“And she just… sat on you?  For two periods?  Ms. Evans?  Fuck, you lucky son of a bitch,” Jordan grumbled as he listened to his friend Tom’s whispered plight at the far end of a lunch table.  “I think I’d lie willingly just to get under there.”

            Their voices were easily covered up from nearby listeners by the overpowering drone of the student body all around.  Most wouldn’t have wanted to hear such talk from two of the most well-known liars in the grade, anyway.  In a way, there was sanctuary between them, where truths somehow seemed to come with ease like nowhere else, however embarrassing they were.

            “It wasn’t too bad,” Tom admitted.  By now, he was just a few inches shy of his full height, and could easily pass for normal.  He chomped on a turkey sandwich, knowing it would be wise to stock up on food sooner rather than later.  “I’ve had way worse.”

            “Way worse?  Do you know what Kaylie and Josh did to me last night?” Jordan demanded with a scowl, obviously just trying to get out some pent-up frustration about his younger siblings.

            “Do I even want to know?”

            “No,” he confirmed heartily, clearly intent on forging ahead anyway.  “They did the same goddamned thing to me, except it was after they got back from that cross-country meet, and their shorts were soaked.  Fuck, I couldn’t even breathe down there.  Dad only told them to let me out because I was coughing so much he thought I might puke on the rug.”

            “Would you have?” Tom asked, taking another bite of sandwich.  “Puked, I mean.”

            “I don’t know!  Maybe!” Jordan reported, lifting his arm up to his nose and taking a big whiff before hacking lightly, turning his head away in revulsion.  “I took two showers last night and another one this morning.  I still smell like their sweaty asses.”

            “C’mere,” Tom requested, grabbing his friend’s arm and smelling it.  “Let me guess.  Kaylie took her turn last, right?”

            “What, are you some kind of fucking connoisseur now?” Jordan demanded, though he couldn’t hide his admiration for the apparent odor wizardry.  “How’d you know?”

            “Kaylie’s sweat is saltier.  How else?” Tom said with a little bit of odd pride as he set his sandwich down and took a swig of juice.  “How big were you?  Foot?   Foot and a half?”

            “At most.  I think in the middle there I got down to eight inches because Kaylie asked me if I’d be more goddamned comfortable if she took her pants off and just sat on me in the sports underwear!” he groaned, gagging at the mere mention of it, though Tom could only shudder a little in remembrance of his previous period.  “And Christ, they get heavy when you’re that small.”

            “Big deal,” Tom chuckled.  “Alaina’s sat on me before when I was four or five inches.  That was bad.”

            “Yeah, except she wasn’t sweating out of every pore at the time!” Jordan countered with annoyance, at last scooping up some chips from his own lunch and chomping them down with contempt.  The competition was only just heating up, as it usually did.

            “What’s up, boyos?” their friend Heather smarmed as she slid into a seat on Tom’s opposite side, slamming her full tray on the table and wiping a few spilled crumbs off her pre-workout sweatshirt.

            “Nothing,” Jordan grumbled, not wanting to give the girl any ammo.

            “Just shooting the breeze?” she suggested.  She brought a buttered roll to her mouth, tearing a large hunk off as she batted her amber hair over her shoulder.  Her possum-like eyes squared to her two shrinkable peers.

            “Something like that,” Tom responded a little more pleasantly.

            “Didn’t see you in anatomy class, Tom-Tom.  Or in the hall before fifth period,” she pointed out cheekily, nudging him in the shoulder with her elbow.  Already she was engaged and she didn’t have a single word of proof.  “Come on.  I want the story.  Now.”

            Tom sighed, knowing it would be easier to just give in now rather than having it wheedled out of him at the cost of shrinking in front of Heather.  She was one of the few other people in his grade who didn’t treat him like garbage just for his tenuous relationship with the truth, but that didn’t mean she didn’t occasionally have a taste for some fun at his expense.

            “Not really anything to tell,” he said with a shrug.  He looked to Heather as she scooped up a spoonful of vanilla pudding from a cup on her tray, though her eyes remained locked onto him with entertained intensity.  “I just, uh… didn’t get to all my homework last night.  Evans asked me if I did it, and I said yes.”

            “That wouldn’t be enough to keep you down for two whole classes, though,” Heather countered with the wisdom of someone who took immense pleasure from carefully tracking the shrinking habits of her friend’s body for careful use to her own advantage later.  “How small did you get?”

