The Big Shrink

by Sarah Mlynowski

  When she was done eating, she looked to see dozens of kids gathered around. All those faces seemed huge.

  “That’s Elliott who lives on my block,” one kid said, pointing. “Hi, Elliott.”

  “He’s sliding on a pickle!” said another kid. “He’s using it as a sled.”

  “Sure am,” cried Tiny Elliott cheerfully. He and Sebastian had used an upside-down lunch tray and a napkin dispenser to make a hill. He climbed to the top of the hill with the pickle held in front of him, then jumped onto it, sitting cross-legged as it spun down the lunch tray slide. “Yahoo! Yeah!”

  “Zamboozle, I want to ride a pickle,” said a fifth-grade Flicker named Fabienne. “Who’s the one with the wonky shrinking magic?” Her enormous eyes landed on Marigold. “Are you the boss? Can you shrink me, please?”

  “It’s not kind to say wonky,” said Marigold politely. “We prefer different or unusual. But yes, I’d be happy to shrink you. We are protesting the ban on Dreggs. The more tiny students, the better.”

  For a split second, she worried that being small would affect her magic. But she closed her eyes and focused … and it worked. Fabienne shrank! Marigold’s size didn’t mess up her magic at all.

  “Shrink me, too!” said Fabienne’s friend Blaze.

  “Me too, me too!” came a chorus of voices.

  Marigold waved her tiny arms and climbed onto a juice box that had fallen over. “All fifth graders who want your Dregg privileges restored, say aye!”

  “Aye!” cried dozens of fifth graders, and the cafeteria shook with the force of their combined voices.

  “And if you’re willing to turn tiny in order to effect a massive change, say aye!” called Marigold.

  “Aye!” Kids thumped the table and stomped the floor.

  “This is awesome,” Nory yelled.

  “I know,” Marigold yelled back. The two girls grinned.

  Marigold raised her hands, signaling for attention. She looked from giant face to giant face the way she’d seen countless teachers do, waiting for every last kid to hush.

  “If you want to be shrunk in order to protest the ban on Dreggs, please line up,” Marigold instructed. “Once you’ve shrunk, Bax will put you on the table. Big people, be careful not to step on your classmates. Understood?”

  “Understood!” chorused the new recruits. People pushed and wiggled as they got into line. The protest was growing. At least two dozen kids lined up to be shrunk. Even Lacey Clench got in line.

  “Hold up!” exclaimed one of the fifth-grade Flickers. It was Rainey, Clyde’s friend. “Marigold, tell them to let me through!”

  Marigold nodded, and the kids separated to give Rainey room. Rainey walked over and opened up their hands, and out spilled Tiny Clyde and Tiny Zinnia.

  “Clyde will lead the tiny Flickers under my supervision,” cried Marigold, pointing to Clyde. “And Zinnia will lead the tiny Flares!”

  The kids stomped the floor and cheered.

  “Fluxers, Fuzzies, and Flyers, I’ll choose leaders once you’re shrunk,” continued Marigold. She spent the remainder of the lunch period shrinking new recruits, all of whom Bax helpfully, but grouchily, deposited onto the tabletop.

  By the time Marigold was done, the tinies had grown in number from eight to thirty-eight.

  “Not bad,” Sebastian said with a whistle.

  “Are you kidding?” said Nory. “Marigold, we are rock stars.” Her eyes shone with awe.

  “Elinor Horace and Marigold Ramos?” There was a lunch teacher looming over them.

  Uh-oh.

  “The two of you are summoned to the principal’s office immediately,” said the lunch teacher. “And I’m taking you in this piece of Tupperware.”

  Bouncing along with Marigold in the Tupperware, Nory was nervous. Yes, she had said she’d be happy to get sent to the principal, and she did want to make the demands of the protest clear. But now that it was happening, as the daughter of a headmaster, she was filled with dread. Father would not be supportive of this protest, she realized. Not at all. Would Principal Gonzalez?

  They reached the office, but there was no one in the room. The lunch teacher deposited them on the desk and left.

  “Ah,” said the principal. “My tiny protest leaders.”

  He shimmered into view. The principal was a very powerful Flicker. He often walked the halls invisibly, checking up on students. He might even have seen them in the cafeteria, Nory realized.

