I swiped the eraser over the last bit of marker, making the whiteboard as clean as it would get until the next day.  When I set the eraser back in its tray, I heard two soft raps come from the doorway.  My eyes turned toward the sound and easily spotted the senior filling the entryway almost from top to bottom.  “You wanted to see me, Mr. Thompson?” she asked in a sweet yet strong voice.

“Yes, come in,” I answered, gesturing toward her with an open palm.  She stepped into the room and I continued, “You know why I asked you to come by after class, right Jessica?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she replied, keeping the same unbothered demeanor.  Jessica is what most high school boys dreamt about – long, golden hair done in a loose braid, piercing blue eyes, and a soft, round face.  Her skin was light but not pallid, and her body was tight and fit.  She was even a cheerleader, and since it was Friday she wore her uniform to school, so our white school’s emblem was stretched across the chest of her green dress, the hem of which barely went halfway down her thighs, with bright, unblemished white sneakers and ankle socks on her feet.  “It’s about my grades, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so, yes,” I told her.  “Please, have a seat.”  I pointed toward the desk next to my chair, but she gave it a quick glance and turned back to me, flicking her braid with the movement.

“Thanks, but I prefer to stand,” Jessica replied, fixing me with a gaze.  A smirk tugged at her pink lips and she began striding toward me, accentuating each step.  “Especially with you, Mr. Thompson.”  She stopped one tile away from me, leaving me to stare at her collar bone.  One thing that made her stand out from the other girls her age was her more than six feet of height – much above that, and I really could not tell a difference.  Her hands rested on her waist and she looked down at me, her smirk spreading.  “Now, what’s this about my grades?”

I craned my neck to look up at her, focusing on her brilliant blue eyes.  This was the main reason I had originally applied to teach elementary school: even at just over five feet, it was unlikely one of them would outgrow me, let alone tower over me like Jessica.  Over the past couple years, however, I had become used to it.  She was far from the first student – though probably the first girl – to try and physically intimidate me for favors, and she wouldn’t be the last, either.  “Frankly, they show a supreme lack of effort,” I told her, not wavering under her gaze.  “You’ve been hovering in the low C range for the past few months, and today’s quiz brings you down to a D.  You know what that means for you starting next week, don’t you?”

“Yeah, academic probation.”  For someone on the brink of failing, Jessica sounded very nonchalant about the situation.

“Meaning you won’t be part of your squad’s cheer routine until you can get your grades back up,” I elaborated.  She was proving very difficult to read, and to be safe I decided to soften the blow.  “Look, Jessica, you’re a very bright young woman, and all the other teachers can do nothing but rave about how hard a worker you are.  So why do you choose to slack off in my class?”

She reached up and grabbed her braid with one hand, then began stroking it with the other.  “History’s just so boring!” Jessica exclaimed, contorting her face into an exaggerated pout.  “At least, your lectures are.  You just talk for an hour and give us worksheets!  I like something that keeps me more involved.”  Her body leaned forward, but instead of imparting any emphasis to me it just proved her head could completely fit over mine, which was evident to anyone with working eyes.

“It’s not about interest,” I replied, unmoved by what I guessed was a strange mixture of attempted intimidation and seduction, “it’s about respect.  You should treat all subjects – and teachers – with the respect they deserve.  You might even end up learning that you enjoy it.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Thompson.”  She had lowered her voice so that it was more like a teasing purr.  Jessica took a step forward until she was practically standing on top of me, trapping me between the wall and her large frame.  “I didn’t know it was so personal for you.”  One of her fingertips came to rest below my chin, locking my eyes into her entrancing blue gaze.  “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

Despite her hypnotizing eyes, I knew if I even hinted that I knew what she was getting at I could get in huge trouble, possibly even fired.  “Aside from giving me the same effort you give the other teachers, not really.”  My best course of action would be to keep my answers short and to the point.  She was not the first student to try this routine, either.

“Really?  There’s nothing else I can do?”  She was laying it on thick, so I simply shook my head.  Something about those eyes kept my attention, though.  “Not even if I were to…”  Jessica trailed off, biting her bottom lip.  All she had to do was explicitly say what she was hinting at and I could tell her to cut it out.

“Grow you back to your original height?”  Her eyes flared when she said that, giving off an ethereal blue glow, and her words took on a powerful resonance that made them bounce around in my head.  In that instant she rapidly shot up in height, seeming to grow one, maybe two feet.  She peered down at me, her eyes just barely visible over her breasts but no less radiant.  Casually she placed her hands on my shoulders, but her light grip was still enough to keep me from getting away.

“So how about it, Mr. Thompson?” Jessica asked after a few seconds of silence.  Somehow her voice seemed a touch deeper and more powerful while her eyes maintained their ensorcelling power.  “All you have to do is give me a passing grade, and no one will ever have to know that, for a few brief seconds, I turned you into a dwarf.”

