As usual, the miniscule freshman’s job got fairly boring after the first P.E. bowling game drew to a close.  He watched most of the inexperienced players including Lisa let their shots drift off to the side and miss the pins, and it made him wish he had the stature and constitution to march out into the open and give some instruction on stance.

                Just to be of use somehow.

                Still, Peter soldiered on, bracing the pencil against his shoulder and scribbling out clear enough numbers that the scores’ owners could make them out.  Halfway through the second game, he nearly cracked his second pencil tip of the day to feel a cold fingertip drumming against his shoulder blade.

                “I had a strike on that last turn, shortstuff, not a spare,” Sharon informed him with uncharacteristic pleasantness.

                “Right.  Sorry about that,” Peter said, spinning the half-sized writing utensil around and setting about awkwardly rubbing away his error.

                “Don’t worry.  I’ll take care of it,” Sharon said.  Her fingers pinched around the top of the pencil and snatched it up before Peter could even let go, let alone protest having his only job taken away from him.  His feet left the sanctity of the table for just an instant as Sharon’s hand went skyward and lifted him up, but luckily he let her have her way before he was too completely at the mercy of the girl and gravity.

                “Okay,” he mumbled, righting himself as his classmate erased the mistake far faster than he could hope to a full-bore pace of erasure.

                “You don’t have to apologize.  There are just certain things some people do better,” she explained coolly.  “Maybe there are… more things in your case.  And it’s always better to let others take care of the things you can’t do.”

                “I can handle erasing, I promise,” Peter said with a good-natured snicker, hoping to break up the immediate tension Sharon was so masterful at conjuring.  The laugh wasn’t reciprocated.

                “Maybe you can manage it, but there are always other things you might not be able to see coming,” she said.  “It’s a big world here, shortstuff.  You need friends to look out for you.  Keep you out of trouble.”

                The transition was so slick, Peter had barely noticed it.  His limbs stiffened.

                “T-Thanks, Sharon.  I’m, uh… glad you’ve got my back,” he said.

                “It’s not just that,” she said.  “I’m trying to make sure things turn out okay for you at this school.”

                “They will!” he blurted defensively, then coughed.  “They… they are, I mean.”

                “Mhmm,” the unconvinced silvery-blonde exhaled.  Her head tilted to the side, like a hawk examining its prey in close detail, before her attentions were diverted out to the lanes, where Lisa was lining up for her next turn.  “Your friends matter, shortstuff.  The sooner you figure it out, the better.”

                Lisa’s stance had improved, and with a good wind-up, the ball sailed down the lane and took down four pins, the victorious crashing of them somehow almost drowned out by a condescending chuckle from a clearly unimpressed Sharon.  However, it went unnoticed by Peter.

                Something else had overtaken his senses with the same immediacy that had on numerous occasions throughout his life kept him safe from incoming stray cats, stray countertop apples, and grabby kindergarteners.

                It was the seismic growl of a bowling ball, rolling like a ten-pound sparkling purple missile toward the table at a rate far faster than the diminutive freshman could’ve hoped to take evasive action against even if he wasn’t stranded on the tabletop.  Someone even less skilled than Lisa had, apparently, lost control.

                Peter, instantly accessing the threat, planted himself firmly on the table with his arms at his sides, and looked hurriedly up to Sharon, the nearest human being, for potential aid.  He saw her silver eyes flash, reverting to the floor and plainly detecting the bowling ball, before returning back to him without so much as an emergent glint.  No other part of her body budged.

                “PETER!” Lisa shrieked from up at the line, jolting in the direction of the table with arms outstretched and no hope of reaching him in time.

                The impact of the ball on the hapless folding table was greater than Peter had been anticipating.  He could hear the screech of the screws struggling to hang on, followed by the cheap metal legs buckling under the force of the ball, toppling, knocking him instantly off his feet as the plastic surface tipped into the cruel grasp of gravity like a crumbling fault line.

                Tumbling head over heels, Peter careened off the side and met a half-instant of cold air before plopping unceremoniously into the eerie white visage of Sharon’s hand, which was waiting for his arrival with plenty of time.

                “Watch your step, shortstuff,” Sharon crooned, her steady voice able to cut even through the echoed rumbling of a dozen bowling balls rampaging down the gym floor.  Her fingers curled inward closer to Peter, making it impossible to sit normally in her hand without threatening to spill out.  The skin was soft and delicate, like a flower petal, but still cool to the touch.

                “You okay, Peter?” Ms. Watson asked, jogging closer to the table with whistle brandished in hand.  Every pair of eyes in the room was now on the five-inch student cupped oddly in Sharon’s restrictive palm, his legs scooped awkwardly over her thumb.  He couldn’t tell what he hated more: the physical strain of all but wrestling Sharon’s fingers just to sit upright, or the mental one of having four dozen curious giants all focused on his action figure-sized frame just like on the first day of school.

