After having little success with the ladies, a young college student is shrunken by his attractive but mature boss, who is looking for a serious relationship to fill a void in her life that she desperately needs filled….
I first read this story months ago, and I came back to read it again and add it to my favorites, and now I'm reading it again. I love the relationship and the dialogue, but the action is the best. I have both of them perfectly in mind. Thanks for all the faps.
A nice guy in a frustrating situation has his world suddenly turned upside-down. Through an accident of circumstance, he gets to experience much more of his beautiful assistant than he could ever have imagined. The desires and ambitions of more than one person, however, might influence his fate.
I enjoyed this story greatly when I first read it months ago, but I neglected to review it then. I just re-read it, and it still hits the spot. The action is wonderfully juicy, one of the better insertion scenes I've read. I particularly enjoyed getting Rosa's side of the encounter.
I also admire the way Tom makes the transition from Rosa's supervisor to her pet. It's tough to find the balance between realistic character reactions and servicing a fantasy, but I was right with Tom every step of the way.
Thanks for writing!
An adventurous teen who just happens to be five inches tall has been stuck in homeschool all his life. When he finally enters public high school and a new world of friends, bullies, and cliques, he quickly discovers challenges even bigger than he could've imagined.
Apology (grudgingly) accepted.
Thanks for reading!
Sharon should be in AP Calculus, so finely has she derived the angles of faux concern necessary to manipulate anyone who tries to thwart her.
She definitely has the skills integral to deriving whatever she wants.
Quick, someone make a Deviantart.com account for Mandy, then send the link to Sharon.
Mandy is nothing if not deviant.
Oh, well done! Ms. Tritter's face settling on Peter like his own personal sunrise. Creamy, indeed.
Who wouldn't want to wake up to that?
Erica stepping up reminds me that I still want to hear more about Dad.
We will hear more about Dad eventually. It's being held off for a reason. ;)
It sounds old-fashioned, but Mr. & Mrs. Carol could really use a full and frank exchange with Suzanne. It's not fair, but friends and family of people with disabilities are often obliged to educate others on how to accommodate them. Also, I think that Suzanne--after hearing Mr. Carol's aspersions--would become much more supportive of Peter when he tries to venture farther out beyond her care.
But yeah, Sharon's not the first bully Lisa's had to deal with.
You raise some good points. Part of the point of this chapter was to show other adults in Peter's world who genuinely don't think poorly of him as a person, but also have a healthy estimation of the stakes for Lisa. But you're right that the Carols might benefit from some outside perspectives.
Very nice culmination of events. Particularly effective was Peter's inner narrative intertwined with the hints of Lisa's emotional states as signaled by her body/facial-language. This allowed the dramatic exchange to carry the reader towards the embrace with the wavering, hesitant pace of two same-sized actors in a fraught scene rather than dwelling on the fact that Lisa was in complete control of just how close Peter came (or didn't come) to her. Even if the scene and the dialogue called for Peter to physically embrace Lisa, she alone determined their proximity; if she deflated or let her arms relax or otherwise held him distant, he couldn't force the issue. But since we were so caught up in their emotional exchange, their embrace seemed mutual rather than unilateral.
And that, my friends, is authentic characterization.
Thanks very much, and I'm glad someone picked up on this. I always love when other macro stories have an echo of how the scene would play if everyone was more equal-sized. In this case, Peter has to lean forward a bit, but Lisa is still completely in control of distance.
Something tells me that Erica just got a big bullseye painted on her back.
May be true, but Erica also has the benefit of being too tall to be picked up, unlike someone else with a target on his back
This is like watching JFK's motorcade leaving Dallas Love Field.
Definitely one way to put it
Sharon picked her patsy well.
Gotta say, you always do a great job keeping the size difference immediate without getting stale. Just about everyone who talks to Peter has to loom over him, and while he might be used to it by now, we're not (and I'm not sure I want to be). But even when Mandy rests her head almost on the table, her menace is in no way diminished.
