Saved by Lucky Charms Marshmallows

Jamie wasn’t a kid anymore. She knew that as soon as her eyes opened on her 13th birthday, and stared disdainfully around at her childish room with its soft pink walls and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. This would all have to change, she thought.

She was finally, finally, a friggin’ teenager, which is one step before you’re an adult and can do whatever you want. And adults don’t have baby pink walls or glow-in-the-dark starry night stickers. So, neither would she.

Stretching her arms wide, her PJ sleeves creeping back towards her elbows, she thought even her body felt different. Were her hips bigger? She ran her hands over them. She’d noticed small changes over the last year, like her chest growing what her mum called ‘mosquito bites’ (that was mom code for tiny boobs,) but maybe since she was 13 now, things would happen faster.

She suddenly thought to check something Annalise had told her about – the hair teenagers grew down there. What if it had grown over night? Figuring she should check, Jamie sat up cross-legged and pulled her waistband open with her thumb. She peered down, seeing only the total smoothness she’d seen a billion times in the mirror before showering.

Nope, guess not.

Her waistband closed with a disappointed snap against her belly. Well, maybe tomorrow, she thought, looking up and seeing her stuffed animals at the foot of the bed watching her. They met her gaze with their glossy, lifeless eyes. Jamie frowned, disentangling one foot from the covers, and gave each stuffed animal a shove with her big toe, one by one, off the bed. Gobbles the Turkey, thunk, Oats the Horse, thunk, Good Luck Bear, thunk.

Feeling like all was now right in the world she fell back onto her pillow with a sigh. Today was gonna be good.

…

“Oooh, gimme” squealed Annalise, snatching the newly unwrapped iPod Nano from Jamie’s hands to check it out. It was just what Jamie had asked for, even in the silver colour, which she felt was more mature than the other options. She’d read it could fit 1000 songs (though she wasn’t even sure she knew that many,) and she was glad it made Annalise jealous.

“Ok, here’s another one,” mum said, tossing a brightly wrapped package at her. She caught it, feeling its slinky mass, and her heart sank. It was another stuffed animal, she could tell. She’d told them not to this year. She’d told them!

Jamie plucked at the wrapping until Annalise looked up: “What are you doing dummy, just rip it open!”

Jamie had no choice; peeling back the paper she revealed a plush, rainbow coloured bear. The cutesy smile beamed at her, locking her in its vacant gaze until a snorted laugh from one of her friends made her cheeks grow hot. The girls giggled around her, and Jamie averted her gaze, trying not to cry.

Sensing impending tears Dad jumped up.

“Ooook, who wants cake? I am famished!”

Dad disappeared into the kitchen. Jamie used the girls’ distraction to stuff the stupid bear under some wrapping paper, out of sight. She looked up and locked eyes with Annalise, who’d been watching her with a smirk. Jamie said a curse word in her head that she’d never said aloud. God, she’d probably never live this down.

Of course, following the rule of ‘it can always get worse’, at that exact moment Dad swung through the kitchen door, carrying a cake with blazing candles, belting out the happy birthday song in his best operatic voice (which was not good by any measure.)

“Come on girls, sing along! Haaaapppy Biiiiirthday…” none of her friends joined, instead giggling and murmuring together. Nearing the end of what was surely the longest rendition of Happy Birthday in history, he placed the cake directly in front of her.

Thirteen candles were sunk into thick chocolate frosting. Wax was beginning to drip down onto the words spelled out by Lucky Charms Marshmallows:

Happy 13th Birthday Princess! xoxo mum and dad.

“Blow the candles out Princess” said Annalise, clearly finding this very funny.

Jamie didn’t find this funny at all, none of this. Everything was wrong. She could feel tears start in her eyes just as mum called for her to blow the candles out for a picture. Ch-chk – the camera flash went off, reflecting off the wetness now on her cheeks.

Oh god, she was really crying now. The chair scraped the floor as she pushed back from the table.

“Honey what’s wrong?!” mum gasped as Jamie pushed past her, running as fast as she could upstairs. She ran for the safety of her bed, flopping face down with a sob.

“Jamie, what the hell is going on? You can’t just leave everyone down there!” Mum had followed her. Through her tears Jamie saw bafflement and anger meet in her mother’s face, and realized she was in trouble.

“You didn’t listen to me, I said NO kid stuff!” she yelled croakily, feeling indignant. Why should she be in trouble?

“Oh Jamie, you’re being a brat, everything today was about you, all this nice stuff was for you!”

“It’s not nice if it’s not what I wanted!” she sobbed angrily, sitting up. “Get out of my room, I want to be alone.”

“Jamie, if you don’t stop crying and come downstairs right now that iPod is going back first thing tomorrow.”

She knew she was making it worse, but she couldn’t help it. They’d made her look like a little kid in front of her friends, and now they all thought she liked stuffed bears and princesses. They should be the ones in trouble!

“I SAID GET OUT!” this time the command was accompanied by a pillow hurtled towards mum’s head. The bedroom door slammed shut as mum left.

