Downsizing: The Privileged and The Powerless by ItWasMe

“You okay?” Bella asked, her voice surprisingly quiet.

Peter didn’t understand the question. Or maybe it was more accurate to say he didn’t understand the intent behind it. As he stood there in her palm, the two of them hidden away inside a local office building left to time’s reckless care, her seemingly innocent words did little to alleviate his concerns over what she might do with him now that they were so completely and totally alone.

The radiance of Bella’s brown-green eyes was on full display as they zeroed in on him expectantly. A minute of nervous silence was his only answer, however. The features on her beautiful face softened as she continued to study him.

“Your mom, I-I don’t even know what to say about all that,” she practically whispered. “You know all that stuff she said is wrong, right? God, the only thing keeping me from punching her in her stupid face was holding you.”

Bella closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Peter’s head was level with the tip of her nose; he could feel the suction tugging on his clothes as her lips pursed and began to draw in air. Her exhale blasted him with enough force to make him take a couple involuntary steps back, his heels digging a little deeper into the pliable flesh of her palm as he finally held himself in place.

That minty quality her breath had was something he found quite refreshing, though.

“Sorry, I’m getting myself worked up again,” Bella said as her eyes popped back open. “But you know you didn’t deserve that, right? And if you need to talk about that old harpy, I’m here.”

She sounded so sincere. Peter really wanted to believe her. He hadn’t even begun to truly process his feelings at his own parents rejecting him, and talking it out with someone might have been just what he needed at that moment.

But he had been fooled before. By Bella, specifically. That’s how he ended up downsized in the first place, after all. So whatever game she was playing here, he wasn’t having it. As terrified as he was being at her mercy, he could at least accept the inevitable and go out like the man he wished he would have become.

“And then what?” Peter finally spoke, taking a moment to swallow his fear before continuing. “Can you just stop messing with me for once and just do whatever it is you’re going to do to me?”

Bella gently raised him up to her widened eyes, each one almost half as tall as he was.

“What?” she questioned. “I’m not gonna … I mean, what do you even think I …”

Peter assumed that Bella already knew the answer as her words died in her throat, but if these were going to be his last moments, he was going to take charge of the conversation in what little ways he could.

“Because the last time you took me to an abandoned building, it didn’t work out so well for me,” he answered her unfinished question, motioning up and down his body with both hands. “So the least you could do is not lie to me this time and stop pretending to care. You owe me that, at least.”

Peter noticed a look of shame cross Bella’s face just before she lowered her head, the force of her casual movement generating a light breeze for him.

“I owe you a lot more than that,” she said with a tinge of sadness.

Peter sighed as he looked away from the crown of Bella’s head, ignoring the luscious chestnut strands messily scattered in all directions around it. As much as his brain told him to be skeptical, his heart believed the sincerity of her words. There was just something in her tone that struck him as heartfelt.

“If you’re not going to do something else to me this time, why are we here?” he asked, trying but failing to keep a slight edge out of his voice.

Bella raised her head, her eyes sparkling with just a touch of wetness threatening to leak from each one. Her face scrunched cutely into a confused expression.

“To make sure the DPS doesn’t see me with you,” she said as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Didn’t they tell you about us?”

Peter shook his head. He had no idea what she was talking about.

“After the cops caught us, the DPS showed up. They were pretty pissed, I guess, because they like to deal with crap like this themselves, and the cops being involved left a paper trail,” Bella explained, shuttering at the thought of what that implied. “They ended up cutting a deal with us: If we agreed to quietly plea out and not make a big thing out of … what happened, then we’d only have to stay in juvie until we turned 18, and then we’d be done. And the court said they’d seal our case forever.”

A surge of anger flowed through Peter as naturally as the blood in his veins. Victoria, Amelia, Sydney, and Bella were all the same age that he was when they downsized him.

Five years, he thought. I lost my entire life, everything! And those spoiled rich girls only got five years?!

“Oh, and once I got out, a DPS agent was waiting for me at home. He told me to stay away from all things downsizing,” Bella explained. “I’m not allowed to downsize, and I can’t get anywhere near a downsizer. He called it my ‘parole’ and said he’d be keeping an eye on me. That’s why I took you here and why I didn’t say much to you before. He kinda freaked me out. Sorry for calling you an idiot earlier, by the way. That was just the stress talking.”

Peter nodded but barely registered what she was saying, too busy dwelling on how easily the girls got off for what they did to him.

“Anyway, Sydney was the youngest, so she just got out last week,” Bella said. “She kinda snapped, I guess? I don’t know what happened to her, but she blames you for being stuck in juvie. So when Vic said she knew where you were, it didn’t take much for her to get us back together and … come find you.”

Bella tried to continue, but Peter raised his right hand to stop her. He had heard enough. This whole time he had been blaming himself for what happened in the shelter. But really it was these … these brats who were upset because they couldn’t handle the consequences of their own actions. That’s the only reason Brendon and so many others were dead; because a group of mean girls didn’t like getting in trouble for once.

