idea of my prowess in the boardroom. They're unfamiliar with my shoe collection and unaware that I live in the Dot-Com Palace. And they didn't notice me pulling up in the Caddy. All they can see is how much space I occupy. With each step I take, I feel cellulite blossoming on my arms, my stomach, my calves. Stop it! I think my chin just multiplied and my thighs inflated. No! Deflate! Deflate! And I'm pretty sure I can see my own ass out of the corner of my eye. Gah! Cut it out!! Am I imagining things, or do my footsteps sound like those of the giant who stomped through the city in the beginning of Underdog? And how did I go from aging-but-still-kind-of-hot ex-sorority girl to horrific, stompy cartoon monster in less than an hour? My sleek and sexy python sandals have morphed into cloven hooves by the time I reach the line for the race packet. While I wait, the air is abuzz with tales of other marathons while many sets of eyes cut in my direction. Eventually an asshat in a JUST DO IT T-shirt asks me, "How's your training going?

I have felt a change in me that began the day I met you. And I don't even think I can put into words or map out the changes in me since that day. I make for a terrible cartographer. The way I think and the way I see the world - even the way I talk - have changed. It's as if I was walking in a pair of shoes that fit so tight on me because my feet had grown. And then it finally occurred to me that I needed a new pair of shoes - a pair of shoes that fit my feet. The first time I walked down the street wearing those shoes, I realized how much it had hurt, how much pain I had been in, when I did something as simple as walking. It doesn't hurt anymore to walk. That's what it feels like, Dante, to walk in the changes that have occurred in me since I met you. I may not be the definition of a happy guy. But it doesn't hurt anymore to be me.

One day before he left, Jon called me into his office and he had a pair of shoes and he said, “What do you think of these shoes?” And I said, “Oh, they’re good shoes.” He said, “What size are you?” I said, “I’m a size eleven.” He said, “I’m a size eight.” And he said, “Will these fit you?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Don’t let anyone ever tell you, you can’t fill my shoes. You’re not meant to fill them.” ~ TREVOR NOAH

And how is the expectant mother? You mustn't tax yourself, you know.I don't want my nephew born early enough to raise eyebrows." Gideon laid his hand in the small of her back in a protective gesture she knew all too well. "Are you implying that I'm the kind of man who'd allow his wife to tax herself?" "If the shoe fits-" "Behave, both of you," she admonished as Gideon bristled and Jordan glared. "I swear, when you two get near each other, you act like school boys fighting over a half-pence." "Oh, you're much more valuable than a half-pence," Jordan retorted. Before Gideon could say anything to that, he added, "And in any case, I didn't come over here to anger you, moppet. I merey wanted to let you know I'm leaving." "Good," Gideon mumbled under his breath.

And there it is. I fell in love. I’m in love with Henry Mackenzie. I always assumed I would have a difficult time knowing if I was in love. What if I didn’t recognize the signs? Or what if it wasn’t as intoxicating as the whole world has built it up to be? But, for me, it feels very simple. It’s the kind of thing I know with just as much assurance as my birthday. It’s not something I feel lost in or confused by. It’s a truth, and some truths hurt more than others.

My shoes.., I put 'em on and wear 'em.., no matter how they looks.., I lov' em and I don't have to trade 'em coz are the only gift God gave me that always fit me..

Things I Used to Get Hit For: Talking back. Being smart. Acting stupid. Not listening. Not answering the first time. Not doing what I’m told. Not doing it the second time I’m told. Running, jumping, yelling, laughing, falling down, skipping stairs, lying in the snow, rolling in the grass, playing in the dirt, walking in mud, not wiping my feet, not taking my shoes off. Sliding down the banister, acting like a wild Indian in the hallway. Making a mess and leaving it. Pissing my pants, just a little. Peeing the bed, hardly at all. Sleeping with a butter knife under my pillow. Shitting the bed because I was sick and it just ran out of me, but still my fault because I’m old enough to know better. Saying shit instead of crap or poop or number two. Not knowing better. Knowing something and doing it wrong anyway. Lying. Not confessing the truth even when I don’t know it. Telling white lies, even little ones, because fibbing isn’t fooling and not the least bit funny. Laughing at anything that’s not funny, especially cripples and retards. Covering up my white lies with more lies, black lies. Not coming the exact second I’m called. Getting out of bed too early, sometimes before the birds, and turning on the TV, which is one reason the picture tube died. Wearing out the cheap plastic hole on the channel selector by turning it so fast it sounds like a machine gun. Playing flip-and-catch with the TV’s volume button then losing it down the hole next to the radiator pipe. Vomiting. Gagging like I’m going to vomit. Saying puke instead of vomit. Throwing up anyplace but in the toilet or in a designated throw-up bucket. Using scissors on my hair. Cutting Kelly’s doll’s hair really short. Pinching Kelly. Punching Kelly even though she kicked me first. Tickling her too hard. Taking food without asking. Eating sugar from the sugar bowl. Not sharing. Not remembering to say please and thank you. Mumbling like an idiot. Using the emergency flashlight to read a comic book in bed because batteries don’t grow on trees. Splashing in puddles, even the puddles I don’t see until it’s too late. Giving my mother’s good rhinestone earrings to the teacher for Valentine’s Day. Splashing in the bathtub and getting the floor wet. Using the good towels. Leaving the good towels on the floor, though sometimes they fall all by themselves. Eating crackers in bed. Staining my shirt, tearing the knee in my pants, ruining my good clothes. Not changing into old clothes that don’t fit the minute I get home. Wasting food. Not eating everything on my plate. Hiding lumpy mashed potatoes and butternut squash and rubbery string beans or any food I don’t like under the vinyl seat cushions Mom bought for the wooden kitchen chairs. Leaving the butter dish out in summer and ruining the tablecloth. Making bubbles in my milk. Using a straw like a pee shooter. Throwing tooth picks at my sister. Wasting toothpicks and glue making junky little things that no one wants. School papers. Notes from the teacher. Report cards. Whispering in church. Sleeping in church. Notes from the assistant principal. Being late for anything. Walking out of Woolworth’s eating a candy bar I didn’t pay for. Riding my bike in the street. Leaving my bike out in the rain. Getting my bike stolen while visiting Grandpa Rudy at the hospital because I didn’t put a lock on it. Not washing my feet. Spitting. Getting a nosebleed in church. Embarrassing my mother in any way, anywhere, anytime, especially in public. Being a jerk. Acting shy. Being impolite. Forgetting what good manners are for. Being alive in all the wrong places with all the wrong people at all the wrong times.

If you think the dress is right for you, where are you going to wear it? Does it fit into the kind of life you lead? (If you live in the country, what are you doing with all those town suits and hostess pajamas?) Supposing the dress is all right. If so, what shoes do you wear with it? What hat, gloves? Handbag, jewelry? […] So many women fall in love with a dress, bring it home, and find absolutely nothing that will go with it.

HAZEL WASN’T PROUD OF CRYING. After the tunnel collapsed, she wept and screamed like a two-year-old throwing a tantrum. She couldn’t move the debris that separated her and Leo from the others. If the earth shifted any more, the entire complex might collapse on their heads. Still, she pounded her fists against the stones and yelled curses that would’ve earned her a mouth-washing with lye soap back at St. Agnes Academy. Leo stared at her, wide-eyed and speechless. She wasn’t being fair to him. The last time the two of them had been together, she’d zapped him into her past and shown him Sammy, his great-grandfather—Hazel’s first boyfriend. She’d burdened him with emotional baggage he didn’t need, and left him so dazed they had almost gotten killed by a giant shrimp monster. Now here they were, alone again, while their friends might be dying at the hands of a monster army, and she was throwing a fit. “Sorry.” She wiped her face. “Hey, you know…” Leo shrugged. “I’ve attacked a few rocks in my day.” She swallowed with difficulty. “Frank is…he’s—” “Listen,” Leo said. “Frank Zhang has moves. He’s probably gonna turn into a kangaroo and do some marsupial jujitsu on their ugly faces.” He helped her to her feet. Despite the panic simmering inside her, she knew Leo was right. Frank and the others weren’t helpless. They would find a way to survive. The best thing she and Leo could do was carry on. She studied Leo. His hair had grown out longer and shaggier, and his face was leaner, so he looked less like an imp and more like one of those willowy elves in the fairy tales. The biggest difference was his eyes. They constantly drifted, as if Leo was trying to spot something over the horizon. “Leo, I’m sorry,” she said. He raised an eyebrow. “Okay. For what?” “For…” She gestured around her helplessly. “Everything. For thinking you were Sammy, for leading you on. I mean, I didn’t mean to, but if I did—” “Hey.” He squeezed her hand, though Hazel sensed nothing romantic in the gesture. “Machines are designed to work.” “Uh, what?” “I figure the universe is basically like a machine. I don’t know who made it, if it was the Fates, or the gods, or capital-G God, or whatever. But it chugs along the way it’s supposed to most of the time. Sure, little pieces break and stuff goes haywire once in a while, but mostly…things happen for a reason. Like you and me meeting.” “Leo Valdez,” Hazel marveled, “you’re a philosopher.” “Nah,” he said. “I’m just a mechanic. But I figure my bisabuelo Sammy knew what was what. He let you go, Hazel. My job is to tell you that it’s okay. You and Frank—you’re good together. We’re all going to get through this. I hope you guys get a chance to be happy. Besides, Zhang couldn’t tie his shoes without your help.” “That’s mean,” Hazel chided, but she felt like something was untangling inside her—a knot of tension she’d been carrying for weeks. Leo really had changed. Hazel was starting to think she’d found a good friend. “What happened to you when you were on your own?” she asked. “Who did you meet?” Leo’s eye twitched. “Long story. I’ll tell you sometime, but I’m still waiting to see how it shakes out.” “The universe is a machine,” Hazel said, “so it’ll be fine.” “Hopefully.” “As long as it’s not one of your machines,” Hazel added. “Because your machines never do what they’re supposed to.” “Yeah, ha-ha.” Leo summoned fire into his hand. “Now, which way, Miss Underground?” Hazel scanned the path in front of them. About thirty feet down, the tunnel split into four smaller arteries, each one identical, but the one on the left radiated cold. “That way,” she decided. “It feels the most dangerous.” “I’m sold,” said Leo. They began their descent.

There is a story told of one old wise man, whose name was Mencius. He was a follower of Confucius and he died when he was very, very old. Somebody asked him: If you were given life again, how will you start it? Said Mencius: I will pay more attention to my needs and less attention to my desires. And this realisation will come to you also. But it always comes very late and then life is no more in your hands. If you were given life again....

