AB_DeLane

Thanks, that would lead to an awkward conversation. Thanks! We'll find out more about what's going on with Maddy's accidents and close calls in a few chapters. And yeah, I'll get the age updated quick. It's safe to say she is trending in the wrong direction. You're welcome. And yes, there have been a few times (such as when Grace abandoned her chaperone duties at the mall), where there are questions about what she might have been up to. Appreciate all the theories. My lips are sealed, though I will say that the next several chapters will be answering a lot of questions. I've had that happen with my own little, to a small extent. But I feel it is often when you are somewhat intentionally trying to lose control, like being on a regimen of going to the toilet every 30 seconds, or practicing letting go the second you feel the need. For Maddy, most of her wetting is the opposite, she is working to hold as long as she can. Thanks, and you're welcome! I can't say where Grace would have been then, but I think it's been established that she is very observant.

Chapter 46: Just a Fluke I stood frozen in place with Hannah’s arms wrapped firmly around me. At least she had hugged me around my chest. Any lower and her hands might have stumbled upon the padding beneath my shorts. I needed to get that pull-up off. I should have known better than to keep it on so close to when everyone was coming home for the evening. I could have encountered problems even if it weren’t for Hannah’s surprise visit. And what had I gotten myself into? I deeply regretted telling Hannah that we were friends back at camp, even if that had been the only plan I was able to come up with to purchase her silence about my bedwetting. I watched over Hannah’s shoulder as her cousin, Emma, practically dashed out the door. Not fair. She got to go play soccer. I had to stay home and babysit her cousin. It was an annoying ending to what had otherwise been a perfect day of having the house to myself to experience wearing an actual diaper for the first time. Who knew how long it would be before an experience like that again? I should have taken at least one more diaper when I had swiped one from Hannah’s suitcase back at camp. Like she would notice one more was gone. My little brother Jackson came pounding down the stairs behind me as I watched the front door shut following Emma’s exit. Hannah finally released me from the hug. I wasn’t sure if it was her pull-up or mine that I heard crinkle when we each took a step back. If Jackson, who had witnessed Hannah’s accident on the front steps when he had arrived home with Mom only minutes ago, had any further thoughts on what he had seen, he didn’t make them known. He turned the corner to the living room with a handful of miniature toy cars held in his arms. Well, he was only five. Kids that age had memories about as good as goldfish. “I’m going to start making dinner,” Mom said. “Hannah, do you like eating spaghetti?” “No,” Hannah said with a shake of her head. “That’s gross.” “How about fried rice?” Hannah shook her head again. “I could make you some chicken nuggets.” That suggestion brought a smile to Hannah’s face. I couldn’t believe it. Mom never let me be that picky when it came to dinner. If I didn’t like something, I had to try it, but I wasn’t required to finish it. But being able to reject dinner options multiple times in a row? That was unheard of. I wasn’t all that keen on spaghetti, but I would have preferred if Hannah had stuck on that or fried rice rather than nuggets. That was Jackson’s favorite meal. I didn’t mind it. But it wasn’t something I wanted to eat more than a few times a month. “Why don’t you show Hannah around?” Mom said. “It’s going to be a while before dinner is ready. Have to get the oven heated up first.” I gave Hannah a short tour of the house, showing her around the main level before heading upstairs. I gave Jackson, who was playing with his toys in the living room, a wide berth. Hannah ran up the stairs ahead of me to the second floor, and I realized I had made a mistake in the clothes I had picked out for her. Many of my shorts didn’t tend to be high-waisted. After all, there wasn’t any need to worry about a pull-up sticking out the top. On Hannah, this was a problem. If she was standing or sitting still, her shirt settled in place just enough to keep the top of the pull-up concealed, but the second she lifted her arms up, bent over, or leaned to the side, her unusual undergarments were plain as day. I didn’t like other people wearing my clothes. I didn’t ever share clothes with Emma or Angie, though they, at times, would swap pajamas at sleepovers. It was an unexplainable ick. I hadn’t objected initially to getting the shorts for Hannah both because Mom had asked me to do so and because there hadn’t been any alternative solution to her wet pants, which was also partially my fault. It wasn’t until I took the first step up the stairs that I became aware again of how I still had a pull-up under my shorts as well, as the padding scrunched between my legs with each step upward. At least my shorts were a pair that was better suited to hide the pull-up. I had to get the pull-up off before Grace got back. Mom didn’t seem to have noticed, and Jackson was obviously oblivious. I didn’t think Dad would be a problem, but my older sister had called me out in a wet pull-up that morning after the birthday sleepover. Would Grace notice a dry pull-up beneath my shorts? I didn’t want to chance it. After getting up the stairs, I pointed out each bedroom as I walked down the hallway toward my own one, which was at the very end. Once inside, Hannah ran toward my bed and launched herself in the air onto it. “It’s crinkly, just like mine,” she proclaimed loudly. I winced, glancing instinctively toward the hallway. Thank goodness that Jackson had already made his way downstairs. I needed to get Hannah off of the topic of pull-ups and bedwetting, lest she accidentally blurt out the wrong thing at the wrong time. I chose not to acknowledge her comparison of how our beds both had protective covers on the mattresses. Though it did make me wonder. My experiment today seemed to suggest that Hannah’s diapers could hold a massive amount of pee without leaking. Why would she also need a plastic mattress protector? Hannah didn’t seem capable of sitting still. She practically leaped off of the bed as she perused the entire bedroom. There was no stopping her as she touched and sifted through all my things, all while giving a running commentary of what she thought about all of it. I had left the top drawer of my dresser open. Sure, Hannah already knew about my pull-ups. But I couldn’t be this careless. What if Jackson had wandered into my bedroom? He was just tall enough that he might be able to see into the top drawer if he stood on the tips of his toes. Hannah peeked into the drawer before I had a chance to go over and shut it. “That’s a lot of pull-ups!” Mom had just restocked. I belatedly remembered her comment about how she would get me the name-brand ones like Hannah wore rather than the generic ones I had the next time she was going to purchase pull-ups for me. It was a shame that I would have to wait a while for that. Hannah, thankfully, didn’t remain fixated on the pull-ups, her attention drawn next to some of my soccer trophies. While Hannah examined the trophies, I slid over to my dresser and closed the top drawer. As I stood next to the dresser, I clenched my legs together instinctively as a sudden urge to pee struck me. When was the last time I’d gone to the bathroom? It couldn’t have been that long ago. I relaxed as the need to pee went away, resuming my watch over Hannah as she continued to peruse my bedroom. A few moments later, the need to pee was back in full force, my bladder feeling as though it had suddenly arrived at its breaking point. What to do? Risk leaving Hannah alone in my room? Or risk not making it to the toilet in time? I had the pull-up on. I could wet it. No. I wasn’t like Hannah. I didn’t need to use pull-ups because I couldn’t make it to the toilet on time during the day. “Be right back.” I walked calmly to the bedroom door, acting as if my bladder wasn’t practically screaming at me, quickening my pace the moment I rounded the corner to the hallway and was out of sight. I locked the bathroom door behind me and then collapsed onto the cold toilet seat in a hurry. I barely managed a trickle. That was odd. I was sure I had needed to pee more than that. I strained for about a minute, getting a little more urine to come out. I was probably just feeling off because of how much extra water I had drunk today. That had to explain why my body was acting strange. I’d be fine tomorrow. I did look down at the pull-up as I attempted to empty my bladder. The absorbent lining on the interior remained completely white. Nothing had come out on accident. I relaxed slightly. The quarter-sized leak on my underwear earlier today had just been a one-off. I toyed with the idea of taking the pull-up off, hiding it somewhere in the bathroom, and returning to the bedroom commando. But in the few seconds I had before needing to get back to my bedroom, I couldn’t think of a suitable location that my family might not accidentally stumble upon before I’d have the opportunity to retrieve the pull-up. I wiped myself clean as fast as I could, trying not to think about what Hannah might be getting up to in the bedroom in my absence. I didn’t wait for the water to warm up as I washed my hands under a cold stream in the sink, shaking them dry and rubbing them on my shorts as I hurried back to the bedroom. I found Hannah with her head stuck inside my closet, looking through all the clothes hanging on the rack. A few shirts on the floor and empty hangers above them evidence enough that she wasn’t being all that careful. “What are you doing?” I asked as calmly as I could, doing my best not to snap at her. I’d put too much work into putting my laundry away neatly to have her come along and mess it all up. It was one of my least favorite chores to do. I tried — and failed — to surprise a large sigh. Hannah just had no concept of personal space or privacy whatsoever. There had been many times in my life when I had wished that I had a sister closer in age to me than Grace — maybe even a twin. But no, at least with siblings a decent distance in age from me, I was granted privacy in my room, and I certainly wasn’t expected to share any of my clothing. “I want something else to wear,” Hannah said. “I don’t like these shorts. They’re itchy.” I looked at the shorts Hannah was wearing. I’d last worn them a week ago at camp. Nothing had been wrong with them then. That didn’t make any sense. I knew my shorts weren’t itchy. Just like I knew my pull-ups weren’t itchy. I didn’t understand why Hannah would claim that they were. Maybe that was just her way of saying that she didn’t like them. It was bad enough that Hannah was already wearing that pair of shorts. I didn’t need her trying on half my clothes to finally find something that would better suit her picky tastes. And what did it matter that her pull-ups showed, anyway? That secret was already out. “Can’t you just wear the shorts? It’s only for a few hours.” “But,” Hannah said, her voice rising an octave to a high-pitched whine. A distraction. I needed a distraction. No more conversations about pull-ups, bedwetting, or clothing. I knew what would work. Even if I also knew that it would send Hannah on another tangent that there would be no getting her off of. I walked over to my desk, opened the drawer, and pulled out the portable video game console. “Do you want to check out this Harry Potter game?” <><><> “Maddy, Hannah, it’s time for dinner.” At the sound of Mom calling from the foot of the stairs, I looked over at the clock. Nearly forty-five minutes had passed since Mom had come home. I hadn’t been expecting dinner just yet. I knew Grace wasn’t home. She always went back to her room to change clothes after returning from work, and I knew I wouldn’t have missed her walking in the hallway. “Can you play for a few more minutes?” Hannah asked as I pressed the pause button on the game and set the console to the side. I eased myself off of the bed, again careful to make sure my pull-up didn’t show. I had to get it off. Maybe I could let Hannah run ahead. It would just take a moment. I could slip the pull-up off. Exchange it for regular underwear and return it to the dresser. I let Hannah head out the bedroom door without following behind her. I waited, listening for her footsteps. I’d be able to tell if she made it down the stairs. That would give me enough time. But the creaking of her footsteps in the hallway came to a pause. And a second later, Hannah poked her head back around the bedroom door. “Aren’t you coming?” she asked. I suppressed a sigh. There was no choice but to follow her. I noticed that only five spots were set at the dining room table when I arrived at the bottom of the stairs. “Isn’t Hannah staying for dinner?” I asked as Mom rounded the corner from the kitchen, a tray of breaded chicken tenders in one hand and a bowl of spinach salad in the other. “Of course she is,” Mom said, setting the food down on the center of the table. “But where is she going to sit? You didn’t add a spot for her.” “Oh, Grace is covering for a coworker’s shift, so she isn’t going to be home for a few more hours.” That was really good news. I still needed to get the pull-up off, but Grace was my main concern. I would have a few more hours to get free from Hannah before. Before I could respond, Hannah walked to the other side of the table, taking a seat in Mom’s spot. For meals in the dining room, we always sat in the same spots. Mom and Dad on one side of the ovular table. Jackson was seated between Mom and me, and Grace was to my left. I stomped my foot. “You can’t sit there, Hannah. That seat is for Mom.” I pointed to where my older sister would normally sit. “You can have Grace’s spot.” Mom just laughed. “Maddy, it’s fine. We can mix things up tonight since Grace isn’t going to be here.” “Who’s Grace?” Hannah asked. I took a seat – in my proper spot, at least. “That’s my older sister.” “I’d like to have an older sister,” Hannah said while fiddling with her fork. Mom called out to Dad and Jackson, who came over from the living room to join us, with each going to their normal seats at the table. I looked over the options for the meal: frozen chicken strips with ketchup, ranch, and honey mustard to dip them in, a spinach and strawberry salad, and instant mashed potatoes. The dishes got handed around the table, and I helped myself to servings of each. Hannah looked apprehensively at the scoop of salad that Mom helped serve onto her plate. “Strawberries are a fruit,” she said. “Salads are for vegetables.” I gritted my teeth as Mom just laughed off Hannah’s comment, assuring her that it would actually taste good. I knew I wasn’t supposed to criticize food at dinner. Why were the rules different for Hannah? I picked sullenly at my dinner. I would have preferred the spaghetti that Mom had originally been planning. Hannah was not the neatest of eaters. Twice, she let ketchup drip onto her shirt while raising a chicken tender to her mouth, for real. Not even potty trained. And probably not far off from needing a bib. Nothing more was said about the circumstances surrounding Hannah’s arrival at the house. I didn’t doubt that Dad already knew, though. Information tended to flow freely between my parents. My parents asked Hannah some basic questions: Where was her family from, whether she had siblings, and what she liked to do for fun. Hannah answered nearly all of them with her mouth full as she focused on downing her chicken strips, the salad still untouched. Jackson’s chair squeaked as he pushed it back and stood up from the table. Mom looked first at Jackson’s plate – chicken mostly finished, salad and potatoes uneaten — before calling out after him. “Jackson, you need to clean your plate before you go play.” Jackson didn’t turn around as he gave his reply. “I need to poop.” I rolled my eyes as I stabbed another chicken strip with my fork, preparing to dip it in a small puddle of ketchup pooled in the corner of my plate opposite the still, untouched salad. What was with boys his age and their obsession with saying poop or pee rather than just saying they were going to the bathroom or restroom? As if Jackson’s sudden exit had reminded Hannah of something, she stood up from the table as well, glancing down the hallway to where Jackson had gone to the first-floor bathroom. Hannah’s feet were crossed, her legs quivering slightly. “Is there another bathroom?” I realized I hadn’t directly pointed out the upstairs bathroom on our tour. “It’s upstairs on the right side of the hallway,” Mom said. Hannah dashed off, nearly losing her balance as she rounded the corner to the stairs, which were visible from where I was sitting at the dining room table. Her shirt flew up as she took the stairs two at a time, exposing enough of her pull-up to make it more than obvious. I started to work on my salad after finishing the last chicken nugget. Not my favorite, but one Mom had made before. I didn’t really like spinach, so I tried to ration out the strawberries so I would not end up having to take bites that only contained that awful-tasting green leafy stuff. And then I needed to pee. Again. I clenched my legs together. It wasn’t fair. We only had two bathrooms in our house. I knew that Angie’s place had three. This wouldn’t even be a problem if my parents had just bought a house with a reasonable number of bathrooms in it. I probably had overdone things this morning, drinking way too much water in my eagerness to make sure I made full use of the diaper. Now, my bladder was all confused. And there was nothing I could do. Both bathrooms were full. I couldn’t think of any excuse to leave the table. There was no way to know how much time had passed since Jackson and Hannah had each gone off to the bathroom. I couldn’t see the clock near the entryway, and I knew better than to pull out my phone at the dinner table. Doing so was strictly forbidden. The pain between my legs was building rapidly. I didn’t have much time left. Maybe I would be safe. It wasn’t as though I had peed that much during the last two close calls. I tried to stare blankly at my pile of mashed potatoes as my bladder gave in without warning, the familiar warmth between my legs now terrifying rather than comforting. I found myself unable to breathe as I silently counted out the seconds. Three. Five. Seven. Done. The flow of urine into my pull-up ceased as suddenly as it had begun. I shoved a large spoonful of mashed potatoes into my mouth, not daring to look up at Mom and Dad. Was I safe? They hadn’t reacted. Despite the warmth of the newly wet pull-up, I didn’t feel the telltale wetness around my inner thighs that would be the first recognizable sign that the pull-up hadn’t held up. It was Hannah’s fault. If she hadn’t been here, I would have been able to go to the bathroom without being stuck at the table and forced to instead go in the pull-up. I continued to pick away at my food, stabbing irritably at the remaining spinach on my plate. Jackson arrived back at the table a minute later, followed closely by Hannah. I looked over at Hannah’s plate. She had picked each strawberry out of her salad. I doubted that she had eaten a single leaf of spinach. As much as I tried to ignore the feeling of the wet pull-up, I wasn’t able to take my mind off the sensation. I needed to get it off as soon as possible. But how? I had to get away from Hannah. But the only place in the house she would leave me alone would be in the bathroom. Couldn’t leave the pull-up in the trash. That would raise too many questions if it was noticed. I was still in the midst of contemplating a way out of my predicament when Hannah loudly announced she was done eating and stood up from the table. She took one step away before pausing, her eyes drawn to the floor by a sudden pitter-patter of feet from beneath the table. “A cat!” Hannah exclaimed. I leaned down and looked underneath the table. Chester was standing underneath Jackson’s chair, his tail flicking back and forth. “Does your family have any pets?” Mom asked. “No,” Hannah said. “I really wish I could get a cat.” As Hannah walked toward Jackson’s chair, Chester darted away, pausing at the foot of the stairs before running up to the second floor. Hannah pouted. “I just wanted to pet him.” “Chester can be shy sometimes,” Mom said. “Maddy can show you how to play with him.” I was happy for the chance to avoid finishing the small pile of spinach on my plate. I was not happy to be forced to stand up from the table with all eyes on me. Not with what was under my shorts. Certainly not, given the condition that it was. The moment of truth. I stood up from the table as carefully as I could, ever so casually giving my shirt a tug to ensure the waistband of my shorts was fully covered. I didn’t look down. I didn’t want to draw any attention to that area of my body. With each step away from the table, I was fully aware of how the pull-up was sagging off of my body, though I was experienced enough to sense that it wasn’t nearly as full as its maximum limits. I hoped more than anything that my posterior didn’t appear off to anyone watching me. At least the shorts were large on me, not form-fitting to the point where the outline of a wet pull-up would show. I followed Hannah up the stairs, struggling to keep pace with her while also trying to walk normally. It wasn’t hard to find Chester. There weren’t many places for him to go. The doors to Grace’s and my parents’ bedrooms were both closed. We checked the bathroom first, but he usually only went in there after showers to lick drops from the faucet in the tub. We arrived at my bedroom to find Chester lying sprawled out on my bed, nestled in between my two pillows. Before I could even open my mouth to warn Hannah that she needed to slow down or risk scaring Chester away again, she bolted forward, right up to the edge of the bed, leaning right over the cat. Chester was not amused. He jumped out of his spot on the bed and made a beeline for the door. When Hannah dashed after the cat, I didn’t make any attempt to stall her. This was the distraction that I needed. I listened to the sound of Hannah’s feet pounding down the staircase. Poor Chester. Maybe I could make it up by sneaking him a catnip treat later. With no hesitation, I dropped my pants to the floor, along with the pull-up. The wet pull-up got rolled up and tucked beneath the plethora of dry pull-ups in the top drawer of the dresser. Not ideal. But I could toss it out in the garage in the morning. That was the normal routine, at least after realizing that keeping the wet pull-ups in the garbage can in my room or the bedroom was leaving a lingering scent of urine. I grabbed a clean pair of underwear and nearly put it on before realizing belatedly that it would be better to get cleaned up first. With my shorts and underwear in hand, I dashed down the hallway and into the bathroom, where I quickly wiped myself dry with toilet paper, flushed, and then got dressed into more age-appropriate clothes. I wasn’t in a rush to get back to Hannah. I adjusted my shorts while looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. So many close calls. I promised myself that I would be more careful going forward. But I didn’t fret. It wasn’t my fault, especially not the last accident. Just a fluke. But no matter how I adjusted my shorts, the underway hidden beneath them didn’t feel right. I found myself wishing it was already time for bed when I could wear a pull-up freely, with my little brother being the only person I would need to keep it hidden from at night. As I meandered down the stairs, I wondered if Hannah had managed to corner Chester. For his sake, I kind of hoped that she hadn’t. If Chester had been a smart cat — in possession of more than one brain cell — he would have disappeared into the basement to hide in the dark corners of the laundry room until Hannah was gone for the night. Chester was not a smart cat. He had instead made his way into the living room, where he was hiding underneath one of the sofas. Hannah was busy attempting to coax him out to play. She had found one of his favorite toys, a little fishing pole with a soft mouse at the end of a short, stretchy string. Dad was in his recliner, feet up, typing away on his work laptop. Jackson was playing with his miniature toy cars, making the most awful sounds that didn’t bear any resemblance to the actual thing. Mom was off in the kitchen. I could hear the sound of running water coming from the sink in the distance as she worked to tidy up from dinner. As I took a seat on the couch, I found myself subconsciously tugging my shirt down again while sitting. I pulled my hand away. Completely unnecessary. Not like I had anything I needed to hide now. The shorts I had loaned to Hannah didn’t fit her as well as they fit me. As she laid down further to reach for the cat, the top several inches of the pull-up became visible. I averted my eyes, pretending to suddenly be really interested in the remaining tea in the glass on the side table to my left. I adjusted my shirt again. “Dad, dad,” Jackson said, until his whining caught Dad’s attention, and he looked up from his laptop at my younger brother. “Why is she wearing a pull-up? Only babies wear pull-ups?” My cheeks burned with secondhand embarrassment. Hannah didn’t look up. It was still hard to tell how much she heard through her noise-reducing ear muffs, but I had come to realize that unless she was actively paying attention to a conversation, things happening to the side didn’t catch her attention. I didn’t recall much of the potty training process my parents had used for Jackson – that had taken place before my interest in pull-ups and diapers had begun – but I did recall that what had done the trick for him at least had been making the clear distinction for him that in order to be a big kid, he had to move on from wearing pull-ups. Dad’s eyes shifted to the left, briefly taking in the sight of Hannah, whose pull-up was still showing, before providing an answer to Jackson’s query. “It’s not polite to talk about other people’s underwear,” Dad said. “And yes, sometimes older kids need to wear pull-ups if they have a medical condition, and their bodies have a hard time remembering to go in the toilet.” “OK,” said Jackson. He accepted the answer and resumed making even more irritating noises with his toy cars. I looked over at Hannah. She was lucky enough to be able to block all of that out. “Maddy,” Dad said, looking at me and nodding in Hannah’s direction. I looked down at Hannah, who was still loudly attempting to get Chester to chase the toy and come out from under the couch. “Can you help her out?” I scooted over to the other side of the couch and gave Hannah’s shirt a slight tug downward to get it back into place, removing the pull-up from sight. Hannah remained too focused on her unsuccessful attempts to play with Chester to pay any heed to my intervention. I rolled my eyes as I watched her continue to whack the toy back and forth under the couch. I slid off the couch and took a seat on the floor next to Hannah. “Give it here,” I said as I took the toy from her. “You have to wiggle the mouse and then move it out of sight so that he gets curious about chasing it.” It took about a minute, but after a few final deft maneuvers with the cat toy, Chester came darting out from underneath the couch. Hannah immediately attempted to grab him. Not a good idea. “Ouch,” Hannah squealed, jerking her hand back as Chester sprinted out down the hallway at full speed. Despite Hannah’s whimpers about the fresh cut on the back of her hand, I was able to make out the sound of the cat scrambling madly down the stairs. <><><> Picking out a band-aid for Hannah proved nearly as difficult as finding pull-ups or clothes that she liked to wear. The plain ones were ugly. She didn’t like any of the superhero ones reserved for Jackson. There were a couple of Harry Potter-themed ones remaining from a pack Mom had purchased for me a couple years back, but none of them were in the right size to properly cover up the inch-long gouge Chester had left on Hannah’s hand. “Ow, ow, ow,” Hannah cried as Mom finished applying disinfectant to the wound. Hannah had finally acquiesced to one of the standard Band-Aids, if only because I told her that she wouldn’t be able to play on my videogame system unless she had a bandage on the cut. Sequestered in the bedroom, there wasn’t any more damage that Hannah could do. No more uncomfortable interactions with Jackson or my parents. No pull-ups being shown off at inopportune times. The only breaks I got from her were the trips to the bathroom. Hannah made three mad dashes to the bathroom. As far as I could tell, she managed to avoid having any accidents. I remembered the potty training watch Hannah had been wearing the first time we had met earlier in the summer. She hadn’t worn it at camp either. Perhaps Hannah had forgotten it back at Emma’s place. Seemed like something she should still be using. For myself, I made two quick trips to use the toilet, though neither had been prompted quite as urgently as what had led to the accident at the dinner table. The sound of the doorbell ringing a couple hours later had me letting out a massive sigh of relief as Hannah raced downstairs to greet her parents. Hannah darted up from the bed to race downstairs. I tagged along more slowly. The sooner Hannah was out the door, the better. But when I got to the foot of the stairs, it was Grace I saw coming in through the entryway, not Hannah’s parents. Hannah didn’t say anything to my older sister. Her attention was focused straight down the hallway, right at Chester, who was in the living room. This time, Hannah didn’t run after Chester. She started tip-toeing as slowly as possible in his direction. Grace took a look at the bandage on one of Hannah’s outstretched hands. “Looks like she learned to be careful with Chester the hard way,” she said. “Her family doesn’t have any pets,” I said. Grace and I continued to watch as Hannah moved in slow motion down the hallway. Chester, who had flopped in the middle of the living room, was now occasionally looking back in her direction. Hannah paused each time he looked up at her like she was in the middle of a game of Red Light, Green Light. “What’s the deal with Hannah wearing pull-ups?” Grace asked in a hushed tone as Hannah finally made it to within a few feet of Chester. I took a close look at Hannah before replying. Her pull-ups weren’t visible at all. “She has autism,” I said at last. That had been a sufficient enough explanation for Mom. “I see,” Grace said. She paused for a second before turning around to head up the stairs to her bedroom. That was a close call. Not for Hannah, but for me. What would have happened if Grace had come home for dinner when I still had a pull-up of my own underneath my shorts? I nibbled slightly on my lip as I thought about what the answer to that question might be. That had been a close call. Even if I’d kept my pull-up dry tonight, if I’d still had it on, Grace would have been aware, and it would have been impossible to try and explain away why I was wearing one a couple hours before my bedtime. In the distance, Hannah was now only a foot away from Chester, every motion remaining slow and very exaggerated as she started to bend down. Chester seemed relaxed enough. Maybe she’d get away with petting him without needing any additional bandages. Her pull-up was visible once again as she bent down further. There was no helping her with that. Then the doorbell rang for a second time. Chester flew up right into the air, scrambling as he landed back on the floor and dashed away back to the basement. Hannah turned around to watch him run, stomping her feet as she did so. “I’m coming,” Mom called out from the kitchen. I took a peak through the window as Mom walked to the front door. The two adults at the door bore a close resemblance to Hannah. She was finally going home. Thank goodness. Mom ushered Hannah’s parents, Steve and Megan, inside as Dad stepped into the living room as well to greet them. “Thank you so much for looking after Hannah,” Megan said. “We hadn’t even realized that she had run off until your daughter texted Emma.” Mom reassured her that it hadn’t been an issue at all. “We have Emma over all the time. I’m sure we’ll be seeing Hannah again.” “Hannah was so excited when she got back from camp last week. She said she had a lot of fun being in the same cabin as Maddy,” Megan said. “Having a new friend to look forward to is making the move so much easier.” I started picking at my fingernails. Hannah had promised not to speak of my bedwetting or the fact that I had been wearing pull-ups during the day at camp as a means to make her feel better. What did her parents know? Even if Hannah hadn’t mentioned that I was a bedwetter, telling them that I had been in the same cabin as her, one reserved for kids with that issue, was just as bad. “When is your move-in date?” Dad asked. “We don’t have an exact date yet,” Steve said. “But it will be sometime later this summer. Need to get everything settled before school starts.” “Will they be in the same grade?” Dad asked. “Maddy is starting eighth grade this fall.” “Hannah is in seventh grade,” Megan said. “But we have her signed up for a private school about fifteen minutes from here. That was one of the reasons we relocated, actually. We were looking for something that offered more specialized attention.” “Hannah,” her dad said. “We need to get going. It’s almost time for you to get ready for bed.” I watched as Hannah started to walk over to her parents. Her shirt briefly slipped up to reveal the pull-up waistband again for a half-second. Cause her shorts didn’t cover it. Because they were my shorts. It was bad enough that she was borrowing them for the evening. I didn’t want her taking them home. “Hey,’ “I said. “Can I have my shorts back before you leave?” Hannah’s parents both looked at me quizzically and then at their daughter. Apparently, Emma hadn’t informed her aunt and uncle about the extent of her cousin’s accident. Mom stepped in to explain. “Hannah’s shorts got wet, so I tossed them in the wash and gave her a pair of Maddy’s to wear for the evening.” “I see,” Hannah’s mom said with a nod that suggested this wasn’t an unusual occurrence, taking another glance over at her daughter. “Maddy,” Mom asked. “Can you go grab Hannah’s shorts from the laundry room? The dryer should be done by now.” Mom had tossed Hannah’s urine-soaked shorts into the washing machine with a load of laundry, so it took me a couple minutes to pick through the nearly too-warm-to-touch clothing in the dryer before I found her shorts. Hannah happily took her shorts back from me once I returned, rushing to the bathroom to get changed before returning to the room and tossing my shorts right at my chest. I caught them but held the shorts gingerly as if they had been contaminated. I didn’t like touching other people’s dirty clothes, even if it was my clothes that someone else had worn. As our parents talked, Hannah kept peeking down the hallway and sneaking glances into the kitchen, but with two new strangers arriving, Chester appeared to be out of sight for good this evening. That left Hannah and I standing awkwardly in the dining room as our parents talked about boring adult stuff like interest rates and the housing market. I watched as Hannah attempted to stifle a yawn, causing me to yawn for real. So much for needing to get home urgently for Hannah’s bedtime. That at least caught the attention of Hannah’s mom. She looked at her watch before motioning to her husband. “I think we need to head out for real now,” Megan said. “Emma mentioned she had friends coming over for a sleepover tomorrow, so we’ll see you then.” My heart sank at the reminder of the sleepover, which I had pushed to the back of my mind since Emma had told me earlier today that her cousin would be in town for it. How was I going to survive it? The sudden hope of getting a chance to snatch another one of Hannah’s diapers clashed head-on with the fear of my secret getting out to the last two people in the world who I wanted to find out. Hannah would expect me to be wearing pull-ups tomorrow night. Emma and Angie would assume I’d be in regular underwear. Somehow, someway, I would need to convince all three of them that they were each right. I glanced over at Hannah as she crinkled past me on her way to the front door. She had better keep her promise. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

