You had met your friend Jimmy on the way home and together you had decided to head back to your house to hang out and play video games.
As you arrived at your fairly modest suburban home you let yourself in and instinctively drop the bags with your purchases by the door and take off your shoes, will Jimmy following suit on habit. He spends so much time here, he could almost be family, much to your Dads annoyance.
You stop for a second and look at Jimmy as he lifts one left to grab his shoe and pull it off. He’s tall and lanky, maybe 6 foot, ginger’ish hair, a few freckles on his face with kinda big ears, and a constant goofy if slightly vacant look on his face. “Go turn on the Xbox, I’m going to grab a drink”, he nods at you in reply as he drops the first shoe and lifts the other leg as you walk down the hallway.
As you walk in the kitchen and head toward the refrigerator you are struck with a thought, you still haven’t done your science project. But, you reason, you have all weekend to get it done, its only Friday evening, so why worry about it now?
You grab two cans of drink and head into the family room where you find Jimmy on the sofa, controller in hand, long legs stretched out in front of him. You put one can behind your back as you go to sit down and he looks at you for a moment slightly disappointed, until you give him the can he can see and take the other from behind your back, “you are so easy to punk”.
“Yeah, well you’re so easy to be a dick” he replied curtly, not having entirely thought it through.
“What?”
“What?!” he replies almost immediately.
“That doesn’t even make sense, idiot” you manage to get out before the smile on his face makes you both burst into laughter. He may not be the brightest spark, but he sure as hell can make you laugh.
You both play CoD for an hour or so before the drink works its way through and you need to go to the bathroom. Getting up you nod towards the two empty cans on the coffee table “ you want another?”
“Uh, sure, … unless you have anything stronger?”
“Yeah, like if I did I’d give it to you. Back in two” you smile and walk away flipping him the bird on your way out the door, hearing him snort with laughter as you do so.
You wander down the hallway to the bathroom and take a leak, stopping as you wash your hands to look in the mirror. You’re … average, but not in a bad way. Average height for your age, average weight, average build, average looks. Though to be honest you are beginning to hope for a growth spurt soon, at 15 and 5’7 its beginning to feel like the rest of the world (or at least everyone at school) is growing and you aren’t.
You more or less take after your dad looks wise (unlike your younger brother who is more similar to your mom), brown hair (which is getting pretty long, past the bottom of your ears), brown eyes, fairly well proportioned facial features. To follow your dads footsteps wouldn’t be took bad, he’s 5’11, decent build, and still has his hair in his late thirties!
As you stare into the mirror your mind wanders, specifically back to the conversation with the cashier at the mall, and those socks. What if they do work? Why wait to get a growth spurt, you know someone just down the hall who is already tall…
You leave the bathroom and creep down the hallway to the front door, making sure Jimmy doesn’t see or hear you as you pass the family room and grab the bag from the mall and stuff his size 11 DC skate shoes into it at the same time. Quietly making your way on tip toes to your bedroom you begin to have second thoughts and stop mid muted stride, you did after all just steal your best friends shoes, which is pretty creepy, and if you take much longer he is going to be wondering where you are.
Buuuuut on the other hand nothing is likely to happen and you will get them back before he even notices. With new resolve you begin making your way to your room, but faster. Once there you sit on your bed, take his shoes out and lay them in front of your feet. They look massive in comparison, you have only just started to get size 9s, and to be honest they’re a little big, it was more you just wanted everyone to think you needed bigger shoes than you really needed them.
“I am such a retard” you say under your breath and you stop and stare at the ‘magic’ socks in your hand, considering one last time simply putting the shoes back and saying nothing more about it, but from somewhere deep within there is a … desire for want of a better word. Not just to be taller, but also to just try on Jimmys shoes, even better to walk around in them, to be like him, even a little bit for only a little while.
You rip open the cellophane packet and pull out the soft fresh new socks. The only characteristic they share with your current socks are colour, both are white. Otherwise you are wearing thin light trainer liners, and these are cushioned crew socks that go past the ankle. You bend down and peel off each of your socks balling them up and throwing them to the side at the bottom of your bed.
“Seriously, such a retard” you lift your left leg and drape it across your right knee, and slowly put the first sock on. Even if this is a load of crap, you might carry on wearing the new socks anyway, “they are pretty comfy.” You put your left foot down on the ground and scrunch your toes into the carpet, feeling the soft socks against your feet pressing into the worn carpet pile.
