Show and Tell Shrunken First Semester chapter 19 by maximally

Victoria changed her dress three times.

Max watched all three from the jewelry tray on her vanity, where she'd set him so he could "help." The first was navy and went to her knees, and she said it looked like a parent-teacher conference. The second was red and didn't go much past her ass, and she turned around in the mirror and looked at it over her shoulder for a long time and then said, "No. No. That's too much," and took it off. The third was black, wrapped, with a deep V that showed off the whole valley between her tits. She did not say it was too much. She put on the gold hoops, and the berry lipstick, and then a second coat of the berry lipstick, and then she spritzed perfume on her wrists and her throat and, after a glance at the door, under the hem of the dress.

"It's just Friday dinner, mijo," she said to the mirror. "With Bea. An old friend of Mama's."

"Bea who?"

"Bea Clydesdale, sweetie." She said it like he should know. "From Ventus."

It took him a second. The name was at the bottom of every email the school had ever sent him, under a little gold seal. Beatrice Clydesdale, President.

"You know the president of Ventus?"

"We go way back." Victoria blotted her lips on a tissue. "We shared an apartment in LA. Before you."

"We're just going to talk about your paperwork," Victoria said. "The check-in. The—the hold. Bea can make a call. Bea can make all the calls, sweetie, she runs the place." She capped the lipstick. "And if it gets late, she has a guest room. So Mama might just stay over. So she doesn't have to drive."

There was a small overnight bag on the bed. It was already packed. He could see the edge of something lacy and purple sticking out of the zipper.

"Okay," said Max.

"Don't make that face."

"I'm not making a face."

"You're making a little face." She picked him up and kissed him, carefully, with just the corner of her mouth so as not to ruin her lips, and then she held him against her cheek for a while, longer than she needed to. "Mama will miss you. You know that? This is the first whole night Mama's leaving you with your sister." She sniffed. "Izzy's going to take very good care of you."

*

"Tell Bea hi," said Izzy, at the front door.

She said it with a perfectly straight face, slouched against the wall in her pajama shorts with her phone in her hand. Victoria, halfway out with the overnight bag on her shoulder, stopped and gave her a long look.

"It's a working dinner, Isabella."

"Totally."

"About your brother's housing."

"Totally, Mom. Have fun working."

Victoria opened her mouth, closed it, and set Max down on the dish towel on the entry table so she could find her keys. She gave Izzy a list. Bottle cap of water, refill it at nine. Crumb of tortilla, the soft kind, not the chips. He goes in the jewelry tray at eleven, on the scarf, not the velvet, the velvet gives him a rash. Text Mama if anything happens. Text Mama if nothing happens.

"Got it," said Izzy, who had not looked up from her phone once.

The red Mercedes backed down the driveway at seven-twenty. Izzy watched it go through the front window, and when the taillights turned the corner, she picked Max up off the entry table by the back of his body, between two fingers.

"Okay," she said. "So I invited some people over."

*

There were three of them, and they came at once, which Max later realized had been coordinated in a group chat.

The first one through the door was talking before she was inside. "—swear to God, Iz, if this is another one of your bits I'm going to kill you, I left a full set half done—" She was blonde, platinum box braids to her waist, with lashes that looked heavy enough to hurt and long pink acrylics with little gold charms dangling from the tips. Tube top, low-rise gray sweats, a lot of herself coming out of both. She was holding her phone out in front of her with a ring light clipped to the top of it, already filming.

That was Kenzie. Max knew her the way you know your stepsister's best friend: from a hundred slammed doors and shrieks of laughter through his bedroom wall, and one time in tenth grade when she'd looked at him across the kitchen and said, "Does he talk?"

Behind her came someone with a skateboard under one arm. Tall, broad, thick through the thighs and hips, a bleached buzz cut grown out into fuzz and a slit through one eyebrow. Cut-off Dickies stretched tight across a big round ass. A faded band tee two sizes too big. Scabs on both knees. Rory Tran kicked the door shut behind her with the heel of one beat-up checkered Van and said, "Sup," to the house in general.

