In-Between Chapters 6 and 7 by Sofia Hammerstein

Cameron Sylvester has grown up always hoping he'll live up to the heritage of his mother's family height. She was a ten-foot-tall Big, after all, and his father was a tall Mid, which meant it shouldn't have been a question that he would grow out of the Little category of height early on. A bright student, he's been at the top of his class in science and math throughout his academic career! Looking toward his high school graduation and towards college, he's received scholarships to attend Emerson University. it's a question of inches if he'll be left to the fate of being a Little with a limited future or manage to make a future as a short 'Betweener.' Even as a Betweener, the question remains to be seen if he can be a normal adult or if he'll be left 'In-Between.'  (A Tale from the Diaper Dimension)

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The Legal Stuff: In-Between © 2020-2026 By Sofia Hammerstein
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 

 
 

Chapter 6: Pranks
 

OVER THE NEXT few months, my life revolved around classes, hanging around with Addison in the evenings, and generally having lunch with Meg, her friend Laura, and another friend of theirs, Stacy. Stacy was like a Little’s Little! She was half of my height, and I couldn’t help but look down at her and realize the proportion was the same between her and me, as Addy and I! Stacy was also a bit of a conundrum in that she didn’t even have to bother to pretend to be potty trained like Meg and Laura. Her only concern was not pooping in class but otherwise was a completely diaper-dependent Little. I’d even seen her sucking on a pacifier once while her mommy was carrying her from her office. I learned that her ‘mommy’ actually regularly breastfed her. Oddly, she claimed to actually enjoy it too! The cool thing, though, was her adoptive parents let her still go to college.

It was weird!

Meanwhile, the university’s Little population decreased daily in our freshman classes. There had been nearly two-hundred littles, I guessed from the copy of the freshman class photo we had taken during orientation; now, if there were still sixty in our class, I would have been shocked. For my part, I chose to avoid that topic as much as possible to avoid people linking me with them!

My classes were going great; going into finals, I had nearly perfect hundreds in every class! Studying with Addison was paying off for her, too, because apparently, even as privileged as she was, she’d never been more than a B student. We were coming up on Finals and were being given a two-day break at the end of the last week of classes to study. Free time meant that besides studying, I was involved in one of my new favorite activities – playing pranks!

It had started with one of our floormates duct-taping a complete layer of tape across my door, making a solid wall that I ran into half-asleep on my way to the shower in the morning. If I didn’t have a good kitchen knife I’d brought, I might have been stuck inside there and late to class! After I cleaned it up, I figured the guy who laughed loudest was most likely the prankster. Some investigating let me prove it, so I showed him how that prank should be done. I had to get an accomplice, Addy, in to help me, but we stacked solo cups, some filled with fine pink and purple glitter, all the way up his door when his roommate left one morning. Then he got the tape on the outside. To ensure it would topple over, I created a string of tape to pull it all down inside towards them as they opened the door.

Addy had to go to class, but the look on his face was epic when he opened the door and was covered in fine glitter! He was about ten feet tall, so the look of death he gave me had me nervous for my safety, but when he began laughing, I knew we were good. “Good retaliation,” Chris had told me.

That had been in October, and now that we were getting closer to December, I noticed that all of the pranks in our dorms were getting more and more outlandish. I had slept in a bit, headed to the bathroom, looked briefly at my shower caddy, and realized I had left my body wash and beard wash in the bathroom the five of us shared. I hated doing that, and I considered it kind of a jerk move to make everyone move my stuff. I personally couldn’t stand when someone left a soap bar in the shower, and I had to move it… It disgusted me a lot for some reason! Realizing I had made a mistake, I mentally noted I’d need to not miss that again…

I showered, washed my hair with the shampoo that I had kept in my room, and took care to really scrub myself clean since I’d be seeing Addy later that afternoon for a study session we were going to go to for Chemistry. My hair took a while since Addy had convinced me to let it grow out. Something about a thing she had for long-haired guys... I had shrugged and gone along with it – frankly, I would probably do just about anything for her!

