In-Between (Diaper Dimension)

Chapter 5
Demotions

SATURDAY MORNING, I found myself still intensely studying trying to avoid thinking of Beth. An hour before lunch, my dad called, “Cameron!”

“Hi Dad,” I told him.

“How are you doing? Things still going well?”

“I guess… Classes are at least.”

“What’s wrong?”

I sighed, “It’s Beth…”

“Oh… I ran into her dad at the store yesterday…” He said sadly.

“What did he say?” I asked, hopeful something good would have been said.

“Well… after they got her text that she was giving up, they got their lawyer involved. He dad is at least a Big… so that helps of course, but he’s also a donor to Emerson. He’s trying to see if he can re-adopt her, or at least get visitation rights…”

“If they can re-adopt her?” I paused, “That would be great!”

“Well… obviously the courts would insist on her being treated appropriately for her Maturosis… it wouldn’t be just going home, right?”

I felt myself shaking then, “No…”

“I don’t know… she might be better off just with the visitation rights Cam,” he told me.

I just sat in silence for a moment before saying, “I might at least be able to see her if she was back home…”

“If she wanted you to?”

“She insisted on saying goodbye to me after she turned herself over,” I told him. “She made the lady bring her to see me… She was… well, she was already in her new clothes.”

“At least you got to say goodbye?”

I sighed, “Yeah, I guess that’s more than her parents got. I hope something works out for them… but more importantly I hope Beth doesn’t end up with one of them.”

I could feel his nod, “Yeah, there’s definitely plenty of that around here. Look, you have to keep going Cameron, you can’t mope for her. I promise things have a way of working out – she was smart enough not to fight things, so she should be okay.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“What else are you up to?”

“Well… I’m going to meet this girl for lunch and to study…”

“Alright! Who is she?”

“Her name is Addison,” I told him. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met honestly…”

“What’s so special about her?”

“Well, she’s like a giant… I mean seriously she’s the tallest girl I’ve ever met in person.”

“How tall?”

“Twelve-foot, eight,” I told him.

“That is tall!” he said. “Is that wise? Beth just…”

I sighed, “I don’t honestly know Dad. I’m pretty protected here at Emerson as long as I have Mid status.”

“Maybe it would be better…” he sighed, “What the hell? What can I say? I did the same thing with your mom…”

“Look I’ll be careful, but she also seemed to feel bad for a little the other day that we both watched get in trouble in our lab.” I paused, “I don’t know, I get the feeling that maybe she’s different?”

“I hope you’re right,” he told me.

We talked for another half-hour before I made an excuse to get off the phone and gathered my stuff.

I had a hard copy of the textbook for Chemistry I had bought at Dad’s insistence. While I really preferred an eBook version on my tablet, he asserted it was easier to get away from a device and really study with a real book. Since he was the one who really paid for my books… Well, I went along with it since it was the one thing not covered by my scholarships! I threw the heavy monstrosity into my backpack, along with my lab notebook from our Chem Lab, and some other notes I had taken on another old-fashioned notebook.

I locked the door and wondered briefly where my roommate had ended up the night before. ‘Maybe he went home for the weekend?’ I thought. I hadn’t seen Jason a whole lot the past week since he’d made friends with someone in another dorm. It was weird he hadn’t been back at all last night though.  

I reached the cafeteria pretty quickly and walked around to see if Addison was already there. Not seeing her, I decided to just go ahead and get a tray of food, and a table meant for mixed sizes that was open. I used the tall stool’s steps to climb up, and hoped no one would think I was a little sitting there. The truth was I had no desire to sit at a Big table and struggle to reach, or use a booster seat like I saw several doing around the large room. I was just noticing that one of the nest mothers had one of her charges sitting next to her in a booster seat. I stared as she was velcroing a bib around her neck when Addison suddenly appeared.

“Hi Cameron, good pick of a table!” she told me with a smile and took a seat on the opposite side meant for Bigs.

“Hi Addison,” I told her.

“Call me Addy,” she told me, “If we’re going to be friends Addison is way too uptight.”

I smiled, “Okay, hi Addy.”

She smiled that gorgeous giant smile at me and I felt like I would probably do just about anything for her right then!

“So, first week of classes down. What did you do to celebrate last night?”

I grimaced, “Not much, stayed in and studied. Didn’t feel much like going out honestly,” I told her.

“Something wrong?”

I grimaced, “Yeah, but don’t worry about it. Just something a friend of mine is going through,” I added.

“Oh…” She looked at me and asked, “Anything I can do?”

“Nope, what’s done is done,” I told her and forced a smile. “What did you do last night?”

