She Didn't Know It Could Be Like This Chapter 10

[Ishigreensa]

Hi, I am trying something a little different.  First person works for a lot of people, and I've had the advice before that I am emotionally disconnected from my characters when I write.  Maybe Third Person is not a style that really works for me.  So, I've decided to write Lauren's tales from the First Person Perspective to see if that helps with emotionally identifying, at least, with the main character.

So, I've been watching some depressing movies lately about child fostering, adoption, and abuse, and somehow, this has sparked my need to tell another story.  Now, I do not claim to know what true abuse is like, and I don't claim to have ever lived in a foster home ever, but I hope my empathy reaches to the point that this story makes sense.

It has been a while since I've actually written a story outside of roleplay, and I don't mean to be insensitive at all, so if you are horrified by the emotions that someone that had not experienced it themselves, but who has the imagination to try to place themselves in the shoes of such a person, then please do not read this.  It is meant to draw up strong emotions, though the main players in this story are NOT the cruel people that would have hurt the kid.  The kid is just ten years old when the story opens....

 

Chapter 1

Was I Dreaming Again?

 

The vibration of the car seat under me shook me so that I couldn’t relax. The drive was long. The new faces were yet to burn themselves into my heart. There was only the feeling that once again, I was in the fog of the unknown. What new rules were there to be? What new rules were there that they thought I already knew? What kinds of things will set off the ticking into an unmanageable explosion? Why couldn’t I just stay where I knew what they wanted?

I looked down at my legs, covered by wine-purple sweats as I pushed my thighs towards each other. I knew why it was hard to make my thighs rest against each other, and why it was uncomfortable to make my knees touch, but that was normal. It wasn’t anything new. What mattered more, was that I kept the secret as long as I could so that I wouldn’t get caught, maybe have a chance to deal with the damp moisture on the skin around my privates. Please, don’t seep through, please don’t do it.

It was late, probably after the time that most had dinner. I was sitting in the backseat of the dimly lit car with a girl a little smaller than me. She was wearing blue jeans and a pink top that had hearts around the collar, the sleeves, and the trimmings at the bottom. It was so cute! She was cute, too, but she was probably just like all the others. I best not talk to her. Best not do anything to upset her. She might tattle on me for something weird. She might even realize what I’ve done, and tattle about that.

Something watery and itchy on my nose, my snot, made me reach up with the upper end of my arm, and as I sniffled, I wiped the water on my purple sleeve, the sleeve of my sweats. I turned to look out the window, hoping that the girl next to me didn’t notice that I saw her. I hoped she didn’t think I wanted to talk. I didn’t want any trouble.

I felt my legs push towards each other, the knees touching on the tips, but it was like trying to keep a clothes pin back end together. It just didn’t want to stay like that, and sprung apart. I glanced down at the pocket of seat that was between my open legs. There was a dry red-brown seat there. I hoped it would stay dry all the way to the place we were going. It was dark outside. I hate the dark.

“Mommy,” the little girl next to me suddenly made a noise that drew me out of myself. Alert that she had said mommy, I wondered if she was telling on me. I wondered what I did wrong, or maybe she knew that my privates were damp. Maybe she knew that the stiffness between my legs was ….

“...I’m hungry,” the girl said. Her hair was darker brown, and when the light hit it, it sometimes looked a little red. She was shorter than me. She was smaller. But it was always the smaller kids that I had to be most careful of. They were the most trouble. All it took was one mistake, and her age, her size, her seemingly innocence would be used against me and I’d be hit!

“Honey, pull over,” the lady in the front seat told the man. “The kids are hungry. We can surely take them out, right? Give us a chance to talk to our new child a bit more like a family.”

The man nodded and seemed like he was smiling as he agreed to pull over. They were pulling over. Oh, no, there was no time to let it dry. They would get me out of the car, and they would notice what I’ve done. It only took a peek down my pants, or a light touch on my bum, and they would know. I was in trouble now.

I tried to bury my face in my arms, and pretend to be asleep. I closed my eyes. It was probably not going to save a ten year old the disgrace of being found like this, but it might get me off. They might think I was just… um… a bed-wetting baby. Better that, then a ten year old kid that pees her pants all the time and causes trouble. But then, maybe they already knew. Most of the people by this time that would pick me up, would eventually get me home, check my pants, and tell me not to lie, that they knew I had peed my pants, even if I didn’t see how they knew it yet. Maybe they were told I’d pee my pants. I don’t know. It was just the confusing way they always spoke, that I was never really sure if they were told or not.

“Honey, get Lauren’s diapers from the back?” the lady told the man as she went to my door. They knew I wore diapers then…. “I want to check her when we go in, and make her comfortable before she eats.”

The man nodded and after opening the side of the car that April, the girl that sat next to me for her, he went to the back. He didn’t look at me at all. I couldn’t tell how mad he was, if he knew I was wet, but at least he wasn’t looking at me like I was going to get it. At least, he wasn’t looking like that just now.

I shivered. Maybe we were in public. Maybe they had known I was leaking in my pants this whole time, and now, they knew I was wet. Maybe it would be embarrassing to them to leave me in wet pants, so they were going to change me, but when we get home, that would mean I’d really get it.

We were walking into the restaurant. I felt a sting in my left eye, and a tear trailed down my face. I knew I was going to be discovered, and I was going to get it soon. I shivered. I felt the back of my pants, hoping it felt dry. I hoped it looked dry. I didn’t want to embarrass them. I knew if they were embarrassed, I’d really get it.

“Mommy, that new girl is touching her bum with her hands,” the little girl told on me. I couldn’t help it. I was so scared and nervous now. I stopped and looked down, waiting for her to slap me for drawing attention to my shame in public. She came looming up before me. I put my arms up to guard my face. She reached around my body on both sides. I stiffened, and as I did, I drizzled pee into my diaper. The lady picked me up and she carried me.

I had no choice. She was bigger. I dared not to yell at her to put me down. I didn’t want her to throw me to the ground. I could only stiffen as she pulled me to her, my face pushed against her bosom. She smelled like lavenders and her hair was fresh. She asked me to shush, but she did it differently than the last woman would have done. She didn’t touch my nose in a way that it would hurt. She didn’t sharply shush at me. She swayed with me, and she made the shushing sound, but it was a softer whisper-like noise. It was almost soothing. I couldn’t help myself. The rest of the pee was now in my diaper. I felt it leaking down my legs and collecting on my butt. She had me in her arms. I was wetting on her. She was going to find out. She was going to be disgusted and throw me any minute.

The woman walked up near the man.

“She’s wet,” the woman whispered to the man as they walked through the doors. “I’m afraid she’s getting me wet, too. Can you get my extra shirt out of the car once you get April settled, and bring it to the bathroom. I have to change our little daughter.”

“Sure honey,” he said. He whispered. He didn’t yell, he didn’t glare at me. He didn’t even touch me with his hands. He leaned in and kissed my head. I had never felt someone do that when I was so disgusting before. He smiled at me when I looked up, like he… like he… I don’t know how to describe it. He wasn’t mad at all! Looking up at the woman, she wasn’t mad either. She was rocking me, and she took me right to the bathroom while the man and April sat down in the waiting area.

The woman, whose name was Bridget, took me into a stall, before she sat me on my feet. She wiped my face with her hand, and whispered. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. Accidents happen.”

I looked up at her and she smiled at me.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. We were told last week that you have toileting problems. We are not going to get mad over a little problem that can be fixed. She must have realized I was looking at the wetness on her shirt, the place I had peed on her.

“This?” she asked as she touched her shirt where I peed on her. “It’s nothing. Your new daddy is going to get mommy a clean shirt as soon as he gets April a table, and then it will be like nothing happened.”

She had lovely green eyes, freckles that made her less perfect than a model, but down to the earth approachable. She was soft, and when she touched me, she was gentle. She put her hands on my hips, or the sides of my sweatpants, actually, and pulled them down revealing a soaking wet diaper that had layer upon layer of padding inside it. I had put those pads inside, to try to absorb my pee as much as I could. I had one front layer in case it sort of went to the front a little bit, and then I had three layers between my legs and two layers on my butt, all made up of four pads.

The woman gently pulled my diaper down. It was one of those panty-like diapers. I don’t know if it has a special name or not. Sometimes, I think I hear people say pull-ups, but I’m not sure if that is the real thing it is called. She saw how wet I was. I knew that she knew I had wet myself several times by now. It was so soaked. I waited for her to ask me if I was gross, if I liked peeing my pants, or if I was just too stupid….

“Oh, baby,” is what she said when she saw how wet I was. “How long have you been like this, honey?” Then she suddenly hugged me, and put her soft cheek against mine. Her arms were warm and welcoming. She worked around behind me, pulling my wet pants and my diaper all the way off of me. She rubbed my back, as she whispered in my ear. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Mommy is going to check you more often.”

I blushed. I didn’t expect her to be nice about it, and to take the blame for me leaking in my pants. It was my fault. I am the stupid one that should have told them I was wetting my pants earlier, even before they had come to pick me up. No one at that place where they got me really checked me. Why would they? I was ten years old. None of the other ten year olds were checked, were they?

She helped me into a clean diaper, and she put less layers of pads on me. She only put two layers on me, one that came a little bit to the front, but not as far us as my other one I did for myself, and one that went all the way around my bottom. She hugged me after she had me in a diaper, but my pants were wet.

There was a knock at the bathroom outside door.

“You stay here a minute,” Bridget told me. “That will be daddy getting mommy a clean shirt. I’ll send him out for a clean pair of pants for you, honey.”

The woman left me in the stall, where I stood, looking down, wondering why she wasn’t yelling at me, why she was so soft and so quiet to me, why she made me feel better after I peed on her.

The woman came back smiling. “Well, it turns out daddy is a mind-reader,” she told me. “See? He got you a skirt from your things.”

Like all of my things these days, it was dirty, stained, and had little holes in it, but mommy ignored that like everyone else did, and she slid it up my legs. She smiled at me.

“We’ll get you some better things tomorrow,” she told me. “Daddy said all of your clothes were like this.”

I nodded. I couldn’t deny that all my clothes were stained and had holes in them. That was just what you grew to accept after you’d been in the system for more than two years, even if you didn’t wet your pants like I did.

Bridget changed her shirt, and then she took me by the hand, and we sat at the table. I was surprised to see that April was not eating yet. I looked up at Bridget and then I looked at Jack. Jack was the man that called himself daddy to me.

“Well, now we are all at the table, we can order,” he turned and looked at April.

The younger girl, by about a year, smiled and nodded. “Is Lauren all comfortable now?” she asked, her question much more sincere than bully-mocking like others had been. There was no sing-song to the question. Her face was serious as she looked over at me, as though to look in my eyes. I thought she was telling on me to get me in trouble when she told them I was touching my butt, but her face wasn’t disappointed at all, when she saw I wasn’t crying. She looked different. She looked like, she, really wanted me to be comfortable.

I nodded at her.

She smiled, and she looked at Jack. “I’ll have whatever Lauren has,” and she passed the menu to me. I stared at it. I couldn’t help my hand shaking as she presented the menu to me. I wasn’t allowed to touch the menu, ever, before. I accidentally didn’t take it in time, and it fell to the floor.

“I’ll get it,” April said with a cheerful smile, and she dived under the table to get it.

Bridget motioned for me, so I got up and went over and stood by her side as she put an arm around me, and she pointed out the stuff on the menu. “You can have anything you want,” she told me.

I looked over at Jack, shaking. I couldn’t believe, that not only April, who might have been naive about how this really works with foster kids, but now, Bridget was telling me that I could pick stuff and showing me the menu with her arms practically around me, not in a threatening—going to choke me kind of way, but the way I’d imagined real mothers put their hands around their own daughters as they comforted them.

Jack smiled and nodded as Bridget tried to draw my attention back to the menu.

I stood there, shaking. My legs were tense. My arms were tense. Something was wrong. This is not how they were supposed to treat me. I wasn’t supposed to even see a menu. I was supposed to come out of the bathroom with a sore butt for wetting my pants, at the very least. I was supposed to be crying. I was supposed to be sorry that I embarrassed them. Bridget wasn’t supposed to be wearing a smile and a different shirt at the same time! Something was wrong.

I couldn’t think. I just closed my eyes and pointed at something random. Mommy laughed, but it wasn’t mean. She shook her head and asked me: “Did you even see where you pointed?”

I shrugged.

“April, why don’t you order, honey. We’ll let Lauren eat what you pick. She’s too nervous to do it this time.”

The younger girl smiled and nodded. She looked up at Jack. “Can I get dessert?”

“Of course, you can, baby. But you know the rule. You eat regular food first, and then if you are still hungry, then you can order a dessert.”

True to their words, they ordered two orders of what April asked for. I don’t really remember what it was, only that both April and I got the same thing. I felt like I was getting full. This was the first real filling meal I had had in a long time. Foster kids were supposed to get something simple, like a bowl of mashed potatoes, maybe a bowl of macaroni, and if I was good, maybe something in the mac like tuna.

I started to slow down on eating, and April looked at me. “Daddy will get you get some dessert,” she told me. “I promise, he will. He always tells me the same rule, but I never finish my dinner, and he still gets it for me.”

Jack laughed. “Wait, you know I will do that, do you?” he had a playful smile on his face. “You clever little goblin! Don’t tell me you order less than you can eat on purpose just so you can make sure you get dessert, too?”

April shrugged. “Well, don’t all kids?”

He laughed and looked at Bridget who laughed too.

I looked down. I didn’t want to lie to them about what I could eat. He told me to finish my food. I tried to pick up another bite, but Bridget took my fork.

“It’s alright, honey. You ate a lot. You can get dessert, too.”

We must have sat there, a little while. April made a face at me, and I looked over at Bridget and Jack, but they smiled. They didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t know if April was making fun of me at first, but then she took me by the hands, and she showed me, as if teaching me, how to make the face she made.

“Look at daddy, now,” she pointed at Jack.

Jack smiled at me, and he stuck his tongue at me real quick.

I looked at him for a minute. He was smiling. His eye had laugh lines in them, and he nodded at me.

“That means it’s your turn to make another face at him,” April whispered to me, though as loud as she whispered I knew that Jack had to have heard. He seemed to pretend not to though.

I felt a dark presence over me, and I shuttered. I wasn’t supposed to disrespect adults. I was not supposed to make faces at them. If he is having fun now, would he pay me back for being disrespectful?

Suddenly, there was a hand on my shoulder. Bridget had come to my side of the table while I was looking down, and she picked me up from the chair and hugged me.

“That’s enough for now,” she told April.

Bridget sat in my chair and held me in her lap. “Lauren isn’t used to this kind of playing,” Bridget explained to April as she rubbed my thighs.

“That’s why she’s stiff, with tears on her face, and she’s shaking?” April questioned.

“Yes, baby. Lauren is scared.”

“I’m sorry,” April told Lauren. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Daddy and me play like this all the time. Of course, I would never stick my tongue out at him seriously. He knows I’m just playing, that’s why it’s okay.”

I looked over at April, who patted me on the leg nearest her.

“Two chocolate cakes with a side of ice cream,” I heard Jack suddenly say, so I turned my head to see what he was doing. He was talking to the waitress. The misses wanted ice cream, and I’d just like a cream doughnut.”

I turned my head and looked up at Bridget with a sting in my eye again. It wasn’t a scared or a sad sting. It was something I couldn’t explain because I never felt it before. But it caused my eyes to water and a tear went down my face.

“Mommy, Lauren is crying,” April observed with her own face looking sad. “Did I do something to make her sad again?”

“No, honey,” Bridget said putting an arm around April. “She’s just confused, and she might even be happy.”

“People don’t cry when they are happy,” April said and in my experience, April was right.

“Honey, sometimes, people cry when they have powerful feelings, even feelings of happiness or love.”

April just looked down accepting her mother’s words, but I was curious if Bridget really believed that. Maybe she was just trying to make April feel better. Adults lied to kids all the time for different reasons, and I’ve seen parents lie to their real kids about a harsh truth, just to make them forget about the terrible thing they saw.

Bridget turned me in her lap so I was facing the table when the desserts came, and she ate her ice cream around me, while she whispered and encouraged me to eat as much of the cake and ice cream as she could get me to eat.

I looked at it at first, but shook my head. I wasn’t supposed to get cake and ice cream. That was a treat for someone’s real kids, not the foster kids.

“We ordered this treat for you,” Bridget whispered in my ear. “No one is going to eat it but you. If you don’t eat it, it will just sit there, and then it will be wasted because someone else could have ordered it.”

I looked up at her and then at Jack.

He nodded. “That’s your cake, baby. Please, if you are still hungry, please eat it.”

April took a fork of it, and I thought she was going to eat it, but she put it up by my mouth. “Eat,” she whispered.

Another sting in my eyes, a sting that went down into my insides, a sting that I couldn’t explain, as the cake was pushed into my mouth, and I slowly closed my teeth over the sponge of chocolate and the fork rubbed my teeth as it was pulled out of my mouth, April smiling.

I wasn’t really hungry anymore. I was neutral. I was satisfied. I could eat more though, and surprising myself, I ended up eating the whole cake, mom and April feeding it to me as I was just too stiff, and too shaky to hold the fork and spoon on my own. I would never have dreamed I’d ever eat cake again. The last time, I couldn’t remember exactly, but I saw another loving face looking at me at the time. I saw two people that I sometimes dreamed about, but knew I’d never see again. I don’t know for sure, but I think, they are memories of my real parents.

