MinnesotaWriter

Chapter 11: Discovery I had never been more attuned to my bodily functions than in the past week. Every waking moment was spent trying to decipher what my bladder was trying to tell me. Was it time to pee? Already? Again? Could I hold off for a little bit longer or did I need to sprint to the toilet right away? At this point, I’d have had better luck trying to understand Chinese than whatever messages my bladder was sending. It was a little over a week since my disastrous attempt at wearing panties during cheerleading practice and the ensuing accident in the porta potty. I’d had a pull-up on almost every moment since. And I need the pull-ups I was taking from my little sister. There was no more room whatsoever for denial about what was happening with my body. Not a single school day has passed without me wetting myself, including one more time during cheerleading practice. The only thing standing between me and everyone knowing about the wetting issue were the pull-ups. I felt like a secret agent in a spy film every time I disguised my pull-up for cheerleading practice. I kept whatever clothing I was going to wear for the practice in my backpack. Then, after my last class, I would changed into those clothes with a dry pull-up in a restroom before heading to the locker room ready to begin practice. Once it was over, I went to one of the toilet stalls in the locker room, took off the pull-up, and buried it in the trash before going to shower. I had panties on for the briefest time after showering, but I used an empty restroom to change back into a pull-up before Mom picked me up to go home. The process was exhausting, but I wasn’t taking any chances with my bladder. At home I’d been having much better luck with avoiding accidents, thanks in part to the continuing efforts to potty train Emilia. I was still taking her to the toilet every thirty minutes when the potty-training alarm went off on her watch. I let her do her business, and as soon as I sent her back to play, I would hop on the toilet myself. The routine was humiliating, but it was better than peeing myself. That wasn’t to say I hadn’t wet a pull-up a couple of times at home, but not nearly as often as I’d done at school. I was trying to avoid going through too many pull-ups, which wasn’t that hard since Mom rarely changed Emilia. Since I was the one who did the changing, I was responsible for telling Mom when it was time to order another box of pull-ups from Amazon, and I didn’t want her to get suspicious if we started to go through them way too fast. The only area of success with my potty training has been at night. I’d managed to avoid a repeat of my lone bedwetting accident by rigorously monitoring how much I drink in the evening, making sure to cut off my liquids early, and use the toilet immediately before getting in bed. While I’d woken up in a dry bed and pull-up every night, there had been a couple of times where the urge to pee has gotten me out of bed and in search of the toilet in the wee hours of the morning. I wish that I could say that potty training was going better for Emilia than it had been for me, but that wasn’t the case. She’s not had a single dry day either, and she’s woken up with a soaked diaper each morning. In just the last week, Mom has had to put her back in diapers on two separate occasions during the day. Like me, I felt as though my sister was also giving up on potty training. It was all I could do to keep from blushing when Mom told Emilia that she needed to be a big girl and use the potty like her older sister. And now I had a sleepover to worry about. --- “I still can’t believe your mom was really letting you come over for a sleepover,” Samantha said as she took a seat at our table in the cafeteria. Our moms had talked the night before. Mom had been insistent that she get to know Samantha’s parents at least a little bit before finally signing off on the sleepover at their place. The fact that Samantha’s Mom was a well-respected lawyer gave her an advantage in assuring Mom that I’d be taken care of just fine while spending the night at their house. The sleepover was officially official. I would be going over to Samantha’s house tomorrow night after the Fortnite team tryout that I’d convinced Mom to let me take part in. I truly wanted to be enthusiastic about the sleepover. I’d begged and begged and begged Mom to let me go on one for years without getting her to budge on it, and it was just last week that I’d finally found the right argument to persuade her. The week leading up to the sleepover should have been one of the best of my life as I plotted all the things I would do with Desi and Samantha. But I was terrified out of my mind. I couldn’t wear a pull-up to Samantha’s house. How would I manage to throw it away if I did have an accident? But if I wear panties instead, that was just inviting trouble. If I peed my pants at her house, I’d never live it down. They’d never invite me over there again. I had hoped that I’d be able to regain some measure of control over my bladder in the past week, but instead of making progress, it felt like I’d been backsliding. I’d considered going to see the school nurse, but I knew the first call she’d make after my visit would be to my mother, and everything I was doing now was for the purpose of keeping Mom from finding out about my accidents. Even now, with my friends, I felt completely alone as there wasn’t anybody I could confide in about what I was going through. Desi, Samantha, and I were at our usual lunch table again. They had just returned to the table with hamburgers and fries on their trays while I ate the supposedly healthier meal Mom had packed for me. Samantha snapped her fingers in front of my face to get my attention. “Earth to Sarah. Earth to Sarah. You need to stop daydreaming. I’m talking to you about the sleepover.” “Oh. Yeah,” I replied, shocked that I had zoned out so easily. “It still doesn’t seem real that it is happening. The whole thing is surreal.” “We still need to decide on a movie,” Desi interjected. I liked superhero and sci-fi movies. They were both into rom coms. So that meant we were going to watch a rom com. “I’m outvoted, so you guys are going to have to settle on one,” I said, resigned to my fate. I could feel the urge to pee growing in my bladder again, but there weren’t any bathrooms close by to this side of the cafeteria. I didn’t feel like spending ten minutes of my precious lunch break time in the bathroom, but I also didn’t like my odds of holding it in until my bathroom break before the next class period starts. What did it matter anyway? I gave up trying to hold it in and let the pee soak into the pull-up. After a week of using the pull-ups, the feeling of wetting one wasn’t nearly as jarring of an experience, and sitting in a wet pull-up wasn’t as bad as enduring increasingly painful urges to pee. I didn’t even bother looking down at my pants to make sure there hadn’t been any leaks. The pull-ups hadn’t given me any trouble so far in that regard. My bladder now relieved, I was able to focus on the sleepover planning without any distractions. We – and again by we I mean Desi and Samantha – settled on “Crazy Rich Asians” as the movie to watch. Even if the movie choice was meh in my opinion, I still was excited about our other plans. For one, I couldn’t wait to try on some of Samantha’s makeup. With the lunch period now nearly over, I needed to make a break for the bathroom to get cleaned up. “I’ll join you guys in class. I just need to use the bathroom quick,” I said to Desi and Claire as I stood up a few minutes early from the lunch table. It wasn’t technically a lie. I did need to use the bathroom, just not for the reason they would be thinking of. --- I had again chosen a stall at the far corner of the bathroom. Its walls were adorned with messages about who was screwing who and some slightly witty ditties about disliked teachers. The privacy was worth it, though. No one was likely to walk in front of the stall and accidentally get a tiny glimpse of me changing into a dry pull-up. I untied and removed my shoes and then slid off my jeans and panties – I still was wearing those on top of the pull-ups – and hung them up quietly on a small hanger on the stall door. That left just the pull-up, and there was no doubt as to its condition. I’d brought baby wipes in my backpack along with the extra pull-ups, but I had skipped on the baby powder. I couldn’t risk smelling like that in class. I slid the pull-up down my legs like I had with my jeans and panties, as ripping the sides open would have been too noisy with the possibility of several other girls still being in the bathroom. Getting the wet pull-up off my skin was such a relief. I cleaned myself up with the wipes before tossing them into the trash. The first time I’d worn a pull-up to school, I’d tried to clean myself up with toilet paper. That had been a mistake. Rip. Rip. That was the noise coming from one of the stalls toward the entrance to the bathroom. The sound was so out of place that it took me a while to realize where I’d heard it before. It sounded just like the noise Emilia’s pull-ups made when I changed her as I ripped them open on their tear-off sides. But that didn’t make any sense. Someone else at school wearing a pull-up? Would someone risk making that much noise? Maybe I’d been quiet enough that she thought that she had the bathroom to herself. Unfortunately, being in the stall at the very end of the bathroom, I didn’t have a way to ascertain who the potential pull-up wearer was. The stall walls went nearly to the floor so I couldn’t peek my head down beneath them. And being at the end, she wouldn’t pass me on her way out of the bathroom, either. I sat as completely still as I could on the toilet seat, not daring to even reach for the fresh pull-up in my backpack that I had been about to put on. I strained my ears. I could make out some faint noises coming from the other end of the bathroom. I thought I could perhaps hear the faint crinkle of a pull-up being put on, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Waiting like this would make me late for class, and Mr. Adams was not one to approve of that, but I simply had to know. While it was likely that I had just been imagining things, the thought would eat away at me all day if I didn’t wait until the girl was done to be able to check out the stall. I waited until I heard the sound of a toilet flush, followed by the sound of a stall door opening and water pouring out the faucet. With that background noise started, I raced to put the pull-up on and get dressed, but by the time I was finished buckling my belt the faucet had stopped and the bathroom door been had opened and then slammed shut. I checked each stall as I walked by them. They were all empty. I had the room to myself. I peered into the stall closest to the bathroom entrance, where I had been sure the sounds had been coming from. I knew I should just go to class. This wasn’t any of my business, after all. But my curiosity beat out my better judgement. I walked into the stall and closed the door behind me. The small trash bin appeared full, but it was topped with quite a few wads of loose, clean toilet paper, much like how I also was hiding my used pull-ups in the garbage. This wasn’t going to be sanitary, but I needed to know. I carefully pulled the loose toilet paper at the top of the garbage bin aside to reveal a pull-up unlike any I had seen before. Emilia’s pull-ups all featured a cartoon character prominently, and the pull-ups I had worn back when I had been wetting the bed had all been decorated with a plethora of colorful, girly designs. The pull-up sitting in the trash was completely different. It was almost completely white, with some clinical markings on it, and the stretchy mesh-like material on its sides was not the same as the pull-up I had on. The pull-up was also clearly larger than Emilia’s, so that could only mean it was for one of the students at the school. There was one last thing I needed to be sure of. I gently pressed the back of my hand against the pull-up. I really shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t leave the bathroom without knowing. Yes, it was still warm. Someone had just been wearing it. But who?

Thanks for all the comments, should have a new chapter up this evening. It's one I've been looking forward to writing. You're welcome. We'll have to see what does or doesn't happen with the school nurse. I think her luck has a better chance of running wet ? No comment ? Quite the interesting theory.

Chapter 10: Not a Perfect Plan The feeling of walking down the school hallway wearing my panties instead of a pull-up was both freeing and unnerving. I’d been wearing a pull-up for less than twenty-four hours, yet I now felt almost naked without it, like something was missing. I was surprised at how quickly I’d grown accustomed to the snug fit of the pull-up’s elastic sides around my waist and the soft padding between my legs, as well as the assurance that I’d be protected in case any accident did happen. At the same time, I didn’t understand why I was feeling nervous. Despite the four accidents I’d had over the past couple of days, none of them had taken place during cheerleading practice. Besides, a communal locker room wasn’t going to provide me with the privacy to wear a pull-up like I had been all day up until now. All I needed to do was to pay extra attention to my bladder, and, if the urge to go did strike, make sure to run off to use the toilet in time. Nothing different from what I’d done since I was first potty trained at the age of two. How did going to the toilet become so complicated? Today was a practice run for tomorrow’s football game, my very first as a cheerleader. I was prepared to be bored out of my mind. I didn’t care one bit for sports – don’t ask me what the difference was between a fullback and a nickelback – and being stuck at the entire game wasn’t going to be fun. Coach Addison believes that rehearsals didn’t mean anything if you also weren’t dressed up for it, so instead of our normal casual workout clothes, we were all to be wearing our cheerleading uniforms. I had tried on the uniform once before at home to make sure it fit properly, which it had, but this was my first time wearing it around other people and I felt a tad conspicuous even though everyone else was going to have the same outfit on. The two-piece uniform was a dark blue polyester miniskirt combined with a dark-blue and lime-green top that intentionally didn’t go all the way down to my waist. I’d practically be showing more skin with this than I would in my bathing suit. The bluish bruise on my hip, which thankfully was beginning to look slightly better, was peaking out over the top of the mini-skirt. At least it matched one of the school colors. The uniform was the antithesis of my normal style, given how I’d prefer to go to school with jeans paired with either a hoodie or a graphic t-shirt. The only redeeming part of the outfit was that while it doesn’t cover much, the parts it covered it does cover well. That was to say, I wasn’t going to be flashing anybody while wearing it. Claire strutted into the locker room while I was finishing getting the top tugged over my head. I could still make out the slight mark on her face from where I had slapped her during lunch when she had been bullying Lisa. I’d nearly forgotten about that spat, but I supposed the fact that I made it to cheerleading practice without a visit to the principal’s office signified that Claire had determined that tattling on me wasn’t worth the risk of getting into trouble herself. Still, I couldn’t help but suspect that she was entertaining thoughts of revenge. Claire didn’t deem me worthy of even a frosty “hello” as she silently grabbed her gym bag from the locker next to me and proceeded to one of the empty toilet stalls to get dressed in privacy. She’s so stuck up. Too good to hang out with students in her own grade. Too good to dress in the locker room like the rest of us. How in the world am I supposed to deal with her for four more years of cheerleading? After changing into my cheerleading outfit, I took another stop at the toilet. I didn’t have any urge to pee. I’d already empty my bladder when I wet the pull-up in class about twenty minutes ago. Still, since I would be going back to panties for the hour-and-a-half practice, I figured it was prudent to leave as little room for error as possible when it came to my bladder. The only remaining stall was next to the one Claire had gone into to change. As much as I tried to go, I couldn’t get any urine to come out. Not a drop. This was awkward. In the stall next to me I heard Claire’s clothing rustle as she changed into her cheerleading outfit. I remembered Desi’s advice that I needed to watch my back around her and how Claire and tripped me yesterday in practice. Following that advice would be more important than ever given the stunt I’d pulled with Claire at lunch. Out of habit, I flushed the toilet before I left the stall, even though it was completely unnecessary. --- Practice always began with a warm-up jog and stretches. The past two days, we had stood around in a circle and done individual stretches for our legs and arms. Those stretches were beginning to get less painful as my body acclimated to the increased physical activity. Give it a few weeks and practice would soon become a breeze, I hope. “Now, everyone pair up with someone in your class,” Coach Addison said. “It’s time to do some buddy stretches.” Someone from my class? Oh, great. That leaves me stuck with Claire, who was standing nearly opposite of me in the circle. At least she doesn’t look as if she was any happier with this than I am. We stared at each other for a couple of seconds without moving. I wasn’t in any hurry to do anything with her. “Come on girls. Get moving,” coach said, clapping her hands a couple of times. We didn’t have a choice. I took the initiative and walked over to where Claire was standing. We still didn’t say anything, as all the other girls on the team got paired up as well. “These stretches were going to be done with one person laying down and the other person standing and assisting them. Whoever was youngest can start on the ground.” “I’m fifteen,” Claire said bluntly. My birthday wasn’t for another week, so I laid down in the short-cut grass. The sensation on my skin was somewhere been an itch or a tickle, and it wasn’t pleasant. I stared up at the cloudless sky waiting for the next part of coach’s instructions, doing my best not to look up into Claire’s face. “Now,” coach began, talking to the girls who were still standing. “For this first stretch, you were going to take one of your teammates’ legs in your arm and you were slowly going to move it up till it was perpendicular to the ground. Keep another hand on the knee so the leg stays straight. Don’t let it bend.” Claire was neither gentle nor slow. “Ow! Ow! Stop,” I said, nearly screeching as I twisted my leg out of Claire’s grip. I so wanted to “accidentally” kick her. Claire turned on a look of contrition in a flash as coach turned to glare at us. “Sorry. I’m so sorry,” she said. “Claire, be careful. You can hurt someone if stretches aren’t done right,” coach said. I was pretty certain Claire had already known that. --- “Water break!” Coach shouted. After an hour of practice, we all ran to where we had left our water bottles on the sideline. I nearly collapsed onto the first row of the bleachers, so exhausted I could hardly think. I had been wrong about how easy practice had been getting, as this had easily been the most tiring practice that we had gone through yet. I was winded enough that I didn’t mind sitting on the cold metal surface. Anything was better than standing and doing more jumps, sprints, and cheers. As I took a larger drink of water than I probably should have, I realized that the bustle of practice had managed to do something that my classes hadn’t managed to do, which was to take my mind off of my bladder. That wasn’t a good thing. Nature’s call was here, and it was demanding an answer right now. The porta potties weren’t far off, just about sixty yards or so down the sideline. I prayed so hard that no one was in them. I knew that no one likely cared a bit if I was going off for a quick pee during one of our brief breaks as I’d seen others did so a few times, but I still felt as if each and every one of my teammates eyes were gazing directly at my back and judging me as I began walking toward the porta potties. I wanted to run so badly. The pressuring on my bladder was growing exponentially to the point that I felt as though I would pee myself if I didn’t pick up the pace. But I couldn’t run. Not in front of everyone like this where my whole team could see my embarrassment of struggling to hold my bladder. I regretted not finding a way to wear the pull-up to practice. As I got closer both porta potties appeared to be open. I fumbled with the door of the first one I got to. My hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t get the door to open. The green sign said “Available.” Why wouldn’t it open? After several panicky seconds I at last figured out the proper way to twist the handle. I swung the door open and slammed it shut behind me. But I was too late. My bladder got the better of me and I began to pee uncontrollably. I spread my feet out as wide as I could to prevent the stream of pee from splattering onto my shoes as it ran down through my panties and the bottom of the mini-skirt straight to the floor of the porta potty. It went on for so long. I didn’t have that much to drink. Did I? I felt helpless without the ability to stop peeing. The rapid tapping splatter of the urine on the plastic floor of the porta potty was way too loud. I hoped no one was waiting outside. At least the porta potty was in a sorry enough state that a puddle of pee on the floor didn’t make much of a difference to its overall condition. The condition of my panties and mini-skirt were a much bigger concern. I didn’t get it. I couldn’t go an hour without wearing a pull-up before I peed myself. How am I supposed to make it through the rest of the cheerleading practice, let alone the season, with this issue? I was miss bladder of steel. The girl who could go the entire day at school without darkening the doorway of a bathroom. I inspected my skirt and was relieved to find that the only wet spot was directly between my legs. The spot was dark enough that it was barely noticeable. I pulled out a ton of toilet paper and just dropped it on the floor to absorb the urine. I didn’t bother picking it up. With some additional toilet paper, I attempted to dry the wet spot on panties and skirt. It was still damp enough that I would feel it, but the wet spot was gone enough that if anyone saw it, hopefully it would just appear like I had been sweating a lot. The only thing going for me at the moment was that there were only about thirty minutes left in the practice. Surely I could go that long without peeing myself. --- I actually did manage to get through the remainder of cheerleading practice without peeing myself, and with no one giving any indication that they suspected I had an accident, I was in the clear. Showering in the locker room after practice was awkward – no curtains divided the shower heads to offer any privacy – but it was still preferable to having Mom bathe me like a baby. I kept my eyes focused directly on the wall in front of me as I got myself cleaned up, as if avoiding eye contact with everyone else somehow made me less naked. The bruises on my butt from the spanking earlier this week had faded to almost nothing, but even if one of my teammates noticed them, I doubted they would think much of it. After all, with all the tumbles and falls I had taken during the first three days of practice, I had less bruises than one might expect to see. I still didn’t know what to do about the accident. I toyed with the idea of quitting the team. I had no idea how bad Mom’s punishment would be, but whatever she chose, I couldn’t imagine it being anything worse than wetting myself in front of all my teammates, or worse, in front of a whole stadium full of people. No way they would keep me on the team anyway if they found out about my accidents. While on the way from the locker room to the parking lot where Mom was waiting to pick me up, I stopped into a completely empty bathroom. The two additional accidents I that had happened today had left me with no other choice. With the whole bathroom to myself, I quickly swapped my panties for one of the extra pull-ups I had brought with me in my backpack. I’d arrived at school this morning with what I had thought was a perfect plan to get my accidents to stop. By the time I left for home, I couldn’t see how I was ever going to get back to being potty trained.

