MinnesotaWriter

Chapter 22: The Night Before I returned downstairs to find that Hannah had resumed watching the movie without me. Like before, she was sitting on the floor. Emma remained absorbed in her smartphone on the couch. "You were in the bathroom for a really long time," Hannah said as I took a seat behind her on the couch. Emma groaned at her cousin's lack of social etiquette, though she still didn't look up from her phone. I didn't respond at all to Hannah's comment. Anything she might think I had been doing in the bathroom was better than what I had actually been doing. I hoped that I had managed to put everything back into the suitcase exactly like I had found it, and that the pull-up I had tried out wouldn't show any signs of having been worn. I wasn't able to pay attention to the TV. It didn't matter that this was my favorite of the Harry Potter movies. I simply couldn't sit still and focus on it. The diapers I'd discovered in Hannah's suitcase both worried and intrigued me. Why was it that she would need to wear those to bed rather than the pull-ups? There was only one explanation that made sense. The pull-ups must not work well enough for her at night. There was no question from when I was holding the diaper that it had significantly more absorbent padding, but it seemed to follow that it would be more effective at absorbing urine. But I struggled to understand why that was the case. The pull-ups seemed to work perfectly fine for Hannah during the day. Or did they? When Emma had mentioned that her cousin had peed all over the couch the other day, I had simply assumed that she must have not had a pull-up on at the time. But what if that wasn't the case? What if she had been wearing the pull-up, and it hadn't been able to completely absorb the accident? Maybe those pull-ups didn't work one hundred percent of that time? What would that mean for my own fake bedwetting once my parents got the pull-ups for me? I, of course, would be wetting them, but what would happen if they leaked all over the bed? I couldn't see my parents wanting to continue getting pull-ups for me if that were to happen. They wouldn't see them as having any value if there were still wet sheets to deal with, anyway. Would I end up needing to wear diapers as well if I were to continue faking the bedwetting? And did I want to wear diapers rather than pull-ups? That was a question I didn't know the answer to at the moment. I hadn't ever remotely considered the possibility of wearing a diaper rather than a pull-up outside of the makeshift diaper I had attempted to make for myself once a couple of years back to disastrous results. Would a diaper feel as good as wearing a pull-up? Would it feel better than wearing a pull-up? That wasn't a question I could answer without having tried one on, but there hadn't been an opportunity to do so. From the windows looking out over the backyard, I could see that the rain hadn't let up a single bit. I checked my phone. The forecast said the downpour wasn't supposed to stop until sometime overnight. The movie finally came to an end. Hannah wanted to move on to the next one immediately, but not before taking another toilet break, as her watch had just gone off a couple of minutes earlier. "I need to put my foot down," Emma said, though she remained seated on the couch with her legs curled up to the side. "I'm not watching another one of these movies this weekend." Hannah was gone a lot longer than before. It was hard to tell since it was raining, but I thought I could hear the sound of someone going upstairs and walking around. When she finally returned, she didn't take kindly to Emma's decision to move on to any activity other than watching the next Harry Potter movie. Hannah stomped her feet and ran off when Emma refused to hand over the TV remote to her. Hannah returned a few minutes later with her mom, who tried to helpfully suggest that perhaps we could make some TikTok videos with Hannah instead. That seemed to test Emma's limit on wanting to do anything but watch another Harry Potter movie, but she agreed. There was still another hour or so before Mom was going to come and pick me up. We managed to get a couple of someone choreographic dance videos made that Emma promised Hannah that she would post to her account, though when Hannah went off to use the toilet again, Emma whispered to me that she was going to delete it all once Hannah was gone, saying that she didn't want to ruin the vibe on her account. The doorbell rang a few minutes later. It had to be Mom coming to pick me up. Hannah stayed behind in the living room as Emma and I went to the front door. Mom was chatting casually with Emma and Hannah's parents in the entryway when we arrived. "Are you excited about summer break?" Mom asked Emma. "I will be when Angie is back from her road trip," Emma said. "I'm looking forward to the sleepover on Maddy's birthday." Mom nodded in response to Emma's statement and shifted her gaze over to me. And just like that, I was caught. Mom wasn't supposed to have known that I'd already invited Angie and Emma to have a sleepover on my birthday next weekend. "Where's Hannah?" Emma's aunt asked. "I don't know," Emma said. "Maybe in the other room." "Can you go grab her? I'm sure she'd want to say goodbye since we're leaving early tomorrow morning." Emma trudged back off toward the living room. I caught her rolling her eyes once she was at an angle where her parents couldn't see it. A little while later, there was a loud patter of feet running along the wood floor, and Hannah sprinted around the corner. I couldn't help but once again find my eyes drifting down to her waist. As she came to a stop, her shirt lifted up briefly, giving one final half-second glimpse of the pull-up beneath her shorts. "Bye!" Hannah said with a wave at me. And just like that, she was done, having turned back around to sprint off toward the living room. We continued to make small talk about plans for the summer for a few minutes, and then it was time to head home. I closed the door behind me after getting into the passenger seat, bracing myself for an awkward conversation. Mom turned on the ignition without saying a word and watched the rear-view camera as she carefully backed out of the driveway. Once we were out on the road, the questions began. "Why does Emma think there's going to be a sleepover on your birthday?" she asked. She had me there. It was stupid bad luck that Emma had thought to say anything about that to Mom. Mom had shot down the idea of an all-nighter, and she had made it clear that she wasn't going to OK the idea of a sleepover unless the anti-bedwetting pills had worked. I really didn't want to answer Mom's question, even though it wasn't as though she likely knew the answer already. "I told Angie and Emma that a sleepover was the plan for my birthday." "Madelyn, you know that I had said that wasn't an option unless we managed to figure out what was happening with the bedwetting." I nearly did it. Even though I had planned to bring up the topic of pull-ups tomorrow, I nearly went forward with the speech I had rehearsed about how it might be good to try them. But I instead fell back on a more vague excuse. "I just figured that maybe the doctor would have something that would stop the bedwetting so I could still have the sleepover. I didn't want to tell them that I couldn't do it." "That doesn't leave a lot of time," Mom said as we turned onto the road that led back to our house. "I want to make sure any solution actually works before letting you do a sleepover. Maybe it would be best if we just postponed it. Your friends can stay until it is time to go to bed. It's not as though you'd really miss anything while being asleep." That was the last thing I wanted, especially after having already told my friends that a sleepover was going to happen. "Please don't tell them that it is canceled yet. I don't want them to think anything is wrong." Mom was silent for a bit as she pulled into the driveway and waited for the garage door to open. "That's fine for now," Mom said at last. "But if we don't find a way to deal with the bedwetting before then, it isn't going to work to have the sleepover." <><><> Another night. Another set of pills to take before bed. At least this was going to be the last time. Despite my pleas to get out of taking the pills tonight, Mom insisted that I should give it one more try before going to the doctor's appointment in the morning. "I don't want you staying up too late tonight," Mom said. "The appointment is first thing in the morning, so you need to make sure you set your alarm for eight." Great. Pills. No more water for tonight. No chance of peeing the bed this evening. And I had to get up early in the morning. I held out my hand, and she dropped the two pills onto my open palm. I grabbed a glass with a small amount of water in it from her as well. Mom watched as I popped both of the pills into my mouth. I resigned myself to the possibility of dealing with an actual headache tomorrow morning as I began to raise the glass of water to my lips. Some loud yelling in the distance – which sounded like my younger brother, Jackson – suddenly grabbed Mom's attention, as she turned around to look in the other direction. Mom's back was turned as she headed down the hallway in the direction of the tantrum that Jackson seemed to be throwing. That wasn't common behavior for him, but when it happened, it usually took both of my parents to rein my six-year-old brother in. This was my chance. I pulled the two tiny pills out of my mouth and placed them in my pocket before quickly chugging down the small glass of water. With my plans for the evening suddenly looking much more positive, I didn't throw a fuss at going to bed earlier than I normally would have on an evening during summer break. I made sure to use the toilet while my parents were helping my brother get ready for bed, making sure they would know that any bedwetting would be happening in spite of all the precautions that were being taken. I flushed the two pills down the toilet, watching carefully to make sure that they didn't resurface. The best part about having avoided taking the pills tonight was that I wasn't going to have to avoid drinking anything afterward. My mouth had been so parched the past several nights when I had gone to bed without sneaking a drink from the sports bottle I had tucked away in my bedroom. Alone in my bedroom, I raised the bottle to my lips. I couldn't believe that I was somehow actually excited about the idea of drinking lukewarm tap water. The likelihood of being able to wet myself in bed tonight allowed me to manage to set aside my disgust at the bitter taste of the water. The problem of going to bed this early was that I still had plenty of time to kill before midnight. I tapped open the web browser on my phone, trying to recall the name of the website Hannah had mentioned reading those Harry Potter fanfiction stories on. I couldn't recall the exact name, but a quick Google search of the acronym she had mentioned brought up a link to the website. I tapped on the link, and then I groaned as a new pop-up appeared on my phone, one that was unwelcome but familiar, a message that the website was blocked due to the parental restrictions on my phone. Well, that was just great. Defeated, I set my phone down on the bed. It wouldn't be the first time that an otherwise appropriate website had been mistakenly blocked by the software. If it was something Hannah had access to, I couldn't imagine that it was actually anything that bad or inappropriate. I would need to ask Dad about the website tomorrow, and he would be able to update the permissions on the parental controls like he had done for me before, though perhaps I should consider coming up with a reason for wanting to access the website other than wanting to read Harry Potter stories. A sense of melancholy struck me as midnight approached. This might be the last time of wetting myself like this. Going forward, I would be wearing a pull-up to bed every night for the foreseeable future. I had first wet the bed nine nights ago. And tomorrow I would be going to see a doctor. I was amazed at how quickly everything had progressed. I'd tried to put off thinking about what the doctor's appointment might mean for me in the morning. What tests would they end up running? What theories would they have for why the bedwetting might be happening? Was there anything I had done that might cause them to suspect that I was actually wetting the bed on purpose? One thing was clear. Regardless of what happened at that appointment, I was going to need to find a way to broach the topic of pull-ups with Mom tomorrow. With any luck, tomorrow night, I'd be going to bed while wearing a pull-up identical to the one of Hannah's that I had tried out earlier today. Having managed to avoid taking the anti-bedwetting pills, I didn't have to struggle at all to manage to wet the bed, and I took in the sensation of the warmth spreading beneath my waist. Even though everything had gone right so far, even though I was still completely on track for my plan to succeed, another thought began to fill me with a new worry as I lay on top of my thoroughly soaked bedding. What if the pull-ups didn't work for me? --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

Well, they did watch that on Friday, so that is something that can be brought up again by Madelyn. For sure, and certainly demonstrates how unhealthy parts of her obsession with diapers are. That does seem to be the case.

