MinnesotaWriter

Chapter 26: It Couldn’t Be Wrong I stared at the package of pull-ups I had set on the bed. It was the worst type of disappointment, the kind that comes completely as a surprise shortly after being certain that success was inevitable. For the shortest time this morning, I had been certain that I was going to get what I wanted. My gambit with Dr. Mathorn had paid off, as I managed to prompt her to bring up the topic of protection, which I was then able to tentatively accept over my mom’s objections. On the drive from the hospital to the store, all I could think of was of the pull-ups I had worn briefly at Emma’s place. That Mom would have multiple options to choose from was inconceivable. And of course she had managed to choose the wrong one. And the worst part of it was that I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to correct this situation. How was I supposed to convey to her that she needed to switch to my preferred brand of pull-ups? I tried to think on the bright side. Perhaps these pull-ups Mom had purchased for me would fit as comfortably as the others I had tried. Perhaps they would perform as well when I wet them in bed later tonight. Perhaps they would be capable of satisfying that itch that had begun three years ago. I walked over to the window and watched as Mom pulled out of the driveway. Here I was. The entire house to myself. Grace had gotten herself a summer job, with hours during the day, unlike previous summers when she had been forced to stick to working evenings as my parents hadn’t wanted to leave me home alone. Her eight-hour shift would have her arriving home in our old minivan around the same time that Mom and Dad finished with work and picked up Jackson from his day camp on the way home. As I had left to head upstairs with the pull-ups, Mom had given me one final reminder of the chores that she and Dad expected me to have done by the time everyone was home for dinner. The cat litter still needed to be cleaned, my laundry needed to be done, and I was supposed to empty all the garbage cans and take them out to the garbage bin in the garage. I picked up the package of pull-ups to examine them one last time before returning downstairs to eat my lunch. But I didn’t discover much more information than the cursory glance I had given the package before. Aside from not being specifically for girls and having boring designs, the notes on the package touted the same basic features that I’d seen in ads for the pull-up brand I had been coveting. I checked the information about the sizing and found that I was squarely in the middle of the size range for the pull-ups. I managed, though just barely, to avoid ripping open the package of pull-ups right then and there. That wouldn’t do. I couldn’t risk Mom thinking I was actually that eager to wear them on the off chance that she noticed what I’d done. I debated for a moment about where to put the pull-ups, then decided that the underwear drawer at the top of my dresser was the most suitable location. That decision elicited a small laugh. It brought to mind the phrase that Hannah had used to describe her pull-ups. She had referred to them as absorbent underwear. I shut the dresser drawer with a sigh. Tonight couldn’t come quickly enough. But there were other fun things that I could still do in the meantime. I walked down the stairs nervously. It was hard to explain, but I could somehow just feel that the house was empty, and not empty in the sense that someone had stepped out and would be back in a minute, but the kind of solitude that came from having a place to myself without any interruptions for the next five hours. And I wouldn’t be leaving. My parents had made it clear that I was to remain in the house and not leave or let anyone in unless it was an emergency. My half-unpacked lunch of chicken strips and fries was sitting on the kitchen counter. I took the lunch with me to the living room, but not before grabbing a Harry Potter book to read. I hadn’t had a chance to ask Dad to reverse the block on the fan fiction website Hannah had told me about, so for now, I would need to continue with reading the real thing. For the first time in my life, I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted at home, and I found that, for now, I was doing exactly what I would have been doing had Grace been left home with me like in previous summers. I quickly gulped down all of my pop well before I was finished with my chicken and fries that I was eating with a fork to avoid getting any greasy fingers on the pages of my beloved books. It was time to get something else to drink from the kitchen. I grabbed the largest plastic water cup that I could find and filled it to the brim with the filtered water pitcher from the fridge. I took a few large sips and then topped the cup off again. I was already beginning to squirm with anticipation at the thought of how I would soon be wetting my pants again later this afternoon. This time, I wanted to wait until I couldn’t avoid peeing any longer, and the best way to do that was to make sure I drank as much as I reasonably could. While I wouldn’t be wetting a pull-up, this would be the next best thing. I considered my options for where I should have this fake accident. When I had wet my pants last week, I had done so in the laundry room. With the cement floor with a built-in drain next to the washing machine, it had made cleanup a breeze. The bathtub would be the easiest to clean up, but that simply felt too weird and gross to do. I simply couldn’t do that given everyone else in my family would stand in it, well, except for Jackson, who was still young enough that he almost exclusively took baths. Wetting myself over carpet was an obvious no-go, though there were a few other places that could still work, such as in the kitchen or in the bathroom. I could have done it in a room with a wood floor, but I remembered Dad’s complaints from when I had spilled a glass of lemonade on it and his concerns about how the flooring might get warped or stained. That was another option to be ruled out for now. I had spent the weekend thinking through various scenarios that I could play out. What clothes should I be wearing when I had an accident? Did I want to try seeing what it would be like to pee myself while sitting in a chair rather than standing? I kept a close eye on the time as I continued to hydrate, making sure to take another sip of water every few pages. An hour and two full cups of water later, I was now finding it almost impossible to sit still, my body squirming in anticipation of my afternoon plans. I still had a book open in front of me, but I hadn’t switched over to a new page in more than ten minutes. I had made up my mind. I was going to change out of my leggings into a different outfit, and when my bladder couldn’t last any longer, I would be sitting in a chair in the laundry room. The only chairs in the basement were folding ones that were only brought upstairs for special occasions when there were enough guests to warrant it. But those chairs were immediately ruled out, as the fabric cushion on them would be impossible to clean. That left me needing to hall one of the wooden chairs from the dining room table set downstairs. I posited it right over the laundry room drain. By this point, there was no question that I needed to pee. It wouldn’t have been difficult to go now. All I would have to do is give my bladder the word, and it would release. But that wasn’t what I wanted to experience today. Nothing but the biggest possible accident would suffice. I wasn’t in any danger of having an accident yet, so I headed upstairs to retrieve my laundry and changed into a pair of stretchy denim shorts. Once I got the washing load started, I took a seat on the chair. I had made sure to only put about half my clothes in with this load, as I would have another to start when it came time to clean up after wetting myself. I wanted it to be as close to a genuine accident as possible, so despite the pain now coming from my bladder, I forced myself to continue to desperately hold on despite the increasingly irresistible urge to pee. I wanted to experience something that felt like an actual accident rather than a fake one. The sound of water sloshing around in the washing machine wasn’t doing me any favors. I clenched my hands between my thighs. My bladder ached worse than anything. I finally reached the point where I couldn’t hold on any longer, even if I had wanted to. I lifted my hands up not a moment too soon as my legs involuntarily unclenched. I looked down at my waist as I began to pee uncontrollably. I gasped as a massive, ever-expanding wet spot appeared between my legs. The pain in my bladder was suddenly