After the fiasco with his daughter Abigail yesterday, Mr. Fernandez decided he would feel a bit better for a couple days if his other kids looked after him for a bit. It was nothing personal against his daughter, of course. But the situation the other day had been quite stressful. Abigail said she understood. Besides, it wasn’t like they weren’t going to be father and daughter anymore, he was just going to rely on his other kids to help him out for the “big” stuff. As the second oldest of his children, Mr. Fernandez had told Carmen what happened and asked if she could take over until their mom was back in a couple days.

The next day, Mr. Fernandez was watching TV while his daughter was on her phone. “Hey Carmen?” Mr. Fernandez called out. His daughter heaved a big sigh and looked up toward her father impatiently. “Can you take me along to check the mail?" 

She pushed herself off the couch. “Yeah dad,” she said, sounding exasperated. She picked him up and tucked him into the pocket of her high-waisted, bleached jean shorts and headed out the door.

“Thanks honey,” he added feebly. When he was normal size, he wouldn’t think twice about asking her to do a favor like this, or any other chore. But now every little demand he had felt like he was inconveniencing her. When they got to their apartment complex’s mailboxes, Carmen opened up their box, retrieved everything, and started to head back. “Wait, can you shuffle through everything here? A lot of it’s trash,” her dad piped in. Carmen rolled her eyes again with the hundredth sigh of the day, tired of all the demands from the two-inch tall man. After a minute of sorting with her dad watching from his pocket vantage-point, it turned out all of it was trash.

They started to walk back home, when a car pulled up beside them, a young girl hanging out the window motioning to Carmen. “Carmen, Carmen, we’re all going to the mall for lunch, and then Devon’s parents are going out of town tonight so he’s gonna throw a party, come on!”

“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Mr. Fernandez started to say, before his daughter’s fingers came rushing from above him and pushed him down into the shallow pockets of her shorts. He started thrashing about, but her quick fingers, a single one as wide as his entire body, made sure to keep him within the dark confines of her clothing.

“Uh, I gotta go home,” Carmen started to say, much to the relief of her dad, “for a couple minutes first.”

“We’re leaving now,” said the driver, a bigger guy a few grades above the girls.

“Yeah, but my dad--”

“If we get there before 1 then Hector can give us all discounts since he’s working today, and it’s 12:40, you don’t have time, are you coming or not?”

“Yeah, fuck your dad anyways,” said someone from the back seat, unaware of his condition. The others laughed and Carmen couldn’t help but smile. 

She hesitated for a moment, then smiled at her friends and opened the door to hop in the car. The driver zoomed away as Carmen’s mood was brightened immediately. She laughed along with her friends and started talking with them as her dad, bewildered that she would just take him along, began to crawl out of her pocket. Carmen felt his tiny body crawling along his leg, and right as he emerged from her pocket, she effortlessly pushed him back down. She didn’t want any of her friends to know her dad was with her. Besides, she figured he probably wouldn’t want them to know either. But her dad seemed to have a different idea, and he squirmed to crawl back out again, this time trying to shout at her over all the voices in the car. Being closest to him, she heard him trying to say something as he nearly emerged again, and this time grabbed him by the head between her thumb and pointer finger. She held him in her pocket, fingers pressing just a little too tight as she used the dougey texture of her thumb to ensure that his face would be totally sealed off and none of her friends would hear him calling out for attention or help.