“Two Shiny Shoes”

by Quinn Tyler Jackson

[Note: “Two Shiny Shoes” is a short story as imagined having been written by Valery Rockford after the events and timeline of the coda of The Fourth Winter. It is presented here as part of an imagined short story collection titled The Books Between Us: Beyond Echo and Shadow, possibly authored by her.]

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“Two Shiny Shoes”

Valery Elizabeth Rockford

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By the time Isabel had learned which staircase led to the library without passing the Grade Six classrooms, October had begun. She had been at the school nearly a month, which was long enough to know where everything was and not nearly long enough for any of it to feel as though it belonged to her.

Her father was a land surveyor, which meant that he spent his working life determining exactly where things were while his family was forever going somewhere else. There had been Prince George, then Kamloops, then a year outside Nanaimo, then eight months in a town Isabel could barely remember except for the smell of the pulp mill when the wind came from the wrong direction. This move had happened four weeks after school started, almost the worst possible time, because everyone already knew where to sit at lunch and which people they were supposed to dislike.

Her parents never fought about the moves. Nobody fought much about anything. Her mother packed the same labelled boxes, her father apologized for the inconvenience as if he had personally invented geography, and Regina complained about leaving her friends but made new ones so quickly that it hardly seemed to count. There was no mystery to Isabel’s family. They loved one another, they ate dinner together, they remembered birthdays, and whenever they moved they simply carried themselves into the next house.

Regina was fifteen and in Grade Ten. Everyone except their parents called her Gina. She had straight blond hair, knew how to make whatever she wore look as though she had chosen it rather than merely put it on, and could read a novel perfectly well when one was assigned to her, although Isabel had never once seen her voluntarily spend Saturday afternoon with one. Gina regarded Isabel’s appetite for books with the tolerant affection she might have shown an otherwise harmless medical condition.

Isabel preferred libraries to houses anyway. Libraries had rules. Books remained where someone had decided they belonged, and if something had been put in the wrong place there was a system for finding it again. She particularly loved Enid Blyton because children in those books could be dropped into practically any difficulty and, provided they paid attention, eventually discover what had happened. There were footprints, overheard conversations, dark, secret passages, suspicious strangers and clues that looked meaningless until the right person looked at them twice.

That was what Isabel liked best: people became explicable.

She met Kelly in the school library on a Wednesday. Kelly was in Grade Seven and sat alone at a table beside the windows, although there were three empty tables farther away. She wore her dark hair almost to her chin and had the expression of someone who had already heard what you were going to say and disliked it.

Isabel was reading Five Go to Smuggler’s Top when Kelly said, “Bit young for that, aren’t you?”

Isabel looked up. “No.”

“How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“Exactly.”

Isabel considered this reasoning insufficient and returned to her book. A few minutes later the girl asked her name, and when Isabel told her, Kelly stared at her hair.

“What?”

“Nothing, Carrots.”

Isabel’s hair was auburn, according to her mother, who said it was unusual and Regina said she would appreciate it when she was older, although Isabel had not yet discovered any practical advantage to it.

“My name is Isabel.”

“I heard you.”

Kelly smiled for the first time. It was not a particularly nice smile, but it was a beginning.

After that Kelly started appearing in the library with enough regularity that Isabel eventually stopped believing it was accidental. Sometimes she read, although not for long. More often she sat opposite Isabel and complained about people. Teachers were idiots because they enjoyed ordering children around, her classmates were idiots because they cared who liked whom, and the petty officer at Sea Cadets was an idiot because he could apparently discover dust on a uniform from across a room. Her parents were not exactly idiots, Kelly said, but they were impossible, which appeared to be worse.

Kelly had joined Sea Cadets after turning twelve. This surprised Isabel because nothing about Kelly suggested an enthusiasm for obedience.

“So you have to stand straight while people inspect you?”

“Obviously.”

“And they tell you how your clothes have to look? Like at this school?”

