Peter took a couple of slow breaths as he set his pre-calc book in its proper place within his locker.
Today’s the day, he told himself as he slammed the locker door shut.
Peter was quite familiar with the hallowed halls of Rutherford B. Abrams Preparatory Academy, the top private junior high school in the state of Washington. So it was easy for him to ignore the feeling of déjà vu as his worn sneakers squeaked against the pristine white luxury vinyl tile.
Every other tile was adorned with the school’s crest: An orange elephant treading on a green cobra. The Hebrew words “Hakol Beseder B'Eli Haseder” were written across a white bordered banner flying above the creepy scene.
The early morning sunlight shined down through the high ceiling windows at an extreme angle, giving each tile and every crest an almost ethereal yellow glow. As Peter walked past seemingly endless rows of black lockers lining the cool blue embossed fiberglass reinforced plastic walls, he gave himself one last lookover before the moment of truth.
The surprise of what he saw stopped him cold. Gone was his uniform, replaced with the tattered gray collared shirt and torn-up jeans he had been wearing at the shelter.
Wait, the shelter? Peter asked himself.
He vaguely remembered the place and that something was happening there, but he shrugged the nagging thoughts off. He wouldn’t let anything distract him this time. He was going to finally suck it up and just do it.
Peter was about to ask out his dream girl, and nothing was going to stop him.
The halls were curiously empty as he resumed his march toward destiny. He was off to see Isabella de Amoros’s locker, or Bella, as she preferred to be called these days. She was by far the prettiest girl at that school, and it was even worth putting up with that insufferable clique of mean girls she associated with just to have the chance to talk to her.
Peter found her as soon as he rounded the next corner.
Her right pitch-black Mary Jane shoe tapped against the floor impatiently, jiggling the white-stocking-covered flesh of her silky long legs ever so slightly. Her arms were crossed just beneath her breasts, protruding her generous chest outward against the navy blue jacket and button-down undershirt of her school uniform, her matching blue skirt swaying slightly with the tiniest shimmy of her hips.
Bella’s face, made all the more visible by her brunette locks being pulled back in a simple, yet dignified ponytail, was dressed in annoyance.
“It’s about time you showed up,” she sneered. “I’ve been waiting for this all morning.”
Despite the meanness in Bella’s tone, the melodic lilt of her accent was intoxicating to Peter. It was a sweet inflection that could only come from a bilingual speaker whose mother tongue was Spanish. It wasn’t thick, but it was there, a molasses-like treat to his ears to greedily gobble up.
But as he looked her over, he realized this was wrong. The girl in front of him was supposed to be in junior high, but she looked at least five years older than he was expecting. She was filled out and mature, at least in the physical sense. She was even taller than he remembered.
This looked more like the Bella who ripped the roof off his house than the one Peter shared second-period chem II with every morning.
Hold on. The roof?
What was he thinking? No part of that made any sense to him, so, again, he pushed it from his mind.
“O-oh,” Peter responded, his nerves playing with his vocal cords. “You were waiting for me?”
His question was met with an irritated sigh and a roll of her vibrant greenish-brown irises that drove him wild.
“Duh,” Bella answered.
She took her eyes off Peter, no longer paying him any attention. Lifting her right hand to about six inches in front of the tip of her cute nose, its palm turned toward her face. She curled her slender fingers with effortless grace and displayed her jelly-pink-polished fingernails in front of her disinterested eyes, seemingly finding the paint job on her well-manicured nails slightly more interesting than whatever the nerd in front of her had to say.
“Look, the first time you did this you just went on and on, and it was. Just. So. Annoying,” Bella said, still not paying him any attention. “So why don’t we just get to the good part, so I don’t have to waste anymore breath on a pathetic little loser like you than I have to.”
First time? Peter questioned internally. But this is the fir—
A weird, warm tingly feeling spread through his body, an unsettling mixture of unpleasantness and exhilaration, silencing his thoughts. He closed his eyes, unsure if he was trying to shut out the sensation or hold onto it for as long as possible.
When the feeling subsided, Peter's eyes popped open, taking a few seconds to adjust to the blinding light surrounding them. Had it always been that bright? But as his vision came back into focus, a different problem made itself apparent.
