Me? Projecting my height problems onto fictional characters? Never!

When they came back to their sophomore year after summer, Danny was dreading it. It wasn't the school work or the early mornings (although obviously he wasn't exactly looking forward to those); it was his friends.

He hadn't seen Sam and Tucker all summer since his parents had dragged him and Jazz off to some ghost hunting convention full of weirdos just like them, and he had to pretend he wasn't a ghost.

He had read all those puberty books Jazz gave him when he turned thirteen, and nearly all of them said he was supposed to have a growth spurt at around fifteen. Danny had yet to have his growth spurt. He had always been small, but now it was getting ridiculous. His mom had tried to console him, saying he'd got her genes, but surely, with his dad being the height that he was, Danny would have gotten a little bit of that too? Jazz was tall! She'd stopped growing a couple of months ago and stood at a respectable 5'8. Danny hadn't even hit 5'7.

He felt sure that Dash would tease him mercilessly. Scratch that: Mikey would tease him. Valerie would laugh her head off, and Sam…

Here he stopped, because he had caught sight of a dark head in front of him.

Sam had taken down her ponytail this year, replacing it with a spider clip pulling her bangs back. She looked good. She looked tall. Taller than Danny.

Danny was not sulking.

Not at all.

She had turned around and waved at him, and he vaguely registered that she was asking him about his summer. He muttered something about ghosts and stupid parents, still trying to take in the fact that Sam was taller than him. She had not been taller three months ago.

It wasn't fair.

"You've grown." He said, interrupting her speech about her mother.

She raised her eyebrow. "Yeah? People do that."

"Yeah," he agreed, "But you're really tall. Like really tall."

Sam laughed. Since when did Sam laugh? "You know my parents are tall. And before she was in a wheelchair all the time, my grandma was one of the tallest women around. It's in my family's genes."

Danny scowled. "It's in my family's genes too, but I don't see me getting any of them."

"Oh my god." She gasped. "Are you upset? Because you're small? Oh my god."

"What?"

"You're an idiot sometimes, Danny. No one cares if you're small. Besides, males don't stop growing until they're eighteen. Just be glad you're not a girl. This is about as tall as I'm going to get."

"I bet Dash'll care."

"Well Dash can stuff it. If he tries to bully you, I have a Fenton blaster in my bag. And you have literal ghost powers. Honestly, I don't know why you're complaining." Sam pointed out. "Stop sulking and tell me about any new weapons we need to look out for."

Danny smiled in spite of himself. Sam's bluntness never failed to cheer him up. "There is always the Fenton tank launcher." He said. "It's supposed to launch mini tanks that grow when they hit the ground, but my mom hasn't got the tech right, and my dad keeps trying to update the Fenton crammer instead."

Sam giggled. "Wouldn't they kind of use the same technology though? You could use the opposite of whatever makes the crammer… cram stuff... and put it on the tank thing."

"God, that's good. Don't tell my parents that."

"Don't worry. There won't be any tanks for you anytime soon." She assured him. "I don't want to have to patch you up after you've gotten yourself run over."

"Aaand the love birds are at it again!" sang a voice from behind them. "Can you two contain yourselves after a whole summer apart?"

Sam growled low in her throat. "Hey Danny?" she said, "Would your parents blasters work on humans?"

Danny burst into laughter, ignoring Tucker Foley's panicked jump back when Sam mentioned blasters. "Sorry, Sam. They don't. But, you know, a paper aeroplane would do just as well."

"Excuse me!" Tucker interrupted, sounding rather put out. "Could we stop talking about how I'm going to die? We're only five minutes into the year."

"Ugh." Sam groaned. "Have it your way. I want to arrange your death by the end of the week though."

"Deal."

Their hands shook, and Danny pretended he wasn't very confused at his two friends. They had a strange tendency to compete for the best death ever since Danny died himself. He supposed he should probably be more concerned about them than he was.

It was then that Danny really looked at Tucker. Tucker was tiny.

Danny thought he was short, but Tucker made him feel a lot better about himself. The boy couldn't be more than 5'5, and he was still firmly fixated on his PDA.

Sam seemed to have noticed Tucker's height as well. She grinned, putting her arm on his shoulder and relaxing.

"Hey!" he started. "What are you…? Are you using me as an armrest, Sam?"

"Maybe." She hummed. "Maybe not. You'll never know."

"Sam!"

"What? I'm not doing anything! Right, Danny?"

He smirked at his friend, offering the unfortunate Tucker no support. "Right. Sorry, Tuck. Nothing I can do."

"Danny!" he groaned. "Us shorties stick together! We need to drive out the infestation of tall people, starting with her!"

Danny shook his head, still laughing. "Usually I would agree, Tuck, but right now I'm just happy that there's someone smaller than me. Sorry."

Tucker huffed, folded his arms and walked away. "Sorry doesn't cut it. You've broken our friendship, dude." He paused, looking back, "Farewell." And walked off into the interweaving students in the corridor.

"He'll be back by lunch." Sam told him.

"Oh, I know."

Poor Tucker. Is 5'5 small? I think it is for a male, but I'm female and much smaller, so who knows. Google didn't help much as it was convinced I wanted to date small people and gave me a load of articles about what heights people like for their partners - not what I was looking for. Hope you enjoyed!