You're like an antidepressant in human form," I tell her. "I guess it's just the librarian in my taking over. When I'm not at the reference desk answering the same questions over and over again, I'm dreaming up the cheapest programs I can come up with for my kiddos." "Do you miss them?" I ask. "I do," she says slowly. "But I don't miss all the bullshit red tape I have to deal with. I just wish I had enough resources to do good by them, but I feel like I'm just writing grants to keep my head above water." "Have you thought what you'd do with the prize money?" I ask. She peers at me. "Pay off my student loans. Buy my library kids some great stuff we could use like iPads and design programs and as many new books as their hearts desire. What about you?

1 I don't believe in omens or fear Forebodings. I flee from neither slander Nor from poison. Death does not exist. Everyone's immortal. Everything is too. No point in fearing death at seventeen, Or seventy. There's only here and now, and light; Neither death, nor darkness, exists. We're all already on the seashore; I'm one of those who'll be hauling in the nets When a shoal of immortality swims by. 2 If you live in a house - the house will not fall. I'll summon any of the centuries, Then enter one and build a house in it. That's why your children and your wives Sit with me at one table, - The same for ancestor and grandson: The future is being accomplished now, If I raise my hand a little, All five beams of light will stay with you. Each day I used my collar bones For shoring up the past, as though with timber, I measured time with geodetic chains And marched across it, as though it were the Urals. 3 I tailored the age to fit me. We walked to the south, raising dust above the steppe; The tall weeds fumed; the grasshopper danced, Touching its antenna to the horse-shoes - and it prophesied, Threatening me with destruction, like a monk. I strapped my fate to the saddle; And even now, in these coming times, I stand up in the stirrups like a child. I'm satisfied with deathlessness, For my blood to flow from age to age. Yet for a corner whose warmth I could rely on I'd willingly have given all my life, Whenever her flying needle Tugged me, like a thread, around the globe.

 It’s weird being alone in the museum. It’s dark and eerily quiet: Only the after-hours lights are on—just enough to illuminate the hallways and stop you from tripping over your own feet—and the background music that normally plays all the time is shut off. I quickly organize the flashlights and check their batteries, and when I don’t hear Porter walking around, I stare at the phone sitting at the information desk. How many chances come along like this? I pick up the receiver, press the little red button next to the word ALL, and speak into the phone in a low voice. “Paging Porter Roth to the information desk,” I say formally, my voice crackling through the entire lobby and echoing down the corridors. Then I press the button again and add, “While you’re at it, check your shoes to make sure they’re a match, you bastard. By the way, I still haven’t quite forgiven you for humiliating me. It’s going to take a lot more than a kiss and a cookie to make me forget both that and the time you provoked me in the Hotbox.” I’m only teasing, which I hope he knows. I feel a little drunk on all my megaphone power, so I page one more thing: “PS—You look totally hot in those tight-fitting security guard pants tonight, and I plan to get very handsy with you at the movies, so we better sit in the back row.” I hang up the phone and cover my mouth, silently laughing at myself. Two seconds later, Porter’s footfalls pound down Jay’s corridor—Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! He sounds like a T. rex running from Godzilla. He races into the lobby and slides in front of the information desk, grabbing onto the edge to stop himself, wild curls flying everywhere. His grin is enormous. “Whadidya say ’bout where you want to be puttin’ your hands on me?” he asks breathlessly. “I think you have me confused with someone else,” I tease. His head sags against the desk. I push his hair away from one of his eyes. He looks up at me and asks, “You really still haven’t forgiven me?” “Maybe if you put your hands onme, I might.” “Don’t go getting my hopes up like that.” “Oh, your hopes should be up. Way up.” “Dear God, woman,” he murmurs. “And here I was, thinking you were a classy dame.” “Pfft. You don’t know me at all.” “I aim to find out. What are we still doing here? Let’s blow this place and get to the theater, fast.

I always felt that someone, a long time ago, organized the affairs of the world into areas that made sense-catagories of stuff that is perfectible, things that fit neatly in perfect bundles. The world of business, for example, is this way-line items, spreadsheets, things that add up, that can be perfected. The legal system-not always perfect, but nonetheless a mind-numbing effort to actually write down all kinds of laws and instructions that cover all aspects of being human, a kind of umbrella code of conduct we should all follow. Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect. But after this someone got through organizing everything just perfectly, he (or probably a she) was left with a bunch of stuff that didn't fit anywhere-things in a shoe box that had to go somewhere. So in desperation this person threw up her arms and said, 'OK! Fine. All the rest of this stuff that isn't perfectible, that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else, will just have to be piled into this last, rather large, tattered box that we can sort of push behind the couch. Maybe later we can come back and figure where it all is supposed to fit in. Let's label the box ART.' The problem was thankfully never fixed, and in time the box overflowed as more and more art piled up. I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. The have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don't sometimes necessarily make sense. Art is all just perfectly imperfect. Once the word ART enters the description of what you're up to , it is almost getting a hall pass from perfection. It thankfully releases us from any expectation of perfection. In relation to my own work not being perfect, I just always point to the tattered box behind the couch and mention the word ART, and people seem to understand and let you off the hook about being perfect a go back to their business.

Funnel The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost-new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died. The children honored their separate arts; two became moderately famous, three married and fattened their delicate share of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was a concert pianist. She had a notable career and wore cropped hair and walked like a man, or so I heard when prying a childhood car into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan. One died a pinafore child, she stays her five years forever. And here is one that wrote- I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive words and scratch out my short marginal notes and finger my accounts. back from that great-grandfather I have come to tidy a country graveyard for his sake, to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake. I like best to think of that Bunyan man slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan of culture to do it big. On this same scale he built seven arking houses and they still stand. One, five stories up, straight up like a square box, still dominates its coastal edge of land. It is rented cheap in the summer musted air to sneaker-footed families who pad through its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew. Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying through the mist. Where those eight children danced their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing, that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced his gifts in numbers. Back from that great-grandfather I have come to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake, to question this diminishing and feed a minimum of children their careful slice of suburban cake.

I opened it. At first sight it appeared to contain nothing except thin white paper, but when I lifted the paper I found a pair of shoes. They were made of canvas of a blue-green colour that reminded me of the Tides of the Southern Halls. The rubber soles were thick and white and they had white laces. I removed them from the box and put them on. They fitted perfectly. I tried walking about in them. My feet felt beautifully cushioned and bouncible. All day long I have been running and dancing for the sheer pleasure of feeling my feet in their new shoes. ‘Look!’ I said to the crows in the First Northern Hall when they flew down from the High Statues to see what I was doing, ‘I have new shoes!’ But the crows only cawed and flew back to their perches.

A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet—if a hero ever has a valet—bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soirées and legislative balls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes—his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.

Then he looked down, and saw that the blood streamed so much from the shoe, that her white stockings were quite red. So he turned his horse and brought her also back again. 'This is not the true bride,' said he to the father; 'have you no other daughters?' 'No,' said he; 'there is only a little dirty Ashputtel here, the child of my first wife; I am sure she cannot be the bride.' The prince told him to send her. But the mother said, 'No, no, she is much too dirty; she will not dare to show herself.' However, the prince would have her come; and she first washed her face and hands, and then went in and curtsied to him, and he reached her the golden slipper. Then she took her clumsy shoe off her left foot, and put on the golden slipper; and it fitted her as if it had been made for her.

Sanity has a deep awareness, I need help. I can’t do life right on my own. Someone outside me must intervene. The sanity of honest humility finds mercy, life, peace, and strength. By contrast, saying we don’t need help keeps us stuck on that hamster wheel of making excuses and blaming others. The end result isn’t life and peace; it’s self-righteousness, self-justification, alienation, and bitterness. Chapter 3 How Does That Shoe Fit?

Mom! Look. This one is my favorite," Devin said, pulling out a faded pink dress with a red plaid sash. The crinoline petticoat underneath was so old and stiff it made snapping sounds, like beads or fire embers. She dropped the dress over her head, over her clothes. It brushed the floor. "When I'm old enough for it to fit me, I'm going to wear it with purple shoes," she said. "A bold choice," Kate said as Devin dove back into the trunk. The attic in Kate's mother's house had always fascinated Devin with its promise of hidden treasures. When Kate's mother had been alive, she had let Devin eat Baby Ruth candy bars and drink grape soda and play in this old trunk full of dresses that generations of Morris women had worn to try entice rich men to marry them. Most of the clothes had belonged to Kate's grandmother Marilee, a renowned beauty who, like all the rest, had fallen in love with a poor man instead.

Keep your ideals with you and seek help from them. These are useless for me. Your shoe do not fit mine. I am done with the exhibitionist of yours. You are professing of something that is even worthless for you. You are so insecure and coward to accept the truth. Dnt make me as miserable as you are. Let me explore myself. Let me unlearn the lie this world has given to me . Let me just undo al the data which is being engraved on my mind. Let me be a child who is just born.

Did you flip, Mac?” “Do I look like I flipped?” He brushed my hair from my face, tucked it gently behind an ear. I shivered. He bristled with the same kind of energy Barrons did—heat, muscle, and danger. When Barrons touches me, it turns me on. But when Ryodan stands behind me, locking me in place with an arm of steel, touching me tenderly—it scares the hell out of me. “Let me tell you something about flipping, Mac,” he said softly against my ear. “Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn, as long as they don’t get caught. But evil is a completely different creature, Mac. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.” “What are you saying, Ryodan? That I flipped and I’m too stupid to know it?” “If the shoe fits.” “It doesn’t. Point of curiosity: Which camp are you and Barrons in? Corrupt to the core and don’t give a damn?

