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Friday, November 6 

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     Marcus’ eyes flashed awake, staring at the ceiling above him. He was finally awake. His first dream involving Jessie from a few days ago had been nothing more than just that: a weird dream. But he hated this second one. It had been a nightmare, and he was glad that he had finally awoken from it. Although the nightmare wasn’t entirely over; his “guardian angel” had been right about one thing. I’m never getting bigger, he thought with despair. I will be two and a half feet tall for the rest of my life.

     But that didn’t mean that his future was decided. The vision he saw presented before him, one where he gradually became more and more subservient to his daughter, was not definitive. His life didn’t have to play out like that. Marcus remembered how his angel had said it all started, with him never finding a new job after his post-shrink layoff. So that was the first thing he realized he’d have to prioritize with his life. If he was honest with himself, he had been slacking lately with sending in applications to various job opportunities online, but that was about to change now. He was determined to take his job hunting while Jessie was at school more vigilantly than ever. Looking for a job should become a job in itself, he reasoned.

     The second major point that he remembered from his dream was how he had followed Jessie along in life, even after she graduated high school and move on like most people do. There were people who continued to live with their parents after they turned 18, but it was clear to Marcus that in his dystopian view of the future, it was him who continued to live with his child. And there was a difference. Jessie had been Marcus’ number one priority in life ever since she was born, but he’d also been single for the entirety of the past 13 years. That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t had sex or gone out on any dates in that period of time. But he found it hard to find single women around his age that were willing to start a relationship with a single parent. The majority of his dates had been with other single mothers; they understood his predicament more than anyone else. He’d just never clicked with any of them. Jessie just took up so much of his joy in life though, that he had never really felt a need to find someone to marry. His mentality was simply, “if I happen to meet someone, then great, but I won’t go out of my way to make it happen.” But he knew now that that would have to change too. He really, truly needed someone else to love and be a part of his life, or else he’d cling to Jessie until the day he died. Also, I’ve barely seen any of my friends since losing my job. So it wouldn’t hurt to try and find some more of those too.

     To his right, he heard the sound of his daughter shifting in her sleep, a soft sigh escaping her lips, and he remembered that he was still in bed with her. So he scooted out from under the covers and hopped over her body, deftly landing on her bedroom floor so he could sneak out the door. There were still a few hours until she’d wake up, so he didn’t bother making breakfast yet. Instead, he found his laptop, and decided to get to work. Instead of applying half-heartedly to dozens of random jobs, he was going to find one job opening, and focus in on it by writing a terrific cover letter and tailoring his resume specifically for that one place. Then, after however long that took, whether it was a couple hours or the rest of the day, he’d move on to the second one. And I won’t stop until I finally get a job again. I can’t stop.

     “Boo!” whispered a voice behind him, and he practically jumped out of his sofa, whirling his head around. But who else would it be except his daughter, who started cracking up at seeing his reaction to her little prank. The house itself showcased a peek of the morning sun as a new dawn arose, and he realized that he had been so focused on his work, the time had completely flown by. That wasn’t to say that he hadn’t gotten anything done though—he’d found an office job there in the city that felt like a perfect fit to him, and he’d been writing and rewriting a cover letter for them ever since waking up. He’d just been in such a state of zen, he hadn’t realized as the sun slowly lit the room, or heard his giant daughter tiptoe up behind him before she pranked him back out of his concentration. “Oh my God, that’s easily like, the best I’ve gotten you in so long,” Jessie laughed, and he shook his head with a smile before rubbing his eyes and taking a deep breath to recalibrate himself. Jessie came around to the front of the couch and collapsed next to her dad. Tilting her head sideways, she rested her head on his own smaller one, and looked over the document he had been working on. “Whatcha doin’?” she asked, not being familiar with the job application process herself.

     “Good morning to you too,” he remarked, looking over his laptop with her. “I was working on a new application for this media company downtown. They have special offices here and in New York that are made for people like me with DSD. Apparently areas like southern California and the Tri-State area, where there’s tens of millions of people, become these sort of hubs for people with my condition.”

