Author's Note: And here is the third chapter. David makes a cameo and reveals that, contrary to her belief, Stress is not that crazy. Woot. And, yay, listees start appearing next chapter. I should have the casting call resolved some point today.

Disclaimer: No, I do not own Disney's live action musical: Newsies. No, I do not own Lewis Carroll's novel, Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland, nor Disney's cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland. I own Stress, her cat Ashes and her fixation with hopping.

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Curiouser and Curiouser

June 12, 2006

Stress has accidentally stumbled into the wonderful world of Newsieland.
Will she ever get back home to New Jersey? Not if the Queen of New York has her way.

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Before she knew it, Stress had shrunk down to exactly six inches, just the height to reach the door handle if she stood on her tippy-toes and grabbed upwards. "Well," she said when she realized that being this small had some benefits, "at least I can get out of this room now. I was beginning to get claustrophobic in here." She wrapped her arms around the top of the knob and jiggled it slightly. It was only then that she remembered that the door was still locked; just because she shrunk down to a size that would allow her to fit through the door, it didn't mean that the door unlocked.

"Shoot," she muttered under her breath and kicked the door. A slight scuff was left behind on the white door but she ignored it. "What do I do now?" Stress looked at the floor, the walls, the ceiling and, lastly, the glass table. And that was when she saw it, resting on the table top. From her position underneath the table, she could see a key that could only be meant for one door. That wasn't there a minute ago, she knew but shrugged. It only followed that, if a glass bottle and table could appear out of nowhere, a key could pop up as well.

She tried to climb up one of the glass legs of the table. She got about an inch or two off of the ground before sliding back down and landing on her rear. So that's why I never got an A in gym class.

She tried twelve more times, each time sliding back down to land on the tiled floor. On the thirteenth try, when she fell off and landed on her butt, she got up and proceeded to kick the table. Unfortunately for her, when she kicked it, she found that a glass table was a lot harder than a white door. While hopping around and clutching her sore foot with her right hand, she pointed at the table and scolded, "If you can make a bottle of juice that makes me shrink appear, and then a key, you can figure out how to get that key down to me."

Whether the table listened to her complaints or not, she'll never know, but a small cardboard box appeared behind her. While she was she still hopping around like an idiot – and trying her damndest not to feel like that strange hopping boy she had seen earlier and was eager to get her hands on again – Stress promptly tripped over the box.

"Oomph," she said as she fell backwards and landed on her rear again. If she kept this up, she was going to have one hell of a bruise when she got back home. Rubbing her backside furiously, Stress reached out and grabbed the box. She lifted the lid slowly and was excited to see that there were freshly baked chocolate chip cookies cooling in the box. It was only then that she realized how hungry landing on her rear had made her.

"Mmmm…cookies…" she drooled as she greedily reached in and took out a handful of cookie. They didn't even need to have the words 'Eat me' spelled out in chocolate chips like they did; she ate them all immediately.

"That was good," she said and patted her stomach before taking a seat next to the wall. "I wish there were some mooooooooooo-" Her thoughts were cut off when, at that moment, she went from six inches high to about thirty feet tall. "-re?"

Shocked and surprised at her sudden growth spurt, Stress just stared down at her tiny feet in amazement. At least the room expanding with me, she thought when she looked up and saw that that the ceiling, only about eight feet high a moment ago, was now about fifty feet high. She squinted slightly and was just able to make out the sparkling glass table right next to her left foot. "Hey, I can reach the key now," she said out loud, trying to find the good in the situation before, of course, finding the bad. "But what good will that key do? I doubt even my pinkie could get through that door now."

Stress' jaw dropped open as realization dawned on her. She was stuck. And she wasn't just stuck because she couldn't leave the room; she was stuck in a fashion that meant if her nose was itchy, she wouldn't be able to scratch the itch.

