The overhead bell chimed roundly in Peter’s eardrums, signaling the end of the morning history class. A sappy smirk crossed his lips as he looked across the room to Lisa in the corner, who returned his gaze with a warm smile of her own that couldn’t help but prick up the goose bumps along his back.

                Now a few weeks into school, the boy was beginning to understand just a little of what all the movies, books, and TV shows he’d been exposed to for fifteen years were talking about when they said “a case of the Mondays.” No matter how much he enjoyed the chance to participate in “real school,” getting up at a predetermined time to make the bus was beginning to feel like just a bit of a chore, if only for the first hour.

                Seeing Lisa today helped, though. Despite his annoyances over Jessica’s determination to ensure he never had to walk another step in his life that she couldn’t pick him up and carry him across, the previous Friday’s game night date hadn’t been the clumsy meet-n-greet he’d half-anticipated. In fact, it was a major success, if his mother’s glowing commentary afterward was any indication. Lisa had a lot to prove to the three most important women in his life, after all, not just as a suitable potential significant other, but as a guardian for his vulnerable existence when they were left alone. She had passed, of course, as he knew she would, with flying colors.

                So much so, in fact, that because of their shared trip between first period history and second period biology, Suzanne had authorized Lisa through the principal’s office to ferry Peter to the next class every day. Lisa had asked Erica if she minded first, of course, a question that the seventeen-year-old answered within four nanoseconds with a desperate “yes please.”

                The entire weekend, then, Peter had spent in an intangible cocoon of sheer glee over his luck and gratitude to the petite redhead and, frankly, his best friend, for her perfect first impression on his family as a unit. It didn’t even bother him having Jessica spend nearly every waking hour in his company: clutching him during afternoon TV show marathons, requiring his audience while she rehearsed dance steps, and of course personally attending to his meals with her knife and fork, ensuring every bite was possible for him to swallow without chewing.

                He really did need to figure that minor dilemma out sooner rather than later, before his little sister started insisted on them bunking together overnight.

                “Here we go,” Lisa said sweetly, speaking up a little louder than usual, enough so that her soft voice easily carried to Peter amidst the chattering carnage of exiting students. She lowered her palm onto his desk, laying her fingers at his feet. “Elevator going up?”

                “With pleasure,” Peter said. He climbed aboard, letting himself feel the flush of gravity as he balanced on Lisa’s cradling hand on its ascent.

                “Wait a second.” The booming voice from behind accused its target with sniveling conviction. A broad hand on the end of a toned arm whipped through the air, nearly knocking Peter off his feet. The strange palm landed with a smack on the desktop just a few inches below. Amy leaned over the desk, dark eyes gnawing at Peter.

                “Hey, be careful!” Lisa gasped at the much-taller girl. Her other hand instinctively cupped around Peter’s legs, preventing a fall.

                “Why are you holding him?” Sharon questioned with icy calm from beside Amy, while Kimmy looked on with a freckled pout. “It’s not allowed.”

                “That’s not really… true,” Peter said, not bothering to inflect his normal cheerful tone. He knew it probably made more sense to explain the new rule to the girls before they put up any more of a fuss. In this moment, though, imbued with confidence from the successful events of Friday, he couldn’t help but just let his ire stand on its own.

                “Well, it should be,” Sharon murmured, not missing a beat. “What would it be like for you here if just anyone got to pick you up and take you with them? Who knows where you might end up.”

                “She’s not just anyone,” Peter said. He felt a grumble developing in his throat. Lisa’s hand pulled further and further away from the desk until she had him hoisted by her shoulder. He wrapped a hand around a silky thread of her red hair.

                “Oh, that’s right,” Amy sneered. “She’s your-”

                “-girlfriend,” Kimmy finished slyly. She stuck out her lower lip and summoned some fake sniffles.

                “Erica is the only one allowed to pick him up,” Sharon said. “And Ms. Watson.”

                “This… isn’t the place to talk about this,” Peter said, recomposing. He was roughly 120% sure he had never told Sharon his older sister’s name, nor anything about his special set of rules. Yet she knew them, of course. It was hard to be surprised.

                “Then where is the place?” the vixen demanded softly.

                “That’s not really what I… uhm, Lisa, do you want to…” the boy mumbled, clearing his throat and eyeing the door.

                “Yeah. Yeah, we should get to class-” she said, turning toward the door.

                Everything that happened next took place in a heartbeat. Peter saw Sharon’s ghostly eyes flash like silver flint between himself and Amy’s towering visage above. A signal. In the next instant, firm fingers, warm and all-encompassing, clamped around his body. It was almost too fast to comprehend until the wind was knocked out of his chest. Each of the tanned pillars that made up Amy’s hand mashed around his body, squeezing him into her fist as it rose.

                “HEY!” Lisa crowed, the rage in her voice dialed up for perhaps the first time in Peter’s memory from its usual soothing canter. He could see the shout had startled Amy too as the lanky volleyball goddess palmed him up toward her face for closer examination. Still, she held strong.

                “Put him down,” the redhead ordered curtly. She extended her hand. “Peter!”

                The puny freshman was unsure if he’d ever been gripped by someone as tall as Amy. It was already frightening when young children managed to take hold of him in their clammy hands with possessive strength, but at least they were near to the ground. So the distance from the ground wasn’t far, and generally a panicked adult was nearby to steal him back.

                But Amy was a regular teenage amazon. He was floating in the void above the class, a space he would never have reason to be, a fall that could very well kill him if she released, and he had precisely no control over any of his limbs.

