In-Between Chapters 16 and 17 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 16: Devices
 

THE NEXT DAY I got a message from Meg on her phone that she’d be changing her number, but Megan was letting her still have a phone to talk to her friends. I wanted to go see her, but Megan insisted on waiting a week while she was busy trying to make her apartment appropriately Little Proofed in case LPS decided to come to check on the new adoption. The woman’s assault had made it onto the local news that night, and it turned out the lady was a prominent figure on the local school board. I decided Megan might, unfortunately, have had a reason to be concerned there!

I spent the next few days worrying a little, but I honestly figured that was the best thing that could have happened for Meg… And when it came down to it, that’s what she had wanted to have happen. Late Sunday night Addy made it back to town, and we went for dinner before going to her place for the night.

“How was your trip?” I asked her.

She shrugged, but her facial expressions made her look really upset, “If I wanted to be in my family’s business, I guess it was good… I just don’t want to join in on any of it.”

“What do they want you to do?”

“Well, since I’ve had my awesome tutor that got me through all of my advanced chem and bio classes, Mom wants me to run their lab division.”

“Like all of the experiments?” I asked nervously.

She nodded.

“So, like you’d be involved in all the trials…?”

She sighed but nodded, “Yeah, unfortunately.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Stall… Grad school and working on my doctorate should let me push it off four to five more years?”

“What then?”

“Good question,” she told me with a sigh. “It’s too bad that they don’t actually protect Littles.”

“Could you make that change?” I asked curiously.

“If my Mom and Dad died… well, I’d have thirty percent of the shares since Danica gets the other thirty percent. If she voted with me, we could make those changes. Still, otherwise, the forty percent owned by shareholders would have a bigger influence.”

“And for profit’s sake…”

“Profit’s sake means continuing as they do now…” She sighed, “It sucks! How was your weekend? Do anything with Meg and Stacy?”

Luckily, she didn’t consider either of them to be competition to be jealous of and seemed more than okay with our friendship. “I did… I went to the mall with Stacy and Meg for Christmas shopping.”

“Find anything good?”

“A few things,” I said with a smile that turned dark, “Need to go back, though; our trip was interrupted when someone spiked Meg’s food….”

“What happened?”

I told her the story from beginning to end. “She is probably better off with her than anyone else. I didn’t think she’d last long past graduation.”

I nodded at that, and we soon found ourselves occupying our time in the bedroom, making up for the lost time of the weekend!
 

MY FINALS WERE done on Friday, but I wasn’t driving home until Sunday since no one would be home there anyway. My dad had gone out of town for a company trip and wouldn’t return until then. Addy still had a final that day, so I decided to see if Megan minded if I came to check on Meg. “Hey Megan, this is Cameron,” I said when she picked up the phone.

“Hi Cameron, how’d your finals go?”

“Should be good; I’ll have to wait until probably tomorrow or Monday before grades are posted,” I told her. “I’m staying in town an extra couple days still and wondered if maybe I could come to see Meg?”

“I’m sure she would love to see you,” she told me. “If you want to come over now, you can join us for lunch before you go back?”

“Sounds great!” I told her.

With that, I headed for my car and input Megan’s address. I wasn’t as worried for Meg as I was for Beth, but I wanted to ensure Megan hadn’t gone off the deep end. Her apartment complex was on the other side of town from the university. However, I still made it pretty quickly - even with my vehicle that insisted on always going the exact speed limit!

I pulled into a parking space by her building and made my way up the stairs to her second-floor apartment. I knocked and waited.

A moment later, I heard the deadbolt turn and watched the handle open. “Hey, Cameron!” Megan said, “Come on in!”

It wasn’t a huge apartment, but it looked cozy enough. A baby swing sat in one corner, a walker behind the kitchen table, and a playpen sat as far out of the way on one side as they could get it in the combined living room.

“Hey, Cameron!” Meg said to me as she came up and gave me a hug.

Breaking apart from her, I took in her appearance. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants that didn’t look much different than she wore before – might have even been one of her old pairs – with a shirt tucked inside them. There was obviously the bulge of a slightly wet diaper. Her hair was tied into two cute pigtails with large bows, but other than that, she didn’t look any different than she did the last time I saw her. “You doing okay?” I asked her.

She nodded, “My mommy is the greatest of all time!”

Megan smacked her head, “I don’t know what I was thinking! My sisters are the ones who are supposed to be called Mommy!”

I laughed, “Sorry, but thank you for saving her.”