I strongly suspect that we will continue to see the gradual addition of larger sizes for diapers/pull-ups. Size 8 becoming commonplace. XXL Goodnites. Pampers putting out 6T-7T pull-ups that are advertised at 64+ pounds. These products are available because businesses are confident that they will make money off of them. Companies that make diapers have no incentive to get kids to stop wearing them and have every incentive to keep them hooked. The average age of toilet training is higher than it was for pre-disposable diapers. And as later-and-later diaper/pull-up use becomes more (to a degree) socially acceptable, we'll continue to get larger sizes. Factor that in with in kids being bigger in general, along with a somewhat untapped market for youth diapers for kids with special needs, and there is plenty of reason to think that the range of diaper sizes is only going to continue to get larger. Now, we aren't going to end up with adult-sized Pampers (not that I wouldn't be elated if we did), but I think in the coming decades, there will be a much more robust market for diapers in the 50-100 pound range.

Nope, and Maddy's difficulty in understanding that nuance was part of that scene. Whereas readers should know that in fact Maddy's parents are reasonable people who would believe their daughter. And even in this case, Maddy didn't get anything more than a light scolding for not letting Hannah in, hardly a serious punishment at all. Yeah, Emma very much set Maddy and Hannah up to fail. No, she isn't, but there is an explanation for why she is reacting the way she is toward Hannah. That is an interesting idea, the neighborhood will be different once Hannah is around full time. This, and this can be exacerbated when they get very single-minded about their pursuits, like Maddy is with her pull-ups/diapers. I don't think Hannah's parents would have her in a diaper before she is actually going right to bed. And, as we've seen from Hannah's time at camp, she is capable of putting on a diaper herself. She would wear pull-ups right until it is time to get into bed. Appreciat the detailed thoughts on the story. To answer a few question: - I wouldn't anticipate messing being a frequent occurance in the story. Maddy has no interest in it. - We will get a Hannah/Emma/Angie/Maddy chapter soon with the upcoming sleepover (not the next one, but likely the one after that), and there's a lot to explore there. Cool friend vs weird "friend" is a pretty good description of where Maddy is at with Emma vs Hannah. Yep, and Maddy very much avoided giving her mom that information, instead referencing Hannah's pull-ups. As much as Maddy wants diapers, even she recognizes that wearing them at night would create too many issues.

Yep, but compared to wearing a diaper, a pull-up is much less noticeable, and Maddy is getting distracted and forgetting that she has it on. Emma has been a bit of a snot for a while. And no, Maddy is not the least bit aware of it. Thanks! The amount of trouble that kids, especially young teens, can get into seems to increase exponentially the more of them you get together, which would be a good reason for parents to take a more gradual approach to giving Maddy more autonomy at home. Without getting into spoiler territory, it is safe to say that there will be plenty more interactions with Hannah to come. Maddy had the option to do that, but as she had previously considered, diapers would make things too complicated for her. I wouldn't see Maddy's parents going with diapers, not with the pull-ups working as far as they know. After all, they were quite hesitant to even consider pull-ups in the first place. Maddy's parents would have been fine with her if she had let Hannah in. And yes, Maddy is probably getting concerned about Hannah by now. There are a lot of longer chapters coming (especially the next three), but if a short one fits for where there are good breaks in the story, that will still happen. It was better to end where I did because the next one, covering Hannah's time at Maddy's house in the evening, is going to be quite long. Though this actually was close to a standard chapter length. 3,000 to 4,000 is fairly typical, and this was at 2650. Thanks! Am curious about what you think Hannah did right as well. Maddy's parents are pretty consistent in their behavior. They aren't looking for excuses to scold their kids. Her mom would have been understanding (especially after receiving the further information about Hannah being autistic).