Chapter 21: Beyond My Imagination I wasn't in a hurry as I biked back home from Emma's place after saying my goodbyes and setting up a tentative plan for me to come over tomorrow afternoon. My feet pedaled slowly as my bike meandered down the side of the road, but my mind was racing. I simply couldn't get the image of Hannah's pull-ups out of my mind. It was one thing to see pictures of the pull-ups on all the advertisements I had spotted in magazines and newspapers. It was something entirely else to see what they looked like in person. And the pictures had not done them justice. I had been unable to take my eyes off Hannah every time her skirt had lifted up to reveal what she had euphemistically referred to as her absorbent underwear. I simply had to have them. Yes, I had managed to wait about three years so far, but even waiting another three days now felt nearly impossible. When I'd followed Emma up the driveway to her house, passing the spot where Hannah had seemed to have stopped and peed herself, the black pavement had been completely dry. I'd seen Hannah drink enough water that she must have had a sizeable accident, but the pull-up seemed to have been more than absorbent enough to handle it. While the size ranges listed in the ads for the pull-ups had suggested that I wouldn't have any issue fitting into them, there was now zero doubt that the pull-ups would work for me. I estimated that Hannah's pant sizes were one or two larger than mine. Any fears about having grown too big to wear the pull-ups were now fully assuaged. I was going to see Hannah one more time tomorrow, and then, who knew if our paths would ever cross again? If I had met her in any other way, if Hannah hadn't been my best friend's cousin, perhaps I could have discussed bedwetting with her, even in spite of the discomfort I felt around her weird behaviors. But that topic had to be off-limits with her. I didn't have any faith that Hannah would be able to keep that secret from Emma. Perhaps, like that time with my cousins all those years ago, I could corner Hannah for a bit while she was alone and see if I couldn't manage to dredge out some more details about her bedwetting, daytime accidents, and pull-ups. For the briefest of moments, I actually toyed again with the idea of wetting my pants during the day in front of my parents. There was no way that couldn't result in being required to wear pull-ups during the day like her. But I realized now that hiding that I was wearing pull-ups in the day would be incredibly difficult. Even if I avoided shorts, skirts, or other things that might make the pull-up become visible, the crinkling sound alone could be a dead giveaway to someone familiar with that sound. Time was running out quickly. I would need to get the pull-ups soon enough before my birthday so that I could prove to my parents that they worked. I needed them to allow me to have the sleepover, and I couldn't quit bedwetting now, not after all the progress that I had made. But with Mom's comments the other night about how she wasn't ever going to force me to wear diapers, I had no choice but to take the initiative if I was to ever get those pull-ups. As the bike ride home continued, I silently mouthed my way through a half-dozen different scenarios before I turned to pull into the driveway, desperately searching for the magic phrase that, if used on my parents, would convince them to purchase pull-ups for me without any hesitation. But none of my arguments felt quite right. I had to find good excuses for the questions I was asking. It couldn't be that I was asking for pull-ups out of the blue. I had to have an explanation for what inspired the request. The only thing I'd settled on so far was that the movie we had watched the other night would be the ideal way to open up the discussion; I could act as though that had given me the idea that this was even something that could be done to handle bedwetting. But how to get from that to the specific bedwetting pull-ups that I wanted to wear? I suddenly had an idea. Once I was back in the driveway, I tapped in the five-digit code to open the garage door so I could put my bike away. When I entered the couch from the garage, which led right into the kitchen, I ran across Mom prepping something for dinner. She was hunched over a cutting board in the corner of the room. "Mom," I asked, "I didn't have a chance to finish that newest Reader's Digest? Where did you put it?" She answered without looking up from her work, though she did stop chopping with her knife. "It's in the basket next to the couch." I retrieved my prize and retreated to my bedroom. With the door closed behind me, I flipped rapidly through the tiny magazine until, at last, I came across the advertisement I had seen earlier in the week. My parents knew that these pull-ups were an option. But they were so adamantly against them that they had even gone to the length of reassuring me that they wouldn't make me wear them. Was it simply that they thought I didn't want to wear them? Had my sister perhaps reacted negatively to the suggestion of wearing pull-ups a long time ago? If that was the explanation, perhaps all I had to do was indicate to my parents that I would be OK with trying out the pull-ups. But even then, I had to go about it in the right way. I couldn't have my parents thinking that I wanted to wear those pull-ups, but perhaps I could frame it as wanting to go on a sleepover so badly that I'd be willing to try anything to make it happen, even something I wasn't keen on, such as pull-ups. That could do. That could be a successful angle of attack. I would use the movie we had watched the other night as an opening to bring up the topic of diapers, then I would conveniently mention the ad I had seen in the magazine. I'd have to make sure I didn't sound thrilled about the idea, but if I could come across as desperately willing to try anything so that I could have the sleepover, that surely had to be enough to win my parents over. But first, I needed to wait until the pills had run their course. Two more nights of wetting the bed should do the trick for that. Then, once the doctor's appointment was over, I would make my move. Perhaps, if I was lucky enough, the doctor would bring up the idea of pull-ups unprompted. I breathed a sigh of relief and flopped backward onto the bed, stretching out on my back. I didn't mind the crinkling sound that the new mattress made. It reminded me in a way of how the pull-ups had sounded when I had been wearing them three years ago and of the sounds I had heard all yesterday afternoon when Hannah had been walking or running next to me. Everything would be simple once my parents were buying pull-ups for me. Continuing the ruse of bedwetting would be as easy as peeing in a pull-up most nights, rather than the charade of going down to the basement after midnight to toss in my bedding. And there would be no need to fake that I was having headaches from the anti-bedwetting pills in the morning. For times when I was away from home – whether for sleepovers or for the soccer camp I'd have later in the summer — I could leave whatever pull-ups were packed with me safe in the bottom of my suitcase, letting my parents think that the bedwetting issue was resolved without actually needing to risk having anyone discover my secret. And I wouldn't have to wet the bed every night. I could allow for a few nights a week when I would remain dry, but then I could save those unused pull-ups to be used during the day to continue the experiments I wanted to conduct with wetting my pants while I was awake. And I'd have the house all to myself to do that. <><><> My nighttime routine followed the same pattern as the past couple of days. My water intake was heavily monitored. I wasn't given quite as much to drink after dinner and only was allowed a small amount to sip on afterward. I made up for it by drinking from my tap-water filled bottle in my bedroom. And I was again given the anti-bedwetting pills. Mom stayed in the room, watching as I placed them in my mouth and washed them down with a small glass of water. I had considered the idea of faking that I had taken the pills and just flushing them down the toilet, but that wasn't possible with how she had stuck around to make sure I had actually taken my medication. If I could have avoided taking the pills, that would have allowed me to wet the bed normally. Mom again reminded me that I was to not drink anything more than the tiniest sip of water now that I had taken the pills. The sternness of the warning was such that there wasn't any scenario where I was going to disobey her. And then there was the reminder to use the toilet before bed. With Mom and Grace around when that reminder was given, there was no way to fake using the toilet, either. All of that meant that there wasn't any way I was going to be able to actually pee in the bed tonight. That was a supreme disappointment. It felt like forever since the last time I had actually peed myself, though in reality, only a little more than a day had passed since I had intentionally wet my pants while in the laundry room on Friday afternoon. I weighed my options: toss everything in the washing machine tonight or wet the bed when I woke up in the morning. As much as I didn't want to deal with having to take my wet bedding down to the basement in the morning, the urge to sleep was irresistible. <><><> The prediction of Sunday being a rainy day turned out to be correct. As Grace was out with her friends, Mom drove me over to Emma's place. I had woken up to an actual headache this morning, and for once I didn't have to fake how miserable I was feeling until the Tylenol kicked in. I didn't have any issues with getting myself to pee when I woke up, and I found myself once again lying in a puddle of urine in my bed for about twenty minutes until I decided that it was time to head downstairs. I nearly managed to take my bedding to the laundry room without running into anyone, only to have Grace unexpectedly pop out around the corner after I had gone down the stairs to the basement. I had attempted to at least wrap up my sheets so that the wet spots weren't visible on the outside, but in my surprise at coming across my older sister in the basement, I dropped everything I was holding, and the sheets unraveled to reveal the spots where they had gotten soaked with urine. That had led to an awkward moment as I scrambled to pick up the evidence of my wet bed while Grace awkwardly excused herself to head past me and go upstairs. "How are you holding up?" Mom asked, once I had gotten into the car. She was all buckled with the key in the ignition, but she hadn't taken the car out of park yet. "Fine." "How's your head doing?" "Better." Mom sighed. "We've got your doctor's appointment setup first thing Monday morning. I'm sure they will be able to figure out what might be causing the bedwetting you've been dealing with." "It better be something that doesn't give me headaches in the morning." "Just one more night of the pills, and I won't make you take any more if they don't work, OK?" I nodded in response, and Mom finally shifted the minivan into reverse and backed out of the driveway. The drive over to Emma's place was quick, and nothing further was said about the bedwetting or the doctor's appointment. Mom pulled up as far as she could in my friend's driveway, so that I would have to be out in the rain for long. <><><> Hannah was wearing another Harry Potter-themed shirt this afternoon. It made me begin to wonder if she had anything else in her wardrobe. She was already holding open the front door for me as soon as I was getting out of the passenger side of the minivan. I managed to not get completely soaked during my short sprint up the front steps and into the house. I had wondered if it would be difficult for me to tell if Hannah was wearing a pull-up today since, from Emma's tale about how Hannah had peed on the couch, it seemed as though she didn't necessarily wear them all the time. But it became obvious right away that Hannah was wearing a pull-up. Her Harry Potter T-shirt barely made it down to her waist. She was fine if she was just standing still, but as soon as she reached up to hold the door open, the shirt lifted up to reveal about an inch of the pull-up sticking out above her loose-fitting shorts. "We're all set. Emma helped me get the movie set up on the TV," Hannah said as soon as the door shut behind me. "This is all your fault," Emma muttered to me after Hannah had raced off toward the family room where the TV was located without waiting for a response