gone. That alone was a massive relief. The seat of the chair wasn’t completely level. It had the slightest of slopes from the front to the back. The result was that the puddle forming in front of me was steadily drifting backward, soaking through the entire bottom of my shorts and then dripping down onto the floor like raindrops. My heart was racing audibly. This was no less exhilarating than the first time I had wet myself in the basement. Something wet touched my feet. I jerked them off of the floor. I hadn’t thought much about how I had positioned the chair, but with how I was sitting, my feet had been directly in the path the urine was taking down into the drain. I immediately ripped off my wet socks as I continued to pee. I didn’t like the sensation of them being wet. It was like having to play soccer in the rain or on an early spring morning when the grass was still covered with dew. And then it was all over. My shorts and underwear were fully soaked, wet, and warm. The seat of the chair was wet, but basically, all the urine that hadn’t been soaked up in my clothes had dripped down to the floor and had turned into a couple of small streams headed for the drain. I wished that I had thought to time how long it took me to empty my bladder. I couldn’t recall ever having peed for that long before. I wondered if I had been going for nearly a whole minute. I stayed seated in the chair for several minutes with my feet hovering above the floor. For how much buildup it took to arrive at these moments, they were always over far too soon. I stood up from the chair, careful not to step on any wet spots on the floor, and stepped back to a dry spot a few feet back from the chair. My shorts felt far heavier than before. Unlike my leggings, the shorts had absorbed quite a bit of urine. The evidence would be gone soon enough. Once this first load of laundry was finished in the washing machine, a hose would spit out all the water into the drain, washing away any trace of what I had done. It hadn’t taken long for my wet clothes to begin to cool off, becoming clammy and clingy against my skin, the comfortable, warm wetness having devolved into a clammy, cold, damp sensation that wasn’t at all pleasant. With that cooling off, the exhilaration of the moment began to wear off, and I started to take in the sight of what I had just done. The chair that was noticeably wet. The puddle of urine that was gradually disappearing down the drain. Demin shorts that had changed from a faded light blue to a much deeper color. There was a lingering sense of unease in the back of my mind, whispers that what I had just done was gross, unnatural, weird, that I should be ashamed of even thinking of doing it, let alone actually going through with the deed. I tried to shake that feeling, to refocus on how good I had felt only minutes ago. It had all felt so good, so why was I now feeling bad about it? I thought about Hannah again. I didn’t want to be anything like her, a freak who wasn’t potty trained despite being in middle school, a weirdo who needed to have a watch to give her reminders to go to the toilet. I had never experienced anything more enjoyable than peeing myself, whether that was while lying in bed or just now while sitting on a chair. It couldn’t be wrong. I just couldn’t be. Everything from the slowly building anticipation as I made sure I was fully hydrated to the moment when my bladder finally couldn’t hold on any longer had been exactly what I wanted. So why was I experiencing this emotional drop-off now? I blamed Hannah for it. I hadn’t felt anything close to this before meeting her over the weekend. Sure, there had been some embarrassment at how my parents and Grace had learned about the bedwetting, but that hadn’t come with this same sense of wrongness. I mean, Hannah was practically a baby, from how she couldn’t tie her own shoes or properly drink from a water bottle to how she fussed and whined when her needs weren’t being catered to. There wasn’t any way she liked peeing in her pull-ups and diapers. She probably didn’t even notice doing so half the time. Looking at Hannah had been like looking into one of those mirrors at a carnival, the kind that returns some sort of distorted reflection that is too tall or too short or too fat or too skinny, where the reflection doesn’t quite match in some way but is close enough to be discomforting. When I pictured Hannah, the resemblance was like that. I could hear Emma’s disdain for her autistic cousin ringing in my ears, along with the specific epithet Emma had used to describe her. I looked down again at my soaked shorts and the evidence of the accident in front of me on the floor. It had felt so good just now. It had felt so good every time I had done it before. And I knew despite what I was feeling at the moment that it would feel so good this evening when I finally was able to pee into a pull-up. I wasn’t Hannah. I wasn’t some stupid dumb girl who wasn’t potty trained. Not me. I wasn’t some awkward baby who couldn’t behave like a normal kid when necessary. I was going to be a teenager for real after this first week of getting a taste of independence. I could indulge in these desires without compromising my status of being a big kid. I did what I did of my own volition. I was completely in control. Besides, it all felt good. It couldn’t possibly be wrong. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

I'm 1 for 2 with stories being removed so far. "The Girl Who Wanted to Wear Diapers" had been shadow banned, but it's all good now, so it seems at least that maybe not all diaper related content is being eliminated. But that story is also completely PG, and in the Wattpad version I've also censored out any bad language. "Diapers Never Lie" got removed last week. I can't say if that was because of any ABDL content in it, it was a pretty dark story (even though in my opinion it didn't violate any of Wattpad's rules), so I think it's removal could have been unrelated to the diaper aspect of it. They seem to be working their way backwards, starting with newest stories, so will see in the coming weeks/months if "All My Mother's Rules survives. It's hard to say, it feels very much like a lot of this is at the whim of whoever the specific reviewer is.

I think that might be a safe guess. Hard to say, at least with baby diapers, some of the less prominent or store-base brands might be as good as Huggies or Pampers. With both Maddy's parents having been bedwetters, it's safe to say they have a lot of their own experiences that are impacting their own parenting decisions with their kids. I don't think that Maddy's Mom is trying to undercut her daughter like that. Like I've mentioned before, Maddy's parents are trying to act in what they see as their daughter's best interest, and otherwise behaving like normal parents. There could be a number of reasons why these pull-ups were chosen instead of the Goodnites that Maddy was wanting. It could be that the Goodnites were out of stock in her size, her mother may have just grabbed the first package of bedwetting pull-ups that she saw, the mother may have wanted to be frugal, the mother could have a preference for that brand if that is what she used for her kids when they were babies, she could have thought that Maddy might have appreciated a less babyish or childish design. Regardless, it's safe to say that the Mom's reasons for her purchase were much more likely to be benign. -- As for Maddy, it's less about wanting a babyish design (she's made it clear she doesn't want to be a baby), than the fact that she had her mind set on a very specific product and is obviously disappointed that she didn't get it. --- For Grace, this would certainly indicate that she at least hadn't worn pull-ups around Maddy's age. Yes, it is fun to show how despite how she thinks her plans are all carefully thought out that they don't always happen the way she expects. Yeah, there were a number of ways I considered having Maddy get pull-ups, but the doctor visit was the one that ended up making most sense for the story. Some other options: -Having Maddy wet herself deliberately during the day: I decided against this as it felt like Maddy wouldn't be up to doing something that embarrassing or wanting to commit to wearing pull-ups/diapers all of the time. -Maddy getting caught with Hannah's pull-ups: Considered having her sneak one of Hannah's pull-ups home, and then get caught with it. -Asking her parents for pull-ups directly: This was probably the only other option that was really considered. But with Maddy still being apprehensive about wanting to make sure her parents don't get the idea that she wants to wear pull-ups, having it come from her doctor still made more sense.

