Jenny was already there, along with some early arrivals from the regular members. Jenny introduced him to a few boys, and then said, “These are the Chelmsford Girls. They all live in my street: Chelmsford Road Turramurra. Megan Murphett lives over the road from me. Next to her are the twins Bronwyn and Marjorie Proude. One house further down is Joanna Coote. These boys and girls are all around your age, but you’ll meet everyone as the night goes on.”

Joanna was tall, even by the size scale of Earth Double girls. She was slightly more than twice his height. As the night went on, nobody said anything about his size, but he felt sure that Joanna looked down on him with nothing but contempt. Megan was friendlier, but seemed distantly preoccupied with some secret of her own. He doubted that she knew of Earth Single. If she had, then she would have shown much more eagerness to talk to him. The twins’ reaction to the newcomer was the hardest for him to gauge. They showed neither contempt nor friendliness. He was able to tell them apart, as something about Marjorie’s face appealed to him more than Bronwyn’s.

For the next few Friday nights, he concentrated his attentions on making friends with Marjorie. He wondered how he could see her outside of youth group time. He had let one opportunity get lost to circumstance with Lynda on his own Earth. With the chance of seeing Marjorie every week, and possibly more often, he might have more success with her. Then he remembered his first visit to Earth Double, and the hasty return to Swain Gardens Double. His railway pass was the key to it. Given his proportionately smaller size, the ticket inspectors hadn’t at a glance, noticed the proportionately smaller size of the railway pass. If that ruse continued, he would be able to catch trains in the after school peak hour on Earth Double.

In the course of conversations, he learned which school in which suburb the Proude girls went to school, which was Roseville. He knew that they would be travelling from Roseville to Turramurra. Somehow he had to get to Roseville Station Double by 3:00 pm. Yet it was hard enough to get to Roseville Station Single by 3:00 pm.

A week and a half later, he got his chance. His own school had a pupil free afternoon. He hurriedly caught a train to Killara, ran to Swain Gardens, soon ran from Swain Gardens double to Turramurra Station Double, caught a train to Roseville Double, and waited on the Station until he saw Bronwyn Proude arrive with her friends. She waited on the station with them, planning to talk a while and then catch a later train. In the mean time, Marjorie Proude turned up, and caught the very next train with him.

“I didn’t know that Roseville was your station,” said Marjorie.

“I got off at Roseville. I like the shops in Roseville,” he said truthfully.

At least it was true of the Roseville near his own Lindfield.

They got off at Turramurra, and he walked with her.

“Aren’t you going out of your way?” she asked, wondering where exactly he lived.

“It won’t be for me now,” he said, “I like going to Swain Gardens after school sometimes.”

“Wouldn’t it still be quicker for you to go straight along towards Brentwood Avenue?” she asked.

“I can get there later. It’s just nice to talk to you,” he said.

“Well Lewis, you don’t need to walk ME home!” she shouted down at him.

The eruption of her angry outburst had been so loud and unexpected, that it left him stunned, crushed and disappointed.

On the Friday night, he arrived early, told Jenny about it and asked what he’d done wrong.

”I don’t think you did anything wrong,” said Jenny, “She just didn’t appreciate your company. There’ll be other people here who will.”

In early April of 1997, the group went on a camp. If his parents had only known that their son was actually camping down south in the Robertson of a parallel double sized earth.

He found himself sitting next to a girl named Angela Runga. She was over a year younger than he was, and two years below him in school. Yet she was easy to talk to, as the Friday evening bus trip took them towards Robertston. In the seats around theirs, jokes were being made about the length of time that Angela and Lewis had been talking to each other. Angela was a pleasant friendly girl. Yet she had not stirred in him any romantic reaction like his unrequited feelings for Marjorie, or his even stronger feelings for the stunningly beautiful Lynda on his own Earth. To her she was merely the female equivalent of his male friends. So he had no shy reticence, and no difficulty engaging her in conversation, just as he did with his male friends at school.

So he had no idea that Angela was keenly attracted to him. At the end of the weekend, one of the boys said, “Angela likes you, but she thinks you’re a bit boring.”