My Fellow Non-American Blacks: In America, You Are Black, Baby Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or I’m Ghanaian. America doesn’t care. So what if you weren’t “black” in your country? You’re in America now. We all have our moments of initiation into the Society of Former Negroes. Mine was in a class in undergrad when I was asked to give the black perspective, only I had no idea what that was. So I just made something up. And admit it—you say “I’m not black” only because you know black is at the bottom of America’s race ladder. And you want none of that. Don’t deny now. What if being black had all the privileges of being white? Would you still say “Don’t call me black, I’m from Trinidad”? I didn’t think so. So you’re black, baby. And here’s the deal with becoming black: You must show that you are offended when such words as “watermelon” or “tar baby” are used in jokes, even if you don’t know what the hell is being talked about—and since you are a Non-American Black, the chances are that you won’t know. (In undergrad a white classmate asks if I like watermelon, I say yes, and another classmate says, Oh my God that is so racist, and I’m confused. “Wait, how?”) You must nod back when a black person nods at you in a heavily white area. It is called the black nod. It is a way for black people to say “You are not alone, I am here too.” In describing black women you admire, always use the word “STRONG” because that is what black women are supposed to be in America. If you are a woman, please do not speak your mind as you are used to doing in your country. Because in America, strong-minded black women are SCARY. And if you are a man, be hyper-mellow, never get too excited, or somebody will worry that you’re about to pull a gun. When you watch television and hear that a “racist slur” was used, you must immediately become offended. Even though you are thinking “But why won’t they tell me exactly what was said?” Even though you would like to be able to decide for yourself how offended to be, or whether to be offended at all, you must nevertheless be very offended. When a crime is reported, pray that it was not committed by a black person, and if it turns out to have been committed by a black person, stay well away from the crime area for weeks, or you might be stopped for fitting the profile. If a black cashier gives poor service to the non-black person in front of you, compliment that person’s shoes or something, to make up for the bad service, because you’re just as guilty for the cashier’s crimes. If you are in an Ivy League college and a Young Republican tells you that you got in only because of Affirmative Action, do not whip out your perfect grades from high school. Instead, gently point out that the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are white women. If you go to eat in a restaurant, please tip generously. Otherwise the next black person who comes in will get awful service, because waiters groan when they get a black table. You see, black people have a gene that makes them not tip, so please overpower that gene. If you’re telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don’t complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don’t even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion.

Astrid turned, slowly and deliberately, toward Reyna. She looked her up and down, and then frowned, as if she couldn't quite place her. "Reyna? I didn't recognize you without the emo girl costume. Still not quite the goddess of light and beauty, are you? Big heels to fill. It'll take a while to grow into them." She looked Reyna over again. "Maybe a long while." "Oh, I fit my shoes just fine. Today, they're a sweet pair of combat boots, because today, I'm playing a different aspect of Freya. Goddess of kick-your-butt-if-you-mess-with-me. Or mess with anyone else.

This is the worst idea ever,” Lend shouted from behind the closed door as Arianna finished pinning my hair under a brunette wig. “I’ve been having a lot of those lately, but one of us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my most recent one.” “Well, you look the part, at least,” Arianna said, standing back to admire her handiwork. I was in a fitted, sleek black pantsuit with a blouse underneath. The blouse was white. I hated it already. That, combined with the too-dark hair and colored eyebrows making my tragically pale skin even white, and I was not loving life. Still, sacrifices had to be made. Jack was lying on the bed with his head hanging over the side, his face slowly turning more and more red as the blood rushed to it. He looked phenomenally bored for someone about to break into a secret international high security facility. I slipped into my favorite stilettos, took one step, and fell over. “Ouch.” Shaking off the shoes, I rubbed at my still-tender feet. The stilettos were so not happening. That did it. If I didn’t already want to destroy the Dark Queen, the fact that she had ruined my ability to wear high heels put her at the very top of my hit list. She was so going down.

There is a pile of clothing on the side of the train tracks. Light-blue cloth—a shirt, perhaps—jumbled up with something dirty white. It’s probably rubbish, part of a load dumped into the scrubby little wood up the bank. It could have been left behind by the engineers who work this part of the track, they’re here often enough. Or it could be something else. My mother used to tell me that I had an overactive imagination; Tom said that, too. I can’t help it, I catch sight of these discarded scraps, a dirty T-shirt or a lonesome shoe, and all I can think of is the other shoe and the feet that fitted into them. The

I remember at night we’d turn out the lights and bring a lamp into the bedroom closet, and push out the shoes so we could sit on the floor and read. Dad was on air raid patrol. You had to pull up your knees so you could fit and then I’d come in behind you and sit in your lap.” “This one could read when she was four years old,” my mother said to me. “She was the smartest child I ever saw.” “You’d push a towel under the door so none of the light got out,” Maeve said. “It’s funny, but somehow I had it in my mind that light was rationed, everything was rationed so we couldn’t let the light we weren’t using just pour out on the floor. We had to keep it all in the closet with us.

The Drunken Fisherman" Wallowing in this bloody sty, I cast for fish that pleased my eye (Truly Jehovah's bow suspends No pots of gold to weight its ends); Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout Rose to my bait. They flopped about My canvas creel until the moth Corrupted its unstable cloth. A calendar to tell the day; A handkerchief to wave away The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm Pouching a bottle in one arm; A whiskey bottle full of worms; And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms To mete the worm whose molten rage Boils in the belly of old age? Once fishing was a rabbit's foot-- O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot, Let suns stay in or suns step out: Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout-- The fisher's fluent and obscene Catches kept his conscience clean. Children, the raging memory drools Over the glory of past pools. Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls Its bloody waters into holes; A grain of sand inside my shoe Mimics the moon that might undo Man and Creation too; remorse, Stinking, has puddled up its source; Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage. This is the pot-hole of old age. Is there no way to cast my hook Out of this dynamited brook? The Fisher's sons must cast about When shallow waters peter out. I will catch Christ with a greased worm, And when the Prince of Darkness stalks My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . . On water the Man-Fisher walks.

Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say ye fools. Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now! - Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though;—cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die! - Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up.

Julian said he had read about a march to Washington, D.C., to be led by Martin Luther King, Jr.... "King leading a march. Who is he going to pray to this time, the statue of Abe Lincoln?" "Give us our freedom again, please suh." "King has been in jail so much he's got a liking for those iron bars and jailhouse food." The ridicule fitted our consciousness. We were brave revolutionaries, not pussyfooting nonviolent cowards. We scorned the idea of being spat upon, kicked, and then turning our cheeks for more abuse. Of course, none of us, save Julian, had even been close to bloody violence, and not one of us had spent an hour in jail for our political beliefs. My policy was to keep quiet when Reverend King's name was mentioned. I didn't want to remind my radical friends of my association with the peacemaker. It was difficult, but I managed to dispose of the idea that my silence was a betrayal. After all, when I worked for him, I had been deluded into agreeing with Reverend King that love would cure America of its pathological illnesses, that indeed our struggle for equal rights would redeem the country's baleful history. But all the prayers, sit-ins, sacrifices, jail sentences, humiliation, insults and jibes had not borne out Reverend King's vision. When maddened White citizens and elected political leaders vowed to die before they would see segregation come to an end, I became more resolute in rejecting nonviolence and more adamant in denying Martin Luther King.

Perhaps, if I had a new fountain pen instead of this wreck, or a fresh bouquet of, say, twenty beautifully sharpened pencils in a slim vase, and a ream of ivory smooth paper instead of these, let me see, thirteen, fourteen more or less frumpled sheets . . . I might start writing the unknown thing I want to write; unknown, except for a vague shoe-shaped outline, the infusorial quiver of which I feel in my restless bones, a feeling of shchekotiki . . . half-tingle, half-tickles, when you are trying to remember something or understand something or find something, and probably your bladder is full, and your nerves are on edge, but the combination is on the whole not unpleasant ( if not protracted) and produces a minor orgasm or 'petit éternuement intérieur' when at last you find the picture-puzzle piece which exactly fits the gap.

A while back a young woman from another state came to live with some of her relatives in the Salt Lake City area for a few weeks. On her first Sunday she came to church dressed in a simple, nice blouse and knee-length skirt set off with a light, button-up sweater. She wore hose and dress shoes, and her hair was combed simply but with care. Her overall appearance created an impression of youthful grace. Unfortunately, she immediately felt out of place. It seemed like all the other young women her age or near her age were dressed in casual skirts, some rather distant from the knee; tight T-shirt-like tops that barely met the top of their skirts at the waist (some bare instead of barely); no socks or stockings; and clunky sneakers or flip-flops. One would have hoped that seeing the new girl, the other girls would have realized how inappropriate their manner of dress was for a chapel and for the Sabbath day and immediately changed for the better. Sad to say, however, they did not, and it was the visitor who, in order to fit in, adopted the fashion (if you can call it that) of her host ward. It is troubling to see this growing trend that is not limited to young women but extends to older women, to men, and to young men as well. . . . I was shocked to see what the people of this other congregation wore to church. There was not a suit or tie among the men. They appeared to have come from or to be on their way to the golf course. It was hard to spot a woman wearing a dress or anything other than very casual pants or even shorts. Had I not known that they were coming to the school for church meetings, I would have assumed that there was some kind of sporting event taking place. The dress of our ward members compared very favorably to this bad example, but I am beginning to think that we are no longer quite so different as more and more we seem to slide toward that lower standard. We used to use the phrase “Sunday best.” People understood that to mean the nicest clothes they had. The specific clothing would vary according to different cultures and economic circumstances, but it would be their best. It is an affront to God to come into His house, especially on His holy day, not groomed and dressed in the most careful and modest manner that our circumstances permit. Where a poor member from the hills of Peru must ford a river to get to church, the Lord surely will not be offended by the stain of muddy water on his white shirt. But how can God not be pained at the sight of one who, with all the clothes he needs and more and with easy access to the chapel, nevertheless appears in church in rumpled cargo pants and a T-shirt? Ironically, it has been my experience as I travel around the world that members of the Church with the least means somehow find a way to arrive at Sabbath meetings neatly dressed in clean, nice clothes, the best they have, while those who have more than enough are the ones who may appear in casual, even slovenly clothing. Some say dress and hair don’t matter—it’s what’s inside that counts. I believe that truly it is what’s inside a person that counts, but that’s what worries me. Casual dress at holy places and events is a message about what is inside a person. It may be pride or rebellion or something else, but at a minimum it says, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand the difference between the sacred and the profane.” In that condition they are easily drawn away from the Lord. They do not appreciate the value of what they have. I worry about them. Unless they can gain some understanding and capture some feeling for sacred things, they are at risk of eventually losing all that matters most. You are Saints of the great latter-day dispensation—look the part.

What if Mike pitches a fit at the reception? What if he causes a scene? Did I pack enough shoes for the honeymoon? What if I don’t like living in the country? Am I supposed to plant a garden? I don’t know how to saddle a horse. What if I feel out of place? I never learned how to square dance. Is it do-si-do or allemande left? Wait…is it square dancing? Or two-stepping? I don’t even know the dances. I don’t belong out there. What if I want to get a job? There IS no job. Does J know I’m getting married today? Does Collin? Does Kev? What if I pass out during the ceremony? I’ve seen it on America’s Funniest Home Videos dozens of times. Someone always passes out. What if the food’s cold when we get to the reception? Wait…it’s supposed to be cold. Wait…some of it is, some of it isn’t. What if I’m not what Marlboro Man’s looking for? What if my face flakes off as I’m saying “I do”? What if my dress gets caught inside my panty hose? I’m so shaky all of a sudden. My hands feel so wet and clammy… I’ve never had a panic attack before. But as I would soon find out, there’s a first time for everything. Oh, Ree…don’t do this now.