     “What’s the Tri-State area?” she asked.

     “It’s like, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania I think. Or New York, New Jersey, and some other state. Either way, there’s all those big cities out on the east coast, right? And a lot of them are up in that area; that’s what people mean when they say that. Anyways, if you shrink out in, I don’t know… Montana, for example, where there’s more mountain goats than people around, you’re not gonna have a lot of luck.” Jessie chuckled at her dad’s joke, and he continued. “But if you’re in a big city, then you’ve got a little more going for you. There’s support groups, right? And better facilities for you, et cetera. So according to this website, they were saying how a lot of people who shrink down move out here, and because of that, they have this kind of, branch of their company I guess, that exclusively employs people like me. According to them, the co-founder’s wife shrunk down too, and they were surprised at how much harder it was for her to find companies that would hire her, so he started one of his own.”

     “So it’s like a charity?” Jessie asked, generally following along but a bit confused.

     “Well, not exactly. I guess you could look at it like that, but they don’t get donations or anything or do work for free. People who work there have regular jobs, and they get paid a regular amount. Remember that grocery store we went to when you were younger, that had a bunch of people with learning disabilities working there? But it was just a regular store.” Jessie nodded, remembering what her dad was talking about. “It’s sorta like that.”

     “Ohhhhhhh.” A smile slowly started to form on her face, glad to hear her dad sounding interested in work again. There was a part of her that had been enjoying the last few weeks and the new kind of lifestyle they’d developed, but she also recognized that it’d be important for him to start working again. Obviously they’d need money again soon, and she was still years away from being able to get a job herself. “Well at least you have a good excuse for not cooking me breakfast this morning,” she joked, standing back up while Marcus rolled his eyes.

     “What, you don’t know how to make yourself cereal anymore?” he responded, evoking a giggle out of his daughter as he stood up himself so he could join her for breakfast.

*    *    *    *    *    *

     Marcus was ready to leave and waiting in the kitchen to take his daughter to school, but Jessie was still in her room, although the door was open. He’d been thinking about his dream—or really, his nightmare—from last night again, and the idea that he’d just become practically a sidekick to Jessie. Right now, he was the head of their small, 2-person family. But what if decades of being no taller than Jessie’s waist eventually turned his daughter into the head, and he became the one she looked after? I’m not that small, my life shouldn’t turn into that. I need to get that job, so I can get my life back on track. Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was 7:38, which meant school started in 22 minutes. And she’ll probably still wanna stop by Starbucks on the way there. He hopped off his chair and wandered down the hallway to her room, knocking on the wall before peeking his head in to make sure she was decent. She was just standing next to her mirror, fully dressed and with her makeup on, looking down at her phone and seemingly texting someone. “Hey angel, ready to—“ he started to say, before stopping himself when he realized what he had called her.

     Evidently Jessie had noticed it too, and she looked up from her phone, tilting her head curiously at her dad’s new nickname for her, something he’d never used before. “Angel?” she asked. “That’s a new one.” Obviously his dream from last night was still stuck in his head. He just couldn’t seem to get it out, and now it had slipped out into the real world. He blushed, feeling flustered, and hoping he wouldn’t have to tell her the full truth. If he behaved awkwardly, it would just make the whole situation more awkward. “Why the new nickname all of a sudden?”

     “Oh, I… I had a dream about you last night,” he admitted, revealing the truth after he had just told himself to lie about it.

     “Awwww,” she cooed, hustling over to him and displaying puppy dog eyes. “And I was an angel in it?”

     Marcus nodded tentatively, “Yeah, and it was… well, I don’t really remember that much from it actually. I’m always forgetting my dreams,” he lied. “But yeah, you were in it for a little bit as an angel.” He scratched his head nervously, hoping she’d buy his half-truth, and was relieved when she didn’t press him for any further details. “So I guess my brain was still associating you with it or whatever and it slipped out.” 

