I’d looked up the word ‘school’ on the internet before, but I never imagined that I’d actually be going there. The topic was pretty foreign at home, and Mum never brought it up. She’d simply shrug the idea off, and change the conversation’s path abruptly. When I turned thirteen, I almost thought I’d gotten through to her about it, but of course, that hasn’t been something we bring up at the dinner table anymore.

 My little brother, Max went to school though. He’s nice enough, as little brothers are, but I try not to get on his bad side, well, because let’s just say that I’m not exactly the strong fighter girl type. Max is turning 14 this year and has just gone through this massive growth spurt, which wouldn’t pester many, but in my case it’s borderline hazardous. Now, I have to watch where I step just to avoid getting squashed by his bus-like feet! Just to let you know, I don’t usually complain about ‘feet’, or the danger they are to someone like me, but seriously! Sometimes I wonder whether he even watches where he’s walking as he bounds through our home.

Every day, I watch him from my seat on the kitchen bench as he leaves for school and yearn with all my heart that I was different. That I could go with him. That I could pack my bag the night before as he does and sprint through the front door each morning to catch the early bus. What I get instead are the weekends, in which he lounges around, sometimes inviting his friends over to keep him company. I generally make an effort to keep clear of them and given my… situation, any smart person would. Fourteen year old boys always seem to have a knack for small, fragile things like me, the one exception being Max. To be honest, he doesn’t like his friends fussing over me either. That’s the one thing we had in common, I guess.

So when mum asked me about school a few days after my 16th birthday, I was pretty shocked. I’d been home-schooled ever since I could talk and after our countless arguments (all of which I’d lost), I’d really never thought I’d ever go to a real school and make real friends. Heck, I don’t even know any of my neighbours. I guess I’m not really a people person.

At first, I was scared by the idea of school, having so many people my age and therefore so much noise. Another odd thing about me is that I’m highly sensitive to noise, to the point where my ears pop at everything above a whisper. It’s why I prefer to wear earmuffs whenever I go somewhere other than home. Mum and Max try to keep it down around me, because as I said, a single shout could make my whole body vibrate. It’s just one of those things I’ve had to live with since birth, and will most likely be something I’ll never get a cure for. But hey, when I thought about finally starting school, my ears became the least of my worries.

After a few weeks of tossing the idea through my head, I told mum that I wanted to go to a proper high school. She’d pursed her lips when gave her my long anticipated answer, but nodded all the same, knowing that is was in fact her idea, after all.

 “I think a smaller school would be better for you though, Amy. Less noise.” She’d suggested. I nodded at that, rewarded me with a small smile that basically summed up her confidence in what she was agreeing to. She asked me if I wanted an interview with my principal, which I declined as it made me nervous. I’m not shy or anything, but people do scare me sometimes. I’m definitely used to their size after sixteen years of experience, but I don’t know anyone besides mum, Max and a few of his good friends. My dad left mum when I was born, more out of fear than anything. I guess he wasn’t all that happy about my… changing.

Ok, ok. I think by now, I’ve dropped enough hints about the fact that I’m a little ‘different’ to your average sixteen year old. I guess I should just spill the beans. When I was born, I had a rare cancer called Shrignakemia; the only cancer documented that one can be born with. And as you would have gathered, I was one of those unlucky babies who came out into the world riddled with the disease. Now, mum hasn’t ever told me much about my whole ‘cancer at birth’ dilemma, apart from the unfortunate details.

See, the kemo therapy that should have cured me wasn’t entirely perfected. An oncologist, Sally Ryan was testing a new serum that didn’t cooperate with my blood type. Don’t get me wrong here: It did cure the cancer, but the side effects weren’t all that spectacular. The aim of the serum I was injected with was to concentrate the cancer molecules and ultimately shrink them down to about a twentieth of their original size, which would kill them off… and what the doctors forgot to mention here, was that if the chemical combination of my blood cells was as rare as my own, there would be a somewhat awkward reaction.

Sally Ryan’s serum made not just the cancer but the rest of my bones and muscles shrink down to about a twentieth of their original size. So yes, I’m pretty small for my age. Small enough to fit in someone’s hand. Small enough to ride on their shoulders. Small enough to call myself five and a half inches tall.