She smiled, “Well… honestly, the moment I saw that woman rip her from your hand, I didn’t see any choice! I guess I just have to get used to having a little rugrat running around here.”

“Everything went okay with the actual adoption?” I asked, looking back and forth between both of them.

“Mostly… Thank God Stacy warned me about what they would do to me back there!”

“It was bad?”

“Not for me, because I kept my mouth shut and made sure that I didn’t cry or complain…?”

“You saw someone who didn’t?”

She nodded, “Lots of them… But I made it through, and now I have a chip in my arm that says I belong to Megan now.”

“And she’s not even given me any trouble!” Megan laughed, “Other than our names being too similar! I’m not letting her steal my name, so our family will know her as Meggy now.”

I smirked at that, “Well, it’s better than getting some sort of dog’s name…”

“I know… I’ve seen some of my friends do that…” Megan said.

I spent the next few hours learning about the forced shopping trip with Amanda and their mom, who was now ‘Grandma’ to Meg. She’d also filled me in on a visit they’d had with her real parents, who seemed relieved that she at least had a good ‘mommy’ compared to all of the rest. I learned that she was just wearing diapers full time, sitting in high chairs and strollers, and sleeping in a crib… Other than that, Megan was treating her like she was still the college friend that she was.

Unfortunately, Emerson considered losing her ID a violation of the Student Code of Conduct, so her adoption resulted in her dismissal from the university. Meg theoretically could transfer credits somewhere if she and Megan wanted to. Still, I think Meg just decided it was game over for her education. “I was about to fail at least two of my classes anyway…” she admitted.

They’d beat an epic video game the previous week together in team mode since Megan was now on mandatory maternity leave for six weeks from her company.

“So, you’re just getting to laze around here and make Megan take care of you, huh?” I laughed while Megan was making lunch for us all.

“Well… it also comes with the mandatory requirements, too…” she told me.

“Like?”

“I have to use my diapers for everything…”

“No potty for number two like Stacy, huh?”

She shook her head, “No, just in case someone comes around… That part hasn’t been fun, honestly. I mean, I’ve had many poopy pull-ups and diapers since I came to Emerson, but…?”

I nodded, “Not a pleasant feeling…”

“How do you know?” Megan asked, reappearing.

“Remember, I just managed to get past the line. I was a Little to the school district all the way until the last few weeks of school my senior year. Thanks to some poisoning at my school, all of us – including some Bigs, actually - ended up in diapers when I was thirteen… Dad wasn’t a fan and did his best to get me cleared out of whatever chemical someone had given us as quickly as possible. There were quite a few poopy diapers until we got it under control,” I blushed.

“That sucks,” Meg said.

“None of that now,” Megan said. “No potty-mouth babies here!” She giggled, but I suspected she kind of meant it.

“Sorry,” Meg said.

“What other requirements?” I asked a moment later when Megan went to check on the stove.

“Well… I have to drink out of bottles – no sippy cups- and nap each day… and sleep in the crib.”

“Other than that?”

“Other than that, Mommy is even letting her still use her computer, her phone, watch TV, and see her friends and family!” Megan said as she came and picked her up. She tickled her side a bit as she plopped her into the highchair. I noticed that her diaper definitely squished as she did so. “Guess we need to change you as soon as we finish lunch, huh?” Megan told her.

She nodded.

Lunch was grilled cheese and soup, something I could easily be okay with. She let Meg feed herself with a spoon, and the sandwich cut up an extra time beyond ours. Ultimately, she said, “Guess I should have put a bib on you?”

I looked at Meg, and sure enough, there were a lot of stains from the soup, along with crumbs from the sandwich. “Oopsie,” she smiled.

“Well, I need to get this one changed and put in something clean for her nap,” Megan said. It was a polite but clear dismissal after we had finished eating.

“Yeah, I need to get back to campus; I’m working on a gift for Addy….”

She smiled, “Meggy mentioned what you bought her the other day.”

“I’d almost forgotten about it with everything else by the time I made it home!”

“Good luck!” She told me.

“Thanks!” I told her.

I’d been going back and forth for the entire week on whether or not I wanted to do it… but in the face of seeing yet another friend lose their freedom… I’d decided you only live once!

This year, I worked for the chemistry department as a tutor and lab assistant, so I had a key to the freshman chemistry lab. That lab, fortunately, was closed down with no one using it since freshman chemistry lab finals were all paper-based. I got in there, began setting up some tubing in a large clear tank, and then inserted the chemicals into both parts of the setup. I prepared it to activate with a simple bump of the device and left to get Addy for dinner.

