“Oh, lil’ Danny-Boy. Sometimes I just have to wonder what in the world I’m gonna do with you.”

“Nothing?” Daniel Stewart piped up hopefully. He quickly regretted the comment as two swirling pads clamped upon the sides of his head like a vice, pressing his cheeks together and forcing him into a steady rhythm of puckering and then un-puckering his lips. An unamused emerald glare continued to drill into his little body, held aloft as it was by the pincer-grip of his best friend’s other hand.

The mesh material of his Truplex undersuit, taut enough normally, pulled even tighter as it dug into his upper chest – a fully intended side-effect of dangling limply in front of his holder’s disapproving face from the small amount of material at the nape of his neck being pinched between her fingertips.

“Going with the wishful thinking route this time, huh?” Olivia questioned, albeit rhetorically. The point was driven home as her pinching fingertips continued to palpate along the sides of his head, making reply just a bit difficult.

“It’s a step up from justification, I guess,” she appended with a sigh that belted him with the garlic-y aftermath of her lunch, “but not much of one.”

“Is it?” she asked. Her fingertips slipped away from his cheeks, only to aggressively punctuate the question with a flick of her finger directly into his gut.

The inch-tall teen was sent tottering back and forth in the young woman’s grip, the playfully sharp smack robbing him of a few breaths while such rocking, suspended a few hundred comparative feet in the air as he was, sent a shiver through him. Yet while clutching defensively at his stomach, Daniel remained silent, even as the rocking slowed and then halted, leaving him to once again focus on his friend’s hard countenance as it awaited a response. It was a practiced silence: serenity with a purpose. Daniel knew Olivia had gone through this little game far too many times before.

In regards to her question, he was unsure as to the answer – and that was why he wasn’t going to offer one. And as expected, a knowing little smirk eventually formed on her face, just as he knew it would.

It was an honest silence, after all, and she’d respect that far more than a misleading word.

“But seriously, Danny,” Olivia started again. She swiped at her auburn bangs with her unoccupied hand. “My very first day back home for the summer, and I find you like this? You’re seventeen, short stuff. I thought you’d be doing better by now. You’re just lucky it was me coming over to see you and not your Mom or Dad coming home from work. Or have they been getting lax with you this last year?”

“A bit, yeah… They’re busy with work a lot now. So they don’t exactly… see it a lot of the time,” he sheepishly admitted to immediately softening eyes.

Good.

As much as he’d been looking forward to seeing his friend return from university today, he’d forgotten her tendency to barge into places like his house or his bedroom without announcement. He’d been expecting to have more time. Worse still, he’d been expecting to be taller than her big toe. He was frankly in a deep hole now, one he knew he wasn’t getting out of. But he could still do a little climbing.    

“Well, that little vacation’s over with now,” Olivia declared brightly, earning an understanding nod from Daniel. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve got any siblings to steer you right. I’m the best you’ve got. So, as far as you’re concerned now, your big sister’s back in town, and I have to say she’s not really planning on straying too far from your house. Especially when lil’ Danny-Boy’s apparently in need of some more guidance. So she has all the time in the world to get you nice and straightened out.” Right on schedule, that little grin turned cocksure. “And I guess there’s no time like the present for getting started on that, huh?”

Daniel grunted, pursing his lips. Olivia had always been quick to respond to his lapses, and a year away in her first year at college had apparently not dulled that particular instinct in the slightest. Nor her eagerness to do so, for that matter. That eagerness to help, much in the same way she might have helped him with his math homework in middle school, with fending off schoolyard bullies in elementary. Or, perhaps more accurate to the situation, tending to one of the several scraped knees he had earned in those playground scuffles. Her mood was latching onto that particular brand of earnesty that made what was about to happen even slightly bearable compared to the “guidance” he had received from others in the past – hell, he might even deem it acceptable, as screwed up as that was.

Not that he was going to go into it without some attempt at getting out of it, of course.

“Liv?” he squeaked out, putting on his best little puppy-dog face. The one that had gotten his best friend to take him along on many a trip to the movies, and which had bought him many an ice-cream cone.

The effect was instantaneous, of course. Olivia’s pretty face softened into that of the doting older guardian, despite her mere ten-month advantage in age between them: fully alert of the trouble and trauma facing the younger being.

“Do we have to do it this time?” he continued. A soft little whine permeated his voice. Nice, shy, and sweet. “Can’t we just see how things go from here?”

“Oh, Danny-Boy,” Olivia repeated softly again, eyes locked onto him with a tender squint. “You know how this works by now. You learn the lesson, and I stop teaching it. Nice try, though.”

Damn it.

“So what exactly was it about this time?” Olivia inquired as Daniel’s head hung low in defeat, and she gave him the lightest shake to jostle him out of it. “Figure I might as well know if we’re gonna talk about it.”

If you’re gonna talk about it, Daniel mentally corrected, yet proceeded to fess up regardless. Being dangled like this was becoming more and more a strain, and with his friend’s mind made up, there was little to no reason to stall.

“Was talking to, uh, Mallory, about a soccer game,” he began. “Someone got hurt real bad because of her, and everyone’s kinda been piling onto her about it. I just... I just figured she’s going through enough with it, y’know?”

“Aw,” Olivia cooed, apparently finding his consolations quite cute, “That’s really sweet. Really, really wrong, but still sweet. You’re gonna have to confess to her, of course. That’ll be good for both of you. But we’ll handle that later. “

Olivia bared her teeth in a wide smile, and Daniel couldn’t really say he liked the look or the familiarity of it as a few less than pleasant memories began to bubble to the surface.

“First, I think it’s about time for you to drop into class.”

“Liv, don-! “ Daniel exclaimed with widened eyes, just as the material of his Truplex was unceremoniously released from between her fingers. Panic escalated along with his stomach as he began a deadweight drop of a few hundred feet.

The turquoise material of his friend’s sleeveless shirt blurred by. Daniel’s head jerked upward to spot the pretty billboard of her face smiling down at his descending form, completely unfazed by the fear in the freefalling teen’s expression. Possibly even reveling in it. Because it wasn’t any sort of fear of hitting the ground that sent Daniel into this panic. The gigantic college freshman wouldn’t ever let him hit the ground from such a drop. She’d catch him, just like she always did. There was no doubt whatsoever about that.

No, it was the method of capture that earned his apprehension, and the temporarily giant girl wasted no further time in initiating. In the blink of an eye, the combined underside of five bulbous appendages slapped into his falling body, curling their warm, clammy selves forcefully around his reduced form.

