Chapter Five


"Hi Daniel." Nell's voice boomed from above. "You still working?"

Daniel looked up from his formulas - and up, and up. Sitting at the desk, his head now only came up to her waist. Nell's pretty, smiling face loomed high above him, shrouded in its halo of blond hair. Another spurt. This had to be at least a foot. This was too much, too soon. Almost as if it were...

"Exponential," Daniel whispered to himself. "Exponential growth."

"Yeah, I grew again about ten minutes ago," Nell remarked off-handedly, as if she was talking about what she ate for lunch. "Everything already looks much smaller." She leaned over the desk, literally standing over him. "And cuter."

Daniel swallowed dryly. "This is too much, too fast, Nell. All of this. This level of growth could be dangerou-"

She stopped him mid-sentence with another kiss, this one far more serious than the last. Her mouth now completely overpowered the lower half of his face, a huge tongue sneaking out between her plush lips to pry his own mouth open further. The kiss was so strong Daniel could feel the breath being sucked out of him.

"Nell - we can't," He tried to protest as she finally pulled away. "The experiment, and your father -"

"Who cares about what my daddy says?" Nell shot back, an impish grin on her face. "I like being this big. And nobody's going to be the boss of me anymore."

Daniel was absolutely speechless. "But... But this..."

"But what? Come here." Nell said, her tone firm. She wrapped a surprisingly soft arm the size of most people's legs around him, and pulled him in towards her. As his head zoomed towards her chest, he swore he could see it expanding before his eyes...


Daniel woke with a start, a sheet of paper sticking to the sweat on his face. "What the hell are you thinking?" he muttered to himself aloud. Well, he couldn't control what he dreamed, even if it left him completely ashamed and confused afterwards. Yet there had been one part of the dream that wasn't fantasy or guilt. Something important he was missing.

The thought floated lazily back to him. Exponential growth. He began digging for a calculator.

***

Nell took a step back from the full-length mirror, trying to fit herself entirely in the frame. Her Daddy had rush-ordered some clothing from the nearest Big & Tall store as soon as he'd finished his "discussions" with the Frankensons. Of course, everyone was expecting her to grow again in the very near future, so he had ordered clothes that were even bigger than her current size.

The cardigan she was trying on had sleeves that drooped well past her hands, and she'd had to cinch the belt she'd been given down to its tightest notch just to keep her pants up. None of these clothes were cute like the one's she'd been trying on in the mall. All the masses of fabric just made them kind of shapeless. She frowned in the mirror, and tugged at the sweater.

Not that she wasn't grateful for the clothes - she knew her Daddy had only managed to get them at the last minute, and it was a miracle she had clothes at all that fit her new size. If she had another growth spurt, she'd be approaching almost twice her height before the growth started.

She didn't know how she felt about growing anymore. She'd been so excited in the first few hours after the serum took effect - every time she imagined herself growing, there was a little tingly rush of adrenaline. But now that excitement was always tinged slightly with guilt. Her father, Winston and Daniel were clearly worried sick about what was going to happen as she got bigger. And she'd never really thought about the practical things like, well, clothes. But at this point, she no longer had a choice in the matter. She'd injected herself, and now only an antidote would be able to cure her.

She sighed and flopped back onto her bed, which groaned loudly as the air left the double mattress. "Don't you quit on me too," Nell said aloud, a half-smile forming on her face.

As if the universe were laughing with her (or at her) Nell suddenly felt a shiver ripple through her body as the now-familiar hot, prickly feeling enveloped her. She could feel her feet skidding across the comforter as her legs lengthened. Nell suddenly found herself wondering what this would look like to someone watching her, as she grew to fill her formerly baggy clothes.

Curious, she managed to lift a hand in front of her face - and watched wide-eyed as it expanded before her eyes, the fingers visibly lengthening. The baggy sweatshirt sleeve looked like it was crawling down her arm and constricting around her wrist, even though she knew that was just her arms getting bigger. There was another splitting sound and for a heartbeat Nell worried that she was already growing out of the new clothes her father had given her.

The clothes remained intact, but she suddenly felt the solid bed give way beneath her. Nell gave a sharp cry as she tumbled to the ground.

***

Daniel had double and triple checked his figures, but the graph remained the same. If the pattern of Nell's growth remained consistent... He punched it in once more, half-hoping he'd get a different result. When the same figures came out, he printed out the graph and headed straight for Winthrop's office.