He had been staring straight ahead into Bella’s eyes before, but now he had to look up to see the underside of her chin! A quick glance down at himself revealed that his clothes had shrunk with him, giving him a very brief moment of relief. His feet took a few steps backward across the decorative tiled flooring as he looked up at her.
“There we go,” she said softly.
Bella finally tilted her head down to face him, a smug smirk spread across her crimson-glossed lips.
“Wha-what’s happening?” Peter asked with a tremble in his voice.
Bella’s vicious giggle filled the air around him, threatening to swallow him alive.
“God, I forgot how much of a clueless dork you are,” she said. “Didn’t you get a scholarship to go here? I didn’t realize being a disgusting perv was a hardship.”
This time Peter kept his eyes open as the warmth overtook his senses once again. He actually saw Bella rising, or rather, himself descending as he fought conflicting urges inside him.
It was almost as though he was going down on the world’s slowest elevator, his line of sight falling past the shred of cleavage peeking through the opening of her uniform jacket. And he could only watch as her nipples, which seemed to visibly poke out through both layers of clothing rose above him, leaving him to follow the curvature of the bottoms of her breasts as he continued to shrink.
This time, Peter saw the light shining through the windows above turn brighter, making it hard to see the walls and lockers surrounding him. In fact, it was getting harder to make out anything except for Bella, who stood out from the yellowish-white haze enveloping everything around them.
Finally, Peter’s height-loss leveled off, her exposed bellybutton staring right at him. Her jacket was nowhere to be found, and her button-down shirt was now tied off at the bottom, leaving her flat tummy out in the open.
Wait, when did she do that? he wondered in a haze.
“Look. At. You.” Bella demanded his attention once more. “This is so much better than listening to you not shut up about Professor Terrible’s Musical Blog or whatever, like last time.”
Peter shook his head.
“It’s actually Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Alon—”
As Peter spoke, Bella took a casual step toward him, cutting the distance between them.
“Ugh! No one cares!” she cut him off. “Who wants to hear you obsess over some stupid show that no one’s ever heard of? Not I, said the pretty girl.”
Bella went on the move again. Peter’s gaze was drawn to those undeniable legs, each nearly as tall as he was, as she took a step toward his right side with her hands folded behind her back. She kept going, starting to walk a circle around him as he watched muscles of her thighs tantalizingly flex and relax with each step, his upper half twisting to follow their trail for as long as it could.
He pulled his eyes off those slim, sexy limbs just long enough to look up and see her staring down at him as she made her way around him, a mischievous grin on her face. The clack of her Mary Jane heels against the flooring rattled in his ears, sounding louder than he thought they should.
“I still can’t believe you actually thought bringing that up was a good idea when you actually tried this,” Bella said with a mean-spirited chuckle. “Only someone as dense and rizzless as you would think that talking to a girl about your favorite nerd show is a good way to ask her out.”
Just as she completed her round of his puny body, that confusing sensation struck Peter yet again. Her words were starting to become physically painful now, but part of him begged for more, getting a thrill out of the attention she was giving him. As the feeling shot through every nerve ending in his body, he felt himself starting to get hard.
The shrinking was picking up steam, and he quickly found himself sinking below the hem of Bella’s skirt as she turned to face him once more. She leaned over him, hands still behind her back, as she watched him diminish further and further with that gorgeous smile taunting him from so far above.
Peter chose to look straight ahead, however, his secret enjoyment at the sight of her white-clad upper leg shooting overhead distracting him from his growing fear over his increasingly dire situation. That distraction lasted until he was stuck staring at her kneecaps, the sensation finally fading away.
The natural lighting predictably became even brighter, rendering the entire hallway practically invisible, as though it had faded away and was replaced by the ivory backdrop of pure light. Only Bella and he remained.
“Hmmm,” she said, looking down at him as she put the pad of her right index finger on her lower lip. “Still too big. Maybe you’re just too dumb to realize I’m trashing you?”
Bella’s right leg shot out directly for Peter. Her shin connected with Peter’s stomach and chest, knocking the wind out of him as he fell on his ass. As he stared back up at her, he saw that her eyes weren’t focused on his face but were drifting down to his crotch instead.
“Ew! Are you getting off on this?!” she said with a disgusted expression. “What a gross little bug you are!”
