Nonetheless, he didn’t want to let Jenny down. She had done so much to help and encourage him, and she had continued to promise that someone with the depth to appreciate him might well come along. How he wished that Anne White would come back. Yet with the Higher School Certificate examinations now imminent, he could discount that as a possibility.

He made his way to Swain Gardens Double as usual that evening, and made no effort to hurry to Four Ways Hall. He finally arrived there, a little after the games had started. He saw Jenny on the front steps of the building, talking to a girl who had her back to him. Jenny saw him from the corner of her eye and sent him a smile.

“This is the latest of the Chelmsford Girls,” said Jenny, “I asked her at the beginning of the year, but she said she needed time to think about it. This is another of this year’s new members, Lewis.”

The girl turned around, and Lewis was moonstruck with surprise. Each of the television shows he had seen about parallel universes had involved alternate identical versions of people from the star character’s own earth. Yet he had never seen any counterparts of the Earth Double people he’d met back on his own Earth Single. Now, standing before him, towering over him in fact, was a beautiful 9 foot 10 inch tall girl whose face looked so identical to Lynda’s, that he felt sure that it could be nobody else.

“Lynda Fielding!” he said.

”Actually it’s Melendy,” said the girl, “But how did you know it was Fielding? Oh, I suppose Jenny told you I was coming and you mixed my first name up with someone else. You must have a lot of names to remember here. It’s a big group.”

“It wasn’t nearly so big when Lewis started coming at the beginning of the year,” said Jenny.

Even Jenny had never been told of his alternate Earth. He had thought of it, but he had decided against sharing anything so special with someone who (as kind as she’d been to him) was dating another guy. It just didn’t feel right. He had allowed everyone on Earth Double to go on thinking of him as a native midget of their own world.

Now he was faced with the irony that the latest girl to discount him as being too small to date would be the living image of the girl he’d joined this group in order to stop missing. Her double size made her even more attractive to him than Lynda. Yet for her, the size difference would most likely work against him, just as it had done with Joanna, Marjorie and the others he’d not even tried to approach.

There were several games to occupy them that night, and when a complex version of chasings was played, he found that Melendy was always choosing him to chase.

“I suppose I’m the obvious target at this size,” he thought, “At least I’m worth something in one way to these girls for one night of the year.”

She always caught him with ease, but seemed to be enjoying it more than the other players in the game were enjoying their chases.