The billionaire wasn't there. Daniel wrung his hands for a moment or two. The pattern the data suggested would require some immediate action - they'd have to start accounting for the next week ahead now, or they'd be in trouble once Nell's growth reached its apex. Daniel pulled out his cell-phone to call Winthrop, and blinked when he saw the time. He'd been in the lab for three hours since they'd returned to the house.

If that much time had passed, Nell had almost certainly grown again.

Daniel half-ran from the office, resisting the urge to full-on sprint down the plushly carpeted hallways toward Nell's bedroom. He mentally filled out the equation for Nell's next spurt. If he was right, she'd now be well over seven feet...

Daniel threw open the door to the bedroom to find Nell sprawling dazed on the floor, her light blond hair tousled around her forehead. The cardigan and capris combo she was wearing were rather drab, but she filled them out magnificently. Daniel tore his eyes away from her curves and up to her concerned, distracted face. That's when he realized that even though he was only a few feet away and she was sitting on the ground, she barely had to lift her head to look him in the eye.

"I'm not sure we can salvage this, sir," Winston said. Only then did Daniel notice that Winston and Winthrop were struggling with the bent, deformed remains of what must have been Nell's four-post bed. The canopy of fabric had been torn from its moorings by the bed's implosion, and Nell's sheets were piled off to the side. The two men were lifting from the wreckage a mattress whose center appeared to have imploded.

"I knew I should have gotten you one of those fancy memory foam mattresses," Winthrop grunted, sweat beading on his brow.

Nell cracked a smile at that, but her eyes still betrayed concern. Concern that Daniel knew was probably justified.

"I'm not sure this is the best time," Daniel started hesitantly.

Winthrop dropped his end of the mattress, causing Winston to fumble the other side to the ground. The ruined furniture landed with a whumping sound. "That doesn't sound like you've found an antidote." Winthrop said matter-of-factly.

"No, but, er, I think I've figured out the pattern of Nell's growth." Daniel stammered.

"I'm not sure I'm in the mood for bad news," Winthrop scowled.

"I want to know," Nell said, brushing the stray locks of hair from her eyes. "You don't have to talk about me like I'm not here."

Winthrop and Daniel both turned to Nell, speechless. "You're absolutely right, Nell-bell," Winthrop apologized. "You have more of a right to know than any of us."

"Well, I was thinking about the rapid increase in Nell's growth..." Daniel took a moment to study her, and made a quick guess that she now stood 7'5". "At first I thought the pattern was unpredictable, but then I remembered exponentials."

"You better not be telling me Nell's growing exponentially!" Winthrop yelled. "I know enough to know what that means."

"No, thank goodness, no. If she - I mean, if you were growing exponentially, you'd already be over thirty feet tall," Daniel explained, turning to Nell. "But there are also logarithmic equations, which follow a somewhat different pattern. Logarithms normally trend in sharp initial increases which eventually plateau. But if we were to invert the logarithm..."

A look of understanding dawned on Winthrop's face. "Her rate of growth is increasing, isn't it?"

Daniel nodded. "And it will continue to do so for quite some time, as long as it's following this equation." Daniel held up the printout of the graph.

"Let me see that." Winthrop stepped forward and grabbed the paper. "If this is correct, Nell could outgrow the house in the next few days."

"That's why I thought you should see it. We need to have a plan." Daniel bit his lip.

Winthrop had turned very pale. "I might be able to clear a space on the factory floor. We'll have to keep you hidden... But how..."

Nell tried to stifle a tremendous yawn, but what would have been a small noise from an ordinary person was now roughly as loud as a cough. "Sorry," she said sheepishly. "I'm just kind of tired."

"It is after midnight," Winston announced.

"Where can I sleep?" Nell asked. "My bed's kind of totaled."

The question seemed to startle Winthrop back to the present. "Winston, can we pull together some cushions from the guest rooms? We could probably make something passable on the floor..."

"Sort of like Arabian Nights," Nell said, smiling. Daniel thought she was probably trying to calm her father down.

"You could say that." Winthrop managed a lopsided grin.

Nell got to her feet, the floor noticeably moving as she stood. Daniel, standing just a few feet away, tried to keep his jaw from flapping open. Daniel now stood eye-to-eye with the area just below Nell's bust. She literally towered over him. Thankfully Nell's room had a fairly cavernous ceiling, and she was able to stand comfortably.

"I can probably help carry the cushions," Nell said, her smile actually turning into a grin. "I bet I could carry more than either of you now."

