Samantha walked toward her first class of the day, which was also her favorite subject: study hall. While she may be an straight A student, she was also a teenager, and enjoyed the total lack of learning that went on in a study hall. As it was near the end of the year, the teachers of New Lincoln High has also checked out mentally, so study hall had become more of a “social” hall. Samantha walked through the door of the expansive room that study hall took place in, toward the same table she sat at every time. She found that her good friends, Tia and Sara, were standing at the usual table, pulling out chairs opposite each other from the square table.

Samantha automatically accessed their looks, an side effect of her position in the “popular” hierarchy. Tia was wearing a brown spaghetti-strap top, leading to a pair of dark Capri jeans and some cute brown flip-flops. She wisely chose a color that would accentuate her naturally olive-hued Mediterranean skin. Tia was a beauty, her face all angles, her black hair layered and shoulder-length, her large brown eyes expressive (aided, of course, by mascara) and her body was what you would expect from someone on the school’s swim team.

Sara was almost as opposite from Tara as you can get, minus the whole personality thing. Tia and Sara were cut from the same cloth there, thought Samantha; both of them were airheads. If they had an original thought in their bodies, Samantha figured either reality would blink out of existence or Hell, should it exist, would freeze over. Being friends with them just made sense, they were beautiful and knew how to dress. Sara typically wore bright colors to contrast her pale white complexion, and today was no different. She wore a lacy white spaghetti-strap top, perfectly matching the short flowing pink skirt that fell from her hips. She wore black flats on her feet, and pale pink lipstick to complete her look. Her long blond hair fell around her shoulders, framing her heart-shaped face, and her dark blue eyes were, as usual, lit up with enthusiasm.

“Oh my god, Samantha, you look so cute!” said Sara, taking a seat in her usual spot, to the right of Samantha at the table.

“Oh for sure, for sure. God, I love that skirt! I could never get away with something cut so short!” gushed Tia, who also sat down, to Samantha’s left, as she complimented Samantha.

“Why, thank you ladies. I was feeling gutsy today, I guess.” Samantha sat down in the chair, crossing her left leg over her right, and turned her attention to Tia. “Tia, you weren’t here yesterday, so I couldn’t show you. I went to Ramon’s”

Tia understood the implication, and a wide smile flashed across her face. “Wow! That must have been super expensive, you have to let me see.”

With a smirk, Samantha set her left foot back on the ground, slid both feet out of her flip-flops, and gently placed them in Tia’s lap. Admiration as well as a hint of jealousy lit up Tia’s face as she placed her hands underneath Samantha’s toes, running her thumb over the nails to feel out the seamless quality of the work.

“You’re so gutsy, wearing black like this.” Said Tia, sliding her hands out from under Samantha’s feet. “Someone might think you’re, like, a goth or something!” she added, giggling and running her hand through her hair.

“Oh come on, a goth? Please. You know Samantha has more class than that!” exclaimed Sara, rolling her eyes and digging into her purse, pulling out a small container and a plastic spoon.

“Sara, really? It’s first period. You can’t wait for lunch?” asked Tia, an annoyed look etched across her face as she stared disbelievingly at the container.

“Hey, I didn’t have time for breakfast, and anyway, it’s low-fat.” spat Sara, peeling off the top of the yogurt cup.

Samantha slid her feet out of Tia’s lap, noticing a couple specks on her left big toe that wasn’t there before. Could the nail be chipping already? Did Tia chip it? She quickly slid her thumb across the surface of her nail, and found that the specks came off. Whew, she thought, that was a relief. She saw that the speck was stuck to the side of her thumb, and after taking a brief moment to try to figure out what they were, just assumed they were from her flip-flops and absentmindedly flicked them off in the direction of Sara, who didn’t notice the specks as they flew from Samantha’s thumb toward her just-opened container of yogurt.

 With that, she slid her feet back into her shoes, her eyes lighting up with amusement. “Yeah, that’ll be the day. Why would I want to spend my days thinking about death? Super lame, right? Death is the furthest thing from my mind. Actually, today has made me looking more on the bright side. You seen Dean around?”

Sara scoffed. “Psht, no. But then again, I never see him around. Guy is like, invisible to me.” The dejected look on her face as she stirred her strawberry yogurt said otherwise.

Samantha grinned. “Yeah, well…I heard you asked him to Prom, and he said no. Sour grapes, perhaps?” She laughed.  “I guess I’m just hoping I won’t see him today. It would really, just, you know, make the sun shine a little brighter.”