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“Uniforms. But not like here. Cadet uniforms have to shine, squared away from beret to boots.”

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“That sounds worse than here.”

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“It’s not school.”

That apparently answered it.

The first time Isabel saw the Thermos, she assumed it contained tea. Kelly carried it in her school bag and sometimes took it into the library at lunch. It was small, with a dent near the bottom and a cup that screwed over the top, although Kelly never used the cup.

One afternoon she unscrewed it, took a swallow and made a small face. Isabel smelled something sharp.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

“It doesn’t smell like nothing.”

Kelly held the Thermos tightly against her chest for a moment and then grinned. “Vodka.”

Isabel thought she was joking until Kelly held it beneath her nose. She jerked back.

“That’s alcohol.”

“Very good, Carrots. You have a sense of smell.”

“You’re not allowed.”

Kelly rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell anybody.”

Isabel said nothing, which was apparently not enough.

“You’re not going to tell, are you?”

“No.”

“Promise.”

“I said no.”

Kelly took another small swallow, screwed the lid back on and asked whether Isabel wanted any. When Isabel refused, Kelly asked if she was scared, and Isabel said she wasn’t. Kelly waited as though expecting a better answer, but Isabel opened her book.

“You’re strange,” Kelly said.

That seemed to settle the matter.

Isabel did not tell. She told herself that Kelly barely drank any, that sometimes days went by without the Thermos appearing, and that Kelly never staggered or slurred her words or seemed much different afterwards except perhaps quieter. Isabel began collecting these facts as though they were clues.

She also began reading different books. She stopped going straight to the mysteries and wandered into the shelves the librarian had once called “life problems,” although the books themselves never used that phrase. There was one with two children sitting on opposite ends of a sofa while their parents argued behind a half-closed door, another about a girl whose father drank too much, and one with a boy on the cover staring at a telephone because his mother lived in another city. Isabel found a thin book about bullies that seemed written for children younger than she was, a thicker one about families under stress that she understood only in pieces, and another whose smiling cover promised to explain what made a good friend. One said that people who behaved badly were sometimes unhappy themselves. Isabel did not think Kelly was a bully exactly, because bullies were supposed to be enemies.

Kelly was her friend. At least Isabel thought she was.

Kelly waited for her after school and sometimes saved her a seat. Once she shoved a Grade Six boy’s pencil case onto the floor after he made a remark about Isabel’s hair and told him to pick on someone who cared. She also called Isabel Carrots at least twice a day, told her she dressed like somebody’s grandmother, said her favourite books were for babies, and observed after Isabel got ninety-six on a spelling test that knowing how to spell things was what happened when nobody invited you anywhere.

Isabel learned to ignore most of it. When Kelly became particularly unpleasant, she went to the library and tried to find out why.

The books were very good at knowing what sort of trouble they contained. By the time Isabel reached the last page, the angry father was angry for a reason, the lonely girl had learned why she felt lonely, and the child being picked on had usually found somebody sensible to tell. Isabel could shut the cover and understand what the book had been about.

Kelly was more difficult.

One afternoon in November, Kelly came to the library and did not insult Isabel at all. She sat down, folded both arms on the table and rested her forehead on them. Isabel read three pages before asking what was wrong.

“Nothing.”

Isabel kept reading, because she had discovered that this sometimes worked better than asking twice.

After perhaps a minute Kelly said, “My parents were yelling last night.”

Isabel closed the book. “At you?”

“At each other.”

“About what?”

“Everything. Money. My dad being late. My mom saying something and him saying she always says that and her saying he never listens. You know.”

Isabel did not know. “My parents don’t do that very much.”

“Of course they don’t.”

Isabel heard the insult but could not determine what it was. Kelly stared out the window for a while and then said, without looking back, “They’re not my real parents anyway.”

Isabel waited.

Kelly looked at her. “I’m adopted.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all you can say?”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

“Nothing. You’re not supposed to say anything.”

