The rest of the day went by without much trouble or mischief. Cordelia went straight from the football field to cheerleading practice without so much as a shower, giving herself only time to change into her uniform and hide Andy in his locker where he would be safe. But her legs were so sore from the running, her throat so hoarse from the push-ups, that she felt like a zombie during the cheers, barely able to keep her hands raised. The other girls noticed her lack of spirit and they too fell into a dull and numb routine until the trainer gave up and sent them home early.
Cordelia didn’t care. She limped home, her bag with Andy inside thrown over one shoulder. She really didn’t care that he was screaming the whole way there either, that he was trapped in there with only the sickening aroma of her damp uniform to please his nostrils. It was all she could do not to collapse on the sidewalk.
When she got home, she walked right past her dad and they barely exchanged two words before she was in her room, taking Andy out of the bag, dumping her clothes on the floor, and collapsing headfirst into her cool pillowcase. Andy slid out of her hands, but he found the mattress almost impossible to stand on, so he just lay down next to Cordelia’s chest so he could hear her heart beating. Then when he realized all it would take is a simple flinch for her to roll over and crush him, he crawled to the edge of the bed and laid his head down, although sleep was still hours to come. Part of him was perturbed that he was two inches tall, part of him was disgusted that he smelled like his girlfriend’s sweat, and still another part was disturbed that she hadn’t even bothered to shut the lights off before going to bed. So he lay there, lost in his thoughts, as little as those may be at times, and let himself drift away into a quiet slumber. His last conscious thoughts were something along the lines of, “I wonder if every guy’s first night in bed with a girl is like this.”
The morning startled them both. Cordelia’s alarm clock went off sure enough at 8 AM, but she slept through it. Andy heard it, blaring through his ears, the painful screech of pop music that he swore Cordelia hated with all her soul. Then he remembered her telling him once that she woke up to the music on purpose, so that she’d want to get up, so that she’d want to smash the radio; but instead she just laid there, limp and aching and exhausted and dead.
When she did wake up, though, the clock blinking 9:17, everything became a blur. All in the same moment, he heard her yelp, like a puppy with its tail stepped on, spring out of the bed, and run towards her wardrobe, catching her foot on the cord of the radio to unplug it, all while lifting her sweater over her head. Andy didn’t have time to see her change, though, as she tossed the sweater onto the bed and he could only see the world turning black as the gray fabric sea washed over him. Now he could only hear her, scampering about, slamming doors and cussing as if it would do any good. He finally heard the rushing of water and was glad that she was finally taking a shower. Now if only he could get one…
His wish wasn’t granted. Cordelia soon burst back into her room, searching the ruffled sheets for Andy. She found him under her sweater and scooped him up with one hand, busy combing her wet hair with the other, and dropped him on her mirrored dresser.
“So much for English class,” she said with half a smirk, her voice unusually calm when her heart had just been pounding so fast.
Andy shrugged. “Never understood why we have to take a class in a language we already know.”
“Some of us abuse that knowledge.”
“Cori, you think I can take a shower?”
“Sure,” Cordelia shrugged, putting down the comb. Then she reached behind her head, pulling together her strands of strawberry-blonde hair, and held them over his small body. With a twist, she began to wring her hair out, drenching Andy in a torrent of soapy water. Squeezing out the last drops, Cordelia reached over to a bin of scrunchies on the desk and picked out a blue one, tying her hair back into a ponytail.
“That wasn’t what I had in mind,” Andy said dryly, which was ironic, because he wasn’t very dry at all.
Cordelia, now in a light green tee-shirt with short pink sleeves and faded jeans, dropped Andy into her handbag along with a packet of Crystal Light and the list of ingredients in Andy’s ‘power shake’ before she walked out the door. She walked to school, rather briskly, enjoying the breeze of yet another windy day. She arrived at school just in time for second period—science class—and took a seat in the back to keep attention away from her while she conversed with Andy and to scan the other students in the classroom.
Cordelia unzipped her handbag just enough to see Andy down through the hole. “Should I call your name for you during roll call?”
“Very funny.”
“Sorry,” she grinned, her eyes glancing around to make sure nobody was watching her. All eyes were glued to the teacher, though. She wasn’t a typical science teacher. She was fresh out of college, blonde hair, a petite body and gentle face, and most of all, her name was Miss Kray. Miss. That meant she wasn’t married. That meant every guy was drooling over her, not listening to a word she was saying, too occupied into watching what her body was saying instead.
“Who should we ask for help?” Cordelia whispered into the bag. “We need somebody who knows something about science. Maybe with an IQ of about 160.”
“Why don’t you ask the guy next to you?” Andy whispered back.
Cordelia looked at the person next to her. Butthead. He was called that because he had shaved all his hair off except a small strip in the middle that people jokingly called a crack and thereby earned him the name ‘Butthead’. Right now, he had just about as much drool around his chin as a baby during din-din and wasn’t trying to hide it like the rest of the guys, as his tongue was sticking clean out.
Cordelia turned back to her handbag. “I don’t think he’s going to know why you ended up shrinking.”
“The front row,” Andy said. “The smart kids always sit in the front row.”