"I think I'll decline to gamble," Winston replied.

***

Daddy, Winston and Daniel helped her lay cushions around the floor of the room, and they covered them with a few separate king-size sheets from the master bedroom. It wasn't her bed, but Nell smiled and told everyone that it was okay, because she was exhausted and just wanted to sleep.

After everyone left and her Dad turned the light off, Nell stretched out, and felt the multiple sheets shift around her. The whole situation felt strange to her. She'd never slept on the floor before, much less with the wide variety of pillows beneath her and covers on top. She tried to think of it as exotic and fun, like Arabian nights after all, but instead her mind turned back to what Daniel had said about her growth pattern.

She could outgrow the house in the next few days. If her growth kept up after that, what would she outgrow next? The town? Her state? The continent? For a second she thought of herself standing on top of the United States, looking just like it did on the globe, and thought the image was funny. But then she thought of what everything else would look like around her. Would she even be able to see people at that size? She certainly wouldn't be able to talk to them.

If she couldn't sleep on a bed now, where would she be able to sleep when she was five hundred feet tall? And what would she eat? Now that her dreams were coming true, Nell was starting to see how they could become nightmares. It was all happening so fast...

Nell turned over, pressing her face into the pillow. She couldn't think about this right now. Worrying wouldn't help anything. She wasn't anywhere near a hundred feet tall yet anyway, and Daniel's calculations could have been wrong. Right now she just needed to sleep.

***

Right around when his pen broke, Daniel decided he was done for the night. Altering the pH balance hadn't done anything except ruin the molecule's structure, so he angrily balled up his last few hours of work (now thoroughly stained with ballpoint ink) and tossed them towards the garbage can. He missed, of course. Daniel had never had anything remotely approaching dexterity or physical skill, and he was even less likely to succeed after a long day like the one he just finished.

Daniel wanted nothing more than to pass out right there on the desk, but he couldn't do that without feeling like he was letting Nell down. The poor girl was going to be inconveniently huge if he didn't work out some way of stopping her growth. This was his chance to actually make a difference in someone's life, and he wasn't about to blow it.

He'd finished rubbing his eyes and was about to open up MatLab for another round of algorithm testing when he heard a soft knock on the lab door. Daniel turned to see Nell's tremendous face filling the window, looking somewhat anxious.

Daniel hopped off his office chair and opened the door, looking up to meet Nell's eye. He couldn't help but notice her unusual bedclothes - she'd wrapped two sheets around herself, creating something like a DIY toga. The girl had already stood tall in her high-ceilinged bedroom, but hunched within the frame of the rather standard-sized hallway, she outright loomed over him. In order to stand up straight, she'd have to stick her head through the roof, Daniel thought to himself.

"I couldn't sleep," Nell said by way of explanation, shifting awkwardly back from the door. She fumbled for the corner of her toga and pulled it tight.

Daniel searched for words. "Um, sleep is pretty important. The current guess is that it serves a number of crucial auto-immune functions..."

"I tried," Nell said pleadingly, "But I just kept tossing and turning."

"Well... what do you usually do when you can't sleep?" Daniel leaned on the wall, trying to look casual.

"Um, the last time I really had trouble was a long time ago." Nell bit her lip. "My dad read me a story until I conked out."

"Do you want me to read you a story?" Daniel asked, unable to totally keep the incredulity out of his voice. The circumstances were totally bizarre - here was a teenage girl almost twice his size, and he was offering to read to her.

"No, no that's all right," Nell allowed, blushing. "If you want to go back to work that's okay."

"I'm sorry, I honestly didn't mean to make fun of you," Daniel apologized. Awkward around girls, as always. Even ones he was getting to know. "I don't really know any good stories though." He ruffled a hand through his hair and smiled.

"Talk to me then," Nell insisted. "Just until I fall asleep."

Daniel took a long, hard look back at his desk, and realized he probably wasn't going to get anything else done that night anyway. He nodded, and followed her as she padded barefoot down the hallway, her newly enlarged feet sinking deeply into the carpet with each step.

***

Nell settled herself beneath the masses of covers, and once sure she was totally beneath them, shrugged her way out of her makeshift PJs. Daniel had turned awkwardly away toward the wreckage of her bed, and the dollhouse next to it. He was toying with one of the windows when she told him he could turn around.

"Is this a scale model of the mansion?" He asked.

Nell nodded. "My dad had it made for me when we moved here. He said that no matter how big the house seemed, I would always be a giant next to the dollhouse." She smiled, but that smile faltered when she thought about how she could be outgrowing the real mansion very soon.