Ok I’m seriously overkilling the word ‘small’, which is actually pretty weird, given how much I hate that word. I suppose it just makes me feel the way I look.

Small.

Miniscule.

Tiny.

Basically, I’m scared of Max’s feet because they could squish me like a bug. I have a permanent grudge with his friends harassing me, because they can easily grab me, suck me up using (my personal BFF) the vacuum cleaner or stuff me in a jar and on the bad days fill it with honey. I’m sensitive to sound because when someone shouts the sound is magnified by almost 20 and never fails in raining hell down on my eardrums.

Yes, it can be made clear that I am in face small. And to be completely honest, I don’t really know any advantages of being my size… but I’m working on it, I swear!  Well, it’d be a fair call to admit that I’m amazing at hide and seek. When I was younger, it would take mum and Max hours to comb through the house looking for me only to come out of it all empty handed. I’ve never lost a game. Ever.

But now, I’m 16, and games aren’t really what interest me anymore. Heaps of people feel sorry for me, in that sense. I’m pretty sure mum does, to say the least. She’s made me a bunch of things to help me cope with my disadvantages height-wise, anyways… When I was little she used to buy me Kellie Dolls, which was basically where I got my clothes from. They always had to be shortened around the waist, but hey, I manage. I’m quite tall, come to think of it (for my size) and slender, so doll’s clothes have always been a tad wide on me. Nowadays though, mum has taken to sewing me jeans and things, tailored to fit a little better. Shoes are hard though, so I tend to stick with a simple pair of socks.

Technically, I don’t really need a bedroom of my own given the amount of space I actually take up, so I sleep in mum’s room, in an old bookshelf which we bought from Lifeline a while back. It’s got heaps of rows, but I generally stick to the top one, which I’ve painted and decorated myself. Of course, I had to use the smallest paintbrush mum could find and held it like a long stick with both hands, but I managed to complete the task all the same.

People have this automatic assumption that I’m handicapped (which I kind of am, but hate to admit it) but I guess that doesn’t deny me from my rights to have a good time… which is basically what sums up my reasons for wanting to attend a real high school, at least for two years before I graduate. I pondered the topic for most of the night, wondering which electives I should run for, and what I want to get out of it. Maybe school wasn’t going to be so bad. Naturally, I was well prepared for it. I knew that I’d get the stares and the double takes I’ve had to cope with for my entire life. I knew I’d have to keep off the ground as best I could to avoid getting squashed. My mind was equipped with the basics of high school knowledge… but my body wasn’t.

The bookshelf shook as mum shut the door behind her, having finished brushing her teeth. I watched her with drooping eyes as she practically collapsed into bed. I crawled over to my own bed and wrapped myself up a thick square of polar fleece I’d bought on our last trip to the textiles store. I slid my eyes shut, as mum opened her mouth to speak.

“I’ve enrolled you into  St Agathas School after the holidays. According to the principal, it’s quite small. Has about 200 kids.” She said softly, and I groaned from my sideways position in bed.

“You do know that my description of ‘small’ is quite a bit different from yours.” I pointed out with a yawn, nuzzling under my covers.

“It was either that or the ‘Special School’.” Mum replied with a laugh, and in all my desperation, I was almost tempted to go there. Because to be truthful, two hundred skyscraper tall teenagers bounding around did little to motivate me about my future as a student. I’ve never actually been anywhere so busy before. A few times I’ve gone shopping with mum in the pocket of her handbag, or riding on her shoulder. She bought me a nice watch to use as a clock in my room, once. But even at the shopping mall the people kept their distance, and when they actually saw me, I was ridden off as a hallucination. It wasn’t like I moved much or greeted anyone, anyway. At school though, the students would know who I was and where I was. They’d know all about my size and how I was different. It terrified me.

 “You start after the school holidays.” Mum continued after a pause. “They last for the next two weeks.”