Chapter 45: The Visitor My jaw dropped at the sight of Hannah standing on the front steps. How? She wasn’t supposed to be around again for over a month. Not until I was back from the family vacation. And what was she doing at my doorstep? I watched as Hannah whacked her knuckles against the door yet again. The pace was becoming a little more frenetic. What was her deal? Couldn’t she get the memo? No one was going to answer the door. I looked away from Hannah, glancing down the street. There was no sign of Hannah’s cousin, Emma. Hannah must have come all the way to my house by herself. Hannah continued to knock on the door, the pounding becoming more and more forceful and urgent. If I didn’t intervene, she would keep this up until my parents got home. And how was I supposed to relax and play my video game with all this racket? My parents had told me not to let anyone in, but they hadn’t specifically said I couldn’t talk to someone as long as they remained outside. Assured that this loophole meant I wasn’t violating their strict instructions, I backed off from the window blinds I had been peeking out through and started toward the front door. I paused halfway to the front door, suddenly keenly aware of a faint rustling sound coming from beneath my shorts. The pull-up. Wearing a diaper nearly all day had dulled my senses to the point where a pull-up felt much more like being back and wearing underwear. I had forgotten I had switched to a pull-up rather than putting on a clean pair of underwear after a close call at the toilet earlier this afternoon. I briefly considered going back upstairs to take the pull-up off, but at the repeated ringing of the doorbell, I decided that answering the door was better. Like Hannah would actually notice I had a pull-up on. Besides, I was just going to tell her to go back to her cousin’s place. Still, I pulled my shorts up a little, double-checking that the pull-up waistband wasn’t visible before tugging my shirt down. There were technically two front doors — a regular wood door and a screen door in front of it. Both were locked when my parents left for the morning. I unlocked the front door and cracked it open a few inches, leaving the screen door closed and locked. “Let me in!” Hannah whined without so much as a “Please” or “Hello.” She rattled the handle to the locked screen door unsuccessfully. I watched as Hannah’s potty dance began to grow more intense. “I’m sorry. I can’t. My parents don’t let me have anyone over when I’m home by myself.” “But I need to pee,” Hannah protested, as if it weren’t already painfully obvious. Hannah had a pull-up on, right? Wasn’t that the whole point of her wearing them so that there was a backup plan if she wasn’t able to make it to the toilet on time? “I told you,” I said firmly. “I can’t let you in. Can you just run back to your cousin’s place? It’s not that far.” Hannah looked over her shoulder down the road. “I don’t know how to get back.” I started to give directions. It was only a half-dozen turns. She’d be back in five minutes. Maybe faster if she ran. “I can’t remember all that,” Hannah said. “What if I get lost?” “Can’t you put the address in your phone?” “I left it at Emma’s.” No phone. No directions. She didn’t even appear to have that small bag she kept her extra pull-ups in. Hopeless. “What are you doing here so soon? I thought you weren’t moving in till next month?” “Mom and Dad had to come to get some things settled with the house and school and stuff.” “How did you even know where my house is?” “Emma told me.” Of course she did. I felt a twinge of annoyance. Just because Emma didn’t want to deal with her annoying cousin didn’t mean she should just toss Hannah off onto me. I mean, I had to put up with Hannah for a whole week at camp. It should be her turn. “Then she should have told you that I can’t have any visitors over during the day. Emma did mention that, right?” Hannah continued to squirm. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just wanted to hang out. Can I come in? I’ll be quick.” I wasn’t going to risk having my summer home-alone privileges revoked for Hannah’s sake. I pulled out my phone, getting ready to message Emma and tell her to come get her cousin. “You can just go in your pull-up,” I said while unlocking my phone. “What’s the big deal? Emma can come pick you up, and you can go home and change.” Hannah was holding both hands in front of her shorts now. “But Maddy…” I was so focused on typing out my message to Emma that I didn’t look up at the minivan coming down the road until it pulled up into the driveway. Mom and my younger brother, Jackson, were home. I looked up from the phone, the message to Emma still unsent. Good. Hannah could come in and use the toilet and stop with her fussing. I looked back at Hannah and was getting ready to unlock the door when I saw her expression change. Hannah’s feet stopped squirming. Her hands relaxed slightly at her sides. I knew the look on her face. My mom had arrived home a minute too late. Twenty seconds passed as Hannah stood silently on the other side of the screen door, a defeated expression on her face in the wake of this latest accident. Everything was still fine. I could finish my message to Emma and get her to come take her cousin home, where Hannah could get changed into a dry pull-up. Then I noticed a large wet patch gradually expand on Hannah’s shorts on the inside of her thighs. The pull-up had failed at its only job. I fumbled at the door as Mom and Jackson exited the car and made their way up the driveway toward us, attempting to get the screen door unlocked to usher Hannah in before Mom could see what had happened. I finally managed to flip the lock. Too late. Hannah had spun around at the sound of the card doors slamming shut in the driveway. I was a little surprised that she was able to hear that sound with the noise-reducing earmuffs she wore. Hannah turned back to face me, tears starting to form. I pushed the door open, and Hannah darted past me inside, not bothering to take off her shoes or ask where to go. “The bathroom is to the left,” I yelled after her. Maybe Mom and Jackson hadn’t noticed the wet spot on her shorts. She could hide in the bathroom until Emma came. “Maddy, who is that?” Mom asked as she speed-walked up the driveway to the front steps with Jackson in tow. I held the door open for Mom and Jackson as they stepped into the house. “Hannah. She’s Emma’s cousin. She was at the soccer camp.” I left out the part about how we had been in the same cabin. The one for bedwetters. “Did she pee her herself?” Jackson blurted out loudly. So much for hoping that the situation could be kept discreet. “Jackson, that isn’t a polite thing to point out,” Mom said. “Go put your backpack away in your room.” Mom leaned in and asked me a question in a hushed tone as Jackson sprinted up the stairs to his bedroom on the second floor. “Did Hannah have an accident?” “Yeah, I think she is in the bathroom now.” “Why didn’t you let her in?” “You and Dad said I wasn’t supposed to let anyone in at all while you were gone.” “Yes, I know we said you couldn’t have friends over. But if it’s an emergency, you can let a friend in to use the bathroom.” “But…” “It wasn’t nice to force her to wet her pants.” I was irritated. I had only done what my parents had told me to do. Why was Mom unhappy with me? “But I didn’t think Hannah really needed to come in,” I said, trying to defend myself. “She wears pull-ups anways.” Mom raised an eyebrow at me. “She has autism,” I added. “She wears pull-ups during the day because she isn’t potty trained. I think they leaked.” Mom didn’t say anything immediately in response. At last, she rubbed her chin and said, “I see.” Mom looked over her shoulder toward the hallway. “Is Hannah still in the bathroom?” “Yeah, I think so.” “We better get some clean clothes for her. Does Hannah know about your nighttime underwear?” “Yes,” I mumbled. “Go upstairs and get her one of them and some shorts if there are some she’ll fit into.” I obeyed and returned downstairs a minute later with a pull-up wrapped inside a pair of my soccer shorts. Mom was talking to Hannah through the bathroom door when I arrived. “Maddy has some shorts and a clean pull-up for you if you can crack open the door a few inches to take it. I can put your wet clothes in the wash once you’ve changed. They should work. You and Maddy should wear the same size.” “I know,” Hannah said as she opened the door narrowly. “Maddy tried my pull-ups at camp.” I winced. That was supposed to be a secret. Hannah had promised not to tell anyone. Promised. I was able to squeeze the shorts and pull-up through to Hannah, but not before I glanced around to see if my younger brother was in sight. To my luck, he must have been upstairs, still in his bedroom. “You wore her pull-ups?” Mom asked. “Yeah, but just at night. I liked how they looked better. Mine are ugly.” As I shifted on my feet, I became painfully aware that I was still wearing a pull-up under my shorts. Why did I keep forgetting that I had it on? And could Mom tell? Grace had, but that had only been after I had wet it. “Would you like me to get you the same pull-ups that Hannah wears to bed?” My heart fluttered. It was right there for the taking. A week ago, I would have been thrilled out of my mind. Now? Yes, I would like that brand of bedwetting pull-ups better, but as of this afternoon, it had been replaced as the sole object of my desire by something far superior. Did I dare? I rolled the dice. “Yeah, I would like that.” “OK, I’ll get that brand instead when it’s time to re-stock.” And there it was. The pull-ups I had dreamed about would be all mine. But back to the current dilemma. I needed to get the pull-up off that I was currently wearing. I considered making an excuse to run up to my bedroom when Hannah inched the door open again, with only her head peeking out. Hannah tossed my crumpled-up pull-up into the hallway. “I don’t like them. They’re itchy.” “Hannah,” Mom said, a bit exasperated. “Can you just try them for a little? We can have your family bring you your usual ones real soon.” “No. I don’t want it. I need mine.” Mom looked at a loss about what to do in the face of Hannah’s defiance. “Can you go without pull-ups for a little while?” Hannah shook her head. “No.” I couldn't see, but it sounded like she had stomped her feet as well. I pulled out my phone, flipping back to the app where the unfinished message to Emma waited for me. “I’ll text Emma and see if she can come over. She can bring some pull-ups for Hannah and take her home.” <><><> The doorbell rang. I rushed over to answer it. Emma was at the front door with Hannah’s bag in hand. “Took you long enough,” I said. “It’s been like twenty minutes.” “I had to find her things,” Emma said, holding up the bag. “Took me forever to find where her pull-ups were. Where is she?” “In the bathroom. I gave her some of my shorts to wear, but she won’t come out until she has a pull-up.” “Oh my goodness,” Emma said with a groan. “I’m really looking forward to when she moves in next summer.” “You are?” “Of course not,” Emma snapped. “I’m never going to be able to get free of her. I don’t need her coming over and peeing over all of my stuff. I sent her your way ’cause she’s been prattling on about you non-stop. It all got worse when Mom insisted that she could stay up with us for our sleepover tomorrow.” I started picking at my fingernails. What had Hannah said? Was the pull-up under my shorts rustling loudly? Or was I just imagining it? I had to get out of it. “She’s your cousin, not mine.” “What was I supposed to do?” “Maybe not tell her where I live. Or maybe tell her I can’t have friends over when I’m home alone.” “I did tell her. But she’s not exactly the smartest cookie in the jar. She kept asking where you lived, and I finally told her. I didn’t think she was just going to up and run off without any of her things.” “Can you just get her the bag, and then she can get dressed and go back home with you?” “Fine.” Emma rolled her eyes and marched past me toward the bathroom; I trailed along behind her. Mom was still waiting outside the closed bathroom door when we arrived. Emma knocked on the bathroom door. “Brought your pull-ups.” Hannah opened the door and took the bag from Hannah’s hand. “Sorry about my cousin,” Emma said to my mom with a shrug of her shoulders. “Did her family move in early?” Mom asked. “No, just visiting for the week, but her family is moving into the neighborhood next month.” It didn’t take Hannah more than a minute to get her preferred pull-up on and exit the bathroom. “Come on,” Emma said to her cousin. “We’ve got to hurry back home. Remember, I’ve got a soccer game tonight.” It was hard to resist being jealous. Even with getting to go to the soccer camp, I missed the being on the summer team with my friends. “Do I have to go to?” Hannah whined. “It’s no fun watching. I’d rather play. Can’t I stay here with Maddy instead?” I looked over at Mom. Please say no. I didn’t want to be stuck having Hannah over for the evening. How was I ever supposed to get out of these pull-ups before someone noticed that I had them on? “Of course,” Mom said. “That would be great, but only if her parents are OK with it.” “Yay!” Hannah yelled. “One more thing,” Mom said, pulling Hannah aside. I didn’t hear Mom’s whispered question. But Hannah’s response was at her normal volume. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her whisper. “Yeah, I have extras.” I thought I could guess what Mom had asked. Now I needed to figure out a way to excuse myself to my bedroom. I just needed a minute alone. That would be enough to swap out the pull-up for regular underwear. Emma appeared to be having difficulty suppressing a grin on her face as she called her aunt, letting us know once she hung up that Hannah could stay for dinner and that Hannah’s parents would come pick her up before her bedtime. Hannah ran up and gave me a hug. “This will be so much fun.” --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

She's aware of the techniques for avoiding leaks, which is what she has done with her generic bedwetting pull-ups. But there are a lot of different preferences for how one might prefer to wet a diaper. As for ADHD, she's had it her whole life without any real bedwetting appearing prior to the events of the story. That would be very unfortuante for her. Thanks, there are definately reasons for Hannah's appearance. Couldn't have her be gone for a whole month or two (in-story time) without showing up. Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it. And yes, there are a lot of questions still, which will get answered eventually to varying degrees. As for Maddy's neurodivergence, the idea for that really started with her obsessive interest in diapers and how those types of special interests can be a neurodivergent trait, and it expanded from there. Thanks, we will be getting much more into the neurodivergence parts of the story in the coming chapters.

