The rest of Marisol's day at least ended well, but she knew her moment of truth was coming tomorrow as she went to bed and she would have to find some way to put up with Fischer long enough to complete their project. Once Saturday arrived Marisol was in no hurry to start moving but she deduced it's better to get it over with so she began to freshen up and put on her brightest, vibrant outfit before getting going to the library.

She arrived a good hour early and needless to say because of Spring Break there was hardly anyone in the library, it would be closing early at 2 o clock and be closed throughout next week. It was deathly quiet with only the sound of the air-conditioning unit and Ms. Ross the old librarian who was entirely consumed in typing away on the computer's keyboard to pay attention to who was entering and leaving.

" Guess I'll just start brain-storming some ideas." Marisol whispered to herself as she set her book-bag and purse on a table and started to put pen and paper for ideas for what their collaborative research paper to be about.

Marisol jotted away at her paper for a good hour and once twelve o clock finally hit, she was surprised to know, Fischer has not yet arrived. She attempted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but all in vain as well because there was no sign of him 30 minutes later and it didn't take a psychologist to tell that Marisol was angry about it.

" I should’ve known he'd stand me up, why in the world did I ever believe he'd come?" Marisol scolded herself for being so naive and began to get up. " Guess I'll go home"

" Don't bother I'm here." Marisol jumped in surprise especially since she was ready to pack up her belongings, however in the niche of time Fischer arrived albeit Marisol noticed that he didn't look very well, slightly pale and like he didn't sleep very well the previous night.

" So glad of you to join me, anyways I've been doing some brainstorming some ideas that we can do for our proposal and some potential issues we can discuss." Marisol greeted him with a snark in her tone, and sat back down since her partner arrived, and handed him a list of issues to write about.

Fischer took the paper and took a brief look at it, before moving his head to cough several times and even Marisol had a quick look of concern since Fischer was obviously sick. " Feeling a bit under the weather today?" Marisol asked, averting her eyes, Fischer was indeed her least favorite person in the school arguably, but she didn't want him to know that she was even the slightest bit worried.

" Nope, perfectly fine. And these topics suck." Fischer bluntly stated and the iota of care Marisol did have disappeared after that statement.

" What do you mean they suck, they're great!"

" Eh, all these have to do with natural selection, our ancestry to apes, and stupidly trying to disprove the big bang theory, pretty cut, dry, and lame in my opinion." Fischer shrugged as he continued to look after her other ideas.

" Really now, and like you have anything better in mind?" Marisol asked, for him to be bashing her ideas she definitely wants to see if he has anything better.

" Hmm, not right now, but give me a moment to think and I will." Fischer replied, handing his partner her papers back. " Don't get me wrong it's 'okay' material, but not 'A' material."

" You don't say?" Marisol lowly said, and put the side of her face in her palm, she'd like to make some sort of rebuttal but she knew he had a higher grade than her. Making any sort of argument she'd have little ground to talk.

" I do say, after all I do have an A in the class." Despite the amount of sarcasm he used, Fischer was entirely to focused on thinking of a matter to detect Marisol's own sarcasm, which was adding gasoline on her fire.

" Thanks for reminding me, I wonder how many times I'm going to be reinformed of that!" Marisol blurted out, before clearing her throat to remember to keep her voice down in a library. Her mini-rant ignored as Fischer had his back turned, he appeared to be breathing heavily, and Marisol's concern starting to rush back partially.

" Are you uh, sure you're okay?" Marisol made sure to sound as callous as possible, luckily Fischer's back was turned so he couldn't see her trying to take a peek at him with her eyes filled with visible concern.

" Y-yeah, I'll be right back, I need a drink of water." Fischer, stuttered a bit and got up to walk away. He may be a pain in the ass to her, but she did hope he could pull himself together.

He navigated his way towards the water fountain near the bathrooms and pressed the button for a stream of water to start spraying out. He took a brief drink and collected some water in his left palm for a second and splashed it in his face.

" Fuck, what the hell is wrong with me today?" He asked himself, he felt perfectly fine all of yesterday and even going to bed last night, nothing that would give him indication he was coming down with a cold. Meanwhile, Marisol was steady in place waiting albeit slightly worried over Fischer's well-being.

" Wait a second, what's wrong with me he's an annoying jerk, I shouldn't care at all." Marisol tried to convince herself that she was not wary of how Fischer felt, but kept twiddling her fingers for him to come back. . . " Oh, forget it, I'll just check on him . to uh . .make sure he didn't ditch me." Marisol lied to herself to give a legit reason to go check on him.

She got up taking only her purse with her and walked through several shelves of books into the back of the library where she saw Fischer, with his head hung down, both hands on the side of the water fountain to keep himself from falling to the floor.

" Hey, are you alright!" Marisol couldn't hide it any longer, he looked like he was about to die and she ran over to him to put a hand on his back, he was burning up.

" . . .What . the . .hell . .are . .you doing . .I'm fine. ." Fischer was struggling to speak and his voice sounded raspy.

" Are you kidding me?! You can barely stand right now and you're telling me you're alright!" It didn't take a medical degree for Marisol to see through Fischer's facade.

" My goodness, you know it's a sin to lie, so if you're not feeling so well, just say so! I guess you can't help being a sinner, but you should make more of an effort to live a more virtuous life!" Marisol was off, despite her worry for Fischer that quickly took the backseat for her to start preaching to him.

All of her words were falling on deaf ears for Fischer now fell flat onto the ground, he felt completely light-headed and his vision was going in and out. This helped Marisol come back to her senses and exited her monologue. " Goodness, Fischer." She leaned down to him unsure of what to do to help, things went from bad to worse as Fischer started to writhe on the ground back and forth like he was in immense discomfort. " Come on Van, please hang in there!"

Marisol tried offering any kind of verbal support she could, but ultimately fell silent to what she began to witness. At first she thought it was her eyes playing tricks on her yet she swore she was seeing Fischer's body shriveling, not shriveling more like . .compressing? His clothes were gradually beginning to look baggier on him, at that moment Marisol couldn't believe what she was seeing, he looked smaller and without a shadow of a doubt he was shrinking.

" Oh my gosh, please stop, please stop!" Never in her wildest dream did she ever imagine or expect to witness something like this and only kept hoping for the shrinking to stop. All in vain as she hopelessly watched him continue to get smaller until he eventually was out of sight and buried inside his shirt.


" . . . " Marisol, sat in place too afraid to look inside the shirt now and see what was left if anything of Fischer. She wouldn't have to though, as she saw a slight bulge in his shirt and saw it move upwards, towards the collar and through the head.

" . !" Marisol covered her mouth to stifle her scream, both of them were shocked out of their lives from what they were seeing. Fischer seeing a giant Marisol staring at him, and Marisol seeing a shrunken 3-inch tall Fischer.