Roy's birthday present to Andy was a pair of adjustable leather dress shoes, sizes 5 to 10, for when he returned to work, and Trina gave him a study Bible. They visited in the living room for an hour after dinner ended. Talk revolved mostly around Andy and Kimberly's wedding, and Brooke's expectations for her first semester in college. She, Andy, and Kimberly were heading out in the morning to move her into her dorm room. Paul contributed to the conversation occassionally, but for the most part he was the third wheel.

After Kimberly left with her parents, Brooke excused herself to go shower, leaving Andy and Paul alone.

"She's grown up fast," Paul said.

"Too much and too fast," Andy admitted, shaking his head. "And she wants everyone to know it, too."

"She's gonna drive those poor college boys crazy. Are you worried at all?"

"No. She's smart. And she has a stronger will than I gave her credit for. I don't know if it's a new thing, or if I just noticed it lately because of the shrinking. She can handle herself."

He regarded his long-time friend for a minute. "Thanks again for coming, Paul."

"Thank you for inviting me. I haven't had this much adult interaction since I started shrinking."

"The hospice nurses aren't very good company, huh?"

"Let's just say I'd rather have a girl who works at Twin Peaks taking care of my every want." He couldn't keep an edginess from creeping into his voice.

Andy smiled thinly. "We can't all be as lucky."

Paul cleared his throat. It was time to address the elephant in the room. "When I see you and her together, it reminds me of what a jerk I was."

Andy knew what was coming and had already crafted an ice-breaking response. "To be fair, if you hadn't acted like you did, Kim and I probably don't end up together. You did me a favor."

"You say that in hindsight because of all that's happened since then, good and bad. It doesn't excuse what I did."

Andy held up his hand in a stopping motion. "Paul, enough. You're my friend. We all have low moments. I forgive you. Kim forgives you."

"I wish your forgiveness was good enough. But I can't forget that night."

Andy sighed. His and Paul's attitudes toward religion were basically identical until recently. Should he share what he was learning at Kimberly's church, that God can pardon every sin? No. It was still new to him. He wasn't as informed about it as Kimberly, or Brooke, even.

So he changed the subject. "What's the best part of shrinking so far?"

Paul sat up. If he answered honestly, he'd say it was flirting with his nubile daughter. But before tonight, without a doubt it was the solitude that he enjoyed the most.

"I like how it's like being in a different world as everyone else. The freedom of knowing that no one will notice you, and you don't have to meet their expectations."

Andy listened, replaying his experiences in his mind. Paul was right. When you were shrunk, you could do anything you wanted and no one would notice.

"Take tonight, for example," Paul continued. "I bet there were stretches of time where you forgot I was there."

Andy bit his tongue between his lips as he searched his memory. "You're right. I did. Heh, makes me wonder what you were up to that whole time."

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Like to know what?" Brooke said, bounding down the stairs and into the living room. Her hair was wet from her shower and cascaded behind her back to her waist. She was wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of bright red booty shorts with the name of her high school band branded across her butt.

"What Paul was doing while we all weren't paying attention to him," Andy said, turning towards his daughter.

Brooke grinned like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland as she looked askance at him. "What WERE you doing, Mr. Briggs?"

Paul wagged his finger with condescenscion. He was still a tad upset about how she almost ate him. "If I told you, it would ruin what makes the shrinking disease so unique, that must be experienced to be believed."

Andy chuckled. "Paul was just telling me his favorite part about shrinking."

Brooke snorted. A guy's favorite part about shrinking? Duh, that's easy, she thought.

"Your turn, Andy," Paul said. "What was your favorite part about shrinking?"

Andy blushed in front of his daughter. "I'd tell you, but it's for mature audiences only."

Brooke put her hands on her hips. "I'm mature! I'm 18 years old."

"There's more to maturity than your age," Andy intoned loftily.

You know that better than anyone, don't you, Andy? Paul thought reactively.

Brooke sauntered up to him. "Let Mr. Briggs be the judge." She cocked one knee and drew her elbows back to clasp her hands together, conforming her shirt to her perfectly round breasts. "Am I mature?" she asked melodiously.

Paul smirked. She loved it, exhibiting herself with her father just a few feet away, teasing an older man with her young body, tweaking his libido. Like taking a new car out for a spin, she was seeing what her charms could do. It was hard for Paul to stay mad at something so beautiful and so eager to please.

"I'm going to need more evidence before making a determination," he said coolly.

"Ha, I'll show you some evidence." She planted her knee on the couch inches in front of him, denting the cushion. Her white, supple thigh leaned over him like the Tower of Pisa. He watched her, unphased. What was she going to do, strip in front of him with her dad sitting right there?

