As Nicole walks into the house, she immediately hears her mother yelling from another room asking who’s there. Nicole answers back and then her mother tells her to come to the family room. When Nicole walks in, she sees her mother sitting on the couch with her head down as she looks spaced out as she stares at her hands, which were folded in her lap. Nicole could tell her mother was very worried about something. Jenna finally stopped spacing out and looked over at her daughter. As her eyes scan into the hall that Nicole’s body was blocking from her view, Jenna asks “Is your step brother not with you?” Nicole shakes her head, “He went to a friend’s house.” Jenna sighs, “Good. That means I can break the news to you first.” Nicole now looks very concerned and Jenna picks up on this. She then gestures for her daughter to sit on the couch with her.

            Nicole sat right next to her mother and waited patiently for her to say something. After a few moments, Jenna was finally able to start speaking “After you left for school, I went to my car to leave for work, but as soon as I got into the garage, I noticed your step father’s car was still here. Now, as you know, Dan typically leaves an hour earlier than the rest of us for work, so I was baffled that his car was still here. The reason I was so baffled was because I didn’t remember seeing him in bed next to me when I woke up, which he usually isn’t since he’s generally out the door before my alarm goes off. So, I went up stairs to see if I just hadn’t noticed him, but he still wasn’t there. I had no idea what to think, so I got out my phone and called him, but then I heard his phone ringing. I walked over to Dan’s side of the bed and found it was still on his nightstand. That’s when I found out….”

           As Jenna pauses, Nicole is at the edge of her seat in anticipation for how this story ends and asks “So, what happened? Did he get fired? Is he leaving you? Is he cheating on you?” Jenna shakes her head “It’s nothing like that. I’m afraid it’s a little worse…. After I hung up my phone, I glanced over at his bed again, and to my complete and total shock, there he was.” Nicole now looks incredibly confused “How could you not notice him there one minute, and then see him the next?” Jenna sighs, “He was laying on the pillow. I didn’t notice him because… your step father has caught the disease, or genetic disorder, or whatever they’re calling it now…. Nicole, you step father has shrunken. He’s only one inch tall.”

           Nicole is speechless. This was the last thing she expected to hear when she came home today. Up until now, this size changing plague hadn’t affected her life in a single way, and she wasn’t really expecting it to. It was just one of those things where she would watch it on the news, and even though she saw how many lives the virus was affecting, she never thought it would happen to someone living in her own home, and since she had only been seeing and hearing about it from the media mostly, it felt just like any other tragedy she watched on the news. After all, every time she watched a natural disaster on TV, she didn’t worry about her house being hit by a tornado or hurricane. It was just one of those things where you think “That’s horrible” but then you don't think abut it happening to you.

           As Jenna let this idea sink into her daughter’s mind, she went on to describe what happened a little more “According to Dan, he woke up and turned his alarm off, but he just couldn’t get out of his bed. He was too tired. I guess that was from the shrinking process starting to work on his body. So, he accidently drifted back to sleep as he laid in bed, and when he woke up, he was even more startled to see my giant face leaning over him than I was to see his tiny body as I gently woke him up.” Nicole couldn’t imagine how shocking that situation must have been for either of them. She then wondered where her tiny step father was. Even though this was an obviously horrible situation for everyone, Nicole realized that she finally knew someone who was shrunken and she wanted to see what her step father looked like in his new form. Nicole quietly asks “Can I see him?”

           Jenna softly nods her head and then looks down at her hands which are still folded. As she opens them up, Nicole’s jaw drops as she sees her tiny step father in the hands of her mother. Dan looks even more depressed than his wife. Nicole then mutters “He looks just like Dan.” Dan jerks his head up in disbelief and says “I am Dan!” Nicole realizes she’s offended him and apologizes, “Sorry. I mean, I know you’re Dan, but it’s like you’re a whole new person now. I always think of you as someone who’s a foot taller than me, so at this size, I don’t really think of you as Dan, even though you look just like him. I mean, you are him, but it’s just not registered in my brain that you’re him…or something….” Nicole then looks to her mom for support, “Do you know what I mean.” Jenna nods and comfortingly says “I understand what you’re saying.” Dan still feels slightly insulted, but he lets it go because she did have a point. At this size, he didn’t look really look or feel like himself.

