MinnesotaWriter

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/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looks like another site is coming down hard on ABDL content, which is incredibly annoying. Wattpad went and shadowbanned a bunch of stories based on AI flagging them for not meeting their standards. Apparently they will be doing a manual review of all those stories to determine if they will get deleted or not. There's more info about that on the Wattpad Reddit site: https://www.reddit.com/r/Wattpad/comments/1btcjsy/update_on_tag_issues/ In addition to that, the ABDL story tag is no longer visible on Wattpad. Searching for it yields no results. Seems likely they will be coming down hard on all of that content fairly soon. I'm making sure to remove my stories from any of those tags, but I think my days writing on that site are numbered.

Chapter 16: As Anticipated It was amazing how many things could get lost all year in a locker. I stood in front of my locker with a backpack and a garbage bag in front of me on the floor, sorting out the contents of my locker one-by-one. Some of it got tossed in my backpack to keep. Most things went into the trash bag. The locker was now about halfway empty. By the end of the school year, the locker had reached its maximum capacity. I had already tossed more than a dozen long-lost pens and pencils into my backpack. I was sure I’d find another couple dozen by the time I was through with emptying the locker. There were a number of overdue library books I needed to bring to the school library before heading out on the bus, an inside-out, balled up jacket I had left once it had become too warm outside to need it. There were half-empty plastic water bottles, crumpled up papers from homework assignments, and textbooks that I thankfully would never need to ever open again. “You’re not finished yet?” Emma asked as she walked up next to me and stared into the abyss that was my locker. I shrugged as I tossed out a Spanish workbook that I wasn’t going to need again. It was true that my locker was fuller than most, but that hadn’t been the main reason for how long it was taking me to get it all emptied out. The conversation about bedwetting with my parents and sister yesterday evening had given me a lot to think about. The pills had proved to not be much of a problem. Yes, they had made it impossible to wet the bed in the middle of the night, as I would have preferred, but I didn’t have any difficulty peeing in bed once my alarm had woken me up in the morning. I was rather proud of how I had figured out a way to wake up early without disturbing the rest of my family. Waking up to an alarm blaring from an earbud wasn’t the ideal way to start the morning, but it gave me time to wet the bed and relax before getting ready for school. However, despite needing to pee in the morning, the puddle that had formed on the bed around my bottom was a lot smaller than any of the other times I had peed in the bed previously, proof that the medication had done its job of limiting my overnight urine output. Mom, of course, had been a bit disappointed when she woke me up. She made sure to clarify that she wasn’t unhappy with me in any way, but it was clear she had higher expectations for how the medicine would perform. She had very much been expecting to see dry sheets and pajamas in the morning. “Eww, is that what I think it is?” Emma pointed to a discolored plastic baggie that had been revealed when I had taken the book out of the locker. I grimaced as I looked down at what was likely the remnants of an unfinished lunch from months ago. That was one of the problems with my locker. I always intended to get stuff out again right away, but as soon as it became buried, it would slip completely out of my mind. Emma held her nose in disgust as I pinched the corner of the baggie and quickly deposited it into the garbage bag. I hoped there weren’t any additional baggies like that in the locker, but I was beginning to dread what I might end up discovering closer to the bottom. “So, about the all-nighter? What did your mom say about the sleepover?” Emma asked. I sighed and rolled my eyes. It was apparent that my friends were going to keep interrogating me until they got an answer. I answered the first half of that question truthfully. “Doing an all-nighter is a no-go. My parents don’t want us drinking all that caffeine and going crazy.” “That’s silly,” Emma said as she watched me continue to empty the locker. “We wouldn’t have any problem getting away with that at my place. My parents wouldn’t care one bit as long as we didn’t wake them up.” “Then we can go that later in the summer. Just don’t mention it to my mom.” “But, like, we’re still good for a regular sleepover next Friday on your birthday?” I paused a second before answering her question. I didn’t want to say that Mom hadn’t decided yet. That would just be an open invitation to unwelcome questions about what could have changed to make it so I couldn’t have sleepovers anymore. Besides, I was sure that I’d have access to pull-ups next week, which would allow Mom to say yes to my friends spending the night. “Of course.” “That’s good,” Emma said. “I’ll go let Angie know. She’s a lot closer to getting her locker cleaned up than you are. I’ll see you at lunch.” I watched as Emma darted off around the corner, weaving through all the other students who were busy getting their hallway lockers cleaned out for the year as well. Well, I was committed to the sleepover now, which meant I was going to need to get my parents to get me the pull-ups or risk an even more awkward conversation with my friends about how we weren’t actually going to have a sleepover next week. But it wasn’t time to ask my parents about pull-ups yet. There was still the doctor’s appointment to consider on Monday. That appointment had me worried. I didn’t like going to the doctor, even for normal yearly checkups. There was that weird thing they squeezed around