New Shoes

Angel was driving April to the mall to get new shoes.  Angel told her, “You’re my best friend, so I’m going to be honest; you need matching shoes.” 

April took her advice to heart, and went with her to the same Lady Foot Locker that she stole the single converse shoe, to obtain a full pair of shoes.  April and April rolled through the streets of Lakewood, while April rolled through a number of reasons that she wanted to wear two different shoes, but Angel demanded that she try.  April had a problem with trying.  When April failed to go to her third detention, Angel told her to go to the fourth one so that she wouldn’t get kicked out, and so that April’s mom would let April go out paroling the streets on Saturdays.  Her Mom never knew where they went, she just left.  “Bye, Mom,” were the words she left her Mom and her apartment, before jumping in the navy pickup truck.  Angel would step on the pedal and surf the streets, while April would stick her head out the window and feel the rush of the air whooshing through her eyelids and pushing her cheeks back.  It wouldn’t have been surprising to have been seen by some satirical omniscient omnipresent viewer of the situation, rabbits and children running away from the path of the truck, and any type of remorse of April and Angel would be left behind, through the exhaust, in the form of smoke.

On the way to Lady Foot Locker, April could sense a rush of sound and emotion coming from the streets ahead.  April had seen in the news earlier that there was a protest going on, but she didn’t realize she would cross its path on her way to her attempt to normalcy.  People marched with a lack of intimacy.  April and Angel drove slowly against the crowd, surfing their way through, like a beach ball over the hands of an audience.  Their eyes seemed angry and lacked sympathy, even though they were supporting a worthy cause, of raising the salaries of the local school teachers.  April felt like it was one of those situations where, for a lot of the people, it was only an excuse to get together and cause a ruckus, to make a mockery of the fact that people are able, on this place on the planet, to do what they want.  It was one of those situations where people got together and made a fuss because they were able too, behind some type of an excuse.  Some people probably wanted something changed, but she could see in their eyes and in their gate that some people were there just for the sake of it, just for the fun.  To abuse this right struck April as unnecessary, and she looked to these people, and she got a sense that they only shouted loud because they wanted to shout, and that they only raised their posters high because they wanted to be seen in this obscene way, and she felt disgust.  She looked to Angel, who was trying to drive her way through the problem.  Though April couldn’t see Angel’s eyes though her sunglasses, she knew Angel knew what was going on.  “It’s poison,” said April.

                Angel parked her car across from a sandwich place.  April got out, dug her hands in her pockets, and looked over to where the protest was going on.  People paced back and forth, with a rhythm like busy ants, while bobbing their posters up and down.  “Such a worthy cause,” Angel said, “But such an unworthy group.  They don’t give a shit, they just want a reason to be out here.  Only the dignified will ever really be seen.”  April had seen this before; not the situation, the theme, a theme of the uncontrollable taking over: in history books, in the amount of junk food she allowed in her pantry.  Suddenly, something struck April on the back of her head.  Some children were throwing a baseball back and forth and it had escaped their control.  April gripped her forehead and fell to the ground, and the last thing she saw was the demonstration of people.  Angel ran to her side and put her jacket under her head.  “Someone call an ambulance!” shouted Angel.  To the protestors they were invisible. 

                April’s head spun into a cyclone of fury.  Everything went black, and then she opened her eyes, and everything seemed to be fine, but she wasn’t across the street from the sandwich shop, and she wasn’t with April.  She thought to herself that she must be unconscious.  It was like a dream where she knew she was dreaming, but she wasn’t dreaming.  She had been knocked unconscious.  What she saw and felt had a sense of depth and immediacy to it.  She looked down to a tile floor, white and spotless.  She felt like there was something behind her vision, like she was sitting in her eyes, and what she saw was being shown to her instead of her seeing it, but she took what her unconscious was giving her.  People below him were rummaging about, preparing for something.  April’s point of interest was the floor.  She just stood there, staring at the floor, while there was commotion going on in the room next to her.  She sensed more from just being there, staring at the sparkling white tile, next to the mystery room, in a mystery location, than she felt she ever would have by going around and asking the people questions, or talking, or being a part of what was going on.  April felt her blood rush through her veins.  She made a decision to leave the comfort of the tile on the floor, to guide herself to figure out what was going on.  Her vision shifted from down to up.  She walked through a hall to a room that was inhabited by a man behind a podium, shuffling papers, adjusting his glasses.  It was like her perspective came from not staring down the guy at the podium, or the people circling him, but from knowing how she felt just by being someone that was there.  April walked a bit and stood in the center of the room, feeling the awkward feeling like she didn’t belong there, like she was intruding on something that shouldn’t concern her.  The people seemed to know she was there, and they didn’t seem to care.  They just continued to shuffle about.  A sense of reality entered April’s psyche, but she knew she it wasn’t real.  The air of the room was secretive yet revealing, mysterious yet intriguing.  She was the peaceful stranger.

                Then April closed her eyes, and opened them again.  April was sitting on a porch with some people she had never met before.  One had brown curly hair and had stars for eyes, and wore an Adidas hoodie and a Cubs baseball hat.  Another boy had blonde hair and several brown eyes.  Next to them was a girl with short, sparkling, black hair, with a folded quilt on her lap. 

“What am I doing here?” April said out loud.  April looked out to the sky and saw several meteors fly across each other, in a crisscross pattern.  Posters littered the lawns on the street.  The posters had black backgrounds with white lettering.  Posters with the statements “Teachers Make Our Future Leaders,” and “Teachers Are the New Believers,” were posted throughout the neighboring lawns, except on the lawn of the house that had the porch where April was sitting.  There were no posters on that lawn.  The girl unfolded her quilt and covered April, herself, and the two boys.  “Our families don’t believe in these kinds of protests,” the girl said.  “People need to find other ways of getting what they want.”

“How?” April asked.  The boy with the brown curly hair looked at her with his stars for eyes.  “No one knows,” he said, squeezing the blanket.  “These things that seem like remedies- they’re poison.”

April looked down at the blanket.  There were many handprints on it.  The girl with the black sparkling hair took April’s hand, placed it on the blanket, and then removed it.  April’s handprint marked the blanket.  “Thank you,” she said.

April’s vision went spiraling into a mirage of colors until she saw the clouds and the sky of Lakewood. 

“Are you ok?” asked Angel, kneeling down by her side.  The children that were throwing the ball and a few other people had crowded around them.  “Yeah, I’m alright,” she said.  She slowly stood up, with Angel’s support, and retained her balance.  “Let’s go buy some shoes.”

I attempted to emulate A Visit from the Goon Squad, subtly, through the theme of public relations, where many of the characters work in public relations with musicians and other public figures, and part of my story is about a situation where public relations is present.  I also found the presence of subtlety dominant in A Visit from the Goon Squad, so I wrote a story where subtlety is also present, throughout the meaning of the plot of the story.