He took a few breaths before he lowered his hand, trying hard to keep his composure.

“So what next?” he asked. “What the heck am I supposed to do now? Mom and Dad were the only family I had, and I obviously can’t go back to the shelter.”

Bella bit her bottom lip as she looked away from Peter.

“I don’t know,” she said with a hint of unsteadiness. “I … I guess I could take you home with me. You know, if you want.”

Peter couldn’t stop himself from scoffing.

“With you?” he said bitterly. “I don’t know what this is, you being nice like this. But I do know that this is all your fault, and the last thing I want to do is let you keep me at your house until you decide that it might be fun to ruin my life. Again.”

Bella cringed at Peter’s words. It didn’t take her long to recover, however, a look of determination etching itself onto her face.

“Look, I get that, alright?” she said. “But you don’t exactly have a lot of choices. It’s pretty much either me or going it alone. So what’s it gonna be?”

The ride down to the floor was so smooth it actually took a second for Peter to realize that Bella was lowering her hand. She was so smooth yet deliberate in the way she handled him, certainly better than Millie was the few times she had picked him up.

In a matter of seconds, her hand was hovering just a few inches above the floor, not quite twice his own height. It was a doable jump, and one he didn’t hesitate to make, proving too stubborn to put too much thought into the decision.

Peter’s feet never hit the ground, however.

Midway down, he was encased entirely in the familiar dark warmth of Bella’s fist. She held him loosely within her closed fingers, so he had room to move his limbs. He hated to admit it, but he found a comfort in her grip that he hadn’t felt since being downsized. Subconsciously, he felt safe in her hand, no matter what his rational mind tried to tell him about the girl who had him in her literal clutches.

When the fingers surrounding Peter opened again, he was back in front of Bella’s face, which wore a stern expression. He hadn’t even felt her lifting him up this time. Her left hand had snatched and elevated him the length of her body before he could even begin to perceive the gravitational forces of shooting up the height of a building in a matter of seconds. He couldn’t help but be impressed.

“Oh my God!” she whined, still keeping her voice down. “You were really gonna go try to rough it on your own. A downsizer wouldn’t last a day on their own out there! What are you … Ugh! Is staying with me really that bad a thing?”

Peter’s hands balled up into fists at his sides.

“Yes!” he yelled. “You downsized me! Maybe I need to actually say it for you to get it! I. Can’t. Trust. You. No matter how nice you are to me now, no matter how much you tell off my sizeist mom, no matter how much you pretend to care—none of that changes what you did! And now you—”

“I didn’t know, okay?!”

The resounding echo bouncing around in Peter’s ears served as a reminder of the awesome power of Bella’s voice when she chose not to temper it.

“I didn’t know,” she repeated, this time at a volume low even by downsizer standards.

Peter tried to look Bella in the eye, but she refused to meet his gaze, looking away instead.

“You didn’t know?” he asked. “What does that mean?”

Bella took a minute to collect herself, then turned back to face Peter, her eyes alight with sorrow.

“You remember when you asked me out that one time and I … turned you down?” she asked, wincing at the last few words of the question. “After that, the girls said that I needed to scare you off so you’d stop bothering us. Vic told us she knew where to find a decommissioned downsizing machine. The girls said we could use it to freak you out, that you wouldn’t talk to us again if we made you think we were about to downsize you.”

Bella choked back a light sob, holding back tears as she hesitated a moment before getting back to her story.

“That’s why I told you to meet me there. You already know that part,” she said. “B-but they told me the machine didn’t work anymore. I swear, Peter, I’d have never done it if I knew it was going to downsize you for real. They just told me to pull the lever, and then you wouldn’t be a problem anymore. I didn’t know! Peter, I’m … I’m so sor—”

“Don’t!” Peter interrupted, practically screaming at the top of his lungs.

He took two steps across her malleable palm toward her face, his rage finally overflowing.

“Do you think this changes anything?!” he ranted. “Does it give me my size back?! My family back?! How about the last five years of my life?! Do you have any idea how miserable that shelter was? Do you?! I had a shot to make something of myself, become a big shot engineer for NASA or NanoHabitats! Now I don’t even have a high school diploma!”

Peter knew he wasn’t being fair. He knew that Bella didn’t intend for any of this, not doubting her words at all anymore. But he didn’t care. For five long years, he had no choice but to stow his pain away inside himself. Now that it had finally bubbled its way up to the surface, he couldn’t stop himself.

“And I’m unregistered, so I can’t even get inside one of those downsized communities you used to see on TV when I was a kid!” he shouted. “There’s nothing I can do about it, either! Unregistered downsizers never get registered, Bella! I’ll never even be able to get a real job! Or have a family! Or anything! I’m pretty much a leper for the rest of my life! But you didn’t mean to do it and you’re sorry now, so I guess it’s fine!”