I rubbed my watery nose on the lower arm sleeve of my sweatshirt.

Bridget smiled at me, and she took a napkin, and she wiped my nose. She whispered in my ear. “Blow, honey.”

I puffed my cheeks and blew and then looked up confused at her.

“No, silly,” April was quick to speak up. “She means like this, and she took a napkin, and she blew her nose.

I blushed. I should have known better. I really am stupid.

Bridget smiled and got a clean napkin and she tried again, to which, I did what was expected. No one had ever blown my nose…. No, wait, maybe that was wrong. Maybe a long long time ago. Maybe the person in my dream had done it. I am not certain, but I somehow feel like it is something she would have done.

“Take April to the bathroom,” Bridget told Jack. “I want to take Lauren and check her diaper again, just in case. We’ve been here a while.”

He nodded.

I didn’t realize we were there that long at all. But Bridget took me to the bathroom. She stood me in front of her while she went, and while she was going, she pulled my skirt and my diaper down. It felt dry.

“Do you want to try on the potty?” she asked me. I had not heard it called a potty in a very long time.

I nodded. I wanted to make her happy. She gave me cake, and she fed me so I was actually not hungry with tummy rumbles. I really wanted to make her happy.

I was put on the toilet after she was done, and she stood there. I knew she expected me to do something. When others took me to the toilet, even a week ago, they made me sit there there until it came out, and they got mad when it didn’t come right away.

I looked up nervously, but not because she might hit me, but because I didn’t want to make this nice lady mad at me at all. I concentrated, and pushed on my stomach.

“Baby, what are you doing?” Bridget looked upset somehow. Her eyes were narrowed, but she was looking at me pushing on my stomach.

“I’m going potty,” I told her through a grunt as I tried really hard to make my body behave.

“I don’t know who told you to do that, but that’s not how you go potty,” Bridget told me. She picked me up off of the toilet. “You know what, I changed my mind. Don’t use the potty right now, baby.”

I looked at her a little confused.

“Just go in your pants if you can’t hold it for now. Mommy will try again later.”

“Was I bad?” I asked stiffening.

“No honey. I just don’t want you hurting yourself. You were not doing it naturally at all, and I am afraid you will hurt yourself if you push on yourself like that all the time.”

“I can’t just go in my pants,” I whispered.

“Because it’s embarrassing?” Bridget asked me.

I looked down.

“I know it’s embarrassing,” Bridget put a tender hand on my shoulder. “And I’ll let you sit on the toilet again to try, if you promise not to push your stomach like that.”

I nodded.

She sat me on the toilet again. She must have seen the look on my face or something, but she had more directions for me.

“No, Lauren. Don’t force it like that, honey. If you need to go, it shouldn’t take that much effort to go. It should be as easy as when it comes out accidentally in your diaper, baby.”

I nodded, and tried to stop myself forcing, then it felt like it was not going to come out. I shook, scared of not getting any out. I looked up at Bridget, and she smiled and prodded me off the toilet.

“Honey, it’s alright. We can try when we get home, and if you are wet before we get home, then mommy can just change your pants.”

I nodded and looking down, I let Bridget pull my panty-diaper up, and then she pulled my skirt into place before taking me out to wash my hands. She hugged me after we washed my hands, and then suddenly, I was being lifted into her arms, and we walked back to the car, where Jack discovered, I had wet on the seat earlier. It had leaked before I knew it had, but he was not mad at all. He told Bridget to wait a minute, and he got a plastic sheet from the back and put it on the seat.

“That will keep her skirt dry,” he was speaking to Bridget, but he looked at me, too, with a little wink. “We don’t want to wet that cute little skirt of yours, do we?”

I looked down at my stained skirt, and then back up at him. I wondered if he was joking, or if he really thought this skirt was cute.

It was still a bit of a drive to get home. They must have driven over a thousand miles to come and pick me up! No one ever drove like that to get me before! If anything, someone took me to a closer place for the people to get me, and sometimes, even dropped me off at their door, but never ever had a foster family come so far to pick me up and take me to their house.

I could see April falling asleep not long after we had gotten out of the restaurant. She had a smile on her lips, and the last thing she did, was move her lips, or at least the last thing I saw, and it looked like she said my name, though no sound came out.

I drifted off a few moments later, and then I was in hell again!

[SashaButters]

I really liked this! Thank you for writing it. It feels like more places are making it taboo to write from the point of view of a child, so more innocent nonsexual stories are getting harder to find. 
 

[LilRedAli]

Wow this POV is already so powerful. Definitely wanna read more! 

[Ishigreensa]

13 hours ago, SashaButters said:

I really liked this! Thank you for writing it. It feels like more places are making it taboo to write from the point of view of a child, so more innocent nonsexual stories are getting harder to find. 
 

Yeah, I know.  I agree with you on the fact that so many stories seem to want to sexualize things more than I think they have to be, and it seems like it has become an opinion of some, that writing from a child point of view is wrong because people, I guess, maybe see age play as something sexual.  I didn't know it had to be.

Thank you for your encouragement, and I do plan on trying to continue this one a few chapters at least, but I've been on writer's block for the second chapter.  I put something out yesterday, but it was garbage, and I'm rewriting it now.  I'm trying to figure out how to move past the point that she is now in their home, and at least lip-serviced accepted while still showing her confusion and fears.

9 hours ago, LilRedAli said:

Wow this POV is already so powerful. Definitely wanna read more! 

Thank you for your encouragement as well.  I was hoping it worked better than some of my older stories.  Like I said, I had written a few before in third person, but I had been told that maybe I'm not good at showing actual living characters that way, so I hoped that maybe writing first person, would at least help make my main character a bit more identifiable.

 

[Ishigreensa]

Chapter 2:

These People are Strange

 

I was at the table, at the Harrisons, this family of like six. They had two boys and two girls, and then there were Robert and Angela. I was at the table, with a bowl of mashed potatoes in front of me. It was dinner, and all around me, the rest of the Harrison family was eating, but I wasn’t allowed to touch mine yet.

I was usually starving as I stared at this bowl of white mush that rested in front of me, staring at me, as if I was a dog, begging, waiting for permission, eyeing the treat. But something was different this time as I eyed this bowl, for the first time since I could remember, my stomach not even rumbling. I felt defiant at this small bowl of mashed potatoes, and I felt like asking-- “Is that really all you are giving me?” but I knew better. I would get hit with the belt, and then I’d not be fed tomorrow for my insolence. I had to keep a level head and know that being grateful was necessary.

I peed in my pants as I waited for permission to get my bowl and start eating. I did it as slowly and as quietly as I could because I didn’t want to get caught. I wanted to eat and finish eating before they hit me. Once they started hitting me, dinner time would be over for me. Even if I wasn’t that hungry tonight, I would certainly be starving tomorrow if I ate nothing now.

It felt weird not to be hungry. It was an unfamiliar feeling. I have never felt like this before. I shook as I sat there, waiting, eyeing the food, wondering if I could even eat it all.

I itched a little bit, and I shuffled in my seat as a little more pee drizzled into my padding. They put like a hundred layers on me when they diapered me, mostly because they didn’t want anyone in public to see the shame. It was, somehow, their shame even though it was me, that was on display for all to see if my butt got wet. I was already wet, I think. I had wet at school like twice today, I think, and I had not been allowed to change yet. It was wasting diapers if I changed before the diaper leaked into my pants. I was told to leak at home, but never in public. It was like they didn’t think I felt any shame if anyone knew. I didn’t mean it to happen. I shuffled a little bit again in the chair.

Any other day, that bowl of mashed potatoes would stare me in the face, making my mouth water, and making me antsy to eat it. Any other day, it would be torture watching everyone eating while I sat there like a dog, waiting permission, as though this was a treat for me. Any other day.

I drizzled a little more, but the drizzle didn’t stop. I closed my legs together trying to stop it. I put my hands down inside my panty-diaper, down into the pads, and tried to push at it to stop, but it just kept coming out, all over my hands. I couldn’t stop it. Now, I did it.

Any minute, it was probably going to leak, and they were going to see me, and they were going to throw my potatoes at me, and then pick me up, and they would….

My eyes felt hot and stinging. I was shaking. But my eyes were now seeing dark. There was something different. The table I was sitting at was fading into dark. The chair I was sitting on, seemed softer somehow, and I felt like I was not sitting. No, it felt like I was on my back. My hands still felt wet. My legs were trying to push on the diaper. The diaper was soaked. Panic sat in, and I bolted up in a sitting position as I felt pee pour around my diaper and pour into the blankets I was covered up in, and the back of my diaper was sitting in a puddle. Pee had come out of the panty-diaper legs. The padding was not as thick as I thought it should be.

That’s not all that was different. As I felt under me, the blankets that were wet, the bed was soft! I wasn’t supposed to sleep in a bed! I was in the wrong place! When the Harrisons find out…. I started to sob knowing I was going to get it.

I jumped off the bed, sobbing, and I gathered at the blankets and pulled them to the closet floor, where I was supposed to sleep, and I laid there, the stale urine did nothing to my nose. It was used to that smell. But I shook because the damage was done. The bed had a wet spot in it and they would know I was in it.

I shook in the closet, unable to keep from whining, though I did try hard not to make it too loud. I sniffled trying to calm myself. Waking them would only make it worse.

I was itching.

I had the closet door pulled closed so that I was at least in the right place when I was found. I couldn’t do anything about the bed, but maybe they wouldn’t hit me as hard if they found me where I was supposed to be.

I heard a loud click. I tried harder not to make a sound though I was still shaking from sobbing and had trouble keeping my emotions under control. I was scared. They were going to be really mad when they saw the bed.

“Lauren!” someone called into the room. It wasn’t that giant that was calling me. It wasn’t Mrs. Harrison either. It was someone else. The voice was somewhat familiar, but I dared not believe the dream I thought I had last night. The dream that someone actually gave me food, that someone actually changed me when they saw me wet, and they didn’t push me, hit me, and yell at me for it. Wait, did I really pee all over my pants, and a woman’s pants in public? I think I did. But why don’t I feel new bruises and pains?

“Lauren, baby, where are you?” the voice sounded concerned somehow. It wasn’t a mad kind of stop playing voice. It was a voice that was more like please come and talk to me.

I pushed the closet door open a peek so I could see the woman in the room. It was the woman in my dream. She had red-brown hair, freckles, and green eyes. Her hair was a little messy right now, and she was in a nightgown, but it was her.

“There you are,” she seemed to sigh as though she was worried and suddenly, the worry went away.

I looked up at her, shaking. She must have seen the bed by now.

“What are you doing in the closet?” the lady asked me.

I blinked up at her. I had no answer. Wasn’t that were I was supposed to be?

“Never mind,” she smiled at me as she then pulled me out of the closet. The smelly sheets coming off of my leaking diaper.

“Don’t be scared,” she pulled me to her as she sat down and pulled me into her lap to sit on her. I shivered. I don’t think anyone put me in their laps before this, well, not in my memories anyway.

She started to sway with me, and she sang a song. I looked to the window. It was dark out. Wait, they were not supposed to come and check on me until morning. Why was she here, swaying with me, singing? Her voice was so soft and kind. She was rocking me, and I felt safe as I went limp against her. I couldn’t help it, I was relaxing. I was relaxing too much. I went the rest of the pee full blown in my panty-diaper, but she didn’t push me off. She kept rocking me. She put me to sleep.

I could almost feel myself being lifted, floating up into the air, and then a secure arm when under my wet butt, and I felt someone strong holding me against a strong chest. It wasn’t soft like the red hair woman’s chest. It was stiff but strong. I heard whispers.

“Shush, little one,” so quietly in my ear, and then I felt darkness again.

When I started to realize that the darkness was fading again, and that my eyes were moving as though they wanted to open, I squinted at first, not wanting to alert anyone I was awake just yet.

Something was different. I scooted my bum in bed. It was dry and warm. Dry? I pushed my hands into my panty-diaper. It was dry! How come I wasn’t wet? I couldn’t take the mysteries any longer, and I opened my eyes. I was snug between two adults, the red headed man and the red-brown hair woman. They were on either side of me, and they were smiling at each other. And they whispered.

“Our little angel is awake,” Bridget softly cooed.

Who was they calling an angel? It wasn’t me. There was no such a thing as me and angel in the same sentence!

The bedroom door creaked open, and I looked over and saw the shorter, younger girl from in the car, the one that told on me being wet, but not in a way that she wanted me in trouble, but in a way, to get me changed. She smiled in at us.

Bridget waved her hand at her real kid, and she came running over and jumped on the bed on her knees and then climbed up between me and Bridget.

“I was worried,” April said looking up at her mom.

“Worried?” Bridget asked.

“Yeah. I saw her room was a mess, she had a wet bed, and her blankets were all in her closet. I put them down by the laundry for you.”

Bridget hugged her daughter, and smiling, she whispered. “Thank you.”

I blushed. Wasn’t she grossed out touching my wet blankets?

The girl then hugged me, and she whispered. “I used to wet the bed, too. You don’t have to hide your blankets in the closet. Mommy doesn’t care if you pee your pants.”

I looked down. What was I supposed to say?

Jack wrapped an arm around me, and he pulled me closer to him. He felt so strong, and his arm was so gentle as he pulled me towards him.

“Accidents happen,” he told me. “But I don’t buy it, that a ten year old just pees her pants because she wants to.”

I blinked up at him.

“Honey, I don’t think we need to ….”

“Nonsense,” Jack told Bridget. “She’s ten years old. Sugar coating truths to her is wrong. She knows what people say about her.”

I looked up at him not believing what he was saying.

“And I don’t care what other people said about you, I don’t buy it, that you pee your pants because you want to, or you think it is a game, or you think it will get you noticed,” he told me. “We are taking you to see a doctor as soon as we can, sweetheart.”

I shivered at what he said. The other doctors always confirmed that it wasn’t a medical problem. If he wasted his money, would he be mad?

“Um…,” I whispered shaking. “I don’t have a good reason. The doctor never finds out anything.”

“Well, then I don’t trust that doctor,” Jack told me. “I don’t care how many doctors we have to see, we are going to find out the real cause of your little accidents, and until then, I don’t want you to be scared of accidents anymore.”

I looked down. “What if sometimes, I do just pee my pants?”

Jack looked at Bridget for a minute, and then he patted me on my back as he held me closer. “If you do that, then there is a reason,” he told me softly almost in a whisper. “Ten year old children don’t just pee in their beds and their pants. There is always a reason. I will find out what it is, sweetheart.”

I shivered.

“Don’t worry, baby. The reason I will not accept, is that you want to, just to do it. I will not accept that you just pee to play games and to get noticed. No one would do it for that reason, if what that lady, Ms. Rebecca, told us yesterday about your conditions. You were hit and punished for peeing in your pants.”

I nodded.

“Ten year old kids are not going to do something that gets them hit and beat, not unless there is a worse scare, baby.”

I looked over at Bridget and April to see what they though.

“Yeah, I used to wet the bed,” April told me. “The dumb doctors didn’t find anything right away on me, too. But daddy kept taking me to different ones, and when they found out the reason, they helped me stop.”

I smiled. April understood the shame of wetting the bed? I was always told that no one over the age of six ever wets the bed, and no one over the age of four pees their pants in the day time.

“Now, how about we get our two little girls some breakfast?” Bridget asked us.

My eyes went wide. They just fed me last night, and more than I’d ever eaten. Do they really expect me to eat again so soon?

Jack got out of bed wearing brown matching top and bottom pajamas. I was sort of surprised that he was wearing those things. No one I ever stayed with before, if they were men, they didn’t wear anything but a t-shirt and underwear to bed. I always had to look at the floor because it was embarrassing to me, and not only did I feel my face get red, but then I’d be slapped. I think it was because they knew I saw them in their underwear.

He picked me up, and he felt under my butt, squishing my diaper a little bit.

“We have a dry little girl,” he told everyone. “I think I’ll take her to the bathroom to see if she can go.”

“Why don’t I do that,” Bridget said. I could hear a little shake in her voice.

Jack nodded and he handed me off to Bridget while he took April by the hand, and led her out of the room.

Bridget whispered to me. “You don’t have to try hard, honey. No one will care if you get any out, but I do think if you can go, you’d like to, right?”

I nodded.

I was carried to the bathroom, and as soon as she had my panty-diaper off of me, I sat on the toilet and not even a few seconds later, I felt it. I pushed a little bit, and I started going fully. I smiled. It was the first time to go in the toilet in a few days.

When I was done, Bridget checked my panty-diaper, and finding it completely dry, she helped me pull it up so the pads didn’t slip out of it, and then she took me to my room where she got me some leggings to wear.

“You’ll be more comfortable around daddy in these,” she told me.

They weren’t mine though. I didn’t own anything like this. These were not even stained with little holes in them. I looked up at her.

“I know they are a little tight,” she told me. “But after breakfast, we’ll get you a bath and then dressed into something more comfortable.”

“Whose are these?” I asked wondering where it came from.

“They were April’s,” Bridget told me without a blink. I felt my jaw drop. No one would ever put me in their own kids’ clothes! What if I peed my pants? But then, she said ‘were?’

“April asked me to give you three of her leggings that didn’t really fit right. It seemed that we got a size too big last time we bought her some, and she said you might fit them better.”

“But that means…,” I stammered not knowing what else to say. “That… that….”