Chapter 9: That Bully I started the school day with a clear plan of action on how to avoid any further accidents. Having been working to potty train Emilia for the past year-and-a-half, I had a pretty good sense of all the different strategies and techniques for getting someone to relieve themselves on a toilet rather than in their pants. I didn’t really want to think of what I was trying to do with myself as potty-training – that term just felt demeaning when used with someone older than a toddler – but that was technically what I was trying to accomplish. I also didn’t really want to think about the fact that my potty-training attempts with Emilia had been, well, rather less than successful. While the day began with apprehension over wearing a pull-up to school, I had grown more confident in my plan once I realized that everyone around me was completely and fully oblivious to the fact that I was wearing it. My racing heart calmed down and in my mind I was again going through the plan I had formulated for the day and the rules of my own that I intended to follow. First, I was going to use the bathroom on a set schedule. I didn’t have a potty-training watch, like the one Emilia wears that reminds her to go to the bathroom every thirty minutes. However, my class schedule was a good enough substitute. As much as I might like to go to the bathroom after every fifty-minute class period, I didn’t care for the considerable attention that would draw from my friends. I needed to get back to the point where holding off on going to the toilet wasn’t going to be a big deal. If I could try and use the bathroom at the start of school and then after every other period, that gives me enough bathroom breaks without appearing that something was off. I might break that schedule in an emergency, but I was going to do my best to follow it. I was not going to allow myself to use a hall pass to leave class early to go to the bathroom, either. Next, I needed to control what I drank. I still had to stay hydrated, especially with cheerleading, but drinking too much at any one time would be bad. That meant I instead needed to drink lots of small amounts of water throughout the day, so I could be hydrated without overwhelming my bladder all at once. The last part of the plan was the one I was most uncomfortable about. That’s the pull-up I was wearing. After the trio of accidents and many other close calls over the past two days, I couldn’t risk anyone noticing if I did have an accident, especially at school. However, I was not going to use the pull-ups on purpose again. Once was more than enough. The purpose of wearing the pull-up was that it gave me leeway to try to hold my bladder during class without running off to the bathroom, since if I didn’t succeed the pull-up would conceal my accident. I began my plan with a stop at the bathroom before the start of our first class. Samantha, who was stuck as being one of the first students picked up by the bus, also needed to go to the bathroom, and Desi, who didn’t need to go, hobbled to the bathroom with her crutches in an act of solidarity. I managed to get a decent amount of pee out, which made my odds of surviving until second period was over without an accident rather promising. --- So far so good. Until today, the phrase “relieving yourself” had never quite made sense to me, but as I sat on the toilet following the end of fourth period, relief was a fully accurate description of how I was feeling. It was strange, sitting in the bathroom stall, using the toilet while staring down into the pull-up hanging between my legs. I’d tucked it down into my jeans, since I didn’t even want to chance that someone might get a glimpse of my pull-up through the gap between the wall and the bathroom stall door. The interior padding of the pull-up remained white. I’d not even let a drop of pee escape my bladder so far during the first half of the school day. Had I not been wearing the pull-up, I’d probably have used the hall pass at least twice already, having lost confidence in my bladder’s abilities to make it through to the end of a class. As much as I hated to admit it, I was glad I had chosen to wear the pull-up. Feeling an urgent need to pee during class was much less stressful now that I knew an accident wouldn’t be the end of me. With fourth period over, it was now time for lunch. I grabbed my lunchbox from my locker and then staked out a spot to sit in the back of the cafeteria while Samantha and Desi went through the line to get a school-cooked meal. Mom always packed a lunch for me. She said she didn’t approve of the “garbage” being served in the school cafeteria. Whatever high school Mom had gone to must have served her terrible food for lunch, but the pepperoni pizza and French Fries on Samantha’s tray and the lasagna and salad that Desi was eating appeared far more appetizing than my ham and mayonnaise sandwich with a yogurt cup and a bag of veggie chips on the side. I hated mayonnaise, but Mom never made my sandwiches with butter, like I always requested. We had grabbed a table in our usual spot, a four-seater near the corner window overlooking the school entrance. Desi had one side to herself, so she could keep her injured leg elevated, while Samantha and I sat opposite her. The success I’d had so far with avoiding any accidents had me in an upbeat mood. I wasn’t going to let that get ruined by a lousy meal. Still, Samantha must have noticed how I was picking at my food. “I’ll trade you my fries for the rest of those...” “Veggies chips,” I said, helpfully finishing Samantha’s sentence. “Yeah, whatever those were. I’ll trade you the rest of my fries for them.” What would I do but for the charity of my friends? Samantha had most of her fries remaining, so I gladly turned over the uneaten bag of veggie chips to her. Samantha turned and chucked the bag of veggie chips into a garbage bin about ten feet away, narrating the shot. “She shoots. She scores. Nothing but net.” “Hey! You didn’t need to do that.” “Come on,” Samantha replied. “It’s not like you were going to eat them either.” “Touché.” Behind Desi, I could see Claire was walking toward our section of the cafeteria with a couple of upper-classmen girls I didn’t know. “She’s too good for us freshies,” Samantha mused with an exaggerated eye roll. Claire’s posse had several unused tables to choose from, as this end of the cafeteria usually stayed fairly empty. Instead, they came to a stop at a table a few rows down where Lisa was seated by herself. With a couple of power outlets, it was a prime spot if you had something you needed to charge. It looked like Lisa was keeping her phone charged as she listened to a video on it through her headphones. Claire tapped her hand on the table to get Lisa’s attention. Lisa removed her headphones to respond to Claire, but I couldn’t make out the beginning of the conversation. Lisa pointed at a couple of the empty tables nearby and then to the five extra seats at the circular table she was seated at herself. Claire’s such an entitled bully. Couldn’t she find her own spot to sit? It was obvious she was trying to chase Lisa off. From the tears beginning to form on Lisa’s face, I could tell that the confrontation had upset her. I was able to catch the end of the conversation when Claire raised her voice. “Ahh. Sad baby. Do you miss your mommy and daddy?” Claire rubbed her eyes with her knuckles in a mock cry. That was so low of her. My jaw dropped. “See, I told you she’s a bully” Desi muttered angrily. I didn’t doubt for a second that if Desi hadn’t had the cast on her ankle that she would have marched right over to Claire and put the brat in her place, but with her crutches all she could do was sit at the table and scowl. If I had been in Lisa’s place, I’d have hit Claire right across that smug face, but Lisa just unplugged her phone charger and headphones and tucked them into her backpack. She grabbed her mostly empty tray of food and started to take a step backwards when her foot caught on one of the legs of the table, sending her falling backwards. Lisa landed directly on her bottom with a thump. Her backpack and lunch tray dropped to the floor with a clatter and her dress – blue with white polka dots – flew over her knees. Lisa scrambled to straighten out her dress and then picked up her backpack, leaving the remains of her lunch scattered across the floor. Claire had doubled over as she and her friends had a laugh at Lisa’s expense. Despite the commotion, since we were tucked into the corner of a loud cafeteria no one really had appeared to have paid notice to Lisa’s fall. I’d had more than enough of Claire. I started to step up from the table. Samantha gave me one of her what were you doing looks, but Desi just nodded. Claire and her gang were too busy laughing at Lisa to notice as I walked stiffly right up to Claire. Right as I got up to her she turned and looked at me, surprised. This better be worth the trouble I was going to get into. I slapped her right across her left cheek, taking care to avoid digging my fingernails into her face. She looked at me in stunned silence. Yep, totally worth it. “Find someone else to pick on,” I said. “Actually don’t. Don’t you dare do this to anyone else.” Claire recovered from her shock on to leer at me threateningly. “You’re so fucked when the principal finds out.” “Sure I am, and we’ll tell him how you were bullying Lisa. Who knows? Maybe we could spend detention together.” With the threat volleyed back to her, Claire sulked away with her friends. Evidently, she doesn’t have a thing for mutually assured destruction. I turned to see Lisa squatted down on the floor, doing her best to get her spilled lunch cleaned up. “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “Just leave it. The janitor will take care of it for you once lunch period was over.” Lisa stood up awkwardly, keeping her dress straightened out. It became clear that she didn’t know what to say. I turned to look back at Desi and Samantha. “Leave that weirdo alone,” Samantha mouthed inaudibly at me. Samantha, Desi, and I had been friends since the first day of kindergarten where we met each other while we were lined up outside out classroom. Samantha had resisted any attempt at expanding our friend group ever since. I weighed my options. Getting one-up on Claire by helping out Lisa was worth making Samantha a little uncomfortable. I introduced Lisa to everyone at the table. “This is Samantha, never call her Sam. And this is Desi. Don’t ask her what it’s short for.” Lisa gave a limp wave to them. Desi took her leg off of the extra chair and offered it to Lisa, who eased herself really gently onto the chair. “Are you still hungry?” Desi asked. “I know Sarah would love to offer you the other half of her ham sandwich, but feeding that to a kid might qualify as child abuse.” All of us but Lisa laughed. She just kind of sat there quietly, her eyes moving back and forth between us. Desi finally made another attempt to break the ice. “Your butt OK? You fell hard there?” “I was fine,” Lisa said. “It really didn’t hurt that much.” “Bet it left a bruise though,” Desi said. “Sarah could show you the nasty one she got on her side in cheerleading practice.” I shook my head. No way was I going to lift up my hoodie. I was sure the pull-up was hidden by the jeans, but I wasn’t going to take that chance. “So. You and Claire. Did you both to go Desert View?” Desi asked Lisa. Desi, Samantha, and I had all gone to Arden Grove, one of the two middle schools in town that fed into River Valley High School. Claire had gone to Desert View, and we hadn’t had much of anything to do with her until high school. Thank goodness. Lisa waited a moment, looking like she wanted to do anything but answer that question. “No,” she replied at last. “My parents had homeschooled me. Until...” Her voice trailed off to a garbled whisper, but we understood what had been left unsaid about her parents. That led to another understandable, but uncomfortable, silence. We needed to find something else to talk about. I thought back to yesterday when she had asked to see the Fortnite flyer. “Are you planning on trying out for the Fortnite team?” “Yeah,” Lisa replied with a nod. “So are you... is everyone... trying out as well?” “Just me,” I said. “I’m the only nerd here.” “And somehow we still love her,” Samantha said, laughing. “Only because I do your Algebra homework.” “So. I’ve written two English papers for you this semester,” Samantha shot back. Lisa had both her hands over her mouth in shock. Guess you don’t have any classmates to cheat off of when you’re homeschooled. “Guys,” Desi said, in mock alarm. “Her uncle is a teacher.” “Don’t worry,” I reassured a still-shocked Lisa. “We’d never cheat in Mr. Higgins class.” Lisa still looked she could be on the verge of tears. “Hey,” I said. “You shouldn’t let Claire get the best of you.” “We’ve had nothing but trouble with her,” Desi added. Even Samantha nodded in agreement. A bit of a smile crept onto Lisa’s face. Nothing unifies a group of girls more than having someone to complain about. --- Even in my seventh and final class of the day, I still hadn’t gotten used to the feeling of the pull-up underneath me as I sat my desk. Sure, the padding had remained soft, but it still felt odd sitting on since it didn’t cover my entire bottom. The day had gone well so far. I’d avoided any accidents, and while it had at times been tough to hold it in, I had managed to wait until I got to the toilet every time. Lisa was again seated to the left of me in history class. She hadn’t said anything to us since lunch, but she had also just barely managed to get to class on time. It was still hard to believe that Higgins was Lisa’s uncle. That had to be so strange taking a class from one of your relatives and to have him grade your work. I wonder how the school ended up allowing that. The class got to about half-way through when the urge to pee began coming on, similar to how the rest of the day had been. I checked the clock on the wall. Thirty minutes remained in the period. I was already feeling uncomfortable, but I could make it. I tried to focus on my note taking in order to keep my mind off my bladder. Twenty minutes remaining. The girls hall pass was still hanging by the door. I could grab it now, slip off to the bathroom and have a shot at going an entire day without peeing myself. But it was just twenty minutes left. I’d been able to hold it through every other class so far today. I shrugged off the desire to go to the bathroom. I could hold it in it this time as well. Time never passes slower than when you were holding your bladder and waiting to go to the bathroom. I felt myself beginning to squirm involuntarily, as my body fought to retain control over my bladder. I was so thankful that I was in the back row so that this miniature potty dance wasn’t on display for everyone to see. I felt like if I stopped moving, even for a couple seconds, that I would completely lose control of my bladder. Ten minutes remaining. My goal had been to go the whole day without using a hall-pass, but in the moment of truth, where I might actually wet myself in class, I wanted to chicken out. But I couldn’t. The hall pass that I had declined to grab five minutes ago was no longer there. I had been so focused my bladder that I hadn’t noticed when Lisa had gotten up and taken it. The pain in my bladder eventually reached a breaking point. I could force myself to pee my pants or have the pee be forced out of me. I couldn’t decide which was worse. Then my body made the decision for me. The experience of peeing while sitting down was so much different than doing so standing up. With the pull-up forced directly against my skin, I felt the urine stream down and then pool in the pull-up before being absorbed. It was all I could manage to keep the discomfort I was feeling from showing on my face. It may have just been my imagination, but I could have sworn I could hear myself peeing. But, as far as I could tell, no heads turned in my direction. No one looked up to see what was happening. I took as casual of a glance as I could at my crotch. There was a slightest of bulges, possibly from where the pull-up had swelled up. Not something anyone would notice unless they already knew I was wearing the pull-up. I hadn’t imagined how uncomfortable it would be to be forced to sit in my own urine. I fidgeted a little, but that only made it worse as I could feel the wet pull-up pressing further against my skin. I forced myself to remain completely still, eyes directed forward at Mr. Higgins and the chalkboard. The bell rung and the class came to an end at last. I casually tugged my hoodie down as I eased myself out of the chair, just to make sure that any potential outline of the pull-up was covered as much as it can be. I was so embarrassed. I was sure my face had gone red. I waved a brief goodbye to Samantha and Desi. I just wanted to change out of the wet pull-up as soon as possible. Even after just a couple months at the high school, I had quickly figured out which bathrooms were the ones to use and which were the ones to avoid. The one near the history classroom was one of my least favorites, but I didn’t want to spend any more time wearing a wet pull-up than I had to. With every step I took I had to suppress the urge to waddle as the absorbent material in the pull-up kept pushing my legs apart. It was all I could do to keep from looking like a penguin. Once inside, the bathroom was busier than I would have liked it to be. There were plenty of other girls taking a bathroom break after class, but I had to change, so I didn’t have a choice. I needed to pick the most private spot I could find. The stalls at the far end of the bathroom afforded the most privacy, but they also were typically the ones most likely to be dirty or defaced with graffiti. When I walked into the stall, I could see that my expectations were on point. I sat indecisively on the toilet for several minutes. My emotions were a mess. A mixture of relief, shame, and embarrassment. I was so glad my accident had gone undetected, but still shocked that it had happened in the first place.The way the pull-up rustled every time I touched it seemed way more noticeable than before. I was certain whoever was in the stall next to me would be able to hear everything I was doing. I wanted nothing more than to rip the sides of the pull-up, chuck it in the trash, and then be done with it. Instead, I slowly and quietly slid off my jeans and panties before at last removing the soggy pull-up. I gently placed it into the garbage bin embedded into the side of the stall and then covered the pull-u with toilet paper so that it wouldn’t raise any questions with the next person to use this stall. The one part of my plan I hadn’t thought through well enough was what I was going to do for cheerleading practice. I couldn’t get away with changing before and after practice, as well as showering, without anyone noticing a pull-up. There wasn’t even the slightest chance of that happening. Despite all the bladder problems I’d had the past two days, I’d made it through cheerleading practice both times without any issues. I had no choice but to chance it again today. I pulled up my panties. The cotton against my skin felt so good and unrestrictive. I was glad to be a big kid again, if just for a couple of hours.