And one must bear in mind the odd angle or slant that the rays of love have to take in order to reach a heart like mine. From George Swiebel’s poker game, at which I drank so much and became so garrulous, I carried away one useful idea – for an atypical foot you need an atypical shoe. If in addition to being atypical you are fastidious – well, you have your work cut out for you. And is there still any typical foot? I mean by this that such emphasis has fallen on the erotic that all the eccentricity of the soul pours into the foot. The effects are so distorting, the flesh takes such florid turns that nothing will fit. So deformity has overtaken love and love is a power that can’t let us alone. It can’t because we owe our existence to acts of love performed before us, because love is a standing debt of the soul. This is the position as I saw it. The interpretation given by Renata, something of an astrologer, was that my sign was to blame for my troubles. She had never come across a more divided screwed-up suffering Gemini, so incapable of pulling himself together. ‘Don’t smile when I talk about the stars. I know that to you I’m a beautiful palooka, a dumb broad. You’d like me to be your Kama Sutra dream-girl.

You choose this moment to act like the Abnegation?” His voice fills the room and makes fear prickle in my chest. His anger seems too sudden. Too strange. “All that time you spent insisting that you were too selfish for them, and now, when your life is on the line, you’ve got to be a hero? What’s wrong with you?” “What’s wrong with you? People died. They walked right off the edge of a building! And I can stop it from happening again!” “You’re too important to just…die.” He shakes his head. He won’t even look at me--his eyes keep shifting across my face, to the wall behind me or the ceiling above me, to everything but me. I am too stunned to be angry. “I’m not important. Everyone will do just fine without me,” I say. “Who cares about everyone? What about me?” He lowers his head into his hand, covering his eyes. His fingers are trembling. Then he crosses the room in two long strides and touches his lips to mine. Their gentle pressure erases the past few months, and I am the girl who sat on the rocks next to the chasm, with river spray on her ankles, and kissed him for the first time. I am the girl who grabbed his hand in the hallway just because I wanted to. I pull back, my hand on his chest to keep him away. The problem is, I am also the girl who shot Will and lied about it, and chose between Hector and Marlene, and now a thousand other things besides. And I can’t erase those things. “You would be fine.” I don’t look at him. I stare at his T-shirt between my fingers and the black ink curling around his neck, but I don’t look at his face. “Not at first. But you would move on, and do what you have to.” He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. “That’s a lie,” he says, before he kisses me again. This is wrong. It’s wrong to forget who I have become, and to let him kiss me when I know what I’m about to do. But I want to. Oh, I want to. I stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around him. I press one hand between his shoulder blades and curl the other one around the back of his neck. I can feel his breaths against my palm, his body expanding and contracting, and I know he’s strong, steady, unstoppable. All things I need to be, but I am not, I am not. He walks backward, pulling me with him so I stumble. I stumble right out of my shoes. He sits on the edge of the bed and I stand in front of him, and we’re finally eye to eye. He touches my face, covering my cheeks with his hands, sliding his fingertips down my neck, fitting his fingers to the slight curve of my hips. I can’t stop. I fit my mouth to his, and he tastes like water and smells like fresh air. I drag my hand from his neck to the small of his back, and put it under his shirt. He kisses me harder. I knew he was strong; I didn’t know how strong until I felt it myself, the muscles in his back tightening beneath my fingers. Stop, I tell myself. Suddenly it’s as if we’re in a hurry, his fingertips brushing my side under my shirt, my hands clutching at him, struggling closer but there is no closer. I have never longed for someone this way, or this much. He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes, his eyelids lowered. “Promise me,” he whispers, “that you won’t go. For me. Do this one thing for me.” Could I do that? Could I stay here, fix things with him, let someone else die in my place? Looking up at him, I believe for a moment that I could. And then I see Will. The crease between his eyebrows. The empty, simulation-bound eyes. The slumped body. Do this one thing for me. Tobias’s dark eyes plead with me. But if I don’t go to Erudite, who will? Tobias? It’s the kind of thing he would do. I feel a stab of pain in my chest as I lie to him. “Okay.” “Promise,” he says, frowning. The pain becomes an ache, spreads everywhere--all mixed together, guilt and terror and longing. “I promise.

I always had trouble with the feet of Jón the First, or Pre-Jón, as I called him later. He would frequently put them in front of me in the evening and tell me to take off his socks and rub his toes, soles, heels and calves. It was quite impossible for me to love these Icelandic men's feet that were shaped like birch stumps, hard and chunky, and screaming white as the wood when the bark is stripped from it. Yes, and as cold and damp, too. The toes had horny nails that resembled dead buds in a frosty spring. Nor can I forget the smell, for malodorous feet were very common in the post-war years when men wore nylon socks and practically slept in their shoes. How was it possible to love these Icelandic men? Who belched at the meal table and farted constantly. After four Icelandic husbands and a whole load of casual lovers I had become a vrai connaisseur of flatulence, could describe its species and varieties in the way that a wine-taster knows his wines. The howling backfire, the load, the gas bomb and the Luftwaffe were names I used most. The coffee belch and the silencer were also well-known quantities, but the worst were the date farts, a speciality of Bæring of Westfjord. Icelandic men don’t know how to behave: they never have and never will, but they are generally good fun. At least, Icelandic women think so. They seem to come with this inner emergency box, filled with humour and irony, which they always carry around with them and can open for useful items if things get too rough, and it must be a hereditary gift of the generations. Anyone who loses their way in the mountains and gets snowed in or spends the whole weekend stuck in a lift can always open this special Icelandic emergency box and get out of the situation with a good story. After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of

I jumped then. It seemed I heard a child laugh. My imagination, of course. And then, when I should have known better, I headed for the closet and the high and narrow door at the very back end and the steep and narrow dark stairs. A million times I’d ascended these stairs. A million times in the dark, without a candle, or a flashlight. Up into the dark, eerie, gigantic attic, and only when I was there did I feel around for the place where Chris and I had hidden our candles and matches. Still there. Time did stand still in this place. We’d had several candle holders, all of pewter with small handles to grasp. Holders we’d found in an old trunk along with boxes and boxes of short, stubby, clumsily made candles. We’d always presumed them to be homemade candles, for they had smelled so rank and old when they burned. My breath caught! Oh! It was the same! The paper flowers still dangled down, mobiles to sway in the drafts, and the giant flowers were still on the walls. Only all the colors had faded to indistinct gray—ghost flowers. The sparkling gem centers we’d glued on had loosened, and now only a few daisies had sequins, or gleaming stones, for centers. Carrie’s purple worm was there only now he too was a nothing color. Cory’s epileptic snail didn’t appear a bright, lopsided beach ball now, it was more a tepid, half-rotten squashy orange. The BEWARE signs Chris and I had painted in red were still on the walls, and the swings still dangled down from the attic rafters. Over near the record player was the barre Chris had fashioned, then nailed to the wall so I could practice my ballet positions. Even my outgrown costumes hung limply from nails, dozens of them with matching leotards and worn out pointe shoes, all faded and dusty, rotten smelling. As in an unhappy dream I was committed to, I drifted aimlessly toward the distant schoolroom, with the candelight flickering. Ghosts were unsettled, memories and specters followed me as things began to wake up, yawn and whisper. No, I told myself, it was only the floating panels of my long chiffon wings . . . that was all. The spotted rocking-horse loomed up, scary and threatening, and my hand rose to my throat as I held back a scream. The rusty red wagon seemed to move by unseen hands pushing it, so my eyes took flight to the blackboard where I’d printed my enigmatic farewell message to those who came in the future. How was I to know it would be me? We lived in the attic, Christopher, Cory, Carrie and me— Now there are only three. Behind the small desk that had been Cory’s I scrunched down, and tried to fit my legs under. I wanted to put myself into a deep reverie that would call up Cory’s spirit that would tell me where he lay.

When it begins it is like a light in a tunnel, a rush of steel and steam across a torn up life. It is a low rumble, an earthquake in the back of the mind. My spine is a track with cold black steel racing on it, a trail of steam and dust following behind, ghost like. It feels like my whole life is holding its breath. By the time she leaves the room I am surprised that she can’t see the train. It has jumped the track of my spine and landed in my mothers’ living room. A cold dark thing, black steel and redwood paneling. It is the old type, from the western movies I loved as a kid. He throws open the doors to the outside world, to the dark ocean. I feel a breeze tugging at me, a slender finger of wind that catches at my shirt. Pulling. Grabbing. I can feel the panic build in me, the need to scream or cry rising in my throat. And then I am out the door, running, tumbling down the steps falling out into the darkened world, falling out into the lifeless ocean. Out into the blackness. Out among the stars and shadows. And underneath my skin, in the back of my head and down the back of my spine I can feel the desperation and I can feel the noise. I can feel the deep and ancient ache of loudness that litters across my bones. It’s like an old lover, comfortable and well known, but unwelcome and inappropriate with her stories of our frolicking. And then she’s gone and the Conductor is closing the door. The darkness swells around us, enveloping us in a cocoon, pressing flat against the train like a storm. I wonder, what is this place? Those had been heady days, full and intense. It’s funny. I remember the problems, the confusions and the fears of life we all dealt with. But, that all seems to fade. It all seems to be replaced by images of the days when it was all just okay. We all had plans back then, patterns in which we expected the world to fit, how it was to be deciphered. Eventually you just can’t carry yourself any longer, can’t keep your eyelids open, and can’t focus on anything but the flickering light of the stars. Hours pass, at first slowly like a river and then all in a rush, a climax and I am home in the dorm, waking up to the ringing of the telephone. When she is gone the apartment is silent, empty, almost like a person sleeping, waiting to wake up. When she is gone, and I am alone, I curl up on the bed, wait for the house to eject me from its dying corpse. Crazy thoughts cross through my head, like slants of light in an attic. The Boston 395 rocks a bit, a creaking noise spilling in from the undercarriage. I have decided that whatever this place is, all these noises, sensations - all the train-ness of this place - is a fabrication. It lulls you into a sense of security, allows you to feel as if it’s a familiar place. But whatever it is, it’s not a train, or at least not just a train. The air, heightened, tense against the glass. I can hear the squeak of shoes on linoleum, I can hear the soft rattle of a dying man’s breathing. Men in white uniforms, sharp pressed lines, run past, rolling gurneys down florescent hallways.

