Art class was uncharacteristically soothing for Peter. Despite the unusual encounter he’d witnessed in the hallway this morning between Sharon and Mandy that couldn’t have been anything but trouble, the mildly unhinged girl at least had the good graces to essentially ignore him for the past two months. Which couldn’t be counted for nothing. Why let his paranoia ruin the day over a simple conversation? That would only mean letting them win.

                With Alita seated on his one side and Calvin just across the table, just as they’d been doing for a few weeks now, he had plenty of armor from any unwanted advances. Occasionally Bluebell even occupied the fourth seat of the table diagonal from Peter, giving him a threefold security detail as he tried to engage his creative side in peace.

                Today, though, the last stool remained empty.

                Not that the miniature freshman minded as he rubbed dust between his palms and punched both fists into the mound of beige modeling clay he’d been given at the start of class. His hands sunk with some effort into the thick muck. It was a considerably smaller portion of the damp material than either Alita or Calvin had received, but it still amounted to at least half of Peter’s body mass. Far more than enough. For the first few minutes, he’d considered modeling it into a car, but that seemed too easy, and he’d now rededicated himself to molding a moth like the one he’d seen out the window those weeks back.

                After all, with fingers as fine-tipped as his, he figured he stood a fighting chance at tracing some incredibly delicate lines into the wings of the clay creature. Mr. Jameson had insisted at the start of class that finer details would be lost to the firing oven, but Peter chose to remain optimistic that he could craft the single most impressive design to ever come out of this freshman-level art class project. It would make a fine tangible example for any of his peers with silently lingering doubts that he belonged at the table.

                “I am going to get more clay. For the snout,” Alita announced quietly to the table, giving her clay dog’s vague nose a pinch. “Do you two need any?”

                “I’m good,” Calvin mumbled, too engrossed in whatever abstract piece he’d sunken his fingers into.

                “Peter?”

                “Same,” the boy responded. “Thanks, though.”
                With a friendly nod and a whirl of her dark hair, Alita rose from her bench and made for the front table of the room where Jameson was dolling out the materials and sleepily critiquing partially completed projects.

                Amidst the raucous conversations of the room, there was a stealthy patter of shoes on the tile floor, but Peter ignored it at first. As he stooped below the steadily shaping wings of his moth, though, he watched the shadow of his clay’s hand-carved ridges tint even darker under a cast silhouette that had imposed itself conveniently between himself and the sun. A new shadow.

                Almost two months he’d gone without a conversation. At least it was nice while it lasted.

                “Hi, Mandy,” Peter said with teeth-gritting cheerfulness. He spoke up loudly enough that Calvin was shaken from his artistic stupor to pay attention to their table’s guest.

                “Hello, little guy,” the auburn-haired liability said with her usual air of scheming casualness. “I’m glad you remembered my name. It’s been a little while, hasn’t it?”

                Peter flinched as he turned around just in time to watch the girl’s right hand arcing toward the tabletop like a catapult. He sidestepped as her palm slapped hard to the clay-smeared surface a mere inch away from his tiny feet. The fingers drummed impatiently.

                “I noticed this chair was empty today,” Mandy said, indicating to Alita’s seat. “Do you mind if I-”

                “Yes…” Calvin butted in.

                “-thanks. I appreciate it.” The girl’s words droned in their tenor monotone over her Calvin’s as she slid smoothly into the place she’d taken up on the first day of school. Her hand remained flat on the table the whole time, fingers curling and dragging her nails with an unpleasant screet that went unnoticed to most ears except Peter’s.

                “You know this isn’t a good idea,” Calvin spoke up, leaning further over the table. “Mandy, why don’t you go back to your table?”

                Of course, Mandy seemed to have already genuinely forgotten that there was another person in her vicinity as her stare glued back to Peter with that usual sociopathic resolve. Eyes broad, pupils dilating, skin twitching.

                The boy could practically feel invisible tethers from her gaze attaching into his skin, keeping him in line and where she could study him from up close. Providing she managed to finish school by some miracle of bureaucratic incompetence, he imagined she would have a successful career as a hypnotist who robbed the customers blind after the procedure. Already his skin had crawled cold.

                “Hey, what’s… Mandy!” Alita was almost at a run as she returned to the table, glaring at the chair thief. “I was sitting there.”

                “Maybe, but now I’m sitting here,” Mandy explained. The logic was obviously smooth in her mind, at least. “You can sit next to Kyle.”

                “My name’s Calvin,” the normal-sized boy corrected, shaking his head. “…but it doesn’t matter. You need to go away.”

                “I’m not hurting anything, am I, little guy?” Mandy protested in her usual wandering whisper, still trained exclusively to Peter. She crossed her arms over the edge of the table and rested her cheek upon her sleeves, giving her a nearer and unsettlingly side-eyed view of the five-inch freshman. “Am I?”

                Peter sighed. She had gone a whole two months without so much as putting a hand in his same six-inch vicinity. He didn’t quite think she deserved the benefit of the doubt, but maybe this was just the required toll to keep her off his back for a while longer. It wasn’t ideal, but he also didn’t feel like a confrontation today. He still had Alit and Calvin right there, after all.