The sensation returned once again, having barely left from the last shrinking burst. Despite being on the ground, Peter could tell that he was getting smaller once again by his palms slowly scraping across the floor as his arms supported his dwindling body from his seated position.
As he watched Bella’s body appear to get larger and larger in front of him, her words kept echoing in his head.
Gross little bug.
It hurt Peter to hear her call him that, both emotionally and now physically. But it also made him even more excited. His face was flush, and his cock was fully erect now, aching for some form of relief. He dared not touch it, though. As much as he secretly yearned to be her gross little bug in that moment without inhibition, he wouldn’t disrespect her like that, no matter how much she disrespected him.
Besides, once he finally reached actual bug size, the fear he should have been feeling this whole time finally set in. He sat paralyzed on the floor and awaited his fate at the hands of the goddess so far beyond him.
When the intense feeling finally died down, Peter was only two inches tall, a height that felt oddly familiar to him. Still on his butt, he was too small to see over the toe of her Mary Janes. He couldn’t dwell on that, though, as Bella’s snide giggling interrupted him, echoing like cannon fire raining down from the vast, unending sky.
“That’s better,” her voice cracked like thunder. “Now you’re the size you were always supposed to be. You’re welcome.”
Peter started hearing screams all around him. His breathing labored as it tried to keep up with the blistering pace of his heart, he searched around him for the source, but saw nothing.
“It’s your fault they’re dead. You know that, right?” Bella taunted at a deafening volume. “We would have left everyone else alone if you had just come out of your puny little house. You know, instead of making me tear it apart to get you. Ugh, you’re so annoying!”
Bella’s right foot rose from the ground, taking its time as it drifted toward Peter. He could see bits of dirt and even a couple small pieces of paper dropping from beneath her shoe. He blinked, and it was debris from houses that had carelessly been stepped on that were falling from her sole.
With a shake of his head, the screaming stopped and the wreckage of homes destroyed vanished. Bella’s shoe was still coming after him, though. Her heel slammed into the floor with the force of an earthquake, vibrating his insides with the force of its landing. He tried to crawl away backward, but the bottom of her shoe was just too vast to escape.
“This is what happens when pervy little ants like you ask hot girls like me on a date,” Bella said nonchalantly, her face completely blocked from Peter’s view by her looming foot. “It’s your own fault, really.”
He could only throw his arms over his head in defense as the rest of her massive Mary Jane came crashing down. He screamed in desperation, the closest thing to words he had managed to get out since the beginning of the conversation. The foot made contact with his arms first, then the overwhelming pressure of its weight left him in absolute agony as his body did nothing to stop its momentum.
Before Peter could comprehend what was happening, he was a stain on the bottom of Bella’s school shoe.
And then he wasn’t.
Peter opened his eyes, slowly lowering his arms as he realized he was still alive. His next realization, making his heart sink, was that he was still two inches tall. He shrugged off his despair, however, as his next observation was that he was no longer at the school or within the white haze, but in a new environment entirely.
He recognized the bleak silvery-gray metal floor, walls, and ceiling of the small room he was in, which had a large enough capacity to comfortably hold six people. Its lone door, leading outside the bootleg downsizing machine, hung open right in front of him.
There, standing on the other side of the door, was Bella, now dressed in the same clothes she wore at the shelter, the world behind her too dark for him to decipher. Her hand was still on the machine’s operating lever as she stared down into his eyes and through his soul, her face unreadable. The cruel laughter of her friends, Victoria, Amelia, and Sydney, rang out all around him, despite them remaining unseen.
Bella wasn’t laughing, though.
She took her hand off the lever and took a step inside, the ungodly loud thud of her step amplified by cold, unforgiving steel all around them. The floor quaked slightly with each step, Peter’s panicking mind faintly thankful for the hard floor absorbing most of the impact of her Converses carelessly battering the floor.
He was too scared to move at all this time, too scared to think. All he could do was look up at the woman of his dreams as she approached him, likely intending to squish him flat once again. He quivered in fear as she stopped right in front of him, the sections of her shoes inches away from him.
“You had to know I wasn’t done with you yet, right?” Bella asked with a hint of amusement in her tone. “And I never did get my turn with you back then. So I guess I’ll just take it now this time.”