Such is her instability, I thought she'd punctuate the conversation by smashing her clay-Peter flat. That she didn't should have been all the clue we needed that she was up to something.
Thanks! This is a story much lighter on the kind of 'action' my other stories have, so I try to focus more on the subtler moments like the image of everyone just standing around above Peter.
SpookyTaco, I'm betting Mandy is a cut-out, one with a well-established credibility problem. The question is not who saw Mandy grab Peter, but who saw Sharon talking to Mandy. If anyone can take on the Jack Ruby role in this, it's Amy.
You're right that the teachers would believe Peter and his friends over Mandy any day. The real solution will be found elsewhere.
I always love a good toilet scare. As nutty as she is, Mandy doesn't seem to have the necessary fiendishness to properly elaborate the threat.
Clearly, Peter's not going to tell Suzanne about this. Will he even tell Erica?
You're right that Mandy's probably more complicated than being a straight-up murderer. But there's still plenty of reason to fear her
Unfortunately, whether or not Peter wants to tell Suzanne is probably irrelevant; there were too many witnesses
This was nothing like an apology from Sharon, but neither was this most recent bout of menacing up to her usual calculating standards. I can't escape the conclusion that Sharon didn't expect Mandy to try to kill Peter, and her own complicity (and lack of foresight) in Mandy's assault bothers Sharon on a level she can't quite access. She can't own up to it, of course, to Peter or to anyone else. I can't remember if Amy or Kimmy are also in Peter's English class, but Sharon seems to have dismissed her coterie while she collects herself. Insisting on her superiority, she reflexively contrasts her care of Peter both with Mandy's callousness and Lisa's negligence, with no other apparent goal than to reassure herself. Feeling on the defensive, she ends the encounter with a derisive barb at the most visible instance of Peter's popularity.
I've lost sight of Sharon's preferred endgame, and perhaps she's shaky on it now, too.
Thanks for reviewing! Neither Amy nor Kimmy are in English with them, so it's just Peter and Sharon alone there. I won't spoil what's coming, but I will say that you're onto something about Sharon being thrown off her normal center of absolute control
Mandy frowned, processing the sudden re-emergence of Peter’s hardiness. Had to read that one twice.
Excellent rising tension. Peter's been through so many perils and survived, it's difficult to keep the menace immediate, but Mandy's "nobody's little bitch" zeal is genuinely terrifying. Stabbing the airholes with Peter in the jar is an image that will stay with me for a long time. It's gonna be fun in the morning when Mandy discovers she forgot to let him use the outhouse before bed.
I can see there being a double misreading on that one.
This is definitely meant to be a high point for the stakes in Peter's life. And he's definitely going to need to use the bathroom.
He's gonna hafta apologize and ask to see the movie with her. And he has to mean it.
At this point, good acting may or may not even make a difference
I'm less confident than before about my ability to predict where this is going, but the humiliation in this chapter is so exquisite (and potentially public) that I cannot help but suspect that Mandy got some coaching.
Sharon share alike....
(Love this chapter. That photo is going to haunt Peter for decades, no matter how this turns out.)
So Mandy's clever enough to set up tests to see if Peter is trustworthy, but she's surprised when Peter turns out to be as fragile as Sparky. What a messed-up kid.
The wrenching thing here is that Peter's best option is probably to play up his helplessness, perhaps even exaggerate his injuries. I just hope his internal-Erica monologue won't prevent him from seizing the only way to manipulate Mandy. Even if it works, he'll feel like a deceiver. (Bonus self-doubt: he'll worry that no matter what he achieves later, he'll always be tempted to fall back into "wounded bird" mode.)
Mandy's all about unwinnable scenarios that she may not even acknowledge as unwinnable herself.
A tough concept to swallow. Don't go there, Peter.
This has been worth the wait. I hope Mandy wasn't bluffing about making movies.
I hoped someone would groan at that. And she most definitely is not bluffing.