A couple hours later, we went to a nice restaurant near campus that was close enough to walk to. I chose it because we would have to pass by the chem labs on our way back to my dorm, where she parked her car. She was smiling and happy that she’d finished her final exams that day, and we planned to spend the next day together. On the way back from dinner, I said, “I forgot something in the lab yesterday; mind if I stop by really quick?”

She gave me an odd look but said, “Sure.”

Since she did not need a job, she didn’t do anything extra for the department like I did. Because of that, she didn’t normally go into the buildings outside her classes and lab times. Fortunately, my key worked twenty-four hours a day - even with it being nine o’clock at night with all exams finished.

The building was like a ghost town as we walked the halls and went up the stairs to the freshman chemistry lab, where we first met.

“Hard to believe this is where it began,” she said as I opened the door.

“Let me get the light… it’s on the other side of here for some reason,” I said, intentionally bumping my device.

Suddenly, the inside of the tank lit up with the glow of a chemical reaction from inside the tubing I had carefully formed into words. I heard Addy gasp as she saw it and turned around to open the box in my hand.

“Addison Elizabeth Harris, you are the love of my life. I knew from the day I met you four years ago I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you… Will you marry me?”

My whole body and soul looked into her eyes and waited for her response.
 
 

Chapter 17: Midtown
 

I WALKED INTO my childhood home knowing that no one would be there. It was lonely and silent as I turned the entryway switch, turning on the lights in the living room. Looking ahead, I saw an old picture of my mom holding me on her lap in a field of wildflowers before she died. You could just see the bump in her stomach that should have been my little sister… That one always made me sad. I couldn’t help but miss her, even all these years later - and I would have given anything for a hug from her right then.

I walked upstairs to my room carrying the suitcase I had brought to get me through the break, sitting it inside the bedroom I’d slept in since I was a baby. I sighed as I dug out a pair of pajamas and emptied my pockets. Emerson ID/Wallet, car key fob, house key, cell phone, and a jewelry box that I gently tapped before wiping tears from my eyes.

I pulled my shirt off, followed by the slacks I was wearing. Two AM clicked over on the digital clock, and I knew I probably should have just stayed in my dorm for the night. I couldn’t stand the thought of being there, though, since all my friends had either left already or been adopted now…

I pulled on a soft pajama shirt, pulled on my pajama bottoms, and retied my hair behind my head.

I nearly went for the scissors right then but decided it was too late that night.

I could tell that Dad had washed my bedding before he left on his trip since I could still smell the scent of a dryer sheet on them. Pulling the covers over my body, I cried even more at the hurt.

“I’m sorry, Cameron,” she said. “I didn’t want… I don’t want…” Tears streamed down her face as she took a breath and said, “Look, I do love you more than you can know, but…” She practically screamed, “I… I can’t marry you. My family will disown me! And my mom… This week Mom… Mom made me...” She sobbed, “Made me... promise to break it off with you before I came home for Christmas…”

“You mean…”

She pushed the box gently back into my hands, kissed me on the top of my head, and said, “I can’t, Cameron. I don’t think another man will ever be in my life because I love you so dearly. But clearly, I can’t keep leading you on with false promises of a future together… I’ll always love you, Cameron, but… but we can’t do this anymore.”

She had turned and left me standing there with the box still in my hand and tears running down my face. Wordlessly I cleaned up the mess of my attempt to be romantic, walked back to my dorm, packed my suitcase, and set the car to begin driving back home on the dark roads.

‘This sucks…’ I thought through the broken heart that I felt.

I tossed and turned for a while before giving up and going downstairs to turn on the TV. I tried reading a book, found a snack, and then tried again. I finally must have fallen asleep about eight that morning, and the next thing I knew, it was close to six in the evening.

Dad wasn’t due home until the next afternoon from his business trip. I decided to shower before dressing in fresh, comfortable pajamas and checking my phone.

Cameron, I really am so very sorry about everything… I will always love you, but I think you’ll understand when I say that I can’t even see you to give you the things you had at my apartment. I placed everything in some boxes and sent them this morning to your dad’s house… you should get them Monday.

Good luck in the future,

Addison

She hadn’t even signed her name Addy… that’s how far I had fallen. I felt the tears in my eyes again as my phone rang. Meg’s photo showed, “Hey Cameron! Are you okay? I thought you were coming to hang out at Stacy’s today?”

