Annie took a deep breath and released it. She had something to tell us, and I could tell it was something big.

“A few months ago, I told my dad about my powers. And the thing is... he knew... he knew because... my mom has this power too.”

Alice and I listened in awe. I couldn't believe it. There was yet another person with these incredible abilities.

“Will, Alice... I'd really like you to meet my mother. And she's really excited to meet both of you. She lives here in New York with my step-father.”

Questions bubbled up inside me.

“Does your mother know anything about your powers? Like how they work?”

Annie's face lit up. “Mm-hmm!” She absentmindedly played with the drawstring of her sweatshirt hood as she answered my question.

“In fact, my step-dad is a physics professor here. He's been trying to figure it out in his free time. He belongs to a group of scientists who are working on it in secret... That's kind of how he met my mom. It's an interesting story... He says that our current understanding of physics can't explain all of it. But they've done experiments, and he says we're not shrinking matter, that's impossible. We're distorting the spacetime around objects. Almost like we're creating a mini-wormhole in the shape of that object. They're working on a theory that we're creating some kind of energy in our brains... a kind of energy we don't even know how to detect yet.”

“That's incredible!” I said.

“Yep, and there are more of us with these powers. And scientists – who study physics and biology, all of that stuff, trying to figure it out... there's a whole community, but it's all top secret for now, because... well, we don't know what will happen. People will panic. I've heard stories about people who have done very bad things with these powers. We have to figure out more about them so we can stop that from happening. Alice, we're not alone! We're not alone and we're going to change the world!”

Annie's tone of voice as she told us all this was hopeful and optimistic, but as I listened to her, I felt a sinking in my stomach. When she had first revealed her powers to me, it had been quite a shock, to put it mildly. But I quickly came to take our little magical world for granted. It was sobering to learn that there were others out there, besides Annie and Alice. Most unsettling of all, however, was the thought that some of those others could be abusing that power – a power not yet fully understood.

Annie suddenly remembered something.

“Oh, I have some pictures to show you.”

Alice and I followed her as she led us to her bedroom. Liz remained behind, and began tidying up the common room. Once we entered the room, Annie opened the bottom drawer of her dresser, and retrieved an envelope stashed towards the back and underneath her clothes.

“Come here,” she said, hopping impishly onto her bed.

We sat next to her as she pulled a stack of photos from the envelope, and began to flip through them, pausing to let us see each one.

“This is my mother, Catherine.”

The photograph showed Annie with her mother, who could have passed as her twin, or at least her future self. They sat in wrought-iron chairs on what appeared to be their back patio. The older Annie looked to be in her mid-40's, with the same brown hair as her daughter, and deep, hazel eyes. Her eyes, like her daughter's, were lit with an otherworldly mixture of wisdom and mischief that somehow made her look younger. Alice commented on how cute they looked together.

“Here's mom with my step-dad, Professor Bernhard Sorensen.”

The professor's appearance fit well with his name – a hale Scandinavian man, with blond hair, a square face, and behind a pair of glasses, eyes that suggested intelligence and a sense of humor. He looked a little older than Annie's mother. He smiled, leaning in his chair to put his arm around his wife.

I knew Gary and Annie's mother had gotten divorced. I brought up the topic, and Annie explained:

“Mom and dad got divorced when I was young. Dad said they were in love once... they had me, and she told him about her powers. Dad was fascinated with her, but a little scared, too. There was a rift between them. They wanted to take different paths in life. When they separated, they fought about me. Dad said he wanted me to have a normal life. When mom saw how much he loved me, she agreed to let him raise me. She thought he was right, that I could have a more normal life with him. She came to visit us once in a while.”

She seemed thoughtful for a moment, then continued with the photos.

“Here's us with some of our friends. They all have the size-changing power, too.”

The photo showed Annie, her parents, and four other people seated smiling around a dining room table. The strangers looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties. There were two young men, one of them black, bald, and smartly dressed, the other tall and lanky with red hair. Across from them sat two young women, one who was pretty, if slightly stout, with black hair and freckles, and the other thin with dirty blonde hair and glasses.

“And here's mom showing off her powers.”

This photo, taken from a distance, showed Catherine, huge and beautiful, against a bright blue sky painted with clouds. Far off behind her were dark green hills. The perspective was such that it seemed she might take a seat on those hills, resting the weight of her gargantuan form on the horizon. She wore a large-brimmed sun hat and a white floral print dress. At her feet was a standalone garage, the roof of which peaked just below her knees. The giantess stood with arms akimbo, a devilish grin on her face as she rested a buckled, leather, high-heeled clog delicately on the roof of a car beside the garage. I looked at the photo with awe. Being shrunken around the girls was incredible, but seeing a woman actually grown to such a stupefying height was something different altogether. I have to confess that I felt attracted to her. There was something about her size and pose that I found paradoxically feminine and alluring. I knew I wanted to take a similar picture of Alice.

