Borrowed Courage

Chapter Eight

"I'm home!" Kaleb called out to no one in particular as he pushed open the door to his family's apartment. Silence greeted him, as it usually did at that time of day. It wasn't that his parents and siblings weren't home, per se (although knowing his older brother, he'd definitely still be out doing whatever he did to pass time). They just didn't tend to linger out in the main rooms in the evening.

He supposed he hadn't been completely honest with Brooke in that regard. The Finch family might rent out their own apartment and use its ammenities when they could, but at their core, they were still borrowers, and borrowers merely preferred living in the walls.

"We're just creatures of habit, son." His father had told him growing up, but Kaleb now knew there was more to it than that. The idea even got tossed around at school on occasion.

Borrowers had evolved as a species by adhering to one simple concept: remaining undetected in a world of giants. Every time they ventured out into the open on supply runs, their senses were primed with adrenalin, only letting up once they'd returned to the safety of the walls. Things may have changed drastically for his kind over the last decade, but that didn't discount the centuries of adaptation that had brought them there.

It was why Kaleb could never fully relax when in open spaces, even while human-sized. Of course, that made taking Upsize on the daily even more exhausting.

Speaking of...

His head throbbed; a glaring reminder of his current time predicament. Kaleb checked his phone with a frown. Missing the bus had set him back at least forty minutes. Usually, he would take a large enough dose to last him through the school day, factoring an extra hour to organise himself for studying each night. It was almost ironic that walking home with Brooke Tucker of all people had killed most of that time.

Kaleb worked quickly. He turned into his human-sized bedroom, which was really more of a storage space than anything. There was a thin mattress and bed frame he'd found at a thrift store, as well as the old bike he had leant against the wall. He'd built his desk himself as one of his first 'Upsized projects' back in middle school, out of an old slab of timber and two saw horses repurposed from the local dump. An up-cycled shelf crafted with the same borrower flair stood beside it, filled with knick knacks and trinkets he'd collected while human-sized.

It was beside that shelf that Kaleb placed his schoolbag, quickly removing his notebooks and laptop. The latter went on charge for the following day, but he kept it open on his desk in case he needed to access it throughout the night. His notebooks were placed beside it, and with practiced motions, he went about taking photos of each new page he'd completed in class that day. After a pause, he took a photo of the task sheet for his latest assignment, too. Just in case.

That done, Kaleb let out the sigh he'd been holding in and reached for a seemingly nondescript powerpoint mounted in line with the surface of his bedside table. It opened outward on two hinges to reveal his usual entrance into the walls. Carefully, he pushed his phone inside, the opening barely wide enough to get his hand through while human-sized.

BADUMP.

A sudden wave of pain shot through his body like a pounding heartbeat, and Kaleb grimaced. His time was almost up. "Alright, alright, I'm going, I'm going." He muttered under his breath, lying back on the springy mattress of his human bed. All that was left to do now was wait.

The full-body ache he'd just experienced was only the first stage; almost like a warning for the vertigo that followed. Closing his eyes helped, but as the shrinking process kicked in, Kaleb still felt like he was falling sideways, his brain unable to keep up with the sudden shift in perspective. He lay there for a few minutes after it was over, breathing heavily from the exertion. Over time, he'd gotten used to most of the side effects that came with regular use of Upsize, but the actual size changes never got any easier. It didn't exactly help that they were over in less than a minute.