“It means that they are getting some use,” Bridget told me as she hugged me, securing them. They actually were not tight on me at all.

“But these are brand new,” I finally spat out surprised.

“Well, not brand new,” Bridget blushed. “April had worn them a couple of times, but got tired of pulling them up all the time.”

I couldn’t believe I was given something nearly new, and something that belonged to the natural child of the couple, and something she could still probably use later. I felt my eyes sting again. I felt a deep something from inside my chest that made it hard to breathe. I felt my stomach doing back flips. These people were so different! I really didn’t understand the rules at all. They haven’t even hit me once! I didn’t understand them.

I was led by the hand down the hall and to the kitchen after I was put in a blue top. The leggings were purple. I could still nearly see the diaper through the leggings, but I didn’t care. I was used to people seeing my diaper at home.

Jack was at the kitchen counter, mixing something. April was setting the table with plates, forks, and knives. There were FOUR plates and there were four sets of forks and knives. There were four sets of glasses and there was milk and orange juice set out on the table.

“April, pour Lauren some orange juice, honey,” Jack said. His tone was not commanding. It sounded more like he was asking, the way he raised his voice at the end.

April smiled and nodded, pouring two glasses of juice. The juices were in seats next to each other.

“Come here,” April said patting one of the chairs that had the orange juice poured for. “You sit my me, okay?”

I nodded. April was so nice! Never had any of the kids at the other foster homes wanted to sit anywhere near me, especially when they knew I wore diapers. April didn’t care at all.

Bridget came back in, for she had left a moment, and she was now wearing a floral shirt and a pair of jeans.

“Lauren peed in the toilet,” she told Jack, though it was loud enough that I and April could both hear her. “She might not be as hard to toilet train as that Ms. Rebecca was telling us.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Jack said frowning. “I didn’t trust anything about the whole topic the minute that she told us that multiple families said she was doing it on purpose to get attention.”

I looked down.

Before I knew it, we were eating these brown circle things that had melting butter on top and sticky brown sauce of sorts. It was a sweet sauce. I didn’t know I could actually eat. I wasn’t usually that hungry in the mornings. Of course, I was never given anything until I went to school and ate lunch.

I eyed the circular disks that were extra, and put in the middle of the table. I liked the way they tasted. I had finished my share, though, so I never thought I’d get any more.

“Mommy, I think Lauren wants more pancakes,” April said.

I shook a little bit, afraid some how I given myself away, and got too greedy. I had to hurry up and tell them I’m sorry. I had to…. “I… I… I didn’t mean it,” I whimpered.

Jack got up from the table. This was it, he was going to hit me. I did something wrong. I got greedy.

He picked me up, and he felt my bottom, but he held me securely in his arms as he did so. Then he pulled me out to look in my eyes. He looked confused.

“You’re not wet, baby,” he said softly. “What didn’t you mean to do?”

I swallowed.

“I think she means the pancakes, and wanting another one,” April looked up at him. How come you thought she peed her pants?”

“Honey, I just….”

Bridget got up and took me from Jack while he went to his seat, but then he took my plate, and he put two more pancakes on it. He frowned sadly, and he looked like he was really sad. “I’m sorry, Lauren. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

I didn’t feel embarrassed. Everyone checked my pants if I started to apologize. It was natural, because I always did that. I smiled sadly at him. “I didn’t mean to get greedy,” I whispered.

Bridget and Jack looked at each other.

“Get greedy?” Jack asked me. “Honey, it’s not greedy to be hungry. It’s only greedy if you take more than someone else, and they are hungry, too. There were plenty of pancakes on the table.”

I gulped. That’s not what I was told before. I would have been sent to the closet for looking past my bowl of mashed potatoes or my macaroni with tuna in it at any other house. If I was only sent to the closet, that was a light punishment.

April reached across and picked up two more pancakes for herself. There was still one more left. Only one? Bridget and Jack were bigger people. They might be hungry. I should not eat my pancakes.

Bridget sat me down in her lap.

I made my mouth tight so she couldn’t feed me.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked me.

I shrugged, but kept my mouth shut.

“Honey, it’s okay. This is for you, baby.”

I pointed at the pancake that was left, and then at Jack and Bridget. I didn’t want to open my mouth and have her sneak a piece in my mouth when it should go to Jack or Bridget.

Jack smiled and he took the one left on the plate. “Mmm. I think this one will finish me off,” he said putting the sticky sauce on it.

“Lauren,” April said rubbing my arm. “Mommy never eats more than three, and daddy doesn’t usually even eat four. You only had two to start, so it’s okay. I always eat four, that’s why daddy made that many.”

I looked over at Jack, trying to see into his eyes. They were not mad. They were not narrowed or scolding. He had a small smile on his face.

“Lauren, mommy and daddy want you to eat enough,” Bridget told me. “You are not a second rate person in this house, baby. You are our little girl, and you are April’s sister, a sister she had been wanting now, for years.”

I looked over at April.

“At first, I wanted a little sister,” she said truthfully. “But I’m okay with you. You are a nice sister even if you are older.”

I felt my face blush a little bit. She wanted a little sister? But she is okay with me, anyway?

Bridget put the fork near my mouth again, and she patted my tummy with her other hand as she whispered. “Please, eat, sweetheart.”

I opened my mouth and let her put it in. Then I reached for the fork, and she gave it to me. I ate my second helping, for the first time ever, and I did so, in someone’s lap. This family was so strange, but I liked this strangeness. It was a happy strangeness. Jack didn’t even call me a pig or yell at me or anything.

 

 

[TheJ]

1 hour ago, Ishigreensa said:

“At first, I wanted a little sister,” she said truthfully. “But I’m okay with you. You are a nice sister even if you are older.”

Have to point out how I find this piece of dialogue perfect: It's slightly thoughtless but wholesome, exactly what a child might say.

In my opinion you're doing a great job describing the thoughts of a hypervigilant, abused child. Only thing that seems unusual to me is how intimate the foster parents are being with Lauren straight from the start, without letting her get familiar with them first. In other depictions I've seen the parents allow the relationship to slowly grow more intimate as the child becomes comfortable with it, although it doesn't apply as much to younger, perhaps preschool age, children.

Still, there's a lot of room for development in the story, given that the intimacy is quite one-sided, and Lauren is far from the happy, content child she always should have been allowed to be.

[spark]

This is such a sweet story.   I like how you've written this from a POV of child who is finally in a place that she is loved

[Ishigreensa]

1 hour ago, TheJ said:

Have to point out how I find this piece of dialogue perfect: It's slightly thoughtless but wholesome, exactly what a child might say.

In my opinion you're doing a great job describing the thoughts of a hypervigilant, abused child. Only thing that seems unusual to me is how intimate the foster parents are being with Lauren straight from the start, without letting her get familiar with them first. In other depictions I've seen the parents allow the relationship to slowly grow more intimate as the child becomes comfortable with it, although it doesn't apply as much to younger, perhaps preschool age, children.

Still, there's a lot of room for development in the story, given that the intimacy is quite one-sided, and Lauren is far from the happy, content child she always should have been allowed to be.

thank you for your input.  Perhaps, I would not make a good foster parent, then.  I would feel so much, that I would want so much to let the child know as soon as possible that they were special.  Every child on the Earth, is special, and that's why everyone grows up into individuals.

Thank you for pointing out the child thing you saw.  It helps me to know that I'm getting at least part of the feeling across I'm trying to convey.

1 hour ago, spark said:

This is such a sweet story.   I like how you've written this from a POV of child who is finally in a place that she is loved

Thank you for your comment. I hope you can feel the connection to the character a little more.  I had to rewrite the second chapter like three times before I was happy with it, and I thought I was done with the third chapter after three edits, but yeah, no, I have to go back.  There is something not quite right.

[Ishigreensa]

Chapter 3

A Dry Diaper?

 

I finished my pancakes in Bridget’s lap. She rubbed my thighs as I ate. Jack smiled and touched my nose twice. I couldn’t help it. There was something pulling inside me, and I giggled.

“Do those tights fit?” April asked me.

I looked up at her.

“They were too big for me, so I told mommy to let you wear them cause all your pants are yellow on the butt.”

I blushed.

“I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” April told me. “And it’s embarrassing to be wet outside.”

I frowned. I had not really thought about the fact that all my pants were stained that way, but they were. I didn’t have any clothes that didn’t have pee stains in them.

April hugged me. “Do you want to play dolls for a little while?”

I looked up at Bridget who nodding, put me gently on the floor.

April went into her room and came back with several dolls. She smiled as she put them all down between us, the television was right there, and Bridget was in the kitchen washing dishes while Jack was reading the paper.

“You can put cartoons on,” he told April, I thought.

“What cartoons do you like?” April asked me.

I shrugged.

“Have you never watched cartoons before?”

I shrugged. I had, a little bit, but usually from a corner or somewhere out of the way, and never all the way through, nor did I ever choose.

“How about Flintstones?” she asked as she turned the channel to a cartoon that had a fat man with black hair, a dinosaur that sounded like a dog, and a thin red hair woman. They had neighbors, too. A thin woman that had black hair and a yellow hair short man.

April took her favorite doll out of the pile and then she looked up at me. “Your turn. You can pick one that you want to play with, then I’ll pick and then you pick again. It’s polite to let guests pick first, but you’re not a guest. You’re my sister, and this is my favorite doll, so I hope you are okay I took it.”

I smiled and nodded. I felt my hand shake as I reached for a doll. What if I broke it?

“What’s wrong?” April asked me.

“I… I never got to play with other kids’ stuff before.”

“That’s because they were not your family,” April told me. “You are my little sister, so you definitely play with my stuff if I want you to.”

I shivered a little bit and looked up at Jack to make sure it was okay to take a doll. He looked from the paper and smiled. “Go ahead, honey. She wants to play with you.”

I was shaking. I took a doll. It was dressed in a green dress.

“It’s okay,” April assured at me. “I want you to play with it.”

“What if… what if I break it?” I asked.

“You can’t break plastic dolls unless you try to,” she told me. “You aren’t going to pull the head and arms off on purpose, right?”

I shook my head no. Everyone else made it seem like I would break stuff. I just thought maybe dolls are easy to break.

“Well, you have to do it on purpose to break it, so don’t worry. And if you accidentally pull out the arms, daddy can fix it.”

I shook a little bit still, and I just wanted two dolls even thought she had like eight of them, and tried to split them evenly, even just giving me two when I wouldn’t choose after the second one.

“Fred is a loud mouth,” April told me. “I like to have this doll be a loud mouth, so it can be funny.”

I nodded.

“And this one is like Wilma,” she told me. “She’s smart, but she gets like… ‘oh brother,’ when Fred does crazy stuff.”

I smiled. She really liked talking about the Flintstones. It was probably one of her favorite cartoons.

I got to be Betty and Fred while she played Wilma and Barney for a while. She said this way, we always talking to each other, and we played for a while. She had such an imagination.

Before long, Bridget came and got me and took me to the bathroom again. I sat on the toilet, but nothing came out, and she didn’t let me push my stomach. She said it will come out when it’s ready, but the real reason….

“Okay, honey, if nothing is coming out, come over here.”

I saw a full tub of water.

“These leggings fit you better than I thought they would,” Bridget told me.

I nodded.

“We are going to the store to get you some clothes and some toys,” Bridget told me. “While we are happy that April wanted to share her toys with you today, she is a little girl just like you are, and sometimes, you don’t want to share toys.”

I looked down. They didn’t have to get me toys. I never had any before, well, except one, that I lost in the family before the Harrisons.

Bridget put an arm around me, and she started to undress me. I could have done it, but I knew better than to say so. If she wanted to undress me, that was her right. A lot of people checked me, changed me, and dressed and undressed me all the time. It was normal.

She wasn’t mean though. She helped me get my top off, and then she pulled my leggings down and checked my panty-diaper. It was still dry.

She helped me into the tub and then she gave me a wash cloth to start washing with, and meanwhile, she started to rub my hair. She was probably putting shampoo in it. It had been maybe a week since my hair was last washed.

Bridget didn’t talk about how dirty my hair was, nor how dirty my bum was. I knew it was. The other people said it was always dirty. They always accused me of pooping my pants. I did try a lot harder to not do that, but sometimes, I couldn’t help it, and some slid into the diaper before I could go potty.

Once I was clean, and Bridget actually let me clean myself, she helped me out of the tub. The only things she did for me, was wash my hair and she washed my back, but she let me wash all my front, and she told me to wash my own privates and butt. I didn’t see any brown on the cloth when I wiped my butt, so I looked up at her to see if she would do it ‘right,’ but she accepted me as being clean.

I followed her with a towel wrapped around me to my room again, and then she pulled up some pink leggings, again, courtesy of April up over my diaper, and then she put a jean skirt on me that had some stains on it and a few little holes, and she put a tan top on me that was also a little stained on the back and had some little holes. These were my clothes, so I really couldn’t complain.

I was dressed and she took me downstairs and set me on the sofa next to Jack while she took April up next to get her bath. At some places, nine year olds were old enough to take their own baths, but for some reason, Bridget didn’t come back until she had April also in a jean skirt and an orange top. She had pink leggings on, too.

“Look, we match,” April said ignoring that my skirt had a stain and holes in it. “Now we are dressed like twins!”

I smiled. April seemed to like the idea that we were twins even though my shirt was brown and hers was orange, and mine was stained with holes while hers were more new-looking.

“She doesn’t have a good coat,” I heard Bridget tell Jack.

“She could maybe borrow that one that April is always taking,” Jack suggested.

“Yeah, I don’t think there is any other choice. I just hope April isn’t stubborn about it this time.”

April brought a long warm coat from the hall closet into the living room. “Mommy, Lauren didn’t have a coat last night,” she reminded everyone.

Bridget nodded as she saw April holding out a fur very long brown coat that had oversized rope loops and slender stick-like handles that worked like buttons.

“Can she wear mommy’s coat?” April held the coat out from herself.

Both Jack and Bridget looked at her a moment with their jaws hung open. I didn’t understand the significance. They had been treating me like I was April all this time. Why would they be surprised by April asking, wait, that I could wear her mommy’s coat? Oh, yeah, that might be surprising.

April took the coat right over to me, and before I realized what she was doing, she was sliding a sleeve up my arm.

I pulled my arm back. “No, April. This is your mommy’s coat. I couldn’t….”

“Mommy lets me wear it anytime it’s really cold outside. I have one, but I like mommy’s coat.”

“Yeah, that’s why I shouldn’t….”

“No, that’s why you should,” she insisted putting her arms on her hips. “You are my little sister, and you don’t have a coat. You need to be warm, too.”

I didn’t correct her when she said I was the little sister. It wouldn’t really matter what she said. I was lucky she wanted me to be her sister at all, so I just stood there, wondering if I should wear the coat.

“I’m glad you see it the way we do,” Bridget suddenly told April. “I was afraid you wanted to wear that one, and then there would not be one big enough for Lauren.”

“I did want it at first, and when I started to put it on, I remembered that Lauren didn’t have a coat yesterday. I am okay in my coat right now. We going to get her a coat that fits her today, right?”

“That’s right, honey,” Bridget smiled.

Jack came between us, and he hugged us both. “You see, Lauren. You are already rubbing off on April. April is thinking about others because of you.”

April looked up at Jack and saw him smile and wink at her. She nodded and she started to try to dress me in the coat again. I let her.

We were taken to the car. Bridget wore a purple coat, Jack wore a blue one, and April wore a pink one. Of all the coats though, I wondered if mine was the warmest one. I felt kind of bad it might be warmer than April’s coat, but she smiled as we were buckled in. The car was warm like it had been the night before. They had not put me in a cold car like the Harrisons sometimes did if they were late getting me ready for school. I think Jack must have warmed the engine and the car while April and I were taking baths. I didn’t remember seeing him go out, but then again, it was chaos that morning, and I couldn’t really keep track of what Jack or Bridget were doing since April kept getting my attention and talking to me.

April reached in a pocket that was in the seat in front of her, the driver’s seat, and she pulled out two coloring books. There was also a box of eight count crayons. She passed one of the books to me.

“They keep coloring books in the car for me,” April told me. “They said it keeps me kind of quiet when we are going somewhere.”

I nodded.

The book she passed me had a big fat brown bear on the front of it, a bear that looked a little more like a teddy bear, and it had a hand full of honey.

I opened the book. There were a few pages here and there colored, but there were plenty of pages left to color.

“You can color any page you want,” April told me.

I nodded, and she opened the other book that had a blue dog on the cover. That dog stood up straight, obviously a comic or a cartoon character.

We colored for a while. This was my first car ride, where I wasn’t going to school or going to a new home.

I looked over at April’s page. She was obviously good at coloring in a moving car. Her coloring was perfect and in the lines everywhere. When we hit a bump, or we slowed or speeded up, you could tell in my book. There were a few lines of color that escaped the area I was coloring in.

April didn’t pay attention to that at all though, when she saw my picture.

“Wow! You are so talented,” she said.

I looked at it for a moment, and then shrugged. I didn’t think it looked nice at all. There were a lot of places the lines went out of the space, and I wouldn’t think the colors I chose were special in anyway.

“I think you should be an art class,” April told me.

I shook my head. “I don’t think you see too many people color,” I told her.

“I do, too,” she said nodding her head seriously. “My daycare, where I go after school, there are a lot of kids that draw and color, and your coloring is better than any of them.”

I blushed. I didn’t know what to think. No one ever noticed if I drew or colored before.

