Erica entered the kitchen with her brother still cupped in her palm and laid her hand on the marbled island counter, where Peter quickly stepped off and walked closer to the edge, where he could survey his mother and plot the most eloquent attack possible.

Even in her best moods, Suzanne Clark didn’t let much by when it came to her son’s participation in activities where he only came up to the ankles of his peers.  Frankly, Peter half-attributed her enrolling him in actual high school to divine intervention.  Weaseling an extracurricular activity out of her would probably require similar luck.

“Hey, you two,” Suzanne said from the kitchen table, the surface of which was covered in paperwork.  “Have a good day?”

“Oh, yeah!” Peter said so happily he almost gave himself a cavity.

“Everybody was nice today?  No problems getting to class?”

“Nope!  I’ve made friends already in almost every class.  Everybody is just really cool,” he continued, refusing to let the overly broad smile drop from his face.  Peter had to give himself every advantage possible from the get-go, and that meant reinforcing the lie that his high school was a veritable sanctuary of safety and prosperity for five-inch-tall teenagers.

“I’m so glad to hear it,” his mother said with a seemingly satisfied smile, shifting her attention to her daughter.  “Erica?  What did you do today?”

“Nothin’,” the girl reported predictably with a shrug, swinging open the pantry door and rooting through the boxes of granola bars and crackers.  She looked over her shoulder at Peter, mumbling: “Want anything while the door’s open?”

“Could I get a fruit bar?  Thanks,” Peter said pleasantly, folding his hands behind his back and trying not to let his legs sway with anxiety.  He cleared his throat as he turned back to Suzanne.

“Mom?  I, uh… I had a really interesting conversation with a teacher today,” he started.

“Oh?  Which teacher?” his parent said.  Her gaze had returned to the paperwork and she was busily scribbling away with a few signatures on dotted lines.

“The… theatre teacher.  Mrs. Park.”

“I think I met her once.  She’s a very sweet woman,” Suzanne said, then paused in her writing.  “You’re not in a theatre class, though.”

“Oh yeah, it wasn’t about… a class, she actually came in at lunch and talked to me.  She… just wanted to offer, if I wanted to think about it, umm…” he fumbled, but at last puffing up his tiny chest and throwing it out in the open.  “…being in the school play?”

His mother’s hand placed the pen back on the table with quiet grace and she turned her head at last to regard her tiny son on the countertop.  She pressed her index finger into the side of her cheek and pursed her lips, the way she always did when her brain was working very hard on coming up with the least disappointing way to tell her child “no.”

It was a look Peter was well acquainted with, and he could tell he was already losing ground fast here to his mother’s over-protective nature.  Sometimes the woman would sweep her thumb thoughtfully over her chin before moving to pin her finger against her temple, but today she’d moved right to the danger zone.  If she tilted her head and stroked her palm down the side of her face, Peter knew it would be all over.

Erica, now leaning on a bar stool in front of the countertop island, chewed with her mouth open on a fruit bar, the package crinkling as she peeled it back.  Her fingernail dug into the bottom corner and she tore off a gummy crumb the size of her brother’s fist.  Wordlessly, she nudged her sibling in the hip with the offering, which he gratefully accepted, if only to find something to do with his nervous hands.  He began jamming the morsel hungrily into his face.

“Oh, Peter,” Suzanne sighed: probably her most common pairing of stressed syllables.  She smiled, but both her children could tell immediately how forced it was.  The woman rose from her chair and walked slowly toward the island, wringing her hands together.  “That’s… wonderful that you’re finding opportunities already at your school.  I’m so proud of you…”

But.  There had to be a but.  Where was it?”

“…but I just don’t know.  I’d be worried about how safe it might be.  Especially backstage in the dark, or around the other kids.  How would I know someone was looking out for you?”

“Well, Mrs. Park is in charge of the play.  She’s… probably liable in the same way my teachers are, right?” Peter said.  “It would be the same as going to class.  And you’ve even met her and liked her, so right now she even has that over my actual teachers.”

Suzanne winced almost imperceptibly, tapping another couple fingers to her skin, getting closer and closer to the point of no return.  Erica munched on her snack in the silence.

“That’s true, I suppose,” the doting parent sighed.  “But what about the auditions?  What if the selection process puts you at a disadvantage?  I wouldn’t want to see you disappointed.”

Grimly, Peter tried not to stew on the irony of this final sentence.

“She basically already offered me a part.  She said I still have to audition so she can see what I can do, but as long as I go, I’m in,” he said more confidently as he stuffed the last bite of the fruit bar down his throat.

“What part?”

“I don’t remember,” Peter said, perhaps too quickly, without skipping a beat.

Suzanne’s eyes narrowed in concentration, and her gaze fell to her daughter as she placed her hands on her hips.  “Erica?  Was this the sense you got too?”

“Uh-huh,” the girl agreed with some apparent disinterest, mouth still full.  “If he shows up, he gets to be in it.”

“I see,” Suzanne said wearily, placing a hand back to her forehead.  Peter cringed, and it wasn’t just because he’d swallowed something three times too large in record time.

“So what do you think?  The audition is Friday.  Please, Mom.  I really, really want to do this,” he begged, fighting the urge to put his hands together.  It was time to start laying his cards down or risk losing the chance for good.  “I could finally start showing more people that I’m not just some little freak-”

“You’re NOT some little freak!” Suzanne scowled remorsefully, her voice cracking as she lowered herself down to eye level with Peter, her manicured fingers curled over the lip of the marble.

“I know, Mom.  But they don’t know that yet.  This might be my chance to show them,” Peter whispered soothingly, patting his mother’s index finger, which rose to stroke his shoulder at the contact.

“But… but…” Suzanne muttered.  She was on the ropes, but not done yet.  “Jessica has her… dance class, on the opposite side of town, that I already have to… pick her up from.”

“I could carpool home,” Peter offered, discouraged.

“I already hate that you have to be on that bus without any protection.   I don’t want you in a car without your special seat,” Suzanne protested.  Her resilience was building back up as she continued to ramble.  “And with the distance from Jessica to you, you’d be there so late, they might start to close down… who knows who’d be supervising then?”

“Mom…”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, but this distance is going to make it too tough,” she sighed apologetically.  Peter understood fully that his mother’s wall of half-concocted excuses only existed out of her terror that he might be harmed, but all the same, it stung deeply to be denied this after his previous appeal.

“I’ll drive him.”

Both Peter and Suzanne, stunned, swiveled over in the direction of Erica, still with a bite of the fruit bar hanging out of her lips, as she continued leaning nonchalantly against the stool.

“What did you say, honey?” Suzanne asked, trying to hide her anxiety at her final excuse being cut down.

“I said I’ll drive him home after his thing,” Erica repeated with a shrug.

Peter blinked several times to ensure he was still awake and not in some mirror universe hellscape, then quickly got excited chills up his limbs when he realized his mother wouldn’t be coming back from this last verbal defensive maneuver.  He tried not to look too gleeful for his defeated parent.

“His rehearsals are probably everyday.  Are you sure you can-” Susan attempted meekly, quietly panicking now.

“Mom, I know how to drive a car, and school is only twenty minutes away.  I think I can handle it,” Erica snarked, finishing off the food and discarding the snack wrapper on the countertop before sauntering into the hallway and hurrying upstairs.

“Well,” Suzanne said, swallowing audibly, curling her fingers around her son’s back as though trying to pre-emptively protect him from the mortal dangers of after school activities.  “I guess we’ve… got an actor in the house now, huh?”

“I guess so,” Peter said with a smirk, hugging his mother’s massive hand and wishing he could do the same for Erica a thousand times over without it being weird.