"Good night, Brooke," Andy said harshly, pre-empting whatever she had in store for him.

She backed off and leaned down to hug her father, butt flexing in those tight, red shorts. "Good night, Daddy."

She returned to Paul and bent way, way down to touch her lips to the top of the head. "Good night, Mr. Briggs."

"Good n-n-night," he stammered, the gaping neck of Brooke's T-shirt acting as a portal through which he could observe the top of her delicious, naked bosom. But the true wonder was what she had surreptitiously hidden between her bulbous swells: a tampon, in its wrapper, almost twice as long as he was tall, and tucked inside her deep cleavage with room to spare. The incredible sight blew a fuse in his head, instantly reversing years of speech therapy to correct a childhood stutter.

She waited a moment to make sure he saw and understood just how big she was, how easily she dwarfed him. And that bigger was always, always better.

"Good night," she said again, and raced back up the stairs.

The waning adrenaline rush left Paul feeling suddenly depleted. He yawned. "I should go to bed, too," he said.

Andy stood up. "Of course. Let me show you the crib." He picked him up in both hands. Paul appeared twice as large to him, since he'd yet to recover roughly half his height. Still, his body was feather-light. So this is what it's like to hold a shrunken man, Andy mused to himself.

He paused mid-stride and sniffed the air above him. "Why do you smell like cake?"

Paul shrugged. "It was really, really good cake."

"Brooke will be glad to hear that. She baked it herself."

Brooke, Paul thought fondly. Everything kept coming back to Brooke.

Tired in body, but not of mind, Paul lay in the crib, staring at the dark ceiling of the guest room. The house was silent. He didn't know what time it was. It could have been 10 o'clock or midnight. He lost all sense of time when he was masturbating, which he had successfully done, twice, since being placed in this ridiculous crib. He didn't know why Andy hadn't let him sleep in the guest bed. No one else was using it.

That's not what he was thinking about, though. He was thinking about going to Brooke's room. Her signals couldn't be clearer. She wanted him. Tonight. But not knowing what would happen when he got there worried him a bit. He had no way of controlling the course of events, not with a girl that much bigger than him, and getting relatively bigger every minute, as she had deftly pointed out before dinner. (His clothes were already starting to hang off his diminishing frame.)

And there was also Kimberly's warning to consider. He believed she was sincere. She really did seem afraid what Brooke could do to him. If she was that dangerous, though, why invite him to the party? Why leave him alone with her? If she was truly demented and evil, why didn't Kimberly act with urgency to protect him? The only explanation he could come up with was that she was acting irrationally, like most women. Most likely she was discombobulated by the potential of Brooke's sexual aggression jeopardizing her treasured alpha female status in her new family. Thus, she saw sabotaging a hook-up between Brooke and himself as essential to maintaining the present family dynamic.

Well, he didn't give a damn about that. He would go to the young maiden's lair and what happened, happened. If she wasn't a murderous temptress, which she wasn't, then the most danger he faced was from himself, from his lack of familiarity being with women at his present size. But he wasn't worried about that at all. He wasn't stupid. He weighed one-fifth of an ounce. He knew his physical limitations.

There was a time in his life when 18 year-old girls terrified him. Now was not that time. They weren't that much more complicated than children. He'd bedded college co-eds well into his 30s based on his operational understanding that he was talking to a child. He could always rely on his wits when dealing with girls like Brooke.

It was settled. He was going.

He crawled out from under the bedsheets and walked to the edge of the crib. He leapt through the bars, plunged through the darkness, and landed easily on his feet on the carpeted floor. One of the "superpowers" that came with shrinking was the ability to fall harmlessly from seemingly incredible heights. This would qualify as his third favorite thing about the shrinking disease, behind solitude and sex (he hoped, fingers crossed).

He walked into the hallway. He hadn't been upstairs in Andy's house often, so he stopped to get his bearings. There were four rooms, not counting the guest room: one to his right, one directly across the hallway, and two to his left. He remembered the bathroom; that was easy, it was the first door on the left after you reached the top of the stairs. The hallway ended at the door to his right. It was probably the master bedroom, Andy's bedroom. That left two rooms to choose from: the one across the hallway, and the one next door to his left.

Door number one, or door number two, he said to himself. He could see a faint glow coming from underneath door number two, so he headed in that direction.

He reached the looming, wood-paneled door, like the sheer face of a 20-story building. He stopped in his tracks. Uh-oh. If she was expecting him, why did she close the door to her bedroom? Maybe she wasn't expecting him after all. What if this whole night she was just toying with him for fun? What if she laughed at him for thinking he had a real shot to be with her? It would be humiliating to be rejected by an 18 year-old girl. He stood in the hallway for a minute, unsure of what to do.

