One Tennis Shoe

My steps are slapping the frozen ground as I walk along the edge of the freeway. I’m not really sure what time it is, but the sky is dark and caving above me. I’m elated by walks on the freeway these days. I love the warm exhaust pipe air blowing in my face. The bright yellow lights are blinding me. It’s like being at a concert, except I’m making the music.

I think I’ve been walking for miles, and a cop hasn’t even pulled over to tell me to get off the road yet. I’ve been planning on walking more, except I see something up ahead. Off to the side of the freeway like me, I see something white. I’m hoping it’s not something dead. But as I’m starting to get closer I’m realizing that this thing disturbing my walk is very much alive and for minutes I just stand there with my mouth open, looming above it as a great, big shadow.

It was a single, never been worn, tennis shoe. The whole thing reminded me of a toothpaste bottle. But, I didn’t need to wonder why it was there.

I knew it was hers. I may be superstitious, but right then I was sure that the one, lonely, running shoe once belonged to Daisy LaPierre. It would’ve been perfectly fine. Lots of things that pass me by belonged to Daisy. I would just keep on walking, but you see, that shoe had never been worn. Not once. And that just made me feel.

I’ll start out saying first… that Daisy LaPierre looked nothing like an actual daisy. She had that kind of deep black, purple, red hair that changed with the lights. Her skin was so white, you could almost see through it and you were lucky if you ever saw her ears at all. Daisy always just looked really clean.

Well, I can’t remember when I fell in love with Bruno’s girl completely, but the way she sang in church got all of us twelve year olds. Me and my cousins sat in the pew in front of her and I still stick to the claim that I heard her first on that bright Sunday she moved to Revere. None of us boys could breath when her voice rang so pure like that. The number of boys on that pew grew rapidly after that week. Yeah, every 6^th grader in Massachusetts was suddenly avidly religious. We all said we could never love another. I’m the only one who ever keeps my word though. Every single one of those boys knew about me and Daisy. Well, they knew about me and they knew that I had made Daisy my own. Somehow, in my head, I had claimed Daisy and decided I would devote myself to her for the rest of my life.

Of course Daisy was Bruno’s Girl and nothing could be done about it. She hated the title, but that’s just the way it was. Bruno was big and bulky. He’s the kind of person that looks like God added a few extra slabs of clay onto his shoulders when he was molding him in heaven. I guess he was “cute” because I heard a girl say that once. He’s not the best big brother, but I think he’s the best football player at Paul Revere High School. I’ll always love him even though he’s real stupid sometimes. But, no matter what you hear about Bruno, he really did love Daisy. He just had a funny way of showing it.

On the night before everything got sick, it was that way. I mean that way that Bruno loved Daisy just in a sick, twisted, different way, but it was still love. It was that day I bought Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and I was so enveloped that I almost didn’t hear them downstairs. I know now that they had just come back from Minnie’s. It was much past my bedtime but I never did go bed before Bruno got home. Just in case.

When a door slams in my house the entire frame shakes. With two door slams it could pull almost anyone away, even from Frankenstein.

I could hear Bruno’s big voice pounding Daisy and I could make up a hundred guesses as to why he was so upset with her, but quite honestly, I still don’t know. I don’t care either, because that’s just not something you ask a person. Anyways, I had heard them again and was lying on the frayed carpet with my ear pressed to the vent. Their voices were muffled but I could still make out a few sentences I will never forget.

“Bruno, please- I’m real sick!” Even I’d heard this before.

I could see all of it through the floor without even opening my eyes. I could see his eyes like he had been so hurt getting closer to Daisy like I could see his big voice. “You’re always sayin’ you’re real sick now days and I’m frikin’ sick of your stupid excuses!” He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her off the armchair, so as to get a better kick at it. He cursed. I know he’s mad at himself now more than he’s mad at Daisy and so my heart hurt and burned in so many ways. He mumbled something that I think was, “Yeah, Daisy. You’re fine.” Daisy was gasping and coughing a little bit. Trying to stop crying and trying to breathe.

I will never forget Daisy’s voice, so stuffed and coarse, speaking like she never did at this part. “No, Bruno--” He looked down then at Daisy’s beautiful water eyes and her wet cheek with the strands of hair plastered to it.

“I’m not sick- Bruno--” Daisy gasps for air like someone just told her.

“I’m dying.”

I remember everything like it was happening now. I’m pounding on the door. I don’t know how I got there, but it was fast. I can feel my heart doing tumbles in the left side of my chest. My heart’s almost hurting me. I’m screaming now, “Let me in!” “LET. ME. IN.”