Since we’d been dating for a few months, we’d gotten a little further along with our relationship, and we’d spent a lot more time learning what could work with our height differences. I always worried she would decide that dating me was like dating a little kid, but she didn’t seem to feel that way! We hadn’t made it any further than second base together, but that was mainly because she had some clear boundaries she said she didn’t want to cross before marriage. When I heard that, of course, I had two reactions – where can I find an engagement ring, and… that’s awkward!

Until my growth spurt, most of my friends in high school had obviously been Littles. Amongst our friends, I was probably the only one still a virgin since it was well known that if you didn’t do it before you graduated, you probably wouldn’t get to in some crazy Bigs nursery! I knew Beth had several partners over the years, and only the fear of getting pregnant kept her on the pill. She’d so wanted to have her own babies, though!

‘Beth, I wonder what happened to you…?’ I couldn’t help but worry about her still. Dad hadn’t given me any updates in a while, except her dad was still trying to re-adopt her.

I finished with the shampoo and moved on to the special beard wash my dad had recommended. His beard was like Santa Claus’s, long but not completely gray. He claimed the wash helped keep things from getting ratty, and that was Addy’s biggest stipulation for me to keep it. She wasn’t a huge fan of kissing me with facial hair, but she understood why I was growing it.

It always made my face feel much cleaner despite the hair and let me get it combed straight. By this point, I’d managed to get my beard to grow quite full, and it was long enough that I had to be careful of food and drink dropping in it. Addy had slyly grabbed a napkin and plucked something out of it a couple times in the past week before teasing me about it.

I sighed as I dried off and walked out to the sink. I brushed my teeth and popped a few pimples before returning to my room with a towel around my waist. I closed the door and dressed in comfortable jeans and a sweater before sitting at the computer. I grabbed a drink from my water bottle and realized I had some hairs on it.

I brushed my face with my hand.

More hair.

I moved quickly to look at myself in the long mirror in the closet. A patch was completely gone out of my beard. I put my hand on my face in disbelief and watched as the slightest touch knocked my beard from my face.

In disbelief, I ran back to the bathroom and washed my face, hoping whatever it was would come off and keep from causing any more hair to fall out! I pulled up the sleeves of my sweater and splashed water on my face repeatedly; after I wiped my eyes clear of the water, I looked down in horror. The drain was completely clogged with a hairball.

Looking up in the mirror, I was horrified that my face was the cleanest-shaven ever… you might even call it a… baby face. I couldn’t even see the little black hair follicle spots on my face, and I was worried whatever happened was completely permanent! I grimaced and looked at my arm, only to notice that there were patches of no hair there too!

Chris peeked his head in right then, looked at me, and laughed.

“What did you put in my stuff?” I asked nervously. Hoping beyond hope, it was a temporary loss.

He tossed me a mostly empty bottle.

‘Little Hair-No-More!’ was the label. Looking at the directions, it was the worst-case scenario.

‘To permanently remove Little’s body hair wash on like soap and wash off. Takes fifteen-second application and fifteen to twenty minutes to take effect and permanently remove all hair follicles from the applied area. Warning! Do Not Apply To Any Area You Do Not Wish To Remove Hair!!!’

I nervously looked up at my hair but remembered my shampoo had been safe in my room. My longish collar-length hair was still intact.

“Jack-ass! We said nothing permanent!” I told him.

“It’s only permanent on Littles. My sister tried it on her legs and still has to reapply it every few months. Don’t worry, Bro; you’re not a Little, right? It’ll grow back in a few months!”

I gave him the double bird salute before going back to my room. I switched clothes before I left to meet Addy for our study session. When I did so, I discovered every bit of my body hair on my front, where I could reach my arms, feet, legs… and groin was completely bare. I didn’t scrub my back well, so the upper part was still hairy.

My reflection in the mirror before I got dressed scared me. It reflected a baby-faced Little boy, who could easily be adopted and taken somewhere before height even came up…

I didn’t have much time before the study session, so I grabbed my backpack and computer and headed to meet Addy. She looked at me with a shocked look as I approached her; you could see ‘Wha??’ coming out of her lips, but I didn’t see it long because a Nest Mother appeared out of nowhere.

