For a few seconds that seemed to stretch strangely into eternity, no one said a word. No one even moved. Jessica and Bethany were still in their seats, their eyes wide, their hands clasped over their mouths in an overt display of silent wonder. Jessica had been the one to suggest that Emma was taller than Igor, but she had spoken in a bit of an offhand way, flippantly deciding to goad Igor with the possibility that he no longer held the primacy of height. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Jessica had truly felt that what she had suggested was true, but she hadn't actually considered the possibility...not at the forefront of her consciousness, at least. That was why she was joining Bethany in silently gasping at the clear fact that Emma was now noticeably taller than Igor, the formerly "untouchable" 8'8" giant.
Emma was studying the slight creases and wrinkles in Igor's forehead, furrowing her brow slightly as she blinked blankly a couple times, struggling to take in the reality of what she was seeing. It worked in an odd way within her brain. First, as she stood up and extended her legs to their full length, it struck her as odd that Igor's broad shoulders seemed so far down below her -- they were almost even with the top of her breasts. She glanced back up at Igor's forehead, against feeling a weird sense of surreality as she cocked her head slightly, chewing a bit on the inside of her cheeks as she studied the novelty in front of her. She was looking...straight ahead...at his forehead. And his forehead was...higher than his eyes...which could only mean, if she thought through it for a second or two, that her eyes...were higher than his eyes. Which meant...that she was in fact, taller than he was.
The line of reasoning that Emma had progressed through in her head was so oddly elementary, so basic, that once she realized the essential truth -- the fact that she was now taller than Igor, and by a good bit -- she blinked again, and her eyes seemed refreshed and clarified with her new knowledge. She smiled, a bit bashfully, and gave a little laugh, which was aimed more at her slowness in grasping the truth than anything else. But it was also a laugh that was tinged with something else: an "old school" type of gentle mockery, as if to say, 'Haha, I'm taller than youuuu!' in the same way that a young girl might tease a young boy on the playground.
Igor was looking up at Emma, his own brow heavily creased, but in an entirely different way. He looked genuinely alarmed and afraid, not of Emma's pure physical presence per se, but rather because of the fact that, in the past few days, she had grown an absolutely unprecedented amount. He had just started getting close with Emma, and had come to think of her fondly as a "little sister" figure of sorts, who was struggling through her own height disorder, but who remained beneath him, in the very literal sense. But now, all of that was totally out the window, and he found himself staring into Emma's bashfully grinning mouth. He felt all the shock, surprise, and alarm that an older brother might feel when his younger sister came back from summer camp taller than him...except that for Igor, this had all happened in a matter of days.
Bethany was the first to speak.
"Oh...my...god," she intoned through her hands. "She totally is taller than you!"
"B-But...but how?!" asked Igor in a voice that didn't sound to him like his own. He was still busy studying Emma's mouth, with his eyes darting around to her full cheeks, her playfully smiling eyes, and the top of her head, which seemed farther above his eyes than what was actually real.
Emma looked up and down Igor's body in wonder. His feet still looked huge...his hands were totally enormous...nothing about him had really changed. That was the truly strange thing to Emma right now -- everything about her giant friend looked exactly the same, except for the fact that she was now taller than he was. She glanced down at her own hands, her mouth slightly open in a neutral expression of intrigue and inquiry. Her hands looked the same too. Surely they were still smaller than his! She looked back up at Igor's face and saw how unsettled and...scared he looked. In that moment, a contrasting duo of emotions rifled through her. First, and perhaps most powerfully, she felt a quick tang of challenging, potent aggression towards him, verging on anger. So she had grown taller than him -- so what!? She was still the same person, after all! Why did he insist on acting like Martha and Dr. Kline and all the other doctors who she had recently been catching looking at her, and whispering about her to each other in corners? It was part of the old story that Emma was really getting sick of: the contrast between the perfectly fine way that she felt, and the concern of all the other people around her who professed to care about her. What was their problem? So she was growing...so she was still growing...so what? Didn't they care about how she felt!? Or were they really all that intent on trying to freak her out as much as possible?
Deep down, Emma was feeling this way because she had successfully repressed her own fears and anxieties about her disorder a while ago, way back weeks before, when she had been living in the house with Daniel, before he had gone on that business trip for a week, before they had fought. She had been the one to freak out, many times, in the earlier stages of her growth, but she had gradually managed to reach a point where she had more or less come to terms with the unassailable fact that she was getting taller and bigger, that no one seemed to know why, and that it seemed like there wasn't really a firmly-defined end in sight.
For better or worse, exempting little moments like her first weigh-in with Monica the week before, Emma had learned to accept her condition for what it was, and to just take it all on the chin, so to speak. It would have been an entirely different matter if her disorder made her feel sick, or tired, or otherwise negative in any way. But despite occasional muscle cramps and growing pains, Emma was now feeling fresher, more energetic, and more alive than she had ever felt in her life. She didn't know if it was because of the physical aspects of the growth, or the psychological, or some combination of the two. All she knew was that, when she encountered concerned and alarmed expressions like the one Igor was giving her right now, they made her feel, first and foremost, irritated.
There was also the slightly, very gentle smugness that came along with the mere fact of a girl being taller than a guy. Emma couldn't really help her eyebrows going up a little as she locked eyes with Igor for the first time as a taller person, and in the same way, she couldn't quite help letting out another slight exhale of amused laughter. Once again, it was almost an elementary response: that "tallest girl" in the class was laughing at the fact that she had exceeded the "tallest boy."
"I...I have no idea," said Jessica out loud, her voice cautious. "You feeling alright, Emma?"
"I...uh, yeah!" said Emma, breaking eye contact with Igor and looking to the side and down at Jessica. "Yeah, I feel...the same."
"Well you...you grew like four inches...or more...in a single day," said Igor haltingly, as if he still couldn't really believe it.
Again, that same strange mixture of irritation and buoyancy flashed through Emma and she turned back to Igor.
"You sure about that?" she asked, with a lightness to her voice that nonetheless carried something of a sharpened point. "Maybe you just shrunk!"
Bethany and Jessica both chuckled nervously at Emma's little suggestion, but Igor was clearly not in any kind of laughing mood.
