That seems to pull him out of his trance. He eyes me up and down like I might be a doppelganger sent to distract him from his righteous path of owning a new pair of sneakers this week.

“How do you know?” he eventually asks in a whine.

I stare at him blankly until he concedes his passive agreement with a long-suffering sigh.

“Fine, fine. Don’t go Yoda on me.”

If there is one thing that Ming knows that I know in this world, it’s sneakers—and even he doesn’t quite know the extent of it.

The walls of my room are covered in them. Well, sort of. Not actual sneakers. The walls are covered in labels I found, sketches of early drafts of limited editions from that student exhibit at the Parsons School for Fashion Design, a few printed designs from the web. I’ve never been able to afford many sneakers, but if you know where to look, you can find some pretty cool things around the city. Original. Designers passing through town are also always game to autograph an empty shoebox. If you flatten them into one another, the result is something that comes pretty close to a mural of sorts. I used to spend a considerable amount of time on the specialized blogs and message boards before little by little, college fare replaced most of those bookmarks on my phone.

“The SKU number is scratched out on the box, for one,” I say after a closer look inside, which confirms what I’d assumed from the window.

“I always forget the SKU number,” Ming eventually grumbles, falling out of love as quickly as he fell in.

“That’s what they’re counting on.” Stock-Keeping Units. Eight characters that will tell you the full life span of a pair of shoes if you know how to read them. “Plus, check the tongue label. Those sizing labels that were designed in 2014 and these were 2012 releases. . . . Also, seventy-nine dollars? C’mon, dude. These retail for two forty online!”

“Stop,” he dramatically whines, passing his hand over the rows and rows of shoeboxes like some southern dame grazing a lake during a boat ride. “You’ve already crushed my ‘sneakerection’ into dust.”

“Ew. If something is too good to be true . . .” I shrug, drifting off because I’m sounding way too much like my dad right now. “How did you even know about this place?”

“What do you mean?”

“You shop in Harlem a lot?” I ask skeptically.

“I’m not a high-rise kid, Haltiwanger!” Ming says with a glare. We listlessly walk through the shop, taking in the new designs and colors of the season. Purple and green are going to be in this year. The streets of New York are going to look like the Joker’s laundry basket.

“You’re a little bit of a high-rise kid. One of the good ones but still.”