“So what school is this again?” Chloe asked Katie as their school buss pulled into the driveway.

            Katie shrugged, her deep, brown hair flowing around her shoulders. “Don’t know.”

            “Guess it doesn’t matter. We’re going to beat them tonight anyway.”

            Katie smiled. “Yep.”

            The girl’s soccer team walked into the gym together, then went off to the changing room, as directed by their coach. This particular school was a little short on changing rooms, so the away team had to use the boy’s locker room.

            They placed their equipment into the lockers first, but decided to look around before getting changed. It was always interesting to see what other schools changing rooms were like.

            The bathrooms were normal, except that they were painted with the most hideous shade of brown imaginable. It wasn’t hard to guess the reason. The ceilings were low and the lights flickered. Pretty much normal. They went to the showers next.

            “This is boring,” Katie said the moment they stepped in. They had been told that this was intended to be a boys locker room, and so hoped to see something interesting in the showers.

            “Yeah,” Chloe agreed. Besides the grime that caked the walls (which, sadly, wasn’t that abnormal) everything was completely boring.

            “Whatever, I’m going to change,” Katie said as she spun around, walking off towards the lockers. Chloe was about to follow, but something on the ground caught her eye. A small black dot on the ground.

            She crouched close to the thing, trying to make out what it was. She quickly came to the conclusion that it was only a bug. A normal, uninteresting, not even moving, bug.

            “Can’t there be anything interesting in this place?” she said as she stood up. Lazily she moved her foot forward, kicking the tiny bug, sending it careening wildly across the floor. She shook her head, turned, but stopped suddenly.

            Quickly she crossed the ground to where the bug had landed, and again she crouched low. She could have sworn she heard it scream, but that was impossible. Wasn’t it?

            The bug was lying face down in a shallow puddle of water, still unmoving. But there were little air bubbles coming up from its head, so it must have been alive. Carefully she moved her finger to its side, flipping it onto its back. Her eyes went wide when she saw the truth of what it was.

            “Hey Chloe,” Tyler said slowly, pathetically.

            “Tyler!” the giant whispered so that no one else could hear. “Oh man, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize that… are you all right? What even happened?”

            The little bug boy sat up, clutching the side Chloe had so rudely kicked. He felt around a bit, but found no sharp pains. He shrugged concluding that there was no serious injury. Amazing really.

            “It’s a long story. Basically Chase, the star of this schools football team, shrunk me.”

            “Really?” Chloe asked back, her shock fading. She had heard about shrinking apparatuses, but didn’t think anyone would actually use one like this. They were extremely illegal. “Are you all right though?”

            “Yeah, I think I’ll be fine. Can you just get me back to normal size?”

            “Of course,” Chloe said immediately, extending her open hand and motioning him to get in.

            When he did climb on, he found he hand warm, soft, and all together comforting. His best friend had found him. He was safe. Now he could finally work on surprising the memories of the past few hours.

            Chloe walked back to the lockers, her hand closed around Tyler so that no one else would notice him. She looked around the room of girls, then down at her own uniform, then back to the shrunken boy in her hand. She had an idea.

            “Hey Tyler,” she whispered into her hand.

            “What?” the boy asked back hurriedly.

“I got a better idea.”

Tyler shook his head, hoping it wasn’t anything like the last idea he heard. “What is it?”

Chloe’s smile reminded him a lot of Chase’s. He didn’t like that. “Well, you see, my feet tend to get really sweaty when I play.”

“So?”

“So… I was thinking you could be a good little friend and try to clean them for me.”

“What?” Tyler shouted, amazed even by the request. Now one of his best friends wanted him to be her slave!

“Quite!” she quickly warned. She looked around, but no one had noticed. “Its not that bad. Just rub them a little.”

“I’m not rubbing your sweaty feet after you play an entire game!”

She giggled then. She always had an amazing laugh, a fact that Tyler had never, and would never, admit. “Who said anything about after?” Before he could say another word of protest, she lowered him down to a pair of old Nike running shoes. She dropped him, his tiny frame landing lightly on the thick, though disgusting, padding. Sweat had actually soaked into the fabric, and the smell rapped around his entire body.

“Chloe, stop!” he begged as she raised her giant foot above his head. Her sock was once white, but had since turned a dirty brown from the hours of abuse she had put on it. There were tiny specks of dust, grime, and many other unknown substances stuck to her sole. Tyler really didn’t want to become one of those specks.

Once again, he didn’t have a choice in the matter. Chloe, one of his best friends, lowered her foot into her shoe, shoving her toes as far in as they could. She could feel the tiny form of her friend trapped under it, right under her arch. She wiggled around a bit making sure he had a little room to breath. After all, she only wanted to play, not to actually hurt him.

She laced up her shoes quickly, sealing him in permanently, then stood up. “Ah, that feels good,” she said down, flexing her toes. “I think this will work out nicely.” Chloe walked out of the locker room, beaming happily, and onto the playing field.