Scott craned his neck downward to look at the phone, probably too far away to be heard from this distance, especially when he was surrounded by an echo-dampening wall of foot flesh.         He looked pleadingly up at Maggie’s face, and this time actually put his hands together to show his commitment.  Shrugging, his sister began to lower her foot back toward the phone, before a devious gleam twinkled in her eye and she simply scrunched her toes around Scott, keeping him exactly where he was.  Instead, she plucked the cell up from the cushioned ground between two fingers and lifted it until it was close enough for him to speak into.

            His heart rate rising rapidly and his forehead perspiring, partially from the warm embrace of the giant toes but primarily from nerves, somehow, Scott found the focus to fight through the sheer embarrassment of where he happened to find himself when trying to have what he was fairly certain was the most important phone call of his young adult life.

            “Hey b- Ella,” Scott coughed, stopping himself from using a pet name with her for the time being, assuming that he hadn’t quite worked his way up again to speaking to her in such a flirtatious fashion.  Plus, having his sister listening in on the whole thing didn’t exactly help with his comfort level in this regard.  “It’s me.”

            “…Scott?” came the reply, drier and more reserved than the already meager greeting had been.  “Thanks for getting back to me.”

            “Sorry it took so long.  I had some things to take care of and there just wasn’t time.  I would’ve if I could’ve,” Scott continued, still rather unsure of himself, and careful not to say anything incriminating against his sister.

            “Okay.  Anyway, I wanted to say I probably should’ve called sooner.  I just needed some time.  I mean, all of this… with you… it’s been weird for me.”

            “I understand,” Scott said truthfully.

            “I’m not… mad at you.  Not anymore, at least.  It wasn’t because of that.  Just wanted you to know that, too.”

            “Oh.  T-Thank you,” he blubbered, trying his best not to sound choked up.  “I mean it.”  Maggie’s foot began to bob up and down, but Scott was so in-tune with this heart-racing chain of words that he hardly noticed it.  Slowly, then, she crossed her right foot over her left knee to more comfortably recline on her bed, hoisting her clenched brother up to an even higher height, though this too went virtually unregistered as her hand gripping the phone followed the motion so Scott could continue conversing.

            “Listen, I… was hoping it would be possible for us to meet sometime this week.  I can come to you.  I know you can’t leave very much yet,” Ella proposed.

            “Oh.  Um…”

            “It’s just that there are some things we need to get clear.  Some things I want to get out in the open, I guess,” she said.  “Could that happen?”

            “I… I…” Scott mumbled, knowing how much more difficult it would be to arrange a personal meeting if Judy already didn’t want him on the phone.  Craning his neck to the side, Scott now found himself at eye level with the happily reclining Maggie thanks to her propped foot.  He bit his lip, wondering how tightly he would have to scrunch up his face to indicate his desire for help, and clasped his hands together again.

            Shrugging uncaringly, Maggie simply opened her lips as though having a tongue depressor inserted into her throat and pointed in with a finger, raising her eyebrows indicatively.  Yet another bargain struck without any real negotiation options available.

            “…yes,” Scott gulped, answering both Maggie and Ella simultaneously.

            “When?”

            “When?” Scott repeated, glancing at his sister with enough of a knot in his stomach to hold back a tidal wave.

            Maggie puckered her lips and blew him a silent smooch before smirking wide enough to fit a couple of golf balls between her lips, then after thinking for a moment, emphatically mouthed the word “Wednesday” and flashed three fingers twice on her free hand.

            Of course.  Almost too dumbfounded to believe a legitimate answer was being bestowed upon him, Scott realized that Judy had mentioned she’d be out again at this time for several hours in the evening after the afternoon garden party was over.

            Could this actually be happening?

            “Six… on Wednesday?” Scott peeped anxiously.

            “Okay.  That would be… great.  And honestly, Scott,” Ella continued hesitantly.  “I do really want to see you.”

            “I want to see you, too, Ella,” Scott promised, assured despite the biting feeling in his gut that he had made the right choice, and swallowed.  “It was… good to hear your voice.”

            “You too, Scott.  See you soon.”

            The call-ending tone droned with crippling conclusiveness.  Even if the call had gone on for an hour, it wouldn’t have been enough for Scott.

            “Cool.  Then we’re… good to go,” Maggie said with a nod, her voice less mocking than before.  Tapping the screen off the call app and sliding it into her pocket, she plucked Scott from between her toes with a thumb and forefinger before swinging her legs out over the bed’s edge and placing her feet back on the carpet to stand.  As she rose up, she lowered her thumb, still with her brother slung like a piece of dead meat across the swirled pad, into the opposite hand and allowed him to pull himself into his usual protective fetal position.

            “Good to go,” Scott repeated under his breath, too quietly for his goddess-sized sibling to make it out, as he settled his cheek comfortably against the fleshy terrain.  He held his breath, awaiting the inevitable pay-off for the deal he’d just struck, and feeling defiantly confident in the correctness of his choice.

            But it didn’t come.  No fingers began probing into his clothes to strip him down, and no hot fog descended on him as he was lurched onto Maggie’s maelstrom-swirling tongue.

            Why?  Even without looking up, he could feel the weight of her unblinking baby blues locked on him, still searching, as always, for something in his feeble frame that she never seemed to find, but somehow, it didn’t pierce as deeply as normal.  The foreboding of a thousand oncoming humiliations wasn’t clenching its tendrils around his heart, though logic dictated that it must’ve still been present.  A minute passed in silence as the siblings remained frozen in the startling quietude.

            “Well?” Scott groaned resignedly.

            “What?”

            “Aren’t I going back in?”

            “Well, sometime, probably,” Maggie shrugged.  “I don’t really feel like it now.  Plus, Mom will be back any minute.”

            Scott actually flinched at this break in the fabric of his personal reality.

            She didn’t “feel” like it now.

            Bullshit.  It had to be.

            This was Maggie.

            “Anyways, just cuz we’re postponing the super-fun stuff doesn’t mean I still can’t figure out something else fun for us right now,” she commented happily as she gazed down at the balled up subject in her creased palm.  Her eyes widened after a moment of thought.

            This was it now.  Here it was.  Scott found himself almost breathing a sigh of relief to find himself returning to familiar territory.

            “I know what!  There’s a Gossip Girl marathon this week on the old movies channel, and a new one’s starting in like ten minutes.  I bet if we went down now, we could easily get in like five episodes before bedtime,” Maggie stated confidently, striding purposefully for the door.

            “Oh.  Okay,” Scott mumbled with a frown, too surprised at the staggering mildness of this decree and holding his breath for the inevitable drop of the other metaphorical shoe.

            Minutes later, as Maggie slumped down into the couch of the empty living room and flipped on her antiquated teen drama, still with her inch-tall brother perched unmolested in her palm as her eyes were glued to the overacted on-goings, Scott couldn’t help but feel startled for the second time by the actions of his titanic sibling.

            Considering that this day had begun with him being put on duty in the mouths of both his mother and sister, the place he’d found himself at the end of it wasn’t altogether bad.  Even, if he dared allow himself a flash of foolish optimism, a positive one.