Chapter 44: Doubling Down I placed the small pill into my mouth for the third time before taking a few quick sips of water. Finally, I hadn’t managed to swallow the pill during the first two attempts, but I got it down on the third try. I had almost been tempted to throw it in the garbage. That would have been as useful as swallowing it. But my parents would ask later if I had taken it, and despite my ability to fake my way through bedwetting, I wasn’t confident that I could pull off lying about taking my medicine. The first morning after coming home from camp, Mom had come into my bedroom with a glass of water and the medicine that was supposed to make my ADHD better. I had gone to bed the night before without wearing anything over the pull-up, and I had wet it slightly before falling asleep. That led to the unfortunate situation of tossing off the covers, leaving no doubt about the condition of my nighttime underwear. In the minutes following the first time I took the medicine, I had sat in bed with baited breath, in anticipation of what might come next, like there might be some magical transformation happening in my body. Was there a tingling sensation in my toes? No, my foot had just gone numb because I had been sitting on it funny. As far as I could tell, the following week played out like every other had at home during the summer vacation. I attended a couple more therapy sessions, but I couldn’t tell what the continuing questions and discussions were supposed to add up to. The summer tutoring, on the other hand, really sucked. Even being gone from it for a week made it feel like I had forgotten so much already, and I didn’t care for the math worksheets and flashcards. The tutors tried hard to not make the lessons feel like real school. I wasn’t fooled. That left me with less time alone at home than I would have desired. Summer was supposed to be about freedom, and I had so much less of it than I desired, a problem worsened by the item hidden at the bottom of my backpack. That changed today. Today was the first time I would have the house all to myself while Jackson was at his summer daycare camp and everyone else was at work. After the first morning of supervising my medication, Mom left it to me to take the pills every morning when I got out of bed. My parents had promised that I would eventually be able to have friends over during the day if I showed that I could be responsible. I felt like I had lived up to my end of the bargain. I hadn’t accidentally burned the house down. I had done my chores even if I usually procrastinated and didn’t finish them until right before my parents arrived home. Well, mostly. I forgot to clean the cat litter every once in a while, usually not on purpose. And I hadn’t snuck in Emma and Angie, turning aside their suggestions to sneak in while I had the house to myself. But for now, I held off on reminding my parents about that promise; I wasn’t going to do that until I had a chance to try the diaper. Hannah’s diaper, hidden at the bottom of my backpack, remained unused. I’d spent hours looking at it, taking it out when everyone was away, building plans for the day I’d finally wear it. I had one shot. I had to preserve it for the right moment. A time when I could get the most possible use out of it. With the amount of padding inside, it had to be five or six times more absorbent than my pull-ups. Wetting it just once before throwing it away wouldn’t do. The clock read 9 a.m. Grace would be the first home from work, not returning until 4:45 p.m. More than enough time to do everything I wanted to do. I’d emptied my bladder into the pull-up minutes after Mom left with Jackson in tow, springing a small leak onto the bathroom floor I’d cleaned before showering. Now I stood in the bedroom fully engulfed in a massive towel I’d wrapped around myself. I’d retrieved the diaper from my backpack. It sat on my bed, taunting me. Last week, the dreams of wearing those bedwetting pull-ups had finally come true, courtesy of unsuspecting Hannah. Never in my wildest dreams would I have envisioned being able to wear pull-ups for nearly a whole week. And yet. I now realized how tiny the dreams of the past three years had been. I had just dreamed of the moon when a whole universe awaited me. And I had only just scratched the surface. I placed a tentative hand on the diaper, the plastic surface so strange compared to the soft pull-ups I wore every night. One chance. If I did this now, I wouldn’t be able to do it again. But with how busy my summer was becoming, waiting for later might risk missing another good opportunity. I let the blanket fall to a heap on the floor and grabbed the diaper, shaking it to make it completely unfold. This brought one of the main questions I’d pondered in the last week back to the forefront of my mind. How exactly was I supposed to put the diaper on? It wasn’t at all like a baby diaper. There were two tapes on either side. Was there a certain way I was supposed to connect them to the front of the diaper? If so, the diaper was of no use. There were no guide marks on it, no indications of what I was supposed to do. The only marking that stood out was a yellow stripe running down the middle, which I guessed had to be a wetness indicator. The internet was of no help. I didn’t dare look up any guidance on putting on an adult diaper. Dad would find out. There was no plausible excuse I could think of to explain away that type of online query. I attempted and failed to position the diaper correctly while standing up. That proved impossible. How was I supposed to hold the front and back in place while also grabbing one of the sticky tabs to connect it all together? There had to be an easy way to do this. If Hannah, a girl so inept that she couldn’t even undo a double knot, could manage to put an adult diaper on all by herself, then surely I could figure out a way to do it all on my own. How did baby diapers get put on? While lying down. After finally stumbling on that obvious clue, I laid down on my back on the bed, sliding the back of the diaper beneath me. The padding was everywhere. I was used to just the thin strip of absorbent material that l ran in a narrow, straight line up and down the inside of the pull-up. The padding engulfed me. I pulled the front of the diaper all the way up to my waist, but it didn’t quite align with the back, coming up way too far on my belly. After another minute of adjustments, I thought I might have everything lined up right. I looked over at the clock. Nearly ten minutes had passed by already. The problem now was the tapes. There were too many of them. I grabbed one and pulled it as far as I could before pressing it firmly against the front of the diaper, moving on quickly to the next three. I stood up from the bed. The diaper nearly slid off. I began to understand why none of the other girls in Cabin B had chosen to wear diapers rather than pull-ups. I started pulling the top right tab off to adjust it for a better fit. Then I noticed it was about to rip the front plastic off the diaper. Sweat started building up on my forehead. Had I ruined my only chance to wear a diaper? What was I supposed to do? Would regular tape even be enough to hold the diaper in place? After a few panicky seconds, I realized to my relief that the tapes could be set twice. There was a second tab on top the first one that allowed for one re-do. But no more, once that was done it was final. The only way to remove the diaper afterward would be to irreparably damage it. This time, I didn’t rush. I examined the diaper for several minutes, trying to think through the best locations to place each of the four tapes, until at last I felt confident that my next attempt would go better. I adjusted the tapes while standing up. I undid the first tab and re-taped it to a much snugger fit. The next three tapes were just as easy. I gazed down at my waist and admired my handiwork. The diaper no longer sagged. The tapes weren’t exactly symmetrical, but for my first try, I felt like I had done good enough. The difference between this diaper and my pull-ups was almost too much to believe. I walked over to my dresser, my gait transformed into an actual waddle as I struggled to bring my legs together. And that was just with a dry diaper. I threw on a t-shirt but opted against wearing anything over the diaper. I would be safe with all the blinds shut. Now, there was only one thing left to do. Drink as much water as I possibly could, then hold onto my bladder until I couldn’t last another second. <><><> I eased my way down the stairs carefully, still not fully confident in my new waddling. My eyes remained fixed on the windows, confirming that the blinds were shut and the shades were down. I chose not to turn on the lights, leaving the house in a semi-darkness broken only by thin beams of light peaking in through the edges of the windows. I tiptoed to the front door, twisting the handle. Locked. Same was true for the back door and the door to the garage. The first glass went down easily as I chugged the cold water down the back of my throat, but I struggled to get even halfway through the second glass, my stomach angrily protesting that it simply couldn’t take any more. My stomach gurgled uncomfortably after one more cautious sip as I tried to prepare myself. I was caught between my desire for the awaited moment to arrive and my intention to hold off as long as possible in order to get as much as I could out of it. I set the half-full glass on the counter, pausing to catch my breath. I needed a break. Any more to drink, and I might vomit. Normally, killing a few hours with the house to myself would have been an easy task. Pick a Harry Potter book at random. Flop on the couch. Lose track of any sense of time. Now it didn’t even feel like my new Hogwarts game would do. Meow. I jumped at the sound of our cat, Chester, as he announced his entrance to the kitchen and meandered over to his food bowl. I didn’t see what he was complaining about. The bowl was still about half full. But the bottom was visible in a few places, and that wasn’t acceptable to the orange cat. Chores. The bane of my existence, well no, Algebra probably held that distinction. I rummaged through the cupboard under the sink for the cat food, finding that bending over, like walking, was more difficult when wearing a diaper. Chester stuck his face right into the food bowl the second I filled it up, not so much as a “please” or “thank you.” At least one of my chores was done, but their familiar dread was beginning to weigh down on me. I could do them later. After I was done with the diaper. I had nearly eight hours or so remaining. But what if I did the chores now? I felt motivated to get them out of the way. I wanted to enjoy the rest of my diapered day without them hanging over my head. I scooped the litter — not before putting toilet paper in my nose to block out the awful smells. Then I took out the garbage from the kitchen and the bathroom. The chores quickly done — the list for today had been short — I filled up two more glasses of water in the kitchen, bringing them with me to the living room, seeking momentary distraction from a sensation beginning to grow in my bladder. <><><> I sat on the couch, a couple of now empty cups set in front of me on the coffee table. It was becoming harder and harder to concentrate on the Hogwarts video game I was playing on the TV. I was well into what I assumed must be the middle stages of the game, racing around the exterior of the castle on a newly upgraded broomstick. My bladder ached, reminding me of that time I had held on as long as possible down in the basement, prior to when I had gotten even any pull-ups. That had been a pain to clean up afterward. I couldn’t imagine ever doing that again, no matter how much I had enjoyed it. Nearly three hours had passed since I had put on the diaper this morning. After finishing my chores, I spent the rest of the morning sitting on the couch. About thirty minutes had passed since I had finished the last of the two glasses in front of me. By taking small sips every few minutes, I had managed to drink both glasses, bringing my total to three-and-a-half. I glanced down at the diaper for the millionth time this morning. I tried to picture nearly four glasses of pee all in the diaper, but the idea suddenly became preposterous. My body swayed back and forth in rhythm with the music from the game. I pressed the pause button and tossed the control to the side, my hands immediately sliding between my legs in a last ditch attempt to try and hold everything in. I rocked back and forth, tapping on the ground with my feet. Just like at camp. The soccer field. The championship game. Losing control right before the penalty kick. I pushed it out of my mind. That had been a fluke, just bad luck because I’d been wearing pull-ups all the time. That wasn’t going to happen again. I looked at all the empty cups on the table. Had I really drunk that much? My confidence in the diaper began to sink. Could it really actually work? And what was I thinking? If it leaked while I was sitting on the couch and dripped down onto the carpet, how was I supposed to get that cleaned up properly? I needed to be somewhere safer. Out of all my options, the kitchen was the closet. I stood up. I took one step. The dam broke. Warmth. Indescribable warmth. All gushing out of me fast enough that I could make out a not-so-faint hissing sound of the urine streaming against the inside of the diaper. I dropped my gaze to my diaper, pulling aside my hands so I could witness what was happening between my legs. The white exterior of the diaper left not doubt about what was happening beneath, as as rapidly expanding wet spot expanded faster and faster. The yellow line turning blue in each spot the wetness reached. Ten seconds passed. Still going as strong as before. The diaper began to bulge outward. Thirty seconds. I could feel the diaper grow heavier, heavier than my pull-ups had ever gotten, expanding outward even more. I braced myself, waiting for the inevitable trickle of wetness seeping out around my thighs and racing down my legs. But I still couldn’t move. Forty-five seconds. Everything remained contained. I was still peeing. I couldn’t bring it to a stop. But it was now coming out much slower than before. Sixty seconds. Done. A few last bursts of pee, and then it was all out. Everyone other than the diaper remained completely dry. I ran a hand along the inside of my thighs where the stretchy sides of the diaper were held tight against my skin. Completely dry. Not even a hint that the diaper had leaked at all. I examined the diaper more closely. To my amazement, the wetness indicator turned back to yellow about halfway down. All that I had drunk and the diaper was only halfway used? No wonder Hannah didn’t have to worry about leaks at night. This amount of absorbency had to be overkill for those purposes, however well-suited it was to mine. I pressed a tentative hand against the front of the diaper. Warm. Squishy. It was everything I had envisioned when I had first dreamed of getting pull-ups to wear. In every area where the pull-ups had failed, these diapers succeeded. It was not fair. Why did Hannah get to wear these at night when I was stuck in pull-ups? It was awful enough for my parents to be aware that I wore pull-ups. For my sister to be aware that I wore them. A diaper? No, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I grimaced, imagining Grace walking by me in the hallway after I had changed into a diaper for the night, the padding underneath my clothes painfully and audibly obvious. And forget about sleepovers. If my parents expected me to have a diaper on when my friends were over for the night, that would be impossible to navigate without Emma and Angie finding out. My heart sank. It was not to be. Maybe I could pilfer the occasional diaper from Hannah, but it was impossible to try and fathom a point in the future where I’d be able to get diapers like this for myself. I walked to the kitchen with an empty glass in each hand. Now I actually waddled, the diaper remaining snug around me. A quick re-fill. Maybe a bite to eat. And I could attempt to hold out another three hours before wetting the diaper a second time. I no longer had any doubt that it would hold. I opened the fridge after setting the glasses on the counter. My options for lunch were slim. I supposed that I should be grateful that it was better than the slop I had been fed for a week at camp, but that didn’t quell the disappointment at the choice of leftover spaghetti, a bologna sandwich, or My stomach rumbled. Not because I was hungry. I needed to poop. Maybe it was just a one-off. I couldn’t need to. I wouldn’t need to. That hopeful thought was followed a few seconds later by a stronger rumble and then the unmistakable sensation of something moving in my gut. I tried to hold it in. Maybe if I waited it out, the urge would go away, and I’d be able to resume enjoying my diapered day. It was no use. I reluctantly arrived at the inconvenient truth that I was going to poop, probably in the next five to ten minutes, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The only question left was where I was going to do it. I had never had any desire to mess myself. Gross was far too simple of a word to describe my feelings about pooping my pants. Even in the earliest days of obsessing over pull-ups, I had only ever contemplated wetting them. Doing that in a diaper was not an option. But the only other choice was taking the diaper off for good, and I had no idea when or even if I would be able to get another one again. Hannah’s move-in date remained a month away. And I’d be away on vacation during it. And once I was back, how long would it take to be able to secure a sleepover at her house and re-stock? If, if, and if. I filled one of my empty glasses at the sink and chugged it down. The idea of being able to empty a completely full bladder twice into a diaper was so tempting. Taking the diaper off now would be such a waste. I clenched my stomach as the urge to poop grew stronger. Time was running out. If I didn’t choose, my body was going to soon choose for me. Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad after all. The diaper would hold it all in. Then, I could wait and wet the diaper a second time. Clean up in the shower afterward. Babies did it all the time. I paced through the main floor of the house, to the living room, back through the hallway, and past the bathroom that I nearly stepped into, back into the kitchen before arriving in the dining room. I couldn’t take off the diaper. Not yet. I’d worked too hard and risked too much. I gripped the edge of the dining room table with both hands as I squatted slightly, the motion an almost entirely involuntary response to the urges coursing through my body, far past the point of being able to exert any control over what was about to happen. Then, I, Madelyn, a 13-year-old girl, messed myself intentionally. It really was that bad. The initial relief of the tension leaving my body as my bowels evacuated was short-lived, replaced by a pungent smell and a sticky, gooey sensation on my bottom. “Oh fuck!” I clasped my hands over my mouth as if uttering those forbidden words was somehow remotely comparable to the act I had completed prior to that verbal outburst. What next? Taking the diaper off meant missing out on my last chance to wear one for who knew how long. Leaving the diaper on meant having poop held snug against my bottom for the next several hours. Taking the diaper off meant having to wipe a huge amount of shit off of my butt. Later. Doing that later sounded like a much better idea. Besides, what was the point of messing myself instead of using the toilet if I was just going to take the diaper off right away? A wad of tissue paper stuffed in each nose resolved the issue of the smell for the most part. With that first problem resolved, I collected several bottles of water, bringing them all to the coffee table as I gingerly stepped through the hallway. I sat down on my knees, finding that to be the least uncomfortable of my options. I attempted to remain as still as I could. If I didn’t move, I could partially manage to ignore the uncomfortable side of the diaper. I chugged through each bottle of water as fast as I could manage, eager to fill my bladder up as fast as possible. This time, I lasted only about an hour before the urge to pee became too strong to bear. And for the first time ever, I wet myself without any single worry that there would be a leak. <><><> As far as I could tell, the wetness indicator on the diaper was now entirely blue. I twisted and turned in the small bathroom on the main floor twenty minutes after the second wetting, trying to get a fuller view of my now very full diaper. I’d drunk over a half-dozen glasses of water so far today. And I’d even messed myself. And still the diaper held, if just barely. Why did my pull-ups have to be so shitty in comparison? The need to pee returned, though just a little. I emptied my bladder once more in a tiny spurt. It was time to get cleaned up. I had no desire to take the diaper off. Some of that was because of how it felt to wear it. Some of it was because of realization that I would not get to wewar another actually diaper for a long time. Most of it was because of the building dread of how gross that process would be. I walked to the base of the stairs, where I stood looking up. The only shower was in the upstairs bathroom. Each step up was more excruciating than the last, as I oscillated between the comfort of the still slightly warm diaper and the sensation of cold poop smearing across my bottom. Mom had gotten me a pack of wet wipes to help clean up in the morning. I had been embarrassed at first, but now I was incredibly grateful that she had done so. I had to use nearly the entire pack of wet wipes before the last traces of poop were removed from my bottom. I still didn’t feel clean. I stepped into the shower with my back facing the faucet, water streaming down my back. I remained in the shower for ten minutes until, at last, I was sure everything had been rinsed off. Never again. <><><> I disposed of the wet and soiled diaper as carefully as I could, wrapping it in a half-dozen garbage bags, both to conceal the smell and to make sure that it wasn’t possible to get any glimpse of the contents through the white plastic lining. The diaper was now in the trash bin in the garage, hidden underneath a couple other garbage bags. Trash day was tomorrow. All the evidence of what I’d done would soon be gone forever. I wrinkled my nose as I stepped back into the living room. The lingering malodorous scents of the diaper still hung in the air. I couldn’t have my parents returning to the house if it smelled like this. I rummaged through the closet until I at last found an odor-killing air spray. I went through half a bottle as I sprayed it liberally throughout the house. I collapsed onto the couch, clean underwear on beneath my shorts as I resumed my game. A pull-up would have been nicer to wear, but it would have been a waste to wear a pull-up for only a couple of hours before my parents and siblings arrived home. That had been the most wonderful experience of my life if only it hadn’t been marred by the need to poop. I simply had to experience it again. Hannah’s arrival in our neighborhood couldn’t come soon enough. The urge to pee arrived suddenly and strongly. I didn’t get up from the couch as I continued the fight against the boss that I was in the middle of. I could go to the bathroom after I had beaten him. A few seconds later, a jolt of pain between my legs caused me to toss the controller to the side without even pausing as I leaped up from the couch, my bladder aching as though it was almost to the point of bursting. I nearly slid on the wood floor as I rounded the corner to the bathroom. I slammed the toilet seat open and dropped my underwear and shorts to the floor, taking a seat on the toilet just in time. I strained for a moment, and a small stream of pee came out. I tried to pee some more, but nothing happened. I looked down at my underwear as I stood up from the toilet. It was marked by a fresh pee stain. I hadn’t completely made it in time. Not again. But, the wet spot was only the size of a quarter. It hadn’t been that much of a leak before I’d made it to the toilet. The wet underwear went into the laundry basket, buried out of sight deep in the middle. I examined my shorts. They had remained dry at least. Another pair of underwear would be the better choice, but I instead grabbed one of my nighttime pull-ups, putting it on instead, tension easy as the familiar padding was pulled snug between my legs. I didn’t need it. I just wanted it. That’s what I told myself as I again resumed playing my videogame. <><><> I jolted upright at the sound of pounding at the door, grabbing my shirt and pulling it down over my waist. Was someone home already? I looked at my phone. It was already past when Grace should have arrived back home, and Mom should be here with Jackson any minute as well. Running back to my bedroom wasn’t an option. What if they saw me round the corner when they stepped inside? All I could hope was that the dry pull-up beneath my shorts would go undetected until I could sneak upstairs to remove it. Then, there was another round of knocking, followed by the doorbell ringing. Wait a second. It wouldn’t be Grace or my parents at the door. They had keys, so they wouldn’t need to knock. I relaxed and leaned back against the couch cushions. I was still safe. It wasn’t uncommon for a package to come during the day or some random salesperson to knock briefly before leaving a flyer and moving on to the next house. I returned my focus to the game. As soon as they left, I’d go up and take my pull-up off, and then be safe for when my family actually arrived home. Then the doorbell rang yet again, followed by another series of knocks. Whoever was at the door was being very persistent as the pounding grew more rapid and intense. Still, I didn’t go look. My parents had given me a lot of rules for staying home by myself, but one of the ones my dad had been most clear on was that I was not to answer the door for anyone, period. Especially strangers, but not even my friends. I sighed. They’d have to realize soon enough that no one was going to answer the door. The next pause lasted nearly a minute. But I wasn’t in the clear. The sounds returned, louder than ever. I knew the rules, but curiosity got the better of me. I tip-toed toward the front of the house, making my way to the living room. I slid a window blind open a quarter of an inch, just enough to get a glimpse of someone standing at the door, swaying back and forth on the balls of her feet with one hand pressed up against the front of her shorts. Hannah. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

I made a few updates to Chapter 43 to get Maddy's pull-ups brands back on track. Thanks again to @Salsa for catching that issue. A summary of the changes:

The accident happened right as she was getting set to take the penalty kick. Thanks! I don't know if I'd put it that way quite yet. Thanks, we'll be getting a lot more into ADHD with Maddy back home from camp, starting with the meds and continuing with the therapy and summer tutoring lessons.

We're going to let that result of the dare be a mystery 😉 I'm not planning on going back to a set schedule. As for the number of chapters, I think the count will be lower. I'd like to focus on longer chapters that push the plot along further than a lot of smaller chapters that end up taking more time to do so. Not that there isn't a lot of story left, but I don't think the chapter count will hit 100. I don't think I've touched on her potty training. I've done a few flashbacks for her, but I don't think I'll be going back that far.

That's a good catch. I missed that after coming back to the story after being away for a while. I thought I had already made that switch to the new pull-ups at some point, as that had been the plan. I'll need to see what the best way to fix that continuity error is. Probably will make some small retroactive changes once I figure out what works best. I do have a preference for avoiding brand-names in my writing. Consantly mentioning them feels too advertisy to me, and I'm not big on fictional or parady brand names either.

Thanks! I think I sometimes write very similarly to how I play videogames. I find it very easy to wander along all the sidequests while leaving the main one untouched. Thanks! You're welcome! We'll be picking up on a lot of things once Maddy is back home in the next chapter.