Before Peter could react, the giantess was already in a crouch, her left hand coming for him. He finally tried to stand, to run, but that only made it easier for her as the shadow of her palm overtook him. Her nails, coated in blood red magnetic polish, curled inward like talons as she snatched him up from behind as soon as he reached his feet.
Bella stood back up as she carried him to her scowling face. His clothes were gone now, though he definitely had them on when she grabbed him. It was only a passing thought for him, however, as the terror of his predicament demanded most of his attention.
“This is what you really want, isn’t it?” she said with far too much confidence to be a question. “As much as you hate me, you’re still into me, aren’t you, little bug?”
Bella brought Peter closer to her face, leaning forward to meet him. Her tongue split her lusciously plush lips, its tip settling under his scrotum. She gave him a long, slow lick up his body, traveling up the shaft of his rock hard cock and over his ill-defined abs and chest before circling his face a few times and pulling away.
“Tell me, Peter,” she demanded. “Tell me you still want me, even after I did this to you. That even five years later, you’re still not over me.”
Bella’s tongue came back for seconds, treating Peter’s body like an ice cream cone. She spent more time on his erection this time, playfully batting it back and forth with her tongue. Just before he felt himself getting ready to cum, she quickly licked the rest of him and withdrew a second time.
“Say it, Peter,” she commanded more harshly this time.
Peter knew she was right. He wanted to hate her with everything he had. But there was a part of him that still wanted this. Wanted her. A part of himself that he was now fighting with as he refused to give her the satisfaction of hearing him admit it, his frustration and stubbornness overriding his fear.
Bella stared daggers at him, clearly annoyed with his lack of compliance.
“Peter?” she called out in a huff. “Peter!”
********
“Peter!”
The rough whispering of his name snapped Peter back to reality. He tried to remove the sense of grogginess in his head with a quick shake, the world around him slowly coming back into focus.
He was no longer in the belly of the downsizing machine that had robbed him of his size. He was, however, still cupped in Bella’s hand right in front of her face, the butt of her palm sticking out to his right and her fingers curling slightly over him to his left. She was looking at him still, only instead of annoyance, her expression was laced with distress.
“Finally!” she said in exasperation. “I didn’t think you’d get so high just off an old sock. Those pheromones are no joke!”
Peter gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyelids tightly shut to deal with even the hushed volume of Bella’s voice from so close a distance. Once he recovered, he noticed the gloomy clouds roaming the skies above. They were standing in an alleyway, as evidenced by the shadows of the large brick buildings on either side of them.
“Pheromones?” he barely managed to ask, still trying to get his bearings about him. “W-what are those?”
Bella took her eyes off Peter for a second, nervously glancing over him at what he assumed was the entrance to the alley.
“Kinda not too worried about explaining that right now,” she said dismissively before looking back down at him. “Where do you live?”
It was then that the full memory of what had happened at the shelter came flooding back into Peter’s brain.
“You tore it apart,” he said as his body shook with fright at the memory.
The agitated look that Bella shot Peter did nothing to quell that growing fear within him.
“Not that home, idiot!” she hissed, cringing a little after feeling his quivering intensify. “I didn’t … I mean that’s not …”
Bella looked straight up and took a deep breath, just glancing around the alley before returning her gaze to Peter.
“Your parents,” she said with a forced calmness. “Where do they live?”
Before Peter realized what he was doing, he had already given Bella the address. Without another word, Bella’s fingers swallowed him whole, closing around his entire form from head to toe. His stomach felt slightly queasy at the force of being hastily lowered from her face. Her fingers opened, and he rolled gently down their length before hitting the bottom of what he knew to be her jacket pocket once again.
It was only as the jostling of her stride tossed him helplessly around inside her pocket that he realized what he had done. The girl who downsized him was now off to see his parents. What could she have planned for them? Could she even possibly do anything to them? Did she want him to watch her destroy their lives somehow as well?
Peter wasn’t even sure why he had given up their address so easily. It just seemed so natural to follow Bella’s order. He didn’t question it at that time. That frightened him almost as much as Bella herself.
********
It was a while before Bella’s fingers came for Peter again.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been waiting there, but he was pretty sure she had gotten on a bus at some point. The shifting of his pocket prison as she sat down, the muffled conversations taking place all around them, and the roar of the vehicle’s engine remaining constant throughout the ride all gave it away.