He still didn’t understand that the girl had been hoping he’d take the opportunity to kiss her. Instead he’d spent the weekend inviting her to play board games and making casual conversation. He wouldn’t have known what to do, had he had a better response from Marjorie, who had conveniently avoided the camp, … and now he hadn’t even recognised the response he was getting from Angela.

In the next two months, he made friends with two other girls: Alexandra Stives and Naomi Wise. They were close friends with each other, and went to the same girls school, although Alexandra was also in year 10. Naomi was 18 months older than them and in year 11. The girls mentioned that they were going to visit their year 12 friend Anne White, who was in hospital. Alexandra had short hair, a lovely face, a subtle sense of humour, and might well have inspired Lewis to try, had he not been so reluctant after his bad experience with Marjorie. Yet Alexandra and Naomi had both told each other, in the course of a conversation which included him, that they never intended to get married. 

Lewis had already made up his mind that he didn’t want to have children. However, he interpreted their declarations as a complete disinterest in romance. There was only one reason for making the hospital visit with them. Anne White was three years older than him, and he’d been completely shy of ever talking to her. Yet she was the only girl in the entire youth group who entranced him as much as Lynda had done.

It was a different affect, but equally chemically motivating. Lynda Fielding had been more bubbly and mischievous and full of laughter. Anne had been a quiet confident intellectual. Lewis had often looked at her across the hall, during youth group activities, had longed to talk to her, but had no idea what to say. She was ahead of him at her own school and might well think even less of him than Marjorie did. Yet here was a chance to go to the hospital and let her know that he was the only boy in the youth group who wanted to visit her. His mere presence would indicate that, without him having to find a word to express it.

He made his way to St Leonards Station Double on the pre-arranged Wednesday after school, via Swain Gardens Double as he was used to doing on the Friday evenings, and they walked over to the hospital, and took the elevator up to the floor of Anne White’s ward. Despite being pale with fever, she looked radiant, lying in the bed, talking mainly to her friends but not showing him any unpleasant response. Surely his presence at the hospital (with a girl he’d never spoken to) was far more unusual in her eyes than his willingness to walk home with a girl he’d spoken to for weeks. Yet Anne White seemed of different material than Marjorie Proude.

“It’s such a different life in here,” said Anne to Naomi, “I wonder how long before they’ll let me out.”

“I went to hospital in second class for an operation,” said Lewis, “It’s a place where one is both waited on like a king or queen and yet imprisoned like a thief or traitor.”

“That’s very poetic,” said Anne.

Lewis would go on to ride that compliment indefinitely. In the weeks ahead, he hoped that he’d be able to see Anne White again. Yet her year 12 studies kept her very busy, and her return from the hospital did not see her return to the youth group. He remembered his own father’s effect on his chances to see Lynda Fielding again and suspected that Anne White would find the Higher School Certificate even more restricting, especially if she was still recovering from a major illness.

In early September, when the Winter Months were over, Jenny Wilmer invited the youth group to a party at her heated backyard pool in Chelmsford Street Turramurra (Double). Lewis was beginning to feel uneasy attending the youth group. He had alienated the Proudes with his attempted courtship of Marjorie, and felt sufficiently negative emanations from other rare few girls who caught his attention to discourage him from approaching them. The only exception had been Anne White’s compliment. Yet she didn’t seem to be returning to the youth group. 

As he stood by the pool, looking into the water, reflecting on the fact that the two most lovely girls he’d met were the only two who seemed to reciprocate his feelings, if he was even right about that; he was despondent. He lived with the realization that the demands of school work (his year 10 School Certificate and Anne White’s year 12 Higher School Certificate) had cut off any chances to explore the possibility of whatever was supposed to happen (between a boy who thought a girl was beautiful and the girl whom he hoped thought positively enough about him to have intended the offer of an ice cream or a compliment to his power of expression as a reciprocation of his feelings).

