“Have you found anything?” Josh asked as he looked up from the stack of textbooks he was sitting on.

“Uh, kinda, but you’re not gonna like this.” Annie answered, closing a tab of some viral video. After a quick online search, Annie had found a couple articles that detailed missing persons who turned up an inch tall at the nearest hospital to their last known disappearance.  “The problem is that they’ve been taken away by researchers.”

“So I’m not the only one?”  

“I guess not.” Annie paused, “maybe we should wait a little before we see a doctor or something.” Her suggestion was faint, and it took a good half-second before he even figured out what she meant.

“Why?”

“What if—what if they take you to a government lab and experiment on you or something?” Her tone was laced with a genuine concern for Josh, but she was also worried about him insisting on going to a hospital and leaving her. “I mean, they already have a couple dozen tiny people. It wouldn’t hurt to, you know, wait it out.” Annie half winced as there was a painful silence between them.

Josh didn’t know how to feel about Annie’s suggestion, but he simply droned, “okay.”  

Annie nodded before adding, “Just until they announce a cure.” Once again her statement was to convince herself.  Their conversation stalled their as neither knew what to say or do, and the unfamiliarity of the situation only made it worse.

Josh never really noticed how much he was starving as he doubled over in pain. He immediately sat back up, hoping Annie didn’t catch his movements. He hadn’t eaten since the night before, it began to take its toll on him as he clutched his gut in an attempt to dull the pain. He kept silent, not wanting to bother the massive girl who sat in front of him.

“Josh?” Annie asked, looking away from the computer screen. As much as Josh tried to hide it, Annie’s intuition somehow caught on to him. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” he forced.

“Do you want something to eat? You look kind of starved.” Josh’s head lifted up eagerly, Annie brought her hand up to the boy, and this time he hopped on with only a second of hesitation. 

About a minute later, Josh found himself standing on Annie’s kitchen counter, watching as the giant woman dug into the fridge.  Annie turned back to him with a small plastic carton of strawberries in her right hand. Moving towards the shrunken boy, Annie grabbed a relatively small butter knife and placed it right next to the boy who eyed it in awe.

Gracefully, Annie brought the knife to the strawberry, slicing it in half vertically before taking a half and cutting it into smaller chunks. She brought a piece to Josh, who accepted it and quickly began to gorge himself with the fruit, no longer caring about anything else as he satisfied his immediate hunger.

Annie smiled, letting out an amused giggle, and Josh looked up at the girl who looked amused. “What?” he asked, wiping away the red stains on his mouth from the half eaten chunk of strawberry.

“Nothing,” she answered lightly, “you just look really cute that small.”

At first Josh was a little ticked off by her comment, and he reluctantly accepted a second helping of fruit from her friend. It didn’t take him long to realize how much he actually didn’t mind the statement.   The way she spoke struck him as playful and endearing, meaning Annie wasn’t really coddling him anymore, which was a relief to Josh since he found himself hating the stiffness between them earlier that morning.

He sat cross legged, and Annie leaned forward on the counter, resting her hand on her cheek. She grasped the uncut half of strawberry and brought it to her mouth in a swift motion. It humbled the boy to see Annie eat the strawberry with no struggle at all since the fraction he ate took him several bites to even finish.

“So what’s it like, I mean, being tiny—what’s that like?” Annie asked, her smile staying put as her initiation of a casual conversation was welcomed by both of them.

“It’s… weird,” he answered truthfully. “Everything’s so big.”

“No duh, I just want to know what it feels like” she shot back playfully, bringing her long, slender fingers towards him. Her fingers mimicked a walking person that was easily a couple of times taller than him. He backed away in surprise as her unpainted fingertips marched on towards him in quicker strides. She stuck out her pointer finger and lightly shoved Josh, causing him to yelp in surprise. “Like that, how was that?”

He couldn’t blame Annie for being curious, and her playful prodding served to break the ice between them. “Weird.”

“Come on, Josh, be more specific.” Annie pleaded. She leaned in even closer to the point where she loomed over him with her shadow directly over the tiny boy who arched his back just to get a better look at Annie’s face. Her cheek was pressed against her hand and compressed her face in an unflattering yet oddly charming way.

Her curious eyes were focused directly on him and his recoiling movements. She couldn’t help but be a little too playful as her teasing words and actions might have been too much.

“It’s hard to describe,” he answered quietly. “You’re so big, like, stupid big.”

Annie smiled at Josh’s description. “You’re tiny, like, stupid tiny,” she mocked. She tapped her right hand against the table as her fingertips hit the marble counter rhythmically.  “Don’t be stiff, dude.”

“It’s weird!” Josh defended, “this kind of stuff never happens.”

Sighing, Annie put away the butter knife and cutting board, snagging another strawberry before turning back to the shrunken boy on her kitchen counter. “So, what should we do now?”

“I don’t know.” Josh concluded, not knowing exactly what to do.

For a brief moment, a small, playful smirk formed on the corner of her mouth as she suggested, “we could play a game.”

“A game?” Josh asked. He was more surprised that a game was the first thing that she came up with. He knew something was up by the way Annie almost seemed to be beaming when she brought it up.