                “No, I guess not,” he said. “Will you leave me alone while you work?”
                “Whatever you want,” Mandy shrugged. Her stinging attention diverted away from him just as easily as it had anchored itself originally. Sitting up again, her hand parted from around her own clump of fingerprint-smeared clay she’d brought to the table.

                The air started to flush out of Peter’s chest, but he quickly sucked it back in. He hardly had the energy to be surprised today. In fact, if he’d been asked to take his best guess at what Mandy was making out of clay, he probably could’ve accurately guessed the truth in one go.

                It was a humanoid sculpture, of course. Mandy’s fingers stroked with uncommon gentleness along the mushy form of her art project, nudging at the creation’s arms and legs, aligning them more smoothly. The shape was certainly masculine, all six inches of it, or at least a close approximation of it, and though it was only a first attempt, he presumed that the subject wasn’t meant to be clothed as Mandy’s palms squeezed into the narrow thighs. Unlike the drawing from two months ago, this newest masterpiece from the girl wasn’t so immaculate in its detail that any layman could’ve picked it out as Peter. Still, it wasn’t difficult for the boy to look on the clay formation caged between Mandy’s hands and know it was meant to represent his naked body.

                He already regretted not putting up more of a stink when she sat down.

                Neither Alita nor Calvin seemed to notice the work of perverse art itself. Frankly, Peter was glad they hadn’t, or he was almost certain he’d fold even deeper into himself with shame. His pair of temporary body guards seemed to have even abandoned progress on their own pieces in favor of glowering continually across the table at Mandy’s face as she happily etched eyeballs into the clay figure with her fingernails.

                Uneasy at these particularly uncouth surroundings made him, Peter’s hands sagged back into the meager pile of clay he’d almost forgotten was supposed to be a moth by the end of class. There was no reason to let Mandy’s mere presence get the better of him. Not when he had so much going for him right now. So, choosing to adopt a similar cavalier attitude, Peter swallowed a heavy lump in his throat containing all his anxiety and set back to work.

                “So I saw you making out with your little girlfriend in the hallway this morning,” Mandy said.

                Her tone was just as innocuous as ever, just as comfortable in savoring this shred of gossip as any. She didn’t even turn to him. Her fingers continued in their rhythm of primping the clay features of her Peter-statue.

                The boy flinched, keeping himself from slamming a miniscule fist on the delicate pronged leg of his clay moth. Of course it was her he’d seen. He didn’t want to believe that she was back to her old ways of leering at him from afar, but it seemed his instincts were unfortunately correct.

                Make-out seemed like a strong word, anyway. The incriminating event had lasted three seconds maximum, which was probably close to a personal record for kisses with Lisa, who regularly worried she was impeding Peter’s breathing with her gentle passions. Mentally skipping past these semantics, Peter debated whether to give Mandy’s statement the time of day. He could see Alita and Calvin’s eyes had shifted awkwardly to him, waiting for a response of some kind.

                “It was pretty cute. Little guy and his little girlfriend,” Mandy said. She leaned in closer over the table, squinting as she applied some surgical detail into the artificial hair of her project. “Don’t be embarrassed. I think it’s really cool to see you fitting in at this place.”

                Peter kept his gaze on the domed eyes of his moth. They weren’t quite symmetrical.

                “Did you hear me?” Mandy pressed. “I said I think it’s really cool.”

                “I heard you,” Peter said.

                “Don’t you think you should say thank you?”

                “Thank you.”

                “Maybe Peter does not want to talk about that,” Alita said intently.

                “How do I know? If he doesn’t want to talk about letting his little girlfriend hold him and touch him and kiss him, then he can tell me himself. He’s a big boy. Aren’t you, little guy?”

                “I’m not going to talk about this,” Peter snapped mutedly. Civility was becoming harder to come by, as was his already limited focus on the moth. Something had to give.

                “If you say so,” Mandy replied. Her voice still had yet to develop beyond its low and half-disinterested small-talk state. She might as well have been bringing up the latest weather forecast.

                “Why are you asking me about this?” Peter felt himself say, louder than before.

                It was a bad idea to engage. He knew that. He also didn’t care.

                At last, Mandy’s focused attention was dragged wearily from her clay model of Peter that actually stood more than an inch taller than him. She palmed the figurine, wrapping her fingers around it in an embrace that threatened to devolve the finely sketched features anew.

                “I just thought you would have some thoughts you wanted to share with me. You definitely had some things to say about me to some other people.” The girl had refocused completely on him now, the clear subject of her unveiled ire. Her knuckles were fading whiter as they curled around the nude statue. A deep furrow creased into her forehead. Her voice was cool and cutting, nearly as icy as Sharon’s average speaking voice. Peter realized it was the first time he’d ever truly seen Mandy angry.

                It was not a mood he’d ever wished he could witness in her.

                “What are you talking about?” he said.

                Mandy shook her head, a clay-speckled finger twirling into her auburn locks without hesitation for the mess that painted her skin. “You don’t have to play dumb in front of me. You might have a little tiny brain, but you don’t have to pretend like that makes you stupid.”