my arm to take my pulse, which nearly sent me into a panic attack every time they did it. But apart from the normal poking and prodding, the worst of it was always the needles. At least this time, I could be confident that I wouldn’t need to get any new vaccinations. But what would the doctor make of my bedwetting? I felt confident that I had fooled my entire family so far. They hadn’t expressed a single inkling of doubt that my bedwetting was anything other than genuine. The idea of someone wetting the bed on purpose had to be so far out there that it probably wasn’t ever a scenario they had considered. But what would happen when I was examined by an actual doctor? What if there was something I had missed during my times of faking bedwetting, something I had gotten wrong that would indicate to them that something was not as it seemed? What if they ran all of their tests and determined that they couldn’t find anything wrong with me at all? Would they chalk it up to just a random fluke of genetics? Or would they begin to think something was amiss? On the other hand, the doctor’s appointment could prove useful to my quest to get pull-ups. Surely, they would be aware of that being an option for dealing with bedwetting. Perhaps they might even recommend it as a solution. That would be ideal. That way, I could still at least pretend that I wasn’t all that happy about wearing pull-ups. I had to keep in mind that I was supposed to be behaving like someone who wasn’t happy at all about having to suddenly deal with bedwetting. I resumed my inspection of the contents of my locker. To my great relief, I didn’t find any additional bags of moldy sandwiches. <><><> Despite my older sister’s warning about the side effects she had experienced when she had previously been taking this medication for her own bedwetting, I had felt perfectly fine all day long. I was tired after coming home from school, but that was just because I hadn’t gotten my usual amount of sleep. I hadn’t woken up at weird times in the middle of the night at all. Grace’s main complaint about the medication was that it had given her some extremely painful headaches. My head hadn’t hurt, and as far as I could tell, nothing else seemed to be off about my body. That hadn’t stopped me from constantly wincing and rubbing my head all morning – especially when Mom and Grace were around. I needed to give them as many reasons as possible to stop with the pills and try to move on to another solution. I continued with the act as Grace unlocked the front door to let me in. I groaned and rubbed my head as I eased my overly full backpack down onto the floor. “You feeling alright?” Grace asked. “How did it go last night?” I groaned again. “No, your stupid pills didn’t even work. The only thing they gave me was this lousy headache.” “That’s too bad,” Grace said. “Maybe you’ll have better luck tonight. Oh, and Mom left a note for you in the kitchen. She wanted to make sure you got your laundry done.” That was just great. Nothing like being reminded of additional chores the minute I was finally free from school and homework for the summer. Still, I knew better than to disobey, and this request suddenly gave me a good idea. There were still about twenty minutes until Jackson got home from school, enough time to try out something new I had been wanting to experience. I followed Grace as she walked up the stairs ahead of me. She’d be secluded in her bedroom again until it was time to walk over to the bus stop to collect my younger brother when he was dropped off later this afternoon. I grabbed my full laundry hamper and hauled it all the way to the laundry room in the basement. Yes, this was going to be perfect. Ever since I had discovered how much I had enjoyed wetting myself in bed earlier this week, I had been desperately curious to see what it would be like to do that in different situations. But there were a couple of challenges with trying out this new desire. The first was that there were very few places where I could easily pee my pants without causing a massive mess. Most of our house was carpeted. I didn’t even want to think about how much of a pain it would be to try to clean up that much urine out of the carpet. That left me with a few options. My bed, of course, worked perfectly because of the waterproof mattress. I considered peeing my pants with my clothes on in the bathtub but couldn’t bring myself to find that to be an acceptable option. It just felt too weird to urinate in a spot where I and the rest of my family would later be standing. That left the laundry room in the basement. Its cement floor would make clean-up easy. Plus, there was even a drain on the floor, so if I were to pee myself over that, clean-up would be even easier. That was far and away the best location, especially as I was not as likely to be interrupted, and it would be able to easily hear someone approaching from upstairs. Having decided on a location, there was still another major obstacle, which was that I was rarely left at home by myself. I was hoping that would change this summer now that I would be turning thirteen in a week. In previous summers, Mom had put Jackson in a daycare-like summer camp that he would go to most days for the entirety of summer break. As for me, my schedule had varied. There were day and overnight camps that I would get signed up for. When I wasn’t doing that, I was often spending the day at one of my friend’s places if a parent or older sibling happened to be home. But be allowed to stay at home all on my own? Absolutely not. I wasn’t sure how many good opportunities I would get to experiment with peeing my pants during the day, so I had to be ready to make the most of them when they did show up. The benefit of being in the basement was that I could easily tell where everyone else was in the house. I would be able to hear Grace’s footsteps the moment she started walking down the stairs to the main floor. I had to guess that she wasn’t