The Girl Who Outgrew The World Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  THE GIRL WHO OUTGREW THE WORLD • ZOJE STAGE

  Copyright Information

  Dedication

  The Village of Wrong Things

  1 James

  2 Lilly

  3 James

  4 Lilly

  5 Lilly

  6 James

  7 Lilly

  8 James

  9 Lilly

  10 Lilly

  11 James

  12 Lilly

  13 Lilly

  14 Lilly

  15 James

  16 Lilly

  17 James

  18 Lilly

  19 Lilly

  20 James

  21 Lilly

  22 James

  23 Lilly

  24 James

  25 Lilly

  Acknowledgements / About the Author

  PRAISE FOR

  The Girl Who Outgrew the World

  “This modern feminist folktale hides dark themes within a deceptively whimsical exterior...the engaging plot will draw readers in.”

  – Publishers Weekly

  “Zoje Stage has crafted the perfect fairy tale: Magical, brutal, and full of heart. A beautifully written story that I can’t stop thinking about.”

  – Samantha Downing, internationally bestselling author of My Lovely Wife and For Your Own Good

  “A perfect blend of The Wizard of Oz meets Jerzy Kosinski, The Girl Who Outgrew the World reminds us of the parts of childhood too painful to remember, the people around us, who kept us small. But this time the story's rewritten: at last, it's the girl who gets to go on an epic hero's journey. Fabulous in every sense of the word.”

  – Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors

  “A strikingly beautiful novella about girlhood, teeming with fairy tale whimsy and heart-wrenching truth. Stage has created an entrancing, bittersweet adventure for the ages.”

  – Rachel Harrison, author of The Return and Cackle

  “I could feel my heart beat gold, my eyes fill with stars, and birds flutter from my mouth as I read this heart-tugging modern fairy tale. In The Girl Who Outgrew the World, Zoje Stage spins an enchanting modern parable in which all we hope is to be accepted as our very unique selves in this world.”

  – Cynthia Pelayo, three-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated author

  “I cannot put into words how much I loved this book. Stage's writing is haunting and engaging, a power-punch of metaphors that transcend the words on the page…When I say this is one of the best books I've read all year, I am screaming it with my whole heart.”

  – Mandy McHugh, author of Chloe Cates is Missing

  The Girl Who Outgrew the World

  Copyright © 2022 Zoje Stage

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in 2022 by Lethe Press

  www.lethepressbooks.com • [email protected]

  Cover design and layout by JeremyJohnParker.com

  Cover images by Mehdi Sepehri | unsplash.com & Deagreez | Adobe Stock

  ISBN: 978-1-59021-523-4

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For all the girls and women

  who are ogled but overlooked,

  underestimated,

  disbelieved, dismissed.

  Rear up like the dynamic queen

  you have every right to be.

  Whisper your truth

  and know you are heard.

  The Village of Wrong Things

  The cat with two tails

  and the fish with no scales

  The ghost with no scare

  and the three-headed bear

  The king with no gold

  who would never grow old

  The bat with no wings

  and the dragon who sings

  The girl with six eyes

  and the goat who eats flies

  The bird who chirps bells

  and the witch with no spells

  Together they live in a town that may roam

  picking up strangers and bringing them home

  Unknown, circa 1800’s

  J A M E S

  He fought the urge to turn off the lamp and sit in the dark. Everything else was dark. The TV. The kitchen. The hallway. The street of tidy but modest homes beyond the bay window. The world had silenced itself, snuffed out the cars, muted the crickets, drawn an invisible zipper across the lips of his neighbors—as Lilly used to do, when she wanted him to promise to keep her secrets.

  He longed to turn the lamp off and sit in the dark. But didn’t, because that was something desperate people did in the twilight of their defeat.

  His fear was unforgiveable, a betrayal worse than any misdeed of his thirty-four years. He was afraid of Lilly. Afraid that she was fundamentally something…else. In spite of his efforts to affix his apple-of-my-eye smile of approval, more and more it dribbled off like milk over the edge of a table. Somewhere on the floor were a thousand quivering mouths. Worse, he saw his rejection in his daughter’s eyes. His hesitation. The mourned loss of their physical language of hugs and squeezes. Even ordinary words had become too fragile to hold. In the absence of an explanation there was only the obvious: unknowable and slack-jawed. It stank of danger. Of something primordial he couldn’t comprehend.

  Eight weeks ago they’d cuddled in this very chair, her legs draped across his lap; they’d watched her favorite show about a girl who could fly. She was too big for that now. The chair too small. When the growth spurt first started Lilly crowed her delight. She’d been nervous about starting sixth grade and a bit more height—“a more impressive stature”—gave her confidence. But by the time school started, barely three weeks ago, Lilly was taller than the teachers. Taller

  than her father.

  Lilly once asked, her voice seesawing between horror and awe, “Daddy, am I a monster?”

  And he said “No no, just a friendly giant.”

  That was mid-August, when she went from four-foot-nine to five-foot-seven and her height still seemed within the realm of possibility. They bantered about the new sports she could try. Volleyball. Water polo.