     “Well that’s kinda sweet, Daddy. I’d rather be an angel than a demon,” she said, sticking her tongue out between a toothy smile. She turned to grab her backpack from beside her bed. “Anyways, I’m ready to go now.”

     “Sounds good,” he said, glad that they could move on, and they headed out to the car together.

     During the drive to the coffee shop, Jessie mentioned how she didn’t mind the nickname he’d given her, although Marcus had no plans to ever use it again. He only hoped that the dreams like he had last night wouldn’t become a regular occurrence. “I feel like ‘sweetie’ is pretty normal, like a lot of guys call their daughters or girlfriends that,” she had said. “But ‘angel’ is like, I’ve only heard people get called that in the movie and stuff. I kinda like it.” 

     Eventually they pulled into the school’s drop-off zone, and Jessie hopped out of the car. Marcus looked out the open passenger door as she swung her backpack over her shoulders. She was wearing tight, black leather pants, and a white crop top hoodie, with all-white sneakers and her hair up in a ponytail. He knew the clothes she was wearing weren’t anything new, but for some reason he still felt like she was dressing up. “Is there something going on today? You just seem like you’re…” he trailed off, gesturing his hand around in an ambiguous motion, “I don’t know, decked out or something.”

     Jessie raised her eyebrow. “What, like a skater or something?” She looked down at her pants—was it the leather that made him say that? Because she definitely wasn’t trying to look punky today, and she’d worn the pants before without him saying anything.

     “No no no,” he laughed. “I just mean, you look nice today. I thought you dressed up or something.”

     “Ohhh,” she sighed with relief. “Well thanks for the compliment. It’s just a normal day though.” He shrugged, turning his attention back in front of him. “Actually, I almost forgot,” she added, shrugging her backpack onto the car seat and unzipping it. “There was, um… some homework last night that we didn’t finish.” She fished some papers out of her backpack, and set them onto the seat, zipping her backpack up again and slinging it around her shoulders again. “I’m supposed to turn it in for fourth period, but there’s like, there’s literally no possible way I’d be able to finish it in time, cuz first period I have Mr. Matthews, and he doesn’t let us work on stuff for other classes or else he’ll take it away, and second period we have a test, and third period I have P.E. But if you did it for me and got it to me during lunch, which is from 10:40 to like, 11:15 I think, or 11:20, then I’d be able to turn it in on time.”

     Marcus gave Jessie a stern look. “Jess, really? I can’t keep doing your homework for you. For one, I’ve never heard of a parent doing that for their child, so you should be lucky that I did it for you at all, and two, you’re not gonna learn if you have me doing all your work,” he laughed. “I mean, Jessie, you’re in seventh grade, you’re plenty old enough to be doing this for yourself.”

     “I know I know I know I know,” she said, teetering up and down on her feet, and she looked behind her as the crowd around her had started to die down. School was minutes away from starting and she couldn’t stay out here and argue with her dad forever. “If you can’t do it, then… fine, I guess, I’ll do it when I get home and I guess I can turn it in late,” she grumbled, closing the car door, and it slammed shut with a bit more gusto than usual.

     He reached over to the seat and picked up the papers, holding them up for her and speaking to her out the car window. “Jess, at least take them back, maybe you’ll—“

     “Daddy, I already told you, there’s literally like, I literally wouldn’t even have time to start it,” she said, backing away from his car. “I have to go anyways, I’m almost late.”

     Marcus dropped the papers back down. “OK, well have a good day. I love you,” he yelled, waving at her as she turned to head towards the entrance. She grimaced, waving half-heartedly back at him, and turned to head inside.

*    *    *    *    *    *

     The car halted to a stop, and Marcus gazed out the windshield thoughtfully, pondering the decision he made. He hadn’t just arrived home though; it was several hours later, and he’d just pulled into the parking lot of Jessie’s school. And there was only one reason why he would come back here today while she was at lunch.

