✅ Younger Than You Think?

"5: Fitting Room"

Iriña edged sideways into the fitting room, a small mountain of clothes piled up in her arms. There were a lot of things she wanted to try on, and she was sure that she would end up buying at least half of them. Or her parents would; anyway. As she moved sideways through the gap, she felt something tug slightly. She paused, not wanting to snag or damage anything whether or not she was going to buy it. But a closer inspection revealed that the problem was her bracelet. The fitting room here in Gimlett's had a curtain to pull across rather than a door, and the bracelet's clasp had snagged on a frayed edge.

She struggled for a few seconds, trying to work out how to unhook it when both of her hands were occupied with the pile of garments to try. She tried grabbing the curtain between two fingers, thinking that if she could tug it over this way a little, she could drop the pile in her hands onto the little seat, and then have a free hand to untangle that chain. But she couldn't get a grip, and the clothes went tumbling onto the floor. She gave an annoyed grunt, and tried to pull the little chain free. But she could see now that it was already broken; all she could manage was to put it in her pocket for later.

Hopefully somebody would still find it, in case it was needed. It was a MedicAlert bracelet, with a caduceus on one side and details of her important medical conditions on the other. Of course, there wasn't room in four small lines of text for all of her medical history, so this one instead just contained the most important detail – that giving her any kind of sedatives was risking her life – and the phone numbers of a few doctors who were familiar enough with her history to give advice in any unexpected situation. Still, it wasn't likely she was going to be in an accident or anything.

With that problem out of her mind, she bent down and started to pick up some clothes. She had sharp business suits; designer jeans; and a couple of skimpier outfits that Mum would almost certainly object to but then reluctantly allow her to get. It was a bit weird, Iriña realised, because it was certainly inappropriate for her to be wearing something like that. Outfits that would be so revealing, if there was anything for them to reveal.

Iriña resented her body, just a little. She was five years old, but the drugs she'd taken when she was a newborn had stunted her growth. She looked more like three or four, and she didn't know if she would ever be fully adult. Almost every child her own age was shorter than her. But what was worse was that they weren't her peers. The kids she talked to at school were seventeen and eighteen, and she had a lot more in common with them than with anyone in her age bracket. She thought like an adult, and she felt like an adult. She was sure she even had almost-mature emotions; she understood romance and attraction as well as any of them, even if the nightmare of puberty was still a long way in the future. Still, at times she wished she could look like one of her classmates, just so that people would take her seriously.

But she could feel a little more comfortable today. The ceiling in this fitting room was a little less than five feet above the floor, and she might be able to touch it if she stretched her arm up and jumped a little. The chairs were the right height for her here, and the door handles were where she could reach them. Visiting this town once every other year wasn't just about buying clothes that would fit her without making her look like a baby. It was about feeling like she fit in.

They called it Titansville, which was apparently a reference to something in pop culture from the previous century. A gated community had grown into a small town, where people of below average height could walk around in a world that felt more comfortable. Everything was in reach for a change, and it meant that dressmakers and tailors who were willing to work outside the constraints of the human median didn't have to limit themselves to selling online. And when customers came to be measured and fitted, a lot of them would decide to come back and live here one day.

Iriña was one of few visitors who came with her parents. There were friends here she could hang out with, who had a similar life experience, but they didn't exactly have the same situation. Daisy, Clark, Wallace, and Benton had all talked to her before she met them in real life; and they all knew what it was like to have someone talk down to you because of their size. But their problem was almost the opposite. Iriña was five, nearly six, with the mind of an eighteen year old and then body of a four year old. Daisy, on the other hand, was finally eighteen now, with her intellect maybe lagging a couple of months behind the average, but she still looked just as small as Iriña. Rather than being stunted, her growth had halted entirely when she contracted the Wilcox-Kapersky virus.

Iriña envied Daisy, because she could legally drink once someone accepted her ID, and she was free to get a job and buy her own house here. That was just what she'd done; she was sitting behind the cash register in Gimlett's Womenswear right now. Daisy envied Iriña, on the other hand, because she would grow over the next few years, and might some day find her body developing like it was supposed to. Other residents here didn't look like children at all, they were just adults scaled down, or with unusually short legs. Iriña couldn't even imagine how it would feel to grow up like that, but she imagined they had their own problems that she would never be able to understand.

It was wonderful that all these people had been able to come together and make a place that was comfortable for them. And a place where Iriña could find clothes that matched the age of her mind, not her body. She picked up the top shirt from a now-untidy pile, and tried it on.

Even after a little mishap, it still felt incredible that she was in a town where she could go into a store and buy something without being asked where her parents were. Or she could go into the Irish-themed pub, walk up to a bar that was a comfortable height for her, and be asked for her ID. She couldn't buy beer of course; and she didn't see why anybody would want to. But for everything where the law hadn't drawn a hard line in the sand, she would be treated as the age she acted, regardless of her experience.

The euphoria of being able to be herself just turned her world around, just like every year. And before she even walked out of Gimlett's fitting room, having chosen a dozen varied outfits to buy, she knew that nothing could possibly bother her today.