Bella’s expression remained stoic throughout Peter’s beratement of her as she just stood there and took it. He had expected her to get pissed or start crying or … or something. The realization that she was letting him vent, allowing him to unload all this pent-up anger and frustration, was finally starting to calm him down a bit.

However, another thought crossed Peter’s mind, riling him up for a whole different reason.

“It’s not like you’re so innocent anyway,” he said, pointing his right index finger right at her. “Even if you didn’t mean to downsize me, you sure didn’t care about your friends killing all those downsizers at the shelter, did you? You just stood there while they tortured, killed, and … a-ate us. In fact, how many did you kill on the way to my house? Or after you put me in your pocket and I … well, whatever happened to me after that happened?”

This time, Peter’s words got a reaction out of Bella. Those tears she had been keeping at bay throughout the conversation finally started flowing freely.

“I didn’t hurt anybody. I was so scared of stepping on somebody that I couldn’t take my eyes off the ground the whole time,” she said. “I-I wanted to save those poor people, but there were three of them, four if that Millie lady would’ve helped them out. They would’ve kicked me out if I tried to stop them, and I … I couldn’t let them do that.”

All the spite and venom left Peter’s body at the sight of Bella crying. He couldn’t stand seeing her like that. He stepped closer to her face, close enough for him to reach out and place his right palm on the tip of her nose.

“Why couldn’t you let them?” he asked, his curiosity completely sincere.

Peter could just make out Bella’s lips curling into a weak smile from his position so close to her face.

“Because I had to save you,” she said. “I did this to you. I wasn’t gonna let them do God knows what to you! I had to get you out of there, and once I had you in my pocket, I told the girls that Vic clearly lied about you being there just so they could … play, so I ’stormed out.’ I thought your family would be happy to see you and that you wouldn’t have to deal with me after that, but here we are!”

Withdrawing his hand, Peter started to process everything Bella had told him. While he was thinking, she pulled her hand back a bit, no longer having to cross her eyes to see him. She looked sad, relieved, nervous, and happy all at the same time somehow. But mostly, she looked gorgeous, even with those tear-stained cheeks.

“Alright, Bella,” he said.

Bella shook her head.

“Izzy,” she said. “I used to love going by Izzy, until they started calling me Bella. I was always too worried about being kicked out of the group to say anything.”

Peter couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his lips. Izzy was such a pretty name.

“Alright, Izzy," he said, “if you’re still offering, I guess staying with you for a while would be better than taking my chances out here.”

Izzy flashed him a smile that nearly melted his heart on the spot.

“Good,” she said. “Thanks for giving me a chance. I know that can’t be easy after what I did.”

There was a moment of awkward silence between the two of them before Izzy finally broke it.

“Um, we can just head that way now if you want,” she said. “This place kinda creeps me out.”

Peter only nodded in response.

“Awesome! I gotta put you back in my pocket, though,” she said as she already started lowering him, only to stop midway down. “How’s the ride in there? It’s not too rough, is it?”

Before he could answer, Izzy lifted him back up to her face, her attention focused solely on him.

“It’s fine,” he said, although apparently not convincing enough, given the skeptical glare she gave him. “I’m getting thrown around a little bit in there, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

Izzy stared at Peter for a few more seconds before deciding that it was okay and lowering him into the opposite jacket pocket from the one she pulled him out of. Her palm tilted just enough for him to slide down the full length of her fingers and land comfortably at the bottom of the pocket. The hand quickly left his new space.

Before they started moving, Izzy’s hand gave him two soft pats from outside the pocket, the warmth of her touch even penetrating through leather. When she started walking, he immediately noticed that his ride was significantly smoother this time. He wasn’t sure how she managed it, but he was silently thankful for the literal change of pace.

The quiet of the abandoned office was soon replaced with uneasy sounds of the much noisier outside world. That didn’t bother Peter, however. Instead, he just enjoyed the gentle sway of the pocket as Izzy made her way home.

And for the first time in five years, Peter had something to look forward to.

********

Izzy stopped just in front of her parents’ front door, her left hand cupping around the barely noticeable bulge in her left jacket pocket

Things hadn’t gone exactly as she had hoped, but Peter was safe. She could tell that he didn’t fully trust her yet, but she knew she had earned every ounce of that distrust. If she was going to help him plan his next move, she’d have to do something about that.

But first, Izzy had to sneak him past her mother.

She took her hand off Peter and took a deep, anxious breath before reaching to open the door with her right hand. She ignored the chill of the knob as she twisted it, bracing herself for the barrage of questions that were sure to come as soon as she set foot inside the house.

“Mom, I’m back!” Izzy called out as she walked in, deciding it was better to initiate herself.

Almost instantaneously, a woman with hair as dark as carbon rushed through the entryway separating the kitchen from the living room.

“You said you would be back by four,” the woman said. “That was over two hours ago. Where have you been?”

