Heather McAvoy had a million things on her mind.

She was going through her mental to-do list for what felt like the fiftieth time since she had woken up that morning and was rapidly reaching the point where she was forgetting what she had already done. With a glance over her shoulder she again confirmed that she had picked up her and Jason's dry cleaning, along with the tables they had lent his sister for some bake sale at the elementary school, and that week's groceries.

On the one hand, she wanted to congratulate herself for doing so much after going on a run that morning then practically dragging Zoe out of bed and driving her to school but all she could think about was how much was left to do.

And the fact that the stupid light to get onto their street took forever to change.

Tapping her fingers against the steering wheel, she absentmindedly reached for the iced coffee in her cup holder. When she sucked on the straw, all that entered her mouth was cold water that tasted vaguely of the coffee she had finished somewhere in the midst of her errands.

The light changed and she turned her tank-like car onto the wide lane that wound through their neighborhood. The winding tree-lined street was normally a relaxing way to get home at the end of a long day but in that moment it was just another frustration making her day a little longer than necessary.

Her stomach rumbled and she suddenly looked back at the iced coffee in her cupholder.

“Oh God,” she muttered to herself, “That can't be all I've eaten today...”

Uttering those words was enough to make Heather's head grow a little lighter.

She cursed quietly to herself and turned onto her own street, past a house that two college girls rented. The sight of a pride flag flapping in the breeze made her smile, if for no other reason than she knew how much it bothered her neighbors.

When she and Jason had first bought their house, his sister had assured them that the college kids rarely ventured so deep into town let alone lived in the neighborhood. But that was over fourteen years ago, shortly after Zoe had been born, and the college had expanded a lot since then. She wasn't too worried but Jason had been grumbling about their property values ever since the girls had moved in and Heather rolled her eyes every time.

Jason was the one who had suggested they move to his hometown after Zoe was born.

He was the one who loved living near his family, he beamed with pride when Zoe made the soccer team and wore the same colors he had as a high school football star, and he loved being recognized as Jason McAvoy who took them all the way to state back in the day.

Heather would have been quite happy to give up being the out-of-towner he fell in love with at college. She would have liked the chance to move back to a city where she might be able to grow her client base and do interesting work again rather than redesigning the same tired office spaces and house renovations. And she really wouldn't mind not having his family rub off on Zoe in all the worst ways.

There was something about the way she had spoken to a waitress when they had gone out the other night that still sat uncomfortably in the pit of Heather's stomach. The sheer haughtiness of it reminded her of the way Jason's sister always talked to people, like she was one minor inconvenience away from demanding to see a manager.

“Ugh, what am I even cooking for dinner tonight?”

She pulled into the driveway and turned off the car.

Pushing the door open, Heather gasped as she almost spilled out of the driver's side door.

Barely catching herself, she shook her head and took a deep breath.

With another muttered curse, she started toward the trunk while rubbing her head until her stomach quivered. Clutching her suddenly aching belly, she frowned and turned back toward the front door, “Oh God, oh dear Lord...”

The pain intensified and while she tried to take quick little steps toward the door, she faltered almost instantly. All of her muscles spasmed as she tried to press forward but then her legs gave out from under her and the world started to spin.

Her skin felt like it was on fire while all of her joints were suddenly under immense pressure.

Heather bit down hard on her lip to keep from screaming as she realized what was happening.

“No,” her voice burned in her throat and the vertigo became so intense that she had to shut her eyes. Smacking her fist against the brick walkway leading to the front door, she groaned through gritted teeth, “Not today, not now, not like this...”

But her clothes were already billowing out around her.

And then just as suddenly as it started, the pain stopped.

All of the air inside of her came out in a heaving gasp and she felt her bare feet brushing against the material of her leggings while the rest of her clothes weighed down heavily on her body. With a few grunts and flails, Heather managed to tug her arms out of her sleeves and flop down onto the ground where her muscles simply twitched for several long seconds.

“Oh God,” she whimpered, still keeping her eyes shut, “It won't be that bad, it can't be that bad...”

Slowly, Heather opened her eyes and took in the monumental sight of her own house.

Her jaw dropped as she craned her neck back and back to take in its now very intimidating two stories. Bringing her gaze back to the ground, she gasped when she realized that her azalea bushes now loomed over her. Looking over her shoulder, Heather had to bite her lip to keep from screaming once more when she took in the sight of her own clothes spilling behind her.

“Ok, ok, deep breath,” she told herself as she extricated herself from her own clothing, “You knew this could happen, you've thought about this...”

Her tiny feet danced across the cool brick for a moment as she realized that she had never really thought about it before, at least not seriously. Standing with one arm across her chest and her other hand in front of her crotch, she realized that she was at least taller than she thought.

That alone made her look toward the front door and then to where her keys had fallen beside her. Her head started to bob up and down, “Ok, you can do this, first things first, uh... make sure that no one else realizes what happened...”

Her head snapped to her left and right where she expected to see someone looming on the horizon racing toward her to snatch her up. The endless expanse of her own lawn and the vast houses in the distance offered her little comfort though.

“Right, so, clothes in the bushes...” She told herself as she grabbed onto the vast fields of fabric beside her. Grunting and heaving, Heather dragged first her top and jacket then her leggings just far enough onto the flower bed that no one would notice them from the sidewalk.

Then she turned to stare at her own shoes.

“My feet aren't that big...” She glanced down at her own feet and then back at the running shoes she had been wearing that morning. Stepping closer she shook her head, trying to comprehend how they could be almost half her size.

“It doesn't matter, just...”

Heather gripped them and dragged with all of her might.

She slowly waddled backwards while sweat poured down her brow and she could feel her tiny body become flush with effort. The moment they were at the edge of the flower bed, she let go and yelped as she fell forward.