  Visible, Principal Gonzalez was a tall man, with no hair on his head and a big mustache. He wore a suit and a bow tie.

  He took a seat at the desk and leaned forward. His gaze was serious as he looked first at Nory, then at Marigold.

  “We have a problem,” he said.

  Eep. It was hard enough being brave in front of the principal when you were your usual size. It was even harder when you were only three inches high. Nory felt herself start to sweat. Then her vision went blurry.

  Uh-oh.

  Pop!

  She was Tiny-Koat-Nory. She had fluxed by accident into a kitten-goat. She had a kitten head and body, goat legs, the most adorable little horns, and a tendency to eat everything in sight. It was usually a fun shape to be, but Koat-Nory did have trouble keeping her human mind. Now she was about one inch high.

  “Ooh, look at the mini—what is it?” asked Principal Gonzalez.

  Marigold sighed and sounded annoyed. “She’s a koat. Nory, flux back. We’re talking to the principal.”

  “Did she flux by accident?” asked the principal. “She does that, I know. But we haven’t had any big incidents since the start of the school year.”

  Tiny-Koat-Nory leapt and cavorted over the items on the principal’s desk, like an obstacle course. She could hear them talking about her, but she didn’t really care. Goats loved to leap and climb, and so did kittens!

  Leap! She cleared the stapler.

  Leap! She cleared the label maker.

  Up, up, up! She climbed the stack of books and sat on the top. “Baaaaa!!”

  “Nory!” shouted Marigold.

  Tiny-Koat-Nory found the edge of a book jacket and had started to chew. Nom nom nom!

  “Do not chew Principal Gonzalez’s copy of Happy Children, Orderly Schools!” yelled Marigold. “We are trying to have a protest negotiation, and you are ruining it!”

  Nom nom nom, delicious book jacket.

  Oh, what?

  Enormous fingers gently picked up Tiny-Koat-Nory and placed her back on the desktop, next to that yelling girl. Tiny-Koat-Nory was disappointed, but she looked on the bright side. The yelling girl was wearing a delicious-looking fuzzy sweater. And now Tiny-Koat-Nory could have a bite.

  “Ahhhh!” yelled Marigold, batting at Tiny-Koat-Nory’s nose. “Nory, I’m serious. Flux back right now. You are off topic. We’re here to fight for having Dreggs at school again.”

  Deep inside Tiny-Koat-Nory, Girl-Nory heard the message. Zwingo, she thought. I better try and flux back.

  Pop pop pop! She was Tiny Nory again, standing next to Marigold with a mouth full of angora. She spit it out into her hand and shoved the fluff into her pocket, hoping the principal hadn’t noticed. “Sorry about your sweater,” she whispered to Marigold.

  “We need to be a united front,” whispered Marigold. She swallowed hard. “This is our chance to make the protest work!”

  “Please forgive me, Principal Gonzalez,” said Nory, using her talking-to-grown-ups voice. “Marigold and I are glad you called us to speak with you.”

  Principal Gonzalez looked grave. “I really am concerned here. I walked invisibly into the cafeteria at lunch to find you’d shrunk a considerable portion of the fifth grade.”

  “Thirty-eight tiny students, sir,” said Nory.

  “I can grow them back,” said Marigold. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “And why are you shrinking them?” asked the principal.

  “We’re demanding big change!” cried Marigold. Then in a quieter voice, she said, “We respe
ctfully protest the banning of Dreggs. We do not think it’s fair for you to decide how we play and what we play with during free time at school. And you did not listen to student voices before you banned them. You never heard our perspective. So … yeah. We caused a peaceful disruption.”

  “Parents will not be pleased if their kids come home tiny,” he said. “I have experience with kids going home invisible. People—especially parents, but sometimes kids as well—get really upset.”

  “I can un-shrink them at the end of the day,” Marigold said. “Every kid who’s a tiny chose to be a tiny. They chose to be part of the protest because they want to bring the Dreggs to school.”

  “The Dreggs cause trouble,” said the principal. “The teachers can’t teach with them hatching and hopping in the classroom.”

