Chapter 22: 

I spent the next few days exclusively with Maggie. For pretty much every waking moment, I was with her. I slept next to her in the shoebox Jackie had made for me. She would wake me up by tapping my little head with her giant finger. She would drape me in a washcloth she had since I was too small for any of my clothes. She would then put me in her backpack to go to the gym. She said she didn’t trust leaving me in her room alone. 

Going to the gym at a foot tall was certainly an intimidating experience. If I felt like a weakling at the gym when I was a five-foot nothing shrimp, I was a hundred times the weakling now. Big guys walked past all the time, making me feel even more inadequate. But the thing that surprised me was that whenever I would make eye contact with one of those hulks, they never laughed or made jokes at my expense. Instead, most of them looked at me with sympathy. Others’ eyes would dart away as if they’d made eye contact with a carnival freak. 

During the workout, Maggie would stick me in between her breasts just like Jackie did when I shrank. I spent the whole time trying not to get a boner as she ran on the treadmill. Of course, I failed every time, and it was awkward to say the least.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Desmond,” she said one day. “This would be a whole lot easier if you were like a couple inches smaller.”

I didn’t know if she meant that I was a bit too big to be comfortable inside her shirt, or if she meant that my shrunken little hard-on was poking into her boobs. Either way, I was thoroughly humiliated.

After the gym, we’d go back to the dorms for a quick shower. Then we’d go to the dining hall, grab some grub and go to my first class. Maggie’s classes miraculously didn’t overlap with mine at all, which meant she was able to take me to all my classes and sit there with me without missing any of her lectures. The catch was, I had to come to all of her classes.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight, you hear me?” she had said after I told her about Jackie shrinking me. “We don’t want that crazy bitch snatching you up and kidnapping you.”

After all of our classes let out, Maggie took me to the library and helped me catch up on my loads of homework. Homework was getting hard for me to do now. At a foot tall, I was too small to use a normal laptop efficiently. I could sit right in front of the computer and reach the trackpad, but not reach the keyboard. So, Maggie was gracious enough to do all the typing for my online homework assignments. And now since the average pen was half my height, she also volunteered to help me with all my written assignments. I told her what to write, of course, but it was a painstaking process. And Maggie, being her usual headstrong self, always had suggestions—suggestions that weren’t really optional—more like commands. She ended up molding a lot of my assignments into her own, which, for the most part, made them a whole lot better.

After my homework was done, we would go back to the dorms, and she would start on her homework. The first night I was with her, I tried to help her with her homework to repay her favor to me, but immediately found that I was of no use to her. She was pre-med, and I knew nothing about medicine. 
For the nights to come, after my homework was done, Maggie would simply tuck me into my shoebox bed and send me off to beddy bye. 

Every morning, I’d wake up to see a million missed phone calls and text messages from Jackie. Since it was nearly impossible to lug my phone around (it was half my height now), Maggie decided to leave it on her desk. So, I ended up giving my mom Maggie’s number if she ever wanted to get in touch with me. One night during the week, my mom called Maggie, who then handed the phone off to me.

“Desmond. Remember, parents’ weekend is coming up. I’ll be down with your sister and your father if he gets off of work.”

“Yeah, mom. Can’t wait.”

She could hear the lack of interest in my voice.

“Are you ok, sweetie? I can come down earlier if I need to. Did you see those doctors I recommended to you?”

My head was swirling. A part of me wanted to tell her what Jackie did, but I knew that wouldn’t be productive. She would lose her mind, and I needed time to think this through.

“I’m fine, mom. I haven’t had a chance to call the doctors. I’ve been super busy over the past few weeks. Maybe you can take me when you come to visit.”

“Ok, honey. First thing.”

Not long after that we ended the call. I genuinely felt horrible for not telling her the truth, but I wasn’t sure she needed to know. Not yet, at least.

