Jackie

Chapter 6

Jackie's POV

The smell of alcohol reeked from the cloth of the tent. Stacks of wine crates piled over my head, only enforcing the scent. Bottles were mix matched rather than organized, rainbows of different drinks in each crate. Under one box, with suspiciously the same branded bottles, two boots lay on their sides.

I gleamed in pride at my guess; Tom's shoes were right here, placed delightfully in a cranny of his dad's wine selling tent. The boots were a sleek black, shiny at the toes and conveniently spiked at the bottoms, like a crocodile's fangs. Breathing heavily, I brushed my hand against the laces, the softness of the leather in opposition to the rough roped ties. I turned to Maria and said, "Aren't these awesome?"

"Oooh! Chateau Lafitte!" She pawed at the bottle, licking her lips, "How does such a poor village get something like this?"

"It's called a scam," I groaned, rolling my eyes.

"I know that," Maria said, matter-of-factually, only adding to the evidence that she didn't know at all, "I'm just really into wine!"

"So you're an alcoholic?" I asked, nodding my head towards her, "Now, look at these shoes! They are so shiny!"

"Okay," she waltzed up over to me. I got a little glance of her shoes, as sly as black cats, shiny of the rich class. My cheeks flushed bright red; the heels on her feet were as polished as sun. Why did I waste her time to look at these things?

Instead of ridiculing me, her attention turned to the spikes. She examined them, with a mischievous sparkle in her eye as she made mental notes. "These boots have spikes on the toes as well as the heels, at about," she measured the length with her thumb, "Two inches. It's impossible to walk in them, unless there is way that the spikes retract. Knowing what I know about the mascot's act, the spikes do retract, marking this as a nifty piece of footwear."

"Wow." I looked at the boots in a new light, "So how do we make the spikes retract?" I asked, experimenting with a shoe. It didn't seem to have any magic levers.

Maria didn't respond. Her gaze was fixed at a flap of the tent, it's shadows moving as the cloth wobbled. After some silence, we heard a hardy grunt. Tom's father!

"His dad is here!" I took Maria's hand, taking us behind some crates. The girl looked at me, nothing like that confident, smart woman she was just minutes ago, her eyes wide as if she was about to cry. I peered over the crates, watching Tom's father wheelbarrow in a full shipment of "expensive" wine, tagged with stickers from Sicily. He whistled a hollow tune, not seeming to notice our shuffling in his tent.

Maria pulled me down, whispering fiercely, "Don't make this situation worse by being spotted, alright?"  

As the man whistled, he took out a short metal blade. Maria panicked, "Is he going to kill us?" I remained calm, but bounded back under the crate. The scrapes of metal against glass sounded, one of the French stickers winding back and forth to the grass. I heaved a giant sigh; the blade was just for pirating cheap liquor.

"That's illegal," Maria noted, "But a good business strategy."

"Shut up," I scoffed at her, frustrated, "We need to get out of this tent! We can't miss our opportunity."

"Shutting up, then," She shot me an angry-worried glare.

"Wait!" I remembered something important, "Did you switch out the shoes?"

"Yes," she replied quietly, paranoid. I gazed at her bare feet and her heels in the nook, mentally collapsing onto my face. I should have planned this out better, I thought, I'm so stupid.