[Wachsende]

This is my first stab at writing in this genre. The genesis of this idea came several months back at the height of the promotional onslaught for Gardasil, the HPV vaccine made by Merck. When Gov. Perry issued his executive order, I was struck by the fact that we were talking about a potentially universally administered vaccine issued to a strictly female and primarily pubescent and prepubescent population. I thought it would be the perfect mechanism for a factually-rooted, gradual GTS story. If there's interest, I'll continue to flesh out the universe and maybe experiment with an on-the-ground, character-driven story.

One Less [Part 1]
By Wachsende

It all started when the Governor of Texas issued an executive order on February 2, 2007, mandating the vaccine for all girls entering sixth grade. In the political uproar that followed, the order was pushed back until 2011. During the intervening four years, obscured by a sea of partisan bickering, was a growing trend of vaguely labeled "adverse reactions." After a 12-year-old girl died of heart failure from the vaccine, the test groups were restricted to women above the age of consent. The limited scope of the drug trials therefore failed to predict what was about to come.
Two elections later, war fatigue and economic crises had handed the liberal voting blocs overwhelming majorities in the state legislatures and Congress. The executive order in Texas passed into law June 16th, 2011. It was joined that summer by legislative mandates in seventeen other states. A federal law went into effect the following summer. The vaccine promised American girls a future free of cervical cancer and genital warts. By fall 2012, 95 percent of 11-year-old girls had been injected with the vaccine.
For the first couple years, there was no public consciousness of anything different about the freshest batch of young middle schoolers. Particularly observant parents with older daughters might have noticed that their sixth-grader was a little bit taller, a little bit stronger. She must be drinking her milk!, they probably mused. Some teachers began noting that their latest batch of girls were a particularly hearty batch, their heads poking two or three inches above the pack. Still, the early signs were subtle; girls were always bigger than boys at that age.

But by 2014, the first grade of vaccinated girls were entering high school — and the signs were becoming less and less subtle. Only a couple years earlier, freshman year had brought with it boys who had shot up over the summer to retake their place among the tallest in the grade. The boys had still shot up over the summer. But the growth of the vaccinated girls who had entered seventh grade a little heartier than those before them hadn't stopped or even slowed. Senior boys in letterman jackets walked to their lockers in the shadows of towering girls who'd been in middle school mere months before.

When America sent its Olympic team to Sochi in 2014, the oldest female athlete was 14 years of age and the average height of the female athletes was 6' 8". They took the gold in eleven events, outperforming the men's team for the first time and setting records in nine of the events.

Across the country, new home construction included higher ceilings. Fashionable clothing sizes shifted higher. High school desks were built in two sizes and assigned by gender rather than year. The Texas students who'd entered sixth-grade in 2011 attended their senior proms in the exceptionally humid spring of 2015. The photographers had trouble fitting both the heads of each couple in the frame; the top of the average boy's head came an inch or two shy of his date's underarm.

[stmercy2020]

Oh, I like where this is going.  I can't wait to see what happens when you start introducing fully-fleshed out characters. 😀

[lalolanda]

i like the premise a lot. fleshing out does indeed seem like the way to go.

[Fonk]

That's an interesting overview. I hope you do decide to expand this idea with characters, it'd be fantastic! ;D

[ratlaf]

Transport me to that world!!  I second the fleshed out characters reacting to this new world…

[00tree]

Oh, I like where this is going.  I can't wait to see what happens when you start introducing fully-fleshed out characters. 😀

Agreed!!!

[Risatara Kalja]

Great work so far, please continue sometime soon.

[Wachsende]

I spent a couple weeks developing these characters in my head, where I wanted them to start and where I intend them to go; I finally sat down today and hammered this out in one sitting. Expect at least two or three more entries to these characters. The reason I'm drawn to gradual growth stories is because the characters get to develop as much as their bodies do. Part one offers just the first hints of the journey to come.

Shortest Girl in Her Grade [Part 1]
by Wachsende

SEPTEMBER 2011

The school year began like any other. I was waiting at the bus stop at 7:15 in the morning, pacing back and forth along the corner, certain my best friend Conner would miss the bus. Two sets of footsteps echoed down the street, prematurely cut off by a high-pitched scream.
I turned around to see the distant shape of Connor's back, hands thrown up in the air out of frustration. Sarah — a tiny little fireball at about 4' 4" — was panting several yards further back, fists balled, staring daggers at her older brother.
"Mom told you to wait for me!"
Connor threw his head back and groaned, pantomiming a strangulation but proceeding no further.
"I'm not going sit around and miss the bus because of you!"
"It's my first day at middle school! You promised you'd stick with me!"
It was a routine I was well-used to; though we'd started at the middle school two Septembers prior, Sarah never-the-less followed him every afternoon and summer since. For all of his grumbling and theatrics, Connor has always been very fond of his sister and enjoyed her admiration for him. Being Connor's best friend meant being Sarah's best friend too.
They finally made it to the stop sign just as the bus rolled off the main street. Sarah'd always looked young for her age, but it never really stood out when it was just the three of us. Glancing around at the other new six graders, I noticed she was easily the smallest by a good four or five inches. I was glad Connor had waited for her; kids could be really cruel.