Leon was holding on for his life, but knew he couldn’t hold on indefinitely. Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to hold on any longer, his hell-ride came to a halt. Taking advantage of the stillness, Leon pulled himself up onto the nail with a grunt and an exasperated sigh. Realizing that she could move at any moment, he took off toward the back edge of the nail, his mind focusing on the corner where he could brace himself from being jostled. He was halfway across when all of a sudden, his living landscape moved again, and without anything to grab onto, fell into a slide. Luckily, this slide was in the opposite direction of the fall to his death, so as he slid, a grin fell across his face.

“Whoo! Finally catching a break!” he said to himself as the wall of flesh that was the back edge of the nail and his destination slid closer. He hit with a small thud, then looked for a purchase for his hands. He was in the middle, as opposed to the corner, so didn’t find an easy to hide in nook for himself. Before he could find a grip, sudden movement threw him to his back, and he began to slide back. This time, the world around him moved in a more vertical motion, and he was pressed to the surface.

Leon likened the motion to when he was a kid, and had stepped onto a roller coaster for the first time: He was frightened, closed his eyes and felt like he was being thrown through space. When he finally came to a stop, he opened his eyes to see where he ended up. Then he began to scream. Far above him, yet taking up his entire sky, was a girl’s face. Black hair spilled down, framing her face, as she seemed to gaze down at him in amusement. It only took a second, but he recognized her: It was Tia, someone he remembered as one of Samantha’s good friends. He lay on the nail, motionless, in shock at the situation. She doesn’t see me, he thought, no recognition or hint of surprise lit up in her face. She was admiring the nails of the person he was on!

            Then there was movement. Leon started to try to stand as he noticed that hands, Tia’s gigantic hands, were appearing on either side of the feet he was on. Her thumbs appeared so quickly, he barely had time to register that they were sweeping across the nails, perhaps admiring the work done. Suddenly, a giant wall of flesh, the side of her thumb, bridged the gap between the third and fourth toes, ready to smear him out of existence.

            “NO!” Leon screamed, and reacting purely on instinct, ran and made a jump toward the quickly approaching wall, miraculously finding hand and foot holds in the crevices that made up her thumbprint. His ability to hold on to such a massive object moving at such a comparatively fast speed was found wanting, however, and Leon found himself being flung from his precarious perch upon the thumb back onto a familiar black surface. He had fallen in such a way that he lay next to the skin, and watched the thumb finish its sweep in front of him and fly off into space.

            “Guess…I got lucky.” wheezed Leon, still on his back. He closed his eyes for a second, but opened them when he heard a familiar sound. A voice.

            “How the hell did you get here?”

Leon snapped open his eyes, to see the weary but smiling form of Dean.

“Oh man! Shit, man! You’re alive!” Leon hopped up, not too excited for words. “I thought you were dead, man!”

“Well,” began Dean, extending a hand to help Leon up off the ground, “Not yet.”

            “Shit! I almost forgot to tell you! I think I know who we are on, man, and you are not going to like it. That bitch that almost squished me was that girl Tia, so this has to be…” Leon was cut off when their world accelerated once again, then suddenly stopped. The two had fallen to the ground again, and looked up to see the face of their ride: It was Samantha.

            Dean and Leon shook in terror as the teenage girl who hated them, now a size beyond imagining, finally looked down and seemed to notice them.

            “Uh…” began Leon. “Do we wave or try to run?”

            “Leon, right now, I’m terrified beyond the capacity for rational thou—“

            Dean was interrupted when another thumb, this one belonging to Samantha, came down, targeting them. They began to run, but the wall of flesh seemed to scoop them up, and they found that the acceleration stuck them to the pad of her thumb. They eventually came to a rest on their backs, as she peered down at them.

            Dean took a moment to try to take in all that was happening to him, but just couldn’t. For a moment, he went on a little mental vacation, so that he was anywhere but there. Leon, however, couldn’t achieve the same blissful state of mind.

            “SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT! OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD.””

Leon screamed at the top of his lungs, much like he did when going downhill on a roller coaster.

            Both boys had a moment to wonder if perhaps they were even too small for her to make out as anything but dark specks. And if she did recognize them, would she help them?

            They watched as a look of curiosity, then annoyance, then apathy crossed her face; no, she hadn’t seen them, at least, for what they truly were. The two were impacted by another wall of flesh that approached from their side, and were flung out into space.

They flew in an arc, with neither one really able to see where they were going, as they speed at which they flew coupled with the nearly indiscernible and alien world of giants that surrounded them gave no familiar object to latch onto.

They did find, on their way down, that they were falling into a gigantic circle, the size of a massive and perfectly round lake. Only, the lake was pink.