***RRRIIIIINNNNG***
You jump with a start as your alarm clock goes off. Calming down, you hit it and try to go back to sleep, you must have forgotten to turn it off this weekend. You lay in bed for a few minutes before deciding that any chance you had at sleep is gone. You roll over so you can see the clock, and mentally sigh when you see it's only 7:30, so much for sleeping in. You get out of bed, bleary eyed, and immediately stop and rub your eyes. There, sitting on your floor, is a model dollhouse of a mansion.
You sit there, staring, when you hear someone say, "Cool isn't it?" You whirl around, looking for the voice, but all you hear is a laugh, "You won't find me like that, you're only hearing my voice in your head." You look around wearily before asking, "Alright, assuming you aren't tricking me, who are you and why is there a dollhouse in my room?" The voice laughs, "Oh it isn't a dollhouse, it isn't even just a small house, you'll find out what else soon enough though." At this he laughs again, "Anyway, few things to tell you before I let you have fun. You'll find that you're unable to leave your house, but there's no one else here, and no one will bother you. If you want anything at all, just email me, I won't always be listening if you ask. I just sent you an email with some other things that are useful, so you can email me back from that. And lastly, you won't know what I'm talking about yet, but they are invincible in every way shape and form, though they still feel pain equivalent to what would have happened if they weren't invincible, so feel free to have fun! I'll mostly let you do your own thing, but I may decide to ask you for, specific things if I'm bored." Throughout this, you try to interrupt several times, but he talks so quickly you don't get a chance. "Oh yea, and they should be waking up now, you should go look!" He says. You sputter out a few questions, eloquently phrased things like, "What! What?! Who?!" But you get no response.
Giving up, you head over to the dollhouse for a closer look, though on a closer look, it has to be the fanciest dollhouse you've ever seen. It's incredibly detailed, you can see the individual shingles on the roof, and the bricks in the chimney. Moving on, you look in one of the giant windows of the mansion, and gasp. There, wearing pajamas, lying curled up in a bed far to big for her, is a girl about your age. You stare captivated at her, you watch her slumber, her slow breathing, her tiny body, you simply can't believe she's real. You're in for another shock though, because at that moment she rolls over, allowing you to see her face and recognize her as Sadie, from school. This, more than before, shocks you, not only did the voice somehow shrink down a girl and put her in your room, that girl is from your school! You stare, your thoughts suspended on that single fact, then a thought occurs to you. When the voice was talking to you, he said "they". You start circling the various rooms, and find that in addition to Sadie, the mansion contains Jennifer, Kylie, Bailey, Rachael, and, somewhat to your delight, your best friend Alex. Thinking about it, you realize all eight are from your math class, but not all of the female students in the class appear to be there. You look around a bit more, then you hear a ding on your iPad as you get an email.
Reluctantly moving to pick up your iPad, you flip through the message from "shrinkthem@gmail.com":
Hi! You probably can figure out what I meant by "them" now! Anyway, something I forgot to tell you, none of them will wake up until you explicitly try to wake them up, or one of them do.
The other thing, here's a link to a site with cameras in the house, have fun!
You click through the different views at the link, and confirm that there's only eight people in the house. Other than that, the house seems pretty empty, you see a large commons room with a very large window and what seems to be the only door in the house, the room seemingly taking up 2/3 of the house, connected to 8, very large, identical bedrooms, each with a small bathroom attached. Curiously, there are no storage rooms, or kitchens. It occurs to you that the house seems to have been designed such that everything of note is near a window. Noticing a gear symbol, you click on it and find various options for controlling the house, including lights, temperature, the ability to lock individual doors, and confirming your earlier guess as to the houses design, the ability to open windows.
Deciding it's time to wake them up, you lock the door to Alex's room, and tap on the glass. Her reaction is pretty predictable, first she rolls over, but after your tapping persists, she turns around and opens her eyes. She stares at the window for several seconds, before squeezing her eyes shut and seemingly muttering to herself. Then she peeks at you again before running to the door and attempting to open it, pounding on it when it doesn't open. For whatever reason, you can't hear her, though she looks like she's screaming at this point. Eventually she sits down, with her back against her wall, and squeezes her eyes shut. Around this point, you decide to open the window, and then you call her name, "Alex?" You whisper as if to a frightened animal, "It's me, Jacob."
"Jacob?" She asks shakily, opening her eyes, "Wha-what happened? Wha-why are you so..... big..." You calm her down, and tell her the story, how the voice woke you up, how this was just sitting there, you leave out the parts where you have the cameras and have control of the house. She sits there without speaking for a moment, before getting up and sitting on the bed. "Alright" she simply says. She seems to have calmed down, and somehow accepted the situation.
Somewhat surprised at how easily she accepted that, you sit silently for a bit. Alex eventually gets up, and starts rummaging around the room. Deciding that the silence had gone on long enough, you say to her, "Do you want to wake up the other girls and explain this to them?" She makes a face and says, "You know I don't like Jennifer and Rachael."
"I know," you say, "but you only have to wake up one of them, anyway, you get along fine with Kylie and Bailey, just wake up Sadie, then you can wake Kylie and Bailey and they can worry about their friends."
"Ugh, alright." She replies. Pulling some clothes out of the dresser, she looks at the blinds attached to the open window, "Could you close that? I can't close the blinds with it open and you don't get to watch me get dressed!"
"Alright," you say, reaching for the button, "Meet me outside once you wake everyone up I guess."
You close the window and unlock the door as she pulls closed the blinds, but of course you aren't going to let a chance to see your best friend naked pass! It might be lewd, but seriously, how often do you, a boy, get a chance to see a your best friend, a girl, naked! Especially since you aren't in a relationship with her.
You pull up the camera feed on your iPad and sit back on your bed to watch the show.
******
The cycle continues with every one of them, whoever is charged with waking them up walks in and shakes them. There's usually a fair amount of disbelief until they look out the window, follow by a long period of waiting before they part ways. By the time they all end up in the common room and head outside, it's almost 9:00.
After they walk outside, I get up and slowly, so as not to scare them, approach before sitting down. They're standing in two, pretty distinct groups, there's Alex together with Sadie, you know Sadie mostly from math, and while you and Alex don't see her that much, you both get along with her pretty well in class. The other four are in their standard clique, there's Rachael, the bossy one, she's by far the rudest of the bunch, closely followed by Jennifer. Kylie's a bit timid, and she's quite nice when she's not with the group, but when with them, she rarely even talks, just nods her head to whatever they say. Bailey's also pretty nice when she's not in the group, but she's rambunctious, and unlike Kylie, she completely changes when with the group. When with Jennifer or Rachael, she pretty much acts like them.
Anyway, after the obligatory backing away scared that they all do, not that you blame them, you decide to say something to them.