“You’re really on a roll, you know that?” Erica sighed, her fingers tapping impatiently at the steering wheel of the family car as she flicked the windshield wipers on to smear away the steady shower that had been pattering down ever since she’d arrived on campus at the end of play practice. She peered into the rearview mirror above, reflecting her brother inside his specialized car seat box in the second row.

                “She’s not gonna let anyone else hold me at school anymore, is she?” the five-inch freshman groaned.

                “I’ll say,” his sister remarked. “With the look on Mom’s face when she got home from your field trip thing, you might have to do some hardcore arguing to get her to let you keep going to school.”

                “Wait… what?”

                “Not really, twerp, relax. But, like, you’ve… you know, you’ve got to be careful about that stuff. Especially when Mom’s right there and going to find out.”

                “Nothing happened, though,” Peter groused. “The table was right underneath. Maybe I would’ve… I don’t know, gotten a bruise or something if I landed wrong. But she saw nothing happened. And she knows it was an accident after we talked about it.”

                “You know Mom’s not going to care about that,” Erica said. She tapped the gas pedal, zooming them down an empty road and through the expansive puddles. “As far as she’s concerned, you took a swan dive off the table and onto your head.”

                “Yeah,” he grunted. Peter buried his face in his hands, slouching deeper into the heavily secured box.

                As bad as it was for his mother to witness a near accident while in the care of school peers, somehow it was made worse by the fact that Sharon had caught him, preventing physical injury. Her grip had snapped him into the cold, unflinching grasp of her admittedly soft fist that never failed to make him feel as though he was being given painful corrective shocks like a test mouse by her every skin cell. The iron digits had loosened as soon as Suzanne had approached, but by then Peter was willingly balled into a fetal position in the center of the titanic siren’s palm, and the silver-blonde was receiving hyperventilated shows of gratitude from his mother.

                Of course the universe would arrange for Sharon, of all people, to fall into his overanxious mother’s good graces. And obviously he couldn’t attempt to explain away any of this to her now, for fear of making the situation even worse, endangering his apparently flimsy odds of staying enrolled in school.

                “Anyway,” his sister said from the front seat after a lengthy pause. The car jostled, hitting a rainwater-flooded pothole.  “Maybe you just… I don’t know, need some more backup plans. Things you can do.”

                “For what?”

                “You know… like, if someone’s not great at holding you, or whatever.”

                “Oh,” he said. “Like what?”

                “I don’t know!” she blurted. She turned the final corner, swerving onto their native block. The car splashed up a particularly wide spray as Erica’s right set of tires dipped through a curb-length puddle. “You keep thinking I’ve got all the answers. I really don’t, though.”

                Peter raised an eyebrow, shrugging his shoulders at this realization. “You’re probably the best source of answers I’ve got in all this.”

                “Well, that’s comforting,” the ever-sarcastic seventeen-year-old gawked as the car inched up the driveway and into the garage. She hopped out, slamming the front door behind her hard enough that the car was rocked for a moment, then swung the side back open and commenced working into Peter’s various car seat straps with her fingertips. “If you want to try to figure it out, though, I mean… I could be convinced.”

                The freshman’s eyes widened as the seatbelts were pulled loose. He shifted aside to make room for his sister’s tremendous hand cupping and filling the space, then hopped inside her palm.

                “Really?”
                “No, twerp,” she droned as she leveled off her hand and made for the door with her backpack slung over one shoulder. “Yes. Obviously.”

                “Oh,” he said. “Um, cool.”

                “Uh-huh,” Erica said. She flattened her free hand against the door and entered the house. “But only because if I have to listen to Mom have one more whining fit over you almost tripping on your own shoelaces, I’m gonna lose it. So we’re gonna figure out how to make you stay in a place you want to stay in. Or… you know, get out of it if you have to.”

                “You can be my sensei,” Peter joked, nudging his sister in the finger. “Teach me how to give someone a wrist cramp with just one punch.”

                “Don’t push it.”

                “Right,” he said. “Got it.”

                “PETER!” Jessica bellowed, bounding around the corner of the breakfast nook, planting her feet so heavily with each emboldened step that the kitchen chairs rattled.  “Why?”

                The boy couldn’t quite remember seeing his sister so simultaneously distraught and embittered, her cute brow etched into a frown, even as her watery eyes were strained pink from previous tears. He flinched, and not from the volume of her voice.

