“I… don’t want to sound like I’m being over-the-top about it. Since you have to look at the same walls every single day,” Ella said.

            “Seriously, I’m begging you. Give me a mental vacation. What’s it like?” Scott held the earbud speaker up to his head as the crackling volume slithered out.

            “It’s… amazing. My room’s got a view of the water, and all the shops are just down the block. And I’m working about ten minutes away,” she explained through the grainy filter of the webcam. The glow of Ella’s face was enough to keep Scott warm as he stared up at the laptop screen, despite the cool shade that surrounded him otherwise beneath Kyle’s bed.

            “Can I see the water?”

            “Yeah, just a second.” Ella disappeared to the side of the screen, though her golden locks hung over the camera in wisps as she lifted her computer up and propped it against the window sill of her room in New Zealand. Crystal-clear water twinkled in the fuzzy draw distance, just past the sand-patterned cliff’s edge. Scott could barely make it out, but it was plenty to make him jealously wistful.

            Had he not taken that drink on that night two years ago, he might have been there right with her now.

            “It’s amazing,” Scott said.

            “I know.” Ella’s face returned to the screen as she observed her six-inch tall boyfriend on the opposite side, worry etched into her forehead. She brushed her fingers over the camera screen, her digits briefly expanded to comic proportions, though ironically Scott felt it was closer to his reality.

            She’d only been there for three days and already Scott was nauseous with the threat of looming time that stretched before them so endlessly. Sure, he’d convinced Kyle to let him use the webcam under the teen’s bed on pretenses of performing personal chores for the least-needy Stevens family member. But it wasn’t anywhere near the same, and Scott knew the toll would only get worse. In college, he’d gone months at a time without seeing Ella, and they made it work, but this was different.

            It was these walls. Like Ella said, they were the same. He couldn’t change them. Not for another year, if he was lucky.

            “I better get going,” Scott sighed, constantly anxious at the idea of this secret webcam privilege being discovered and stripped away before he’d even had a chance to take it for granted. He reached up on his tipetoes, brushing his hand along the webcam lens in answer to Ella’s digital touch. A grin forced itself on his lips.

            “All right. Take care of yourself,” Ella whispered in nervous demand. “Seriously.”

            “Seriously, I will,” Scott said with a nod, trying not to think of the various invisible responsibilities currently weighed on his shoulders, not the least of which being the dubious gamble of the truth offered by Sylvia Lockwood. It was best that Ella didn’t have to think of those things, too, for the time being.

            Ella smushed her lips up against the camera. Then call came to an end, taking Scott back to the heartbreaking menu screen of the chat program. He let the earbud fall from his hand and made the shambling march out from under the bed, head hung by almost irresistible gravity. His body hadn’t felt this heavy since he was six-foot-two.

            “Done?” Kyle mumbled from where he sat on a beanbag chair in the corner of the bedroom, headphones draped over his neck to give his brother privacy even while he remained in the same ten-foot-vicinity.

            “Yeah,” Scott said quietly, barely looking up at his brother as the youngest Stevens sibling rose from his seat and padded quietly to the bed, stooping down to drag his computer out from under the dusty space.

            “There’s been some weird stuff in the news about Dad,” Kyle said suddenly as he fished for the laptop. “Has Mom said anything to you about it?”

            “As if she would,” Scott said. “What do you mean by weird?”
            “I mean, they keep bringing up his next trial dates, but they never… say anything about it? You know? Nothing about what’s happening with it, or even what Mom’s been doing there. It just feels off. Like, none of them say anything. And I’ve looked around.”

            “Sounds about right,” Scott said. He knew perfectly well Techilogic had to be tucking nice wads of bills in its media friends’ pockets. “Hey…”

            “Yeah?”

            “Thanks. For… you know, letting me talk to Ella in here.”

            “Not a big deal,” Kyle shrugged as he stood back up with the computer tucked under his arm.

            “It kind of is. You know it is,” Scott said, at last looking directly at his little brother. “It means a lot.”
            “Okay, Princess Feelings,” Kyle chuckled. “I’ll tell you if she messages again.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” Scott said, daring to allow himself a smile, in spite of his shapeless grief.

            “Just saying. If you’d said something like that… I don’t know, two years ago, I don’t think I would’ve believed you weren’t on something.”

            “Two years ago I wasn’t in hell,” Scott replied neutrally before he even realized the words were processed in his brain. His finger flinched. “No offense.”

            “None taken,” Kyle said as he curled back into his beanbag chair.

            “You know what I mean.”

            “Not really, but I can imagine living here like this is the shittiest thing ever for you.”

            “Yeah, something like that.”

            Kyle adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose, looking pointedly back to his six-inch-tall sibling idling in the middle of the bedroom floor with his tiny hands in his pockets, appearing even lower spiritually than he stood physically. The twenty-two-year-old looked like he might melt into the floor.

            “Well, uh…” Scott continued after an aching pause. He cleared his throat of a morose scratch, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Do you… actually want me to clean something up in here, just in case Mom asks later, so you don’t have to lie?”

            Snorting softly, Kyle threw up an ironic pair of peace fingers.

            “No, you can scram,” Kyle said as he stood up from the beanbag. He opened his mouth to speak, only to sharply intake air rather than utter any words. He swallowed, mustering an uncomfortable smile. “Keep it together. Or whatever.”

            Scott nodded, amused at how much he and his younger brother sounded like the same flavor of clumsy when they were trying to tactlessly communicate something genuine. He shrugged and ambled toward the door, waiting for his brother to turn the knob and let him slip through the crack.

            “Oh, there you are.”

            Looking up just as soon as he passed through the hinged barrier, Scott found himself standing before the freshly purple-painted toes of his mother’s enormous left foot. Her big toe drummed thoughtfully on the rug, vibrating Scott up through his shoes.