She stopped a few feet in front of Izzy, her hands finding a natural perch on her hips.

“The sun’s still out, Mom,” Izzy whined as she had to look upward to meet her taller mother’s glare. “And I’m 18 now, anyway. It’s not like it’d be weird for me to be out at night.”

The stern look on her mother’s face didn’t budge in the slightest.

“Eighteen and still not a woman,” she scoffed. “Or did you forget that we couldn’t throw you your Quinceañera while you were in that … place?”

The woman shook her head, wearing a disappointed expression.

“We both know why they put you there, too,” she said. “So excuse me if I don’t trust my little girl to make good decisions when she’s by herself.”

Izzy lowered her head in shame. She wanted to tell her mother that she was doing something good, making up for her mistake. But she had no idea how the woman would react, so she couldn’t risk it. Not to mention that her mother was well aware that Izzy was to be nowhere near a downsizer now, let alone bringing one home.

“Isabella,” the mother said, her right index finger tilting Izzy’s chin back up to meet her gaze. “You have a good heart, but we’ve already lost so much because of your mistake. You’re going to have to earn our trust back, and breaking the rules like this isn’t the way to do that.”

Izzy nodded, her mother’s finger following along with her chin as it moved up and down.

“Yes, mama,” Izzy said with a hint of sadness. “I’ll do better. I promise.”

The two of them talked for a while longer, with Izzy swallowing down no small amount of guilt as she lied about her whereabouts that afternoon. She said she’d run into an old friend near the park, making sure to emphasize that this friend wasn’t Sydney, Victoria, or Amelia, all three of whom the older woman had never cared for, even before the incident with Peter.

Izzy told her mom that she had lost track of time catching up with this old friend and rushed home as soon as she realized her mistake, even if she thought having to be home so ridiculously early was a bit ridiculous. Her mother scrutinized her, but Izzy was prepared, having every little detail worked out in her mind.

Once her mother was satisfied, Izzy headed up to her room, eager to finally let Peter leave the dark confines of her jacket pocket.

She closed the door behind her, then slipped her left hand into her pocket. Her fingers blindly searched for the tiny boy until her pinkie lightly brushed against his side, a natural smile crossing her lips at the contact. With a quick adjustment of her hand, she carefully pinched his hips between her fingers.

“Sorry for keeping you in there so long,” Izzy said as she removed Peter from the pocket, placing him in the palm of her free hand. “Mom’s been pretty strict since I got back home.”

She walked across the room, mindful of her speed and the steadiness of her hand as she approached her desk. This was her first time moving while holding a downsizer, but she had practiced plenty of times. She had spent so much time studying and perfecting her handling techniques during her time in juvie that she had no doubt that she’d ace her MHIP exam if she were allowed to take it.

“I-it’s fine,” Peter mumbled, looking away as he brushed large chunks of pocket lint from his ratty clothes. “The ride here was better, by the way.”

He still doesn’t trust me, Izzy thought as she lowered her hand to the worn wooden surface of her desk. Of course he doesn’t. Why would he?

She hid her disappointment behind a polite smile.

“Awesome,” Izzy said, his little feet tickling her as he stepped off her fingertips and onto the desk. “Now I know how to walk with you in there, so we should be good from now on.”

She took her jacket off and hung on the back of the chair at her desk, filling the seat right afterward.

Peter nodded absently as he looked around the room with a confused expression on his face. She followed his gaze, taking in the dull pink walls adorned with various art and posters, as well as a full-body mirror near the door. The room wasn’t really anything fancy, but it was undeniably hers.

“Something wrong?” Izzy asked.

Peter shook his head.

“No, I guess I was just expecting something nicer,” he said, his eyes immediately going wide. “That came out wrong. I just thought your room would be fancier, like the other girls’.”

Izzy gave Peter a quizzical look before she realized he was talking about Victoria, Sydney, and Amelia. She cringed as she remembered that each of them had taken him for a couple days before they were caught. It made sense that he assumed that her family was wealthy like all of theirs.

“My family doesn’t have money like that,” she explained. “My parents are working class. Heck, if I hadn’t gotten a full scholarship, they’d have never been able to afford to send me to a fancy school like Abrams.”

Peter winced and rubbed the back of his neck as he looked straight ahead rather than up at her.

“Same here,” he said, sounding a little more relaxed. “And I really wasn’t trashing your room. It’s pretty cool, actually! A lot better than the craphole where I lived for the last five years.”

Realizing that she was the reason Peter’s neck was bothering him, Izzy folded her right hand over her left in front of her on the desk and lowered her chin on top of them. Peter took a surprised step backward as her face suddenly appeared before him, and she silently scolded herself for not moving more slowly.

“Yeah, I didn’t wanna say anything, but that place looked rough,” she said, flashing him a sympathetic look. “Sorry about the whole ripping your roof off thing, by the way. I can’t even imagine how scary that was for you.”

Peter paused before responding, looking a bit unsure of himself.