Overwhelmed, Jamie sobbed, punching the bed covers and dislodging Dante from his hiding spot.

“AHHHHHGGG!!” she screamed at the stupid toy, and hucked him as hard as she could at the wall. She watched him bounce off and slump to the floor before crying herself to a fitful sleep.

…

When Jamie woke it was to silence and a vastness around her she didn’t understand. Her bed was gone, and in every direction there was only softly sloping land. Standing and rubbing her eyes she saw a mountain in the distance. Or at least, what looked like a mountain: it was entirely covered in a horribly familiar heart pattern that made Jamie’s stomach drop out as she realized the impossible.

Was that… her pillow?!

Her head spun as familiar shapes loomed over her: bedposts reached like skyscrapers towards a ceiling of glowing stars; her duvet was an endless mountain range. In the distance was the outer reaches of her room, unfathomably far.

NononononononWhatTheHell!

Looking down at her feet bare feet standing on her ginormous bedsheets, she could see the fabric’s woven pattern clearly. She must be no bigger than a penny, she thought in blind panic. Somehow Jamie had been shrunken in her sleep. Questions swirled in her mind, crushing her to her knees.

Why is this happening? Could she be un-shrunk? What if someone stepped on her? How could she get down from her bed? What if her parents couldn’t find her? Would they think she ran away?

This last question ripped a scream from her.

“MUM! DAD! HELP ME!”

For the first time in Jamie’s life her parents didn’t run to her cry for help. She shrunk under the loneliness of this realization as tears choked her throat. She wanted her mum and dad.

It felt like years before Jamie’s eyes ran dry. Wiping snot from her face with her tiny pajama sleeve she began to hatch a plan.

First, how to get off the bed. She walked to the edge of the bed and peered down. The drop to the floor was so steep Jamie felt dizzy and sat down. Her vision clearing, she noticed that her top sheet was draped over the edge, forming a smooth continuous slope to the floor. Like a slide, she thought. She scooted forward on her butt until her legs swung over the edge and took a deep breath. Could she do it?

She answered herself by pushing forward. Her stomach flew to her throat as she slid down the soft flannel so fast it made her hair whirl behind her. Reaching the floor, she tumbled forward against a soft wall that she at once recognized as Oats the Horse.

All around her the discarded stuffed animals lay like the bodies of giants. Somehow, they seemed more alive, (or was it more dead?) now that she was small. Is this what the archaeologists felt uncovering the massive sphinx statue buried in the Egyptian desert? She remembered reading about that in a book once. Had its sand hollowed eyes seemed to watch them the way her stuffed animals’ did?

She shivered. This was creepy, and she was eager to leave it behind. Dragging her gaze away she noticed a band of light in the distance. Her door! She set off towards it without glancing back. If she could just get to the hallway maybe she could get her parents’ attention.

The light in her room turned from deep to pale blue as she walked. The sun would rise soon she thought. Keeping her eyes trained on the illuminated space between the door and the floor, she didn’t look up until she was close. The door was endless, extending up into the sky beyond Jamie’s sight. She craned her neck so hard she nearly fell backwards. Whoa.

Remembering her goal, she turned back to the crawl space. It was just slightly shorter than her, and Jamie passed under only crouching slightly to clear her head.

Emerging into the hallway she stopped short, for there in front of her was the biggest slice of chocolate cake she had ever, and probably would ever, see. At least the size of a house, she thought.

“What the hell?” she breathed.

Her parents must have left it for her. Maybe they’d felt bad about the fight. Jamie felt shame and longing blister in her stomach. If she ever got unshrunk, she’d never yell at them again. Even if they gave her a million stupid stuffed bears. They’d even made sure to leave her most of the Lucky Charms marshmallows.

The marshmallows.

She could spell out a message with them! What was it called? An S.O.S, right? This was her way out!

Spurred on by the possibility of being found, she leaped over the lip of the plate and begun scaling the cakey walls. Her feet dug into the spongey filling as her nose filled with the smell of chocolate. She was so hungry.

On top of the slice the hardened icing crackled under her toes. She reached down and pried a handful of it off, eating until her teeth hurt. At this size, she could eat cake for every meal for the rest of her life, she thought, her spirit buoyed by the sugar rush.

She looked around at the scattered marshmallows: shooting stars, four leaf clovers, rainbows, all the size of her head. She wondered what she should spell. HELP seemed the easiest, and it would be hard to miss.

By the time she was finished she was exhausted. Jamie curled up and slept, a rainbow shaped marshmallow for a pillow.

…

David was shuffling sleepily to the bathroom when he noticed the slice of uneaten cake by the door with a new and rather creepy message rearranged on it: HELP.

Stranger still was the faraway sound emanating from the baked good:

“help!”

Was he losing his mind? Was this the first of a breed of sentient birthday cakes? Both probable. He leaned close to and came eye to eye with his daughter.

“Jamie? Is that my little girl?!” he gasped.

“Yes! Dad! it’s your little little girl” tiny Jamie laughed.