Chapter 25: Doctor’s Orders “Protection.” The implications of that single word didn’t immediately strike me. What exactly was Dr. Mathorn talking about? It was Mom’s reaction to my pediatrician’s suggestion that caused me to put two and two together. “No offense, Dr. Mathorn, but that’s a bit ridiculous,” Mom said. “No teenager would want to wear that to bed. I already promised Maddy that I wouldn’t make her wear them.” I had never heard the word protection used to refer to a diaper or pull-up before, but there could be only one thing that would mean. Like the phrases “absorbent underwear” or “nighttime underwear,” it was another way to way to refer to a diaper that was intended to be less embarrassing. Mom’s reaction was disappointing, but not in any way surprising. It seemed as though my parents had done everything but purchasing diapers for me as they sought to deal with my recent bedwetting. Of course, she would have to respond that way to Dr. Mathorn’s suggestion. “I don’t know about that,” Dr. Mathorn said. “A bedwetting accident is going to be embarrassing regardless of what steps you’re taking to clean up or contain the mess.” Dr. Mathorn turned back to face me. “I’m not saying you should feel embarrassed about the accidents you’ve been having at night, Maddy. You shouldn’t need to feel bad about something that isn’t your fault, though it is normal for it to be an upsetting experience when your body isn’t behaving the way that you would like it to.” “I just don’t see how that is a good solution to her bedwetting,” Mom said. “We’ve already got a waterproof mattress, and Maddy is more than capable of making sure her bedding gets washed and changed whenever there is an accident.” “Those are certainly ways to handle it,” Dr. Mathorn said. “But letting her wear some protection to bed would make cleanup a lot easier and allow Maddy to get a full night of sleep, which is still extremely important for teenagers as they develop. It’s not going to be good for her to have her sleep constantly interrupted for however long the bedwetting may continue.” “I’m not making my teenage daughter wear diapers to bed,” Mom said. There it was. The word that both my mom and the doctor had avoided saying so far in this conversation. “That’s not what I’m saying,” Dr. Mathorn said. “I wouldn’t ever suggest forcing a teenager to wear a diaper to bed if they didn’t want to. But I think that Maddy’s opinion about all of this is what is important. She’s the one who is having to deal with a wet bed nearly every night.” Both Mom and Dr. Mathorn turned from their argument to look at me. “You’ve been unusually quiet,” Dr. Mathorn said to me. “What do you think?” This was it. I could have everything I wanted, but it would require an admission that it was, in fact, what I wanted. There was a large kernel of truth to Mom’s objections. She was absolutely right. Girls my age weren’t supposed to want to wear diapers. Someone else in my situation would have to be extremely apprehensive, at best, about a doctor’s suggestion of protection. Dr. Mathorn was right about the issue of missing sleep, though it wasn’t playing out like she thought it was. Having to stay up until everyone was asleep to wet the bed and toss clothing in the laundry had often left me rather tired the next day. “Um. Um.” I looked back down at my feet. Saying yes would have to mean admitting what I wanted. Could I do that in front of them? This was the final test. I had to make it clear that I was willing to wear diapers without making it seem like I was in any way looking forward to doing so. I thought back to all the preparations I had previously been making for the possibility of having to bring up the topic of those pull-ups directly with Mom. I stared off into the space between Mom and Dr. Mathorn as I delivered my carefully thought-out answer. “I don’t really want to, but I want to be able to have a sleepover still. And it would be nice to not have to get up and have to change all my sheets in the middle of the night. I guess I could give it a try.” Mom let out a small, defeated sigh. Why did she seem so disappointed in my decision? “I think that is a good idea for now,” Dr. Mathorn said, “at least until all the test results are back.” “When should we expect those?” Mom asked. “Maybe by Friday, but certainly no later than earlier next week,” Dr. Mathorn said. “I’ll give you a call right away, and then we can see if you’ll need to bring Maddy in for another appointment.” There was a long pause after that answer. Even with having given my decision about how I was comfortable trying diapers. “So,” Mom asked, “They do, you know, have some in Maddy’s size?” I bit my lip to hold back from blurting out an answer about the advertisements I had seen. Here I was thinking that Mom might have paid attention to them when, apparently, she had been completely oblivious. “Of course,” Dr. Mathorn said. “Most stores would still carry them in the baby aisle, though, in my opinion, they really ought to have them in a separate section.” There was another pause in the conversation. “I guess we’ll get some and see how it goes,” Mom said. <><><> As soon as we had said our goodbyes to Dr. Mathorn, not a single word was said about the decision that had been reached in the exam room while we walked out to the car. My heart was pounding in my chest as I buckled myself into the passenger seat. I had done it. Actually done it. Mom had agreed to purchase pull-ups for me. The only remaining question was when she was going to do it. Surely, it had to be by tonight. Mom would want to see that the pull-ups worked for a few nights in a row before agreeing to the sleepover that I had already set up behind her back with my friends. I got an answer to that question a couple of minutes later as Mom pulled into the parking lot of the first big box store we passed. “Why don’t you stay in the car,” Mom said as she cracked the windows down an inch. “I shouldn’t be in the store all that long.” Mom was out of the car before I had the chance to say anything else. It took me a moment to realize what Mom was doing, but once I understood, I was a bit grateful. The last thing I needed was to run into someone I knew while going inside with her to purchase the pull-ups. I watched from the window as Mom disappeared into the store. The baby aisle was all the way in the back. Surely, it wouldn’t be that hard for her to find the pull-ups. I