Taller - Ch 1

Lori was awakened by the uncomfortable sensation of her cold feet hanging over the end of the bed. She sighed and rolled to her side, pulling her knees up to drag her feet back onto the bed under the covers. It was an awkward position, and as much as she wanted to rest more and delay the start of her day, sleep would not come.

Lori gave up on her too-small bed. She deactivated her morning alarm and sat up, setting her over-large feet on the floor beside the bed. Then, she stood up to stretch, taking care not to lift her arms above her head for fear of scraping her fingers on the ceiling. She walked to the door, taking care to put a hand on the top of the doorframe to make sure she ducked safely through it. She still bore a fading yellow and purple bruise on her forehead from when she had bumped into the frame yesterday morning.

After making it down the hallway, she ducked through the bathroom doorframe and shut the door behind herself. She hesitated to turn on the lights, dreading what she would see in the mirror when she did. She sighed and decided to get it over with for today, she flipped the switch and found that she could not see her face in the mirror. She had become taller than the top of the mirror, meaning she would need to stoop to look at herself properly. She did. It was a sorry sight.

Lori had the impression she was looking at a stick figure made flesh or a human statue built out of broomsticks, improbably long and thin limbs attached to an elongated middle. She looked down to the floor frighteningly far below at her lengthy, narrow feet. Then, she held up her hands, curling and straightening her spindly spider-leg fingers. Bending forward even more to see her face in the mirror, she discovered that she barely recognized herself, her features having been stretched out like the rest of her body. “Why the long face?” she joked, half-heartedly, her deep voice sounding almost masculine. “I wish I knew.” She sighed.

As Lori had done the past few weeks since the start of this ridiculous growth spurt, she headed to the next stop on her grim morning routine, measuring her height. Inside her bedroom, next to the door, she found the pencil marks on the wall and prepared to add another one above the rest. She grabbed a pencil and stood up straight, sensing that the ceiling had become far too low compared to her. She rested the pencil on the top of her head and made her mark on the wall. Then she grabbed the tape measure and extended it from the mark down to the floor.

“Seven feet?” she said in disbelief. She checked if she was holding the tape flat against the wall and was saddened to find that she was. Her true height was accurately seven feet tall. She sighed. “Why?” she asked again, as she had been asking every day lately with no answer. Not even the doctors she visited could determine the cause of her rapid growth.

She returned to the bathroom to take a shower, having to bend down to allow the showerhead to get her wet above her chest. All the while, having to contend with cleaning the full length of her extensive body.

When Lori was done and dried off, she returned to her bedroom and started getting dressed. One of the odd quirks of her growth was the fact that, while she had been getting taller continuously, her body had not grown wider at all. Her underwear and clothes still fit her as well as they had done when she was five feet tall, only now all of her shirts had become bare midriffs and all of her pants had become capris. Her shoes and socks were a different story. Her feet were now far too long and narrow for any shoes or socks they could find at a store. Instead, she wore a large pair of beach sandals, which just barely kept her heels off of the floor.

Dressed now, she checked herself in the bathroom mirror again. Somehow, her growth seemed even worse when clothed. All of the bare skin extending from her clothes only seemed to emphasize how much taller she was, making her look as though some giant had taken her ordinary body, grabbed her by the toes and fingers, and stretched her out like a rubber band.

Although she was physically ready to leave for school, she hesitated to exit the bathroom, dreading the stares that she was sure to get today. She considered texting her mother to beg to be allowed to stay home again today, but she knew that would not work. Not only had her mother already begun her shift, but also the school had said she would no longer be excused for her absences without a doctor’s note. Since she was not technically ill, the doctors would not write her one, despite her body having become a freakish beanpole.

Lori sighed, realizing that it was going to be a long day.

***

Climbing into the school bus required some awkward contortions and a lot of stooping to allow her to walk to an empty pair of seats. She would need a whole bench as her legs needed to be turned sideways to fit in the narrow space. At the very least, all of that careful maneuvering kept her preoccupied enough to ignore any reactions from other students. She just pretended that they were not there, hoping that they would do the same for her.

The bus stopped and more students got on.

“Lori?” said a familiar voice.

“Hannah?” Lori replied, spotting her friend walking down the aisle toward her.

“Are you alright?” Hannah asked, squeezing into the seat across the aisle from Lori. Hannah was short but wide around the middle, making the bus seats a difficult fit for her as well. “I kept texting you but you just kept replying that you weren’t ready to talk. How are you feeling? Are you still…?”

“Growing?”

Hannah nodded.

Lori nodded back.

“I’m sorry.”

“When I got over six and a half feet I just started to feel like a freak, so I stayed home. But, the growing didn’t stop.”

“How tall…”

“Seven feet now.”

The shocked look on Hannah’s face almost made Lori laugh.

The bus stopped again and Lori spotted another one of her friends walking toward them.

