“Is… this… enough… height?!” Aiden grunted out, pants between each breath. The crevices and ridges embedded into the wood of the desk were ample enough to climb, but the work of the ascent was a far greater toll than either of the pair were used to. Ironically, Micah had recently earned the distinction of the more athletic of the two; a healthy mind can only exist in a healthy body, after all, and so he began to jog with frequency.

Jogging, while better than nothing, was not an exceptionally useful skill to translate to rock-wall climbing, especially without ropes. Aiden had grabbed the phone and been the first to attempt to scale the leg of the desk, but Micah was slowly and surely catching up to them. The progress was negligible, though it still was a bit annoying to Aiden that he couldn’t beat Micah in the one area Aiden felt he would have an advantage; in the end, they were both geeks.

“It should be enough! I hope,” Micah finished under his breath, a strained action. The bookshelves were a far more scalable surface, but it would be far harder to establish contact compared to the much more observable desk. Either way, there was no way to check now. Last Micah checked, the phone was already on 6%, and even on airplane mode it was dwindling too fast for his liking.

“I-I-I’m slipping!”

Micah’s head turned upward to see the two legs and arm of his friend dangling from their crevice.

“Aid!” Micah shouted, perching himself and reaching a hand up above as Aiden’s fingers slowly slipped from their space, ultimately losing purchase and sending the teen plummeting what seemed like seven stories below.

“No!” Micah yelled, an adrenaline-boosted maneuver allowing him to grasp onto Aiden’s flailing hand in the half-second he had before Aiden passed by, but a maneuver that only resulted in Aiden exchanging the phone with Micah, who could only look down in horror as he watched Aiden tumble downward in somersaults, until finally…

Thud.

Silence.

Silence.

Then:

“I’m okay!”

Aiden allowed himself to be grateful that the massive drop was, in fact, closer to two or three feet, at least before his mind went to pondering the other physics properties that had now gone topsy-turvy since they had been shrunk.

“Good to hear!” Micah shouted. Then he looked at the phone in his hand. 4 percent.

Gripping it, used his single dangling hand to type a new message into the message box.

-----

Sharon finished readjusting her flat before placing her feet once again on the floor. She scuffed them about, finding joy in something as trivial as the scraping sound the soles made against the linoleum to ease her boredom. 

Dooo Weee Dooooooooo.

A text?

Sharon pulled her phone from her pocket, a smile and frown creeping at once on her face as she saw it was a set of messages from Micah. She knew this before checking the phone, of course; the ringtone was the Doctor Who theme, something Sharon did herself to know when her son was texting her, and a cute gag to one of her favorite old TV shows.

As the texts scrolled across the screen, her eyes widened.

HELP MOM. WE’RE SHRUNK. COME TO THE LIBRARY; WE’LL BE ON THE GROUND. PLEASE. THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

Then:

thank god, I got away. MOM, you need to find me on a desk! look ON the desk! it’s the only way! I don't have time to explain; my battery is

What the? Shrunk? The messages came so rapidly in succession; were they sent at the same time? Or was there a delay in being able to get a signal? That could explain why they were so different in tone. Was it even Micah who was texting?

Then, as Sharon scanned and rescanned the messages, she chuckled. It was definitely Micah, alright.

The second message was what gave it away. It was written exactly like someone trying to send something out quickly, but still ensuring proper punctuation and semicolon usage was being adhered to. The battery going out was a cheeky joke, but emblematic of a problem he has with not charging his phone as often as he should. All that said, it was clear that whatever he wanted, it was going to be in the library, and was most likely only to be tangentially related to anything having to do with school.

Welp… Sharon pocketed her phone. It was time to find out where the rest of the school had gone. She stood up and began to walk briskly through the room, out the door, to the library. It was only a hop and a staircase away after all.