I’m throwing some kind of fit just like the ones I used to have. Back when mom fixed a knob that could lock from the outside and I’d take my plastic garbage can and hit it against the door with feeble attempts. We never got around to painting over the dents. I would scream and pound and drown just like I am now. All sense of logic falls to a puddle at my feet. All the energy inside me would instantaneously drop from me. I’d turn weak real fast and join the rest of me in the pool soaking around my ankles. That’s what was happening now, except I’m bigger. I was turning 13 in a week.

My voice sounded like it was underwater. My throat was filling with tears and gunk and anger and hopelessness. I guess they couldn’t hear me through all the filth either because they never did open that door. Not Daisy, or Bruno ever did let me in there.

I suppose I eventually fell back into my puddle, because I awoke on the floor with everything having seeped back in me.

Daisy always wanted to be free. She told me so sometimes. But she never could be. Not free from Bruno or free from her breast cancer that had consumed her. I would’ve traded all the perfect in my skinny body to give Daisy that freedom. But, it’s like Daisy told me. “It doesn’t work that way, Bo”.

It’s been four years now and the hospital room memories are starting to fade. But I remember all the pink and white that filled Daisy’s room and I can remember every door I had to pass through to get there. Daisy loved peonies so her room was stuffed with every peony in America, I bet. Her grandpa got them because he really loved Daisy. Most boys really loved Daisy. Most people always love a dying girl too.

I started to get really sad around winter that year. I knew Daisy was gonna have to be bald soon. I was awkward about it, but I ask Daisy if I can keep her hair. I know now that it was ridiculous, but Daisy just smiled at me like she always did. Still with the eyes that knew everything and always seemed to be laughing at some beautiful, kept secret. But they were growing to tired eyes.

“No, Bo. You can’t keep my hair.” She’s all slow with the way she talks, but I think she had always been that way. “Why do you want my hair, Bo?” But I know this isn’t really a question. She just wants to hear how I’m gonna answer.

I wanted to say, “Because I love you”, but I didn’t. I was still too afraid. I shrug instead.

“I’ll tell you what... I’m gonna give you a piece.” She pulled closer to my ear and said softly, “But don’t tell, ‘cause, you wanna know who else is getting some? Nobody. You’re the only one.”

She doesn’t know how many sizes my heart was pumping to right then, because owning an inch of Daisy could fill me for years. And she gave me 4’.

            Daisy died on August 19^th. I believe in heaven like I believe I’ve got 2 hands and 2 feet. I know that Daisy is my guardian angel. I think she’s gotta be the most beautiful angel that ever entered in heaven’s gates. Bruno had left for college two weeks after that night we found out and he never saw her again. Daisy’s cancer had destroyed Bruno. No matter what we said, Bruno thought that he had killed Daisy. And today, Bruno still treats himself like cancer. He came to the funeral though. Me and the boys still sat at that same pew and everyone was crying. I heard things about how Daisy’s death was so sudden, but it felt awfully long to me. I only cried once. It was when the preacher said that Daisy was now an angel, whole and perfected. I had worried that maybe her cancer still followed her into heaven because it was still a part of her, right? But, I still wonder if Daisy is now completely free.

I haven’t told anybody, but I never did tell Daisy I love her. While she was alive anyways. But I wrote her this letter on August 17th and I put it under her pillow while she was sleeping. I didn’t know if Daisy ever opened the envelope or if she even noticed it. I asked everyone. Daisy’s mom and dad. Her nurses. Nobody ever saw it under the pillow or saw Daisy reading anything.

            But I like to think she got it.

Now, tonight, I walk along the edge of the stream of cars and I come upon a shoe. She was always ready to run in the free-est way and I’ve been discontent these past 4 years on the thought of Daisy’s freedom. The thought that she never got a fair chance to run free in mortality.

It has been 4 years since Daisy died. I sit down, my jeans pockets pressing on the wet concrete. I think it's been raining for a while now. I’m tugging my boot off my foot and I toss it to the side. I wipe the rain off the white and pull the brand new tennis shoe onto my foot. I’m kneeling and the cars are lighting me up to a sillohette as I tie the laces tight.

I walk away that night with the new shoe on my own foot. Because if Daisy couldn’t be free by herself, I should be the one to help her. Her foot wearing Freedom in heaven and my foot wearing Freedom on earth.

I continue my walk down the freeway. The yellow and red lights continue flashing upon me and the street is coughing smoke in my face. I’m wearing the other half of Daisy’s Freedom. For the first time in 4 years, I am content.

I'll be surprised if you read all of that.

I'd like to say that I just sat down and wrote that one day, but not exactly. It was for a creative writing assignment (the only one all semester) in my English class. The prompt was just one tennis shoe on the freeway that has never been worn and you could write absolutely anything. It was the coolest prompt ever. We all wrote such different things. I accidentally wrote a lot more than what I turned in to the teacher, but it was already so long. I almost turned it into a short book that I would call Falling in Love With Bruno's Girl.