And we are back with a new chapter. A little longer of a wait than I intended, but the chapter is also rather a bit longer than intended. Chapter 43: Promises It was still dark outside when I woke up the first time, cutting my dream in half. The details of the dream that had been interrupted were a bit fuzzy in my head. I felt like it had been something to do with trying and failing to hide my nighttime pull-ups from my little brother Jackson, the only member of my family still oblivious to my bedwetting situation. I blinked a few times as the realization that I wasn’t home hit me. I was at camp. In a cabin. With a bunch of bedwetters. And Hannah. A couple minutes passed as my eyes gradually acclimated to the darkness, calmed by the fact that the present situation was at least better than the nightmare I had been in the midst of a few moments ago. Not that it was a particularly high bar to clear. My attention was redirected to the other side of the room by a creak from a floorboard. I couldn’t make out who it was in the dark, but I could make out the silhouette of someone on the opposite side of the room who wasn’t being stealthy enough as they rummaged through a suitcase on the floor before tip-toeing toward the bathroom. I craned my neck as I watched them go down the hallway; the light that flickered on from the bathroom showed me that it was Lily with a white pull-up clenched in her hand. I pretended to be asleep when the bathroom door opened again and a flicker of light appeared from it before Lily flipped the switch off. But pretending to sleep swiftly changed into actually sleeping. It was past sunrise by the time my eyes opened up once again. I had shifted out from underneath the blanket in my sleep, and my shorts had slid down enough that the waistband of my pull-up was visible. I grabbed the blanket and pulled it back over myself before surveying the room. Half the bunks were already empty. Lily, Hailey, and Hannah also remained in bed, but they showered last night, so there wasn’t any rush to get ready for the day. Amy, the cabin counselor was already up and dressed. She was laying down on her bed flipping through some papers on a clipboard, going through what looked like a schedule for the day. Isabella had also finished getting ready for the day; she was beside her bed organizing some soccer equipment into a smaller drawstring bag. While a dry pull-up or diaper might not be as noticeable underneath pajamas, I discovered, to my chagrin, that a fully wet one was rather obvious, at least in the case of Hailey, who I watched carefully as she got out of bed, grabbed some clothes, and made their way out the bathroom. The pull-up wasn’t directly visible, but from the way her pants sagged down, it was clear she hadn’t come close to staying dry last night. I winced. The way my older sister Grace had figured out I had a wet pull-up beneath my pajamas that one time suddenly made more sense. Had It really been that obvious the morning after the sleepover? I slid my hand beneath my shorts to inspect my own pull-up. It was only a little full, all from when I had wet it before falling asleep last night. I reassured myself that it wouldn’t be nearly as noticeable as Hailey’s. I did need to pee. Now, it wasn’t nearly so bad that I needed to rush off to the bathroom, but it was enough that I knew better than to risk wetting the pull-up for a second time, which would probably result in it leaking out over the bed. That had been one of my considerations when I had been contemplating how I could get my hands on another type of pull-up or diaper. I had thought about wetting my pull-up so much that it leaked, and then using that as an excuse to borrow some of the better protection options from the other girls. It hadn’t taken me long to soundly reject that plan. For one, I wasn’t sure if I could endure that level of humiliation. Secondly, there wasn’t any guarantee that there would be any extra pull-ups that would fit me. Amy glanced up from her clipboard as Olivia and Maya returned from the bathroom, before turning her eyes in my direction. “You need to hurry up, Maddy. You’re the last one, and there should be a shower open now.” I tugged my shirt down and slid out of the bed. There weren’t many times where I was happy to get out of a pull-up, but this was one of them. It would be a welcome relief to not be worrying about if anyone could see what I was wearing beneath my shorts. As I gathered some clothes for the day and grabbed a washcloth, shampoo, and a pair of flip-flips, I tried to focus on what Chloe had said to me the night before, that feeling embarrassed was perfectly OK. The problem was that the source of my discomfort was the exact opposite of the obvious assumptions Chloe was making. Or was it? If I had been an actual, real bedwetter, would I have still been as uncomfortable, or would I have been so at peace with that situation as to be able to walk around like she did with her pull-up fully exposed? Everyone was too wrapped up in what they were doing to pay any attention me as I made my way over to the bathroom, quickly using the toilet before slipping into the shower stall with a quiet sigh of relief as I admitted that this whole situation would have been much easier to handle as a regular bedwetter rather than someone pretending to be one. The shower was partitioned into two sections. Behind the first curtain was a small changing area with a few hooks on the wall to hang a towel and a wood bench where I could set my clean clothes. That was separated from the tiny shower stall with another curtain. It took several minutes of twisting the hot and cold knobs back and forth to get the water to an acceptable temperature. I looked down uneasily at the plastic shower flooring, grateful that Mom had insisted on having me pack flip-flops. I wasn’t all that keen on the idea of stepping onto it with bare feet. Once I was finished showering I ran into another problem as I looked down at the pile of pajamas still on the bench. I hadn’t thought through how I was going to dispose of the wet pull-up without anyone noticing. If I had been thinking properly, I would have tossed it in the small garbage can in the toilet stall. My only option was the trash can at the far end of the bathroom, which meant having to walk all the way past the sinks. I shifted the wet pull-up to my left hand so that my body could somewhat naturally shield it from view as I walked by everyone to my right by the sink. I kept my eyes laser-focused on the garbage bin. I didn’t glance over at the mirror. I didn’t want to know if the girls at the sink were reacting in any way to what I was doing, though out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that it was Chloe and Hannah who were in the middle of brushing their teeth and hair, respectively. I took a peak inside the garbage bin as I deposited the pull-up. The only thing that made me feel better was that there were already several pull-ups and what must have been Hannah’s used diaper at the bottom of the otherwise mostly empty garbage bin. Well, that was over with, at least. I turned to glance back toward Hannah, who was still busy with a brush, trying to get a few tangles out of her hair. My face burned with second-hand embarrassment at the sight of the purple waistband of her pull-up sticking up an inch over her shorts. She must not have tied her waistband snugly enough. She was completely hopeless. I returned to my bed, which I made by haphazardly tossing the sheets and blanket on top before pulling out my phone to enjoy what I suspected were my last few Hannah free moments of the morning. I was midway through responding to a text from Mom when I overheard a conversation between Chloe and Maya behind me. “You won’t believe what I saw in the bathroom,” Maya said. “Hannah is actually wearing a pull-up still. I honestly thought it was some sort of weird joke that she wore them during the day. What’s wrong with her?” “Maya,” Chloe said. “You literally piss your pants every single night. I don’t exactly think you are in any position to be judging someone about having accidents.” Maya rolled her eyes. “Whatever, you know what I meant.” I had hoped that Hannah would at least be discreet with her pull-up during the day. It was one thing with a diaper, which was basically impossible to hide, but there wasn’t any excuse for letting a pull-up show. --- When I stepped outside the cabin behind Hannah, there was already a steady stream of campers making their way to the cafeteria. Once everyone had gotten dressed, Amy had given us a rundown of the schedule for the day. We’d have some practice sessions based on what positions we played, followed by some with our actually teams for the week. Outside of that, there would be some non-soccer activities organized by cabins. My stomach grumbled as I tried to keep up with Hannah. Even though I would normally skip breakfast most mornings, I was feeling quite ravenous today. Surely, breakfast would be better than the disaster that had been dinner last night. Breakfast was pretty hard to mess up. Hannah was dressed like normal with yet another Harry Potter themed shirt and a drawstring bag that I assumed contained extra pull-ups to change into. The problem with the bag was that it was causing the back of Hannah’s shirt to roll up slightly, which, when combined with the fact that Hannah’s shorts had slid down an inch again, meant that the waistband of her pull-up was showing. “Hannah, wait up,” I yelled. But, of course, she didn’t seem to hear me. I still didn’t really get why she needed to wear those stupid noise-reducing ear-muffs. The only time the earmuffs came off was when Hannah was sleeping or when she was going out onto the soccer field. That would be too much of a safety hazard. I wouldn’t have wanted to try a header with those on. I quickened my pace and finally caught up to Hannah a few seconds later, quickly reaching out to grab her shirt and give it a tug down. Hannah paused and swatted away my hand as she turned around. “Don’t,” she said in a whiney tone. I managed to hold back my irritation at her response. “Your underwear was showing,” I said. Hannah just stared at me with a look of confusion on her face. “But I’m not wearing…” I glanced around. There were too many campers walking nearby. At least no one seemed to be looking directly at us. I leaned in closer to Hannah. “I mean, your pull-up was showing,” I said in as soft of a whisper as I could manage. Hannah tugged up her shorts. Now that she was facing me, I could see that her drawstrings had come undone. “Just tie your shorts,” I said, trying not to let my exasperation show. “Then you won’t have to keep worrying about them falling down.” Hannah fumbled at the drawstrings for about ten seconds before giving up. “I’m not very good at tying knots.” I was inclined to believe that statement. After all, both her regular shoes and soccer cleats had Velcro clasps in lieu of laces. My initial annoyance at her request turned to relief with the realization that this was exactly what my plan was needing. I needed to Hannah to think I was her friend if I wanted to get her to keep my pull-ups a secret. “I can do it for you.” I reached down and cinched both of the drawings before tying a double knot to keep her shorts securely in place. I tried not to think about what everyone else would be thinking if they were watching me tie Hannah’s shorts. I tried even harder not to think about how awkward it would be if Hannah’s pull-ups were showing at all during the practice sessions after breakfast. With the shorts in place, Hannah dashed off again toward the cafeteria without so much as a thank-you. I let out a long sigh as I slowly walked behind her. Best friend? More like babysitter. --- To my chagrin, I learned several minutes later that it was, in fact, incredibly easy for a cafeteria to mess up breakfast. On my plate were a few rubbery pancakes, an unpeeled orange, and some yellow gunk that was allegedly scrambled eggs. The only normal thing was a small plastic cup of yogurt, which had the benefit of at least being pre-packaged. For her part, Hannah had barely touched any of her breakfast. Instead, she stared down at her phone, which she had set on the table next to her tray, casually swiping down on what appeared to be a never-ending block of text. I was kind of curious about what she read if it wasn’t the Harry Potter series. “What are you reading?” “It’s a fic about what would happen if Harry got sorted into Slytherin.” I stared at her dumbfounded for a few moments, attempting to processes what she was saying, recalling that Hannah had mentioned reading fan-made Harry Potter stories before. “This is one of my favorite ones,” Hannah continued as she swiped down on her phone to scroll through what looked like a massive wall of text without pausing to look up at me. “Harry and Malfoy are dating.” I spat out a mouthful of yogurt all across my plate, earning more than a few glances from other campers. “What? The? Heck?” Hannah provided me with enough of an explanation that I understood why the parental controls my dad had set up would have blocked the particular fan fiction site she was on. Hannah went back to reading as if I hadn’t said anything at all. At least this kept her quiet, or, to be more accurate, it prevented her from talking my ears off. I instead had to contend with her smacking lips as she chewed loudly with her mouth open like she was attempting to mouth the words to herself as she was reading. I managed enough bites of breakfast to sustain myself through a morning of practice but didn’t take a single bite beyond that. Thankfully, our schedule didn’t allow much time for breakfast. Hannah tagged along behind me as we returned our trays with half-eaten breakfasts. “Don’t leave without me,” Hannah yelled back to me as she darted off toward the bathroom while we were walking to the exit from the cafeteria. I leaned back against the wall as other campers streamed out past me, resigned to the fact that I’d be waiting like his on Hannah all week long. I felt a twinge in my bladder. I had just used the toilet a short while ago before showering. May as well go now since I was waiting for Hannah either way. It turned out that I didn’t need to pee that much. I was in and out of the toilet stall quickly. It was only when I was washing my hands that I realized Hannah hadn’t finished doing her business. “Maddy!” I turned around. Hannah’s head was peeking out of the stall. I grabbed a couple of paper towels to dry off my hands, getting a quizzical look from the girl who had been standing next to me at the counter before heading over to the toilet stall where Hannah was. Probably just needed me to tie her shorts again. At the rate this was going, I hoped I wasn’t going to be changing her diapers by the end of the week. “You tied it too tight. I can’t get my shorts off,” Maddy said, not bothering to keep her voice down. There was a poorly disguised snicker from the other girl at the sink. I bit my lip. Six more days. I just had to get through that, and everything would be better again. Just six more days. “Here, I can help.” I pushed the door to the stall open slightly further and looked down at Hannah’s shorts. In my haste to get them tied on the way to the cafeteria, I had double-knotted them extremely tight. My fingers fumbled around with the drawstrings on Hannah’s shorts for more than a few seconds before getting them loose. It was harder to do it from a different angle, and my tighter-than-normal knot didn’t do me any favors. I got the knot undone, but I went too far in loosening her shorts. Hannah’s shorts slid six inches down her legs. Not much. But also more than enough to reveal the pull-up that Hannah had wet after being stymied by the double-knot. “Oh my god, for real?” The girl at the sink was now staring at us, a couple of crumpled-up paper towels in her hands. Hannah tugged her shorts up as I pulled the stall door shut, but the damage was already done. The girl at the sink didn’t say anything else. She just stood in place, gawking at us, one hand held over her mouth. My face burned as red as my hair. The only thing more humiliating than this would have been if I had been caught wearing pull-ups myself. She finally dashed out of the bathroom, dropping the wet paper towels in her hand onto the floor. I took a few steps away from the stall to give Hannah some privacy. A few seconds later, I heard a faint trickling in the toilet bowl. I shifted my feet impatiently. It was already enough of a delay to stop and use the restroom. I didn’t want to be late for practice. But a minute passed, and Hannah was still inside the bathroom stall. I knew from experience that changing a pull-up didn’t take long. With the bathroom still empty of any other campers, I approached the stall and lightly tapped on the door. “Hannah, we need to go now. We’re going to be late for practice.” “Go away, I’m not going.” “But Hannah…” “Go! Away!” I flinched as Hannah yelled out from the other side of the bathroom stall, and then was drawn closer by the ensuing sound of muffled sobbing. I stepped closer to the stall door once again. “Everything is going to be OK.” I had no idea how I was going to make this better. All I knew was that abandoning Hannah here would mean abandoning any hopes of coercing her into keeping my secrets. “You promise?” Hannah asked quietly. “Yes, yes, I promise. Now, will you come out and wash your hands?” Hannah opened the stall door slightly. Her shorts were back on with a single knot, but they looked secure enough this time around. Hannah held out her hand with one small finger extended toward me. “Pinkie promise?” I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I clasped my pinkie finger around her. Whatever would make her happy. “I promise,” I said. A smile spread across Hannah’s face. “Friends don’t break promises.” “Of course. Now, let’s go.” Hannah inched forward, then leaned back. “I can’t.” “Of course you can.” “But she saw my pull-up.” That was going to be a problem. Or would it? Hannah would have been done for if her shorts had dropped like that in the middle of a soccer match. But with just one witness, was as much at stake? “No one else saw besides her,” I said. “If she says anything, we can just say she is lying. I mean, who is going to believe that someone your age is still wearing pull-ups?” Hannah’s eyes turned down toward her feet. I rolled my own eyes. What had I done now? “OK, so can we go? I don’t want to be any more late.” Hannah mumbled something incoherent and took another step inside the stall. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.” “Of course you can. Your shorts are tied right. Your pull-up will stay hidden.” Hannah still didn’t move. My irritation got the better of me. “What’s wrong?” I snapped. Hannah wiped the back of her hand against one of her eyes before replying. “No one else my age wears pull-ups during the day.” I guess that out of the millions of girls in the country, her statement wasn’t technically true. But providing that information wasn’t going to be a solution. This was a disaster. And it was all my fault. If I hadn’t helped tie Hannah’s shorts so tight, she wouldn’t have gotten into this predicament. I had a stupid idea. No, that was putting it mildly. It was downright reckless. But one more glance at Hannah’s distraught face made me fear losing any chance of building a friendship that simply had to exist by the end of the week. How far was I willing to go to earn her silence? “Here,” I said. “I’ll wear a pull-up during the day, too, so you don’t have to be alone.” I looked at her bag. “You have extras, right?” The next few seconds felt as though they were being strung out for hours as I waited breathlessly for her response. If this gambit didn’t work, what would? “OK.” Hannah handed me her bag. “One more thing,” I said. “I’ll wear the pull-ups for you, but you have to promise not to tell anyone that I’m doing it. Pinkie promise.” Our fingers locked again. There. A simple test. Could Hannah be trusted to keep a secret for a week when the stakes were far lower than what awaited me back home? I ushered her out of the stall to go wash her hands as I stepped inside, beginning to contemplate the repercussions of this offer. I tried to reassure myself that it wasn’t a bad idea. Hannah was the only person I knew at camp. If, somehow, my secret did get out, would it actually matter? It wasn’t like I was ever going to see anyone here again. I had never considered wearing pull-ups anywhere other than the privacy of my own home. Sure, there was the standard fear of discovery, but it was also such a private act that there was somehow a wrongness to doing it in public, no matter how hidden the pull-up might be. I told myself that I was just doing it as part of the deal to win over Hannah’s friendship. That my shaking hands were only because of the fear of what might happen should other campers discover what I was doing. That there weren’t other factors guiding this decision. I opened Hannah’s bag and pulled out the single object I had desired most over the past three years. The pull-up I had hoped my parents would have purchased for me instead of the generic brand I had been stuck with. The distinctive purple waistband. The pastel rainbow on the front. But there was no time to admire it. I couldn’t deny a sudden rush of giddiness that was running over me as I felt the stretchy waistbands of the pull-up brush up against my legs as I slid it up to my waist. --- I took a sharp step forward with my left foot, planting it in the direction I was aiming my pass across the field. I swung toward the ball with my right foot, striking the ball on the inside of my cleat and sending it flying on a low trajectory toward Hannah twenty yards away. Hannah received the pass easily, executing a fancy side-step with the ball before kicking it back over to me. And no one could tell that we now had matching undergarments beneath our shorts. We’d gotten some looks from the coach running the morning drills, but he let us off with our excuse that we had gotten lost during our first morning on the massive complex. The drills had begun right away, leaving me little time to fret over how the pull-up was going to hold up. It turned out that there was no need to be worried. The pull-up was snug beneath my compression shorts, but to my pleasant surprise, it seemed like keeping them hidden during the day would be quite easy. So far, I hadn’t noticed any difference between these long sought-after pull-ups and the generic brand my parents had gotten for me. They felt the same. I hoped these would be more absorbent, but now wasn’t the time to test that. The compression shorts came up higher on my waist than the pull-ups did, reaching nearly to the top of my soccer shorts, and the snug fit of the compression shorts seemed to mute the crinkle sound, which I now could only make out faintly when I was close to Hannah while she was walking. It was impossible to forget that I was wearing the pull-up, not with how the compression shorts held it and pressed it up tightly against my skin. I mishandled the return pass from Hannah, the ball bouncing over my leg and coming to rest a dozen yards back. I jogged over to retrieve it, conscious the entire time of the extra padding between my legs, hoping fervently that it wasn’t forcing me into any type of waddle. Hannah’s semi-frequent runs over to the port-a-potty continued, my annoyance tempered with the relief that she seemed to be avoiding accidents, except perhaps for the time she’d grabbed her drawstring bag before heading in. There weren’t any more mishaps with her shorts, though I made sure to look over each time she returned to make sure that the drawstrings were in fact tied. I kept an eye out for the girl we’d encountered in the bathroom, but I didn’t catch a single glimpse of her. With the amount of campers, I hoped that this would stay the case for the rest of the week. I tried to re-assure myself that such an encounter wouldn’t matter. Like, who would believe her even if she accused Hannah of wearing pull-ups? Kids our age just didn’t do that. By the time morning practices were over, I was hungry enough that I didn’t care what was being served in the cafeteria. I intended to clean my plate down to the last bite. Hannah trailed behind me as we walked amidst the crowd, all flowing in the same direction, and she suddenly veered off to the side. “This way,” Hannah said, grabbing my hand. “Hey, the cafeteria is the other way,” I said. Hannah leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I need more pull-ups.” “Fine. But let’s be quick.” The detour to our cabin only took a few minutes. I had to nearly jog to keep up with Hannah’s speed-walking. I had done it. I’d survived a whole morning wearing a pull-up with no one else having a single clue. The small wave of giddiness I had felt earlier was back, and I didn’t know why. I suddenly felt like I needed to pee. Not so badly as to rush to a bathroom, but enough that doing so wouldn’t be difficult. What if I just went in the pull-up right now? I fought back at the intrusive thought. I knew that was a bad idea. I had no idea if these pull-ups would be much better than my own. I realized I had a decision to make as we arrived at our cabin, empty besides ourselves. I initially had intended to only wear the pull-up for one day. I had no desire for any of my cabin-mates to catch on to what I was doing. The opportunity to continue to wear these long-desired pull-ups was too difficult to pass up. And I really liked wearing the pull-up, even if wetting it wasn’t an option. And when was I ever going to get a chance to wear them for a whole week in a row without having to worry much about what the consequences of being caught would be? “Hold up,” I said as Hannah was making her way to the bathroom after restocking on pull-ups from her suitcase. “Would it make you feel better if I wore pull-ups the rest of the week?” Hannah didn’t answer right away. I began to worry that I had gone too far with my request, that she would be weirded out by my willingness to wear pull-ups without any actual need to do so. Instead, Hannah raced forward and wrapped her arms around me in a tight hug. “You’re the best friend ever.” “Um, thanks,” I said as I eased myself out of her grasp. “Can I take enough extras to put in my bag? That way, no one else has to know. Just us?” “Sure.” After Hannah went into the bathroom, I turned back and scanned around carefully, double-checking to make sure that none of our fellow cabin mates were approaching the cabin. I swept over to her suitcase, which she had left unzipped. I had no issues locating her pull-ups, which took up a third of the suitcase. Unlike me, Hannah had made no attempt to hide their presence. I counted out enough pull-ups to wear one each remaining day, scooping them up into my arms. Then I spotted something else. A bag full of Hannah’s nighttime diapers. Could I? Did I dare? There was no time to answer the question. There was only time to act. I counted the diapers quickly. There was one for each remaining night at camp with four spares. Way over-prepared, which was good, because that way she would be likely to overlook one of them going missing. If she had only brought one