from me. "What is all my fault?" I asked as I slipped out of my shoes. "I'd finally managed to convince her that I wasn't interested in Harry Potter, and then you had to encourage her yesterday and she hasn't shut up about it since. She's already gotten through the first two movies this morning. All she's done today is sit in front of the TV." I followed Emma toward the family room. I said hello to Emma's mom on the way over. She was talking with two people who I assumed were Hannah's Mom and Dad. "Does Hannah have any siblings?" I asked Emma. "No. Thank goodness," Emma said. "I couldn't handle more than one of her." Hannah was sitting in the middle of the room in front of the couch when Emma and I walked in. Her eyes were already glued to the TV, where the movie adaptation of the third Harry Potter book was queued up to start. I figured this wouldn't be so bad. I didn't enjoy the movies as much as the books, but they were still a fun way to pass the time. And it would certainly beat the interrogation I had gotten from Hannah yesterday afternoon. But I wasn't even able to enjoy the movie. Hannah didn't seem to have the ability to stay quiet for long. She was constantly talking over the movie, either sharing trivia about it or commenting on how she didn't like some parts that weren't similar to the book. Emma was instead focused intently on her phone. I could see her scrolling through TikTok from the corner of my eye. She didn't even have her headphones in, either. Even though the volume was set low, I could also hear the annoying music from whatever she was watching. I found myself picking absentmindedly at my nails again. I was getting really annoyed. All I wanted to do was watch the movie in peace and quiet. I found my eyes drifting downward to where Hannah was sitting in front of me. Her shirt wasn't doing a good job of hiding the pull-up. Even though I had previously foresworn the idea of looking for her pull-ups at Emma's house, and even though I was on track to potentially have pull-ups of my own in a few days, I couldn't help but want to get my hands on some as soon as possible. Every warning I had given myself about it being too much of a risk was washed away by an intense, uncontrollable urge to find and put on one of Hannah's pull-ups. I wanted nothing more than to put one on, and I simply couldn't wait any longer. All I needed was to find the right excuse to have a chance to explore Emma's bedroom upstairs. If that is where Hannah was sleeping every night, there had to be pull-ups in her luggage there. We were forty-five minutes into the movie when it was interrupted by the now-familiar sound of Hannah's watch going off. "Pause it," Hannah yelled to her cousin as she went off toward the bathroom. I realized right then that this was my chance to do a little exploring. With the bathroom on the main floor occupied, I had an excuse to head upstairs to the other bathroom there. "I really need to go, too," I said as I stood up from the couch. "I'm going to run upstairs." Emma nodded silently, but didn't look away from her phone. The layout of Emma's house was exactly the same as mine, as if the company that had developed our neighborhood had simply hit copy and paste hundreds of times as the homes were built. But that also meant that I knew where everything was. I hadn't completely lied to Emma. I did need to pee slightly, but not nearly so badly as to need to rush all the way upstairs to do so. What I wanted to do was take a look in Hannah's suitcase, which I assumed would be in Emma's bedroom, where Hannah had been sleeping on the floor. But first, there was something I wanted to check in the upstairs bathroom. After arriving upstairs, I discreetly peeked into each of the bedrooms, confirming that I was completely alone. I set a timer on my phone to make sure I remembered to head back downstairs in a reasonable amount of time. I stepped into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet without lifting up the cover and cautiously opened up the lid to the trash can set next to it. At the top of the pile of garbage were a half-dozen wet wipes and one of the bedwetting pull-ups Hannah had been wearing the other day. The pull-up hadn't been rolled up particularly well. I could see inside it easily. The previously white padding had expanded and turned yellow. I wondered how frequently she was having accidents. But what caught my eye was what was beneath the pull-up. I shook the trashcan a little so that the pull-up moved away to the side. No way was I actually going to be reaching in to touch anything. Underneath the pull-up was a diaper, one different from anything I had seen before. One thing was immediately clear. This was not a baby diaper. That was obvious because it didn't have any of the colorful designs that had been on the diapers my younger brother had worn. There were no pictures of smiling animals or cartoon characters wearing their own diapers. Instead, the diaper was mostly white. The one similarity it shared with the baby diapers Jackson had worn was that there was a wetness indicator running down the middle, and if I was reading it correctly, the diaper had most certainly been wet before it had been discarded. But there were other signs as well. Unlike every diaper and pull-up I had seen before, the material of the diaper didn't appear soft. There was a silky-smooth plastic look to it. I wondered what it would feel like, but couldn't bring myself to touch it. The most obvious sign that this wasn't a baby diaper was how large it was. There was no way this would have fit on a baby – and there weren't any in this house. This had to be a diaper for someone my own age. For Hannah. In a single moment, all the questions I still had from yesterday had been answers, and another million ones had been created. I hadn't known what to make of Emma's statement that Hannah's mom had to help her daughter put on a diaper for bed. It didn't seem as though putting on a pull-up would be too challenging, even considering Hannah's disabilities, but I could see how a tape-on diaper would require assistance. Emma's comment about thinking Hannah should have been put back into diapers during the day after the accident on the couch was also brought into a new light. Had she been insinuating that her cousin should have been wearing these diapers during the day as well, rather than her pull-ups? I listened closely as I continued to stare down into the garbage bin. The stairs in Emma's house were as noisy as the ones at my place, so I would have ample alert if anyone was to come upstairs after me, but I hadn't heard the telltale signs of footsteps. I slipped out of the bathroom, trying to walk softly down the hallway so that everyone below me wouldn't realize how much I was wandering around. The door to Emma's bedroom had been left open. Unlike me or my sister, she didn't do much to protect her privacy. A whiff of a strange scent hit me as I stepped into the bedroom. I paused while I tried to consider what it was. Emma had complained about how her bedroom smelled like pee because of her cousin's bedwetting. Was that what I was smelling? That brought an immediate rush of embarrassment and concern. Despite the efforts I had taken to freshen up my room with fabric sprays, is this what my bedroom smelled like? Had I simply not noticed it before? And would Emma be able to tell the next time she came to my house? I was sick with worry for a moment, but those concerns dropped away as soon as I laid eyes on what was obviously Hannah's suitcase up against the wall, next to a balled-up sleeping bag and pillow. The suitcase was already unzipped, and there was a pile of dirty laundry sitting next to it. To no surprise, a lot of the clothing was Harry Potter themed. I pushed aside the guilt of prying into Hannah's personal belongings and lifted up the lid to the suitcase. I found what I was looking for right away. There were more than a dozen pull-ups tucked along the side of the suitcase. But that isn't what drew my interest. Instead, there were nearly a dozen diapers matching the ones I had come across in the bathroom. I pulled one of the two diapers out of the suitcase. It crinkly loudly in my hands, much more so than a pull-up. I gently unfolded it, taking a peek at the interior padding that was far more extensive. All I could think about was how it must be able to absorb an incredible amount of pee without leaking. It was simply beyond anything I could have thought to imagine. I'd never once seen the remotest hint that a product like this could exist in all the advertisements I'd perused over the past three years. I checked the timer on my phone. Only seven minutes left. There simply wasn't enough time. I had to set aside all my thoughts about the diapers for now and do what I had come upstairs to do. I reluctantly set the diaper back into the suitcase, which was exactly where I had found it. Taking a diaper simply wasn't an option. I didn't have enough time to figure out how to get it on. But I would have no issues with putting on a pull-up myself. Besides, I as attempted to remember, that was what I had come up here for in the first place. I was torn momentarily between the two designs – one with pastel stripes and one with floral pattern – before finally deciding to grab the one with the stripes. I tip-toed back to the bathroom, pull-up in hand. I looked at my phone again as I entered the bathroom. I had initially given myself thirteen minutes. Being in upstairs much longer than that would only risk making Emma and her family get suspicious. I still had six minutes left. After double-checking that the bathroom door was indeed locked, I hastily stripped off my pants and underwear, my hands shaking as I did so. My disappointment at not being able to try on the diaper melted away as soon as I began to stretch out the sides of the pull-up as I prepared to put it on. Three years. How had so much time gone by so quickly? I was once again holding a pull-up in my hands, and it felt as though no time had passed at all since I had last done so. Only this time, the pull-up was perfect for me. This was one meant for teen girls. The pull-up slid up my legs just like a regular pair of underwear, except that it felt entirely different once I had it on. It was as if I was reliving the best dream of my life. Each moment replayed itself like those scenes from years ago that I had worked so hard to re-capture. I examined myself in the mirror. The fit was perfect. All my worries about the pull-up not working for me had been for nothing. But time was slipping by way too fast. I couldn't hide away in the bathroom forever, but I couldn't stand the thought of having to remove the pull-up after only having had it on for a few minutes. Could I get away with wearing the pull-up back to my place? I put my underwear and leggings back on over the pull-up. My leggings at least rose up enough on my waist to easily cover the waistband so I wouldn't be exposing myself like Hannah had. I turned around, examining the outline of my bottom in the mirror. If only I had thought things through and worn an outfit that could actually have covered up my bottom, perhaps I could have risked wearing it. But there wasn't any way to hide the outline of the padding beneath my leggings, even if this outfit seemed to have somewhat reduced the crinkling sound. Defeated, I removed my leggings and underwear a second time. The timer on my phone now said that there were four minutes remaining. I ran my hands all over the outside of the pull-up, mesmerized by the crinkling sound, the way it hugged my waist, and the feel of the padding between my legs. It was exactly as I had remembered. It was so completely perfect. I wanted nothing more than to see what it would feel like to wet the pull-up, but there was no way to get away with doing so. An extra pull-up in the trashcan would risk raising some awkward questions, and I couldn't think of any way to discard the pull-up discreetly after peeing in it. I let another couple of minutes pass as I stood in the bathroom, anxiously watching the timer on my phone continue to count down. It was over all too soon. I removed the pull-up carefully, making sure not to rip any of the sides, and checked that the inside padding had remained clean. I folded the pull-up back up the way it had come out of the suitcase and tucked it back into place. I managed to hit the pause button on my timer three seconds before it went off. I hurried back downstairs, hoping that my absence hadn't been so long as to raise any questions. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