“I don’t think that –“

“But if you don’t,” Jessica interrupted, “come Monday, all the other students will see you in all of your four-foot glory.  I’m sure you’re used to me and some of the other students looming over you with how small you are normally, but what about the others?  Do you think you could deal with every single student in this school, even the freshmen, towering over you?  All you’ve got to do is climb up into your chair and boost my grades and this’ll just be our little secret.”

I took a moment to clench my jaw and steel my resolve.  “I’ve never been ashamed of my height,” I began, “even though I can’t use it as a weapon like you do.  It’ll take more than a little trick and some threats to get me to go along with this.  I’ll make you a counter-offer: how about you leave right now, and I won’t tell the principal about your attempted academic dishonesty?”

Jessica put a hand on her mouth to stifle a giggle.  “Sorry, your voice is just a bit squeaky,” she explained, holding her thumb and index finger a short distance apart.  “Hm, a bit.”  She regained her composure and focused down at me more intensely than before.  “That gives me an idea.  And don’t worry – this one will be much easier to keep between us.”

Her eyes radiated the blue glow again, much more powerful this time, and she began leaning down toward me.  Without thinking I retreated, keeping the distance between us the same while I looked for an escape.  The light grew in intensity until it overwhelmed my senses and all I could see was that overbearing, blue-white floodlight.  There were no shadows or hues, just the blinding light washing over my body.

As suddenly as it came the light receded, and I looked around to get my bearings.  I was standing on a broad, flat white plain, with flecks of black and gray breaking up the monotony of the texture, along with ditches every hundred or so feet.  In the far distance I saw a low mound, about my height, which was somehow able to support a tremendous metal spire that went higher than I could see.  When I broadened my focus I saw there were dozens of similar structures, and even further away, floating against an immense cliffside that reached the sky, I spied… a bookshelf?

Thunder crackled above me, as though the sky itself were demanding my attention by clearing its throat.  Another, longer rumble followed, that sounded remarkably similar to speech.  It took my brain a second to process it, but it sounded like a colossal voice booming “Up here, Mr. Thompson.”  There was no way.  She couldn’t have.

Curiosity got the best of me, even though I knew this was a trick.  My eyes began slowly craning upwards until I spied two enormous, cream-colored pillars at the edge of my vision, bowed outward like calves.  The towers had a pair of matching protrusions toward me before getting vastly wider the further up my gaze went, until reaching a point where a green and white curtain covered them, and they continued to an all-white ceiling.  The further up I looked the harder it became to deny.  Next was a flat, sheer green cliff, with a wide bulge near the top where I could see the bottom half of our distorted school’s logo in white.  I forced myself to keep going until I reached a pair of familiar blue eyes with a curtain of blond hair, their powerful glow subdued and replaced by mirth.

“Hi.”  That time I saw her lips move with it, and I had to accept what had happened.  With that single rumbling syllable I was thrown into a panic, looking every which way to see what the hell was happening.  My eyes dropped back to my level and I looked to the side, where I saw a tremendous white sneaker, larger than my house, propping up the gigantic leg of the woman standing over me.  “What’s up, Mr. Thompson?” Jessica asked, her tremulous voice unable to hide her giggle.  As though in a frenzy my eyes darted around, taking things in and barely registering them.  Her ankle, almost 25 feet high, and her legs that went up for hundreds of feet.  “Besides me, of course.”  The laugh that followed was a terrifying sound, chilling me to the bone and making my stomach churn.

Finally, my fight or flight reflex kicked in, and I chose flight – how could I possibly fight someone thousands of times my size, anyway?  I darted toward the door, moving as fast as my tiny legs could carry me.  A gargantuan scoff came from on high and the great white behemoth shot forward, making an ear-piercing squeal as it came to a halt in my path.  Unable to stop in time I ran headlong into it, and the springy rubber knocked me back onto the tile.

“I thought this was just going to be between us?” Jessica chided, doing her best to act offended.  “Unless you want the other students to see you like this?  I can call some of my squad mates, or just send them a picture if you’re really that eager to show off your new size.”  I was unable to respond, still agog at how suddenly everything had changed and just how immense it was now.

“I can’t have you getting squished before you change my grades, though,” Jessica declared, “so you’ll have to come with me.  You understand, right?”  I understood so little of what was going on, and black spots were starting to appear at the corners of my vision from hyperventilating.  “Let me just pick you up off the floor and we can get down to business.”  She began leaning over toward me, and the experience overwhelmed me.  The sight of a titanic blond cheerleader reaching down for me, her hand poised like a claw to pluck me off the ground, was simply too much, and when her hand engulfed me I lost consciousness.