  But Lilly kept growing and the doctor stopped joking about the healthy effects of the summer sun. A weed. A stalk of corn.

  James surrendered and switched off the lamp, afraid his daughter would stumble in needing a drink of water or another Tylenol—her eleven-year-old bones hurt—before falling asleep. Sometimes she forgot to duck and hit her head on the doorjamb. It pained him to see it. He wondered if she was right.

  A monster.

  Unsure what to do, he shut his eyes.

  L I L L Y

  Her feet hung over the end of the bed. Daddy promised her a big bed—and a new wardrobe—once they were certain the growth spurt had stopped. Not long ago her bedroom had been a favorite place. Now, the stuffed toys were too small to hug and the dollhouse miniatures were like slippery peanuts in her clumsy hands. The top of her bookcase hid a layer of dust which she otherwise wouldn’t have seen. Instead of cleaning it, she’d used a finger to spell out her name.

  Her exposed toes grew cold in the dark.

  The dark bred the doubts that crept toward her throat, threatening to strangle her.

  She had never wished for a mommy before—Daddy’s love was an endless ocean. (
Though oceans weren’t truly endless, but they were vast, and deep, and the birthplace of all living things.) Even when Lilly grew distressed—“it’s my fault”—because Mommy died while giving birth to her, Daddy always said “No no, you are the gift that keeps on giving.” But now….

  In the dark of her bedroom….

  As her knees hummed like the deep bass of a loud song….

  She hoped she wasn’t being disloyal just to wonder, to ponder the possibility that a mommy might find a better temporary solution than the Big & Tall Men’s Store, or men’s basketball shoes. Maybe a mommy would sew her a sundress out of a pretty fabric shower curtain. And shopping for a bra with a mommy wouldn’t be weird. Lilly hadn’t needed a bra before, but the whole of her had grown exponentially (minus some bits and pieces). Her little buds were now small boobs; at least they weren’t as out of proportion as her hands and nose.

  As Lilly turned over to get more comfortable, her thick hips dug into the thin mattress. Maybe a mommy wouldn’t be as afraid of her as a daddy. Maybe a mommy would say “Girls grow buttercup, suck it up” to anyone with a questioning gaze. She understood some of Daddy’s fears: What if she outgrew their house? What if she outgrew the world? But she hadn’t yet, and while she’d never given much thought to the variables of human size, she knew she wasn’t beyond being a person—though she was beyond the accepted norms for a girl.

  J A M E S

  Every morning James eyed her as she came into the kitchen, trying to gauge if she was any taller. Her hair didn’t look clean—she wasn’t used to the handheld nozzle and inevitably sprayed water around the bathroom as her elbows collided with the narrow walls of the shower stall. But Lilly hadn’t noticeably grown in a week.

  Maybe it was time to make good on his promise and get her out of those men’s chinos, the stuffy buttoned shirt that made his little girl—if he could still call her that—look more like an insurance salesman than a middle school student. Lilly once had long hair and she’d proudly worn it in two braids that she’d woven herself. As she gained her height, her hair hadn’t kept up. It swung unhappily above her shoulders now, almost too short for Lilly to hide behind. Her fingernails, also, hadn’t grown proportionately, which made her hands look grotesque, paws with dull splinters of moon.

  She gripped her fork, her tongue poking from between her lips, and watched with the attention of a bloodthirsty hunter as he slid the dozen scrambled eggs onto her plate.

  “Thanks, Daddy.” Her voice was still that of a small child. If he hadn’t seen her mouth move it might have been a ventriloquist’s trick, throwing the voice of a girl who no longer existed.

  “Did you sleep well?” He returned the skillet to the stove, nibbling on the remnants.

  Lilly shrugged, chewed. “Not really.”

  His expression softened as he studied her. It wasn’t her fault, any of it. And it hurt her. Physically, and in ways he couldn’t imagine. She needed something from him and he didn’t know what to offer.

  “We can ask the doctor about it on Friday.” They went to the doctor’s every week now, to monitor and theorize.

  Lilly shrugged again. It struck him how resigned she was: this was her new body, her new life. Her growth couldn’t be undone. The doctor had been straightforward about that, back when they were looking for a pituitary tumor. Then the scan came back negative. Specialists were consulted. They sat in a conference room at the hospital, a half dozen doctors projected like game show contestants on a big screen, asking questions, comparing research. No one knew anything.

  “We’ll make her as comfortable as possible,” Lilly’s pediatrician had whispered to him. They thought she was going to die. They thought she would grow until her heart burst.

  “I think…. Everything fits the same,” he said, inspecting her, lingering over the small bulges on her chest, a development that ruled out gigantism, which typically caused a delay in puberty not an acceleration. “Your shoes still okay?”

  “Yup. It’s been a whole week!”

  He didn’t know if she understood. The possibility of what could happen if she kept growing.

  “Maybe we should hire that seamstress.” He threw her a wink.

  “Really?” Her grin made a clownish face, with her nose wide and taut, but her delight was undeniable.