Kelly’s face had changed. It was not softer exactly. Isabel had never seen her look frightened before, and it took a moment to recognize it.

“Does everyone know?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t tell anybody.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

Kelly worried at a loose thread on her sleeve. “I was a baby. I don’t remember anyone else or anything. They’re my parents. It’s just—”

She stopped.

“What?”

“When they’re fighting, sometimes I think maybe they made a mistake.”

“About adopting you?”

Kelly shrugged. “That’s what everyone says. That they chose me.”

“It seems important.”

“It isn’t when they’re shouting.”

Isabel thought about this for a while. “I don’t think people stop being your parents because they’re angry.”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“No.”

Kelly looked quite surprised. Most people, Isabel suspected, would have argued.

Eventually Kelly smiled. “You’re weird, Carrots.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me something.”

“What?”

“Something you don’t tell other people. Tit for tat.”

Isabel said she didn’t have anything, which Kelly declared impossible. There were no terrible secrets in Isabel’s family. Her father snored. Her mother sometimes ate chocolate in the kitchen after everyone else had gone upstairs. Gina had once kissed a boy behind a portable classroom at her previous school, but that was Gina’s secret and therefore did not count.

Isabel looked down at her book. “When we first moved here, I ate lunch in the girls’ washroom.”

Kelly laughed before she could stop herself.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t know anybody.”

“So you sat on a toilet?”

“I sat on the closed seat.”

That made Kelly laugh harder. Isabel immediately regretted telling her.

“You said you wouldn’t make fun.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were supposed to.”

“Fine. Fine.”

Kelly stopped laughing and asked if Isabel had really done it.

“Three days. I didn’t want everyone seeing me sitting by myself.”

Kelly looked at her differently then, not kindly exactly, but without the usual edge. “Well, you don’t have to do that now.”

That was as close as Kelly ever came to saying they were friends.

For several weeks Isabel believed she had finally solved something, and for several weeks she was wrong. Knowing more about Kelly did not make Kelly simpler. Her parents argued. She had been adopted. She drank vodka at school from a Thermos. She could stand through a cadet inspection without moving and then spend the next morning calling Isabel stupid because she had mispronounced a word she had only ever seen written down.

Every new fact ought to have explained an old one. Instead the facts accumulated.

By December, Kelly had begun giving Isabel small jobs. Hold this. Take my library book back. Get me one while you’re there. Tell Williams I’m sick if he asks. Usually Isabel did them because refusing meant an argument and doing them did not seem important enough to object to.

Then, on a Friday, Kelly brought her cadet shoes to school. They were black and stiff, scuffed around the toes, and Kelly pulled them from a cloth bag at lunch and set them on the bench between them.

“You’re doing these.”

Isabel looked at the shoes. “No.”

“I’ve got parade tomorrow.”

“So?”

“So they need polishing.”

“Polish them, then.”

“I hate polishing them.”

“So do I.”

“You’ve never polished them.”

“Then I might hate it.”

Kelly pushed one toward her. “You like fiddly little things.”

“I like books.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Kelly turned one shoe toward the light and rubbed a thumb against the leather. “They both have to be right. If one looks bad, the whole pair looks bad.”

“Then you should start.”

There were several other children nearby, and Isabel could feel them listening now.

“Take them home.”

“No.”

“Come on, Carrots.”

“No.”

“What’s your problem?”

“I don’t want to polish your shoes.”

“I’d do it for you.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Kelly smiled. “How would you know?”

“Because you won’t even do it for you.”

Someone laughed.

Kelly heard it, and the smile disappeared. “Think you’re funny now?”

“No.”

“Then take the shoes.”

“No.”

By then children had begun to gather in the effortless way they gathered around the possibility of humiliation. Kelly stood. She was taller than Isabel by several inches.

“Pick them up.”

“I’m not your servant.”

“Oh, listen to her.”

“Polish them yourself.”

“Maybe I’ll tell everyone about your lunch hours.”

Isabel felt something tighten in her stomach. Kelly saw it immediately.