  “But they’re bringing kids together,” explained Nory. “And Dreggs are especially good for the kids in the Upside-Down Magic class.”

  “How so?” asked Mr. Gonzalez.

  “Other kids make fun of us,” said Marigold. “I know you told them not to, but they still do. They call us wonkos, or they steer clear of us in the halls, like they’re scared to be near us.”

  Ooh! Marigold made a good point. “But since we introduced Dreggs to the school, kids started liking us,” Nory added. “We went to a party at Clyde’s house, and there were Flickers and Fluxers there. Two Flares are helping with our protest. And just now, in the lunchroom, I know we shrank some Fuzzies and Flyers. That means kids from all five Fs care enough about Dreggs to stop being nervous around kids with upside-down magic. That’s good for us, and it’s good for them. Don’t you think?”

  Principal Gonzalez tapped his lower lip. “Hmm,” he said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Nory in her politest voice.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “How about I let the fifth graders bring Dreggs to school every Friday, to be taken out only during recess? Never in the classroom, never in the cafeteria—but A-OK in the yard on Fridays?”

  Nory glowed. “Yes, sir, that would be great. Thank you.” She had won. Or rather, she and Marigold had made their point and convinced the principal!

  Marigold cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but no,” she said.

  Nory swiveled her head. “Marigold, this is a really good compromise,” she whispered.

  “It’s not good enough.” Marigold blinked anxiously, but stood her ground. “I learned from my tutor that sometimes, protests need time to build. People are nervous at first. But today we got thirty new people on board. More could join tomorrow! Principal Gonzalez, we do appreciate your offer. But we can’t accept.”

  “Fridays is my best compromise,” said Mr. Gonzalez. “I’m not going to make another.”

  “Fridays are good,” said Nory. “We do accept! We one hundred percent do!”

  “I’m sorry. We do not,” repeated Marigold. She was clenching and unclenching her fists, Nory noticed. “Until you allow Dreggs at school every day, at least for recess and when we’re not in class, I’ll keep shrinking anyone who asks me to. Even if Nory backs down, I’m keeping this protest going.”

  The office secretary called Ms. Starr to send a student to collect Nory and Marigold. The two girls waited in the hall outside the principal’s office, on a hard bench.

  The moment they were alone, Nory blew up. Marigold was expecting it.

  “Why did you ruin everything?” barked Nory. “Principal Gonzalez met us halfway!”

  “It wasn’t halfway. He said we could have Dreggs one-eighth of the day, only one time a week. That means he met us one-fortieth of the way,” explained Marigold.

  “He offered a compromise, Marigold! A compromise!”

  “Yes,” Marigold said. “But the compromise was bad. And we are just getting started. Don’t you see?”

  “It was a good compromise,” Nory insisted. “We won.”

  Bax arrived, holding the cardboard box. Nory and Marigold climbed in, still arguing. As they stepped around the corner, a Flare named Rune came down the hall with five tiny Flares sitting in his hand.

  “There they are,” one tiny Flare cried. “With the grumpy boy!”

  “Speed up, Rune!” said Tiny Lacey. “I want to hear the news.”

  Marigold felt a surge of energy. She would tell the Flares about the way they’d stood up to the principal. She’d offer to shrink Rune and the rest of the Flares, to make the Big Shrink even bigger!

  A group of fifth-grade Flickers swarmed up as well, holding a gerbil cage full of tiny Flickers. They were eager for answers, too.

  “So? Do we get to bring our Dreggs back?” Clyde asked. “What happened?”

  “We won, but Marigold ruined it,” Nory said.

  “No. We stood our ground,” said Marigold. “Principal Gonzalez offered a very weak compromise. Fridays at recess only. But more and more kids are joining our protest. We don’t have to have Dreggs only on Fridays. If we stick with it, we can have them every day of the week.”

  “Marigold told him she’d keep shrinking people,” explained Nory. “She threatened the principal.”

  “I did not threaten him. I said our protest was growing and I would keep shrinking kids who wanted it. It’s a peaceful protest, like we learn about in social studies,” shouted Marigold. “Do we give in?” she called to the crowd.

  “No!” called some of the kids.

  “We do not give in!” Marigold proclaimed. “We can get him to give us a better offer. We just need more fifth graders to turn tiny. Who’s in?”

