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Sunday, October 25
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Paris’ mom ended up staying extra long at her event that night, so her daughter, Jessie, and their friend Harper didn’t get dropped off at the Tilden residence until almost 10. Marcus had fallen asleep on the couch watching a movie that ended up being more boring than he anticipated, so he didn’t hear them come in. He woke up a little over an hour later from his accidental nap, and saw that Jessie’s door was closed, but her light was on, and quiet whispering could be heard inside. At least they got home safe, he thought with a smile, and decided to leave them alone for the night and try to finish his movie again in bed.
The next morning, he was up before anyone else. They probably stayed up past midnight, he realized. And they need more sleep than me since they’re still growing up. I probably have a few more hours still to myself. So he spent his time reading a book, a hobby he was trying to take up now that he had so much extra time on his hands while Jessie was at school. After plowing through several chapters while reclining on the couch, he suddenly heard the toilet flush and the bathroom faucet turn on. Realizing they must be awake, he hopped off the couch and went to peer around his couch, just in time to see a bare foot disappearing into Jessie’s room and quietly close the door. Well, it’s good that they’re finally awake. Unless they just went back to bed. He decided he wanted to make breakfast for them, all of them. And if I make a smoothie, then the blender might wake them up too if they’re not already. He knew that if he let them sleep in too late, their body clocks might get messed up and it’d be harder to wake up for school on Monday. But on the other hand, his daughter’s door was closed, possibly for a good reason. And since his knocks didn’t prove to be very loud at his size, Marcus wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of wandering into a room full of sleeping 13-year-old girls who were twice his size without an excuse better than “it’s time to wake up.”
So he grabbed a hefty bag of frozen strawberries from the freezer, a few bananas, and a quart of milk from the fridge. He’d had to stop buying gallons once he realized he was hardly able to carry them anymore, let alone pour them. But narrow cartons with only two pints were manageable, weighing a bit more than two gallons from his perspective. Oh! And some ice cubes. He almost forgot the key ingredient that would also serve as the loudest. He gathered the food all together into a mixer that was half as high as he was, secured the lid on, and pressed the on button. As the machine roared to life, he instantly winced at how loud he forgot it was, and turned it down a few power levels. One of the few upsides to DSD was that his hearing wasn’t constantly bombarded 24/7. Even though his height had been drastically reduced and things felt like they weighed sometimes hundreds of pounds, he didn’t feel like his eardrums were at a constant threat of being ruptured. He didn’t understand the science behind it, but he assumed it had to do with how much smaller his ears were in the first place. Bugs don’t go crazy even though they’re thousands of times smaller than humans. Then he chided himself, Ugh, I shouldn’t think of myself as a bug though. Sometimes he felt like his smaller brain made him magnitudes stupider too.
After the smoothie seemed to take on a liquid consistency, he turned the blender off and dipped a finger in to taste it. He was surprised at how good it had turned out without any measurements or instructions. Maybe a bit more ice though to thicken it up. As soon as he tossed in a few more cubes he had grabbed from the freezer, he heard Jessie’s door open, a lot louder and more evident than whoever had closed it before. The slow, soft thumping of freshly-awoken feet against carpet grew steadily louder, before a 5’4 young black girl dressed in sweats and a long-sleeve tee turned the corner, and a smile instantly grew on her face.
“Hi Mr. Tilden, it’s so nice to see you again!” she said, and Marcus smiled back at the polite friend of Jessie’s that he had watched grow up alongside his daughter over the past few years.
“Hey, good morning Paris, it’s nice to see you too.”