“Want to hear something funny?” she said, raising her voice.

“Kelly.”

“Carrots didn’t even eat in the cafeteria when she got here.”

Isabel went still.

Kelly looked around at the others. “She ate her lunch in the toilet.”

The laughter was immediate.

Kelly was enjoying herself now. “For three days. Sitting there with her little sandwich because nobody wanted her sitting with them.”

“I told you that.”

“I know.”

“You promised.”

Kelly shrugged.

Isabel could hear the laughter behind her and somewhere inside it a boy saying something about sandwiches. Her face felt hot. Kelly was still smiling.

Isabel wanted the smile gone. She wanted Kelly hurt, and that was the part she understood afterwards.

There was no accident in it. “At least I’m not adopted!”

The corridor became silent. Kelly’s face did not change at first. For a second Isabel thought perhaps she had missed, but then Kelly’s mouth tightened and her shoulders went back. She stood exactly as Isabel imagined she stood on parade, chin level, everything held where it belonged.

The first tear crossed her cheek. Kelly wiped it away furiously, but another followed, and somewhere behind Isabel somebody whispered, “She’s adopted? That explains it!”

Isabel knew at once what she had just done. She also knew she could apologize. The word was there. She turned and walked away.

By the time she reached the library, her hands were shaking. She took an Enid Blyton book from the shelf, sat in her usual chair and read the same paragraph seven times before giving up. Nobody followed her.

An hour later, her homeroom teacher asked her to stay behind. Mrs. Warren shut the classroom door after the last student left and told Isabel to sit down, then perched on the edge of her desk.

“I heard what happened at lunch.”

Isabel stared at her hands.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No.”

“All right.”

That surprised her. Mrs. Warren folded her hands and waited a moment before continuing. “Kelly won’t be back on Monday.”

Isabel looked up. “Why?”

“Something else happened this afternoon. She was found with alcohol at school.”

The room seemed suddenly colder.

“What kind?”

Mrs. Warren looked at her carefully. “Vodka. In a Thermos.”

Isabel said nothing.

“Did you know?”

She considered lying, but only briefly. “Yes.”

“For how long?”

“A while.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone?”

“She asked me not to. She was my friend.”

Mrs. Warren’s expression did not harden, which made everything worse. “I understand that. Sometimes being someone’s friend means telling.”

Isabel stared at the floor.

“There have already been other concerns about Kelly, and people have been talking with her family about what kind of help she needs. What happened today changed some of those plans. She’ll be moving out of the private system into the district’s alternate program, where there are people who can keep a closer eye on her for a while.”

“Because she drank vodka?”

“Not only because of today.”

Isabel thought of the books she had been taking from the library and of all the things Kelly had told her that did not seem to fit together. She wondered how many other people had facts of their own.

“Did she tell you I knew?”

“No.”

“Then how—”

“It doesn’t matter how I know.”

Isabel nodded. Mrs. Warren let the silence stand for a while. “What you said to Kelly was cruel.”

“I know.”

“What she said to you was cruel too.”

Isabel looked up, but Mrs. Warren did not add anything.

There was something infuriating about this. “Am I in trouble?”

“Yes.”

“What happens?”

“We’re going to talk to your parents.”

That was almost a relief. Punishments were understandable. Isabel walked the six blocks home with her library books pressed against her chest. Her father was already there, with survey plans covering half the dining-room table and held flat by two salt shakers and a heavy glass ashtray nobody used. Her mother was chopping onions in the kitchen. Gina was doing chemistry homework beside the plans and complaining that whoever had invented covalent bonds had clearly wanted teenagers to suffer.

Everything in the house was ordinary. For a little while Isabel hated it for being ordinary, and then she went upstairs. Gina came into her room about twenty minutes later. “Mom says you had a bad day.”

Isabel was lying on her bed with a Famous Five book open beside her. “I did something.”

Gina leaned against the doorframe. “What?”