diaper per night, it would have been too mean to take one. I looked around once more before pulling the diaper out of the suitcase, sprinting to my bed, and tucking the diaper at the very bottom, away even from my own nighttime pull-ups. I looked around again. The coast was still clear. Hannah was still in the bathroom. No one else had entered the cabin. It wasn’t exactly a heist worthy of *Ocean’s Eleven*, but I still felt like I had pulled off a major job. Assuming Hannah didn’t notice anything was off tonight, once I got home from camp, I would finally be able to discover what it felt like to wear an actual for real diaper. I stared off into space, my mind awash with a whole new world of possibilities that I had never before considered. Would it fit? Would I be able to get it on by myself? What would it feel like? What would it sound like? And what would it be like when I finally released my bladder after holding it in as long as I could? “Maddy. Maddy! Is my pull-up showing?” Hannah asked, turning around so that her back was facing me. I didn’t see any tell-tale signs of the pull-up’s waistband above her shorts. “You’re good, it’s not showing.” “Thanks,” Hannah said as she turned around to face me again. “Why don’t you wear something like compression shorts over the pull-up?” I asked. “It hides my pull-up perfectly. You wouldn’t have to ever worry about anyone noticing.” I pulled down the waistband of my soccer shorts and my compression shorts, letting the top inch of the pull-up show briefly before hiding it again. Hannah crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t like them. They’re too tight on my skin. They feel funny.” “So? Isn’t it better to feel a little funny than to have someone see your pull-ups on accident?” Hannah shook her head firmly. “Uh, uh.” She was hopeless. I shuddered to think how this week of camp would have gone for Hannah if I hadn’t been along to hold her hand each step of the way. I didn’t know what to say next to help Hannah. My experience with wearing pull-ups paled in comparison to hers. “Well, maybe just make sure your shorts are tied tight enough so they don’t sag down.” I excused myself to go use the restroom. May as well be extra cautious. It was one thing for Hannah to be aware I was wearing a pull-up to make her feel better, but wetting them, on purpose or otherwise, would only serve to confuse things. Only kids like her had daytime accidents. --- I needed to pee so badly that I barely made it to the toilet on time. I should have gone before going to the campfire, but I had an experiment I was desperate to perform. I had lingered in the bathroom longer than normal each time, reluctant to remove the new pull-up from my view. Why did Hannah have to be so lucky as to get to wear these as well as her nighttime diapers? The thought of trading places came and went. No, that wouldn’t be worth the humiliation of everyone knowing that I wet my pants all the time. I let my soccer shorts and compression shorts fall to my feet. I didn’t remove the pull-up from my waist, sitting down on the slightly cool toilet seat with the pull-up still on. It was time to get ready for bed, and no way was I going to wear these at night. I didn’t want any of the other girls to get any hints of the extent to which I was now wearing pull-ups. If I was going to throw the pull-up away in the tiny garbage can in the toilet stall, there wasn’t any point in not wetting it first. I stared down at the pull-up as I let my bladder release. It filled up quickly. Too quickly. In a matter of seconds, there wasn’t a single dry stop remaining. I could feel urine pooling inside, not getting absorbed, but not quite leaking out yet, either. And then a few drips in the toilet, followed by a tiny stream. I sighed. Different pull-up. Same result. --- The next few days passed by in a blur as I settled into a routine. Sneaking an extra pull-up to change into after I showered in the morning wasn’t easy, but I managed to pull it off. And if anyone in Cabin B guessed that I was wearing a pull-up beneath my compression shorts, they kept that knowledge to themselves. Outside of the cabin, keeping the secret was even easier. By the second day, I hardly noticed that I was wearing a pull-up while I was running around during different soccer practices, games, and other camp activities. Hannah was basically a shadow, considering how she almost never left my side. That may have been for the best, considering the amount of times she needed my assistance, leaving me to feel almost as though I had gotten stuck in the role of a babysitter. I found myself once again in the restroom with Hannah, though at least she was proving to be more self-sufficient with her shorts. The stalls were narrow, and the walls didn’t go super close to the far. The effect was that you could see the feet of the person sitting in the stall next to you, along with whatever clothing they had dropped down to their feet, something I had noticed quickly and had made sure to be careful with my daytime pull-ups so as to keep them out of sight. I didn’t mean to notice Hannah’s pull-ups as I sat down in the stall, but it was impossible not to. I shuddered at the thought that anyone else she had been using the restroom next to might have inadvertently caught a glimpse of her different underwear. “Hannah,” I whispered, though I was fairly sure we were alone it the bathroom again. “You need to keep your underwear pulled up when you’re on the toilet. Otherwise someone might see it.” At least after a few days Hannah did understand that when I used the word underwear in public, I was instead using it as a euphemism to refer to her pull-ups. I saw her hands quickly grab her pull-up, and a second later it was out of sight. --- I kept a close eye on the back of Hannah’s shorts as we sat down in a semi-circle in the middle of the practice field while one of the coaches pulled out a white board to talk about some passing tactics to break offside traps. There was no sign of a pull-up sticking out. I breathed a sigh of relief. After the drawstring mishap on the first day at camp and the incidents in the bathroom, I was constantly checking to make sure her pull-up wasn’t visible. I still didn’t understand Hannah’s aversion to the compression shorts, but it did seem to be a theme, with all of her clothing looking large and loose-fitting on her. But, I would happily suffer any amount of discomfort if it meant preventing others from seeing my pull-ups, and it didn’t make sense that Hannah, who did have a sense of embarrassment at her insufficient toilet training, wouldn’t go along with that solution. Especially when it was so obvious. I was really enjoying all of the practice sessions. I couldn’t wait till this fall when I’d be back on a team with Emma and Angie and would be able to put this into use in games that actually mattered. Then Hannah’s hand shot up into the air in the middle of the coach’s explanation. Not again. I wanted to disappear into the ground. Her tendency to ask awkward, off-topic questions was only slightly better than her proclivity to just spout out whatever unfiltered thoughts were on her mind. “Hannah,” the coach said. “We’ll have time for questions later.” Hannah continued on, undeterred. “Are we going play capture the flag after dinner?” How and why her brain made that connection from what the current topic was something I couldn’t figure out. I looked down at my feet, second-hand embarrassment rushing through me, as the coach again gently explained to Hannah that there was a time and place to interrupt and ask questions. --- Three nights in, I realized something significant. As far as I could tell, not a single one of my fellow bedwetting campers had experienced any nighttime leaks. I hadn’t noticed any wet spots on pajamas in the morning, and no bedding had ever been removed or replaced. I knew from the evidence discarded in the bathroom garbage bins that plenty of bedwetting was happening each night. Why was it that the pull-ups didn’t work for me when the various forms of protection they wore seemed to work so well? My generic pull-ups did technically work, but only under the right circumstances when I peed in a moderate amount while my body wasn’t contorted in a bad position. And while I hadn’t tried to wet one of Hannah’s pull-ups fully in bed, I suspected the result wouldn’t be to my liking. Anything more than that, or if I tried to wet myself while lying on my side, and I was nearly guaranteed to create a big puddle underneath myself. Did some bedwetters just not pee as much? That might explain the situation for some of the campers. But the fact that Hannah wore a diaper to bed at night seemed to suggest that her pull-ups would be insufficient for the task. And whatever brand the pink pull-up was that Chloe wore, it appeared noticeably more absorbent than my own ones. The knowledge that there were better options than my pull-ups continued to taunt me. The problem was that I couldn’t see anything to do about it. No way was I going to ask my parents to buy diapers for me. That would put an end to the careful charade I put on to allow myself to continue going on sleepovers with my friends. The best I could do was the one I had stolen from Hannah. The thought of better pull-ups was also intriguing, but I couldn’t see a way to easily convince my parents to switch over to them, not when they thought my current pull-ups were doing an adequate job. I was in bed once again with one of my own fresh pull-ups. I’d last gone to the toilet about an hour ago, so I didn’t need to pee a lot, only a little. I shifted off of my side and onto my back and let my bladder release. Everything was warm, and warm was good. I was asleep before the pull-up cooled off. --- The soccer matches we played at the camp were adjusted slightly from the ones I normally played, The matches were shortened. That, and having large teams with lots of substitutions, allowed us to get a lot of games in while making sure everyone got sufficient playing time and enough rest in between. The beginning of the camp was a round-robin tournament. Our team won the first four games in our group, with Hannah and I tied for the most goals scored. But now we faced our biggest challenge. The team we were up against had also gone undefeated, meaning whoever won would get to go to the champion’s bracket for the ensuing playoffs over the final two days at the camp. It wasn’t my turn to start, so I had to wait about ten minutes until I got sent in with a substitution. The game remained scoreless. Hannah had also come off the bench to play the forward position across from me. Then I saw her. The girl from the bathroom. And she was playing defense for the opposing team. Maybe she wouldn’t recognize Hannah. Just as importantly, perhaps she wouldn’t recognize me. Then I saw the look on her face. How she ran over to whisper in the ear of another defender while pointing at Hannah. The girl and Hannah were both playing on the same side of the field, with the defender shadowing Hannah. There wasn’t much for us to do at the moment, with the action taking place on the other side near our own goal. As much as I wanted to move closer to Hannah to make sure she wasn’t getting bullied, doing so would put me well out of position. The other team finally got a shot off, with our goalie making an easy save. Now, it was our turn. The punted ball landed right in front of me at midfield. I trapped the ball and then turned to make an upfield pass toward Hannah. The defender got there first. She intercepted the pass, but knocked it out of bounds while in the process of doing so. The referee signaled for us to make a throw-in. One of our midfielders came up to throw the ball in while Hannah and I, the two lone forwards, attempted to get free of our defenders to receive it. The ball was thrown in toward Hannah’s feet, but it wasn’t aimed well. The defender slid between Hannah and the ball, shielding Hannah from it. A quick shove as she turned to pass the ball, and Hannah was on the ground. And, of course, the referee didn’t blow the whistle. There was a smirk on the defender’s face as she watched me run up to help Hannah to her feet. “Aww, did someone make a pee pee in her pull-up?” the girl taunted as I pulled Hannah off the ground. My mind searched for a solid comeback and went blank. Hannah looked like she might start crying. “Come on,” I said, guiding her away with a firm pat on her back. “She’ll shut up as soon as you score.” No sooner had we gotten back into position then the ball was moving up the field toward us again. Once again, I had the ball at my feet. I dribbled past the first defender and attempted another crossing pass toward Hannah. This time, I aimed it better, and Hannah was able to control the ball before the defender arrived. Hannah deftly swept the ball to her right past her. Now, there were no defenders remaining between herself and the goal. The girl spun and reached out toward Hannah as she ran past, grasping onto the back of Hannah’s jersey. A blatant but strategic foul to stop Hannah from getting a clean shot at the goal. I watched in horror as Hannah’s shirt lifted up and came untucked as she pulled away from the defender. There was a brief flash of pink above her shorts before Hannah tumbled to the ground, and the shirt fell back into place. The whistle blew a few times in quick succession. The ref first motioned for a direct kick and then pulled out a yellow card to display in the direction of the defender. I ran up to Hannah. As I helped her to her feet for a second time, I tugged down on her jersey to ensure it was covering her waistband. “Stop,” I said as Hannah started to try to tuck her shirt back in. She had again inadvertently exposed the pull-up, but just for a split second. I managed to get Hannah’s shirt tucked in without further showing off her pull-up. I hoped no one had gotten enough of a look to realize what it was. I lined up to take the direct kick, with the ball about 10 years out of the penalty box. Too far for a shot at the goal to be likely to succeed, but a great distance to send it into the box for an assist. I struck under the ball, getting a nice amount of loft as it dropped into the goalie box. Hannah slid between two defenders, leaping up at the exact right time. She flicked her head and the ball was in the back of the net a second later. We ended up winning by one goal. --- I stepped onto the field confidently, ready for my chance at glory. We’d made it all the way to the championship game, which was taking place on the main field after dinner on the last night of the soccer camp. Five minutes remained on the scoreboard. The score remained tied at 0-0. We had been allowed to let our round-robin matches end in a tie, but if both teams remained scoreless after the next five minutes, the winner would be determined by a penalty kick shootout. But there wasn’t much I could do about that at the moment. The ball remained stuck on the other side of the field as the opposing team attempted back-to-back corner kicks, though they failed to get a good look on goal either time. There was a sudden twinge in my bladder. My first instinct was to ignore it. I’d used the porta-potty shortly before the game began. That was a little over an hour ago. I hadn’t even drunk more than a sip or two out of my water bottle. I’d be fine until after the game was over. I could head over to the porta-potties near the bleachers then if I needed to pee that badly. I didn’t think Hannah would have the same issue. She made a habit of taking a potty break during half-time. Another couple of minutes passed as I stood tensely at mid-field. Just one chance, that’s all we needed. Our defense finally gained possession of the ball, kicking it up to the midfielders. I started a run up the right side of the field, raising my hand to ask for a pass. I got what I wanted, but the ball flew past my head and was easily cleared by a defender. I rested my hands on my hips for a brief second. The need to pee hadn’t gone away. But I really didn’t need to go badly, so I pushed it away again as I jogged back toward midfield, watching as our defense struggled under our opponent’s attack. Two shots on goal. Both deflected. Then three straight blasts of the whistle. Time was up. I returned to the sideline to see what the coach’s instructions would be for the shootout. I was pretty sure I’d be selected. The signals from my bladder were still coming. There was a porta potty about a hundred yards away. But no way was I going to risk missing the end of the game. I didn’t even need to go that bad. Hannah and i were among the five picked for the shootout. Hannah was to go first. I was chosen to go last. I found it hard to stand still as I lined up at midfield to wait my turn for the shootout. It was easier to ignore my bladder when I was focused and moving. It was much harder to do so when I was standing still. The rest of the campers and staff were gathered in a small set of bleachers overlooking the field. No way was I doing a potty dance in front of them. The other team missed their first shot. Hannah went first for us. The goalie dived to the left side of the goal, the ball hit the back of the net on the right. No surprise there. Hannah grinned as she returned to join us. The score was 2-2 after each team had shot twice. The final player for the opposing team missed their penalty kick with the ball bounding off the left post with a loud clang. This was it. Make the goal, and we win right then and there. Miss and it would be on to the single elimination round of the shootout. I walked up to the penalty box, scooped the ball up in my hands, and placed it on the penalty spot marker just how I liked it. My strategy was always the same for the first time I faced a goalie. Hesitate just slightly. Let them make the first move. Then drill the ball safely down the center. I stood up and took a pre-practiced amount of steps backward. As I got into position, the urge to pee transformed from a moderate need to an urgent, you are going to wet your pants right now, feeling in the span of just a single second. One minute, I was holding my bladder in with some effort, but it wasn’t so difficult that it caused me any worry. The next second, I was peeing uncontrollably. The whistle blew. My turn. I stood in place for a few painful seconds. My eyes remained fixated on the center of the goal. My mind remained fixated on what was happening inside my pull-up as urine warm enough almost to the point of feeling like it was burning spread between my legs. The stream of urine ended as abruptly as it had begun. Not enough that it should have leaked. But I didn’t look down to confirm. I moved forward – each step automatic and well practiced – and hesitated just enough to get the goalie to start diving, before tapping the ball straight forward into the net. I sank to my knees as shouting teammates surrounded me. --- In the chaos of the win, I’d managed to slip away, getting back to the cabin by myself. I’d lost track of Hannah, but I could blame the crowds if she ended up being that unhappy about being separated. What had just happened? I stood in one of the bathroom stalls, holding a pull-up I’d grabbed from Hannah’s suitcase. She was nearly out, but the half-dozen remaining ones would be enough for her to make it home tomorrow. My soccer shorts and compression shorts lay in a heap at my ankles. The state of my pull-up ensured that I couldn’t ignore what had happened on the soccer pitch a half-hour ago. I placed my hand on the front, the touch of my hand confirming what I saw. I had peed myself in public. Not on purpose. Not because I had wanted to see what it was like but because something had happened outside of my control. If I hadn’t been wearing a pull-up… I pushed that thought away. It had been nearly impossible to pee into a pull-up the first time I tried. It had taken a lot of effort to convince my brain and bladder that it was OK to urinate away from the toilet. I’d finally re-wired my brain to think it was OK to pee in a pull-up, and after wearing pull-ups for a week straight, it was inevitable that I would have relaxed enough to create the possibility of an accident. Tomorrow, I’d be back in regular underwear during the day. I wouldn’t wet myself then. My bladder knew better than to do that. --- After several minutes of moving back and forth, I finally found a seat that was a comfortable distance from the campfire. There were at least a dozen campfires in a scattered cluster on the outskirts of the cabins, enough so that a good portion of the campers could be sitting around them at any given time. The campfires had been completely full the first night, but they had gradually lost their appeal as the week wore on, and now, on the final night of the soccer camp, the seats around the fires were scarcely populated. I struggled to find a spot close enough to the campfire where I would be comfortable. Too close, and it felt like my shins were on fire. Too far, and I could barely feel any warmth at all, which was no good since I had forgotten to put on a hoodie before coming out in the surprisingly cool evening air. Hannah jumped back from the fire with a yelp, having set aflame her third straight marshmallow in a row. She pulled it close to blow it out, nearly striking her face on accident, but with the marshmallow’s surface completely charred black, the damage was already done. “Just get another one. I’ll do it for you.” After a week of eating s’mores, I was already sick of marshmallows myself, but Hannah again insisted on coming out to the campfire. Out of more than a dozen attempts this week, she had only managed to properly cook her marshmallow on one occasion, leaving it up to me to make one that would be perfect for a s’more. The problem was that her definition of perfect was very precise, and I was stuck eating the ones that were – according to her – too overcooked. Hannah returned with another marshmallow in her hand. I stabbed it securely onto the end of her three foot skewer and carefully positioned the marshmallow a safe distance from an open flame, rotating it every so carefully to make sure to get an even, lightly gold melt. I pulled it out in the nick of time a couple of minutes later, placing it onto a graham cracker held in Hannah’s outstretched hand. “I’m really glad that I got to spend the week at camp with you,” Hannah said between bites of her s’more. “Yeah, me too.” The lie came easily after a week of rehearsal. I mean, I was kind of glad that I had gotten to wear pull-ups the whole week. Well, aside from what happened in the game, but I was determined to blacklist that memory from my mind. And I was glad for the chance to wear one of Hannah’s diapers afterward. But I would easily have traded all that in for the peace of mind of knowing that my bedwetting secret was safe. But my plan had worked. Hannah had, admittedly to my surprise, held up her end of the bargain. She had not said so much as a word to anyone about the pull-ups I had worn each day. If I asked her to do the same about my bedwetting, I felt like I could trust her to be silent. The alternative wasn’t pleasant. “We’re moving to Minnesota in a month,” Hannah blurted out. I did some quick mental calculations. One month. That meant I’d be away on our family vacation at the time Hannah was moving in. Nothing to bother Hannah with at the moment. I adjusted how I was sitting on the chair, feeling the padding press up beneath me. What if? Maybe, the diapers would work well for me. New plans formed. Sleepovers with Hannah. Waking up in the night to grab a couple diapers from her closet to tuck away in my backpack. A steady supply that would supplement the pull-ups my parents purchased for my nightly use. All that could be mine for the simple price of pretending that I was her friend. --- For the first time in nearly a week, I was wearing regular underwear beneath my shorts, leaving me with the odd sensation of feeling a bit naked even though I, of course, was not. I had experienced a slight amount of trepidation as I pulled what felt like an unusually thin undergarment up to my waist. But the idea of a repeat of last night was unthinkable. This would get my bladder back on track during the day. All my bags were carefully packed. Other than my underwear, which had basically gone unused since the first day of camp, I was down to my last clean pair of clothes. Beneath the layers of dirty clothes bunched tightly into the suitcase was a secret that I couldn’t wait to experiment with. The single white diaper. If Hannah had noticed that her diaper count was off, she didn’t say anything. I was pretty confident it was something she would have spouted off about right away, so in the absence of any outbursts from her, I felt it was safe to assume that I was in the clear. What was the rest of my summer going to be like after camp? Hannah wouldn’t move in until I was already gone on the family vacation. There was the diaper tucked safely in the bottom of my bag. I would have to find the perfect time to try it on. But returning home also meant a return to attending that stupid summer learning program. The only thing good about it was they weren’t making me take any tests. And then there were the therapy sessions, the AD-whatever diagnosis, and some medication I was supposed to be starting for that as well. In less than an hour, my dad would be arriving to pick me up. It was time for the conservation I’d been prepping to have with Hannah all week long. Hannah and I were the last ones in the cabin. This time, I was grateful for how slow she was getting dressed and ready for the day. “Hey, I, um. I need you to do me a favor after camp. It’s really important. Do you think you could do that?” Hannah’s eyes lit up. “Sure!” I looked around, making sure that no one was heading toward the cabin, before inching closer to Hannah and whispering my request. “I need you to promise to not tell anyone else that I am a bedwetter.” I paused, feeling like it was probably best to be specific. “That includes your cousin, Emma, and Angie, and anyone else.” “They don’t know? Don’t you do lots of sleepovers?” Of course, I wouldn’t be able to escape with the promise without facing an interrogation. I shrugged my shoulder in an attempt to act nonchalant about her inquiry. “I’m good at keeping it hidden.” “But aren’t they your friends?” I grit my teeth. Couldn’t Hannah avoid being nosy just for once? “I don’t want them to tease me.” “Emma doesn’t tease me about it,” Hannah said. Of course not. But it wasn’t like I could tell Hannah that the only reason Emma was nice to her was because her parents insisted on it, that the words used behind Hannah’s back were far different and far less kind. “Please,” I begged, no longer fully needing to fake my anxiety and concern. “I’m really embarrassed by it. Can you please do it for me? As something for a friend?” Hannah’s head bobbed back and forth for a few seconds. “I guess I can.” “Pinkie promise?” I said, tentatively sticking my finger out without any hesitation. If I was going to do it, I should do it right. “Pinkie promise!” Hannah stretched out her own hand in return. Our fingers locked. Our hands shook. The promise was sealed. --- Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/

