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David leaned over the white kitchen counter, breathing heavily, recomposing himself. The kitchen furniture and appliances now matched his scale, but everything was still different. It wasn’t a normal human house, and his whole body felt wrong.

He opened the refrigerator, which he noticed seemed a bit small for such a wealthy family, and pulled out a plastic-covered glass dish labeled “dinner” in black marker. He rolled back the opaque plastic and found a bed of yellow rice with … chicken chunks? No. He looked closer. It was something different.

The buried lumps of meat had muscular legs … and tails.

“Kangaroos,” he whispered when realization struck, and another bout of queasiness hit him.

Cade and Conor, meanwhile, had deviated from the path to the kitchen. Their curiosity had pulled them toward their own bedroom, which they viewed in absolute awe, even as its long shadows deepened with the dying light of the late afternoon.

At their shrunken state, they trudged laboriously through the long, puffy threads of thick, lime green carpet toward their bunk beds, which towered high, cluttered with loose, crumpled bedding and plush toys that partially hung over the wooden ledges up above. A cute toy stuffed tiger’s paw beckoned silently to Cade from an unreachable distance. In the back of his mind, he felt glad that David had not seen this room during the hide and seek game — he might consider it babyish to sleep with such a thing.

Conor, on the other hand, had his eyes focused and forward, and he ran full tilt toward the deepest shadows under his bed, where a sliver of shiny purple gleamed.

“Cade! Come see if you can push me!” he yelled.

His brother complied, and quickly saw what was up — one of their toys, a purple replica Jeep Wrangler, had sat there unused for months. Now, it was almost as big as the real thing for them, and its open top allowed Conor the freedom to climb inside.

He used to grab the car and run it all over the floor, vertically over chairs and walls, and with imaginary rockets installed, he would sometimes pretend that it could fly.

“Push it, Cade!” he said, and his brother gave it his best shot.

Cade soon realized just how heavy a large chunk of wood and metal could be from a human’s perspective, especially with its rubber wheels snagged in the carpet fibers. He could barely move it an inch, and he wasn’t sure if that really happened, or if it was his imagination.

“Dude, it’s too big!” he said, huffing and puffing. Conor groaned, resisted saying “That’s what she said,” and jumped out of the slightly-too-small driver’s seat. With both boys pushing, their minds deceived them into thinking it moved about half a foot, but it still wasn’t enough.

“David could move it, if he was here,” Conor thought, and he quickly realized that he had been thinking of the human-sized version of his “big bro.” Even at this tiny stature, the teen still seemed pretty strong. At giant size — would he be stronger than most other giants?

Apropos of that thought, the twins suddenly heard and felt soft tremors from out in the hallway, gradually increasing in intensity.

“Where are you guys?” asked a booming voice in the air.

David had given up on preparing dinner and decided to go look for the kids he was being paid to watch. On one hand, he was a little worried for their safety, since they were in a giant house with no anti-crush or anti-plummeting-death protection. On the other hand, he was sick of the odd feeling of being blown up in size, and he hated the idea that he himself was a danger to the boys. With every thunderous step, he shuffled carefully. His eyes were glued to the ground in front of him, and he listened very closely for tiny voices. After he called out, he heard the faintest two-person chorus of “We’re in here!”

Cade and Conor marveled at the view of the teenage colossus turning the corner into the room and flipping on the light switch. They saw David’s concerned gaze sweep the place a couple times before finally landing on them. Even though they knew he was their friend and protector, it activated a tiny amount of instinctive panic in them to know that they had been found by something so huge. And now that huge thing was gingerly walking toward them, creating small earthquakes as he moved forward and kneeled down.

Both boys gulped, but then got over themselves quickly. As they had been walking in the massive house, they had calmed down and decided together that fear was most definitely the mind killer. Cade jumped into the Jeep’s seats first, and then Conor followed suit.

“Push us, David!” they both shouted, almost in unison.

David couldn’t help chuckling. He briefly remembered fantasizing as a child what it would be like to have a giant friend, and this simple scenario was a part of it. Safety still at the forefront of his mind, he moved his hand with the steadiness and accuracy of a surgeon. Gently gripping the back of the toy car, he moved it forward at medium speed.

Of course, anyone could guess that this left the twins nonplussed. “Faster!” they screamed, and the abrupt sound made their giant babysitter’s shoulders jump.

“OK, fine,” David thought, and proceeded to move the car across the carpet as if he were a kid playing with Hot Wheels again (except without the inevitable crashing and explosion noises).

It was obvious this new speed was satisfactory as the boys were both howling and laughing now.

“Turn on the rockets!” Conor shouted. “Make us fly!”