     “Hey, I gotta talk to you about something important,” he texted her. “I’m here in the parking lot. Can you come out?”

     A few moments later, his phone buzzed and he read the reply. “if i try to leave thru the cafeteria entrance, the vice principal will stop me and ask what im doing.” Marcus bit his lip; he hadn’t actually thought about that. He shouldn’t be surprised that her middle school wasn’t quite as lenient as a high school, where the students had more freedom to go anywhere during lunch. But she followed up her text with a solution: “theres an exit next to the water fountains, but it doesnt have a handle on the outside so id still need to come thru the front again and mrs jacobs would still see me but if YOU come to the side exit then i could open it for you. its on the east side of the parking lot.” Marcus hesitated; he hadn’t really wanted to intrude on Jessie’s time with her classmates. But he’d already come all the way here, and he’d already texted her and told her it was important. A third text, just a few question marks from her, as she awaited a reply.

     “Alright, I’ll meet you there,” he wrote back, and she quickly responded by liking his reply. Pulling the keys out of the ignition, he gathered his things and hopped out of the car, slamming the door shut. There was nobody around as he made his way along the sidewalk to the edge of the building, spotting a gray door without any handles on it. And just as he approached the secret entryway, it cracked open about a foot, and out stuck Jessie’s head, looking around before her eyes settled on her dad.

     “Hey, what’d you need?” she asked, propping the door open enough so she could lean against the framing, crossing her arms. She’d just gotten out of P.E., so she was eager to get back to her food, and she had a science class in half an hour that she wasn’t looking forward to not being able to turn her homework in for. That is, until her dad revealed the papers behind his back: last night’s homework that she hadn’t finished.

     “I ended up doing it for you after all,” he grinned, and Jessie’s eyes went wide as she squealed with excitement and snatched her homework out of his hands.

     “Really?! Oh my god, Daddy, thank youuuuu!” she chirped, looking the papers over and seeing that sure enough, all the questions were filled out. Marcus felt a surge of energy at seeing how giddy she became from her surprise gift. It was like the feeling someone gets when they’re on a sports team and help someone else score some points. She lowered the papers and looked back down at his proud, smiling face, and without warning, bent over and scooped him up into a hug. He reciprocated by wrapping his arms around her neck, while she squeezed his little body tightly against her own. “I thought you weren’t gonna do it, I literally can’t describe how thankful I feel right now, AH! I love you so much.” She lowered him back to the ground, just as someone else came walking up behind them. The door was hidden in a kind of nook that jutted out from the rest of the cafeteria, so most people weren’t able to see who Jessie was talking to, but her friend Harper had seen her leave their table and came to investigate what she was up to.

     “Hi Mr. Tilden!” the girl exclaimed, and Jessie turned, hearing the voice behind her and instinctively thinking she got caught, before seeing it was just her friend. “What are you doing here?”

     “Oh, um… Harper, right?” Marcus stuttered, feeling just as caught as his daughter had at first, before he settled down and realized there was nothing to worry about with Jessie’s friend. “Jessie just left some of her homework at school, so I came by to give it to her.” Just then, Jessie lurched forward, grabbing ahold of her dad’s arm and yanking him inside, quickly shutting the door behind them.

     “I just saw Mr. Davis heading out to his car,” she explained, her eyes closed with relief, hoping they wouldn’t hear a knock on the door any minute and get found out. It wasn’t technically against school rules for a parent to come by and drop off their homework, but evidently Jessie was in a nervous enough state that she wasn’t thinking clearly, and was seeming extra suspicious because of it.