One thing to note: Emma was very much not interested in having Hannah along. In the previous chapter, she described Hannah being there as "bad news" and explained that the only reason Hannah is coming with them to the park is because Emma's Mom is making Emma bring her cousin along. And then there is the way she uses the r-word to describe her cousin to Maddy. With the water bottle, there is the additional note from Emma where she mentions to Maddy that she had to give the water bottle to her cousin because she doesn't want Hannah to tattle on her back at home. Emma doesn't like her cousin, and the only times she is doing anything that might seem nice is because she is motivated by not getting in trouble with her parents.

Maddy's negative reaction to Hannah is very much intentional, and it will play an important role in her development later in the story. There are a couple of good psychological explanations for why Maddy is reacting like she is, which will be fully explored further on, and we'll see more of Hannah beyond just this weekend. I can definitely understand how Maddy's response could come across as rather jarring and inconsistent, especially as we've not seen her behave this way toward other characters. It's hard for that to not be a bit uncomfortable when told from a first-person perspective rather than from an impartial narrator. Like I've mentioned in other comments, Maddy is written as neurodivergent (though undiagnosed), something that certainly colors her perception of (and interactions with) Hannah. We'll have one (maybe two) more chapters with Maddy and Hannah covering events over the rest of the weekend, but Hannah will be a recurring character past that point as well. Plenty of chances for them to continue to interact.

I didn't name it specifically in the story, but the site I had in mind that Hannah referenced was AO3. We'll have to see how parental controls play out if/when Maddy decides to look into that.

