"Stop doing that." I moan. I twist away from my mother's hands and shake my head fiercely, just like Dixie our poodle does when she wakes up from a nap. I don't like grown ups pressing on my head. It makes me feel like the back of a chair. I also don't like big people fiddling with my curls. I look up at her. She is still yapping with the woman we met in the store. Her fingers are moving where I used to be standing. Is she pretending that I am still there?

One of my shoes is untied. I sit down in the middle of the sidewalk and tie it. Grandma says that to make a perfect bow, you have to do everything backward. Left over right and pull, then make the loop with your left hand not your right hand. "It's supposed to be hard," she'd say. I like it down here on the ground. There are lots of busy feet passing, all wearing different kinds of shoes. Some shoes are happy, like the blue and white polka dots that just bounced by. Some shoes are noisy and make smacking sounds. Others look very tired, like they've walked too far. I wonder if shoes are like the people who wear them.

My Mom's shoes have beat up toes and flimsy heels. I think this is why she can't stand up straight (without leaning on me). When she is not pressing on my head, she stands with her legs crossed, like she is doing now. I cross my legs when I have to go to the bathroom. The woman she is talking to has shoes that look like hooves. They are brown, rounded and hairy. If she grew two more legs, she might look like a pony. The pony woman stands normally, not like the letter X.

My shoes used to be bright red. Now they are the dull red of a faded dishtowel. My shoes remind me of Dixie's bone with nibbled edges and dents. Early this summer, I nearly lost one of my shoes. I had taken them off to create my own Lonely Mountain in the sand. With my plastic green pale and shovel, I made a towering heap. Using water from the sea, I shaped the path that wound up the mountain and stopped at the dragon's lair. I stole the picnic salt to make the snow capped peak. The waves had been inching closer though. In the end, I had just a short time to gaze at my masterpiece. This is when I saw one of my bones being eaten by sea. The other one was already in its belly.

There is a hand on my shoulder. It squeezes me inside of my shirt. In a sudden, swooping motion, I am standing on my feet. I look up at my mother. The pony woman is gone. Now I am being towed. Now I feel like my rusty wagon, not like a chair. She pulls my arm and I try to keep up. This is how it is, all the way back to the car.