If his instincts were right, he would be rewarded with the best night of his life. If they were wrong, his shame would be acute, but brief. It would make a funny story to tell her friends, and would be forgotten in a week. He saw her rarely enough as it was, she might not get a chance to hold it over his head.

As if it mattered. He couldn't go back to bed on his own anyway. He was committed to this course of action the second he left the crib. There was no turning back.

Welcome to Jurassic Park, he thought. He got on his hands and knees and wormed under the door.

An open, 25 foot-tall cardboard box blocked his view of the room. The word "INTIMATES" was scrawled in black marker on its side, each letter as tall as him. He walked around the corner of the box, the room coming into view. It was simply furnished with a collapsible writing desk, a dresser, and a full-size bed. Pictures of Brooke with her friends and a Johnny Depp poster adorned the walls. A trombone case leaned against one corner. A 40-watt lightbulb burned under a lampshade on the nightstand. The ceiling fan turned slowly. It was warm.

Paul wound his way through a maze of moving boxes and piles of clothes. If Brooke had intentionally made reaching her as adventurous as possible, she could not have done a better job. He couldn't see the sleeping beauty, but he could hear her breathing. When he reached the bed he looked back at the door. He could still abort this mission and no one would know.

"Mmm," he heard her moan softly. Her hand appeared over the edge of the bed, long fingers curled but relaxed. Just a couple of hours ago she held him between her fingers, high off the floor and at arm's length so he could appreciate her scintillating body in its fullness.

Fuck it, he thought. He grabbed a hold of a loose sheet corner and climbed up to the mattress. His knuckles fit through the machine stitching, making for easy climbing.

A minute later he stood on top of Brooke's bed. The bedspread was laid out before him like a half-acre lot, with her majestic form occupying the center, lying atop a mess of bedsheets. She slept on her left side, diagonal to the length of the bed, her elbows tucked in against her chest. Her top, right leg was bent but her lower, left leg stuck straight out.

He walked around her dainty foot and along her left leg towards her butt. She had boasted she had skinny legs, but they looked powerful enough from his vantage point. They were the color of vanilla ice cream, and absolutely hairless. Her scrumptious posterior looked like a world record-holding strawberry in those red booty shorts. She was a 140 foot-long strawberry sundae. Needless to say, he was erect.

The first warning that Brooke was stirring in her sleep was the groan of the mattress springs. Then one by one the letters printed on her booty shorts disappeared underneath her as she started to roll to her right. Thigh muscles rippled under her skin. Paul backed away as the back of her right leg came down where he had just been standing. Hundreds of tons of teenage girl settled into a new arrangement on the bed. She now slept on her back, both legs extended, with her arms folded over her belly.

Dare he? Yes, he dared. He climbed up her booty shorts to the top of her right thigh. The material was slick under his bare feet. He padded cautiously over her narrow crotch and looked up towards her head. Her T-shirt was bunched up in the valley that bisected her buxom chest. Between him and the promised land were her folded arms.

He padded across Brooke's soft, flat belly, his stance wide as he rose and fell with her every breath. A light sheen of sweat covered her fair skin. He paused to admire her cute belly button before continuing on. He climbed over her left wrist, grasping her fine arm hairs for purchase. He slid down the other side and walked over her wrinkled shirt into her cleavage.

Holy shit, I'm standing between her tits, he thought. He slowly turned 360 degrees in wonder of his surroundings. He could make out both her feet sticking up over her hands to the south. To the north were her throat, chin, and seductive lips. He couldn't see the rest of her face. And to his east and west were her firm, bra-less breasts, which while inverted and unsupported still retained their splendid, semispherical shape. He sank to his knees and raised his hands, as if in worship of an idol.

Brooke stirred again. Her arms moved off her belly to her sides, pulling her T-shirt taut over her bust. The material popped up between the highest points of her breasts. Paul launched into the air as if he was attached to a bungee cord. Brooke's lovely face rushed up to meet him as gravity pulled him back to earth.

"Agh!" he screeched, as his knees came down on either side of her nostrils, racking himself on the hard, thin bridge of her nose, sending his balls up into his throat. The shock left him unable to breathe. He clenched his thighs as he slid backwards down her nose until his shins met her cheeks.

Catching his breath, he pushed his chest off Brooke's nose. Not again, he thought with a groan. He lifted his leg over the side of her nose and scooted down her freckled cheek on his butt. He landed on his knees and rolled onto his back, coming to rest on a fan of straw-colored hair.

As he waited for his breathing to return to normal and for the nausea to pass, Brooke's head rolled to the side and her eyelids fluttered open. Her big, curious eyes focused on the 2.75-inch tall man reclined on the pillow next to her face.

"Hello, little one."