“We’re, like, sure this is the best thing to do?” Wanda muttered. She peeked over her two roommates’ shoulders at the cramped kitchen table, where three identical juice tumblers ominously stood on the surface. The glow of the glass filtered through evenly poured iced teas: all three cool and dripping with perspiration.

            “Didn’t we talk this through over and over already?” Nora groaned. She crossed her arms, her thumbs fiddling with the fraying ends of her sleeves. “Let’s just get it over with.”

            “Yeah, yeah, I know, but like, what if something goes wrong, and this still doesn’t bring in enough cash to pay the rent?” Wanda asked. “I mean, the shrinking is permanent!”

            “Look, do you have any better ideas? I don’t see those bills going anywhere if we don’t do something major!” Cassie said. Her hands waved about with her normal charismatic overdrama. She dug her self-manicured fingers into her dark, curly locks, ensuring they weren’t unkempt by the added emphasis. “Cuz unless you give me something better, then we’re all gonna have to drink these teas, and whoever loses- well, whoever gets the one with ShrinkTuff mixed in is just gonna have to be a good friend and go along with it.”

            “I guess so,” Wanda shrugged.

            “How could it miss?” Nora said. She rubbed her eyes, still a touch veiny from her last bowl. “I mean, stuff between us three doesn’t have to change, really. Yeah, one of us will be super small, and depend completely on the other two, and probably need to be okay with getting… used for some funny stuff, for the vlog, just so we can go viral and get paid, but that’s it, really.”

            “That’s true,” Wanda said, at last sufficiently reassured. She wrapped an arm around each of her two roommates, giving their hips a squeeze. “I guess it’ll turn out okay once the vlog is up and running and the money’s coming in.”
            “You got that right,” Nora chuckled. She ruffled her noticeably shorter roommate’s black hair with rough affection. “So… we gonna do this, or what?”

            “I think it’s time,” Cassie announced, as though the decision wasn’t truly made until this exact moment when she confirmed it. “I poured the ShrinkTuff in one and stirred it in without you guys looking, then after me, Nora switched them around-”

            “Like three-card monte,” Nora said.

            “-yeah, like that, and then Wanda moved the glasses, too. I think this is the fairest way, don’t you guys?”

            “Well-” Wanda began.

            “Coolness!” Cassie said brightly. She puckered her lips and scooped up the nearest glass of ice tea. A slosh of liquid, a wrinkle of her nose, and she took a sip.

            “Down the hatch,” Nora shrugged with near-lethal indifference. She tipped the glass over her mouth and guzzled it down like a champ.

            “Hey! We all have to do it at the same time so… ugh!” Wanda said, resolving instead to join with the same ferocity. Within a minute, each of the three young, broke women had consumed their beverages. In silent solemnity, all three filed into the adjoining living space of their apartment: first Cassie, followed by Nora, and then Wanda at the rear.

            “Feel anything?” Cassie questioned as she sat daintily on the nearest couch cushion. She crossed her bare legs one over the other and squinted at her glossy nailbeds, perhaps assuming they’d diminish at any moment into the ether.

            Nora wiped her mouth and swung a foot over the side of the chair. “Nothin’ yet.”

            “Maybe we didn’t put in a strong enough dose?” Wanda suggested helpfully. The final syllable had only just passed from her lips when her body began to melt down into the billowing fort of her now grossly oversized clothing.

            The shrinking effect was powerful, taking its course in mere seconds and without scientific mercy. Wanda threshed like a lemming as she sunk down into the coiled heap of her jeans and panties. The parachute of her hand-me-down top draped heavily above.

            Naked, her legs huddled to her chest, Wanda remained seated in the crater of her now-useless clothing. The girl bit her lip.

            She’d agreed to this. This was okay. That was the thing to remember.

            They all took a chance, after all, and agreed to be supportive. This was for Cassie and Nora, her best friends, and especially herself. Wanda. This was the start of a new life, free of debt, with the new vlog and thousands or even millions of people making goo-goo eyes over her tiny self.

            Think positive. Think positive, she told herself.

            The shirt she previously wore snagged and rose into the air like a circus big top. One of her roommates was uncovering her. As light spilled in to the cottony remains of the shrunken girl’s former stature, Wanda cupped a hand over her eyes. Despite the fifteen entire minutes of research she’d done that morning on the physical effects of ShrinkTuff users, she still wasn’t prepared for the sight which greeted her.

            Nora, whose gigantic hand had swiped away Wanda’s shirt, stood nearest.

            Nora, who easily stood the tallest between the three before, now held the title in laughable terms. Those denim-clad legs of hers stretched up like hulking blue temple pillars, up to the ratty grunge band shirt she’d thrown on that morning. The heel of her Sharpie-tattooed sneaker, newly double the length of Wanda’s entire body, thumped against the floor. The enormous girl smirked down at the uncovered treasure beneath the shirt.

            Wanda looked down at her pathetically bare self. Her skin tone and prominent hips, once her biggest body worries, were hardly the highest order concern now. She couldn’t be certain without a ruler, but she was easily less than six inches now. At least a couple lower, in fact.

            “Oh, thank God. Thank GOD it wasn’t me!” Cassie squealed giddily. She pumped her fists, leaping up and down like a small child who just discovered Santa left the motherlode. Her earrings and necklace bounced gaily against her cheeks. The disarray of her curls was long forgotten. “No offense, Wanda!”

            Each time Cassie’s pink-socked feet crashed back to the hardwood floor, the seismic activity rattled Wanda’s body. She teeth chattered as her friend’s enormous toes plowed into the earth again. All she did was nod in response.

            “Yeah, luck of the draw,” Nora said with her usual cavalier cool. Her shoulders remained in their perpetual state of carefree shrugging. As she brushed her bangs out of her eyes, the look on Nora’s face suggested she wasn’t any more or less concerned now than she’d been two minutes before, when she might well have been the one shrunken down into her clothes instead. The shabby-chic blonde nibbled the corner of her thumbnail as she crossed one leg over the other, looming above her tiny, stranded friend.

            “Should we get started, then?” Cassie said brightly.

            Started? Wanda thought. Already? No adjustment period? No minute alone, just to get her bearings on her brand new existence?

            “That’s good with me,” Nora said with a grin. She hunched down, her chuck sneakers squeaking low on the floor as she reached out a wide open palm for her friend. Her long, peachy fingers had no hesitation in barreling toward Wanda and wrapping hard around her vulnerable little body.