Chapter 8: Just My Secret After several moments of silence, I turned, at last, to face myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the closet door. My plain, pale-blue t-shirt hung down to my waist, fully exposing the now-sagging pull-up. I could feel how much heavier it had become. I was a sorry sight. I stood still, not moving a muscle, continuing to stare back at my reflection, which now felt better than looking down directly at the pull-up itself, as if doing so provided some distance from what had happened. What have I done? I’d just peed myself. Like, on purpose. And into a pull-up no less. I felt so gross and disgusting. I was fourteen. What the hell was wrong with me? There could be no turning back at this point. I’d already committed myself. I couldn’t let my wetting accidents be exposed, and this was the only way I could think of to hide them. At last, I lowered my eyes and peeked down at floor. Complete dry. The idea had worked at least. The puddle of urine that should have resulted from peeing myself had instead been absorbed by the pull-up. That was all that mattered right now. At least I knew that if I were to have an accident in public, I would be able to escape without anyone noticing it. The feel of the urine-soaked pull-up against my skin was somehow even more uncomfortable than how I had felt when I had wet my bed last night. I tossed the soaked pull-up in the diaper disposal bin and cleaned myself up with some of Emilia’s wipes. I could hear the sound of Mom bathing Emilia coming from the bathroom. The splashes let me know that I still had time to get myself cleaned up. My panties and jeans lay in a pile on the floor. I could still go back to them. It would only take a few seconds to put them on. I could pretend this hadn’t happened. Pretend that everything was OK. Pretend that I was not a fourteen-year-old girl who somehow keeps on peeing herself. But I couldn’t. Unless this issue stopped as suddenly as it started, I eventually was going to have more accidents. And one those one of those accidents was bound to happen when I was around other people. What then? The sleepover would definitely be a no go. And who at school would want to be friends with someone who pees herself? And Mom? I didn’t want to think about what she would do. Sometimes you must do the thing you don’t want to do because you realize that the alternative is even worse. I rubbed a just tiny amount of baby powder around my legs. I knew I needed to avoid any chaffing, but I didn’t want to go around smelling like a baby, either. I slipped a fresh pull-up on – another Ariel. At least it looked cute on me. I pulled my panties over the pull-up. I didn’t need the panties, and they didn’t do much to conceal the pull-up, but I felt better wearing them. I couldn’t bring myself to part with that vestige of being grown up. That lead to a wry thought about one of Mom’s rules for Emilia – just keep your pull-ups dry for seven days and you can wear panties. I hope my luck with that was better than Emilia’s had been. What to wear to bed? I may as well get my pajamas on now while I have the privacy to change by myself. I didn’t want to risk wearing the shorts I often used at night. They didn’t go up very high on my waist and I was worried they might accidentally expose the pull-up if I were to lean over. Instead, I opted for a pair of pajama pants and a nightgown that nearly came down to my knees. I gave myself a thorough look-over in the mirror. There was no way anyone could tell that I had a pull-up on. If I listened extremely closely, I could pick up the slightest of rustling sounds while I walked, but I was certain no one would hear, or, if they did, connect the dots to realize I was wearing a pull-up. With the bath sounding like it was over, I slipped off to the living room so that Mom could have the room to herself to get Emilia ready for bed. Even though no one was watching me, I tugged at my pajamas and adjusted them all the way down the hallway, worried that they might somehow expose the pull-up. I felt so self-conscious when Mom entered the room and looked at me. I knew she couldn’t see the pull-ups. She had no reason at all to suspect that I was wearing them. Moms might be able to see out of back of their heads, but their superpowers didn’t extend to x-ray vision. I gradually relaxed as it became clear she was none the wiser about my predicament. --- I tossed and turned in bed, trying to find a comfortable position. The feel of the pull-up’s padding between my legs was just enough of a nuisance that I couldn’t get my mind off of it. If the pull-ups weren’t absorbent enough to hold Emilia’s nighttime accidents, I was skeptical they would be any better if I were to wet the bed again. But I wasn’t planning on doing that. I had taken my last drink of water at 7 p.m., three hours before going to bed. When Mom reminded me to go to the toilet, I made sure to do so without complaint. I’d learned my lesson with that last night. Then why was I wearing the pull-up to bed? If I had an accident, it wouldn’t do me much good. And an accident isn’t likely, given all the precautions I was taking. So why not at least let myself wear panties tonight and worry about the pull-ups tomorrow? The reality was that I was scared. Something that had been a certainty in my life – the ability to go to the bathroom when, where and how I wanted – didn’t exist for the moment. The pull-ups could help me take back a semblance of that control. If I can’t control my accidents, at least I can control who sees them. With those last thoughts I drifted off to sleep. --- Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. I woke up abruptly from a dreamless night. At least I’d slept until the alarm clock this time. As I jumped up to hit the snooze button, I realized that I had the bed to myself for the first time in a while. Guess the spanking had been good enough motivation for Emilia to stay in her crib for once. Today’s going to be a good day. I was going to ask Mom about the sleepover. I’d got another cheerleading practice. I’ll practice some for the Fortnite tryout. My sheets were dry. The importance of that last detail didn’t stand out to me immediately as I stared down at my sheets – not a wet spot in sight. Then all the memories from yesterday came back in one big rush as I felt a pit grow in my stomach. Had I really had all those accidents? I couldn’t have possibly wet a pull-up? Did I? Could it all have been just one bad dream? I slid my hand beneath my pajama pants and my heart sank at the obvious evidence. The pull-up was there, but at least it had stayed dry. The momentary relief of not having wet the bed was soon replaced with the dread of the day to come. I was going to wear a pull-up to school today. Having recently done a fresh load of laundry, I had as many choices as I could want for what to wear. I grabbed my largest hoodie, which would help keep the pull-up out of sight, as well as a looser pair of jeans. I didn’t want anything tight that could expose the outline of the pull-up. I normally would go back to my room to dress after a shower, but instead I brought all my clothing with me to the bathroom to avoid any risk of Emilia waking to the sight of me putting on a pull-up. I inspected the pull-up I had worn all night more carefully after removing my pajamas. Dry, just like I had thought after feeling it in bed. No sign of even a tiny accident overnight. No way was I going to wear this for a week. If I could manage to get through today without any issues, I’d go back to panties. I checked myself over again after showering and dressing. The pull-up was invisible under my jeans. Seeing how easily I could hide the pull-up made me feel much better about how the school day was going to go. Emilia was at the edge of her crib, ready to get out, when I returned to the bedroom. She started jumping eagerly when she saw me. “Sarah! Sarah! Guess what?” She looked really proud of herself. What had her in such a good mood? “What was it?” “I’m dry. I didn’t potty all night.” I needed proof before I’d believe that. I’d heard her make that claim a few times when actually she just couldn’t feel that the diaper had been wet. I picked her up and set her down on the changing mat on the bed before pulling back her nightgown. Wow, the diaper was dry. “Ahh. Good job. Now you just need to start staying dry during the day and you’ll be in big girl panties in no time.” With Emilia’s punishment for having too many accidents now over. I grabbed a pull-up with Ariel on it. I knew that’s not the one Emilia wanted, but the thought of us having matching pull-ups while re-starting potty training was a bit amusing. I’d have called the situation ironic, except, as I’d recently learned in AP Lit, coincidences didn’t count. I gave Emilia a pat on her pull-up as I sent her off to get whatever Mom was making for breakfast. With her out of the way, I had one more thing to do to get ready for school. I grabbed three more pull-ups from Emilia’s dresser – two with Minnie Mouse and one with a children’s cartoon character I didn’t know the name of – to tuck at the bottom of the backpack. I had no plans on using the pull-up I had on – accidentally or otherwise – but that didn’t mean I was going to take the risk of not having a backup. The scent of something cooking on the stove began to make its way to the bedroom. Pancakes for breakfast? On a school day? That meant only one thing. Mom must be in a really good mood this morning. I made sure to pour my own glass of orange juice, taking care that Mom didn’t notice as I filled it only halfway this time. I wasn’t interested in having to rush out of AP Lit with a hall pass again. I didn’t want to drink less liquids, just spread them out so that I was not filling my bladder up too much at once. It had been over a day since I’d asked Mom about the sleepover. She seemed to have acquiesced to the idea but had still said she wanted more time to think about it. I was growing impatient. If I didn’t follow up she’d probably wait a week or two before finally remembering to tell me her decision. “So, did you think about the sleepover?” “Yes.” I’d asked the wrong question. Just like Mom to avoid me with a literal answer. “You will let me go on one? Please?” “Yes, but...” I didn’t think I was going to like what she was going to say after that. “... not until you turn fifteen, and I’ll need to speak with your friend’s parents first.” That wasn’t as bad as I feared. My birthday was coming up in a little over a week, and Samantha’s parents were really chill, so I doubted they would give Mom any reason to back out of a sleepover. Plus, my birthday was on a Saturday this year, so the timing will be perfect. Mom had never been big on birthday parties. No relatives to invite over to celebrate. Never any friends over, either. Having anyone over to our house was an absolute, non-negotiable “no.” Any time spent hanging out with my friends was usually done at Samantha’s place. My first sleepover, and my first birthday party with my friends. I could scarcely believe my luck. I gave a squeal and jumped up to hug Mom. “Thank-you. Thank-you.” --- The school bus was late again, leaving me to sit impatiently on the curb. In all the craziness yesterday, I had completely forgotten about the Fortnite team that was forming at school. I pulled out the flyer that I had left in my backpack and looked over the details carefully. There were six spots available on the team. Practices would be in the evening and could be done from home. Games would be every Saturday, though you had to come into school to the computer lab for them. The tryout was scheduled for a week from Saturday – my birthday. I had to figure out a way to get to the school for the tryout. Wasn’t sure how Mom was going to feel about it. She was always pushing me to take part in extracurricular activities, but I was certain this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. I jumped to my feet and tucked the flyer into my backpack as the bus pulled up at last. I grabbed a seat next to Samantha. Sitting down delivered a reminder of what I had been dreading about today. In my excitement about my birthday, the sleepover and the Fortnite tryout, I’d completely forgotten about the pull-up I was wearing. I could feel the padding pressing up against my skin as I sat. I wasn’t uncomfortable, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable either. Was it going to be like this the whole day? “The sleepover was a go,” I said excitedly to Desi and Samantha. “Great, let’s do it this weekend,” Samantha said. “Can’t. We’ve got to wait a week. Mom says I have to be fifteen first.” “Why’s that the magic number?” Desi asked. “No idea. You know how Mom was. Once she gets it in her head that things ought to be a certain way that just ends up being how it was. Anyway, it is only a week from Saturday.” “That will work,” Samantha said. “I’ll need to check with Mom, but she never says no to having friends over.” I filled Desi and Samantha in on the details from yesterday’s cheerleading practice. “What’s the deal with Claire, anyway?” I said. “She tripped me in practice yesterday. I swear she did that on purpose. That bitch.” “Hey! Language,” Desi said. We all laughed. That was a bit rich, coming from her. “Claire really was a bit stuck-up though,” Desi said. “Thinks she was better than everyone else. She always goes into one of the bathroom stalls to dress. Won’t do it around anybody.” I hadn’t noticed, but Claire had also always been in the locker room before me those first two practices. “Anyway,” Desi continued. “I think Claire was looking to take my role, with all the acrobatics. When I got hurt, she didn’t seem all that upset. Just shed a couple of crocodile tears. Bet she was jealous because coach gave that role to you rather than her. I’d keep my eye on her if I were you.” As I walked off the bus, I had to mentally resist the urge to pull my hoodie down to better cover my butt and to tug up my pants. I knew, objectively and certainly, that no one could tell that I was wearing one of my sister’s pull-ups, but I couldn’t help but be self-conscious. It felt as if the eyes of everyone passing by in the hallway were aimed squarely at my crotch or butt, as if at any moment someone would gasp and point out the pull-up. But there were no gasps, or laughs, or pointing fingers. No one paid me a second glance. Why would they? Nothing about my appearance would be any different to their eyes. All they see was the jeans, hoodie and backpack. With all the accidents and the decision to wear a pull-up, it had felt as if my entire world had been turned upside down. In some sense, it had. But otherwise, my world had kept moving on unchanged. Homework. School. Sports practices. Sleepovers. All of it continued moving on, indifferent and unaware of my recent bladder struggles. It came as a relief to realize that the accidents and pull-ups were my secret and not anyone else’s. Now I just needed to keep it that way.

