I couldn’t help but spend my entire drive home, thinking about what had happened at work.  The receptionist being gone.  Searching up and down the halls time and time again, and even having the Doctor looking for her too.  It was like I was slowly becoming obsessed with the fact that she was missing from my perspective.  Why would it matter?  She was somewhere in the building.  She had to be.  But my mind just wouldn’t let it go.  I was already thinking about how I’d be searching different places the next day to try and find her. 

I was still thinking about it when I walked in the front door.  It bothered me, but not as much as the next events would.  No sooner had I opened the door did I hear rumbling from inside the house.  It rumbled every second or so, but soon sounded more like patting.  Patting, slowly getting louder and louder until I saw a silhouette come through one of the doorways, Rebecca walking through the room and towards me.  I let out a soft grin at my surprise.  She’d never waited for me to get home so late and come out into the house like this before.  It was always her waiting at the door already or her waiting in bed. 

As she walked up to me while I closed the door, she suddenly had a rush of genius, or so it seemed.  I could swear I saw a light bulb come on right above her head as she proclaimed, “I knew it!!!!”  I just raised my eyebrow at her as she proclaimed this in the middle of the night/early in the morning.  I questioned her about it, but before she answered, she walked towards me and started patting my head and pushing me against the wall, measuring me up to the doorway’s boarding.  I was just kind of moving for her along for the ride until she eventually told me what was going on.  

“You’re shorter, babe”.  Her words didn’t make much sense to me.  That tied with the fact that my mind was pre occupied at the moment from the confusion of her moving me to the wall and measuring me and wondering more about the missing receptionist.  I just scratched my head for a moment and joked back at her.  “Rebecca, don’t listen to my mother anymore.  I know she told you coffee makes people shorter, but that’s just a myth she and Dad made up.”

“I’m totally serious!” she said back to me.  The way she spoke was in a way that I knew she wasn’t just joking around with me.  She really thought that I had gotten shorter.  So I had to clear my mind for a moment and try to think the way she was.  If she really thought I was shorter, I’d go along and hear her out.  “Alright, Rebecca.  What makes you think I’m shorter?”  I was legitimately curious about what had made her so convinced that I was shorter than before.  I didn’t feel any shorter. 

She then looked me in the eyes, directly.  Her eyes were level with mine and she just stood there for a moment, as if expecting me to make some miraculous discover.  “We’re eye level with each other now.  You used to be taller than me, remember?” she said, as she drew ever closer.  I thought about it and she was right.  I was always just a little taller than she was.  Her eyes normally came up to about my lips, maybe my nose.  We were eye level with one another, but I still wasn’t convinced that I was shorter than before.  My clothes still fit fine.  If I were shorter, surely my pants would be dragging and falling. 

“Maybe you’re just taller, Rebecca.  Maybe you got a random growth spurt.”  She just gave me a look after that and shook her head.  “Me?  A growth spurt?  Come on, babe.  I’m telling you you’re getting shorter.  Now you can either believe me or maybe you’ll keep getting shorter.  Maybe if my chest is eye level you’d believe me more!” She partially laughed as she gave this comment, but I could tell she didn’t appreciate me not believing her.  She was definitely serious about this, but that just doesn’t happen.  She can’t expect me to believe that I’m shorter than I was a few days ago.  Even if she was eye level with me.  

The more we spoke about it, the more agitated she got with me for not taking her seriously and believing that I was getting shorter.  She kept taunting me about being eye level with her chest or hips and whatnot, as if that were even a possibility without her getting ridiculously high heels.  Or a step-ladder.  She’s done that before, pretending to be a super tall woman before, or to get something off the high shelf without me having to go out and help her.  So I wouldn’t put it past her to do that to me one night.  I’d walk in the door and she’d be on a step stool next to the door, pretending to be super tall. 

As the night ended, we went to bed.  I still remembered the last words she said to me before going to bed, our debate clearly still fresh in her mind.  “Night Night, shorty.” And with a giggle she was fast asleep.  I couldn’t help but shake my head and drift off to sleep on my own…