Isabel told her. She started with Kelly and the vodka, went backwards to the adoption, then forwards again to the shoes and the washroom and the corridor. She told it badly, and several times Gina made her stop and explain which thing had happened first.

When Isabel finished, Gina sat at the end of the bed. “You knew she was drinking at school?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone.”

“She trusted me.”

Gina thought about that. “Okay.”

“It wasn’t okay.”

“No. I mean I understand what you thought.”

Isabel pulled her knees up. “Mrs. Warren said sometimes you tell.”

“She’s right.”

“So I’m awful.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“I told everyone she was adopted.”

“Yes.”

“She told everyone about me first.”

“I know.”

Isabel waited for Gina to balance one against the other. Gina didn’t.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“She did it first.”

“So?”

Isabel stared at her.

Gina sighed. “Look, Izzy. She should not have told them about the washroom. That was horrible, and you have every right to be angry about it.”

“Then—”

“But what you did is still what you did.”

Isabel looked away. “I know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because I know.”

Gina picked up the Enid Blyton book and turned it over in her hands. “I think you got mixed up about secrets.” Isabel frowned. “You kept the vodka secret because you thought being her friend meant everything she told you had to stay secret.”

“Yes.”

“But drinking at school wasn’t only a secret. She could’ve hurt herself.”

“She hardly drank any.”

“You don’t actually know that.”

Isabel said nothing.

“And then when you got angry, you gave away the other secret because you knew it would hurt her.”

“She hurt me.”

“I know.”

Gina placed the book on the bed. “Knowing something about somebody doesn’t make it yours.”

“I didn’t think it was mine.”

“You acted like it was.”

That hurt because Isabel could not immediately find a reason it was wrong. After a while she asked, “What am I supposed to do?”

“Apologize.”

“She’s not coming back.”

“Then write to her.”

“What if she doesn’t forgive me?”

Gina looked genuinely puzzled. “Why does she have to?”

Isabel felt tears come into her eyes and became angry with herself for them. “I am sorry.”

“Good. Then tell her.”

“What do I say?”

“That you’re sorry.”

“That’s not enough.”

“It has to be enough for the apology. It doesn’t have to be enough to fix everything.”

Gina stood, then stopped at the door. “And don’t write five pages explaining why you did it.”

“Why not?”

“Because then you’re making her read about you feeling bad.”

After Gina left, Isabel sat for a long time. On her desk were four library books she had borrowed during the previous two weeks. One had the arguing parents on the cover, another was about drinking, another about friendship, and the fourth was an Enid Blyton mystery she had nearly finished.

She picked up the mystery first. She knew how it went. Somebody would finally notice the right clue, someone would understand what the suspicious person had really been doing all along, and the pieces would fit together until everything that had seemed confusing became obvious.

Isabel put the book down and found a sheet of lined paper. She wrote Kelly’s name at the top, then sat chewing the end of her pencil before beginning.

I’m sorry I told everyone you were adopted.

She looked at the sentence for a while and crossed it out.

On the next line she wrote:

You trusted me with something and I used it because I wanted to hurt you.

That was worse to look at, so she left it there.

Underneath she wrote:

I am sorry.

She nearly added that Kelly had told everyone about the washroom first, but she could already hear Gina asking what the but was for. Instead she folded the page once and slid it into an envelope.

Maybe Kelly would read it or maybe she would tear it up. Maybe she would tell somebody else about the washroom. Maybe she would never speak to or about Isabel again. None of those possibilities changed what belonged to Isabel and what did not.

Across the room, the library books remained in their neat stack. Beside the envelope lay the tin of black polish Kelly had shoved into Isabel’s bag before the argument, forgotten in everything that followed.

Isabel took it out and turned it once in her hand. She remembered the pair on the bench, one scuffed more deeply than the other, and Kelly insisting that it did no good to make only one of them right.

She put the tin beside the envelope and left both where they were. For once, she did not go looking for a book with pictures that would tell her what happened next.