Chapter 7: Drastic Measures I sat on the toilet for what was now the fourth time today at school. I’d had a couple of close calls, but nothing nearly as bad as what had happened in first period. There had at least been time to go to the bathroom between classes without the embarrassment of having to grab a hall pass in front of everyone again. This must be how Emilia feels, needing to go every thirty minutes. There wasn’t any way that Desi and Samantha could have failed to notice all my runs to the bathroom, but if they thought something was off, they hadn’t mentioned it to me yet. After first period, I was much more careful. I limited myself to taking just a handful of sips from the drinking fountain and hadn’t touched the water jug I always carried with me in my backpack. My mouth was beginning to feel dry. I didn’t like the thought of trying to make it through cheerleading practice while being this dehydrated, but I could always wait and drink up right before it starts. I had expected the lack of fluids to cut off any need to go, but if anything, the urge to urinate was stronger, even if I was only making small trickles of pee into the toilet. I squeezed out every last drop that I could before pulling my pants up again. I wasn’t taking any chances in history class. Not with that sadist, Mr. Higgins. Who tells teenagers to pee their pants, anyway? My friends were already in their seats waiting for me in the back row of the class. Lisa was again sitting in the chair to my left, chewing on her nails while busy playing a game on her phone. “Have you been feeling OK?” Samantha asked as I sat down. “That’s like only your fifth bathroom trip today.” “My fourth, but, yeah, I’m doing OK.” She gave me a sly look. I was a bad liar. I knew she didn’t believe me. “I saw this on the wall. Thought it might cheer you up.” Samantha handed me a flyer with the school logo on it. Fortnite? As a new school sports team? No way. “Apparently, it’s a big thing now,” Samantha continued. “Didn’t you hear? There was a kid who’d won like a million bucks or something in a tournament.” I laughed. The winner of that massive tournament had actually come away with three million dollars. And yes, I’d watched the matches live. “Nah, I’m not nearly that good.” “They are going to have girls and boys teams. You know, Title 9 and all. You should give that a shot.” I was a bit skeptical, but wait. If I did make it on the Fortnite team, wouldn’t that require Mom to let me “practice?” That might be worth a shot after all, even if my chances might be slim. “Um, excuse me... could I, maybe, see that flyer?” I turned to see Lisa leaning over, taking a look at the Fortnite flyer I was holding. I guess she’d been eavesdropping on our conversation. “You play?” “Yeah, a little.” With a long-sleeved, flower-patterned dress – I can’t recall ever seeing Lisa wearing pants – she didn’t fit exactly with the image of a stereotypical gamer-girl. Not that that was a look I tried to go for myself. I handed the flyer over to her. Mr. Higgins stepped to the front of the classroom. “Settle down everyone. Settle down. Back row. Cut the chatter. Thank-you.” The class passed by without incident. I was much less stressed out. Going to the bathroom beforehand had been a good idea. Like yesterday, Lisa slipped out in the middle of the class to go the bathroom. Only this time a hall pass was readily available for her. After class, Desi and Samantha tagged along as I walked toward the locker room for cheerleading process. “Lisa was such a weirdo. Imagine getting stuck on a team with her,” Samantha said. Tactful isn’t exactly a word anyone would use to describe Samantha. “What?” I replied. “She’s such a loner. I swear, I hadn’t heard her speak to anyone besides a teacher until today.” “So? Mr. Higgins told me her parents had passed away over the summer. I was sure she had a lot on her mind.” “Did he tell you what happened to them?” Samantha asked, a little too eagerly. “No. Why?” Samantha was always fascinated by crime dramas. Her mother was an assistant county prosecutor after all. Death. Crime. Murder. Mystery. She lived for that kind of stuff. “I overheard Mom mentioning something about them in passing. No details about what happened. Just that it was pretty messed up. Mom wouldn’t even tell me anymore when I asked about it.” That was good for Lisa, because Samantha would then have been blabbing it all over the school. “Exactly. Now didn’t be so mean,” Desi said. Lisa came running up behind us. The flyer waving in her hand. I hoped she hadn’t overheard anything from our conversation. “Here’s the flyer. Sorry, I had forgotten to give it back to you,” Lisa said, handing the paper to me. “You going to try out for the team?” “I think so, if Uncle Higgins lets me.” “That will be fun. Maybe we’ll both get on it together.” --- Coach Addison looked relieved when I entered the locker room. Did she think I’d gotten scared off? While the fall had been a little frightening, I was certainly more scared of what Mom would do were I to quit the team than of what would happen if I were to have another nasty fall. That would be the mother-of-all-spankings. I’d given myself more time to get dressed than yesterday. As I discreetly switched into my cheerleading outfit for the first time, a couple of teammates took a look at the bruise on my hip. They were pretty impressed. It had just begun to fade, but probably wouldn’t fully go away for at least a couple of weeks. The cheerleading outfit wasn’t as bad as I had feared. The fit was just a little loose, but much more discreet than I had thought it would be. No chance of me flashing my panties at anyone. The only person who didn’t seem happy to see me was Claire, the other freshman on the squad. She gave me a frosty hello when I arrived at the locker next to her. What was her deal? I made sure to take several large gulps from my water jug. Having had almost next to nothing to drink since breakfast, the water felt so good. With cheerleading practice being twice as long as any of my classes, I slipped off to the toilet – now for the fifth time at school – before heading out with the team to the field. If anything, the second day of cheerleading practice was worse than the first. My legs ached. My butt ached. Every muscle in my body ached. Even the ones I couldn’t name. Especially the ones I couldn’t name. Life would have been so much better had I just intentionally flunked the tryout, no matter how unhappy that would have made Mom. For this practice, what we were focusing on was practicing our intro for the football game. There was a hoop with streamers strung all a crossed it that we had to jump and somersault through. The first couple of tries were a bit rough, but by the third time through I was getting the hang of it. I was running toward the hoop, ready to tumble through, when my foot got tangled with the leg of one of the girls who was holding it, Claire. I managed to make it through the hoop, but tripped afterword and landed on my face. At least this time I was falling on grass and not a hard surface. “Oh, I’m so, so sorry,” Claire said, reaching down to offer me a hand. The look on her face – a smug smile that she couldn’t quite hide – didn’t make it seem like she was sorry at all. What’s her deal? That was the only mishap at practice, which, I guess, when compared to yesterday wasn’t bad at all. With practice nearly over, I realized that the sensation to pee hadn’t come even a little. There were some porta potties at the edge of the field that I could have gone to in an emergency, but I was glad I hadn’t had to use them. I’d sweat so much during practice that I guess there wasn’t anything left to come out. Back in the locker room, I chugged down some more water. The workout had made me even thirstier. I watched as most of the other girls ran off to the showers. I knew Mom wasn’t going to be happy if I waited to shower at home, but it was going to be probably another day or two until it was safe to show my butt in public, and even without that concern, I just didn’t like the idea of being nude around so many other people. I’d just have to risk whatever punishment Mom gave me. --- “But I was going to shower once I got home.” “No buts, young lady. You do remember what I told you?” Now that was a trick question if there ever was one. Saying you forgot a rule was just as bad as remembering the rule and choosing not to follow it. “Yes,” I answered. There wasn’t any getting out of this. “Tomorrow you’ll shower in the locker room like everyone else, but since you don’t seem to want to keep yourself clean, I’m going to get you cleaned up before dinner. Until then, you were going to stand in the corner until I say you can move.” I was really needing to begin to pee. It felt as if the water I had drunk at the end of practice had already raced down to my bladder, but I couldn’t tell that to Mom. She’d probably just extend the punishment rather than shortening it. I heard Mom walk off toward the bathroom, followed by the sound of the tub filling up with water. I relaxed. Making me take a bath was not near as bad a punishment as getting spanked or grounded. I did my best to refrain from any sort of potty dance. With my face to the corner I couldn’t tell if Mom or Emilia was watching me. At last, the sound of the water rushing out of the faucet stopped and Mom called me into the bathroom. The tub was filled with pink bubbles. Well, as long as it isn’t too hot or cold I can deal with a bubble bath. I started to undress myself when Mom slapped at my wrist to stop me. “No, keep your hands still. You’re not bathing yourself. I am doing it for you.” As Mom put her thumbs under the edge of my shirt, getting ready to pull it off over my head, I realized something I had forgotten. The bruise! How on earth was I going to explain that to her without causing even more trouble? I angled myself away from her slightly so she wouldn’t see the bruise right way. Mom pulled off my shirt and bra, followed by my shorts and underwear and tossed them in a heap in the corner. I shivered. The room was cold without any clothing on. I wanted to get in the water so badly, but I knew better than to do anything before Mom told me to do it. “Get in.” I stepped toward the tub, exposing the bruised side despite my best efforts to keep it out of Mom’s sight. “My goodness! What happened?” I did my best to sidestep the question. “Mom, cheerleading was a sport. It can be dangerous. Remember, you had to sign the safety waiver? Coach checked me out. I was fine.” “Why didn’t you tell me about it?” “I didn’t think it was a big deal. Besides, everyone ends up taking a tumble at one point or another. I just happened to get it out of the way at the start.” Mom looked over the bruise for a couple more seconds, then reached out her hand to feel it. That hurt. The spot was still tender, but I gritted my teeth to avoid making any noises. She didn’t need to know how bad it was. “Next time, you need to tell me right away if you get hurt at all during practice.” “Yes, Mom.” “Get in the water.” I dipped my toe in the water. Warm. Bordering on hot, but not too much that I couldn’t bear it. I sat down in the water, letting the bubbles cover my body. I had thought they were childish at first, but now I was grateful for the amount of privacy the bubbles were providing for me. I could feel my muscles began to relax. It had been a couple of years since my last bath. Why didn’t I do this more often? In my concern about my bruise, I had temporarily forgotten that I had the need to pee. I hoped Mom got over with the bath soon so I could get to the toilet. The rest of the bath was miserable. Mom’s hands roughly sudsed my shoulder-length hair with shampoo, kneading through it painfully. After getting my hair rinsed, she wasn’t any gentler with the shower sponge, scrubbing painful against my skin. I giggled as Mom scrubbed my armpits. I was ticklish in a lot of places, but that was the worst. Then I gasped, I was certain I had just peed myself, but beneath the bubbles and soapy water there wasn’t any way to ascertain what had happened. “What was that noise about?” “Nothing, it just hurt a little, that’s all.” I remained silent and compliant as Mom finished washing me. --- Alone in my room, with dinner and homework both done, I recounted the past day. I’d peed myself three times. Once in my bedroom. Once while I was asleep. And once during the bath. Besides that, I’d had a number of super close calls. Something was seriously wrong with me, but what? I couldn’t tell Mom. Disciplinarian was her only mode. I shuddered to think at what punishments she’d come up with if she’d known about all those accidents. I doubted she would take me to the hospital. The only times I’d ever gone were for school-mandated vaccinations or physicals. Mom had hemmed and hawed at the physical I had to do before being allowed to participate in the cheerleading tryout, but in the end she had relented. Whatever fix Mom was sure to try and implement on her own wouldn’t be pleasant. But I’d got no room for error. One slip up. One pair of wet pants at the wrong place and the wrong time and I was done for. At the rate it was bound to happen sooner rather than later. I’d been super lucky to have avoided any of my accidents being discovered. Mom had just started Emilia’s bath. She would bring a book to read while Emilia splashed, played, and eventually got all washed and scrubbed. That usually took about thirty minutes, certainly not less than twenty. Mom would never leave Emilia alone by herself in the tub, which gave me plenty of time for what I was about to do. I had an idea. A crazy, stupid, embarrassing, reckless idea. But if I could pull it off, it might just buy me time to figure out how to get back to using the toilet like normal. I pulled open the top drawer of Emilia’s dresser with trepidation. With the box that had come in yesterday, it was packed completely with pull-ups and diapers. Did I really want to go through with this? What if someone notices? But peeing my pants would be even more noticeable. If tomorrow was anything like today, I didn’t like my odds of avoiding an accident. I skimmed through the myriad of pull-up designs. May as well take one that Emilia was less likely to want to use. I settled on a classic: Ariel. I wasn’t big on Disney, but “The Little Mermaid” was one of my favorites. I picked up the pull-up and gave the sides a gentle stretch. They pulled apart further than I thought they could and didn’t show any signs of ripping. OK, OK. I took a deep breath. This might actually work. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. The design was actually quite adorable. I wouldn’t mind the look if it were panties. But despite whatever the ads wanted to say, a pull-up was still a diaper, just one that was disguised for big girls. I pulled off my jeans and paused. I didn’t want to go through with this. I really, really didn’t. But I couldn’t see any other choice. All the alternatives were far worse. I removed my panties as well and then slid the pull-up up my legs. The pull-up fit well enough. It felt somewhat restraining, but the sides hadn’t ripped. I was a bit relieved. It was not much different than if I’d had an overly large pad strapped between my legs. However, I didn’t dare turn and look myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to see how it looked on me. Not yet. I moved and walked around the room. Spun around in a circle. Stretched. Did a couple of jumping jacks. The pull-up remained snug around my hips. But there was one more question that needed answering, and I couldn’t risk waiting until I was stuck in class without the ability to go to the bathroom to find out. I had reached the point of desperation that I was willing to try almost anything. Peeing had come so easily the past day that it caught me by surprise that I was having any problems doing so right now. Despite a slight feeling of needing to go, it still took a minute before the first trickle of pee came out and turned into a steady stream. “Just pee yourself, pee yourself, pee yourself.” I could feel the absorbent material in the pull-up swell and expand against my legs. The wetness indicator was long gone, replaced with a yellow hue. Of all the things that had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours this was, by far, the worst. No amount of humiliation could match how I was feeling right now. Not the spanking in front of my sister. Not the fall during the first cheerleading practice. Not wetting the bed for the first time in five years. I was fourteen. I just peed in a pull-up. On purpose. I wanted to cry.

Oops, nice catch. I fixed it.

The mattress should be fine. It's a good thing mom made sure to keep a plastic sheet on the bed, ?