     Marcus looked up at the two, giant teenagers in front of him, one of them still a little on edge, and the other one eying him inquisitively. It was only his second time meeting the young girl, but the way she looked him up and down wasn’t easy to forget. It wasn’t a sexual look, like Veronica had given him, or a dominant one; it was a look of curiosity. The only other times he was looked at that way was by little kids who were half her age, but coming from someone as old as her, it made him feel uneasy. And somehow even smaller. “Hey, you know what? You should meet me and Jessie’s friends!” she suggested enthusiastically. You guys are at lunch, at school, he thought nervously. I don’t even think I’d be up for meeting them normally, but especially now, this just doesn’t feel like the place. “C’mon!” she insisted, and grabbed ahold of his hand to pull him along. Clearly her sense of boundaries wasn’t quite fully matured yet, and her overt enthusiasm without much regard to what he wanted reminded him of his nightmare last night when his grandkids pulled him along to their room to play, with him simply trailing helplessly behind them.

     But before Harper could haul him back to their table, Jessie held out her hand to halt her friend. For a brief moment, Marcus was glad she had stopped them, until she spoke up. “Wait, we don’t wanna get him kicked out, so he should walk behind us so we can block any of the adults from seeing him.”

     “Oh you’re riiiiight,” Harper agreed. “Tch, I bet if Mrs. Jacobs saw him she’d be like ‘What the hell is your dad doing here during school hours,’ wah wah wah wah,” she mocked, causing both of them to laugh at Harper’s impression.

     “God, she’s so strict,” Jessie commented.

     “Wait, I don’t wanna risk you guys getting in trouble,” Marcus said, taking a step back and holding his hands up defensively. Both of the giant girls turned to face him, confused at his lack of willingness for Harper’s idea. Well, Harper was confused at least. From Jessie’s perspective, her dad’s reluctance made perfect sense. It was the very attitude she and her dad had been trying to coax out of him ever since he shrunk, like when he came to her match last night.

     “It’s fine, Daddy, she’s not really gonna notice you unless she like, actually sees you. Otherwise she just sits at her little table for most of lunch and ignores whatever we do unless she has to get involved like if there’s a fight. But you’re probably not even taller than the lunch tables.” Harper bit her lip to keep from giggling at this last comment, which Jessie didn’t even mean as a joke. But his daughter could still sense his hesitance, and she bent over with her hands on her knees so she could get closer to him. “I thought we talked about getting you out of the house more and around bigger people,” she softly reminded him. He felt like he was being talked down to like a child, by his own daughter no less. And she wasn’t even aware of what she was doing!

     “I know Jess, but we just did that yesterday. It doesn’t need to happen all at once,” he reasoned. 

     Frowning at his stubbornness, she crossed her arms and stood upright again, so that the loving face in front of him was replaced by a view of her crotch, clothed in her tight, black leather pants which seemed to match with the persistent attitude she was assuming. “Would you rather me invite a bunch of people over to our house then? Cuz lunch is like, half an hour, but whenever I hang out with friends it lasts a lot longer. Even something like yesterday, at the match, there were more people than there are at our lunch table. I just don’t get it Daddy I feel like you’re making it seem like a bigger deal than it is.” Her hunger was feeding her impatience too, only having eaten a little bit of her lunch before her dad had texted.

     Marcus thought about what Jessie was saying. Technically she’s right, it probably wouldn’t be any more embarrassing than when she has friends over, or being around all those people last night. I’m sure I know most of the people she sits with anyways. “Alright,” he mumbled. “I guess you have some good points,” he admitted. The two girls smiled, glad that he could come around to see it from their point of view.

     “Good,” Jessie replied with satisfaction. “Then just make sure to follow behind me then or else our vice principal might see you.” With that, she pivoted back around, and Marcus’ field of view was replaced with his daughter’s toned, muscular butt right in front of him. Harper turned around too, staying close beside Jessie so as to offer additional obstruction from anyone seeing her friend’s father, and the two began walking around the corner, heading back to their lunch table. Marcus followed obediently behind the two girls, trying not to look at his young daughter’s perky, leather-clad butt as it wagged back and forth in front of him, leading him along.