Suddenly he heard a sound behind him, and felt two hands press against his back. He realised that someone was trying to push him into the water for a prank. He was unable to stop his loss of balance, but his hands shot out behind him and grabbed onto the shirt of his jesting assailant. That told him that, unlike Lewis in his swimmers, the other person was still fully clothed. He fell into the water, pulling the other boy with him. There had been nothing malicious in his response, just an amusement at the way the prank had backfired. He turned to face the boy whose clothes he’d just soaked, and they both laughed. It had been a welcome relief from the heartbreak he had been enduring in one form or another all year. Now perhaps, he could enjoy the youth group a little more, and hope to meet someone who liked him.

He got to know the boy, Torin. Torin was only in year 7, and his double size made him a little taller than Lewis. Yet Lewis had been able to grab the lower part of his shirt, and then gravity had done the rest of the process, which had left Torin’s shorts and shirt drying on his person in the midday sun.

“Do you like anyone else other than Marjorie?” asked Torin.

“How did you know I like Marjorie?” asked Lewis.

“Her friends in the group have told everyone about the day you caught her train and walked with her. Most of these girls gossip about you. They say nobody would go out with a midget. I think they’re mean.”

“I didn’t even like girls in year 7,” said Lewis.

“I don’t either, but I like new friends like you. I don’t think they should be so mean.”

The benefits of having just made a new friend were now lost on the news that his size (the very thing that made these girls more exciting than the ones on his own earth) had turned out to be the stumbling block on his developing romantic aspirations all throughout that year. He understood it all now. To the girls in the youth group, he was nothing more than a toy department prop that could talk and move by itself. The fact that he had the occasional crush on one of them was viewed either as a joke or an inconvenience.

That pool party had been a special activity on a Sunday. Five days later he went to the youth group again, and said very little to anyone all night. Eventually he went outside and sat on the back steps of the Four Ways Hall.

After a while, Jenny Wilmer came out and sat beside him.

“You’ve been quiet tonight, Lewis.”

“I don’t like coming any more. The girls all think I’m a midget that nobody should like.”

“That’s right, they do, but I’m starting to advertise the group more widely. There’ll be more girls to meet, and more friends like Torin. You took each other’s actions at the pool party very well, and now you’re both friends. Apart from that, I’M glad you’re coming.”

“But you wouldn’t want to … really like a guy my size, would you?” he asked.

“Your size is no discouragement to me,” she said, “I’m just older. I started dating someone I met at university. I have thought about you, especially the day I asked you along to the group in Swain Gardens. I chose him only because he was my age, and it was easy to see a lot of him at uni. It doesn’t mean you’re any less of a gentleman or any less handsome. You’ll find someone nice, and hopefully soon. I’ll help you if I can.”

She kissed his cheek.

It was the first time anyone had done that. How ironic that the third beautiful girl who seemed to reciprocate his feelings was both unavailable and yet the only one who had enabled him to know what the touch of a girl’s lips felt like. It would encourage him to resume a pattern of looking for the best in people which he’d all but abandoned lately.

And that was what Jenny had planned.

It soon became apparent to Jenny, that the girls who had snubbed him were attracted to guys who made a significantly negative impression on Jenny herself. Joanna Cootes brought her boyfriend to the youth group one night. At the end of the night, Jenny asked them if he’d enjoyed the youth group. His descriptive response included a four letter word. Marjorie fell for an older man who led her into behaviour, which brought on premature parenting tasks and a sudden move to another country to escape the legal ramifications if his behaviour should be brought to the attention of the police. Only Megan Murphett  had chosen a pleasant boy in the youth group who had been friendly and welcoming to Lewis at the beginning of the year, when he’d been a new member.

In October 1997, Jenny had organised a youth group wide games night, which would utilize both the Four Ways Hall and the grounds outside. Lewis almost didn’t attend. He thought of the fact that the night would draw more attention than ever to the disadvantages of his size on Earth Double. How could he make any impression at all, when even the year seven girls and boys could run faster and jump higher than he could?

Nonetheless, he didn’t want to let Jenny down. She had done so much to help and encourage him, and she had continued to promise that someone with the depth to appreciate him might well come along. How he wished that Anne White would come back. Yet with the Higher School Certificate examinations now imminent, he could discount that as a possibility.