Looking up, Cordelia scanned the front aisle and her eyes came to rest on Zeith. He wasn’t a science geek—at least, not in the sense that he wore glasses, because he didn’t, or dressed funny, because he didn’t, or even talked funny, because he didn’t. But he was the only senior in East Shores High to still eat Elmer’s glue and he did have a bug collection the size of Delaware. He was also very weird. He talked a lot, which scared people, especially because nobody really understood what he was talking about. They weren’t even sure if his name was really Zeith. Everybody called him that, sure, but Cordelia remembered that his real name was Zach or Zech or something back in preschool and he just had people call him ‘Zeith’ because it sounded like an alien species from Star Trek or Star Wars or any of those stupid space series that Cordelia hated so. In fact, she could make out the word ‘Star’ printed on the back of his black shirt and it made her cringe at the thought of asking him for help about anything.
“I’ll ask Zeith,” Cordelia sighed.
Andy burst out laughing, which caused a few people to turn around and stare at Cordelia. She just flashed a smile and they turned back to Miss Kray, who was busy blabbing about some chemical compounds that nobody was bothering to take notes on.
“I know what he’ll tell you,” Andy joked, raising his arms as if to be some kind of monster. “He’ll say, ‘Aliiiens did it! Oooooh… They’re coming to take me aboard their mothership and give me an anal probe!’ Haha!”
“You’re awful,” Cordelia sighed, zipping her handbag as Andy continued to pretend to be an alien.
“Okay, students!” Miss Kray said, clapping her hands together. “I want you all to, like, grab a partner and a station in the back of the room. There, you’ll find many of the chemicals on the periodic table lined up. Now I’m going to, like, leave you all unsupervised for the remainder of the class period while I go take this very important cell phone call outside with my beautician. Mix any chemicals you wish together and, like, record your findings in your notebooks.”
Half of the class waited for her to walk out the door, gabbing on her cell phone, and then got up and walked out too. The rest of the class chatted noisily, grabbing friends or lovers and finding a lab in the back of the classroom. Cordelia was the only one who stayed in her seat, waiting for Zeith to walk on by. He did and took a seat, as always, by himself away from the rest of the class at one of the work stations. There, he spread out his many multi-colored notebooks, pulled out a tiny pencil sharpener, and began sharpening a box full of number 2 pencils while looking over the lethal chemical elements the teacher had supplied.
“This can’t be good,” he said to himself, holding up a piece of rock labeled ‘uranium’.
Cordelia tucked her handbag into her lap and took a deep breath. “Okay, Cori, you can do this…” She rose from her seat and quietly stepped over to Zeith’s lab. He didn’t notice her at first, too occupied in his work, until she at last cleared her throat and he slowly gazed up. He nearly stumbled out of his chair.
“A g-girl!” he stammered. “You’re either a demon or an angel!”
“No…” Cordelia said slowly, afraid any sudden movements would cause him to have a heart attack. “I’m the girl who sits in the back of the class.”
“G-golly, I know who you are! You’re C-C-Cordelia, captain of the cheerleading squad! I love you girls. I come to all your games! I sit in the bleachers and stare at you and wish I could have you, every one of you!”
“Freakish, but forgivable… Anyway, I—”
“Can I have your autograph!?”
“What?”
“M-make it out ‘To my favorite Martian, Zeith. Love, Cordelia of Venus Quadrant Squared’!” he cried, sliding his notebook across the desk. “Do you need a pencil? You can have one of mine! You can even keep it!”
“That’s okay, I don’t need a pencil…” Cordelia said, scribbling her name quickly on the page of Zeith’s homework.
“You can never have too many pencils! I collect them!”
“Right… Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about a problem.”
“A problem? Ha, no problem for me! What is it? Math? Science? Art? History?”
“It’s—”
“Social studies? Anthropology? How about astronomy?”
“Zeith—”
“Oh, no, it’s one of those ‘girl’ problems, isn’t it? About bleeding? I don’t know anything about that!” He turned red and quickly tried to hide behind the safe cover of his notebooks.
“No, it’s a…um…small problem.”
Zeith looked up. “Small?”
“Yeah, a teensy weensy, itty bitty, little wittle, small problem,” Cordelia said, holding her thumb and index finger about two inches apart.
“Oh…my…God… I’m getting so turned on.”
Cordelia stepped back. “What!?”
“You want to shrink me, don’t you? You want to tease me and torment me and make me be your sex slave!”
Cordelia stared at him.
“I didn’t think girls shared in my fantasy!” he exclaimed, loud enough for the rest of the class to hear. “Look, look!” He flipped through his notebook, showing Cordelia pictures of giant girls towering over cities or little guys sitting in the hands of a girl or getting crushed underfoot. She just continued to stare, mouth wide open, eyes never blinking, as Zeith all but orgasmed over the science lab in his ecstasy.
“This…was unexpected…and so very unnecessary,” Cordelia whispered to herself.
Zeith jumped up from his seat, wrapped his arm around Cordelia’s hips, and dropped to his knees so he could look up at her. “Put me in your shoe, my goddess!”
“Get away from me!” she screamed.
“Please! I promise to be naughty! And you can torture me however you want!”
Cordelia broke away from him and began running around the table as Zeith chased after her, crawling around on all fours like a mouse, begging to be her tiny sex toy. This continued for another couple of minutes until somebody stuck a needle into Zeith’s back and, with one last mad orgasmic look, he collapsed to the tiled floor.