What breaks in me? Some sinew cracks! 'tis whole again; oars! oars! Burst in upon him! I grow blind; hands! stretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is't night? Oars, oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for ever too late, Ahab may slide this last, last time upon his mark; I see: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! - Oh, all ye sweet powers of air, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a woman's fainting fit. Up helm, I say ye fools. Is this the end of all my bursting prayers? all my lifelong fidelities? Oh, Ahab, Ahab, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up helm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on towards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me now! - Stand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now help Stubb; for Stubb, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Who ever helped Stubb, or kept Stubb awake, but Stubb's own unwinking eye? And now poor Stubb goes to bed upon a mattrass that is all too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee, thou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins of as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would yet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh! thou grinning whale, but there'll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye not, O Ahab! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Stubb die in his drawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though; cherries! cherries! cherries! Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die! - Cherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Stubb, I hope my poor mother's drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will now come to her, for the voyage is up.

I was headed into the final fitting of my leg. I’d gone through the test socket phase and my leg was finally ready. I was so excited! I walked into the physical therapy lab and shouted, “Man, I cannot wait to put this leg on and walk!” My physical therapist, Bob, and the prosthetist exchanged nervous glances. My right leg was still pretty weak and by all normal standards, I should not be able to walk right away. But then, of course, I never like to be like everyone else. They had me wheel over to the parallel bars to attach my new leg. “We’re just going to have you stand for now,” said Bob. “Nah, I’m walking.” I offered up my best shit-eating grin. “Let’s just see how it feels,” Bob replied with some firmness. I stood up and said, “I feel good. I feel really good.” Bob relented and they let me try to walk. They put a belt around me so that Bob could hold on to me as I walked the parallel bars. Most guys can use the parallel bars for support. I only have one arm so that only helped me so much. Good thing I didn’t really need them. I started walking without faltering right away. “Yeah, this feels good. I feel good. You can back up,” I told them. They backed up and I started walking by myself, holding on with one hand. Then, feeling bolder, I lifted my hand off the bar. I took a step. And then another step. I was walking without any help. I walked up and down those parallel bars the very first day I put on my leg. I did all this with an audience. Dad and Uncle Johnny were right there with me, watching and cheering me on. They were so excited. Uncle Johnny snapped a picture and sent it to my mom back home in Alabama. And as any proud mom would do, she sent that picture to everyone she knew. That picture went the pre-viral version of viral! It was a triumphant snapshot. I was walking again. And not only that, I was wearing those shiny new New Balance shoes the nice ladies had given me. As the picture made the rounds through my mom’s friends and friends of her friends and friends of friends of friends, somehow it ended up with people at New Balance. They reached out to my mom to ask what sizes of shoe Colston and I wore. She told them and then soon after that, Colston and I had matching sneakers.

I might be a fan of Audubon, I suppose." "Ah, birds. I can tell a lot about a person by the type of art they're drawn to. You say Audubon, and I think of someone with a meticulous eye for detail. But that's an easy assumption, isn't it? Not the sort of thing that impresses someone like you much." "Like me?" "Uh-huh. Skeptic." He studied her intently, and she was surprised to find herself unaffected, buffered from his scrutiny by her coat and her mittens, her ugly shoes and her padded socks, her warm cup of coffee and her anonymity. He rubbed his chin with his knuckle. "I would say a person who hangs Audubon on her walls is a person who believes in God, but not necessarily religion. A person who believes in free will, but also in the existence of a natural pecking order, pardon the pun, in all societies. Aware of it, and accepts it. I would say such a person has the capacity to be awed by nature and horrified by it, in equal amounts. A scientist's brain, but an artist's soul. How am I doing?" Alice smiled. "Remarkable." "You're not impressed. I see I'll have to up my game." He looked at her face, her eyes, and she looked back at him blandly, keeping her sharp corners hidden. She had little practice talking to strangers but embraced the thought that she could play the role of anyone she chose, trying on imagined identities to see what fit: businesswoman here for a meeting, opera impresario, wealthy collector, lover en route to a secret assignation. "Hmm," he said, narrowing his eyes while he watched her. "It's not so much an admiration for the artist as it is for the subject matter, correct? What is it about birds? People envy them the ability of flight, of course, but it must be more. Maybe not just their ability to fly, but to fly away 'from', is that it? To leave trouble behind, be free from boundaries, from expectations.

If it's so easy -- if it only takes a day, a moment, a new dress, and some shoes and a hairstyle that didn't quite suit you -- to transform someone into something that fits into my world, why on earth would it matter to me at all?

I drove to the bar Theodosha had called from and parked on the street. The bar was a gray, dismal place, ensconced like a broken matchbox under a dying oak tree, its only indication of gaiety a neon beer sign that flickered in one window. She was at a table in back, the glow of the jukebox lighting her face and the deep blackness of her hair. She tipped a collins glass to her mouth, her eyes locked on mine. “Let me take you home,” I said. “No, thanks,” she replied. “Getting swacked?” “Merchie and I had another fight. He says he can’t take my pretensions anymore. I love the word ‘pretensions.’” “That doesn’t mean you have to get drunk,” I said. “You’re right. I can get drunk for any reason I choose,” she replied, and took another hit from the glass. Then she added incongruously, “You once asked Merchie what he was doing in Afghanistan. The answer is he wasn’t in Afghanistan. He was in one of those other God-forsaken Stone Age countries to the north, helping build American airbases to protect American oil interests. Merchie says they’re going to make a fortune. All for the red, white, and blue.” “Who is they?” But her eyes were empty now, her concentration and anger temporarily spent. I glanced at the surroundings, the dour men sitting at the bar, a black woman sleeping with her head on a table, a parolee putting moves on a twenty-year-old junkie and mother of two children who was waiting for her connection. These were the people we cycled in and out of the system for decades, without beneficial influence or purpose of any kind that was detectable. “Let’s clear up one thing. Your old man came looking for trouble at the club today. I didn’t start it,” I said. “Go to a meeting, Dave. You’re a drag,” she said. “Give your guff to Merchie,” I said, and got up to leave. “I would. Except he’s probably banging his newest flop in the hay. And the saddest thing is I can’t blame him.” “I think I’m going to ease on out of this. Take care of yourself, kiddo,” I said. “Fuck that ‘kiddo’ stuff. I loved you and you were too stupid to know it.” I walked back outside into a misting rain and the clean smell of the night. I walked past a house where people were fighting behind the shades. I heard doors slamming, the sound of either a car backfiring or gunshots on another street, a siren wailing in the distance. On the corner I saw an expensive automobile pull to the curb and a black kid emerge from the darkness, wearing a skintight bandanna on his head. The driver of the car, a white man, exchanged money for something in the black kid’s hand. Welcome to the twenty-first century, I thought. I opened my truck door, then noticed the sag on the frame and glanced at the right rear tire. It was totally flat, the steel rim buried deep in the folds of collapsed rubber. I dropped the tailgate, pulled the jack and lug wrench out of the toolbox that was arc-welded to the bed of the truck, and fitted the jack under the frame. Just as I had pumped the flat tire clear of the puddle it rested in, I heard footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a short, thick billy club whip through the air. Just before it exploded across the side of my head, my eyes seemed to close like a camera lens on a haystack that smelled of damp-rot and unwashed hair and old shoes. I was sure as I slipped into unconsciousness that I was inside an ephemeral dream from which I would soon awake.

He moved into a large sitting area, past a sunken bath that could fit ten and through a set of double doors, where he tossed her on the bed. She bounced as she hit and looked up. He didn’t break eye contact as he shed his jacket, tossing it over on a chair. “Strip.” “You first.” Frank toed off his shoes and loosened his tie, pulling it over his head then dropping it to the floor. “Tell you what. Whoever’s naked first, gets to be on top.” He gave her a lecherous grin and was rewarded with a rosy blush, coloring her cheeks. “Okay.” She climbed off the bed. “On the count of three.” “One,” Frank said and lifted his hands to the top of his dress shirt. She did the same, bracing for the count like a racer on the blocks, her hands behind her neck. “Three.” Frank unbuttoned the collar, and tugged the shirt over his head, including the T-shirt underneath. “That’s cheating,” she said, as she fumbled with the hooks down the back of her blouse. “You had a head start. I’m evening the field.” He ripped his belt off and undid his fly and dropped his boxers and pants all at once. She froze and gasped, staring, hunger in her eyes, snapped out of the spell and tossed her blouse and bra to the side, moving fast, but not fast enough. Her skirt puddled around her ankles as Frank stood, as bare as the day he was born. “I win.” She kicked her garment to the side and placed her hands on her hips. Her chest rose and fell, pebbled nipples displayed against gloriously soft skin and full breasts. Her eyes were wild and her soft blonde hair tousled, like she’d already taken a roll in the sack. Man, did he want to make a bigger mess of it.

I feel oddly like the prince from Cinderella, but instead of searching for the foot that fits the shoe, I’m looking for the dick that fits my pussy. There’s

Scott doesn’t suspect anything, right?” I ask. “Are you kidding? He knows pretty much everything,” Travis says as if there was ever a doubt. “What? Did you tell him?” I accuse. “Etty, he’s turning thirty. He’d have to be a moron to not know there is going to be a party. You always order food from the same place, and we both live in a shoe box, so your parents’ house is the only place that could fit more than five people. It didn’t take Einstein.” I chew on my bottom lip. “We will have to do something spontaneous,” I say, nodding my head. “Slow down,” he says, holding up his hands. “Don’t go crazy. The party we planned is fine.” Why does everyone always say that to me? Like they think I go overboard on everything. Which is so untrue. Everything I plan is with love, and I am in complete control the whole time. It’s the plans that have a mind of their own. I mean, did I ask the magician to put my mom in that box for his ‘Disappearing Trick’ even though my mother’s claustrophobic? No. And after I calmed her down and she drank a bottle of wine I think even she appreciated that it was a pretty cool trick. And my dad fumbling with the keys to get her unlocked and punching out the magician− it was so romantic. Sadly, I did lose my security deposit on that one.

All my life, I have gotten everything I ever wanted. I have a mother and father who are incredibly successful. We live in a big house in upstate New York where my parents own a horse farm. I’m attending this prestigious college and I don’t have to worry about anything. To everyone looking on, I have it all. But no one knows how very lonely I am. No one knows that my parents work every minute of every day. No one knows that I’m having trouble fitting in at school. I work really hard to hide my need for more. More what? I have no idea. But I need more. I don’t know why I thought I’d find it by befriending Bob Caster. Bob Caster, the bad boy. Bob Caster, the dreamy man who makes me want to ask him a thousand questions and just sit back and listen to the answers. Bob Caster, who, although he is incredibly poor—you can tell by the quality of his clothes and shoes—probably has more than I do. He probably even has friends. Real ones. Not just the ones who want to be around me because I can buy the shots.

