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multi-colored.
    “Get up!” it squawked. “Get up! It’s time to fly.”



FIVE
    W hen you wake up in someone else’s shoes, it’s hard to be yourself, which is why Story woke up that Tuesday morning feeling courageous. But when she undid the straps on the high heels and put them back in the closet, she felt like her old self again—a wayward, unwanted visitor. The night before, Story had conceived of the bold and admirable goal of helping Cooper Payne, not only because she really liked him, which was a rarity in itself, but also because she knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. But in the process of tidying the bed, it took Story one full minute to recall this ambitious goal, and then another five seconds to reject it.
    She actually whispered, “Sucks to be you, Cooper Payne,” as she put on her slippers and prepared her getaway. The sooner you realize there’s no magic treasure box, and the sooner you realize that life is one giant crapshoot, the better off you’ll be. After all, the shattered dreams of Story’s youth had made her stronger—capable of not dreaming at all.
    The digital clock read 8:33, which meant she’d overslept. A lot. On her sleepovers, she tried to be out before six. Luckily, Cooper and his mother had probably already left the house for school. She started walking down the hallway toward the stairs, but stopped in front of Cooper’s open bedroom door. Something lured her inside, and within a few seconds, she was looking around his room at the things Cooper deemed important. There was a model airplane hanging from the ceiling, and in the corner was a ratty, stuffed puppy dog, too juvenile to be on display, but too special to be discarded.
    Story snickered when she saw a Socra-Tots® collector’s book set titled Why Do Manners Matter? sticking out from under the bed—there was no escaping her mother. On a white bookshelf sat a signed baseball in a clear plastic box, and next to it was a framed picture of Cooper and his father, laughing, his face turned to the side, trying to wipe ketchup off his son’s. Beside that was an older, yellowed picture, Cooper’s father in hospital scrubs, splotchy-eyed from crying, standing next to a clear bin and holding the tiny Cooper Michael Payne.
    As Story continued to peruse the room’s contents, she made frequent glances back at the picture of Cooper and his father, as if she were being watched. She approached a bulletin board with the word D-R-E-A-M hanging above it in big wooden letters. Tacked onto the corkboard were three things: on the top left, a foam cutout of a giant number one; on the bottom right, a banner which read, If You Can Imagine It, You Can Do It ; and finally, at dead center, a ripped-out coloring-book picture of a pirate’s treasure box lying underneath a palm tree.
    On his bedside table sat a snow globe, an encapsulated winter wonderland foreign to the sun-lovers of Phoenix. Story picked it up and shook it until tiny white flakes flurried about, settling on the shoulders of the miniature Santa. When Santa was almost completely covered in snow, she tapped the plastic enough to free him, and Story found herself lost in a long-ago Christmas memory.
    She was five years old, lying under her covers on Christmas Eve, her green eyes beaming with a sense of want and wonder. Two hours earlier, she’d placed a plate of warm cookies, a glass of milk, and a bundle of carrots by the fireplace, and she couldn’t sleep thinking of Santa bringing her cherished and requested gift—her very own magic kit, complete with a shiny magic wand, a red silk scarf from which to pluck a goldfish bowl, a deck of cards, several mini-cups for concealing small objects, and finally, a purple, velvet magician’s robe with silver stars.
    Around midnight, she heard noise in the living room, so she snuck out to see if it had arrived. She tiptoed out of her room in her yellow footy-pajamas, down the hall toward what she knew would be the present that