Once school ended, Alex came and found me again. She put me in her bag we got on the bus.

Back home, Mom was waiting at the front door for us. Alex lifted me out of her bag with one hand clutching around my abdomen, and showed me off to my mom, as if to prove how looked after I was.

“He did really good today, Mrs Flynn,” Alex exclaimed. She patted my head with approval, before lifting me up so mom could take me back in her arms.

“See you tomorrow, Tad!” Alex called back to me before heading to her house.

“Sounds like you had a lot of fun today,” Mom said, taking me back inside. She sounded relieved that I wasn’t pushed around or had too much difficulty getting to class.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“Alex seems to like you a lot,” mom observed without a beat. “Or she’s trying to be extra nice.”

“She’s just…nice,” I said non-committedly.

“So it looks like it’s not so bad to hang out with a girl at school?” Mom ventured. “And it’s okay if Alex had to take you to school every day of the week?”

“I guess she’s okay,” I shrugged. “She looked after me and stuff.”

“I know it’s probably a little embarrassing for you to be carried in a girl’s bag, but you seem pretty happy with it so far so maybe we’ll keep trialling this system, until we figure out something else.”

Mom put me in the living room and I sat down and did my homework, which was a little hard since my dog would try to walk across it and sit on it, and also try to sit on me.

I thought about the rest of the week, that every day was going to be like this, and the next week too, and the next. Each week would get a little easier, a little more familiar. The end of the year was coming up, and then high school. If my high school days looked like this, it might not be so bad. I would slowly forget what it was like to be regular size, and giant people would gradually start to look normal to me. When I was very young all adults were huge and that was normal, but as I grew and got taller, the size difference began to lessen. It was like that, but now in reverse. I had to slowly get used to being small again. It seemed intimidating but less, with Alex. We would both grow up together, and that was kind of cool. She didn’t treat me any different. She teased me, but then, she always had, and about things other than size.

Right before graduation, one afternoon my mom came into my bedroom with something to tell me. She had enrolled me in St Justina’s boarding school. I would be staying on school campus, where they had the best facilities and support system for someone my size.

I remembered the day at the skate park, before I went to the Kijeks and shrunk. How Alex had intently peppered me with questions about which high school I was going to, and her sighs of frustration when I didn’t give straight answers.

Remembering this, my heart sunk.

“What about Day Prep?”

“Dayford Preparatory?” mom said dismissively, as if she’d barely heard of it before. “Oh, it was alright before. But there’s obviously been a change of circumstance for you. And not a little change.”  

“What about Alex?” I said.

Mom replied:

“I think it’s too much to ask Alex to be your minder every single school day, every year of high school. She’s going to have her own responsibilities soon enough, Tadley, and her responsibilities are only going to grow as she gets older. And what if she gets sick or goes on vacation?” Mom came over and gently sat beside me on my bed. She was so humungous that her weight depressed the cushion and made me fall into her leg.

Without a pause, she scooped me up under my arms and put me on her lap. Then she held me with one hand and began rubbing my shoulders with her thumb and fingertips.

She explained patiently:

“The staff at St Justina are going to look after you, sweetie. They’ll assign you some special buddies to take you to classes and return you to your room. They have a small team of wonderful helpers and feel so incredibly confident about it for you.”

“I guess you’re right,” I mumbled. Maybe it was unfair to put all the responsibility on Alex. And I didn’t want to strain our friendship and make her resent me for needing her each day.

After dinner, I got a call. It was Alex. Her parents must have told her what was happening, that she didn’t need to buddy with me next year, or ever. Over the phone, she sounded dismissive.

“My parents are just dreaming,” she reassured me. “I think they forgot how small you are already. I bet you a million bucks the teachers at Day Prep make me buddy with you anyway. Sorry, weeny,” she chuckled, “but you probably gotta keep riding in my bag all the way until we graduate.”

“I’m not going to Day Prep,” I said hesitantly. “My mom says I got to go to St Justina.”

“Since when?”

“Since I shrunk, I guess, my mom’s serious now. She’s enrolled me already.”

Alex sighed in sympathy.

“Well, that’s kind of a big heap of crud, Tad, for your mom to go do that without asking anybody. No offence. But Justina’s ways out of town – you do know that right?”

