Chapter 36:

Once I officially arrived home, the Christmas festivities consumed most of my time. Between helping my mom make cookies, decorating the tree, and going out to the mall for last minute gift shopping (I didn’t carve out any time for that when I was still an inch tall), I was running myself ragged. Not much time to think about why Jackie put an app on my phone that could read all my messages.

After I called my mom about the app, she tried to take away my phone, which I didn’t let her do. Partly because I’d just gotten back, and partly because I didn’t trust another soul with my phone. It had the shrinking app on it, and it needed to be protected. Later, I eavesdropped on a conversation my parents were having in the kitchen.

“His girlfriend is spying on his phone. That’s insane behavior. He needs to get away from this girl!” my mom said.

“The boy is 18, honey,” my dad said, “He needs to come to that conclusion on his own.”

“On his own? He loves her. He told me as much. He’ll never see her for what she is. A jealous, nasty control freak. She’s gonna destroy him, Brian.”

Even if my mom had a point, I flinched at that characterization of Jackie. Surely, she wasn’t that bad. And surely, I wasn’t blinded by my love for her.

“What are we supposed to do, Natalie? Tell him he can’t date her anymore? He’s away at college! He’ll end up doing whatever he wants regardless of what we tell him. This is his first test. The crazy bitch test. I dated a few of them before you. If Desmond knows a crazy bitch when he sees one, he’ll steer clear.”

There was a long pause, and then the clatter of several pots. I assumed my mom was rooting around one of the kitchen cabinets.

“Fine, you know what? We’ll do it your way,” my mom yelled, irritated, “But if I find out that she’s manipulating him or blackmailing him or God forbid shrinking him again, I’m going to rain hellfire down on their parade. Then, I’ll come for you, Mr. ‘Let him make mistakes!’”

She stormed out of the house, and seconds later, her car’s engine started, and she drove away.

Now, I was definitely glad I didn’t bring Jackie home for Christmas. And since I knew she was peeking at my messages, I stopped texting Maggie and Audrey for the time being. I felt awful leaving them hanging, but until I spoke with my girlfriend about her spying app, I wasn’t going to take any chances. I knew the reason she installed the app was because of Maggie and Audrey. I wasn’t about to give her ammunition. Especially because the only reason I was back to my old height was because she’d given up 5 inches of her own. If I got her angry and jealous by texting other girls, she could easily shrink me back down to 4’7” (or even smaller). I just hoped that Vicky would eventually surface and give me my height back.

To get my mind off Jackie, I took off in my car. I had no idea where I was going. All that mattered was blasting my music, which consisted of the best of 70’s rock: Queen, AC/DC, The Eagles, and of course Led Zeppelin. Just as the iconic guitar riff of “Kashmir” came on, I pulled into a mall parking lot. I had all my Christmas gifts, but my plan was to wander aimlessly inside the mall and watch while everyone else was freaking out trying to buy their kid the hottest new toy. My presence would be invisible, just like when I was an accessory on Jackie’s neck.

Or so I thought, because when I looked at the car parked to my left, I locked eyes with someone who knew me from high school. And the way her eyes widened; I knew she’d recognized me.

Fuck, I thought.

She got out of the car and walked right up to my car window. Instead of getting out to greet her, I just rolled down my window.

“Wendy, it’s been a while!” I said, trying to sound happy to see her. Wendy was one of the two girls I was “involved” with in high school. More accurately, we went on two dates, and she dumped me because I was too short for her. I had to admit she looked good. Wendy was a girl of Chinese ancestry with jet black hair. Her skin wasn’t porcelain white like it used to be. She had actually acquired a tan. And since the ninth grade, her face had matured quite a bit. She was, dare I say it, pretty.

“Desmond, is it…really you?” she asked.

“What do you mean, ‘is it really me?’ Of course it’s me.”

“No, I mean, everybody heard what happened to you. You shrank…didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I did, but I’m back to normal now.”

She immediately asked. “Can I see?”

This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I just wanted to be alone, not be pestered with questions by a girl from my past. But nonetheless, I obliged. She stepped back to allow me to open my door. To my surprise, she actually seemed shorter than she used to be. Probably because the last time I’d stood this close to her, I was a little shorter than five feet tall. I reached my adult height during junior year. Still though, my eye level was at Wendy’s chin, when back in high school, my eye level was probably around the middle of her neck.

“You do look like you’re back to normal. Are you sure you’re OK? I mean, going through what you went through must have been crazy tough.”

Crazy tough, I thought, that’s one way to describe it.