                “I swear to God, Jess, if I go deaf someday because of you, I’m sending you all the med bills,” Erica threatened, shielding her ear with a hand.

                “No swearing in this house!” Suzanne called out from the other room, though Peter could already hear his mother approaching at a rapid pace.

                Great. Even more guilt was inbound.

                “Okay, but can she at least start wearing a bucket over her head or something when she has to scream for no reason?” Erica complained. She plopped her backpack to the floor with a heavy thud and slumped into one of the kitchen chairs, setting her hand down on the table as Peter clambered off his sister’s fingers and onto the glossed surface.

                “Um, why what, Jessie?” Peter asked innocently as he massaged his raw eardrums as he sunk to his haunches against the table’s centerpiece fruit bowl. Not that he really wanted to get into this conversation, but the more trivial he treated this latest supposed atrocity in his delicate existence, the sooner he knew his sibling would be soothed. Hopefully.

                “Why did you let… let strangers hold you?” Jessica screeched, her bright golden locks flouncing about as she dove into a chair, leaning over the table, her trembling fingers clenched pale into the cusp of the surface.

                “They, um… they weren’t strangers,” Peter explained. More than anything, the boy wanted to recount the various reasons why his sister was exactly right about these three particular girls, and that anything that could be done to keep him out of their hands was a good thing, but this wasn’t the time or place. Not with his very attendance at stake. “They’re my partners for our… project. And they haven’t had any practice yet at holding me. That’s all, really.”

                “That’s all?” Jessica squealed in repetition. One of her hands lifted from the table, dragging her fingers over the table with a fleshy squeak of friction. The teen’s digits extended up, tapping lightly at her brother’s miniature kneecaps, as if checking to ensure they were still intact. Her thumb hooked around one of his arms. “They could’ve dropped you all the way to the floor. You wouldn’t even be talking to me now. H-How… how c-could you j-ju…”

                “Listen, um… you’re gonna love it when I tell you about some of what we did at play practice today!” Peter expressed brightly, rising up and giving his sister’s searching fingers a good-natured pat. “We did tongue twisters and stretches, and we did some improv games too to get warmed up, like we played this one called-”

                “Mom!” Jessica cried, interrupting her brother as she stood back to full height, her palm slapping against the surface of the table in anguish. “Tell him he can’t be so careless!”

                “Don’t worry, honey. We’re going to talk about it. Everything’s going to be okay,” Suzanne reassured as she entered the room, wrapping her youngest daughter into a hug and holding her in closer. She shot her son a look, the flash in her eyes indicating this promise wasn’t just something to quiet Jessica down.

                “No it’s not! Not if he keeps letting stupid idiot girls hold him,” Jessica protested as lukewarm tears rolled down her cheeks, seemingly settling at her mother’s hard embrace, though simultaneously still reaching back for the table. Her fingers opened and closed against her clammy palm, extending for Peter, who stepped forward and offered another caress of the girl’s digits.

                “Mom…” Erica grumbled, her gleaming cell phone inches from her nose as she tried to drown out the irritation of her emotionally rampaging sibling. Her finger swam through the newly tangled mess of her dark-blonde locks. “Can you, like… tell her to cool it down for a little? I’m getting a headache.”

                “Shut up! You don’t even CARE about him being safe!” Jessica scowled with harsh venom in her voice, a spittle mist unleashed from between her teeth.

                “Just because you’d rather wrap him up in your blankets like a baby doll…” Erica growled. “He’s not a toy, you know.”

                “HEY,” Suzanne boomed. She instantly halted the oncoming verbal crossfire as her eldest child opened her mouth to unload another retort. Still, the woman’s volume was only just enough to silence both sparring girls, as she glanced back down to her smallest offspring, going through auditory recovery after his entrance to the house. Satisfied, the Clark matriarch held out a finger, her hand poised between both daughters to keep them from leaning in closer or perhaps chucking a phone at someone’s head. “I think that’s enough. From both of you.”

                Peter first looked up to Erica, who still sat closest to him, watching her upper lip cringe and wrinkle at the sight of her youngest sibling, her forehead furrowing as she apparently continued mulling over what had been said. Craning his neck, the boy next turned to Jessica, still bundled in Suzanne’s much longer arms, bowed halfway over the table with her twinkling blue eyes narrowed into furious slits.