going to be coming to the basement, but if she was, I would have ample warning to straighten things up quickly. I had worked extra hard to stay hydrated the last couple of hours at school in preparation for this possibility, but now I was wondering if I would be able to pull it off. I ran through the scenario once more in my head. I would change into an old pair of leggings from my hamper. I would stand in the corner of the laundry room where there was a drain in the floor. I would wet my pants there, where it would be easiest to clean up afterward. I would allow myself some time to enjoy the experience before using some of my other dirty clothes to dry off and mop up everything from the floor. Then, everything could be tossed in the washing machine, and no one else would have a clue what had happened once I had changed back into my regular clothes for the day. All so complicated. It would be a lot easier if I simply had a pull-up. I took off my leggings and replaced them with another pair from the laundry hamper. That was one of the strange things about this new interest. I didn’t have any desire to pee myself without any clothes on. I wondered why that was? With this new pair of leggings on, I positioned myself right over the small drain set into the cement floor. I listened carefully. There was no sound from my sister moving around upstairs. This would be another first for me. I had never peed myself while standing before. I assumed that it would be easier to do than while lying down. I spread my legs apart slightly and focused on trying to get my bladder to release. The bottom of my pants began to get warm, and then a warm, wet sensation began to run down both of my legs. It was exhilarating in a way I couldn’t define. Part of it was tied to the physical sensation of what I was doing, but there was something else as well. Was there a certain amount of excitement that came from doing something so socially forbidden? Like always, once I started, there was no stopping it at all. Not that I in any way wanted it to stop. I wished that this feeling could go on forever rather than just the thirty seconds that it would take for my bladder to fully empty. It had been every bit as enjoyable as I had anticipated all day long. The only problem was that it was over far too soon. I looked down at my feet. I knew I had forgotten something. I hadn’t taken off my socks, which were now soaked. For some reason, I had figured that the urine would just go straight through the bottom of my pants and stream onto the floor. I hadn’t considered that it my might run down my legs to my feet. Even then, the drain had proven to be quite effective, as there was only a small puddle remaining beneath me despite how much I had peed. With the sound of urine dripping onto the floor now over, I listened intently again for any movement upstairs. There was complete silence. At any moment now, Grace should head down to the front door to wait for Jackson. I looked back down at the puddle beneath my feet. Again, this would have been so much easier if I had been wearing a pull-up. I wouldn’t have even had to sneak downstairs. I could have done this in the comfort of my own bedroom. I thought back to that girl I had seen at the mall, the one who had been about Jackson’s age, getting her pull-up changed in the restroom. For a moment, I wished that was me. Faking bedwetting was one thing. Pulling that off was easy, given my sister’s history of bedwetting. And wearing pull-ups at night would be an easy secret to keep, even from my friends. But to have accidents during the day was something entirely else. That would call for a much more thorough investigation into what was going on with my body. Besides, I didn’t think I could survive the shame of having my parents, Grace, or Jackson, witness me wetting my pants during the day. And that would make my task of hiding pull-ups from my friends nearly impossible, not to mention what I would have to do at school. No, that wasn’t an option, despite how much I would enjoy being able to wet my pants at any moment whenever I wanted to. But I consoled myself with the possibility that once I got my hands on some pull-ups to wear at night, I could get away with wearing them occasionally during the day. The worst part of it was that I had to clean up right away, rather than continuing to stand in the corner in my wet clothes. The only good thing was that the mess was relatively easy to clean up. I wet some of my clothes in the sink next to the washing machine and used them to mop up the small puddle of urine that surrounded the drain. Satisfied that I’d managed to get everything cleaned up, I tossed the rest of my clothes in the washing machine – along with a large amount of detergent – and got it started before changing back into the leggings I had worn to school. The pounding of distant footsteps told me that Grace was now coming down the stairs to the main floor. I waited until I’d heard the front door slam shut before I made my way back upstairs. My heart was still racing as I shut the door to my bedroom behind me. With all of these new things to explore, this was going to be the best summer ever. I retrieved an old magazine from the bottom of the drawer beneath my bed and flipped instantly to the right page, my eyes fixated on a pair of special undergarments. If everything went right, in less than a week they would be mine. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

I think it is fair to say that Maddy hasn't quite thought through all of the long-term implications for what happens after she has established herself as a bedwetter. We'll get a good look at how it plays out, it's safe to say that it could lead to a lot of interesting situations. That's certainly what the pills are supposed to do. But, like most medications, it doesn't mean they work 100 percent of the time or work the same for everyone who takes it. That would be one option for Maddy to get away from using the pills.

It does seem a little extreme, but there is a certain line of thought in the parenting world that pull-ups/diapers are best avoided for bedwetting, and there could be a bunch of other reasons why they didn't do it for Grace and are avoiding it for Maddy. I think that if they had used pull-ups successfully at any point for Grace, that this might have been brought up as a solution for the sleepover, but we'll have to see when we learn more about the motives they have for those decisions. For sure, it will be interesting to see their thought process for why diapers/pull-ups are being avoided. That would be quite the conspiracy. For sure, there are lots of ways Maddy could play things with the pills to show that they aren't a good idea (apart from making sure the bedwetting continues despite taking them). We'll get more info on the pills later (there's a doctor's appointment scheduled now). But as far as the expiration date of the pills, you have to recall that Grace was still using them up through early high school as an insurance policy when away from home. And the Mom did clear it with Maddy's pediatrician, so it's safe to assume that it's OK in this instance (meds can have a shelf life of up to five years, and that's not a true expiration anyways, that's just how long the FDA has tested) It's clear that the medicine still works, as it is making it more difficult for Maddy to pee so it is stopping urine production as intended. We'll have to see what may or may not happen with the side effects.

Chapter 15: A Hard Pill to Swallow I stumbled through the front door after being dropped off by the bus on Thursday afternoon. I let my backpack fall to the floor with a loud bang as soon as I had shut the front door behind me. I was exhausted. It had been another seven hours of struggling to stay awake and focused through what had seemed to be an endless day of end-of-year exams. The only relief was that I was finished with taking my last test for this school year. Now I had about a week of bliss before my end-of-year grades became available online. Yes, I still had to go into school tomorrow, but that was just to wrap things up, clean out lockers, and have end-of-year pizza parties. I’d be free from homework, studying, tests, and early morning bus rides for the next three months. Now, all I wanted to do was sleep. Grace wasn’t anywhere to be seen. But I knew my older sister was home because the minivan she drove had been in the driveway when the school bus had dropped me off. I didn’t get what she did while she was shut away in her room all the time. I took advantage of her absence to drink a glass of water in the kitchen. But with my recently discovered sports water bottle – tucked away in the deepest recesses of the bottom drawer of my dresser – sneaking around to stay hydrated enough to make myself wet the bed wasn’t going to be an issue ever again. Angie and Emma had grilled me about the sleepover again during the ride home from school. That was annoying because I’d already told them yesterday that Mom had said she needed to think about the proposed all-nighter on my birthday a little over a week from now. I was hoping to get an answer about that from her tonight. Neither of my friends were coming over after school. Angie was busy tonight with preparations for the vacation her family was heading out for as soon as school was out tomorrow. I would have had Emma over this evening, except that she had somewhere to be with her family. I quickly cleaned the glass I’d gotten a drink from and then dried it off before putting it back in the sink, leaving no evidence behind. Once in the living room, I kicked off my shoes and collapsed onto the couch. <><><> I woke up to Grace furiously shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes and looked up. She was standing over me with a panicked look on her face. “Leave me alone,” I mumbled, rolling over to not be facing my sister. “I was just taking a nap.” “What in the world are you thinking?” Grace said, her voice sounding rather agitated. “What do you think? I was taking a nap ’cause I was tired.” “And how do you think Mom would feel about you peeing all over the couch? That’s a lot harder to clean up than your mattress?” I turned back over to look up at Grace. “I wouldn’t do that during a nap.” “Well, that’s what I thought once, too. Just go to your bedroom if you want to sleep.” I yawned and looked at my phone. It was about twenty minutes since I had arrived home from school, but I felt a lot better even after that quick nap. “I think I’m fine, now.” That did raise another interesting question. Was it common for bedwetters to have accidents if they fell asleep for a brief nap during the day? And then there was another thought, one I would have to consider later. If being a bedwetter meant sometimes having an accident during a nap, that could create an excuse for me to experiment with peeing my pants more during the day. “Actually, since you are awake,” Grace said. “You should probably get the cat litter taken care of before Mom gets home. It was really stinky when I was putting clothes in the washing machine before you got home. And you can get your laundry out of the dryer while you're down there because I’m going to need to use it soon for my stuff.” It didn’t matter that Grace was saving me a potential lecture from my parents about not doing my chores. It still was annoying that she was telling me to do it. I stomped noisily down the stairs on the way to the basement. This evening couldn’t come quickly enough. <><><> Mom had apparently talked through the proposal for the all-nighter with Dad, and neither of them was enthusiastic about it. “It’s simply too risky, Maddy,” Mom said. She was sitting next to Dad on the couch. It was just me and my parents in the living room. Jackson was playing with Legos in his bedroom. Grace was off in the kitchen with her after-dinner chore of washing the dishes. “What if you fall asleep on the couch or on the floor by accident? I’m sure you don’t want to have a bedwetting accident around your friends.” I tried to get them to see my side, to no avail. “But that is why we’ll have a bunch of energy drinks. There’s no way I’m going to fall asleep.” “Maddy,” Dad said. “I don’t think you realize how much more caffeine is in those drinks. Even one drink could have four to five times as much caffeine as a can of pop.” “What’s this about energy drinks?” Grace asked as she walked into the living room. There was a splatter of wet spots across her shirt from when she had been washing dishes. “Maddy wants to do an all-nighter for a sleepover on her birthday to avoid the issues she’s been having at night. I was explaining that having a bunch of energy to stay awake the whole night isn’t going to be a good idea.” “There is absolutely no way I would want to deal with three girls all drugged up on caffeine and who knows what else in energy drinks,” Grace said. “Seriously, Maddy. You get shakes just when you have more than one glass of Mountain Dew.” “But,” I said, trying to protest. “It’s not going to work,” Mom said. “An all-nighter is simply not a good idea.” But this left me in a bind. If I couldn’t have a sleepover, what was I supposed to say to my friends? “But I can’t tell Angie and Emma that I can’t do any more sleepovers.” “I don’t think you’ll have to,” Mom said. “There’s something else we can do – something we did with your sister – to make it so you can have a sleepover, so long as it is a normal one without energy drinks.” Pull-ups. Please let it be pull-ups. Perhaps the advertisement in the magazine had been enough to remind Mom of what she may have done for my sister. “Guys,” Grace whined. “Do you have to keep mentioning my own bedwetting?” “It’s just to help your sister out,” Dad said. “We learned a lot about how to handle it with you, so of course, we’re going to try some of the same things with your sister.” “When your sister was around ten years old,” Mom said, “our pediatrician, Dr. Mathorn, recommended trying a pill that would make it so she wouldn’t wet the bed, and it worked quite well.” Seriously? It was as though my parents were doing everything possible to avoid the solution that seemed most obvious to me. But why did it take so long to get Grace the solution that apparently solved all her problems? “Why didn’t she have Grace take those pills earlier?” “I think she said it wasn’t as effective with younger kids and that bedwetting was fairly normal for younger, elementary-age kids, so there wasn’t any need to be concerned about it. We had Grace take the pill whenever she wasn’t going to be at home. It was very effective, so long as she also made sure to limit fluid intake and use the toilet before bed.” Grace groaned softly off to the side. Her hands were covering her face. Obviously, this wasn’t a memory she wanted to be forced to re-live in front of her younger sister. Mom continued her explanation. “Even after her bedwetting phased out, we will had her take the pill for sleepovers for the next couple of years, just as an insurance measure. We still have some, so we figured we’d have you try them the next few nights. Assuming they work as well for you as they did for Grace, then you’ll be able to have the sleepover without any issues. “You really kept those pills?” Grace asked incredulously. “I mean, it wasn’t really intentional. We didn’t think it was likely you’d need them again. They just got tucked away at the back of the medicine cabinet and were forgotten about. It’s probably about time to take them tonight. I’m going to go grab them now.” Mom left to get the pills. Dad excused himself to go off and get Jackson started on his own bedtime routine, leaving me alone with Grace for the moment. My older sister still looked a little irked that Mom had kept her bedwetting medication long after that issue had stopped. For all the ways my parents had allowed my older sister to be independent, bedwetting hadn’t been one of them, not when she had also been forced to continue to sleep on the waterproof mattress until a couple of nights ago. I turned to Grace. “Was there a reason you didn’t take the pills every night?” “I never slept well, and I often had really bad headaches afterward for the next day. It made school impossible.” “Is that supposed to make me want to take them?” “I mean, they do work. I never wet the bed once after taking them. And a terrible headache in the morning beats being known as the girl who still wets the bed at school. But there wasn’t any way I was going to take them every night; that would have been way too much.” “But, like, how does it work?” “I’m trying to remember exactly how the doctor put it,” Grace said. “Basically, it makes it so your body doesn’t produce as much urine while you sleep so that your bladder doesn’t fill up so quickly and make you need to pee.” This revelation about the bedwetting pills was another nail in the coffin to the idea that my older sister had ever worn pull-ups to manage her nighttime condition. I was fairly certain at this point that Grace had never worn pull-ups at home, not with how frequently the laundry was being done when she had been a bedwetter. And the pills meant that she wouldn’t have needed a pull-up any time she had been sleeping overnight somewhere else after she had turned ten. Still, if she had started using the pills around when she was ten, there would have been a time before that when her bedwetting would have to have been managed somehow when she wasn’t at home. I tried to think back to the trips we had taken, but I would have been a baby for nearly all of them, so I didn’t have the slightest recollection of what would have happened with my sister’s bedwetting. Had pull-ups perhaps been used only for those occasions? Or had we picked places to stay that had given my parents the ability to do the necessary amount of extra laundry that would have been required? I’d held off on asking further questions about my sister’s bedwetting because I hadn’t been able to think of a way to ask about pull-ups that would work. I couldn’t have her thinking that I was at all interested in wearing them. But this new revelation gave me an opening to ask a question that could lead to the same answer without revealing exactly what information I was seeking. “So, like, what did you do on trips before you had the bedwetting pills?” I felt quite proud of myself for how sneakily discreet the question was. Without even mentioning pull-ups, there was the possibility that she could give an answer on the subject. “Why does it matter?” “I don’t know. I just realized that I’d never noticed you wet the bed before.” Grace glared at me. Before my sister could say anything further, Mom arrived and answered the question for her. “Oh, we used a special, disposable, absorbent bedwetting pad on top of the mattress.” “Mom, did you have to tell her that?” “What? We’ve already discussed other stuff from your bedwetting.” “It sucked,” Grace said. “It was like sleeping on a massive puppy pee pad. It crinkled worse than my mattress. I could hardly sleep.” “Well, it did at least keep the bed dry while we were at hotels or staying with relatives,” Mom said. “Though it would have been pretty wasteful to use it at home when we had the ability to just toss everything in the washing machine easily.” I finally noticed that Mom was holding a glass with a couple of ounces of water in it. “We should give the pill a try tonight. We need to know if it is going to work before we can OK the sleepover,” Mom said. “Are you sure it is fine to use without talking to a doctor?” Grace asked. “Of course not,” Mom said. “I gave Dr. Mathorn a call this morning, and she gave the OK to have Maddy try the pills this weekend, and depending on how that goes, we can figure out the next steps during her appointment on Monday.” Mom had already signed me up to go to the doctor? My brain started to get fuzzy at the thought of being poked and prodded in an uncannily sterile room. “But… but…” “Dr. Mathorn helped us a bunch with your sister’s bedwetting. It’s not as though she is unfamiliar with the topic.” Mom handed me the pill and the glass of water. “I know you don’t like taking pills. But this one is nice and small, so let’s just get it over with.” I recalled that if I had been an actual bedwetter, I would have been eager about this new solution. I forced what I thought was a natural happy face as I tucked the pill under my tongue and rinsed it down with a swig of water. This was going to be a major problem. “And this is really important, Maddy,” Mom said. “Grace’s doctor was very clear that once the pill is taken right away before bed, you aren’t to have any liquids until the morning. He said that is necessary to avoid some other harmful side effects.” That sucked. I had only gotten half of the way through my water bottle full of disgusting tap water tonight. And the way Mom had phrased this request made it clear that disobeying it would be unwise. I assured Mom that I would avoid drinking any more water and excused myself to head back to my bedroom. I needed time to think through what I was supposed to do next. There were a number of things that I wanted. I wanted pull-ups to wear. I wanted to continue peeing myself. I wanted my parents to think I was a bedwetter. I wanted to have the sleepover with my friends. I wanted to keep the bedwetting a secret from them. I wanted Mom to think