knew from the ads that I had seen that the package would clearly show that the pull-ups would fit me. It wasn’t as though I could tell Mom that I had already verified the fit the other day. I pulled out my phone to respond to some texts from Angie and Emma, though I couldn’t resist looking out the window every few seconds. The worst of it was that it wasn’t even noon yet. I was going to have to wait all day until I’d have a chance to finally wet one of the pull-ups. I wondered how strict Mom and Dad were going to be about their new nighttime rules for me once I started regularly wearing pull-ups to bed. Was I still going to have to deal with the same restrictions about not having too much to drink, even though I’d shown them that it hadn’t done any good? I figure that at least the part about being made to use the toilet before bed wasn’t going to be going away anytime soon. And what about Grace? She was observant enough that she would no doubt notice the sudden drop-off in the amount of laundry I was doing each and every morning. I had no desire for her to find out that the reason was because of pull-ups rather than the bedwetting coming to an end. I checked the time again on my phone. About fifteen minutes had passed since Mom had walked into the store. What was taking her so long? She had said earlier that she was only planning on taking the morning off from work, and with how long the appointment had gone with all the tests, she didn’t have that long until she would need to go into the office. I rubbed at a sore spot on my arm where the nurse had done the blood draw earlier this morning. It hurt worse than when I’d gotten shots for vaccination. If it was this sore tonight, finding a comfortable position to fall asleep in was going to be difficult. The van beeped, and the trunk popped open. Mom had managed to sneak up on me, after all. I peeked into the mirrors and got a glimpse of Mom loading up a few bags. As much as I tried, I couldn’t see their contents. If Mom had managed to successfully find the pull-ups, she didn’t give any indication of that when she took her seat in the car. “Why don’t we get you something to eat on the way home,” Mom said. <><><> Fast food wasn’t something we did all that often. According to Dad, the price really began to add up when it was our entire family eating out. So it was a surprise when Mom said I could pick whatever fast food place I wanted to go out to, as long as it was something that we were going to pass anyway on the way home. I weighed my options before deciding that chicken strips and fries were what I wanted to eat for lunch. When we pulled into the drive-through lane, Mom ordered a meal for me but just got a drink for herself. The best part about the meal being entirely mine was that I could snack on fries on the way home without anyone complaining that I was actually taking theirs. Since I didn’t have keys to the front door, I punched in the code to the garage door to get into the house that way instead, while Mom went to the back of the car to grab the shopping bags. I had just finished transferring my chicken and fries to a plate when Mom stepped into the kitchen behind me. “I’ve got to hurry into the office,” Mom said. “There’s a meeting I’d really prefer not to miss after being out this morning.” Mom reached into the plastic bag and pulled out a bag of pull-ups that weren’t like anything I had seen in any recent advertisements or during the long-ago trips down the baby aisle. “Why don’t you go ahead and put these in your dresser?” My mouth dropped slightly as I took hold of the package. These were not the pull-ups that I had dreamed of wearing for the past three years. These weren’t the same brand I’d worn just the other day in the upstairs bathroom at Emma’s place. They weren’t even specifically for girls, with the packaging making it abundantly clear that the pull-ups, which in the picture appeared to have some grayish designs on the front of an otherwise completely white design, were meant for both boys and girls. After all the trouble that I’d gone through to get Mom to make this purchase for me, she had gone ahead and purchased a knock-off store brand. I stood next to Mom in the hallway, staring numbly at the package of pull-ups in my hands, unable to move. Mom reached out and placed a hand on the package. “If you’ve changed your mind, I can always return them. I’ve still got the receipt. You don’t have to feel like you have to wear them if you don’t want to.” I maintained a firm grip on the pull-ups. It may not have been what I had been expecting, but there was no way I was going to let Mom take it away from me. I’d just have to hope that these pull-ups were as good as the real thing. “It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll see how they work tonight.” --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

It's only been a week-and-a-half of in-story time, so it isn't that odd that Maddy's parents wouldn't immediately jump on the diaper train (especially as they've indicated they did have their other bedwetting daughter use them. That would certainly line up with her attitude so far. We'll get some answers at the doctor's office for why the parents are so dead-set against nighttime diapers. The parent's own history of bedwetting is something that we'll learn more about later down the road as well, though. It makes sense from a perspective of not wanting their kid to feel humiliated or embarrassed. If parent s think that is how their kid might react to diapers, then avoiding them would be reasonable from their perspective. Oh yes, we're just nearing the end of what I would say is part one of the story. That's a good question about what her parent's reaction would be. Those are a lot of very interesting theories. To kind of flip that idea on its head, rather than needing to suffer to get what she wants, she might get what she wants first and have to deal with the unintended consequences afterward. I do have plans for another book, though it's going to at least be several more months before it's finished. That does kind of line up with the last line of the description I wrote for the story. I do have a twisted sense of humor. I would say the best part of this story (as say, compared to All My Mother's Rules), is that I don't feel like there is a clearly obvious direction for the story to go. It makes it easier to have some surprises planned.

