“Oh, Peter…” sighed Suzanne as she cradled her five-inch-tall son in the palm of her hand, keeping her fingers curled slightly upward to protect him from falling out as he sat cross-legged on her warm pad of skin.  “I just don’t know about this.”

                “Mom… c’mon,” said Peter with a joking smile, raising an eyebrow.  “You can’t seriously be freaking out about this NOW.  You’ve told me it was okay for the last year!”  To comfort his mother, he reached over and gently stroked her thumb, which was laid calmly next to him as an extra protective barrier.

                “I… I know…” said the worried woman, a few tears welling in her eyes.  “B-B-But… are you sure another year here wouldn’t be better?  I mean… I just think that high school is…” she whispered, her voice beginning to crack.

                “Mom, I’m fifteen, not three.  Every other kid my age goes to high school now.  I know I’ve been homeschooled up until now, but… I’ve gotta get out there somehow!  You know, meet people, get some new experiences…” said Peter with excitement.

                Suzanne, who was seated in an armchair in the family living room, raised an eyebrow and crossed one of her legs.  “Oh, you know I know that, Peter.  But… it’s just… you’re so…”

                “What?” asked the boy innocently, knowing very plainly to what his comparatively giant mother was referring.

                “…special…” said Suzanne with a guilty gulp and a grin, raising her other hand and gently stroking the top of her son’s brunette hair with a soft fingertip.

                In this much, at least, Peter had to admit to himself his mom was right.  His size wasn’t the result of some unnatural or otherworldly occurrence in his life that had rendered him less than half a foot tall. He had simply been born at under two inches long, and had grown up to be roughly five inches tall.  He wasn’t even the first of his kind, although he was something of an anomaly nonetheless.  In fact, for relativity to his size, he was quite lanky, with long, thin limbs and a sallow face.  His mother constantly worried that he wasn’t getting enough to eat, but the real reason for this was simply that Peter enjoyed getting exercise, and it wasn’t even for personal health. 

What Peter wanted more than anything was an adventure of some kind to appear in his life, and this led him to often partake in the tiny, amateur equivalent of free running in his own home, which made his mother worry even more.  His mother tended to worry about almost anything Peter did, though, so this never held much stock for him as he would gleefully zipline from across the kitchen counters, or scale a bedpost with only a piece of string.

                After there had been such a media frenzy surrounding Peter’s birth, Suzanne had taken it upon herself to homeschool the tiny boy, both for his own physical protection in a world not designed for ones his size, and to shield him from the judgmental outsiders.  Suzanne had been paranoid for many years that if not protected at almost all times, Peter could easily be kidnapped, and he could do little to save himself.  Finally, though, as he had just turned fourteen and prepared to enter the eighth grade level courses, Peter had been pestering his mother to allow him to attend a regular high school where he could interact with other teens his age, and learn from actual trained teachers.  Suzanne had taken great issue with this, but after hearing her son’s desperate case to see the outside world on a much more regular basis, she had relented, deciding that the transition between middle school and high school was the best place to enter her son cautiously into public schooling.

                The big day had come up far more quickly than Suzanne had emotionally prepared herself for, though.  Despite the weeks-worth of technical measures the terrified mother had implemented in the school and amongst the staff for her son’s incoming academic year (something the school was only too happy to oblige, as being able to add the fact that they had allowed what many considered to be a severely physically handicapped boy to attend the school would look good on their history and advertisement as a school), Suzanne was still not ready to let her literal “little boy” leave the safety of her hand and go off into a real school, where she could no longer protect him minute-to-minute.

                “Mom… the bus is gonna be here in like fifteen minutes,” said Peter slyly, breaking his mother’s sad trance by tapping on her thumb with his fist.

                “I…” she gasped, suddenly realizing herself again, and tilted her head back down to look at her son, and she couldn’t help but allow a few fat, salty tears to plop out of her eyes.  She quickly pulled her head back, whipping her blonde hair a bit and brushing it out of her eyes, but she wasn’t fast enough, and several of her tears fell right on her son’s face, soaking it.  “I’m sorry, honey,” she cooed, laughing a little at how pathetic the situation was, as she raised a finger from her other hand to help dry his face.  “This is just… very hard for me.”  She gingerly placed her fingertip against his cheek, pressing hard enough to get most of the excess tear water without pushing her son too hard.

