Shrunken Second Semester Shrunken First Semester chapter 2 by maximally

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, the freshly shrunken freshman immediately got a big clue about where he was. He knew this coffee table. He knew the beanbags off to his left with the skid marks, the cabinets labeled “COMMUNAL,” the Loona poster peeling off the wall above the futon. He knew the air, too: a suffocating blanket of stale food, weed, sweat, and farts.

 

House Proserpina. The Loser House.

 

Then, a door opened behind him, and the floorboards started to creak under a set of lumbering, flip-flopped steps. A colossal shadow fell across the table. Every legend from orientation came rushing back—the campus boogeywoman, the den, the telltale stink—and Max did the only thing he could do. He froze.

 

“No,” he whimpered. “No, no, no, no…”

 

*

 

“—ax? Max. Hey. Max.”

 

Suddenly, Max woke up. Again.

 

This time, his face was mashed against something warm, soft, and very, very damp. Something that rose and fell under him like a slow tide. The air was hot and close and smelled of sweat, Cool Ranch Doritos, and a faint, familiar sweetness that he’d stopped noticing sometime around Halloween. A deep, rhythmic thump-thump pounded up through his whole body from somewhere beneath him.

 

He didn’t need to open his eyes to know where he was. He opened them anyway.

 

Two enormous, pillowy hills of tan skin rose on either side of him, each easily the size of a hot tub from where he lay. Above them, past a ratty, sweat-stained T-shirt pulled down to make room for him, a pair of big brown eyes peered down at him with sleepy concern.

 

Daisy Flores. The girl most people at Ventus knew as “Buttzilla.” His girlfriend.

 

“Hey,” she murmured, her voice thick and hoarse from sleep. “You were, like, kicking. A lot.” She bit her full lower lip. “Did you have a nightmare?”

 

Max let out a long breath and sank back into the warm, sticky valley of her cleavage. His heart was still slamming against his ribs, but it was already starting to slow down, in time with hers.

 

“Kind of,” he admitted. “I was back on the coffee table. The first morning.”

 

“Oh.” Daisy’s cheeks went pink, then red, then all the way to her ears. “The, um. The scenting morning.”

 

“The scenting morning,” Max confirmed.

 

“S-sorry.” She winced. “Again.”

 

“Daisy, it was four months ago.” Despite himself, Max laughed. “You’ve apologized for it, like, forty times.”

 

“Forty-one, now.” She smiled anyway. It was a small, crooked smile, the kind she only ever seemed to make for him, and her massive chest quivered under him as she let out a sleepy giggle. “Was I scary? In the dream?”

 

“Terrifying,” Max said. “You were the size of a building.”

 

“I’m the size of a building now.”

 

“Yeah, but now I’m into it.”

 

Daisy’s whole body shook with laughter, and Max had to grab a fistful of t-shirt to keep from sliding out of her cleavage altogether.

 

It was true, too. Funny how much could change in a semester. Four months ago, he’d woken up three inches tall and naked on a coffee table in the grossest sorority on campus, with no memories of the night before and no idea how to get back to normal. Then the most infamous shut-in at Ventus University had stuffed him down her sweatpants, carried him back to her swampy den, and—once he’d stopped screaming—turned out to be the sweetest person he’d ever met.

 

The rest had happened in a blur. Daisy taking him next door to Hazel, who’d run every test she could think of (some of which still made him blush) before finally slumping in her gaming chair and announcing that whatever had shrunk him was “a one-way trip, Miniguy. Sorry. Like, genuinely.” A few bad nights. Then a lot of good ones. Daisy asking, in a voice so quiet he’d made her repeat it twice, whether he wanted to be her boyfriend. Then, worst of all, the FaceTime with Victoria, followed by the drive down to Abuela Lupe’s for a family meeting that he still couldn’t think about without wincing—right up until Lupe had pulled Daisy into a bone-crushing hug, called her mija, and started asking if her mother had a good recipe for pozole.