  Rune didn’t volunteer, but almost all the Flickers raised their hands. So did several nearby Flyers. Marigold concentrated, sent the magic through her fingers, and zwoop, zwoop, zwoop! The Flyers shrank.

  “They’re so cute!” somebody said.

  The tiny Flyers zipped in between people’s legs, none of them more than a foot in the air.

  Next, Marigold instructed the big Flickers to put down the gerbil cage. Once they were all tiny, everyone piled into the cage. Rune, who had stayed large, would carry it.

  “Excuse me,” said Tiny Lacey, banging on the door to the gerbil cage. “Marigold? I want to change back. Never mind about the protest.”

  “What?” Marigold was shocked.

  “Well, my magic is small now that I’m small,” said Lacey. “I really don’t like it, and later today we’re doing cooking projects in magic class. I want my fire back.”

  “Yeah, me too,” chorused the tiny Flares. They started complaining about how small their magic had gotten. They could only make tiny sparks.

  Hmm. Marigold thought about what they were saying. True, some of the kids’ magic had gotten small when they got small. But Marigold was still able to shrink things. And Nory was still able to flux just fine—just not into anything large. How did it all work? There was still so much about magic they didn’t understand.

  In any case, the tiny Flares shouldn’t grow large now. “You’ll ruin the protest if you big up,” Marigold said. “You have to wait until the end of the school day at least.”

  Lacey’s mouth fell open. “I don’t think you heard me. I need my full-sized fire back.”

  “I did hear you,” Marigold said. “And I said no.”

  “I said change me back.”

  “No. We’re in the middle of a protest.”

  The other tiny Flares shouted that they wanted to be big again, too.

  Marigold refused. “We have to stay strong,” she urged. “Don’t you guys get it? If we all turn tiny, Principal Gonzalez will have to meet our demands.”

  “But, Marigold, why do you get to decide?” a tiny Flare asked. “If it’s a group protest, shouldn’t it be a group decision?”

  “I’m okay with the protest ending,” said another tiny Flare. “I want it to end!”

  Marigold shook her head. “I’m doing this for all of us. For the whole school. You’ll thank me. You’ll see.”

  The bell rang to end recess. People scattered. �
��I’ll get you for this, Marigold!” cried Lacey Clench, shaking her tiny fist as Rune walked down the hall, carrying her and the others in the gerbil cage. The tiny Flyers swarmed off to class. Nory, Bax, and Marigold stood alone in the hall.

  Nory glared at Marigold. “If people want to be changed back, you have to change them back!” she said.

  Marigold pressed her lips together. She twined her foot around her ankle.

  “You think it’s fair to force them to do the protest?” Nory asked.

  “They committed to doing it! They shouldn’t back out in the middle.”

  “Seriously?” said Nory.

  “Yes! Seriously!” Seeing a protest through to the end was serious. Why didn’t Nory understand?

  A shadow loomed over them.

  “The two of you are driving me batty,” Bax growled from above. “You’re stressing me out and I don’t want to flux, so …” He folded in the flaps of the cardboard box, making a lid. Everything went dark. He’d closed them in! “We’re going back to class,” he said as he strode down the hall. “And we’re not going to talk about the protest anymore. We’re going to be quiet, and then we’re going to listen to Ms. Starr explain our volcano research projects.”

  “But why?” Marigold said, calling through the crack of light that shone between the flaps.

  “Because I say so,” Bax said. “And guess what? I’m bigger than you, so what I say goes.”

  Back in class, Nory sulked. The Big Shrink was out of control. Marigold was being unreasonable. If they didn’t big up the kids who wanted to go back to normal, all the good feelings between the UDM kids and the typical kids would disappear. But what could she do?

  Nothing, that’s what. Marigold had the power.

  Nory wanted to tell Pepper all about it. And Elliott. But she couldn’t even do that, because as soon as Bax brought her and Marigold to class, Ms. Starr launched into the day’s lecture on volcanoes. She let the tiny kids sit on her desk so they could see the board. She showed them a diagram. And another video. She talked about the three different kinds of lava monsters and the way they only appeared during volcano eruptions.