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Nothing with stripes or prints. Ever. Which always drove my mom crazy. From what I saw the guys wearing at Charles Lister, I would fit in just fine.
    After the paperwork was finished, the secretary handed us a Lister Intermediate School bumper sticker and a gold metallic folder with Charles W. Lister’s portrait on the front.
Pioneer—Educator—Leader—Friend.
“Welcome to Lister.” She smiled. “We’re glad to have you here, Joshua.”
    Note to secretary: I am not glad.
    As we left, the realization that I was actually going to be walking through the doors of this place in about two weeks began to sink in. My stomach felt slightly sick—like when you are going up to the plate in baseball and there are already two outs and you have the feeling you are about to be number three. That’s the way my stomach felt. Nervously sick.
    “You want to take a drive past the old Murphy’s building?” my dad suggested. “See what’s happening there?”
    “Sure, okay.”
    Anything to get my mind off starting over at a new school, but I didn’t say that.

9. Jerry’s Blue Suede Shoes
    Murphy’s Shoes was on State Street, in a small city block of old brick buildings and neighborhood businesses that looked as if they had been there for the last hundred years. On the corner was a pharmacy called Kent’s Drugstore, which always had large and rather scary advertising signs taped to its windows: HALF-PRICE HEARING AIDS, WHEELCHAIRS, BLOOD PRESSURE CHECKS, and COLD RX.
    Harpy’s Video came after the pharmacy, followed by a little music store with a dusty-looking guitar display in the front window. Murphy’s Shoes was the fourth, and last, store in the block. My dad drove by it slowly and parked in one of the empty spots out front. The big white-and-green Murphy’s sign was still hanging on the building, but the windows were covered with brown paper and a thick chain was wrapped through the two door handles. It seemed strange to see the building locked up, looking as if somebody had recently died there.
    My dad rested his arms across the steering wheel and squinted through the windshield. “Doesn’t seem like anybody has done much with the place yet, does it?” He was silent for a few minutes, just staring at the building. “Lotsa good memories there, right?” he sighed, shaking his head. “Still miss that old place.”
    Sometimes I couldn’t figure out my dad at all. One minute, he could be going on and on about how much he liked being Elvis, and the next minute, he could be talking about how much he missed his job as a shoe salesman. It was another one of the things my mother said was a problem with him. He bounced from one idea to the next. It was hopeless to try and keep up.
    “I thought you didn’t like selling shoes,” I replied, playing with the window button, pushing it up and down.
    “I never said that,” my dad insisted. “I liked Murphy’s. I just wanted to be more of a big shot—you know, running my own store someday.”
    “Your own store?” I couldn’t picture my dad running a store.
    Dad tossed his baseball cap into the backseat and rumpled his Elvis hair with his fingers. “Let’s get a closer look at the place,” he said, jumping out. We walked up to the windows, hoping to see between the sections of brown paper. “You know what I’d call my own place?”
    “No,” I said, trying to check out if the old Chiclets gum machine was still by the door.
    “Blue Suede Shoes,” he replied, turning toward me with a big smile. “Isn’t that a great name?” He gestured toward the Murphy’s sign. “Can’t you see it on a big sign right up there? Jerry’s Blue Suede Shoes. We could play Elvis songs and the salesmen could wear gold sunglasses and big sideburns. Imagine buying your shoes from Elvis.” He grinned. “Wouldn’t that be something people would talk about?”
    It was a pretty creative idea, I had to admit. Better than going around town singing in shopping malls and restaurants. But