She walked over to where Marcus was, and looked down on him standing on his school, but her eyes were more empathetic than they were pitiful, an occurrence which didn’t happen often when people saw Marcus nowadays. “I’m so glad you’re OK, I haven’t seen you since Jessie told me about your diagnosis. I didn’t wanna come over while you were still getting smaller, just cuz I figured it’d be best to give you some space.” She reached her arms out cautiously. “Is it OK if I hug you, or does that make you uncomfortable?” This was why Paris was Marcus’ favorite of Jessie’s friends. Her parents had done such a good job raising her to be polite and considerate, and as a result she had always seemed the most mature of his daughter’s classmates. There were a lot of other people with Marcus’ condition who were insecure about their body sizes, which led to half the population treating them awkwardly and different than everybody else, or shunning them altogether. And the other half of society was too ignorant of the size differences, like constantly forgetting how weight affected them differently, not seeing them on the sidewalk or in hallways and bumping into them, or simply not caring about their requests for special treatment. But Paris was one of the few people who acted towards Marcus the same as when he was normal sized, while still showing thoughtfulness to what he was going through and how he might perceive things differently. Even Jessie was mostly ignorant of DSD’s implications for the first couple weeks that Marcus was shrunken, although she was getting better at coming around. But it warmed his heart to see Paris asking for permission to hug him, aware of how much larger and stronger she was than him, as trivial as it might seem to others.
“Of course,” Marcus replied with a smile, opening up his arms in return, “and I’m so glad that you asked, I wasn’t very fond of people touching me for a little while.” Paris delicately wrapped her arms around the smaller man, being careful to embrace him without holding him too tightly against her torso. The hug lasted only a second, just long enough as was appropriate for a man and his daughter’s friend, before they let go of each other. So how’s school been going for you?”
“Really good! I have a B in one of my classes, but so far I’ve been having a great year, I love all my teachers.”
“Well that’s good to hear,” he replied, and he noticed as her eyes quickly glanced at the blender behind him. He turned around, “Oh, I was gonna make everyone some fruit smoothies, I just put more ice in. Lemme just finish it up real quick.” Marcus turned it back on, while Paris went and got 3 pairs of cups, plus a fourth smaller one from a section that she could tell was set aside for Marcus.
He heard more footsteps from the hallway again as soon as he turned the blender off, and he turned to see his daughter ambling into the kitchen, with another girl a few inches shorter than Jessie following behind. She must be… Harper? Was that her name? She had frizzy, dark brown hair, and a pair of black-rimmed glasses. “Morning, Daddy,” Jessie yawned, and tilted her head to the side, pointing to her friend. “This is Harper, sorry we didn’t say hi to you last night, but it looked like you were sleeping so we just went to bed.”
“That’s OK, I saw your list was on when I woke up so I knew you all got home safe. Hi Harper,” he said, extending out his hand to the new girl, “you can call me Mr. Tilden.”
Harper's mouth was wide open, and she walked over to Marcus like she was staring at a museum artifact. “Whooaaahhh… I didn’t know your dad had the shrinking disorder,” she said, her eyes ravaging the uneasy man.
“Harper, jeez, don’t be so weird, there’s plenty of people like him,” Paris butted in, looking at their friend disapprovingly. “And it’s called DSD, ‘shrinking disorder’ is an outdated term, some people are offended by it.”
“I didn’t know, and I’m not being weird,” she instantly bit back defensively. “I’ve just never seen one this close before.” She took Marcus’ hand, encapsulating the whole of it with her own, and shook it like she was meeting a president.
“By ‘one,’ do you mean a person?” Marcus joked, and Harper instantly started laughing, stepping back a few feet in surprise.
“Oh yeah,” she giggled, and turned to Jessie, “your dad’s funny.” She turned back to Marcus, “Sorry, I meant DSD I guess.”
“That’s OK,” Marcus said. He didn’t really care whether or not people used the term ‘shrinking disorder’ around him, but it was at least nice to see she was apologetic. “It was nice to meet you Harper.” He stepped aside, revealing the smoothie he had made, “I don’t know what you girls have planned for today, but I made some breakfast for everyone.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Tilden,” Paris said, and grabbed the pitcher off its power source. “I can pour it for you.”
“Thanks Daddy,” Jessie chipped in.
“Yeah, thanks Mr. Tilden,” Harper added, putting on her best display of maturity yet, and the four of them all enjoyed Marcus’ fruity concoction while he caught up on Paris’ life and learned more about Jessie’s new friend.
* * * * * *
The girls left later that afternoon to meet some guys at the neighborhood park. Despite it being a Sunday, Marcus thought he might as well try to be productive and do some more job hunting online while he had the house to himself. He got a few applications in and was able to spend a solid couple of hours doing some “work.” But after getting a notification on his laptop about a developing political story that really caught his attention, he quickly got distracted and started to hatefully binge-read a series of articles on the matter. He didn’t even hear the girls running up to the house until they opened the front door out of breath, from racing the final couple blocks to Jessie’s house. Harper looked around her friend’s house. She couldn’t hear anyone or anything; it seemed as if nobody was even home.
