Mark wasn’t sure what made him feel more internal wrenching: the throat-tearing wails of his sister that had been continuing without oxygen breaks after she discovered him impounded in her shoe, or his mother’s enormous fingers prodding and kneading at his entire newly regrown twelve-inch body for injury. Already it had been an hour since his eight minutes in sweaty purgatory, and he seemed to be the only one ready to move on with life.

            “Mom, seriously, I’m fine,” the shrunken delinquent grunted as Joy clutched her son against her lap, her thumb tugging his shirt up and exploring across his stomach with her grooved fingertips. He squirmed against the woman’s expansive palm, which was able to cover almost his entire torso, even at this size, though his arms were gently but firmly nudged aside by a flick of her fingers.

            “I hear you, honey,” Joy said as she sat on a stool by the marbled kitchen island, her first aid kit opened and at the ready on its glossy surface in case it became necessary.

            “I looked, though!”

            “Mhm. Remind me who went to nursing school in this house and who didn’t? I’m not about to go off on a hunch when we could’ve prevented something just by checking.”

            Becky, hearing her mother’s declaration, seemed to take it quite personally, releasing a choked sob of even greater volume as she collapsed her cheek against the countertop, where her tears had already pooled. Mark winced, partly out of sympathy for his sister for her near-grave error, but also for the especially potent effect the cry had on his miniscule eardrums.

            “Hey!” he yelped as Joy’s thumb ran up the length of his thigh, passing over his crotch in transit.

            “What?” she questioned, pausing and immediately hovering her fingers back over the danger zone. “Did I find a spot?”

            “No!” he groaned. “Just… c’mon, Mom.”

            “Sorry,” she said, immediately understanding and moving on. She brushed her bangs higher on her forehead then commenced delicately pinching at Mark’s calves and ankles between her thumb and index finger. “Just make sure to give yourself another thorough check tonight when you’re changing, okay?”

            “Uh-huh,” he droned.

            “Why didn’t you SAY SOMETHING when we came in the room?” Becky howled, lifting her tear-splashed face up from the countertop again and slamming a fist into the surface. She rubbed her knuckles along the puffy undersides of her eyes, then wiped at her cute button nose, mopping up the refuse with overused tissues crumpled around her that Joy had provided. “We were calling for you. I even yelled your name, right there!”

            “I, uh…”

            “All you had to do was say you were there, and I could’ve gotten you out! You… you would never have… h-have…” Becky murmured, devolving quickly into unintelligible gurgles again.

            “It was my fault,” Joy said before her son could dryly offer up another excuse. She propped her thumb against his chin, lightly turning his gaze up to her face above. “I should never have asked you to clean out the shoes in that room without moving them into the kitchen, so no one could think they were usable.”

            “Mom… Becks… seriously, it’s… it’s not a big deal,” Mark said, wracking his brain for rhetorical devices. “Sure, I mean, it wasn’t… fun, exactly… but-”

            “But what?” Becky sputtered. She stumbled up from her own island bar stool and scurried around the kitchen counter, standing above her mother’s lap and towering over her prone sibling, hands pressed to her cheeks. “We called for you, over and over! Did… did you actually want t-”

            “GOD no!” Mark balked, mortified and infused with shivers at the very notion.

            “Then why?” Becky demanded. She reached down, clenched fists unfurling around Mark’s doll-scaled hips. Joy’s own warm fingers spread aside, making room for the girl to gently grapple with her accused.

            “I don’t know,” he admitted with a begrudging sigh. “I was… embarrassed, I guess. You had your friend there, and I just… thought you’d go away or something so I didn’t have to, like, come out like this or-”

            “Embarrassed?” Becky gaped with genuine confusion, furrowing her brow as she leaned in closer. Her tender fingers squeezed tighter around her brother’s narrow sides as she lifted him up, propping his knees against her chest so she could aim his miniature face at her own distraught countenance. “Why would you be embarrassed with us? You know Melissa! She’s super nice, she wouldn’t have done anything mean to you, and if she did anything that even started to hurt, I’d just take you back, and then you’d be with me again!”

            Mark noted that his sister seemed to list this last option as though it was some kind of reward to be sprawled at in inch high in the creased landscape of her palm: at Becky’s complete, utter, and adoring mercy. However, he resolved to keep his mouth shut.

            “It doesn’t matter why,” Joy said softly. “It happened, and now we have to learn from it.” She rose up and wrapped her arms around her daughter, offering further comfort as she hugged the entire family into a plush sandwich of shirts and trembling arms, with Mark carefully poised between his sister and mother’s abdomens.

            “I’m… I’m so sorry, Marky,” the girl wept again as a fresh downpour of soggy tears leaked down her chin, plopping unceremoniously against her brother’s head. He felt the salt in his eyes, trying unsuccessfully to blink it out. Next he reached up and pre-emptively wiped away a trickling stream before it could plunk off of Becky’s adorable face. “I should’ve been thinking. I don’t know why I wasn’t more careful, or why I didn’t feel you… but it’s all my fault!”

            “It was all of our faults,” Joy announced solemnly, leaning in nearer for the hug to enforce it and her own equal dispersion of guilt. “No one is taking on all the blame for something when we each had a part.”

            “Um, Mom?” Mark questioned as he felt his mother’s embrace increasing the pressure as his head was wedged awkwardly into the shallow valley of Becky’s t-shirt while Joy’s slender stomach squeezed harder against his back. For an instant, he was almost reminded of the sensation of being inside Becky’s mint flat again beneath her nyloned toes, albeit thankfully devoid of the same sopping and vinegar-flavored bog.

            “I’m sorry too, sweetie,” Joy said, her voice cracking on the last syllable as her hands slid up under his legs, offering support to her foot-tall offspring. She inched away to give him breathing room. “You look fine, like you said. Nothing I can see. Just check yourself out again tonight, and we’ll go from there.”

            “Okay,” he muttered, bowing his head. Looking down, Mark watched his sister’s much more petite though nonetheless dwarfing palms opening again, wrapping around his sides and pulling him back in against her upper body until his entire face was nuzzled into her moistened cheek.

            Swallowing his embarrassment, the boy planted a quick, polite peck of forgiveness on his sister’s cheek. Hearing and feeling it, the girl only coughed up more tears and sobs.

            “It’s all right, honey,” Joy said as she brushed her daughter’s frazzled bangs off her clammy forehead. The woman leaned back into her seat again, observing her youngest child bear-hugging the Shrink-Act-prosecuted older teen into her shoulder. “Mark, you can go ahead and take the rest of the day off, all right? You two can go watch some TV and I’ll make some popcorn. And then we’re going to come up with a plan to make sure this never has to happen again.”

            “A… plan?” Mark peeped awkwardly, trying to turn his head and glance at his towering mother behind them, but he could already feel the vibrations of Becky’s body as the belabored dancer took heaving steps back toward the living room, her hands clasped around his body and unlikely to release their lovingly overprotective grasp for at least the rest of the afternoon, except to snatch up kernels of puffed corn.