Walking toward the school, perched safely in Erica’s hand, Peter felt like he was an astronaut preparing to board the shuttle and jet out of the stratosphere.  He had never gotten to visit his sister’s high school, and yet he suddenly found himself about to attend it, where he would be learning new things, getting grades, and hopefully befriending people.  Peter crossed his fingers, silently praying to himself that this last one in particular would be possible to pull off.

                “Okay, where am I going first?” asked Erica, not afraid of hiding the distaste in her voice for the great deal of extra walking she would have to do before getting to locate her friends and her own classroom.

                “Wait, wait, wait…” said Peter as calmingly as possible, rummaging through his backpack.  While doing this, and not able to grip onto the flesh of his sister’s palm for support, he was a little more at risk, and it was in times like this that he could feel the imperfections in smooth motion of Erica’s hand as she walked.  No matter how hard people tried, even his three family members who had gotten years of practice at it, keeping a hand perfectly straight for long periods of time entails some kind of margin for error, and Peter could feel it, rocking his body slowly like a boat on the ocean through his sister’s fingers, which wiggled slowly against his back as she walked cautiously through the thick sea of people all heading for the front doors.

                Peter politely balled himself up again, making it easier for his sister to grip him as she slipped through the school entrance and into the foyer, which was crowded with students trying to decode their schedules or get a cell phone signal.

                “Seriously, I need to know now, because this is the hub.  This is where you get everywhere, from here,” said Erica, raising her hand up closer to her face.  She tickled her fingers gently against her brother’s sides as if to prompt him.  He convulsed for the briefest second, even giggling, before retrieving his schedule from his backpack with a smile.  Pulling his arm roughly from around his sister’s thumb, which was pinned gently against his leg to keep him from being dropped, Peter cleared his throat.

                “American History, room 136,” read Peter roughly against his sister’s fingers pressing down on his stomach.  “Mr. Browning.”

                “136?” groaned Erica, setting off quickly down one of the wide hallways.  “That’s in the exact OPPOSITE direction of where I’m going.”

                “Sorry…”

                “Whatever, we just gotta move fast…”

                The rest of the way to history class was a jostling roller coaster ride for Peter.  His mother never allowed people holding her son to move at any speed over a walk, let alone actually run, but here his sister was all but sprinting.  He secretly relished the thrill of flashing blindly through the cavernous halls of the high school, past dozens of strangers he might soon meet in a class.  Erica’s soft, wide fingers had closed tightly around him, holding him in a firmly clenched fist just hard enough not to harm him.  While this wasn’t his preferred method of transport, as he enjoyed the freedom of sitting in an open hand and not having to rely entirely on the dexterity of his current transporter, he trusted his sister whole-heartedly, and knew that he would soon find himself flying to the hard carpeted ground if these measures weren’t taken.  Her thumb was digging uncomfortably against his right thigh, but before he knew it, she was allowing him to sprawl back into her palm as she came to a stop in front of room 136.

                “Here we go…” said Erica uncaringly, stepping over the threshold and entering the classroom.  As she did, she looked down at her brother, who was righting himself back into a seated position in her palm.  “That was okay, right?”

                “Yeah, yeah, it was fine.”

                “I mean… because, you know Mom is…”

                “I know.  Relax.  Just don’t run into anybody,” said Peter with a wink to his sister, who only shook her head at him, feigning pitied amusement at his ridiculousness.

                “Where do you want to sit?” she asked, eyeing the desks, many of which were already occupied by students, most of whom had their wide eyes glued to the new student who had just entered their midst.  “Because I literally have to go right now.”

                “Okay, okay, sorry… umm, that one,” said Peter arbitrarily, pointing forward to the closest empty desk, midway into the classroom clump of seats, surrounded on all sides by other desks.  Shrugging, Erica lowered her cupped hand toward it, allowing her brother to crawl quickly off onto the surface with his backpack in tow.  She retracted her arm as soon as Peter was clear, walking backwards toward the door.

                “I’ll be back in like an hour.  Remember, try not to freak out about stuff,” she said with a friendly grimace and a raise of her slender eyebrows before turning and jogging out the door to make it to her first class on time.

                Peter set to work pulling notebooks and tiny pencils out of his backpack, ready for action, before taking a calm seat on the desktop, trying to keep his eyes trained on his new supplies.  It was the best distraction from the dozen or so pairs of eyes he felt staring at him with an almost physical presence, and he couldn’t help but feel his shoulders start to shake, not from fear, but from embarrassment.

                Keep it together, he ordered himself mentally.  You’ve worked hard for this.

                After a few moments of silence, Peter couldn’t help but notice the frenzied whispering that had started up behind him.  He was able to ignore it at first, but he finally couldn’t take it much longer, and looked over his shoulder.