Chapter 24: The Only Other Option I hated everything about going to the doctor. I tried to avoid thinking about what this doctor’s appointment was going to entail as I got ready for the day, but nothing I did was able to prevent my thoughts from drifting back to the subject. There were the normal fears: needles, all the ways I’d be poked and prodded, the way that the general atmosphere of the hospital always seemed to unnerve me. But there were also some fears that were specific to this occasion: I had successfully tricked my parents and older sister into believing that I was genuinely wetting the bed. But what would happen when my situation was examined by a professional? I had a sudden fear that they would be able to see right through the façade. Could there be something about the way I had gone about faking my bedwetting that would clue a doctor into the fact that it was all a lie? The one good thing was that I wouldn’t be needing to take those anti-bedwetting pills anymore. It shouldn’t have taken as long as four days to convince Mom to give up on them, but when she got me out of bed this morning, the sight different sheets than I had on the bed the night before was all the confirmation she needed that I had wet the bed and changed my sheets overnight. I didn’t bother with faking a headache this morning. And I didn’t have an actual one, as I’d managed to fake taking the pills the night before. I fiddled around with my breakfast as Mom focused on getting Jackson ready for his first day at his summer camp, sipping on a glass of orange juice while nibbling on a piece of toast with cinnamon butter on it. In the background, Mom was chasing Jackson around, prodding him to finish getting dressed and packed. I wasn’t normally all that enthusiastic about breakfast, but today, I didn’t feel hungry at all. My stomach felt all jittery, and while the upcoming appointment was weighing heavily on my mind, it wasn’t the only thing that was making me nervous. I was going to have to bring up the topic of pull-ups with my parents soon. I couldn’t hold off for much longer, not if I wanted to avoid having the birthday sleepover get canceled. I stared down at the kitchen table. There wasn’t any way I could eat anymore. I went to dispose of my half-eaten breakfast. I dumped my half-piece of toast in the trash, but Mom caught sight of what I was doing before I could pour out the rest of my orange juice in the sink. “Madelyn,” Mom said. “You need to finish your orange juice.” I paused with the glass of orange juice held over the sink. “But I’m not thirsty.” “I poured a full glass for you because Dr. Mathorn said he wanted to make sure that you were hydrated for the appointment. Now, please finish it because we need to be out the door in a few minutes.” I retreated from the sink and finished the orange juice, as Mom had asked. Why would Dr. Mathorn care how much I had to drink for breakfast? <><><> It was a bit of a relief that we had to drop Jackson off first before we needed to be at the hospital for my appointment. I sat in the car while Mom took Jackson inside to drop him off at his all-day summer daycare camp. I remembered the summers when I had been forced to do that every day. Sometimes, it had been fun. We took cool field trips to museums or amusement parks. But there had been plenty of other times when I had been forced to take part in group games or activities that I had no interest in. I’d rather be at the park playing soccer with my friends or curled up at home reading a book. “We’ll be at the hospital in about ten minutes,” Mom said once she got back in the car. “It will be in plenty of time before your appointment.” The silence in the car as the ride to the hospital began was deafening. On any drive longer than a few minutes, Mom typically had music playing, usually from some musical. Today there wasn’t anything coming out of the speakers. I thought it perhaps was because she wanted to talk about the upcoming appointment, but the next few minutes instead passed by in silence as I texted my friends. I mentioned that I had a doctor’s appointment I had to go to, mostly because I wanted someone I could complain about it to, though I played it off as a standard check-up. Both Angie and Emma were also excited to hear the news that I was allowed to stay home by myself during the summer, but disappointed by the restrictions my parents had still placed on me. Emma texted, asking if she could come over after lunch to hang out. I promised Emma that I would ask, though I didn’t think I was going to like the answer. “Can Emma come over after lunch? Please?” As happy as I was that my parents were now entrusting me with the responsibility of being able to stay home during the summer by myself, there were a couple of downsides to it, namely the fact that I wasn’t supposed to have anyone over or be at my friend’s place without their parents or adult siblings around. That wasn’t to say that I wasn’t going to enjoy my time alone. Between having as much time as I wanted to read Harry Potter without being accosted about the lack of diversity in my reading habits and being able to have more chances to experiment with wetting my pants, there was plenty to occupy my time. “That’s not going to work today,” Mom said. “Your sister is going to be gone all afternoon, and I’m heading off to work once the appointment is over. I wasn’t intending to take the whole day off.” “But Mom, that’s going to be boring. Can’t my friends at least come over some of the time? That can’t be any worse than letting me have the house to myself?” “We’ll see how the first few weeks go,” Mom said. “Then your dad and I could perhaps talk it over and see if that might be allowed.” I resisted the urge to argue further. That was probably as much of a concession as I was going to get. I passed on the bad news to Emma and received a bunch of sad-faced emojis in response. <><><> The last time I had seen our pediatrician had been at the start of the last school year, when I had gone through my normal physical required for the soccer teams I played on and had also gotten up to date on my shots. The only good thing about that last appointment was that Dr. Mathorn had reassured me that it would be several more years before I would need any additional vaccinations. That was far enough away that I didn’t need to worry about it for now. I took a seat in the waiting room as Mom got in line to get me checked in. We had arrived about twenty minutes early. I scanned the magazines stacked on the table next to me, trying to guess which one might have some ads for diapers or pull-ups. After flicking through the pile of magazines, I came across a parenting one. I looked over to where Mom was standing in a long line. I had plenty of time to browse and then put it down before she got back. I did manage to come across a few advertisements for baby diapers, which had me reflect again on the strange white diapers I had discovered in Hannah’s suitcase, ones that had two tabs on each side rather than one, but there weren’t any ads for the bedwetting pull-ups. I did stumble across an article discussing late potty training, but unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to read it, as I could see out of the corner of my eye that Mom was at the front of the line. I reluctantly set the magazine down and pulled my phone out of my pocket. Mom came down to sit beside me a minute later, grabbing the same parenting magazine that I had previously been reading. I waited anxiously as a nurse occasionally stepped out of a door and called someone’s name. I breathed a short sigh of relief each time it wasn’t mine. I was so not ready for this. After about ten minutes, the nurse again stepped out into the waiting area. “Madelyn?” <><><> The first parts of the appointment were no different from past check-ups. I was weighed and had my height measured. I was a little disappointed to find that I wasn’t five feet tall just yet. I still had another inch to go for that. And according to the scale, I weighed ninety-six pounds. Then there was the exam room to deal with. The nurse led Mom and me in and had me take a seat on the paper-covered exam table. She listened to my heartbeat and then took my blood pressure with that uncomfortable cuff that went around my arm. Nothing was said yet about the reason for the visit while all these tests were underway. I sat silently while the nurse types some details into a computer. “I’m going to go and grab Dr. Mathorn for you,” the nurse said. “She’ll be with you shortly.” Then, it was just Mom and me in the room together. She was sitting in a plastic chair off to the side while I remained at the exam table. Mom gave me a reassuring smile as I looked over at her. I tried to mentally prepare myself for Dr. Mathorn’s arrival. I couldn’t have her thinking in any way that the bedwetting might not be genuine. I nearly