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001.
The Season Opener / CHAPTER ONE
PLAYING . . . Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears
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CEDRIC LAUREN is five years old, and he doesn't know how to tie his shoes.
Objectively, yes, he knows how it's done— he knows that you cross right over left and pull the shoelace underneath and pull it tight, that the right lace forms a loop between thumb and forefinger, that the left lace curls around the spot where those fingers are pinched together before being plucked through and pulled tight, tucked away so that Eric can run free from the fear of tripping over his own two feet— but he doesn't feel like he's doing it right. One loop always ends up a bit bigger than the other, or he tightens the laces so much that the tops of his feet are crisscrossed with angry red indentations when he removes his shoes at the end of the day. No matter how many times he ties and reties the laces, there's always an unequal pressure, an imbalance in the lace-to-lace ratio.
His grandma buys him a pair of velcro sneakers. They're cool shoes, really— but Eric's chest hurts a little when he thinks about his lace-up shoes sitting by the front door; shoes that were a pristine white when his mother bought them two months ago but have now adopted a hue reminiscent of the dirty rainwater that collects in the empty flowerpot on the back lawn, the laces speckled with dried brown blood from the times he tied them and untied them again and again until they didn't feel so foreign on his feet.
The velcro shoes are great, really, they are— and Eric shoves the unopened box under his bed because the thought of giving up on tying his shoes perfectly, of never achieving that wonderfully balanced pressure, of never getting identical twin loops and even-ended aglets makes his head spin and heart clench because who is he to abandon the shoes waiting for him by the front door before he's mastered their laces?
