Tom hugged his arms against his chest as though flying down a log flume, though in reality he was being squeezed quite firmly between the fingers of his older sister Alaina’s fist as she, their older brother Blake, and youngest sister Emma all trudged down the sidewalk toward the bus stop.

            There was precious little room against his sibling’s plush palm that allowed for movement, let alone the steady rise and fall of his chest.  She kept her hand at roughly stomach level, though there was obviously very little concern for how much swinging her arm did.  Already Tom was feeling sicker than when he’d been flopped continually around under Linda’s toes earlier, and that was saying something.  He’d managed to regain a few more inches while cleaning out the last scraps of oatmeal from his mother’s feet, but Tom was still standing at only six inches when his siblings had come back downstairs, ready to walk down to the bus.

            “God, this is pathetic.  Look at him.  Just look at him,” Alaina mocked, shooting their shrunken sibling an excoriating glance as she marched down the sidewalk.  Blake, shaking his head, only scoffed under his breath.

            “Yeah, I know,” their brother mumbled, apparently just feigning similar concern to keep her off his back.  Though he and Tom certainly weren’t best friends, he at least didn’t hold his sibling up to same stringent degree of discipline as Alaina, and generally wasn’t as interested in helping correct the boy’s ways.  Unless the method of correction happened to be especially funny, of course.

            Emma, meanwhile, smirked and pretended not to pay attention as she twirled the end of her ponytail around her thumb  and smacked a thick wad of gum against the inside of her cheek.  She’d learned it was always easier not let her amusement at her sister’s irritation show.  It saved a lot of trouble later on.

            “Unbelievable how much Mom lets him get away with.  I don’t think we’ve had to carry him to the bus for weeks,” Alaina continued.  “If you ask me, he should have to walk there himself, no matter how much he’s lied.  That would teach him.”

            “I bet,” Blake agreed with a chuckle.  “He’d make it down to the birdbath in front of the Jefferson’s.  Maybe.  If he didn’t get eaten by the dog, obviously.”

            “I’ll carry him if you want,” Emma said as nonchalantly as possible, extending an expectant hand and tapping her fingers against her palm as she eyed her toy-sized brother.  A tiny rubbery bubble popped from the corner of her lips in earnest.  “You know, if you’re sick of him already?”

            “No.  I’m trying to make a point here,” Alaina snapped, knowing perfectly well how humorous her youngest sibling found all of this.

            Tom only listened in calmly.  They all spoke as if he wasn’t there, just as they usually did if he’d shrunken down much lower than his normal height in their presence.  His input certainly wasn’t asked for, and probably would only result in a harsh squeeze from his sister’s fingers that would compress the wind from his lungs if he so much as interjected.  It was simply much more practical to wait it out.  Besides, Tom had other more interesting things to focus on, like the neighbor’s new poppies, and the semi-nauseating lurch of his stomach on each of his sister’s steps.

            Alaina was as devout a believer in the sanctity of truth as her mother was, even belonging to two different clubs that incorporated this virtue somehow or other, as well as acting as president of the official Truth Council for the high school.  There was no questioning her dedication to honesty, and the fact that she had someone like Tom for a sibling was an endless source of utter humiliation for her that she had never been shy about letting him know.  Given her particular set of values, Alaina’s personal view of her younger brother was far closer on the scale to “unholy sinner” than “compulsive liar.”  This, too, she wasn’t at all shy about letting him know.

            “I mean, obviously whatever else Mom’s trying with him isn’t getting the job done.  He’s only sixteen, and he’s probably shrunk more times in his life than most of the teachers at our school.  Maybe combined,” Alaina rambled on discontentedly, adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose.  Her arm swung on a wider arc, and she seemed to intentionally shake Tom around like a ragdoll.  The thumb, even, seemed to ride a little higher up, lodging itself under the boy’s chin and forcing him to stare upward at his seventeen-year-old paragon-of-virtue sister.

            “No kidding,” Blake agreed dryly, ruffling a hand through his shaggy locks and blinking blearily in the glare of the sun overhead.  “He’s just used to it by now, I guess.”

            “What does she even do?  Throw him in her shoes a couple times a week after he’s lied about six times in a freaking row?  What’s that even doing to help?” Alaina demanded, more from the universe itself than from her sibling.  “Obviously, he needs that too, but that can’t be the only thing we’re doing to him, because something has to change.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Are you even listening to what I’m saying?” she snapped irritably, pointing an accusing finger at Blake to a rattling chorus of her bracelet beads.

            “No,” he groaned honestly.  Emma snickered, unable to help it.

            “I don’t want to hear any shit from you either!” Alaina scowled at her sister without missing a beat.

            “What are you getting mad at me for, anyway?  He’s the one who’s gonna make it tough for you to get re-elected to the fancy-pants club next year,” Emma protested, no longer finding it hysterical now that she was being made the victim of Alaina’s ire.  She reached back over to her sister’s fist and rubbed her thumb against Tom’s tiny head, massaging the back of his skull but also providing a forceful enough nudge that he couldn’t easily forget her presence.  The girl tended to like reminding him of how close she was.

            Alaina cringed at the mentioning of this terrible prospect of her burgeoning junior political career, and took it as a prompt to lift Tom back up to her face.  She seethed at him, boring through his eyes with her own fiery irises.

            “You are not going to ruin all the work I’ve been doing for our school.  Do you understand me?” she grumbled venomously, spraying a few stray drops of spittle onto her tiny brother’s face.  Emma stifled another giggle with her fist, endlessly entertained by these showdowns between the indignant Alaina and immovable Tom, and bounced her ponytail back over her shoulder.

            “Yes,” Tom wheezed.

            “You’re going to start shaping up before you become a problem for you.  Aren’t you?”

            “Yes,” the little lair said, and immediately he was reduced down to four inches, causing even more of his body to be swallowed up in his sister’s grip, until it was only his head that was able to pop out between her firm fingers like some miniature whack-a-mole target.