And I say, “Baby girl get a hold of yourself. Baby girl don't you know your wealth?”
“Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby – awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”
Snicket, Lemony. (2007). Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid. HarperCollins Publishers.
__________
As Jacob tightened his grip on the stupid ring of corroded metal Emily had asked him to hide from her sister, something funny started to happen. A wave of vertigo swept across him with brief severity. His vision wavered, became blurry, and momentarily inverted in mirific, illusory Fata Morgana. A sensation of woozy nausea passed over him, and Jacob found himself dropping the tarnished copper doughnut to the soil with a dull thud, then crumpling to the ground himself. Every muscle in his body suddenly felt shaky and anemic – powerless even to rise and stand upright.
But no sooner had his body collapsed prostrate to the sod than the weird sense of frailty and disequilibrium passed completely away leaving Jacob sweating and breathing heavily, but feeling fine.
What the hell was that? he tried to say.
Instead the words came out in a high-pitched mewl: “Goo Goo, Gaa Gaa.”
What the hell was that, thought Jacob in a panic.
He struggled to rise to his feet but found he had virtually no strength present in any of his limbs. In fact, it was a herculean effort just to lift his head up to look around. When he did so, Jacob discovered he had shrunk. The world around him now loomed in towering, gigantic, alien proportions that left little no doubt he was now approximately the size of … of a baby?!
“Goo Goo, Gaa Gaa,” he again said, this time leaving a silvery trail of slimy, wet drool dribbling down his plump, pink chin.
Jacob supposed it was just as well the words hadn't come out as he'd intended this time as there would have been some pretty foul language he wouldn't really have wished for Emily to hear.
Emily?
Where was she?
As if on cue, the now titanic silhouette of the teenage girl Jacob loved stepped into view: a soaring, feminine colossus from Jacob's present perspective.
His heart leaped into his throat with a mixture of terror and humiliation as she bent low and, with a gentle smile, scooped up Jacob into her arms and lifted him high into the air.
The experience managed to draw Jacob's attention to the rest of the bizarre changes that had been inflicted upon him. He definitely had the tiny, chubby, soft arms and legs of an infant now. What's worse, he was wearing a little pink, cottony dress trimmed with white lace … and he had the distinct impression a bulky, crinkly, plastic diaper-like undergarment was wrapped about him below the dress. He prayed it wasn't what he suspected (and knew) it really was.
“Goo Goo, Gaa Gaa,” he faintly protested in a high-pitched, whining cry.
“Hush baby girl,” replied Emily with a warm smile. “You're all right. It's okay. Emily's right here.”
“I guess she didn't like being taken outside after all,” said an unfamiliar male voice.
Jacob struggled to turn his head and find the face of whomever was now speaking.
“You'd better take baby Jamie back inside,” said Emily, answering the strange voice. “I think she's scared, Jacob.”
Waitaminute, thought Jacob. I'm Jacob! Who is “baby Jamie” and who is Emily talking to?
Jacob finally got a good look at the person talking to Emily as she passed him over into the arms of a teenage boy. Jacob looked up at the stranger now gently cradling him and saw a vaguely familiar face. It wasn't his own, but it could have been the face of Jacob's brother – except Jacob didn't have a brother!
“She's stopped fussing,” said Emily. “I think she feels safe and comfortable back in her big brother's arms. Better take her back inside though, Jacob. My date will be here soon anyhow. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Buh-bye baby Jamie!”
The original Jacob then watched with horror as he was carried helpless into the house by the fantastic stranger, created out of thin air, who was now usurping his old life.
Someone else is now me, thought Jacob. And I'm now … I'm a powerless, little baby girl who can't even walk or talk yet!
Kaitlyn's stupid doughnut of doom or whatever-she-calls-it is responsible for all this, Jacob groused. And it's still probably just sitting outside in the lawn, buried in the tall grass. Unless Jacob could somehow get his chubby little infant hands wrapped around the Toroid of Transformation, he would likely spend the rest of his life as his own little sister: trapped as “Jamie” and forced to endure growing up all over again … this time as a girl.
“Goo Goo, Gaa Gaa,” Jacob weakly insisted to his utterly oblivious new big brother.