           There’s a very long, awkward pause as no one says anything. Jenna then looks straight ahead as if she was zoned out again and softly says “I have no idea how I’m going to tell Kevin.” She then looks over at her daughter, who gives her a sympathetic look. Jenna then asks, “Should I tell him the same way I told you? Did you think the way I told you was okay?” Nicole nods, but then adds “But what about for the second part? Have you thought about how you’re going to tell him that?” Jenna looks confused and asks “What second part?” Nicole then reminds him “The likeliness that he'll get it too. They may not know if the disease is a genetic disorder or environmental or some sort of bacteria virus, but every time a man shrinks, his male relatives end up shrinking later as well. They even did that story the other day about how guys who have a shrunken dad or son go into the doctor’s office to get a check up, and even though they look the exact same, their blood work or DNA or whatever show signs of their body starting to go through changes even though they haven’t started shrinking yet. It could be today, or it could be a year from now… but Kevin is going to shrink too.” Jenna looks at her tiny husband, and then back at her daughter, “We didn’t even think about that. We’ve been so worried about how we’re going to break it to him that his father shrank, we didn’t even think about the fact he’ll be shrinking too!”

           Nicole optimistically asks “Do you think you’ll even have to tell him? Maybe he already knows?” Jenna shakes her head “He never pays attention to anything like that. He has that typical, apathetic attitude a lot of young adults your age have, acting like none of it matters because you can't control what's going on in the world.” Nicole sees the depression on her mom’s face and tries to lighten the mood by making an inappropriate joke, “Well, if you want, I could tell him… as long as I can tease him about it. I’d love to see the look on his face when I tell him that he’ll be the size of his big step sister’s pinky toe real soon!” Jenna’s frown did momentarily turn into a small smile for a moment, but then Dan said “That’s not funny!” Jenna gave him a look that said she agreed with him and then gave her daughter a disapproving look. Nicole than says “Sorry. I forgot you were here, little guy.” Dan starts to get a little angry “Don’t call me that!” Nicole than replies “I didn’t mean that in a demoralizing way, I was just saying I made the joke because I forgot you were in the room for a second because you’re so small. I wouldn’t have said that if I remembered you were in the room.” Dan becomes a little bit angrier, “Even if I wasn’t in the room, it would still be inappropriate.” Jenna tries to calm him “Relax. She wouldn’t really tease him about it. She knows how serious this is, which is why she tried to get me to smile.”

           Nicole remained quiet for a minute as she let her mother think about what she might say to her step son. Nicole on the other hand was thinking about her step brother, and how he had always been a little small. Nicole was always slightly taller than her little step brother. They were both adults now, so it was unlikely he was going to get any taller, but his dad continued holding out hope that he would hit a huge growth during his college years and would no longer be such a shrimp, but even their family doctor said that was incredibly unlikely because most young adults will only gain an inch or two at most. Still, Dan continued to champion the extremely slim possibility, hoping his son would beat the odds and not be known as the short guy for the rest of his life.

           As Nicole thought about this, she couldn’t help but smile. When her mom and step dad noticed this, she jokingly said “I guess this means that even if he does hit that super growth spurt, I’ll still get to be the bigger sibling!” Her mom gave her a disappointed look and Nicole responded less jokingly “What? I'm just saying the silver lining is that you guys don’t have to worry about him growing anymore. We all know he probably wasn't going to get taller, but even if he did grow two feet over night, it wouldn’t matter anyways unless they cure the disease.” Though Nicole had made a good point, she could see her mother and step father were still not happy that she brought it up. This was the moment Nicole decided to excuse herself to let her parents get ready for the hard conversation they were about to have.

           When Nicole heard her step brother come home, she could hear her mom telling him to sit down. She never liked her step brother, but she did feel a shred of sympathy for him. Nicole couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like to find out you’ll be shrinking down to a millionth time your own size and might have to permanently stay that way. It also made her wonder how this would change the family dynamic. Nicole tried to visualize what it would be like for her tiny step brother to be standing around and watch as her mom and herself roam the house and look like giants, even though they would really just be normal sized. She never thought about how shrunken family members might effect her life, but Nicole knew she was about to find out.