“It was until it wasn’t,” he said cautiously. “Why did you put a sock in my face?”

Izzy’s face almost involuntarily scrunched with regret.

“I, um, I needed you not to freak out when I found you; didn’t need you getting the other girls’ attention on accident,” she said before a big dopey grin played on her face. “So I grabbed a dirty sock before I left the house and prayed I had pheromones. Turns out I do.”

Taking a step toward Izzy’s face, Peter narrowed his eyes just a bit, barely significant enough for her to even notice at his tiny size.

“Yeah, you said something about pheromones before,” he said. “Do you mean like animal pheromones?”

So Izzy explained how pheromones worked between downsizers and some humans. She told him how certain chemicals realized by humans, primarily through smell, can attract downsizers, driving them into a sexual frenzy if they’re exposed long enough or the chemicals are potent enough. In some cases, especially during early exposures, downsizers have even been known to hallucinate once the pheromones take hold of them.

It was at this point that Peter’s eyes went wide as he recklessly pointed at her.

“That’s why I had that dream about you!” he blurted out before freezing up, seemingly realizing what he had just said aloud.

Izzy could feel the blood rush to her cheeks.

“You were thinking of me when you were …” she trailed off. “What was I doing? I mean, if you don’t mind telling me.”

Peter turned away from her right away, although Izzy caught his embarrassed blush before he could hide it.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said softly. “When a downsizer is under the influence of pheromones, they can’t control what’s going on in their brains. And you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. I was just curious is all.”

Izzy was a lot more than just curious. She was flattered. She was happy. She was … intrigued. She didn’t know why the thought of Peter having some sex-crazed hallucination about her got her so excited, but she was sure that telling him any of this would only make him more embarrassed.

It doesn’t matter anyway, she told herself. There’s no way he’s going to tell m—

“We were back in junior high, but we were older, like we are now,” Peter began. “It was the time I tried to ask you out. I bet you don’t even remember it, but it was a big thing for me.”

Izzy remembered that day better than she wanted to. She remembered how cute she found the nerdy boy finally gathering the courage to ask her out. He had approached her several times, making awkward small talk about classes and the weather before chickening out and running away, and she was kind of proud of him for actually doing it.

She remembered Victoria telling her before to drop that “loser” and to remind him how far above him she was. Victoria was close by that day, and once she could tell that the boy was going to try to date outside his “species,” she made a point to briefly interrupt to compliment Izzy’s sandals. Sandals that Victoria had given to her, along with a lot of the rich girl’s old clothes, to help Izzy “fit in” with the group.

Victoria always complimented Izzy on those clothes when she wanted Izzy to do something that Izzy didn’t want to do, reminding the middle-class girl just how easily Victoria could take away all that she had been given.

Izzy remembered the harsh words she had said to Peter when she shut him down. She had been just as vicious as she had been told to be. She hated the look on his face as she ripped his heart out without mercy, but she had worked so hard and done too much to get in with the popular clique, and she would have done almost anything to make sure she stayed there.

But most of all, she remembered crying herself to sleep that night.

“It was so weird,” Peter continued. “In the dream, you already knew everything I was going to say ,like you remembered it even though it didn’t happen yet. And you kept making fun of me for what I hadn’t even said yet.”

Izzy could feel herself start to tear up again as the memories came flooding back. Why would his brain take him back to that, of all things?

“You were pretty mean about it,” Peter said. “It really left my feelings all mixed up.”

All mixed up? Izzy asked herself. Why would he be confused about that? Why wouldn’t he just—

The answer hit her before she could even finish the question. From what she had read, pheromone-induced hallucinations always have a sexual component to them, even if other emotions push their way into them as well.

Does that mean that part of Peter likes it when I talk down to him? Izzy mused.

She chose not to dwell on that question at the moment, instead deciding to listen as Peter revealed more details of his hallucination. She could tell there were some things he was holding back, probably because they were embarrassing, but she could pretty well fill in the blanks.

“… then I was back in the downsizing machine again, and you were even dressed like you are now,” Peter said. “You walked in and … well, some stuff happened. Then you snapped me out of it.”

Izzy could feel the frown as it formed on her face. While she was flattered by the idea of him being into her even after everything that had happened between them, there were parts of his hallucination that bothered her as well. And nothing made her feel more uneasy than the fact that the downsizing machine had muscled its way in there.

No matter what else he was feeling for her now, even with pheromones enhancing those desires, her betrayal was right there in the middle of it. Could she ever gain his trust? And if she couldn’t, how would she help him figure out what to do next? He had already almost chosen to go it alone in the big world once; would he end up trying to do it again? And if he asked her to abandon him, would she be able to listen?

Stop thinking like that, Izzy chided herself. You can do this. You’ve just gotta earn his trust.

“Did I make things weird?” Peter asked, trying to fill the silence between them. “I-I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Izzy frantically shook her head.

