During summer in Oklahoma, you don't need to wear shoes. Not when you're a kid anyway. Summer break is the greatest thing in the world for most kids, but it was a horrible time of year for me because I couldn't escape to school. However, some little miseries could be relieved during the summer, such as not wearing shoes that were two sizes too small like I had all winter.

If it wasn't for Nikki's mind whirling in a meth blender all day, I probably wouldn't have ever gotten shoes that fit. One summer day out of nowhere she jumped up from the table and let out this blood-curdling screech. I had just walked down the hallway from my bedroom to the kitchen, and now I was right behind her. She turned and grabbed my shirt and lifted me like I was a bird. No, like I was an origami bird. Paper.

"YOU STOMP SO FUCKING LOUD IN THIS HOUSE! WHY! WHY CAN'T YOU WALK LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE!" she yelled, shaking me while I just blinked at her in shock.

She dropped me. Her eyes were so huge in her thin face. Crazy bottle cap eyes. "THIS is how normal people walk, Austin! Watch! WATCH!"

"I'm WATCHING!" I shouted back.

Nikki did this little delicate prance across the linoleum floor and looked back at me, smirking.

"That's what normal people do," she said. "And THIS is how YOU walk, Austin! You walk like your heels weigh ten tons! You're like a fucking elephant!"

She proceeded to stomp heel first with a force that shook the entire trailer, demonstrating the Godzilla-like stroll I had apparently just taken in the hallway.

"See?" she said.

I didn't.

"Sorry," I replied softly.

Nikki suggested new shoes for school, quiet ones.

For the rest of the summer though, I had to relearn how to walk so she wouldn't attack me again. I simply couldn't do it without putting my heel first, so I trained myself to walk on the balls of my feet, not like on tip-toes, but with my heel just about two centimeters off the ground.

Anyway, the point of the story is that to this day sometimes I find myself still walking on the balls of my feet, doing this sort of press step instead of walking heel to toe like everyone else, like a bipedal human should walk.

In this little scene, Nikki silently communicated to me that I simply took up too much space in the world. I was too loud, too clumsy, and now I was too stompy. I thought if I worked on making myself quieter and smaller, so much smaller, so small that I took up no space at all, maybe they wouldn't hurt me.

Walking like a horse is a completely unconscious act for me, one that I sometimes become aware of only when people say, "Are you hurt? You're walking funny." Most of the time, though, I have to come to the realization on my own, like when I pick up three concrete patio tiles with all my weight in my toes and lose my balance as I stand up and drop them first on my shin and then on the top of my foot.

The pain makes me dizzy, and I almost wanna puke as I gasp for air and fall against a wall behind me. I know right away I broke some bone in my foot and walking on both feet is out of the question. I put a slight amount of my weight on the injured foot and bite back a cry of pain. I spot an overturned bucket nearby and hop to it so I can sit down and survey the damage. No one is around because I'm on the back side of this rich lady's house and most of everybody else is in the front laying these tiles on the driveway, which is a job I'm earning fifty dollars for this afternoon. At least nobody saw this happen.

I hold my breath so I won't scream as I peel my sock off. My foot still looks like a normal foot, albeit with a huge red lump that is growing by the second. No bones seem to be obviously out of place though, so it doesn't exactly look broken. I quickly look around before putting my sock and shoe back on.

Since no one knows about this I force myself to keep on working for another hour but, no surprise, I'm pretty much useless. It takes me three times as long to load the tiles in the wheelbarrow and take them around front. The boss notices. He calls me over, tells me I'm cut for the day and hands me about three quarters of what he would have paid me if I'd worked the entire afternoon. I thank him anyway and hop away down the street to where I parked the van.

I left Pixie playing in this cozy neighborhood park a few houses down and she's on the swings now talking to a little boy. A fleeting shot of frustration zips through my body. I told her never to talk to anyone, not even kids, and here she is making friends, jeopardizing everything. The frustration is short lived though, because mostly I just feel sorry for her. If she was a normal kid and we had a normal life, she would have friends other than me, Olaf and the cashier from the grocery store.

"Pixie!" I call because I can't walk over to where she is.

She looks up and I make a come-here-now motion. She must know she did something wrong because she walks slowly with her head down and climbs into the back of the van without speaking.

"Pixie," I say as I pull out of the parking place.

I have to use one foot to drive now and it's making me nervous. Too nervous to look into the rear view mirror and see the expression on her face.

"What?" she asks.

"I know you're bored, but you can't-"

"He was little like me! All we did was swing!" she exclaims.

"I know, Pixie, but no one can know anything about you."

"Why, Austin?" she asks, and even though I can't see her face I can tell she's on the verge of tears.

"Because I said so."

"But why?"

"Because anyone could steal your Disneyworld ticket!" I say, the idea coming to me from nowhere.

She goes silent, pondering this. "Oh," she says. "We need tickets to go there?"

And about five thousand bucks, I think.

"Yes! Think of all these other kids who wanna go! They'd take that ticket in a second!"

I am such a piece of shit for lying to her, but it can't be helped.

"Oh," she says. "Sorry."

"That's okay."

"Austin?"

"Hm?"

"Can I see my ticket?"

"No. Why?"

"'Cause I wanna hold it," she says.

"It's hidden away," I say.

"Is it this?" she asks, and she hands me a flat folded square of paper.

"What is this?" I ask.

"Stuffy had a pointy butt so I stuck my finger up there and it was there, and I pulled it out of his butt," she says.

I have a mini-heart attack before remembering Stuffy is just my stuffed rabbit. A laugh burst out of me because I can't help it.

"So is that my ticket?" she asks, all serious as I fall apart.

"No!" I say, gasping and trying to get it together before breaking into another laugh despite myself.

I haven't laughed this hard in a really long time, and it lifts me out of the darkness for just a minute. It's like breathing for the first time after being underwater.

"So what is it?" Pixie asks, annoyed.

I take a deep breath. "I'll look when we stop for the night," I say.

Pixie is a little better and so am I, so we're back to sleeping in the van for now. We park in an apartment complex as darkness falls, and I read Pixie a bedtime story and help her get dressed into her pajamas, tasks which are now agonizing and frustrating with my useless broken foot.

As soon as I get her to sleep I pick up Stuffy and examine his "butt." It looks like someone ripped the toy rabbit's stitches out and sloppily sewed them up again. I've never noticed this before, but I do remember the loose threads. I guess I just never felt the small square of paper in all the fluff.

I slowly unfold the paper. It's pretty old, at least a few years or older. I can tell by the sharpness of the folds. At first I figure it's a tag for the stuffed animal or whatever, so I'm surprised when I see handwriting scribbled all over it. I squint in the darkness of the van and can just make out a few words,

"Dear Austin, please don't hate me..."