The man was staring at her skinny legs. Nelly pried her hand from her sister's and folded her arms across her breasts. She had only grown them the year before and even now, at the precocious size they were, she felt them tingle most nights. They were tingling now, nipples buzzing under her arms. She wasn't sure about them at all, what to do with them, how to wear them and worst of all, her clothes stretched tightly over them, like she wanted to show them off.
'How old are you?' the man said, patting the dust beside him. Nelly and Mackenzie sat down in the scrub. The earth was warm on their bare legs.
'Thirteen.' She wished she'd said sixteen. It would have explained her body.
'I'm six,' echoed Mackenzie. She took a stick and scratched in the dust.
... after only a few moments, Nelly forgot her self-consciousness, forgot to cover her breasts as they vied for space beneath her stripy halter neck top, forgot that she was only thirteen and began to sway her long back in time with the music, tipping her head in the opposite direction, her hair falling across her face. The man watched her as he played. He drove each note precisely at the young girl, tiny quavers flying through the air and ricocheting off every part of her. It was like she could feel it, her skin jumping each time a note buffeted her. As he played on, Nelly felt like she was fast-forwarding into womanhood. Her mind swelled with experience too great for her small head. Her body aged and roughed and, as she stared down at her hands in the dust, she could see a craze of tiny lines criss-crossing their backs. She had read Alice in Wonderland over and over and could now sympathise with the girl's dilemma ... She was attaining something far more dangerous than a few extra feet in height.
'I wish you were less developed than me.' Jenny said.
Right away Jenny noticed Genie getting shorter, but Genie didn't appear to be getting smaller. Something was wrong. Jenny felt a little strange, her jeans felt smaller, and her shirt felt tighter. She looked down at her chest, where there had been absolutely nothing to see. A couple of A-cups were slowly inflating like balloons. Her hips widened and her waist had narrowed by comparison, which explained why her jeans were getting super tight. Her jeans rode lower on her bulging hips as she grew taller, passing Genie in height by an inch as her body became long and slender. Her breasts stopped inflating at a small C-cup, the parts of her shirt that hadn't popped or torn looking like they were painted on. The bottom had ridden up exposing her mid section. She took a step back comparing herself to Genie. Now looking to be about 14 years old, Jenny had got her wish. Genie was less developed than her.
'Oh my god, what did you do to me. You were supposed to get smaller, I wasn't supposed to get older. I can't have my family see me like this.'
Someone was coming up the stairs 'Quickly,' Jenny said 'I wish I was back to normal and that you were my age and size.' As you wish. Genie replied with a frown.
Jenny felt her newly acquired assets start to shrink. Her broken jeans loosened on her shrinking hips as her butt flattened, losing its womanly shape, and her waist widened by comparison. With that her sexy curves were gone. Her breasts deflated, leaving her with a ripped and overstretched shirt. She lost all her gained height. She was back to young Jenny in the stretched out and separated remains of her clothing. Genie looked less than impressed as she quickly lost her womanly curves and chest, and her long legs became thin and awkward. Her long black curls began to recede into her head, lifting up till they only came to her shoulders. When the changes were over they looked like two average 9 year olds dressed in rags.
The girl sat on the subwoofer in the middle of the room. Her teeny feet, wrapped in tight ballet slippers, dangled over the subwoofer but her stubby legs didn't reach the floor. A pale green silk taffeta tutu flowered around her bottom, an opaque leotard hiding her boyish figure. With hair done up in spiky pigtails, she pouted, wide saucer eyes thunderous, as if on the verge of a terrible tantrum.
A pear-shaped dollop of the stuff snapped off the bulge and plopped onto her head. She grew a bit taller and her feet touched the floor. She skooched around so Dee couldn't see her face.
Another gobbet fell, and she grew another inch. She turned back, pigtails whipping about eyes twinkling liquidly with tears or rage, Dee couldn't tell which.
A few more big drops fell. She glared, morphing into puberty. The bands holding her pigtails in place snapped back and her hair stabbed out into its familiar frizz.
The remaining stuff on the ceiling crashed onto, then into, the girl in a series of wobbling spheres. As each one splashed down, she would make a quantum leap in size and age and take another step toward him, her voice double-pitched for a split second then dopplering down into a more adult tone, until with a final splash she stood almost as Dee had first met her, cherubic yet mature, proud, and only inches away.
8/6/2001
Before my daughter Lauren was born, I thought up the self-challenge to photograph her every single day for her first year. These images are in albums chronologically, dated and numbered. Lauren will enter her senior year of high school this month. I was bittersweetly pondering her future and realized this could well be the last full year we live together in the same house. So I've asked and she's agreed to let me photograph her every day again.
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