Five days into my self-imposed quarantine with Maggie, I knew I had to face my problems. I needed to talk to Jackie. 
I agreed to meet with her on Copley Lawn–right in the center of campus. It wasn’t enough time for me to really get over what she did to me, but I needed to talk to her, nonetheless. I needed to know how to reverse this. I needed to know why she lied to me for so long.

I chose a public meeting spot because I didn’t trust her not to simply put me in her purse and walk away nonchalantly. I also chose to bring Maggie with me, because even with the prying eyes of the public, I still didn’t feel safe enough to be alone around Jackie. 
Maggie carried me on her shoulder all the way across campus, with my makeshift loincloth covering my chest and nether regions. Heads rolled, but I was over it by now.

As we got close to the top of Copley Lawn, Maggie asked, “Are you sure you’re ready for this? I’m here to back you up, but if you’re nervous just—”

Atop her shoulder, I said, “Are you kidding? I’m shitting bricks right now! But I still have to talk to her, don’t I?”

“Yeah. If you ever want to grow back,” she said bluntly.

If there was anything I wasn’t ready for, it was Maggie’s brutal honesty. If this meeting didn’t go well, Jackie could easily just deny she ever shrunk me and never grow me back. Hell, I didn’t even know if she could grow me back! That thought gave me a mini panic attack. 

But a part of me knew that Jackie was fully capable of growing me back. While my trust in her was severely diminished, I still trusted her enough not to shrink me without knowing how to grow me back. She had to have an explanation for all of this. 

I didn’t have a concrete strategy going into this conversation with Jackie, so I asked Maggie for input.

“Hey, should I just kiss her ass? Beg her to grow me back?”

“No,” she said.

“But what if I come off too aggressive, and she takes offense? Then she’ll never grow me back!”

“Dude trust me, girls hate it when guys act all wimpy. Just act cool.”

“But what if I am wimp?” I pouted.

“Then don’t act like one.”

I had no adequate response to that, so I just stayed quiet. My silence ended when I saw Jackie sitting underneath the biggest tree on Copley Lawn. She was staring ahead blankly with her hair looking flat and uninspired. Her phone was next to her, lit up from all the texts she was getting. As listless as she was, her phone was still blowing up. She was still popular. She had status. I was nothing compared to her. And that was enough to make me terrified of her.

“There she is! Oh god, I’m gonna fuck this up!” I said.

Maggie squeezed my cheeks together with one hand and took me off her shoulder. She held me in the air by my face, cutting off my ability to speak.

“She’s told you she loves you! If that’s the truth, when it comes down to it, she’ll do the right thing.”
Maggie sat me back down on top of her shoulder and walked over to Jackie with a swagger. For the first time ever, Jackie looked small.

She was alone under that giant tree trunk, and it made her look tiny. But more than that, the expression on her face was one of defeat. In that moment, things became crystal clear. When I walked out on her, it devastated her. Guilt was pooling in my stomach, but I reminded myself of one thing.

She shrunk you. Don’t get sucked into her pity party. No matter what, you have to grow back.

I couldn’t risk being manipulated by Jackie, so that became my mantra.

When Maggie and I were about 15 feet away, Jackie saw us and waved sheepishly. Maggie sat down with a thud, causing me to almost lose my balance and fall off her shoulder. Thankfully, I grabbed a strand of her wickedly dark hair at the last second. 
We sat in silence for a moment. No one knew how to begin. Fortunately, I didn’t have to talk first because Maggie beat me to it.

“I’ve talked to Desmond about this whole mess for a long while, Jackie. I’m mad. Mad at you. Mad at him for not seeing through your act. Hell, I was going to get in your face and demand you grow him back right now! But he told me to keep my cool. And let me tell you, he is the only reason I’m not telling the whole world what you did to him. I’m here for him as a friend, and you are not going to take anything else from him. Do you hear me?”

Throughout Maggie’s entire rant, Jackie couldn’t bring herself to look at her or me. And when she didn’t answer Maggie’s question, Maggie didn’t let it slide.