Daniel blanched almost immediately: the powerful, unwashed odor of his friend’s jog over to the house forced itself upon him even as the toes cupped him roughly into the ball of the foot with no amount of gentle pressure. That grip was to ensure his safety, of course, considering he was still questionably secured at least a hundred feet in the air while his friend balanced on one leg. The foot that held him bent inwards as it held him level with her waist while she positioned it parallel to the ground.

Her lips broadened into a triumphant smile.

“Hah! Still got it!” Olivia declared. Hands fixed to her hips as she held a steady balance without the slightest hint of effort. She was clearly basking in the physical fruits of a near life-long career in gymnastics as she pridefully observed her shrunken best friend pinched between the toes of her upturned bare foot.

Daniel grunted, not nearly as enthused as the soft flesh of her toes poured over him. By the second, the diminutive liar was marked with their pungent aroma as they palpated and flexed. It was almost a relief when, after a few further moments of Olivia admiring her skill, Daniel suddenly found himself both facing the ground and being lowered toward it along with his living restraints. The five digits suddenly released their grip, leaving him to a rough ten foot fall in the process.

Already bracing on his hands and knees from the drop, the shrunken liar wasn’t under any compunction to let up on it. He was almost certain that Olivia’s ped would be right behind him, ready and eager to mash his body into the brown carpet. So when the shadow of her hovering foot instead removed itself from both his person and the surrounding terrain, he had to struggle to not let his elation overcome. That foot would still be coming like a freight train for him – just not quite yet, apparently.

So, after a moment of enjoying what would likely be the last clean air he’d access for a while, Daniel turned himself over, rising slowly to stand at attention as he faced his friend.

From down here, Olivia was, as always, an impressively intimidating sight. Letting his eyes wander upward after a brief, cautious linger on her temporarily patient feet, they traced up her powerfully defined legs  up until the point where the lightly tanned towers disappeared into the material of her black and pink Nike shorts. That turquoise shirt followed it, hiding what he knew to be equally defined abdominals underneath it, and of course her well-toned arms still had her hands resting confidently on her hips.

There were a lot of negatives to being reduced to this floor-hugging stature: ones far separated from how people usually reacted to the lie-induced reduction in itself. However, the one that topped his list was just how much further the monolith in front of him drove in the sharp contrasts between his own level of fitness and that of his best friend. A monument of pure athleticism versus a lazy little nerd – it was no wonder folks automatically assumed he was just some dreamy stalker following her around whenever they were seen in public.

Preventing a wave of self-consciousness from overtaking him, he finally met Olivia’s gaze once more. Her piercing green eyes, now so far above him, seemed to study with delicate curiosity, and Daniel clued in on why immediately.

“Class” had started, yes, and apparently they were starting with the remedial lessons. If Daniel were to look behind, he would, of course, see the towering couch. The same couch which had just enough ground clearance for, say, an inch tall seventeen-year-old to scamper beneath and just maybe escape what he had coming. Maybe even allow him some time to grow back to his natural height.

It was also a fool’s quest, one which would serve only to test his friend’s patience. He had made that mistake once before a few years back, and the resulting outburst from Olivia had been more than enough to cement it in his mind to never even consider such a thing ever again. No, passivity and acceptance offered a much more preferable experience that he’d gladly take over the alternative to which he’d been introduced on that day.

“Sooo…” Olivia eventually drawled after ensuring he stayed put, giving a light toss of her head to reposition her bangs again. “How ‘bout you tell me exactly what you thought you were accomplishing by not being truthful with Mallory?”

“Well, I mean… you know Mallory, Liv,” Daniel explained upward, almost at a yell. “You know she wouldn’t ever hurt someone on purpose, but everyone keeps acting like she did and she just doesn’t deserve that. So I just… wanted to give her a pick-me-up, y’know? So that she could feel like someone was on her side.”

“But was hurting that other girl something she could’ve avoided?” Olivia probed.

At that, Daniel gulped.

“Yeah,” he eventually conceded. His eyes darting elsewhere for a moment, as they couldn’t quite meet with his friend’s during this his admittance. “It was a tough game. She got aggressive, and it just happened when she made a play. But she was… so upset about it, Liv, and I just wanted her to feel better.” An exasperated sigh recalled his gaze back to Olivia’s face, now shaking back and forth.

“Oh, Danny, you really can be the sweetest, most thoughtful lil’ guy,” she murmured, head still cocked as she considered him. “It’s your best feature, easily.”

Olivia’s words were soft, her little compliment blush-inducing. But most notable to Daniel was that the usual energy in her words was drained, replaced instead by an ominous monotony joined by the sudden flexing of her boulder-sized toes.

Swallowing again, Daniel found his eyes darting furtively between his friend’s increasingly blank face and her even more increasingly eager toes.

“But you went about it wrong here, by not being honest with her,” Olivia insisted at length. “And doing that doesn’t help, Danny. It hurts.”

Daniel had no time to brace himself. In spite of the klaxons sounding in his head, Olivia simply moved too fast, too suddenly for the inherent significance of the one stressed word to click. In an instant her bus-sized right foot surged forward, the gap between her big and second toe aimed squarely at him. The two damp digits synchronized to grasp him between their odorous flesh right near the tips, and what followed was something he could only describe as being driven to the floor by a three-hundred-pound linebacker. The impact fired a sharp, swift pain throughout his back, jarring his person as a whole.

“You hurt Mallory when you aren’t honest with her over something like this,” Olivia chided far above the arching toes that currently held him to the ground. All the while, her digits scrunched together in their best imitation of a bear hug before lifting upward, taking Daniel with them. “You stop her from bettering herself.”

Again, the shrunken liar was driven into the carpet below. He grunted in pain as he was dragged up once more in the tangle of toes.

“You’re one of her closest friends,” she continued, following up with another slam that earned a second groan. And yet again, he was staggered back to his feet. “She cares a lot about what you have to say.”

To the ground again she drove him, this time eliciting a hollowing gasp that did nothing to alter pensive face so far above. Internally, he held on tightly to the fact that this was still a preferable experience to the alternative.

“I know Mallory didn’t mean it, and I’m sure she was super upset about it,” she said, propping him up again in what had become a pattern. “But she’s still a big, strong girl. You know, little guy? And she still let herself do it, and you admitted that much.”

The toes went down, the pain returned, another unheeded gasp floated into the air – followed soon and again by Daniel’s body itself.