Thomas glanced back at the stairs, excited nerves leaping in his stomach. “Is Eliza coming?” After the words escaped his mouth he realized how comical he sounded. Of course she was coming. “I mean to say, is Eliza ready?” A wide grin washed over Kitty’s face, as if she were hiding something. “She’ll be down shortly.” Thomas nodded and rested his fidgety hands on the back of the embroidered chair. Nathaniel led Kitty to the other seat and helped her to sit. At that moment, the dainty tap of Eliza’s shoes on the stairs forced Thomas to whirl around. Nathaniel came up behind him. “Steady, boy.” Thomas clenched his jaw to keep it from gaping and dropped his hands to his sides. His eyes traced Eliza’s dainty form. She was even more radiant in that gown than he’d imagined and her face glittered with the most magnificent smile he’d ever seen. The fitted gown accentuated her perfect curves and impossibly tiny waist. The white lace around the neckline tickled her creamy skin, while the dusty-pink color drew out the rosy nature of her cheeks and lips. He tried, but he couldn’t stop staring. Her hair was curled like Kitty’s and wrapped with a delicate ribbon that matched the color of her gown. Her creamy complexion and the velvety look of her long neck were so enticing he had to fight the sudden urge to taste it. Eliza curtsied low and dipped her head. Upon rising she lifted her lashes and spoke to him in a tantalizing timbre. “Good evening, Thomas.” Thomas’s heart beat with such profound strength, it ripped every word from his mind. He wanted to say how beautiful she was. He wanted to tell her he was sorry for keeping his distance when she needed him. Even more than that, he wanted to move his face near hers, and inhale her graceful rose scent deep into his lungs before tasting her lips once again. Every appropriate response fled his mind as his blood raced around his body. He bowed. “Good evening, Eliza.” “Do my eyes deceive me?” Nathaniel, back to his charismatic self, pushed Thomas aside and kissed Eliza’s hand as he bowed with dramatic flare. “You are even more alluring than Aphrodite herself, my dear.” Eliza smiled again and giggled low in her throat. “You are too generous, Doctor.” “I am too enamored. You and your sister shine like the stars themselves.” A hearty grin flashed across his proud face. “Shall we go in to dinner?” He took his place beside Kitty and sent a flashing glance to Thomas, no doubt intended to instruct him to make the most of the moment. Thomas could kill himself. Good evening? That’s all he could say? Eliza’s body faced away from him, but she turned in his direction and the rest of her followed, her gown sweeping across the floor. Thomas closed the space between them, offering his arm. “Shall we go in?” Her slender hand grasped his arm. “You look very nice this evening, Thomas.” Thomas’s tongue dried up in his mouth, shriveling his ability to speak. He could never compete with Nathaniel’s theatrical praises. He’d have to just say what he thought. “You’re a vision, Eliza.” Her

It’s like I’ve said before, you can’t possibly walk a mile in my shoes, or anyone else’s. They don’t fit, and you would be bitching to get them off in about a minute and a half, so don’t even try. Just be there to understand, and maybe once in a while check in and see how that person is doing. None of us is asking you to fix it. We just want to be understood.

You choose this moment to act like the Abnegation?” His voice fills the room and makes fear prickle in my chest. His anger seems too sudden. Too strange. “All that time you spent insisting that you were too selfish for them, and now, when your life is on the line, you’ve got to be a hero? What’s wrong with you?” “What’s wrong with you? People died. They walked right off the edge of a building! And I can stop it from happening again!” “You’re too important to just…die.” He shakes his head. He won’t even look at me--his eyes keep shifting across my face, to the wall behind me or the ceiling above me, to everything but me. I am too stunned to be angry. “I’m not important. Everyone will do just fine without me,” I say. “Who cares about everyone? What about me?” He lowers his head into his hand, covering his eyes. His fingers are trembling. Then he crosses the room in two long strides and touches his lips to mine. Their gentle pressure erases the past few months, and I am the girl who sat on the rocks next to the chasm, with river spray on her ankles, and kissed him for the first time. I am the girl who grabbed his hand in the hallway just because I wanted to. I pull back, my hand on his chest to keep him away. The problem is, I am also the girl who shot Will and lied about it, and chose between Hector and Marlene, and now a thousand other things besides. And I can’t erase those things. “You would be fine.” I don’t look at him. I stare at his T-shirt between my fingers and the black ink curling around his neck, but I don’t look at his face. “Not at first. But you would move on, and do what you have to.” He wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. “That’s a lie,” he says, before he kisses me again. This is wrong. It’s wrong to forget who I have become, and to let him kiss me when I know what I’m about to do. But I want to. Oh, I want to. I stand on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around him. I press one hand between his shoulder blades and curl the other one around the back of his neck. I can feel his breaths against my palm, his body expanding and contracting, and I know he’s strong, steady, unstoppable. All things I need to be, but I am not, I am not. He walks backward, pulling me with him so I stumble. I stumble right out of my shoes. He sits on the edge of the bed and I stand in front of him, and we’re finally eye to eye. He touches my face, covering my cheeks with his hands, sliding his fingertips down my neck, fitting his fingers to the slight curve of my hips. I can’t stop. I fit my mouth to his, and he tastes like water and smells like fresh air. I drag my hand from his neck to the small of his back, and put it under his shirt. He kisses me harder. I knew he was strong; I didn’t know how strong until I felt it myself, the muscles in his back tightening beneath my fingers. Stop, I tell myself. Suddenly it’s as if we’re in a hurry, his fingertips brushing my side under my shirt, my hands clutching at him, struggling closer but there is no closer. I have never longed for someone this way, or this much. He pulls back just enough to look into my eyes, his eyelids lowered. “Promise me,” he whispers, “that you won’t go. For me. Do this one thing for me.” Could I do that? Could I stay here, fix things with him, let someone else die in my place? Looking up at him, I believe for a moment that I could. And then I see Will. The crease between his eyebrows. The empty, simulation-bound eyes. The slumped body. Do this one thing for me. Tobias’s dark eyes plead with me. But if I don’t go to Erudite, who will? Tobias? It’s the kind of thing he would do. I feel a stab of pain in my chest as I lie to him. “Okay.” “Promise,” he says, frowning. The pain becomes an ache, spreads everywhere--all mixed together, guilt and terror and longing. “I promise.

The first step in these arguments was to prove that the design existed. Nature was ransacked for results obtained through separate things being co-adapted. Our eyes, for instance, originate in intra- uterine darkness, and the light originates in the sun, yet see how they fit each other. They are evidently made FOR each other. Vision is the end designed, light and eyes the separate means devised for its attainment. It is strange, considering how unanimously our ancestors felt the force of this argument, to see how little it counts for since the triumph of the darwinian theory. Darwin opened our minds to the power of chance-happenings to bring forth 'fit' results if only they have time to add themselves together. He showed the enormous waste of nature in producing results that get destroyed because of their unfitness. He also emphasized the number of adaptations which, if designed, would argue an evil rather than a good designer. Here all depends upon the point of view. To the grub under the bark the exquisite fitness of the woodpecker's organism to extract him would certainly argue a diabolical designer. Theologians have by this time stretched their minds so as to embrace the darwinian facts, and yet to interpret them as still showing divine purpose. It used to be a question of purpose AGAINST mechanism, of one OR the other. It was as if one should say "My shoes are evidently designed to fit my feet, hence it is impossible that they should have been produced by machinery." We know that they are both: they are made by a machinery itself designed to fit the feet with shoes. Theology need only stretch similarly the designs of God. As the aim of a football-team is not merely to get the ball to a certain goal (if that were so, they would simply get up on some dark night and place it there), but to get it there by a fixed MACHINERY OF CONDITIONS—the game's rules and the opposing players; so the aim of God is not merely, let us say, to make men and to save them, but rather to get this done through the sole agency of nature's vast machinery. Without nature's stupendous laws and counterforces, man's creation and perfection, we might suppose, would be too insipid achievements for God to have designed them.

Joanie’s treatment of me wore me down, so I started to gravitate toward her cousin Robin, who was alpha like Joanie but in an entirely different direction. Robin was a full-on flower child and lesbian, a beauty with cocoa-brown skin, hazel eyes, and natural hair down her back. In fitted Levi’s jean suits and boys’ shoes, she turned people’s heads with her braless breasts pointed out like little missiles.

Name: Alya Fall Storm Age: 18 Gender: Female DOB: September 13 Sexuality: Straight Description: Black hair and dark blue eyes - the hidden beauty you have to discover Long Brown hair, navy blue eyes. Fair skin, 5'6. Has a small scar at the top of her left cheek from an incident in training. Style: Wears mostly black and combat boots because she is a knight and always needs to be ready. When she's off duty she wears leggings and fitted t-shirts and a flannel around her waist. Always wears tennis shoes or her fuzzy socks. Personality/ history: She's fierce and has the hard outside personality of a guard as she was trained to. But under the knight exterior she misses the family that she never had and the reason she became a knight was so that she could prevent others from getting hurt like she was when she was kicked out of the orphanage at the age of 12. She began her training at 14 and graduated at 16. She doesn't have many friends she keeps to herself spending her free time reading, drawing, or training. Likes: Reading, drawing, running, puppies, horses, riding, cheesecake, sugar cookies. Dislikes: Green beans, being underestimated. Fears: Snakes Occupation: Knight

My therapist says I’m too empathetic for my own good. That I pick up on other people’s emotions and feelings and then I feel them myself even when it hurts. And she’s right. That’s why I have to separate myself from others, from even life sometimes … to keep safe the soft core that shines when I find people like me … who are good but broken. Who want nothing but happiness. Who would give you their shoes, or their stories, or sometimes even their own precious, collected shards. The shards that they’ve worked for, and love, and treasure. And sometimes they do give them. And sometimes you give them back some of yours. And you’re surprised to find that these shards fit better.

Passing through the gates of the property was like passing into a memory that no longer fit. I was a foot too big for a shoe, deformed by the world beyond as I returned to the landscape of my boyhood.

I'm not scared of you, she said automatically. Someone once said only the things worth fighting for scare you." He flinched. "Turning my own words back on me?" "If the shoe fits...