“Do you hear me?!” she asked once again.

“Yes, I hear you.” Jackie’s voice audibly quivered. 

I got down from Maggie’s shoulder, by rappelling down her body using a piece of her hair. I was light enough now where pulling on a girl’s hair didn’t even hurt her anymore. Maggie was sitting crisscross apple sauce, so I stood in the middle of her legs. It was embarrassing, but I was so short that even with her legs nearly flat on the ground, her knees rose higher than me. 

I didn’t let that height comparison get to me though. Amid the towering mass of Maggie’s legs, I looked up at Jackie and tried to be as gentle as possible with my words.

“Why did you do this to me?” I asked. 

She returned my eye contact, her cheeks already glistening with tears. 

“I did it because I wanted to lift the volleyball team up and be popular with the girls. I know it was wrong, Desmond. Oh god, I know! I can’t believe I did it!”

Maggie was irate. “Well, ya did do it! Get to explainin’ missy!”

Shocked out of her excuse-making by Maggie’s brazenness, Jackie began an explanation that would soon put everything into perspective. 

Jackie said that on one of her first nights at early volleyball practices over the summer before she started college, she told her fellow volleyball girls that she could shrink people and redistribute their size. Her grandma had given her a special ink that could rewrite a person’s body structure when exposed. All she had to do was get me to touch that ink, and that was the moment I was destined to shrink. 

I tried to press her on how her grandmother got this ink (did she make it, or did she have it made, and what was in it?). She said she didn’t know. I believed her.

“So why would your grandma give you something like that?” I asked.

“Before I left for college, she said if there was an emergency, like if someone was trying to assault me, I could spray it on them and shrink them so they couldn’t hurt me.”

“So then how come I didn’t shrink immediately when I touched the ink on the note?”

“Because I added a trigger device into the ink. That trigger device is less than a millimeter wide, and it’s somewhere deep in your body. The device protects you from the effects of the ink, but when you ejaculate, the device’s protective shield is deactivated. When that happens, a notification is sent to my phone, and I can input how long I want the shield to remain deactivated for, and that directly affects how much you shrink.”

This was all too much for me. Even when she told me she was responsible for shrinking me, I never could’ve dreamed that she had this much direct control over how small I got. 

“Shrink ink, trigger devices, and protective shields, huh? Is there anything else you did to me that I should know about?” I asked with hurt in voice.

She looked directly down at me and said, “No. I promise. There’s nothing else I did.”

“Why did you do this though? Why shrink me?” 

“Me and some of the other people on the volleyball team wanted to get an edge on our opponents. The thing is, the mass I took away from you isn’t gone. I have it. And I can give your size to everyone on the team. We can make ourselves bigger and stronger and taller with all the shrunken mass from you, Desmond. And hopefully, we could win that way. I was totally against it at first, but once Vicky heard about my abilities, she wanted to shrink someone. And there was no way I was going to say no to the captain of the volleyball team.”

Maggie was fuming. “Are you trying to cast yourself as the victim in all of this? Do you really expect us to feel bad for you?”

Jackie looked down at the ground, clearly ashamed of herself. Perhaps Maggie didn’t feel bad for her, but I did.

“Maggie, lay off, would you?” I told her, “We’re trying to figure this out. Everyone just…calm down.”

Jackie’s reasons for shrinking me were shockingly not as self-serving as I thought they would be, though on some level, they certainly were. She wanted to make herself bigger, along with the rest of her teammates. And then I remembered something.

“Hey!” I said, “Jackie, when your boobs exploded out of your robe when we were in the bathroom that time, did you—”

“Yeah,” she cut me off, “I transferred some of your mass into my boobs. I thought it would be fun for us. I thought you’d like it.”

“I did. I did like it. It’s just…wild, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So why haven’t you made the girls bigger yet?” I asked. 