Chapter 6: Bad Dreams I dreamed a distorted conglomeration of the previous days’ events. In history class, Mr. Higgins again denied a student her God-given right to go to the bathroom. But instead of Lisa, this time it was me. Both hall passes were gone as I begged him continuously to leave. I wiggled constantly in my seat as I tried to calm my bladder, but he wouldn’t budge. “Just pee yourself,” he said. “Just pee yourself, pee yourself, pee yourself,” the class chanted back at me. Tears in my eyes, I hobbled toward the door with my knees clenched together. “Oh, come on, just pee yourself,” Lisa shouted after me. Samantha and Desi laughed as I fumbled to get the door open. My dreamed turned me back to my bedroom. Then the urge to pee struck harder, just like it had yesterday evening. I turned to leave my bedroom and get to the toilet, but Emilia was already in the bathroom. I knocked and knocked and she wouldn’t open the door. “Just pee yourself,” Emilia shouted at me through the door. You can just go in your pull-ups. “I’m fourteen. I don’t wear pull-ups.” But I looked down and my pajama shorts had been replaced with my sister’s pull-ups. They somehow fit. Minnie Mouse was grinning up at me. I swear she winked. I went back out to the hallway, but instead of my home I was again back at school in my cheerleading outfit. I was running through the school hallways, but I kept finding that each bathroom door was locked shut. The echoes of my classmates’ chants just wouldn’t stop. “Just pee yourself, pee yourself, pee yourself.” At last, I made it to the locker room, which, surprisingly enough, was unlocked. I raced to the toilets. Relief was in sight. Then the tiles beneath my feet turned into the hands of the girls on my cheerleading squad. Those hands gave way, and I was falling, falling, falling, falling. No end in sight. “Just pee yourself, pee yourself, pee yourself.” I continued falling. The urge to pee was no longer present. I landed awake in my bed. The nightmare over, I looked up groggily at my alarm clock – 6:37 a.m. – couldn’t I have gotten another seven minutes of sleep. I rubbed my eyes open. That was such a strange dream. I felt something heavy against my back. Oh great, Emilia was in bed with me. Mom isn’t going to be pleased. As I tried to move into a more comfortable position in which to spend my last few minutes asleep, I felt a wet and slightly warm sensation. Emilia’s diaper must have leaked all over me. Yuck. Now I had to do laundry as well before getting ready for school. May as well just get on with it. I pulled the cover and sheets back to reveal a much larger wet spot than I had expected to find. I examined the bed. There was no question as to what had just happened. The wet spot was directly beneath me and covered way more of the bed than a diaper leak could possibly have done. I gave Emilia’s bottom a quick pat. Yep, her diaper was still on. That meant only one thing. I had just wet the bed. I had actually wet the bed. What in the world? The urge to pee hadn’t just been a dream. Those dreams about needing to pee were the ones I had always had when I was younger. Back when I had been a bedwetter. How did this happen? I remembered last night. I had chosen not to go to the bathroom before getting into bed. I guess going over five years without any nighttime accidents had made me a bit careless. Well, I wouldn’t be making that mistake again. I gave Emilia a slight nudge. Still asleep, she didn’t stir at all. That gave me some time to figure out how to extricate myself from this predicament. What to do? What to do? I couldn’t dare let Mom find out. If she discovered that I’d wet the bed that would be the perfect excuse for her to forbid me from ever going on a sleepover ever again. Why hadn’t I just gone to the toilet last night like I normally did? I could have avoided all this trouble if I’d just done that. Whatever I did, I wanted to do it quickly. The sensation of the wet clothing sticking against my skin was becoming uncomfortable as it cooled. The fact that Emilia had snuck into bed was my saving grace. I could just tell Mom that Emilia’s diaper had leaked and that would be the end of it. Emilia’s nightgown had gotten wet enough on the outside that it would be a believable excuse. For me, at least. Mom wasn’t going to be happy with Emilia. I didn’t want Emilia to get in trouble, but in this case, it wasn’t going to be avoidable. Normally, if she had crawled into my bed when she had been told not to leave the crib, I might admonish her gently, but I would still put her back in the crib without telling Mom what happened. Of course, that’s what probably lead her to believe she could get away with it again tonight. I wondered what Mom would do when she found out. Probably a spanking. Hopefully, Mom wouldn’t be too hard on her. I gave Emilia a gentle shake until she at last opened her eyes. “Come on sis. We need to get you up. Your diaper leaked. You got me and the bed all wet.” I didn’t bother changing Emilia into a clean diaper and outfit yet. I needed to make sure Mom saw the evidence. “You know what Mom said about staying in your crib.” “But I had a scary dream. Mommy never stopped making me wear diapers.” I hugged Emilia as she began to cry. Potty training was getting on her nerves as much as it had been getting on mine. “Don’t worry. We’ll get you potty trained. But you’ve got to obey Mom as well. We’ll need to go tell her what you did.” “Please don’t tell. Please.” “But Emilia, your diaper leaked. How am I supposed to explain to Mom that my bed was all wet? I’m too old to do that anymore.” Well, until this morning I was, but Emilia didn’t need to know that. She started to walk toward the kitchen with a resigned look on her face. My little sister just couldn’t avoid getting herself in trouble. “Emilia, you know Mom’s rules. Babies don’t walk. They have to crawl.” Emilia got on the floor without protesting, but from her pouting face I could tell she was unhappy with me. Whatever. I’d just saved her from the additional punishment that she would have gotten had she gone walking into the kitchen out of line with Mom’s rules. “All I want for Christmas was...” It’s not even 7 a.m. yet, and that’s what Mom had playing on the speakers as she was cutting up grapefruit for breakfast. All I wanted was for Mom to forgot about Christmas. At least until November. At the sight of Emilia and her wet nightgown, Mom accepted my explanation for the wet bed without any questioning. I hurried to take the sheets to the washing machine before Mom had a chance to realize that the wet spot was far larger than what would have come from a leaky diaper. The morning shower felt better than normal. It felt so good to get clean. Even with the water rushing down on top of me in the shower, I could still make out Emilia’s crying as Mom administered a spanking. I felt bad for Emilia, but at least this would teach her to stay in her crib for a while. I was looking forward to the idea of having a few nights in bed to myself. --- The fact that I had to start my school day with my least favorite class sucked. AP Lit was a bore. The only redeeming factor was that Mrs. Whittleworth was incredibly easygoing and lenient. Not nearly as bad as the horror stories I’d heard about other teachers for advanced placement classes. If only the material were as easy. I sat in the front of the class with Desi and Samantha. We’d spent the whole bus ride to school planning out every detail of the coming sleepover. It was going to be awesome. I’d told them that nothing was set in stone yet, but they assured me that they would be flexible to host whenever Mom was OK with allowing me to come. I was hopeful that I’d have a decision by tonight. The urge to urinate began growing about halfway through the first period. Good grief. I’d only had a glass of orange juice and half a grapefruit for breakfast, nothing different from the usual. It’s OK, only twenty-five more minutes left. No reason I can’t make it that long. The clock at the front of the class moved at an agonizingly slow pace. Tick. Tick. Tick. This was Samantha’s favorite class, so of course she had to insist that we sit in the front row. If I left now to go to the bathroom, everyone would see me. So embarrassing. I wouldn’t have even considered the possibility of a daytime accident had it not been for what had happened yesterday evening, when I had wet myself in my room. I would have just continued to sit in my seat and hold it in, confident that my bladder of steel would hold out until the bell rung. But now there was doubt creeping in. Having experienced a moment where I had lost control, I couldn’t be completely sure it wouldn’t happen again. Wetting myself? In front of my friends and the class? That would be worse, so much worse than the awkwardness of leaving to go to the toilet for a few minutes. Twenty minutes till the class was over. Has it only been five minutes? That isn’t possible. I took a glance back at the hooks next to the door. Both hall passes were still hanging there. Mrs. Whittleworth continued to prattle on about “Crime and Punishment.” Couldn’t I just read for fun? Why did every single detail have to have meaning? Ugh, I bet everyone can see how I’m squirming trying to keep my bladder from exploding. I didn’t have a choice but to get up and go to the bathroom. An accident in school would be the end of me. Desi gave me a quizzical look as I stood up and walked by her desk. I fought the urge to run and walked at a steady pace toward the door. The girl’s hall pass was still there. Thank goodness. Lisa was sitting in her normal seat in the desk closest to the door. She had almost started to get out of her seat. Did she want the hall pass as well? Too bad. I couldn’t help but recall how my dream had interrupted what Mr. Higgins had said to her the other day. “Just pee yourself, just pee yourself, just pee yourself.” No. I’m fourteen. And I’m not going to pee my pants. I stepped out into the hallway and glanced both directions. No one was there. The coast was clear. I did a quiet semi-sprint down the hallway to the bathrooms. Getting up and running had only hastened the urge to go, as if my bladder knew the moment of relief was approaching quickly. The bathroom doors weren’t locked. I pulled down my pants and underwear and collapsed onto the toilet seat in a single motion. It turned out that I hadn’t given myself a moment to spare. A second later and I would have had a wet pair of pants that would be extremely difficult to explain. I didn’t hurry back to the classroom immediately. I mean, if I was going to go to the trouble of taking a hall pass to leave AP Lit, I may as well get the full eight minutes out of it. I was just about to pull the bathroom door open when someone on the other side pushed the door open hard and knocked me onto the floor. Ouch, my butt was still too sore for that. It was Lisa. Mrs. Whittleworth had let her out? Without a hall pass? “Sorry. Sorry,” Lisa said, stepping by me. Lisa hurried into an empty stall without so much as stopping to help me up. I guess when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Chapter 5: Eureka Mom was the only one of us enjoying dinner. I unenthusiastically poked away at the taco casserole. Was Mom really capable of making anything other than casserole? Despite the heavy workout from earlier today, I just wasn’t feeling all that hungry. Mom’s constant babying of Emilia was getting on my already stressed out nerves. I had been potty-trained young enough that I had no recollection of ever wetting myself during the day. I was both relieved that I’d managed to avoid Emilia or Mom noticing and perturbed that it had even happened. “Choo choo! The spoon train was coming through,” Mom cooed at Emilia, who was sitting in a highchair with a bib around her neck. I caught myself just as I was starting to roll my eyes. It’s a spoon, not an airplane, train, or boat. Mom slid a spoonful of casserole into Emilia’s mouth, wiping it against the top of her lip as she pulled the spoon out. Since my three-and-a-half-year-old sister was back in diapers for the time being – most likely through tomorrow night – she wasn’t allowed to do anything herself. I’d already had to endure ten minutes of Mom making cutesy faces and noises as she coaxed Emilia into eating her supper. I didn’t get the point of what Mom was doing. So what if Emilia had a couple of accidents at preschool today? Putting her back in diapers and treating her like a baby was still interrupting the progress we had been making toward potty-training. There had been a couple times in the past few weeks where it felt like we might be on the verge of a breakthrough. Now, I worried that Emilia might become too discouraged to even try. At the beginning of dinner, Emilia had thrown a tantrum about being fed like this, but the threat of another spanking, which would be her second for the day, was now keeping her in line. I watched as Emilia squirmed in her seat. Though I’d changed her less than an hour ago, the diaper was almost certainly wet again, at least a little. Even while potty-training, she’d only been able to last about a half-hour before needing to go. But while in diapers, Emilia was only getting changed about every two hours, which at this point meant she’d remain in the same diaper until her pre-bedtime bath. As Mom laughed while feeding Emilia, she seemed genuinely happy with babying arrangement. With Mom in as good of a mood as I’d seen her be in the past week, now was my time to strike. The revelation that I hadn’t actually deserved the spanking I’d received last night would hopefully be enough to get Mom to do me a favor and allow me to go on my first ever sleepover. “Mr. Higgins handed back our history quiz grades today. I found out I actually had gotten a perfect grade on that quiz I told you about last night. He told me that he’d just made a mistake when he had posted the results online.” “So?” That’s all she had to say? Not, “I’m sorry I gave you the worst spanking of your life.” Not, “What can I do to make it up for you?” This was not getting off to a promising start. “So... I was thinking you might be able to make it up to me by letting me go to a sleepover at Samantha’s place.” Desi would be there as well, but Mom viewed Desi as a bad influence, so having Mom know about that wouldn’t increase my odds of success. “It’s not my fault you told me right away about the grade rather than checking with Mr. Higgins first. You need to be more careful next time. And I’ll let you go to a sleepover when you were old enough to, not any sooner.” “But he’d never posted my grades wrong before. How was I supposed to know it wasn’t right?” “And he’d never given you a ‘C’ before. That should have made you want to double check.” Mom wasn’t budging. Every last one of my arguments was defeated. I had gone into battle with the perfect plan and couldn’t stomach the thought that I would be forced into a retreat. I’m not usually one for thinking quick on my feet, after all, that’s what had gotten me into that mess last night in the first place, but if there ever a time to say that a metaphorical lightbulb had gone off in my head this was it. I’d stumbled across the magic phrase that could make Mom do a complete turnaround of her opinion. If this doesn’t work, I swear I’ll give up at any hope of ever going on a sleepover. “How am I supposed to survive living in a college dorm if I’d never had any experience being away from home?” Bingo. After all these years I’d finally stumbled across the argument that might convince her to let me go to a sleepover. One of my mom’s biggest obsessions was that I be able to go to a good college. That’s why she hounded me about my grades and administered strict discipline when the scores weren’t perfect. I’d just pitted Mom’s hopes for my future against her desire for control and watched as her face transitioned from disapproving scowl to something close to approval. I knew right then that it was only a matter of time before I’d get a sleepover. “Mom, I’d never spent a night away from home ever in my life. I’m going to have to learn how to do it sometime.” “I’ll think about it. I’m glad you’re wanting to prepare for college, but you’re still only a freshman.” I’d hoped for a “Yes,” but that was still preferable to “No.” Well, I’d better be on my best behavior the next couple of days so that she would make the right decision. --- I texted Samantha and Desi the news about the sleepover request – minus the part about yesterday’s spanking. There was so much that we needed to get planned. What snacks to eat. What movies to watch. Maybe we could do each other’s hair and make-up. Their parents gave them much more leeway with that than Mom did. Emilia usually went to bed about two hours before me, which meant I was then kicked out of the bedroom until it was my turn to go to sleep. With Mom currently giving Emilia her bath, judging from the faint splashing noises from the bathroom that I could just make out, that left me with about thirty minutes until I had to relocate to the living room. With all my homework assignments done for the night – and double and triple checked to make sure they were done correctly – I had just enough time for one round of Fortnite. I couldn’t quite figure out how I’d gotten Mom to allow me to play it. She normally was pretty opposed to any kind of violent video games. I signed into my account – dragongirl27972 – and jumped in the queue for a solo round. I’d rather do duo or squads, but finding good people to play with online was hard, and I didn’t want a random teammate to ruin my one game of the evening. I had tried a while back to get to get Desi and Samantha to join in on Fortnite. That had been an utter failure. The game began. 100 players. It’s a fight to the death. Last one standing wins. I preferred to wait as long as I could before jumping off the bus to a potential landing spot. I surveyed my possible destinations: “Craggy Cliffs” or “Steamy Stacks.” The power plant was too enticing to pass up, even if it looked like a lot of players were also gliding that way. It was a risky, but potentially rewarding situation. After I landed, I raced my character from room to room. I wouldn’t survive if I wasn’t able to get some weapons to arm myself. Finally, I found a chest at the bottom of a stairwell and opened it to reveal a couple of rare guns. Bam, bam, bam. Shotgunned in the back. Game over. 87th place. The game wasn’t nearly as easy as the YouTubers I like to watch made it seem like. I’d had a streak of bad luck recently too. Maybe I should just stick to Minecraft. --- Mom carried Emilia, who was just wrapped in a towel, into the bedroom and got her diapered and dressed for bed while I closed out a much more peaceful game of Minecraft. I wish Mom had gotten me a laptop rather than a desktop, so I could continue my games once Emilia was asleep. After placing Emilia in the crib, Mom raised the lowered bar to its normal height. That would prevent Emilia from making any of her normal nighttime excursions. At least I’ll be able to sleep soundly tonight without her trying to crawl into my bed. Mom began to read Emilia a bedtime story – something about a hungry caterpillar – when I got up from my desk and started to make my way to the living room. As I stepped into the hallway, I felt another sudden urge come from my bladder. The pressure to go wasn’t nearly as strong as when I’d wet my pants before dinner, but still was urgent enough that I rushed to the toilet as fast as I could. Normally, I’d only feel this way if I’d skipped going to the bathroom at school altogether. This was so strange. I usually only go to the bathroom a couple of times a day, but this was the third time I’d had to go already since coming home from school, and I still had two hours until bedtime. The trickle that I managed to pee out didn’t seem to match the intensity of the feeling that I had to go. I waited in the living room until Mom had finished wrapping up with Emilia’s bedtime routine. I needed to find a way to get my sister potty-trained. I explained to Mom what I’d learned in the potty-training research I’d done before dinner. Mom didn’t seem too interested in the idea of laxatives. “There’s no excuse for a three-year-old not to be potty-trained. She’s just being lazy. Your sister needs the right motivation. I hope this punishment reminds her that wearing diapers and being a baby isn’t as fun as being a big girl.” I recalled how upset Emilia gets when she had an accident. I didn’t think she wasn’t trying hard to potty-train. “Did I give you any trouble during potty-training?” “Not a bit. We went to the store, picked out your big girl panties, and, besides from at night, you never had a single accident since.” If only she knew. I untangled some headphones I’d pulled from my pocket and turned on Spotify. I had no interest in any of the soap operas that Mom liked to watch once Emilia was asleep. I read a book for about two hours, slipping away in the middle once again to go to the bathroom. I’d like to stay up later, but if it was time for Mom to go to bed, then it was time for me to do so as well. “Make sure to go to the toilet before you get in bed,” Mom shouted behind me as I left the living room. What was it, like five years since I had last wet the bed? With my back toward her, I safely rolled my eyes. I might have stopped to use the bathroom if Mom hadn’t reminded me to. Going to the toilet last thing before bed was a well-ingrained habit. But having Mom remind me to go to the toilet – Hello, I’m fourteen – rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t feel the need to go at the moment anyway, so I bypassed the bathroom. I changed into my pajamas – a pair a shorts and a tank-top – in the dark with the help of a nightlight so as not to wake Emilia and climbed into bed. I laid down on my stomach as my butt was still too sore to allow me to sleep on my back and drifted off to sleep, hopeful that tomorrow’s cheerleading practice would go better than the first one.

Yeah, that's a pet peeve of mine as well. I'm not a big fan of scenes where parents overtly show off in public the fact that their child is wearing diapers/pull-ups just for the sake of humiliating them.

That wouldn't be an unreasonable conclusion.