The last one closed the door again, properly, because Rory hadn't latched it. She was short and plush and pear-shaped, in a matching pastel pajama set with little strawberries on it, carrying a rolling overnight bag and a Tupperware of homemade cookies. Thick black hair in a scrunchie. Glasses. She looked around the entryway like it might be a crime scene.

"Hi," Priya Raman said. "Sorry. Hi. My mom thinks we're doing SAT flashcards for my cousin. If she calls, we're doing SAT flashcards."

Izzy waited until they were all standing in the living room. Then she opened her hand.

*

Nobody said anything for a full three seconds. Kenzie's ring light lit him up on Izzy's palm, naked, three inches tall, and he put both hands over his crotch and looked at the carpet, which was a very long way down.

Then Kenzie screamed, happily, for a while. "Chat," she said, to her phone, "chat, look at this, I'm not even—Iz, that's him? That's Max? Little man! Little man, look at the camera!"

"No filming," said Izzy.

"I'm not posting it, I'm just filming it."

"Kenz."

"Fine." Kenzie lowered the phone about two inches. The ring light stayed on.

Rory leaned in close, hands on her knees, and studied him without any expression at all. "Huh," she said. "Does he bite?"

"Only if you ask nice," said Izzy.

Priya hadn't moved. She was still standing by the couch, holding her Tupperware in both hands against her chest. Her glasses had slid down her nose. She pushed them up. They slid down again.

"Izzy," she said quietly. "Izzy, this is a person."

"Yeah, he's my stepbrother."

"He's three inches tall."

"Yeah, he's my stepbrother who's three inches tall." Izzy set Max down on the coffee table, on top of a People magazine, and dropped onto the sectional with her feet up. "Relax, P. He's fine. He's, like, thriving. Mom carries him around in her bra all day." She grabbed the legal pad from the side table. "He has a whole list. Look. He wrote it. Number fourteen."

She held it out, tapping the line with one chipped black nail. Kenzie read it out loud, because Kenzie read everything out loud.

"'Fourteen. Humiliation. Be mean to me.'" She cackled. "Oh my God. Little man has goals."

"I didn't write that," said Max.

It came out small and hoarse, and it was the first thing he'd said. All four of them turned to look at him at once, and he felt his whole body go hot from his scalp down.

"Oh my God, he talks," said Kenzie. "Say something else. Say 'Kenzie is the hottest.'"

"Can he hear us at normal volume?" Priya asked suddenly. She'd put down the cookies. She'd knelt by the coffee table, her face almost level with him, and her eyes behind the glasses were very big and very focused. "Like, is his hearing scaled down? Because the ear canal would be so small, the frequencies would—" She stopped. "Sorry. Sorry. That's rude. I'm asking you. Can you hear me okay?"

"Yeah," said Max. "I can hear you."

"Okay." She let out a breath. "Okay. Hi. I'm Priya. We had AP Bio together. I sat behind you."

He didn't remember her at all. Somehow that made it worse.

*

It took Rory about twenty minutes to get bored of looking.

"Bet you won't put him in your sneaker," she said to Izzy.

"Ew. Mine are, like, brand new."

"Then I'll do it." Rory toed off her left Van. It came off with a sound of peeling rubber, and the smell came out a second behind it and rolled across the coffee table like weather. She wasn't wearing socks. She never wore socks. The shoe sat on the carpet with its tongue hanging out, black-and-white checks worn gray, the heel crushed flat, the sole half peeled away from the toe, and inside, where her bare foot had been all day, the insole had gone dark and shiny with sweat. "It's on his list, right? Number seven?"

"Seven," Izzy confirmed, delighted. "'Her shoes. In them. While she's wearing them.'"

"Oh, sick."

"Rory," Priya said. "Rory, that's—is that hygienic?"

"Nope." Rory picked him up off the magazine. Her hand was rough and hot and smelled of grip tape. "You good, dude? You can say no."

