I had a friend who used to sleep over all the time to avoid his alcoholic mother and one morning I woke to find him and my new shoes gone. After that I didn’t see him at school for weeks. Finally I ran into him at the mall and he was wearing my shoes, so I attacked him. But he was stronger than I was. His cigarette burned a scar that lingered for months on my cheek. He took off and a rumour later had it he left town. I didn’t ever see him again. A few years later a mutual friend told me he saw my shoe-thief friend on a television news exposé about teenage hustlers in Hollywood California. Apparently my friend was living on the streets and doing what he had to do to get by. By then I’d been through several pairs of shoes and that pair stolen years before didn’t seem like such a big deal anymore.