“Ok.” I replied slowly. “Max doesn’t go to St Agathas though, right?” That was yet another fact about this new school that shocked me: Max didn’t even go there. Nope. He attended the much larger and much more popular state school a few blocks away from our house.

“I know, so I’ve organised for your cousin Gabby to come stay with us over the next week. She goes to St Agathas and has offered to show you around on the first day.” Mum explained in reply, and my mouth dropped open. I didn’t know many of my relatives, aside from my grandparents, who would occasionally come visit. They were always nice, but I’d never met any of my cousins before. Mum has always thought it best to keep my little (pun intended) secret away from the public. I know she’s embarrassed, and a part of me doesn’t even blame her.

 “Does she know?” I asked after another episode of silence, and not even mum had to know what I meant by that. She sighed.

“Yes, and so does your Aunty.”

I didn’t reply to that. I was already scared to meet someone new, and even if that someone had even been informed of my unique size, there would be no telling how they would react. I’m already shocking at first impressions, anyway!

I closed my eyes as mum whispered her goodnights and rolled over onto my side to sleep. We rarely talk for long in bed due to the fact that I was always tired out of my mind. To put you in perspective, a trek around the house for me is like a hike up a mountain for everyone else. So in other words, the moment mum said goodnight, I was asleep.

*****

Marcus hadn’t been hard to capture.

 I came across him for the first time on a regular school day three and a bit years ago, though  it’s not like I count. He was thirteen; same age as me. A bit older though, as he told me on my first encounter. He’d been kept down a grade and was turning fourteen that year.

Now, I have to admit the first time I saw him I was shocked. I’d seen pictures, obviously, from my mother’s files, which were kept in a folder in her room. Marcus was one of the first documented there, with about a hundred or so cases following him. I think there were about twenty actual pictures of the effected in total, though. Of course, there wasn’t much special about the people in the photos, apart from one minor detail.

They were all the subject of my mother’s failed cancer treatment. It had shrunk them down to less than a tenth of the normal human size. The only organ not affected by the treatment was their vocal chords, which was thankful; otherwise they would have sounded like chipmunks for the rest of their lives.

So yeah, my best friend at the time happened to be a twentieth of my size. I was pretty much Marcus’s bodyguard, taking him places and steering him away from prying eyes. He was my friend though, and I will never forget that, no matter what.

 Not that he’ll ever forgive me for what I’ve done, though. I guess don’t really blame the guy.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself now… Anyway, three years ago, as I said, I met… No this is wrong. Ok. I should probably introduce myself. My name is Thomas. Thomas Ryan. I like my name; mum used to say she chose it for me the moment she first looked me in the eyes. If anyone wanted a visual of me, I am tall, quite muscular (if I might add), with blue eyes and tanned skin from years of working in the farm I live on. My hair happens to be dirty blonde, and I usually keep it cropped short. I don’t have many hobbies, aside from soccer, so I guess you could say that my life is pretty simple all in all.

My mother studied as a doctor for seventeen years, and begun to take an interest in cancers and tumours; the study of oncology.  She often explained to me about what she was doing, but hey, I get Ds for medical science in school. So basically, I had no idea and only now am beginning to grasp the concept.

She had the breakthrough before I was born. Basically, she and her partner Dr Jack Andrews had done it; they’d discovered a cure for a rare cancer, Shrignakemia which effected about 500 people in the long run. My mother saved lives, one of those being Marcus’s. But, her fame ran out as soon as the anomaly occurred.

 Just over 16 years ago, a baby born with the cancer developed… irregular side effects to the treatment, as I said before. Doctors linked the sufferers following the baby girl by their blood type; AB positive, which unfortunately also happens to be mine, for the trivia side of this. AB positive is so rare a blood type that my mother hadn’t even bothered testing it while trialling her cure. That was the biggest mistake she ever made.

Over twenty percent of the people affected by Shrignakemia, children and adults alike (and even newborn babies) were shrunk. Mum got off the hook at first, but when we discovered that protests had begun as a result of the failed treatment, we had to move to Australia, where we stayed in Sydney for some time. This was when I was ten. The protesters died down eventually, but when I was 14, they started up again. Mum and I had no choice but to move again, this time to a distant country town in Australia, with a small population and school- St Agathas.