“Yeah...”

“Know how long the bus is going to take each day?” she emphasized, “And I hate riding the bus – but it was kind of fun when you rode with me, now it’s going to be so borrrrrinnnggg!”

“It kind of was fun,” I admitted. Riding in Alex’s bag on the bus – and off the bus – was basically my favourite part of the school day. When she carefully packed me in with her books and pencil case, and gave my head a small affectionate pat, it felt good. I would never admit that, of course.

She went on thoughtfully:

“I guess we could still hang out after school, like normal. But probably later once you get off the bus ‘cause it’s going to take you a looonnnng time to get home. Poor l’il Tad. But it’ll be okay, I guess. I’ll ask my mom if you can sleep over more often.”

“I’m not catching the bus,” I said. “My mom’s making me board there. Because my mom says they’ve got special—”

Alex interrupted me:

“Then we can’t hang out.”

Her tone had totally changed. It was completely flat now, finally understanding.

“I could come home during breaks. Probably.”

“That’s months away. I can’t believe it. Your mom hates me.” She said this like it was an incontestable fact.

“She’s just kind of being my mom,” I said.

“I said I was sorry,” Alex emphasized. “But she still hates me!”

“My mom likes you,” I said.

“Yeah, right!” she complained. “Don’t you get it? This is punishment because I got you shrunk. If I never shrunk you, you wouldn’t have to go to Justina. But it’s ‘cause I shrunk you—”

“You didn’t, really,” I said. “I said to keep doing it. Remember?”

“No,” she snapped. “But you should have told me not to, you jerk. You’re not supposed to act like it’s okay, and then go run and tell your mom on me and make her think it’s all my fault.”

“I never told, and my mom knows that’s not all your fault.”

“It’s not all my fault but it’s most of my fault.”

“It’s no one’s fault but we both did it.”

“—And then let your mom think you need all this help and I can’t help you anymore. And now your mom hates me. Do you even wanna go? I bet it’s way dumber at Justina than it sounds.”

“I’ve got to go there, there are special facilities—”

“Like harnesses?”

“—plus my mom already enrolled me, and the school has everything ready.”

Alex was quiet for a moment.

“Oh, okay.”

She didn’t sound okay.

*

Alex was her usual self for grad, although she didn’t talk about me or her, but talked lightly about things that had nothing to do with us. After the ceremony we sat in the cafeteria which had banners up.

Bruna was excited to start Day Prep because of the fierce competitive gymnastics and cheerleading and she wanted to try out, and kept telling us multiple times, except when her parents came by, then she went quiet. Once her parents passed to talk with some other parents, she went back to talking breathlessly about it. I never heard Bruna talk so much.

“Your mom is going to freak over what you have to wear to practice,” Alex said in undertone.

“You think so?” Bruna grinned.

After the grad ceremony, Mr Kijek came by to talk with me, to wish me luck for next year.

“We understand,” he said, “and, don’t worry, Alex understands as well. Justina is going to be great, but of course, Alex is going to miss you a lot. When she heard, you could say it deflated her evening. But you’re going to be very supported at St Justina, and don’t worry about her. She’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Mr Kijek,” I said. With all the banners and celebration going on, I didn’t feel so much in a celebratory mood. I wasn’t sure how I felt.

Bruna then invited her parents to meet my parents, which they had never properly done before. While they chatted with Alex, Bruna sat down and leaned down to whisper in my ear:

“Wanna go for a walk?”

I stared up at her; not understanding at first. I couldn’t easily go for a walk with her among the crowd of parents.

Without explaining, she gently picked me up and carried me out to the courtyard in front of the cafeteria. There was some hedge gardens and railing, and it was out of the noise and main congress of parents.

The grad was basically over, I could see parents were funnelling out of the school, down the pathways. We would all be leaving soon. I wanted to talk to Alex but I didn’t know what to say.

Bruna put me down on a table in the paved court area and took a seat. She also seemed to want to talk, but didn’t know where to begin.

“Um,” She began to go pink before she even finished her sentence, “I guess…see you when I see you, Tadley.”

