“All right, Annie, I think that's enough,” said Alice, finally mastering her laughter.

I watched the bottom of Annie's car-sized flip-flop rise as she lifted her foot off me, placing it on the bed beside its twin.

“Sorry, Will, I couldn't resist.”

As she watched me stand up and dust myself off, Annie looked apologetic, but her remorse wasn't strong enough to suppress a smile. She was still a little devil, and she knew it, but I could never get mad at her.

Alice shifted in her seat.

“Will told me you used to play games with him. Was that one of them?”

“Yeah...” she said with a giggle.

“What other games did you play?” Alice leaned forward with interest.

“Well, we had this game where Will had to climb onto my bed with me... bu-ut, for some reason Will just wanted to hide in my shoe.”

That's not how it happened! I fell in her shoe while trying to climb her bed. Alice gave me an amused look. Since I was too small for her to hear, I tried to signal to her that that wasn't the whole story.

“And a few times he painted my nails, and oh yeah, Will and Liz and I used to play Intergalactic Princess Hero Team! Do you like that show? I have the first four seasons on DVD. Maybe we could watch it later!”

“I'd love to.”

“Let's see, what else did we do? Um... Oh. There was that one time... I'm sure Will told you about the time he...”

She was of course alluding to the time she shrank me so I could spy on my cheating ex-wife.

“Yes, Will told me. He was very brave.” Alice tilted her head and gave me an angry look. “Very brave and very stupid. He could have gotten hurt. Or worse, found.”

Alice's eyes, normally gentle and full of love, seemed to darken and fill with storm clouds when she got angry with me. Very seldom though did she get really upset with me. There were a few occasions when I had to endure a terrible look from her (made even more terrible if I happened to be shrunk), a look that seemed to say, “I'm going to grind your bones to make my bread.” I knew she would never really hurt me, but that look made me think of all the things she could do to me if she wanted, and that was more than enough to keep me off her bad side.

Maybe it was stupid. But I had to. Otherwise, we might not be together.

My surroundings began to return to their ordinary scale. Is Annie growing me, or shrinking the entire world? I thought half-seriously. I was now sitting beside Annie on the bed. As Alice watched me return to normal, I saw the storm clouds in her pupils dissipate, leaving behind the gentler darkness of a clear night sky. She greeted her now normal-sized boyfriend with a smile and a melodic hum. She looked at Annie with eager interest.

“So, um... Annie, how did you first learn about your powers?”

Annie's face grew thoughtful and serious, and she was silent for a while. Then she told her story, the story she had told me once, about facing down a bully, and getting her first shocking glimpse of how frighteningly powerful she really was. Alice's eyes grew wide, and she covered her mouth in shock.

“Oh my God!”

A pang of sympathy was evident on her face as she got up from her chair to give Annie a hug. She cradled Annie's head to her breast for a moment.

“Look at me, Annie. Don't you ever think you're a freak or a monster. We didn't choose to have this... power. I know it can be hard to bear sometimes, trust me, I know. But it can't control you, or tell you who you should be. Only you can decide that.”

It was a heartwarming moment, watching the two new friends repose in their long-awaited understanding, but I suddenly began to feel ill. A strange sense of dread came over me, and the room seemed to disappear, leaving the three of us floating in space. Annie turned her head to look at me. She seemed to sense my unease. I had the sudden, strange feeling that she was reading my mind, answering a question I couldn't put into words. My unease began to subside, but I was left feeling just as perplexed as ever.

“Will... How did you know? How did you know Alice had the shrinking power?”

“How did you know I knew?” I almost said. Instead, I thought for a moment. I don't know how I knew. I just knew when I looked into –

“Her eyes. There was something strange about her eyes... something that told me she was different. Something that reminded me of you, Annie.”

Annie's face lit up at that.

“Of course...”

Alice seemed just as intrigued by Annie's response as I was. When Annie's eyes met mine again, she looked as if she had said something she shouldn't have. It was clear she knew something she wasn't telling us.

Before I could ask her about it, we heard the sound of a door open and close in the common room adjoining Annie's bedroom. We heard the sound of footsteps growing louder, and then a girl appeared. She was slightly thickset, with Asian features, dark hair and glasses.

“Hi Will!”

“Alice, I'd like you to meet my best friend and roommate, Liz.”

“Nice to meet you, Liz.”

I had gotten to know Li-Na Kim, or Liz, during my stay with Annie. She was the first one Annie told about her powers, so I knew they had a close friendship.

“My mother was asking about you, Will,” Liz said as she put her backpack down by her bed.

“I'm sure Mrs. Kim would like to see you again,” teased Annie, grinning. “Maybe this time you could paint her toenails.”

The girls laughed, and I just wondered how long Annie was going to keep embarrassing me during our visit. I had of course told Alice about how I had given Liz's mom, Mindy, the shock of her life when she walked into her daughter's bedroom and saw me shrunk on the floor. What I had told neither Alice nor Annie was that, on a previous night at Liz's house, I had snuck out of Liz's room out of curiosity, and ended up in the kitchen by Mindy's gargantuan feet. It wasn't until Liz appeared that I was rescued and returned safely to her room. I thought Mrs. Kim was a kind, sweet woman, and, though I felt a little guilty admitting it, I thought she had very attractive feet.

“I'll be right back, you guys,” said Annie, exiting the room. Liz followed, leaving me and Alice sitting on the bed together.

“She's really sweet, Will. I can tell she really cares about you.”

She slipped her hand through mine, and gripped it gently.

I thought back to that strange, dreadful feeling I had felt a few minutes earlier. Between that and Annie's strange comment, I had the inkling that something big was going to happen this weekend. I knew that there were at least two women in the world who had these powers – powers that should be impossible, powers that defied explanation. I felt the dread lurking again. I knew that I was part of something bigger than me, and something told me I would soon find out what that was.