Oliver gaped up at Melissa as she stood in the doorway, frowning down at him. She would've looked huge even from his full four foot height, but from his current position - laying on his tummy with his feet hanging in the air above him - she looked downright gigantic. As the younger brother, he had been used to being smaller than her most of his life, and in his earliest years held a deference towards her rivaled only by their parents. Now that all had come back. Now it was if the last sixteen years had never happened. Now it was as though he really was seven years old all over again - and despite the fact that all he had been doing was playing by himself, her size and the expression on her face and his state of near-nudity made him feel so small, so silly, as though she'd caught him snooping through her room for no other reason than that it bugged his big sister when he did so.
"...hello," Melissa finally said, seemingly at a loss for words herself. "Are you one of Connor and Jackson's friends? Do you know where Oliver is?"
Oliver couldn't find the nerve to speak. He blushed in bottomless shame as he slowly drew himself to his feet, avoiding his sister's gaze all the while, standing there with his head hung and his hands behind his back as though presenting himself for punishment. His eyes glued to the carpet, the only thing he knew was the horrible silence that had descended upon the room, weighing heavy on his skinny shoulders as his stomach tied itself in knots over how much trouble he'd be in when Melissa found out how naughty he'd been.
A light touch came at his smooth chin. Oliver slowly raised his head to find Melissa on one knee before him, eyes wide and cheeks pale and lips parted as she stared at the silent, shamed little boy who stood before her.
"Ol...Ollie?"
For a second Oliver was still - and then he threw himself at his big sister, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her shoulder as he cried and cried and cried and cried. It was a few seconds before Melissa could get over enough of her shock to respond...but when she did she hugged her little brother right back, squeezing Oliver tight against her and comforting him the way she used to when he was small the first time.
"...shhh...it's okay, Ollie, it's okay..." Melissa cooed as she stroked the boy's soft hair and rubbed his bare back. She hadn't called her brother Ollie in ten years but the boy in her arms was so small and cute and helpless that his grown-up name hardly seemed appropriate. Though the strangeness of the situation made her movements a little stiff and uncertain, to Oliver they were nothing less than Balm of Gilead. He felt as though nothing could hurt him while he was in Melissa's arms, her embrace and her touch and her whispered words a warm blanket that made the boy feel fuzzy and nice from his head to his toes. Melissa gently pulled back when his bawling had become little hiccuping sobs, the astonished woman wiping her little brother's eyes as he struggled to regain his composure.
"Ollie, this..." What she was seeing was so impossible that she could barely even find the words to ask. "How did this happen? Where are my boys?"
Oliver relayed the story as best he could in his tiny hiccuping chirp. Melissa went from pale to chalk when he told her about how her sons had turned themselves into grown-up Olivers, the little boy looking as though he'd break down crying all over again when he relayed the awful spanking Connor had given him before he and his brother left.
"An' it wasn't like I was even bein' naughty I just wanted them to know that they were gonna get in troub-ule-ule-uleeee..." Oliver whined miserably. He sobbed on the last word and it was only Melissa's gentle squeeze of his shoulders that kept him from breaking down.
"You don't have to cry, Ollie, I'm not mad at you..." Though Melissa was doing her best to console the child, her heart and stomach were doing flip-flops at the thought that her boys were out there somewhere in her brother's adult body. Putting any two five-year-olds in that kind of situation was a recipe for trouble, but her boys were a special kind of rambunctious. "How long ago did they leave?"
"Um..." Oliver wiped his nose with his fingers and looked at the clock. "An hour?"
"An hour!" Melissa cried. "Why didn't you - "
The woman stopped when Oliver cringed beneath her. She took a deep breath and softened her tone.
"Why didn't you call me when they left, Ollie?"
"'Cause they took my phooone!" Oliver wailed at the indignity of it all. "An' I didn't want to leave an' have someone see me all little so I stayed here and waited for you. I didn't think I had been playing that long. I'm sorry."
Melissa looked past him to the pile of LEGOs on the floor, to the adorable little city scene Oliver had been working on when she came in.
"...you've been playing this whole time?"
Oliver sniffed and nodded.
"Uh-huh. I was good, I promise."
Melissa raised her eyebrows. The way he was speaking, it was like...
"Oliver," she said, speaking slowly and clearly. "How old are you?"
Oliver frowned and scrunched up his face in thought.
"I'm..." His eyes lit up as he looked at Melissa and smiled. "I'm twenty-three! I'm a grown-up like you!"
Melissa exhaled and returned the smile. Though it was of no small concern that he had to think that long to remember, he had, at least, remembered.
"That's good," she said. "You just keep remembering that, okay? You keep remembering how big and grown-up you are."
Oliver beamed and gave her a resolute nod. Melissa rubbed his skinny little arms and silently studied his tiny, undeveloped body. She'd always loved her little brother - even when he was being a brat - and seeing him like this again brought back the maternal affection she had felt towards little Ollie when they were growing up. That big bright smile splitting those tear-stained cheeks made her just want to hug him and take care of him and do whatever it took to see as many Ollie smiles and as few Ollie tears as possible. He was so cute. So helpless. She had her little brother back.
"Okay, um..." She shook the thought out of her head as the urgency of the situation impressed itself upon her. "We've gotta find the boys before they get in real trouble. If I know them, the first place they'll go is..."