“Where’s your dad?” she asked, panting hard from having taken the race more seriously than her friends. Marcus smirked from his spot sitting up against the couch armrest. Because of how close the sofa was to the front door, the girls couldn’t see him behind the cushions. His mind raced with ideas; ever since shrinking down, he’d grown accustomed to pranking his daughter by hiding and scaring her every once in awhile. So he sat motionless, quietly closing his laptop and setting it on the floor while he waited to see if they’d notice him.
“I dunno, he’s always around somewhere,” Jessie shrugged, speaking about her father like others talk about their cat. She slid her shoes off using her heels, then kicked them across the floor, nowhere near the other shoes, a lazy habit she’d developed as a kid. Then she reached down and pried her socks off. “C’mon, let’s just go to my room,” she said, and turned towards the hallway. As soon as they started hurrying off to Jessie’s personal abode, she tossed her socks carelessly behind her. Marcus, unable to see what they were doing, only heard as they scampered away, and realized his opportunity was gone, until suddenly one of his daughter’s dirty graying socks hit him right in the face. He was caught off guard, as her little anklet sock was nearly as wide as his entire face, and blocked out his vision momentarily. The October weather wasn’t too bad, but Jessie had still been fairly active, and it was just the littlest bit moist, just damp and warm enough to remind him how recently she had worn it. And it was musty as hell. Coming to his sense, he swatted it off his face as he realized what she had done, but she herself hadn’t even realized what she had done, and was already in her room with her friends. God, I hate the smell of feet, I wish she wouldn’t always leave her shoes and socks around the house. He wiped his face with his shirt. I’m just glad it’s not a game day, and she’s responsible about doing her laundry. He didn’t even want to think about what one of his daughter’s long, black, unwashed volleyball socks would smell like after she’d been running and jumping around in them for several hours.
He found the other sock she had thrown, and pinched them precariously between his thumb and pointer finger, then went and grabbed her shoes as well, slightly warm to the touch, marching them to her room. He knocked on the door with the three fingers that weren’t holding his daughter’s socks, and the voices inside didn’t seem to hear him. They were playing music too, kind of loudly actually, that was probably why. He glanced down at the shoes. I don’t even need to be holding these, he realized, and dropped the socks into the holes of her shoes, knocking on the door with more gusto, using his full fist this time. “Jessie!” he yelled, hoping someone would hear him over their music. They didn’t seem to hear him, so he figured it was safe to assume he could enter. He opened the door to see Paris was recording Jessie and Harper as they danced along to Dua Lipa’s newest remix of Levitating. They didn’t even see him come in, and continued sequentially jutting their elbows to the side, switching them downwards, and then curving their backs into a thrust of their hips from side to side, while Paris nodded her head along to the rhythm. Harper's moves were a bit more stunted, but she was still keeping up and clearly had done the dance before. And Jessie’s eyes displayed a keen level of focus that made it clear how intent she was on making sure it was a good video. Marcus sighed and rolled his eyes; he didn’t care that his daughter was on TikTok of course, he wasn’t as paranoid as some of Jessie’s friend’s parents. But I’m not a fan of some of the dance moves, he thought, glancing to Jessie’s swaying hips. The song was suddenly over, and the two girls grinned and began to rush over to Paris to check out their results. “Jessie,” Marcus repeated, now that the music wasn’t so loud, and his daughter looked up before she could see her phone. “Don’t leave your shoes and socks lying around the house please, either keep them by the door or in your room.” He smiled faintly to try and ease the tension, deciding not to mention the embarrassing bit about her stinking socks landing on his face.
“OK Daddy, sorry about that,” she replied. “What’d you think?” she asked, and the other girls turned to see his reply.
“Of… the dance?” They all nodded their heads. “It was… it looked pretty well choreographed,” he stammered, not really thinking they wanted honest feedback anyways.
The girls broke out into giggles, “Such an official review,” Harper said, and Jessie joined in.
