I watched the trio of older girls and estimated them to be in senior high or close to their graduation. In any case, that poor little girl from before had done nothing wrong and they were just being mean.
I listened in our their conversation from another table. Daddy was rich, mommy worked at an accounting firm. Did you see so and so’s clothes? So last year. And Becky somesuch came to school with dirty hair, her family must be so poor, probably because her dad drinks the money away.
And so on. I rolled my eyes, remembering not long ago when I went to class with girls like that. I could just wish them into better people, of course. But... where would be the fun in that? I decided to mess with them.
One of the girls, a thin young Asian with long dark hair, made a crack about so and so’s mom being a whore. The token blonde bitch twirled her curly hair and flipped it over her expensive brand jacket. The third, a redhead with freckles, wore glasses. I couldn’t be sure if she was trying to impress the other two girls for popularity or it she was just as bad.
In any case, they sure enjoyed making people feel small. I grinned deviously. They’d know what that would be like soon enough, because I wished all three would shrink ever so smaller every time they said or did something mean.
I watched out of the corner of my eye. It didn’t take long. The blonde girl made a crack about somebody’s shoes being ugly. To my amazement, she visibly grew a little shorter. Just a bit. Like an eighth of an inch shorter. Not just shorter, I realized, but actually physically smaller in size. Clothes, skin, bone, everything. Smaller. Not to be outdone, the smug asian girl said it wasn’t just her shoes but her face. Ping! Down she went. The redhead laughed along and she shrank a bit too.
As they chattered and giggled and ate their fries and sucked on their smoothies, I watched as little by little their general mean words and amusement at other people’s imperfections began to add up. The blonde in particular was about ear high to the asian girl she had stood over minutes before, while the asian girl was herself dwindled. The redhead, just a bit tinier, was clearly not as bad as the others but still kind of cruel. She was now the tallest of the trio, easily an inch or two taller than the asian.
Suddenly, the conversation stopped. They had noticed.
“Uh... Steph?” The redhead gaped. “Aren’t you, like, taller than Jenny?”
I chuckled as the blonde looked up at the taller girl sitting next to her and sat up straight. Her jaw dropped. “W-What... I... I am...”
“The hell?” Jenny gasped. “Look at you! You’re... you look like you’re sixteen.”
“Uh, Jen...” The redhead stood up, shocked, and holding her hands to her mouth. Nobody noticed this or cared in any way. “Stand up!”
The asian stood up warily, eyes wide, as the redhead stood back to the back with her and they began freaking out.
“...I’m... I’m shorter!”
“Can’t be!”
“L-Look at me! Guys! Look at me!”
All three were now standing up and frantically comparing their heights. The redhead was particularly shocked as she realized that her friends were actually way smaller than she thought because she herself had shrunk too. They began comparing themselves to the cups they had been holding the the chairs at their table and silently going into frantic hysterics.
“W-We’ve shrunk!” The asian squeaked, horrified. “That’s impossible! People can’t shrink!”
“I-I know!” The blonde was almost in tears. “Oh my God, look at me! I’m... I’m like junior sized!”
I smiled to myself, chuckling at the image in my head. I wished for the blonde to shrink to the bottom of the asian girl’s neck. She did, slipping down instantly for the other girls to see.
The frantic commotion and squeels of shock were hillarious.
“W-What do I do? What do I do?” The blonde kept repeating, waving her hands in front of her face and trying not to cry.
“What if it’s a cold or something?”
“A cold?!” The Asian spat at her readheaded friend. “You’re such a fucking idiot, Carly!”
I wished for the effects to be more pronounced. ZIP! The asian girl lowered down to the blonde’s shoulder height and stood there in shock.
“Okay.” The dark haired girl began to tremble. “Just... just stay calm. People are staring at us.”
Indeed, people had begun to notice the commotion. Not the shrinkage, of course, because their clothes had scaled down with them.
“Guys, we... we have to go. What if my boyfriend sees me like this?” The blonde gulped, trying to fight back tears.
“Yeah,” the redhead agreed, nodding. “L-Let’s get out of here!”
The trio nodded in unison and quickly abandoned their fries and half drunk smoothies to flee the table, all of them agape at their surroundings as they scrambled to get out of the mall.
“T-This is probably your fault, Carly! Your mom works at that stupid lab!”
PING! They all screamed as the blonde shrank down to the asian girl’s chest, now getting close to kid sized.
“Wait! Wait!” I watched as the three gathered away from the food court and a new realization began to set in.
“Carly, say something mean!” The blonde squeaked, her voice raised in pitch just a wee little bit.
“What?” The redhead gaped. “What do you mean?”
The asian girl realized and gasped. “Yeah, say something mean!”
“About what?”
“I don’t know, Carly! Make something up!”
“Uh... Jason Lawton has a shit car.”
PING! Down the redhead went, still half a head above the asian girl. She looked over herself in shock. All three girls sat down on a nearby bench next to a trash can and just sat there. They were absolutely shocked.
“We... we shrink when we put people down.”
“S-Say something nice.” The redhead insisted, realizing. “Maybe it’ll make you grow!”
That was a brilliant idea. I wished that every time they said something nice or did something nice, they’d grow until they were their normal size again.
“Uh... uh...” The blonde stammered, looking up at her asian friend and trying to think. They stared at her in pleading tension.
“Jen, you... you have really nice hair.”
ZIP! The blonde stretched taller, now staring her friend in the eyes again.
The redhead gasped. “This... this is like a karma thing. Maybe we’ve been cursed or something.”
The other two were about to snap but instead their expressions fell and they stared at each in shock. “That’s... like, so smart, Carly.” The asian admitted, shocked as she grew forward and returned to almost her normal size.
The blonde smiled warmly and grinned too. “Shit! Look at that!”
The trio carried on complimenting each other and growing until they were full sized again, relieved, hugging and almost crying.
“I-I don’t think I can be nice all the time.” The blonde gulped nervously.
“Well, we’ll... we’ll try.” The asian wiped her eyes. “If... if we are cursed, like, forever, then we have to.”
“I-I’ll help you guys. I don’t want to be a pygmy.” The redhead reassured her friends.
From a distance, I listened to this and a sly smile overtook me. Did I leave them to learn their lesson or try something else?