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Author's Chapter Notes:

Before Desmond can get ready for the party at Heidi's, he has to deal with his sister's shenanigans and he has to confront Jackie about her supposed desire to spy on his phone. How will he navigate the challenges each woman has for him?

Chapter 37:

When I woke up on the morning of Christmas Eve Eve, I decided that I was just going to focus on the upcoming party at Heidi’s and not obsess about Jackie. That was easier said than done given that she’d already sent me 4 texts. 

Morning my TALL bf!

Are you glad to have your height back?

I’m sure you are

However, it was her final message left me anxious.

Let’s facetime, k? I have to talk to you about something

Her messages gave me no indication of whether or not she knew that I was aware of the app she put on my phone. If she knew, she didn’t mention it explicitly. 

With all this relationship turmoil threatening to spill over and consume me, I was thankful that our extended family wasn’t coming to our house for Christmas. My mom probably thought it would be best to have a tight knit family Christmas this year. It was comforting to know that I wouldn’t have to awkwardly explain my situation to my aunts and uncles. 

I got up from bed and put my phone on my night table with the screen still on. I looked at the messages from Jackie again. 

I’ll text her back after I get out of the bathroom, I thought. 

I slipped my underwear off and wrapped a towel around my waist. I listened outside my door and heard nothing. No one was in the bathroom. No one was even stirring. My dad was probably already up running errands. That’s what he did on the weekends. But my sister and my mom were still asleep. Eager to take a hot shower, I exited my room and tiptoed into the upstairs bathroom. 

I stepped into the tub, turned the knobs, and blasted scalding hot water on myself for the first time in months. The sheer pressure of the water washed away grime without me even having to soap up. I put my head underneath the shower head, letting my hair get all wet and droop over my forehead. Then, I leaned back and slicked my hair with the pounding water. In addition to feeling cleaner than ever, waves of nostalgia were crashing in my brain, remembering just how great showers felt. 

When I was small, Jackie always cleaned me in the sink. It was certainly nice to be sudsed up by ten giant feminine fingers, and looking back, she was probably more thorough than I was. She would always tell me to close my “widdle eyes” as she squirted an ungodly amount of body wash onto me, (a pea-sized amount to her) then she’d massage my entire body, getting the soap into every nook and cranny. She often spent a little more time around the crotch area, which never failed to get me excited. 

“Don’t cum, little guy. We’re trying to get you cleaned up, remember?” she’d tease me. And when I was adequately soapy, she’d dunk me underwater, causing the suds to gently float away from my skin. Then she’d dry me with only the heat of her breath. And every time she breathed on me like that, it was enough for me to get hard.

But as great as Jackie’s baths were, I still missed steaming showers. No matter what she did, she could never get the water in the sink to stay hot enough for me. A few minutes into the bath, the water would turn lukewarm. And of course, right now, I was relishing the comfort and privacy of being locked away behind a bathroom door where no one could get to me. Or so I thought. 

About three minutes into my shower, an all too familiar feeling hit me. The angle the water was hitting me changed. The soap rack looked higher than it did when I first stepped into the tub. I was shrinking. In a panicked frenzy, I shut the water, toweled off my hair and walked up to the vanity. I had to get on my tippy toes to even wipe the fog from the mirror. 

With my reflection in plain view, I watched myself shrink. First, I could see half of my face, then my nose disappeared, then my eyes, until finally, I was staring at the back wall of the bathroom in the mirror. Luckily, it stopped there.

A million thoughts were going through my head. Did Jackie lie about the 5-mile radius for shrinking and growing? If so, perhaps she was shrinking me from 900 miles away. Maybe she didn’t lie about the radius, but maybe she was somehow remotely controlling my phone and shrinking me that way. Was she punishing me for merely texting Audrey and Maggie on the plane? 

I had no idea, but I guessed that I was a little under 4 feet tall now. I wasted no more time freaking out and went back into my room to find out what was going on. What I saw almost made me wet myself in fear. Amanda was sitting on my bed fiddling around on my phone. 

Did she find the shrink app?