“So when you make excuses for her, tell her it’s not her fault, even if it’s to make her feel better? Instead of telling her the truth and letting her learn from it, you just set her up to do it all over again.” This impact came the hardest, mighty enough to upgrade his gasp to a shrill cry. And that did at last earn him something, at least, in the form of a sad little frown.

“And then what?” Olivia asked. Her rhetorical tone rise with the motion of her toes, albeit empty as Daniel had been left lying on the carpet. Yet even after leaving, those digits still hovered overhead, blotting out his view of his friend’s face. “Do you lie to her about it again, Daniel? And maybe again, and then again?”

“What you create isn’t just a lie, Danny, it’s a wound. A festering little wound between the two of you that does nothing but get bigger and bigger, because all it wants you to do is keep adding to it. And unless you try to heal it by sharing the truth, it’ll ruin both of you. Because no relationship can be built around even the smallest lies, even if you mean well when you tell them.”

Those arching toes ceased their air dance, and fell upon him yet again. Of course, Olivia didn’t need all of her digits, didn’t even need two, for what came next.  Her big toe was upon him directly now, driving the tip directly against his torso. Compressing down into him. Twisting. Robbing him of his breath, in itself an almost merciful side effect, while painfully caving in his chest.

“And then there’s what it does to just you,” Olivia carried on, and at this her tone turned ever more sorrowful. Of course, the drilling of her toe didn’t halt, each word matching up with its own little plunge into his body. “What it earns you. Which is why we go through this little lesson like we do, Danny.” One last little twist there, thankfully, though as usual it continued the precedent set before by reaching a higher magnitude of pressure. Again, he cried out, though this time there was no visible frown to suggest the young woman was at all reconsidering the righteousness of her actions.

Especially not as the toe returned, extending fully over him in all its horrible glory, and then sunk down until it was his everything. All he could see, all he could feel, all he could smell, all he could taste. The ridged pad dug hard into his face, strong enough that he would likely be checking for a permanent skin imprint soon after growing back.  And as the clammy flesh mashed into him, the perspiration that coated it began to assert itself upon him more aggressively.

Even after he had the sense to close his eyes, the liquid stung them, mixing in its own special brand of discomfort already provided by its source. And even with a tight-lipped mouth, the gyrations of that all-powerful toe against his lips still managed to part them, even if only slightly. It was enough to allow the salty secretion to pass into his mouth, the overpowering scent of her sour foot enhancing the putrid mouthful even further. And through it all, the toe continued to make his entire body its personal plaything. Mashing, grinding, and bouncing atop him without mercy, its pillowy nature being the only thing mitigating the unforgiving impact.

All the while, Olivia continued onward with her well-rehearsed admonitions.

“I truly don’t like hurting you like this, Daniel,” she informed him for what was not the first time. Her voice raised to allow him to hear even as her big toe continued vigorously smothering him – growing not an iota smaller, he noted, though he knew it wouldn’t.

It was an honest comfort she liked to provide for her little friend, and one that he liked to receive. Throughout the length of her caring diatribe, Olivia herself hadn’t shrunk an inch. Most of his other disciplinarians surely couldn’t admit an aversion to these games without shrinking nearly as small as he stood now.

“But I have to,” Olivia said. “Because I don’t know of any other way to make you truly understand what your lies will do to you if you don’t stop. And you need to.”

One last push exerted against him, harder than any that had come before, and then the dominating digit was finally removed – but if it was for the better, he couldn’t yet tell. Olivia’s foot was, ultimately, only repositioning itself. And in the resulting operation, the poor boy found that his body had disappeared under the ball of his friend’s foot, with only his head exposed, albeit barely. Once again, Daniel was looking up the length of his self-imposed educator’s body, this time from the crevice between her big and second toe, as if his head were simply an unfortunate little pea that had dropped into sweat-glazed partition of flesh.

“When you lie…” Olivia preached to him with fiery green eyes focused squarely on his red, irritated face. “It’s violation itself. In its purest form. Violation of everything good and right. And that’s why people who do it are punished. It’s why they’re made lesser, to match what their lies do to their spirit. But you know that it doesn’t last.”

Something to be thankful for, Daniel quietly mused, only to promptly discover the resumption of his friend’s rhythmic pressing, as if those brilliant emeralds in the sky had had pierced his very mind.

“But there are other consequences, Daniel, and they do last,” the colossal gymnast continued, her voice growing somber. Her mashing lightening. “Consequences of the soul. Consequences that will make what I’m doing right now seem like a day at a spa. Consequences that last forever, Daniel, after you… pass on. And if you don’t stop, if you don’t do better, that’s what you have to look forward to.”

A salty splash, and odorless unlike what he had become used to, graced his face just then. It melded into his eyes in a stinging intrusion that blurred his vision and made it an impossibility to see much further than the lightly tanned walls of the surrounding toes. That was fine, though, as he had no need to. Right now, he doubted that his friend’s vision was that much better, after what had just landed on him.

“And that’s why we go through this,” she stated, and Daniel could swear he heard crack forming between her words. “So that you understand what’s waiting for you. To give you a taste. ‘cause you’re too sweet to end up like that, when you’re just a little… misguided. And all of us… your parents, the guys at school, Mallory… me… we love you too much to let that just happen, when we can still put you on the right track.”

“You understand what I’m saying, right?” she asked following a brief, shared silence that saw the removal of the fleshy pressure upon his form. “You understand all this, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” he gasped out after a moment, not being at all dishonest. He understood perfectly well why this was happening. Why his best friend was doing this. Why he was where he was. The “whys” of it were, after all, what truly allowed him to get through this without any love lost.

“Liv?” he called up, to allow her to confirm he wasn’t getting any smaller.

“Yeah?”

“Can we… can we call it here, for today?” he asked of her, allowing himself some small amount of hope. “And see how things go? Please?”

And to his towering friend’s credit, she actually seemed to consider it. Her goliath of a foot even began to unpin, just a bit, though he was merely afforded a look up between its toes and at her face.

At her head, shaking in the negative.

“Oh, no,” she murmured, her voice soft but firm. “No, no, no, no. You know how this works, lil’ guy. We stop when you’ve gone all the way down through the heel.”

And once more, Daniel Stewart’s world was enveloped by the unwashed flesh of his best friend’s caring foot, the teenager taking one last breath as the ball of Olivia’s foot pressed itself into his body.

Daniel Stewart was in Hell.

Of course, if he were to dispense with the melodrama, he would say that he was just in his best friend’s gratefully watered-down approximation of the place.

