Always His Baby

Chapter 3
Lost

Chapter Description: Will Sheridan be able to convince anyone of her real age?

Robin moves forward and kneels behind the screaming child, carefully putting a hand to her back and slowly rubbing, though she looks a little worried by this.

"Hey, hey. What’s the matter?" She asks, softly; "Did you have a nightmare, sweetie?"

Sheridan roughly tugs away from Robin’s touch. She wants to slap her hand away. Of course she had a nightmare. And it’s still going on. It won’t stop, no matter how hard she pulls her hair or pinches herself or screams. Robin and Jake continue to tower over her like it’s perfectly normal. She’s awoken into a world of giants. No, that would probably be a better situation because at least she’d still have her stunning figure.

Jake stands in the doorway, frowning a little, though looking more perplexed than concerned that his girlfriend is now a decade or so younger. And in hysterics. He doesn’t even seem aware of the horror. No one does.

"W-what’s goin’ on? What’s wrong w-with me?" Sheridan finally asks, testing out her younger voice again, snivelling a little as she tries to fight back frightened tears.

"Nothing’s wrong, honey. I think you just had a bad dream. All over now though. You’re safe here. Your daddy wouldn’t let me babysit you otherwise, would he now?"

Sheridan’s jaw hangs open. Babysitter?

This...geeky brat is her babysitter?!

"I d-don’t need a babysitter. I’m fifteen years old! Tell her, baby!" She looks over to the bemused Jake in the doorway, whose eyes widen a little. Mainly from being called ’baby’ by a small kid.

He and Robin share a look and Sheridan sees her mouth the words ’play along’. Jake smirks and nods.

"That’s right! She’s the cutest fifteen year old I’ve ever known." Jake humours her, lazily. "And the tiniest."

"Ah. Of course. I completely forgot. Silly me." Robin grins.

The little play between them makes Sheridan fume; a fiery pout forming on her face. Was this really just a joke between the two of them? They must really know what has happened to her. That this isn’t her real age. They know and they’re messing with her head. If that really was true then she wasn’t getting the joke at all. It was sick.

Robin pats her back again; "Come on, little miss teen. Let’s get you ready for school. Then you can play ’growing up’ with all your friends at lunch."

She tries to reach out to her again but Sheridan dodges her hand and runs to tackle Jake’s legs, throwing her arms around his knees and looking up at him with big, tearful eyes. Her head only just meets his stomach.

Sheridan Tyler doesn’t cry. Only babies cry. But it’s becoming a struggle to stay strong with this disaster happening.

"Jake, it’s me! Sheridan!" She tries to plead with him, growing more distraught by the detached frown he gives her in response; "Whatever’s happened, just...make it stop! Please...This can’t be real."

Jake looks to his sister again; "Think she’s taking this a little bit too far. You’ve been letting her watch too much lame TV with you."

"I’m telling the truth!" She hollers, jumping a little in frustration, partially aware of how that only serves to make her look more childish; "You must know who I am. How could you forget? I’m your girlfriend!"

This time Jake can’t resist bursting out with laughter. And he might as well be tearing Sheridan’s heart into tiny pieces before crushing them under his foot.

Robin shakes her head and moves forward again, taking Sheridan’s hand.

"All right, sweetie, enough of this now. I know you’ve got a very active imagination but I need to get you dressed for school." She coaxes, trying to imitate her mother’s firm tone.

Sheridan is so shell-shocked that she can’t even seem to find the energy to keep vehemently denying that she is a child. Instead she’s quiet and malleable as Robin takes her aside, watching with dismay as Jake leaves without a single care or thought for her. How could he do this? They were in love, for god’s sake. He chewed her out for kissing other blokes and yet he doesn’t even recognise her just because she’s suddenly younger.

Neither did Robin as she tried to get Sheridan into the red gingham dress and cardigan that must be her school uniform. It snaps Sheridan out of her stunned daze a little and she shakes her head, stepping back and wrapping her arms around herself.

"No. No way, not wearing that." She scowls at the outfit. And no way was she going to Primary school.

"You can hardly go wearing my brother’s football shirt now, can you?" Robin retorts with a grin; "Look, I know school uniforms are silly. They don’t get much better at Secondary, trust me."

Sheridan couldn’t agree with that. At least she was able to alter the top and shirt of her Secondary uniform to fit the curves on her adult body. Here, in this reduced state, she has nothing to work with.

She continued to try to fight Robin on both having to wear the outfit and going to school. But Robin is still convinced that she’s just playing a game of make pretend. Sheridan racks her brain on how to convince the little dweeb she’s telling the truth but her mind draws a blank. This is all just too surreal to know how to deal with it. Why did they teach all sorts of nonsense in school but not the best way to handle being spontaneously made younger?

Eventually, for the sake of not giving herself a headache, she takes the outfit from Robin, but on condition she dresses herself which Robin praises her for. Sheridan wants to slap her but she can’t reach. She puts on the dress, though ties the cardigan around her waist to add a bit of style, then adds the dreaded anklet socks and Mary-Jane shoes to her feet. She scowls at her reflection in the mirror. This is all kinds of wrong.