“What? No, no, no,” she said a little too hastily. “I’m glad you told me, honestly. I was just thinking about something else. Sorry.”

With a questioning look, Peter opened his mouth to speak, but Izzy cut him off.

“Do you trust me?” she asked.

Peter stared blankly at Izzy for several seconds before answering.

“Wow, that’s the major one, isn’t it?” he asked, hesitating before continuing. “I mean, I’m here, aren’t I?”

Izzy noticed right away that Peter didn’t actually answer the question.

“A question with a question, huh?” she asked. “That’s never good.”

Peter sighed as he raised his right hand and buried his face in his palm.

“I just … I don’t know how to answer that,” he admitted. “I’m just having a hard time squaring this Izzy right here with the one who downsized me. I know that’s probably not what you want to hear, but—”

“All I wanna hear is what you really think,” Izzy spoke over him, stopping his words in their tracks. “It doesn’t matter about what. If you don’t trust me, that’s fine. If you … if you hate me, I get it. But don’t just say what you think I wanna hear, okay?”

Peter walked right closer to her, close enough that he reached out and put his right palm on her right cheek. His touch, tiny as it was, sent a rush through her, almost electric in nature. It more than made up for her no longer being able to focus on him.

“I don’t hate you,” he said softly. “I don’t know why, but I don’t think I can. Not really. That’s something at least, right?”

Izzy closed her eyes and savored the sensation of Peter’s puny fingers stroking down her cheek. She found comfort in it, almost as much as she had in his words, and she was in no hurry for it to end.

“You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that,” she said.

Before allowing herself to get too lost in his touch, however, Izzy reminded herself why she had embarked down that line of questioning in the first place. Her eyes took their time opening, stretching the moment out just a little bit longer. She felt them cross as she tried to look directly at Peter.

“Yeah, it’s a start,” she said. “But maybe there’s a way to build up some trust between us.”

Peter took a couple steps backward, breaking out in laughter as soon as he saw her face.

“Sorry,” he said between chuckles, apologizing before Izzy could even ask what he was laughing at. “I wasn’t expecting the whole cross-eyed look. It was kind of cute, though.”

Her head shot up right away as she straightened out her back. She was vaguely aware of him stumbling back at the sudden movement, but she was much too focused on hiding her own embarrassment to think too much of it.

C-cute?! Izzy thought. Did he mean like silly cute or “Hey, you wanna go out next Thursday” cute?

She cleared her throat, trying to get both her mind and her conversation with Peter back on track.

“Like I was saying, we could try a trust exercise if you’re up for it,” Izzy said.

She stared down at him as he considered her words.

“Depends what it is,” he said. “What are you thinking?”

Izzy brought her right hand to her chin, looking up in contemplation as she rubbed it thoughtfully with her index finger.

“The trust fall is real popular, but I don’t think we’re there yet,” she said more to herself than to Peter, starting to lose herself in her thoughts before snapping out of it suddenly. “Hey, that could work!”

Before Peter could ask what she was talking about, Izzy reached into a drawer and pulled out a pair of scissors. She caught a glimpse of the concerned look on his face, his eyes glued to the blades of the scissors as she stood up, remembering to move at a slower pace this time.

“Oh, these aren’t for you,” she told him with a slightly guilty tone, realizing the implication that came with pulling out a sharp object while talking about trust exercises. “I just need these for a sec. I’ll be right back!”

Izzy walked over to her closet, pulled out an old shirt, and cut a tiny rectangular piece of fabric from it, all with her back to Peter. She discarded the shirt on the closet floor and made her way back to the desk, making sure to put the scissors away as soon as she sat down, hoping to put Peter at ease.

“What’s this?” he asked as she handed him the piece of fabric.

Reaching for the other side of her desk, Izzy grabbed a tape dispenser and set it down on an open space closer to Peter.

“A blindfold,” she answered as she grabbed a pink cup-like pen holder and set it down near the tape dispenser. “I thought maybe I could talk you through a little obstacle course. Start small, ya know?”

As Izzy started to lay a few pens from the holder strategically across the formerly empty area, she noticed Peter giving her a stern expression.

“Coming in with the size jokes already?” he said, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

It took a minute for Izzy to register what he was talking about, her suggestion to “start small” not being an intentional joke. She stopped what she was doing and looked at him with a serious expression.

“Peter, I don’t pun. They’re low-hanging fruit,” she said before her lips curled into a smirk. “Like, really low. I bet even you could reach them if you, I don’t know, jump, I guess?”

Peter just stared back at her, dumbfounded. Just as Izzy was beginning to worry that her joke had hit a sour note with him, he started to chuckle. She answered with a giggle of her own. Soon they both erupted into full-throated laughter.

“That was terrible,” he said as the laughter subsided. “Not funny at all. I don’t know why I laughed.”

Despite his words, Peter had a joyful grin on his face that melted Izzy’s heart.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, unable to hide her own smile. “Just put on the blindfold already.”