“And where are you going, young man? All of the boy’s nests are to be in their rooms studying!”

I looked up at a tall and a rather plump Nest Mother that I vaguely remembered being in charge of a boy’s room since there weren’t many ‘daddies’ interested in the job.

“Pardon me, but I’m not a little; I don’t live in Wenig,” I told her.

“You’re going to lie to me? I’ve seen you there every day!” She was about to grab me when Addy came up.

“What do you think you’re doing with my boyfriend?”

“Boyfriend?” She looked at Addy in shock, “Eew… he’s a Little!”

“He’s actually a Mid, as he was telling you. Both of his parents were taller, but he got the short end of the straw. And yes, I said boyfriend. I’m also more than willing to call the President of the University and complain on Cameron’s behalf about the abuse he was about to suffer.”

“Well… he looks… I…”

“Was just leaving?” Addy suggested.

She turned on her heels, and I looked up gratefully at Addy. She bent down and gave me a hug and a kiss that drew some looks. “What happened to your face?” She smiled, “Not that I’m complaining. I prefer kissing you like this!”

I sighed, “Chris spiked my body wash and beard wash with some sort of permanent hair removal product!”

I watched her stifle a giggle, “I’m sorry, it’s not funny… but maybe in a few months you’ll appreciate the prank? That’s pretty epic?”

“Nothing permanent… those are the implicit rules in our prank war,” I told her.

We sat down and took part in the study session for Chemistry. It was definitely more for her than me, but I would appreciate it if I could avoid losing a point or two on a test!

The only plus to the prank was that Addy preferred to kiss me without the beard. She did at least console and reward me with a make-out session that night after our study session.

Of course, apparently, I wasn’t Chris’s only victim… He’d gotten two other people, including our RA, and found himself in hot water with the university. They were on the verge of kicking him out, but his parents managed to negotiate it down to promising he would be on his best behavior. I nearly pulled a prank to frame him - just to retaliate but hadn’t felt I had the best opportunity to do so and get away with it cleanly.

I complained to Stacy and Meg about it on the third day of finals. “Look at my face,” I whined a bit.

Meg nodded, “Buy some bigger lifts and be careful what you wear?”

Stacy looked confused, “So what’s so bad? He’s tall enough, right?”

I shook my head, I would sometimes forget that she wasn’t from the dimension, but comments like that would remind me. “They mostly leave us Mids alone, but if you look cute enough, it can still be a trip to a daycare or preschool… I think I’ve grown another couple of inches this semester. Still, even if I miraculously reach seven feet before I stop growing, I could easily be smaller than a four-year-old Big.”

Meg nodded her agreement, “I’ve seen it… it’s not as common since it’s not like the newborn size you are, Stace, but it’s close enough for some crazy Amazon mothers.”

Two days later, on the day of my last final, I walked out to the main part of campus and saw that all six of the big fountains between my dorm and my class that had been turned off for the winter had somehow turned back on. It was a warm day, so they weren’t freezing, but they were all a big puff of bubbles!

This was another one of those pranks I felt was pretty much too far with as much clean-up and potential damage as I knew it could do. After the other day, I couldn’t help but wonder if Chris wasn’t involved in it.

Sure enough, when I made it out of my last final that day, I passed him speaking with university police officers. Twenty-four hours later, his roommate found out he would have a single for the next semester as he was being booted from the university. It was one prank too many when they found him on the security cameras leaving the dorm with a large backpack and followed him to each of the fountains.

A part of me was just disappointed that I couldn’t return the prank on him.
 
 

Chapter 7: Pyrrhic Victories
 

MY FINALS ENDED, and I went home to wait for my test scores to be posted online. Addy had driven away a couple hours before Dad had picked me up. Addy and I had ensured that we had a good sendoff for each other before we said goodbye. Fortunately for us, it was only goodbye until two days before Christmas, when she would come to pick me up to go to a company party her parents were hosting. Given my stature and lack of facial hair now, I had gotten her promise that she’d stay with me the whole time except in the bathrooms! I was quite nervous about finally meeting her parents!