Chapter 20: Euphemisms Mesmerized by what I was seeing, I watched Hannah swing for another minute. Once Emma had gotten her cousin started with a push, Hannah didn’t have any issues maintaining her momentum on the swing set. Hannah swung her legs back and forth in a rhythm that kept her flying high into the sky each time she swung toward me. Every time Hannah was vaulted up into the air by the swing, the wind seemed to catch her skirt without fail, lifting it up enough to give me a brief glimpse of what I was by now one hundred percent certain was a pull-up. I wondered if Hannah knew how little her outfit did to conceal the pull-up and if that was something that concerned her in any way. Emma was standing next to me in front of the swing set, but she had pulled out her phone and was tapping away at it. If Emma had gotten a glimpse of her cousin’s undergarments, she didn’t say anything to me. Despite the suspicion that I had heard some crinkling from Hannah as we walked to the park, I was still somewhat surprised to find that Hannah was wearing a pull-up. Emma’s tale about Hannah wetting herself on the couch – and her statement that she thought Hannah ought to be put back in diapers during the day as well as at night – had made it appear as though Hannah hadn’t been wearing any daytime protection. But I was certain my eyes hadn’t deceived me. I had accepted Emma’s statement about Hannah’s bedwetting without thinking too hard on the matter. After all, my sister had wet the bed until she was my age, and it was clear from the advertisements I’d seen that pull-ups were sold for bedwetters the same age as Hannah and me. So, finding out that a thirteen-year-old girl was still wetting the bed – though unusual – wasn’t a surprise. And, from what I’d learned recently in conversations with my parents and Grace, there seemed to be some clear medical explanations for why a kid my age could experience bedwetting. But this – a girl my age needing to wear a pull-up during the day – was something altogether different to consider. It was like that five- or six-year-old girl I had seen getting her pull-up changed at the mall last week, another shock to my preconceptions about pull-ups and who used them. But why? That was the question I couldn’t escape. Why would a girl my age have difficulty controlling her bladder while she was awake? I wanted to pee my pants, and even trying to get my body to do it intentionally took an insane amount of effort. Using the toilet was natural, and it took a lot of convincing to get my body to do otherwise. So, what was the deal with Hannah? I looked around the playground. It had been several years since I had lost interest in running through it. We weren’t the only people using the playground by far. There were a couple of younger kids on swings further down the line on the swing set, and behind us on the playground, and another dozen or so from toddlers to kids a couple years younger than others running around on different play sets and equipment. I cringed a little as Hannah’s skirt lifted up to flash her pull-up again. I found myself getting embarrassed at the thought of what anyone else at the park would think of Hannah – and by association, Emma and me – if they were to notice that Hannah was wearing a pull-up, and about the derogatory word Emma had used to describe her cousin on the way to the park. As my parents had explained from their own experience, bedwetting was a normal thing that could happen to any kid, so while it was still embarrassing to have my family view me as a bedwetter, I could handle that as it allowed me to get pull-ups for myself. I remember that Emma had mentioned that her cousin had autism as if that was a one-size-fits-all explanation for all of her strange behavior. That had to be the explanation for why the girl wasn’t smart enough to use the toilet, despite being a teenager. “Alight, she’s good now. Come on,” Emma said, looking up from her phone. “She’s perfectly fine playing by herself.” We walked a short way from the playground to a nearby soccer field that wasn’t being used. I sat down on the grass and switched over from my tennis shoes to the soccer cleats I had brought along in my bag. I considered the possibility of taking a pull-up or two from Hannah once we got back to Emmah’s house. If I hadn’t already begun my bedwetting plan, I was sure I could have arranged to spend the night at their place. That would have been a perfect chance to get some pull-ups and learn more about why Hannah needed them. But with my parents now thinking I was a bedwetter, and with them not having gotten me any pull-ups yet, that wasn’t an option. Besides, as impatient as I was getting for pull-ups – seeing another girl my age wearing them wasn’t helping – I felt certain that I would be getting some from my parents soon, so unless the perfect opportunity presented itself, it wasn’t worth risking it to get any from Hannah. These soccer fields were currently set up for elementary-age kids, so the soccer goals were a lot smaller than the full-sized ones we typically played on. But that worked well for playing simple games of one-on-one and for practicing being more accurate with our shots. It was a shame that Angie wasn’t around, as she would have been able to play goalie for us. Instead, Emma and I took turns attempting to block each other’s shots. I dribbled the soccer ball out past the penalty box, which, like the goal, was proportionally smaller than the field we played our games on. Emma positioned herself in the middle of the goal, a few feet off of the line. Behind her, Hannah was having fun by herself on the playground. She had moved on from the swing set. Now she was busy climbing on a massive, circular jungle gym. Twisting through the different rings and levels until she was near the top of the structure. I pushed the ball ahead of me to the right with the outside of my right foot before stepping ahead to line up a shot. I pulled my leg back as far as I could before swinging it forward. I wasn’t going to give Emma a chance to stop it from going into the net. In the distance, Hannah had reached the top of the jungle gym. Even from as far away as I was, it was still obvious that she wasn’t wearing normal underwear. That made me even more curious. Emma hadn’t seemed to have had any reservations in talking about all the issues she had with her cousin. I couldn’t see how Emma could have been unaware of her cousin wearing a pull-up. That brief moment of taking my eye off the goal caused me to send the shot well over the top. The soccer ball sailed in the air. “Seriously,” Emma said. “You would have missed that by a ton, even on a regular-sized goal.” I groaned and jogged past Emma. It was my responsibility to retrieve the ball since I had missed the shot. Hannah saw me approaching and slid down from on top of the jungle gym. She jogged up to grab the soccer ball, which had rolled a few feet onto the rubber surface of the playground. “I want to play soccer now,” she said, starting to walk with me toward the soccer field. I really wanted to say no. But Hannah hadn’t even phrased it as a question. By the time I had managed to think of a somewhat polite way to tell her to go back to the playground, we were already nearly back to the soccer field. Emma had taken advantage of the break to grab a water bottle from her bag. She had just finished drinking from it when Hannah and I returned. “Can I have some of your water?” Hannah asked her cousin. Emma pointed to the other side of the playground. “Go get something from the drinking fountain over there.” “I tried it. It’s too cold,” Hannah whined. “It makes my teeth hurt. Can I have yours instead?” “Fine,” Emma said. She didn’t look happy about it, but she handed the water bottle to Hannah nonetheless. Hannah pushed open the cap, and then raised the water bottle right up to her mouth, placing her lips on it. “No, no, no,” Emma said, snatching the bottle out of her cousin’s grip. “Don’t be gross. I don’t want your germs on my water bottle.” Hannah stomped both of her feet on the ground. “That’s not fair. I need something to drink.” I winced at the sound of her high-pitched whining, but I wasn’t going to offer her my water bottle. I didn’t want anyone’s germs on it, either. “You can have my water bottle,” Emma said. “But you need to pour the water into your mouth.” Hannah crossed her arms. “I can’t do that. It will spill.” Emma tilted her head back and demonstrated for her cousin, pouring water from the bottle into her mouth without having her lips touch it. “That’s how you do it.” Emma handed the water bottle back to her cousin. Hannah hesitantly raised the bottle in the air, but she didn’t have it aimed correctly at her mouth. When she squeezed the water bottle to get a drink, the water instead sprayed all across her face and dripped down onto her shirt. Emma looked as though she was having a hard time suppressing a laugh as she watched her cousin struggle to line up the water bottle for another attempt at taking a drink. The second attempt didn’t go any better than the first. And now Hannah’s face and shirt were all wet. “I can’t do it,” Hannah pouted. She looked like she was going to start crying. “Fine,” Emma said. “Drink it however you want. You can have the rest of it.” Hannah raised the bottle to her lips and sucked on it almost like a sippy up. “See what I have to deal with,” Emma said to me quietly. “She whines like a baby when she doesn’t get what she wants. If I hadn’t given her the water bottle, she would have been tattling on me to my mom and aunt when we got home.” “All done,” Hannah announced. She handed the now-empty water bottle back to Emma. “Why don’t you go back to the playground,” Emma said. “Maddy and I are going to play soccer for a little while more, and then we will head back home.” “I can play soccer, too,” Hannah said. I watched as Emma started to say something and then bit her lip. I remembered what she had said just earlier about how she was supposed to be accommodating to her cousin. “Yes, that would be nice,” Emma said flatly. “Awesome!” Hannah yelled. She walked up to one of the soccer balls and kicked it toward the goal, putting it straight down the middle. Hannah turned around proudly toward us. “See.” “Yeah, and I would have blocked it if I was playing goalie,” Emma said with a wave of her hand. We decided to play a game called World Cup. The rules were simple. One person would guard the goal while the other two players competed against each other to score a goal. Whoever scored had to take the next turn at playing goalie. The game started off with Emma standing in the goal. She threw the ball out toward the middle of the field, and Hannah and I raced off to get it. Hannah was unexpectedly fast for how awkward her running form was. She made it to the ball first and began to turn to dribble back toward the goal. I backpedaled a little as I kept myself in front of Hannah, waiting for her to lose control so I could step in and easily poke the ball away from her. But, to my surprise, she was handling the ball much better than I had anticipated. Still, as she neared the top of the penalty box, I swung my foot forward, thinking I was going to get an easy steal, but instead of making contact with the ball, my cleated foot swung harmlessly through the air, and I nearly lost my balance. I didn’t know how Hannah had managed to evade me, but I turned to see her spinning past me, all while maintaining perfect control of the soccer ball with her feet. She took a shot at the goal and put it past Emma and into the corner of the net. She jumped up and down in celebration, again showing off the pull-up she was wearing. Emma started laughing at me. “I can’t believe you fell for that move.” “You’re the one who let it in the goal,” I retorted. “Only cause I was too distracted by you spinning in a circle.” I made Emma pay for that comment by stealing the ball from her and getting a goal of my own. Hannah’s goalkeeping skills weren’t anywhere near the level of her dribbling, so that wasn’t as much of a challenge. We continued our game for another twenty minutes or so, though the question of who was the winner was never really in doubt. Hannah had easily scored more goals than either Emma or me. It made more sense when she mentioned that she played the forward position on her school team back in Illinois. After scoring another goal, it was my turn to guard the goal while the two cousins faced off against each other again. I punted the ball gently, sending it out for them to chase after it. Hannah again reached the ball first and managed to keep it away from her cousin until she was closer to the goal. Hannah sidestepped deftly past Emma, but before Hannah could get the shot off, Emma shoved Hannah off of the ball with her hip, causing Hannah to fall to the ground. I was so caught off guard by the move that I wasn’t ready for Emma’s shot, which sailed past me untouched into the goal. Emma did an exaggerated celebration, sliding down on her knees on the grass. The way she had been so aggressive toward her cousin shocked me. No hard fouls was one of the unspoken rules we had when we were practicing. As Hannah lay on the ground for a moment, I got a much closer look at her pull-up than before. It did appear as though she had managed to keep it dry so far. After a few seconds, Hannah stood up awkwardly, brushing off her skirt as she did so. Beep. Beep. Beep. The timer on Hannah’s watch began to go off. Unlike when we had been back at Emma’s house, Hannah didn’t rush off to use the restroom. She tapped frantically at her watch, finally getting the alarm to shut off. Hannah got into position next to me as Emma grabbed the ball to walk toward the goal. Emma looked over at her cousin. “Aren’t you going to take your potty break?” “I can wait until we’re home,” Hannah insisted. “Hannah,” Emma said. “Your mom did tell me to make sure that you went if your watch went off while we were out.” Hannah glanced over at the center of the park. “I’m not going in a porta potty. Those are gross.” “Whatever,” Emma said. “I suppose you are wearing a diaper today, so it doesn’t matter if you pee your pants.” “I’m wearing a skirt, not pants,” Hannah said. “And they’re absorbent underwear, not a diaper. Only babies wear diapers, and I’m not a baby.” I recognized the euphemism from how the pull-ups were often described in the advertisements I had seen. I had always found the phrase to be really silly. Who would actually think those undergarments were underwear rather than just another version of a diaper? “Whatever,” Emma muttered quietly, rolling her eyes after turning away from her cousin. “Same difference.” Emma returned to stand in front of the goal before again through the ball out for Hannah and me to chase. We went through a few more rounds before deciding it was time to head back home. Emma and I sat down to change from our cleats back to our tennis shoes for the walk back to her house. Hannah was still dribbling a soccer ball absentmindedly in the field behind us. “Are you free to do anything else this afternoon?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what answer I wanted. There was part of me that was curious about Hannah’s need for pull-ups and another part of me that really didn’t want to spend any more time around that weirdo than was necessary. “Sorry, we’ve got plans to do stuff with Hannah’s family this evening,” Emma said. “But we could do something tomorrow.” “What are we doing tomorrow?” Hannah had snuck back up on us completely unnoticed. “We could play soccer again. Please?” “I think it is supposed to be raining tomorrow,” I said, as we started to walk down the path out of the park. “Then we can stay inside and watch a Harry Potter movie.” “That would be fun,” I said automatically, without thinking about it. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I saw Emma just glare at me. I then remembered how she had warned me not to bring that topic up. What followed was an incredibly detailed interrogation from Hannah. “What House would you be in? What is your favorite character? What movie do you like best? Should Harry have ended up with Ginny? What would your patronus look like?” I barely had time to answer dozens of rapid-fire questions before Hannah jumped onto the next one. There finally was a brief pause, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness that was over. I was mistaken. The next thing I knew, Hannah was talking about some Harry Potter fanfiction she had read on a website I hadn’t ever heard of before. Emma had slowed down, and was now trailing a dozen feet or so behind us to try to avoid the conversation. I hadn’t even realized that people writing their own versions of those stories were even a thing. She was talking at one-hundred miles an hour, with just the shortest of pauses to catch her breath as she detailed her favorite alternative plot, which somehow involved Hermione and Malfoy becoming friends. It was so bizarrely outlandish, but there wasn’t a chance for me to step in and ask any questions. Hannah paused her rambling mid-sentence as we were about a half-block away from Emma’s house. She then took off in a straight sprint, cutting across several yards rather than remaining on the sidewalk. “You know,” Emma said as she caught up to me. “You can’t say that I didn’t warn you about bringing up that topic.” Ahead of us, Hannah came to an awkward stop about halfway up the driveway to Emma’s house, when she suddenly frozen mid-sprint and stood with her legs crisscrossed. She remained frozen in place for about fifteen seconds before walking slowly up toward the house. “Yep, looks like she just pissed herself again,” Emma said with derision. “Such a baby.” --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

That's a good question. In the ABDL world, we definitely make a clear distinction between pull-ups and diapers, something I've done for the most part in all my previous stories. That isn't the case for a lot of people outside of the community. Most adults would refer to depends as an Adult Diaper, for example. In this case, with Emma, the ambiguity is intentional. There are a number of different scenarios for how Maddy first gets a hold of pull-ups. She needs them by the birthday sleepover, which is less than a week away, so whatever way it goes, it will have to be relatively soon. Emma certainly isn't nice, though I'd say she probably takes it further than your average middle schooler. And yes, Maddy is very much written as being neurodivergent. How she relates to Hannah is important for her development as the story goes forward.