He made his way to Swain Gardens Double as usual that evening, and made no effort to hurry to Four Ways Hall. He finally arrived there, a little after the games had started. He saw Jenny on the front steps of the building, talking to a girl who had her back to him. Jenny saw him from the corner of her eye and sent him a smile.

“This is the latest of the Chelmsford Girls,” said Jenny, “I asked her at the beginning of the year, but she said she needed time to think about it. This is another of this year’s new members, Lewis.”

The girl turned around, and Lewis was moonstruck with surprise. Each of the television shows he had seen about parallel universes had involved alternate identical versions of people from the star character’s own earth. Yet he had never seen any counterparts of the Earth Double people he’d met back on his own Earth Single. Now, standing before him, towering over him in fact, was a beautiful 9 foot 10 inch tall girl whose face looked so identical to Lynda’s, that he felt sure that it could be nobody else.

“Lynda Fielding!” he said.

”Actually it’s Melendy,” said the girl, “But how did you know it was Fielding? Oh, I suppose Jenny told you I was coming and you mixed my first name up with someone else. You must have a lot of names to remember here. It’s a big group.”

“It wasn’t nearly so big when Lewis started coming at the beginning of the year,” said Jenny.

Even Jenny had never been told of his alternate Earth. He had thought of it, but he had decided against sharing anything so special with someone who (as kind as she’d been to him) was dating another guy. It just didn’t feel right. He had allowed everyone on Earth Double to go on thinking of him as a native midget of their own world.

Now he was faced with the irony that the latest girl to discount him as being too small to date would be the living image of the girl he’d joined this group in order to stop missing. Her double size made her even more attractive to him than Lynda. Yet for her, the size difference would most likely work against him, just as it had done with Joanna, Marjorie and the others he’d not even tried to approach.

There were several games to occupy them that night, and when a complex version of chasings was played, he found that Melendy was always choosing him to chase.

“I suppose I’m the obvious target at this size,” he thought, “At least I’m worth something in one way to these girls for one night of the year.”

She always caught him with ease, but seemed to be enjoying it more than the other players in the game were enjoying their chases.

“Would you like to come over to my place for lunch on Sunday?” asked Melendy at the end of the evening.

“Yes, I’d love to,” said Lewis.

She told him her house number in Chelmsford Street, which was now quite familiar to him after his journey to Jenny’s pool party and his now insignificant memory of his attempt to walk down Chelmsford Street with Marjorie.

He was elated, as he watched the significantly taller counterpart of Lynda Fielding walking out of Four Ways Hall and down the steps to undertake the short walk to Chelmsford Street.

“I told you things would change,” said Jenny, who had somehow appeared behind him, “I’ve been watching you two all night. I’m sure she likes you.”

“Oh Jenny, you were right. She does!” said Lewis, “She’s asked me around for lunch on the weekend. I’m so glad you talked me into staying in the group.”

“I’m pleased you stayed too. I think she discounted the group, when I first told her about it, because she was waiting for some kind of romance novel in real life to fall into her hands. Tonight she opened her heart, and found it right here after all.”

On the Sunday, Lewis arrived at Melendy Fielding’s house just before lunch time. Her mother opened the door.

”You must be Lewis,” she said, “Come in. My husband’s usually out playing tennis with his friends on Sundays, but I’m always happy to have my daughter’s guests here.”

Melendy’s polite friendly mother served them lunch and talked with them for a while.

“Can you bring the washing in from the line and fold it up now, Melendy?” she eventually asked.

“Sure Mum,” said Melendy, and smiled at Lewis before walking away.

“Now Lewis, I want to ask you something,” said Mrs Fielding, “Fifteen years ago, I wanted to call our baby girl Lynda. I was going to suggest it, but before I could bring it up, my husband said he was very fond of the name Melendy. It sounded just as nice, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. So Melendy it was. My daughter had no knowledge of the name that could have been hers, when she told me how you two met the other night. So how could you have possibly jumped to the conclusion that her name was Lynda Fielding?”

Lewis went silent. So far nobody here knew of Earth Single. He liked these Fieldings, and wanted to trust them, but what would they think of him as an interdimensional relative-sized midget?

“Are you hiding something I should know about?” asked Mrs Fielding.

