Not really in the mood to attend her other classes, Cordelia stepped outside the school and walked around the building. The air was colder now and she shuddered, wishing she had brought her jacket. She tried to tug down on her bright pink sleeves, but they wouldn’t stretch any further, so she gave up and leaned against the side of the school where she would be safe from the harsh chill of the wind.

“Andy,” she called out, unzipping her handbag. She saw him curled up in there, between a used tissue and her cell phone. He wasn’t sleeping, just laying there, staring up at her with his hands tucked behind his head. “…Just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“Yeah,” he said after a moment, “I’m alright.”

“You sure?”

“…Well, I’ve had better days.”

The corner of her lip curled slightly. “Like yesterday?”

“Okay, better weeks.”

Cordelia’s lip didn’t stay up for long. It soon lowered and she shuddered again, her hair scratching at her face in the wind. She brushed it back tenderly with her fingertips. “You know, Andy… This is all so surreal. We’ve been so busy running all over the place that I haven’t had time to stop and think what it must be like for you… You must be so scared.”

“Never, babe. You know me better than that.”

She cocked her head to the side. “It’s okay, Andy… I’m scared. What if something happens to you before this afternoon? What if Alex can’t find an antidote? I can’t go on pretending there is nothing wrong forever …There is something wrong.”

“If there’s one thing you can trust about nerds, it’s that they always come through.”

She looked at him, trying to laugh. “…Yeah, Alex won’t let us down.”

“Then…would you please not cry?”

“I’m not crying. The wind’s in my eyes.”

The wind had stopped a minute ago, but Andy pretended not to notice. “Look, Cori, I may be small right now, but that doesn’t mean we have to sad. We could even have some fun with this. I still know how to have a good time.”

“What did you have in mind?” Cordelia smirked.

Andy spread his empty palms to show he had nothing. “That’s your call, girl. You’ve done everything you could do for me in the past twenty-four hours. My life is now in your hands.”

“Literally,” she laughed into another gust of wind, using the opportunity of brushing back her dancing strands of hair again to also wipe her eyes with her forearm. “Okay, so your life is in my hands. Do you trust me?”

“Girl, you know I do. I’d throw my life in your arms any day if it meant you’d have me.”

Her eyes widened, taken back first by his abrupt answer, without a shred of doubt in his mind, and secondly by his utter honesty, the kind she didn’t know he possessed. She stared at him, as if waiting for something else—an inapt joke, a laugh, a typical jock grin, but his face was the mask of sincerity.

“That’s so…unlike you,” she finally spoke.

“Well, this isn’t exactly like me either,” he said, presenting his shrunken body as if she hadn’t noticed. “But we’re not different people. I’m still Andy and you’re still the sexiest girl in East Shores High. Nothing’s going to change that and nothing’s going to change how damn much I love you.”

“That’s actually kind of sweet.”

 “What? You’re not going to confess your love for me as well?”

“Unlike you, I don’t have a reason to. You have nobody else to go to, no choice of your own. You’re mine whether you like it or not, but…I am glad to see you like it, Andy.”

“There’s that cold shoulder again.”

“The coldest.”

He smiled, knowing she couldn’t keep her wall up forever. “You love me.”

“No more than reason.”

“Ha. Before this is over, you’ll want me. I see it in your eyes.”

“I do believe your own eyes deceive you.”

“We’ll see, girl. We’ll see.”

Cordelia slid her fingers into her handbag and pulled Andy out, setting him down on her shoulder. “How about a first class ride?”

This was a bit of a shock for Andy. He was fine at first—that is, until Cordelia gradually moved her fingers away from him. Then his stomach lurched forward and he was sure he’d fall, down past Cordelia’s breasts which were like grassy mounds under her emerald shirt, and onto the pavement below. This was no carnival ride; there were no seat belts, no red tape or glass windows to keep him from becoming a stain on the ground. There was only Cordelia.

But she wasn’t going to let him fall. She walked slowly at first, pulling the strap of her handbag around her other shoulder so as to keep it out of Andy’s way. She also made sure not to swing her arms too much on her strides, which, though short and deliberately slow, caused her shoulder to tremble with every step. It was only a small twitch to her, barely noticeable because it came so natural, but to Andy it was like sitting on an active fault line. He was jostled around like a loose leaf that her arm was trying to brush away. Eventually, when he noticed that Cordelia was accelerating into her normal walking speed, he spun around, grabbing a handful of the soft pink fabric of her sleeve in each hand and leaving his feet to dangle helplessly in motion with her steps.

“How is it?” she laughed.

“Remember when we went rock climbing over the summer?”

“Yeah.”

“Like that,” he said, scrambling for higher ground as his feet were now rocking under the crook of her arm, “but the mountain’s alive.” And sexy as hell, he added to himself.

“Mount Cordelia… Well, I always did want a mountain named after myself.”

She had reached normal walking speed by now and every time she took a step with her left foot, Andy’s lower body would swing upwards. But then her right foot would come down, and so would his flailing body, and his face would be smothered in the cool silk of her sleeve. It was terrifying, at first, the way roller coasters and horror movies and fast cars and first sex are terrifying—the adrenaline surging through the veins, the heart like a jackhammer pummeling away at the chest, the brain crying out for mercy and the soul screaming, louder than ever, for this to never end.

Andy erupted in laughter and made his swings all the more wild by kicking off Cordelia’s arm on the uplifts and burying his face in her sleeve when he was thrown back down.

“You know,” he said between times of getting his face smushed against her shirt. “I could get used to this. No more school, no more parents, no more parents who expect you to go to school. Just you and me, Cori. That’s the way it should be.”

“It is pretty cool,” she admitted, though her enthusiasm wasn’t as great. “I just kind of wish…no, that’s selfish of me.”

“What?”

Cordelia stopped walking for a second, giving Andy the chance to grab hold of her hair and pull himself onto her shoulder. He struggled for a bit, trying to find a good foothold in the crinkled shirt fabric, but he eventually made it the top and stood on her shoulder.

“What is it, Cori?” he asked again.

She blushed slightly. “I kind of wish…not that you would stay this way forever, but that Alex could find a way to make you little again. You know, after he gives you the antidote. In case…you wanted to have fun.”

“I like fun.”

“But do you like being little?”

Andy pondered her question for a minute. “I don’t know yet. We haven’t had the chance to do anything.”

“We can change that.”