“Oh, I just went out with my parents for dinner. They hadn’t seen me since they dropped me off and wanted to see me.”

“Free food from the ‘rents is never a bad thing, huh?” I smiled at her. “You enjoy it?”

She shrugged, “On one hand I do miss them – even though it’s not like this campus is that far from my house.”

“How far away did you grow up?”

“Oh, just about twenty minutes or so - out in the suburbs. I could commute here every day, but my parents insisted I stay on campus so I could get the ‘full college experience.’ I don’t mind that though, because last night was tough enough with my mom still thinking I was her baby… Geeze, you think you grow up, but when she’s even taller than you still it doesn’t help.” She shook her head and took a bite of food.

“She’s taller than you?” I asked in surprise before taking another bite of some pasta.

She swallowed and laughed, “Yeah, she’s got three inches on me - and will never let me forget it.” She smiled, “But at least I have two inches on my dad!”

“I can’t imagine being that tall,” I told her honestly. “It would have been nice to at least get to my dad’s height though.”

“You’re only eighteen, right?”

I nodded.

“You could actually still grow in the next year or two. Who knows, maybe you’ll pick up a few more inches still?”

I laughed, “Inches versus your feet!”

She told me about her little sister who was three years younger than her too, Danica. It sounded like they fought a lot when she was still at home, and apparently, she’d skipped the family dinner to do something at school. We talked about our backgrounds and what we liked to do for the next hour even after we finished eating. “Well, where do you want to study?” She asked me.

I shrugged, “How about one of the lounges in this building? I haven’t really been in them much yet, but they had some couches and chairs that looked fairly comfortable?”

“Sounds good!” She said to me. I climbed down the stool and grabbed my backpack. She had her own and we walked to the lounge nearby that was occupied only by one other person studying. We picked a set of individual chairs across the room from him to setup at.

“So where are you struggling?” I asked her, and we got to work on studying.

It turned out that she was bright, but for whatever reason hadn’t had a good chemistry education in high school. It didn’t help that she wasn’t a fan of math either… With that knowledge I took a few steps back to re-explain something that Professor Casio talked through really quickly in our class. After two hours of helping her she said, “You taught me more in the last two hours than I learned in an entire year of chemistry in high school… or any of the tutors my parents hired...”

I smiled, “Glad to hear it.”

“I need to go get ready for an event my mom’s old sorority is hosting, but how about I take you out to dinner on Friday as a thank you?”

My stomach did a few flip-flops right then. “Umm… sure, where?”

She smiled, “I know of a few good places. I’ll make reservations. Do you have a sports coat?”

I nodded, “Yes, though I don’t wear it often.”

“Why not?”

I sighed, “I’m legally past the point of being a Little, but I’m always worried about the same things that Littles are about appearances. Looking like you’re dressing up too much can look bad…”

“That was honest of you,” she told me. “I promise with you as my date though no one will dare say anything.”

“Date?” I raised my eyebrow.

“Date. I like you, and you’re the first guy… or really person, I’ve ever met that hasn’t been obviously wanting to befriend me for my money.”

I laughed, “You’re beautiful enough you don’t need that as a reason.”

“And you, what you don’t have in height you make up for in brains and personality. It’ll piss my parents off to see us dating – and I’m also okay with that!”

“Is that a good idea…?”

She laughed, “You’re a Mid, you’re safe. If you were really a little, or diagnosed with a case of Maturosis as a Mid, then we might have a problem. I don’t think we’re in danger of that though.”

I smiled, feeling a bit better about our new relationship. “Okay, date it is.”

I arrived back at our room to find the door open. “Made it back Jason?” I asked as I walked in the door.

It was then that I realized Jason had made it back… and… he had the Littles Dean with him. “Oh, good afternoon ma’am,” I said politely. “I’m Cameron,” I said politely while looking up at her imposing form.

“Hmm… I’m Dean Sanders,” she said looking at me like she was deciding to see if she was going to scrape a bug off of her shoe. “This one should have taken your lead on learning how to be mature and behave.”

It was then that I took in Jason’s appearance and tried not to run out of the room screaming. He was a foot taller than me, but clearly dressed in a Little’s uniform, complete with a thickly padded rear end!

I had no response to that, and she took that to mean an affirmation, “How did you spend your Friday evening?” she asked me.

I shrugged, “I worked on some homework and a paper that’s coming up for my technical writing class.”

“Did you now?” She asked. “You’re not just lying?”

“I can show you the timestamps on the files if you’d like,” I told her with a smile, “I had probably the lamest Friday night of anyone on campus,” I told her. ‘Excepting the poor Littles,’ I allowed.