            “Uhhh... maybe a foot?” he said, gulping as he focused on easing out the correct words.

            “Yeah, definitely more than one lie, then.  Maybe three big ones,” she reasoned, leaning in closer as she pushed the spoon of pudding between her lips and cleaved its yellow goopy contents into her throat.  “So what was it next?”

            “She just asked what I was… doing instead of the homework,” Tom continued.  It occurred to him that Heather was starting to back him into a corner much like his teacher did, and there was little he could do to prevent it.

            “And... you said what to that?”

            “Aren’t you hungry?” Jordan queried to their friend, trying to give Tom a hand.  “Shouldn’t we just get our food down and talk about this some other time like… I don’t know, never?”

            “Nope!  I want to hear what he said,” Heather corrected, shifting her gaze to Jordan and batting her full eyelashes playfully.  “Unless you wanna tell me about your evening instead, Mr. Nutrition?”

            “What?  Why would I want to-” he gasped.

            “I can smell you from over here,” Heather intoned dully, trying not to smile too wide.  “Maybe you should shower after one of the Wonder Twins wears you in their shoe.”

            “I wasn’t in their damned shoes!” Jordan snapped defensively, realizing the web he’d been caught in too late.

            “So what’d they do with you, then?” Heather followed up instantly, leaning further over Tom’s lunch to be able to make herself heard.

            “They didn’t do anyth-” Jordan spat bitterly, then caught himself in the middle and clenched his eyes shut, making a choice.  “-ing but sit on me.”

            “Better or worse than being in their shoes?” Heather asked bluntly as though she’d prepared the questions ahead of time.

            “B-Better,” Jordan managed with effort.  Blinking, he looked down at his body, which still retained its normal stature, though he was apparently half-expecting to suddenly be looking up at the looming face of his vindictive friend. It was clearly a tough call.

            Chortling at the teen’s misfortune, Heather sank back into her chair, clearly sated for the moment but nonetheless unsatisfied with her inability to catch Jordan in a lie.  Her eyes snapped immediately back to Tom, who was innocently trying to scarf down the rest of his sandwich before he lost the chance to do so under his friend’s line of questioning.

            “Well?” she said to Tom with a broadening smile, launching right back into it as another lump of pudding disappeared into her mouth.  “What do you have to say for yourself?”

            “What do you mean?”

            Heather rolled her eyes melodramatically and ran her fingers through Tom’s hair, ruffling it aggressively in jest.  “Your excuse.  What did you tell Evans you were doing when you should’ve been working?”

            “I… I…”

            “No, wait.  Not good enough,” she corrected, a sly smile spreading anew over her lips as she parted them again to receive another morsel of dessert.  The warm metal of the spoon clicked against her teeth as she rattled the utensil thoughtfully between her thumb and fingers.  “What were you doing instead of your homework?”

            And there it was.  Tom gave his tray a nimble shove into the center of the table and sighed deeply, looking with irritation over to Jordan, who only shrugged and tried to avert his gaze.

            “I… I was doing the laundry,” Tom said, closing his eyes as he accepted his fate.  The flush of his size took place in a near-continuous motion, as though his body was anticipating the inevitable next loss in a pattern.  “I mean, I was helping my mom garden.  Helping dad with cleaning the car, I mean, that’s what it was.  Cleaning the garage, not the car.  Garage and the car.  A-Actually, it was… it was none of that.  Or all of it.  Just… later.  It… was sunbathing.  I was just sunbathing.”

            “Was it now?” Heather whispered as she leaned way over into Tom’s seat, which by now was barely occupied, save for a boy who stood at just under two inches tall.  “Sunbathing.”

            “Yes, it was,” he reported, losing another entire inch.

            Heather’s hand lowered to the chair, the shadow of her fingers casting alternately over her reduced friend, and landing with a thud that nearly jolted Tom off his feet.

            “And that’s the truth?” she pressed, her hot breath scented of bananas and mint gum seeping in a cloud over Tom’s whole world as he looked up at her lips, rippling into another massive grin.

            God, he was small.  Smaller than he’d been in weeks.  Maybe months.

            “Yes,” he said simply, instantly dropping down to just a quarter-inch in height in the shadow of his triumphantly grinning friend.