That Summer(10)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“We’re looking for some new sneakers.” The father walked over to me, holding a popular style called Benja min in his hand. All the Little Feet shoes had children’s names; it was part of the gimmick. The Little Feet chain was full of gimmicks. “But thirty-five dollars seems kind of steep. Got anything cheaper?”

“Just this one,” I said, holding up a model called Russell, which was cheap because it was an ugly bright yellow-and-pink-striped style from last year that never sold well. “It’s on sale for nineteen ninety-nine.”

He took the shoe from me and looked at it. It was blaringly bright, especially under the fluorescent lights. “We’ll try it. But we’re not sure what size he’s up to now.”

I went to get the measuring scale, then squatted down in front of the kid and unlaced his shoe. There was a small explosion of dirt and gravel as I pulled it off, at which his mother like all mothers looked embarrassed and said, “Oh, dear. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “Happens all the time.” The little boy stood up and I fixed his foot in the scale, sliding the knob on the side to see where it reached to. “Size six.”

“Six?” the mother said. “Really? My goodness, he was just a five and a half only a few months ago.”

I never knew what to say to this, so I just nodded and smiled and went off to look for the ugly Russell shoe in the storeroom, where we had tons of them piled in stacks. Marlene was still in the same spot, licking her fingers and flipping through the glossy pages of the Enquirer.

While I was lacing up the shoe, sitting on the floor in front of the little boy, he looked at me and took his thumb out of his mouth long enough to say, “You’re tall.”

“David,” his mother said quickly. “That’s not polite.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I was used to this by now; kids are dead honest, no way around it.

Once we’d gone through the fitting and the lacing and the pinching of toes, and we’d all watched David walk around the store in his bright, ugly shoes, blaring pink and yellow against the orange carpet, the decision was made that they were a perfect fit and affordable. I watched the father sign his credit-card slip, his script looping and neat, then slid the old shoes into the new box and handed the kid a balloon and they were on their way. Little Feet was too cheap for helium, so all we gave out were balloons pumped from a bicycle pump, with a ribbon tied around them so you could drag them along behind you like a round plastic dog. There’s something depressing about a balloon that just lies there, listless. I always felt apologetic as I offered them to the children, as if it was somehow my fault.

I told Marlene I was taking a break and went down to the Yogurt Paradise for a Coke. The mall was still dead and I waved to the security guard. He was standing outside the fake-plant store flirting with the owner, who had a beehive and a loud laugh that echoed along behind me after I’d passed them. I got my Coke and walked down a little farther towards Dillard’s, where a stage was set up and some kind of commotion was going on: several people running around and hammering nails and one woman with a microphone complaining that no one was paying attention. I sat down on a bench a safe distance away and watched.

There was a sign right next to me that said LAKEVIEW MALL MODELS: FALL SPECTACULAR! with a date and a time and a graphic of a girl in a big hat looking mysterious. Everyone in town knew about the Lakeview Models, or at least about the very best known Lakeview Model, Gwendolyn Rogers. She’d grown up right here in town over on McCaul Street and gone to Newport High School just like me and was one of the very first of the models, which were basically just a bunch of local girls all made up and flouncing down the middle of the mall for the seasonal fashion shows. She was the closest thing we had to a local celebrity, since she’d been discovered and gone off to New York and Milan and L.A. and all those other glamorous places where beautiful girls go. She’d been on the cover of Vogue and did fashion correspondence on “Good Morning America,” always standing in front of some fancy store with her hair all swept up and a microphone planted at her lips, telling the world about the latest in hemlines. My mother said the Rogerses had let Gwendolyn’s success go to their collective heads, since they hardly spoke to the neighbors anymore and built a pool in their backyard that they never invited anyone over to use. I’d only seen Gwendolyn once, when I was eight or nine and walking to the mall with Ashley. There she was in front of her house, reading a magazine and walking the dog. She was so tall, like a giant in cutoff shorts and a plain white T-shirt; she didn’t even seem real. Ashley had whispered to me, “That’s her,” and I turned to look at her just as she saw us, her head moving slightly on her long, fluted neck, like a puppet with strings that stretched all the way up to God. I didn’t know what was in store for me then, what I would someday have in common with Gwendolyn other than our shared hometown and neighborhood. Back then I was still small, normal, and I just stared at her, and she waved like she was used to waving and went back inside with the dog, who was short and fat with hardly any legs to be seen, like a Little Feet balloon.

Because of Gwendolyn, everyone knew about the Lakeview Mall Models. She’d talked about them plain as day in all those interviews when they asked her where she got her start, and even came back one year to judge the contest herself. Everyone in town pooh-poohed it but still went to try out when they were old enough, even my sister, who was too short and never made it past the first round. The contest had just been held a few weeks earlier there at Dillard’s and my best friend, Casey Melvin, had even gone so far as to sign us both up. I could have killed her when I found the confirmation card in my mailbox, all official on pink Lakeview Mall stationery. Casey said she only did it because I had the best chance of anyone, since being tall is 90 percent of modeling anyway. But the thought of walking alone in front of all those people while they all watched, with my huge bony legs and spindly arms, was the stuff my nightmares were made of. Like being tall is what it takes to be Cindy Crawford or Elle Macpherson or even Gwendolyn Rogers. I wasn’t sure where Casey got her statistics or percentages, but it had to be from Seventeen or Teen Magazine, both of which she quoted from as if they were the Bible itself. I had no interest in modeling; attracting attention, on purpose, was the last thing I wanted to do. And so the day of the tryouts, while Casey went and got cut the first round, I stayed at home and hid in my room, drawing the shades, as if just by happening, a few blocks away, it could hurt me.