The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

son,’ she said when her eyes reopened, ‘run the box and all these bits of packaging down to the tip. I’ll give you some money. You can get some sweets on the way back.’
    He looked warily at the sun on the lawn, all sickly green. ‘Can’t you take it? You can drive.’
    ‘Be a good boy.’
    ‘I don’t want to go outside.’
    ‘Listen… I have to… hide these. Before your father returns. He won’t understand. Be a good boy, son.’
    They gathered up the polystyrene and stuffed it back into the parcel. Then his mother gave him some coins and he grudgingly carried the box out of the house. But he went no farther, creeping back inside to spy on her.
    He watched her strutting about in the hallway with an imaginary dancing partner, her bad leg making her moves lopsided. Without hesitation he sneaked to the cupboard where his parents kept their Polaroid and tiptoed back to use his mother as subject, taking photos one by one, loving the whirr as they slid out undeveloped. He laid them on the kitchen floor while she hummed a ballroom tune in the hallway. They emerged from the white like explorers returning from a blizzard. He was so engrossed by this enchantment that he didn’t hear his mother’s humming stop. She caught him poring over the photographs.
    ‘Son!’ she hissed, bustling over to the photos he’d taken. She put a hand to her forehead when she saw them and moaned.
    ‘Mother?’
    There was a noise at the front door. She turned to Midas, suddenly alarmed. He watched her eyes widen. ‘Quick!’ she hissed, but the noise was only the afternoon paper dropping through the letterbox. She held a hand to her heart. Then she became agitated again. ‘I must hide the dragonflies,’ she said to herself as much as to him. She picked up the pile of photos. ‘And now I must hide these. But Midas, please deliver this box to thetip as you said you would. I beg you: do that for me.’
    He shrugged and went back outside, picking up the box to carry it a few paces down the street before turning into a leafy alley. The hot sun drew sweat beneath his jumper. Birds screeched and fled as he passed. A black-and-yellow caterpillar dangled from a stalk, building a cocoon to melt itself into something else. Searing light was everywhere and blinding, and he jogged to get the trip to the dump over with. Soon he could smell rot. The alley took a right turn into a ring of skips and growling machines. Muscular workers in neon jackets frowned at him as he scampered up the steps of a skip and tossed the box on to a bed of litter. When he climbed down, one of the workers said something about his haircut. He hurried back up the shady alley towards the house.
    Just as he was opening the front garden gate, somebody called, ‘Midas!’
    His father, walking down the street, a burgundy sweater over a cream shirt and black tie. Not a drop of sweat on him. The light gleamed on his glasses and bald head and buried itself in his dense moustache. He nodded to Midas at the gate.
    ‘You’ve been playing in the street?’
    ‘No. I… went to buy a film for my camera.’
    His father shook his head and pushed through the gate. ‘You should spend your pocket money on books. You know that?
Books
, Midas.’ He paused, twitched his fingers and crouched down by the verge of the lawn. ‘Ah… What have we here?’
    He held up a polystyrene figure-of-eight as if it were a rare gem. He turned it round and round, rubbing his moustache. ‘Hmm. Well now.’

     
    Dinginess had returned to the house. Midas’s mother, having redrawn the curtains and blinds, stood in the hallway as his fatherwiped his shoes on the mat and crouched to slowly unfasten his laces.
    ‘Good afternoon, dear,’ he said sweetly.
    ‘Good afternoon. Hello, dear.’
    She hovered closer, restless. He slid off his shoes and passed them to Midas, who put them on the rack and handed back his father’s slippers. These his father pulled over his argyle-patterned socks. Then he took her