“And just now, where are you coming from?”

“I was having a study session to help a friend out with Chemistry.”

“Indeed?” She asked.

“Who?”

“Addison Harris?”

She looked at me like I had grown horns then. “Why?”

“We’re lab partners and I helped her out this week. I’m good at Chemistry,” I told her. “I know I’m just barely a Mid, but we get along quite well.”

“Do you?” She asked. I was pretty sure in her mind she was appraising how I would look dressed like Jason right then, but decided that wouldn’t be her move then.

“We seem to, at least? We have a date for dinner scheduled for Friday again,” I told her.

“Hmm… Well, I hate to have to inform you of this, but young Jason here has unfortunately not followed your mature lead. He was caught partying and drinking alcohol last night. The fact that he’s underage is bad enough, but he also can’t hold his liquor apparently! He had a big accident in his whittle pants when security picked him up. We’ve decided he’s going to be better off over in Wenig where we have a more appropriate and caring environment all setup for him. We know the staff will be able to properly look out for him the way he needs. Luckily, we have plenty of newly open beds that we can put him into. I think we have just about all of his things out of here. If you find anything else, would you please just drop it off at my office?”

“Umm… sure ma’am, be happy to.” I told her.

I gave a long look at Jason, and couldn’t help but feel bad for the guy. He was still crying from the humiliation that was likely only just beginning. I knew, like me, that he would probably blend into a preschool or kindergarten setting quite well. There were too many parents that liked to also have littles who were continually failing at their potty training when they were too old for diapers… I had a feeling Jason may have unfortunately just found his way on the road to becoming one of them. The uniform he wore, along with the ID badge around his neck, now denoted him as legally nothing more than a Little.

“Umm… Good luck Jason,” I told him as a large Amazon guy came back with a cart that they loaded with his last possessions to take to his new dorm.

As they walked away with her holding his hand, I sighed in relief that I was still dodging bullets.

I was still staring at the empty side of the room a few minutes later with the door open when Grant came by. “Dude, where’s your roommate’s stuff?”

“On its way over to Wenig with him,” I told him.

“Dude! He was nearly my height!”

“Yeah… I think the lesson of the week is that no one is safe…”

“You okay?”

“Yeah… Thank God I was a boring nerd last night, and stayed in to study. I swear she was looking at me as needing to be given a Maturosis diagnosis too…”

“Fucking Amazons are nuts…” he said to me.

I just nodded.

“Well, at least you can have all sorts of wild and crazy sex in your room now and won’t have a roommate to care?”

I raised my eyebrows, “Not sure that drawing attention to myself is a good idea at all right now.”

“Yeah man… I get that. We’re going to set up a gaming session tonight in the lounge, you want to join us?”

I thought for a second and shrugged, “Sure…”

I enjoyed the time of playing some role-playing games with him and a few others from our dorm that night. It was something that took my mind off of height and forced babyhood for a while at least.

By the middle of the week, I noticed that there seemed to be a significant number of Littles gone from my classes. Meg and another girl, Laura, were some of the few that I still had to talk to at lunches. I tended to eat dinner later with my Mid friends, and Addison in the evening, when the littles were supposed to be in bed. On Thursday I was sitting in Chemistry class and heard one of the loudest farts I’d ever heard outside of a bathroom! It actually stopped Professor Casio from speaking for a moment, and everyone scanned the room to look to see who might have done it.

Suddenly my eyes landed on my former roommate, who I hadn’t even realized was in that class before because he had been skipping all of his classes. He was acting… Well... suspicious. I wasn’t the only one who noticed his behavior, and when we all heard another fart, all of his body turned red. One of the girl T.A.s walked over to him and, “Stand up please…”

She turned him to where his back was to her and we all watched the horror show as she pulled the back of his elasticized pants and diaper open. “Whoopsies! We have a wittle boy who made a big pwesent in his diapees! Guess we better take you to Dean Sanders…”

He walked by and I could see tears in his eyes as his face was bright red. Only a student Little on campus for less than a week… Unfortunately for him, Dean Sanders must have decided he had his demerits, because I never saw him again.

With all of the beds that were probably now available in Wenig, I made sure that I went to classes, did my homework, and otherwise stayed out of the Bigs' way.

One thing I did start doing the day after Jason was demoted to Wenig, was to begin growing out my beard. Dad had always insisted it was one of his best tricks to seeming like an adult amongst the taller people. While he had a couple feet on me, I hoped it would help out the same for me if I didn’t look cute and baby faced.