She grabbed the book off my lap and put it towards Bridget. “Mommy! Look!”

Bridget turned and took the book from April.

“That’s the beautifullest picture I ever saw colored,” April said.

Bridget looked it over and then looked back at the crayons we had.

“How’d you do this?” she suddenly asked me on part of my coloring.

“Um… I just… I just did?” I said a little confused.

Jack glanced at it for a second, and he nodded as he looked back at the road. “She’s got some talent,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it. Everyone was saying I was good at something. I wasn’t good at anything. I was a waste of space, but now, Jack, Bridget, and April were saying that I did something awesome.

I couldn’t help but smile.

“I think we need to get her some extra colors,” Bridget told Jack. “She should work on improving this talent of hers.”

He nodded. “She should, if she likes coloring.”

I was so red but happy at what they were saying. I couldn’t believe they liked what I did.

“Can I have this to put on the fridge?” Bridget asked me.

I shrugged. “I think it’s April’s book though.”

April smiled. “You can have it, mommy.” Then she turned to me. “Color me one, too, little sister.”

I nodded.

I still didn’t know what the big deal was. I colored a tree that Winnie the Pooh was climbing. I colored in the edges of the tree a little harder, then I colored the middle with less pressure, and left some like lines of space, and then I colored those places with the black crayon. Any kid could do it.

We pulled into a large road area with lines that cars seemed be parked between. A lot of people were walking out in the road area, not something I had ever remembered doing. There were giant street lamps here and there around this strange road area that had spaces for cars to park at.

Bridget got out of the car and opened the door for April. Immediately, she took her hand. Jack opened my door, and he reached in and undid my seat belt and lifted me out. I clung to his neck as he started to put me down. I was a little bit scared. I was told that you were not supposed to walk on the road, and yet, everyone was doing just that around here. I saw no separate places for walkers.

“What is it?” Jack asked as I clung to him. “Do you want me to carry you?”

I held him tightly, shaking a little bit. He hadn’t thrown me down yet, so I kind of trusted him not to do that.

He patted me on the bum and whispered. “Alright, sweetheart.”

We walked through the strange road, cars parking here and there on all around it. A while later, I would learn that this was called a parking lot. I looked up towards the store, safely in Jack’s arms.

A red big K followed by smaller blue and white letters that spelled out mart was showing on the store front. There were giant sliding glass windows, that actually parted as soon as Jack and Bridget and April stepped near the doors. It kind of looked like magic. I had never seen doors like that before, or at least that I could remember.

We walked into this large hall that had something like book cases, only they didn’t have books, but had other stuff on them. Jack carried me quickly by this area, so I really didn’t get much of a chance to see what was there, but further in, near the middle of the store, there were these round things that had clothes hanging from them.

Jack started to put me down again. I let him, but I kept hold of his shirt. There were so many people in here, I was afraid I might lose Jack and Bridget. They walked me over to the shirts for kids. Then Bridget started to hold some shirts up to my chest. I looked up at her.

“What do you think?” she asked me as she held up a Minnie Mouse face on the front of a short sleeve shirt that you pull over your head.

I smiled. I didn’t care what was on the shirt. The shirt was brand new! It was the first time I had ever had a new shirt held up to me.

“Right, she needs about twelve shirts, eight undershirts, eight pair of panties, and six pair of jeans,” Jack told Bridget.

“I think she might want a couple of skirts, too,” Bridget told him back.

I looked from one to the other as they spoke.

“Come on,” Bridget took the Minnie Mouse shirt and led me to a place with curtains. She came in with me, and then taking off my dingy stained top, she slipped the Minnie mouse over my head.

“How does that feel?” she asked me.

It was kind of tight, but I didn’t want to criticize. It was new. So I was going to stay quiet and just nod, but she pulled at it, and she gauged that something wasn’t right.

“Please tell mommy if it’s too tight or too lose, honey. There are plenty of choices out there, and I’m just trying to find your size.”

I looked up at her. I pulled at the sleeve, trying to take it off. She saw me struggle.

“Too tight, okay,” she said without me having to tell her. She put my other shirt back on, and we went back where Jack and April were looking at things.

“She wears a little larger size than this,” Bridget showed Jack. “Maybe try the next size up?”

He nodded.

I was a bit small, like at the old school I went to, I was like the third from the shortest girl in our class, and I was very thin, so I guess Bridget thought I was smaller than I was.

We walked to some other shirts, this one had some red, blue, and white stripes in it. It was kind of okay, and Bridget took me back to the dressing room again. She helped me put the shirt on, and this one was a lot more comfortable. I smiled up at her as I felt it all around me. I thought it fit perfectly.

“Do you like the fit?” Bridget asked me.

I nodded.

She then came back out, told me the size, and then she put the shirt back, and she squatted next to me. “I want you to find twelve shirts that is that size,” she told me.

I looked down. No one ever got me more than one shirt at a time before, and it was never brand new like this. I didn’t know what to think.

“April, help her out,” Jack said patting April on the shoulder.

April ran over to me, took my hand, and before I knew it, she was pointing out and suggesting all kinds of shirts. I was really lucky before, just to find a clean shirt waiting for me, one that I hadn’t seen before, so all these choices of new clothes were so overwhelming. I just followed April, and I let April choose like six shirts before I saw this really cute blouse. I walked over to it, and it had the right size. I took it off the rack, and held it to my chest, thinking.

“That’s beautiful!” April said to me.

Jack came over and he took the blouse from me and looked it over until he found the tag. He smiled. “And it’s perfectly in the budget.”

I didn’t understand what he meant by perfectly in the budget, but it looked like he was putting it in the cart, so I guess he was getting it.

I walked around, getting the shirts and eventually we moved on to the underthings. April was once again very helpful once Bridget found out the size I wore. I think April was enjoying this more than I was, and honestly, having never been in a real store before, I was a little more nervous than having fun. What if I messed something up? What if I embarrassed them?

They bought me so many things, I couldn’t believe how full the cart was! Jack told Bridget he’d meet her over at the jeans, and he was taking April with him to get another cart, so Bridget pushed our full cart, and I walked holding onto Bridget’s shirt, not wanting to get lost. I kind of had to pee, but I was scared to tell them that. It always embarrassed people if I said that, and I really didn’t want to make them mad at me. They were being so nice to me.

Bridget started to figure out what size I should get as soon as we got there, and when she took me to the dressing room for the first time at the jeans place, I was trying really hard to hold still while she helped me put on my pants. It was kind of hard though because I was scared I’d wet.

Bridget got the jeans off of me, and saw me kind of marching around, and she bend down to look me in the eyes.

I shivered a little bit.

“Honey, do you want to go potty?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“Okay, let’s put your skirt back on, and I’ll see if daddy is here yet so he will know where we are.”

I nodded. I was starting to squirm. I didn’t mean to squirm.

Jack and April walked an empty cart up to us, while I squirmed there in place.

“Our baby needs the potty,” Bridget told Jack.

He nodded.

Bridget then knelt down by April and she asked her. “And how about you, do you want to go?”

April shrugged.

“Okay, I’m taking both the girls with me,” Bridget said.

Jack nodded. “I need to go check on something, so you go ahead and go, and I’ll meet you back here.”

Jack took the empty cart, and Bridget pushed the full cart. I kept a hold of her shirt. April smiled at me.

Bridget left the cart at some place called Layaway and had a few words with the lady there, and April talked to me.

“You don’t have to hold mommy and daddy’s shirt all the time,” she told me. “They aren’t going to let you out of their sight. I promise.”

I shrugged.

“You’re scared, right?”

I looked down.

She hugged me, and held my hand that wasn’t holding Bridget. “You are so cute,” she told me.

I blushed and looked down, still squirming a lot. I hoped we were going to the bathroom soon.

Then Bridget smiled and took my hand, the one that was holding her shirt, and she led me to the bathroom. She pointed at one of the empty stalls and told April to go, and then she took me into the larger empty stall. It had a funny symbol on it, like a stick man inside of a letter C. I had not seen that symbol before.

Bridget helped me pull down my skirt and my leggings, and then she pulled down my panty-diaper and sat me on the toilet.

I started to go.

“Good girl,” Bridget told me.

I smiled. I loved it when she praised me, but I don’t know why. I just peed in the toilet like a normal ten year old. Still, it was so much better than hearing it when others said: “Ten years old, and squirming around and drawing attention to yourself like that….”

I looked up at her. I wondered if I embarrassed her because of squirming at that place called Layaway, and she was talking to the lady there. She just smiled down at me, and waited for all the water to get out of my body. She stood there, waiting, not tapping her foot, not rushing me, but she just smiled.

I looked down as I felt something else pushing on my butt. I looked up afraid I didn’t have time for this. Bridget doesn’t want me to do this right now, does she? I started to try to get off the potty, thinking I had to hold it, but as I did so, Bridget noticed something wrong.

“Honey, You’re going to poop your pants if you get off the toilet right now,” she told me. She was probably right. “You don’t want to do that, do you?”

I felt stinging in my eyes, and water starting to push to the front as I shook my head.

Bridget put me properly back on the toilet, and she whispered. “Just go, baby. No one wants you to embarrass yourself.”

I looked up at her. “Because that will embarrass you, and make everyone look at you?”

Bridget got down and reached to hold me towards her. “No, baby. Because it will make you uncomfortable, and make you want to cry.”

She held me a moment, and then she smiled releasing me. “Now go potty, and we’ll get you a treat after we finish getting your clothes.”

I looked up at her.

There was a knock at the stall door.

“Mommy, are you still in there?” April asked through the door.

“Yes, honey. Your sister is still trying to go.”

“Okay. I just wanted to make sure cause you didn’t come out yet, and I was afraid maybe I misunderstood and you were waiting outside.”

“Go wash your hands, honey. Lauren and I will be out as soon as she is done.”

I looked up at the nice lady. How come she knew I’d be scared if she didn’t take me into the toilet and put me on the potty and stay with me. How come she knew I almost pooped my pants, if she wasn’t there to let me know I wasn’t taking too long? How come she didn’t get mad that I made a scene at the Layaway? How come she was still smiling and I finished.

I reached for toilet paper, and she let me wipe, but then she shook her head.

“No, honey, you are not done wiping,” she told me. I looked up at her confused.

She took some toilet paper, and held me up from the toilet, bent over a little, and she wiped. Then she showed me. It had poop on the toilet paper.

“Keep wiping until it is clean,” she told me.

She released me, and gave me more paper. “You can do it.”

I wiped again, and then again, and then again, and it was finally clean. I looked up at her and showed her the paper.

She nodded. “Good girl. That’s probably the reason that the last people accused you of pooping your pants,” she told me. “You probably didn’t even do that. You probably just didn’t know how to wipe right.”

I looked down.

“It’s not your fault, sweetie. Kids have to be shown this stuff before they understand how to do it.”

I nodded.

She picked me up and took me to the sink after fixing my clothes, and then I washed my hands.

“She took a while, mommy,” April told Bridget.

“Yes, honey. She’s still learning what is okay, and she didn’t know she had a right to poop.”

“Ew! That’s gross! What did she do before, if she didn’t poop in the potty? Poop her pants?”

Bridget grimaced. “I’m sure she just held it until she thought she could go.”

“But that’s not even right.”

“I know baby. There are some mean people out there, when someone is not your kid. They never saw her as their family.”

April suddenly hugged me. “You poop in the potty as soon as you gotta go, little sis,” she told me sternly. “Cause if you don’t, you’ll poop your pants and then get real sad.”

I nodded. I did poop my pants sometimes, or I did before. I was glad that Bridget put me back on the toilet. I was glad that April wasn’t mad about waiting the extra time. I was sort of glad she scolded me the way she did. It somehow, made me feel I had a right to use the bathroom.

Bridget picked me up and started to carry me, and with her free hand, she held April’s hand, and we walked out to meet Jack. He was already back, and what I couldn’t believe, was that there was this big tiger stuffed animal in the cart that was nearly half my size.

“This is your new buddy,” Jack told me. “We are going to get you some more toys after we finish shopping for your pants and skirts, but I thought I’d show you, it was okay to get toys.”

I smiled. April smiled.

“Can I get a toy, too?” April asked.

“Of course, baby,” Jack told her. “It’s not fair to get one of you toys and not the other one. Just be mindful that you already have toys and Lauren doesn’t, so we are getting her more toys this time around.”

April nodded. “That’s fair.”

When we were done shopping, I couldn’t believe that I was in a public place, that took a long time, and I was now, in the car, and my diaper was dry. I couldn’t remember the last time I went somewhere public with someone, and ended up in the car in a dry diaper

[spark]

Jack and Bridgette must have prepared April for the big change.

This is such an interesting method of a first person narrative.   We are getting Lauren's thoughts as they occur.   I love how you're purposely hiding most of her story.   I want her (which means you) to tell me more about her background, but she is not trusting, so it makes sense that she is not letting us know about her background.  

BTW- I usually hate that.   I read the Wikipedia synopsis of Better Call Saul Episodes before watching the episode because I get frustrated if I don't know what is going on.  Keep up the great work.

 

[parkintochter]

The story is really heart warming. Thank you! I hope this beautiful story will continue soon.

[Ishigreensa]

19 hours ago, spark said:

Jack and Bridgette must have prepared April for the big change.

This is such an interesting method of a first person narrative.   We are getting Lauren's thoughts as they occur.   I love how you're purposely hiding most of her story.   I want her (which means you) to tell me more about her background, but she is not trusting, so it makes sense that she is not letting us know about her background.  

BTW- I usually hate that.   I read the Wikipedia synopsis of Better Call Saul Episodes before watching the episode because I get frustrated if I don't know what is going on.  Keep up the great work.

 

Sorry to frustrate you, but thank you for your assessment.  It is imperative that I tell the story slowly and give out information in smaller doses here and there, so that it doesn't just feel like an information dump.  At least, that's how I see it.  I'm working on the fourth chapter, and there will something in there that will help you know part of her background.

 

6 hours ago, parkintochter said:

The story is really heart warming. Thank you! I hope this beautiful story will continue soon.

It's not easy to write the story.  I've started chapter four over like five times now, not liking how each time I started it.  I even completely decided to move on past the shopping scene, or at first, I was thinking of writing it out.  I think we know what is happening with the shopping because of what has already happened thus far for that.  So, look for another chapter soon.  Just trying to move the story along.

[bje]

I just read chapter 4 (It rolled over and over and over) and think this is very good story. I like a friendly story with nice persons. I just have a few comments on what could be improved to make even better:

8 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

“She turns eleven in a few days, so I wondered if she would be in sixth grade or in fifth,” Jack told her.

“We could test her, but normally, we just put anyone who turns eleven after the school starts in fifth grade, and anyone who was eleven before the first day of school in sixth grade.”

“I would like her tested,” Jack told them. “The kid has had a tough three years or so, and I’m really not even sure she can keep up with the fifth graders.”

It seems inconsistent that Jack wonders if Lauren would be in sixth or fifth grade if he is not sure she can keep up in fifth grade.

8 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

“Lauren, they are worried that your language skills have not been developed very much, and that you might be talking like a second or third grader,” she told me. “Your math skills, however, are really high, and if it were up to your math skills they would be happy to put you in sixth grade, but they can’t do that since most of your subjects rely mostly on your language skills.”

I understand this from the plot, but it doesn't harmonize with the fact that the story is told in first person with very good command of language. The "I" person's language is much better than Lauren's language would be.

8 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

I sat back, thinking back to that time when I went to the first home ever. I had had to pee, kind of bad, and I don’t think I was there more than a couple of days. There was this one boy that was like two years younger than me. I was probably seven, maybe and so he was like five? Anyway, I had to go bad and I didn’t know about thinking about others at that time. I just ran right in to the bathroom.

She couldn't be seven as she lost her parents just after eight year birthday.

[bje]

2 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

“April is still a little scared of people right now, so can you please please give us a little more time, Cindy?”

“Of course. You said that April had bad people around her.”

I think that should read Lauren instead of April in both lines.

[BabySofia]

3 hours ago, bje said:

It seems inconsistent that Jack wonders if Lauren would be in sixth or fifth grade if he is not sure she can keep up in fifth grade.

Depends on her birthday, eleven could be either grade. A late summer birthday would mean she could be eleven all the way through sixth grade in some places. A fall birthday would mean she could be eleven in fifth grade, especially if this is late in the year. 

3 hours ago, bje said:

I understand this from the plot, but it doesn't harmonize with the fact that the story is told in first person with very good command of language. The "I" person's language is much better than Lauren's language would be.

First person always makes with unreliable narrators. If this is set in the future after Lauren has received help it would be entirely possible she could be writing about her life in a more formal style of writing. 

 

This is the kind of piece that unfortunately could very well happen with a kid. Neglect and abuse is something that should never be tolerated, but there are so many horror stories in the system. Hope Lauren ends up with a happy ending here, it seems like right now her foster (hopefully adoptive) parents are very much the right people for the job!

[spark]

41 minutes ago, BabySofia said:

This is the kind of piece that unfortunately could very well happen with a kid. Neglect and abuse is something that should never be tolerated, but there are so many horror stories in the system. Hope Lauren ends up with a happy ending here, it seems like right now her foster (hopefully adoptive) parents are very much the right people for the job!

Aside from doing what they can for Lauren, somebody needs to investigate all of her previous foster placements, as well as the people who supervised them

 

This is such an interesting story and the way the narrative is being told is unique.   I've never read something that is told in this manner, and it's very interesting. 