     Lucky for Marcus, Jessie and her friends sat at a table in the corner of the cafeteria, so he didn’t have to worry about being paraded through a crowd of curious middle schoolers, who would all probably swarm Jessie to get a better look at his two-and-a-half foot self. They approached the table, and Harper and Jessie took a seat as half a dozen sets of eyes immediately took notice of the shrunken man who had followed the two girls back to their table. Sitting around the table with Jessie and Harper was Paris, of course; Amy, Paris’ secret girlfriend; Brandon, the boy from Paris’ house who Marcus assumed was gay; along with two other girls and a boy, none of whom Marcus knew the names of. “Hey Mr. Tilden!” Paris smiled, surprised to see him but always the kindest of the bunch, and the first to greet her best friend’s dad.

     “Oh my god, you brought you dad to school?” Brandon asked, his mouth agape with incredulousness.

     “That’s your dad?” one of the unknown girls asked, a small Korean girl with long, black hair and thin, circular glasses.

     “I thought he was your little brother at first,” the second boy commented, chuckling at how small the man was. He was wearing a generic, blue sweatshirt with his hood up, and a peach fuzz mustache that he apparently thought looked better unshaved. Paris lightly backhand slapped the boy’s arm, but that just made him grin for having gotten a rise out of someone.

     “Yeah, we’ve been trying to get him to come out in public more so he can be more comfortable around people,” Jessie explained. Marcus remembered when his family had had a dog growing up, and the way his mother had described the process of socializing a baby puppy around humans reminded him an awful lot of how Jessie was describing him now. But that just encouraged him to speak up and introduce himself to everyone.

     “Hey, it’s nice to meet you guys,” he said, grimacing slightly at his introduction and waving at some of the familiar faces. “I know I know some of you, but I don’t think I’ve met you guys before,” he added, looking in the direction of the three kids who he hadn’t met before. 

     “I’m Elijah,” the boy stated.

     “Anna,” the Korean girl politely added.

     “I’m Willow,” the third girl said, spinning out of her seat and coming around to kneel in front of Marcus, offering her hands out for him to shake. “It’s nice to meet you, Jessie told us you’d shrunk,” she remarked, as he reached out his arm. She accepted his hand with both of hers, and gently shook it up and down, like she was careful that she didn’t want to break it.

     “Will, go sit down, someone’s gonna notice you,” Jessie said, pushing her hair behind her ear and nodding her head back in the direction of her friend’s seat. Willow roller her eyes, but stood back up and went back to her spot. “He’s gotta stay, like, right there, or else someone might see him,” his daughter explained.

     “Why’s he even here?” Brandon asked.

     “I forgot some of my homework at home and he came back to give it to me, and then Harper thought he should meet you guys.” Several of them nodded along, and nobody objected to her reasoning. A few of them went back to eating their lunch. Elijah pulled up something on his phone and nudged Anna, showing her a meme he saw on Twitter, and they began making comments to each other about it. Everyone’s behavior was actually putting Marcus at ease; these group of kids weren’t too many to deal with, and half of them seemed disinterested in him anyways. I guess Jessie was right, he thought, taking a deep breath and soothing his prior nerves, this wasn’t too bad. Just gotta get used to it. Jessie eyed her dad’s body language as she bit into a carrot, and thought that he seemed to be taking it pretty well, although she didn’t say anything. But she felt right about agreeing with Harper to introduce him to her friends.

     “So how was your day so far?” Paris asked, munching into the second half of her sandwich and looking down at Marcus. 

     “It’s been pretty normal, I’ve been working on a job application this morning for a place that only hires people with DSD.”

     “Ohhh, that’s cool!” Paris responded, somehow seeming even more excited than his own daughter had been. “Well good luck, I hope you get it!”

     “Well my day sucked,” Jessie announced, leaning back in her seat as she took another sharp bite out of a carrot. “I’m pretty sure I got like, a D or something on the Geography test. And then in P.E. we just did laps the whole time because Ms. Felix had to go to the office so Mr. Davis took over, and we were supposed to start with racket sports today but he just had us run around for 40 minutes.” Another crunch as she popped a carrot in her mouth.