Robin spots her mood and reaches out; "Why don’t I do something with your hair to sort it out? Do you want it braided? I could probably have time to crimp it."

Sheridan visibly cringed at the thought of crimped hair. As if it were the mid 90’s.

"Just let me have a pony-tail." She demands from her ’sitter’ and she puts her hair up herself with one of the blue ties Robin hands her.

There. At least she managed to avoid looking ’cute’.

"Very trendy!" Robin smiles, obviously putting on a positive front to counter Sheridan’s grumpy position.

Sheridan scoffs. The kid wouldn’t know trendy if she got hit round the head with a copy of Cosmo.

She has to face the inevitable route of going downstairs where Jake and Robin’s mum sees her and also greets her as if she were a stupid child, putting on a big smile and that cheery voice along with an offering of pancakes. To be fair, the pancakes weren’t bad. And Sheridan quickly thought that she didn’t have to worry too much about dieting in this body. She’s quiet as she sits at the table, avoiding looking at Jake who doesn’t even regard her as he mulls around the house and she just eats her breakfast.

"Are you okay, Sheridan, honey? You don’t seem yourself." Robin’s mum asks.

No kidding, she thought bitterly. But she doesn’t respond. The woman will just think that she’s playing a game as well. When, in reality, it’s someone else playing a twisted one on her.

"She’s been down all morning." Robin comments, as if Sheridan couldn’t speak for herself; "Pretty sure she had a nightmare last night but she won’t talk about it."

"Maybe she just misses her dad." Robin’s mum replied before smiling at Sheridan again; "He was only away for one night, dear. You’ll see him after school. We can give his mobile a ring now, if you want to talk to him?"

Sheridan froze. Dad. Maybe she should talk to him. Maybe he could...

No. On second thought, Hell, no.

Dad would be the worst person to be around with this. He already treated her like a baby as a teenager, this would be like Christmas come early for him. He’d be extra patronising and double annoying. And there would be less chance of him believing her than Jake or anyone else. And Sheridan suddenly felt awfully alone. Who was there she could go to to help with this?

Or, better yet, who was behind it all?

She then realises their mother is waiting for a response and she shakes her head. No, she doesn’t want Dad. She doesn’t need Dad. She’ll sort this out herself. She’s not a child, no matter what her appearance may suggest.

Once breakfast is over, Sheridan begins to realise that her best chance would probably be the police. But she couldn’t just ring 999 from Jake’s house and say that she was a fifteen year old girl now turned six. They’d yell at her for wasting time and not even consider sending anyone round. Perhaps if she walked into the station herself and just explained to someone then...Well, it was a long shot but it was the only option she seemed to have.

So she lets Robin ’walk her to school’, waiting for the opportunity to split from her and go towards the station. But it doesn’t seem to come up as Robin and Jake meet-up with their friends on the corner of the street. Sheridan’s friends. The gang that she’d been a part of ever since Year 8. And, as expected, not one of them seem to recognise her as the girl they knew either. Instead they ruffle her hair and call her cutesy nicknames just as her....babysitters had done earlier that morning. Sheridan just decides not to rise to any of it. Just keeps her head down and grits her teeth.

Either this was the queen of all pranks or there was some kind of conspiracy going on and everyone else had their minds warped into believing this version of reality. Except for her. No, she just had her body shrunk down to that of a little pipsqueak’s.

The group of teens seem to surround her as they walk past her school, either teasing her or ignoring her, never leaving her a gap to sneak away before Robin leads her past the gates.

"Have fun, sweetie. Try to cheer up, yeah?" The geek encourages, tapping her on the nose; "It’s only school, after all. I’ll see you soon."

Sheridan doesn’t respond and there’s more worry in Robin’s eyes as she leaves her charge in the playground to rejoin her brother and their friends. Once they’re out of sight, disappeared beyond the gathering of parents and other sitters, Sheridan makes a run for the gate only for one of the teachers assistants to stand in her way. And Sheridan finds herself craning her neck up again to look at another oh so tall human looking down at her with a sickly pleasant smile.

"Did you forget something, Sheri?" The woman asks, kindly.

She says ’no’ all too quickly, realising maybe she could have asked the assistant to go after Robin and then made a break for it while her back was turned. She blames the reduced size of her brain for being too slow on the idea.

The woman’s smile widens and she motions for Sheridan to join all the other snivelling little brats running around in the school grounds, playing tag and hop scotch. With a heavy sigh, Sheridan turns and walks into the noisy, hyper-active chaos. It’s even worse considering she’s even smaller than most of them, being basically at the bottom of the ladder. She doesn’t belong here. She belongs with the others on their way to the cafe before Secondary. She belongs with her Jake.

Her Jake...who doesn’t even notice her anymore.

Instead she’s stuck here, with all of these squealing kids, mistaken for one of them. And not having a single clue who any of them are. Not sure when she’s going to get another opportunity to escape and get to a police station but you can bet she’s going to do so or die trying. It was just everything she dreaded having to put up with until that moment.

This day was going to be Hell.