Lauren's schooling situation would be extremely complicated.   In California,  students typically start Kindergarten if they turn 5 by December 1, which would mean Lauren would turn 11 while she is in 6th grade.  In her case, if she has been unschooled (which limited schooling), they could and would likely place in 5th.   If her birthday is in the spring, I guess 4th grade would be an option, but it probably wouldn't if she spent most of the school year as an 11-year-old.

Personally, I think starting kids early can be detrimental, and the transition years can be very difficult.   Some districts start Middle School at 6th grade, and December child is 10 years old.  Middle schools also have 14 and even 15-year-olds, and there is a big difference in maturity between a teen and a 10-year-old.    It also means that you're 13 years old on your first day of high school, and school sometimes starts in early August.  I'm a September baby, and my mom waited an extra year.   I didn't start Kindergarten until my 6th birthday.  I was nowhere near ready to start Kinder at 5.   Even with that extra year, I still lagged behind my grade-level peers until I was in 11th grade (up to about two years in maturity).

The testing they are describing sounds like a formal assessment, and that doesn't just happen immediately after a parent asks.   There is a process, and it takes about two months to complete.  Fortunately, schools do have counseling that doesn't require an IEP, and Lauren's needs would be so severe that it would be obvious they would need to assess her- especially if Bridgette and Jack pushed hard for it.

Sadly, the teacher delaying Lauren's access to the toilet, even after knowing that she needs immediate access is accurate.  Even if it's in the IEP, teachers don't always allow kids free access.  Think of what that could do to a child like her.  She is wetting herself because she doesn't think she is allowed to go to the toilet when she needs to.

[Ishigreensa]

Actually, reading over the feed back, I am thinking I did rush those chapters, something I didn't mean to do.  I will repost chapter 4 and 5 soon, hopefully cleaned up of some of the obvious mistakes.  There is one thing I wanted to point out that was not supposed to be a mistake.  The girl does have spelling and reading issues, and she has a lack of vocabulary, as instanced when she first came across a parking lot and syrup on her pancakes.

I also want you to realize, that while I am writing the words spelled correctly in her narratives, this is more for reader ease than necessarily how well organized her thinking is, but she does have a strong command of grammar and of even some advanced ideas like similies and metaphors.  In one section, she was compared to an eighth grader when it came to just writing freely when she wasn't worried about spelling.

As for Jack not knowing if she was to be in fifth or sixth grade, he is just a parent who has had one child with a birthday in a non-confusing part of the year, so he wouldn't know the exact rules.  And honestly, I think that December 1 rule, is either very new or region specific.  My Birthday was December 30, and I think they tried to put me in Kindergarten early in Oregon, too, but they decided that actually, that was not a good idea, and had me repeat kindergarten because of that.  My sister's birthday is November, and she was in 6th grade when she was 11-12 years old, and in seventh grade at 12-13 years old.  At that time, in Cheyenne, Wy, elementary went K-6 and Junior High was 7-9.  I was in 7th grade, also when I was 12-13.

My brothers, both summer kids, June and July birthday, went to sixth grade 11 years old, seventh at 12 years old, and so on.  That is basically what I was going on with the school ideas.  As far as I knew, most of the time, schools started you in the lower grade if your birthday fell after Labor day and they put you in the higher grade if your birthday was before labor day.

[bje]

2 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

As for Jack not knowing if she was to be in fifth or sixth grade, he is just a parent who has had one child with a birthday in a non-confusing part of the year, so he wouldn't know the exact rules.

I don't think I made myself clear before. What I thought was odd was that Jack thought the choice was between 5th and 6th grade when he had doubts about Lauren's ability to do 5th grade. In that case, I assumed the choice was between 4th and 5th grade. I thought (perhaps mistakenly) that she was to be placed in a grade based on ability and not age.

[Ishigreensa]

39 minutes ago, bje said:

I don't think I made myself clear before. What I thought was odd was that Jack thought the choice was between 5th and 6th grade when he had doubts about Lauren's ability to do 5th grade. In that case, I assumed the choice was between 4th and 5th grade. I thought (perhaps mistakenly) that she was to be placed in a grade based on ability and not age.

I understand.  if it were up to Bridget, she'd get a special tutor and be tutored from third grade, but Jack understands that going down before fourth grade would probably hurt her confidence.  He was actually not so sure of grade based on age.  But he certainly wants her to get extra help no matter what grade she goes into.  And she will end up in her sister's class for a while, until they decide that that teacher is neither right for her nor even April.  Even a normal kid shouldn't be told to wait, in Jack's mind, if that kid looks like they are about to have an accident.  He can't believe a teacher can't tell the difference of an urgent potty dance, and someone faking it.

[Ishigreensa]

I am rewriting the last two chapters to add some consistency and to correct a couple of errors I made, such as calling April Lauren a couple of times.  It was also rightly brought to my attention that it would take time for the tests to be administered, so I'm trying to take that into account too.  I do understand, that there might still be a few things that look a little strange, but this is chapter 4 revised.  And the visit with the professionals will come in a later chapter.

Chapter 4

It rolled over and over and over

 

Around three years ago, we were driving back in the rain. Four days at Disney World had left several Disney goodies packed in the trunk. Mom and dad were joking and playing silly things in the radio thing in the car. It was the evening of the second day on the way back home, and we were supposed to get home that night.

I was singing The Little Mermaid’s song when she sang about wanting to be apart of your world. It should have been the happiest birthday trip of my life. But everything went bad in less than an hour.

I leaned up towards the front of the car, you know, the typical kid thing “Are we there yet? Are we going to stop soon?”

“We still have about two hours or so, kiddo,” was what daddy told me. I blushed and held my privates. I used to be kind of shy about saying it, even in front of mommy and daddy, but mommy looking in the mirror, she guessed it, and she whispered to daddy.

I put my hands against my pants, and looked out the window, trying to sing another favorite, “A whole New World” from Aladdin. I was rocking and it sort of hurt, but I was too old to wet my pants. I was completely potty trained at that time. There were no wet beds, no wet sheets, no wet pants, and no diapers. I was able to do do anything any other eight year old could do.

I leaned up to the front again, my privates hurting a little bit, and squirming, unable to sit still. I thought I was going to burst. “Can’t we stop sooner?” I asked.

“Daddy is looking for a place, honey,” Mommy told me. I nodded and sat back, sucking my thumb. I don’t know why I put my thumb in my mouth, but I was really scared I was going to be a baby. I couldn’t pee my pants after I just turned eight. What shame!

The rain got stronger, and I remember that there was a fog out there, that was really hard to see through. It was almost like driving through an evil minded cloud that came down from the sky. The wind around the car was crazy. I felt the car shift to one side before daddy corrected it. I was starting to get scared.

They turned the silly songs off on the radio, and now, they were listening to the weather. I was even more scared because of that. The car jerked to the left again. I felt my pee pee almost let go, and I went a little bit in my panties. I leaned up.

“I really gotta go,” I told mommy and daddy.

“We know, honey. We are trying to find you a place,” daddy told me. His hands were white on the wheel though. I think daddy was scared. I leaned back trying to be good. Mommy looked back at my face, and she looked down towards my pants. I had leaked a little bit again. She saw it.

“Honey, we need to find a safe place,” Mommy told me. “I know you can’t hold it.”

I frowned. “Yes, I can,” I said determined. I’m eight years old. I was not a baby.

The wind pushed the car to right. Daddy corrected.

I grasped the cloth between my legs. Mommy was probably right. I probably can’t hold it. I already leaked a little bit twice. The seat under me was already a little bit wet. I started to cry.

The wind pushed at the car again, and this time, daddy tried to steer us straight, but another gust pushed us into daddy’s turn, and we started to spin. I started peeing. We spun in circles, the cars around us kept turning at my side window, where I could see the front lights and then the red back lights. I continued peeing my pants. Our car hit the guard thingy on the side of the road. My head smacked the window. I felt dizzy.

I hoped it was over. I leaned up to check on mommy. As I did, something hit us from the side, the cars side of the car, and I felt myself jerk against the window again, hard. The car felt like it flew up into the air, and I felt the car roll as we went up, my head was down, then my head was up, and then my head was down. There was a big bump as the car landed on the ground. My side window broke against my head. We rolled over and over and over.

 

It was my fault that we crashed. If I didn’t keep telling mommy I had to pee, daddy would have been more worried about the road. Mommy would have been helping him. I peed my pants anyway, so bugging them about it didn’t stop that. I was a wicked child. My first foster family asked me what happened to my parents. They confirmed with me, that it was my fault that I had no parents. I didn’t know how to shut my mouth. I sadly had to agree.

“Lauren, wake up!” April came running into my room about two weeks after we had been shopping. “It’s the first day of school!”

I opened my eyes, and saw the little ball of energy, the happy little nine years old girl, all happy and perky. She was going into the fourth grade this year. I was going to be in fifth grade. My birthday, well, the day I was born, was coming up in a week or so. My bed was wet.

April walked over and pulled at the blankets. I was red with embarrassment. I hated to be found wet even though it was every morning for the last two weeks, and actually only two weeks these people knew me. It was since that night I had just dreamed about.

“Don’t,” I whined not wanting her to see my wet diaper and my wet bedding. The diaper had leaked again, and I felt the pee in the bed.

Bridget came to the door and looked in on us. She saw April trying to take the blankets off me.

“April, we talked about this already. Even if she is okay with you calling her your little sister, she is still embarrassed by you checking her. It’s mommy and daddy’s job to check her, and your job to comfort her when she needs it.”

April nodded. “I wasn’t checking her, though. I was just trying to get her up for school.”

“And she’s told you before, she’s not comfortable getting out of bed until mommy and daddy come for her, hasn’t she?”

“But that’s so prisoner-like,” April protested her arms on her hips. “She should have the right to move around in her own house.”

“I agree with you, April, but you want her to want to move around on her own, don’t you?”

April nodded.

“You making her get up is not going to help her feel like she has the right to get up when she wants to, sweetheart.”

April sighed. “All right!”

Bridget walked over and pulled my blankets back. The bed was soaked this time. My Pajamas were soaked front and back, and the top was wet to the middle of my back. Bridget picked me up and carried me down to the bathroom and stood me by the toilet. I knew she probably wanted me to use the toilet, but I already went all over the bed and my clothes. I didn’t think I could go anymore especially since Bridget wouldn’t let me push my stomach anymore. Still, I pulled down my pajamas and took them off, and then pushed down my diaper. It was sagging heavy, and it was stained all over the inside. The three pads in it were soaked. I let it get on the ground and stepped out of it, and then I sat on the toilet.

Bridget looked over and saw the wet diaper. She could probably tell that I was a bad girl and went completely on myself in my sleep. She had to know I was bad, but she never once said I was bad. She never let me call myself bad even though I knew I was. Ten year olds are not supposed to wet their pants and wet the bed even if April did wet the bed last year. April had a doctor reason, and the doctor helped her stop it. I was told I had no doctor’s problem. I was doing it for because I wanted to pee my pants. That was always told me, and I had no reason to deny it anymore. I was with nice people, but I was still peeing my pants, and I didn’t feel any different, so I couldn’t have a doctor’s problem like April had once had.

Bridget called me over to the tub side, and she whispered to me. “You haven’t had a daytime accident in a few days,” she told me. “Would you like to try wearing just panties to school today instead of a diaper?”

I frowned and looked down. I really would like that, but what if I caused trouble? What if I peed my pants, or worse, pooped my pants? I whimpered.

“Are you scared you’ll have an accident?” Bridget asked.

I nodded.

“Well, how about this? We let you wear diapers for a week to school. If you come home dry every day for a week, then we try panties at that time?”

I nodded. That made me to know it, and I’d know if I could hold it or not at school.

Bridget smiled and set me gently into the tub. “Remember, no pushing your stomach at school, either, honey. You raise your hand if you think you need to pee, and you go to the bathroom. If nothing comes out right away, then go back to class, and ask later when you feel it a little stronger, okay?”

I nodded.

“I’ll let your school know that you have some potty issues.”

Great. All the kids will know and probably call me what I am, a baby.

“Don’t worry. The only people that I will tell this to, are people that will make it easier for you to get to the potty in time, like your teacher, your principal, and your nurse, in case you need your diaper changed.”

I looked down.

Bridget started to clean me up. She was still really gentle as she washed me. She wasn’t mean at all. She washed my hair for me, and then she washed my back, and then left me in the tub to finish. It was usually this way about every two days, and every other day, she would just get me up, and tell me to take a bath. She washed April’s hair every two days, too, so I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if I peed myself or not, this is what she does.

It was nice that she did this though. It was better than getting yelled at for wasting shampoo when I tried to wash my own hair, and they didn’t think I did it right, but they never showed me how, either. Bridget didn’t show me how yet, but she didn’t want me to do it.

When I was done in the bath, I pulled the little black thingy for the water to go out of the tub, and then went naked to my room, with a towel, but I wasn’t good at getting it to hide me. I didn’t care anyway. It was just Bridget, April, and Jack there, and the few times Jack saw me without clothes, he turned his head and just said something like… “I wish someone special had clothes on so I could go hug her.” That always made me smile.

I dressed into a nice snoopy short sleeve shirt and a pair of pale blue jeans. I probably took too long, because there was a knock at my door. I knew who that was because he always knocked if there was a chance I wasn’t dressed.

“I’m decent,” I told Jack. That’s how they told me to tell Jack if he could come in. I didn’t know why I couldn’t just say I’m dressed, but Bridget told me that this would be important to me sooner than I know. I trusted her. She knew a lot of stuff, and she was always nice.

“Did you decide to ditch the diaper today?” he asked me as he came towards me to hug me.

I shook my head no as he reached me.

“Well, whether you have a diaper on or not, try to raise your hand and ask the teacher to go potty when you feel it, okay? If you have an accident, we won’t be mad, but we also don’t want you to feel bad at school.”

I nodded.

He picked me up. He always liked doing that. I didn’t complain. He would never throw me down, and the one time I think he was mad, the put me on the floor on my feet, and then he patted my butt, and I could hear his voice was tense, but he said to me to go to my room while he calms down. That’s when I knew it was safe for sure to let him hold me.

He carried me to the table where he put me down in front of my breakfast, pancakes, eggs, sausages, toast and orange juice. I started to eat. I now knew that that sticky sweet sauce they put on the pancakes was called syrup. I liked it maybe a little too much.

Bridget saw me putting too much on my food, and she came over and took the bottle out of my hands. She didn’t look mad though. She smiled. “Now, we can’t have you getting too much sugar this morning,” she told me. “You’ll never settle down for your teacher at school.”

I smiled up at her. I could tell the way she was saying it, she didn’t believe it was really a problem, but rather, it was just an excuse to take the syrup away. After all, I had a puddle of syrup on my plate from pouring too much on the pancakes. It wasn’t like they didn’t allow a small puddle of syrup on the side though. I know a few times, they poured the syrup for me, and they made sure I had enough with a little bit of a puddle for my sausages that I also liked to dip in it.

April was dressed in a dress for the first day of school. She looked at me dressed in light blue jeans and the snoopy shirt, and she frowned.

“It’s the first day, Lauren. You really should wear something nicer,” she started to scold me, when Bridget sat down next to her, and whispered to her.

April nodded and she looked over at me. “Your clothes look nice. I hope you have a good day today.”

Bridget smiled at April, gave her a hug, and then got next to me, and she whispered in my ear. “You are our baby, honey. If anything goes wrong at school, anything at all, you come and tell mommy about it after school, okay?”

I nodded.

Then she rubbed my back while I ate.

 

I was taken by the hand and led into the office with both my caregivers and with my little big sister, April.

“How can we help you today, Mr. and Mrs. Bridges?” the office people asked.

“This is our new adopted child, well, foster, but hopefully soon to be adopted.”

The lady smiled at me.

“She turns eleven in a few days, so I wondered if she would be in sixth grade or in fifth,” Jack told her.

“We could test her, but normally, we just put anyone who turns eleven after the school starts in fifth grade, and anyone who was eleven before the first day of school in sixth grade.”

“I would like her tested,” Jack told them. “The kid has had a tough three years or so, and I’m really not even sure she can keep up with the fifth graders.”

“We can certainly do that, Mr. Bridges. I may take a few days though to get the tests for that.”

I sat there on Jack’s lap, and he rubbed my back while they were talking.

“I also want her teacher to know to let her go to the toilet as soon as she asks, and for a while, to let her try to go multiple times.”

“That could be disruptive, sir.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. But she has had a rough three years like I said. If she doesn’t show some empathy for her though, then I’m changing her teacher. This kid has a hard enough time telling you when she has to go, and the last thing she needs, is to have a class full of her peers watch her wet herself because the teacher couldn’t be a little understanding. I promise, we will work with her to try to help her get this under control, but she needs to know school is a safe place before she will be able to control her needs.”

“We will let the teacher know of your concerns,” the office person said. “It is highly irregular though for a teacher to give a kid a pass in less than an hour after they have given a kid a pass for the same reason.”

“Irregular or not, I expect her to do it. If my daughter comes home and tells us the teacher made her pee her pants because she couldn’t go the first time, I will not be happy since I’m putting this out there for you to understand.”

“Does your daughter wear diapers?” the lady asked Jack.

“We are trying to ween her from them during the day. She hasn’t had a daytime accident in about two weeks, and we are pretty sure it is because she is getting more confident that she is allowed to use the restroom when she needs to go.”