“Lori?” said Valerie. “Oh my God,” she said with a mixture of disbelief and annoyance.

“Seven feet,” Lori repeated, still struggling to accept that it was true.

“Move over, please,” Valerie told Hannah who slid closer to the window to make space for her friend to sit.

Valerie sat down. A month ago, she had been the tall one in the group. As Lori had grown, she had noticed Hannah acting increasingly jealous around her. If only Lori had a way to trade some of her height away to her friend, she would.

“Did you see a doctor?” Hannah asked.

Lori nodded and said, “A few different ones. I have to leave early for another appointment today. Hopefully, they’ll have some good news from my test results. They said there might be treatments to stop me from growing any more, but they need to figure out the cause of my growth first.”

“Why didn’t you stay home again?” Valerie asked.

“My mom’s orders,” Lori explained. “The school won’t excuse my absences anymore, so my mom said that if I was not feeling ill and I could make it to school, then I needed to start going to class again.”

Valerie’s expression softened, and Lori could tell her friend was genuinely concerned despite any jealousy she might be feeling.

Lori looked down at her long legs folded uncomfortably next to her and said, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

“Hey,” Hannah said. “We’ll be there for you. Don’t worry. We’ve got your back. Right, Val?”

Valerie nodded. “Right.”

Lori had to hold back tears of gratitude. At least she was not alone. However, she would only see the two of them again a few times that day. The rest of the day, she would need to survive on her own.

When the bus arrived at school Hannah and Valerie gave Lori a hand getting to her feet and then escorted her into the building. After that, they wished her well and parted ways.

***

It was hard to say who Lori disliked most, the people who stared or the people who tried to avoid staring. The ones who stared made her uncomfortable, but at least they were honest about their interest, if only a little impolite. The ones who averted their eyes made Lori paranoid, thinking that they were only waiting for her to look the other way before they could secretly spy on her. For the past few days, she had been wishing to become invisible, but she only became more and more visible each day.

Maybe the worst part of being this tall was how alone Lori felt walking down the hallways now. She saw no one at eye-level with her, only the tops of heads beneath her. While it was only the difference of a foot or so, it felt like she and them were worlds apart now. She understood why they stared. If she had been one of them encountering her, she would have stared as well.

Lori’s unwieldy body caused everything to feel unfamiliar and precarious. The length of her legs meant it was easier now to climb stairs two at a time, but it took focus to avoid tripping. Even then, by accident her long foot caught on a step, making her stumble and fall onto the landing in front of her. It was a terrifying drop. Not only did she have a longer distance to fall now, but also her boney limbs and joints felt dangerously feeble and fragile, having no extra flesh to pad their increased length. She hit the floor and came to rest in a tangle of limbs. Fortunately, nothing seemed to be broken or dislocated, although she had picked up a few new bruises. It took several seconds to untangle herself and try to get back on her feet. She provided a spectacle for other students, who gawked at her standing up, looking like a baby deer trying to find its balance on shaky legs. Once she felt stable again, she was careful to cling to a railing as she slowly continued climbing the rest of the way up, one stair at a time.

***

In class, Lori felt even more oversized. Her knees would not fit under desks comfortably, and her feet either stuck out into the aisle or extended beneath the desk in front of her. She blocked the view of the board for anyone unfortunate enough to be sitting behind her. Her extra-long fingers fumbled with pens and pencils. Using a keyboard was a struggle and her phone took some focus to operate at all.

Gym class was almost worse, despite being a situation where her new size would seemingly be an advantage. Today they were playing basketball, meaning Lori was picked first for her team, by Valerie in fact. However, Lori proved to be disappointingly clumsy. It was the same situation as walking up the stairs; unfamiliar limbs made her coordination all but nonexistent. She would only be able to dribble a few times before bouncing the ball off her toes or completely missing the ball with her hand. Shooting was hopeless; none of her attempts even hit the hoop. The only points she scored were when she stood beside the hoop and let Valerie throw the ball to her so she could dunk it in without having to dribble. Those baskets cheered up her team but earned her some dirty looks from their opponents.

“Hey,” said Brandy, a well known “mean girl” on the other team. “That’s no fair.” She grabbed the ball and held it.

“What’s the matter?” Valerie asked.

“You can’t just have her standing by the hoop. How are we supposed to guard against a tall freak like that?”

Lori winced at the word “freak.”

Valerie stepped up to Brandy as though she were preparing for a fight. “Listen,” Valerie said. “You don’t call her that. Not in front of me. Not unless you want to start something.”

Brandy tried to stand tough, but her eyes looked obviously worried. “It’s an unfair advantage at least. Nobody wants to play in a game when there’s no chance to win. Get it?”

Valerie lunged for Brandy, who flinched away, dropping the basketball, which Brandy caught after a bounce.