I had just finished setting my stuff down in my old bedroom, which hadn’t changed at all in my absence, and walked down to find Dad sitting at the table drinking some coffee. “It’s good to have you home, Cameron,” he told me.

“Thanks, Dad,” I told him. “It’s good to be here… It’s kind of weird now.”

“Yeah, I remember coming back from college and feeling the same. I don’t mind you going out and doing things if you want, but make sure you let me know where you’re at?”

“Sure,” I told him.

“There’s one…” he sighed, “There’s one place you might want to go, and you might not.”

“Where?”

“Beth’s at her parent’s house.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” I asked. “I have to go see her!”

“I figured, but… Cameron…” he couldn’t finish the story before I was already out the door and walking the few doors down to where she lived.

I rang the doorbell, and Beth’s tall dad answered.

“Umm… Hi Mr. Fehler, umm…”

“Cameron, it’s good to see you,” he told me sadly, “Come in.”

I walked in and immediately knew that things were not good for Beth.

Their kitchen now featured a Little’s high chair - complete with all the restraining straps that were never on a baby’s. I felt my stomach drop at the thought of her being strapped in, unable to move her hands, feet… or head if he used that one… To my right, I looked in the living room and saw all the signs of a baby living there. A playpen, a swing, a walker, soft toys, and… well, it really looked like a baby, at most a year old, lived there now.

Unfortunately, I knew it wasn’t a real baby; it was instead one of my best friends.

I looked up at him, “I’ll let you see her… but we have to talk first, Cameron,” he told me. “I know she would want to see you.”

I followed him to a pair of armchairs in his living room. I climbed onto the tall chair and noticed a star-shaped baby’s rattle wedged in the cushion. I ignored it and looked at him.

“Cameron, first of all, I want you to know that Beth considered you her best friend… and maybe more than that growing up. Her mother and I always hoped the two of you would get together and get married someday… you were good for each other,” the tall man told me.

“I know,” I told him. “I don’t know that I realized it, though, until Beth came to say goodbye to me?”

“I think she figured it was probably a true goodbye Cameron. And, in a way, it probably was.”

There was a sadness in his voice that spoke of him being brokenhearted about whatever had happened next. “My dad said you were trying to re-adopt her… obviously that worked?”

“I knew when Beth went to college that there was a good chance that she would end up demeriting out and getting adopted. Honestly, when you have a Little as a child… well, you have to accept that’s probably their future. It’s not fair, it’s not right… but it’s the way the world tends to work. Most Littles come from parents of the same height, so there’s really no chance they can interfere. When she told me she was going to student services, I immediately started to fight for her to return home. The problem, though, is the iron-clad student contract that a Little signs when they go to school at Emerson. As soon as you go to Emerson, if you’re under seventy-two inches tall, you must sign a power of attorney and consent form that makes the university your legal guardian. It supersedes any blood relationship… even for the child of a Big.”

My gut twisted in knots over it, “But you got her back… how?”

He sighed, “I fought with my lawyers at my side for two months, Cameron. She stayed in a special ward at the university while they were also seeking other options for her adoption. In the end, a woman who was about thirty and an alumnus of Emerson had… paid the ‘application fees’ for her adoption with a ‘donation.’ I managed to tie things up, though, to where we were brought in before a judge for mediation. It was… it was the first time I’d seen Beth...”

His voice broke, and honestly, there was no doubt that he was heartbroken, and I knew things had to be bad.

She ran to me and hugged me before they ripped her away, sat her down in a high chair, and stuffed a locking pacifier into her mouth. We both made our cases for a long while, and the judge finally said, “The university agreed that she would have a choice when she committed herself to the student placement services, correct?’”

The university’s lawyer answered in the affirmative, even as the woman was told to be quiet because she was sure she should be hers!

I sat there, wondering what had come next; I suspected it was probably the worst.

The judge considered some documents and said, “Take that gag out of the girls’ mouth.”