Chapter 4: Accidents I entered the locker room with a queasy feeling in my stomach. I had rarely felt so out of place in my life. At exactly five feet and ninety-four pounds, I was small, even for my age. During the physical exam I had taken as a requirement to be allowed to try-out for the cheerleading team, the doctor had told me that I was in about the 25th percentile. I’m not quite sure how the knowledge that a quarter of the girls my age were smaller than me was supposed to cheer me up. It sure didn’t feel that way when I looked at the rest of the freshman class at River Valley High School. Visits to the doctor were a rarity for me. I stood awkwardly inside the entrance to the locker room, just taking in the bustle of girls changing from school to workout clothes. Communal dressing, just another item to add to the list of why I was going to hate cheerleading. An upper-classman I hadn’t seen before came running up to greet me. “You’re Sarah, right?” I nodded affirmatively. “I’m Sasha, one of the team captains. I’m sorry I missed your try-out the other day. Heard you were splendid, though. Coach Addison was running late, so she asked me to give you a quick tour.” Sasha led me on a brief lap around the cheerleading section of the locker room and introduced me to the other eighteen members of the team. She pointed me to my locker, which was next to Claire, the only other freshman on the squad. We began to say “hi,” but were interrupted. “Come on, girls. Cut the chitchat. We need to be in the gym in three minutes. It’s an indoor practice today because the field was taken,” Sasha yelled. I stripped off my jeans and hoodie and changed into shorts and a t-shirt, careful to keep my back to the locker. I didn’t care to show off the bruises that I imagined must still be emblazoned on my bottom from yesterday’s spanking. Just like any sports team, everyone on the cheerleading squad had their own role to play. In this case, my smaller stature had been a huge benefit when trying out for the team. After all, it’s a lot easier to have someone stand at the top of a human pyramid or be tossed in the air if they don’t happen to weigh a lot. We spread out in a big circle in the middle of the gym as the captains led the team through a series of stretches. OK, this hurts. I’m definitely out of shape, no matter what Desi says. We spent most of the afternoon learning some new cheers for the upcoming football game – there goes more of my evening free time. But the end of the practice was the part that I had been dreading more than anything else.­ “Don’t worry about it,” Sasha said. “You’ve got the easy part. Just need to hold still as we toss you in the air and then gravity does the rest.” “Have you... Have you ever dropped anyone before?” Sasha rolled her eyes. “You think they’d make me captain if I was in the habit of dropping people?” “Anything else I need to know?” “Just make sure to waive to the crowd while you’re in the air and fall with your back to the ground so that we can catch you.” This was utterly terrifying, but I’d come too far to back down now. A group of six teammates, including Sasha gathered around to lift me up. “One. Two. Three.” I let out a slight scream as I was tossed up into the air, but I did make sure to wave my pompoms before falling back into their arms. The adrenaline rush swept away all of my fear. That was exciting. Never mind earlier, I might actually like cheerleading after all. We practiced the routine several more times without a hitch. I was really getting into the swing of it. “OK, girls. Once more and we can call it good for the day,” Addison said, taking a seat in the bleachers in front of us. At the count of three, they flung me into the air one last time. I gave an enthusiastic wave to the imaginary crowd in the bleachers before leaning back to fall into what I thought would be my teammates’ embrace. I felt myself slip through their arms and twist before landing on my side on the hardwood floor. The pain that shot through my body was unlike anything I had felt before. I lay on the ground gasping for breath. It hurt too much to even scream. Coach Addison was by my side almost instantaneously, her hand feeling up and down the side where I had fallen. I guess she was checking for broken bones. “Relax, she’s OK,” Addison said. “She’d be in a lot more pain if she’d actually broken any bones. Sasha, grab some ice wraps from the freezer.” Was it possible to be in more pain than this? This was bad enough as it was. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. Not even last night’s spanking – the worst I’d ever gotten – was as bad as what I was feeling right now. A couple of the girls grabbed me under my shoulders and helped me hobble to the bleachers. I spent the remainder of the practice holding an ice pack firmly against my hip. After giving a stern lecture to the girls who had dropped me, Coach Addison made them run a bunch of sprints back and forth across the gym. The swelling on my hip began to go down, but I was still left with an ugly, purplish bruise. Back in the locker room, Coach Addison approached me as I was gingerly changing out of my workout clothes. “Sorry you had such a rough first day with that accident. How’s your hip holding up?” “A lot better after I iced it.” “I almost forgot, but this was for you,” Addison said, holding out a cheerleading uniform in a plastic wrap. I gave the uniform a quizzical look. Remind me again about how wearing this was supposed to increase my odds of getting into a good college? Coach must have misread the expression on my face. “I know. but it’s the smallest size we’ve got,” she said. “Don’t worry. Desi fit into that same size just fine and you and she have about the same build. It’s typical to move up a couple sizes between your freshman and senior years.” While the pain in my hip had subsided for the most part, my body still felt a bit off since the fall, though I couldn’t pinpoint what the issue was as I carefully walked out the locker room door. --- Mom was already waiting for me in the parking lot when I stepped outside. I tossed my backpack and gym bag in the trunk before sitting down in the passenger seat. “How was practice?” “Fine.” I decided not to mention the fall I had taken. No need to give Mom something else to worry about. The note about the error in the history quiz grade was something I was going to save for a more opportune moment. I couldn’t dare waste my one golden shot at being allowed to have a sleepover. “Drink that,” Mom said, pointing to a thermos in the cup tray that was filled with a thick, green liquid. What was Mom trying to feed me, pond scum? Mom glared at me after seeing my look of disgust. “It’s a kale smoothie. Don’t give me that face. It’s got banana, pineapple and lime in it too. Make sure you finish it before we get home.” Mom’s health-nut phase hadn’t been such a big deal when it had been focused on making us eat veggies or avoid junk food, but this was just too much. I had just about fifteen minutes until we were back home, so picking up the cup with a bit of trepidation, I slowly raised the glass to my lips. Hmm. Not as bad as I thought. Sweet, with just a little of a bitter aftertaste. I gradually finished the smoothie in tiny sips. I didn’t want to give Mom the satisfaction of knowing that she was right about the taste. Who knows what other crazy ideas she might come up with? Emilia was strapped into a car-seat in the middle of the back row. Her hair was in pigtails with rainbow beads at the end. She was wearing denim overalls, but the watch on her arm was missing. That wasn’t her typical outfit. Mom was discreet about pull-ups when we were out and about. She didn’t care to show the whole world that a daughter that old still wasn’t toilet trained, but usually the clothing was something that could be removed with ease in case the need to go to the bathroom arose. Emilia’s eyes were a bit puffy as well. Guess I wasn’t the only one who had a bad day. “Emilia had a couple of accidents at daycare, so we’re going to take a rest from potty training for a bit,” Mom said nonchalantly. Drat. Emilia had been making so much progress up until yesterday. And even then, those accidents had really been my fault. Being back in diapers meant Emilia wasn’t allowed to use the toilet at all, so I might be stuck with a messy diaper or two to change before she was back in pull-ups. I tried to give Emilia a sympathetic look. What in the world was going wrong with her? I finished the smoothie well in advance before we pulled into the driveway. I wasn’t taking any chances with getting on Mom’s bad side. I needed to rinse my mouth out as well, because while the smoothie hadn’t tasted too bad while I was drinking it, as soon as it was finished, a nasty aftertaste had clung to my mouth and wouldn’t go away. A couple of Amazon packages along with a large cardboard box of pull-ups were sitting on the front porch. Mom preferred to do almost all her shopping online. “Sarah, take Emilia’s pull-ups to your room and unpack them. Also, you need to hop in the shower before you do homework. You really should have done that in the locker room after practice.” I could get used to communal dressing, but I really was going to draw the line at communal showers. No way I was going to do that. But I would save that battle with Mom for another day. I grabbed the box of pull-ups. Size 4T-5T, 38-50 pounds. Emilia was on the small end of that range. I was familiar with the marketing jingle, “I’m a big kid now,” but even then, the size range was a bit ridiculous. I was skinny enough that they probably would fit me if I ever cared to try. Thankfully, the Minnie Mouse designs were still in vogue. It wouldn’t be good if Emilia were to throw a fit at not being able to have them. --- After getting cleaned up, I marched into the living room, all prepared to give the speech I had practiced in the shower about how I had been wrongfully punished and that Mom should make it up to me by allowing me to go to a sleepover. Mom was sitting on the couch, cradling Emilia’s head in her lap. She was holding a bottle with a green liquid – I could only assume it was the kale smoothie – up to Emilia’s mouth. My sister looked miserable. I don’t blame her. Being stuck in diapers was bad enough, but that also meant that Mom was going to completely baby her until tomorrow night. Emilia wouldn’t be allowed to do anything for herself, so no feeding, dressing or using the potty while she was at home. I took a deep breath to begin my speech, but Mom got the first word. “Sarah, there you were. It’s about time. You shouldn’t be so wasteful with those long showers. Can you finish feeding Sarah and then get her changed? I’d got to get started on dinner.” That had to be one of Mom’s favorite excuses for handing Emilia off to me. I took Mom’s place on the couch. Only about a third of the bottle was remaining. “I’m not thirsty,” Emilia said. “I don’t wanna. Yucky.” I looked over my shoulder. Mom was already out of sight and out of hearing range in the kitchen. I twisted off the lid of the bottle and chugged the remaining smoothie in a single gulp. I replaced the empty bottle in Emilia’s mouth with a pacifier. Toddler Emilia just used a pacifier at night, but baby Emilia had to have it in all the time. I could feel something squish when I put my hand underneath Emilia’s bottom to carry her to the bedroom. No wonder Mom wanted to hand her off to me. I did my best to clean up the messy diaper quickly. Thank goodness it hadn’t been a blowout. With the dirty diaper safely in the bin, I picked Emilia up, settled her on my lap, and gave her a big hug. “I’m sorry Mom had to put you back in diapers, sis.” “I hate diapers.” I squeezed Emilia even tighter as I felt her tears roll onto my shoulder. Taking a fresh wipe, I cleared the tears off her face. “You just make it through tomorrow, and we’ll work extra hard on getting you potty trained after that. You can do it. I believe in you.” Once Emilia had crawled back to the living room – babies aren’t allowed to walk – I moved to my desk, opened Chrome and went to Google. We’d tried all the traditional potty-training methods, so maybe it was time to do something a little different. I wonder what I can find. I typed “3-year-old can’t potty train” into the search bar and began going through the results – mostly links to parenting forums – one by one I clicked on the links and searched through the suggestions. I sighed. It was just more of the same. Reward charts. Potty training schedules. Laxatives. Wait, laxatives, what were those? Another Google search gave me an answer. Well, this would be an interesting conversation with Mom if she were to check my internet history. A lot of the forum members seemed adamant that their child’s potty-training problem was the result of backed-up bowels. I looked at the potty-training chart for the past month. Sure enough, Emilia was only making two or three bowel movements a week. I felt bad at the idea of making her take laxatives, that was bound to be a messy experience, but if it resulted in getting her fully potty-trained it would be so worth it. I was busy with my research when I was struck with an immediate burning urge to pee. I stood up instinctively and made it halfway to the bedroom door before I began to lose control. The sudden sensation of the warm urine spreading through my panties and jeans was so foreign to me. I squeezed my legs together as tight as I could. I got the flow to come to a stop after a couple seconds, but not before the damage had already been done. A large wet spot was still gradually expanding around my crotch, and a small puddle had formed on the floor beneath my legs. I stripped off my jeans and panties, using them to soak up the puddle on the floor and wipe myself down before burying them in my hamper. Never before had I been so grateful that Mom made me do my own laundry. I grabbed a pair of jeans that most closely resembled the ones I had wet – hopefully Mom wouldn’t notice that change – and got cleaned up before Mom or Emilia had a chance to enter the room. I peed myself. Like. I actually just peed my pants. My brain was working in overdrive trying to process what had just happened. My mind was still aflutter as I finished doing my business on the toilet. What in the world was going on? I had never had any trouble holding my bladder. My friends all joked that I must have a bladder of steel, yet the urge to pee had come on so suddenly and strongly that I hadn’t been able to do anything about it. As I hauled my hamper off to the living room, I made sure Mom saw what I was up to. Doing laundry unprompted couldn’t hurt in my attempts to get her into a good mood. I still needed to ask her about the sleepover later tonight, after all. I emptied out the contents of the hamper into the washing machine, added a little more detergent than usual – just in case – and turned it all the way up to the deep clean setting. I stayed to watch as the machine filled with water, soaking all the clothes and removing any last evidence of the accident.

Chapter 3: New Leverage “Sarah, Sarah, wake up.” I never needed an alarm clock in the morning. Being the responsible student that I was, my clock was set to loudly and rudely wake me up at 6:45 a.m. every school morning so that I could get ready in time before the bus left. But rather than waking to the buzz, buzz, buzz of the alarm, my morning usually began with Emilia tugging at my blanket. I rolled over to my side and took a peek at the alarm clock – 4:37 a.m. Even this was earlier than usual for her. “Sweetie,” I yawned. “It’s much too early. Go back to bed.” I couldn’t wait until she was old enough to understand how to use a clock. I tugged the covers back over my head and rolled over to the side facing the wall. I got a few moments of reprieve until I felt Emilia tugging at my blankets a bit harder than before. Life had been so much better before we had lowered one of the sides of her crib, which let Emilia get out whenever she pleased. “Sarah, can you change me? I’m wet. Please.” I really didn’t want to get out of bed, but at least she was remembering her manners this morning. Emilia still wet the bed every night, and, if she took after me, she’d continue doing so for another five or six years. I knew she wouldn’t stop bothering me unless I got her cleaned up. I begrudgingly slipped out of bed and winced as I turned our bedroom light on. Much too bright for this early in the morning. I straightened out my covers to make room for the changing mat and Emilia crawled up onto it. I pulled her pink and blue Elsa nightgown up above her waist to reveal a soggy diaper. We still used diapers at night for her because the potty-training pull-ups would leak, and she wasn’t big enough yet to fit into the nighttime pull-ups that I had once worn as a bedwetter myself. I made quick work of the diaper change. I was tired and wanted nothing more than to get back into bed. But when I was done changing Emilia, she didn’t go back to her crib. “Please,” she said. “Can I sleep with you?” That’s another bad habit she’s been getting into. I swear, it’s been nearly every other night when I’d woken up to find her in my bed cuddling next to me unannounced. I give Emilia a stern look, hoping to dissuade her. “But please. I had a scary dream.” I relent. I’d get back to sleep quicker if I just let Emilia into my bed than if I spent the next ten minutes arguing with her. And if we make too much noise, we’d wake up Mom and that was just asking for trouble. I gave Emilia a clean pacifier, lifted up the covers, and let her crawl in. I slipped into bed and cuddled behind her. I was asleep again before I knew it. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Ahh. Really. I slammed my hand against the alarm clock to put it into snooze. While I was wide-eyed and awake, Emilia was still asleep in bed. The pacifier wasn’t in her mouth anymore. It must have fallen behind the bed. I reached under Emilia’s nightgown to feel her diaper. Wet again. Not much, but still, how much could one kid pee at night anyway? I decided to let her sleep some more, while I hopped in the shower. Emilia looked to still be fast asleep when I returned to the bedroom. Good. I always preferred dressing while she was asleep. Now, what to wear, what to wear. My options were pretty limited, considering the large stack of laundry that I had put off doing. Mom always makes me do my own laundry, and I’ll admit that I’d been procrastinating on it. I’m not much of a girly girl. Jeans paired with a hoodie or a t-shirt were my normal style. I grabbed an unused Fortnite hoodie from a closet hanger and checked the jeans I had worn yesterday. No stains, so I could get away with wearing them again. That was another thing I was dreading about cheer-leading. The outfit for that – a mini-skirt and short-cut top – was just not my style. I didn’t care for the idea of accidentally exposing my panties to anyone. Well, I’d just have to see how that new outfit looks on me later today. Coach said she’d have a uniform all set to go after school. I packed my gym bag with a pair of shorts and a t-shirt for practice, and made a mental note to make sure to grab a water bottle from the kitchen before getting on the bus. Unlike most of the students in my class, I also had the added responsibility of getting my sister ready for the day as well. Thankfully, that didn’t mean doing much other than changing Emilia into a pull-up and t-shirt and then ushering her into the kitchen for breakfast. Mom would take care of getting Emilia dressed for preschool and then drop her off on her way in to work. I gave Emilia a little nudge on her shoulder. She wiggled a little too much. That brat was just pretending to be asleep. “If you don’t get up, the tickle monster was going to get you.” That got her attention. Emilia jolted up. “What pull-ups do you want to wear today?” I asked her. “Minnie Mouse!” I should have known. That’s been her answer every morning for the past several days. I sifted through the pull-up drawer. Good, there were still a couple of Minnie Mouse pull-ups left. I grabbed yet another Minnie Mouse t-shirt from the closet to go with it. I couldn’t wait for the Minnie Mouse phase to be over. --- I had been sitting on the curb for about five minutes before the school bus arrived. Typical. The only time the bus was on time was when I was running late. Desi and Samantha were sitting in opposite seats in the row behind the driver. Normally, we would choose something closer to the back, but with Desi needing crutches cause of the cast on her ankle, that was the best location for us. Samantha was taking up an entire seat to herself, with a bunch of her Algebra 1 homework spread out next to her. She had headphones in both ears and didn’t appear to notice that the bus had arrived at my stop. I took a look at the assignment Samantha was working on. She was ever the procrastinator. Mom had made me do those same problems over the weekend. Desi re-adjusted her crutches to make room on her seat for me. Sitting down on the bus seat wasn’t as bad as the dinner table, but it was a close second. I must have made a weird face when I sat down, because Desi certainly took notice. “Are you not feeling well?” she asked. “I think I’d just got some sore muscles from the try-out yesterday.” No way was I going to bring up that Mom had given me a spanking. I don’t know why, but it just felt wrong talking about Mom’s punishments with someone outside of my family. It wasn’t exactly as if Mom went around bragging about how she spanked me. Desi and Samantha knowing about it would just add to the humiliation. Desi chuckled. “Yeah, I knew what you mean. My ass was so damn sore that first week. It hurt like a fucking bitch until I got in shape,” she said. Yeah, Mom didn’t like that I’m friends with Desi. Thinks she was a bad influence on me. Of course, overhearing Desi drop an f-bomb the only time they met might have had something to do about it, especially since we had only been in third grade at the time. I sighed. I’d had enough of potty mouths and potty training. “I feel so out of shape. The try-out left me exhausted.” “Don’t worry. It gets easier. Coach just makes the try-outs harder than regular practices, so she knows that you’ve got what it takes to be on the squad.” That was Desi for you, a bit crude on the outside, but beneath the rough edges she was compassionate and understanding. “Samantha and I were trying to plan another sleepover soon. You’re always welcome to come.” I appreciated that she always tries to invite me. When I was younger, the thought of a sleepover had been terrifying. No way was I going to risk letting my best friends find out that I wet the bed. So when Mom told other parents that she just didn’t allow sleepovers as my age, I didn’t throw a fuss at all. I had been so excited when the nighttime accidents had stopped. In my mind, that was all that had been holding me back from being able to spend a night at a friend’s house. But Mom had kept on adding excuses for why I wasn’t allowed to, and despite all my efforts, she hadn’t relented. “Desi, you know Mom doesn’t let me go to sleepovers. She’ll never change her mind about it.” “You’ll be turning fifteen in what, a couple of weeks or so?” “Yeah.” “Look, I knew your Mom was an overprotective bitch and all, but you’re still turning fifteen. That’s old enough to start driving a car. There’s no reason you can’t spend the night at Samantha’s house.” “OK, OK, I’ll ask Mom about the sleepover, but don’t be surprised if she says no.” Samantha finally noticed that I was sitting on the bus. Only took her like five minutes. “Morning,” Samantha said. “You’ve finished the Algebra assignment, right? Can I check my answers against yours to see how I did?” I knew that “check” was just a euphemism for “let me copy all your answers because I’m terrible at math,” but I owed her a favor. Samantha and Desi were the only reason I’d managed to get through my AP Lit class without any grades less than an “A” so far this semester. I grabbed the assignment from my backpack and discreetly passed it to her. Desi, Samantha, and I had all managed to get the exact same class schedule. I didn’t know how we would have survived the first semester of high school otherwise. We made the perfect study group as our different academic strengths balanced each other out. Bump. I winced as the bus hit a rough patch of pavement, causing the pain in my butt to flair up again. This was going to be a long day. --- I did everything I could to keep from fidgeting during our last class of the day. My butt had just gotten more and more sore throughout the day, no matter what positions I contorted myself into. While Mr. Higgins was droning on about the Cold War, my mind kept trying to drift off into daydream land, but after getting a “C” on that last quiz, I was determined to make sure I was taking copious notes. The one thing you didn’t do in Mr. Higgins’ class was interrupt him. He didn’t do questions except for when he asked if anyone had questions to ask, so it was a bit of a surprise when a girl sitting to my left in the back row – I think her name was Liz, or maybe Lisa – raised her hand. Mr. Higgins ignored it and continued talking. The girl began to wave her hand, at first just a little, but then more urgently. “Put your hand down. You can save your question for later, Ms. Erickson,” Mr. Higgins snapped. “But can you please excuse me from the class,” the girl interjected. “I need to go to the bathroom. Like really bad.” That drew a couple of laughs from the class, including from me. I mean, this was high school. Shouldn’t you be potty trained enough to be able to holder your bladder for forty-five minutes? “Then you should have gone during the break between periods,” Mr. Higgins said. “You can go leave when the pass was returned.” Our high school had strict rules about when you could leave during a class. Every classroom had two hall passes – one for the guys and one for the girls – and you were allowed to be gone for no more than eight minutes -- enough time to get to the bathroom, do your business quick, and get back. If one of the hall passes was already in use, you just had to wait your turn. I’d developed a bladder of steel ever since my bedwetting had ended. I could go the entire school day without stepping foot in the bathroom if I really needed to. As much as I knew I should be paying attention to the lecture, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the girl with the small bladder, making quick glances to my left as discreetly as I could. She was in my AP Lit class as well, but we’d never spoken. She seemed to keep to herself. The few times I’d seen her in the massive cafeteria she had been seated alone. After about five minutes of squirming, she froze still, and then after another fifteen seconds moved just a little more to re-adjust how she was sitting. As soon as the pass was returned, she grabbed it and walked slowly out of the room. Toward the end of the class, Mr. Higgins went row to row, handing back assignments he had graded. I already knew what my grade was, but I needed to know what questions I had missed. I still couldn’t believe I had gotten enough wrong to get a “C.” I eagerly reached for the quiz sheet when he handed it back to me. 10/10. I was shocked. The school website had said I’d missed three questions. I scanned over the assignment thoroughly. Yep, that was my and handwriting. My name was on the top, and those were the answers I knew I had put down. Desi leaned over to look at my quiz. “What were you shocked about, miss smarty pants? You got an ‘A.’ Like always.” I couldn’t suppress a grin. “They must have entered in the grades wrong online. Mom gave me hell cause she thought I had gotten a ‘C.’” The bell rang, calling an end to the class period. Just as I was about to head out the door, I realized there was one more thing that I needed. Mom would want additional proof that the online grade had been correct. Maybe I could get a note from Mr. Higgins. As I walked toward his desk at the front of the classroom. I saw that the girl who had been in such a rush to get to the bathroom was at his desk, returning the hall pass. As I got closer, I overheard the end of their conversation. “Why couldn’t you have just let me go to the bathroom when I needed to?” the girl asked Mr. Higgins. “Lisa, I can’t treat you differently than any of my other students. This was high school. You can wait like anyone else.” Mr. Higgins paused. “Or you could have peed yourself.” Gross. I couldn’t believe Mr. Higgins would suggest something like that. That would be such a mess to clean up. Not to mention unsanitary. “But I d...,” Lisa began to say, before turning to see me standing behind her. “I’d got to go,” Lisa stammered before making a beeline for the door. Well, that was awkward. I stood in front of the history teacher’s desk, not sure of what to say. He broke the ice first. “Sorry about my niece,” Mr. Higgins said. “She’s had a rough time of things lately. She moved in with my wife and I this summer after her parents passed away.” Now that was a mood killer. Mr. Higgins apologized emphatically when I showed him that my online grades had gotten messed up. He even wrote up a quick note for my mom without asking any other questions. I made sure the quiz and Mr. Higgins’ note were securely tucked away in my backpack. I couldn’t wait to show them to Mom. I now had an idea about how I might be able to convince her to let me have a sleepover. I just had to survive my first cheerleading practice.