slid off of the exam table in surprise as the door to the exam room swung open without a knock. I smiled nervously as we all exchange some pleasantries. Dr. Mathorn took a seat in front of a computer and pulled up a chart with my medical history. “I see you are going to be turning thirteen this weekend, about to be a teenager. That’s so cool. You have something fun planned for your birthday?” The difficulties I often had with lying hit me right there. “I was wanting to have a sleepover…” My voice trailed off. While that still was my plan for the coming weekend, sleepovers weren’t something that bedwetters went to typically, at least not in my family, and certainly not without something like medication or pull-ups to keep the issue hidden and managed. “Of course,” Dr. Mathorn said. “I can see why that would be more of a challenge. Your mom did talk with me about the reason for this visit.” I winced as I bit my lip a little too hard in nervous anticipation of what she was about to say next. “Your mom mentioned that you’ve had some recent issues with bedwetting. Is that right?” There was no need to fake how embarrassing and humiliating that question was, but that was the price I had agreed to pay in order to get those pull-ups. I tried to conjure the feeling of the pull-up from Hannah’s suitcase. I had worn it just the day before. If I could just get those pull-ups for myself, all of this humiliation would be worth it. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything in response. I looked down at my lap and nodded. Mom saved me the difficulty of needing to give a full update on the status of my recent bedwetting. She filled Dr. Mathorn in on all the details: when the first bedwetting accident had happened, how frequently it had been since then, the unsuccessful attempts they had taken so far to try to get the accidents to stop, our family’s history of bedwetting. I finally managed to look up about halfway through Mom’s speech. Dr. Mathorn was just nodding along as Mom talked, as though the subject of bedwetting was something she came across on an everyday basis. Dr. Mathorn turned to me once again after Mom had finished with her very thorough explanation of the past week-and-a-half of my bedwetting. “Plenty of kids wet the bed – even some adults,” Dr. Mathorn said. “Even though it is more common in elementary age kids, it still does happen with kids around your age as well.” Next came a whole litany of questions for me: Did it hurt at all when I peed? Had the color of my urine changed at all? Had I had any accidents in the day or had any times when it felt like I had to urgently rush off to the toilet? Was I waking up a lot at night? How much was I drinking before bed? Was I having trouble falling asleep? Had I been happy at school? I answered all the questions as truthfully as I could, even the ones that didn’t seem to make all that much sense. It wouldn’t do to get caught in any unnecessary lies, but so far, the questions, if a little awkward, had been pretty straightforward to answer. Still, I found that I wasn’t quite able to meet Dr. Mathorn’s eyes as I answered all of her questions. The gentle interrogation continued for a few more minutes before arriving at a surprising – an even more awkward – question than the ones that had pertained directly to the bedwetting and my peeing habits. “From my notes from your last visit, you hadn’t gotten your first period yet. Has that changed?” “Um.” It wasn’t as though I didn’t know what Dr. Mathorn meant. My health class the year before had provided way more information than I would have wanted to know, and I figured that a little more than half of the girls on my soccer team had to deal with that affliction that came from growing older. “No,” I said at last, followed by the only question that came to mind. “But why would that matter?” “That’s not something we’ll know until we’ve got all your tests taken care of. There are a lot of things that could cause bedwetting to start, and puberty – hormones and the way your body is changing – could be one possible factor.” Tests. I took a deep breath. What tests? <><><> If I had known that faking bedwetting would have resulted in needing to have my blood drawn, I might not have been brave enough to go through with it. The testing area was on the main floor of the hospital. I had trailed behind Mom on the way to it like a prisoner heading to the gallows. The worst part of it was that Dr. Mathorn seemed to have implied that there was going to be more than one blood test that would be required. At least the chair to sit in during the blood draw was comfortable. It was soft and allowed me to lean back quite a ways as I set my feet on a footrest. The nurse who would be drawing my blood rested her hand on my arm. “I’m going to need you to relax. Why don’t you look off at the picture hanging in the hallway? I’ll count down when I’m ready.” I tried to follow her advice, focusing my gaze on a painting of a mountain landscape in the distance. “Three.” “Two.” And then the needle was in. I gasped audibly as the nurse poked me. She hadn’t even waited until saying “one.” That was not fair. “You poked me early,” I protested a few seconds later after the blood draw was finished. “That’s because you were less tense then. I don’t think you’d want me to have to try again if I missed your vein the first time.” As the nurse placed a pink Band-Aid on my arm, I admitted to myself that she had a valid point. <><><> Next, it was time to pee in a cup, and I understood why I had been required to have a full glass to drink along with breakfast. That test was easy enough to pass, though it again made me worry about what would happen when my blood and urine tests came back and showed that there wasn’t anything noticeably wrong with me. What exactly were they hoping to learn from those tests? I managed to fill up the plastic cup nearly all the way with any difficulty. I’d gotten better at making my body need to go whenever I wanted to over the past week or so. I didn’t even need to hand the cup back to the nurse. There was a discreet hole in the bathroom wall to slide the cup of pee into afterward. But that wasn’t the last test. I followed Mom down a couple more hallways to the final exam room, where they did an ultrasound of my bladder. I saw some black-and-white images flash on the computer screen during the process, but I had no clue what they meant, and the technician doing the ultrasound said we’d have to wait to talk with my doctor afterward. <><><> Dr. Mathorn was waiting for us in the exam room when all the tests were finished. “We can rule one thing out right away,” she said as I once again took a seat on the exam table. I tried to decide whether that would be good news for me or not. “Some of the results we can get back right away,” Dr. Mathorn said. “The lab technicians ran a test of your urine, and it came back negative for a UTI, which isn’t too surprising since you weren’t showing any other symptoms for that. There’s a more thorough test they’ll do later that takes a few days to get results back, but I’m not expecting it to say anything different.” I tried to look relieved, as if I wasn’t completely aware of what the test result was going to show. “So, what do you think the issue might be, then?” Mom asked. Dr. Mathorn swiveled in her chair to face Mom. “There are a number of things we might look for in a situation like this, where bedwetting is starting for a teenager who hasn’t had any previous issues. We’re going to test for diabetes as well as any other medical conditions or illnesses that could be causing complications. There is your family’s medical history to consider since there is a genetic component to bedwetting. And given Maddy’s age, it could very well be an issue with hormones that may resolve itself on its own in a matter of weeks or months.” Dr. Mathorn turned to face me. I again couldn’t quite manage to look her in the eye. “I know it is frustrating, Maddy, but I don’t think we should worry about it much until we’ve got the test results back and have a better sense of what the next steps should be.” “But what should we do in the meantime? Are there other medications we could try?” Mom asked. That caused me to groan loudly. I was annoyed at how Mom kept avoiding the obvious solution, but I hadn’t intended to noticeably complain about it. “You didn’t like the pills you used the past few days?” Dr. Mathorn asked. “No, they gave me headaches, and they didn’t even work at all.” “That’s OK,” Dr. Mathorn said. “We won’t make you take those pills again. And for now, I think it would be best to wait until we get the test results back – it shouldn’t take more than a week – until we think about trying other medications.” That was it. We were back to square one. The question was now on the tip of my tongue. All I had to do was ask. Surely, pull-ups would be an acceptable choice for now if there weren’t any other options to choose from. It was so obvious that pull-ups were the right decision to handle my bedwetting at this point. Why was it so difficult for either of the adults to bring it up? I swung my legs back and forth. The exam table was tall enough that my feet didn’t come close to touching the floor. I wanted to ask the question. What was stopping me from doing it? I just couldn’t get the word “pull-ups” past my lips, so I asked something else instead. “But what about the sleepover?” Dr. Mathorn looked as though she was about to say something, but she paused as Mom answered my question first. “I think we’re just going to need to skip sleepovers for a little while,” Mom said. “I’m sure it won’t be long before you get better.” “There is something that could help with that,” Dr. Mathorn said tentatively, as if not wanting to upset me. “It’s not something you have to try, but there are other kids, some of them your age, in fact, who find that it helps to wear some protection to bed.” --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