There was no unpleasantness in the question, only curiosity in the manner in which she looked and spoke.

“It’s not that I want to hide it from you. I just don’t know if you’d believe it, and I don’t know if you’d still want me to see Melendy. I was surprised that she wanted to see me herself.”

“Well Melendy has quite a crush on you. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her like this, and if your secret is benign and innocent, I want only the best for you both. Why don’t you tell me what it is, and we’ll see?”

“Alright,” he said, “Every Friday night this year, I have been visiting this youth group, but not from the Lindfield you’re familiar with. I come from another Lindfield, on another parallel earth. They’re actually real. All you have to do to go from one to the other is stand in a special spot that’s common to both worlds (although mine is in Killara and yours is in Turramurra) and slightly bend your legs. Then you just suddenly find yourself in the other earth. On my earth, everything and everyone are half the size of the places and structures and plants and people of your earth.”

“I trust you’d be willing to show me this special spot,” said Mrs Fielding.

“Yes, but would you keep it between us and Melendy?”

“I will, but first I’d like to know how being from another earth gave you knowledge of Melendy’s other potential name. Even if your people have mind reading power, it doesn’t explain you knowing something that Melendy herself was never told.”

“We can’t read minds, but in January this year, I met the only person on my earth whom I’ve so far found to have a counterpart on yours. I was reading a book on a Saturday afternoon in January, a week and a half before school resumed, in the park behind the Lindfield library. LYNDA Fielding was there with her friends, while her father played tennis with his … What?”

Mrs Fielding’s mouth had dropped wide open.

“That’s where Melendy’s father was playing tennis on Saturday afternoons earlier in the year. He changed it to Sundays, when he had the chance to play at Turramurra Park. It was closer to home for us, and had available courts on Sundays. Melendy didn’t go with him, but she was there on the Saturdays in January with her friends. Tell me the rest.”

At that point it crossed Lewis’s mind that Lynda Fielding might live in Chelmsford Street Turramurra on Earth Single too, but he didn’t even want to find out. They were both beautiful, but here he was with Melendy, and she was as big and exciting as the other girls in Jenny Wilmer’s youth group. Yet she was as beautiful and friendly and fond of him as Lynda. He would never know what became of Lynda Fielding. She would most likely grow up, marry someone on Earth Single, have children, and many years later, in the age of the internet, she might read Lewis’s online published memoirs (conveniently disguised as a fiction) and think back to the days of her two Saturday near miss encounters with Lewis and laugh. Lewis was in love with Melendy Fielding. Of that he was sure. Right now he had to go on with narrating his story to an expectant Mrs Fielding.

“Lynda and her friends were nice to me, and I thought Lynda and I liked each other. I saw them two weeks in a row. On the third Saturday (which was the first Saturday in February, just after school had gone back) I had hoped to go and try to find a way to see more of her. Then my father told me on the Monday before that I had to do school work on Saturday afternoons. I was devastated. On the Friday afternoon, I was trying to get over it in Swain Gardens on my world, which I call Earth Single, because it’s single sized to me. I stood in that spot and bent my legs to balance steadily to take a photo, and popped into Swain Gardens on your Earth Double. I call it that, because of things being double sized. I guess you could call yours Earth Single and mine Earth Half.”

Mrs Fielding laughed.

“Not at all. You made up the names. You made the discovery. Nobody renamed America after Columbus on either of our worlds, I’m sure.”

“Columbus?”

“Christopher Columbus. Is it different on your world?”

“I dropped history at the end of year 8.”

“Well anyway, we wouldn’t want Earth Single to mean two different things from our two perspectives. It’s an honour to think of myself as a Double,” said Mrs Fielding, “You must have been so crushed to have lost the chance to see Lynda. My daughter has a double on another earth. It’s amazing.”

“At that point, the loss of Lynda was taking a back seat to the fact that I wondered how everything seemed to be so big, and how Swain Gardens had moved from Killara to Turramurra. It wasn’t until I got to the counterpart of my house that I realised my family didn’t seem to have doubles on this world, and that was when I knew I was on a world of double sized people and things. Once I understood, I knew it would be fun to come back here. I picnicked in Swain Gardens Double on the Sunday of that weekend, met the youth leader Jenny Wilmer and got invited to join the group.”