Chapter 2: Guilty Conscience The downside to making Emilia pee herself was that I was the one stuck changing her wet pull-up. Mom hated changing diapers or pull-ups. So guess who’s gotten to do that a couple thousand times over the past several years? Yes, yours truly. In truth, I didn’t mind it too much. A wet pull-up isn’t that big of a deal to change, and, thankfully, going number two in the toilet was the one part of potty training that Emilia had nearly managed to master. Emilia cried all the way to the bedroom. She wanted to be a big girl so badly. During this latest attempt at potty training, her failure to learn how to properly use the toilet hasn’t been due to a lack of trying. She even managed to reach the big girl panties stage twice, only to be relegated back to pull-ups as the result of accidents. Our bedroom was barely big enough for one person, let alone two. The only furniture was my bed, her crib, a pair of dressers, and a tiny desk just big enough for my computer monitor. In our old house, we all had our separate rooms with enough space for changing tables and playpens. As I sifted through the drawer looking at Emilia’s collection of pull-ups and diapers, the one thing that struck me about her pull-ups was that they were so darn adorable with all the cute cartoon characters on them: Minnie Mouse, Elsa, Ariel, and every other Disney princess imaginable. My unpaid babysitter duties extended beyond just changing diapers and potty training. Having good manners was another rule Mom heavily enforced, and, again, the responsibility of teaching that to Emilia fell to me. “Please” and “thank-you” were the focus right now, but getting her to do either still required quite a bit of prompting. After grabbing a fresh pull-up from the drawer, I turned back around to face Emilia. “And what do you need to tell me now?” I asked. “I need my pull-up changed,” she whined. I sighed. Emilia really did know better. Even if she was only three. “And what do you say when you need your pull-up changed?” “Can you change my pull-up?” “Sis, you’re forgetting the magic word.” “Please,” she said finally. With that, I rolled out a changing mat onto my bed and plopped Emilia onto it. I was glad we were past her terrible twos when diaper changes had been an absolute nightmare. She laid on the bed complacently – I suppose it did feel good to be changed into a dry pull-up – lifting her legs up when I needed to wipe and not struggling even a little as I replaced her wet pull-up with a fresh one, this time with a picture of Ariel on the front. I placed the wet pull-up in the diaper bin and then made a mark on the potty-training calendar to note that she’d had an accident. I gave Emilia a hug as I set her back down on the floor. “And what do you say now?” I asked Emilia. “Thank-you.” “Thank-you for what?” “Thank-you for changing my pull-up.” You’re welcome, but you need to keep Ariel dry for the rest of today or it’s back to diapers, you understand?" Emilia nodded back at me solemnly. “I will. I will,” she said. --- Dinner, even if it was just meatball casserole, had its own sets of rules. All the silverware had to be in exactly the right place. No eating before we had a chance to bow our heads and say grace. No spilling any food. No talking with your mouth full. And, most importantly, you had to eat every last bite of food that Mom put on your plate. You weren’t leaving the table until you were completely done. I gingerly lowered myself into a chair at the dinner table. Of course, it had to be a wood chair. My butt hurt so much. I had no idea how I was going to get through school tomorrow, if this was how it was going to feel. Mom placed Emilia in a highchair next to herself. Emilia really was too old for it, but Mom was determined that if Emilia wasn’t wearing panties like a big girl, then she wouldn’t be treated like a big girl either. That meant Emilia also was wearing a bib and had to drink out of a sippy cup. I was apprehensive as I held up my plate for Mom to scoop out a serving. I really hoped she wouldn’t put too much on my plate. Let’s just say I don’t share her affinity for casserole. Disgusting stuff, but I knew better than to voice that opinion out loud. Thankfully, her scoop wasn’t too big. I could manage. I just wanted to finish eating as quickly as possible so I could get my butt onto a much more comfortable surface. Mom hadn’t mentioned anything about the spanking earlier today. She never did. It happened. Then it was over. She moved on without a second thought. I would rather eat in silence, but Mom always made sure there was plenty of conversation when we were together at the table. “How did the cheerleading tryout go?” Mom asked. I started to answer with a mouthful of food, but then paused until I had finished chewing. Close call. “Good,” I replied. Please, just let me eat so my butt can stop hurting. I hadn’t wanted to be a cheerleader at all. Or do any after-school activities of any sort. Couldn’t I just spend my time after school reading or playing video games? But Mom was insistent that I had to have a ton of extra-curricular activities since apparently colleges care about that stuff when you apply. Getting on the cheer team as a freshman isn’t exactly easy. I’d come close to making the team at the beginning of the school year. However, my best friend Desi had gotten the spot instead. It had actually been a bit of a relief. I thought I was out of the woods until last week, when Desi had taken a tough fall and torn her ACL. With her out for the season, they had an emergency try-out for a replacement. If only Mom hadn’t gotten wind of it. But she did, and I aced the try-out. “So, when do you start?” “Tomorrow. Practice goes until 5 p.m.” Just less time to be doing the things I want to. And no more bus rides home with Desi and Samantha. Mom would have to be picking me up from school every day now. I made sure to thank Mom for the dinner as I stood up from the table. “Remember, you need to finish your homework before you play any video games,” she said. --- I’d just gotten through the first chapter of “Crime and Punishment” when Mom opened the door to my room. Without knocking, I might add. She didn’t believe in privacy, or at least that I should have any. “I’m going on a walk,” Mom said. “You’ll need to do your homework in the living room and keep an eye on Emilia. I’ll be about an hour.” The Fitbit was another part of Mom’s health binge. She had to get her 10,000 steps every day, after all. Good thing she didn’t have to pay for a babysitter. Emilia was playing make-believe with a pair of hand-me-down Barbie dolls on a rug on the living room floor. Ugh, this book was hard enough to get through without also having to ignore her incessant chattering. After fifteen minutes, I had barely managed to get through a handful of pages when I felt the call of nature. “You behave yourself. I’ll be back from the potty in a little bit,” I told Emilia. The toilet seat wasn’t any more comfortable to sit on than the dining room chair, but when you gotta go you gotta go. I was nearly ready to flush when Emilia began to whine on the other side of the door. I couldn’t believe my luck. “Sarah,” she whimpered. “Hurry. I need to potty. Please.” Normally, I’d be happy to quickly finish up with my business and let her onto the toilet, but my still-stinging butt and the memory of her laughing during the spanking were too fresh in my head. Plus, with Mom gone, there wasn’t any way Emilia could force me off the toilet. “Sis, you’re going to have to wait a few minutes. Can you be a big girl and do that for me?” “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t,” Emilia whined again. “I don’t wanna wear a diaper.” If she was worried about being made to wear a diaper, that meant she was close to having an accident. It had been nearly thirty minutes since her last trip to the toilet. I could hear her feet patter on the other side of the door. I suppressed a laugh at the mental image of the potty dance she must be doing. And since she’d already had one accident today, another one meant she’d have to be put back in diapers for a whole day. I’d be changing them, of course, but the feeling of schadenfreude was more than making up for it. I ripped off some toilet paper and pretended to still be cleaning myself off. Emilia wasn’t good at holding it at all. When she needed to go, she needed to go now. All I needed was to stall for a few more minutes. “Emilia, big girls can hold their pee in for a few minutes. You’re going to have to do that for me if you want to prove that you were a big girl.” After a couple of minutes, I heard Emilia’s prancing feet come to a sudden stop. There was a moment of silence – a rarity with her – followed by a steady stream of quiet sobs. Mission accomplished. In the great potty-training war, I’d just turned into a double agent. I finished with pretending to clean myself up. Another minute wouldn’t hurt now that the damage was done. At last, I flushed the toilet and opened the bathroom door to a very sorry sight. Emilia was sitting down on the floor with her hands covering her face, both legs splayed out in front of her, giving me a perfect view of a completely soaked pull-up. There wasn’t a single wetness indicator remaining. “Come on. Time to get on the potty,” I said, pretending not to notice her accident. “I don’t wanna go potty,” she said. “Don’t need to.” “Oh, it’s OK,” I cooed at her. “Did my baby sister have an accident?” “I’m not a baby,” she shouted. “I’m not. I’m not. I’m not.” Beep, beep, beep, beep. Emilia crossed her legs and tugged her shirt so that I could no longer see the pull-up. I really don’t know what was making me feel so vindictive today, but I wasn’t going to waste any chance to rub the accident in her face. I placed the potty-training cushion on top of the toilet seat, and then motioned for her to stand up. “Come on, pull your pull-ups down and sit on the potty. Three minutes.” The pull-ups fell to the floor with a squishy thud. I took a peek down at them to see the yellow, soaked insides. The next three minutes passed into total silence. There wasn’t any more pee that needed to come out. “OK, time to put your pull-ups back on.” “But.” “No buts.” I reached down and grabbed the pull-up that was hanging around Emilia’s feet on the floor. It was warm and squishy to the touch. A twinge of guilt began to form in the back of my mind. I remembered how it felt to be forced to wear a wet pull-up waiting for Mom to change me. Having to deal with the uncomfortable feeling of something warm and squishy being held tight again my skin with no control over when I would get cleaned up. All the same, I pulled it back up over her waist. The rules were the rules. Two accidents today meant that I needed to put Emilia in a diaper once I’d gotten her cleaned up. I don’t normally question Mom’s rules, but in this instance a bit of doubt was gradually beginning to creep in. After all, both of Emilia’s accidents today were my fault. She hadn’t done anything to deserve having to be put back into diapers. Without saying anything further, I picked Emilia up and carried her the short way to the bedroom. The changing mat was still there from the pre-dinner accident. As I lay her down onto the mat, tears were rolling down her face and onto the bed, but Emilia didn’t put up any resistance. I ran my hand gently along the back of her head and placed a pacifier in her mouth to sooth her. “Hey, it’s OK, you’ll feel so much better once I’d gotten you all cleaned up.” I had a choice to make when I opened the top drawer of Emilia’s dresser. I should’ve grabbed the diaper decorated with the Sesame Street characters, but the part of my conscience that was feeling bad for Emilia had won me over. I picked out another pull-up – making sure it was another Ariel one so Mom wouldn’t think anything was amiss – and grabbed the wipes and powder. I ripped off the tearaway sides of the wet pull-up and proceeded to thoroughly wipe her clean. I added just a smidgen of baby powder after that. I didn’t use nearly as much as Mom would, as I can’t stand the smell. The look of surprise on Emilia’s face when she realized I was putting another pull-up on her instead of a diaper was immensely gratifying. The tears stopped flowing, and a cautious smile was spread across her face. I lifted her bottom up and made sure the new pull-up was fit snugly around her waist. As I tossed the used pull-up into the diaper pail, I made sure to conceal it underneath some wipes. Not that Mom was likely to go looking in there anyway. As I helped Emilia off the bed, she began to say something, but I quickly interrupted her. “This was going to be our secret, OK? Pinky promise?” “Pinky promise,” Emilia replied.