                In the desk directly behind him sat a thin, sporty-looking girl about his age with nearly silvery-blonde hair and crackling blue-gray eyes.  Her lips were pursed, and almost seemed to be vibrating: twisting, as if she was hatching some sort of complicated scheme in her mind, and the physical repercussions couldn’t be helped.  Her hands were clasped politely on top of her desk, her thin, violet, fashionable poncho draped over shoulders, partially concealing a silver cross necklace.

                Her eyes were trained, unblinking, on Peter, and he couldn’t help but begin to sweat, and this time not from the embarrassment of being the center of attention, but quite frankly because she was one of the most beautiful girls Peter had laid eyes on.  Granted, he didn’t leave the house all that much, and most of the normal-sized girls he had met were just the friends of his sisters, but this girl was almost too much.  Her face looked like it had been carved lovingly over a decade into pure pearl: it was a striking face, and it looked like it could have convinced anyone of anything it wanted to.

                Her lips slowly parted, decompressing and inflating partially like plush, pink balloons, rippled with thin creases.  “What’s up?” she asked, her mouth widening into a sly grin.  The words were soft and purposeful, as if she spoke with a low enough volume in order to force listeners to pay closer attention to her.  She leaned forward across the desk, sliding her upper body across the surface, until she was close enough that she probably could have reached out and touched Peter.

                The boy felt sweat begin to drip down his back.  Don’t blow this, he thought.  You need friends around here.  Why not try to make one right now?

                “I… I, uh…” he mumbled, far too out of his comfort zone to come up with something to say to this towering beauty as she continued staring him down with an expectant smile.  His throat went dry.  Suddenly, the thought of potential joking popped into his head.  “The sky?”

                The girl laughed sweetly, tilting her head to the side playfully and sliding her hands outward, still clasped together, into the space in front of her desk.  Peter instantly cursed himself mentally for his terrible sense of humor, thinking in retrospect that it would have been far better to have given a more standard answer, but the look on the girl’s face now wasn’t of ridicule, but of actual amusement.

                “You’re funny,” she said, nodding and narrowing her eyes deceptively at him.  Peter blushed ten shades of red, his fingers trembling with the thrill of this meager conversation.  “What’s your name?”

                “P-P-P…” he sputtered, closing his eyes and clearing his throat.  “Peter.”

                “Peter, huh?  Nice to meet you.  I’m Sharon,” she said.  After this, she nodded off to her left and right sides, indicating at the two girls on either end of her desk, who Peter now realized were staring at him almost as intently.  “This is Kimmy,” she said, nodding to her left.

                Peter made eye contact with Kimmy.  The girl looked almost too young to be a freshman in high school; it seemed to Peter she could have passed for one of his younger sister’s friends.  She looked short (relatively to normal-sized people, anyway), with strawberry blonde hair styled into a swooshing little bob cut.  Her pale face seemed to puff up as she smiled so hard that deep dimples creased cutely along her cheeks, showing off teeth that seemed speckled with discoloration.  Evidently, the girl had worn braces, and not done a fantastic job of brushing her teeth during this time, because the distinct, circular shapes seemed lightly bronzed onto her teeth.

                “And this is Amy,” said Sharon cheerily, pointing to the girl on her other side as Peter turned to smile back at her.  Seeming almost to be Kimmy’s opposite, Peter could tell Amy was long and lanky, coming in only a few inches shy of six feet tall, even as a freshman.  Long, dark brown hair flowed pleasantly just past her shoulders, framing her face, which lit up with a smile.  Unlike Sharon’s grin, though, Amy’s countenance made Peter a little uneasy.  It wasn’t a smile so much of friendliness, but of pride.  Victory, almost, although Peter couldn’t imagine where it came from.

                “Um… hi, guys!” said Peter kindly, standing to his feet so they could see him better.  “It’s nice to meet you, too.  I’m…”

                “Oh… my… God…” gasped Amy, cutting off Peter’s friendly introduction, her eyes bugging.  “That’s so… so…”

                “Amy!” grumbled Sharon, poking her friend’s shoulder with an elbow and whispering out of the corner of her mouth.

                “So…” continued Amy, not paying the slightest bit of attention to her friend, her bugged eyes still locked to Peter, as she reached a long arm forward, her hand outstretched, fingers wiggling playfully in midair.  Peter, who had always been offered the option of being picked up or not whenever in contact with normal-sized people, was confused and unprepared as Amy grasped her thumb and forefinger against the scruff of his shirt and plucked him from the desk, dangling him just above the surface.  A wide smile spread across Amy’s lips as she rotated her wrist, shaking Peter a bit.  She giggled heartily as the small boy helplessly hung over the painful drop between her firm, authoritative fingers, trying to keep his stomach from spinning on itself.