When the bailiff complied, the judge said, “Young Lady, make sure you understand if you can’t be at least a little bit mature and quiet right now, I’ll make this decision completely for you. The way I see it, I think you should have a choice. Still, we also have to acknowledge that you recognized you have a growing case of Maturosis, and going back and becoming your father’s big girl again isn’t in the cards now, is it?”

Beth meekly said, “No, ma’am,” and asked, “What is my choice?”

“Hmm, well, if you go with the nice lady over there, she’ll do a nice job of re-raising and supporting you the way you need, and she can start with you exactly how you are. She’ll be in charge, and you’re her baby forever.”

I watched her dad wipe a tear away.

She continued though, and said, “I’m willing to consider, though, that your daddy loves you very much – so much so that he’s gone through a lot of time and effort over this case to prove that he is by far the best person to care for you. But, again, with your case of Maturosis, you can’t be a big girl, can you?”

I couldn’t help but think that was the second time she’d said that phrase. I felt my gut twist as I saw a diaper peeking out of a package to the side of the playpen that was probably tall enough to contain me.

My little girl answered respectfully, “No, Your Honor?”

“Right then,” she’d said.

“The judge lined out that Beth could come home with me, but only if she agreed to be regressed to having no potty training, treatment so she could no longer walk, have her teeth removed and replaced with a gum implant so she could only have a liquid and pureed diet, and have a tongue procedure to reduce her diction. She insisted the procedures were necessary so neither of us would be tempted to pretend she was a big girl when she came home… At that moment, I wanted her to choose the woman with all of my might – so there was a chance she might not have all of those things done to her!”

I looked at him, “She chose her daddy, though,” I said softly.

“She chose me,” he nodded as he wiped away tears.

“She can still think and talk, though?” I asked.

He shrugged, “When she chooses to? Honestly, Cameron, it hit her hard… Her mom wasn’t here when she came home either, which didn’t help.”

“Where is she?”

He sighed, “We got a divorce, hoping it would help me regain custody without her. Many would consider her ‘Tweener mother to be a negative influence that led to her Maturosis… It’s amicable, but she can’t be here and has no visitation rights allowed per the agreement with the judge.”

I sat there stunned before finally asking, “May I please see her now?”

“Sure, she should just be waking up from her nap. Why don’t I go up and change her, then I’ll bring her down so you can talk…?”

I watched him walk up the stairs, felt my gut twist, and waited for him to bring her down. I heard an odd, high-pitched, laughing sound upstairs as if there was a giggling baby. I was glad that she was at least smiling as he brought her down and said, “Why don’t you sit with Lizzie on her blankie? I’ll give you two some privacy,” he told me as he sat her down.

I climbed off of the chair and walked over to join her. Beth was dressed in a short dress with a snapped onesie attachment. A pacifier was bobbing in her mouth. “Am…Am!” she said to me. She tried rocking forward to her hands to push herself to a standing position but fell forward. I caught her and helped her sit back as she grabbed me and hugged me.

We were both crying then. “Oh, Beth…” I said sadly. “I’m so sorry.”

She squeezed me though and pushed away, letting her pacifier drop from her mouth, “Is okay,” she told me. “Daddy bes home.”

Unfortunately, she couldn’t get her ‘t’s’ out without her teeth, but I was glad she could at least communicate still.

“You’re really okay?” I asked her.

“Yeth,” she smiled. “No wi mean wady, wi Daddy. Would be way worse!”

I nodded. “He’s being nice about it?”

“Hurs him more an me,” she told me. “Diapees no all ba…”

“Daycare?” I asked, knowing he worked.

She blushed, “I jus pren complee baby.”

I nodded, “That’s probably smart.”

I had been terrified that Beth was a mindless shell of herself, but clearly, her dad had refused to force her to regress any more than the judge had already done. ‘She was probably right in some ways…?’ I grimaced at the thought, ‘Her dad would have let her earn her panties back and freed her within a year.’