Like always, once you start to think of a way to make your situation worse, it happens. "Damn it, I can't scratch my nose now. And it itches soooo bad. What am I gonna do?" Enormous tear drops began spilling from her cheeks and she began to cry her frustrations out. "I really need to scratch," she moaned to herself as she tried feverishly to raise her gigantic hand to her face. But her nose remained itchy.

She sobbed and sobbed until she saw the tiny white door open. Curiosity got the better of her and she stopped her crying for a moment. Not like it really mattered, she had already made an Olympic size swimming pool with her tears.

"What is all this?" asked a voice. Someone was wading through the small lake.

Stress squinted her eyes again and smiled when she saw who it was. It was a relieved smile even though, a few minutes ago, she was wishing she could just throttle the boy. "David?"

The newsie looked down at his pocket watch real quick then put it away and drew out a carrot from his pocket. "Mmm…lunch," he said as she took a rather large bit from the tip of the carrot. After munching on it, he turned his head upward. "Oh, I'm sorry. Do I happen to know you? My name is David. David Jacobs," he said, introducing himself and sticking out his hand in an attempt to shake. But, when her realized that his companion was way too large to perform the niceties, he took his hand back and placed it in his pocket. "Yes, well…"

Now, if it wasn't for the fact that she was about six times her normal size, Stress probably would have jumped for joy. Not only was she not crazy for thinking she had fallen down a newsie hole but she was actually meeting David Jacobs. "I know," she began before trying to ask the newsie for help. But, just when she started to explain her problem, the boy cut her off. "Listen, I ne—"

David alternatively swam and hopped his way over to the glass table that was currently floating in the water. Once he had jumped up onto the table and was able to refrain from getting soaked he looked up at the giantess before him. "Excuse me, Miss? You are a miss, aren't you?"

She just looked down at him.

David shook his head and continued with his questions. "Well, then, are you crying?"

Stress rolled her eyes before answering his question this time. "Well, duh, David. Wouldn't you start to bawl if you were thirty feet tall and trapped in a room, in a place that you fell from a hole into? I mean, where the hell am I?"

Rather than answer her right away, David looked down at his pocket watch again before finishing off the rest of his carrot. "It's getting late," was all he said and he hopped off of the table, pocketing the key that was sitting on the table as he did so. "The King of New York always gets so nervous when his precious key pulls its disappearing act," he explained to her as he tried to make his way back to the white door from where he had entered.

"Wait, don't go. I need help!" Stress forgot her pleasure at meeting a newsie once she realized that David was going to leave her there alone.

He stopped and, as he treaded water, he looked up apologetically at her. "I'm sorry, miss, but the King and Queen of New York here in Newsieland aren't very patient people. As it is, I'm already late and I have to heading on my way." He began to swim away from her but stopped again when he heard her sniff. "Here, maybe this will help," he said and, slowly, he peeled his soaked blue shirt away from his skin, leaving only an off-white undershirt. He tossed it into the air and gave her a small wave. "Bye," he said and made his way over to the door. Despite the water that pressed up against it, he opened it up and exited without another word.

Stress watched as the shirt hung mid-air. "Like some tiny little bunny-boy's shirt is gonna help me get back to normal and escape from this room," she scoffed before she felt a familiar rumble in her tummy.

All of a sudden she began to shrink again. What the… She looked down and realized that the blue shirt was no longer floating mid-air; she was now wearing it. This shirt must be making me grow smaller, she realized and began to pull it off. If she didn't get rid of it soon, she might just shrink into nothingness.

Once the shirt was removed, though, she continued to shrink at an alarming rate. What else could be making me shrink?, she panicked as she looked down at herself. Nope, still the same white tank top, white keds and faded blue jeans that she had donned that morning. "Wait, what's this?" she wondered out loud as she felt the weight of something on her head. She ripped the object from her head and dropped it into the water. Somehow she was wearing a brown newsie hat.

Once the hat was floating around lazily in the water she stopped shrinking. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. She was now about three inches tall and that was pretty much it.

"Damn it."