                “I don’t think he knows what you’re talking about,” Calvin protested sternly. He’d risen from his seat by now and taken a stand behind Peter, towering above both the miniature boy and Mandy, at least while the latter was sitting down.

                “Yes he does.” Mandy’s teeth ground together, slurring her words into a graveled hiss.

                “I don’t,” Peter said bluntly. “Just tell me so I can ex-”

                “You’ve been telling people you think I’m crazy,” Mandy growled. The last word was uttered in a violent hush, like the most sacred of curse words. In that instant, the veins in the fifteen-year-old girl’s eyes seemed to pop, spilling their crimson hue to the surrounding white.

                Peter observed her for a moment. He was a little stunned but not exactly floored by this revelation. It was a lie, of course, but he couldn’t exactly disagree with whoever had started this fib about him.

                What did he mean “whoever?” Any ghostly doubt in his mind was quickly banished for the certainty of knowing that this must’ve been the subject of Mandy’s conversation with Sharon this morning. No question.

                “I didn’t tell anyone that,” Peter said calmly. “I don’t spread rumors about people.”

                “Rumors aren’t rumors if you believe it,” Mandy continued. Her eyes were bulging now. A stray hair that hung too low over her cheek had caught on the corner of her mouth, but was batted away by her tongue.

                “Mandy. I didn’t tell anybody you’re crazy.”

                “That’s sweet of you to say. So I don’t have to feel bad. Or maybe you’re still lying to me because you’re afraid I’ll figure it out.” Fingers trembling as she gripped the edge, the chemical reaction of a fifteen-year-old rose to her feet, using the table for balance.

                “I’m not worried about anything,” Peter lied flatly. As per usual, his knees were beginning to quake as he watched the girl’s wild eyes bead up and down his frame.

                A dribble of saliva formed at the corner of Mandy’s lips, but she quickly slurped it back inside before it could drip down.

                “Leave him alone.” The new voice was soft and measured, like each word had been individually weighed before being spoken, and Peter realized Bluebell was now standing behind Mandy, and unlike Calvin, she had a couple of inches over their uninvited guest. Peter couldn’t help but smile just a little guiltily.

                “Oh, hey, Blueballs.” Mandy had turned to face her slightly taller opponent. Peter detected a flinch in her already unsteady composition.  The girl picked at her fingernails with an nervous fervor, which the miniature boy decided he much preferred over her slapping her palms on the table like before.

                “It’s Blue,” she said calmly.

                “I didn’t… hear you coming.” Mandy stifled a giggle, enunciating each word for the lip-reader to make out.

                Bluebell blinked with the patience of a yoga master and thumbed her earlobe just below her hearing aid. “You won’t either when I come up behind you next time.”

                “Five minutes to the bell. Bring up what ya got! Oven’s piping hot.” Mr. Garrison’s groaned drawl somehow managed to momentarily sever the gasoline-drenched tension that had formed in the cluster of students all crowded around above Peter, each ready to pounce.

                “I’ll see you losers later,” Mandy said with a shrug, dismissing the liquid rage in her throat just as quickly as she’d conjured it. Mercifully her gaze at last left the real-life model for her art. She scooped up her naked-Peter statue in both palms and shouldered past Bluebell, joining the rest of the line for the oven.

                “Woah. She’s… a piece of work,” Calvin whispered, leaning low over the table and resting his chin on his fist. He studied Peter. “Where do you think she heard that?”

                “Who knows?” Peter shrugged, not in the mood to get into the complex litany of passive-aggressive foes he had around the school at this precise moment.

                “Peter, are you ready? I could take your… butterfly?” Alita asked.
                “Moth,” he corrected with a smile. “And that’d be great. Thanks.”
                “Do not mention it,” she said, winking as she delicately wrapped her fingers around the wings of the clay creature, careful not to compress them inward. She palmed her dog-shaped art in the other hand as she sidled by the table and made for the line that by now was trailing out of the firing closet adjacent to the classroom.

                “You can go, too, man,” Peter said, waving his hand at Calvin, who still sat hunched over the table a foot away. “The line’s already almost full.”

                “You sure?”

                “Yeah,” the shorter teen said, reading the specific concern in his voice. “You guys will see her coming out of the firing room, anyway. She’ll have to go past you three. And I know you’ve got my back.”

                “True,” Calvin said. He cradled his abstract piece as he stood up from the stool. He signaled between his eyes and Peter’s body with two fingers, reiterating the promise as he joined Alita in the line.

                Peter slumped down to a seated position, dusting his palms together and mentally trying to convince his shoulders to release some of their built-up tension. It wasn’t coming easily, but with a sigh of relief and a keen eye focused on the door to the firing closet, he knew he was sitting pretty until Erica arrived any minute to ferry him off to lunch.

                That was when the fingers closed around him. Unyielding and cold, as though a snowball had just been molded by the palm, just as it was on the first day of school.

                Peter’s vision blurred into colorful chaos as Mandy sprinted for the door, with his tiny body clenched in her fist.