It was possible to free a little you had adopted, but the steps and paperwork were vast. There was a complete legal outline of the steps you needed to prove a Little could handle to grant them emancipation. Among those steps was that you had to demonstrate that the Little could care for themselves and function independently. With Beth unable to walk, use the potty, or even eat real food… well, she was stuck.

We talked for a bit more before I hugged her and left to go back home to have dinner with my dad. On my way out, I held my hand out to Mr. Fehler, “Thank you for saving her… I hate what the judge did to her, but at least I know you love her and will always take good care of her. You did everything you could,” I told him sincerely.

“Thank you, Cameron. She talked more to you than she has to me in the entire time she’s been home…” he told me. He looked to be nervously wrestling with something, “Look, I don’t have a problem if you come by and drop a present appropriate for under an infant off at Christmas, and maybe come say bye to her before school, but it would be a bad idea for her, and you, to come here regularly….” He nodded, and I suddenly realized an industrial security camera sat watching the living room.

I grimaced, hoping our conversation didn’t get them in trouble, but said, “Yes, sir, I’ll respect your wishes.” I sighed, feeling vomit as I said, “I know she’s not my adult friend anymore...”

He squeezed my hand again, and I headed back home to my house, deep in thought. ‘The damn judge ordered them monitored too?’

I walked through the door and saw Dad putting something back in the oven. “Cam?” He asked.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m back.”

“You… okay?” he turned towards me.

I sighed, “I guess. What the judge did to her…?”

“Sucks,” he said.

“Yeah… I mean, at least Beth’s with her dad, who won’t treat her like some doll to find new ways to torment. But it’s all bullshit!”

He nodded, “I can’t tell you how grateful I was when you grew that bit before you graduated. By now, that probably would have been your fate too…”

I nodded. “Yeah, two stupid inches is all that separates us.”

“Well… more than that now…”

I looked up at him, “Huh?”

“Have you actually measured yourself this semester? They say guys may not finish growing until they’re twenty. Clearly, that’s true with you.”

“No?”

“Look, dinner needs a few more minutes in the oven; why don’t we put another mark on the wall?”

I curiously followed him up to the wall we had started when I was a baby, and we moved into the house. The first mark was ’14 months’, and we’d marked where I was at least a few times each year. There were a lot of shorter lines! I removed my shoes, stood against the wall, and let him lean down and mark where my head reached. I couldn’t help but notice that distance wasn’t the same as in the spring. He had a tape measure and ran it from the bottom up.

“Seventy-seven inches,” he said; you’re almost six-and-a-half feet tall!”

“I hadn’t even noticed I’d grown…?”

“I did. Can’t you see your pants are shorter?”

“Well, we bought them long… so no… I hadn’t paid attention.”

“How about tomorrow we go buy some new pants for you? And didn’t you say this Addy was picking you up to go to a party in a week or so? Probably need a new suit too?”

I nodded, “Sounds great, Dad,” I told him.

I was genuinely smiling about the fact that I was now further over the safety line in height. No one would be able to just ‘adopt’ me off of the street now. Everything for someone like me had to go through the courts unless something like ending up in Wenig Hall with the university forced me to sign away my rights.

Dad walked off to pull dinner out, and I examined the wall again. After age seven, another set of initials had an occasional mark. I couldn’t help but run my fingers over the B.F. initials from last year. Beth had been at my house and seen it was still there, insisting on another set of marks for both of us... Thanks to the bitch of a judge, she would never again stand tall like that on her own.

“This sucks!”
 
 

Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment if you did so and press the Kudos button! I should be posting a few times a week until this is fully posted here on BC. The full novel is complete (65 chapters plus Epilogue) and published on Amazon if you wish to be impatient though!

All of my published works have AI read audiobooks available for them. I’ve spent some time tweaking pronunciations, and they’re pretty good when you can’t afford thousands to pay for audiobook creation! They’re a $1.99 addon to the $5.99 price on Kindle. If you’ve already purchase the book it should come up as only $1.99. They’re also available on Audible directly, but that’s $9.99 versus the cheaper price! https://www.amazon.com/author/babysofia