Where is he?” I say. I have been waiting for hours to ask that question. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was chasing Tobias through Dauntless headquarters. No matter how fast I ran he was always just far enough ahead of me that I watched him disappear around corners, catching sight of a sleeve or the heel of a shoe. Jeanine gives me a puzzled look. But she is not puzzled. She is playing with me. “Tobias,” I say anyway. My hands shake, but not from fear this time--from anger. “Where is he? What are you doing to him?” “I see no reason to provide that information,” says Jeanine. “And since you are all out of leverage, I see no way for you to give me a reason, unless you would like to change the terms of our agreement.” I want to scream at her that of course, of course I would rather know about Tobias than about my Divergence, but I don’t. I can’t make hasty decisions. She will do what she intends to do to Tobias whether I know about it or not. It is more important that I fully understand what is happening to me. I breathe in through my nose, and out through my nose. I shake my hands. I sit down in the chair. “Interesting,” she says. “Aren’t you supposed to be running a faction and planning a war?” I say. “What are you doing here, running tests on a sixteen-year-old girl?” “You choose different ways of referring to yourself depending on what is convenient,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Sometimes you insist that you are not a little girl, and sometimes you insist that you are. What I am curious to know is: How do you really view yourself? As one or the other? As both? As neither?” I make my voice flat and factual, like hers. “I see no reason to provide that information.” I hear a faint snort. Peter is covering his mouth. Jeanine glares at him, and his laughter effortlessly transforms into a coughing fit. “Mockery is childish, Beatrice,” she says. “It does not become you.” “Mockery is childish, Beatrice,” I repeat in my best imitation of her voice. “It does not become you.” “The serum,” Jeanine says, eyeing Peter. He steps forward and fumbles with a black box on the desk, taking out a syringe with a needle already attached to it. Peter starts toward me, and I hold out my hand. “Allow me,” I say. He looks at Jeanine for permission, and she says, “All right, then.” He hands me the syringe and I shove the needle into the side of my neck, pressing down on the plunger. Jeanine jabs one of the buttons with her finger, and everything goes dark.

It hurt. I counted three splinters in my hand. “Ha,” Samantha said. It has been said that behind every successful man there is a woman, and by extension we can say that behind every escaping Dexter is a really annoying Samantha, because her happiness at seeing me fail spurred me to new heights of inspiration. I took off my shoe and fitted it over the top of the stake and smacked it experimentally. It didn’t hurt nearly as much, and I was sure I could hammer it hard enough to make a hole in the locker’s floor.

Do you need a ride?” He said again. “No, actually.” “Come on. I’ll take you home.” I don’t need a ride. That’s my bike.” Maggie pointed to the bike at his feet. He didn’t look down at the bike, which made Maggie think he was aware all along that it was hers. “It’ll fit in my trunk.” “No, thank you. I’ll ride it home. It’s a big bike.” “It’s a big trunk.” Maggie stared at him, confused by his sudden appearance and his even more sudden interest in spending time in her company. “Why?” “It was made that way. Most of the cars made in the ‘50’s had decent sized trunks.” “Ha ha, very funny. That’s not what I meant and you know it. Why do you want to take me home?” Maggie almost smiled at his dry attempt at humor. But she didn’t. It still hurt too much to look at him, to be near him, and her smile stayed dormant. “I want to talk to you.” “I had the very distinct impression the last time we were together that I made you angry. Plus, I’m thinking your driver’s license is long expired. You shouldn’t be driving.” “Ha, ha, very funny,” Johnny mimicked her. “Have you always been such a goody-two shoes?” “Nobody says goody-two-shoes anymore!” Maggie said crossly and walked to her bike, squatting beside it to undo the lock. “Maggie,” he coaxed. “Maggie?” She really tried not to look up at him. “How do you drive a blonde crazy?” Maggie’s head shot up, and her eyes locked on his. “You put him in a round room and tell him to sit in the corner,” Johnny quipped, but his eyes were serious. “Not bad, Kinross. Did you make that up yourself?

It was another beautiful crisp, clear day, in what has always been considered picturesque Überlingen. The village was internationally known for its traditional beauty and was a popular vacation destination long before the war. As usual, there was just a hint of a breeze off the brilliantly blue lake and I could understand why so many Germans would come here for their urlaub or vacation. Having a little money left over from the last check sent by Mina, I found a nice room for the three of us, overlooking the lake at a classy resort hotel. For the next two days we lived quite comfortably in our new surroundings. In fact we even enjoyed a real hot bath, something that I had almost forgotten. As I soaked in the warm, sudsy water I could hear my children laughing and giggling in the next room, and longed for a time when the world would be at peace again. During the day we walked along the shore of the beautiful Bodensee, but in the back of my mind, I knew that this was nothing more than a horrible illusion and couldn’t last; besides I had to find work. In reality, the children and I would have to settle in somewhere so that we could find some sort of stability. It was also important that they enroll in a school again. That “somewhere” turned out to be a room in a house owned by two old ladies who took in boarders. The old house faced the railroad station and was quaint in the old world style. It fit right into the picture postcard appearance of romantic Überlingen. Erika, the younger of the two ladies, was very kind and helpful to me. There were also two other tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Koestoll. He was German and she seemed to be what could be considered a typical French housewife, who devoted her life to her German husband. Herr Koestoll, was old and feeble and they sustained themselves on a very small pension. In fact it was so bad that he couldn’t even afford shoes. However their happiness didn’t seem to depend on money. I grew very fond of them for the short time that we knew each other.

Stepmother taps her chin and frowns at Moody’s dress. “She needs some pin tucks in the skirt to give it more lift. And put some padding into the bodice to fill out her bosom-” “Motherrr!” Moody whines. “What? It’s no secret you’re flat as a floor.” Loony cackles while Moody throws a murderous look. “At least my chest doesn’t fall on my lap when I sit down.” Loony frowns. “Are you calling me fat?” “Well, if the shoe fits-” “Come, come, girls,” Stepmother says. I’m glad she stopped them. I’ve seen my stepsisters fight before and it’s like cats, all clawing and hissing. I don’t care if they go to the ball with red scratches on their faces but they could ruin Moody’s gown. “You

I got you a bunch of stuff today at the store. Why don’t you check it out?” she asks. His brow arches. “You got stuff for me?” He grins and whoops and goes to rummage through the bags. He is a teenage boy, and I do have experience with those beasts. The girls, not so much. When Sky’s not looking, I chuck him on the shoulder and warn, “Even if you don’t like it, pretend you do. Don’t hurt her feelings.” “Are you kidding?” he asks. He holds up a T-shirt. “These are great.” He tries his shoes on, and they fit. She bought Vans, so she couldn’t go wrong there. He loves them. “You shouldn’t have, Aunt Sky,” he says. He gets up and goes to her. She’s grinning from ear to ear. He picks her up and spins her around. “Thank you,” he says. She squeals. “I have to get used to that hugging thing you do,” she says. “Why?” he asks. He looks confused. I have a feeling Sky didn’t get much affection as a child. But these kids were steeped in it. “It’s just…not something I’m used to,” she says. Seth’s face falls. “Do you want me to stop?” he asks. “I hugged my mom all the time.” “If you stop, I’ll have to ground you or make you wear a funny hat to school or something. Hell, I don’t know how to torture you, but I’d come up with something.” She laughs, but I can tell she’s uncomfortable. He wraps his arm around her shoulder again and squeezes her. She squeaks a little, and he laughs. “You’re like a little mouse,” he says. “Do you whisper when you’re angry, too?” She punches his shoulder. “You’ll find out if you keep it up.

It was an instant-fix afternoon quickie, and the Architect was a master of the kind. After I locked my front door after him, still radiant from recent orgasmic thrill, I had it all figured out: love yourself. Take care of yourself. Nurture yourself. Have your needs met; and everything will fit in its space. Eventually, if not earlier. Yet, there was one thing I was unable to grasp: How come men can do the nasty with their shoes on (how do they take their pants off?), yet they never fail to take off their handwatches?

But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do;

Every great idea has a spark of inspiration. Divine…if the shoe fits. Every great spark of inspiration comes from a remarkably intense passion, love, or desire. It can be out of love for God, a family member, a lover, child, friend, or just out of a desire to be compassionate and help others. It can be an intense passion for music, art, physical comforts, or beauty. It can be from the desire to prove those who hurt, wrong, or doubt them wrong because they themselves are not yet capable of asking questions and chasing dreams which seem so far away. The paradox of any genius or creative virtuoso is that they see one plus one does not equal two and they do not consult the mathematicians to hear what they have to say about this. When the idea or project they desire to create is fueled from a combination of these previously mentioned factors and then ignited by a pure intention of their heart and soul it is more than the sum of its’ parts. It is no longer a song composed of a melody and words or a picture brushed with paint upon an easel. It is a masterpiece with an explanation which can only be hinted or pointed at. Just like the moon can only reflect the light passed on to it by the sun. Personally, a master watch maker is a person I look up to. They lovingly and thoughtfully put immense energy and concentration on putting seemingly small pieces into place that once put into place learn to work on their own in perfect synchronization and harmony. However, this working together of gears and pieces does not happen by itself; It happens because the master had a vision of what he wanted and put in the time, energy, love, and effort to make it happen. The designer didn’t have it materialize right in front of their face instantly. Rather, they had faith it would come together a piece at a time. It’s my mission to find as many of these Masters who don’t run away from their ability to love, be loved, and create. The more we present beauty to those around us, the quicker others will find light within themselves. The more assistance we give to those we know struggling with poverty both inside and externally, the quicker we change this world into what it’s meant to be.

Well, why doesn’t Thomas play the part?” Nigel said, eyeing the strapping young man. “He’s certainly imposing enough for it.” “That’s entirely the problem,” Lucy said. “He’s too big. When he tried on the robe, it started to rip across the shoulders.” “Surely there’s someone else…” Nigel trailed off at the look on Lucy’s face. “Good Gad, no,” he exclaimed. “You cannot begin to think—” “Of course!” Amelia’s face lit up as she grabbed his arm. With the small portion of his mind not taken up with the horror of Lucy’s plan to make a complete fool out of him, he noted that Amelia did seem to be touching him rather a lot this evening. Now she was also bouncing up and down in her pretty white and gold spangled shoes. “You’d make a splendid Father Christmas, Mr. Dash, because you have such an easy way with children. I’m sure the robe will fit, and we can adjust the wreath in an instant.” “The wreath?” Nigel repeated in a hollow voice. He fastened his appalled gaze on Philbert, who nodded in masculine sympathy “Well, Father Christmas must wear his crown of mistletoe, Nigel,” Lucy said in coaxing voice. “He wouldn’t look authentic without it.” “Surely, there must be someone else,” Nigel said, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt. “One of the other servants, perhaps.” Lucy shook her head. “The footmen are too big and the scullery boy is too small.” When the corner of her mouth quirked up, Nigel had the sneaking suspicion she was beginning to enjoy the absurdity of the situation. Lucy knew he disdained costume balls and masquerades as undignified romps and refused to step foot in them. “I know it’s a lot to ask, Nigel, my dear, but you are certainly the best candidate to replace Philbert.” Amelia was still clutching his sleeve, but now she brought her pleading gaze to bear on him as well. “Please, Mr. Dash, it would mean so much to the children. I would be enormously grateful if you would be so kind as to play the part of Father Christmas.” Her beautiful brown eyes, full of concern for her younger siblings, pleaded with him. Blast it, the young ones had probably been looking forward to the treat for days, and would be sorely disappointed if it failed to materialize. And he had a feeling Amelia had been looking forward to it too, if for no other reason than to see the excitement on the children’s faces. With a mental sigh, Nigel consigned his dashing new persona to the dust heap. Life, it would seem, had consigned him to play only one role—that of dependable old Nigel Dash, always ready to take on whatever necessary task fate and the ladies of the beau monde decreed for him. “Of course, Miss Easton,” he said. “I am only too happy to help.