And yet that moist descriptor was one he meant quite literally, as Olivia’s wet and wrinkled sole threatened to both drown and smother him underneath its all-powerful girth. Whatever sweat that had been previously absorbed by the fields of carpet had either been an inconsequential amount or, as he was starting to suspect, simply been replaced in the heat of this slow, purposeful grinding. Each small, quick breath he was allowed had an equal chance of filling his mouth with pungent flesh or foul liquid. And the former usually brought the latter with it anyway.

It was being completely subsumed underneath Olivia’s behemoth of a ped that he hated above all else. Worse, he figured he was still only about halfway through with the process. Like some sort of perverted automated carwash, her foot would see him through from one end to the other, from toe to heel, washing him thoroughly of his sin – not with soap and water, but with pain and humiliation.

And sweat. Obviously. All at a very deliberate pace. He estimated that his face had only just passed fully from the pounding ball of her foot and underneath her arch, and his legs had yet to even reach her heel.  He doubted they would any time soon. He had plenty of discomfort to go through still, and plenty of aches. And he would endure them, just as he always had. Because it wasn’t the pain that cultivated his hatred for this sweltering grinder.

It was the fact that he was so utterly isolated. So tucked away under this ridiculous blanket of doughy flesh that nothing else could reach him. He couldn’t see Olivia. He couldn’t see her serene yet scolding face. He couldn’t see that pure, innocent purpose behind her brilliant eyes. And he couldn’t hear it in her warm voice, delivered to him via verbal lesson constructed purely for his benefit.

More than anything, it was that in this state of deprivation, he may as well be under anyone’s foot. Someone like Ms. Roland’s, who had delighted so often in the pain she had caused him in times past. Who did so very little to hide it, yet never got caught. Never got called on it. Who truthfully did not care about him or his well-being, physical or spiritual, in the least.

A particularly sharp twist of Olivia’s foot broke him out of his pitiful reverie. It elicited a yelp from the youth that earned him another disgusting mouthful of the lint-speckled underbelly which continued on without pause in its grim work. Again, no different as if it had been with the likes of Ms. Roland, and Daniel turned his thoughts to reminding himself that it wasn’t.

That the individual currently out of sight wasn’t anything like his wretched teacher. That this individual cared, and that even though he might also be out of her sight, every action she took was suffused with it to the utmost. No true harm would ever be allowed to reach him while he paid penance to his transgression against truth.  And he told these things to himself through every period of building, unceasing pressure, every sharp, sudden press or twisting grind. Over and over and over again, barely conscious as his body moved along through the ringer, until Olivia delivered one last dig that mashed his tiny face in and almost submerged his head in the waterlogged carpet upon which it rested. Like a little bug beneath her heel.

“There we go,” Olivia declared with finality. Her punishing ped lifted up and away from his battered form. One last wince was paid, of course, as that ceiling of pinkish skin passed over him in all its threatening glory. Daniel half expected one last little step to fall upon him for good measure, particularly as a droplet of sweat suddenly splashed – almost tauntingly – onto his face.

But no, the foot simply, and thankfully, kept going, until it was out of sight. Replacing it once more was the full, powerful form of his friend, with hands still resting confidently on her hips. Her expression was just about as serene as he had pictured it, her green eyes gentle even in the searching gaze currently pointed down toward him.

“Well, lil’ Danny-Boy, I guess the only thing left is to see if we’re gonna do better now,” she stated. She gave her head another quick whip to reposition her bangs yet again.

“So. Are we?” she asked, voice as soft as silk. Certainly soft enough for Daniel to pick up on the undertone to that little question: one of sincere pleading for his compliance. For a positive, yet truthful answer. So that this lesson would not be one that had to be repeated again.

“I’ll…I’ll try to,” he answered quietly, utterly drained from his ordeal. “I will.”

“Oh, I know you’ll try, shorty,” Olivia shot downward with a little tilt of her head. “That’s why I went ahead and stopped with just the one foot done. I’m asking if you’ll keep it up better than you usually do, ‘cause I really don’t want this to be a regular part of our summer together.”

“I…I want to do better,” he murmured, and that was the truth. It wasn’t like he looked for the first excuse to belt out a lie, or for a moment where he felt he could get away with it. Something usually came up, and he’d find honesty slipping down his priority list in the face of whatever that something was.

“Well, I guess we’ll just hope that it happens this time,” Olivia remarked casually. The sudden, tender little curl of her lips was an easy tell of how much she truly meant it. “So, you ready to stop hugging carpet?”

“Y-Yeah,” Daniel confirmed. The unpleasant aroma he had continued to soak in even after the removal of its source provided plenty of incentive. Providing much less incentive, unfortunately, was the shifting of his friend’s lips from tender smile to playful smirk.

“You wanna go upsy-daisy?” Olivia asked with overly good humor.

A shudder overtook Daniel’s little body as the pillowy undersides of her ever-playful toes hovered once more into his vision. They wiggled with distinct fervor at the enticing prospect of welcoming his form into their unified embrace once again.

“N-n-no,” he stammered out amidst a flurry of headshaking.

He hated upsy-daisy, even more than their little inverse game of drop-and-catch. Primarily because, unlike the simple plummet that marked the basis of that horrific activity, being tossed up into the air by his friend’s toes actually did terrify him. Through the combination of g-forces asserting themselves upon him in what was usually a rapid ascent and release, the stomach-displacing peak that it led to, and finally the sudden plummet into an aggressive snatch from Olivia’s hand, it was furthest from his desires.

“Really?” Olivia questioned. She was clearly disappointed in the rejection as the vigorous shaking of Daniel’s head transformed into a nod. “Well, whatever. You know I’m just gonna replace it with another lesson later, right?”

“Yes,” Daniel replied curtly. She could do whatever later. He didn’t care. As long as it’s not fucking upsy-daisy.

“Suit yourself,” Olivia remarked with a shrug of her far-off shoulders as her now depressed little toes departed from view. A welcome sight in itself, but one enhanced by what moved in to replace it, something that was typically the most welcome sight of all in the wake of these reckonings: Olivia’s hand.

It approached quickly with fingers splayed wide to receive him. As usual, at least when it came to things that didn’t involve working him along the length of her foot, his friend was not particularly patient in her motions. Only taking a second for the college freshman, her waist bent rather flexibly to scoop her fingers through the dampened carpet and underneath his body. The motion sent him tumbling along their lengths, eventually coming to a face-up rest in Olivia’s upturned palm.