“Yeah, thanks Daddy.” She turned back to her phone, and the other two girls turned back too. Marcus just tossed the shoes onto the floor, and turned to leave. As the song started back up, he just hoped Jessie might at least remember what he asked.
* * * * * *
Harper left later that afternoon, but Paris stayed behind. Marcus had to admit, it was nice to have her around again. It felt like with Jessie’s best friend back in her life, part of his former life had returned as well. Things were back to normal, even if it was a new, 2-and-a-half foot normal.
The two girls had also persuaded Marcus to let Paris sleep over again, for a second night in a row. Even though it was a Sunday night, she had slept over on plenty of school nights before, and her parents were OK with it, so he digressed. Apparently she had taken her backpack with her when she got dropped off on Saturday night, since she still had to get a tiny bit of homework done still. And with the rest of her overnight gear already there, the only problem was Paris having to wear her Saturday clothes again to school on Monday. But the two girls had had so much fun hanging out for the first time in weeks, she didn’t mind.
Actually, the clothes weren’t the only problem. Paris had also woken up with a sore back that morning, which she presumed was a result of sleeping on the floor. She had a sleeping bag, of course, and pillows, but a simply carpet and thin sleeping bag were still considerably less comfortable than a mattress. As a result, Jessie offered to switch places with her friend; Paris could sleep in Jessie’s bed, and Jessie would use Paris’ sleeping bag. Marcus found out about this after checking in on them before bed that night and discovering his daughter wasn’t the one using her own bed. The two girls explained the situation to Marcus, who chuckled and told his daughter she could use his bed, and he could sleep on the couch for the night.
“No, Daddy, that’s OK. It’s your bed, you should sleep in it,” she insisted.
“Jess, it’s a full-size mattress.” He had never been married, so he’d never quite needed a Queen or King sized one. And even though it had been awhile since he’d… gotten some action, so to speak… a full-size bed ended up working fine for those matters. “I’m plenty big for it now, it’s got plenty of room. Take it, I don’t mind using the couch for a night, it’s not as small for me as it might look to you.”
“Well… I’d still rather sleep in the same room as Paris,” she explained. “Unless…” She slowly turned to her friend, “you think we could split it? It’d be like that time we slept over at Madison’s birthday party in 5th grade.”
Paris shrugged, “Sure, I don’t mind. As long as that’s OK with you, Mr. Tilden.”
“I guess it doesn’t make a difference to me whether just Jessie uses it or the two of you. I can tell you guys are too big to fit on Jessie’s twin, and you’re almost like family to us Paris. If you’re fine with it, and Jessie’s fine with it, you two can sleep wherever you feel most comfortable,” he said with a reassuring smile.
“Then you won’t need to sleep on the couch,” Jessie realized excitedly. “So it’s a win-win. For all of us!”
Marcus didn’t quite understand what she was getting at. “Why wouldn’t I sleep on the couch?”
“Uh, cuz there would be a free bed in my room? Obviously.” Shit, I didn’t even think about that. “I mean, if I’m sleeping in your bed for the night, you wouldn’t mind sleeping in mine, right?”
The idea seemed strange to Marcus, but he couldn’t come up with a logical reason to object. “I guess not. Um… yeah, I can do that. For tonight.”
Paris got out of Jessie’s bed, playfully pushing her on the shoulder with her foot while Jessie unzipped the sleeping bag. “What a good idea, Jess,” she said with a wink. “Thanks for letting us switch Mr. Tilden.” The two girls grabbed their phones and chargers, and brushed past Marcus.
“And thanks to me for the good idea,” Jessie proudly said as she exited her room, flipping the light switch off. “Goodnight Daddy,” she whispered, and closed the door, leaving him standing alone in the dark in the middle of his daughter’s room. I wasn’t even gonna head to bed yet, Marcus begrudgingly thought, and considered opening the door back up to head out and quietly watch his news show in the living room. But I don’t know when they’re gonna get up, especially Paris, so I should probably head to bed now so I can be out of their room in the morning. With a reluctant sigh, he climbed into his daughter’s bed, the soft smell of his daughter’s clothing and sheets greeting him (along with the ever-so-faint aroma of Paris’ hair), before pulling the covers over himself and quickly drifting off to sleep.