Wait, there are two threads with people offering inane takes on Pree? I'll keep this one short. Incontinent people exist. They are allowed to exist. They are allowed to choose to wear or use whatever products best suit their needs. They are allowed to share as little or as much information about their condition as they feel comfortable. They are allowed to be into ABDL. They are allowed to want nothing to do with it. They are allowed to fall somewhere in between. They are allowed to make reviews, create YouTube channels, and be advocates for people like themselves.

Let's take a step back for a second. For 99.9 percent of the population, diapers are not a sexual object. Your average person has a neutral view of diapers at best, though more likely views them with some level of disgust (or shame if they happen to need to wear them past a typical toilet training age). Sometimes, it's easy to get caught up in the ABDL world so much that we forget how diapers are viewed and treated by the general public. That fact that someone might get uncontrollably horny when they see a woman wearing a diaper is a them problem. Not a her problem. Women are allowed to exist for themselves, to live their lives as they feel comfortable. They don't exist solely for men's pleasure. The idea that anything Pree is doing must be to try and sexually entice her viewers is a sexist and chauvinistic attitude that diminishes women and denies their own agency. The idea that she must somehow be a secret ABDL is a big load of projection, and says a lot more about the people holding that opinion that it does about her. I've come across her videos in the past when I was doing research for new diapers to buy for either myself or my girlfriend and found no issues with her content. The videos that feature diapers were informative reviews, and in many of her other videos, she talks about the challenges she has with her disabilities. There is nothing in her videos that would suggest that she is faking any of her medical conditions. Yes, she shows the diapers in the videos. That's kind of important when reviewing an article of clothing. Step outside the ABDL worldview and look at this situation from the perspective of a regular person. Incontinence is a fairly common malady (in some countries, adult diapers outsell baby ones). There's a lot of shame associated with it. Yes, it's possible for someone to want to advocate for people with that disability and help them become more comfortable with their need to wear protection without it being fetish content. Quite frankly, I think ABDL people need to show some more care and discretion when entering spaces for incontinent people (whether that be interacting with Pree's videos or on places like r/incontinence), but that's a topic for another day. If you still happen to be all that hot and bothered by her content, I might humbly suggest plucking your own eyes out first.

You want to write with something that has an autosave features. It's especailly useful if you were to perhaps let you laptop battery get to low and then forget where you put the charging cable (I, of course, have never done something like that). I used to use Word, but I've disliked it's tie-in to one-drive and all the AI stuff that's getting brought into Microsoft 365. I switched over to Obsidian a couple months ago. It's free, though you'll need to adjust the plugins to get the desired experience. There's also the option to pay a few dollars a month for cloud storage as well. https://obsidian.md/

I have the sneaking suspicion that someone is a Brandon Sanderson fan.

Thanks! Yes, that is the curse of showing when you are online. Thanks, and we will at some point get more clarity on why Maddy dislikes Hannah. There's a lot going on that I've tried to be intentional with. I think Hannah needing diapers isn't all that unrealistic. My understanding is that individuals on the autism spectrum are more likely to experience incontinence (not to say that all or most do, just that there is an increased likelyhood, especially with interoception issues). Thanks!

Thanks! Thanks, me too! I can say (and I would't say it is a spoiler) but yes, Maddy will eventually get diapers. But in the meantime, we'll be getting a lot more into her relationship with Hannah in the next chapter. Thanks! The next chapter will be focused a lot on their time together now that Maddy has gotten settled in (though not fully adjusted) to being in the bedwetting cabin. Yeah, that type of scenario would be out there (though also in line with a lot of other ABDL fiction, especially older stories). I do like to take ABDL tropes and subvert expectations with them. And like I've mentioned earlier, the main point was to find a scenario in which Hannah and Maddy are alone together (at least in the sense of being away from all their normal friends/family) with Maddy's bedwetting out in the open. That said, keeping track of all the new character's names and their info was a bit painful, especially with coming back to this part in the story after having some time off. I'm pretty hopeful that there aren't any continuity issues. Those are lots of really good quesitons. Those are things I've considered with the outline, but there shall be no spoilers. I'll just say that we've got a lot of good stuff coming post-camp.

Thanks so much Tina! Definately should! Someday I might manage to write shorter stories.