* * *

Connor and I had lucked into the same homeroom teacher for eighth grade, Mr. Poole. Known as the most eccentric science teacher by far in the school, he always had interesting experiments for his classes set up on the black lab tables each morning. His notorious lack of focus meant that each day's equipment provided more than enough entertainment for the fifteen minutes before bell. We were smart enough never to mess with the chemicals he occasionally had set up, however.
As for Sarah, Connor had to pull aside a couple bullies early on. Afterwards, however, she fell in with a popular and energetic group of girls and we didn't see as much of her afterwards. Before long, Christmas had already passed and we were rolling around to better weather again. Though we enjoyed our time as top of the heap, it wasn't long before we were counting down the days until summer — our voices now awkwardly frog-like at times.

* * *

JUNE 2012

On the last Thursday in June, Connor and I scrambled off the bus for the last time. We were only a few steps down the road, already deep in discussion about plans for soccer games and tree house forts when Connor abruptly stopped.
"Shit! Where's Sarah? Mom's not going to be home until five and I've got the key." We turned around, and watched the dispursing crowd of our classmates, already laughing and lightfooted in glow of fresh summer.
Sarah was still the smallest of the lot by a few inches, but looking around at her classmates that no longer seemed such a damning statement.
"Jeez, the girls weren't that tall when we were in sixth grade, were they?" I muttered. Connor shrugged noncommittally. I wiped sweat off my forehead with my hand as we waited. It was probably just the heat.
After waving off the last of her friends, Sarah tromped over, glowering darkly at no one in particular.
"I told mom! Didn't I tell her? Everybody's going to camp this summer. Everybody! Apparently it wasn't too far away for their parents!"
Connor put his hand on her shoulder and sighed sympathetically.
"Yeah sis, but the thing you've got to realize is that our mom's an overprotective psycho."
His concurrence threw sent her into a fresh attack against their mother and, ducking out from under his hand, she stomped ahead, consuming the entire walk home with a detailed explanation of why this summer life was more unfair for her than any one else.

* * *

SETEMBER 2012

As I stood waiting at the bus stop, now a half-hour earlier than the summer before, I thought back almost nostalgically to the year prior. After spending all summer hanging out with Sarah, it was weird to see Connor walking quietly up the street alone. By the end of the summer, Sarah had come within half a foot of our heights. That meant that instead of merely being a tag along, she was actually big enough to participate in our games. Since most of the neighborhood boys also turned out to have gone away to camp, this was lucky. Where last year she was at the bottom of the pile and we were kings, this year it was our turn at the bottom.

* * *

Our new homeroom teacher was also a science teacher, but he didn't set up before his lessons and certainly wouldn't have permitted our playing around with them if he'd had. In fact, the one time we arrived after the bell resulted in a week's worth of detentions.
The bullies were merciless. I evaded a swirlie only by a well-placed kick in the shins on my part and a particularly sweat grip on the bully's. Connor got shoved into a locker twice during that first month. Despite significant growth spurts on both our parts over the course of the year, the girls stubbornly remained just an inch or two taller than us (and, indeed, most of the boys in our grade). The spring formal was known for being an awkward affair, the first dressy dance for any of us. Based on the grumbling heard in the locker room before gym class the Monday after, however, I gathered it was, by general consensus, more awkward for us than our predecessors; in their heels, the girls in our grade positively towered over us.
Still, by June awkward glances were covertly exchanged. Notes were passed hastily under desks. Hands were clasped awkwardly in the halls when no seemed to be looking.
All in all, it was a pretty standard freshmen year — often miserable but occasionally wonderful.