He saw no point in spoiling the story by taking the focus away from her daughter and onto his string of now redundant disappointments with the girls in the youth group. He had not increased his size at all in 1997, but had grown up in maturity concerning the diplomacy and methods of dating. Rule One: Make sure the girl likes you, before you contemplate a journey to her street. Rule Two: Make sure the girl’s mother likes you, when you tell her you’re from a parallel universe.

He suddenly thought of Rule Three: Make sure the girl’s mother knows that you prefer the girl to her parallel counterpart, even though the version from your own earth is your own size.

“She invited Melendy in March, but Melendy didn’t seem interested back then.”

Now he had his chance to make the most vital point.

“I’m so glad she came this week,” said Lewis, “I like her more than Lynda. It’s nice, you Fieldings being bigger than me and still liking me.”

Mrs Fielding beamed at him.

“I’ve just realised how wrong it would be of me to ask you if I could meet your world’s version of my daughter,” said Mrs Fielding, “It would expose that Lynda to the knowledge that you have chosen to be with Melendy instead. You’re a very wise and sensitive young man.”

Suddenly everything was working out well for him.

“When would you like me to show you the way to my Earth?” he asked.

“Melendy had suggested watching videos with us, but I’m going to suggest an afternoon tea in Swain Gardens,” said Mrs Fielding, “Will you help me keep your secret from her a little longer, so we can surprise her?”

He began to see from whence Melendy (and presumably Lynda) got their sense of harmless mischief.

Mrs Fielding walked the teenagers to Swain Gardens Double, and they enjoyed strawberries and scones with jam and cream in the tea room, which was open on Earth Double on Sunday afternoons too.

“You know the gardens better than us,” said Mrs Fielding to Lewis, “Can you show us around?”

He knew he was being prompted to demonstrate the trip to Earth Single. He led them to the spot and left them watching on the path, while he stood in the bushes, bent his legs a little and disappeared from the sight of the Fieldings.

To him, they seemed to disappear from sight, and be replaced by the view on his own world. To his surprise, there were two people sitting on the wall with their backs to him, talking: a husband and wife couple. They had only to turn around and see him.

He certainly couldn’t very well bring two double sized people there at that point.

He returned to Earth Double and explained everything to a surprised Melendy, but leaving out the reason that he’d called her Lynda, and the fact that he loved her more than Lynda. He didn’t want her to feel the faintest concerns about a rival double, as he had no intentions of creating any rivalry. Had he been able to see Lynda again, he’d have been happy with her for the rest of his life, and would never have discovered Earth Double. Yet things had gone in a different direction, and he could not have been happier with the outcome.

Half an hour later, he popped into Earth Single again, wondering what would happen if one of his arrivals had coincided with someone looking in his direction. He’d have to pop out and hope they thought he’d been a mirage. This time the Swain Gardens Single were deserted. He went back, and helped Melendy into position. She vanished towards Earth Single. Then he did the same for Mrs Fielding.

“Oh Mum, look how small and quaint this is!” said Melendy, thinking, “No wonder Lewis is so small and cute.”

“Nobody else on either of our earths knows about the other earth, as far as I’m aware,” said Lewis.

“How tall is the tallest person on your earth?” asked Melendy.

“There is a record of a woman who is eight feet tall (eight of my world’s feet, which would be four of yours),” said Lewis, “You’d be even taller than her, but just as your people thought me a native midget, mine would accept you as a native giant.”

“They’d accept one of us,” said Mrs Fielding, “I think it would arouse too much suspicion if we came here together. I should stay on my world, now that I’ve seen proof of yours. You two young people need to be able to go on outings and see each other on both worlds.”

“If I can fit in your house’s rooms,” said Melendy.

“I don’t think I’d like to tell my parents about your world,” said Lewis, “They might stop us from meeting again. But my year 10 formal is coming up, and the school dance hall is much higher even than you. You could stoop down to go through the door and then be comfortable all evening. Would it be alright for me to take her, Mrs Fielding?”