Ruth dozed for two stops and woke with the precision of a woman who did not trust sleep in public. "We get off at the second mall stop," she said, though Aaliyah knew. "Not the first. The first dumps you at the loading side and I am not walking that hill on a knee I have already introduced to the Lord."
"Second stop," Aaliyah said.
She did not tell Ruth about the piano. Not because she meant to disobey, but because the hope was still thin enough that saying it might snap it, and because Ruth's warning — public doesn't always mean welcome — had landed in the same place as the hope and they were sitting together now, uncomfortable, like two passengers who had not agreed to share a seat.
At the second stop the mall rose in front of them, a long beige body with a glass chest, flags barely moving, cars circling for spaces as if parking were a skill some people had been born with and others had to pray for. Ruth took Aaliyah's hand until they were through the doors, then released it with a look that meant the hand was still available if the building got ideas.
Inside, the light changed. The ceiling took the sky and broke it into rectangles. The smell became cinnamon and new rubber and pretzel salt. Aaliyah felt her shoulders do the small lift they did in large rooms, and she put them down again, because Miss Anita had once tapped her between the shoulder blades with two fingers and said, "The piano can hear your posture from across a room. Don't walk in already apologizing."
They found the shoe store on the lower level, past a kiosk of phone cases and a man demonstrating a mop no one wanted to watch and everyone slowed down for. The yellow-tag wall was real. The size was not, at first. Ruth sat. Aaliyah tried on three pairs. The second pair pinched at the left toe in a way that would become a blister by Tuesday. The third pair was uglier and kinder. Aaliyah walked to the mirror and back.
"They look like shoes that work," Ruth said.