There's nothing wrong with debating whether her form of activism is helpful to her cause, but comments like this are simply disgusting and unnecessary. --- As a side note, attacking climate activists for supposed hypocrisy is ridiculous. People do what they have to do to get by. Even if she needed to wear disposable diapers that isn't the mark against her that people think it is. Global Warming is a systematic, global problem, almost 100 percent driven by corporations. One person wearing a disposable diaper isn't the problem. The issue is the lack of laws and regulations that allow corporations to run wild in polluting the planet without having to face any consequences. One of the biggest lies driven about climate issues is the way in which corporations try to shift the blame from themselves to individuals, who often have little say in the products that they need to use to get through their lives.

Chapter 19: Not the Same as Me Note: In this chapter, a character uses offensive language about a person with disabilities. This is not an endorsement of that behavior. I shivered as I held the ice pack against my forehead, but I had no one to blame but myself for the situation I found myself in on Saturday morning. This morning, I had again kept up the pretense that the bedwetting pills had given me some annoying headaches. I had gotten out of bed just in time to snag the last of the pancakes that Dad had made for breakfast. From the look on Mom’s face as I entered the kitchen, it was clear that she had already noticed the sheets I had tossed into the washing machine last night. But with Jackson in the room, there wasn’t an opportunity to have a conversation about bedwetting again. I groaned and rubbed my forehead frequently while eating my breakfast. It must have been a stellar acting job because no sooner had I finished breakfast than Dad had come up to me with an ice pack in hand. The good thing was that my parents believed me. The bad thing was that they believed me and had offered me an ice pack to help dull the pain. I had no choice but to accept it, so now I was lying on my back on the couch, painfully watching the seconds pass by. I trembled a little as another shiver ran all the way through my body. A little bit longer, and perhaps I could pretend that I was cured for the time being. Mom had promised to not make me take the pills for more than a few more nights if they continued to prove ineffective. I was going to hold her to it. I didn’t want to have to keep faking a headache every morning. It wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as faking the bedwetting. My phone buzzed. With one hand still holding the ice pack to my forehead, I checked my most recent message. It was from Angie, who was bored out of her mind on the road trip her family was taking out to South Dakota. This morning, her family was at Mouth Rushmore, and she’d taken a selfie to share with Emma and me. I really hoped the vacation my parents had planned for later in the summer was going to have better destinations than that. “Since you’re not feeling well, I moved your sheets over to the dryer,” Mom said as she stepped into the living room. I groaned, this time from the fact that my bedwetting wasn’t exactly being treated like a secret rather than from faking a headache. With Grace fully aware of it, Mom and Dad weren’t showing any reservations about bringing up that topic with me while she was around. “Is your headache still pretty bad?” Mom asked. “Perhaps you should stay home today to rest up rather than going over to Emma’s place?” There was no way I was going to be spending the first day of summer stuck at home. Even with Angie gone, I still had plans to bike across the neighborhood to hang out with Emma for the afternoon. “I’m sure I’ll be feeling better by then,” I insisted. “I think the ice pack is really helping.” “We’ll see how you’re feeling later,” Mom conceded. “I can always drive you over instead.” I re-adjusted the ice pack on my forehead, trying to find a way to hold it in place that wasn’t so cold. All of us were in the living room except Jackson, who was playing with Legos in his bedroom. For the sake of all our feet, those evil bricks were now banned from being anywhere else in the house. After a few more minutes had passed, I set the ice pack down. Hopefully, that recovery time from the headache wasn’t too unbelievable. “There was something else your mom and I were wanting to talk to you girls about.” I looked over at my sister before looking up at Dad. Grace appeared just as confused about what this could mean as me. “Maddy,” Dad said. “Since you are going to be turning thirteen in a week, we’ve decided that you’re going to be able to stay home by yourself this summer.” “Oh, thank goodness,” Grace said. I glared at my sister. “No need to act that excited about it.” I did see where Grace was coming from, though. Having to be home with me had limited some of her opportunities for work and hanging out with her friends during previous summers. “Hey,” Grace said. “I’ve been asking Mom and Dad to let you do it for a while now.” “It’s a lot of responsibility,” Mom said. “And you need to understand that this is a privilege that can be taken away if you aren’t careful with it. There are some rules you need to follow. It’s similar to the rules we had for your sister when she was your age. No having any friends over while we are gone. No using the stove or the oven….” A picture of what those days at home might look like this summer came into focus in my head as Mom continued to go over all the things I’d need to do to be allowed to stay in the house by myself. I had already thought this summer was going to be the best one ever, but this, having the whole house to myself? The implications became immediately clear. With the whole house to myself, I would have so much more freedom to experiment with peeing my pants. What should I try first? I wanted to hold my bladder to the point of bursting before I let it out. I wanted to see what it would be like to wet my pants while sitting down. Maybe I could try peeing myself with different outfits on. “Maddy, Maddy.” Someone was snapping their fingers and saying my name. I blinked rapidly and returned my gaze back to Mom. “Madelyn,” Mom said, “We want to give you more responsibilities, but you need to pay attention.” “Sorry,” I said. I found myself beginning to subconsciously pick on my fingernails. I hoped that my sudden daydreaming hadn’t ruined this new opportunity before it had already begun. Grace laughed. “I bet she was thinking about how to sneak in a boyfriend while I’m gone.” “Eww,” I said. “No. Gross.” “Your sister is right, though,” Dad said. “No friends over when you’re by yourself means no boyfriends as well.” “Or girlfriends,” Mom said. I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have either of those.” “What, you want to grow up to be a crazy cat lady?” Grace asked. I looked over at Chester, who was napping in a sunspot on the carpet in front of the window. “That doesn’t seem like a bad idea.” <><><> I sat on my bed with the fourth Harry Potter book in my hands. I wasn’t as big a fan of the Triwizard Tournament story arc, but I always found the Quidditch World Cup to be fascinating. It would be enough just to have the opportunity to go to a soccer World Cup at some point. If only I could convince my parents to get tickets when the U.S. hosted it in several years. I had already breezed through the previous book earlier this morning after having finally discarded the ice pack. Once the conversation about being allowed to stay home alone this summer had ended, I had retreated up to my bedroom to read. It was too noisy downstairs to concentrate. My eyes flickered back and forth rapidly across the pages. My teachers always told me I read too fast. I didn’t see how that was supposed to be a bad thing. “Maddy. Maddy. Maddy!” My head snapped up as I finally caught wind that someone was calling my name. Mom was standing a few feet away, looking down at me. I hadn’t even heard her knock or open my bedroom door, which should have been enough to get my attention. “Can’t you pick out something else to read?” Mom asked as she looked down at the book in my hands. “There are plenty of other books to choose from in the basement.” That was another reason I had gone off to my bedroom to read. The Harry Potter series was pretty much the only books I’d read over the past two years outside of anything that had been required for school assignments. I hadn’t counted how many times I’d gone through the series, but it had to be a lot. Sometimes, I’d read through the books in order, but other times, I’d jump around to different ones depending on which one I felt like reading at the moment. My parents didn’t have anything against the Harry Potter books. They just were overly insistent that I try to expand my reading interests. None of the other series they’d thrown my way had caught my imagination in the same way, so I usually conducted my Harry Potter reading out of sight as to avoid any criticism. My parents had never explicitly banned me from reading them, but they had very much pressured me to not read them so often. “Your sheets are dry now,” Mom said. “Can you please go grab them from the laundry room? And make sure to fold them neatly and put them back in the closet. I don’t want to come back up and see them tossed in a pile in the corner.” “Can I at least finish this chapter?” “Right away, please,” Mom said. “It’s almost time for lunch.” “Can I at least not take those pills again tonight?” “Let’s just try it for two more nights,” Mom said. “That way, if it hasn’t worked by the time we take you to the doctor, then we can talk with them about what to do next.” I suppressed a sigh as I got off of the bed and headed toward the hallway. “And while you’re down there, don’t forget to clean the litter box,” Mom said, calling out after me as I reached the stairs. “You know you’re supposed to do that in the morning before going off to play.” “Stupid chores,” I muttered to myself. I let my feet fall just a little harder on the stairs as I trudged down the steps on the way to the main floor. We had sadly eaten all the pizza last night, which meant no leftovers for lunch. Instead, Dad was busy in the kitchen, with multiple pots and pans set out on the stovetop. I tried to avoid making eye contact with anyone as I made my way back upstairs with a bundle of laundry in my arms, enduring the walk of shame in silence as I carried the evidence of my presumed bedwetting back up to my bedroom. <><><> “I’ve got good news and bad news,” Emma said as she opened the front door to let me into her house. I had biked over to Emma’s house after lunch, though it had taken some work to convince Mom that my fake headaches had cleared up enough for me to leave the house after all. But she had still made me take a couple of Tylenol pills before I left. Even though Emma’s house was on the opposite side of the neighborhood, it was an easy trek, one that I had made countless times before. “What is it?” I asked. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” I thought about that for a second. “Good news.” “The good news is I’m still free to go to the park.” That didn’t make much sense to me. Why would Emma not have been able to go to the park near her house, where we often hung out during the summer? “What’s the bad news?” Emma raised her eyebrows and looked over her shoulder. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Her.” I took another step into the house and looked over Emma’s shoulder. The girl in the distance bore a slight resemblance to Emma, enough so that I had to guess that they were related in some way. They both had curly brown hair, though the girl's hair was done up in braided pigtails while Emma had left her shoulder-length hair unbraided. But it was how they were dressed that differentiated them. Like me, Emma was wearing soccer shorts and a T-shirt. The girl was wearing long pink and white striped socks that came up to her knees. She had on a plaited, muted-pink skirt and a white shirt with a Hufflepuff emblem in the middle. There was a pink watch on her left hand and a half-dozen colorful bracelets in different styles on her right hand. But what stood out most was the set of earmuffs she was wearing. I settled for that word rather than headphones, because something just looked off about them. The girl hadn’t turned in our way yet. She was facing the other direction, staring off into space. I lowered my voice so the girl wouldn’t hear me. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, despite whatever misgivings Emma seemed to have. “Why is she bad news?” “She’s my cousin, Hannah. Her family has been staying with us for the weekend. She is bad news because I accidentally let her overhear that I was going to go to the park with you, and now she wants to come as well. She threw a tantrum when I told her she couldn’t, and then my mom said I had to let her tag along.” I looked over again at Emma’s cousin before turning back to face Emma. Setting aside the fact that a girl our age throwing a tantrum was a bit strange, I still didn’t get why Emma was concerned. “So?” Emma opened her mouth to respond, but Hannah ran over to greet me before Emma had a chance to say anything further. Emma grimaced as Hannah stood next to her. “Hi!” Hannah said, waving her hand at me. “Um, hi,” I said in return. I noticed that Hannah was looking down at my waist rather than up at my face. “OK,” Emma said after the long silence that followed that awkward introduction. “Hannah, this is my friend Maddy. Maddy, this is my cousin Hannah.” “What happened to your fingernails?” Hannah blurted out. “They look all chewed up.” Were my nails that bad? I hastily pulled my hands up in front of my face. I did have a habit of picking on them absentmindedly, but it was embarrassing to have a stranger call it out so bluntly. “I paint mine so I don’t bite on them,” Hannah said. She thrust her hands out in front of me, showing off nails painted in yellow and black. “I did them in Hufflepuff colors. Have you ever read-” Buzz. Buzz. The screen on a bright pink watch Hannah was wearing around her wrist went off. She paused what she was saying mid-sentence and dashed off around the corner. “Whatever you do, don’t mention that you like Harry Potter,” Emma said as soon as Hannah was out of sight. “Why? I like Harry Potter.” “I’ve had to listen to her yack about it for the past two days non-stop. It’s so annoying. She’s even more of a chatterbox than you. Can’t get her to stop for nothing, so don’t you dare get her started on it again.” “And she can hear us fine with those earmuffs?” “Yeah, as long as you aren’t whispering,” Emma said. “They’re supposed to reduce noise or something since she’s supposedly sensitive to loud sounds.” “What’s the deal with her watch?” “It’s to help remind her to go use the toilet.” “But, like, why would she need to be reminded to do that?” Emma rubbed her face with her hand. “Yeah, I should have warned you. She has autism. She acts like a toddler more than a teenager a lot of the time. You have no idea what I’ve had to deal with since she got here two days ago. I was hoping to get away from that weirdo for the afternoon, but now I’m stuck with her.” I thought through all the details of my brief interaction with Hannah so far. That made sense. Something had felt obviously off about her. “I suppose she is a bit different.” “Oh, that’s not even the worst of it,” Emma said. “She still pees the bed every night. Can you believe that? She’s already thirteen, and her mom has to help her put on a diaper before tucking her into her sleeping bag. And, of course, she has to be sleeping on the floor in my room. I’ve been using a scented odor spray, but my bedroom still smells like piss.” I prayed fervently that I could keep a poker face and not give any hint of what I was thinking. It wasn’t as though I wasn’t aware of the fact that my friends had a poor view of kids our age who wet the bed. In the three years since I had learned about two of my own cousins being bedwetters, I hadn’t ever come across another kid who was a bedwetter. I had practically a million questions, not that I could ask Emma any of them directly. “She really, like, pees in a diaper? That’s so gross,” I said. That only encouraged Emma to continue her rant about her cousin. “Honestly, her parents should probably just make her wear diapers during the day. She pissed herself all over the couch last night when we were watching a movie. It was so gross. She didn’t even really seem to notice. Just sat there with her soaked clothes until my aunt said something about it.” I fidgeted and began picking at my nails again, even though there was hardly much left on the ends of my fingers. Like Hannah, I had also been wetting the bed and peeing my pants during the day. But I was different. I wasn’t some weirdo like her. I had full control over what I was doing. I just did it because it felt good. It wasn’t anything like Hannah did, basically behaving like a toddler who wasn’t fully toilet trained. Hannah came sprinting back around the corner with a smile on her face, nearly running into me as her feet slid on the wood floor. “Are we going to the park now?” she asked Emma. “Yes, we’re going to the park,” Emma said curtly. “Go get your shoes on.” Hannah walked over to the doorway and grabbed a pair of white and teal shoes off of the shoe rack. I noticed that instead of laces, they had Velcro straps. Emma leaned in toward my ear and whispered to me. “I know right, she wears those cause she can’t even tie her shoes properly.” We waited for Hannah to finish getting her shoes on and then followed her out the door. “Aren’t you going to grab your bike from the garage?” I asked Emma once we were in the driveway. “We’re going to walk since there isn’t a bike for Hannah, at least not one with training wheels,” Emma said. Hannah appeared oblivious to our conversation. I was wondering exactly how well those noise-reducing earmuffs worked. She was sitting on her knees in the grass next to the driveway, plucking dandelions. The weeds were still bright yellow, not close to the point where their seeds would be ready to blow away. The park, situated near the center of the neighborhood, was only a couple of blocks down. It was a massive complex. There was a large playground, a splash pad, a sand volleyball court, a couple of baseball diamonds, and, of course, some soccer fields. It would have been nicer to bike over to it, but walking along the sidewalk wasn’t that bad. This part of the neighborhood was fairly quiet, without much through traffic. Emma and I both had our soccer cleats and a soccer ball tucked inside matching drawstring bags on our backs. Emma shifted over to the left side of me, leaving me between her and her cousin. As we walked down the sidewalk, there was a sound coming from Hannah’s direction that brought back an old memory. Could that faint rustling sound be what I thought it was? I didn’t have long to consider it. When the park came into view after turning around the corner, Hannah darted out ahead of us, skipping energetically down the sidewalk with her arms swaying awkwardly out by her sides. Emma put both her hands on her face. “She’s such a fucking retard.” I bit my lip and stared down at my feet as I continued to walk alongside Emma. There had been one time five or six years back when Grace has used that word at me during an argument we had been having. The details of what had led up to that confrontation had been long forgotten, but the aftermath of it was still stuck in my mind. My parents had always been fully opposed to corporal punishment. They’d never once laid a hand on my bottom. As far as I was aware, that was the only time Grace had ever been given a spanking. Her face had been puffy, red, and wet with tears when my parents brought her back to apologize to me afterward. I still remembered how Grace had squirmed uncomfortably on the couch that evening. The message had been crystal clear. And that word had never been heard again in our house. I wouldn’t have ever considered using that word against someone else, no matter how angry I was or what I thought of them. Even years later, when I first discovered a word that rhymes with duck, the only thing my dad had told me was that unless I had just whacked my finger with a hammer or stubbed my toe, that I shouldn’t be using that type of language. As uncomfortable as I was with what Emma had just said, I found myself agreeing with the overall sentiment. I felt uncomfortable around Hannah in a way that I hadn’t felt about anyone else before. I cringed as I watched her prance around in the playground in a way more reminiscent of girls my brother’s age. Something about her rubbed me the wrong way, like a piece of chalk being slowly dragged across a blackboard. “How long is her family staying?” I asked. “Just through the weekend, but it might end up being forever. They are looking for a house in the area. There apparently is a school around here that her parents want to send her to, you know, one for special kids like her,” Emma said, making air quotes around the word “special” with her hands. “Emma, can you push me?” Hannah yelled in the distance. We looked over at the playground. Hannah was sitting stationary on a swing. Emma sighed again. “Better go do it. I’ll hear it from Mom if she finds out that Hannah didn’t have a good time at the park.” I followed Emma over to the swing set, watching as she stepped behind her cousin and took hold of the swing, pulling it back as far as she could before running forward and giving it a big push. Emma sprinted underneath Hannah as she flew in the air and then came to stand next to me. There wasn’t any mistaking it as Hannah flew up on the swing. The wind caught hold of her skirt and lifted it up, revealing that Hannah wasn’t wearing ordinary underwear. My suspicions about the sound I’d heard on our walk over to the park were confirmed. There was a short flash of pastel colors on a material far bulkier than normal underwear. I waited with bated breath as Hannah swung backward and then came up toward me again. This time, my eyes were locked in. When her skirt lifted up in the air again, I caught sight of a pattern I had only previously seen in magazine ads. What Hannah had on beneath her skirt was nothing other than the pull-ups I was so badly wanting for myself. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

