Julia’s oceanic irises snap to me before the familiar greeting has even finished leaving my lips. For a moment, her frame jostles as though I’ve startled her, and I can’t blame her. She probably wasn’t anticipating the kind of death-wish confidence I just displayed by amiably roaring a morning salute to the girl who’s probably literal seconds from swiping me up into her fist and pinching my bones to powder one joint at a time.
Her enormous toes curl provocatively against the carpet, grasping at the fibers, as though she’s about to pounce like a jungle cat, but there’s no other movement in her body after her palm containing Gina and Faith lowers back into her skirted lap. From this distance, it’s harder to read the sixteen-year-old’s face, especially since she’s pursed her glossed lips and opened her eyes to such a state of chilling neutrality. She might just as well be desiring to pop me back into her crotch as she is planning a fiery apocalypse for all mankind.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Julia was capable of managing both those emotions at once.
The seconds tick by and I still haven’t been pulverized by those pale toes or found myself suffocated into the pad of my ex-girlfriend’s massive palm. All organic matter remains as eerie stone. Silence settles fully back into the room, though when I concentrate, I think I can hear Gina’s breathing getting heavier even from all the way down here. After all, she’s most likely assumed she’s going to have to watch me die now, and that’s a much more likely conclusion than the mad designs our ragtag band has been coming up with inside the walls all night.
Julia’s pupils remain trained directly onto me as I stand calmly on the carpet a matter of footsteps away, looking rather pathetic with the towering white door behind me. I’ve been under this kind of scrutinizing gaze many a time by Julia, feeling as though the layers of my skin and muscle were being peeled back just by the glow of those blue eyes, but not today. Right now, and maybe for the first time, she’s just a girl. Granted, a girl with a powerful tool, a deadly charm, a homicidal streak, and the singular wish to possess all the world as her toys and candies.
But nonetheless, a girl.
And I will not allow her to be anything more to me from now on.
Over a minute of stinging quietude rolls by before Julia’s plush lips part, exhaling audibly and sighing deeply enough to fully re-inflate her lungs. She’s in no hurry, but luckily, neither am I.
“Jack,” she says. I’m surprised the word isn’t expelled with vomit. If anything, she speaks sweetly to me. Even calmingly. “I’m glad to see you’re okay.”
It’s a rational thing to say; she probably wants a clean canvas before she turns me into human splatter pattern art.
“I’m here,” I say, holding my arms out as wide as I can. For as vulnerable as I am at this moment, I feel oddly invincible.
“Yes,” she answers. Her fingers curl possessively inward toward her palm, forcing Gina and Faith further back against the heel of her hand. “So where are the other two?”
“Still inside the wall,” I say, shrugging nonchalantly.
“Oh?” A frown crosses Julia’s brow, and her toes cease flexing and instead set to tapping impatiently against the floor. “Is that so?”
“Yes. That’s so.” I say simply, willing myself to remain still. Already I can see this is working and I’ve barely said anything. It’s burning her up just a little to be shown such flippant insubordination by her former lover, and as hard as she’s trying to keep from letting a single emotion show itself, I can see her truer side starting to come through.
“That wasn’t the deal,” she informs me with a little less of her earlier gentility. “You heard what I said yesterday to the house, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You know what I’m going to do to them if I don’t have all of you in here now?”
“Of course I do,” I say coolly. No lying required here. “I’ve seen you do it to people before. I know you aren’t kidding.”
“Good,” she scoffs. Her nostrils flare. Her right foot shifts its weight against the floor as though she’s considering standing, but then thinks better of it. “So why don’t I have all three of you in here now?”
“I wanted to come here myself first,” I say. “So I delayed them.”
“Delayed them?”
“I didn’t hurt them. I just blocked off the way out of the wall,” I say. “I thought it was important you and I talk first.”
“And why should I believe you did that?”
“You don’t have to,” I say. “But you know Brian. You really think he’d let me risk his baby getting swallowed by letting me come in here alone?”
Julia pauses, considering me from a new angle. She lightly chews her lower lip. “I’m not going to let Gina or Baby Julia go until I have all of you back.”
“I know that,” I say. “We can talk, and then I’ll show you where they’re hiding.”
“I’m not in the mood to play mind games, baby,” she responds swiftly, the sarcasm dripping from each word. Her tongue peeps from the corner of her mouth, smacking wetly at the inside of her cheek. “Not anymore.”
“No one ever was,” I say. “That’s why it’s just me here now.”
“I don’t think we have anything to talk about now. Not after what you’ve done to what we had,” she says. With her free hand, she twirls a finger through her dark locks, tucking them gingerly behind her ears. “It’s really not complicated. Nobody’s going to leave. I’m going to get all of you back here with me again. And then I won’t have to eat anyone.”
At last she smiles that well-worn victorious smile of hers, letting the dimples deepen in her cheeks, but I remain as stoic as ever. She doesn’t get to have a single inch here.
“There’s where you’re wrong,” I say boldly, and this time I’m rewarded with a flinch as her grin fades just as quickly as it was flashed. “There is something that needs to be said. Me to you. I just haven’t known how to say it before.”
“And what might that be, Jack?”
Her attention is solely on me. I’d guess she’s hardly aware now of the two lives perched in her hand. I’ve never felt so specifically like the center of someone’s universe.
“I realized something while we were hiding in that wall, Julia,” I proceed after letting the air catch in my chest. “All this time you’ve been shrinking people and keeping them because you think you’re better than us. Haven’t you?”
“I know I am,” she says without thinking. Her tone remains frigid.
“So why do you have to shrink us, then? Why not just tell us yourself? If you were really better than us, you wouldn’t need your fancy little toy to prove it,” I challenge.
A few successive blinks. Julia’s internally dumbfounded at what I assume to be the first time anyone has ever dared call her out on this genocidal hobby of hers, though she still doesn’t let it show.
“I don’t need it,” she affirms after mulling it over, the confidence redoubled in her voice. “Maybe at first, just so I can keep you long enough to learn your lesson. If I made you big again now, do you really think it would make any difference? Do you really think you could ever live without knowing you’re mine?”
It’s at this juncture that I let out a chuckle that earns another cringe from Julia. I’m really starting to spook her now.
“I don’t think anything would ever change, Julia,” I say truthfully. “My size doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe it never did, and I just had to learn the way things really are. So I guess I owe you thanks for that…”
“You’re welcome, Jack,” she whispers bitterly, her eyes narrowing as she studies me again. “Are you telling me you understand now?”
“Yes,” I say. “I had to be on my own for a day to know it, but it’s never been clearer to me than right now.”
“Really?” Julia’s elegant eyebrow rises. As paranoid as she’s probably become in the last thirty-six hours, I can see how desperately even now she wants to believe she can still own my entire being rather than just the little meat sack I happen to inhabit. The desperation to be wanted by someone she imprisoned is still healthier than ever. God, it’s sad.
“Of course,” I say, lowering my hands behind my back and clenching my fingers together to keep them from shaking. “No matter what size I am, I will never let you make me small.”