“We have to be careful when we take pictures like this,” Annie explained. “Luckily our house is in a very rural area, so nobody will see us.”

She showed us the next picture. “And this is me pretending to crush dad.”

The photo, shot in the same place as the preceding one, showed Annie by the garage, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, as she raised her pink-striped Adidas sneaker above the Professor. Her father had a nervous smile on his face, clearly uncomfortable about the whole situation. Alice giggled.

“It's sort of an inside joke,” Annie continued. “Sometimes when we argue, or just for fun, I tell him I'm going to step on him, or I shrink him and pretend like I'm really going to do it. Dad doesn't think it's funny. And mom tries really hard not to laugh and tells me to stop.”

Annie was certainly becoming less inhibited with her powers. I felt happy that Annie had found an environment where she was free to be herself, superpowers and all, but I couldn't help but feel a little disturbed by the thought of her playfully threatening to mash her father's body into the rubber grooves of her faded white sneaker sole. Sure, it was cute in a weird way. But it was alarming to think of a teenage girl so casually and thoroughly subverting her parent's authority. I found myself worrying that Alice and I would one day have a daughter with these powers.

“And here's one with mom.”

The next picture showed Annie now pretending to crush her mother, who was clearly a better sport about it. Catherine smiled at the camera, cowering in phony fear, with her hands lifted up futilely against her daughter's descending foot.

She showed us a few more pictures, many of them more ordinary, but there were a few more that showcased the family's magical side, such as Catherine holding her shrunken daughter and husband in her palms, or Annie with her parents on her shoulders. We talked for a little bit after Annie was done with the pictures. Alice and I asked her questions, but she was very reserved when we asked her about her powers. She said that her mom and dad would explain more when we met them.

I was both eager and nervous to meet Annie's parents, people who seemed to know more about this mysterious, whimsical world I had stumbled into. I had been frightened and fascinated by the powers these girls had for the last two years. Somehow, seeing those funny photos of Annie's family made that power more human and less threatening. It was comprehensible, even if fantastical. And yet, I felt that the strange anxiety I had been feeling lately had grown, and finally revealed its source to me through a sudden thought. What did it mean for humanity that there was a small group of people with the powers of gods? When would they choose to reveal themselves? And what were they planning? Imagine what they could do!

The question hung heavily on my soul. I instinctively wrapped my arm around Alice's waist. Whenever I touched her, I felt safe. She seemed to emit an energy that somehow reassured me that everything was all right, even if I couldn't understand it.

“We'll leave first thing in the morning,” said Annie. “It's getting pretty late. Let me show you where you'll sleep. I made up a special room just for you two.”

***

I held Alice's hand as Annie lowered us into the shoe-box. The fleshy platform hovered in space, allowing us to walk down her fingertips and into the room below.

I recognized where we were at once – the room-inside-a-shoe-box, which I had first seen back at Annie's house. The interior was completely revamped – a large bed sat in one corner, covered with a nice bedspread and decorative pillows. At the other end of the room were a dresser, a table, and chairs. The shrunken furniture created the illusion of normal scale, which was offset by the pattern on the wallpaper, which looked too large by comparison, and by the “lamp” on the nightstand – a working lantern key-chain. Annie lowered her hand into the room, and gently placed our duffel bag beside the bed.

“Well, how do you like it?” asked Annie.

“Annie, it's wonderful!” said Alice, beaming. “When can we move in?”

I had to agree with Alice. Annie had indeed done a good job of making the former home of her shoes feel homey. Life might not be so bad living under Annie's bed. I knew she would take good care of us. Our utility bill certainly made it an attractive option anyhow.

“Annie... you did all this?” I asked, echoing Alice's sentiments.

She smirked and said, “Aw, c'mon, it's not that great... Good night, you guys.”

She brought her pointer finger to her lips, kissed it, and then touched it gently to the top of Alice's head. She got a second goodnight kiss ready for me, but turned it into a noogie instead, bringing her fingertip down roughly on my head and grinding it in a circular motion. The force of the girl's gargantuan finger caused me to tense up. I grimaced, my neck and knees buckling, a sight which elicited laughter all around.

Annie looked down at us one last time, before replacing the roof of the shoe-box. The room was bathed in a dim LED ambiance. We then felt a sudden quake as Annie carefully slid the shoe-box under her bed, leaving me alone with Alice.