“Is she caught up on all of her shots?”

Jack pulled out some papers. “The adoption agency said that these are everything you will need to enroll her.”

They looked it over.

“If there is any question that she won’t make it to the bathroom, we really need to have you put her in diapers.”

“She is wearing one right now, but it better not get out to anyone that doesn’t need to know. The only people I expect to know about it, are the school nurse in case she needs changed, the office and principal, and her classroom teacher. If anyone else finds out about it, and I think it is the school’s fault, I will not be happy.”

“We understand. We will make sure to keep her private information private.”

“Good.”

I couldn’t believe what Jack was saying just for because me. He didn’t sound like the Harrisons at all, and he didn’t sound like anyone else I had been with since my parents’ death either. He was telling these people that they better not let on that I wear diapers, and they better not make me pee my pants. He told them to let me go as often as I needed to get it to come out. I couldn’t believe it. He was nice, but he told the school off, like I had rights, and I was allowed to go to the bathroom, even if I was wearing a diaper. I felt my respect for him grow.

“One more thing,” Jack said before he left. “If my daughter is sitting in urine in her seat, I expect the teacher to find out why she doesn’t want to stand up, and then let her sit and keep still until she can move her without everyone noticing how or why. If the teacher in anyway, causes other kids to see her accident, I will not be happy.” And only after that, did he leave the office.

“Well, as for you,” the office lady said to me. “You should sit there while I talk to the principal about what he wants to do about you, but your little sister, April, you know which teacher you have, right?”

April nodded.

I was brought in and I sat down when the principal had a minute.

“The Bridges want her tested. I think there might be some concern on their part about her schooling,” the office lady told the principal.

“I see. And she is ten years old?”

The office lady nodded.

“It won’t hurt to put her with her sister until we get the tests together for her. No point in putting her in any permanent class until we see what she can do,” he told the office lady.

“You normally don’t put siblings with the same teachers, though, do you?”

“No. It’s usually not a good idea, but with everything you’ve brought to my attention, I think this little one having someone familiar to her would be a good thing.”

I was led down the hall and the office lady stopped outside the room with someone’s name on the door. Mrs. Horrace. Ho’race? I didn’t know how to say her name, but it looked like a weird name to me.

A woman with brown hair tied in a bun came to the door, and she looked first at the lady, and then down at me. “What’s this?” she asked not at all happy that I was standing there.

“Her parents have asked that she be tested,” the lady told her. “She has some issues with a bad past, so the principal would like to put her with her sister until he decides where to put her.”

“Issues?” the woman said the frown in her face looking even less friendly that it started.

“The principal would like to talk to you when you get your first break about her issues. That’s around nine-thirty when you take your class to music, right?”

The woman sighed and nodded.

“And let her use the bathroom whenever she asks.”

“That’s kind of unreasonable,” the lady said. “I mean, you know I’ll let them go when it is reasonable to ask, but just anytime she asks? That kind of privilege would be abused.”

“It’s important for her, for the moment. I’m sure the principal will tell you everything you need to understand about that.”

The woman nodded and put a hand on my back. Her hand wasn’t tender at all. It felt heavy, like she was pushing at me. I guess she was directing me. I sat next to my sister.

“If I hear too much chatter from either of you, and you will be separated,” Mrs. Horrace said.

She looked up at the clock and sighed. “And that’s what happens when a lesson is interrupted. We didn’t even get a chance to practice our fire drill routine,” she said with a heavy sigh. Well, stand up, kids. Line up at the door.”

I went to the very back of the line, and so did my sister, April.

“No, girls. If you are going to be together in line, you are not going to be as far from the front as possible,” and the woman grabbed April’s hand and led us to the front of the line. “Now, I can watch you two, and stop you making unnecessary noises. Now, we are going to take you kids to music. I want to hear a good report from Ms. Harper or I will take five minutes off your morning recess.”

I sat next to April, and the music teacher smiled at us with kind brown eyes and she had such a wonderful voice, too. Maybe that’s because she sang all the time.

I listened to the teacher carefully so I wouldn’t get in trouble from her. I think Ms. Harper is a nice woman.

We sang two songs, and the teacher told us some rules about this year. She said other kids already knew the rules, and she asked the others help her tell the rules. My sister is so smart, and April raised her hand to tell three of the twelve rules. I slowly peed my pants while I listened to the rules. I didn’t want to make trouble.

The teacher came back and we lined up, and she put April and me at the front of the line again. She told us….

“I want to talk to you both a minute when I take the class out for recess.”

We nodded.

We went outside, and the other kids ran off to go play. I was used to not playing, even at school, so I didn’t care if she talked to me. Jack and Bridget were the first persons that didn’t tell me I couldn’t hold a stuffed animal, or didn’t tell me not to play with stuff. They the first people to even give me a toy, but they didn’t just give me one! I had a whole room that had toys everywhere.

The teacher squatted down by us, and she spoke very quietly so I had to listen so carefully. I imagined my ears can have to take out from my head with a cord, and I give her one, so she can talk into it, because that how small voice she use when she talked.

“The principal tells me you are wearing diapers,” she told us.

“Just my sister,” April corrected her.

“I got taken from Harrison people maybe two months before now, and the Bridge family only saw me a two weeks. I wear diapers. April doesn’t.”

The teacher put her hand on April’s should and kept with her very quiet voice.

“The principal says you were peeing your pants at the end of last year, honey.”

“That was only one time,” April said with a pout. “My dad told the school I had a doctor problem. The doctor fixed it, but it took time.”

“I know,” Mrs. Horrace said. “But are you sure you are not wearing diapers because of that same problem still?”

“That problem fixed before the summer. I don’t pee my pants,” April started to get cry in her eyes. I frowned at the teacher. “She doesn’t pee her pants. I at her house two weeks, and she never peed her pants, and she never put on diapers. Sometimes, we take a bath together, and she doesn’t wear diapers.”

Mrs. Horrace nodded. “Okay. So it’s just Lauren then?”

I nodded.

“Since everyone is at recess, April, why don’t you take your sister to go to the bathroom?”

April took my hand, and we started into the building. When we were just inside, I whispered to her: “I already peed my pants.”

April smiled and rubbed my arm. “Then let’s see the nurse.”

 

We went into the classroom after recess, and the teacher made these baskets of books, and put one for each four desks.

“You may pick up one book from the basket for your group,” the teacher said. “When I say Super Quiet Uninterrupted Independent Reading Time is over….”

“That’s a really long thing to say,” one of the boys burst out before the teacher finished.

“Mark, you need to control your mouth. You speak only when you raise your hand,” she told him. He frowned and looked down.

“But you are right. That is too long and I will get tired of saying it.” She wrote the word side ways down the board. I saw her write S and I knew she was going to write that word, but she didn’t spell it how I thought. She wrote S Q U I R T and now SKWERT. Then she made the S into another word.

Super

Quiet

Uninterrupted

Independent

Reading

Time

That’s when I first learned how to spell squirt for real, and she told us if we could see what it means, then she wants to just say squirt from now on. We nodded our agreeing. And so the time was called squirt time.

“So, when I say that SQUIRT time is over, I want you take a piece of paper, and write your name and your page you are on, and put it in the book. Then tomorrow, when you get your basket, you can find your book. If you didn’t like your book from yesterday, you can choose any other book that has not been marked by a classmate, or if you see a classmate reading something else, you can ask and make sure they don’t want that book anymore, and if they agree that they don’t want it, then you can take their paper out to put your own paper in it after that day.”

It was a strange way to make us read, but I knew teachers all have their own special rules that they like, so I shrugged at it, and knew it was easier to do whatever she says.

I looked in the red basket, but there were really hard books in there. None of the books were picture books. I saw the teacher looking at me when I was taking too long. I was the last one to get a book from a basket, so I got the Where the Red Fern Grows.

The book was boring because it didn’t have any pictures except it had a boy and two dogs on the front. The words in the book were not all hard, but I kept coming to words that didn’t look right. I got tired and just kept the book open to the same page for until the teacher said squirt was over.

I quickly put my book back, and I didn’t put my paper in it. I’m not getting that one tomorrow.

The teacher started to pass around these thick books around the class, and she also passed out another paperback book that had a horse on it.

“Now, we are going to do reading groups,” the teacher said. “I will give each of you a piece of paper inside your big book. When you get your paper, I want you to take your book and find five other kids with the same thing as on your paper.”

She was really fast.

“Okay,” the teacher said and I didn’t even see her move to put the papers in. “You can open your books, and you should all have a piece of paper.”

I opened my book. It had a purple paper that said ‘Stardust’ on it. Stard...st. I don’t understand that word. It isn’t something I ever heard before. But I found five others, two girls and three boys in my group. April was in another group. I frowned because it means I’ll be not next to her to help me read.

The teacher then wrote something on the blackboard.

Monday: Pink Unicorns Tuesday: Purple Stardust Wednesday: Green Goblin Thursday: Red Wizard and Friday: Yellow Griffon.

“On these days, your group will come to the back table, and you will read for me,” she told us. The other groups will have a worksheet passed to them, and they can help each other on it, in their own groups. If a group gets too loud, more than twice, I will ask that that group no longer helps each other the rest of the reading time.”

I knew the teacher had to have the room stay quiet when she had people reading so she can hear if people say a word right. I wanted to have April in my group. I looked up at the teacher.

“Well, reading time is almost finished for the day, so what I’d like to do now, is show you where we go in case of a fire drill,” she told us. I wanted so much to raise my hand, but if I did, and the teacher said no, would the other kids make fun of me for wanting my sister to be in my group? Would they do worse, and make fun of April for it? I decided I better not, but then I saw April raise her hand.

“Yes, Miss Bridges?” the teacher used her last name.

“My sister is still really new to being treated properly like a person. I was wondering, can she and I…?”

“Be in the same group?” Mrs. Horace asked finishing her question. My sister nodded.

“No, honey. I understand that she might be new to being treated like any other student at school, but you do have to give her a little independence, or she won’t learn to be on her own.”

April nodded and looked down. I looked down too.

Then the teacher went on talking about the fire drill.

The rest of the day was okay. I asked once, and Mrs. Horrace let me to go to the bathroom.

 

We were on the bus, and April sat next to me, but she was looking over at one of our classmates, this girl with black hair and brown eyes. They seemed to be really good friends.

I whispered to her. “Who’s that?” They didn’t really get to play today, I think because April was afraid of leaving me alone. The first recess, the teacher talked to us, and then April took me to see the nurse. The Lunch recess, I saw her come up and say something and April talked to her for a minute, but she skipped off.

“That’s Cindy,” April told me. “She’s been my best friend since second grade.”

“How come you didn’t play with her?”

“Because I didn’t want you to be lonely, and I didn’t want to force you to meet people before you are ready. Mommy told me that you might be on your own today, and if you looked like you’d be lonely, to try to stay with you.”

“You could sit with her,” I told April. “We are going to be home soon anyway, and you can talk to me in the house. You should spend time with your friend.”

She hugged and said “Thank you.”

She ran over and sat with her, while a boy bigger than me sat next to me. He pulled out his notebook and it looked like he was going to do some school work on the bus. That would be no fun. I put my head against the window and started out of the bus, as we drove up and down different neighborhoods.

“Why are you bouncing your legs,” the boy suddenly asked me.

“Huh?” I looked down and my leg was bouncing, and now, I realized I had a pang in my side, and I wanted to pee.

“Can you stop bouncing the seat?” he asked me.

“Sorry,” I whispered. I pushed my legs way out sideways. But it wasn’t coming, and I felt another pang, so I scooted them closer and I stared to bounce again. “I’m sorry. I just have to pee,” I told him.

“You’re not a second grader. Surely you can hold it without all that squirming around?”

I shrugged and tried to grab my leg to stop it bouncing. I felt a little bit of wetness leak through into my diaper. I didn’t want to cause trouble. I tried to push a little bit, and making a face, I forced myself to start pouring pee into my diaper as I sat there. The boy was working, and I hoped he didn’t realize what was happening next to him. He looked kind of nice with a nice checkered top of red and white and a pair of jeans. His hair was still looking as freshly combed as he had done it that morning.

We got to my stop and April and Cindy stood up, confirming to me, that this is where we got off. I tried to push out to the aisle.

The boy frowned as he didn’t stand up for me, but just made me almost have to crawl over him. He frowned when I was in the aisle, and he kept staring at my butt. I didn’t think about it, and we walked off of the bus. Some of the kids on the bus started there was a baby on the bus, but I was already getting off when it got loud enough that I could hear. I looked back towards the bus, but I couldn’t see a baby.

April ran over to me, and she pulled the back of my pants up.

I blushed. “It showed?” I asked April.

April nodded.

Cindy came up and put a hand on my arm. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “If anyone in class asks about it tomorrow, deny it and say they were seeing things. No one expects a fourth grader to wear a diaper, so no one will really believe you were wearing one.”

“How come you’re not laughing at me?”

“April was talking to me about why she couldn’t play with me at recess today, and now, after hearing her reasons, and seeing that you wear diapers, I don’t blame her at all. But you know what? Tomorrow, how about the three of us go inside that big tire at the end of the playground at recess so we can all talk?”

Cindy had a nice smile, and she seemed like she wanted to talk to me, so I said okay.

 

[spark]

2 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

I understand.  if it were up to Bridget, she'd get a special tutor and be tutored from third grade, but Jack understands that going down before fourth grade would probably hurt her confidence.  He was actually not so sure of grade based on age.  But he certainly wants her to get extra help no matter what grade she goes into.  And she will end up in her sister's class for a while, until they decide that that teacher is neither right for her nor even April.  Even a normal kid shouldn't be told to wait, in Jack's mind, if that kid looks like they are about to have an accident.  He can't believe a teacher can't tell the difference of an urgent potty dance, and someone faking it.

FTR- I do have a little bit of professional insight about how public schools would handle a student like Lauren.  I could give you the information about how a school could do it really well for her, and also how they could (pardon my French), F it up.  I happen to work with older kids (the younger kids scare me), but I would be the ideal teacher for a student like Lauren.    Let's put it this way: if Lauren was my student, and I knew that she denied access to the toilet, Jack wouldn't need to chew her ass out because I would have already done it- and then I would tell Jack to go ahead and chew what is left.   I think based on the way that you've written Bridgette- she would go full 'mama bear', but only if Lauren wasn't around. 

The way that you wrote the scene where Lauren knows that she peed, and Bridgette knows that she is wet was wet after the testing was awesome. FTR- those tests are extremely stressful for students.   I've tested a ton of students- and  it's always stressful.

The parents need to stress to April that when she sees somebody try to hurt Luaren- let mommy and daddy know.

[Ishigreensa]

25 minutes ago, spark said:

FTR- I do have a little bit of professional insight about how public schools would handle a student like Lauren.  I could give you the information about how a school could do it really well for her, and also how they could (pardon my French), F it up.  I happen to work with older kids (the younger kids scare me), but I would be the ideal teacher for a student like Lauren.    Let's put it this way: if Lauren was my student, and I knew that she denied access to the toilet, Jack wouldn't need to chew her ass out because I would have already done it- and then I would tell Jack to go ahead and chew what is left.   I think based on the way that you've written Bridgette- she would go full 'mama bear', but only if Lauren wasn't around. 

The way that you wrote the scene where Lauren knows that she peed, and Bridgette knows that she is wet was wet after the testing was awesome. FTR- those tests are extremely stressful for students.   I've tested a ton of students- and  it's always stressful.

The parents need to stress to April that when she sees somebody try to hurt Luaren- let mommy and daddy know.

Did you read the redo on Chapter 4?

3 hours ago, Ishigreensa said:

I was taken by the hand and led into the office with both my caregivers and with my little big sister, April.

“How can we help you today, Mr. and Mrs. Bridges?” the office people asked.

From about here, I changed the story, and even above, I did try to write a little closer to Lauren's perspective, replacing some vocabulary with words a little closer to how she'd say them.  But particularly from when she started her first day of school, I changed it so that I could try to redo the test scene so it would make more sense.  I will have her do the tests in another chapter.

AS for how to F it up, I want the school to misunderstand and think she has full language development problems, causing the Bridges to second guess them because they have been around her enough to know she talks just fine.  Then the professionals at that brown building find out her real problems are spelling, reading, and confidence as well as a lack of vocabulary for things she has been shunned away from for some time.  I do want there to be a lot of missed school, and I am going to show that at near the beginning of chapter five when I get that done, too.  Can we PM?

[Ishigreensa]

Chapter 5

The Alarming Assignment

 

I was in my third grade classroom, one day. A man I had never seen before came and took me out of class. We had to walk to a special room, where he put some stuff out for me to point at. I didn’t understand what he was getting at when we were talking. None of the things he had had me do seemed like school stuff. There was no math, no regular reading, and not even any thinking. The pictures he showed me looked more like ink stains on a floor than anything.

“What do you see?” the man asked.

“Black ink,” I told him.

“Does it look like anything to you?”

I shrugged.

He asked me if I pretended when I was at home, and asked me if I knew what pretend meant.

I nodded. “Pretend is when you say a doll did something because dolls don’t really move.”

“So do you pretend when you are at home?”

“I don’t have any dolls,” I told him. “There isn’t anything to really pretend at home. There is just homework, television, and sleep time.”

“I see,” he looked down at my pink sweats. “Well, do you know what a lie is?”