By that time, I knew all about Marcus and the other shrunken people years before meeting them, through my mum’s work. She had a profile for each of them and recieved news on who was against her cure by Dr Jack, who had also gone completely incognito during the protests. At one point I’d heard that he’d had to change his name to avoid getting himself arrested or terrorised. The cure itself was still in use but wasn’t administrated to AB positive blood types unless they had permission.

Mum had several portraits of Marcus, growing up and all. She only kept them to check for signs of regrowth size-wise. There was none, of course. The effects were permanent. When Marcus and I were friends, mum was his role model. He loved seeing her and thanked her every time for saving his life. He had nothing against his size, or the consequences of it, like vulnerability and bullying. I always liked seeing mum’s face after she’d seen him. I knew she was proud that she had changed someone’s life and while neither of us truly understood how getting shrunk could improve someone’s outlook, Marcus did. That was all that mattered, at the time.

Then came the sentence.

The parents of one of the shrunken, Ebony Sawyer, who was seventeen and struggling with depression at the time, sued my mother for her lack of ‘research’ whilst trialling her serum. We both knew that she couldn’t hide herself away from this. She had seven days to appear before the court or a legalised arrestment would take place.

 The court hearing didn’t last long. Mum was whisked away before I could say goodbye into a cell.

A cage.

Forever.

I could only see her once a month. I don’t know what came over me after that. Maybe it was the foster care. Maybe it was the murdering of my father for attempting to kill Ebony and her family after the hearing. Maybe it was my school and the overprotective foster parents, Julie and Mark who arrived shortly after to raise me. I never figured it out.

 I stopped acknowledging Marcus, who struggled without me. He began asking his twin brother Cameron to transport him between classes while his other friends weren’t around. At one point he stopped turning up to school altogether.

Thoughts began to consume me.

It was them.

The shrunken.

They had put my mother in prison to rot in a cell.

They had ruined my life and killed my father.

So, after a month of letting anger and hatred boil inside me, I captured Marcus when he returned to school. He protested, kicking and screaming- biting, even, but I wasn’t fazed. All I could think about was revenge for imprisoning my mother. When I took him home, zipped up in my lunch bag, he never stopped swearing and screaming at me. I’d betrayed him as a friend, yes, but I didn’t care. He deserved to suffer the way my mum was.

Marcus screamed and cursed for weeks on end. He cried, rattled at the bars of the old bird cage I kept him in. He refused to eat anything I gave him, but of course that didn’t last. Months after imprisoning him, I broke both his legs, more scared than anything that Julie and mark would hear his pleas for help. I was afraid I’d done some serious damage, but he’d taught himself to walk again after they healed.

After that, he never spoke a word to me again. Something dark consumed him. Something I’d never seen before in a human being. A part of me feared the looks he gave me as I scrutinised him from outside the cage.

Marcus gave up after his legs healed.

But he broke something that would never be repaired when I got my hands on Ebony herself, a year later. They had known each other since the beginning. The connection between them shifted his shredded gears back into place and sent him raging and cursing again, louder than ever. I didn’t injure him as harshly again, but kept him in a jar beside my bedside table for weeks while he settled down. By the time that was over, nothing human remained in his tiny body. Not even hope.

I found others in the coming year, but none caused Marcus to react as harshly as he had with Ebony. To me, that was always a mystery.

The birdcage is a secret. I never told either my mum, or foster parents. They assumed that I kept the cage in my bedroom for my budgies, which I’d freed as soon as Marcus came along.

I told myself over and over again that revenge was the only way to live and that he deserved to be imprisoned, just like my mother. And the scary thing was that eventually, I believed what I was saying. Remorse and mercy left me. I forgot what it meant to have a heart, or a best friend like Marcus.

And now, after three years, remorse is trapped in a prison cell in my brain, with Sally Ryan.

With mum.

But why should I care?

After all, it wasn’t the judge that put mum in prison. It wasn’t the gun fired by the policemen that day that stole my father’s last breath.  

It was their fault.

And it would stay that way.