* * *

JUNE 2013

Though I'd hung out at Connor's house as often as he'd hung out at mine, Sarah was nowhere to be found. So consumed was her time by her clique of a dozen or so girls, I never really thought twice about her absence.
Meanwhile, most of our fellow freshmen were headed off to sleep-away camp this year where, doubtless, the sly early impulses awakened during the spring would blossom into early, tentative sexual exploration. Connor and I were insanely jealous. My parents couldn't afford to send me and his mom had become no less protective over the year; if day camp had been a dangerous proposition, then sleep-away camp was surely out of the question.
With nothing better to do, we plopped down on the asphalt corner and chatted away the forty minutes or so until the middle school bus rolled down the street. Connor had assured me that Sarah was just as jealous of her classmates as we were of ours. All the other kids spending their days in the neighborhood were ten or younger, so I was more than happy to wait for Sarah — by all indications still a tomboy and the closest kid left to our own age.
When kids started pouring out of the bus, I thought for a moment there was some mistake; these girls looked almost the same age as our classmates! But as they fanned out, I saw boys looking much as we had looked in eighth grade emerge from between pairs of shoulder blades. Whatever I had thought I'd seen the previous June wasn't just the heat talking; I looked over at Connor, who looked equally shocked.
"I thought Sarah was just an early bloomer," he whispered to me. "I didn't know they were all like that!"
The gender height difference wasn't as pronounced between the seventh-graders as it was with the eighth graders. But while Sarah, one of the last of seventh graders to filter out of the bus, was still easily the shortest of the seventh-grade girls she now towered over the boys.
She said her goodbyes to her friends and then sprinted lightly over toward us. She still that chocolate mane of untamed hair tucked instinctively behind her ears and those mischievous, watery blue eyes that peered aggressively out from a face quite pale like her brother's. But she was just starting to show the earliest signs of curves in her figure, and standing up, I was astounded to find that my eyes — so used to glancing down at the top of her head well below my shoulders — now couldn't quite see over the top of her head.
I looked down and met her gaze, which peered up from a height just above my chin. She, who had seen as little of me over the past year as I had seen of her, was visibly a little startled as well — though I noticed that she recovered almost immediately. Clearly she had become used to finding herself taller than she might have expected.
"Hey you! Long time no see? How was your first year at high school? Connor's told me some awful stories!" She gave a little theatrical shiver, and launched right into a spirited retelling of her second year at middle school. By the time we had made it back to our houses all was as it always had been between the three of us, though for the first time an onlooker might casually suspect we were all classmates.

* * *

The summer proceeded in its usual hot, humid fashion. With both of my parents working during the day now, and their mom's duties now extended into most of the evening, our days from 9 to 5 were filled with greater freedom than ever before. If last summer Sarah had finally been big enough to do more than tag along, this summer she was proved equal to every adventure we could conjure up. Some days would feature miles-long bike rides into the country. Others were spent in the town pool, fooling around in the shallow end and inventing increasingly creative jumps off the diving boards. Still more were spent building haphazard additions to the treehouse between our yards out of the scrap wood we found laying around the neighborhood.
At the beginning of summer, Connor and I would take turns lifting Sarah and tossing her into the pool. As the days wore on, it took us longer and longer to do. By the last week of July, it took both of us working together a good five minutes of real struggle on the concrete to finally get her into the pool. At the beginning of the summer, either Connor or I had to be up in the treehouse to help her lift the rather sizable boards from the person below. By the end of the summer, she was the one handing the boards up to the two of us.
As the summer sped along, my eyes had to travel less and less down to find hers. By the beginning of July, I only had to look down to the level of my mouth. By the end of July, only to the height of my nose.
The banter among us remained largely the same, but all three of us could feel an intangible change slowly filtering into our dynamic.
At the beginning of August, I spent a week with my parents on the Cape. After unpacking, I ran out to the backyard where Connor and Sarah were hard at work on the ever-swelling treehouse.
"Hey guys, I'm back! The beach was awesome!" I yelled in greeting, fresh from a fun time, but happy to be back in the thick of things. A flurry of hands, some pointing up and some down, waved back happily.
As I approached, I noticed Sarah was pulling at a thick board a bit larger than we'd ever attempted before up to Connor, his head and arms dangling down from the hole in the floor.
"Hey, Sarah! Need any help with that?"
She nodded casually, and hefted the board up to Connor with only a little effort visible. Connor strained at least as much as he pulled it up the little remaining distance.
As I closed the gap between us, Sarah used her now-free arms to pull me into a quick, friendly hug. As she released, she stood straight and I realized we were seeing each other eye-to-eye for the first time. She realized it too, and for a moment we paused and just stared. Then her eyebrows popped up and she looked down at our feet. While I was wearing socks and sneakers, she was completely barefoot.
We met each others eyes again. I met her gaze for a good long while, knowing it was likely to be the last time the two of us ever met eye to eye.
She was as shocked as I was, but also a little amused. I knew without her having to say anything that things between the three of us would never be the same.

[Wachsende]

Sorry about the overabundance of italics; I forgot to close the tag on the Every in Everybody. By the time I figured it out, it was too late to edit.

[Risatara Kalja]

Happens.. but the story is a great read. 😀

[Author]

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