So Yesterday Read Online Free PDF Page B

course that bubble burst. People wanted shoes,
not spaceships. Innovators began to search suburban malls for the humble sneakers
of their childhood. Trendsetters demanded whole new categories of shoes: for
skating, snowboarding, surfing, walking, running, and every other sport
(parachutists probably have their own shoes), and to save all those secretaries
time, hybrids appeared, dressy on top and rubber in the sole.
    The client—with its flashy, gimmicky, jump-shooting
shoes—faded. The world it had dominated disappeared, broken down into a
patchwork of tribes and cliques and niches, like some neighborhood controlled
by a different gang on every block.
    But the pair in front of us recalled the oldies in
Antoine's lovingly stacked boxes in the Bronx, those ancient, golden, simple
days. Not spaceships—just shoes with insane confidence, vitality, and flair.
    Sheer cool.

***********
    "Wow," Jen said.
    "I know." Acting on instinct, I pointed my
phone and took a picture.
    "Wow," she repeated.
    I reached out, and my hand glowed in the shaft of
sunlight, as if the shoes were infecting me with their magic. The texture of
the panels was something I'd never felt before, as rough and pliable as canvas
| but with the silvery shine of metal. The laces flowed through my fingers as
softly as ropes made out of silk. The eyelets seemed to have tiny spokes that
turned when I flexed the shoe, using the same effect as those 3-D postcards
that change when you look at them from different directions.
    But the individual flourishes weren't what made the
shoes incredible. It was the way they called to me to put them on, the way I
was sure I could fly if I was wearing a pair. The way I needed to buy them now.
    A way I hadn't felt since I was ten.
    "So this is what Mandy wanted us to see."
    "No kidding," I said. "The client must
be keeping this a total secret."
    "The client? Look again, Hunter."
    She was pointing at a circle of plastic set into the
tongue, where the client's logo stood out bright white and proud. With my brain
gradually recovering from its dazzlement, I saw what Jen had spotted right
away. The logo—one of the world's best-known symbols, up there with the white
flag of surrender and the golden arches—had been cut through with a diagonal
line in bright red.
    Like a no-smoking sign. Like a
no-whatever sign. The bar sinister, a symbol of prohibition also recognized
around the world.        , ^
    It was an anti-logo.                                  
    "Bootlegs," I murmured. That was another
thing that went on in the I shadows of Chinatown. In rows
of small, discreet shops on Canal Street you could buy watches and jeans,
handbags and shirts, wallets and belts, all with the labels of famous designers
sewn onto them by hand. All cheap and fake. Some were laughably crude, some
pretty much passable, and a few required an eye as expert as Hillary Hyphen's
to spot the telltale wrong stitch.
    But I'd never seen any bootleg that was better than the original.
    "Not exactly bootlegs, Hunter. I mean, it's
saying right up front what it's not."
    "True. I guess a bootlegger wouldn't do
that."
    "But who would do something like that? What's the point of a
non-bootleg bootleg?"
    "I don't know," I said. "They're so good. Like the perfect shoe the
client never made."
    Jen shook her head. "But Mandy called us here.
Does she work for anyone besides the client?"
    "No. She's exclusive." I frowned.
"Maybe this really is their shoe. Maybe they have this master plan of
rebranding as the opposite of themselves. Or maybe these are supposed to look
like bootlegs when they're not. And after these get too popular, which they will, the
client will absorb the backlash and become cool again. Maybe they're ironic
bootlegs."
    Confused? Trust me, it was making my head hurt, and
it's my job to think this way.
    "That's so insane,"
Jen said. "Or pure genius. Or something."
    "Something really cool."
    "So where's Mandy?"
    "Oh, yeah."