Daniel must have noticed her expression, because he quickly changed the subject. "Ah, so, if you wanted to talk, uh... Is there somewhere I could sit?"

"Oh, there's a chair next to the desk," Nell pointed. Daniel quickly brought the chair over and sat down a few feet away from Nell's pile of cushions. Nell was amused to notice that Daniel fit the chair almost perfectly, even though it had been made to her scale. Had her father sat there, the seat would have collapsed beneath him. Nell turned over towards Daniel, pulled the covers around her neck, and said, "So, tell me something interesting."

Daniel's eyes turned up to the ceiling, and he was silent in thought for a few moments. "Well, do you know about single-celled eukaryote locomotion?"

"Not about science!" Nell grinned. "Talk to me about yourself. About your life before you came here."

"I'm not sure how much there is to tell," Daniel said sheepishly.

"Well, you must have had friends. And people you worked with."

"Oh, well, I did have a few drinking buddies from college. But I kind of lost touch with them when I entered the trial phase of the experiment. I really didn't have too much of a life." He laughed awkwardly. "As far as work goes, I had the people who gave me grant money, but I only reported to them once a month or so."

"No girlfriend?" Nell immediately wondered if that was too obvious, and wished she had kept her mouth shut.

Daniel seemed totally oblivious to Nell's embarrassment. "Well, I dated one girl in college for a while. I think she was a lit major. I haven't really done anything since grad school though."

Nell couldn't help herself. "Why not?"

"Well, I'm kind of shy," Daniel admitted. "And scrawny. Most girls want some big guy to, I dunno, protect them or something."

Nell smiled. "I don't need anyone to protect me. Not anymore."

Daniel actually laughed aloud at that. "No, I guess all the guys in dark alleyways would be afraid of you."

Nell couldn't imagine that for the life of her. She'd never frightened anyone or anything - except maybe Linda. Yes, Linda had been scared of her, but that was because she saw her change. The Nell she saw in the mirror obviously couldn't hurt a fly. She couldn't imagine actually intimidating someone who was scary. "You're not afraid of me, right?"

"Of course not." Daniel said reassuringly, with a wave of his hand. There was something so fragile about him, sitting in her old little chair, doing his best to comfort her. Almost doll-like. Nell had a sudden, weird impulse to hug him.

"Daniel, do you like me?" Now was as good a time as any to ask.

Daniel opened his mouth as if to respond, but instead just sat there slack-jawed for a moment or two, as if he was processing this.

Sensing the need to back off a bit, Nell hurriedly said, "It's not a trick question or anything. I just mean, y'know, like me. As a person."

Daniel seemed to finally recover his composure. "Yeah, sure. I mean, I haven't known you for too long, but you seem like a very nice girl, Nell. I'd like to get to know you better."

Nell allowed herself another grin. "Well, you're stuck with me until you make an antidote. So I guess we'll have more time to talk." She found herself stifling a yawn. "Not right now though. I think I'm finally sleepy." In fact, she could barely keep her eyes open. "Could you turn off the light?"

"No problem," Daniel said, getting up and taking the chair back to the desk. "Good night, Nell."

"Good night, Daniel."

***

He lingered after flipping the light switch, waiting with the door open just a crack to make sure Nell actually fell asleep. When he heard her breathing turn to shallow, half-snore gasps, he quietly closed the door behind him and trudged down to his bedroom.

Daniel had no idea how to feel about what had just happened. Talking to Nell had been fairly surreal - with the absence of furniture in the room, his sense of scale had been totally thrown off. He couldn't tell if she was huge or he was simply tiny - although in reality it was rather a bit of both. He'd managed to avoid looking at her now mountainous curves though, and that was a small victory. No matter how crazy his dreams were, there were boundaries that he could respect while he was awake.

On the downside, he'd definitely shared too much about his personal life. Nell was his employer's daughter, not his best friend. And besides, what he'd said made him look like a total loser. No friends, just work. How pathetic was that?

Yet it seemed like Nell was genuinely interested in hearing about him. There was this strange, almost childlike curiousity about her, that shone through at odd times. A certain vulnerable air, even despite her new huge size.

She's a teenage girl, Daniel realized. Of course she's unsure of herself. And he didn't want to take advantage of that. He didn't have a chance with her romantically anyway. But a girl in a situation like hers could use a friend.

That's what he'd be. A good friend to her. And that was all.