There probably wouldn’t be a next time that I saw her, although it didn’t feel real yet. She tentatively placed her hands around my body, and lifted me, drawing me into her for a hug. More often these days she smelled like a cloud of incense. She held onto me a moment longer, squeezed almost all of the air out of my body, and I found myself nearly smothered in long black hair. 

She placed me back on the table. Alex shuffled over, noticed Bruna blushing more than ever, and smiled faintly. Then she looked down at me. 

“Hey, this sucks and everything but stay cool, Tadster,” she said, giving me a high and low fiving me with one finger, and a very gentle fist bump with her whole fist.

She was ice cool as always, as if it was just a regular Friday and we would see each other on Monday, as usual. She and Bruna had more in common than she let on. In a couple of years, it would hit me that Alex’s ‘coolness’ was not confidence, but very well played shyness.

“Too bad you didn’t get smaller,” she said, with a tiny smile. “Like, soooo small. Then I could take you back home in my pocket and hide you in my room. Then you wouldn’t have to go away. You could live in my room and I’d feed you and show your mom that I can look after you without anyone else’s help.”

We both knew that wouldn’t work, but she seemed to relish the thought.

“Why do you get to have him?” Bruna interjected. “You have to let me keep him sometimes, too.”

“Okay,” Alex humored her. “We could share.”

Our parents then came out into the courtyard, and spotted us by the benches. Alex looked at me, somewhat self-consciously:

“You’re going to let me squish you?”

Before I could answer, she bundled me up with both hands and squeezed me fiercely, knocking my breath out again. I did my best to hug Alex back, just as fiercely.

“See you around, weeny,” she said.

=====================================================================================
                                                                TWELVE YEARS LATER                                                                      
=====================================================================================

I was scrolling on my phone; which doubled as my computer monitor, looking at job listings. It wasn’t promising: Warehousing , Sales – I was too small to lift stock. Office clerking; I was too small to use the office supplies.

There were plenty of tutoring jobs for senior students facing finals. Seniors were still teens and I avoided teens. I hated hanging out with people younger than me, they always underestimated my age. Of everyone, teens were the boldest and most curious around me. Sometimes they pointed me out and giggled, other times they bent down and condescended me with a bright baby-voiced greeting and acted like the tiniest thing I did was a living marvel. They treated me in a way they would never treat me if I was regular size.

“Yoohoo!” a girl’s voice came through my front door. Tas let herself in and found me in the living room.

Even with a messy ponytail, no makeup and casual clothes, Tas always found a way to look good. She liked to grab me and wrap me up in her sweaters. At first it annoyed me, but I grew to love it.

She stopped in the living room.

“So you still want to do this with me?” she said, “Right now?”

“Let’s do it,” I said, pushing my phone aside.

She fished around in her bag.

“It’s going to be a crazy ride, but you’re going to love it.”

“I’m ready for anything,” I said, trying to sound pumped.

“I’ll fill you in, just enough so you can enjoy it. But I think you’re a quick learner, and you probably will pick stuff up pretty fast just by watching.”

“How long is this going to go on for?”

She smiled.

“Ohhh…we could be a while at this. Up to you. You can still back out, there’s still time. But once we start, you’re not going to want to stop.”

“You keep telling me how amazing it is. Just show it to me already!”

She switched on the living room TV and got onto Netflix, and dropped onto the sofa.

“There’s 12 seasons and it’s not going to really pick up until season 3, but 3 will hit just right only after you see 1 and 2.”

Tasmine was my best friend; we met at Justina, when she was my student buddy. I had several student buddies over the years, but Tas was special. We clicked almost immediately.

As my buddy it had been her job to carry me between classes and take me back to my dorm room after school. She eventually began staying in at my dorm and walking home later. She had slept in my bed a few times since it was normal size, while I slept on a miniature packable mattress, which she brought over. I loved it when she slept over because for the next few days my bed smelled like her.

We remained friends even after I graduated. When I first met her, I constantly compared her to Alex. But I didn’t do that anymore. Tas was very gentle and sweet and my size brought out her generous, nurturing side, and I was pretty certain I was falling for her. Not only that but, she had hinted she was into me a few times.

Now she had let herself in and put some food in the fridge. It was the long awaited weekend and she planned to introduce me to her favorite TV show, and binge the seasons with me.