“Uno mas” you grab your other leg and this time with quicker purpose put on the second sock and again scrunch your toes into the carpet. Standing you walk around for a few paces, and then plunge straight in.
Your left foot goes into Jimmys left trainer first, there is so much room, pushing your toes all the way to the front leaves a massive gap in the back; even if you did the laces as tightly as possible they would still fall off with ease. Putting all your weight onto your left foot you put your right into his second trainer, and again move around in the cavernous feeling space. You scrunch both sets of toes, though this time there isn’t carpet to feel, but so the soft almost bouncy membrane of the shoe sole, it feels … slightly damp if you’re honest. Which makes sense, knowing Jimmy he will have been wearing these shoes non-stop for god knows how long.
You take a few paces, having to put the effort in to make sure the shoes actually stay on your feet, and look at yourself in the long mirror you have on the back of your bedroom door. From top down you look the same, blue and white plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves, over a white t-shirt, slightly skinny jeans that hug your legs just a bit, white socks just peeking through, and then the … boats on your feet.
“How can anyone walk around with these things, it’s like wearing god damned flippers” but you are interrupted as you stare down at your now massive looking feet as something begins to feel … odd. Your sense of balance is off, and it isn’t the shoes, your even beginning to feel a bit light headed.
And then, perfect timing as usual “Yo, Mike, where the hell have you gone?” you hear Jimmy shout from down the hall.
“Fuck, fuck fuck fuck” you hiss under your breath. You look around and start to think, you could just take the shoes off, but Jimmy will be between you and the front door where he left them, so that wont work without him thinking you are at the very least a creep. Buying time seems like the best option, “just … grabbing a drink” you shout back.
“You went to do that like 2 weeks ago!”
“Uh, yeah, yeah, but I’m just uh, changing my socks! …?” your voice was breaking towards the end there, hormones or fear you are sure. And while not exactly the world smartest answer, you are hardly dealing with a chess champion. You wait for a second to see if he bought it.
“O-kay, well, I’m gunna grab a drink, cool?”
“Yeah, sure, cool, take what you want from the fridge. Be there in a minute” He really isn’t that bright. But then, what exactly would he be suspecting, that you had bought magic socks, stolen his shoes, and were now parading around your bedroom in them… “wow” and there’s that feeling of vertigo again.
You head back over to your bed, with the world feeling like it’s slipping on ice. As you sit down, you realise that everything is out of proportion. Your eye line is above that of your dresser, which it shouldn’t be. And it feels like your legs are bending slightly as you sit on the bed, … which they shouldn’t be.
You lean over to see if you can catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror on the back of your door, but you look the same … only, bigger? “What the fuck, is that…” you get up and walk over to the mirror staring at your hair, only you arrive way to quickly, your strides were … longer, and you didn’t have a problem with the shoes. You scrunch your toes … the shoes seem to fit, if anything they feel a bit small, you can feel the tip of the toes … with the tip of your toes!
“My hair” you say, grabbing a tuft at the front, its shorter, and the brown is lightening, it’s becoming … ginger. Christ, and your face as well, you can see it subtlety changing, the freckles are starting to show through. It’s happening, you’re becoming Jimmy.
At this point you can only stare, you’re taller now, and ginger with big ears and freckles … you basically have his face, Jimmy’s face, your friends face. And you look kind of hilarious, in your cloths, now much too short (you can see a lot more of the socks now, there is plenty of space between where your jeans stop and the shoes start) though they are not necessarily too small, Jimmy is pretty lanky, possibly even thinner than you, well … the old you.
And the expression on your new face, one of bewilderment, not Jimmy’s usual blithe smile or confused grin, but … consternation? “Jeeze, that loo..” oh, you hadn’t thought of that, between the growth and looking like him you hadn’t considered “my voice, I sound just like him!”. You stop for a moment, “You know what they say about guys with big feet and deep voices …” you had always wondered how Jimmy was … gifted, downstairs being your best friend and all.
You had to admit this whole thing was making you jump between shit scared, and fucking excited, and when you were excited little Mikey… well, little Jimmy was getting excited too…
However, now really wasn’t the time, not least of all because no matter what size little Jimmy was, he wasn’t enjoying being stuck in your skinny jeans!
You take a few steps back from the door to get a better look when you hear something from outside, and the door begins to push open…