Of course, by the time he had settled in, he was already well on his way along a collision course straight into the lightly tanned skin of Olivia’s cheek. Not that he wasn’t expecting it, of course. So his sudden impact with the soft skin wasn’t truly “sudden”, and he welcomed this affectionate little hug with closed eyes and a sigh of pure relief. Even if this tender embrace still managed to induce some manner of soreness from his battered body.

“Please do better, Danny. I do care about ya a whole stinkin’ bunch,” Olivia said with a comfortable warmth that seemed to act as a verbal aspirin in soothing him. Less soothing, though, were the rather pronounced inhalations coming from her nearby nostrils. “Even if you do kinda stink really bad right now.”

“Well, hey, don’t look at me,” Daniel murmured in a tone no less playful that his friend’s had been as he pressed his forehead a little bit deeper into her cheek. “That’s on you.”

“No, that’s me on you,” Olivia countered with a deeply amused little chuckle that shook Daniel’s world even as he cringed at the awful, awful joke.

“You’re not proud of that, are you?” he inquired, fully serious.

“A little bit,” she responded, earning another little cringe. “Besides, it’s the truth. Ain’t it, little guy?”

“Y-yeah,” Daniel replied after a moment’s consideration between what would be the larger risk – telling his much bigger friend the rather unflattering truth that she did not, in fact, smell like fresh roses after a workout, or blatantly lying about it and facing further consequences.

The consideration was, of course, only for a moment. Olivia knew full well what she was asking, after all, and if anything this was just a quick little test on his most recent lesson. One he had apparently passed, if the sudden added firmness of their embrace was any indication.

“Well, true as that may be…” Olivia started. The remnants of her chuckling were still fresh in her voice as she finally pulled Daniel away to look at him as he reclined in her palm. “…you do stink, shorty. And from the looks of it, you’re gonna be this small for a pretty good while, even with good behavior. Which means you and I are gonna be hanging out for that good little while. Which means I’m gonna have to deal with you stinking to high heaven that whole time.”

“And I gotta tell ya, Danny,” she continued, the most playful smile in the world forming on her lips as her free hand swept through her bangs again, “I’m not really sure I want to deal with that.”

Oh, no.

Lips curling in the exact opposite direction of his best friend’s, Daniel wondered if it wasn’t, perhaps, too late to go with upsy-daisy after all.

“So maybe we should just mosey on back to my house and fix this little problem, hm?”

“You know, if all that squirming doesn’t stop real fast, I think I will remove that stupid little suit for this,” Olivia warned as Daniel writhed helplessly in the softly caged arena of her curled fingers. They’d only just come back through the front door of her house, and he hadn’t ceased passively resisting for a single footfall of the journey back.

It was not a threat Daniel had to hear twice. Like a lightning bolt delivered directly from the unseen heavens, blocked as they were by the cocoon of his best friend’s giant fist, the words sent a jolt through the writhing teenager’s body that put an immediate end to his desperate rebellion. Planking within Olivia’s curled fingers, a shudder built on the anticipation of potentially the greatest embarrassment he might ever face in his lifetime. It was the only thing that functionally distinguished his forcibly prone, stiff form from that of a petrified wooden board.

Granted, he was still about to suffer one of the most embarrassing things Olivia could ever inflict upon him in his rather reduced state. Not for the first time, either. But while he felt that his towering friend’s words were probably a bluff and most likely a tease, hell if he was going to actually test that particular hypothesis.

Even if correct, continuing to act out would likely just annoy her. Greatly.

And that wasn’t a risk he was going to take when he still might have a chance of getting out of this with some level of dignity intact.

The cheery humming now making its way into his clammy confines didn’t speak particularly well of those odds, of course. A cheery Olivia was usually a good Olivia when it came to these moments of lie-induced vulnerability; relatively speaking, anyway. Just not so much when that cheeriness was paired with circumstances like this.

Even still, as his captor bounded through her house and to the bathroom adjoined by her room, there was no fiber of Daniel’s being that was going to give up on trying to get out of this without one last plea in spite of how poor the chances of success might be. He just plain refused to.

“Alright, Danny-Boy, you just sit tight while I give my hands a quick wash,” Olivia declared as they reached their destination. Her balled fist unfurled, fingers tilting so as to allow his stiff body to roll along off their well-worn undersides and onto the counter-top. “Can’t exactly get you clean if all this sweat just washes onto you, right?”

“Well, you don’t have to clean me,” Daniel offered weakly as he sat up, his aching body not at all pleased with actual movement on his part. The snicker his little suggestion earned from his towering friend was not particularly encouraging. Her formerly occupied hand moved to work the cold-water knob of the sink.

“I ran all the way to your house and then mushed you into my foot, shorty. I pretty much do have to clean you.”

“But you don’t have to do it,” Daniel replied just before a gentle torrent of water gushed forth from the faucet, jarring him despite knowing it was coming. Out of almost sheer morbidity, his eyes couldn’t help but track Olivia’s hands as they slid underneath the stream, twisting and turning to allow the cleansing liquid to wash over every square inch of the twin appendages.

“No, I’m actually certain that I’ve gotta do it,” came yet another jovial response, punctuated with yet another giggle. Daniel’s eyes remained glued to Olivia’s hands throughout this rather undesired response. She delivered a couple of quick pumps to the soap dispenser, ejecting some of the raspberry-red gel into the palm of her hand.

It was when those two hands met once again, rubbing that gel into a thick white lather, that the warning klaxons within the teen’s head truly began to sound. Particularly now that he could see himself being swallowed into the gap between Olivia’s hands, where her soft but firm flesh would roll over him. Over every part of him.

“Liv, please,” he all but begged upward as his friend’s cleaning came to an end with the last of the lather being washed from her hands, followed by a rightward turn of the same knob. “Please don’t. It’s embarrassing.”

“Nothing embarrassing about it, squirt,” Olivia casually retorted as her hands headed toward the hand towel hanging from the wall to temporarily whisk away the remaining moisture. “You’re really not in a position to do it, so I will.”

“But I could be,” he countered.

He obviously could.

“Oh, is that so?” Olivia questioned, now clearly amused as her emerald eyes found him again. The knuckles of her left hand rested rather condescendingly upon her hip.

“Yes!” he piped upward. Daniel was fully aware that this window being provided to him was not a large one, that it remaining open rested solely with his friend’s rather lacking patience. It truthfully wasn’t much of a shot, but he had to take it.

“You’re – first, you’re an inch tall – you’re an inch tall and you’re going to give yourself a bath? With no help from me?”