I was pretty sure this was a guise and Tas actually wanted to vent about her boyfriend, Jason, who had voluntarily downgraded himself to fuck buddy since half the time Tas didn’t know where he was anymore. I heard about Jason a little less every week, and personally, I didn’t mind. I don’t think Jason understood Tas like I did.

She lay out some snacks on the coffee table.

“I’ll just be in the shower, Taddy Bear,” she said kindly, blowing me a kiss, “if you’re asking.” She giggled mischievously. “Just hang ten, okay?”

She shut the bathroom door and then the water was rushing.

She was taking showers at my house now, and sometimes even humming. It was a good sign; not a huge leap to imagining her taking a shower here every morning. I might be tiny, but I was pretty sure I could treat her better than Jason. I was one hundred percent in love with her, and no one else on the side.

This was a really good sign. She was showering right before the movie –random – except if it meant she wanted to get close. And maybe a lot close. You didn’t shower to prepare for a hug.

While the water ran, I nervously rehearsed what to say once she got out. My brain wouldn’t sit still.

*

“…so, I’m in crisis. With Jason, with whoever Jason’s with. Oh yeah, because there’s that now.  Sometimes he says things about a girl, like ‘I would say that to her, but it’d be a lie’. And then I think, when you said that to me last week, was that a lie? And who is this girl? – Am I paranoid?”

She ate some more popcorn and then looked down at me as if she suddenly remembered I was there, sitting on her lap. We were watching episode 2, season 1, but midway, Tas’s voice got louder and the TV volume got quieter.

Now she put it on pause, not just the TV but it seemed the whole room, us, everything. She was stuck on pause and she didn’t know how to unpause.

I sighed and took her hand, or at least, wrapped my hands around her index finger.

“Tas,” I said earnestly. She quickly brought the volume down further so she could hear me. “You don’t need this confusion.” I squeezed her finger. “You’re so generous; you deserve all the love in the world.”

“You’re sweet. Just a big beautiful soul in a tiny vessel.”

“I’m just being honest.”

“Okay…” she lifted me off her lap and placed me next to her on the sofa, “then, can I ask an honest question?”

“Is there any other kind?”

“Guess not. Did you want to ask me out, Tad?”

I was taken aback. Tas knew me pretty well, but this was almost psychic. I lit up inside. This meant she was thinking the same thing.

“When you said ‘honest’ question,” I grinned, “you really want to get straight to it.”

She bit her lip.

“So…Yes or no?”

“Of course,” I blurted out. “So long as we’re being honest, I don’t want waste your time.”

“I thought so,” she said seriously. “And I don’t want to waste yours either. So, let’s just be fully honest.”

With the room quiet, totally tuned into her, I said:

“Great.”

She fidgeted her hands in her lap.

“So…yeah. It’s going to have to be a permanent thing. I mean, no.”

I didn’t understand. There was a break in communication somewhere.

“No? You just said…”

“Yes. It’s a no.”

“To a date?”

“Well,” she changed her mind, “what were you going to ask me?”

“Nothing,” I said honestly. “I thought it was obvious.”

“Maybe I’m dumb,” she said fretfully, “because nothing is obvious to me right now. I feel like the last to get it, especially with Jason.”

“Jason isn’t part of this conversation,” I said cautiously. “In fact…you said all your friends told you to break up. I was trying not to have an opinion, but…I agree. And I thought you did break up. You seemed really happy today. Like everything is clear again.”

Her fingertip was suddenly stroking my stubble.

“I love your hair,” she said – and told me ten times a day. “Wish it was longer. Would you grow a mustache? A cute little devilish one.”

I knew if I did she’d tug it all the time. 

“Tad.” She paused. “It’s ‘break’. Not ‘break up’. Rest, pause. Not ‘over’. Jason and I…we’re fine.”

“I like fine,” I shrugged. “If I could find my Jason – I mean my Tas – I mean— …uh, you know what I mean.”

She smiled sadly, a little painfully, looking like she’d rather be anywhere but here, and nodded:

“Go on.”