“It’s when something didn’t happen, but you say it did. If I told the principal you left me here, and you went to the store, but really you talked to me the whole time, it would be a lie.”

“Very good. So, it seems you might have peed your pants yesterday at your desk in your classroom.”

I looked down.

“Do you have a reason why it happened?”

I shrugged. I didn’t think this guy had any right to know everything. I didn’t even know him. He got me from class, so maybe my teacher knew him, but if my teacher didn’t know my reason for peeing my pants, then why should I tell this man?

“You pee your pants because you are a lazy worthless stupid kid,” the people I stayed with always told me. “You killed your parents with your immaturity. Now, you are stuck with peeing your pants because you are too stupid to stop doing it.”

Tears started filling in my eyes.

 

A couple of years after that, about A couple of months before the car trip that took me to my new home with the Bridges, I was in my bedroom closet, crying. My pants were soaking wet as I lay there, in trouble for being bad again. I had no idea what I did. I just had to stay there until they got me.

“Lauren has missed over ten days in the last month,” I heard someone talking as they came near the closet I was in. “If a child is that sick, then why is there no hospital record?” a lady was yelling at Angela. It was the first time I ever remembered Angela unable to string two words between questioning. “The month before that, she had missed eight days!”

I heard them right outside my closet. I had to be really quiet. I wasn’t allowed to show myself when they had guests, especially when I had on pee soaked clothes like I did now. I was going to get it if they saw me wearing wet pants.

“That bed is where the girl sleeps?” the woman that was badgering Angela asked.

“Yes, that’s her bed.”

“Why does this room smell like piss?”

“I told you, Lauren has been sick. She’s been seeing doctors to find out why she does this.”

“She has, has she? And you just neglect to tell the school or even our office about it?”

“We thought we’d just get her in and the doctor would give her medicine, and then she would stop, but she doesn’t stop. Honestly, I think she likes peeing her pants.”

“What? Are you serious?” the woman asked Angela. “Where is the child?”

“She might be in the backyard, playing. Why don’t you go look there?”

“Aren’t you coming along?”

“I will be down in a minute. I just need to use the restroom.”

I heard the woman and Angela walked out of the room. They spoke quietly and then when I thought I could breathe again, the closet door sprung open.

“Wet again?” Angela yelled at me.

I looked down.

“Well, never mind. We don’t have time to change you right now. Go in the kitchen and sit at the table. I’ll be right back.”

I was glad she wasn’t hitting me or calling me names. I think she was having a bad day though, and once this lady was gone, I was going to get it again.

Angela walked in with the lady whose voice I heard earlier. I thought I recognized this woman, but I wasn’t sure what to think of her. She put me with the Harrisons, so I was sure when she saw my wet pants, she’s say how stupid I was, too.

The woman walked around to face me.

“Oh, little lady! You are just drenched,” she said. “Why didn’t you change your we clothes?”

I shrugged.

“I need a few minutes alone with her.”

“Why?” Angela asked. “You see her. She’s healthy, isn’t she?”

“It’s the rules, Mrs. Harrison.” and the woman took my hand and started to walk me back up to the room that Mrs. Harrison said was mine.

She paused at my dresser.

“Would you like to change into some clean pants first?” the lady asked me.

“I’m not allowed.”

“What do you mean, you aren’t allowed?” she asked.

“I have to wear my wet pants so I understand how bad I was. I can take it off when I take a bath tonight.”

“Who tells you to not change your pants, honey?”

“Everyone? Mostly the man, um… Mr. Robert.”

“What does he do if he finds out you changed?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. I never broke that rule before.”

“Have you ever broke rules here before?”

“I try not to anymore.”

“What happens when you break rules here?”

“That’s one of the rules. I can’t tell you.”

“It is?”

I nodded seriously.

“How long you been in those wet pants you have on right now?” she asked me.

“From the morning?”

“You peed them this morning?”

I nodded. “Just before school. They got mad because I peed my pants too early and told me I can’t go to school. So they put me in here.”

I opened my closet and she could see the water all over the floor from me peeing my pants. I had a diaper on, but it didn’t do anything now.

“Your teachers said you didn’t go to school for over ten days.”

“That’s cause I got hurt, and the Harrisons said I have to get less red before I can go back to school.”

“Less red?”

I nodded. I lifted my shirt and turned around and showed my back.

The woman’s mouth dropped. “How did this happen?”

“I fell out of a tree,” I lied.

“You fell out of a tree? Did they take you to the hospital?”

“No. Mr. Robert is good at injury, and he said it was just bruised. If I rest, it will go away.”

“Well, what if I told you that that doesn’t look like a falling from a tree bruise?” the woman asked me. “What I told you that no matter how small an injury it was, it would have been wrong even if it was a tree injury, for them not to take you to the hospital?”

I started to shake in my arms, and my legs stiffened. I couldn’t breathe. What was going to happen now?

“Are you scared?” she asked me. I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t nod. I couldn’t answer. I was so scared, I felt myself leaking, this time, not even knowing I had to pee but it pushed out and down my legs and I peed in front of this scary woman.

“You don’t have to be scared, little one. You did nothing wrong.”

“You not taking me to jail now?”

“Why would I take a sweet little child like you to jail?” she asked me.

I frowned and looked down. I’m not sweet. I killed my mommy and daddy. Everyone says so.

The lady took my shirt all the way off me, and she held my hands.

“I need pictures for a report,” she told me. “Can I take pictures, honey?”

I didn’t know why she asked. People do what they want with me. I don’t have a say. I shrugged.

“You don’t like it here, do you, honey?” she asked me as she snapped a picture of my back.

I shook my head. “I… I don’t like it anywhere. No one is different. I’m not a real kid, so it doesn’t matter. At least they give me potatoes at night to eat.”

“What do you mean, they give you potatoes at night?”

“At night. When everyone has dinner, they give me potatoes to eat for dinner.”

“Just potatoes, honey?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes, it’s macaroni, and if I did real good and didn’t cause trouble for a week, they mix something good in the macaroni, like tuna, or peas, or something else.”

The lady frowned.

“Do you want to tell me why you keep wetting your pants, sweetheart? Is is because you are scared or something?”

I shrugged at first, but she kept looking at me.

“It causes less trouble than…,” and I got water in my eyes, and sniffled and couldn’t talk.

The lady wrote something down.

“Go ahead and pull down your pants, if you are okay with that,” the lady told me.

I pulled down my pants just as Angela walked in. “What are you doing to her? You wait until I call the authorities on you,” Angela tried to turn all this around on the lady.

“Ma’am, I would love for you to go make that phone call,” the woman said. “Go ahead, Lauren, let’s see your diaper.”

“Lauren, you leave your pants up. Are you a little hooligan that wants people to just look at her privates without any thought? Do you want to be touched in bad places?”

I shivered and pulled at my pants. I didn’t want that.

The lady shook her head and she stormed out of the room I was in, and Angela was right behind her, saying stuff like it was all the woman’s fault. She said the woman was bad, but the woman went down stairs, and I stood in my room, my shirt off and my pants, almost nearly pulled down, and I was almost talked into it. I was scared.

 

We walked into the house, April, me and April’s friend, Cindy. Cindy looked over at Bridget and waved. Bridget waved back.

“You can take your friend to your room, the living room, or out back,” Bridget told April. “I need to talk to your sister first before she joins you.”

“Because you going to change her?” Cindy asked. I don’t know why Cindy said it like that, but it made Bridget get really mad.

“April,” she had a face as mad as I’d ever seen Angela, even that time the social worker took me away from her. “Why does Cindy know about her needing to be changed?”

I shivered and raised my shaking hand. Water filled my eyes and I pleaded she wouldn’t just hit April. I didn’t say it loud. I couldn’t. I froze.

“I think someone on the bus pulled her pants down,” April told Bridget. “I don’t know if they did it on purpose for a laugh, or it was done by accident….”

Bridget ran over to me and she hugged me.

“A boy was sitting next to me on the bus,” I whimpered.

She looked up towards April. “I thought I told you to sit with her on the bus.”

April had tears in her eyes and she looked down.

“I told her to sit with Cindy,” I told Mrs. Bridget. “She didn’t spend any time with her friend at school all day because she was taking care of me, and I saw them looking at each other, when she first sat by me. They were both really sad. I told it was okay.”

Bridget kept hugging me.

“Did that boy pull your pants down, honey?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “He just sat there, when I stood up though, and he wouldn’t move, so I had to get between him and the seat in front, and it was really tight. I didn’t even know my pants fell down in the back until we got off the bus, and April unzipped my pants, and she fixed it, and then pulled it up back over my diaper. That’s why the whole bus was saying baby when I was getting off. I didn’t know it until April fixed me.”

“I told her to just pretend the kids that saw it are crazy,” Cindy told Bridget. “If they pretend the kids imagined it, then most of the kids won’t believe she wears diapers. Fourth graders don’t usually wear them.”

Bridget smiled and she reached out an arm towards April and Cindy. Her face had changed while it was all explained. She was a smiling happy Bridget again. Do you mind if I hug you, Cindy?” Bridget suddenly asked her.

Cindy shrugged. “I don’t mind, but why?”

As Bridget hugged her, she explained. “You were there the whole time April had trouble last year, making her day at school a lot better than it could have been, and now, you are being so understanding towards Lauren. Your parents did a good job teaching you empathy.”

I smiled up at Bridget. “Cindy saw my wet diaper, because It’s wet and she saw the pants were weird, but she doesn’t care,” I told her.

“That’s how a real friend is,” Bridget told me. “No matter our personal problems, a friend doesn’t judge. They are there to help if you need it, but if they can’t help, they still support you emotionally.”

Bridget kept using big words that I don’t know, but I understand her meaning. I nodded.

Bridget took me to the bathroom to help me get out of my wet diaper. It was kind of wet, but it wasn’t leaking. She smiled and gave me a warm watered rag and said to me to clean up, so I wiped my privates for her. She smiled.

“Good girl,” she said to me. “Now, let’s go put some panties on you,” she said.

“I didn’t make it today,” I looked down. “I peed my pants twice today.”

Bridget hugged me, and she whispered to me. “You were in an unfamiliar place, sweetheart. You were not at home when that happened. And one of the times, you were on the bus, right?”

I nodded.

“Did the bus have a toilet to use?”

I shook my head.

“Then the bus incident doesn’t even count.”

We had a rule for the last two weeks, when I stay dry at home, they put me in panties, but as soon as I wet them, then I wear a diaper the rest that day. I wear panty-diapers to bed because I can’t stop peeing in my sleep, or honestly, I don’t tell Bridget, but I pee in bed, when I’m awake, too. I have to because it gets too hard to wait sometimes, and everyone is in bed.

 

After I was clean again, and Bridget had made sure I was good with a skirt and panties on, she sent me out the back where I saw April showing Cindy a coloring book.

“Lauren did this one,” she showed her.

“That is really good,” Cindy said. “My dad is an artist. Can I take the book and show him?”

“Only if Lauren wants you to. Mom told me that I can’t just show her stuff to strangers because that’s wrong, but if she is okay with it, then maybe….”

I shook my head. “It’s not that good,” I said. “Don’t waste your daddy’s time with that.”

“Lauren, you’re wrong. This is some of the best I’ve seen in a long time, even when daddy teaches art students, and he takes the work home to examine it closer so he can assess how they are doing. This is really really really good.”

 

“What are you doing, wasting paper?” I heard so many times before. “I buy you crayons for school, so you can do your school work, and then you ruin them by using them at home, and then before I know it, the school is on me about getting you new ones! Look at that trash. No one would think you are good enough to waste your time on stuff like that!”

 

I haven’t really colored here, except when April wants to color. Ms. Bridget and Mr. Jack are so nice. I know they say they like everything I color, and everything that April colors. But I know that real people out there don’t like it. Cindy is just a kid like us. She doesn’t know art. She’s nice, but she is just a kid.

“I don’t want you to,” I told them both, and they nodded and April took the coloring book back in and put it up. One thing I really like about April, if I say something, and she knows I’m serious, she puts it away, and doesn’t mention it for several days. She doesn’t tease me and push me and hurt my feelings like those other live with kids. She really is my sister.

 

It was on Tuesday morning, and we just finished reading, the second day of school. The teacher wrote ten words on the chalkboard.

Affirm:

Withstand:

Coddle:

Jaywalk:

Double Cross:

Relationship:

Remove:

Disappear:

Renovate:

Meltdown:

 

I tried to copy the words at my seat, but it was a mess. I was having trouble with where I was, and what letter was next. I wrote.

Afrm

witstand

codle

jawak

doblcros

relationsip

remoe

disaper

renovte

metdon

 

I looked over what I wrote and compared to the board again, but I just couldn’t see what was wrong. It was so confusing all those letters. I decided that I didn’t know how to fix it, so I went to the board and tried to copy them right next to the board.

A I wrote and checked the next letter. Ff and I checked again. Ir and then m.

Affirm, I read to myself. It looked right somehow, where the other one was wrong.

“Lauren, what are you doing out of your seat?” the teacher asked me.

I shrugged. “Sorry, Mrs. Horrace. I’m going back.”

I tried the next word, but so far from the board, it didn’t look right. I sighed and gave up, tears in my eyes, I just put my head down on my arm as I stretched across the desk top.

The teacher came up a little while later, and she looked at my paper. I wasn’t doing the assignment. I couldn’t. It was too hard. I was supposed to look up the words and then write a sentence on each word, but I couldn’t even put the words down right.

“That’s a zero for not completing the words,” she told me. She only saw the second paper that I got the first word, and the bad version of the second word on it. “You will come in at lunch and work on at least writing out the words.”

I nodded.

I ate lunch, and then when I went out to the outside with my class, I was only out about a minute, and the teacher came up and took my hand in front of everyone. I was bad again. Everyone saw that Lauren, troublemaker, got in trouble with the teacher for not doing work in class time.

The teacher put my desk right against the board, and she put a dictionary on the desk top for me, and she told me to get as much as I can done.

I looked up at her. She looked a little bit neutral. She didn’t have the scowl that Mrs. Angela would have at the Harrisons, but she wasn’t smiling. I decided I better not ask.

I started writing. I was closer to the board now, so I could compare each word. I stood up, when she was looking away to hold my paper to the words to see if I got all the letters on the paper. I slowly peed my pants.

The lunch recess bell sounded, and the teacher came over and checked. I at least had all the words written now, and I had two sentences written.

The court people afrm that Lauren can live together the Bridges forever and ever.

The girl sat in class, and she witstand to pee her pants and work for the end of school.

 

The teacher raised an eyebrow at what I was writing.

“You and I need to talk,” she told me. I shrugged.

She told me to wait and put my desk back, and she came back with the other students.

The teacher asked the kids to open the Social Studies book, and they started to read about American Indians. Then she took me by the hand.

“When I get back, there will be a pop quiz on the first part. No moving around, no talking, and no playing. I expect quiet reading until I get back,” she said to everyone, and then she walked with my hand and my paper, and she took me to a scary looking door. She knocked.

This tall thin man in a suit came to poke his head out the door.

“Ever since yesterday, I’ve felt something is off more than what the Bridges told us,” she told the stranger. “Now, look at this. Look at that second sentence she wrote. I believe she thinks she is supposed to pee her pants in the middle of her lessons.”

The counselor frowned.

The teacher left me with this strange man, and I shuffled a little bit in the chair they made me sit at, facing a small round table with several other small chairs. He sat next to me, and he put a hand on my shoulder.

“What is life like at home?” he asked.

I looked up at him. Why was he asking me this question today? He better not take me from Bridget and Jack and April. He better not. I started to cry.

He put a hand on my back. “Does your foster dad hit you?” he asked me.

I shook my head no.

“Does your foster mom hit you?”

I shook my head and started to cry more. Why was he asking if Jack and Bridget hit me, but no one ever asked if Robert or Angela hit me? “No,” I cried at him, my mouth wide. I wanted to bite him for suggesting something like that.

“Why did you write something like this?” he showed me the sentence I put for witstand. (withstand).

“Do they let you use the toilet at home?”

I started screaming. He was asking about the wrong people! He was thinking that I just started to wet my pants at school. He was thinking that somehow, something I learned to be a safe thing to do for two years, was something that just started. He was making it the wrong people! I made trouble. I’m stupid. I screamed. I cried, and I fell to the floor, covering my face, and crying into the carpet of the floor.

I’m bad. I made trouble for the Bridge family, and they only been nice to me. I hate myself. I don’t know what to do. I don’t deserve them. I hope they don’t take April away. April doesn’t deserve foster homes. Foster homes are too hard to live in. You never know the rules.

The man got up and walked out the door. I sobbed a few more moments, and then got up, tears still running down my face, and I moved the handle a little bit. It was locked. I couldn’t get out.

If they are taking me away from the Bridges, then I’m paying it back at them. The Bridges are the only ones to care for me. I went over to the nicely arranged desk. I found a long inches and yard stick, and I put it on the table. I moved the stick in a circle and it pushed all his stuff off, even his coffee and made a mess. I went to one of the shelves with books nice and neat, and I pulled them out, one by one, and I threw them at the desk.

“The Bridges are MY FAMILY!” I yelled each time I threw a book. Some of the books were really heavy, so they only made it half way to the desk. Two books landed on the desk and one in the chair. One landed in the coffee puddle. I was glad. They were taking my family away. They deserve it.

The door opened, and I froze. I knew I was bad. I would be hit now.

The principal walked in with the man in the suit.