The hiatus is over. I'm excited to be continuing Maddy's story! Chapter 42: Not Like Them Pretending to be Hannah’s friend was both difficult and easy. The easy part was that she hardly left me alone. The difficult part was that she hardly left me alone. What I needed more than anything was some peace and quiet to be able to organize my thoughts. Too much had happened in the last few hours, from being placed in a cabin with a bunch of actual bedwetters to the discovery that one of those fellow campers was none other than Hannah, the cousin of one of my best friends. The following several hours proceeded like a blur as my mind vacillated between the hope that I might be able to maintain my secret once I returned home from the soccer camp and despair over whether Hannah would be willing and capable of doing so. “Are we friends?” That was the query from Hannah earlier in the day that was the source of both my hope and despair. I had answered in the affirmative, which was the exact opposite of how I felt about her. In truth, I couldn’t stand being around Hannah, though it was hard to put a finger on why exactly that was. Yes, she was annoying and completely oblivious to other’s personal space, but there was just something else that rubbed me the wrong way, though I couldn’t find the words to describe precisely what I was feeling or why I felt that way. What I did know was this: keeping Hannah on my side was the only way I could extract myself from this mess. The hours after leaving the cabin passed by at a rapid-fire pace. There was a big gathering of all the campers and counselors, where they went over all the rules and the schedule for the week, a tour of the campgrounds and the sports fields, all followed by a meal in a cafeteria that was only marginally better than the uninspiring goop served in the cafeteria at my middle school back home. In the few brief moments when I was able to find some time to detach from all the noise and bustle and begin to contemplate my next move, I arrived at a few decisive conclusions. Quitting bedwetting wasn’t an option. I had worked too hard and had endured too much to let go of my hard-won right to wear pull-ups to bed each night. Besides, that wouldn’t make any tangible difference to how my friends would react if Hannah spilled the beans about our time in Cabin B. The only option was to convince Hannah that my secret was not to be shared with anyone else. I had a week – well, technically, this evening, five whole days, and one morning – to get Hannah over to my side, or I would be done for when her family moved over to my neighborhood later this summer. “Maddy, Maddy, come on!” Hannah was standing to the side of where I was seated at a long cafeteria table, holding a half-eaten tray of food that had been heavily picked through. I held back a sigh and attempted to smile. From the grin on Hannah’s face, she hadn’t cued into my initial disappointment. The only moments of peace I had gotten were two times she had abruptly sprinted off to use the restroom before racing back afterward to catch up with me. I looked down at my own plate, which contained a half-eaten, probably microwaved, corn dog, Jell-O, and a few remaining raw baby carrots and broccoli that had rolled into a pool of Ranch dressing. It wasn’t appealing enough that I would risk letting Hannah get out of my sight. “Sure,” I said, as happily as I could manage. The rest of cabin B – the nickname having stuck in my head - had split up for the most part. Maya and Chloe, despite their apparent annoyance with each other earlier, were seated together with Lily a few tables away. I still wondered what the outcome of their bet - that Maya would get over her bedwetting by this summer - was going to be. No sooner had we both emptied the contents of our trays in the trash did Hannah dash off again without warning. This time, I didn’t bother calling after her to ask what she was doing. I knew she was headed to the bathroom like she had done a couple of times since we’d left the cabin. I followed behind Hannah at a much slower pace. I wasn’t feeling any need to use the restroom myself – while fiddling with the lanyard ID card hanging around my neck. On one side, it had my name, cabin, counselor’s name, and the name of the team I’d be on for the week. The back of the card had a tiny map of the campgrounds. We’d also been given a schedule for the week. I didn’t have any pockets to put it in, so I had stuffed the paper inside the cardholder as well. Teams weren’t divided up by cabins – that would have been a lot simpler – but Hannah and I had still ended up getting paired together. I actually wasn’t all that annoyed by that. Hannah had demonstrated that she actually knew what she was doing when she had come to the park to play with us that one time she had been visiting her cousin earlier in the summer. I fiddled idly with the lanyard, twisting it around and letting it loose to spin again, as I watched the other campers filter out of the cafeteria toward the fields. We were going to meet up with our teams this evening before getting s’mores around the fire and heading back to our cabins for the night. I let out a sigh after a few minutes had passed without Hannah stepping out of the bathroom. She had probably wet her pull-up and was needing to change. While her outfit was discreet enough to conceal her pull-up. I had been able to pick up the telltale sign of it rustling beneath her shorts a few times today. I mean, if she hadn’t been potty trained earlier this summer, what were the odds that she had managed to turn that situation around in the last month? Still, I couldn’t shake the embarrassment of standing out in the hallway waiting for Hannah to finish doing her business like I was some kind of chaperone for her. A grin spread out across Hannah’s face once she saw me after she had exited the bathroom. I returned a quick smile. “We need to hurry,” I said. “We still need to get our gear from the cabin. Don’t want to be late to the first practice.” <><><> I couldn’t help but feel nervous when I stepped back into the cabin a few hours later. The last few hours of the night had been a welcome distraction as Hannah and I joined up with the group of girls who would make up our team for the week. I was so focused on the drills and games that, for a while, I was able to push my dilemma to the back of my mind. Even Hannah hadn’t been that bad. She’d reverted to being extra clingy around me but hadn’t been as much of a nuisance as she had been when we had first arrived at the cabin in the afternoon earlier. She did make two runs to a nearby porta-potty – one time bringing her small backpack with her – furthering my suspicions that there were still plenty of times in the day when Hannah wasn’t keeping her pull-up dry. That behavior had drawn some looks from our new teammates, but nothing more than that so far. Hannah and I were the last two campers to arrive back at the cabin after the evening practices and campfire s’mores. Everyone else was busy either tucking away their soccer gear, chatting, or looking at their phones. I was finally afforded a few minutes of peace as Hannah again rushed off to the bathroom at the back of the cabin. I unlocked my phone to find a half-dozen text messages. I responded to the ones from my parents first, assuring them that I wasn’t feeling too lonely, which was the truth, as I’d been so busy the first day of camp. I didn’t make any mention of Hannah being at the camp. I hadn’t mentioned her to my parents earlier and hoped that wasn’t a conversation we’d need to have. The last thing I needed was for my parents to be aware of another bedwetter that was soon to be in the neighborhood. There were a few messages from Emma and Angie. The team had managed to pull out a close win today. I did feel rather jealous. I would have rather been playing in the summer league like I had in the past rather than being forced to skip it because of all the upcoming family vacations. Even being fully immersed in soccer for an entire week wasn’t enough of a consolation prize. I hesitated while trying to decide what I was going to tell them. There was no way I would be able to get around Emma finding out that Hannah had gone to the same camp as me, but I wasn’t sure how to break that news to them in a way that would avoid any implications that I was a bedwetter like her cousin. They had to think that everything was going normally at camp. What would I be telling them if I had met Hannah at camp and hadn’t been faking being a bedwetter? I tapped out a quick message to the group chat with Emma and Angie: “You’ll never guess who is on my team at the camp?” That elicited a few responses from them – all wrong – as they put in guesses about some other girls we had played soccer with over the last few years. I finally provided the answer. I typed in “Hannah,” followed by an ellipsis and an eye-roll emoji. That brought back a rapid-fire flurry of texts in response. Emma and Angie were both far too amused at the situation, though, to my relief, neither made any jump to assuming that I was in a cabin with Hannah or what the implications of that would be. At the sight of Hannah exiting the bathroom out of the corner of my eye, I quickly closed out of the group chat, switching over to the much more innocuous messages thread I had been on with my parents. Hannah was still wearing her noise-reducing headphones. The only time she had removed them was when we were playing soccer after dinner. I let out a small sigh of relief as Hannah went over to her bed instead of coming by to chat with me. “Hey, listen up,” Amy said, as the cabin counselor clapped her hands several times in a row. “Excuse me, I need your attention. Lights are supposed to be out by 10:30, so we’ve got about thirty minutes to get ready for bed.” There were a few groans from that. At least for me, that was a fairly normal summer bedtime. “Show of hands,” Amy asked. “Who is taking a shower tonight, and who is doing one in the morning?” Hailey, Lily, and Hannah raised their hands. “Well, that’s a relief,” the counselor said. “It’s impossible to be on time in the morning if everyone is waiting until then.” Amy pointed at Hailey and Lily and told them that they were first to shower, then it would be her and Hannah’s turn. I suddenly felt way out of my element. I’d never had any issues getting dressed around other people before, whether that was with family, or soccer teammates in a locker room, or during sleepovers with Emma and Angie. It didn’t matter that everyone knew or that every single person in the cabin - with the exception of Amy, the counselor - was going to be wearing some form of protection beneath their pajamas. I tried not to look anxious as I glanced about the room. I had no intention of being the first person to reach into their suitcase or dresser to retrieve a pull-up. I wanted so badly to look around and see what all the other campers were doing. But at the same time, there was a gnawing guilt running through me, like I was an intruder in a space I had no business being in. How did actual bedwetters behave? I couldn’t take into account anything I’d observed Hannah do. She was the complete and total opposite of normal, regardless of the circumstances. At a normal camp, I would have felt totally at home stripping and changing right next to my bunk bed without giving it a second thought. But I realized something. I absolutely did not want anyone to see me wearing a pull-up. It was one thing to be a pretend bedwetter in the abstract sense. It was something entirely else to be going through that performance with all eyes in the cabin on me. Hailey pulled out a small bag from her suitcase and made her way around the corner to the bathroom first. I watched Lily from the corner of my eye as she rummaged through her suitcase, first pulling out a T-shirt and then a pair of pajama shorts. That was followed by something white and crinkly. It wasn’t the colorful style of pull-up that I had in my own suitcase, but it also didn’t bear any resemblance to the diapers of Hannah’s that I snuck a look at when she was staying at her cousin’s house. I dropped my gaze as Lily stepped away from her bed, looking up again to catch her rounding the corner to the bathroom as well, but I didn’t get another peek at the pull-up. No one else appeared to be in much of a hurry. There were still thirty minutes left till the lights were supposed to go out. I tried to think through what my plan was going to be. I regretted not saying I was going to take an evening shower. That would have made getting changed into a pull-up a lot easier. I decided that grabbing some pajamas and changing in a bathroom stall would be easiest. At least that way, no one would have to see me in a pull-up. And, if I went first, I would have the bathroom to myself while I did that. I had packed enough pull-ups to have one each night with a handful left over. They were buried at the bottom of my suitcase. I re-orientated the suitcase so that the open lid faced the rest of the cabin, helping keep the contents out of view. I found a pair of shorts and a shirt. I looked up. Everyone else was minding their own business. No one else seemed like they were in a huge hurry to get dressed. That was good. I was counting on one of the bathroom stalls being open for me to be able to change in. I dug further into the suitcase, my hand brushing up against the familiar texture of the nighttime pull-ups. I grabbed one, scrunched it up, and then tucked it in between my pajamas. I considered grabbing the pouch with my toothbrush, toothpaste, and other toiletries but decided to come back and grab that after I had gotten dressed. With everything in hand, I took a deep breath and stepped away as casually as possible from the suitcase, making sure not to leave it open. Fixing my eyes directly on the back of the cabin, I walked as calmly as I could toward the bathroom, resting the urge to sprint – or at least speed walk – around the corner and out of sight. My hands were shaking by the time I rounded the corner into the bathroom. The setup of the bathroom at least lent itself to some privacy. There was a row of three sinks on a counter, past that were two small bathroom stalls. Beyond that was a pair of shower stalls. I could hear the water running behind them. I hurried to the furthest bathroom stall and closed the door behind me with my heart still racing. I looked down at the bundle of clothing in my hand. I unwrapped the shorts and the T-shirt. The pull-up was nowhere to be seen. My heart sank right into my stomach as I sifted through my pajamas in a hopeless attempt to see if the pull-up had just gotten bunched up somewhere I couldn’t see. It simply wasn’t there. The second-to-last thing I wanted to do was to go back to the main room of the cabin to retrieve the pull-up. But the last thing I wanted to do was to leave the pull-up sitting out any longer than necessary. I placed my hand on the door to the toilet stall, trying to assure myself that I could do it. I counted to three, but at the last second, I shrank back from the door. How could I have been so careless? I stayed frozen in place. With each passing second, there was a greater chance someone would notice the pull-up on the floor, but it still took me a couple of minutes to work up the courage to finally ease the door to the toilet stall open and peek my head around the corner, taking a look at the bathroom floor. It figured that I wouldn’t have been lucky enough to have dropped the pull-up somewhere out of sight from everyone else. I pushed the stall door open all the way and made my way back to the main room of the cabin. And there it was. My pull-up was lying right in the middle of the floor. I’d only made it a few feet away from my bed before it had slipped out of my grasp. Every step toward the pull-up felt like an eternity. I kept my eyes locked in on the pull-up, not daring to look around at everyone else. I was sure they all must be staring at me. What were they thinking? Were they judging me for the type of pull-up that I was wearing - the brightly patterned one that was clearly a style for kids? Was it typical for girls my age to prefer nighttime protection that was less childish? The cabin wasn’t that large. It only took me a dozen or so steps to reach the pull-up. I didn’t need a mirror to confirm that my face must have been burning red as I bent down to pick it up. Once I had the pull-up in hand, I hastily tucked it back inside my pajamas. Only then did I chance a look around the room. Hannah was lying on her bed reading a book that was held just a few inches in front of her face. I knew exactly which Harry Potty novel it was right away from the cover art. Olivia and Isabell were chatting between their beds, both already having changed into their pajamas. I’d gotten a glimpse of something white - though I wasn’t sure whether it was a pull-up or diaper - when I’d seen Olivia unpack earlier, but I didn’t know what type of protection Isabell was wearing. If either had noticed the pull-up on the floor, there was no indication of it. Maya was staring at her phone on the opposite side of the cabin. She hadn’t gotten up yet to get ready for bed. My worst fears unrealized, I turned to head back toward the bathroom. And there was Chloe, standing right in front of me. I literally jumped in surprise as I untended like a spring. But right as I did so, the pull-up again slipped out of my grasp and fell to the floor. I scrambled to grab the pull-up, instinctively tucking it and my pajamas behind my back. Out of the corner of my eye, there was some movement elsewhere in the cabin. Great, now I was the center of attention, after all. Chloe let out a lighthearted laugh. “There isn’t anything to be embarrassed about,” she said. “I used to wear those pull-ups too.” “Um, yeah, um.” My feet shifted anxiously as I tried to figure out what to say in response. The only thing I’d experienced more embarrassing than this was when my older sister, Grace, had come across me wearing urine-soaked pajamas in the hallway when I had first begun faking my bedwetting. I stepped around Chloe to head to the bathroom without saying another word. This time, I ran. A few seconds later, I was again back in the bathroom stall. This evening was a complete disaster. Why could I just be chill and relaxed, wearing a pull-up like all the other campers? I had totally flunked if my goal had been to not stand out. And in my embarrassment, I missed an opportunity to find out what type of protection Chloe wore to bed, obviously having moved on from the nighttime pull-ups I used. And the worst of it was that I was going to have to go out and face everyone again. And the more I delayed doing so, the more awkward it was going to feel. Given that I hadn’t heard the showers turn off yet, Lily and Hailey must have still been cleaning up. I wondered what Amy would do if we weren’t all ready for bed in time. After using the toilet for its intended purpose, I finally got changed into my pull-up and pajamas, running into yet another problem. My shorts covered the pull-up, but just barely. I cinched the drawstring uncomfortably tight around my waist and made sure to double-knot it. It would have been easier to check if I had been standing in front of a mirror, but I reached my hand around to feel the back of my shorts, confirming that the pull-up was hidden, if just barely. My shirt was the second problem. Ordinarily, there wouldn’t have been anything wrong with it. The edge of the shirt came down just past the waistband of my shorts. I regretted not putting more thought into the clothes I had packed for the week. I walked sheepishly out of the toilet stall, this time to retrieve my toiletry bag. I had never been more fully conscious of the pull-up beneath my shorts. The way it crinkled. The way the padding wrapped around me. It felt so obvious and out of place. Chloe and Lily were in the middle of brushing their teeth as I headed in the direction of the sinks toward the exit from the bathroom. I got an obvious answer to my question about Chloe. A bright pink pull-up was visible beneath the bottom of her hoodie, and there wasn’t any question that it contained significantly more padding than the pull-up covered up by my shorts. I had made do with my nighttime pull-ups, but only because I could wet them while I was awake, when I could be careful about how much I peed and what position I was in when doing so. I realized a truth I had been refusing to admit to myself. Just because these pull-ups still fit me didn’t mean they were the right choice for a girl my age. I had been so obsessed with getting them to be willing to acknowledge that they might not be perfect, and I had been too ignorant of the now so-obvious reality that there were other, better products available. I managed to pry my eyes away from Chloe as I slipped past her - the image of the pull-up stuck in my head as I returned to my suitcase to retrieve my toothbrush. I was afforded one more glance at Chloe’s pull-up when I returned to the bathroom and took my place beside her at the sink. I realized suddenly that all the discomfort I had felt at my pull-up mishaps a few minutes ago had disappeared. A pull-up on the floor was less awkward and embarrassing than a pull-up around one’s waist, and the casual manner with which Chloe handled her bedwetting took away the feeling that anyone in the cabin would care one bit about what I was wearing under my shorts for bed. Hailey and Lily each wrapped up their showers while I was flossing, and soon after, Amy walked behind us on the way to the showers, followed by Hannah, who was holding a nightgown in one hand and one of her white diapers in the other. I tugged at my shorts to lift them up a half-inch before leaving the bathroom once I was finished brushing my teeth. While I was grateful for how Chloe had put me at ease, I wasn’t keen on following her example. The packaging still labeled my pull-ups as nighttime underwear, and under what I was wearing was where I intended to keep them. I returned to sitting on my bed, not quite sure of what else to do before it was time for the lights to go out. I kept reaching down to tug at my shirt after spotting the pull-up waistband peeking out ever so slightly from my shorts. Lily, Chloe, and Maya were all veterans of the camp and seemed to have their own little clique. Isabell was in the corner, talking quietly with her phone pressed up against her ear. Haile and Olivia, who, like Hannah and I, had gotten paired on the same team together, were chatting on the other side of the room as they were braiding their hair. I missed Emma and Angie. I missed my parents. I could almost bring myself to admit that I missed my older sister, Grace, and my younger brother, Jackson. I grabbed my phone from my backpack and unlocked it, though I just stared at the home screen, flicking it back and forth and back and forth with my thumb. I was so absorbed in thoughts of home that I didn’t notice Chloe until she had already plopped down next to me on the bed. At least this time, I didn’t jump in surprise. “You doing OK?” “Fine.” A one-word response that was both widely inaccurate and somewhat befitting my current mood. “Yeah,” Choe said. “I shouldn’t have said that you shouldn’t feel embarrassed earlier. I mean, that really isn’t true ’cause that kind of is a normal feeling, especially with bedwetting.” “I guess.” There wasn’t any need for me to fake embarrassment, even if the sources and reasons for it were something that there was no way anyone would suspect. “Your first time spending the night away from home?” “No, I’ve had sleepovers before.” I tugged down at my shirt again, just in case. “I’m guessing they went better than this has.” “Yeah.” I managed to stop my hands before they reached down for my shirt once again. The conversation shifted to soccer and what types of things I could expect the rest of the week. While I appreciated the advice, it was hard to focus on it. Chloe was sitting so close to me that it was uncomfortable looking her in the eye, but looking down at my lap meant her pull-up would be clearly visible, which wasn’t much of a better option. I tried to rack my brain about where she could have gotten it. The only other ads I’d ever encountered had been ones for ugly, old-people diapers, and those didn’t hold any appeal to me or bear any resemblance to what Chloe had on. Aside from Chloe, if I hadn’t known that any of the other remaining girls were bedwetters, I might have missed the subtle indications that they were also wearing protection underneath their pajamas. Chloe was saying something about Maya, but the words went in one ear and out the other as I watched Hannah return to her bed. The nightgown Hannah was wearing, which had a large picture of Hedwig on the front, came down to Hannah’s knees. That didn’t make the diaper any less obvious. An audible crinkle emanated from her direction any time she moved. She was humming a tune from a soundtrack to one of the Harry Potter movies, not the theme song, but a more obscure one that I still was able to recognize as being from the sixth movie. Amy was out of the bathroom a few seconds later. “Have we finished getting ready for bed?” she asked once she was at her bunk near the front door. That was answered by a few murmurs of yes and a loud “not yet” from Chloe, who was still sitting on my bed. The lights went out without warning, leaving the cabin brightly lit up by the several phones that were still in use. “Really,” Chloe said in annoyance as she stood up and crossed the room to her bed. “If your phones aren’t off in three seconds, I’m confiscating them until morning,” Amy yelled from her bunk near the door. That threat resulted in prompt obedience to her request, and a few seconds later, everything was dark. Now what? I stared up at the ceiling as I listened to the sounds of the cabin. A few of the girls were shifting around in bed, adjusting pillows, or otherwise attempting to get comfortable. The bed crinkled under my weight as I rolled over onto my back. The sound was firmer than the soft crinkling like my pull-up made, or even the almost crackling noise that had come from Hannah’s diapers. I slid my hand to the edge of the mattress and reached my hand beneath the sheets. There wasn’t a mattress protector. But that didn’t matter. The whole mattress was covered in soft but slightly plasticky material that I assumed was incredibly waterproof. That made sense. I knew full well how much of a pain it was to deal with a wet mattress. I stared up at the dark ceiling as I tried to consider what I had going for me with my plan to keep the bedwetting secret once I was home from camp. It was clear that Emma didn’t exactly like spending a lot of time with her cousin. They weren’t close at all, and even with Hannah now nearby, it wasn’t likely that they would be confiding secrets to each other. I counted how many sleepovers I had gone to with Emma and Angie before realizing that it was well over forty of them. We’d gotten dressed into our pajamas around each other countless times. They knew I didn’t wear pull-ups to bed. And not once had any of us ever wet the bed during any of the sleepovers. The plan was clear. Make sure Hannah viewed me as a friend. Get her to promise to keep my secret, perhaps by figuring out something I could do in exchange for her. All the while, I could continue my bedwetting, confident that even if Hannah were to say anything to my friends, there would be no way they would actually believe it. It felt like a massive weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. That wasn’t to say this was going to be easy to accomplish, but with a plan in place for all the possible outcomes, I was able to shift my attention back to my regular obsession. For so long, I had viewed the kid’s bedwetting pull-ups, which I wore, as the epitome of what I could get for myself. From my previous brief experience with Hannah’s nighttime diapers to the variety of protection I’d caught a short glimpse of from the other bedwetters in the cabin, it was obvious that there existed a whole world of diapers and pull-ups beyond the single brand that I had coveted. I wanted all of it. As attached as I was to my pull-ups because they were the first, and there was something that would probably always be special about them. I felt the sudden desperate urge to try everything else. What would the other brands of pull-ups feel like while being worn? Would they be softer, thicker, or perhaps absorbent enough that I could wet them without any fear of ever leaking? I simply had to know. And there was one product that was drawing my attention more than anything else: Hannah’s diapers. When I had held one in my hand, it had been immediately apparent that the diapers had the ability to contain so much more absorbent material than any of the pull-ups did. I’d gotten what I had wanted, only to discover that it wasn’t enough to satiate my desires. I needed more, and as I continued to dwell on that inescapable desire, a new plan began to form. But until then, I would need to make do with what I had at hand. I only needed to pee a little at the moment. But that would do. A warmth expanded in the pull-up as I let my bladder empty in a now well-practiced way. If I was going to fake being a bedwetter, I may as well get the most out of it.

Hannah certainly could use a friend, but that probably also renders her susceptive to whatever Maddy is planning. You're welcome! Glad you are enjoying it. Thanks! I'm glad you are enjoying it. Hannah will certainly be a larger part of the story going forward (she's moving to the neighborhood sometime later this summer, after all).

I'm not dismissing science. The science in fact demonstrates that there are serious issues with AI Text Detectors producing a significant amount of false positives, which renders them effectively useless as a primary means of grading, especially in an academic context when they are being used to accuse a student of cheating. Evaluating the efficacy of AI content detection tools in differentiating between human and AI-generated text | International Journal for Educational Integrity | Full Text (biomedcentral.com) Secondly, there are models that state that they detect how much of a work is AI generated. This is from the Grammarly AI detector, which I have used before: AI Detector by Grammarly This is why we have professors reacting the way that they do. Because there are in fact models claiming 20 percent of some poor student's essay was AI generated. I fully agree. I've seen stories posted here and elsewhere, where it was clear that a large portion (if not all) was AI generated. And this is why I think AI writing can be policed academically without the need for AI detection models being used as anything other than a starting point. AI writing is poor quality for anything other than surface level observations of a topic. If a professor is consistently giving good grades to AI written content, there's a problem with their grading method. The better solution is to fail a potential AI written essay on its actual merits. Give it a bad grade because it is deserving of a bad grade because it is poor writing, rather than going into the nebulous territory of trying to determine if it was bad because the student used AI or because the student just did a poor job of writing. If this happens again, the best solution is to show them the revision history of your document if the writing app you used, such as Word or Google Docs, has it. This will demonstrate that you actually wrote and revised the essay and didn't just copy and paste from ChatGTP. It's not perfect, but it is one way to demonstrate that you actually wrote what you claimed you wrote.

AI writing detectors are basically junk science. If it is saying 45 percent, it is saying 45 percent of it is AI generated, not a 45 percent chance that it was, which of course is utter nonsense. I've come across a lot of stories about college students being falsely accused of using AI for essays and being threatened with being kicked out of a class or expelled, and being forced to basically show their word doc revision history as proof that the writing was their own. There are a lot of not so bright professors who think that the AI detectors are instant proof that a student must have cheated. On the other hand, AI writing is fairly easy to spot just through reading once you've played around with generating stories on your own. Unless you are heavily modifying the prompt generation process to try to get a certain style, writing from ChatGPT has a rather distinctive, but formulaic flavor to it that does tend to stand out, with certain uncommon words that it often overuses. https://medium.com/learning-data/words-and-phrases-that-make-it-obvious-you-used-chatgpt-2ba374033ac6 If I had to guess about what an AI writing detector would be looking for, it probably is looking for overlap with things like what is listed in that article.