                “I want both of you to go to separate rooms. Now. I don’t care who goes where, but we’re taking a break from this,” Suzanne instructed softly as her hand hovered in midair between both girls. She snapped her fingers. “Erica? Jessica? The only rule is you can’t stay here.”

                “Okay, but I’m taking Peter,” the youngest said, twirling her hair around her finger as she plunged her opened palm onto the countertop just behind her brother. “C’mon. Please, Peter?”

                “Not just yet. You can spend some time together later on, hon. I need to talk to your brother for a little bit,” Suzanne said. “Now go on. Both of you.”

                A combined chorus of gripes and muttered words marked both sisters’ exit from the room through different doorways. Jessica looked on longingly toward her five-inch sibling as she walked backward into the living room and toward the den, still anxiously spiraling her finger into her tangling blonde locks, while Erica tromped directly toward the staircase without another glance to anyone.

                “All right,” Suzanne sighed as her clearly tensed shoulders finally reposed, if only slightly, as she sunk into the chair. The woman kneaded her fingers together, drawing invisible circles across her thumb pad with her index digit as she rested her hand on the surface, just a few inches from her palm-sized son, whom she continued to study with pursed lips.

                “Mom…” Peter started, hanging his head, though he didn’t have that sentence planned out any further. In the near-silence of the cavernous, brightly lit kitchen, he fixed his gaze on his mother’s mammoth fingers, each at least as large as his legs and definitely thicker, spiraling together with increasing intensity.

                “Peter, that… that girl that caught you,” Suzanne said. “What’s her name?”

                “Sharon,” he offered quietly. Even saying her name somehow made his lips stick together a little harder, like he’d walked face-first into a spider web.

                “I’m just so glad she was there,” she exhaled. “I’m so glad you have some people that are ready to watch out for you.”

                “Yeah,” Peter coughed, then added, hoping to make the most of the situation: “Especially like… Lisa.”

                “Lisa is very good, too, yes. I was impressed with how she held you,” Suzanne relented. “You’ve done really well. I’ve been really proud of how you’ve been able to manage at school, finding people you can trust, like Lisa and Sharon...”

                “But,” Peter said for her, watching his mother’s mouth opening again without sound.

                “Honey, you already know what I’m going to say.”

                “You think I need to take a break?” he mumbled.

                “I think you need to be able to take a good look at the entire situation,” she said. “But no, I don’t think you need to take a break or quit and come home or anything.”

                The boy’s ears perked up at this unexpected reaction, but he didn’t respond. Instead he lowered to his haunches before Suzanne’s softly opening and clenching fist and laid a hand on his mother’s enormous thumbnail. His gesture caused her to finally stop grinding the gridded pads of her fingers together, and instead she gently draped her pointer finger over her son’s arm.

                “So what do you mean, then?” Peter said. “About taking a good look?”

                “I mean I know you’re not a child anymore, and I can’t protect you from the world forever,” she sighed, nearly staggering her doll-sized child back with two admissions in one sentence that he was fairly certain she’d never make as long as she lived. “No matter how big it is.”

                Suzanne clung to his wrist, and in response the boy only curled in closer to his mother’s hand, which opened amiably, accepting him into the toasty, creased expanse of her palm, where she hugged him into her fingers.

                “Thanks, Mom,” he said.

                “What I need from you, though, is some good faith. If you’re old enough to take care of yourself in… a lot of ways, at least, then you also need to be adult enough to evaluate a situation independent of your own desires,” she said. “And you know that’s something I expect from your sisters just as much as you. This has nothing to do with how much you can or can’t accomplish.”

                “I know,” he relented, resting his cheek against the woman’s tender palm flesh and shutting his eyes. No matter how much resented her occasional umbilical-cord-parenting style, Peter was a rational enough thinker to recognize when she was laying out some undeniable common sense.

                “So I’m asking you, not as my son, but just as a bright, hardworking, logical young man… do you believe you’re safe, going down the road that you are right now?” Suzanne proffered, the weight of these final words evident in her throat. She gulped down a thick lump of restrained emotion. “Do you believe, in your heart of hearts, that going to this school is best for you?”

                “Yes,” he said with immovable conviction as he stared up at his mother while enclosed in the sanctity of her softly closed hand, even as part of him violently repressed absolute knowledge of the terror trio’s mini-people mania and Mandy’s stalker proclivities. “Yes I do.”