“I was waiting until you were small enough to not notice. And, once the season was over, I was going to start growing you back, little by little.”

That was the heart of the discussion. When was Jackie going to grow me back? I was the size of a ruler, and I was standing comfortably in the middle of Maggie’s crossed legs. It felt like I was in a courtyard. Jackie looked like she was dozens of feet tall, even as she sat wistfully against that big tree. 

And at that moment, I realized something. I kind of liked the way things were. I had gotten used to beautiful women carrying me everywhere, pampering me, and taking care of my every need. I had also gotten used to being utterly dominated at every turn. I liked being dominated. It seemed like all the women in my life knew better than me anyway. 

So, I started thinking the unthinkable. Did I even want to go back to five feet tall? I mean, of course I did! That was the whole point of confronting Jackie in the middle of Copley Lawn, or so I thought. 

In my head, I formulated a compromise. It was going to delight one of the girls. The other—not so much.

“Ok, here’s the deal, Jackie. I’m hurt that you lied to me for this long, but I don’t think you deserve to fry for this. You were just trying to seek Vicky’s approval, and I got swept in along the way. I get it,” I said. “But I want to be returned to my normal size at the end of the volleyball season, and I want you to promise that you’ll return me to five feet tall in writing. Is that fair to you?”

From Jackie’s emerging smile, she seemed ok with my compromise. Maggie, though, threw an absolute fit.

“Fair? Desmond, what is wrong with you?! She could put you back to normal right now if she wanted to! Volleyball season doesn’t finish until the end of the semester! Why are you still helping her?”

Jackie interjected before I could say anything.

“Actually, Maggie, I wouldn’t be able to return him to his normal size at this moment. Desmond would have to shrink down to 1 inch tall, because that’s his target height. Once he hits that height, then I can transfer his size back to him.”

“You’re kidding!” Maggie said.

“No. I’m definitely not kidding. If he doesn’t have another orgasm and shrink down to 1 inch tall, Desmond will never grow back. He also must remain an inch tall for at least a week, or else the shock of regrowth will most likely kill him.”

Maggie started to get up, “You have some nerve, you know that? You take everything from this boy, and you have the nerve to act all high and mighty.”

That was a poor choice of words, because it prompted Jackie to stand up to her full height. As she rose, Maggie trailed off. She didn’t even come up to her shoulder from what I could see wallowing down at both of the girls’ kneecaps. 

“Go on,” Jackie said to Maggie, “I’m ‘high and mighty’. What else am I?”

It took her a second, but Maggie regained her southern fighting spirit. She cocked her chin upwards, giving Jackie uninterrupted eye contact. She put her hands on her hips. Maggie was ready to get sassy.

“You don’t get it. You think shrinking him was a flimsy little mistake on your part. No. You’re evil and ruthless and you manipulate people weaker than you into doing your bidding. That’s what you’re doing right now. Desmond might not be able to see it, but I can see it. It’s clear as day.”

Jackie wasn’t going to let that stand. She bent over in the same patronizing way she always did to me.

“You don’t know a damn thing about what goes on between Desmond and I. Things aren’t as simple as you’re saying. He likes being small. Has he told you that?!”

Maggie shot her a look of disbelief, she then directed her attention down at me, hoping I would side with her in thinking Jackie was crazy. My face remained blank.

“I guess he didn’t tell you. Yeah, he loves it. I liked Desmond before I shrank him. And I shrank him because I liked him. I thought it would be better to shrink someone I liked than someone I had no connection with.”

“That’s bullshit!” Maggie interrupted, “You could’ve picked anyone. Hell, you could’ve picked a 7-foot-tall basketball player and your stupid team would’ve gotten even taller! Why didn’t you?”

“Because it’s not all about the team for me! I wanted to have a shrunken companion that I didn’t hate. In fact, I love Desmond! Someday, I want to marry him! This whole shrinking thing is a blip in our relationship that we’re going to get over! Ok?!”