     “Seriously?” came from Amy. Jessie nodded, stewing at the thought of the memory.

     “Run around or walk around?” Harper asked.

     “Well, almost everyone else had to run. But because Mr. Davis knows me and Madison are on the volleyball team, he kept being like ‘oh, you guys should be running.’” She rolled her eyes, unhappy about the unequal treatment.

     “I’m sorry to hear that, that doesn’t sound fair,” Marcus offered. Jessie glanced at her dad, and then got an idea.

     “Hey, you could give me a foot rub if you wanted,” she casually mentioned. “That’d make me feel better.”

     “Oh… a massage?” he repeated, making sure he heard her right. He’d never had a problem with them over the last few weeks, but now he was surrounded by her friends. He would never consider a foot rub as intimate, and yet now, surrounded by all of Jessie’s teenage friends, he was giving it second thoughts.

     Jessie shrugged, “Yeah, why not?” She pressed the tip of her left shoe against the heel of her right, prying it off her foot, and then did the same with her other. “When was the last time you ran three or four miles in the middle of a school day? Cuz it was way more boring than playing badminton or tennis would’ve been.” She wiggled her socked toes as the sneakers dropped to the ground, and reached out with one of them, thrusting it against her dad’s chest expectantly.  “Like, volleyball practice is obviously a workout too, but at least that’s fun,” she went on. He’d never actually said he would rub them, but she’d gotten so used to her massages lately that apparently she just assumed he would agree to it anyways. Her giant foot instantly felt warm against him as her rough, fuzzy sole easily covered more than the length of his torso. It was clear that the socks she’d worn during P.E. were the same ones she had on now, which meant a lot of his daughter’s body heat was a result of having run around for so long less than an hour ago, and they’d only left her shoes for a few seconds when she’d changed after class. Which meant this was the first time she was really able to air them out. He had to reach out with his hands and steady himself against her foot, giving himself a few inches of distance, since her toes had been right under his chin and were giving his nose more of a preview of the 13-year-old’s musty, sweat-laden socks than he would’ve preferred. 

     “Eugh, I can smell them from up here,” Paris commented, crinkling her nose in disgust and shifting slightly away. But the smell was obviously even more worse and more potent for Marcus, who was right at the source. Jessie giggled at her friend’s reaction, but was glad that her dad was holding steady and hadn’t objected despite how stinky she knew they were.

     “Yeah, what’s that smell?” Anna asked. She couldn’t even see Jessie’s feet and was on the other end of the table, but apparently the stench had still reached her sensitive nose too.

     “Jessie wanted her dad to give her a foot massage because of how much she had to run today in P.E. class,” Harper answered, prompting Jessie to stick her tongue out at the rest of her friends, giddy that she was gonna get a special treatment the rest of them wouldn’t.

     “Gross, ew,” Elijah scoffed.

     “Aw, I kinda wish I’d had P.E. too,” Willow giggled; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten a massage of any kind, let alone one for her feet.

     Marcus glanced around at everyone’s various reactions, still holding Jessie’s foot, before his eyes landed on his daughter. She looked like she had frozen, her eyes looking back at his, before looking down to her foot and back up at his face. “Soooo… are you gonna rub it?”

     “Oh. Right, yeah,” he said, and started on her massage, pressing his thumbs deep into the rough, moist fabric of her sock and circling them around in little patterns. 

     Her body relaxed as she felt his tiny fingers begin to ease the soreness out of her muscles, and she smiled. “Yeah, there we go,” she encouraged, a soft smile forming on her lips. She crossed her legs while he still held onto her foot, and began bobbing her other one up and down. The other kids soon forgot about the odor and went back to talking and eating their lunches. Although for Marcus, it wasn’t so easy to ignore the stink, and he simply had to put up with the seventh-grader’s smelly feet while she eventually ignored her dad and returned to her friends’ conversation while he stood below her, dutifully servicing her soles.