            “Hi,” he said, trying not to look too inherently guilty. The LFC tool was brandished behind his back. “I got the living room and kitchen picked up. And dusted on the floor seal in your office like you asked.”

            “I saw. It looked just fine to me. Thank you, honey,” Judy said. She was facing him as she loomed above, hands on her hips as per usual, but her gaze was flitting back and forth between her diminutive son and the newly closed door of her youngest child. Her eyebrow arched. “What were you up to in there?”

            “Ahh… well, you know how you always say be proactive about keeping the place tidy,” Scott said, smoothly improvising. “And you know he doesn’t really… always do it himself, especially in there.”

            “That’s true,” Judy said with a nod, though her tone suggested she wasn’t quite on board with the story. “So you picked up his clothes and trash on the floor?”

            “Well, some of it,” Scott said, nibbling the corner of his mouth and pointedly clearing his throat. His mother wouldn’t be above pushing the door open just to call his bluff if she felt like it. “There’s still more to do. But I guess he wanted to have the room to himself again or something.”

            “Oh, I see.” Judy’s lips then. “Then… maybe I was mistaken.”

            “About what?”

            “Well, the thing is, honey, that with all my new responsibilities as a candidate and representative, my backers have taken great care to make sure I’ve got all the latest conveniences available in the house, including network sharing and monitoring… just so I can make sure everything is going smoothly in real time with everyone I’m in contact with.”

            For all his mother’s business speak, Scott felt the swelling of a cubic lump in his throat, expanding beyond the capacity of his airway. He knew perfectly well where this was going; why was she dragging it out so far?

            “And… well, it just so happens that all the devices in use under this roof use the same network, just to be on the safe side…” Judy’s hand rose from her side, unholstering a cell phone, which she dipped just low enough for Scott to make out the call records screen illuminated above. “So I couldn’t help but feel a little curious to see Kyle just now, sharing a video chat with Ella?” Her toes drummed in unison now before her six-inch son like war instruments.

            “Ah.” Scott didn’t attempt to hide his attitude with a dramatic presentation of false shock. He knew Judy would’ve only taken it as an insult. He tucked his hands into his pockets, bowing his head slightly, but kept her stare.

            “Now, sweetheart,” Judy intoned, almost mocking in her artificial empathy. She cocked her head as she gazed down at the pitiful little twenty-two-year-old caught in his minor deception. “I understand perfectly how you’re feeling now, being so far away from someone you care about, knowing she won’t be back for so long. That’s not what upsets me. What upsets me is the need to keep it hidden from me for some strange reason which I couldn’t possibly fathom.”

            “Yeah, I can see how that, uh… might look a little off,” Scott agreed, already resigned three times over to whatever was incoming. There was no cause to be anxious, really. It was almost like breathing at this point; frankly, getting to speak to Ella and see her face was more than worth whatever his parent was about to throw at him, no matter how sweaty, painful, and oxygen-depriving.

            “Don’t sound so flippant with me, young man,” Judy snapped. “Because what I especially don’t care for is you using your brother, the brother who’s actually putting in effort to make something of himself, to further your own selfish aims.”

            “Yeah…” Scott shrugged, indeed feeling some genuine remorse for Kyle’s association with this comparatively small infraction.

            “So if you don’t mind, we’ll get this settled nice and clearly before we decide what we’re going to do with you so you have time to think about being more selfless in the future.” Judy stepped forward, the ball of her foot landing heavy on the rug a few mere inches from Scott, the wind force nearly staggering him back as he now stood between his mother’s massive insteps. She extended a fist and rapped on the door of her youngest child.

            Kyle answered the door almost immediately, and by the way his headphones hung limply around his neck, the muffs pointed outward, Scott was willing to guess his brother had them off for the last minute or so and was, in fact, listening to the exchange right outside his door.

            “Hey, Mom,” the teen said, glancing down at his half-foot brother a few inches from the tips of his sneakers and cowering by nature of scale between Judy’s imposing bare peds. Kyle scratched the back of his head. “What’s, uh… what’s up?”

            Judy only furrowed her brow, holding up the phone and displaying the incriminating call list to her other son.

            “Ooohhh…” Kyle said, fidgeting with the bridge of his glasses. “Yeah.”

            Scott tried not to chew his fingernails as he looked up, attempting to limit the view of his face to his brother rather than his parent. Subtly, he nodded to Kyle, hoping to convey his insistence that the youngest Stevens absolve himself from blame, as guilt had already been pre-determined for Scott. There was no need for them both to get in trouble, especially when Kyle had so skillfully avoided his mother’s wrath for at least a couple of years now. That was a record Scott could only dream of.

            “Have you got something to say about this?” Judy asked calmly.

            “It… was just a call,” Kyle said, his voice muffled slightly. “It was only a few minutes. It didn’t seem like a big deal.”        

            “I don’t believe it’s your decision to determine which privileges for your brother are a big deal or not,” Judy said, looking only narrowly downward at her youngest, whom she dwarfed by barely an inch in height. Scott knew that slight difference had to be killing her just a little bit.

            “Ah.”
            “Do you have an apology to make?”

            “I…”

            Scott kneaded his forehead, hoping to conceal the look of pleading encouragement on his face from Judy as he looked up at his brother from between their mother’s feet: a silent statement that he was already claimed and incarcerated by them for his wrongs. Kyle finally cast longer than a glance from the corner of his eye down to the six-inch young man; he lingered, a frown etching into his countenance. His Adam’s apple bobbed. Then he looked back up to Judy.

            “No,” Kyle said, savoring the word so that the distinction of the syllable couldn’t be mistaken. “I don’t have anything to apologize for.”