                “Y-Yeah.  Yeah, I’m f-fine,” he said, still just recomposing himself after being so violently startled.  Peter struggled to avoid peering out at the gawking faces, but the alternative was looking at the porcelain flesh that now, despite rescuing him from some broken legs, imprisoned him.

                “Do you need to see the nurse?” Watson queried loudly.  “Feeling anything in your ankles?  I could check it out, too, in my office if you think you twisted anything.  I know some first aid, so it wouldn’t be any trouble.”

                “No, no, I… I really am fine.  Thank you,” Peter said, on the verge of full-body tremors from all the eyes that had fallen on him.  As he glanced around the gym, though, he began to realize the students weren’t looking at him with wonderment or amusement, as one might a performing circus monkey that had just dropped its juggling balls, but simply with fear.

                Not of him, but for him.

                “All right, if you’re sure then, let’s keep going.  Everyone pick up your pins and for God’s sake, watch where you’re kicking the equipment before someone gets hurt!” Watson barked as she strode back to her post.

                “Um, S-Sharon?” Peter said, taking a deep breath and at last settling himself as he attempted unsuccessfully to pull his legs against his abdomen.  “T-Thanks for the catch, really, but… you can… let me down now.”

                “Just making sure you’re still in one piece,” Sharon said with almost abrasive warmth.  Her hand lowered toward the table, with her fingers even touching the edge, but she didn’t flatten her palm to let Peter out.  If anything, her firm fingers closed more tightly around his limbs.  “That’s the way we prefer you.”

                “Sharon,” said a firm voice Peter took a second to register as Lisa’s, stronger and more assertive than he’d yet experienced it.

                “Yes?” the reply shot back, metallic and automatic.  Sharon’s piercing eyes widened acutely on Peter, not even bothering to acknowledge Lisa.  Like crescent moons darkened on one sliver of the rim, the siren’s irises threatened to spin from her sclera as poisoned shuriken and slice cleanly through the boy’s spine.  It made her miniature freshman captive sincerely wish he was strapped into a plane plummeting toward the ocean, or really just literally any other location than his current one.  He felt moisture on the back of his neck, wondering if Sharon’s palm had grown clammy, until he realized the nervous sweat actually belonged to him.

                “You should put Peter down,” Lisa declared, suddenly standing beside Sharon.  “Now.”  Extending a hand, the tender-hearted student grasped Sharon’s wrist.

                The platinum blonde twitched like she’d been slapped across the face, her lip quivering slightly as she stared with nauseous revulsion at the unwelcome appendage of someone so painfully unpopular actually daring to touch her.  Appearing quickly behind the duo were Amy and Kimmy, looking like spectators about to watch a world champion boxer bat down a hot-headed ticket-holding challenger.

                “Obviously I will,” Sharon said, smiling so widely Peter was terrified a chuckle would escape her thin lips.  Her eyes drilled back through him once again.  “I’m just making sure he knows his limits.”

                Her hand finally unfurled onto the tabletop, allowing her catch to roll on his side back to the surface, where he pulled himself to his feet to dust off.  Lisa’s hand, at last, roughly released from her opponent’s wrist.

                “Nothing more dangerous than not knowing what you can, or… can’t do.  Is there, shortstuff?” Sharon said.  As usual, her seemingly innocent confirmation question had the density of a statement already sure of itself.

                Those grey sunshield eyes were throwing down a challenge, and already ridiculing him with their laughing light for pre-emptively failing.  Daring him to step out into the ring with only his toothpick arms as defense and defy her iron will.

                “No, there’s not, Sharon,” Peter said.

                For the first time, her name came out of his mouth without anxiety or apprehension, but simply as a word, representing the fifteen-year-old teen queen rather than a fanged mythical beast.  He could see Amy and Kimmy’s smiles straightening out again, and even Sharon’s eyes lost a little of their midnight luster as he broke free of their mental grasp at long last.  Whatever imaginary curse had been laid on him was severed at last, and in his first seconds of freedom, the path ahead was finally clear.

                He swiveled, turning toward Lisa: the benevolent redhead standing above him with her hands folded neatly in front of her waist without their usual anxious white-knuckle tightness, a cherishing twinkle in her green eyes, and a gentle curve on her kind lips.

                Enough was enough.

                “Lisa, would you like to go out to see a movie with me this Friday?” Peter asked, with enough volume that everyone in the vicinity and even a few others surrounding them could make it out, but his gaze was locked onto his friend, the only one in the room who mattered.  If he’d managed to pull his attention away even the slightest amount, he’d have witnessed the matching slack-jawed expressions on the trio, the most stunned of all in Sharon’s stony, angelic countenance.

                “Of course, Peter,” Lisa breathed.