Oh, there's definitely something going on with Grace. My lips are sealed on that for now. Given everything else the parents were trying, along with their lengthy experience of dealing with Grace's bedwetting, the lack of pull-ups/diapers very much had to be an intentional decision. We'll get some more details about the reasons behind that decision later on. As for why the topic came up. Maddy's mom must have misread her daughter's expressions regarding the diaper references in the movie (thinking her daughter was upset/worried at the idea of wearing protection for her bedwetting), and she was seeking to re-assure her daughter that she wouldn't have to wear them. For sure, I would have considered 2012 as another option, if Jackson had been old enough to watch it. That was so bizarre watching it in the theater without a heads up about that product placement for Goodnites. There are lots of movies and shows with diaper references. It can be a good plot device to start conversations about diapers/bedwetting, etc. with other characters in the story. And yeah, there's a lot more going on in the story. There are several other additional storylines that have been briefly hinted at that will be expanding in some chapters that are coming up soon. I'm thinking this story ends up possibly reaching 100 chapters, so there's a lot still to come.

Chapter 18: Only One Step Remains Friday night was pizza night, and it sucked as I wasn’t even being allowed to have any pop. Mom, Dad, and Grace each had a full glass of ice-cold root beer to go along with their pizza dinner. Even Jackson got a small glass of pop, albeit with a bunch of ice, so there wasn’t actually that much for him to drink. Like I had been at his age, he could get a little too hyper if he had too many sugary drinks. Any time he was given pop, my parents made sure it was of the uncaffeinated variety. But I was the exception. I had a glass of water. Not even tea or juice. Both of those alternatives had been vetoed by Dad because they contained sugar. And it wasn’t even a big glass of water at that. I hoped this practice of limiting my fluids wouldn’t be so strict once my parents surrendered to buying me pull-ups. I took the tiniest of sips from the glass of water before taking another bite of my pizza. I was making as much of an effort as possible to ration out the sips of water as I tried to finish my two slices of pizza. The last thing I needed was to finish the water before I had finished eating my pizza. That would leave my mouth parched for the remainder of the evening, as Mom had strongly implied that I wasn’t going to be allowed to have any more refills. How many more times was I going to have to fake wetting the bed before they realized that this all was pointless? I stared down at my slice of sausage and pepperoni pizza as we sat in the living room and ate our meal on the couch. I didn’t feel all that hungry at the moment, even though I hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch at school. Pizza just wasn’t as appetizing without a sugary, caffeinated drink to wash it down. We were about twenty minutes into the movie my parents had chosen for tonight. The only good thing was that Jackson was at least old enough to be allowed to watch some PG movies, so we had something on to watch during dinner that was at least entertaining. The movie of choice tonight was “Spy Kids.” I would have preferred to watch one of the Harry Potter movies, but Jackson still wasn’t old enough to start watching them, according to my parents, so that would have to wait for a time when he wasn’t around. It had been a lot easier in the few years when he had been too young to care about what was going on the TV. For now, I mostly had to stick with the books to get my magic fix. Now everything that came on during the day had to be vetted to ensure that it was age appropriate for him. I knew Grace had her own shows that she watched on her computer in her room, but I didn’t have access to my own Netflix account like she did. At least this was a movie I hadn’t seen before. We often got stuck watching a Pixar movie that I’d seen with Jackson a half-dozen times or more. A line of dialogue from one of the parents in the movie caught my attention. The two adults – who were secretly spies – were expressing concerns about how their two kids were holding up without them. “They can take care of themselves,” the mom said. “They are still in diapers,” the dad said. “Only one wears diapers. And only at night. It’s no big deal,” the mom said. Jackson burst out laughing at that line of dialogue. I did my best to continue focusing straight ahead at the TV. This was so embarrassing. Yes, having my parents see another reference to diapers being used for bedwetting could be helpful in my quest to get them to purchase those pull-ups, but it felt so awkward to have the possibility displayed right on the TV in front of everyone, especially as Grace was also aware of my bedwetting. “That’s silly,” Jackson said. “Why aren’t they potty trained already?” Grace, who was sitting closer to the TV on the same couch as me, turned back in my direction. From how red her face was, it was clear I wasn’t alone in being quite embarrassed by the scene in this movie. “We’ll, they are old enough to be potty trained during the day,” Mom said. “But not everyone is able to potty train quickly at night. Sometimes their bladders don’t want to listen to them when they are asleep, at least not until they get older.” My younger brother thankfully accepted the explanation without any other comments. I breathed a sigh of relief that Mom hadn’t decided to bring up the fact that everyone in our family, apart from him, was or had been a bedwetter at some point. I tried to guess which of the two characters were in diapers at night. The oldest girl, Carmen, was the same age as me. Her younger brother in the movie, Juni, was nine years old. It really hoped that it was the boy who was the bedwetter. Grace excused herself the moment she was finished with her pizza – if she had been allowed to take it to her room to eat, she most certainly would have chosen to do so – and left the room, presumably on her way upstairs to the bedroom. The only movies she enjoyed watching with us were animated ones. Grace always had a bunch of different facts on hand about the behind-the-scene details of how the animations for those films had been done. I wondered if that was something she’d be studying more in college in the fall. Part of me wanted to get away from the movie as fast as possible. I had a sinking feeling that the topic of diapers was going to come up again at some point. There had to be a reveal as to which of the kids still needed them. At the same time, I was curious about how it would turn out, despite how embarrassing it would be to have to sit around and be in the room when that scene played out on the TV. I took one final sip of water and set the glass that was now only full of ice cubes to the side. With any luck, the ice cubs would melt enough by the end of the movie so I could get a few more sips of water. I still had half a slice of pizza left on my plate, but I didn’t feel like finishing it at the moment, not without something to drink to wash it down. Beside that one oblique reference to diapers, the topic had been dropped off. I hoped that the audience would be left in suspense. There hadn’t yet been any further conversations since this morning about the lack of effectiveness of the pill that was supposed to have prevented me from wetting the bed the night before I had allowed my pretending about having a headache from the pills to drop off before Mom and Dad got home from work. I didn’t want to risk going too far overboard with it. I felt that my acting job from this morning had been sufficient to make them think that I was dealing with the same symptoms that Grace had when she had previously taken those pills. Still, I wondered how many nights it would take for my parents to abandon the bedwetting pill as a solution to the nighttime accidents? I had to assume that as long as it wasn’t producing results, they would stop making me take it fairly soon. I pulled my feet up onto the couch – which I now had to myself with Grace’s absence – and stretched out my legs. Chester hopped up on top of me a few minutes later and nestled in around my knees. “Stop it, or I’ll call you names,” the younger brother, Juni, said, threatening his older sister during an argument. “Go ahead, warthog. You got nothing on me,” Carmen replied. I knew right away what was going to happen next. The writers had set Carmen up for a spectacular fall. Of course, it had to be the girl my age. “Sure I do, diaper lady.” “How long have you known?” “Since forever. Mom made me swear not to mention it.” Jackson was again laughing loudly at the scene. Why did everyone have to find the topic of older kids dealing with bedwetting to be so funny? I really wanted to see the expressions on my parents’ faces at this moment. What were they thinking? Was this sparking an idea of something they could try if the pills stopped working? But I couldn’t dare bring myself to look back. I was both too embarrassed and concerned that they might get the wrong idea. I couldn’t have them thinking that I was either too eager for some nighttime protection or too embarrassed to be willing to try it. I wasn’t confident that I could work my facial expressions into an appropriate middle ground. The movie continued for another half-hour or so, and it reached its conclusion without making any more references to the fact that the twelve-year-old girl still wore diapers to bed. Mom sent Jackson up to his room with instructions to tidy up his toys before it was time for his bath. Now that it was summer, I still had a couple of hours before I would need to go to sleep. But this also meant that I was alone with my parents for the first time today. The show had created a perfect opening for me to bring up the topic of pull-ups. But it was all too sudden. I hadn’t had enough time to figure out the proper way to word my request. And it was too important of a moment to try to do it impromptu. Instead, I grabbed the third Harry Potter book off of the shelf and flipped to where I had been last reading it. It was my favorite of the series. Mom preferred to read on her tablet while Dad was watching something on his phone with his earbuds in. It was probably a show that they didn’t think I was old enough to see yet. I normally found it easy to get lost in the world of Hogwarts while reading, but I wasn’t able to concentrate on that tonight. My mind began to wander, wondering about how bedwetting would be handled in a magical world. I imagined there probably was a spell that would automatically dry off a wet bed. Mom stepped out of the room for a few minutes. When she returned, she was again holding a small glass of water, and, like last night, I suspected she had those special pills in her other hand. “Maddy,” she said. “It’s time to take your medicine again before bed.” “Do I have to? It didn’t even work. And it gave me a really bad headache.” “Why don’t we give it a try for a few more nights?” Mom asked. “If it doesn’t work, I promise I won’t make you take the pills again, OK? Perhaps there might be some other options your pediatrician can recommend on Monday instead.” “Fine,” I mumbled. “A perfect way to ruin my first day off of school.” It seemed like Mom meant other medications. I just hoped the doctor was familiar with nighttime pull-ups. Pull-ups. Mom. Why couldn’t she mention pull-ups? That had just been a subplot in the movie. As if in reaction to my expression, Mom gave me a slight smile. “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “We never made your sister wear diapers to bed, and we aren’t going to do that for you.” I did my best to put on a happy face. Someone my age who was actually a bedwetter would have to find a statement like that from their parents to be a relief. But it was so hard to do so. With one single sentence, Mom had completely ruined all of my plans. I now realized that there wasn’t going to be any scenario where my parents were going to have me wear pull-ups of their own accord. “Here,” Mom said, handing me the glass of water and the pills. “Best to get these down at least a little bit before you actually get to sleep.” Still in a bit of shock from Mom’s pronouncement that she wouldn’t make me wear diapers, I downed the pills easily and then handed the empty glass of water back to her. “Since you’re going back upstairs,” she said. “Can you please tell your sister that she needs to come down and do the dishes before she goes to bed?” As I trudged up the stairs, my mind was in a state of complete shock as I tried to contemplate what I should do next. I had felt so confident over the past day that I was on a surefire route to success. My mind kept replaying what Mom had said to me, parsing her words to try to find any wiggle room. She had made a small but important distinction. She had said that they wouldn’t force me to wear diapers, not that they didn’t believe diapers shouldn’t be used for bedwetting. I breathed a sigh of relief as I reached the top of the stairs. There was still some hope for me, but I would have to somehow get it across to my parents that I would willingly accept wearing pull-ups at night and do so in a way that didn’t make it look like I was actually all that eager to wear them. I needed to spend some time tonight thinking about how I was supposed to begin that conversation so I could be better prepared the next time that it came up. I silently chided myself for my lack of preparation. I should have been ready for that conversation tonight. I was now standing at the end of the hallway. Like usual, Grace’s door was closed. I knocked on it a couple of times. Unlike usual, there was no response from her. Not even a grumpy request to leave her alone. Somehow, she always seemed to know whether it was me or my parents knocking on the door. She would never be that sassy toward them. I knocked on the door a second time. Still no response. Seriously, why was she not even bothering to answer? I knew very well that I wasn’t supposed to open the door without Grace’s permission. She was not going to be happy with me. But Mom had insisted that I pass along the message. Disobeying her was worse than bothering my sister. I reached out and twisted the handle of the doorknob. I peeked inside as I slowly inched the door open. Grace was seated in the corner in front of her large monitor with her fancy computer box flashing all sorts of neon lights next to her. I didn’t have a clear line of sight to what was on the screen, though it looked like she had one of her digital art programs open. Even from just inside the doorway, I could hear the faint sound of music coming from Grace’s headphones. The music had to be on crazy loud for me to be able to hear it from where I was standing. “Hey!” Still no response. I took another step forward. Still didn’t have a good view of what my older sister was drawing on her computer. “Hey! Grace!” There was a flurry of taps on the keyboard. The monitor flashed away to the home screen before I could get a good look at what she had been drawing. Grace removed her wireless headphones and turned around to look at me. Her eyes widened. She glanced back at her monitor one more time before returning her gaze to me. “What the heck, Madelyn. You’re supposed to knock.” “I did knock. Mom sent me to tell you to come downstairs and wash the dishes.” Grace rolled her eyes. “I haven’t forgotten. You’d think they wouldn’t care as long as I got it done before I went off to sleep. Just tell her I’ll be down in a bit.” “You can tell her,” I said. “I’m going to bed.” I left Grace with her secrets and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. With a mouth full of sudsy toothpaste, I considered my options for tonight, now that I had taken the bedwetting pill again. What I really wanted to do was pee in bed again while lying down, but there was no way I was going to be able to accomplish that until the morning. The pill was effective enough at limiting my body’s urine production to the point where there would be no way for me to pee at midnight while I was taking it before going to bed. One option was to wait until tomorrow. There would be no rush to get out of bed on a Saturday morning. By the time I woke up, my bladder would be full enough to pee in bed. And unless I slept in way too long, Mom and Dad wouldn’t be coming in to check on me. But that also meant that my bedwetting accident would be more obvious to everyone, as I would have to bring the bedding down to the laundry room while they were all awake. I didn’t care for that option. That meant faking a late-night bedwetting accident was better than faking an early-morning one. But without the ability to make myself pee, I had to resort to the trick that I had previously used of just tossing my dry bedding into the washing machine to create the appearance of having cleaned up after a nighttime accident. I waited for what seemed like forever, though probably less than an hour had passed, until I heard my parents finish getting ready for bed. I emptied out the remainder of my secret soccer water bottle onto the middle of the bed. May as well have the bedding appear wet while carrying it downstairs in case I ran into anyone on the way. I had the feeling that Grace was still awake, though, with any luck. She would be far too distracted without whatever secret project she was working doing on her computer. As I returned to my bedroom after getting the washing machine started, thought back again to what Mom had said regarding my sister. They hadn’t forced her to wear diapers. I wondered if they had suggested that option to her only for it to have been refused. Had she perhaps reacted in a way that was making them not want to broach the topic with me? I finished putting a new set of sheets onto my bed, which crinkled beneath me as I tucked myself under the covers. I tried to focus on the one bright spot from this evening. My parents were completely aware that there were diapers that could be used by bedwetters my age. I thought back to how much I had accomplished in the past week since I’d put this plan into action. I’d convinced my parents that my bedwetting was a real issue that wasn’t going away anytime soon. I’d managed to keep up the act despite their multiple attempts to find a solution. I’d discovered that they were informed about the possibility of diapers, even if it wasn’t something they were currently planning to have me use. I’d made so much progress, and now only one step remained. I needed to convince them that I would be OK with wearing diapers again. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

One of my stories, "The Girl Who Wanted to Wear Diapers," is no longer shadow banned. It's showing in searches and tags again, but my other two stories are still delisted. I haven't added any ABDL tags back to the stories yet, though. I want to wait and see how everything plays out, since they did remove that tag listing. Other removed tags include diaper, DDLG, ageregression, little, littlespace, baby, and ageplay. You can still use those search terms, but it makes me not want to have those tags on my story, in case they decide to just move ahead with banning any stories with those tags in the future. Interestingly, tags like TBDL, diapers, CGL haven't been removed yet. See: https://www.wattpad.com/stories/abdl I recently expanded to posting on DA. I noticed something interesting when researching how the viewcount works there. What I found is that views are counted even if a post shows in a user's feed (regardless of whether it was clicked on or not). It seems to be the case that views on DA are highly inflated.