                “Mom, I got it, it’s fine,” said Peter, pushing her finger away and wiping his own cheeks.  “You won’t be there at school to do that for me, remember?” he smirked.

                “Now, you just remember,” she said, almost scolding, intending for her son to heed her words fully.  “If you need anything.  ANYTHING… during the day, and you just give your sister a call.  The administration is perfectly fine with her giving you any help you need,” she said.  “Understand?  You just give her a call, and she’ll be there in no time.”

                “Umm, yeah, sure,” said Peter unsurely, scratching the back of his head absentmindedly.  His sister Erica was two years older than he and was entering her junior year of high school, and he had a sense she didn’t particularly feel like babysitting her five-inch-tall brother when she would much prefer to hang out with her friends.  “I’ll do that.”  He removed his cell phone from his pocket: it was a device that had been special ordered by the family from a phone company looking for a unique advertising opportunity, and it had ended with Peter getting a fully functioning, correctly sized cell phone that allowed him to make calls to normal sized cell phones that dwarfed him considerably.

                “And I’ve told her.  If you need something, she’s going to help you.  So she understands too, okay?” said Suzanne.

“Yeah, Mom, I got it, really,” responded Peter, mentally gulping, knowing that bugging his older sister was not very high on his priority list.

“Do you want some breakfast?”

“Yes, but I can…”

“No!” said Suzanne, more forcefully than she intended.  “Let me.”  She stood up slowly from the chair and headed toward the kitchen, still cupping her son lovingly in her cushy palm.  Peter didn’t object, knowing his mom was trying to squeeze out every last second she could of taking care of him.

                Just as Suzanne and Peter entered the kitchen, Erica and Jessica, Peter’s thirteen-year-old sister, stepped in as well.  Erica was moving groggily despite her clearly well-picked outfit and painstakingly applied make-up, wearing a pair of skinny jeans, a tight pink shirt that barely concealed her navel, a variety of colorful bracelets that represented the current accessorizing trend, and a silky sheen running over her recently straightened dirty-blonde hair. 

Jessica, meanwhile, looked thrilled to be there, seeming to have an enthralled gleam in her blue eyes as she proudly brandished her favorite blue t-shirt with the Happy Bunny printed on it, combined with a pair of flowery-printed jeans.  With a bounce of her nearly bleach-blonde hair upon entering the room, Jessica stopped in front of her mother and brother.

                “Are you really going to school today, Peter?” asked Jessica with a gigantic toothy grin to her handheld sibling.  He nodded, smiling.

                “I really am, Jessie.”

                “Are you excited?”

                “You bet,” he winked, causing his little sister to beam brightly, giggle girlishly, and scurry off to the fridge to look for some orange juice.  Peter grinned to himself.  His little sister was a bit attached to him, and while it got on his nerves from time to time, his relationship with Jessica was admittedly far better than the one with Erica.

                Suzanne set her hand gently down on the kitchen table, allowing Peter to step lightly from it and await his breakfast, which she busily began preparing with the toaster once she was sure he was safely upon the marble tabletop.

                Jessica set her glass cereal bowl down with a loud and obnoxious clatter, and quickly tucked into her corn flakes, tenaciously scooping her shining silver spoon back into the lake of milk before bringing it back up, full of golden, crusted clumps, and depositing them messily over her lips, allowing several droplets of milk to spill down her chin.  She laughed as she busily ground the flakes up into a pulp with her molars, wiping the white dribbles away with the back of her hand before dipping back in for another bite. 

A stray drop of milk that happened to be swatted off Jessica’s thin chin by her massive hand flew down and splashed wetly onto the lapel of Peter’s shirt, but he simply wiped it away, stepping back a bit further.  He mentally scolded himself, having learned very well over the years that it was best to steer clear of his thirteen-year-old sibling when she was eating, as her table manners weren’t exactly up to snuff, and for a boy Peter’s size, a lack of her table manners had on more than one occasion left him with sprayed chunks of food or drink coating his clothes and face.  The best policy was normally just to give Jessica a solid cubic foot of space around her eating area to avoid the splash zone.

