“See you tomorrow, Tom Thumb!” Thomas calls out as he swings past Cameron and I on a bright red bicycle to cut off onto the road.

“Jerk.” I mutter under my breath, despite the smile playing at my lips.

“Tom Thumb? Really, Marcus?” Cameron laughs, looking at me as I sit on his shoulder. I roll my eyes and pick at a scab on my knee, cheeks heating up. My brother sighs dramatically and continues down the path on the way to the bus stop. His shoulders bob with every stride so I find myself gripping the thick collar of his polo shirt for support.

Students walk in front and behind us with bags slung over their own shoulders, but no one notices me. When they do, they ride it off as a hallucination. Because that’s what people look at me and see. A hallucination. The bus driver doesn’t look twice when Cam and I enter the bus. It’s the same guy, alright, and Cam’s still swiping two go-cards to be fair, but I have a feeling the guy is going to get off my back for a while.

The moment we’re home, I exhale in relief. I swear to god my house has never felt so inviting. Here I can be myself and even my one year old baby sister Katherine will accept me. “Can you put me in my bookshelf?” I ask Cam with a yawn, not feeling in the mood to talk. My brother rolls his huge blue eyes and nods. He takes the stairs two at a time, causing my teeth to chatter uncontrollably.

I don’t wait for him to lift me off his shoulder into my room. The moment the shelf is within midget jumping distance, I leap off his shoulder onto the painted wood, rolling to absorb the impact of the fall. I’ve done jumps like that countless times before so it’s almost like a second nature. “Geeze, bro! Stop trying to kill yourself!” Cam jeers with a smirk as he tugs open the door to his own bedroom beside my shelf. I poke my tongue out at him before swinging myself through a little man hole that’s been drilled through the top of the shelf.

My fluffy doll’s bed lulls me forward and I collapse into the soft mattress, earmuffs slipping off. I’ve got about a dozen pairs, but these ones are my favourite. Why? Because they’re custom made. There’s a little screw at the top which can be connected to a midget sized cord. And that cord can be connected to my IPod. They were last year’s Christmas present from my parents. Since my dad lives in America with an expensive job as a technician, he took the liberty of designing a pair for my let’s just say ‘small’ head.

“IPod.” I say aloud. My hand snaps out of nowhere to grab my earmuffs and slap them back on. “CAMERON!”

My brother’s head peeks outside his bedroom door. He’s changed into a simple t shirt and boxers and has one earphone in his ear. “Marco? That was an impressive yell, brother. I actually heard that one!”

“Shut up.” I snap, pulling myself back through the manhole so I’m on top of the desk. “My IPod’s gone.”

Cam yawns loudly and I get a whiff of curried egg and god knows what else he’s eaten. All that does is remind me how hungry I am. But my stomach is the least of my worries. “Relax, brother! I’ve got it in my bag.”

The look of worry slips off my face. “Christ, I thought I lost it.” I say.

“I’ll go get it. Just give me five.” Cameron shuts his bedroom door and I yawn myself and sit down with my legs hanging over the edge of the shelf. The drop below is probably over 100 feet for me, but I’m hardly scared. Heights are nothing to me. Except annoying, that is. The fear I used to feel when looking over the side of my bookshelf is long gone now. Cameron places my good old IPod fourth gen beside me, winks, and shuts his door again. I hear a muffled sigh from inside his room.

My eyes travel to the black screen of my IPod and I smile at my reflection. It’s like looking into a mirror. After a pause to collect my thoughts, I use both hands to push the thick device towards my manhole. It’s like pushing a flat screen TV, but my muscles are used to the strain. I grunt under my breath and lug the IPod down into the bookshelf before slipping in behind it.

The bookshelf I live in is divided up into little sections; five in total. I can access the different levels via little manholes in the ground. The top shelf, though, is where I sleep. Once the IPod is positioned back against the wall, I relax a little and tug the striped socks off my feet, wiggling my toes. I quickly change into my own t shirt and shorts, the shirt being custom made with the slogan: To gain height, lose all your tall friends. I got it on an online doll’s clothes website for over $100. If I want to get something custom made, I have to really want that something.