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” Annie continued. The giant girl brought her pale hand to her shrunken friend.

Eagerly and without a moment of hesitation, Josh jumped onto Annie’s open palm. It took both by surprise on how willing Josh was, and neither wanted to comment on it as they both enjoyed the glow between them. The familiarity of the hallways were now foreign to Josh, but the brief, awe inspiring views didn’t last long as Annie made her way into her bedroom while keeping the tiny boy in a safe and comfortable grip.

Her room was kept clean on most occasions, but it had gained a decent amount of clutter over the course of the week. She took a look at the strung out clothes, discarded cans, and various junk on the floor.  Her feet sunk into the shag carpet that seemed to further cement the idea in her head. She kneeled over, lowering her hand to the ground and dropping Josh onto the floor.

Annie stood to her full, imposing height, her stature intimidating the boy from her sheer size alone. Her hands on her hips, the giant girl simply sent down a cheeky smile in Josh’s direction to remind him that he wasn’t in any sort of danger, yet he still felt humbled at her towering figure.

Without any sort of warning Annie turned away from him and walked away, feigning disinterest, but in reality she fought to hold back a giddy laugh. She kept her straight face as she left the room, but right as she was about to leave she turned to Josh with her stoic expression.

“Run,” her voice more of a suggestion than a threatening order as she closed the door behind her.

Josh simply stood there for a second, completely confused by Annie’s order before realizing what she had in mind. With his mind already in a willing high gear, Josh took off and dashed to nowhere in particular. He didn’t know why he was playing along, but humoring Annie seemed to be one of the better decisions he made that day.

It finally dawned on him how much they wanted this, how much he wanted this. There was nothing stressing him out, nothing bothering him, just him, Annie, and a mindless, completely pointless game that he welcomed wholeheartedly. All he had to do was run, and he was perfectly okay with that.

Josh avoided the closest hiding spot, running past an empty bag of chips and choosing to skip a discarded beanie while opting to run further. He struggled as he pushed against the shag grasslands, which definitely slowed down his progress exponentially, but he didn’t mind since it added more of a challenge.

With his hands on his knees, Josh gasped for air, forcing himself to take slow, balanced breaths to keep him going. Thankfully, he spotted a decent hiding place a couple yards in front of him. He rushed towards it as he gained a better look at his preferred spot, noticing the gray, detailed etchings along an abnormally round shape.

Shoes, more specifically, high tops were what he had saw in the distance as the detailed imprints were the sole’s grip. One shoe was tipped on its side, creating a little cave that was a little too convenient, and the thought of how ridiculous his situation also weighed in his mind. He simply shrugged off the feeling as he climbed onto the opening of the shoe. His heart pumped heavily as he waited for what seemed like hours until he heard the sound of the door opening, and he quickly hid back to the heel of the shoe.

The inside was dark, but Josh could definitely see the imprint of Annie’s foot on the sole. Surprisingly the air wasn’t stale. In fact, there was no trace of a scent at all, and Josh was at least thankful for that, although he did find it a little humbling to be hiding inside of a shoe of all places.

Taking delicate, gentle steps Annie walked into the room and darted her eyes to the floor.  Her excited smile was now wide, and she couldn’t help but playfully stomp around the room, despite the fluffy carpet muffling the sound.

As a first thought, she reached over for the bag of potato chips, lifting it up into the air and looking down into the contents. Her smile faltered a little by seeing it empty with nothing greeting her but a few already stale crumbs. She should’ve expected that Josh wouldn’t be dumb enough to hide in the first thing he saw.

Annie dropped to her knees and began to search under her bed and found it just as empty. Sighing, Annie stood back up and toyed with the pile of clothes at her feet, kicking away t-shirts and socks and finding nothing underneath.

After scouring the room, Annie figured out that Josh was hiding inside of her shoes near the corner. She slowly made her way to the shoes and walked in front of the opening and faced away from the shoe, giving the illusion that she was turned away and was searching for him somewhere else.

Down below, Josh simply watched as Annie’s socked feet came into view. He found himself staring at them since they were the only things he can see through the opening of the shoe. He assumed that Annie had not found him yet as he simply waited in silence as an innocent, almost hokey kind of humming came from above. She turned to him and began to walk in his direction, but right before she got to the shoes she stepped directly over them, passing them completely as if she wasn’t interested at all.

Sighing out of relief, Josh laid his head against the worn heel of the shoe. And without warning, the tiny boy fell on his side, his face planting against the heel as he attempted to get a look out the opening. Sure enough, Annie’s smiling, cheerful face was greeting him.

“Hey, cutie.” Annie teased as she rustled the shoe enough to knock the boy off his feet.  She found the way he stumbled over completely adorably, watching his tiny form attempt to stand up.

“Alright, you got me,” Josh shouted up to the air.

Annie tilted the shoe at an angle, and Josh rolled down the slope uncontrollably until he landed in her hand. The shrunken boy was sprawled out on the center of her palm, his arms and legs extended, as he caught his breath.

“I thought you’d never find me. I swear I almost passed out from the smell alone.”

“Shut up, Josh.”

Annie could’ve sworn she saw Josh crack a smile.