I pushed my voice out the rest of the way:

“If I could meet my person, and they were you – I mean, like you, mostly—”

She slid up next to me, making our size difference even more obvious and awkward. The closer she sat the more she had to hunch, but she was so graceful she did it without self-consciousness.

“And who is Tad’s person? Give me a profile.”

“You already match it, Tas,” I said.

“I mean,” she corrected, “I’ll see if I can match it to someone I know.”

“You don’t know yourself?”

She ignored this, pretended to mull something over in her head:

“Let me think…Yup. I think I got your perfect mate. Ooh, fair disclosure; she’s a little tall. But—”

“Wait, she can’t be that tall—”

Tas stopped and stared at me.

“Why? She may have, what, a couple of inches over you? Tiny difference. And you know what they say,” her voice went clandestine, “everyone’s the same height lying down.”

I couldn’t stand the thought of Tas imagining me having sex with some other girl – one of her friends? – and deciding that was the best of all possible worlds. What a terrible joke.

When I didn’t say anything she frowned.

“Tad...” she said shyly, “I love you. Really. And if something crazy happened and my whole life came crashing down, I would go to you first. Because you get me.” As she said this, she stroked my hair with her fingertips.

“Your hair is so soft. I love you too much to date; I want you for keeps. You can’t eat chocolate for every meal or you’ll get sick. And I don’t want to get sick of you. Does that make sense?”

“No, I think I get it.”

“Don’t you think us just being really cool is the greatest thing?”

“Really cool?” I definitely felt the conversation had cooled a lot, in minutes. “I didn’t think we were cool. I thought we were hot.”

“If we dated and it got weird, and then...we’re done. We’re not talking anymore. This is too special, Tad, and I’d want to keep it around forever.”

I let this sink in for a minute. The entire time, Tas shifted around uncomfortably, making me rock around on her thigh. It got annoying fast.

“Who says it would be forever?” I said suddenly, stunned. “You don’t seriously think I’m that into you?”

“Well…” Tas fidgeted with her hair, tugging it out of place and then trying to put it back in place again, “…you’re not Jason. You’re always there. You’re nothing like him.”

“Yeah, I needed you to take me places.”

“Why would you say it like that?” she said, suddenly. “Why would you say: ‘You don’t seriously think—?” she took a breath and started again. “I can be with Jason and be a best – a damn loyal friend – at the same time. Girls can be multiple things, ya dummy.”

“Yeah, that was dumb,” I admitted slowly. “This whole conversation is dumb. I don’t mean any of what I said.”

“Something, something, I’m sorry, Tas,” she muttered.

I didn’t say anything.

Tas took a breath and leaned back, looking almost comfortable, looking anywhere but at me. Finally she said, sounding calm and almost upbeat:

“Jason and I were going to Tahiti, but then we got in a fight. I guess I’ve been spending so much time with you, I forgot about Jason. But….” She sighed again, deeper. Then stood without another look. “I think I’m going now.”

“To Tahiti? When?”

“Leaving your room, your house…Just leaving. Bye.”

I considered running after her, but that would be absurd, she would be out of the house before I crossed the room.

She shut the door and was gone. She had stroked and teased my hair so much it stuck up in a brush. I tried to feel sad, but nothing. I guess I just did a massive favor for Jason.

I returned to my phone, trying to pretend my job search hadn’t been interrupted. Within a minute, the recruiter picked up and I began talking:

“Is there an opening for me?”

“How soon can you start?” the rep asked.

“I wish I’d started yesterday,” I said.

“That’s great!”

The platform was called Pocket Tutor. It was called this because it ran through a phone app. The Pocket Tutor people sent me material in the mail before my first session. Then I thought.

It was twelve years since I saw Alex, we were twelve year olds. Now I was double that – and, somewhere out there, so was she. The concept of Alex being an adult was no more real now than it had been

Within a few months of us starting high school, the Kijeks moved house. The rare times I came home from St Justina on break, the neighbor house stood empty. Then a couple moved in. If Alex, Bruna and I had been older, we might have made a long distance friendship work out. But kids can’t do distance, and they can’t do it long. They hang out with the kids they see every day. One day I had to accept that St Justina killed our trio. Alex and Bruna were probably still the best of friends, and I was a memory.

Now I needed a distraction, and it looked like this tutoring gig was it.