“Yes!”

“In my bathroom?”

“Yes!”

“In my sink?”

“Yes!”

“You – again, you’re an inch tall – you think you can just walk over to that knob and turn the water on?”

“Yes, I can!” Daniel shouted, exasperated at this point. So much so, in fact, that he didn’t give the slightest shit that he couldn’t possibly turn the knob in his current stature, even while knowledge of this technical falsehood existed in the back of his mind. He knew he couldn’t, though his lips had spoken otherwise, and this was when the mechanism of his brain ground to a halt. The gears clicked into place just a second too late to help.

Oh, no. No. No, no, no, no…

That sinking feeling hit him again. Not for long, thankfully, but enough to notice. A quarter of his already pretty pathetic height slashed away in an instant, a reflection on his hasty breach of the truth.

He didn’t bother hoping that his friend hadn’t noticed. It would have been a short-lived hope to begin with. Those playful emerald irises, now just a little further upward, glowered at him with an almost palpable disappointed anger. To make matters worse, Olivia’s chest was noticeably heaving with each labored breath she was taking.

How in the world had he let himself screw up like this?

The question reverberated in his brain as fear and a bad case of the shakes overcame him.

“Liv, I d-didn’t mean to…didn’t mean to do that,” he pleaded to the fuming young woman, hoping instead that this set of pleas would not fall upon deaf ears. “I r-really, really d-didn’t. I promise. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I wasn’t th-thinking, I j-just said it,” he continued, yammering on with increasing desperation. “I’m so sorry, Olivia, I didn’t mean to, I just…I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Olivia, please-“

“Stop,” came the rather curt order from up on high, megatons of frustration packed into just one little syllable. The matching countenance worked with her voice to silence him immediately and mercilessly.

It was with true fear that Daniel continued to look up into his best friend’s hardened eyes. His pleas would be for naught.

You never lied to Olivia again when you were still suffering the consequences of a previous breach of truth. Everyone who knew her knew this fact, and he had been the first person to learn it. It was a lesson that, much like the one regarding actually trying to flee from her, had only needed teaching just the once.

He had never, until now, given her reason to teach it again.

“Just…stop,” she repeated. Olivia closed her eyes and rubbed her temple, getting her breathing under control. For his part, Daniel was prepared for the worst, and that included the possibility that his friend’s earlier threat would now come to pass. He was pretty sure he’d rather take a ride inside Olivia’s shoe than have that happen, but considering the hole he had just dug for himself, having to experience both was a completely viable possibility.

To say he expected the next words that came out of the young woman’s mouth would have been the most catastrophic lie of Daniel’s limited life.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” Olivia breathed. Her voice was now much calmer; gentle, even, with her eyes opening anew to affix him with a matching gaze.

Daniel was so caught off guard by this wholly unexpected display that he didn’t even notice the approach of her enormous hand: the sudden, peaceful rubbing of his back by a thumb now larger than he was. He nearly jumped from his seat.

“I was having a little too much fun with you,” she explained softly. “I needled you too much. And I got you to say something without thinking about it first. I’m sorry for that. It wasn’t right of me.” The stroking on his back continued. Daniel felt he might actually melt into the comforting digit out of pure relief. “We’ll just consider this one on me, okay? So don’t worry about it. I’ll take responsibility for it at confession on Sunday.”

“Thank you,” Daniel murmured rather sheepishly. Relief still washed over him, along with a little guilt over his expectations. Olivia could be a lot of things, both good and bad, but one of those “good” things had always been her sense of fairness. He felt bad for forgetting that truth and attributing to her instead the traits of a much crueler individual. It was impossible not to feel he’d done a disservice to her character.

“So how ‘bout we go ahead and get this bath over with, hmm? The TV’s got a bunch of saved episodes I didn’t have time to see at school; when we get done, we can go watch whatever you want.”

Nope, strike that. She was evil. Pure evil.

Daniel couldn’t help but squirm as the formerly compassionate thumb worked in tandem with its closest partner to pluck him from the counter-top. Olivia’s fingers delivered him over to the stainless white basin of the sink. Already, his friend’s free hand was working the faucet handles to concoct a warm deluge of water for use.

“Liv, please don’t,” he uttered one final time over the gentle crashing of the small waterfall into the valley below. He could already feel his cheeks reddening as this potential humiliation was quickly becoming his reality.

“Oh, just calm down,” came the at-once amused reply. “It’ll be over with before you know it.”

With that, the two digits holding him captive suddenly braced Daniel against Olivia’s open palm. It gave him just enough time to helplessly watch her other hand join in.

Contrary to the shrunken teen’s expectations, he did not, in fact, find himself pressed between two bronze walls. Instead, the titanic hands joined together to form a nice, fleshy cup, the bottom of which he was soon released. An overpowering spray of warm water soon entered the pool of his friend’s cupped hands under the faucet. The admittedly comforting liquid quickly filled up his temporary miniature though still oversized tub, soothing his remaining aches as he floated with the surface to the top.

“Deep breath, Danny.”

To Olivia’s credit, she did wait for the command to both register and be heeded before bringing the tip of her thumb down atop his head. With a single press, she plunged him underneath the water’s surface, even as she retracted her hands out from under the still-pouring faucet.

Nowhere near satisfied with this quick dunk, his friend’s dexterous digit moved to catch him at his side. From there it began to swirl, stir, and whisk him around his little pool. Daniel was grateful he’d closed his eyes upon his rather unceremonious dunking – he was pretty certain he’d be under the influence of motion sickness now if he’d actually witnessed all this spinning on top of actually experiencing it.

Thankfully, that particular act ended quickly enough. Olivia’s thumb withdrew after carefully bringing his little form to a gentle stop, allowing him to float back to the water’s surface, open his eyes, and catch his breath. Of course, no sooner had he risen than he began to lower once again, this time as Olivia carefully allowed the water to seep through a small gap she had created at the bottom of her cupped hands. It didn’t take long for his organic basin to empty, leaving him alone and thoroughly drenched on its squishy, damp floor formed by her palms.

That, of course, was when the soap arrived.

The raspberry gel plunked down onto him with careful precision. The pump worked, like so many things, by Olivia’s thumb as her hands rested underneath the dispensing top. A glob of purifying goop splattered against the back of his head, down the length of his back, prepping him nicely for the dreaded moment to come – and, at last, it arrived. Olivia’s hands closed upon and around him, sandwiching him with utmost care between her palms.