Cade gave his brother a sidelong “Are you crazy?” look, but braced himself as David’s giant hand obeyed. The huge teen was surprised at how realistic the purple car looked and at how light it was. How easy would it be for him to pick up his mom’s yellow Jeep at this size?

But after a few minutes of gliding the vehicle through the air, David noticed how pale, silent and still one of the boys (Cade) was in his seat, and at the same time his stomach lurched again, showing the side effects of growth magic.

Slowly, he brought the purple car to a soft landing in the middle of the room, despite Conor’s protestations. Reaching beneath his shirt, he drew out the silver emergency whistle.

“Guys, I think it’s time we went back to our real sizes again,” he said. “This ‘being a giant’ thing really gives me the heebie jeebies.”

Cade chuckled a little and stopped himself from kissing the sweet ground when he jumped off the toy Jeep, but Conor shouted up at his huge friend, “Wait David! Don’t blow the whistle yet!”

David leaned his huge face toward the boy and furrowed his brow inquisitively. “Is that you, Conor?” he asked. “I really can’t tell you guys apart from this distance. What do you need?”

Conor smiled up at the giant teen. “I got really scared when you grew before,” he said. “But I think there’s one thing you should get to do before we change sizes again. I think you should carry Cade and me to the kitchen in your hands.”

Cade balked at this at first, but then quickly calmed down. Being up high in the Jeep was frightening, but being close to David, protected in his hand, seemed kind of like a cool idea. He couldn’t articulate why. “Yeah, big bro, you should pick us up!” he said.

David sighed, a little perplexed. “I don’t know guys. I don’t think I’m as good at being a giant as you are. It’s really weird.”

The twins both ran toward his knees and whimpered, making cute puppy dog eyes.

“Come on, David!” Conor said. “I want you to feel what we feel when we pick you up and carry you! It’s really cool!”

After a few seconds, David relented, and the boys cheered. He set both of his hands down on the ground, and Cade and Conor climbed on. To them, this was yet another new experience, and their mouths hung open in wonder as they sat down and traced the ridges of their giant friend’s palm and finger prints.

Concentrating very closely on balance and speed, David raised himself up from the floor in a perfect vertical move that would make any gymnast proud, holding his cupped hands in front of his chest, and he began walking to the kitchen. It was only a short journey, but it felt longer as he drank in the experience of cradling such small, delicate life. He gently set the boys on the kitchen floor before finally putting the whistle to his lips and blowing it in a downward tone.

This time, the feeling was not as disorienting for him. In fact, it was refreshing, and when he reached his original height of 5 feet and 10 inches, he found himself smiling with a sense of calm and contentment. He didn’t even flinch at the sight of Cade’s enormous toes curling right in front of him.

Soon he was snatched up by a youthful hand and placed gently on the kitchen tabletop. “What’s for dinner?” Cade said benignly.

“Well, I found a dish with meat and rice in it for you. It should be next to the toaster over there,” David said. “I think it might have had kangaroos in it?”

“Ooh! I love roos!” Conor said, and proceeded to unwrap the meal. “But why is it still cold?”

“I couldn’t figure out how to use your giant oven,” David said. “Also I was feeling kind of gross. Do you guys eat kangaroos often?”

“We get them once in a while,” Cade said, pulling a chair up to the table and sitting down, leaning with his elbows on the surface. “They’re kind of wild tasting, but we like them. We only get to eat meat on Fridays.” He managed to sneak his hand behind David as the teenager watched Conor get the massive oven ready. With a magician’s grace, he stroked his little friend’s back with a finger, sending a tingle up David’s spine. “What will you eat for dinner?” he asked.

David had totally forgotten. “Oh! I packed something. It should be in my backpack. Can you get it from the entryway?”

Cade smiled. “No need! I’ve got your backpack right here!” He reached into his left pocket and pulled the item out, dangling it from his finger. David accepted it, thanked him and proceeded to unpack his Clif bars, his Powerade, his Slim Jim (guilty pleasure) and a pair of navel oranges. As he watched Conor set down a glass of water for Cade that could have filled two above-ground pools, realization dawned on him. “Hey Cade, since you picked up my backpack, did you grab my longboard, too?”

Cade’s face flushed. He turned to his drink and started taking a giant gulp, hoping David would think he didn’t hear the question. As luck would have it, the human’s attention was diverted by the oven’s timer going off, accompanied by some conversation from Conor.

In Cade’s right pocket, he felt the tiny lump of his guilt — the obliterated remains of David’s longboard. In fact, since the middle of the hide and seek game, he had been punished for his crime. A splinter of the thing was lodged in his left foot.

He glanced at his babysitter from over the rim of his cup, wondering how he should break the bad news.