“I get it,” Brandy said. “No more dunks. We don’t need to dunk to beat you anyways.”

After that tense moment, the game resumed, and Lori felt like hugging Valerie, but she just quietly continued playing. To avoid any more conflict, though, she avoided the ball altogether for the rest of the game. Valerie played her heart out, earning them a victory almost single-handedly.

By the end of the period, when they were changing in the locker room, Lori was feeling sort of lousy, after realizing that she had failed to make good use of her unwanted height in the one place that it might have been appreciated.

“It’s okay,” Valerie said. “We still won.”

“You scored most of the points,” Lori pointed out.

“But, we won,” Valerie said. “And, we put Brandy in her place. Don’t get so hung up on the negatives.”

Lori nodded and left the locker room with a faint smile on her face.

***

At lunch, Hannah was full of questions. “Did you change what you were eating?”

“No,” Lori said as she started on her second hamburger, her appetite having grown along with her body.

“Did you get exposed to strange chemicals?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Radiation?”

“I don’t think so.”

“A disease?”

“Probably not. The doctors would have noticed that right away, I think.”

“There must have been something different that happened.”

Lori shrugged and finished her hamburger. She noticed Brandy was sitting two tables over, and tried to avoid eye contact.

Hannah was quiet in deep thought for a moment. Then, she said, “This is like when you lose something and you need to go searching for it. They always say you should just retrace your steps. Go back everywhere you’ve been to find the thing you lost.”

“You think I should go back to everywhere I’ve been the last few weeks?”

“Just do it in your mind. Walk back through everything you’ve done, mentally. Maybe you’ll find what caused this if you do.”

Lori nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. I’ll try it when I get a quiet moment tonight.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out today,” Hannah said. “Let us know how things go with the doctors. Okay?”

“Okay,” Lori said.

The bell rang and they said goodbye to each other. Hannah went to class, and Lori headed to the office to meet her mother and go to the hospital.

***

Lori was glad to escape the school building. After a somewhat cramped ride in the car, they arrived at the hospital. The physical examination had become routine by now, but with every number the nurse recorded, Lori could see her becoming increasingly worried. The finale was to check her height. Lori stepped up to the ruler and waited as the nurse found a step stool to stand on before extending the ruler as far as it would go.

“Eighty-four inches,” the nurse said, amazed. “Seven feet, even.”

Lori sat down on the exam table, her mind trying to fathom the truth. She had confirmation at last. She was officially seven feet tall, such a frightening milestone. She could not think of anyone she knew that was even close to that height aside from some professional athletes, like basketball or volleyball players. It felt so impossible that she could be that unreasonably tall, but here she was, staring down the length of her body to her narrow feet, far below. Had she not been able to wiggle her toes in confirmation, she might have assumed they belonged to someone else. Her mind could not accept that a part of her could be so distant from her head. And, if the trend continued, they would only get further and further away. When would it end? Could they even stop it? How would she be able to live if she kept on growing like this? So many questions, Lori hoped the doctor might have some answers now that they had her test results.

The door opened and the doctor entered the room. Lori looked hopefully at her face. Seeing the concerned expression there, Lori’s hope began to fade. After getting through pleasantries, the doctor got down to business.

“We have the test results,” she said. “They did not show us what we were hoping for, though.”

“Is it… serious,” Lori’s mother asked.

“No, actually,” the doctor replied. “All of the tests, the scans, the x-rays, the blood tests, everything appears to be normal. Lori shows no signs of disease or injury. She appears to be in perfect health for a girl her age, of course, aside from her extraordinary growth rate this past month. Other than that, we see nothing out-of-the-ordinary about her body.”

“But… why?” Lori asked, feeling her frustration releasing. “Why is this happening? Can’t you help me? There’s got to be some way to stop this.”

“If we could figure out what might have caused this, then we might be able to help you,” the doctor replied. “Our measurements show a pretty consistent growth rate for your body. It would appear that you are getting an inch taller every day. If we run that growth back, then we could estimate when it would have started. You were five feet tall before this began? Correct?”

Lori nodded.

“Then, the growth would have started about twenty-four days ago. Can you remember what you were doing on that day?”

Lori shook her head.

“Think it over. Maybe you can remember something that happened that might have triggered this. In the meantime, I’m writing you a prescription for a medication that will block your growth hormones.”

Lori’s mother and the doctor talked over the specifics of the medication while Lori checked her phone to look up what day of the week it had been 24 days ago. On the ride home and all through dinner that night, she tried to recall what had been going back then.

Lori went to bed with only the vague notion that she had met someone new on that day. Lying there, doing her best to get comfortable on her too-small bed, she tried to mentally walk through her memories of that day as Hannah had recommended. She remembered actually walking somewhere with her mother. Where was it? Next door? “The new neighbors!” Lori said as the memories came flooding back to her.

To be continued...