                Peter decided, as he wheezed for breath with the bronzed flesh of her palm pressed hard against his tiny chest, that he was not a fan of this sensation.

                “Let him go now, Amy,” Lisa commanded. She prodded her index finger at the much-taller girl’s stomach, her other hand still open to receive Peter again.

                “Is there some kind of problem over here, ladies?” Mr. Browning interjected from the front of the room. Hurriedly he passed between the desks and arrived at the scene of the spat, hands on his hips. “Peter. You all right?”

                “He’s okay. Honest. Aren’t you?” Amy smarmed, displaying a victorious grin for her capture as she grasped him just a couple inches away from her professionally whitened teeth.

                “I think so,” Peter croaked. His lungs slowly refilled with air as the girl’s titanic fingers relented pressure on his innards. He suspected he was only granted this luxury because there was a teacher glaring right in their direction, though.

                “She snatched him up without asking,” Lisa informed him. “Right out of my hand. It was really dangerous.”

                “Is that what happened?” the teacher droned, looking shiftily between Lisa and Amy.

                “No,” Amy snorted. She batted idly at her dark locks with her free hand, while the opposite one still held Peter at chin level, in the splash zone for the overpowering aroma of her wintergreen gum. Her fingers had his arms folded obediently at his sides, his legs dangling awkwardly out of the bottom of her tightly wound fist. Pure iron. It wasn’t hard to imagine why she was usually called upon to spike the ball in her games.

                “Yes it did. And put Peter down!” Lisa scowled. “Now.”

                “Take it easy, sweetie,” Amy chuckled passively, only bothering to raise an eyebrow at the redhead. Her attention was devoted almost solely to the miniature lad restrained in her wide hand. “I’m only thinking about Peter’s safety.”

                “That’s very selfless, but let’s also make sure Peter is comfortable with it,” Mr. Browning insisted, his voice deepening now.

                “Okay, okay,” she groaned. The tanned giant took her time relenting, her hand lowering only about an inch every few seconds. “I’m just being careful!”

                “So what’s the problem here?” the teacher asked once Peter was finally released on the table. “Why are we fighting over whether or not Peter is safe?”

                “Cuz she…” Kimmy whined, pointing a stubby finger at Lisa’s nose. “…just picked him up and was gonna just leave with him. She can’t do that!”

                Lisa’s hand returned to the desktop, whereupon Peter gratefully crawled back into it. It was done without his giddy jaunt like last time. Instead he entered almost on his knees, so relieved he was to reach a friendly hand. He wanted to throw his arms around the girl’s soft thumb in thanks, but decided that wasn’t the kind of image he wanted Sharon to be gifted with.

                “Actually, she can,” Mr. Browning said in answer. He plucked a crumpled note from his pocket. “I got this in my office mailbox. I’m assuming his second period teacher did too. His sister and Lisa Carol… and only his sister and Lisa Carol… are authorized to hold him for getting between these two classes.”

                “Aww,” Kimmy groused again. She reached out and took the note, which the history teacher proffered to her, and inspected its red pen scrawl with squinted scrutiny. “That’s not fair.”

                “Yeah, like they’d let the girl who dropped him carry him around,” Amy muttered under her breath.

                “What?” Kimmy grumbled. Her fists balled up.

                “Girls. Girls, please,” Mr. Browning said, leveling his arms between the short, slightly pudgy strawberry blonde and the tall, toned athlete in opposition. “Peter, you’re sure you’re fine?”

                “Yep,” the boy peeped from the curled wall of fingers surrounding him in Lisa’s hand.

                “Good.” The man returned his attention to the trio. “The point is, I don’t want you interfering with Lisa and Peter getting to class anymore, understood? I have half a mind to write you up with the principal for harassing one of your peers.”

                “What about the school’s message to look out for others, Mr. Browning?” Sharon observed sharply, having been quietly gazing at Peter in Lisa’s hand for so long. “They had that big poster up in the front hall since the first day of school. We’re just being active bystanders.”

                “I think grabbing people away from other people is a little different than-”

                “-well, Peter’s a little different from other people,” Sharon cut in, easily silencing her adult teacher with just a pearly glare. Her lips flowed from word to word like a practiced opera singer. “And we didn’t have the whole story until now. I don’t think we should be punished for wanting to look out for our fellow classmates, especially those who need to be looked out for even more. Do you think so, Mr. Browning? Do you think we should be punished for caring about Peter?”

                Furrowing his brow, the educator glanced between the cherub-like expressions on the faces of Amy and Kimmy, and the stone-cold, stark-still look of genuine resolve on Sharon’s. He bit his lip and sighed.

                “Peter?” he said.

                “It’s… fine. I’m okay,” Peter repeated, propping himself up on Lisa’s pinky. Looking into Sharon’s unblinking silver eyes, he sensed this was not the time to make a scene. It simply wasn’t worth it. Not when the day had started with such promise in the form of Lisa’s new duty; not when a minor disciplinary hearing might result in his mother rushing to the school and demanding to have the whole event relayed back in excruciating detail. “I just don’t want to be picked up without asking. That’s all.”

                “I think that sounds very reasonable,” Mr. Browning said. “And now that we’re all on the same page, let’s all get to where we’re going before the next bell rings. If you’re late, just tell your teacher to shoot me an email.”

                “Thanks,” Peter sighed, offering a grateful wave to his teacher as Lisa pivoted on her heels and made for the door before any of the trio could offer chase. Still, Sharon’s icy gaze followed them all the way to the door and, the young man suspected, possibly through the walls.