They had walked a bit further after getting off the bus before Bella reached for Peter, her grabby digits pushing their way into his space and feeling around a bit before the warm pads of her fingertips made contact with his right leg.
Her thumb and forefinger gripped his ankle, but instead of lifting him up, they pulled, inching his body closer to her fingers until she could wrap them around him with only his head sticking out of her fist. She didn’t take him out of the jacket pocket, however, and he felt her hand trembling ever so slightly as three booming knocks were barely muffled by the jacket.
The sound of a door opening followed by indiscernible conversation made it to Peter’s ears, his body absorbing a sheen of sweat forming on Bella’s palm as her fingers absently pressed him into it. Then, he was being taken out of the pocket, rising toward the grayish daylight marking its exit.
“What I’m trying to say is,” she said, giving an anxious sigh, “I have your son right here.”
Bella raised Peter just above chest level, opening her fist and flattening her palm to present him to whoever she was talking to. He rolled just a little bit along the breast of her palm, stopping on his back just short of the base of her fingers. So he didn’t have to tilt his head to see a familiar feminine face staring back at him.
His mother’s dirty blond locks draped over her face as she tilted her head to look down at him. A sudden feeling of happiness welled up inside him. For the first time in five years, he was looking at his mother. She was right there! He had no idea what Bella was scheming, but it didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered.
Peter was finally home.
He started doing snow angels on Bella’s palm, not caring in the least how ridiculous he must have looked. The friction of his limbs rubbing over the smooth, pliable skin of her palm, generating a gentle heat all over his body, was such a delightful sensation, only adding to his giddiness.
Peter was overcome with emotion. So overcome, in fact, that he failed to notice the uncertain look on the face of the woman who gave birth to him.
“I’m sorry, miss, but that’s not my son,” the woman said, opening her front door just a little bit more and pointing inside. “That’s my son.”
Peter sat up, dumbfounded at his mother’s words, which hadn’t fully sunk in yet. His eyes followed the trail his mother’s finger set them on, looking into his old living room to see his father playing with a toddler-aged child, only two or three years old by the look of it. He was vaguely aware of Bella’s chin hovering directly over him as she leaned forward to peek inside as well.
“You’re not Peter’s mom?” she asked in an almost accusatory tone. “He gave me this address.”
Bella’s hand elevated higher, putting Peter close enough to his mother’s face that he could almost touch the tip of her nose if he were to stand at the tip of Bella’s fingers.
“I, uh … Well …” the woman tried to speak, clearly unsure what to say.
Peter stood up and walked down the stretching length of Bella’s middle finger, stopping just before she would have had to go cross-eyed to see him.
“Come on, Mom,” he said, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. “I’ve been waiting five years to get back here. I went to bed so many nights crying my eyes out that we never even got to say goodbye and praying that I’d get the chance to talk to Dad and you just one more time. It’s been the same for you guys, right?”
Peter’s
mother looked away from him, a hint of sadness and guilt in her eyes.
That expression morphed into one of irritation as she turned back
toward the inside of the house.
“Gerald!
she shouted, causing Peter’s father to turn his head toward her.
“Didn’t you say we were all paid up with that oriental girl?”
Oriental girl? Peter wondered. Are they talking about Millie? And are my parents racist?
“Yeah, we made the last payment a few years ago,” Gerald replied. “She said we were all squared up. What’s this about, Helen?”
That’s when realization hit hard. For years, he had begged Millie to let him reach out to his parents. He assured the caretaker that they would pay for his return if that was why she always turned him down. He hated her for keeping him away from his parents. Only now did he begin to realize that his parents had been paying her to keep him away from them this whole time!
Peter started to feel numb as his mother reassured his father that everything was fine. Then Helen turned her attention back to Bella, looking right over her own son without even bothering to try to answer his question.
“You go back to your boss and tell her that she’s not getting another penny out of us!” Helen yelled while pointing a finger at Bella, seemingly without care for her downsized son, who was covering his ears in a weak effort to shut out the pain caused by the loudness of her voice. “And how dare you bring him here to try to guilt trip us like this! We already used the rest of the settlement money getting ready for our real family. There’s nothing left for her to take!”
As Helen continued to rant at Bella, the younger girl pulled him toward her chest. Her free hand hovered over Peter before gently falling on top of him. Bella’s left palm covered him like a dome, allowing him just enough room to stand. The destructive sound of his mother’s voice was suppressed by the soft, lotion-scented flesh of Bella’s hand.