Chapter 17: Not a Baby Three Years Ago I didn’t let my failure to find pull-ups in my sister’s bedroom deter me. I scoured the rest of the house. Jackson’s bedroom seemed like a promising Plan B, but there were no pull-ups or even baby diapers to be found in there either. The same held true for the rest of the house. But just because I didn’t find any diapers didn’t mean that there weren’t other discoveries that were made. The basement was the final frontier of my search for diapers or pull-ups. It was where things that were no longer needed were tucked away forever, or at least until Mom decided it was time to pull them out for a garage sale or donate them to a thrift store. I had to tug hard at one of the doors in the closet that ran the length of the shortest wall in the unfinished area of the basement that was adjacent to the laundry room. The door finally opened with a rather large bang. I hoped that no one upstairs wondered what I was doing. It was Saturday afternoon, so everyone was home. It would perhaps have been wiser to hold off on the search until Monday, when it would just be Grace and me at home during the summer while our parents were off at work and Jackson was attending preschool. But I simply couldn’t bear to wait any longer. I was so convinced that there had to be diapers or pull-ups somewhere in the house. The fact that I hadn’t found them yet just had to mean that I hadn’t looked in the right places. But this first section of the closet didn’t yield the results I had been hoping for. There were a bunch of storage boxes, but the contents of the clear plastic bins were obvious. It was just a bunch of Christmas decorations, ornaments, lights, and an artificial Christmas tree that would need to be painfully reassembled next year. The door shut with a firm click. That was OK. There were still four more sections of the closet left for me to check. The next two were also disappointing, especially as they all contained cardboard boxes that I had to drag out and open before determining that the contents – old keepsakes, games, clothes, and other odds and ends – were not what I was looking for. My anticipation was turning to despair as I approached the second-to-last closet door. I tugged open the door. And there it was. For a moment, I thought I had hit the mother of all jackpots. The cardboard box of pull-ups was sitting at eye level with me on the shelf. I would have preferred to have discovered a box of my sister’s old pull-ups, but at this point, I was simply elated to have found anything at all. It didn’t matter one bit that they were pull-ups meant for boys. I was so eager to finally try one on that I was willing to overlook that detail. I pulled the box out of the closet and set it down carefully on the floor. I paused before opening it, listening for any sounds of movement upstairs. But no one was walking around at all, and there were definitely no sounds of anyone heading toward the stairs that led down to the basement. I was relieved that the cardboard diaper box wasn’t taped up. All I had to do to open it was to unfold the top of it. My hands were shaking as I reached down and pulled the cardboard flaps on top of the box apart. But it wasn’t diapers that I found inside. Instead, it was an assortment of all the baby items that my brother had outgrown. There were bibs, bottles, pacifiers, an old diaper bag, tiny baby utensils, and sippy cups. I closed my eyes and groaned. I had been so close. I hurriedly opened the last remaining closet door. Nothing. Just more clear plastic bins that very obviously did not contain any diapers or pull-ups. My mind felt numb. I had been so sure I’d at least find something. Every other option I had considered for getting my hands on those pull-ups seemed so far off and out of reach at the moment. I wanted them now. The realization that I was being denied that instant gratification stung deeply. I went back to look at the pull-up box that didn’t actually have any pull-ups in it. I no longer had any hope of finding what I was looking for, but I dug my hand into the box nonetheless. All I found was regular, hard plastic, not the soft, crinkly sensation of the pull-up I had held in my hands a little over a week ago. I again regretted that I hadn’t been able to work up the courage to sneak that pull-up home rather than toss it away in the bathroom garbage container. Then another thought took hold of me. If it felt that good to wear a pull-up, perhaps it might also feel good to try out some of my brother’s baby items. Perhaps this whole search wouldn’t end up being a waste of time after all. I looked down at the contents of the cardboard box. It was immediately apparent what my first experiment should be. I plucked out a pacifier from atop an assortment of other baby items. I held the blue pacifier in front of me. Mom had gotten Jackson to give up pacifiers about a year ago – shortly after his second birthday. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to have it in my mouth. I examined the pacifier carefully as I rotated it a couple of times in my hand. How in the world was I supposed to tell which side was up? The clear, silicone part of the pacifier wasn’t uniformly shaped, so there had to be a right way to insert it into my mouth, but I was at a loss to figure out which way it was supposed to go. I tried to recall how it had looked in Jackson’s mouth, but I had never paid close attention to how he has used his pacifiers before. But there was an incredibly obvious way to figure out an answer to that question. I flipped the pacifier over once more, opened my mouth, and brought the pacifier up to my lips. I learned an incredibly important lesson when I put the pacifier into my mouth. It was very important to wash something that had been sitting in storage for a year before you put it into your mouth. I spat the pacifier back out onto the floor. I had never in my life tasted something so gross. I felt as though I was going to puke if I didn’t immediately remedy the situation. Water. I needed water. The closest option was the laundry room sink. I raced around the corner to the laundry room, fumbling for the light switch so I could see the sink in the far corner next to the washing machine. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have taken a single sip of water from this sink or any other one in the house. I had never been able to stand the tap water ever since we had moved into the house when I was about five years old. No one else in our family had that problem, but after several days of me point-blank refusing to take even the smallest sip of water, my parents had finally relented and purchased a filtered water pitcher for me to use. The filtered water tasted so much better. I couldn’t understand how my family could claim that it didn’t taste different at all to them. I had the same problem with water at restaurants. There was about a fifty-fifty chance whether I would be able to drink more than a couple of sips before insisting that my parents let me order juice, ice-tea, or even soda. At this point, they usually just ordered bottled water for me, if that was an option. I looked down at the sink. Under normal circumstances, what I was about to do would have been unfathomable. But these were not normal circumstances. I turned the handle for the cold-water faucet and cupped my hands beneath the cold stream of water before bringing them repeatedly up to my face for quick sips. This was probably the first time in four years that I had actually swallowed any tap water at this house. I brought my cupped hands up to my mouth a half-dozen times before the awful taste left by the pacifier was gone. The tap water didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth, but in comparison to the aftertaste that had been left by the dusty pacifier, it was a massive relief. That didn’t mean that I was in any hurry to drink more of it. I paused at the sound of footsteps moving upstairs. It sounded as though someone was heading out of the living room, straight toward the kitchen. I sprinted out of the laundry room, not bothering to shut the light off. I reached for the box of pull-ups and was just about to lift it up to return it to its place in the closet when the footsteps came to a stop right above me in the kitchen. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was probably just Mom getting started on her dinner preparations. I’d be fine as long as she didn’t need to come and get anything out of the pantry. I realized as well that I had completely forgotten about the pacifier that had fallen to the floor. The second or so that it had been in my mouth hadn’t been nearly long enough for me to decide on whether I liked it, as that moment had been spoiled by its gross taste. My first thought was to wash the pacifier in the laundry room sink, but I immediately dismissed that idea. It was in bad enough shape that I was going to need soap. I tucked the pacifier into the pocket of my shorts. I would need to find a way to clean it later. I looked at the size description on the side of the pull-up box as I put it back into the closet. The weight range that these pull-ups were supposed to fit was thirty-two to forty pounds. I knew from the scale in the upstairs bathroom that I was a good twenty-five pounds above that. Even if there had been some of these pull-ups left over, there wasn’t any way they would have fit me. On the other hand, it was clear that the bedwetting pull-ups my cousins had worn must have had larger sizing requirements, as they had fit me without any issues. But that was a question I wasn’t going to be able to get an answer to. I didn’t have a smartphone. Grace, who was six years older than me, had just recently been allowed to have one for herself. Plus, Dad had made it very clear that he was capable of seeing what things I searched for when I used the family PC or tablet. That was a lesson I had found out the hard way while searching for information on what should have been an innocuous topic, only to have to immediately advert my eyes at what actually showed up on the screen. I had closed the web browser immediately, but somehow, I still ended up getting a lengthy lecture from my parents about internet safety, followed by being banned from using the tablet for several weeks. A few loud thumps caused me to turn my gaze toward the ceiling. There was no doubt about it now. Someone was headed toward the basement stairs. I hurried back over to the laundry room after shutting the closet door behind me, hoping that the pacifier would, in fact, be a good consolation prize. I got on my knees and started opening some cabinets on the floor, pretending to be searching for Chester. “Maddy, what are you doing?” I turned around to see Mom standing in the laundry room doorway. “I’m looking for Chester,” I said, giving the pre-made excuse I had prepared in case any questioned why I was spending time alone in the basement. We’d gotten the two-year-old orange cat several months ago. He was gradually becoming more friendly with us, but he still took to hiding in odd places around the house for hours at a time. “He’s upstairs napping behind the couch in the living room,” Mom said. “But you need to leave him alone if he is hiding away like that. You can play with him when he comes back out again.” “But, Mom.” “If he doesn’t want to be bothered, he doesn’t want to be bothered. He’ll let us know when he wants to be played with again.” Without any further excuse to stay in the basement, I watched as Mom grabbed a box of pasta noodles off of a shelf and then followed her back up the stairs toward the kitchen. I made my way upstairs to the bathroom on the second floor of the house. I did need to use the toilet anyway, and this would provide the perfect cover for getting the pacifier washed. I hoped that the hand soap I was using to clean off the pacifier wouldn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. I made sure to rinse it off as thoroughly as possible before placing it back into my pocket for the short walk down the hallway to my bedroom. I took the pacifier out of my pocket and laid down on the bed. There was still plenty of time before dinner for me to see how using the pacifier would go. I cautiously slid the pacifier into my mouth. I had done a good job of washing it; there was no yucky taste of built-up dust or soap. I sucked on the pacifier awkwardly, trying to figure out exactly how I was supposed to use it. There wasn’t any real taste to it, just the bland sensation of semi-squishy silicone. I felt really silly. It wasn’t doing anything for me. It wasn’t anywhere close to as fun as wearing a pull-up. I used my tongue to rotate the pacifier in my mouth. Perhaps it had just been in the wrong position. Nope, it was still the same. It wasn’t as though I disliked sucking on the pacifier. It didn’t taste bad or feel uncomfortable. But it didn’t do anything for me. It was nothing like the euphoria I had felt when I had been wearing a pull-up. I tried, and failed, to imagine myself as a baby, sucking on a pacifier or drinking out of a bottle, but whatever had led me to be interested in wearing pull-ups again wasn’t in any way connected to other baby items. Having grown bored with this new toy already, I hid the pacifier in the bottom of my dresser, tucking it safely away until I would have the chance to return it to the closet. Later that week, when I returned the pacifier to its place in the pull-up box in the basement closet, I also tried drinking from a baby bottle, which required me to be incredibly stealthy to clean and fill, even with only my older sister around at the time. I managed to get away with it without being caught, but the result was the same, even though I had filled the baby bottle with my preferred filtered drinking water. Being a baby simply held no appeal to me. I couldn’t fathom wanting to suck on a pacifier or drink from a bottle for more than a minute or two. I certainly didn’t want to be a baby again. But that didn’t matter. As I had learned from my cousins, one didn’t have to be a baby to wear diapers. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

Thanks! That certainly would be an interesting scenario. I don't think Maddy realizes yet that there are diapers her size, and not just pull-ups. I wouldn't think she would be disappointed with diapers instead if that were to happen. For sure, there are lots of different ways diapers might come into play for Maddy.