My IPod’s waiting for me when I’m done and I grab it, as well as half a lolly snake, which I keep in a lunchbox container under my doll’s bed with the rest of my candy stash. The IPod sits in my lap like a full on two metre long poster. I punch in my passcode with my whole hands and open up Instagram. The first word that comes into my head is: how?

 I have just under 100 new followers. And when I scan through the list of usernames, I realise that all these people are in fact, my classmates. Heck, even Thomas has followed me. Shrugging, I follow all my fangirls and fanboys back and open up my profile page. I didn’t have many followers before the run in with high school. Well, I follow all the other real life midgets around; Ebony (who calls herself TheBorrower35), a girl called Minime101 who I believe is Amy Leebeck (Gabby’s cousin), Russel (who calls himself SteamPunkMidget) and Harriet (who calls herself LiteralActionFigure). There are a few others who claim to be midgets, but they’re usually just faking it.

It’s hard to tell whether or not these people ARE in fact like me, but I’ve just confirmed that Amy’s a real case, and I’ve met Ebony in person. Russel’s a year older than me and lives downtown somewhere, but I know he’s a midget because he kinda takes photos of himself in someone else’s hand. I just follow Harriet because I like her name. So now, as I look at all these new and random people who call themselves my classmates, I wonder what they’ll think of me.

Everyone’s liked my pictures, which are mostly just selfies, apart from a pic of Cam and I, and one of me doing a backflip off the couch. The one of Cam and I is pretty embarrassing, actually, because I’m literally sitting on his head pretending to meditate. He won’t let me take it down, though. Besides, he’s got heaps of embarrassing shots of me on his own page. My least favourite being a shot of my head poking out of his enormous mouth from when we were ten. I couldn’t get the smell of saliva out of my clothes and skin for weeks.

I snap the IPod shut, toss the remainder of my lolly snake back inside its container and stand up out of bed to stretch. Once my head is marginally clear I clamber back on top of my bookshelf and clear my throat. “Cameron!” I yell for the second time this afternoon. The familiar sound of heavy metal music fills my covered ears. Cam always listens to music in the afternoons.

“Coming!” His voice calls from his room. The bedroom door creaks open and Cameron appears, looking drowsy. He’s worse than me, sometimes, with his sleeping. At least I have an excuse because midgetness can really drain a guy, but Cameron? No; he just eats, sleeps and then repeats. “Sorry, bro. Is the music too loud?” He asks me now.  

I shake my head instantly and pat my earmuffs. “Nah, I’m just bored. You wanna go for a walk?” I reply.

Cameron sighs. “Where to?”

“I don’t know… the park or something? You’re kind of the one who’s taking me.”

“That’s true.” He says.

“So… You up for it?”

“Ok then. But mum’s coming home in an hour.”

“Co-“ I’m cut off abruptly when my brother’s hand comes out of nowhere and wraps around my midsection gently, but firmly. He lifts me off the top of my shelf and sets me on his shoulder so quickly it makes my head spin. “Cool.” I finish tightly. Cameron giggles and pokes me in the chest with a giant finger. “You just love harassing midgets, don’t you?” I drawl, pushing his hand away.

“Nope.” Cam says with a smirk. “I just like harassing you.”

“Aren’t you a lovely sibling.”

He winks and continues down the stairs and out the door of the house. The sunlight stings my eyes for a second before my vision clears. “So, we’re going to the park?” Cameron asks.

“Depends on what you want.” I sigh.

“Well, big brother. Lucky for you, I’m in the mood for a ride on the slippery slide.”

I groan. The slippery slide is a translation for my brother watching me slide on my ass down the giant sized play slide, which is like a rollercoaster to me. He calls it funny, but I call it a form of midget torture. “I was hoping you’d settle for sitting on the grass or something…” I say.

“More like sitting in the grass for you, Marco.” Cameron giggles as he walks down our street.

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” I say sarcastically.

“I need to talk to you, though.” Cameron says, more seriously.

“Alrighty then.”