  James decided then and there: even if his little girl kept growing—grew beyond the logistics of a coffin—he’d get a whole team of seamstresses on the job that very day.

  James drove her to school, as had become their routine. It was close enough to walk and Lilly seemed unaware that everyone stared when they saw her. People weren’t unkind—it was almost as if they saw the reaper in her shadow, waiting to carry her off to the netherworld the instant she crossed some invisible boundary. They had pity in their eyes, but also terror—that such a random wrongness might befall them or someone they knew. It was James who didn’t like the spectacle of it.

  As he braked in front of the squat one-story middle school, Lilly unfolded herself from the front seat—pushed all the way back to make room for her. Like a magical creation of origami, she angled herself out of the car, a paper doll whose limbs, uncrimped, expanded upward. She didn’t lean in to kiss him goodbye anymore because it hurt her back, but James threw her kisses and reminded her of his promise. The army of seamstresses. The new and beautiful wardrobe.

  She strode up the walkway, the smile on her face visible even from behind. He watched as she greeted a friend—bless her friends, the smart and giggly girls who still accepted Lilly just as she was—and tried not to notice the slight limp in her walk. Whether her gait was uneven because of lingering pain or because her legs were now slightly mismatched, James wasn’t sure. But, like so many things since Lilly’s affliction began, it ravaged him like he’d swallowed a grenade.

  One hand on the door, Lilly turned to wave at him, still abloom with the promise of the return of her skirts and colors and mismatched plaids and polka dots that expressed her whimsy, her confident I-am-who-I-am. She ducked and followed her friends inside. Maybe it was those plaids and polka dots that had prepared her for this—for being a standout in their small community of green lawns, everyone decapitated by the same ruthless lawnmower.

  He was an Eye-Tea man. When Lilly was little she’d peer into his coffee mug, on the lookout for floating eyeballs, until she finally understood what IT meant. It was the perfect at-home career for the single father. After Daphne’s unexpected death, his guilt-ridden parents had helped him acquire a small house, and there he and his daughter lived, worked, and played. It was a more enclosed life than he’d expected, but Lilly the Light always kept him from mourning. She was the best sun a father could have—a joke that confused people who thought he meant a son.

  A cloud moved over the house.

  The room instantly darkened, as if there’d been an eclipse.

  The furniture faded into the background—the wide desk, the ergonomic chair, the hard drives and cables—as his computer’s triple screens luminesced. He’d already researched local tailors, and there was only one good option: Kendra’s Kustomwear. Her specialties included prom dresses, maternity clothes, and tailoring for Little People. Lilly wasn’t pregnant or a dwarf, and she didn’t need a glittery dress, but the combined expertise in the oddly-sized and feminine sounded promising. He tapped in the number.

  “Kendra’s Kustomwear, Kendra speaking, how may I help you?” She answered on the second ring and spoke with a slight southern twang.

  “Hello, my name is James Wolf. I’m looking for someone who could make a complete wardrobe for my daughter. You see, Lilly—”

  “The little girl who grew?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Isn’t she the girl who grew so suddenly this summer? I was hoping you’d call me—I wanted to reach out, but I didn’t want to impose.”

  Of course he knew Lilly wasn’t a secret. Such things were impossible in the age of cellphones and the internet, and he’d even allowed a piece to be written about
her for a scientific magazine, hoping to elicit answers from distant doctors or researchers.

  “Yes, Lilly—”

  “Oh Mr. Wolf, I can’t tell you how glad I am you called! My church has been praying for your little girl. And I’d be happy to make her whatever she needs.”

  In spite of the discomfort he felt that a stranger was so aware of his predicament, he was also relieved. He’d dreaded trying to answer “What size does she wear?”

  “I’m sorry to impose like this,” he said, “but everything’s happened so quickly and she’s been wearing men’s clothes. I’d really like to get her back into something more age appropriate as soon—”

  “Of course! No woman—or little girl—wants to be stuck wearing fashions that don’t suit her, we all want to look pretty, don’t we?”

  James wasn’t sure how to answer that. Looking pretty had never been a major concern for him. “Can you give me an estimate? Do you charge by the piece, the hour?”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Wolf. I know you have a lot more to worry about than the price of girls’ underthings. My church has been gathering donations for you and we’ll put it toward the cost of fabric, and I have a crew of volunteer sewers who help me when we’re making things for the overseas orphanages and whatnot. We’re always ready for a mission! We’ll get your daughter feeling good about herself again in no time.” She sounded as buoyant as a balloon.

  He deleted his most uncharitable thought—that Kendra was a Kook, a Do-Gooder with Jesus on one shoulder and a beauty pageant trophy on the other. Her priorities seemed a bit off. Unless they weren’t. Was Lilly feeling bad about herself? She couldn’t see much in the bathroom mirror anymore, but was all of this taking a toll on her self-esteem? He’d learned from the mommy blogs how susceptible girls were to basing their self-worth on their physical appearance, so he’d always made sure to praise Lilly for meaningful things: her brains, her creativity, her hard work and kindness.