“Yeah, it was crazy tough. Listen, Wendy, do you mind? I have some Christmas shopping to do,” I lied.

“Well, what a coincidence,” she said, “So do I! Wanna walk together and catch up?!”

No.

“Sure!”

Wendy and I walked throughout the mall. I basically just followed her lead, going into whichever stores caught her eye. It turned out she really loved any stores with beauty products. Bath & Body Works seemed to be her favorite. She shoved candle after candle under my nose, telling me to smell. I smelled damn near every single candle in the place. I didn’t remember her being this pushy when we dated. So, I brought it up as we were walking out of Bath & Body Works. I had nothing to lose.

“Hey, so you were never this, I don’t know, assertive with me when we went out. What changed?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, cocking her head to meet my eyes.

“Weren’t you kinda shy back then? I mean, you’ve been dictating where we go in the mall, and you had no problem making me smell every candle in the store. You’re more…confident than you used to be. I mean, I basically had to coach you on how to break up with me.”

She threw her hands in the air, and exclaimed, “Finally someone has noticed! And yes, you did kinda break up with yourself, I’m so sorry for that. I just was such a wallflower as a freshman, and I couldn’t bear hurting your feelings. But, I got more confident as time went on. You don’t know how much it means to me that you noticed!”

“Are you sure it’s not because I’m shorter than you?” I asked earnestly, but with a hint of humor. “Girls attain a whole new level of confidence when they tower over a man. Trust me, I know.”

She giggled at my half-joke. Then she put her arm around me, further demonstrating her newfound confidence. “Well, I was taller than you when I stammered through my attempt to end our relationship. But if I’m being honest, your stature does put a girl at ease. I’m not too big myself, so when I’m around a guy who’s even just five foot ten, I feel like he’s so much bigger than me and could hurt me. But you, you couldn’t hurt a fly.”

I wasn’t even offended at her insinuating that I was a total weakling that even girls could dominate. Because I already knew that about myself.

“If you think I couldn’t hurt a fly now, you should’ve seen me a couple days ago. A fly could probably kick my ass then.”

Again, Wendy laughed, and I found myself finally enjoying her company. She began asking more about my shrinking, and I had to weave together a web of lies to keep her prying questions away from the real truth: that I was shrunk by an overzealous, insanely hot, sometimes-negligent volleyball player who also happened to be my girlfriend. I told her that it was a complete and total mystery what happened to me, because based on what Wendy told me, that’s what everybody thought, so why tell the masses something different?

“After your sister tweeted out that that girl Jackie shrunk you, social media was infected with conspiracy theories. Jackie shrunk you to keep as her pet, she shrank you to give your height to the rest of the volleyball team, and the weirdest of all, that both of you were into being vastly different heights.”

All the conspiracy theories were true. Completely true.

“Yeah, that’s all a bunch of bullshit,” I said. When had I become such a good liar?

“Oh yeah, I know. I mean especially the thing about you two having the hots for one being gigantic and the other being small. I mean, how weird is that?”

“Weird. Really weird,” I said, staring straight ahead.

“I mean, I would be terrified if a guy I was dating just started to shrink. Not turned on,” she said with a disgusted scowl on her face.

“Valid response,” I muttered.

Her hand came in front of my chest. I was stopped in my tracks. I turned my head and looked at her. Her eyebrows were raised, and her head was tilted inquisitively. Maybe I wasn’t as good of a liar as I thought.

“Are you OK?” she asked. “Am I making you uncomfortable? We can stop talking about your relationship if you want. Are you still with Jackie? Oh gosh, I’m so sorry. Let’s just drop it.”

I could see Wendy’s old lack of self-confidence creeping back. She was afraid that she’d offended me. Which she did, but I couldn’t let her know that without revealing that all the “conspiracy theories” she mentioned were completely accurate.

“No, I’m fine,” I said, briefly pausing to think of something to say. “I am still with Jackie. I just…miss her. That’s all. I grew back right in time for us to be separated, and now I have to wait until the end of winter break to see her.”

“Dang, you seem to really like her,” she said.

“It’s more than that actually. I…love her. Which is something I never thought I’d be capable of saying six months ago.”

She stopped me again, putting both her hands on my shoulders. She looked down at me and smiled. “You seem super stressed. Why don’t you come to Heidi’s X-Mas eve eve party tomorrow night?”