Cameron rounds a corner and I’m greeted with the familiar secluded park scene I’ve grown to love. If I was normal, then the park would be my second home. It’s hilly, with clover patches and green, green grass. There are trees everywhere, where people of all ages do homework or chat under. The playground itself is usually teeming with toddlers, but today, it’s occupied by a classic group of punks. My brother is careful to steer us away from them. As much as he loves harassing me, no one wants midget soup for dinner, and those punks look like the squishing-because-it-looks-cool type. Not my kind of party.

Instead we sit at the very edge of the park under the shade of a tallish oak tree. Cameron rests his back against the trunk. After a minute’s silence, I inspect the distance between my brother’s slumped shoulder and the ground, deem it survivable and leap off the edge to roll onto the grass. “Doesn’t that hurt?” Cameron asks tiredly as I stand up in the waist high grass.

“Not really.” I answer, lying on my back on the rubbery grass. Cameron looks down at me, his skyscraper tall body blocking out the sky above.

“You’ve really gotta teach me some of that parkour stuff one day.” He says. I smile from my position amongst the grass. Luckily it’s not wet with dew like it is in the mornings, otherwise I’d be soaked through in seconds.

“It’d be harder for you.” I yawn. “My body’s lighter so it doesn’t react to gravity as much…”

“How did you find that out?”

“Wikipedia.” I laugh. Cameron rolls his huge blue eyes.

“Listen, Marco. I wanted to talk to you about school.” He says, turning serious again. I swear to god there’s a switch in his brain that turns him into an overprotective sibling sometimes.

“What about it?” I ask. “Besides the fact that it’s drained me?”

  Cameron’s smile fades. “We need to be in the same classes, bro. I’m only in one of your classes and that’s PE, which you can’t even do. You do Drama, Japanese and Computer Studies as your electives and then you’ve got your cores. I’ve got Soccer, Art and DTS. I know your choices for a subject are limited because you can’t play sports or hold a hammer for DTS, but you’ve gotta do art at least. I’m worried about you, Marco.” He says slowly.

I sigh, a blade of grass tickling my nose. “I like drama, though. I can’t do art unless I swap out of it! It’s only my first day and I’m already Tom Thumb…”

Cam purses his lips. “Maybe I could switch to drama…”

“No!” I stand up amongst the long grass defiantly. “Art’s your best subject! You can’t do that for me, bro! I’ll be fine.” The expression I’m rewarded with is almost hurt. I instantly pity my brother. All he wants to do is to protect me… I wade quickly through the grass to climb onto Cameron’s black converse. “I love you, bro. You’re my best friend, remember? Just don’t worry about me.” I say, smiling softly.

“But-“

“No buts, little bro.” I place a hand on his ankle. “I’m happy with my subjects, and I know how much you’ve wanted to do art and dts and get a soccer scholarship. There’s no use in me switching to art, anyway. I can barely hold a paintbrush, let alone a pencil…”

Cameron scoops me up into his hand and brings me eye to eye with him. It’s a weird experience to sit in someone’s hand- always has been- but I know he won’t hurt me. “I just don’t want you to get hurt, Marcus.” He sighs.

“You can’t control what happens to me, bro, and I can’t either. Just don’t ruin this for me, ok? When I’m with these kids, I feel half normal.” It’s true in a way, particularly with my new drama group. I may be Tom Thumb and a real life midget, but I have real friends. And they don’t even notice my size anymore.

“I know, I know. I just don’t want anything to happen… You can’t defend yourself, bro. You can yell and scream and feel pain, but you can’t fight back. If someone wanted to…”

He can’t finish. I really hate it when he speaks the truth. I usually try to forget my disadvantages and move on with life. Being a midget has its perks, I know, one being that everything yummy is ten times bigger than normal. But it means I’m too small to defend myself. In all fairness, I could easily take on someone if I was regular sized, with my agile body that’s been built up to tackle life as a midget, but it doesn’t matter that I’m strong. The fact is that I’m trapped in this midget body. And there’s no cure. There was a cure to my cancer, yes. But this? This is like my own little version of Kemo. Instead of making me feel sick and lose all my hair, it shrunk me. But unlike hair, I don’t grow back.

I’m stuck this way forever.

And there’s nothing I can do about it.