You don't accept me for who I am. You judge me, yet you haven't lived in my shoes. If you can't respect me for who I am, leave me alone and let me live my life.

Twenty years prior to my birth, Marie Curie advocated the use of Radiography in the diagnosis of injuries and treatment of wounded soldiers during World War I. The advances in X-ray machines were rapid and by the 1920’s they were everywhere. Shoe-fitting, fluoroscope machines, known in England as Pedoscopes, which displayed a continuous X-ray image on a monitor, were outside most of the better shoe stores and were a great toy to play with. I thought that it was fun to hop onto a Pedoscope, when the clerk wasn’t looking, and stick my feet into its openings. Looking down through the scope, I could see the bones in my toes wiggle around. My family doctor, Dr. Kooperstein, and his colleague, Dr. Franklin, bought an upright fluoroscope machine, giving me a chance to see my insides moving around in real time. Wow, what impressed me was how complicated everything was inside of me! Modern medicine was making great advances and I was there to witness them. Penicillin came into use in the early 1940’s and perhaps could have saved my sister’s life, if only it had been developed fifteen years earlier. The twenty-second bursts of radiation from the shoe machines and that of the fluoroscope machine used by my doctors were many times greater than the X-ray machines in use now. Even at these elevated bursts of radiation, I doubt that I was in any great danger, but shoe clerks fitting shoes have been known to receive radiation burns requiring the amputation of their hands and arms. Doctors and nurses were also in danger of the effects of being over-radiated, but at that time radiation poisoning wasn’t known and was of little concern to anyone.

The first thing I would show players at our initial day of training was how to take a little extra time putting on their shoes and socks properly. The most important part of your equipment is your shoes and socks. You play on a hard floor. So you must have shoes that fit right. And you must not permit your socks to have wrinkles around the little toe—where you generally get blisters—or around the heels. I showed my players how I wanted them to do it. Hold up the sock, work it around the little toe area and the heel area so that there are no wrinkles. Smooth it out good. Then hold the sock up while you put the shoe on. And the shoe must be spread apart—not just pulled on the top laces. You tighten it up snugly by each eyelet. Then you tie it. And then you double-tie it so it won’t come undone—because I don’t want shoes coming untied during practice, or during the game. I don’t want that to happen. That’s just a little detail that coaches must take advantage of, because it’s the little details that make the big things come about. The sentiments above are John Wooden’s, the most successful coach in the history of college basketball.

Told you there was a bottle of cheap champagne at the end of the safety-briefing rainbow,” Henry whispers into my ear.

Name: Alya Fall Storm Age: 16 Gender: Female DOB: September 13 Sexuality: Straight Description: Black hair and blue eyes - the hidden beauty you have to discover Long Brown hair, navy blue eyes. Fair skin, 5'6. Has a small scar at the top of her left cheek from an incident in training. Style: Wears mostly black and combat boots because she is a knight and always needs to be ready. When she's off duty she wears leggings and fitted t-shirts and a flannel around her waist. Always wears tennis shoes or her fuzzy socks. Personality/ history: She's fierce and has the hard outside personality of a guard as she was trained to. But under the knight exterior she misses the family that she never had and the reason she became a knight was so that she could prevent others from getting hurt like she was when she was kicked out of the orphanage at the age of 12. She began her training at 14 and graduated at 16. She doesn't have many friends she keeps to herself spending her free time reading, drawing, or training. Likes: Reading, drawing, running, puppies, horses, riding, cheesecake, sugar cookies. Dislikes: Green beans, being underestimated. Fears: Snakes Occupation: Knight

Name: Alya Fall Storm Age: 16 Gender: Female DOB: September 13 Sexuality: Straight Description: Black hair and dark blue eyes - the hidden beauty you have to discover Long Brown hair, navy blue eyes. Fair skin, 5'6. Has a small scar at the top of her left cheek from an incident in training. Style: Wears mostly black and combat boots because she is a knight and always needs to be ready. When she's off duty she wears leggings and fitted t-shirts and a flannel around her waist. Always wears tennis shoes or her fuzzy socks. Personality/ history: She's fierce and has the hard outside personality of a guard as she was trained to. But under the knight exterior she misses the family that she never had and the reason she became a knight was so that she could prevent others from getting hurt like she was when she was kicked out of the orphanage at the age of 12. She began her training at 14 and graduated at 16. She doesn't have many friends she keeps to herself spending her free time reading, drawing, or training. Likes: Reading, drawing, running, puppies, horses, riding, cheesecake, sugar cookies. Dislikes: Green beans, being underestimated. Fears: Snakes Occupation: Knight

You are not born to peace, my friend. This is the first thing you must accept. You will not come to it, perhaps, till the day you die. Each of us has his own cross, you know, made and fitted to his reluctant shoulders.

I just want to live my life the way it is happening. I do not want to expect, plan or steer it in any direction.

Don’t buy shoes that don’t fit. Or feel uncomfortable. You won’t wear them in, as the assistant promises that you will. Blisters always hurt.

It was not imprisonment, supposedly, but simply that all Manchus needed special protection because they were related to the royal house and so were part of officialdom. Actually it was a luxurious imprisonment, for this was the Chinese way of conquering enemies. When the Manchu invasion of 1644 was successful in a military sense-and almost any people could invade China successfully, it seemed, in a military sense-China did not resist. The people were apparently passive, mildly curious, and even courteous to their conquerors. The real struggle came afterwards, but so subtly that the conquerors never knew they were being conquered. The technique of victory was that as soon as the invaders laid down their arms the philosophical but intensely practical Chinese persuaded them to move into palaces and begin to enjoy themselves. The more the new rulers ate and drink, the better pleased the Chinese were, and if they also learned to enjoy gambling and opium and many wives, so much the better. One would have thought that the Chinese were delighted to be invaded and conquered. On the pretext of increased comfort, the men shoes were persuaded to live in especially pleasant part of any city, and to be protected by special guards against rebellious citizens. This meant they were segregated and since they were encouraged to do no work, the actual and tedious details of the government were assumed performed by the chinese, ostensibly for them. The result of this life of idleness and luxury was that the Manchus generally became a fit while the Chinese administered the government. The Manchus were like pet cats and the Chinese kept them so, knowing that when the degeneration was complete, a Chinese revolutionary would overthrow the rotten structure. Revolution was in the Chinese tradition and every dynasty was overthrown, if not by foreign invasion, then by native revolution.

Why are your feet so huge?" Hermes asked. Then he met Dionysus's gaze and raised a brow. "Is it true what they say about shoe size and dick size?" "I'm not sure what they say," said Dionysus. "But I'd really rather not talk about my dick with you." "Fine," Hermes said, sniffing. "I was just curious." "Well, I need these fucking shoes to fit," said Dionysus. "Well, you have magic, idiot. Make them!" "They are your gods-damned shoes. I can't change them!" "You can add to them! Wrap vines around your fucking feet!" said Hermes. "Gods, and you think I'm stupid.

My eyes trail the stranger’s body, noting the contrast between my dirty sneakers and his shiny dress shoes. His legs are thick, but his suit pants are perfectly tailored to fit his strong thighs. His crisp white shirt is practically see-through, showcasing his tatted skin, and when my gaze falls on the thin gold chain around his neck, I realize who I ran into. My body, thanks to the warmth flowing through me from the unexpected contact, knows too.

My workout is part of my day. I don’t change clothes, wear special shoes, drive anywhere, pay a membership or even get sweaty. It’s simple: I don’t want to bulk up or enter any weightlifting competition — I just want to improve overall health and fitness by making my entire body stronger.

The shoes were of white leather and fur, with impractical heels that would add half a foot to my height, but unlike every other adornment I had been presented with, they did not sparkle with frost or ice-encrusted jewels. Somehow, he had woven the fur with the petals of cherry blossoms, as if the pale beast who had owned the pelt had rubbed its back against a tree. When I touched them, a spring breeze fluttered against my fingers, and I smelled rain and green, growing things. "If you would allow me the honor, Your Highness?" Wendell said. In one quick, graceful motion, he slid the boots from my feet and replaced them with the shoes. They fit perfectly, and oh, they were so warming. I felt astonished that I hadn't realized how cold my feet had been before.

My blood turns to lava, and I think I might just explode. Being called brave is one of my biggest pet peeves. When someone calls me brave for going out or wearing a fitted dress or for some other normal thing that every other girl does, what it really means is: I would be mortified to look like you, but good for you for merely existing even if all I can think about is how fat you are and how I’m terrified I’ll one day look like you. So brave.

I grin down at her as I take out my mouthpiece. “Just playing by the rules. Moo, bitch. Moo.

My hair, always pale, is now flossy white and very, very long. It is fine too, finer it seems with each passing day. It is my one vanity- Lord knows I haven't much else to be vain about. Not any more. It has been with me a long time- since 1989, this present crop. I am fortunate indeed that Sylvia is happy to brush it for me, oh so gently; to plait it, day in, day out. It is above and beyond her job description and I am very grateful. I must remember to tell her so. I missed my chance this morning, I was too excited. When Sylvia brought my juice I could barely drink it. The thread of nervous energy that had infused me all week had overnight become a knot. She helped me into a new peach dress- the one Ruth bought me for Christmas- and exchanged my slippers for the pair of outside shoes usually left to languish in my wardrobe. The leather was firm and Sylvia had to push to make them fit, but such price respectability. I am too old to learn new ways and cannot abide the tendency of the younger residents to wear their slippers out. Face paint restored some life to my cheeks, but I was careful not to let Sylvia overdo it. I am wary of looking like an undertaker's mannequin. It doesn't take much rouge to tip the balance: the rest of me is so pale, so small. With some effort I draped the gold locket around my neck, its nineteenth-century elegance incongruous against my utilitarian clothing. I straightened it, wondering at my daring, wondering what Ruth would say when she saw.

Remember when I fell down the stairs at Mom’s funeral? Yes, I was wasted, but I was also trying to stuff my feet into shoes that didn’t fit. I worry that you’re trying to squeeze yourself into being a stay-at-home mom, when that’s clearly not the right fit for you.