     A little while later, after Marcus had alternated between her feet a few times while she enjoyed eating lunch with the others, the lunch bell ran, signaling that everyone had 5 minutes to get to class. The table had already mostly cleaned up their stuff, but Marcus was just glad that this meant he could be done with Jessie’s massage, as she stuffed her feet back into her shoes and slung her backpack around her shoulder. “See, you went on in public today,” Jessie stated, leaning down to speak to her dad, “you didn’t have any problem rubbing my feet for a little bit while I was with my friends. It’s like I’m fixing you!” she declared, happy to see so much progress made with her dad and his anxiety with being around bigger people.

     “Yeah, I guess so,” he sighed.

     “Anyways, I invited some friends over to have a sleepover at our place tonight, so I need you to clean my room for me before you pick me up again later. Thanks.” She bent over even more, giving him a kiss on the top of his head before standing up straight again. “I gotta get to class now, so I’ll see you after practice. Bye Daddy, love you,” she said, and turned to catch up with her friends, leaving Marcus standing alone at the edge of the table. As he noticed the bustle of other kids start to empty out the cafeteria, he realized that she’d forgotten to escort him back to the door, and he turned to hurry back to the exit so he could get out before anyone else noticed him.

*    *    *    *    *    *

     Marcus arrived back at the school for the third time that day, a little after 5 o’clock. Jessie and Paris were just coming out of the gym when his car pulled up to the side walk, and they opened the trunk to toss their stuff in as his car pulled to a stop. This obviously wasn’t the first time that the two of them had had a sleepover on a Friday, and Paris’ parents were used to bringing their daughter’s overnight bag to school and dropping it off for her before she went home with the Tildens. Marcus felt like a chauffeur as they opened up the back seat doors and hopped in, greeting him in the process, since the passenger seat up front was empty, but he didn’t blame the two girls for wanting to sit together. 

     “So, did you clean my room for me?” Jessie asked right away, and Marcus nodded as he pulled away from the curb.

     “Yep, I took care of your laundry for you too and started a load with the stuff in your hamper,” he stated, and Jessie smiled at the good news. 

     “Ooooh, perfect. Thank you!” She soon went back to focusing on her phone, before she remembered something that popped into her head. “Ohhhhh, oh oh oh! I almost forgot, Coach told me before practice today that I did such a good job yesterday, that he referred me to this local, like, talent scout or something for volleyball.” 

     Marcus was impressed, and a bit surprised if he was honest. “Really? That’s great, Jess.”

     “Yeah, apparently they try to get volleyball players like me when we’re still in middle school, so they can give us like, extra specialized training. Like they have this whole private club and stuff, and have meets all over California, and a lot of the girls go on to compete in nationals and even the Olympics and stuff.”

     “Jessie that’s wonderful!” he exclaimed. “I’m so proud of you.”

     “Well I’ve got you to thank too,” she boasted. “I played so well last night because you came to watch me and I wanted to show off. So I guess you’ll have to come to more matches from now on.”

     Marcus shrugged, “I guess so. Glad I could help.”

     They pulled into the garage after arriving back home later, and Marcus opened up the trunk for them to bring their things into the house. He glanced at Paris’ sleeping bag as they all shuffled into the house, and remembered what Jessie had said earlier at lunch about wanting to invite ‘a couple friends.’ Presumably, more than just Paris. He figured it’d be Harper, or maybe Camila was coming over later. “Hey, were you gonna invite anyone else here tonight?” he asked. “I thought you had said it’d be more than just the two of you.”

     “Yeah, I think—“ Jessie started to say, before she was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. “Oh, that’s probably her!” She threw her bag down and ran over to the front door, swinging it wide open to greet her other guest for the evening. Except it wasn’t the neighborhood girl, or her quirky little friend from lunch. The girl at the door smiled, greeting Marcus’ daughter and giving her a hug. And then she looked his way, and her smile lit up even more after seeing his shocked expression.

     It was Veronica.