Thanks! Those were all things I experienced as well before I learned how much easier it was to get information off of the internet (and give my parent's old computer a lot of viruses). And it's funny too, because no way our parents would have realized that we were looking because we wanted to wear them. Kids get curious about all kinds of things when they are bored silly during a shopping trip. Yes, as has been hinted, Maddy's diaper making experiment didn't go all that well. The next flashback will cover exactly what happened for her then. I managed some very good makeshift diapers myself. Plastic garbage bags cut into the shape of a diaper, then lined with a ton of toilet paper, and then taped on like normal. I promise we are getting very close to Maddy getting what she wants (though not anywhere close to the end of the story)

Chapter 23: The Little That I Know Three Years Ago I now knew for certain that there were no pull-ups or diapers in the house. All I had managed to find were a bunch of Jackson's old baby items, but pacifiers and bottles held no interest for me. I may have wanted to wear diapers, but I didn't have the slightest interest in behaving like or being treated as a baby. There was so much that I didn't know and very few means of attaining the information that I sought. My fixation on pull-ups ebbed and flowed for the following year after I first learned about those bedwetting pull-ups from my cousins. It wasn't as though there was any point where I didn't want to try to wear one, but without any actual ability to do so, the desire would fade out of mind for weeks or months at a time until something would occur to spark those urges again. I would catch a glimpse of an advertisement for diapers on the TV or in a newspaper. I would be at the park when a toddler would run by with the waistband of a pull-up clearly sticking out the top of their shorts. I would overhear some of my mom's friends talking about struggles they had with getting their toddlers to potty train. And then my mind would be back at it again, fruitlessly searching for information until I once again gave up hope of ever getting my hands on pull-ups of my own. <><><> My mom kept me close at hand when we went shopping for groceries. Jackson was still young enough to sit in the cart, facing Mom as she pushed it down most – but not all – of the aisles in the grocery store. To my dismay, there were a number of aisles that we never seemed to go by anymore, ones that I wished I had paid more attention to previously but that had been before I had known what I wanted to look for. Slipping off to check out the baby aisle was never an option. Mom preferred that I stay within arm's reach of her at all times. I had to make do with attempting to discreetly peek down the baby aisle as we went by, taking in its distinct scents. But it was hard to make out much from a distance. There were so many brands and styles, and I wasn't sure exactly what I was looking for. That changed one day right at the end of summer break, several months since my interest in pull-ups had begun. One of my mom's co-workers was having a baby shower for her first baby, which she was expecting in a couple of months, and Mom needed to pick out some diapers and wipes as a present. I found myself standing smack dab in the middle of the diaper section of the baby aisle, completely overwhelmed by all the options, brands, and styles. All the bright colors and smells made it hard to concentrate on what I was looking for. I needed to find something that was meant for older kids my age, not toddlers or preschoolers. There were regular diapers and pull-ups and ones that seemed to be a mix of the two. On a few of the other packages where information about the sizing was available, it was again clear that none of the products were remotely close to my size, as if that wasn't clear from the age of the models on the front of the packages. I began to wonder if that scene with my cousins a few months back had actually been real. Could it have just been something that I dreamed up in the boredom of that vacation? Then I saw a package. There was a picture of a sleeping girl on it, more than old enough to be my age. Could that be it? But then I saw the phrase "nighttime underwear" beneath the brand name. That didn't make any sense to me. Why would they be selling underwear for girls in the baby aisle? That was just plain silly. "Maddy," Mom said. "You need to keep up with us." While I wanted to see if there was any other information to glean from the package, I didn't have any choice but to obey Mom as I turned around and dashed ahead to catch up to her shopping cart. What exactly did that package mean by "nighttime underwear," and why was it located in the baby aisle close to all the diapers and pull-ups? It would be a long time before I walked through the baby aisle again. <><><> An indoor water park in the winter made for a perfect vacation. Grace was busy lying on her stomach on one of the poolside chairs. Teenagers were weird. It wasn't like she could catch a tan inside. Mom was at least reading a book while reclining in her chair. Dad was munching on some snacks, keeping an eye on Jackson and me from off in the distance. I was playing with Jackson in the kiddie pool. The warm water only came up to our ankles, but there were tons of fountains, sprinklers, slides, and water toys to play with. Above us was a bucket connected to a swivel. It gradually filled with water before tipping over and emptying its contents onto whoever might be unlucky enough to be standing beneath it at the time. Jackson found the idea hilarious. Though for him it was more amusing when the bucket of water was dropping down on my head rather than his. I knew better than to look up to try to see if the bucket was close to overflowing. I had made that mistake once and wasn't interested in making it again. At this point, my hair was already thoroughly soaked, so there was no use in fussing over yet another bucket of water pouring over it again. The small clang the bucket made as it began to tip was the only warning I got. I closed my eyes and shut my mouth as the warm water – at least it was warm water – poured over my head. I opened my eyes to the sight of Jackson giggling and pointing at me like a maniac. "OK, it's your turn now," I said. I stepped away from the spot under the basket and motion for Jackson to take my place. It seemed to take the bucket a little under a minute to refill before soaking its next victim. But my eyes drifted away from Jackson. Her top was a normal swimsuit, but around her waist was an uncovered swim diaper, blue with a picture of a mermaid on it. It was absolutely mesmerizing. Jackson yelled at me to pay attention to him, and when I looked again in the direction the girl had run off in, I had lost sight of her. I knew that I wouldn't fit in a swim diaper made for a baby, but the site of the swim diaper still stirred up that longing that had gotten tucked away for a couple of months. Since that disappointing trip through the baby aisle, my interest in diapers had dropped off. With diapers on my mind again, I couldn't help but notice them everywhere I went at the water park, and over the course of the long weekend, I spent much more time playing with Jackson than I normally would have, much to the delight of Grace and my parents. It wasn't so much that I cared to spend time around my brother, but being in the kiddie pool gave me a chance to catch glimpses of diapered kids as they splashed around in the water, wishing all the while that it was me who was wearing those diapers and pull-ups instead. <><><> I learned not to leave the room during commercial breaks. I didn't care much about the cartoon show that my brother was watching on TV. I found it difficult