He looked up at her. Kenzie's ring light was on him again. Izzy was smirking. Priya had both hands over her mouth.

"I—" Max said.

"Cool," said Rory, and dropped him in.

He landed at the toe. It was dark and wet and close and the smell was a physical thing, sour and cheesy and rubbery all at once, rotten-sweet, so thick he could feel it coating the inside of his mouth. The insole was slick and spongy under his hands. Above him, he could see a little oval of living-room ceiling through the opening.

Then the oval filled with foot.

Rory took her time. She was, he would think later, being careful, in her way. The heel came down first, at the far end of the shoe. Then the arch, a wide hot slab of flesh closing over the sky. And then her toes, five of them, thick and calloused, curling down into the toe box and finding him there and settling on top of him, one on his chest, two on his legs, the big one over his face. Her sole was damp. It stuck to his skin. When she flexed, the sweat squelched.

"Oh, dude," Rory said, from very far away. "I can feel him wiggle."

"Walk," said Kenzie. "Walk walk walk, walk to the kitchen—"

Rory walked.

Every step was an earthquake. Her weight rolled forward onto the ball of her foot and down into her toes and onto him, and then lifted, and came down again. The shoe flexed around him. Rubber creaked. Hot, thick air pumped in and out of the toe box with every stride. He could hear them all laughing, muffled, through canvas and foot. He could hear Kenzie going "chat, chat, CHAT."

And under the embarrassment, under the smell and the sweat, something else he didn't want to look at too closely was happening, the same thing that had happened on the couch on Wednesday. He'd stopped bracing. He'd stopped fighting the toes. Somewhere around the kitchen island, he'd started to lie back into them.

Rory stopped walking. He felt her lean down.

BRRRAAAAAP

It wasn't a fart. It came from the other end. It rolled down through her whole body and vibrated the shoe. A cheer went up.

"Eight seconds," said Kenzie. "Rory, that was eight seconds. Okay, I'm posting this."

"Kenz, no—"

"It's not his face, Iz, it's literally just a shoe. Nobody can tell. Look." There was a pause, and then Kenzie read off her own screen in her narrator voice. "'Bestie's stepbro is in Rory's Vans rn' and then like nine skull emojis and I tagged you and Rory. There. It's up."

"Kenzie."

"It's a story. It's gone in twenty-four hours. Who's even gonna see it?"

*

Rory got him out with two fingers and set him on the coffee table again, glistening. Izzy threw him a paper towel. It was the size of a bedsheet. He sat in the middle of it, wiping himself off, while Kenzie checked her views and Rory ate cookies with her shoe still off and her bare foot propped on the coffee table edge, right next to him, toes wiggling.

Priya was the one who came back.

She'd been quiet for a while. She knelt down at the coffee table again and looked at him, and pushed her glasses up her nose, and said, in a small careful voice, "Can I ask you something? You can say no."

"Okay," said Max.

"When she was walking. Could you feel everything?" She swallowed. "Like, every part? Her toes. The—the texture? I'm just. I'm trying to understand the sensory experience. At that scale, the pressure per square inch would be—" She stopped herself again. "Could you?"

"Yeah," Max said.

"Was it bad?"

He didn't answer that. He didn't know how. Priya watched him not answering, and her eyes went very dark behind her glasses, and something in her face shifted.

"Can I hold you?" she said.

Izzy, on the couch, looked up from her phone.

Priya's hands were small and cool, and she held him the way you'd hold a baby bird, both palms cupped, so gently it barely felt like being picked up. She sat back on her heels on the carpet with him in her lap. Her pajama pants were thin cotton, and under them her thighs were wide and plush and spread out against each other, and he sat in the crease where they met, sinking. She smelled of strawberry shampoo and fabric softener and, faintly, nervous sweat.

"Your heart's going so fast," she whispered. She'd laid one fingertip on his chest. "Is that—are you scared? Or is that just how it is now? It's basic scaling, but—" Her finger stayed. It moved, a little, in a circle. "You're so warm."

"Priya," said Izzy.