And then they started to rub.

The motion wasn’t rough, but it was certainly firm. Enough to induce the soapy gel into a foaming lather as his little body was rolled back and forth with the motions of his friend’s hands. The cushiony palms overtook every part of him as he felt like he were being spread upon them, leaving a fresh trail of suds behind with every rolling motion. The scrubbing hands didn’t miss much of anything in their work, and that meant anything.

It took a concerted effort to ignore certain presses in certain areas between certain legs. Daniel was just glad to be trapped and out of sight within this muscular mayhem of a human car-wash, lest Olivia notice the heat overcoming his face due to the unwanted physical contact.

This was, after all, just the preliminary scrubbing. If history was any indication, as he was certain it would be, this was about to get much worse, and doubly as personal.

It was a certainty that was confirmed when Olivia’s hands parted once more. However, he wasn’t greeted by a torrent of cleansing water under the bathroom’s yellow light, but the pad of his best friend’s thumb pressing once more onto his head.

Gently – always gently – the digit began to rub at his scalp in circular motions that he would not deny were soothing and that he might even dare to label as enjoyable.

It was when the swirling thumbpad moved down his tiny face that his hackles truly rose. The same soothing motions applied to his scalp were now foisted upon his chest, a last look at Olivia as the motions tracked further down his person. It thoroughly unnerved him as the thumb moved over his stomach, closer to his waist. And continued down.

Her thumb traced across the millimeters of space stretched between Daniel’s thighs. The gridded ovals of her fingerprint adjusted infinitesimally for the minor hill formed beneath his clothing. Olivia’s all-encompassing gaze was outright dutiful, with no visible hesitation given what she was doing… or rather, what she was touching, now, though it was something Daniel himself was forced to recognize and bear. Something hormone-filled teenagers were obviously superb at.

Daniel couldn’t help but wonder if Olivia viewed him as utterly sexless in these moments, and he wasn’t sure if he were glad for that distinction or embarrassed even further by it. He was certainly glad for the Truplex material currently acting as the most appreciated barrier in the world, despite its inability to hide foreign shapes beneath its form-fitting fabric. So militant had he become in diverting his gaze away from the alluring event, in fact, he made no notice of the light rosy flush decorating Olivia’s cheeks in the intervening seconds, nor the tug of her tongue against the inside of her cheek as her gigantic finger loitered just a second longer than necessary over the boy’s delicates.

At last, the stimulating motions finally passed over the danger zone and beyond, moving further down his legs and all the way to his feet.

He also wasn’t sure if he should be glad or dismayed that she had handled his front-side first as the tip of her thumb proceeded to tump him over onto his stomach. It was not a comfortable position to have forced upon him in that moment, but at the same time he was glad to have his unwanted reaction and her ministrations hidden from view while he brought it under control.

His mind refocused to its usual method of veiling his biological reactions: scientific documentary footage of a polar bear turning some poor seal into grisly dinner.

While usually effective, it’s propensity for solving this problem seemed to be cut in half as Olivia’s thumbprint found his back and renewed its work, delivering an effective massage that further alleviated his lingering pains.

What was more, though, was that this time the digit lingered in place, making it clear that he was correct to perceive it as a massage. In all likelihood, it was a small apology on Olivia’s part for her contributing role in his most recent shrinking spurt. It was not wholly unappreciated – it was very sweet, honestly – but boy did he need her to move on at the moment. The polar bears weren’t working fast enough, and he could feel his member now prodding into the ridged terrain of his friend’s skin. And the grinding of soft flesh on all sides of his body wasn’t helping, either.

Luckily, her thumb moved on sooner, rather than later, and his relieving thoughts of gory seal death took him through the rest of the digit’s unwelcome but thankfully speedy journey down his lower back.

A sudden rush of cool water onto his big bronze cushion finished the job and in more ways than one. It didn’t take long for the lathered suds to wash away, taking the dirt and grime with them as the water spilled over the sides of her hand. The thumb returned momentarily to flick him onto his back once more. It allowed the serenely flowing water to wash over and complete its work. Soon, no suds were left, and the downpour from the faucet was squeezed to an end.

“All clean,” Olivia chirped triumphantly. A genuine smile beamed down at Daniel on his damp, flesh-toned mattress. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

The mostly rhetorical questioned received little more than a nearly inaudible grunt from Daniel himself. Which in led to an exasperated rolling of his friend’s eyes up above.

“Well just be that way, I guess,” she added in thankfully faux-annoyance.

Daniel soon wondered if he maybe weren’t a little bit mistaken in his choice not to answer – namely, as the oversized hand that held him suddenly flipped over. He was dumped straight onto the hand towel that had been placed nearby. The teen hacked in surprise, which was apparently worthy of a boomed coo from above. He had little time to get his bearings before he suddenly found himself utterly surrounded by undulating walls of navy blue towel. Olivia aggressively folded it around his body, burying him amidst its drying fibers.

“All right, Danny-Boy, the rest is up to you,” Olivia’s voice soon informed from outside his towel fort. It was followed shortly by the tell-tale sound of a shirt hitting the tiled floor.

Damnit was the only word that passed through his head.

“Cleaning you up doesn’t exactly fix anything if we hang out without me washing up, too. I really wouldn’t recommend making your way out of there before I take you out myself, so just sit tight.”

Of course. After she rubs me down like that is when she realizes it’s kind of really fucking awkward, Daniel thought, utterly nonplussed, as the sound of a distant waterfall permeated his night-blue surroundings.

“Oh, Murphy’s cool. You’ll like her a lot, as long as you behave. Maybe even if you don’t.”

Daniel grunted lazily at his friend’s playful jab at his nasty habit, far too enraptured by his current predicament to muster up much more than that token sign of displeasure as he continued to slowly, comfortably melt onto her gargantuan thigh. Its owner was currently laying on her side across the length of the living room couch. Olivia’s thumb seemed rather intent on accomplishing this particular goal, with the dexterous digit kneading him softly into her golden skin. The now immeasurably powerful muscles seemed all too willing to accept this fact, yielding as they did to the whims of the young woman who had spent years cultivating them.

That lazy grunt turned to a moan as Olivia’s friendly thumb changed its motions. No longer simply rubbing up and down his tiny back but, instead, adopting a swirling motion that worked even better in its soothing purpose. In some ways, Daniel wondered if this – this being stroked as if her were a tiny but treasured pet in need of a gentle, calming hand – might actually be more embarrassing than the despised bathing session that had preceded it. Olivia was, after all, touching roughly the same places he’d rather not while grinding his front into the now pleasantly-scented surface of her bare thigh as she lounged about in a fresh pair of Nike shorts and a clean tee.