I was frozen. I was prey, awash in terror. When she saw me standing there, her mouth fell open in utter shock. But it didn’t take long for her to realize what she’d discovered. She smirked, no doubt relishing the power she had over me. 

“So this is how Jackie shrunk you, huh?” She stood up and approached me. I shifted the towel up on my body so it was covering my shoulders and chest. But when she was close enough, she ripped my last semblance of privacy away from me. Shrunken, naked, and afraid, standing face-to-face with my sister’s pubic area. “When were you going to tell me about this, lil’ bro?”

“N-Never,” I said.

“Never, huh? Well, if you want to keep secrets, you should probably keep your phone locked. Just sayin’.”

I poked her in the stomach as hard as I could. Her muscles remained taut and were barely affected by my tiny finger. “What are you even doing in here?! You have no right to invade my privacy! This is between Jackie and I, alright?”

“That’s fine with me. Originally, I came in here to rip the covers off you, you know as a proper welcome home. But then, I saw your phone was open. I just couldn’t resist, and judging by your reaction, I found something you really didn’t want me to find. I don’t want any involvement with your freaky kinks, dumbass. All I want, is this app, on my phone.”

“No. No way.”

“Fine, have it your way,” she said. 

She tapped my phone, and in a matter of seconds, I dwindled down to the height of her upper thigh. 

“You are 2’7” right now, Desmond. And I’m going to shrink you a foot every time you don’t give me what I want.” She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrow, “So, are you going to give me what I want?”

Blinded by rage, I simply stared at her. I said nothing. And she, of course, took that as a no. When she went to tap my phone, I jumped to try and grab it from her. Big mistake. Her knee immediately came forward and pinned me against the wall. Her leg was up against me as I shrunk down another foot, and her thighs and calves quickly became the same circumference as my body. When I finally stopped shrinking, her knee was grinding into my nose.  

“One last chance, little brother. Or I swear, I’m gonna leave you the size of an elf for Christmas.”

I didn’t doubt that. And the last thing I wanted was my mom catching wind of these shenanigans between Amanda and me. 

“Fine, I’ll…put in on your phone.”

A few minutes later, Amanda could control my size whenever she pleased. Since I had it on my phone too, I could always reverse it, but she anticipated that.

“Now delete it off your phone,” she ordered.

“But Amanda I—”

“Now!”  

I did as I was told, hovering over the app with my finger. When the delete button appeared, I clicked it, only to be told that I couldn’t delete it without the permission of my parent. Just like when I tried to delete the child safety app. 

“Oh my god, did Mom and Dad put parental controls on your phone? You are such a loser! You know what, in the spirit of Christmas, I’ll put you back to your normal height for now. But this is going to be really fun for me, Desmond.”

She left my room, and I immediately began to grow back. Several minutes later, I was back to being five feet tall. Shaken by my run in with Amanda, I threw on some clothes and locked my door. Not another person was stepping foot in my room without my say so. 

I sat on my bed for a while and did nothing but think. I had several major problems on my hands. Chief among them, my sister could now shrink me any time she wanted. Of course, she had to be within five miles of me, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I was at home right now, so at any given moment, I could shrink back down to an inch tall if that was her will. 

Another problem was Jackie. Looking over her texts again, I could see that she wanted to talk. What would our conversation entail? I had no idea. But it was better to be prepared than not, so I rehearsed. If she didn’t admit to the parental control app, I would bring it up and ask her why she put it onto my phone. If she did admit to it and say it was her fault for being jealous, I would lecture her about it but ultimately, I would forgive her. If she admitted to it and defended her actions, then I would have to argue with her. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but I knew that it was a possibility. 

In an act signifying my newfound courage, I facetimed Jackie instead of waiting for her to call me. She picked up rather quickly, and let out a long, “Heeeeeeeey!”

I responded with an equally long “heeeeeeeey” to poke fun at her. She took it in stride, smiling and swatting it aside. 

“So, what’s up?” I asked. “You wanted to talk to me about something, right?”

“Eager to get into the nitty gritty, are we? You didn’t even ask me how my flight home was,” she said, feigning outrage by rolling her eyes.