"I'm just asking." Priya didn't look up. She was breathing faster. Her thighs had started closing around him by degrees, so gradually he wasn't sure she knew she was doing it. They closed on his hips. They closed on his chest. "What if I—what if I sat on you? Just for a second. Just to see. I've read about this, there's stuff online about pressure and comfort, deep pressure stimulation, it's actually therapeutic for some people—"

"Ooh," Kenzie said, and lifted the phone.

"P, you've had, like, six cookies," said Rory.

"I'm fine. I just want to understand." Priya was already moving him, lifting him off her lap onto the carpet. She was already turning around, on her knees. Her ass was huge in the strawberry pajamas. It swung over him, round and heavy and wide, blotting out Kenzie and the ring light and the whole room. "I'll be careful. I'm always careful. I'll count. I'll count to ten and then I'll—"

She came down. Not hard. Carefully. Thoroughly. She sat on him the way she probably did everything, with total attention, settling her weight a little at a time, and the thin cotton and the heavy flesh under it closed over him in a dense hot dark that smelled of strawberries and girl.

"One," Priya whispered. Her voice had gone breathy. "Two. Oh. Oh, I can feel him—three—"

He felt her shift. He felt her grind, very slightly, back and forth.

"Four—"

And then the weight was gone, all at once, and Priya was yelping, and light was crashing back in. Izzy had her by the arm. Izzy had hauled her right up off him and to one side, and Priya was sitting on the carpet with her glasses crooked and her mouth open.

"Okay," Izzy said. "Okay, no."

"I was only at four—"

"I said no, P." Izzy scooped Max up off the carpet. She didn't do it gently. Her hand closed all the way around him, tight, hot, her chipped nails digging into his back. "That's enough. You guys are being weird."

"We're being weird?" said Kenzie. "You literally—"

"He's not, like, a toy." Izzy held him against her chest, against the stretched-out cotton of her tee, and her heart was going almost as fast as his. Her face had gone red. "He's mine. You don't just—you don't get to just do stuff to him. Mom and I do stuff to him. That's it."

There was a silence.

"Damn," said Rory, mildly, through a mouthful of cookie. "Okay."

Priya pushed her glasses back up her nose and didn't say anything. She was still breathing hard. She was still looking at him.

*

The rest of the night, he stayed with Izzy.

She didn't put him in the jewelry tray at eleven, on the scarf or the velvet. She didn't put him anywhere. She sat on the sectional with her legs tucked up and kept him in her lap, under one hand, the whole time they watched a horror movie Kenzie picked. She didn't let anybody hold him. When Kenzie reached over, Izzy turned her shoulder. When Priya asked, very politely, if she could just look at him again, Izzy said, "No," without looking away from the TV.

And Max lay there under her hand.

He'd always hated Izzy's hands. He'd hated her poking and her flicking and the way she snatched things out of his hands just to see him reach. But this was different. Her hand covered him from his shoulders to his knees, heavy and hot and still, and every so often her thumb moved across his back in a little absent stroke, like she'd forgotten she was doing it. The whole room had wanted a piece of him tonight. Izzy hadn't let them have it.

He didn't have a name for what he felt about that. Relief, maybe. Or something close enough to be dangerous.

At one-thirty they all fell asleep in a pile on the sectional: Rory face down with her bare foot hanging off the end, Kenzie snoring with her ring light still on, Priya curled up in her strawberry pajamas with one arm reaching toward the coffee table. Izzy was last. She lay back with Max on her chest, under her palm, and her breathing slowed and deepened and her fingers went loose.

On the coffee table, Kenzie's phone lay face up where she'd dropped it, still unlocked. The screen glowed in the dark living room. Max could see it from where he lay: the story, a blurry checkered Van on a kitchen floor, and at the edge of the frame, down by the shoe, something small and pale that nobody would notice unless they zoomed in. Nine skull emojis, two tags. In the corner, a little eye and a number.

Seen by 1,204.

As he watched, it ticked over to 1,205.