If the Boot Fits
In a small town in north Texas, Katie Wethermock lived in a tiny blue house with her sturdy grandmother and their border terrier, Jack. Next to their faded blue house, a three-stalled barn sat half-sunken into the dry, cracked soil. Every morning, when the sun was still hiding behind a faraway hill, Katie tossed aside her quilt, slid her toes into dust-covered riding boots, and made her way sleepily out to the barn.
One morning, as Katie slid open the wooden door to feed the horses, the familiar squeal of rusty metal grated in her ears.
Why does that
have to be the first thing I hear every morning? Katie wondered, wishing for the millionth time that they had the money to replace the rusty hinges.
In the first stall, Whitaker, an old dapple grey gelding, snorted his friendly greeting. Next to him, Lula, a Palomino mare, shook her head in welcome.
“Of course you all are happy,” Katie grumbled. “We spend all our money taking care of you, and you don’t realize how poor we are.” Then Katie rubbed her eyes and switched on the flickering light above the rafters. Moose, a dark bay yearling who already stood as tall as Whitaker, whinnied in delight.
“And you’re the trouble,” she said, shoving his nose aside when he nestled her shoulder. “Trotting down the road out of nowhere, all scraggly and scrawny…of course we couldn’t turn you away.” She plunged a large plastic scoop into a barrel of oats and dumped it into his bucket with a loud clatter. “But three horses is a lot to feed.”
That afternoon at school, Katie noticed Olivia Wince’s ballet flats—shining, expensive, and one-hundred-percent Olivia’s. Olivia’s mother was always spending money on her—new dresses, new shoes, fun parties.
“I love your shoes, Olivia,” Katie said, unable to take her eyes off her friends sparkling gold toes.
“Really?” Olivia asked. “If you want… you can have them.”
Katie’s eyes widened. “Really? But what would you wear all day?”
“I’ll wear your boots!” Olivia said. “Mother never lets me play in the mud with the other children, or even walk along the river because she says I’ll get my clothes dirty! But with those boots, I could go anywhere I want!”
And so, Katie and Olivia traded shoes. Olivia skipped around the edge of the playground, where the ground was dustiest, and Katie sat staring at her new, shiny shoes. They pinched her pinky toes, but she didn’t care—she finally had something new for herself.
On her way home, Katie walked slowly along the gravel road, careful not to let any dust mar her new shoes. It took her twice as long to get home, and by the time she opened her front door, she’d missed her afternoon baking session with Grandma.
Later, she went to the barn to work with Moose, but the horse wouldn’t let her anywhere near him because the shimmer at her feet made him skittish. With a sigh, Katie walked back to the house and sat on the couch, where she tapped her toes together, watching the reflection of the overhead light glimmer on her toe.
“I could paint,” Katie thought, for she loved to paint—pictures of her horses, of her grandmother, of the sunset. But then she realized she might splatter brown or green on the perfect gold shoes, and they’d be ruined.
“Grandma, do you need help with dinner?” she asked hopefully.
Her grandmother gazed at Katie from her station at the stove. “Oh no, honey, you might splatter grease on those pretty shoes of yours! I got it.”
Katie sighed, and she didn’t leave the house the rest of the night.
The next day, she slipped her toes into the gold ballet flats, wincing when the sore skin of her pinky toes hit the end of the shoe. It was five-o-clock, even earlier than she woke to feed the horses. She walked down the lane, past Gower’s pond, and onto a paved street filled with towering houses. Spotting a wide house with pink bricks, Katie marched up the front steps, knocked on the door, and waited.
The door opened slowly, silently. “Hello?” A tired-looking man in leather house shoes poked his head out the door.
“I need to see Olivia,” Katie said. Moments later, her friend appeared at the door, rubbing her eyes. Katie bent down and yanked the ballet flats off her feet. “Here!” she said. “You can keep them. They’re pretty and all, but… I can’t paint, I can’t cook, I can’t even feed my horses!”
And those are the things I love most, she realized
—but she didn’t want Olivia to know that her favorite things were so dirty.
Olivia’s tight, sleepy face melted in relief. “Oh, thank goodness!” she said. “Here!” She reached behind the door and appeared with Katie’s old, dust-covered boots in hand. “Mother wouldn’t let me go to afternoon tea! And I wanted to go dress shopping, but she said they wouldn’t let me in the stores! I’m sorry, Katie, but… I guess these just aren’t the shoes for me.”
Katie took her boots back from her fried. She slipped her right toe into the boot, then her left. She walked home, faster than she had on her way to Olivia’s, for her toes didn’t hurt quite so bad this time. She walked to the barn, where she paused before shoving aside the door, letting the squeal of its hinges ring inside her ears. She smiled. As she entered, Moose raised his head and whinnied his welcome.
“I know!” Katie said, gazing down at her old boots and wiggling her toes. “Aren’t they just the prettiest things?”
Author's Note: My story was inspired by Aesop’s fable, The Raven and a Swan. In this story, a raven is jealous of the swan’s beautiful white feathers, so he decides to live in the marsh and eat and act as the swan does. This ultimately leads to the raven starving to death because he can’t live off of the same things the swan eats. The moral of the story is, “A change of habits will not alter nature.” So I took this theme and told a story about dissatisfaction with one’s own life, and then the realization that we sometimes already have the thing that suits us best. Wearing pretty new shoes did not change Katie's desire to be with her horses, or paint, or cook.
Bibliography: The Raven and a Swan, anonymous, copyright 1919 from Aesop’s Fables. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm
