MinnesotaWriter

I'm back! Thanks for all your kind notes while I was gone (Has it really been three months? that went by so fast). Life has settled down for me, and I should have plenty of time to write for the foreseeable future. I'm extremely excited about what the next chapters will reveal. I should have a new chapter up by tomorrow evening.

Chapter 23: Best Served Cold Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. For once in the past few days, the alarm-clock woke me up in the morning before Mom did. I sat up in bed as quickly as I could to smack the snooze button on the alarm clock. Another five minutes in bed would be great. As I collapsed back onto the mattress, I felt the cold, clammy squishiness of the diaper against my bottom. Oh great. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that I had wet the diaper, but still, the fact that I had been wearing the diaper had been completely out of my mind until I felt it as I laid down in bed again. I slid my hand beneath my pajama pants to feel the diaper. Beneath the plastic lining of it around my crotch, the diaper was squishy yet clumpy, as the absorbent gel had broken apart overnight. The diaper also didn’t feel all that full, unlike how the pull-ups did after I used them. There wasn’t even the slightest sensation of moisture on the outside of the diaper. I could have probably peed in it one or two more times before it reached the point of overflowing. When I had pressed the snooze button, I had been looking forward to getting a few more minutes of sleep, but now all I wanted was for Mom to come in and change me. The thought of wearing pull-ups had never been so appealing to me before. Mom opened the door to the bedroom a minute later. No doubt she had heard the alarm going off as well. I kept my eyes closed. I knew what was going to happen as soon as I opened them. It was a conversation I wasn’t eager to have. I opened my eyes when the sound of Mom’s footsteps told me that she was right next to my bed. “Did you sleep well last night?” “Yes.” “And you didn’t wake up at all in the middle of the night?” “Nope.” “And how did the diaper do? Did you have an accident?” To wet the diaper was one thing. To verbally admit it to my mother was something else. “I don’t know,” I replied, breaking off eye contact with her. “I’ll need to check then.” Mom pulled my sheets off of me so that the top of my pajama pants were in view. She then tugged the top of my pajamas down slightly, just enough to see the obvious wet spot. “See, isn’t this so much better than having to wake up to a wet bed in the middle of the night?” I didn’t respond. Admitting that Mom was right about having me wear a diaper to bed was not something that I wanted to do. But she did have a point. I didn’t feel nearly as tired as I had during the previous mornings this week. “Come on,” Mom said, putting my pajamas back in place. “Let’s get you off of the bed so that I could get the changing mat in place. “Mommy, I need to be changed too,” Emilia whined from her crib. Ugh, just another thing I have in common with my sister now. Once I had gotten up, Mom tossed the covers over to the corner of the bed and placed the change mat in the middle of it. I crawled dutifully onto the middle of the mat. “Sweetie, you need to slide over so we could make room for your sister as well,” Mom said. “But...” “No buts. It would be quicker to change you both at once.” Emilia was aware that my bedwetting had restarted, but she hadn’t seen me in a diaper yet, something I had been hoping to avoid. I moved over to the side of the mat as Mom scooped Emilia up out of her crib and laid her down next to me. Mom pulled off my pajama pants completed, leaving the wet diaper almost completely exposed. Only the very top portion of it was hidden by my t-shirt. Mom did the same for Emilia, and now we were both laying on the bed, each with just a t-shirt and a diaper on. As Mom grabbed wipes and a clean pull-up for Emilia, my sister turned her head to take a look at my diaper. “My diaper looks cuter,” she said. Thanks a lot, sis. I turned my head to the side so that Emilia couldn’t see how badly I was blushing. “Don’t tease your sister, Emilia. Diapers for kids your sister’s age don’t come with cute designs.” It made sense. Younger kids might be able to be tricked into feeling good about wearing a pull-up or diaper if it came with interesting designs on it. That trick wouldn’t be nearly as effective for teenagers. The four tapes on the diaper came off with several loud rips. I shivered involuntarily as Mom pressed the cold baby wipes against my skin. Even though the wipes were cold, they felt incredibly good as the yucky residue from peeing in the diaper got wiped off. I couldn’t decide how I was supposed to feel. The humiliation of having my mother change me was still there, though it wasn’t as bad now that she had been doing it for five days in a row. Part of me felt relieved. Relieved that I wasn’t waking up super tired. Relieved that I didn’t have to wake up and change the sheets in the middle of the night. But that’s just it. To acknowledge the feeling of relief was to acknowledge that there was something that I should be receiving relief from. In that sense, the relief I was feeling was just a band-aid incapable of covering the larger issue – that I no longer had total control over my bladder during the day and apparently now had no semblance of control over it at night. I didn’t want to receive relief from my problems. I wanted them to go away altogether. But to do that, I needed answers. I needed to know why my body had suddenly begun to behave the way that it had and what I could do to try to fix it. Doing any research at home was out of the question since Mom closely monitored all my internet activities. Mom wasn’t likely to take me to a doctor and going to the school nurse would get back to her. I could try to use one of the computers in the library. Even though the library wasn’t heavily used by students, there was still the risk of someone noticing, but with how desperate I now was for any sort of answers, it now felt like it would be worth it. When she finished with the wipes, Mom handed me a towel and I went off to the bathroom to shower and think through my plans for when I got to school. --- I was dressed – or rather not dressed – the same way as with each of the previous school days this week. You would think that it would just make more sense for me to get my complete school outfit on while I got dressed after the shower, but Mom hadn’t relented on her insistence that she be able to see my pull-up at all times when I’m at home, meaning that I wasn’t going to be allowed to put my jeans on until right before I was about to head out the door to get on the bus. That Emilia was dressed the same way as me wasn’t at all comforting. I was her older sister. It had been my job to get her potty trained, and now Mom seemed set on treating me as if I’m a toddler as well. The resentment I’d been feeling toward Emilia over how she had tattled to Mom about my accident — the whole reason I’m in this mess right now — had been simmering all week. I knew better than to lash out at my younger sister overtly, but I wouldn’t turn down a discrete opportunity to get back at her. Emilia did a bit of a wiggle dance as she ate her cereal. I knew what that meant. Her bladder was telling her that it was time to go potty, and she was trying to put it off as long as possible. A week ago, when I had been responsible for Emilia’s potty training, I would have reminded her that she needed to go sit on the toilet. But that wasn’t my problem now. I wouldn’t even have to change her if she did wet her pull-up. So why should I care? After a few minutes, where Emilia’s squirming had continued to increase, she jumped off of her chair all of the sudden and took a few quick steps toward the bathroom. It was too little, too late. Emilia paused and tried to squeeze her legs together. I knew right away what that meant. “Mom,” I shouted down the hallway, trying hard to keep a note of glee out of my voice. “Emilia just had an accident.” I should have felt bad, but I didn’t. It was her fault that Mom still had me wearing pull-ups. Emilia plopped down on the floor and started to cry. I didn’t do anything to comfort her. Instead, I tuned out the noise as I finished my bowl of cereal. --- Since we shared the same schedule, Samantha, Desi, and I all had our morning study period together. Having a time where we could chit-chat together in the middle of the school day was normally great, but now I needed an excuse to get away from them if I was to go to the library to do some research about my bladder problems. I waited a few minutes into the period for when my friends had already gotten settled down into their comfy chairs in one of the study lounges. “Hey, I need to go over to the library to look for some books for my history project. Do either of you want to come?” Desi shook her head. Samantha gave me a look like I was crazy. The library was pretty empty. The school was more than thirty-years-old so it was a holdover from a time when students weren’t likely to have access to every bit of information imaginable on their smartphones or laptops. Only one of the eight computers in the library lab was in use. With small screens, they were relics of another era. I don’t think any of them ran on anything newer than Windows XP. I looked for a computer that another student had failed to log out of. I didn’t want any of the things I was about to search for to show up under my student ID. I took a seat at one on the far end that had been left turned on. With a wall right behind me, it was unlikely that someone would come by and be able to see what I was doing on the computer. I began by opening up a web browser and pretending to do some homework related searches. As I opened up another search tab, I was at a loss as to what I should type. There must be a medical term to describe what I’m experiencing, but I had no idea what it would be. My fingers froze above the keyboard. Did I dare type it out? I took a look around the room. No one was near me. But what should I type? I hesitated, and then rapidly typed out “14 and beginning to pee myself.” The search resulted in a flurry of article titles, most of which had a word I didn’t recognize. Incontinence? I did another search, this time just for that word by itself. Google linked to a definition right away – “Lack of voluntary control over urination or defecation.” That fit what I was dealing with. I hadn’t even considered the possibility of losing control over doing number two. I guess I should be glad it was only my bladder that was causing me problems. I felt a lot better knowing that there was a name for the problem I was dealing with. Now I just needed to find out what could be done to regain control of my bladder. I typed “fixing incontinence” into the search bar. Pills, surgeries, diets, implants, exercises. The amount of potential causes and solutions to my bladder issues left me overwhelmed. I closed those browser tabs, my nerves finally having gotten the better of me. I wasn’t much better off than when I had started. I now knew that the issue I was dealing with was called incontinence, but the reasons for why it might have started and what could be done to treat it were so varied that I had no clue for where I should even begin. Before leaving the library, I grabbed the first book I could find on George H.W. Bush to back up the cover story I’d given my friends about my trip to the library. Desi and Samantha were both flipping through their phones when I returned to the study lounge. I’m guessing not much actually studying had occurred while I was away at the library. “Did you find what you were looking for?” Desi asked. “Yep.” Desi nudged Samantha gently with her foot. “Hey, we need to get started on our project as well.” “Relax, we’ve got plenty of time,” Samantha replied. I hoped Lisa was also on top of the project. We hadn’t discussed the assignment since it had been given earlier this week. “Hey,” Desi said, with the tone of just having remembered something important. “Halloween is less than a week away. We need to plan for trick-or-treating.” I had to hold back the urge to glare at her. This wasn’t something I wanted reminding of. “I’m sorry,” Desi said. “I forgot that your Mom doesn’t like trick-or-treating.” “It’s not that she doesn’t like it,” I replied. “It’s just that she decided that once I turned thirteen that I was too old to go out trick-or-treating anymore.” “That’s not cool,” Samantha said. “I know. Mom doesn’t even give candy to kids if they look like they were old enough to be in high school.” It had been a tradition for us to all go trick-or-treating together. Samantha’s neighborhood was the best in terms of how much candy was given out. But for the past two years, Samantha and Desi had to go trick-or-treating without me. “Wait,” Samantha said. “We don’t have to go trick-or-treating to have fun on Halloween. We’re in high school now. We could go to the school’s Halloween party instead.” “I don’t know how Mom is going to feel about it.” “But this was a high school party, not trick or treating,” Desi said. “So I’m sure she’ll let you come.” “I don’t even have any idea of what I’d be dressing up as.” “It’s still almost a week away, so you’ll have plenty of time to figure something out,” Desi said. I nodded in agreement. Being able to dress up again for Halloween did sound like a bunch of fun, but getting Mom to sign off on it was going to be a challenge.

Thanks, there's more still to be learned about Sarah's mom. You're welcome. We'll have to see what happens with school going forward. That's a good point. Bedwetting and sleepovers aren't all that compatible, so we'll have to see how that plays out. Don't think we'll be seeing Sarah's mom have a return to bed-wetting. The one change with Sarah being back in pull-ups (and now a diaper at night) is that her mom has relieved Sarah of much of the responsibility of caring for Emilia. Nice catch. Sounds like someone knows their diapers.

Chapter 22: A Sudden Change “Sarah,” Mom said sternly, as I lay on the couch reading, “you need to come with me to my bedroom.” My heart skipped several beats at that announcement. To be brought to Mom’s room was only for the most serious of punishments or discussions. That’s where she had given me that whole discussion about the birds and the bees. That’s also where I’d received one of my most painful spankings ever after failing a test. If Mom had any inkling that I had secretly changed myself out of a wet pull-up without her permission, she hadn’t let on at all so far this evening. Or had she only been waiting until after Emilia had been put to bed? That wouldn’t be like Mom though. If I went afoul of her rules, the punishment was dealt out the moment she became aware of the transgression. Mom wasn’t a believer in justice being delayed. “I’m coming,” I told Mom as I got off the couch. I was at a loss as to what this was about, but I knew better than to ask or – even worse – to delay at all in obeying her. I could feel my heart pounding as I followed behind her to the bedroom. What could I have done? Had she found out about how I’d changed myself? Had she discovered how I was taking Emilia’s pull-ups? Had I gotten a failing grade on an assignment that I hadn’t noticed yet? My heart was beating faster and faster, and I could feel a bead of sweat beginning to trickle down from my forehead. I entered her bedroom to see that the box I had placed on her bed earlier in the day was now open. Inside it was a plastic-wrapped package with the image of a disposable diaper on it. The question as to what was in the box I had carried in from the front steps earlier today was now answered. The implications – unbelievable as they were – became readily apparent. No. She couldn’t have. This had to be some kind of joke. It couldn’t be real. “Sarah, sit down,” Mom said, patting the edge of the bed next to the right of where she had taken a seat herself. “We need to have a talk.” What Mom meant wasn’t exactly the same as what she said. Having a talk meant me listening to her tell me about something I needed to do and then doing it without a word of complaint. It would be one of those one-way-road type of conversations. I took a seat wordlessly next to her, my feet dangling a couple of inches off of the floor. Had she really done it? Had she really bought some diapers online for me? The look of distress on my face must have been evident as Mom tried to take on a comforting tone. “Sarah, we need to find a better way to deal with... what had started happening again at night.” Neither of us said anything for a while after that. The elephant in the room was too awkward to address head on. But there was no escaping it. Mom had brought the issue to a head by bringing out the package of diapers. “The pull-ups aren’t working at night,” Mom said at last. I didn’t look at her. I kept my eyes focused squarely on the door as I gave a simple nod in agreement. There was no arguing that point. “You’re not getting enough sleep, and neither am I, with having to get everything cleaned up in the middle of the night.” I wanted to interject to say that Mom could get all the sleep she wanted if she would only let me change myself, but I bit my tongue. “I went online and found... something else for you to use at night,” Mom said, again not naming what was in the box. “The reviews are really good, better than all the options in your size, so it should work well enough so that you could sleep through the whole night without getting interrupted.” Mom’s logic was infallible. I couldn’t deny that my bedwetting had resumed itself in full. I couldn’t deny that the nighttime pull-ups were now pretty much useless at keeping my bed dry. I couldn’t deny that waking up in the middle of the night to change the sheets and the pull-up was leaving me more and more exhausted each day. Everything Mom had said was correct, but all the facts pointed to an outcome I wasn’t willing to accept. I’m fifteen. I shouldn’t need to wear diapers. I didn’t want to wear diapers. This was so not right. I could feel the tears beginning to form. I briefly clenched my eyes and blinked rapidly a couple of times in an attempt to hold the tears back. Now wasn’t the time to cry. If I didn’t want to be treated like a baby, then I needed to act like an adult. “Go use the potty one last time. We’ll get you dressed for bed once you’ve done that.” And that was it. No room for discussion. No asking if I’m feeling OK. No asking her fifteen-year-old daughter if she cared for the idea of having a diaper putting on her. The worst part was that I had no standing to argue against her decision. I’d already given her all the proof she needed to decide to put me back in diapers at night. I sat on the toilet for as long as I dared. I had managed to release a decent trickle of pee shortly after sitting down, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get anything else to come out in the minutes afterward. As much as I didn’t want to return to the bedroom, there was little point in putting off the inevitable. Once Mom gets it into her head that she was going to do something, there was usually not much to be gained by arguing with her. I returned to Mom’s bedroom to find that she had gotten everything setup to diaper me. The changing mat had been set up on the edge of her bed, and to the side of it was baby powder, wipes, pajamas, and a single diaper Mom had pulled out from the package. I hated wearing pull-ups, but I wasn’t blind. I could admit that the designs on them did look cute. Even Emilia’s diapers came with a colorful assortment of animals on them. The diaper that was sitting on the bed was ugly as heck. There wasn’t any other way to describe it. The outside of the diaper was almost completely white. Two thin, yellow strips ran vertically across the center of the diaper, with a random assortment of printed numbers and letters between the lines. I didn’t wait for Mom to tell me to lie down on the bed. After I had gotten on the changing pad, she started by ripping the sides of the pull-up to take it off. Even though I’d been keeping the pull-ups dry during the day, she never let me wear the same one for longer than a day. But now was the hard part. I watched as Mom unfolded the diaper. Oh, my goodness, it was big. I went from wondering whether the diaper would be big enough to fit me to thinking that Mom might have accidentally ordered a size too large. While the outside was white, the interior padding had a peach colored hue. “Come on, lift your bottom up,” Mom said, as she laid the diaper on the changing pad in front of my bottom. I pressed my feet against the bed and arched my waist up so that there was room beneath it. Mom slid the back end of the diaper underneath me, taking time to line it up correctly. “Alright, down again,” Mom said. As I eased my bottom onto the diaper, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The padding on the diaper was soft. It felt as though I had sat down on a cushion. And there was so much of the padding. This had to be four or five times as absorbent as the nighttime pull-ups I had been using. Once Mom was done applying a more-than-healthy layer of baby powder to my posterior, she pulled the front of the diaper up to the top of my waist. As Mom fumbled with the tapes, I noticed something about that diaper that I hadn’t realized before. Instead of one tape on each side like a diaper normally would have, it had two of them on each side. Weird. Mom kept adjusting the tapes until at last the diaper felt snug around both my waist and my legs. Mom grabbed me by both of my hands and pulled me off of the bed and onto my feet. That was when I noticed another effect of the diaper. The padding in the pull-ups had felt odd between my legs, even though it probably wasn’t all that different from an extra-large sized pad. The diaper was something entirely else. The absorbent padding covered much more of my body and was noticeably thicker. As I tried to stand straight, I could feel the bulk of the padding pushing my legs apart. With me back on my feet, Mom again checked each of the four tapes to make sure they were snug, then she ran her finger first around the waist of the diaper and then around the leg gatherings, making sure it was tight against my skin. “I can’t do this,” I said, as a sobbed escaped. The tears I’d managed to hold off throughout the ordeal let loose all at once. This was the worst moment of my life. I’m fifteen. I just started high school. I should be maturing and getting more responsibilities. Instead, I felt as if I had taken a few massive steps backward in the past several weeks, back to being the bedwetting child I had been in elementary school. I reached down to the diaper to try to untape it, but Mom gently brushed my hand away. Before I could reach down to the diaper again, she wrapped her arms around me in a firm hug, and I let her sweater absorb my tears as I pressed my head against her neck. “Please, could I take the diaper off? If I wet the bed again, I’ll take care of it all myself so that you won’t have to get up in the middle of the night.” “Sarah, you’re fifteen. You need to stop whining. You need the diapers, so you are going to wear them. That’s all there was to it.” All I wanted was for the diaper to be off. I tried to play off her emotions. Couldn’t she see how this was upsetting me? “But you don’t understand how embarrassing this was.” “Of course I do,” Mom interrupted tartly. “I wet the bed until my junior year of high school. I wore diapers every night until I stopped, and that was exactly what you were going to do as well.” That statement actually put a stop to my sobbing. Wait? Mom had been a bedwetter herself? I could scarcely believe it. “You’re lucky. They didn’t make diapers nearly as good back then as they do now,” Mom added. I didn’t feel lucky. Lucky would be if I woke up to find that all of my bladder issues had miraculously gone away. “You need to get off to bed,” Mom said. “You still have to get up for school tomorrow. “And put these on as well,” Mom added, handing me a pair of pajama bottoms. I was grateful Mom had let me dress myself for once again. I pulled the pajama pants on quickly. I’d take my minor victories when I get them. Mom gave me a pat on the bottom as I turned to leave the room. I waddled across the hallway to my own bedroom, crinkling the entire way. I didn’t want to fall asleep. To fall asleep meant that I would then need to wake up. Waking up would mean facing a reality that I wasn’t ready to accept. I had no hope whatsoever that the diaper would remain dry overnight, not with how the past week had gone. As long as I remained awake, that new reality was put on hold. But life didn’t have any pause buttons. Try as I might to keep my eyes open, sleep came as surely as it always did, racing me forward against my will to the start of a new day.

Thanks. I'm hoping that the build-up will be worth it, especially in the next several chapters. There's a few coming up that I've been looking forward to writing for a while. Thanks for the comment. We'll have to see what Sarah's mom has in store for her. Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you like the school. As far as the mother's backstory goes, that may be explored some later on, though I've dropped a couple hints along the way. Thanks for the comment. We'll to see what Sarah's mom chooses to do. Hmm ? Yeah, that wouldn't turn out well for Sarah. Thanks, narcissist would probably be the best way to describe how Sarah's mom is behaving. She certainly believes she is in the right, but in a self-centered, I know what is best, type of way rather than from a perspective of focusing on what is actually best for her daughters.

Chapter 21: Sleepyhead “Wake up. Wake up.” After receiving a hard poke to my shoulder, my head jerked upright from where it had been resting in my arms on my desk. My heart was pounding. My eyes were as wide open as they could be. My eyes darted at first to the front of the classroom, but the teacher was too busy writing on the whiteboard to have noticed my brief attempt at a nap. After four nights in a row of being wakened by a wet pull-up and a wet bed, I was now running on fumes. This was the second time already today that I’d dozed off in class. Thankfully, Samantha and Desi had been quick to wake me before I got into trouble with any of our teachers. The clock said there were five minutes remaining in the class. I wasn’t sure I could make it. Being tired plays tricks on your mind. I swear that these wooden desks at the high school had been intentionally designed to keep students uncomfortable, but now the hard surface looked more inviting than any bed I’d ever slept in. All I wanted to do was rest my head on it. Just one moment. I wouldn’t close my eyes. I’d lift my head back up in a couple of seconds. As I lowered my head, I got another poke. This time, it was from Desi. She didn’t whisper anything to me, but the look of concern on her face told me enough. I forced myself to sit upright. The temptation to close my eyes for just a few brief seconds was so strong, but I knew that if I gave in, that could easily lead to me falling asleep again. How was I going to get through the rest of the day? I didn’t know what I was going to do if the bedwetting kept up like this. I’d never felt so tired in my life. I could handle it if I was walking around, standing, and doing stuff, but sitting at a desk with someone droning on and on about some boring subject was the perfect recipe for me to fall asleep. The past couple of nights had been so strange. I had hoped that Mom’s dislike of changing diapers would extend to her letting me change from a wet pull-up into a dry one, but the last two nights she had insisted on changing me herself. Awkward wasn’t close enough of a word to describe how uncomfortable that was, but I had been too tired to put up a fuss over it. Once I had replaced my sheets and had Mom change me into a dry pull-up, I was too awake to fall right back to sleep. I’d lost a couple hours of sleep each night just laying there in my bed staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t wait for fourth period to come to an end. Lunch was next, and If I ate my lunch fast enough, maybe that would give me enough time for a short nap in the cafeteria. The bell rung, and I wearily stepped out of my desk and went off to grab my lunchbox from my locker while Desi and Samantha got in line for a hot meal in the cafeteria. I didn’t get the peaceful lunch I had been hoping for. I’d barely been at the table I was saving for myself and my friends for a few minutes when Desi arrived with a mug on her tray. “This was for you, sleepyhead,” she said, setting a coffee mug in front of me. “I don’t like coffee.” “I don’t care. You need to drink it, or you’ll be sleeping through the rest of your classes.” I took a look down at the brown liquid in the mug. “It’s disgusting.” “Stop whining. I put like seven packets of sugar in there for you.” Loads of caffeine and sugar. What could possibly go wrong? I shoved the mug away from my side of the table. The risk of offending Desi was not nearly as bad as whatever havoc that drink would cause to my bladder. “Fine. I’ll drink it instead,” Desi said. She wasn’t one to let anything go to waste. I tried to stifle a yawn, but I wasn’t successful. I couldn’t wait until I got home. A nap sounded like such a good idea right now. I wished today was Friday and not Thursday. At this point, I felt like I needed a whole weekend to completely recover. “You really need to stop staying up so late playing video games,” Samantha said, as she arrived at the table. Despite my protestations, she was convinced that this was the cause of my tiredness. In truth, I hadn’t tried too hard to dissuade her of that opinion. It was much better for her to think video games were the cause of my lack of sleep than what was really happening. I hated lying to my friends, but telling Samantha about the bedwetting was off the table – not with how she was treating her younger brother – and I couldn’t get away with telling Desi without Samantha finding out. “Mom never lets me stay up late. I’ve just been waking up a lot. I don’t know why.” I wasn’t sure if they believed me, but I was sure that they wouldn’t guess what was preventing me from getting a good night’s worth of sleep. --- With cheerleading practice over, I sat in a bathroom stall in the locker room and removed a pull-up soaked with both sweat and pee. All the physical activity of the past hour-and-a-half had kept me awake, but now I was more exhausted than before. With the pull-up off, that meant I’d have to go without a pull-up for about fifteen minutes while I showered and dressed, but it kept my secret safe from being found out by my teammates. I would stop in another bathroom on my way out to instead put on one of the pull-ups Mom had given me so that I could trick her into thinking that I’d kept it dry all through the school day. I still hadn’t gotten used to showering at school. I didn’t care to show my body to other people. I did my best to focus straight ahead and only concentrate on washing myself. I knew I wasn’t the center of attention. Everyone else was minding their own businesses as well. But in the back of my mind it still felt as if everyone’s eyes were still secretly on me. Once I’d finished rinsing off all the soap, I turned off the shower, wrapped a towel around my waist and chest, and walked back to my locker to get dressed. As I turned around the corner to the section where the cheerleading lockers were, Claire was standing next to my locker. My backpack was propped up on the bench, and it was clear that one of its sections had been unzipped. Claire was holding a couple of pull-ups in her hand. Her face held a triumphant, jubilant look as she smirked at me. “Aww, the baby returns. Look who still wears diapers.” Those were pull-ups, not diapers, but now wasn’t the time to argue that etymological distinction with her. A few of the upperclassmen – the girls Claire often hung out with outside of cheerleading -- snickered at Claire’s childish insult. This was so not good. I tried my best to keep a look of panic from forming on my face. How could Claire have known that the pull-ups were in the backpack? Wait, she must have seen them when she had taken my backpack earlier this week. “Catch,” Claire said, tossing one of the pull-ups at me. I caught it one handed since I was still using my other hand to hold up my towel. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the pull-ups that Claire had pulled from the backpack were only my sister’s ones and not the other nighttime ones. I could use that to my advantage. I rolled my eyes at Claire, trying to put on a show of being annoyed with her rather than showing how deathly embarrassed I was. “Really, Claire? My little sister is still potty training. I have her pull-ups because if I take her out somewhere, I have to have something to carry them in case I need to change her.” I was proud of myself for coming up with that alibi right on the spot. The calm delivery of it was spot on as well. I didn’t let up on Claire, who still had the other pull-up in her hand. From the look on her face, it was clear this confrontation hadn’t gone as she had planned. “I doubt even a twig like you could fit into them, though if you’re curious, I’d certainly let you borrow one to try.” That led to a cascade of laughter from the remaining girls in the room. I was skinny myself, but not nearly as much as Claire. Her face turned to an angry shade of red as she threw the pull-up onto the ground, shoved my backpack off the bench, and stormed away. Normally, I’d keep my towel draped over my back for as long as I could while I got dressed to give myself a little bit of privacy. This time, I set the towel on the bench so that it would be completely clear to any of the remaining girls that I was putting on a pair of panties. I knew what I needed to do. I should walk down the hallway to the coach’s office and tell her what Claire had just done. But that meant telling another person about the pull-ups in my backpack. That meant another chance that my lie might get exposed. As much as I wanted to get back at Claire, I couldn’t see tattling on her to Coach Addison as being worth the risk. I grabbed my backpack – I’d put my sister’s pull-ups back inside – and left the locker room, relieved that Claire’s latest attempt to bully me had been so easily thwarted. --- A large cardboard box was sitting right in front of the door when we arrived back home. Mom must have been doing some online shopping. “Sarah, grab that box and take it to my bedroom, please.” “OK.” The box looked to be way heavier than I could manage to lift, but when I bent down to pick it up, I realized that it didn’t weigh nearly as much as I had anticipated. As I lifted the box up, the way its weight shifted with a thump suggested that it contained a slightly smaller package inside it. I propped the box up against my body with one hand while I used the other to open the door. I didn’t put much thought as to what was in the box. Mom ordered a lot of stuff online, so it wasn’t uncommon to come back from school to see a package waiting for us on the doorstep. I set the box on her bed – I knew better than to open her packages – before returning to the entryway for another routine I had grown to hate. “OK, girls, mommy needs to make sure you’ve kept your pull-ups dry.” I stood silently next to my sister as Mom took my pants off and inspected the pull-up. The nighttime ones didn’t come with a wetness indicator, so Mom pulled the front of the pull-up forward so that she could look inside. Mom went through the same steps with my sister – Emilia’s pull-up was dry as well – before letting us get on our way. I didn’t have too much homework on my plate. My biggest assignment at the moment was the group project I was supposed to be doing with Lisa, but we hadn’t talked about it since we had been given that assignment on Tuesday. I filled a bowl with veggie chips – bland, but better than nothing – and sat down on the couch to munch on the snack while looking at my phone. Mom allowed me to take a little time to eat a healthy snack before getting started on homework. With my legs folded up to my chest, the pull-up was barely noticeable. Just three more days. Three more days of staying dry and I could put this whole potty-training charade behind me and focus on trying to figure out what was going wrong with my body. Since Mom was having me follow the same potty-training rules as Emilia, that at least assured me that the times I’d wet myself at night wouldn’t count against the seven days I had to stay dry during the day to go back to wearing panties. That didn’t mean I’d stop wearing pull-ups, but secretly wearing my sister’s pull-ups was so much better than having Mom parade me around in the nighttime ones. With thoughts of freedom in my mind, I let my eyes close for just a short second. That was a mistake. I woke up a short time later. Emilia was still watching the same TV show so it couldn’t have been too long, but the damage was already done. A small wet spot had formed at the crotch of the pull-up. It wasn’t a big accident by any means, but big or small didn’t make any difference when it comes to Mom. It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t help it since I had been asleep. The thought of having to go tell Mom about the accident filled me with dread. Just the thought of that humiliation was already making my cheeks burn. Emilia was too focused on the cartoon playing on the TV to turn around and notice the obviously wet pull-up. I turned my head toward the hallway. I could hear Mom preparing dinner in the kitchen. I left the empty bowl of chips on the book stand next to the couch. Mom would be unhappy with me for that, but if I carried the bowl into the kitchen to put it in the sink, there was no way Mom wouldn’t notice the wet pull-up. I got up from the couch and walked casually through the hallway. I tried to keep my body slightly angled away from the kitchen as I passed it, but Mom was too pre-occupied with cooking to turn and look my way. I shut the door behind me as soon as I got into my bedroom. I was in the clear. No one had noticed. I removed the wet pull-up and buried it as deep as I could in the diaper pail. Mom would have to deliberately go digging through it to find out that an extra pull-up had been thrown away. I retrieved another one of the nighttime pull-ups from the dresser. There were only about a dozen left, given how many I’d gone through already at night this week. I made sure to select one with the same design as the one that I’d tossed. I sat down at my desk with a sigh of both anguish and relief. Three days had never felt like such a long time before.

Thanks for all the comments. Just an FYI, I'm on vacation so it will be about a week until the next chapter is posted Thanks. Will do. ? Just to clarify things, Sarah is still changing from the nighttime pullups mom had pulled out of storage for her and into her sisters pull-ups while she is at school. So the accident she had in this last chapter isn't one mom would likely be aware of. You're welcome ? Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it.

Oops. Got that fixed. Thanks for the catch.

Chapter 20: Group Project Does waking up in the morning with a dry pull-up really count if you had to change out of a wet pull-up in the middle of the night? Mom must have thought so. She was in a better mood in the morning when she pulled back my sheets to find that I had managed to keep my pull-up dry for the remainder of the night. I guess I should have been grateful for those little accomplishments, but the events over the last night had only served to compound the stress I was under. I rubbed my eyes as I attempted to force myself to wake up. Having my sleep cycle interrupted like that was no good. I knew the shower would wake me up, but I could hardly summon the energy to get myself up and out of bed. “Come on, you need to get going,” Mom said as she gave me another gentle nudge on the shoulder. I pulled myself out of bed, the pull-up still visible as Mom gave me a re-assuring hug. “I’m sure this was just a phase you’ll get over,” Mom said. “No one wears diapers to college.” That phrase wasn’t all that re-assuring. The last time a doctor had told me that bedwetting was just a phase, I’d gone on to do it for another three years. I hopped into the shower while Mom took care of changing Emilia out of her wet diaper and getting her dressed for the day. A week ago, I would have given anything to get out of diaper duty. Now, I’d give anything to be back in charge of caring for Emilia rather than having Mom treat me like a toddler. I knew I couldn’t dawdle in the shower or I’d be late for school, but I also wanted to savor one of the few moments of freedom that I got from wearing a pull-up. If today was anything like yesterday, after the shower, Mom would be waiting for me again in the bedroom, ready to get me dressed. I didn’t put up any fuss as Mom dressed me. Being cooperative meant it was over with faster, and that’s all I wanted. I didn’t care for the hoodie she selected – gray with “Girl Power” emblazoned on it in pink, glittery letters. Sure, I’d worn it a ton in middle school, but that childish stuff wasn’t what I want to be seen wearing to high school. I suppose if Mom was going to be dressing me, it might be worth taking a look at my closet later and moving anything I don’t like to the very back and out of her sight. Mom chatted away while getting the clothes on me, which was nice, as the situation still felt too weird for me to want to say anything. “I checked your grades online last night...” Please. Please. Please. Let there be no assignments with grades other than “A.” I didn’t need another spanking. “... and none of them were bad.” Mom had gotten me completely dressed besides from pulling on my jeans when she motioned for me to get off the bed. “Come on, you need to hurry up and eat breakfast before school.” “Mom, I’m not going to school like...” I couldn’t bring myself to mention the uncovered pull-up. “...this.” “You don’t need the jeans now. I’ll put them on you once it’s time for you to head out the door.” I chose not to argue. I just wanted this over with, but Sunday felt so far away. After pouring myself a bowl of cereal, I joined Emilia at the table in the kitchen. She glanced up at me as I sat down at the table, but other than that, she didn’t pay any attention to me or the pull-up that I was wearing. Not that she should be able to say much, given that she had on a fully exposed pull-up as well. I hated this. There was a reason people didn’t just waltz around in their underwear all the time, and it wasn’t only for the sake of modesty. While the pull-up covers everything it needs to cover, it doesn’t cover the things it doesn’t need to cover. That was to say, that meant a good portion of my bottom was exposed to the cold, hard surface of the chair. I wolfed down the cereal as fast as I could. I didn’t mind the idea of being early and waiting outside for ten minutes or so for the bus as long as that meant I could at least be fully dressed. I was still in shock at how rapidly my life had changed. Of how what I had once considered normal has been replaced with this new normal. Of how swiftly my mom and sister have grown accustomed to it in just a matter of days. But this wasn’t normal. And I didn’t want it to ever become normal. Even as I outwardly accepted the situation – stealing Emilia’s pull-ups to use at school and letting Mom potty train me and treat me like a toddler – I struggled in vain to see a path forward to get back to the old normal. Looking weeks and months ahead was hard to do when I was so focused on the minute by minute struggle of keeping my bladder in check. --- One last class to go. I didn’t know how I had managed to pull it off, but for the first time in about a week I’d made it through my first six classes without so much as a tiny leak into the pull-up. That was either really good or really bad. Depending on how you believe in statistics, that either meant I was guaranteed to have an accident to make up for not having one earlier or the trend was going to be my friend in keeping me dry today. My bladder, however, was not being my friend. I needed to pee. I’d been trying hard to avoid slipping out of my classes to go to the bathroom and had managed to avoid doing so today. I hated drawing that much attention to myself, but having kept the pull-up dry all day long, the chance to be able to make it a whole day without peeing myself wasn’t something I wanted to pass up. Fifteen minutes to go in the class. I crossed my legs, but even that couldn’t stop the need to squirm. An inch to the right. An inch to the left. What was it that causes everyone to do that distinctive potty dance when their bladder comes close to reaching its breaking point? What was it about the urge to pee that makes you feel the need to move your body? I was completely zoned out of the class as Mr. Higgins wrote down dates and names on the chalkboard. I’m sure they were important, but not near as much as the almost painful urges coming from my bladder. I hated being the center of attention. Even at the back of the room, the thought of having to get up to grab the hall pass and risk people turning around to look at me was embarrassing. I steadied my breath as I gradually worked up the courage to get out of my seat. I could do this. I could do this. I stood up. But so did Lisa. And her desk was to my left, right between myself and the door. We paused and exchanged an awkward glance. “Sorry, I need to go,” Lisa whispered to me as she made an antsy shuffle of her feet followed by a semi-dash to the door. I watched in silent horror as Lisa grabbed the only girls’ hall pass from the hook next to the door. Why did she always have to do that at the most inopportune times? This was so unfair. I returned to my desk as discreetly as I could. Thankfully, it didn’t appear as if anyone besides Desi and Samantha had paid any attention to me getting up. I didn’t bother raising my hand to ask Mr. Higgins if I could be excused to the bathroom as well. I knew already that his answer would be no. I twiddled my thumbs, doodled with my pencil, bit my lip – anything to just keep my mind off of my bladder and to keep the contents of my bladder from ending up in the pull-up. It was working. I readied myself to make a dash to the bathroom as soon as the bell rung, since Lisa wasn’t likely to get back to the class until right before the period was over. “Not fair,” Samantha muttered under her breath. What’s not fair? Her remark drew me back into paying attention to Mr. Higgins, who was finally back to facing the class and not the chalkboard. “The project would be a group presentation about a U.S. President. Since that would be a lot of work to put together, we’ll be putting you into groups to create the presentation and deliver it as a team.” Another large assignment? I swear, every teacher was always saying that their homework was only thirty minutes a night, but when you have seven classes, that comes close to four hours of homework every single evening. “Since the number of students in the class wasn’t divisible by three, one group would just have two of you in it...” Higgins said. He read through the list of students who would be in each group. If we had to get stuck with more homework, at least Samantha, Desi, and I could all feel miserable about it together. “...and the next group, covering John F. Kennedy, would be Samantha, Desi, and Jonathan.” What? I’m not in the same group as Samantha and Desi? Mr. Higgins had to see that we always did stuff together. After all, he’d put us in the last group project he had assigned. We’d gotten an “A” in that. And by we, I mean Samantha had done most of the work on that paper, but still. Higgins continued reading through the list of teams, seemingly ignorant of the fact that his assignment had disrupted the social order of his classroom. There weren’t many people left. Who was I going to be paired with? “... and for our group of two students: Sarah and Lisa, who would be covering George H. W. Bush.” It could be worse, though that might leave me with doing most of the talking for the presentation. I turned to look at Lisa’s desk. Mr. Higgin’s talk about the project had temporarily distracted me from my need to use the bathroom. The urge to go was present but not as strong as before, but Lisa wasn’t back yet, and the bell hadn’t rung to dismiss us from the class. As I adjusted my position in my seat so I could turn to talk to Samantha, a squishy, wet, warm sensation pressed against my bottom. Wait. What? I’d leaked some into the pull-up? I’d been so caught up in listening to Mr. Higgins that I hadn’t noticed. So unfair. It wasn’t even my fault. If not for Lisa, I’d have been able to stay dry. “I’m sorry you had to be stuck with Lisa,” Samantha said, giving me a pitying look. She must have taken my look of unhappiness – really from the wet pull-up – to mean that I was displeased with how Mr. Higgins had split us up for the project. I was unhappy that I wouldn’t be doing it with Samantha and Desi, but if it had to be with someone else, it wasn’t bad that I had gotten paired up with Lisa. “I’m not unhappy with her. It’s just strange that Mr. Higgins didn’t keep us together like last time.” The ringing bell announcing the end of the period interrupted Samantha’s response. Probably just as well, since she never had anything nice to say about Lisa, who had arrived back at her desk. “So... I heard we were going to be partners for the group project,” Lisa said as I turned to face her. “Yeah.” “What president did we get? Uncle wouldn’t tell me ahead of time.” “Bush. The first one.” “Oh, weren’t you needing to go to the bathroom?” I didn’t have a big urge to go anymore, but I couldn’t exactly admit that. I could see how my relaxed attitude right now would seem strange given how I had previously indicated that I had an urgent need to go to the bathroom. “Oh. Yeah. I do.” I grabbed my backpack and slipped past Lisa and out into the hallway, leaving her in the classroom with Mr. Higgins. With any luck, being paired with my teacher’s niece might make this an easier assignment to get a good grade on.

You're welcome. That would be an intriguing idea. Sarah has helped her sister in the past. We'll have to see how her current predicament impacts that attitude though. Will she decide to help her sister as well or try to get back at her?

Soup

Thanks! I hoped it would get a laugh or two. ? For now, I think Sarah's mom is content with making sure that there isn't anything covering the pull-up when Sarah is home for the day. We'll have to see if that changes at all in the future. Wet beds aren't fun for anyone. Very true. We'll have to see what mom does to handle it. Thanks. We've definitely made it into the middle of the story. There's a lot of stuff that's going to be going down soon.

Chapter 19: My Only Wish “I told you already. The pull-up is dry.” Mom gave me a look that suggested she wasn’t entirely sure I was telling her the truth. I had barely finished taking my shoes off inside the front door and Mom was already interrogating me about whether I’d had any accidents at school. I told her that I’d had none. That was a lie, but since it was my sister’s pull-up that I had wet, there was no way Mom would be able to know otherwise. But I was also a bad liar, so while there wasn’t any proof that I hadn’t told Mom the truth, I suspected that she could tell something was amiss. “Well, let me see the pull-ups I sent with you to school.” I made sure to reach into the section of the backpack where I’d placed the nighttime pull-ups. I’d kept those separate from the pull-ups I’d taken from Emilia to reduce the chances of Mom finding out how I’d been disobeying her potty-training rules. I removed the two dry and unused pull-ups from the backpack and handed them to Mom. “Let me see the other one.” That gave me a brief jolt of terror. Had Mom sent me with more than two of the nighttime pull-ups to school? I was certain it had been just those two. How could I have lost one? “Those were the only two you gave me,” I said at last. “Sweetie, I meant I need to see the one you were wearing.” I did not want to strip off to just a pull-up in front of her and my sister. “Mom,” I said in a drawn-out whine. “You didn’t need to. Of course it is dry. What do you expect?” “It wasn’t dry this morning. Now let’s get your pants off.” That wasn’t fair. I couldn’t help what happened while I was asleep. Before I could utter a word in protest, Mom was already undoing my belt and buckle. Seconds later my jeans were in a pile on the floor. I avoided eye contact with Mom as she examined the pull-up I had on. Once Mom was satisfied that it was dry like I had said it was, she sent me off to my bedroom to get started on homework. I hadn’t doubted that Mom would make me wear pull-ups for a week, but I had kind of hoped she would at least spare me the indignity of having to parade them around the house for the whole time. I took a seat at my computer and began working on an essay for one of my classes. I hated not being able to cover up the pull-up. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep myself from constantly glancing down at it. But the pull-up remained wrapped around my waist as a humiliating reminder of how I’d been losing control of my bladder. Every time I tried to wiggle into a more comfortable position in my chair – sitting too long in one spot caused the fabric to make my skin feel uncomfortable – the tell-tale crinkle from the pull-up was there to remind me. I’m sure there were things I could look up online that might help me figure out what was going wrong with my body. I knew I wasn’t the only teenager to ever experience this problem. The pull-up I’d found at school stood as evidence of that. But Mom had those child monitoring – spying was what they actually should be called – apps on my computer and my phone, so any searches about the subject would raise way too many questions. The nurse at school was a no-go as well. The school district’s policy was that parents had to be informed about any visits to the nurse. That policy had gotten put in place after a spat over students being given medications without their parent’s knowledge or consent, but the policy extended to parents being informed of any trip to visit the nurse and the reason for that visit. I struggled to get started with the essay for the history class. It only needed to be five paragraphs. Why did it have to be so hard to write even that much? I’d rather do a whole page of algebra equations. The paper wasn’t due for a week, so maybe I could offer to do some of Samantha’s math homework in exchange for her ghost writing this assignment. “Sarah, time for a potty break.” Again? Already? I took a look at the word count: sixty-three words. How was I supposed to get my homework done if I keep getting interrupted like this? I’d gone to the toilet a little less than twenty minutes ago. “Mom, it hasn’t been thirty minutes yet.” “I know, but Emilia needs a potty break, so we may as well get yours done with. It’s so much easier to keep you two on the same schedule.” Remind me, why in the world had I ever wanted a younger sister in the first place? I got up from my computer desk with a loud sigh. I did need more frequent bathroom breaks than normal, but this was ridiculous. “What did I just hear, young lady?” “Nothing, I’m on my way.” I entered the bathroom to see that at least part of Emilia’s potty break had already happened in her pull-up, as its wetness indicators had all but faded away. Mom had Emilia seated on the toilet, but the silence suggested that my sister didn’t seem to have anything left in her bladder. “Emilia, look at your sister,” Mom said, while pointing her finger directly at my pull-up. “You see how Sarah’s pull-up was still dry. That’s what you need to be doing too. She isn’t going potty in her pull-up.” “Sarah, let Emilia see your pull-up,” Mom added a second later. I hadn’t even realized that I had been subconsciously holding my hands over the front of the pull-up. I raised my hands to show Emilia that my pull-up was indeed dry. “Sarah, come here and show Emilia how to go potty like a big girl,” Mom said, helping Emilia off the toilet seat and removing the potty-training booster seat from it. Peeing was not supposed to be a performance art. It took me two full minutes before I was able to generate a brief stream of urine that splattered into the toilet. ----- I kept my pull-up dry the remainder of the evening. Given my previous accidents that might seem like an accomplishment, but Mom made me go to the bathroom every half-hour, meaning that I had taken about a dozen trips to the toilet since coming from school. I’d given up on any attempt to argue with Mom over it. All I had to do was make it to the end of the week and then I could get Mom off of my back and work on dealing with my bladder issues on my own terms. With the constant toilet trips while at home and with using my sister’s pull-ups to hide any accidents that might happen at school, I was confident I could make it to Sunday evening without Mom discovering any daytime accidents. What happened at night was another story. I’d now wet my bed twice – once without Mom noticing – after going years and years of keeping it dry every single night. My only saving grace with that if Mom was truly making me follow the same potty-training rules as Emilia, then at least nighttime accidents wouldn’t count against the daytime potty training. I finished my final trip to the toilet before bedtime, cautiously optimistic that it might be enough to hold off my bladder until I wake for school in the morning. Mom was being more cautious than optimistic. “If you have an accident...” “Mom. I’m not going to. That was the first time in like forever.” “I’m just saying. If you do have an accident. You need to let me know so I can get you cleaned up.” Just a few days ago Mom had been trusting me to change Emilia’s pull-ups and diapers. Why couldn’t she let me change my own? Having Mom put me in a pull-up was bad enough, I didn’t want to deal with her changing me after I’d wet one. But there was an easier solution than arguing with her. I just needed to wake up dry. ----- I woke up long before my alarm was set to go off. I was filled with that sense of foreboding that you get when you know you were worried about something the night before but were still too tired to recall precisely what it was that had concerned you. The reason behind that concern didn’t evade me for long, as I only had to shift slightly in the bed to become aware of the wet sheets I was laying on top of. Fuck. I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to deal with this. I couldn’t deal with this. At last I forced myself to roll from being on my back to being on my stomach, even though that again forced me to confront the feeling of the wet sheets against my skin. I buried my face into my pillow and cried. This had to be a dream, a nightmare that I would eventually wake up from to find myself in bed, wearing panties that most definitely were not soaked through with urine. But I didn’t wake up. I didn’t even manage to fall back asleep. I just lay there in bed, listening to the sound of my sister breathing softly as she lay asleep in the crib. I was still too tired to think straight, but I knew I didn’t want to lay awake in a wet bed until morning. The last thing I wanted to do was wake Mom up in the middle of the night to tell her that I had wet the bed again. However, I wasn’t going to fall back asleep in a wet bed. I rolled over to the side and looked at Emilia’s crib. She appeared to be sound asleep. Every sound felt as though it was being amplified in the dark, as I tried to stealthily maneuver around the room. The creaking floor. The groan of the dresser as I pulled it open. And, of course, the pull-up just wouldn’t stop with the crinkling noises. I knew Mom had told me not to change myself, but at the rate I was going, this next pull-up would probably be wet in the morning as well, so maybe she wouldn’t notice. I grabbed a dry pull-up and slipped into the bathroom so I could have enough light to get myself cleaned up and changed. Once in the bathroom, I took a closer look at the pull-up. These were made for kids who wet the bed, so why on earth had it leaked twice on me? Could it be a bad batch? Did it rip somehow? As I looked the pull-up over, it was clear the only reason it had leaked was because it had already absorbed as much urine as it could. Completely useless. May as well wear panties to bed for all the good these pull-ups were doing me. With a fresh pull-up and dry pajamas on, I stripped the wet sheets off of the bed and replaced them with clean ones from the closet. It would be too noisy to do laundry now, but I could at least put the wet sheets in the washing machine and get it started in the morning before school. With the wet blankets and sheets wrapped in my arms, I tiptoed down the hallway and past the kitchen to the laundry room. “What is going on here?” I jumped as I turned around to see Mom standing at the door to the laundry room with a full view of me placing the wet sheets into the washing machine. “The pull-up leaked, so I was putting the wet sheets in the washing machine so they could get cleaned in the morning.” “Your pull-up doesn’t look wet at all to me.” I’d forgotten that I hadn’t replaced the wet pajama bottoms that I’d taken off, which left my pull-up completely visible to Mom." “It was...” I started to say very wet, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit how bad the accident had been. “...uncomfortable so I took it off.” “Don’t you remember what I told you last night?” “I thought.” “No, you didn’t think. You didn’t take the time to think. Because if you had, you would have thought about how I had specifically told you to come to me if you needed to be changed.” I couldn’t think of anything to say in response, so I instead mutely nodded my head. “You know better than to disobey me. We’ll need to deal with that before you go back to bed. Go sit on the living room couch. I’ll be there in a second.” I knew what was in store for me right away, but I was tired, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to get this over with and get back in bed. I had expected to see Mom holding the spanking paddle when she walked into the living room. That’s usually what happened when she would have me wait there for her to go get something. Mom came back without the paddle in her hand, but she didn’t come back empty-handed. I couldn’t make out what the small object was that she appeared to have enclosed in her fist. “Put this in your mouth. I don’t want you waking your sister.” Mom held out one of Emilia’s pacifiers. “Mom. No.” “Quiet. I’m not dealing with Emilia waking up as well.” Mom jammed the pacifier into my mouth. I really hoped she had washed it. It wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be. The pacifier material was bland, tasteless, and squishy. It didn’t quite fit right in my mouth, but I guess they didn’t exactly make pacifiers big enough for teens. I was grateful Emilia was asleep in bed and not witnessing the spanking this time around. Mom patted her lap, and I knew what she wanted me to do. I laid down across the couch so that my bottom was squarely on her lap. Mom placed her hand firmly on the part of my butt cheek that wasn’t covered by the pull-up, marking the spot where she was going to be hitting me. Whack. Even without the paddle, the first strike to my bottom still stung. Had it not been for the pacifier in my mouth, I probably would have let out a yelp. Instead, I shut my eyes and bit down onto the pacifier as hard as I could. I didn’t know if the effect was real or just a placebo, but it certainly felt like the spanking hurt much less because I was using the pacifier, not that I would ever tell that to Mom. Mom alternated her swats between both sides of my butt, always striking my bare skin, and not where I was covered up by the pull-up. After the first five or six hits, I at last opened my eyes again. Emilia was peering out from the edge of the hallway, her own pacifier nestled in her mouth. We made eye contact briefly, but before I could spit the pacifier out of my mouth to say something to Mom, she disappeared around the corner. The spanking continued for another minute before Mom finally relented. The good part about Mom using her hand to spank me meant that it hurt her as well if she struck me too hard. “Mom, Emilia was watching,” I said as soon as Mom took the pacifier from my mouth. Mom turned around instantly to look at that hallway. “I don’t see her.” “I know. She went away when she saw that I had noticed her.” If I had to get a spanking for getting out of bed, then I wasn’t keen on letting Emilia escape without facing similar consequences. Mom didn’t seem as concerned. She turned her attention back to me. “Now what have you learned?” Mom asked, as she helped me off of her lap and on to my feet. “To make sure to let you change me.” “No, that wasn’t the lesson. Try again.” “Not to disobey you.” “Right, now get yourself back to bed.” Mom followed me back to my bedroom. Emilia was indeed back in her crib with her eyes closed. Mom gave Emilia a nudge, but my sister didn’t stir. Either that brat was faking it, or she had really managed to fall asleep again in only a minute or so. “She’s asleep, just like you should have been,” Mom said, ignoring the fact that I had to wake up to deal with the wet pull-up and bed. I didn’t respond as Mom left the room. I simply pulled back the sheets and crawled into bed. My only wish at this moment was to be able to be able to sleep a full night and not have a wet bed to deal with in the morning. Was that too much to ask for?

Thanks, but that's not the one. I'm very certain the imaginary friend was female, and that plot doesn't line up with what was in the story.

Good catch. I'm going to guess you've had experience raising actual kids. We'll have to see what she figures out. Sarah's mom is intended to be the bad guy, not in a Billie Eilish kind of way but as in being the primary antagonist in the story. Bad puns aside, the way Sarah's mom is treating her daughter isn't intended to be looked on as good or normal. I'd be rather concerned about someone (and their potential offspring) if they read this story and thought that the mother was the model of good parenting. So the main question isn't about whether or not Sarah's mom is bad, cause she is. The question is whether or not she gets the just ending that readers seem to think she deserves. As far as realism goes, my intent is that the story is realistic, or as realistic as a diaper story is going to get. For me, realism doesn't mean that the events and reactions of characters have to stay in the realm of what is probable or likely, but does still has to be constrained by what is possible given the context and setting of the story. I am glad to see the strong opinions that the mother is getting out of people. Sarah's mom is inspired by a mother in a story I read on Daily Diapers a long time ago. As a reader, I tend to heavily empathize with the protagonist, and I remember feeling the same way about that mother, outraged and shocked at her behavior and desperately wanting the protagonist to get free of it. The protagonist is the age she is because that is fundamental to the story, which is about a parent/child relationship. If Sarah where 18, 21, or even older, it would be vastly different story in my opinion in terms of the interaction between Sarah and her mom. One of my pet peeves is when a character is 18 simply for the sake of making the character not underage when it doesn't make sense in the context of the story that the character would actually be that age. For example, an author says a character is 18, but by the way the character is behaving and being treated by the other characters in the story, it would have been more realistic/accurate for the character to have been given a younger age. That's very true, the "descent into diaper use" is for sure the most common theme in ABDL fiction. I've not tried to avoid the diaper story cliches (sleepovers, cheerleading, etc..), but I do hope that the spin on them has been unique. Fully agree, and the story will definitely adhere to those rules.

Looking for a story. Protagonist is a elementary or middle school aged girl. I believe she was incontinent, but not 100 percent on that (if not, she obviously ended up in diapers) The key part of the story was that the girl had an imaginary friend that she was absolutely certain existed, though her family was dismissive of it. I forget exactly what the twist involving the imaginary friend was (I'm thinking it was a sister/friend who had died?) but I remember it being a very good read and was hoping to find it again. I would have read this at least several years ago and it may have been written a while before that even. Tbanks

Thanks for all the comments and feedback. I'm glad you guys are enjoying the story. ? No comment Claire is definitely up to something, we'll have to see what it is. Sarah is pretty self sufficient, so I wouldn't be surprised if she does try to take some more active steps to get out of the mess that she's in. Thanks for catching that, Got it fixed. As far as Sarah's dad goes, for now, let's just say he isn't present in her life. That may or may not be expanded on later in the story. You're welcome. There certainly are more accidents in Sarah's future. Sarah does want someone to be able to confide in, so we'll have to see how that plays out. Preschoolers do tend to have a growing awareness of how people around them are acting. With her mother and sister having worked hard to instill a set of rules regarding potty training, it's natural I think for her to point out a situation where her older sister broke those rules. That's absolutely correct, and it can be worse in some ways because a child might not even recognize that the way they are being treated isn't normal.

Today, the death toll in the U.S will hit 100,000. I think it is ironic that this is happening on Memorial Day of all days. In three months, by the end of August, it's not unreasonable that those numbers could have doubled, based on the models that have done the best job so far with projecting the pandemic. And the truth is, the deaths from the pandemic are likely being under-counted, since we didn't have nearly enough testing early on. 200,000 dead by August. And that is with everything we've done so far. Imagine if we hadn't acted, if we'd all just gone about our lives like normal. Is 500,000 dead OK? What about 1,000,000? The challenge with a pandemic is always this. It's nearly impossible to quantify how many lives were saved, but given how bad is had been with our best efforts, I think we can fairly say that to not have shutdown like we did, we would have gotten hit extremely hard. For me, I've been lucky. I can work from home, and I've not lost my job (It's an essential industry). I've gotten a 10 percent pay cut, but I do stock trading and taking advantage of the swings in the market more than made up for that. I'm an introvert as well. Staying at home and being forced to play video games isn't something I can complain about. For people who are out of work, have burned through their savings, and don't have the money to pay for what they need (food, housing, etc...) the threat of not being able to work can seem greater than the threat of COVID-19. And it is hard to tell someone who has gotten screwed over financially that they still can't go to work. But the way to fix that isn't to have everyone go out an work, causing the pandemic to have a massive second wave. The way to fix that is for the government to increase the level of aid it is giving directly to people who have been impacted. Screw the billions of dollars giving out to the wealthy and the businesses who don't need it. The U.S. should be more focused on both expanding unemployment assistance and making it easier to get that assistance (easier in the sense that many states have outdated systems that have made it hard to handle the increased requests for unemployment benefits.) ---- TLDR: Lots of people have died. But the shutdown was needed cause that number would have been much worse without it. It sucks to not be able to work, but the best solution is for the government to actually focus on helping the people out of work rather than handing out billions to company's that don't need it.

Chapter 18: Confrontation “What did you think of your first sleepover?” Samantha asked as I took a seat next to her on the bus. “I think I’m still in need of some sleep,” I replied, trying to stifle a yawn. I didn’t succeed, causing Desi and Samantha both to take a turn yawning as well. “Stop, that’s contagious,” Samantha said. “Sorry. Can’t help it. I’m so tired.” “I thought you’d gotten a decent amount of sleep Saturday night,” Samantha said. “I slept,” I lied, having not gotten any sleep that night, “but I woke up a lot because I wasn’t used to being on the floor in a sleeping bag.” I thought Samantha looked at me a little nervously after that remark. Was she concerned I’d seen her go up to Tommy’s room? “I’m sure you’ll get used to it,” Desi said. “After all, it was the first time you’d spent the night away from home. I bet you’ll sleep like a baby next time.” I hope not. My experience sleeping like a baby - wet pull-up and bed and all – wasn’t exactly pleasant last night. “Yeah,” Samantha added. “We should definitely start planning for another sleepover.” I wasn’t sure of the best way to respond to that. With Mom now partly aware of my bladder issues, I wasn’t certain she’d approve of a sleepover, or, if she did approve, what she might say to Samantha’s mom. And, if Mom approve, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to another sleepover anyway. Even if I could manage my bladder problems and keep my friends from discovering that issue, I realized that I hadn’t enjoyed the sleepover nearly as much as I had expected to. But I couldn’t bring myself to admit that to them. “Yeah,” I replied. “But it might be awhile. Mom wasn’t happy with how tired I was after it.” Thankfully, they let the topic of another sleepover drop, and we all drifted off into a tired Monday-morning silence on the remainder of the ride to school. The bus made good time today. We arrived at school with twenty minutes to spare before our first class began. I knew it was almost certainly my imagination, but the nighttime pull-up I had on felt so much more noticeable than the ones I had been taking from my sister. This was the first time I’d had it on beneath my jeans. I hadn’t thought that the outline of the pull-up was visible under my clothes when I had checked in the mirror this morning, but I couldn’t help but feel anxious as I made my way to the bathroom. I didn’t consider mom’s threat to keep me in pull-ups to be an idle one. If she were to find out that I had wet one of them, there was no doubt in my mind that she would re-set the seven-day clock for how long I had to keep them dry before I could go back to wearing panties. Before I’d left for school, mom had told me she’d count the dry pull-ups that I brought back, so there wasn’t any way I could wet any of them without her finding out. I have no idea what has been going wrong with my body, but until I could figure that out, the odds of going a week without wetting myself simply wasn’t possible. Wearing Emilia’s pull-ups instead of the nighttime ones was even a riskier proposition than before. First, I now must deal with the fact that I knew those pull-ups weren’t going to work one hundred percent of the time. That made sense, since even though I could still fit in my sister’s pull-ups they were really made for toddlers, not teenagers. The other problem was that was that Mom discovering me using Emilia’s pull-ups now would be so much worse than before, because she would surely see the use of my sister’s pull-ups as an attempt to circumvent her rules. But I had made up my mind. The chance to get mom off my back about the accidents was worth the risk of mom finding out about me using Emilia’s pull-ups. I used a bathroom break before the start of our AP Literature class to swap from my sister’s pull-ups to the nighttime ones. I grabbed a pair of panties from my backpack to wear over the pull-up for good measure. “Morning,” I said to Lisa as we passed her on the way to the front of the classroom. Lisa returned the greeting with a smile, while Samantha shot me a look of annoyance. Why did she care if I was being friendly with Lisa? --- After an accident in fourth period, I was relieved that I had chosen to wear my sister’s pull-ups. I’d gotten much quicker with changing myself, so I didn’t have to worry about my friends wondering why I was taking so long each time in the bathroom. I arrived in the cafeteria as Desi and Samantha had finished loading up their trays. As we made our way to our normal spot by the windows in the back of the cafeteria, I saw that it was already taken. “Why couldn’t you have saved a spot for us?” Samantha complained to me. “I’m sorry. I had to make a quick run to the bathroom. Besides, there are like a million other spots we can sit at,” I said. That wasn’t completely true. While there were some open tables, the majority of them had been taken already. I spotted Lisa seated by herself at a table for four. “We could grab a spot at Lisa’s table,” I said. “No way. Not with that weirdo,” Samantha replied. I wanted to hit Samantha with a thesaurus, partly because she was being mean to Lisa and partly because she at least needs think of more creative insults. “Just stop,” I said. “What’s your problem? She’s on the Fortnite team with me.” “Geez, I just don’t want to listen to her blabber about video games.” I knew Samantha didn’t share my liking for video games, but that comment still stung deeply. And besides, when had we ever heard Lisa blabber about anything? “Fine. I’ll go sit with Lisa, and you could find another table where you can prattle on about whatever you like.” I marched off indignantly, leaving Desi and Samantha to themselves. “Sarah. Wait. I’m sorry.” Samantha called after me. I ignored Samantha and sat down in a chair opposite Lisa, who was so absorbed with something on her phone that she didn’t even notice me take a seat at her table. I knocked quietly on the table to get her attention. Lisa jerked her head up and nearly fell backwards out of her seat. “How’s your day been?” I asked once Lisa had regained her balance. “Fine.” “It was fun playing with you last night. Sorry, I only had time for one game.” “It’s OK. We... we could play again tonight?” Lisa asked hesitantly. “Of course, as long as you don’t think I’m holding you back too much.” Our conversation was interrupted by Desi and Samantha walking up to the table. Samantha was biting her lip. I’d known her long enough to know that was her tell for trying to not look like she was unhappy. I guessed that Desi had told Samantha that she needed to come join us or she’d be left to eat by herself. “Hi Lisa, could we join you guys as well?” Desi asked. Lisa nodded. The conversations at the table diverged, with Lisa and I talking about what new changes might be coming in the next update to Fortnite and Samantha and Desi talking about a new movie they wanted to go see. By the time lunch was over, I noticed that Samantha hadn’t said a single word to Lisa the entire time. Why does she have to be so petty sometimes? --- I hated cheerleading. Even if it weren’t for the craziness of trying to avoid wetting myself and keeping anyone from seeing my pull-ups, I don’t think I would enjoy it. There was one person responsible for that – Claire. Not a single practice had gone by last week where she hadn’t tried to sabotage me in one way or another. She was clever as well, never doing anything overt or that couldn’t be dismissed as an accident with an insincere apology. She wanted my spot on the team and seemed determined to find a way to get it. The easiest solution would be for me to quit. I could avoid having to deal with Claire anymore. But Mom would go ballistic. I couldn’t say how Mom might choose to punish me for leaving them time, but it would for sure be bad, even though I had managed to get myself involved in another extracurricular activity with the Fortnite team. That meant my choice was either to deal with an angry Mom or an angry Claire. As much of a bitch as Claire was, she didn’t have anything on an angry mother. Coach Addison had caught on to how Claire and I had been feuding. She was no longer pairing Claire and I together for drills during practice. That didn’t deter Claire from trying to get under my skin, but it did give her fewer options for doing so. The locker room was nearly empty after cheerleading practice as I finished getting showered and dressed into panties, jeans, and a hoodie. I was ready to swing by a bathroom in the hallway to change into a pair of the nighttime pull-ups before mom picked me up. As I closed my locker and turned around to grab my backpack off of where I had set it on the bench, I noticed that it was no longer there. “Missing something?” Claire asked from the other end of the room, my backpack dangling from her hand. This was so not good. I did my best not to look too nervous, but my pull-ups were at the bottom of the backpack. “Hey! Give that back!” Claire unzipped the backpack instead. She wouldn’t see the pull-ups immediately. I had made sure to hide those at the very bottom. My secret was safe so long as Claire didn’t start taking stuff out of it. But that was exactly what she intended to do. “Catch,” Claire shouted, as she pulled a book from my backpack and tossed it underhanded at me. I managed to catch the book before it hit my face. I set it down on the locker room bench as Claire sprinted off toward the other end of the locker room with my still very full backpack. I ran around the edge of the locker room, trying to cut her off. Hopefully, she wasn’t planning on running out into the hallway. I could hear footsteps running from around the corner, and as I turned around the corner, Claire and I ran smack into each other and then onto the floor. After a brief tussle, I at last managed to tug the backpack from Claire’s arms. It came loose and spun across the floor, but besides from a couple of pencils, nothing came out of it. As we scrambled to our feet, I gave Claire a firm shove against the wall and she let out a cry of pain. We both turned to see Coach Addison come into view. She didn’t look happy with us. “Sarah. Claire. In my office. Now,” coach said. I grabbed the backpack – no way was I letting it out of my sight – and followed Claire into Coach Addison’s office. As soon as the door shut, Claire and I began talking at the same time. “She shoved me.” “Only because she took my backpack.” “Stop,” Addison said. “But...” Claire and I said in unison. “Not another word from either of you two,” Addison said. “I’m not interested in who started what, and I’m tired of dealing with your constant bickering. If either of you cause any more trouble, you were off the team. Are you clear about what I said?” We both nodded. I wanted desperately to argue with the coach. This was so unfair, but I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. Claire gave me a smirk as I left the locker-room. She didn’t seem upset at all with Addison’s threat. That was not a good sign.

You're welcome, thanks for the comment. Would be more interesting for us, maybe less so for Sarah Good question. If she did, that could really cause things to backfire on Sarah. For sure. We'll have to see if Sarah's mom gets around to that conclusion.

Chapter 17: Milk and Cookies As soon as Fortnite loaded on my computer, I got a pop-up message. A friend request? Probably some random person I’d played against recently. I went over to the screen where I could reject it. Seeing that notification continue to sit there was going to annoy me. LisasuarasRex. That’s who had sent me the friend request. Wait. I couldn’t recall noticing Lisa’s username during the tryout, but this was too much of a coincidence for it not to be her. I added her as a friend. A chat pop-up from Lisa opened almost instantly. LisasuarasRex: Sarah???? Dragongirl27972: Yep LisasuarasRex: good, this was lisa LisasuarasRex: wasnt sure i remembered your username right LisasuarasRex: all those numbers LisasuarasRex: u up for duos? Dragongirl27972: sure!! LisasuarasRex: ive been practicing making runs to the grotto this weekend LisasaurasRex: u could join Dragongirl27972: seems risky LisasaurasRex: not really LisasaurasRex: loots worth it too LisasaurasRex: easiest way to get a sniper rifle LisasaurasRex: just follow and youll be fine I saw a notification that Lisa had invited me to party up with her. I accepted it and clicked a button to indicate that I was ready to start the game. I’d forgotten to ask if Lisa had a microphone herself. We wouldn’t be able to type to each other once the game got underway. “Testing. Testing. Testing,” I said into the microphone as soon as soon as the game loaded to the waiting area. “Here.” I checked the route the bus was going to take over the island. Good, it was on the opposite side of the map from The Grotto. We’d probably be the only ones heading over to that location. Lisa pinged a spot on the map for where we were going. “Best entrance to The Grotto was through the water passage from the ocean,” she said. Lisa must have spent all weekend playing. Once our characters had jumped into a telephone booth to get disguised as the AI henchmen patrolling the area, Lisa led us to every chest of items in the hideout. In just a couple minutes, we were stocked up on every weapon we’d need for the rest of the game. I was just along for the ride. Lisa notched six kills, and I got two assists as we easily dispatched the first three teams we came against. In no time at all, it was just us and one other team remaining out of the fifty two-persons teams that had started in the winner-take-all game to begin with. Building was one of the things I didn’t do well in Fortnite. I get the buttons for it all jumbled up, building ramps instead of walls, and vice versa. And I wasn’t even going to attempt to edit things I’d already built. Lisa threw out a fort for both of us in a matter of seconds, building higher and higher into the sky. We now had a clear view of our two remaining opponents. Lisa took the first shot with her sniper rifle. One down. One to go. I zoomed in with my scope and tracked the remaining player. And bam. I got him. First place. “Woo hoo!” I shouted enthusiastically into the microphone. “We won!” Lisa wasn’t as enthused as me. I suppose she wins often enough that it wasn’t too exciting. “Potty time, Sarah,” Mom yelled at me from the bathroom. I winced at the announcement, making me glad I wasn’t video chatting with Lisa. I didn’t know how good my microphone was at picking up sound, but if Lisa heard anything, she didn’t say so. I muted my microphone so I could reply to Mom. “I’ll be there in a second.” “You’ll be there right now, young lady.” “I’ve got to run,” I said to Lisa, as I turned the microphone back on. “I’ll see you at school tomorrow.” “Sure. Bye.” I didn’t really feel the need to pee right now. I probably could have gone another twenty minutes or so before my bladder would begin to feel irritated, but ignoring Mom wasn’t going to be an option. “Have you kept your pull-up dry?” Mom asked as I walked into the bathroom. I wanted to roll my eyes so bad, but I managed to have enough self-control not to do so. “Of course I did.” I couldn’t believe Mom had to even ask. Couldn’t she see that the pull-up was obviously dry? That was the whole point of not having me cover it up, right? Even though these didn’t have a wetness indicator, a wet pull-up still looks much different than a dry one. “Let me see.” Mom reached down and cupped the bottom of the pull-up with her hand, feeling to see if it was wet. “Good job. Now show your sister how to use the potty.” The compliment made me feel even worse. I didn’t need to be praised for doing something that everyone else my age could do. Well, almost everyone, I guess, thinking back to the pull-up I’d found at school. The one benefit of Mom making me go to the bathroom every thirty minutes was that it at least almost guaranteed that I’d be able to avoid having any accidents at home. School was going to be a whole different matter. I wasn’t sure yet how I was going to handle it. As Emilia and I finished washing our hands – having to use the bar of soap that Mom had put in my mouth was so gross – Mom announced that she had fresh-baked Christmas cookies waiting for us in the kitchen. Yes, she’s made Christmas cookies in October. When I arrived in the kitchen, Mom had already set out a small plate of cookies for me and Emilia, along with a full glass of milk for me and a sippy cup filled with milk for my sister. Even though my legs weren’t covered, I didn’t feel cold as I walked through the house. Mom had made sure the temperature was warm enough that I didn’t feel physically uncomfortable with not wearing pants. Now that we were in the same room together for an extended time, Emilia couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off of my pull-up. I hated how she kept staring at it. The tree-shaped sugar cookies with green frosting did taste marvelous. Mom has the best recipe for Christmas cookies, but I was leery about drinking the whole glass of milk she had set out for me. That would be a recipe for disaster tonight. Dumping some of it out into the sink wasn’t going to be an option with how close by Mom was. To her, wasting that much milk would be completely unacceptable. I’d sipped little by little until I’d drunk about half of what was in the cup. That was as much as I felt I could risk drinking without putting myself in danger of wetting the bed. As soon as Mom’s back was turned to me, I gave the glass a nudge with my arm. I didn’t do it hard enough. The glass only slid over slightly and still remained upright. I gave it a harder shove and the glass of milk tipped over with a thump. The milk flowed all across the table and then cascaded over the edge like a waterfall onto the kitchen floor. “Sarah!” Mom turned to me with a look of indignation on her face. “Good grief. What was with you today? Get that mess cleaned up.” I immediately obeyed. I had knocked it over on purpose, after all. I grab several handfuls of paper towels and got all the milked cleaned up. I was so absorbed in that task that I didn’t notice what Mom was doing. As I turned back to the kitchen table after tossing the wet paper towels in the garbage container, I saw a large sippy cup filled with milk sitting on the table. “If you’re going to knock your drink over like a toddler, you’re going to drink from a sippy cup like one.” “I’m not thirsty. I’ve had half a glass of milk already.” “Well, I’ve already poured it out, and we’re not going to let it go to waste, so drink up.” How I was going to avoid wetting the bed if I ended up drinking one-and-a-half glassed of milk this late in the evening? I couldn’t pull an all-nighter right before a school day. I also couldn’t tell Mom that I was worried about wetting the bed. That would only raise more questions after the accident I had this evening. I begin to drink the milk. I held the sippy cup up to my mouth. The firm, sippy part of the cup had a small opening, which only allowed a tiny stream of milk to go through. Drinking it was a slow struggle, but I finally managed to finish the bottle to the last drop. I felt so full. Mom took Emilia off to get her diapered for bed. It was a nice change not to be stuck with that responsibility. With Emilia in bed, I was shut out of my bedroom until it was time for me to go to sleep myself. I was surprised at how exhausted I felt, especially since I had slept for most of the morning and afternoon. I had figured it would at least be midnight by the time I was tired enough to sleep. If only I could have a gaming system to play Fortnite on after my sister went to bed. Playing Fortnite on my phone wasn’t an option as my smartphone wasn’t smart enough to handle that game. With nothing much to do, I decided to at least get a head start on some of my homework for the week ahead. We had just gotten to the Part 2 in “Crime and Punishment” and were beginning to see the immediate fallout from the murders Raskolnikov had committed and the guilt his conscious was experiencing. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. The timer on Mom’s watch started going off. I had hoped that with Emilia asleep that Mom might be more relaxed with how often she was making me go to the toilet. But nope, that wasn’t going to happen. “It’s time to take a break from the book and go potty,” Mom said. “I didn’t need to go right now.” “That doesn’t matter. Go sit on the toilet for at least two minutes. Don’t come back any sooner than that.” At least I got to have some privacy in the bathroom, since Mom didn’t accompany me there this time. Once I was seated on the toilet, I did find that I was able to get a decent trickle of pee out even though I hadn’t yet felt the urge to go. I guess Mom was right after all. --- A dreamless night passed by in almost an instant. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. I both heard the alarm and didn’t. The sound reached my ears, but my brain didn’t register the fact that the sound meant I needed to wake up and get out of bed. “Sarah. Sarah!” I felt some hands give me a shake on my side. I opened my eyes at last. Mom was standing right next to my bed. My alarm was still buzzing. I looked groggily at the clock, which said 6:55 a.m. I’d slept through my alarm for ten whole minutes? “Get up. You need to hurry, or you’ll be late for school.” I threw off my sheets and covers. I felt something wet on my bottom as I rolled off of the bed and onto my feet, but being only half-awake I didn’t pay much attention to it. “Sarah, what did you do now?” “What did I do?” “Look,” Mom said, pointing back at my bed. I turned to look back at my bed, which had a large wet spot on it right where I had been laying. I had never had the pull-ups leak before at night, but the last time I had used them for that purpose had been about five years ago. “The bed’s all wet, young lady. Didn’t I tell you to keep the pull-up on?” This was too much. Starting to cry, I sat back down on my bed, and in doing so, felt the sensation of a wet pull-up. This was all Mom’s fault. Why did she have to make me drink that stupid sippy cup of milk last night? “Mom, I didn’t take it off.” Mom raised her eyebrows at me, unconvinced. “Let me see it then.” I didn’t want Mom to see my wet pull-up. I didn’t particularly want to see it myself, either. But I also didn’t want Mom to think I had disobeyed her by not wearing the pull-up to bed. I lifted up my nightgown just long enough to reveal a yellow, wet, and droopy pull-up before letting the nightgown drop down again to give myself some privacy. “Oh,” Mom said softly. She reached down and gave me a firm hug for several seconds. “It’s OK. It’s OK. Let’s just get everything cleaned up and then you could hop in the shower and get ready for school. Take the bedding to the washing machine and get it started. Toss your nightgown in as well, since it’s also wet.” As I removed my wet nightgown and tossed it into the washing machine along with my pajamas, I realized I hadn’t given any thought to what I’d wear on my way to the bathroom. I peeked into the kitchen. Emilia was seated by herself in a booster seat, munching on a bowl of cereal. The pull-up was getting more and more uncomfortable the longer I stayed in it, but I didn’t want to walk past my sister wearing only a pull-up and a bra. I tried to slip past her quickly and quietly but was not successful. “Did you have an accident?” Emilia asked. Why does everyone have to ask if I’ve had an accident when it’s clear as day that I’m wearing a wet pull-up? Besides, Emilia really should mind her own businesses. It’s not as if her own track record with pull-ups was all that great. “Yes, I had an accident at night, just like you did,” I replied, trying to put Emilia in her place by reminding her of her own potty-training issues. “Nuh-uh,” Emilia said, shaking her head. “I was dry all night.” Her face beamed. She was really proud of that accomplishment. “Good for you,” I said gruffly. --- Mom was again waiting for me in the bedroom after I had finished showering and getting dried off. The changing pad was on the middle of the bed. Next to it was a pull-up and baby power, along with a set of clothes for the day. Mom never backed down on her punishments. If she said I was going to be wearing pull-ups for a week, that meant that she meant it. I hung the towel up on the back of the door and crawled onto the changing mat without saying a word to Mom. Let’s just get this over with. I didn’t have the energy to argue with her, and the wet bed gave Mom all the ammunition she would need to shoot down any of my objections. “This was so much easier than changing Emilia,” Mom remarked as she finished adjusting the pull-up. “She could learn a thing or two from you.” Mom wasn’t content with just putting the pull-up on me. She insisted on strapping on my bra, as well as dressing me in the remainder of my outfit for the day. “Lift your arms up,” Mom said as she pulled a t-shirt and hoodie onto me. I wasn’t even allowed to put on my jeans, as Mom put those on me as well before grabbing my hands and pulling me upright off the bed. “Put these in your backpack,” Mom said, holding out two pull-ups. “I don’t need any extra ones. I don’t even need the one I’m wearing right now.” “Really?” Mom said. “The wet bed and the accident yesterday evening say otherwise.” “I wouldn’t have wet the bed last night if you wouldn’t have made me drink so much milk.” “Don’t blame me for your own accident. You’re fifteen. That should be old enough to have some milk to drink in the evening without waking up in a wet bed, but I guess it’s not.” I took the pull-ups that Mom was holding out to me and placed them deep in my backpack, though I made sure to put them in a different spot than where I still had some of Emilia’s pull-ups. “When I pick you up this afternoon, you could show me that you’ve kept all three of them all dry.” That left me with nothing to argue against. I couldn’t deny having the two accidents, and I couldn’t reject the logic of Mom’s offer that I could simply prove that I didn’t need the pull-ups by not wetting them. I had an idea of how I could manage to do that.

The mom certainly does have major issues. How that impacts her and both of her daughters is something that the story will explore. I don't think there are any 'Mother of the Year' awards in her future. On a more serious note, yes, it's a pretty screwed up situation that Sarah has found herself tangled in with her mom having a rather misguided and binary sense of discipline. Thanks for the comment. It will be an interesting week. Thanks! Sarah's mom is definitely not intended to be the most sympathetic figure.

Thanks for all the comments/feedback/theories. For sure. I think my dad would still be unhappy if I cursed in front of him. And I'm 27. You're welcome. The doctor question will get answered -- one way or the other -- in a future chapter. That would raise a lot of uncomfortable questions for Sarah. We'll have to see what happens. Thanks for the comment. Always good to have hope. ? Thanks! I'm hard at work on chapter 17. Thanks for the comment. We'll see how things go. Thanks for the comment. It's very interesting to see other perspectives on what is going on in the story. Always good to look at character's motives.