“There you go!” said Suzanne proudly, trying to conceal the sadness in her voice, as she slowly placed a napkin with a quartered piece of toast before her son.  “Eat up.  You’ve got a big day ahead of you.”

“Thanks Mom…” said Peter sheepishly, awkwardly picking up one quarter of the partially blackened piece of bread and nibbling at the corner with a soft crunch.

“Erica, honey,” Suzanne seemed to whine slowly at her eldest daughter, who was clicking away at a new text on her cell phone and ignoring the others.  “Can’t you eat something?”

“Mom, I’m gonna get something at lunch.”

“That’s not the same.  You need your breakfast.  Come on, just let me make you a…”

“Mom, I’m fine,” groaned Erica, returning to the text.  Suzanne shrugged and sighed, not in the mood to argue with her daughter on this morning where she was already so emotionally distraught.  Jessica finished her cereal in record time, wiping away a thick milk mustache with a little chuckle before hopping off her chair and heading for the laundry room to grab her backpack, which was freshly stuffed with new school supplies.

“Jessica, your bus doesn’t come for almost an hour.  Relax,” said Suzanne with a smile, knowing her youngest was just as thrilled for the start of the new year as her son.  Hanging her shoulders and drooping her smile for dramatic emphasis, Jessica lumbered back to the kitchen table, laying her head on the side jokingly before cracking a smile and chortling uncontrollably.  Suzanne laughed too, shaking her head at Jessica’s hyperactive sense of humor, and returned to Peter, who had eaten a sixteenth of the toast slice before placing the rest on the napkin, politely wiping his mouth.

Knowing his mother was about to heartily object to his eating so little, Peter took the lead as he grabbed up his proportioned backpack, filled with notebook paper and pencil tips designed to fit his body, and slung it over one of his shoulders.  “Mom!  Seriously, the bus is on the way.  You want me to be late my first day?”

Suzanne, noting to herself how desperately she didn’t want her son to go to school at all, kindly deprived her son of the truth, and instead set her hand back on the tabletop, palm up, with a motherly smile, her upper lip quivering again with the effort to not turn the waterworks back on.  Walking toward the front door, Suzanne leaned against the frame before opening it, peeking out the window nervously, pondering what her son was about to undertake.

“Are you… are you SURE about…”

“Mom, don’t worry about me.  I’ll be fine,” said Peter optimistically, grinning.  To help quell his mother’s fears, he grabbed ahold of her thumb, lifting it up, and hugged it against his chest warmly.  This sent goosebumps down his mother’s arm, and she smiled, the tears welling again.  She wiped them away before Peter could see them. 

Bringing a fingertip from her free hand to her lips, she kissed it loudly, then lowered it toward her son, pressing it gently against his cheek.  Being so small, Peter could actually feel a trace amount of wetness from his mother’s plush lips, and he wiped it away, embarrassed, as he ceased hugging her finger.  “Mom… seriously, we’ve got to work on that.”

“Sweetie, just… please… be careful,” begged Suzanne, bringing her son a bit closer to her face so he could hear her gentler, hushed tone.  “If anything ever happens to you at that school, I swear to God…”

“MOM…” groaned Erica, her arms crossed, tapping a foot next to her mother as she waited for the door to be unblocked.  “The bus is coming.  Let me through?”

“All right,” said Suzanne slowly, lowering her hand away from her face and slowly uncurling her fingers from their defensive position around her little son’s seated body.  “Ready?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m ready,” answered Erica, rolling her eyes, and opening her hand unceremoniously, palm up, for the transfer.  Slowly and caringly, Suzanne lowered her hand over her oldest daughter’s softer, younger palm, allowing Peter to disembark carefully onto Erica’s hand.  With her brother on board, the normal-sized teen stepped to the side, grasping at the door handle and swinging it open roughly before stepping carefully down the steps so as not to send Peter flying from his precarious perch in her hand. 

“Bye, you two.  Have a… great day…” called Suzanne, pulling a tissue from her pocket and blowing her nose.

“Bye, mom,” Erica said begrudgingly over her shoulder as she began the walk down the block to the bus stop, Peter still cupped safely in her palm.