With a small nod, Peter wrapped the blindfold around his eyes and tied it behind his head as Izzy grabbed more things to use for the trust exercise.

The two of them got to it as soon as everything was set up. Izzy talked Peter around the improvised obstacle course, telling him when to step over a pen, turn to avoid walking into a pen holder, and climb over a carrying case for her sunglasses.

He started out moving cautiously at first but soon gained confidence in her direction. His movements began to look more and more natural, almost as if he could see everything himself. It wasn’t long before he was asking for something a bit more challenging, getting lost in the game of it rather than worrying about whether he trusted her or not.

So far so good, Izzy mused. Time for the real deal.

She moved at a snail’s pace as she set her right hand palm down on the desk near the makeshift obstacle course. She knew that even the slightest twitch or thump from her fingers against the surface would give her away.

Izzy’s words moved Peter beyond the course and toward her hand, anticipation building within her. Once he arrived in front of her middle finger, she told him that he needed to step up onto something.

“What is this?” he asked as she felt the meager weight of his shoe touch down on her dark red nail. “It’s not as even as the desk.”

It was hard for Izzy not to giggle once Peter’s other foot stepped past the nail and landed on the nearest joint of her finger. There was just something about him touching and walking on her that left her feeling giddy.

“You said you wanted a challenge, right?” she asked, fighting to keep her composure as he took another step. “Just keep walking. I’ll tell you if you need to stop.”

Peter made his way down Izzy’s finger, with her warning him about the “bumps” that were her middle joint and her knuckle along the way. As he reached the back of her hand, she slowly started to raise her arm, doing her best to ignore the tiny tingles of his steps across her hand. Much to her delight, he seemed completely oblivious to the “ground” beneath him lifting skyward.

Dang, all that practice really paid off! she thought once her arm leveled out to give him a straight path to her shoulder.

“Whatever this is, it’s kind of familiar but not at the same time,” Peter said curiously, stomping his foot a few times on her wrist. “It’s kind of driving me crazy!”

Izzy could tell by the effort he was putting in that those stomps were supposed to be hard, but they didn’t even qualify as taps to her. She bit her lip, resisting the urge to coo at how precious the whole thing was.

“I know,” she said in a teasing tone. “That’s why this is so fun. For me at least!”

Peter just groaned and continued plowing ahead. As his little feet stepped onto her arm for the first time, Izzy felt goosebumps pop up all along her forearm.

“Careful,” she told him. “The terrain just got a little bumpier.”

Peter shrugged and kept going, although he slowed his pace down after nearly rolling his ankle on the first bump he stepped on. Izzy’s left hand trailed behind just beneath her right arm, ready to catch him if he tripped and fell. She began to wonder if she hadn’t thought this all the way through, disregarding her own reactions to him walking on her body.

But the intensity that jolted through her each time his foot landed on a goosebump made her dismiss the notion that this was a mistake. It was like someone was running a single finger down her spine with a feather touch, but along her arm instead. It was all she could do to suppress the shivers that wanted to run through her body and keep a steady surface for him to keep walking along.

Peter soon made his way past Izzy’s forearm, mentioning the “rockier” surface of her bicep as he worked his way over her upper arm. She smiled at his comment. She didn’t have a bodybuilder’s physique by any measure, but she did work out regularly during her time in juvie, and she was proud of the solid muscle she had built up over the years.

The temptation to suddenly flex hit her, picturing the shocked look on his face as she bucked him from her arm before landing in her waiting hand. But she reminded herself that this was a trust exercise, not something they were doing for fun. So she kept herself perfectly still and contented herself by watching him struggle just a bit to keep his balance as he crossed her lightly muscular upper arm.

It wasn’t until Peter finally reached Izzy’s shoulder that he began to piece together where he was.

“Wait,” he said as he reached out, grabbing a few of her brunette strands. “Is this …”

Peter released the hairs as he started to take the blindfold off with both hands. Simultaneously, Izzy turned to have a better look at him as she prepared to explain why she had him walk up her arm as part of the exercise. The movement caught Peter’s attention first thing after regaining his eyesight, turning toward her as well to investigate.

She could just make out Peter staring directly into her scarlet-glossed lips, standing less than an inch away from the plushy pillows as they started to pucker on instinct alone. Peter took a trance-like step closer, halving the distance between himself and those inviting lips.

Then Izzy’s phone rang.

“Huh?” she mumbled.

Izzy turned to find her phone, making sure not to disturb Peter as she did so. She found it among the obstacles on her desk, wasting no time zeroing in on the caller ID.

“Sydney,” she said in slight surprise. “I guess I should have figured one of them would suspect me after they didn’t find you.”

In a slight rush to try to throw the girls off Peter’s trail, Izzy gently plucked Peter from her shoulder and set him on the opposite side of the desk as before. She felt a little bad about doing it without his permission, but she hoped he understood that she needed to get in front of this right away.