Chapter 16: Consequences No. No. No. No. No. This couldn’t be happening. The fact that I had wet myself in front of Emilia moments ago wasn’t even the worst part of this situation. I had one of my sister’s pull-ups on beneath my jeans. Maybe I could pass off a single accident as a fluke, but if Mom were to find out that I had been taking my sister’s pull-ups, how in the world would I explain that to her? That wasn’t something I’d put any thought into. I had counted on being able to avoid ever having that discussion in the first place. After all, that was the whole point of wearing the pull-ups. I felt betrayed. First, by my sister. I’d hid some of her accidents before and gone light on her many occasions where Mom’s punishments would have been far more severe. If she could have just kept her mouth shut for even ten minutes or so, I would have had time to get cleaned up and fully hide that the accident had ever happened. But no, she had to go blabbing her mouth off to Mom the second she got the chance. I also felt betrayed by the pull-up. Yes, pull-ups were inanimate objects, but I had put my trust in them that they would keep anyone around me from knowing about the difficulties I was having with my bladder. I’d wet myself so many times in them without issue that I’d come to simply expect that they would always work. I could take the consequences of having a single accident, but I was not going to let Mom know how severe the issue actually was. I had to get the pull-up off. I pulled down my jeans and panties, ripped the sides of the pull-up off, and tossed it in the trash. I heard Mom’s conversation with my sister in the kitchen as Emilia continued to tattle on me. “You better not be pulling my leg.” “No, mommy. She did. I saw.” I heard Mom’s footsteps as she made her way down the hallway toward my room. I managed to pull my panties up and had barely finished buckling my jeans the moment Mom walked through the doorway. The initial look of surprise on her face told me that Mom hadn’t really believed Emilia’s story about my accident. “What was going on here, young lady?” I hoped that the question was rhetorical. I didn’t need to answer it for Mom to know what had happened. The large wet spot on the crotch of my jeans, the streaks of pee on the legs of my pants, and the puddle of urine on the floor told a crystal clear story of what had transpired moments ago. “Well,” Mom said, after pausing for a few seconds to survey the scene. “I had an accident,” I mumbled incoherently. “Speak up.” “I had an accident,” I said, enunciating each word. My voice was still quiet but now understandable. “You’re fifteen. Fifteen years old Sarah. How am I supposed to potty train Emilia if her older sister was going around wetting her pants right in front of her? We’ve been trying so hard to teach her that wetting herself is unacceptable and now... this?” I chaffed at Mom’s suggestion that she was the one potty training Emilia. That had almost exclusively been my responsibility, but I knew better than to speak back to her when she was in a mood to lecture me. “You need to get yourself cleaned up. We’ll discuss what to do with you once you’re done with the shower. And don’t take too long either.” As relieved as I was for Mom to be letting me go, I felt a sense of foreboding at her suggestion that something needed to be done to me because of the accident. It was never a good sign when Mom said she needed time to think about how to discipline me. As the hot water poured over me in the shower, I tried to think of what Mom’s punishment could be. Just the thought alone of getting a spanking made my butt feel sore. That was Mom’s go-to choice of discipline, so that seemed to be the most likely punishment I was going to get, though I don’t know if I’d prefer a spanking to something else, like getting grounded. This situation was my fault, I realized, as I reflected on what had happened. I’d gotten careless with my accidents and had become over-reliant on the pull-ups. I easily could have held my bladder until I’d at least sent Emilia back to the living room to play, but I’d instead gone what I had thought was the easier route of just peeing into the pull-up then and there. I’d have to be much more cautious going forward. I couldn’t afford a repeat. When I got out of the shower to dry myself off, I realized that I hadn’t brought any clean clothes to change into. I wrapped the towel around myself discreetly and walked back to my room. Mom was sitting on the bed waiting for me. “Mom, could you give me some privacy to get dressed?” “I don’t think so. We need to talk about what you are going to be wearing.” Talk about what I was going to be wearing? What was Mom talking about? I always pick out my own outfits. Besides, she had never bought anything for me that she would consider inappropriate to wear. The realization of what Mom was talking about dawned on me when I saw what Mom had placed on my desk. I instantly recognized the distinctive box that Mom had brought into the room. I had no idea that Mom had kept my old pull-ups. I was sure she had tossed or donated them once we were certain my bedwetting phase had come to an end all those years ago. But there they were, sitting in their original box on my desk. No. There was no way she could do that. She couldn’t be serious. “I brought your old pull-ups in from the garage. You’re going to be wearing them for the next week,” Mom stated as matter-of-fact as if she were discussing her getting me a new set of pajamas. Yes, I’d been wearing pull-ups for the past couple of weeks, but that had been my decision, done discretely without anyone humiliating or embarrassing me. I was not going to admit it to Mom, but I had accepted that I was better off wearing them to have some sort of protection against the accidents I’d been having. That was not something she needed to know. “Mom. It was just once. It was just one accident. You can’t be serious. I don’t need to wear a pull-up.” “So, you think the rules should be different for you than Emilia? It’s hard enough getting her to use the toilet as it was without it getting in her head that the potty-training rules don’t matter at all.” “This isn’t fair.” “What’s not fair would be to let you keep wearing panties after an accident when Emilia would have to wear a pull-up if she did the same thing.” “So? Emilia is three. I’m fifteen.” “Exactly, so you should be setting a better example for her.” “It’s been forever since I used those pull-ups. I’ve grown. They weren’t going to fit me anymore anyways.” “The box says the size goes up to 125 pounds, and you weren’t close to that when you had your physical for cheerleading.” I’d exhausted all my arguments. With nothing left for me to say, Mom continued her lecture. “Sarah, you are going to wear the pull-us for a week. It won’t be any longer than that because you’ll keep them dry. Now lay down on the bed so I can put one on you.” Mom stood up from the bed and walked over to me. She pointed her hand to the bed, motioning me to go over there. The gravity of what was happening sunk in. And Mom wasn’t even going to let me change myself? “I’m not wearing a fucking pull-up!” I shouted. Whack. I heard the sound of Mom’s palm striking my face. The pain didn’t immediately register as my head was knocked to the side. Then it hurt. Oh, it hurt. The stinging pain on my cheek was worse than any spanking I’d ever received. The towel that I’d been holding wrapped around my body dropped to the ground as I raised my hands to my face, leaving me standing naked in front of my mother. “Get on the bed.” I didn’t put up any more resistance. I lay down on the bed, placing myself squarely on the changing pad. There wasn’t enough room for me, so my legs dangled off the edge. Mom reached into the box on my desk and removed a pull-up. It looked exactly like I remembered. I shut my eyes, both because I didn’t want to watch what Mom was about to do and to try to hold in the tears that were beginning to form. This brought back memories of how Mom had always insisted on putting my pull-ups on me before bed, even when I had been more than old enough to do so on my own. Not being able to see what was happening didn’t reduce the humiliation at all. I felt the cool sensation of the baby powder as Mom sprinkled it on me. The smell was overwhelming. She always used too much. I cringed as Mom rubbed the powder into my skin with her warm hands. Why was she taking so long? Please, just get this over with. I opened my eyes at last as Mom stretched out the pull-up and guided my feet through the two leg openings. I knew the drill. I raised my bottom up slightly without needing to be asked, allowing Mom to slide the pull-up till it came to a rest around my waist. “Stand up.” I obeyed, and I was again standing in front of Mom. I couldn’t bear to look her in the face, but looking down meant staring straight at the pull-up with its pastel colored flowers on it. “Look at me.” I kept my face down. I couldn’t look at her. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. “Look at me,” Mom said, grabbing my jaw firmly and pulling my face up until I was looking directly up at her in the eyes. “Your punishment isn’t done yet. You know better than to cuss like that. And to say that word at me... completely unacceptable.” Mom grabbed me by the ear – her fingers pinched hard on my skin – and led me to the bathroom. As I walked for the first time while wearing the pull-up, I could tell immediately that the padding between my legs was now thicker. “Mom. Please. No. I won’t do it again. I promise I won’t.” I used the chance of being in the bathroom to get a look at myself in the mirror. My face was red, though the one cheek Mom had slapped was slightly redder than the other. At least there wasn’t a bruise or any cuts on it. My reflection looked so pathetic, standing there with nothing on but a pull-up and tears running down my face. Mom had only ever washed my mouth out with soap on one occasion, after Desi had first taught me a curse word and I had mistakenly used it around Mom. I’d been extra careful to never use that type of language around Mom ever since then. I’d take any punishment over having to do that again. “Mom, please, could you do something else? Can it be a spanking instead?” Mom didn’t respond. She just grabbed one of the bars of soap and began rinsing it thoroughly with water in the sink. At last, she turned off the faucet. “Open your mouth.” I looked at the bar of soap in her hand. It was covered completely in suds. I could already imagine how awful that would taste. “Anything else. Please. Anything. Anything.” “Don’t make this any worse on yourself than it had to be.” Filled with trepidation, I opened my mouth a little for her. “Wider.” I complied, and Mom shoved the bar of soap into my mouth. I instinctively tried to jerk my head back, but Mom had placed her other hand firmly on the back of my head, holding me in place as she ran the bar of soap all around my mouth. The taste was so disgusting, I wanted to gag but couldn’t with it in my mouth. Mom ran the bar of soap back and forth and in and out until my entire mouth was full of suds. The whole process couldn’t have lasted more than ten or fifteen seconds, but it felt like so much longer. I spat out as much of the soap as I could into the sink, followed by rinsing my mouth multiple times with water. The taste of the soap still lingered. “And what lesson have you learned?” “Not to say curse words.” “Good, now let’s get back to your room.” I walked back to my bedroom with Mom trailing behind me. At least she wasn’t dragging me by the ear. I wanted nothing more than to get some clothes on. I went over to my dresser and begin to pull out a pair of jeans before Mom yelled at me to stop. “You’re going to wear a shirt and a pull-up, just like your sister. No jeans, dresses, skirts, or leggings.” “But Mom, I can’t walk around the house with the pull-up showing.” “Emilia does. You can, and you will.” I tried to find the biggest shirt that I owned. It at least covered the top inch or two of the pull-up. I looked ridiculous. “I’ll come get you once it is time for Emilia to go to the toilet, which,” Mom said, taking a look at her watch, “will be in about ten minutes. By the time I’m back, I want you to have put all the pull-ups in the dresser.” I wanted nothing to do with the box of pull-ups on my desk, but I also wanted nothing to do with whatever punishment Mom would devise if she came back to see that I had disobeyed her. With the room to myself, the first thing I noticed was how crinkly the pull-up was without anything covering it. Every step I took produced that noise, no matter how slow or fast I moved. If there was a silver lining to this situation, at least this pull-up was bound to be more absorbent, so another leak might be less likely. I counted out the pull-ups as I placed them next to my panties in the top drawer. There were sixteen of them, not counting the one that I was wearing. Mom’s reaction to my accident had been far worse than I feared. I didn’t want to know what she would do if I were to wet the pull-up, but I couldn’t see how I was going to manage a week with no accidents. I hated that Mom wasn’t letting me wear pants, but at least, if I were to be following the same rules as Emilia, that restriction wasn’t going to apply when I left the house tomorrow to go to school. “Sarah,” Mom called from the bathroom, interrupting my pity-party, “it is time to go potty.” Potty. I hated that word. Childish. Demeaning. It made me feel like I was being treated like a toddler instead of a teenager. Emilia gawked at my pull-up when I walked into the bathroom, but at least she didn’t say anything. I doubted that Mom would tolerate her teasing me. “Sarah, why don’t you show Emilia how a big girl uses the toilet?” I didn’t need to look in the bathroom mirror to know that my face was turning red. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me, but I didn’t have any choice but to take a seat on the toilet and let the pull-up drop to my knees. I didn’t have a shy bladder, so peeing in public places had never been a problem in for me, and my bladder was beginning to feel full as well. After I was done, Mom placed the potty-training seat on the toilet so Emilia could get on as well. With both of us now having done our business, Mom re-set the timer on Emilia’s watch for thirty minutes. With a half-hour of freedom before I would have to repeat that humiliating ritual again, I sat down at my desk and opened the box with the new headset Mom had given me for my birthday. Thirty minutes was more than enough time to get through a single game of Fortnite. I desperately needed something to distract me from worrying about what the next week held in store.

I think her figurative mess is big enough problem for Sarah right now. We'll have to see how Sarah explains the situation to her mom. Muahaha. As a reader, I hate cliff hangers. Writing them is a lot of fun though ? Appreciate the comments. It's fun to see speculation on what might happen. My lips are sealed. ? Nope, doesn't seem like she can.