maya's favorite shoes lose some of their sparkle

Maya wiggled her toes in us, her watermelon sandals, flashing her pink glitter pedicure in the warm midsummer sun. Her light blonde hair had been separated into two braids that morning and coiled on top of her head like bear ears, but now it had fallen down while she played in the sprinkler and now was a wet mass of tangled waves. Her mother took her inside the house and used a rattail comb to separate it and braided her hair so tightly that her eyebrows were pulled into an expression of perpetual surprise.

"Mom, it's too tight!" she shrieked. Her mother removed the elastic bands and fixed Maya's hair again, this time a little looser, telling Maya not to touch her hair again. Maya found her favorite doll, Cinderella, and took her outside into the sprinkler to play. Cinderella's hair was as ratted and finespun as cotton candy; Maya's mother would just get her a new one for Christmas anyway. While Maya was telling Cinderella that she was a good girl with good friends, Shayla's mom drove up to their house in her green SUV and parked it nearly diagonally in the driveway, simply because Shayla's mom couldn't park. She took Shayla out of her pink toile car seat and brought Shayla around to the backyard where Jane was watching Maya.

"Hey Jane, how are y'all?" Shayla's mom Ashley asked as she chewed mint gum in her mouth and held the toddler on her skinny hipbone.

"Fine, and y'all?" Jane asked. Ashley put Shayla down on the ground, at which point Shayla ran to play with Maya in the sprinkler. The two women chatted until they heard Maya screaming.

"Those are my shoes, Shayla!" Maya yelled. Shayla said nothing because she couldn't talk very well. She was six months younger than Maya, and not nearly as vocal. While Shayla could say simple sentences explaining what she wanted, this statement bothered her as her brows furrowed in deep thought. Shayla gave up on finding the words, shook her head in confusion, and reached out and grabbed Maya by the ankles, pulling her down on the ground, screaming the words 'no' and 'mine' as tears ran down Maya's face.

"Baby Shayla doesn't want those! She doesn't want them," Maya said as Jane and Ashley came to separate them. Maya had forgotten about the black sparkle shoes as they were replaced in the summer by sandals with flowers on them as her favorite shoes, but like an old faithful friend, Maya had remembered them as soon as she saw them on Shayla. The shoes whispered quietly, trying to explain to Maya that they were too small for her now, but Maya couldn't hear them, and after that day, shoes lost their magical powers in her mind, and would never speak again. Instead she focused her vivid imagination on her cat, Dave.

lucky shoes, lucky in love?

Ana gingerly opened the box, again, feeling slightly queasy. This was the second time that she had opened the box, only there was an outer sarcophagus made of corrugated cardboard and packing tape to cut through first. After discarding the styrofoam packing peanuts, she finally found the brown box with the white loopy type on the lid, and opened it. We were like new again, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Her shoes were brought back to life by the sorcerers at Louboutin.

She pulled us out of the box, and slipped us on her pedicured feet. She had a date, with the guy that she referred to as "Kazinsky's friend". Kazinsky's friend's name was actually Brian, but her relationships were so fleeting that she didn't really talk about men by name, but by who her friends might know who may know her date. So, this one had been dubbed Kazinsky's friend, after the incredibly geeky guy who worked in the information technology department at the university, fixing networks and recovering accidentally deleted files.

Brian dropped by her apartment later that night and picked her up in his new F-150, and took her to the city to a fairly swanky Italian restaurant with cloth napkins, oversized white plates, and candlelit tables. Everything was perfect, including us, her beautiful lucky Louboutin shoes. They played footsie under the table, and she felt that they had a connection. After the dinner was over, he asked for the check and suggested that they walk downtown and admire the canal and street performers.

"But my shoes," she said, looking down at us as she spoke apologetically.

"That's fine, I'll just get my truck from the valet and we'll just go back to my apartment. It's nearby, do you want to watch a movie?" he asked. She agreed, and after the movie, they sat on his black leather couch inside a townhouse apartment downtown. Everything was going well, and this was their sixth date. She was a rules girl and had finally felt it was time to take it to the sheets.

Afterward, she laid in his bed, falling asleep. He nudged her, and said, "Hey, I think you should go now."

"But it's 2 am, and I don't have my car here, can't I stay?" she asked, confused and bewildered.

"Yeah, well at this stage in our relationship, I don't think it's a good idea that you sleep over," he said.

"What am I supposed to do?" she asked.

"I'll call a cab," he said, picking up his phone.

"Don't bother," she said and walked to the door. It was 5 steps away, but she was there in three.

"Hey, hey, hey! Why are you leaving like this?" he asked.

"Because you're an asshole," she said, thinking about how absurd it was that he was going to send her on a $50 cab ride alone, at 2 am.

"Look, I'm sorry, I just don't feel it's appropriate at this point in our relationship," he repeated. She whipped out her cell and text messaged a friend who was in the city that night, clubbing. She then walked out the door, and waited for her friend to pick her up. There was a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk across the street, and she pleaded to God that her friend would pick her up soon, so she could take off her shoes, shower, and go to bed.