Gus was five years old, and he lived in his shoes.
Not a house. His shoes.
The left shoe was the bedroom. The right shoe was the kitchen.
Every morning, Gus climbed out of his left shoe, where his tiny bed sat between the tongue and the heel. His pillow was a folded sock. His blanket was the other folded sock.
He stretched. He yawned. And he walked across the carpet to the right shoe.
In the kitchen shoe, he kept a very small refrigerator near the toe. The counter was a popsicle stick laid flat across the laces. He made toast there every morning, and the crumbs rolled down into the sole.
"Time for breakfast," Gus said, the way anyone says it.
He ate his toast. He wiped the counter. A crumb bounced off the popsicle stick and landed in his hair.
Then Gus got ready for school.
This was the hard part.
Because when you live in your shoes — you cannot also wear your shoes.
Gus walked to school barefoot.
Every single day.
Through the wet grass. Over the bumpy sidewalk. Past the puddle by the mailbox that never ever dried up, not even in summer.
"Gus," said his teacher, Ms. Plimpton. "You are barefoot again."
"Yes," said Gus.
"Did you forget your shoes?"
"No," said Gus. "They're at home. I mean — they ARE home."
Ms. Plimpton nodded slowly, the way grown-ups do when they are not sure what just happened. She handed him the classroom slippers from the lost-and-found bin.
The slippers were orange. They had frog faces on them. Gus did not love them.
But he wore them.
At recess, Gus played kickball in the frog slippers. He ran to first base. He ran to second base. He slid into third — and one frog slipper flew off his foot, sailed through the air, and landed RIGHT in the teacher's coffee mug.
SPLOOOSH!
Coffee went everywhere. The frog slipper floated in the mug like a little boat.
"Well," said Ms. Plimpton, looking at the frog in her coffee.
"Sorry," said Gus.
She fished it out with two fingers. It dripped on her clipboard.
After school, Gus walked home barefoot again. The sidewalk was warm now. The puddle by the mailbox was cold. He jumped right over it.
He got home. He looked at his shoes sitting there on the carpet, side by side.
The left shoe had his little bed, all messy from the morning. The right shoe still had toast crumbs in it.
Gus sat down on the floor.
He looked at his shoes for a long time.
Then he got his tiny broom — which was really just a toothbrush — and swept the crumbs out of the kitchen shoe.
He fluffed his sock pillow in the bedroom shoe. He set a dandelion he'd picked on the walk home into a bottle cap full of water and placed it right between the two shoes.
Right in the middle. Like a little front yard.
The dandelion leaned a little to the left.
Gus leaned a little to the left too.
The carpet was warm under his bare feet. The light through the window turned everything gold. His shoes sat there, side by side, with a bright yellow flower between them.
Gus smiled.
He was home.
