Over the Wall: A Collection of Short Stories (NaNoWriMo 2014)

Day 10: Shoes

Note: This is a very long piece that is sort of rambling but remember, these are rough drafts. This story is sort of a journey of a girl from the time she is six to the time she is twenty eight and the things that happened. Please don't talk about how there are no names for the characters or the city they're in, it's supposed to be like that. Hope you enjoy it! Also this is dedicated to AngelofMusic1997 for all her help during NaNoWriMo :)

She put on her shoes and walked out the door. She is a little girl walking to school for the first time by herself. At this point she is six years old and her crowning achievements are her new shoes, which are bright pink with glitter all over them, and the fact that she is deemed old enough to walk to school by herself. She is a happy little girl with parents who are equally happy and in love and she wants for nothing, except maybe a puppy.

Although the walk to her school is only three blocks away, which is actually a short distance in this area since the blocks are rather small, this is the only reason her parents let her walk herself, she makes it last for a very long time. She does this by stopping at every bush and every cat and dog she comes into contact with and, when all else fails, walking backwards and walking in a straight line all along the sidewalk crack pretending she was on a tightrope. She liked the way her shoes looked as they followed the line all the way down to the stop sign in front of school.

When she arrived at the school the warning bell was just ringing. She grinned, thinking about how much fun she had had but yet still got to school on time. She stomped through a puddle on her way up the front steps but was quickly stopped by a teacher who scolded her for tracking mud in. She looked down and saw that her brand new shoes were covered in mud so she began to cry. She did not want to make her mother mad for messing up her shoes. The teacher, suddenly feeling very bad, took her to the front office and called her mother as the girl calmed down. Her mother, of course, was not mad and was able to clean all the mud out. In fact, the little girl was able to wear them on her way to school the very next day.

Four years later, when the little girl was ten, she put on her shoes, purple vans with absolutely no glitter this time, and walked out the door. Actually, she ran more than walked. You see, she was very upset that day, which was a far cry from how she was that day she was six. Everything had changed since that day. Her parents, who had once seemed hopelessly in love with each other as much as they were with her, had just announced to her that they were getting divorced. They said it like it wasn’t even a big deal. It was a big deal.

She did not go in her usual direction towards her school. Instead of turning right, she turned left. If she went right towards the school there were only lines of houses where everyone passing by could easily see inside and watch all the happy families. Her family used to be one of those families. She couldn’t remember when they stopped being that family either. Years later she would realize exactly when and why her parents decided to divorce but at this time she has no idea.

She walks aimlessly for a long time until she finds herself outside a park that her parents took her too a lot when she was little, around her six-year-old time period. Actually, they took her there almost ever since she was just learning to walk. There were pictures to attest to that. There were actually many pictures. They all were the same, actually, with all of them having the same theme: happiness. She wanted more than anything to just forget this whole thing.

Some more years later when she was fourteen, she put on her white converse, all her friends had them, and walked out the door. It was her first day of school yet again, her ninth first day of school to be exact. Which if you didn’t know that would be the first day of eighth grade. She was very nervous since she hadn’t seen her friends almost all summer. She had spent the summer with her father, who had moved from the city to Connecticut, going back and forth every week. It was very hard to spend time with your friends when you’re doing that.