“Well, I’m sorry!” I laughed, trying to ease the building tension. “You made it sound very important over text. And if there’s something I need to know about, I want to know about it.”

She looked away from the camera for a few moments and said, “Fair enough, Dessy Poo. Do you have headphones in?”

“No, but whatever you have to tell me, tell me. My door is closed and locked and no one is around.”

Her eyes darted around the room she was in, which looked to be her bedroom at her parents’ house. Depending on how this conversation went, maybe I’d ask her about her room after it was over.

“OK, so I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have an app on your phone that can track what you do and stuff. I kinda put that there.”

I blinked and told myself to remain calm and let her explain herself. 

“Yes, I became aware on the plane actually. Right after you and I were texting.”

“Oh god, I am so sorry. Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“Are you trying to shift the blame onto me somehow?” I fired back. “I didn’t even think it was you at first. I called my mom asking her if she’d put it on my phone, and she said she didn’t.”

“Oh god, so your mom knows too?” she bared her teeth, cringing at the fact that she had been discovered. 

“Yeah, Jackie. She knows. So does my dad. Can you please explain to me why you ever thought it was a good idea to do this?”

She hesitated. But ultimately, her facial expression was one of someone who was guilty. Still, she was stalling, which made me believe that whatever her motive for doing this, it was less than pure. 

“Jackie?” I prompted her, a little anger creeping into my voice this time. 

“OK, here’s what happened. I put the app on your phone when you were too small to use it anymore. The app forwarded all your texts and emails to my phone, so it genuinely came in handy when I had to respond to your professors over email or write back to your friends and parents. And obviously, when you were shrunk, you weren’t using your phone so there was nothing for me to spy on. But when I grew you back, I realized that the app was still on your phone after I gave it back to you. And you were so happy to get your size back that I didn’t want to spoil the mood by admitting to another shitty thing I did. So, I didn’t tell you. And I was wrong for that. That’s why I called you now to let you know.”

I genuinely didn’t know how to respond to Jackie’s soliloquy. On one hand, she was expressing contrition. On the other hand, there was a brief time when she was happy to spy on my phone. She was receiving the texts from Maggie and Audrey. She saw them. She said nothing to me at the time. 

“You should’ve told me right away, Jackie. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I-I wasn’t thinking—”

“That’s a lie! You made a conscious decision to not tell me. For days! It’s been days, Jackie! Were you waiting to confirm if I was cheating on you? And when you found nothing, you decided to admit what you did?”

Her face was getting red. “No! Of course not! I just...I don’t know Desmond, I—"

“Jackie, for god’s sake, tell me the truth, OK? I don’t want to be mad at you. The last thing in the world I want is to be mad at you, but you can’t expect forgiveness if you’re not honest.”

“OK, you’re right. I’ll be honest. I was trying to catch you. And of course, I didn’t because I was wrong and dumb and stupid and anything else you want to call me.”

“Jealous,” I added. 

“Yes, jealous. But Desmond, I had every right to be jealous of you and Audrey, don’t you think? You’re clearly attracted to her. You laugh when she’s around, and she has a massive crush on you. I was worried she was going to snatch you right out from under me, especially because she lives so close to you, and you’ll be home for almost a month.”

I tried to think about this from Jackie’s perspective briefly. If a beautiful person like Audrey was showing interest in my significant other, chances are I would feel threatened too. Of course, that didn’t excuse her spying on me. 

“I get where you’re coming from,” I said. “But what you did isn’t OK. Now, tell me how to delete this off my phone.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she coached me on how to get rid of it. Once it was gone, she assured me that she could not see anything I was doing on my phone. Once we were off that topic, she asked, “So what are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “Listen, I’m not feeling too great about what just happened. I appreciate that you owned up to what you did and fixed it, but I’m done talking for now. Let’s talk after Christmas, OK?”

She looked down, upset that I declined to continue the conversation. “OK. Love you.”

“Love you.”

As soon as I hung up, I kicked myself. I probably should have asked her to somehow help me get the shrink app off Amanda’s phone. But there was no way I was gonna call or text again. Not with how things ended.

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