 

Victoria had taken longer. She’d spent most of Thanksgiving watching Daisy over the rim of her wine glass like a hawk eyeing a particularly unhygienic pigeon. But by Christmas she’d stopped calling Daisy “your little friend,” and by New Year’s she was texting her directly. Between her and her old friend Queen Bea, the paperwork had somehow sorted itself out too. As far as the Ventus registrar was concerned, Max Calhoun was a perfectly ordinary second-semester freshman who happened to take all of his classes remotely.

 

Remotely, as in: from Daisy’s laptop. From Daisy’s bed. Usually from somewhere on Daisy.

 

Max was still barely passing his classes. He still hadn’t tried out for any teams or clubs. If anything, his social circle was smaller than ever. But for the first time in his life, someone wanted him around—and by now, he’d basically stopped wishing he was big again.

 

He was happy. Really, honestly happy. Weirdly, disgustingly, three-inches-tall happy.

 

“Hey.” Daisy’s thumb came down to stroke his back, gentle as ever, smearing a little more of her cleavage sweat across his shoulders. “You’re doing the thinking face.”

 

“Just thinking about how lucky I am,” Max said.

 

Daisy went scarlet. “Max.”

 

“What? I am.”

 

“You can’t just say stuff like that at…” She craned her neck toward the cracked screen of her phone on the nightstand, wedged between a bottle of lube and a stack of empty Mountain Dew cans. Her eyes went wide. “Oh, shoot. It’s eight-forty.”

 

“So?”

 

“So it’s the first day of classes, Max!”

 

Like most things in Daisy’s room, her laptop had seen better days. A spiderweb of cracks ran across the corner of the screen, the trackpad was sticky with something Max had long since learned not to ask about, and a faded Kingdom Hearts sticker covered most of the logo. Still, it worked—and by 8:57, Daisy had propped herself up against a mountain of pillows on her makeshift king-sized bed with the laptop balanced on her gut, and Max perched on the warm shelf of her left breast like a tiny, naked lifeguard.

 

“Okay,” she said, chewing her lip as two windows loaded side by side. “Intro to Bio first, then Psych at eleven. Do you have the links?”

 

“Got ’em.” Max hopped down onto the keyboard, which, at his size, was less a keyboard and more an obstacle course. Planting both feet on the Enter key, he bounced. The Zoom window blinked to life: a lecture hall full of tiny thumbnails, half of them still black, and a harried-looking TA trying to work out how screen-sharing worked.

 

“Camera off,” Daisy reminded him.

 

“Camera’s off.”

 

“Mic?”

 

Max checked the little red slash. “Muted.”

 

“Cool.” Daisy let out a long breath, the same way she always did whenever she was dealing with something stressful. Then her gut let out a deep, wet gurgle that rumbled up through the laptop and straight into the soles of his feet.

 

Max knew that sound. “Daisy…”

 

“I-I’m fine,” she said quickly. “It’s just, um. First day nerves. Y’know.”

 

Then, all at once, the room got noticeably warmer.

 

 

It went on for a good six seconds. The bedframe actually rattled. The laptop rode the shockwave like a surfboard, and Max had to throw himself flat across the spacebar to keep from getting bucked off onto the mattress. A moment later, the smell rolled up over the edge of the screen: hot, eggy, and thick enough to chew, with a base note of last night’s chana masala and something a lot older underneath.

 

His eyes watered. His throat seized.

 

Then, to his complete surprise, Max started laughing.

 

Not polite laughing, either. Real, wheezing, can’t-breathe laughing, the kind he hadn’t done since middle school. He lay there sprawled across the keyboard, shaking and gasping in the stinkiest air he’d ever breathed, while Daisy stared down at him with her mouth hanging open.

 

“S-sorry!” she squeaked, waving a hand frantically over the laptop like it might do any good. “Sorry, sorry, sorry—are you okay? Why are you laughing?”

 

“Because—” Max wheezed, wiping his eyes. “Because four months ago, that would’ve knocked me out.”

 

Daisy blinked. Then, slowly, her horrified expression cracked into a sheepish grin. “…Okay, that’s kinda fair.”

 

“Pretty sure I’ve got antibodies now.”