Heidi. A 5’9” bombshell that went to my high school whom I had a massive crush on. In fact, I think I had a crush on her until the moment I first met Jackie. Months ago, I would have been apprehensive to go to a party hosted by Heidi, who was a star tennis player and class president. But now, after dating Jackie, who was a foot taller than Heidi, Heidi no longer made me nervous.

“You know what? That sounds fun. I’ll be there. What time?”

“9 o’clock. Heidi said she hoped you’d come.”

“What, really?! She said that?”

“Well, after the whole shrinking fiasco, everyone from high school is sort of fascinated with you. Heidi especially.”

“Are you serious?! Man, she never gave me the time of day.”

“Well, trust me. She will now. I became friends with her probably around the beginning of junior year, and I remember the way she used to treat you. Fake flirt with you in the halls, then leave you startled and confused. Now, you can do the same thing to her, Desmond! Take her down a peg!”

“Whoa, you’re right! I mean, she’s into me…like that?”

“Dude, she talks about you all the time. A lot of the girls do. But I know you had a crush on Heidi. Everybody kinda knew that.”

“Really, was I that obvious?” I asked.

“Yeah, but half the guys in our school had a crush on her. So, it didn’t really matter too much.”

We approached the exit of the mall, then walked back to our cars, which were parked right next to each other.

“So, I’ll be seeing you tomorrow night, right?” Wendy asked.

“Yup.”

“Hey, if you really wanna stick it to Heidi, you should bring Jackie to the party. If you flaunt that hot piece of ass at her own party, God, I can’t even imagine how pissed she’d be.”

I briefly thought about how delicious that would be. Bringing Jackie to a party where she towered over everyone, including Heidi. Wendy was right, she would be livid if I brought Jackie. The one thing Heidi hated was not being the hottest in the room.

“I would if Jackie were here. She’s back with her folks in Virginia. Though, I think I have the next best thing.”

A few hours later, I was walking down my street, knowing that what I was about to do was a bad idea. I knew that sneaking around behind Jackie’s back was wrong, even if she’d put a spy app on my phone. But, I was doing this nonetheless. I choked down my nerves and told myself to keep it cool.

“Desmond? Hi! Are you…back to normal? Like is that your normal height?”

“Yes I am, Audrey.”

She was as thick as ever. Maybe thicker. She filled up the front doorway like no other woman I’d ever seen in my life, and her clothing only accentuated how insanely big she was. I was back to my old height, exactly level with her shoulder, yet I still felt as dwarfed as ever.

“So, what’s up?” she asked.

 I’m actually here to invite you to a party, believe it or not.”

“Oh really? Where at?”

“It’s tomorrow night at Heidi Martin’s house,” I started, then realizing she had no idea who Heidi was. “She’s a girl from Gloucester High, you wouldn’t know her. But she kinda invited me through this other girl Wendy, and I want to bring you with me. Down to meet some new people?”

“It’s funny you say that because I actually do know Heidi. She and I played tennis together in a bunch of different leagues.”

“You know Heidi?!”

“Yeah.”

“OK, that came out of left field. Well, anyway. I’m gonna be honest with you. I used to have a hell of a crush on Heidi. I don’t anymore obviously, I’m with Jackie, but if you come along with me, I think she’ll be super jealous. Apparently, she’s showing some interest in me now. She never paid any attention in high school.”

Audrey crossed her arms and let out a small huff. A smirk formed, but she said nothing. Clearly, she was skeptical.

“What?!” I asked.

She uncrossed her arms and brushed my cheeks with open palms. “Are you sure you don’t have a crush on her anymore? Making a person jealous often means you have a crush on that person.”

“No! Listen, I know how this sounds. But trust me, I’m over Heidi. Jackie and I are happy together, alright!”

She fired right back. “Who are you trying to convince right now, Desmond? Me or yourself?”

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t in the mood to talk about the intricacies of my relationship with Jackie. So, I changed the subject to the party.

“Do you want to come, or not?”

“Sure! Heidi and I were always rivals on the court, so I wouldn’t mind getting in her head a little.”

“Alright, I’ll pick you up at 9:30. We’re going to show up fashionably late.”

“Sounds good, Desmond,” she said. I turned around to walk away back to my house. After a few steps, she called out to me, “You wear your height well.”

I briefly looked back at her and winked, trying to appear confident. And the truth was, after being an inch tall for so long, I really did have a swell of confident energy rush back into me. The old me would’ve been a nervous wreck going to any sort of party. The new me wasn’t exactly equivalent to James Bond or anything, but I now had a baseline level of poise that I knew wouldn’t fail me. And with Audrey by my side, what did I have to worry about?