Croy's Shoes
I awoke to the normal Smokey sounds. I walked to and ate breakfast with some of my friends who work with me; it was a perfectly ordinary morning. We messed around a bit, until we had to go get our hoverboards and head off to another day of pulling up train tracks. Just as I stepped out the door, the roar of overworked hovercars filled my ears and rumbled my brain. This could only mean one thing. My theory was correct: Tally Youngblood has betrayed me… betrayed us. I knew it, but nobody believed me. Looks like a whole bunch of people owe me an apology, I thought, making a beeline for the woods.
I bent my still-moving legs into a leaping stance, but I was not fast enough. "Croy!" I heard someone yell. Turning my head, a black gloved hand reached out and grabbed my shoulder, forcing me to the ground. The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a fenced-in area with more than half of the other smokies around me. Over to my left, I saw her. She was shoving a Special Circumstances agent of the roof of a trading shack. The glimmer of a hoverboard caught my eye. Wait, I thought to myself, there are two hoverboards over there, sandwiched together. Then I realized that she was taking them both and heading off somewhere, to get away, probably. "Typical Tally," I mumbled under my breath, "Saving herself, forgetting about us."
I was enraged and irritated. We all were. However, I had to help, because somehow I knew she was going to get David. I cared about David. He had not been at breakfast and they had been together last night. As I watched her ride away and the Special Circumstances Agent run back to the library, I noticed she was barefoot, no socks or anything. I wanted to leave her my shoes, but I did not know if her feet were the same size as mine. Then I got a brilliant, helpful idea. "Take off your shoes, pass it on," I whispered to the Smokey next to me.