I saw Stacy standing there, too, as the video feature went live. “Oh, Cameron, what’s wrong?” Stacy asked.

“She said… She… No.”

“Oh, Cameron! I’m so sorry!” Stacy and Meg said in near unison.

Megan suddenly came into view, “Where are you?”

“I packed up my stuff from my dorm last night and just came home?”

“Didn’t you say your dad is out of town?” Meg asked.

I nodded, “He’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”

“Are you okay? You need us to come there and hang out?” Megan asked.

I hesitated momentarily but shook my head, “No, I’m definitely not okay… but I’m guessing I will be after some time. Honestly, I just want some time to try and process everything. I mean… what do I even do with the ring I bought?”

Megan frowned, “Hang onto it for now. After the break, maybe Amanda and I can take you to return it? I have a feeling that if you try and do it yourself, it won’t end well…”

I nodded, thinking that a Mid with a failed engagement ring wouldn’t be safe returning it…

“Yeah… that’s probably a good idea.”

“Look, if you change your mind and want us to come over, let me know! Or if you just need to talk! I hate to see you alone right now, but I can understand you wanting that.”

“Thanks, Megan. Thanks; sorry about bailing without letting you know….”

“Understandable, Cameron!” Meg said.

I sighed as I hung up the phone and decided I needed something to eat. Dad didn’t have much in the kitchen, so I went out to my car and drove to a fast-food place nearby. I ordered a hamburger combo and took it back home to eat.

Throughout the evening, I curled up underneath a blanket on the couch in the living room, watching some of my favorite movies. The phone rang when my favorite part was coming on one. I felt guilty and embarrassed again as I saw Dad’s face. I paused the movie and turned on the video feature for the call like we normally did.

“Hi, Cameron… are you home already? Weren’t you planning on doing something today with Meg and Stacy?”

I sighed; I hadn’t brought myself to call him. I was so mortified! “Last night, I asked Addy to marry me….”

Dad knew me well enough, “I take it she didn’t answer how you wanted…?”

I shook my head and wiped a tear from my eye, “No, she told me her family had given her an ultimatum to break up with me by yesterday… It’s not fair! I love her, Dad!”

We talked for a while, with tears shed on his side too, it looked like, before he said, “Look, Cameron, I’ll be home in the morning. Maybe we’ll pick up a six-pack of beer or something and drink it together? Or go out somewhere?”

I looked at him in surprise, “What?”

“You’re twenty-one, right? With your birthday being after school started, we never got a chance to go out for the beer a father owes his son?”

I nodded, “Okay… that sounds good, Dad.”

When he hung up, the living room felt emptier. I looked up at the picture of Mom again and sighed, “I really wish you were here!”

I curled back up under the blanket and found myself on the two social media sites I used. I felt a knife in my gut when I saw that Addy had changed her relationship status and unfriended me in the past half-hour. Friends of mine had already sent me messages asking what happened.

I mostly ignored them but answered a few before throwing the phone on the counter and avoiding it the rest of the night.
 

DAD MADE IT home at about three in the afternoon and immediately wrapped me in a hug. “I’m so sorry, Cam,” he told me.

I felt more tears trickle down my face and let them flow for a few minutes before he released me. “I know it seems impossible right now, but I promise you you’ll find someone even better than Addy.”

I shrugged, “Maybe...”

“You will… Now, why don’t you take a shower, put on some nice clothes, and we’ll go out for dinner and some drinks.”

“Is that safe?” I asked him nervously.

He laughed, “As long as you’re with me, you’re fine. Besides, we’ll go to Midtown – you probably won’t even be the shortest person there!”

I nodded at that. I had never been there, but I had heard that it was a club that catered to Mids and Littles with a nine-foot height limit enforced by bouncers at the door. They also intentionally only installed short nine-foot door frames and low ceilings that were supposed to be a physical deterrent. I hopped into the shower and thought it was odd that I still hadn’t needed to shave again after all these years. The hair removal stuff from my freshman year was still in full effect.

I was annoyed with the long hair as I dried it, but even though I’d grown it out for Addy… I kind of liked the way I looked still. ‘Maybe I can dye it gray and look like an old barrister…?’ I forced a quiet laugh and sighed.

I dressed in the suit that I normally went out in with Addy. After deciding to go without a tie, I put on my lifted dress shoes. They brought me nearly seven feet in height when I wore them. ‘Maybe I’ll find someone who isn’t so tall…’

It hurt, though, and twisted in my guts like a knife, thinking that the relationship I’d had for over three years was gone just when I thought it would continue forever!