that the new bedwetting pills she was giving me were ineffective. I couldn’t think of a path forward that would allow me to accomplish all of that. There was no way I could stop wetting the bed, even temporarily, not when that would convince Mom that the pills were the solution to that problem. But if the bedwetting continued, there wasn’t any way Mom and Dad would sign off on a sleepover. Succeeding in convincing them that I was a bedwetter would only result in them stopping sleepovers unless I could somehow get them to consider pull-ups as a solution. At least with the latest information about my sister’s bedwetting, I was able to understand how she had avoided being made to wear pull-ups. My parents had found a way to handle her nighttime condition in a way that mostly worked without needing disposable undergarments, though in my opinion a pull-up would have worked better than a disposable, absorbent sheet on top of a mattress. Did they not know pull-ups were an option? Had Grace simply outright refused to wear them? Or perhaps they just considered it too expensive or wasteful compared to washing sheets every night? But the exact reason didn’t really seem to matter. What seemed clear to me was that there was no way my parents were going to get me pull-ups of their own volition. I realized now that unless something changed before the sleepover, I was going to need to do the unthinkable. I was going to have to directly ask my parents to purchase pull-ups for me. <><><> A few hours later, I found myself lying awake under the covers. I’d gotten better at staying up past my parents’ bedtime without feeling tired. I had been trying to pee for the past thirty minutes, but it was no use. I didn’t have the slightest urge to urinate. That little pill had worked extremely well. I should have at least felt a decent need to pee at this point, as I’d managed to drink half the bottle before Mom had instructed me very sternly to not have any more water. It was so not fair. The only thing that cheered me up was that it shouldn’t take more than three or four days to convince Mom that these pills weren’t worth the effort. I set an early alarm on my phone, putting in a single earbud so that I’d be the only person to hear the alarm in the morning. No matter how good the pill was, I’d surely have a need to pee in another six hours. I would let Mom wake me up to discover a wet bed again. And in a few days, with every other solution having failed, perhaps it would be possible to convince them that pull-ups were a palatable option. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

There is certainly no question that she is going to get pull-ups, but yes, we aren't quite to that point just yet, outside of the flashback to her first pull-up experience. I think it is safe to say the water bottle is tucked out of sight in her room. Had to have a way to put some limitations on her (having a dad in IT who is careful with where his kids go on the internet), especially with how thorough she has been in trying to get information about pull-ups and diapers. If it weren't for her concerns about being caught looking it up, she certainly would have been eager to look up information which I would rather not have her knowing at this point in the story. Yeah, I was online (I hope secretly) as early as 11 and finding all kinds of stuff, but that changes the dynamic for Maddy too much. I think it's a more interesting story with her having more limited information, at least in this stage of her explorations.

Something like that, lol. That's the danger of posting around midnight and getting a little mixed up on what the date is. I think things will be a little awkward when the report card arrives. Not sure how much gets tied to the bedwetting, it's pretty clear that Maddy hasn't ever been that good of a student in the first place. There are a number of reasons a doctor hasn't been involved yet. It's important to remember that not much time has passed in the story. Maddy first wets the bed early Saturday morning. The last chapter ends Wednesday evening, meaning it's been less than a week since the first bedwetting accident happened. And they would have viewed the first couple of accidents as a random fluke occurrence. Also, this is in the U.S., doctor's appointments aren't something that can easily be set up the next day, especially for something that, while concerning, is in any way an emergency. And this finals week for Maddy. It wouldn't make any sense for her parents to hold her out of school and cause her to miss her exams to go to a doctor's appointment that could be much more easily scheduled for when school is out. Plus, one of the parents will need to arrange time off of work themselves to get her to a doctor as well. Finally, the parents are familiar with bedwetting from their own experience and their experience with Grace; the initial steps they are taking, limiting liquids and making sure she goes to the toilet before bed, are some pieces of advice that would be given anyway at a doctor's appointment. I think it is fair to say that the parents are quite knowledgeable about bedwetting.