“Stay here,” she said as she grabbed her phone. “I’ll be right back.”

Izzy hurriedly left the room, closing the door as her finger hovered over the button to accept the call. She knew it would be easier to just take the call in her room and avoid her mom’s prying ears, but she would have to act like one of them if she was going to convince them that she really didn’t have him. And she couldn’t bring herself to do that in front of Peter. Not again.

So she took a deep breath and answered the call as she made her way down the hallway.

********

Peter wasn’t sure what had just happened.

He’d been having fun with Izzy’s trust exercise, and he was even starting to feel more comfortable around her. The trek up her arm had been a fun mystery for him, and he was still surprised at just how still she had been to ensure that he had no clue that he had been walking on a living, breathing body.

But it was being faced with those waiting, touchable lips afterward that had his mind reeling. Was she trying to kiss him? Did he want her to? Had she done some weird pheromone thing to him again? But he didn’t hallucinate this time, so that couldn’t be it, could it?

He tried to shake off the confusion. When that didn’t work, he decided to distract himself by having a look around his new environment on the other side of Izzy’s desk.

There were all kinds of fliers and books scattered about, most of them involving downsizing in some way or another. There were whole books on how to handle downsizers, the effects a human’s voice and simple movements could have on a downsizer, and even a couple of biographies written by downsizers.

Is this why Izzy is so much better at handling me than Millie was? he asked himself, feeling a little touched at the effort Izzy had apparently put into understanding downsizers.

Looking down, Peter realized that he was standing on the flier of some sort of pro-downsizing organization. It looked like something people just left on people’s windshields or handed out on the street.

“The Downsizing Conservation Club,” he read aloud. “Protecting the environment from humanity’s greed.”

Peter couldn’t stop his eyes from rolling. While he was still leery of humans, he wasn’t necessarily a fan of those downsizers living in cushy communities either. He knew he was just being bitter, but he felt as though he’d earned the right after five years in hell.

Before he could move on to another pamphlet, however, the rattling of knuckles on Izzy’s bedroom door caught his attention.

“Isabella?” a woman’s voice, one he recognized from inside Izzy’s pocket when they first arrived at the house, called through the door. “Are you in there, M'hija?”

Peter froze.

Please just go away, he kept repeating in his mind.

Pure terror overtook Peter as he both heard and saw the doorknob turning after a moment of silence. The door opened and a woman who could only be Izzy’s mother stepped into the room; she simply shared too many facial features with Izzy for the breathtaking middle-aged beauty for the two of them to not at least be family.

She was easily the largest giant he had ever seen, clearly tall even by human standards. Her never-ending legs, dressed in black yoga pants, carried her into Izzy’s room in long, lazy strides. Her straight shoulder blade-length hair waved slightly in the wind generated from her steps, almost as though she were big enough to merit her own weather system.

Peter didn’t even think to hide until Izzy’s mom was halfway to the desk he was standing on, paralyzed by a feeling somewhere between fear and infatuation. He started running for a bookrack on the desk. It only took the giant woman three quick steps to arrive, however.

“Catalina, you shouldn’t be doing this,” the woman said, the deafening volume of her casual speaking voice giving Peter a whole new appreciation for just how quiet Izzy had been keeping her own voice for his sake. “But somebody has to make sure that girl keeps out of trouble.”

Peter ran with his hands covering his ears, wishing that this woman—Catalina by the sound of it—wasn’t the type to talk to herself. To be fair, however, he would have appreciated her slightly thicker accent compared to Izzy’s if he wasn’t scared out of his mind.

He heard the loud sound of a drawer being opened just as he made it to the rack. He looked back before rounding the corner and completely shielding himself from view, seeing a guilty look on the giantess's face as she started going through Izzy’s desk. He also spied a glance at the woman’s black sports top, not being able to stop himself from admiring how tightly it clung to her abs and rather large breasts, showing off just a sliver of her belly.

Peter finally made it behind the bookrack, but, unfortunately, that last movement didn’t go unnoticed.

“What was that?” Catalina’s voice shook him a little, even from behind the books.

Without warning, the bookrack skyrocketed into the air, and a shocked gasp echoed through Peter’s eardrums. He looked up, seeing the giant woman holding the bookrack, so large and stationary to him, with ease as she shifted it to just her left hand. Those same brown-green eyes that hypnotized him every time Izzy looked his way focused only on him now, filled with astonishment and confusion.

Before Peter could even try to say something, Catalina’s hand was already on him. Her lengthy, elegant fingers wrapped around him so quickly that he didn’t even have time to react. They easily swallowed him whole with plenty of room to spare, pressing him against the breast of her palm.

By the time he started to struggle, he could already feel the sway of her walking with him imprisoned in her fist. He had no idea what Izzy’s mom had in mind for him, but he knew that his only hope was for Izzy herself to come to his rescue.

I guess this is where the real trust exercise starts, Peter couldn’t help but think.