In other ways, he didn’t really give a shit. This was comfortable, and Olivia’s gentle massage was wholly appreciated as it worked to alieve him of the aches and pains she herself had inflicted upon him underneath her merciless sole, seemingly working them out of his body as she pressed him into her own.

So hell if he was going to think about this too much and ruin an otherwise gracious act from his friend who was currently feeling a little bit apologetic over the teasing that had led him to losing another chunk of his already severely lessened height.

Because if there was one thing he knew about these moments, it was that he had to enjoy them while they lasted.

“And? Who else?” Olivia questioned curiously as she continued to prod him about his courses for next semester and, most importantly, who would be teaching them. “Algebra, right? You get Ms. Stone?”

I wish, the shrunken teen thought with a bitterness that almost turned thought into word. With a dissatisfied groan, his eyelids opened for the first time in a while. Greeting them over a sea of carpet was the scientific documentary she had clicked on as a little treat for him, muted and essentially forgotten as the two had soon struck up both this conversation and delightful massage.

“Well?” Olivia pressed with some impatience. Her thumb slowed its motions to a halt in order to lessen any distractions that might come between her and the answer she desired. Daniel, staring blankly over the curve of her thigh, sighed before wetting his lips as he recalled the sheer unpleasantness of reading whose class he had been assigned to. He milked the silence between him and his friend for all it was worth out of a need not say the name that soon escaped his lips.

“Roland.”

It was almost amusing, really, how forcefully that one word expelled all air out of the room. How it caused the seemingly invincible body he rested upon to seize up out of sheer concern. If he had simply been an outsider to this conversation, Daniel might even deem it impressive.

“That’s…” Olivia started, voice suddenly rather quiet. Unconfident – which was not at all natural for the auburn-maned athlete. “…that’s not right,” she continued after a thoughtful pause. “Roland doesn’t teach that.”

“She moved up to Algebra this year,” Daniel sullenly explained, forlorn eyes sinking into the warm comfort of Olivia’s flesh. As a pained silence overtook them, Olivia’s thumb joined him in his despair, providing an affectionate rub of support. It was easy to become lost in this particularly oversized brand of sympathy.

“Danny,” his friend’s quiet voice called as the sympathetic rubs came to an end. Accompanying that end, though, was her thumb moving to his side, the pristine nail pressing down just enough into the bronzed thigh so as to leverage itself underneath him before gently rolling the little boy onto his back. Curious, Daniel’s eyes drifted up Olivia’s considerable curves, eventually meeting her worried emerald gaze.

“Danny, listen to me,” she continued, knowing she fully had his attention. “You can’t have another slip-up like this next semester. You can’t.”

“Yeah,” Daniel replied meekly, while Olivia’s far-off shoulders slumped in thought.

“If it happens,” she eventually offered as her mind raced with contingencies, “Go talk to Mrs. Murphy. I mean it. You won’t… you won’t get off easy, but she’s fair. She’s a good person, Danny – she was faculty advisor for our Truth Council chapter my senior year. Tell her I told you to go to her. She’ll… I mean, she’ll teach you a lesson, but that’s all it is from her – a lesson. And she’ll take looking after you seriously. She cares, Danny.”

He nodded.

“And she’ll care about keeping you safe,” Olivia muttered as the pads of her thumb and forefingers clamped onto Daniel’s sides. She lifted him from one comfortable surface to another – her taut, toned stomach, itself covered by the pleasantly soft fabric of her fresh tank-top. In probably the best approximation of a hug his friend could manage at this height differential, her fingers pressed him gently into the powerful abdominals in a display of affection that left Daniel wondering just who this hug was meant to reassure.

The implication through all of this was that Ms. Roland didn’t care about him learning any kind of lesson and, thusly, did not care at all about his well-being, whether that be physical or spiritual. The latter itself was enough to earn Olivia’s annoyance and disrespect. The moment he had confided in her his read of the woman, which his friend had fully trusted without a second thought, that distaste had become palpable.

The former, though, was enough to earn Olivia’s fear. Fear of what that lack of care could mean for his health. Fear that one of his well-intentioned slip-ups might one day be the last he ever made, and not for any of the reasons she generally hoped would be the case.

Absent, of course, was any suggestion that Daniel confide in anyone else. Perhaps better than even he himself, Olivia understood why he did not do this. Why she was the only person he had shared his thoughts with. Suggesting that a teacher, a shaper of young minds, did not care about the sacred Truth? That she saw its workings solely as a means to enable her own particular proclivities? It was an accusation that had weight, and too much of it. And Daniel had too little proof – nothing more than knowing how she looked at him, the tone of her voice when delivering a “lesson”, the licking of her lips when he had cried out in pain. Nothing but physical tells existed – something the sadistic instructor plainly took great care to keep up. That Olivia believed him even then, that she trusted so fully in his eyes, his perception…

Well, it meant the world to him. And that meaning was why he couldn’t really help but snuggle slightly into her stomach as her hand cupped over him, sealing him against the defined surface. One of her fingers returned to its previous activities, rubbing tenderly against his back and unintentionally intensifying his light snuggling in the process.

“You know, I can’t really watch my show here,” he called up somewhat playfully in an attempt to lighten the mood and move on to something a bit more lighthearted.  Not that it wasn’t nice to occasionally be treated to this much softer side of his friend, but seeing her shaken like this, her confidence seemingly lost, he could do without.

“You stopped watching that like five minutes in,” Olivia replied, her voice not at all lightened. If Daniel’s eyes could see beyond the finger clasped above his head, and then further beyond the cusp of her chest, he would see that the gears in her head were still turning. Trying to come up with any more contingencies should the risk of an afternoon with Ms. Roland look like it might become a reality. Teachers he could see, maybe an old junior classmate that had been on the school’s gymnastics team at the same time. She was clearly in no mood to lighten up at the moment, not when her friend’s safety might now be in question.

Resigning himself to the fact that he was probably not going anywhere until Olivia had worked through this rather disturbing news, Daniel simply made himself comfortable. Not really hard to do – Olivia had more or less done that for him already. Rubbing the side of his face into the fabric of her shirt until it shifted to his liking, mostly as an attempt to contribute to his own comfort, Daniel allowed himself to close his eyes as the considerable warmth of Olivia’s body spread to his own, gradually lulling him into a calm slumber.