to concentrate on my book with all of that background noise. Ever since coming home from the water park vacation, I had been obsessed with learning as much as I could about pull-ups and diapers, and I had discovered an easy way to do so. I endured the annoying shows my younger brother watched for one, and only one, reason. The programs geared toward kids his age often featured advertisements for pull-ups and diapers. I had become familiar with the names of all the brands and the different types of pull-ups and diapers they would sell, and all the new features they were constantly adding. I peeked at the TV over the top of the book I was reading. A new commercial break had just begun. The first two advertisements were disappointments. The first was for a cereal brand I absolutely detested. The second was for baby formula. A few commercial breaks had passed by already without any of the advertisements I had been looking for, and I was beginning to wish I had just spent the morning reading in my room instead when the next ad caught my eye. One of the brands I was familiar with was advertising a new type of pull-up. A boy and a girl around Jackson's age were both going through the routine of getting ready for bed with their parent's assistance. There was the familiar scene of the closeup shot of them sliding the pull-up over their waists. And then the lights went out, and the designs on the pull-ups were glowing in the dark. But I knew by now not to get my hopes up. The kids in the advertisement were Jackson's age. No matter how cool those pull-ups looked, they weren't for me, either. The ad continued by showing how to activate the pull-ups first by holding them under a light. The advertisement was over all too soon, and Jackson's show resumed. But instead of turning back to my book, I thought over again about what I had just seen. This didn't confirm that the pull-ups I remembered my cousins' wearing were real, but it did confirm one important detail. There were pull-ups made specifically for use during the night. I wondered again about the brand of nighttime underwear that I had seen in the diaper aisle nearly half a year ago. There was a word I had learned in class the other day. It was really long, and I didn't think I'd ever be able to remember how to spell it. The concept of the word – euphemism – was also hard to grasp, and the idea that a word might not mean what it actually meant was simply too confusing. It didn't seem right. It was so much easier when people simply said exactly what they meant, rather than the opposite of it. But it was like a lightbulb had gone off in my head. Could nighttime underwear actually mean something entirely else? I tried to recall the name of the brand I had seen that day in the baby aisle. It took several minutes for it to come back to me. I had to recite the alphabet silently in my head several times before I remembered it. I whispered the name of the brand silently to myself over and over again, like a mantra. With the name of what I was looking for now in mind, I kept my eyes peeled for any glimpse of it, but several more months passed by without any additional luck. I managed to catch a glimpse or two – or at least thought I had – of the packages of so-called nighttime underwear in the baby aisle. But that was only for seconds and from a long distance, so I wasn't able to glean any more information than from the time I had spent first looking at it. My remaining options were highly limited. There was absolutely no scenario in which I would look up that brand on the family computer or tablet. I couldn't have my parents question why I was seeking out that information. I knew instinctively that they would not approve of this quest. There was no way that query would escape Dad's notice, and I had no desire for the questions that would surely follow. And despite my continued vigilance in watching ads on the TV, I never managed to come across one for that nighttime underwear. <><><> About a year had passed now since the day I had worn pull-ups My biggest fear was that I was growing. I was quite a few inches taller than a year before. I wanted to believe that they made pull-ups for teenagers, but without any direct evidence to confirm that, my worry was that I would eventually get my hands on the bedwetting pull-ups, only to find that I had done so too later and would no longer be able to fit into them. I was once again on the alert for any information I could find about that nighttime underwear brand. It was a week after my tenth birthday. To celebrate, I had gone with Emma and Angie to an indoor trampoline park. I had put the thought of those pull-ups out of my mind for a while, as I hadn't recently come across any new information. The allure of the TV advertisements had faded. It was just the same old information re-packaged in different ways. Yes, I would still look up at the TV at the familiar sound of certain jingles, but I no longer went out of the way to stay in the living room as Jackson watched the TV. The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies wafted upward through the air and to the second floor of the house. I followed the irresistible scent downstairs as it grew stronger and stronger until I came across a bunch of cookies spread out on old pages of yesterday's newspaper on the dining room table. To my disappointment, my parents only got the newspaper on Sunday. Mom said the only reasons she got it at all was for the advertisements that came tucked inside it, though all I cared about was pulling out the comics section from the middle, often wishing that I would be able to get the comics from the middle of the week as well. Mom was in the kitchen, putting one final batch of cookies in the oven. She gave me permission to eat two – and only two – cookies. I stared down at the newspaper pages as I tried to determine which two cookies were the biggest. None of the newspaper articles carried any interest to me. Reading the news was something that adults did. However, the newspaper pages also included a section with advertisements for the local grocery store that Mom preferred to shop at. There were ads for a variety of baby products. I glanced over at them, not really expecting to learn anything that I already didn't know. There were headings for different products that were on sale: wipes, formula, diapers, and pull-ups. I turned my attention to the images in the pull-up sections, which, according to the ad, were on sale for fifteen percent off this week. And there it was. The picture was tiny, but unmistakable. It was the same package of nighttime underwear that I had come across so long ago in the grocery store. And there was no mistaking what it actually was. It couldn't have been an accident that it had been listed in the pull-ups section. I squinted down at the newspaper as I removed a couple of cookies and put them on my plate. There was some tiny writing on the package, but it was indecipherable with how small the picture was. The text next to the advertisement said that the sale included small through extra-large sizes, but I knew better than to let that phrase get my hopes up. I had seen a couple of ads for extra-large pull-ups before, only to find that this just meant they were for preschool-age kids and not toddlers. I poured myself a glass of milk in the kitchen and slowly ate my cookie while considering this new revelation. I realized that the most important thing I had learned wasn't that these nighttime underwear were actually pull-ups. That was a discovery I had made on my own a few months back. No, what I realized was that there was another potential untapped source of information about these pull-ups. From then on, I made sure to skim through all the advertisements in the newspaper. These special bedwetting pull-ups didn't show up often, but each time they did, the same problem remained as before. The information contained in the ads was minimal, with nothing to suggest whether I would still be able to fit into these pull-ups or if I had already outgrown them in the past year. There wasn't any information about the weight ranges or clothing sizes that the pull-ups would fit. But with the confirmation that these pull-ups existed, I found it impossible to put the topic out of my mind. After that moment, not a single day passed where I didn't think about what it would be like to be wearing a pull-up once again. But actually getting my hands on one of those pull-ups seemed like an impossibility for the time being. It wasn't likely that I would be visiting those cousins anytime again soon, and I didn't know of a single other kid my age who was a bedwetter. It was time to take matters into my own hands. If I couldn't get a diaper of my own, perhaps I could make one for myself. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

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/