TEN

I wake up late the next day and go to the kitchen to drink Dad’s leftover coffee.

Parents hate the idea of kids drinking coffee, so of course I started sneaking some over a year ago. Now I love it even though in the beginning it just tasted like medicine and was probably staining my teeth.

It’s not true that coffee stunts your growth. I looked this up and there is no evidence. Piper told me that adults get coffee breath, which she says smells like a cat bed. I add lots of milk to my coffee because I don’t want to smell like a cat bed.

I sit by the window with my cold coffee and milk, and I think about the dance steps we learned from Shawn Barr.

Mom had to go in to work and she left Tim in charge. He doesn’t care what we do as long as we don’t get him in trouble.

If Ramon were here I’d take him for a walk. I’d know that he was happy, because nothing was better to him than getting out into the world and smelling every tree and bush and lamppost he could find as he worked to eliminate squirrels from our planet.

I decide to walk down the street and just pretend he’s with me.

I think about taking his leash, but it would look weird to people if I was dragging a leather strap behind me. I don’t want to make a scene, so instead I just roll up his collar and put it in my pocket. It’s very bulky. I should leave it home, but I don’t because I’m imagining that we’re together.

I’m barely out the door when I start to sing the Wizard of Oz songs in my head just to practice the words. I think I’m singing silently, but I’m not. I pass Mrs. Chang’s house, and I should have gone to the other side of the street, because suddenly the door opens and she’s right there.

She calls out: “Your Munchkin shoes are ready!”

I look down at my feet. I’m wearing running shoes. She’s had one night and part of a day, and she already has shoes for me?

Mrs. Chang comes down the not long walkway and opens the swinging gate to her garden. “Come on in. Let’s see if they fit.”

I don’t want to go into her house. Plus, how in the world did she make shoes? We don’t live in Roman times.

Mrs. Chang doesn’t know that I did a report on the discovery of sandals found in the Fort Rock Cave, and I know for a fact that these were just “foot bags” made from bear parts. I didn’t work very hard on the report and I have trouble remembering the details. Maybe Mrs. Chang has a plastic mold and a heating oven, because I can’t imagine her going on a bear hunt to find a hide.

Most of the shoes made today aren’t made of animal skins. And I’m not going to wear homemade rubber shoes, no matter what my parents say about being nice to old people.

The next thing I know, I’ve stepped into Mrs. Chang’s house.

It’s not at all what I expected.

I didn’t really have an idea in my head of what it would look like in here, but if I had, it would have been a house with a lot of pictures of flowers. She has so many growing in the yard that it might be some kind of obsession, which can happen when you care too much about one thing. Grandma Mittens says that the Dodgers have caused her as much heartache as joy, but that’s the nature of being a sports fan. She has more Dodger hats and sweatshirts than is considered normal, because of her obsessive feelings for the team.

But Mrs. Chang doesn’t have a single framed picture of a flower. She has cooler stuff.

First of all, there is a puppet collection.

I thought puppets were incredibly stupid, until now. None of Mrs. Chang’s puppets are people. They’re animals. There is a cat wearing a red dress, and a chicken with rain boots. There are many different dogs, some in outfits and others with elaborate fur and interesting faces. There are all kinds of birds, including a flamingo that has glass eyes that look real.

But the puppet wall is only the beginning.

I follow Mrs. Chang into the living room, where the floor is wood but each board has been painted a different color. There are more lights hanging from the ceiling than we have in our whole house. There is an orange couch, and a set of mint-green chairs around a coffee table made out of silverware. It’s as if every knife and fork and spoon in town ended up stuck together to make this piece of furniture. It might be dangerous to have this table if there were toddlers in the house, because one fall could lead to the emergency room.

I can’t stop myself. I blurt out, “What’s going on in here?”

Mrs. Chang just shrugs.

That’s it. No explanation.

Here I thought she was only a boring old lady who spent a lot of time growing flowers.

Before I can ask any real questions about the puppets or the furniture or the life-sized buffalo made from buttons that I now see in the other room, Mrs. Chang disappears down a hallway.

She comes back carrying shoes.

These are not regular footwear.

First of all, the shoes are made of leather but also of fabric that looks like ribbons and is sunny orange and bright, bright blue. It ends in a tip that curls in a complete circle.

I don’t even try them on before I say, “You made these?!”

I don’t care if they fit.

They can give me blisters or hammertoe, which is what Grandma Mittens said happened to her from wearing bad shoes when she was a teenager in a very cold climate.

I want to take these shoes and not just wear them: I want to hug them.

I look up, and I have tears in my eyes, so Mrs. Chang is now all blurry. I say, “You made these for me?”

She nods like it’s no big deal. But I can tell she’s happy, because she takes a seat on the fuzzy orange couch and she adjusts the pleats on her skirt in sort of a formal way.

I go over to her. “Are you a famous creator or something?”

She laughs but then says, “I did date one of the Beatles a long time ago. I was very young. It was before I met Ivan.”

I know that the Beatles were a big-deal music group that changed the way people thought about getting haircuts. They sang songs that were pretty good because you can still listen to them today and not get angry. If you were born at a certain time, which was long, long ago, you had a favorite Beatle.

It is unusual that Mrs. Chang dated one.

I can’t imagine her dating anybody. But I’m not interested in her love life. Right now I’m just crazy about these shoes.

I drop to the floor, pull off my sneakers, and carefully slip the left shoe on my foot. I look up at Mrs. Chang and try not to scream: “It fits!”

I’m more wild with the second shoe; I jam my toes inside and spring back up to my feet. Right then and there it happens: I feel like a Munchkin.

A real one.

I grab Mrs. Chang’s hand and I pull her up off the orange couch and I start singing as I twirl her around.

I have to say that she’s pretty light on her feet, and she spins and even holds up her arm when she turns, which is a nice touch.

We sing and dance until I’m so out of breath and dizzy that I realize I have to go home.