Maggie was stunned into silence, and so was I. Neither of us saw the marriage thing coming. 

Jackie got down all the way to her knees to address me once more. On her haunches, she was still able to cast a shadow that engulfed me completely.

“Desmond, I’ll sign whatever contract you put in front of me. You just need to promise me that you’ll stay an inch tall until the season is over, and that you’ll tell no one outside of Maggie that I shrunk you. Do you promise?”

I stuck out my puny hand and grabbed a hold of her finger, shaking it.

“You have a deal.”

After we were done with our finger handshake, Jackie, out of instinct, went to grab me. She stopped herself though, knowing we weren’t ready to reunite yet. She smiled wistfully at me, as if to say, I regret how things turned out. 

I regretted how things turned out too. I wish I hadn’t blown up and refused to talk to her like an adult until five days passed. I wish she hadn’t lied to me for weeks about what was happening to me. 

“Bye, Dessy. I’m gonna miss you a lot,” she said as she stood back up. I watched her rise like a skyscraper being built in seconds. 

“I’m going to miss you too,” I said from the ground.

Maggie’s hand came from behind and wrapped around my torso, lifting me up to her eye level. Once I was safe in her grip, she delivered Jackie a nasty final blow. 

“We’ll deliver you the documents you need to sign soon. Until then, stay away from him. I don’t want to see you around our dorm. And if I do see you, there will be problems. Do you understand?”

Even though Jackie towered over Maggie, she looked utterly demure and powerless. 

“Yes. I understand.”

“Good,” Maggie said. 

And with that, she walked off with me in her hand. 

A few minutes passed with neither of us talking. I knew what she was going to say, and I was simply waiting for to vocalize it.

“I can’t believe you,” she finally said. “You had the option to demand to be regrown as soon as you hit one inch tall, and you left it on the table! Do you really like being that small? What is it? A sexual thing?”

How do I answer this and not sound super weird?

“I don’t know, Maggie. Shit changed when I started shrinking. My desires shifted as I got smaller. Maybe it is a partly a sexual thing.”

Her face wrinkled with disgust. “Please don’t tell me you…like the size difference between me and you.”

“I’m not into you like that,” I quickly said.

“Ok, good. Because that would be weird. I’ve been putting you between my boobs at the gym, and I could’ve sworn I could feel something poking into me.”

“Come on! That’s a little different, don’t you think?! Being between a girls’ tits is an inherently sexual activity!”

“Ok, you’re never going in there again.”

Fuck.

It didn’t take much longer for us to get back to the dorms. Maggie swiped into the elevator. She stepped out of the elevator onto our floor with me still in her hand.

“Desmond?!”

I looked up to see my mom, my sister and a couple I didn’t know. 

“Mom, what are you doing here?” I asked as Maggie walked closer.

“It’s parents’ weekend! I called you about this.”

Shit, I forgot they were coming!

I put two and two together and realized that the couple I didn’t know were Maggie’s parents. Maggie politely greeted my family, then handed me off to my mom (literally). 

“Desmond, we’ll talk soon. Ok?”

“Yeah,” I said.

She then absconded away with her parents, who looked at me with absolute confusion. 

I sat in the palm of my mother’s hand, and both of them were gawking at my new size. I believe the last time Amanda saw me; I was around four feet tall. Three feet was a lot to shrink in that small of a time. 

“You have some explaining to do, Desmond. This cannot continue. You fit in the palm of my hand. This is insane,” my mom said.

I was shocked that she wasn’t more pissed. But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep secrets from her anymore. 

“I know. I’ll explain everything. To you,” I gestured at my mom. “I don’t trust Amanda to not tell the whole world.”

My mother took no issue with that. “Wait in the hallway, Amanda.”

I was about to tell my mom the truth about Jackie, and there was no telling how poorly she would react. The door shut behind us, and it was time for me to explain.