The shoe material was thankfully soft but the sudden intensity of her own foot funk made her reel back. Coughing and sputtering with disgust, she again stared down at her own two feet with a strange sense of betrayal.

Carefully, she moved back to her keys and heaved them up into her hands.

Tossing the key ring over her shoulder with a grunt, she gave another glance around for other people before she raced toward her front door. Standing at it, she stared up at the doorknob that hung over head and took a deep breath.

“You can do this,” she told herself before hoisting herself up with all of her might.

The stretching felt almost pleasant until she began to lift the keys toward the knob.

Her arms immediately began to shake and her lungs burned as she struggled to breathe with the sudden effort. The roar of an engine in the distance made her heart almost leap into her throat. Blood pounded in her ears and she watched the keys waver while her arms threatened to give out and send them crashing down onto her head.

The approaching car grew louder and Heather knew if it passed by the house she'd be snatched up.

A tiny voice in her head wondered if it would be such a bad thing to be kidnapped by a stranger and Heather immediately silenced that voice by letting out an angry yell. It echoed in her own ears, beating out her own blood and the thunderous car engine, and she stabbed her house key into the lock and yanked with all her might.

The door creaked open and she pushed inside.

Slamming her back against the door, she heard it shudder in its frame once more before she dropped to the floor.

Sobs erupted from Heather and she immediately pulled her knees up to her chest and rocked back and forth. Her whole body ached while the terrible reality of what had just happened to her weighed down on her.

Her head spun so hard and her chest burned so much that she swore she was shrinking again.

Heather sat on the worn welcome mat in front of her door, clutching her chest and struggling to breathe for several long minutes before she realized she was having a panic attack. She gasped for air while twisting her head every which way in an attempt to find five blue things or whatever you were supposed to do to calm yourself.

All that came out of her was more tears.

Finally, Heather managed to take in a breath without her chest hitching with another sob.

Slowly, she lifted her head up, brushed away the tears staining her cheeks, and looked around the room. The sight of her own house blown up to strange oversized proportions gave her another jolt but she simply took a deep breath and forced herself to her feet.

She swayed but then steadied.

“Ok, I just need to...”

Her heart skipped a beat and she looked at the door over her shoulder.

The realization that she had left her purse, and thus her phone, in her car hit her suddenly. She braced herself against the wall and preemptively took a slow calming breath, “It's ok, Zoe will be home from school in a few hours. It's... it's not as good as Jason racing home to help me but it's fine, Zoe is...”

A dozen words should have jumped to the tip of her tongue at that moment. All the ways that she would normally describe her daughter should have been the words that came to her mind. Instead only one stood out to her.

“... Immune.”

She stared up at the door she was braced against and the knob that loomed high enough over her head that she had to strain and stretch to reach it. Then she thought about her own daughter, who had always taken after her six-foot-four husband in the height department and whose pediatrician said she would probably keep growing throughout most of high school. It wasn't hard to imagine the way the shadow of Zoe's lengthening frame filled the frosted glass window at the door's center and how it would now cast a shadow over her whole world.

Heather thought about how big her own dainty sneakers had been and found her head turning slowly to where several pairs would be lined up beside the door.

The fancy new running shoes that her daughter had begged for all summer stood at the front of the line. Their thick pristine white soles rose up almost to her calf and the big letters that spelled 'Hoka' stared back at her.

She remembered being so confused about why Zoe had wanted those shoes particularly, and a few of her college friends with kids shared in her confusion. They all said the same thing though, that for the past few years all kids had wanted were chunky sneakers.

It was just what was popular these days.

Heather's eyes were suddenly drawn to few small red flecks near the bottom of the sneaker's sole. At first, she thought it was just a part of the pattern, a dark red to contrast the sky blue of the sneaker itself but then she noticed all the specks were near the arch.

She knelt down beside her daughter's mammoth shoe, which could easily cover half of her body, and pressed her hand against it. The first thing she noticed was how much heftier it was than the lightweight sneakers she had struggled to drag around. Then she realized that the red flecks were an almost brown color and the pattern was like a strange spray effect.

Her hands shook as she pushed them into the soft exterior of the shoe.

She shoved, rocking the thick soled sneaker back and forth until finally it tipped over.

What she saw on the sole made her eyes widen and her pulse quicken.

The stain had seeped through most of the tread but most of it was centered around the arch where bits of what Zoe had stepped on still clung to the bottom of her shoe.

Heather shook her head as she realized that it wasn't a what on the sole of her daughter's sneaker but a who. Bits of bone, much smaller than any of her own could be, were still stuck in a small cluster near the center. She tried to tell herself that she was just seeing things but she knew that they were human bones and once she saw that, she could almost see the shape they must have been in when her daughter's foot came down on them.

They would have been curled up with their arms covering their head.

They would have been cowering at her daughter's feet, begging her not to step on them.

Her eyes were drawn to the other shoes in the line, not her husband's massive pairs or her own, but the other ones they had bought for Zoe over the past year or two. The chunky Nikes, the thick-soled Doc Martens, the ridiculous platform purple Crocs that she had worn all summer.

She also thought of the way that Zoe had started to speak to people who were working at stores or restaurants. The way she always seemed to be looking down her nose at them and smirking like she knew something that they didn't.

It had never crossed Heather's mind that it could be because Zoe was Immune.

That the thing Zoe knew that no one else did was how easily she could crush them if they shrank.

Her eyes went back to the huge shoes they had gotten her and she thought about all the chunky shoes that Zoe's friends wore. Friends that she had mostly made in high school, after they had gotten her tested the summer beforehand.

Friends who apparently encouraged her to crush other people.

People like her.

“Oh God,” Heather dropped to her knees, “I need to get out of here...”