He found it surprisingly comfortable caged between her hands like that.
When Helen finally quieted down, Peter pushed as hard as he could on the warm, living roof over his head, trying to push it away. He felt a bit of pride as it started to rise, thinking he’d succeeded. But once the hand was lifted well beyond his reach, he realized that Bella had just removed it for him, hurting his pride a bit.
“You guys are the ones that put me in that shelter?” he asked Helen, unable to keep the hurt out of his voice. “Why would you do that to me?”
Peter had always assumed that it was the DPS who had hidden him away at Hester’s Hideaway, that his parents had never been told where he was taken after the police caught the four girls trading him off every couple days like a shared class pet. He was struggling to understand why his parents would just give him up like that, without even explaining why.
Helen frowned at Peter, a sympathetic look that he would classify as one part real, two parts for show, as she leaned down to address her son face-to-face.
“Peter, honey, we’re a human family,” she explained. “Downsizers and humans don’t belong together. You guys have your own communities. We just sent you to live in one of those … with your own kind.”
Peter stared back at her in disbelief.
“Mom, those communities are for registered downsizers,” he said, not even wanting to address the sizeist component of her words. “I’m not registered. They won’t let me into those. The place you sent me to doesn’t even have running water or electricity. I’ve been using an outhouse for five years!”
Helen stood back up to her full height, rubbing the back of her neck nervously.
“I’m sure you’re just exaggerating,” she said, sounding unsure. “There are plenty of other downsizers living there too, right? So I’m sure things can’t be that bad. Maybe that’s just how it is everywhere for you guys.”
Peter’s anger and frustration at his mother’s ignorance and bigotry were serving as a great distraction from the crippling depression that was getting harder and harder for him to hold at bay.
“They tried to kill me!” he screamed up at her. “The girls that did this to me! They came to the shelter. It sounds like they paid the caretaker off to buy me or something. But they killed a bunch of downsizers! And they’re looking for me! I need help! Please, mom!”
Helen only shook her head in response.
“That’s impossible. You have to get a permit and permission just to touch a downsizer. Everyone knows that,” she said calmly. “You must have just had a nightmare or something. Humans hurting downsizers just isn’t something that happens. Just go back to your shelter and let’s get back to the way things were. It was working out just fine before.”
Peter couldn’t believe this was happening. He had finally made it home again, only for his own mother to send him back to die in that stupid shelter. His father was in on it, too. They were the ones who did this to him, and they didn’t even feel the least bit guilty! Did they really not see him as their son anymore just because he was downsized against his will?
The thought nearly crippled him. He collapsed onto Bella’s palm as the agonizing pain of his family rejecting him truly started to set in. Before it could overwhelm him, however, he became worried as the supple ground beneath him refused to stay steady.
“What’s wrong with you?” Bella’s voice, barely above a whisper, quavered as she spoke.
Helen focused on Bella, looking unsure of herself and not saying a word in response.
“This is your son!” Bella’s voice raised to meet the aggression of her tone. “Your family! How could you just … just turn your back on him like that?!”
She kept her eyes on Helen as her free hand zeroed in on Peter’s position once more. It covered him much like it had before, only this time her fingers parted a little like the bars in a prison cell, just enough for him to look between them.
“You don’t get to just start again and have a ‘real’ family,” Bella sneered. “People don’t choose family! Peter’s just as much your kid as your other son, no matter how much you say he’s not!”
Helen opened her mouth to speak, but Bella cut her off before she could even get started.
“You gave birth to him, right?” Bella asked with a tinge of raw emotion. “Who helped him out with his homework when he needed it? Taught him how to ride a bike? Held his hand the first time he crossed the street? Told him everything was gonna be okay whenever he was sad? That was you! You’re his familia! That’s real!”
Peter could see his mother’s face fill with shame with each word Bella spoke.
“And what? You’re just gonna throw all that away because he’s tiny now?!” Bella continued, her anger rising with her voice. “Why?! Why does that change anything?! Why does that make Peter any less your son than before this … this happened to him?”