Dad was dressed nicely and had his beard combed straight. With the gray in it, he really could have done the Santa gig if he wanted it! We called a cab to come to get us. Walking outside to it, “Excuse me, just give me a minute so I can get a car seat out for your young man,” he insisted.

“I’m tall enough…”

“You might be, but I don’t want to have the death of some kid on my hands because they weren’t properly restrained!” He said tersely.

“It’ll be fine, Cameron,” Dad said to me.

The man latched in a front-facing car seat that looked like it had seen better days. The faded pink color and unnamable stains on it failed to make it any better. Dad didn’t get off the hook either, though, as the man installed a backless booster, “I need you to sit on that, sir,” he told him.

He just sighed, “Of course…”

The ride to the restaurant wasn’t long, and it was thankfully within walking distance of the club. Still, I flushed as at the dropoff area of the restaurant, my door opened, and a valet picked me up from the seat. “Welcome, young miss,” the tall man said to me.

“I’m a guy, that’s a cab, and I don’t normally sit in a car seat,” I said tersely to the giant.

He looked like he was going to be offended, but Dad grabbed my shoulder and said, “Let’s go get something to eat.”

Over dinner, we enjoyed a glass of wine with the meal. Dad told me about some things with his job, funny stories, problems, and other bits of his life since I was at school. He worked as one of the chief technicians on a crew that made repairs to independent portals like Diamond Tours and PR, Inc. His understanding of the technical workings of the machines meant he was in high demand - and paid pretty well. It also meant he got stuck dealing with some of the most idiotic Little crazy Bigs out there... He was well practiced with it, though, and usually dealt with them quite easily!

By the end of a delicious meal of filet mignon, I was feeling the effects of the alcohol but was certainly not drunk yet.

“Let’s hit the gents and then head over to the club,” Dad said after he paid.

“Good idea,” I said. ‘The last thing I want to do is have a drunken accident like my old roommate!’

We finished up there and walked down the block to the club. As we walked, I watched many couples and people out for a night on the town. Whenever I saw that they held hands or kissed, the knife in my gut twisted some more. This was a popular area that had grown a lot in the past few years since I went to college. A few Bigs were around, but mostly Mids and a few Littles wandered from place to place.

“Bigs don’t come down here?” I asked Dad as I could see the sign of the club.

He shook his head, “A bunch of Mids and Littles got together and bought up this block. They built everything smaller than the Bigs, so it mostly keeps them away. A volunteer group of security also wanders the streets to help dissuade anyone from adopting shorter folks.”

“Huh…” I said aloud. “Too bad we don’t have a part of town like this near Emerson!”

“It’s been so successful here that they’re talking about putting one in a few miles from the university, actually,” he told me.

“Just in time for me to graduate,” I noted.

“That’s the way it works,” he agreed.

“ID?” the bouncer asked me as I came up. I presented my limited license, and he motioned for us to continue without asking my dad for his.

Dad must have picked up on my thoughts, “Enjoy that they ask for it. You’ll be old like me someday and wish they did!”

“I guess,” I said.

I had never been inside a bar that was my size, and only once to a Big’s with Addy when I turned twenty-one early in the fall. We walked up to the counter, and I could get on a bar stool with much less effort! “What can I get you?” she asked.

I looked at Dad, “This is your idea…”

“Let’s have a Jack and Coke and a shot of tequila apiece,” Dad told the bartender.

“Any preferences?” He asked, motioning towards the tequila.

“An Extra Anejo,” he said.

“Just a minute,” he said. I watched as he poured a finger of Jack in two glasses and topped it with coke from a fountain nozzle.

Two shot glasses joined them in front of me, and Dad raised the larger drink to me, “Cheers,” he said.

We talked for a couple hours and more drinks about how it might have been better this way. “You were worried about picking a school near her, right? Now you can just worry about taking the best offer!”

That thought didn’t make me feel better, but it didn’t feel so bad as the tequila was sipped slowly after the cokes. After a short while, I could feel the alcohol affecting my brain chemistry! I was most definitely drunk when we hopped into another cab to go home. I was still capable of stumbling upstairs, using the restroom, and making it into bed all on my own, though.

The next day I had a hangover like nothing I could have imagined! It meant I hardly registered the four boxes that arrived from Addy’s apartment for me.
 
 

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