 

“Max!” She giggled, burying her face in one hand. “Oh my gosh. I’m the worst.”

 

“You’re the best,” Max corrected.

 

Before she could argue, a series of heavy, rapid-fire thuds rattled the wall above the bed. The poster above Daisy’s headboard—a buxom anthro wolf girl in a bikini—shuddered on its thumbtacks.

 

“YO! D!” Hazel’s voice came straight through the drywall, as loud and manic as ever. “I CAN SMELL THAT FROM HERE AND I’M JEALOUS! ARE WE STILL GETTING NUGGETS AFTER CLASS OR WHAT?!”

 

Daisy groaned. “Hazel, I’m literally in class right now!”

 

“SO AM I! I’M IN ORGANIC CHEM! I’M ALSO GOONING! MULTITASKING, BABY!” A pause. “TELL MINIGUY HE STILL OWES ME A REMATCH ON MARIO KART~.”

 

“He heard you,” Max called, as loudly as his tiny lungs would allow.

 

“HA! I KNOW! THURSDAY’S STILL MY NIGHT, RIGHT?”

 

“Y-yes, Thursday’s still your night!” Daisy hissed, her ears going red again. She shot Max a quick, nervous glance. He just gave her a thumbs-up. They’d talked about Hazel’s nights a lot, and no matter how many times Daisy asked whether he was sure he was okay with it, the answer was still yes. Hazel was a lot. But she was also Daisy’s best friend, and—as she reminded both of them roughly once a day—“the hottest genius in the Loser House, no contest.”

 

“Cool!” Hazel bellowed. Something heavy hit the floor on her side of the wall. “…I’M OKAY!”

 

Daisy sighed and turned back to the screen, where the TA had finally gotten her slides working. BIO 101: Spring Semester Syllabus. “Okay. Focus. We have therapy with Dr. Chandra on Wednesday, so I want to at least look like I’m paying attention to something.”

 

“Wait, this Wednesday?” Max frowned. “I thought she said it was every other—”

 

“She emailed me last night.” Daisy scrolled to her inbox. The message was short, warm, and signed Riya, with no title and no invoice. “She wants to go weekly now. Still free.”

 

Max hesitated. Dr. Riya Chandra had been nothing but kind to them so far. She’d caught them in the hallway outside the Wellness Center one afternoon in December, taken one look at the tiny guy riding in Daisy’s hoodie pocket, and insisted—insisted—on seeing them both every week, pro bono, no questions asked. Every session, she listened like they were the most important thing in the world. She also farted in session, freely and without apology, which Daisy found weirdly relaxing.

 

Still, there was always a moment, usually near the end, when she’d look at Max for just a little too long. Like she was seeing somebody else.

 

“Weekly’s fine,” he said finally. “I like her.”

 

“Me too.” Daisy smiled, cupping a hand around him so he could climb back up onto her chest. “She’s way less scary than your stepmom.”

 

“Everyone’s less scary than my stepmom.”

 

Daisy snorted. Then her phone buzzed on the nightstand. Then it buzzed again. And again.

 

“Ugh. It’s the Loser House group chat,” she muttered, picking it up with her free hand. “Someone’s probably selling a mini-fridge or—”

 

She stopped.

 

Max craned his neck to see the screen. It was a screenshot from somebody’s Instagram story: a selfie in front of the Unaffiliated Students Dorm, a short, curvy girl with a straight black emo fringe, black lipstick, and a silver ring in her brow throwing up a peace sign beside a stack of moving boxes. Max had been on the receiving end of that same lazy smirk since his freshman year of high school.

 

 

Below that was a second text. This one wasn’t from the group chat. It was from Izzy herself.

 

heyyy lil bro 😘 moved into ur old room. zeke says hi. tell ur gf I said hi too. we should hang out SOON!!!!

 

Daisy’s thumb hovered over the screen. Her gut gurgled again, softer this time, the way it did when she was anxious.

 

“So,” she said quietly. “Izzy actually took your old room?”

 

Max swallowed hard.

 

“Yeah,” he said. “She actually did.”