Bella’s words softened as she worked her way through that last question. Looking out at his mother, Peter could see her lips curl up in a slight smirk, any trace of guilt from before now absent. He knew that haughty expression. He’d seen it several times growing up, pretty much every time she was about to win an argument with him, typically by twisting his words.
“Well, first of all, I don’t know why you would think I spoke Spanish, but I don’t, so I don’t know what a familia is,” Helen said smugly. “As for Peter, you’re just too young to understand. They fill your head with all this nonsense at school, I’m sure, but things are different now that—”
But Bella cut in before Helen could finish whatever talking point she was about to make.
“Nope! No one wants to listen to your sizeist crap!” she said through gritted teeth.
An indignant look washed over Helen’s face.
“Did you just call me a siz—”
Again, Bella didn’t give Helen the chance to finish.
“A sizeist? Yeah, I did,” Bella said. “It’s nicer than a heartless old hag like you deserves. Y’know, honestly? I feel bad for your ‘new’ son, too, having to put up with you as he grows up.”
Peter turned around and looked through the cracks of her fingers on the other side of his living canopy, ignoring the sauna-like heat generated from her two hands completely enclosing him. He could just make out Bella’s eyes, almost flaming green rings surrounding the intense brown cores of irises blazing with anger as they stared directly into his mother’s soul.
“What? You think you’re not gonna be a crap mom this time?” Bella scoffed. “Because you were clearly a crap mom the first time, despite how Peter turned out. And now here you are, throwing your oldest kid on the street; you know, the one you got rid of when things got kinda tough.”
Bella’s eyes narrowed in judgment.
“You’ll bail on your other son, too,” Bella lowered her voice again, her tone calm but carrying an edge. “As soon as something bad happens, he won’t have any parents, either. Actually, with the crap job you’d do, he’d probably be better off that way.”
Without warning, Bella’s left hand hastily lifted away from Peter, leaving him fully exposed in the palm of her right. He twisted his body as he tracked the hand through the air. With frightening speed, Bella struck Helen hard across her right cheek, a terrifying thunderclap announcing the blow.
“Real family,” Bella growled as she withdrew her hand. “No sabes lo que es eso.”
She pivoted on her heels, turning away from Peter’s former home. Just before her fingers closed around him yet again, he caught one last glimpse at the woman he used to call his mother. She was rubbing the spot Bella had slapped, a red handprint already visible on her cheek and a stunned, distant look on her face.
And then he was once again shrouded in the muggy darkness of Bella’s grasp. She slipped him back into her pocket and left him to his thoughts as her hand made its exit.
What just happened? Peter asked himself.
As much as he wanted to sulk over his parents rejecting him, the uncertainty of his current situation demanded too much of his attention. He now had no idea where Bella was taking him, and that thought terrified him.
Doing his best to keep from being bounced around within the jacket pocket of the seemingly uncaring giant, Peter reflected on her confrontation with his mother. It had looked as though she had stood up for him, and he truly wanted to believe that. But could that have been her real motivation?
After all, this was the same girl who tricked him and downsized him, condemning him to a life of constant suffering and shame. The same girl who showed up at his former home with her three friends and stood by and watched as they murdered innocent people just because of their size. The same girl who kidnapped him, destroying his house in the process.
And it’s not like she hadn’t manipulated Peter before.
Actually, where is the rest of her clique? he asked himself. Why aren’t they here, too? Did she just leave them at the shelter to keep having their fun while she just fucked with me?
But then, a more horrifying thought popped in Peter’s brain:
If her original plan was to leave me with my parents, what is she going to do with me now?
The thought was interrupted as the jostling within the pocket picked up in intensity. This was a new kind of movement from Bella, Peter realized as he clung for dear life to the closest wall of fabric, his fingers gripping as tightly as possible as the rest of him roughly tumbled about.
When it was finally over, she reached in and pulled him back out into the world. When her hand opened, he saw that they were inside an old, rundown building, the gloomy clouds outside illuminating the building through dingy windows. Scant office furniture was scattered about, but the faded white walls and random pieces of debris lay all over the floor.
And not a soul in sight.
As Bella lifted him up before her unreadable face, he recognized that they were totally alone, him an unregistered, unprotected downsizer, and her, the girl who made him that way on a simple whim, because she and her friends thought it would be funny.
And all he could do was try to keep his body from trembling too much as he awaited her decision about what she would do with him.