Sarah's mom is a strict disciplinarian, with rules for anything and everything. When the 14-year-old girl begins to wet her pants again, will she be able to avoid getting caught in the web of all her mother's rules? Her mother is currently attempting to potty train Sarah's 3-year-old sister, Emilia, and it's been a disaster so far. Her mother has instituted a strict regimen of potty-training rules for Emilia, and as Sarah begins to experience an ever-increasing amount of daytime and bedwetting accidents, she must navigate school, sleepovers, cheerleading practices, and a new friendship while attempting to keep her condition a secret. --- Links to all of my stories are available at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com Chapter 1: Crime and Punishment Christmas was my mother’s favorite time of the year. Can’t say the same for myself. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I liked Christmas as much as any other kid. Racing down the stairs at the crack of dawn to get the first glimpse of the surprises beneath the tree. Decorating cookies. And candy canes. I absolutely loved candy canes. But Mom took it to the extreme. And by extreme, I mean that I’d just stepped off the bus to the sight of her at the top of a ladder stringing lights across the front of the house. It was the first week of October. I did my best to keep a straight face despite the giggles coming from my friends Desi and Samantha. They knew the drill, but it didn’t make the situation any less funny to them. At least this year, Mom was not putting up Christmas-themed Halloween decorations. Skeleton Santa, anybody? Yeah, no thanks. I try not to make eye contact with Mom. I swear she was always trying to come up with new ways to embarrass me. She had on the absolute worst Christmas sweater, which was saying a lot because she’s got a closet full of them. It was unusually chilly for a fall day in New Mexico, and any excuse to wear a sweater was a good one for her. Walking quietly up the driveway, I nearly reached the front door - Christmas wreath on it and all - without catching her eye. Like I’d ever gotten away with that. “Sarah,” Mom yelled. “Make sure to check up on your sister before you start your homework. It’s been about thirty minutes.” “Sure thing, Mom,” I reply, followed by a sigh that was too small for her to notice. I might be turning fifteen soon, but any noticeable back-talk or back-anything meant risking some hard swats to my bottom. Having been an only child for the first eleven years of my existence, I was so thrilled when Emilia was born three-and-a-half years ago. I had helped decorate Emilia’s nursery, picking out all the colors and accessories. I even arrived at the hospital all proud with by big sister shirt on. That thrill had lasted all of three weeks until I graduated from adoring older sister to unpaid babysitter. And don’t tell me it builds character. I’d heard that cliché more than enough. I opened the door to the sound of “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” serenading through the house, followed by the pitter-patter of bare feet scrambling across the wood floor. “You’re home! You’re home,” Emilia yelled as she rushed around the corner and gave me a hug around my waist. I mean, of course, I’m home. Not like Mom usually let me go anywhere else after school was out. Fourteen might be old enough to babysit my sister, but Mom didn’t think it was old enough to do things like sleepovers. Emilia was dressed in a pink Minnie Mouse t-shirt with a matching pink Minnie Mouse pull-up. If you were wondering what Mom had asked me to check, let’s just say my latest responsibility was being conscripted into the great potty-training war. This was our third attempt. Unfortunately, Mom hadn’t found my jokes about “World War Pee” to be particularly funny. We had made two heroic attempts at potty-training already: once when Emilia had turned two and again after her third birthday. We tried every tactic we could think of. Stickers, charts, rewards, special “big-girl” panties, potty-training toilets in every room of the house. There was a week where we had let Emilia just run around naked. That was such a mess. Mom had even half-joked about having me wear pull-ups to model good potty-training behavior for Emilia. I’m so glad she didn’t go through with that. This time around, though, we needed to succeed. There weren’t any other options. Emilia would be kicked out of her preschool if she wasn’t toilet trained by her fourth birthday. Mom threw a fuss with the daycare, but I don’t blame them. Who wants to be changing a four-year-old’s dirty diaper? I sure as heck didn't. Our most recent strategy was for Emilia to be wearing a special potty-training watch that went off every thirty minutes to remind her to go to the toilet. We’ve given up on those plastic potty-chairs - such a pain to clear up after - and had instead settled for a toddler seat that could be quickly placed on the toilet in our lone bathroom. “Guess what? Guess What?” Emilia clamored while giggling. “I’ve been dry all day.” I’m a bit skeptical of that statement. Emilia isn’t very good at noticing her accidents. What was that phrase Mr. Higgins had taught us from that president recently in history class? Oh yeah, “Trust, but verify.” Emilia smelled good, at least, so she hasn’t done a number two. That was a relief. The last thing I needed right now was a poopy pull-up to change. I checked the front of her pull-up as well, and the wetness indicators were, surprisingly enough, all still unchanged. Guess she was dry after all. At home, Mom never let Emilia wear anything to cover her pull-up. She wanted to always be able to know right away whether it was dry, wet, or messy. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Well, Mom was right about the timer needing to go off. “Come on, kiddo, it’s time to get you on the potty,” I said, grabbing Emilia by the hand. This was followed by her usual, drawn-out protestations: “I don’t have to go. I don’t. I don’t have to. I... I don’t.” Then she stomped her feet and started to pout. Emilia wouldn’t have dared to do that with Mom, but I’m the good cop after all. On other days, I might have attempted to gently cajole her into cooperation. Today I wasn’t having any of it. I grabbed her under the armpits with both hands and hauled her off to the bathroom with her whining all the way. A few minutes later, it turned out that she had needed to pee after all. With the potty-training out of the way - for half-an-hour at least - I raced off to the kitchen to get an after-school snack. A few minutes of looking through the cupboards, fridge, and pantry left me feeling less hungry. There isn’t junk food of any type in sight. Mom had been on a health binge recently. I settle for a bag of veggie chips instead. I take a look at my own watch. Thankfully, it didn’t come with a timer telling me when I had to go to the bathroom. But I had to start doing homework at 4:30 p.m. That’s another one of Mom’s rules. So that gave me just about twenty minutes or so to relax. I wasn’t the only one getting a break. Mom was in the living room as well, showing Emilia how to put together a simple puzzle - of Minnie Mouse no less, cause that was my sister’s thing right now. I had barely been on the couch for just a couple seconds when Mom interrupted me. “Did you wash your hands before you started eating, young lady?” she asked. Mom had certain ways of saying things. Young lady means she knows full well what the truthful answer was. Any attempt to fib your way out of the situation would be futile. “I’ll do it right now,” I replied. I didn’t want to outright admit how close I had come to breaking one of her rules. “Remember, twenty seconds,” Mom yelled after I had already headed off to the bathroom sink. When I came back to the living room, I wanted to take over the TV. There had to be something entertaining on. But I knew better than to interrupt what Mom was watching - home videos of our previous Christmas mornings. Look, most families videotape their Christmas mornings, and then that’s the end of it. They might upload it to YouTube or let the tapes collect dust in a cardboard box in the basement. But my mom, she loves to go back and watch them. It gets her in the Christmas spirit. I grabbed a library book instead and picked up from where I had left my last bookmark. “Why is Sarah wearing a pull-up?” Emilia interjected suddenly. I was confused at first. I mean, I had panties on, after all. Then it dawned on me. Bless young children and their questions. I looked up from my book to the video playing on the TV. The slightly grainy footage must have been about six years old. But there I was, clear as day, opening presents next to the Christmas tree while wearing no clothing other than a pull-up adorned with a colorful assortment of flowers and butterflies. The pull-up was sagging between my legs and clearly soaked. I looked at the screen awkwardly for a few more seconds as felt my face go flush red before turning back to intently looking at my book. Yes, I used to be a bedwetter, and my mom had ample evidence of it for all posterity. That was not something I liked being reminded about and was certainly not a subject I cared for my blabbermouth of a sister to be aware of. OK, this was too embarrassing. I hopped off the couch, tossed my empty bowl into the sink, and walked toward my bedroom. Getting an early start on homework was better than watching videos of myself in pull-ups. By my room, I really meant our room. Cause three people in a two-bedroom house means someone ends up sharing. Which was why I’m stuck in a room with my little sister. Sharing a room with a baby, or for that matter, a toddler that isn’t toilet trained, sucks. There was always that lingering, hard to describe diaper smell that seems to persist despite the mighty powers of the Febreze can I keep in the top drawer of my dresser. I opened my backpack and pulled out the new book we were studying in my AP Literature class, “Crime and Punishment.” Earlier today, I had struggled not to laugh when Mrs. Whittleworth passed out copies of the Dostoevsky novel. Crime and punishment. That was the story of my life, if there ever was one. Mom was big on rules. That was kind of her thing. And not just the normal rules a kid might have, like “no curse words” or “eat your veggies before your dessert.” My life was highly regulated. If I ever got a grade on any school assignment, that was less than an “A.” Well, that’s a spanking. My butt still hurts when I think about the one time I got a “D” on a test. With rules, come punishments, and I’d experienced every one known to childkind. Time-outs. Getting grounded. Having my mouth washed out with soap. And spankings. That was Mom’s favorite. She cherishes her grandfather’s wooden paddle like it was an actual family heirloom. Once I logged into the computer at my desk, I made sure not to go to any sites that weren’t educational. Yes, Mom tracks where I go online, and, yes, if I waste time watching cat videos on YouTube I’ll likely not be allowed to touch the computer for the rest of the week. I logged into the website our school uses to let us track homework assignments and grades. “Shit!” I said. I didn’t like what I saw, and I was glad Mom was far enough away not to hear me. Stupid Mr. Higgins had given me a “C” on that quiz on President Reagan from earlier this week. What could I have gotten wrong? Getting a “B” wasn’t too bad, especially if it was a “B+.” But a “C?” That wasn’t going to make things fun tonight. I did, however, have something going for me. Mom had one means of grace. If I’d broken a rule, and I told her rather than try to hide it or make her wait and find out herself, the punishment was usually a lot less. Mom did check my grades every couple weeks, but I would have heard it from her already if she’d seen it. I’d gotten better at avoiding spankings recently, but I didn't think I could get Mom in a good enough mood to talk her out of them for that bad of a grade on an assignment. But I didn’t have to decide immediately. There was not any chance she checks my grades from the living room couch. Instead, I grabbed “Crime and Punishment” and jumped onto my bed, only to be greeted with a loud, crinkling sound. So irritating. Normally, I wouldn’t pay attention to the crinkle coming from the plastic mattress cover on my bed. But after the video, it was just another awkward reminder of my bedwetting phase that I’d really rather put behind me. It wasn’t that Mom had been mean or strict about it, but it had still just been such a humiliating experience. What was funny about the bedwetting was that Mom was nicer, a little, about nighttime accidents. I’d heard that the condition - I forget the medical name for it - was hereditary, but no way would I ever ask her about it. I had wet the bed nearly every night until I was about nine. Mom never made too much of a fuss about it besides making me wear pull-ups every night and keeping a plastic cover on my mattress. I had to stay dry a whole month before I was allowed to stop with the pull-ups, but no matter how hard I asked, the plastic sheet was there to stay. That, and the reminders every night that I go potty before bed, you know, just in case, like I wasn’t a fully toilet trained teenager. The rules Mom was more stringent on were the ones about daytime potty-training. It almost made me feel bad for my bratty sister. Almost, but not really. The potty-training rules were as follows: No big girl panties unless you’ve gone seven straight days with no accidents. Any accident, no matter the reason, meant you were back in pull-ups. If you had two accidents in the same day, you’d be back in diapers for all the next day. Once every thirty minutes, you had to sit on the potty for three minutes. No lying about whether you’ve had an accident. Yeah, it’s strict, but I mean, I was potty-trained during the day before I turned two, according to my mom. And Desi and Samantha’s younger siblings, who I think were around the same age as Emilia, all were perfectly capable of using the toilet on their own. Who knew what was wrong with Emilia? I flipped through the first few pages of the book. I hated AP Lit. This book was going to be the death of me. I’d only got five weeks to read and then write a report on it. Maybe I’d ask Desi for help. At least she can get onto CliffsNotes without her parents caring or noticing. As I read through the opening chapter, I couldn’t help going back to think about my own impending punishment. After fifteen minutes and only three pages, I decided that I may as well get it over with. I set the book down and headed back toward the living room. I tried to be calm as I walked into the room. I really did. But Mom must have some sort of sixth sense cause she caught on right away that I was apprehensive about something. “Sweetie, what was wrong?” Mom asked. Sweetie, now that’s another one of my mom’s keywords. She does that when she suspects I’d done something wrong, but doesn’t know what. I could still back out now, tell her that everything was OK and hold off for another day. But though I had walked into the room determined to get the spanking over with, the words just stayed stuck in my mouth, refusing to come out. Mom gets what was going on. “Do you have something you need to tell me?” she asked. I nod and walk up to her. I know the drill. This scene had played out hundreds of times before in my life. I could recite it as well as any of the lines from my school play. But just like in real life, when it comes time to go before an audience, I always mucked it up. “Mom, I broke your rule about getting good school grades,” I spat out, garbling all the words together. “No, say that slower and enunciate your words.” “I got a ‘C’ on a quiz in my American History class,” I said crisply and clearly, with my eyes pointing down at my feet. “No, young lady, you look me in the eye while I’m talking to you.” I matched my mom’s eye and felt my face go full red. Oh, I hated how I had no control over my blushing. It just always seemed to amply the shame that I felt. I repeated about how I had gotten a ‘C’ on the quiz. “And why was it wrong for you to get that grade?” “Because I need to be an ‘A’ student so I can get a good scholarship and go to college.” “And what is the punishment for getting a ‘C’ on an assignment?” This was trickier, you see. While my mom had punishments, they weren’t always consistent. Make it too easier, and she might go a lot harder on you. But if you gave yourself too much of a punishment, well, you were stuck with that as well. I decided to play it cautiously. “A spanking.” Mom gave me that look. And I knew right away I had given the wrong answer. “And just how many spankings was that punishment going to be,” she said. I hesitated, which was bad. I’m always bad at thinking on my feet. I spat out the first number that comes to mind. “Twenty.” Bad, bad, bad idea Sarah. Twenty was more than I’d gotten when I’d burnt dinner and set off the fire alarm. I probably could have gotten away with just five. But Mom didn’t object, didn’t say that seems like a bit much. She just gave a soft smile and stood up from the couch. It was so unfair. “Hold still and lift up your shirt a little,” Mom said. I complied without saying a word. The shock of impending spankings was still fresh. Why, why, why did I have to suggest twenty of them? I pulled my shirt up just enough to reveal the top of my jeans and my belt. I felt Mom’s hands as she undid my belt buckle and then pulled the entire belt loose. Next, she unbuttoned my jeans, pulled them off my hips, and let them fall down. Mom sat back down on the couch. She didn’t have to say what I was to do next. I already knew. I stepped out of the jeans, leaving them in a pile in front of the couch and carefully lay on the couch facedown so that my bottom was directly on my mom’s lap. My head was facing the TV, which only added to the humiliation. The video was paused right at an angle where you could fully see how wet the pull-up was. Yellow and saggy. Why couldn’t Mom have changed me out of it before opening presents? Emilia had stopped building her puzzle, which was about halfway done, a look of puzzlement on her face. It had been a while since I’d been spanked. Who knows, maybe she doesn’t even remember having witnessed it before. I sure as heck didn’t want an audience for this. “Emilia,” Mom said. “Go get the black bag that was in mommy’s closet.” I should have known I wasn’t going to get away with her not using a paddle. We live in a small house. It shouldn’t have taken even Emilia more than a minute to grab the bag. But it felt like an eternity. Why did I have to get a stupid “C” on that quiz, anyway? All I had wanted was to get the spanking done and over with quickly, but it kept getting drawn out. The pitter-patter of Emilia’s feet signaled that she had at last come back to the room. The plain, black gym bag was what Mom used to keep all her disciplinary supplies in. Several types of paddles. Non-toxic soap to wash out mouths. Lotions and ointments for treatment after a spanking. The next choice Mom makes would greatly determine my level of discomfort. Please, please, please don’t use the wooden paddle, I prayed silently. After Mom had finished rustling through the bag, I saw Emilia come back into view, sitting on the floor next to the coffee table where she had been working on her puzzle. But she hadn’t gone back to playing. She was facing me with a curious look in her eyes. My face was burning now. Why couldn’t Mom just send her away? Without any warning, Mom pulled down my panties to expose my bare bottom. Oh great, this was it. She held the paddle against my bottom to line it up. And she had chosen the wooden one. I’d gone a year without getting a wooden paddle spanking. Smack. The first whack knocked the breath out of me. I was barely able to squelch a sob. The strikes proceeded likely clockwork every five seconds. One after another. Left. Right. Left. Right. I was able to hold out for the first few swats. But the tears and cries of pain were inevitable. Emilia watched the entire time. And that brat even started giggling. Suddenly, as quickly as they had started, the spankings came to a stop. The only sound in the room was my heavy breath and receding sobs. A cool sensation covered my bottom as Mom rubbed a lotion into my skin. Despite the relief it was giving, I knew sitting would be a pain in the you know what for the next week. Mom pulled my underwear back up and helped me sit on her lap. Her hand took a firm grip of my chin as she held my face steady with hers. “There, there,” she said. “Now, what lesson have you learned from this?” “I’ll study harder and get good grades. I promise.” I couldn’t help it. All the pent-up emotion, pain, and tension had to come loose again. The floodgates burst open, and I cried and cried and cried into Mom’s shoulder as she rubbed my back. It was over. Thank goodness it was over. Another beeping found filled the house. But it wasn’t Emilia’s watch. Mom quickly set me down on the couch. “Put your jeans back on and help your sister clean up her toys while I get the casserole out of the oven,” she said. Just the effort of sitting up and pulling on my jeans was enough to remind me of how sore I was going to be. As I finished pulling on my jeans, the sight of Emilia sitting in front of me gave me an idea about how to teach that brat that it was not nice to laugh when your sister was getting spanked. I reached down and ever so gently gave her the slightest of tickles, enough for her to feel my touch, but hopefully not enough to blame me for what was about to happen. If there was one way in which my sister and I were most alike was that we were super ticklish at even the slightest touch. I knew all her weak spots. The result was exactly what I had hoped for. Emilia jumped up with a little squeal and placed both hands on the front of her pull-up. I didn’t even need to look at the wetness indicator to know what had just happened. “Mom,” I yelled, doing my best to keep the satisfaction out of my voice. “Emilia just had an accident.” Karma may not be a bitch, but it certainly was a wet pull-up.