The counselor man knew I made the mess. No one else was there to do it.

The principal asked me. “Did you do all this?”

I looked down. I did it. I didn’t know if I was sorry or not.

“Why’d you do this?” the principal didn’t sound mad. The guy in the suit left the room. I thought he would hit me, but he just left the room. He was probably going to tell someone else.

“You trying to take my Bridget and my Jack and my sister from me!” I finally said to the principal.

“What made you think that?”

“Because the last time I was in a room like this. I was asked questions. Then I changed foster families,” I told him.

The principal showed me what I wrote again.

“They ever ever ever hit me,” I said crying again. “They don’t ever ever ever make me stand at the table until I pee my pants. That was Harrisons, not my Bridget. Not my Jack and not my sister, April.”

“Why don’t you call Jack and Bridget mom and dad?” he asked me.

“Because they don’t make me. The people that made me, they were mean, so moms and dads are mean. Jacks and Bridgets are nice.”

“Do you know that throwing stuff around the room is not a good thing?” the principal asked me.

“I know. If Angela was told what I did, she would slap my face, and not even give me my potatoes for dinner for a week.”

“Who is Angela?”

“The Harrisons. The last people that I stayed at. They didn’t have me call them mom and dad, but they made it a point, to say they would never be a dad or mom to a stupid kid like me.”

“Can I ask, when did you learn to just sit there at your seat and pee your pants in school, honey?”

“It was…. I was in third grade. I think. The teacher told me no, I couldn’t go. I had an accident. The teacher got mad at me for peeing my pants. My fosters got mad and said I embarrassed them. I got it hard for that one. That was after I already started wetting the bed.”

“After you started….”

“Yeah. A long time ago, when my daddy and mommy were alive, and I was in second grade, I wasn’t peeing my pants at all. I never woke up in wet pajamas, and I never peed my pants at school. But they died just before I started third grade, just before I had a birthday, just before my life changed.”

“I see. Do you pee your pants on purpose at school, honey?”

“Sometimes. I pee my pants so I don’t interrupt tests. I pee my pants when the teacher is talking so I don’t interrupt the lesson, and I pee my pants on the bus because it takes too long to get home.”

“Do you pee on accident?”

I nodded. “A lot.”

He frowned. “No one is taking your adopting family away from you, sweetheart. Your notes were alarming, and your teacher and the counselor were worried about you, but I can see that you really love the Bridges.”

“The Bridges never slap my face for peeing my pants, even if they know I sat there and just did it.”

“What do they do if you just sit there and do it?”

“They tell me that the bathroom is just down the hall. Bridget picks me up and takes me to the bathroom, and she puts me on the toilet even if I already went, and she says that where I go. And she not mad at all. She leave me there, and she go the tub and she runs bath. She get me from toilet, even I don’t pee, and she doesn’t let me push my stomach anymore.”

“Does she clean you up?”

“She washes my hair sometimes, and she washes my back, where I can’t reach, but she always give me the cloth, and she lets me wash the rest. Sometimes, she makes sure, except if I poop my pants.”

“Do you poop your pants?”

“Sometimes. If I poop my pants, she cleans me up. She says that I should do it, but it is too hard for a little girl. She says she hope I learn to stop doing it before I get teenager, because she have to make me to it alone if I am teenager.”

“Do you poop your pants just sitting there, and making it come out?”

“No. I only do that on accident.”

He smiled.

“Do you do that on accident at school?”

“Sometimes. If the teacher says no, no means no, so I don’t make trouble, I don’t ask after she said no. I wait until recess, and if I take too long before recess, last year? I pooped my pants like five times. The Harrisons were so mad!”

He ruffled my hair.

“When is the last time you pooped your pants with the Bridges?”

“I didn’t. This only second day of school, and they never make me wait at home, so I never pooped my pants at all. I wet sometimes because it took too long to find toilet when we went shopping twice, but Jack and Bridget and April all hugged me. Then Bridget changed me. They never mad at me.”

He nodded.

“Did you ask your teacher today if you could pee?”

I shrugged.

“Are you wet?”

I shrugged.

“Well, we are calling your parents to get you, and while you wait for them to get you, I want you to clean this mess up. Just do as much as you can, because you made it, okay?”

I nodded.

I went around the room and got the books and started to put them in the bookcase.

 

I was sitting in the office when Bridget and Jack came in looking for me. “Where’s my baby?” I heard Bridget ask before she even opened the office door. The principal asked them to come with him to his office, and I sat there alone a few more minutes.

The office door opened, and Bridget came over scooping me from the chair and brought me back into the office with them.

“Okay, you can see that she is okay,” the principal told Jack and Bridget. “Now, can we talk about her behavior today?”

Bridget rocked me and rubbed my legs. “If she did anything wrong, someone or something set her off,” Bridget said quietly.

Jack turned to principal. “I think we are ready to listen, but I hope my daughter gets a voice in this.”

“I already talked to your daughter. I know exactly what happened, and why your daughter acted out. Even if she has reasons though, she can’t just destroy school property.”

“No, of course not,” Jack said nodding.

“It seems, she innocently wrote a couple of lines down,” and he showed us the paper.

Jack looked at the paper first and he nodded. It didn’t look like what I wrote surprised him at all. He passed it to Bridget and Bridget nodded handing it back to the principal. “You were warned that she might think like this,” Bridget said. “What is so shocking?”

“Well, she was brought to the counselor first, when the teacher discovered it. She sat in at lunch recess because she didn’t do her work during class time, and not even copied any of the words,” the principal told them. “Then given more time to work on the words, the teacher discovered this is what she had written just before she went to get the class from lunch recess.”

“Okay, but again, we told you that she might wet her pants on purpose in class a few days,” Jack said.

“It’s one thing to expect her to do it. It was alarming to have her write it like it was normal. The teacher may have over reacted and the counselor started to ask her questions. I was brought down and she had thrown everything off his desk, threw several papers and books in the puddle of coffee on the floor where his cup landed, and I had a talk with her. Obviously, the counselor had to go cool off because she had just ruined some work he had been working on for a week.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Jack said.

“Are you aware that she doesn’t want to call you mom and dad because she associates that with people that were forceful to her. She accused us of trying to take her family, and she called you, not mommy and daddy, but she stressed my in front of each of your names. Apparently, she got upset we were thinking about having social services check into you one more time, and she said we were trying to take, how did you put it, sweetheart?” he looked at me.

“My Jack, My Bridget, My sister, April?” I asked. “Because they are. I am only safe around them. They never slap my face for asking questions or peeing my pants. They never make me sit still or stand at the table until I poop my pants, and they feed me dinner, and dinner isn’t just a small bowl of potatoes or a small bowl of macaroni. It is what they eat. April said, that’s because I’m really in their family. I’m not separate.”

“Mr. Davis! I’m sending the other Bridges daughter to the nurse.”

“Why?”

“She got upset that I took her sister out of the room, and she got scared because she doesn’t know what is going on, and she’s crying non-stop, and sir?”

“Yes, Ms. Horrace?”

“She’s just peed her pants.”

“Alright.”

All of that came over the speaker in the principal’s office. I hope the teacher didn’t just tell the whole school that my big sister peed her pants.”

Jack got up. “I’m going to check on my other daughter. She’s never wet her pants at school before. She’s probably scared out of her mind about where her little sister went.”

“Little sister?”

“Yeah. At first, we tried to put a stop to it, but anyway, I’ll let my wife explain that. I’m going to go check on my other baby.”

I heard mommy smiled up at the principal. “April has been waiting for nearly three years for a younger sister, ever since we put in to adopt a little girl. We were given our little Lauren here, and you never saw a child take to each other as fast as my daughter did her. She told her daily that she was her little sister. I tried to tell her at first that Lauren was about a year older than her, but she doesn’t care. And when I was explaining it one day, Lauren told me that she doesn’t care who the younger sister is. She was just glad that she was finally accepted by a sister. I think Lauren actually accepted April as her sister before she really realized she wanted to stay with us.”

“I see. And you don’t think this is hurting her social development?”

“Why would it? They are only a year apart, and they love each other. Her little sister would do anything for Lauren, and it seems like Lauren would do anything for her.”

“I’m the little sister,” I reminded Bridget. “Age doesn’t matter when you are friends,” I told the principal. “I sometimes see really old white hair people talk to younger people like my Jack and my Bridget, and sometimes, I see really big kids tell other big kids to stop picking on their friend, who is still sucking his thumb and doesn’t even go to school, yet. If that doesn’t matter, then who cares if I’m the littler sister or the big sister. All that matters, is we will take care for each one another.”

The principal nodded.

“I wanted a sister like April for a long time. I couldn’t have mommy and daddy back. I gave up that anyone would ever think me that way. I mean, I gave up before. Now, I have Bridget and Jack, and know I never get another My Jack and My Bridget ever again. It took two years and so many hits on the face and back and fist in stomach and smack on back head and standing at table to find this, my perfect family.”

“April told on me, the first time I met her. She said her parents, that I touched my butt, a tattle tale that I wet my pants. I thought she wanted me to get trouble, but Bridget picked me up that day. We changed my pants and they gave me dessert even if I embarrassed her, and I peed on Bridget. Did you know that? I found out April didn’t tattle tale me to get me trouble though. I found out because when I came back, she looked me sincere, and she ask if get comfort. Then she ordered food. We were restaurant. She always tell on me, but like she is the big sister, and like she wants Bridget to fix me if something is wrong for me.”

I looked down. “I knew that instant, that she told on me, that when she check if I get comfort, and she only happy to get food after she know I comfort, that I found my little sister. But she wanted to be big sister. She told me she wanted little sister a long time, but she said I am okay her sister the first time she said I am okay to stay.”

The principal looked at the Bridges and he sighed. “Well, take your family home. There is no point in bringing April back. By the time you get her home and changed, school will be over, and I want you to keep Lauren out of school for a couple of days. We will call you when we have someone to talk with you about some of her special needs.”

We went home.

I forgot to tell the principal I did poop my pants a couple times when the family went out, but it wasn’t important. I told him enough that he decided not to take my Jack, my Bridget, and My sister, April, from me. I was so happy and exhausted, I fell sleeping in the back, and April would be found when we got home, hugging me and sleeping with her head in my lap

[Hugues]

To be honest I don’t think this edition is better. I prefer the previous version.The narrative rhyme is broken.It is too quick than it should be.

3 minutes ago, Hugues said:

To be honest I don’t think this edition is better. I prefer the previous version.The narrative rhyme is broken.It is too quick than it should be.

I just want to say that absolutely I respect your hard working and I really know how difficult to create a story from the void.But I think you’re growing up. You can be a better one based on the details of the work. 

[Ishigreensa]

Chapter 6:

That’s Gross

 

I sat back, thinking back to that time when I went to the first home ever. I had had to pee, kind of bad, and I don’t think I was there more than a couple of days. There was this one boy that was like two years younger than me. I was probably eight, maybe and so he was like six? Anyway, I had to go bad and I didn’t know about thinking about others at that time. I just ran right in to the bathroom.

“What on earth did you do?” I heard screaming outside of the bathroom door. “Lauren, you get your butt right out here, right now.”

“I’m on the toilet,” I tried to tell them.

“I don’t care,” the woman yelled at me. “If you don’t get out here by the count of 1, you’ll get it!”

She started to count from three.

“Three…, Two….”

I got scared when she said two, and I grabbed at my pants pulling them up as I opened the door, my panties still showing. The younger boy had peed all over his pants and the floor.

“Look what you did,” the woman told me. “I didn’t hear you flush, so you better have something in the toilet that warranted you locking him out of the bathroom like this.”

My pee had been clear, so there was no yellow and I didn’t poop. She frowned when she looked in the toilet and it looked clear.

“So, you made him pee his pants on purpose, did you?”

I shook my head no.

Then get on the toilet and go. I want you to show me that you didn’t just do this to be mean. I didn’t have anything left inside. I got on the toilet anyway. Nothing came out. I knew it wouldn’t.

The lady slapped my right ear and scolded me. “You little hooligan! The next time you make one of my kids pee their pants, with your playing around, and you will be diapered for a month without potty privileges.

It was about two weeks since that meeting with the school counselor. I was at school, in the office, and the office lady brought over some tests for me.

“These are so we can see what is going on in your head, and find out the best way to get you back on track to maybe catching up with your peers, sweetheart,” she told me. “Don’t be scared if you can’t answer everything. Just do what you can.”

I nodded. I knew that this test was important. I wanted to make Bridget and Jack proud of me, and show them that I could do something. I started working. The math part was easy. It was just doing stuff like normal, but kind of backwards. I mean, they gave me the first question of 5 + ? = 8. That was so easy. Who wouldn’t know it was three? A little later, the question was more difficult, but with some thinking, it was not impossible. I had a question: 2 X ? + 6 = 12. I had a think about it, and I knew that 6 was part of the answer, so I thought I move it first. I maked the question 2 X ? = 6. My reason is that 6 + 6 is 12. And so if six is not in the problem at all, then I take it off the 2 X part and then I also take it off the answer because I add it on answer later. Everyone knows 2 X (3) is 6. Then Everyone know 6 + 6 is 12, the question is 3. That is answer. I checked it. 2 X 3 + 6 = ? I know from fourth grade, that you do times’es and devidings before you do addings and taking aways. So you have to do 2 x 3 first, not 3 + 6. That means there is 6 and then +6 and that is 12. And the answer on the end was 12, so I think this the answer.

I did more math, but some of the math was reading. I hate reading. I skip that part and find another just doing the numbers. The numbers was fun. Reading was confusing. I hate reading.

After I finish the math part, and it took two hours, I went outside. I was glad I found April outside. Mrs. Horrace’s class had recess. I ran to the tire where April and Cindy like to play.

“What are you doing?” April asked me.

“I took this really long math test that takes like two hours,” I told them.

“I hate math,” Cindy said.

“I don’t care math,” I said. “I like numbers. I hate reading. Part of the math test had reading. I skipped that part completely,” I told them.

“I hate story problems, too,” April said. “They always trick you on what you looking for, and then you have write the answer in a sentence. That should be against the rules, making you write a sentence in math.”

I agreed with April.

“What are you doing after you go back in?” Cindy asked me.

“I don’t know, but I hope it’s not reading.”

I peed my pants in the tire, but I didn’t tell anyone. It didn’t matter.

I went back to the office when Mrs. Horrace called April and Cindy back inside, and I sat down.

“Now, we would like you to do some language arts tests,” the lady from the office said.

I didn’t like the sound of that. But when she put it on my desk, and I saw it was just a sentence at a time, and I just had to circle the S or put lines under the V or something dumb like that, I sighed. It wasn’t reading, really. I don’t have to know the words too well to know where the S and V are. I don’t need to know the words to know questions marks, periods, or explaining marks, too. So that was easy. I thought it was easy.

I did have to read though after the third test. I had to read and decide answer for question on the read parts. I put my head on the paper. I read with my finger on the words. I go to answer question, but the story doesn’t make sense. I shake my head. If I just circle some, I will get some right. If I don’t circle any, I will get them all wrong.

I hate reading so much!

I had the last part my test, and it was almost lunch time.

“Write your favorite animal, what it is, what it eats, and where it lives,” the paper said.

I hate writing. What if they check all my spells? What if they can’t read my paper at all? I try to write on it anyway.

I lik fox. Fox is red or red bron. Sometimes, you can see it white, too. Fox can live in the hol like rabit does. It maybe live a forest. It can live in snow, too. Fox can run fast, and it can catch fast food. It doesn’t the fast food of MCDonlds. It means food lik bird. Fox eat rabits. It eat sqirls. It runs nachur. Fox liv always nachur. Don’t get fox for pet. Fox doesn’t lik. Fox is prisoner as pet.

 

I took the write to the office lady.

“Do you want to look at it and try to fix any spelling?” she asked me. I shook my head. I don’t want to think spelling. I afraid to tell her that. But I don’t good at spelling and reading.

 

After that, I go at lunch, and I get to go outside, and I see April and Cindy again. Lucky! I run to our tire. No one else play in that tire.

“Did you wet your pants?” April asked me when we in the tire.

I shrug.

“I asked because your pants look strange, like your diaper is trying to fall down inside it.”

I shrug. “Maybe I wet it morning recess.”

“You didn’t ask the nurse to change you?”

“I taking tests. Tests very important, and so don’t wasting time for them. I don’t mind. I wear wet pants all day at school last year many times. I wear poop in pants two times last year all day, and a few other times, I poop in pants and go to office.”

April doesn’t happy. “You didn’t poop your pants today?”

I shake my head. “I just pee at morning recess.”

“I want to take my little sister to the nurse,” April told Cindy. “You coming, or do you want to play with other people? It might take the whole recess for her to change.”

Cindy shrugged. “I don’t mind. I’ll come along. Remember, you peed your pants that one time last year, and I came with you, then too? I know how long it can take.”

April blushed.

“Don’t tell April so embarrassed thing,” I said to her. “She had doctor trouble. You even know it.”

“I’m not telling it to someone who doesn’t know,” she told me. “I mean, you are her sister. She told you she had doctor troubles, right?”

I nodded. “But it still embarrass her. Please don’t say it again.”

“Oh, okay. I didn’t know it was that bad for her.”

“I pee pants all time. Trust me, it bad when people know you pee, and they say it all every time they can say it.”

“I’m sorry, April,” she told my sister. That made me to smile.

April walked me to the nurse, and she walked up to her, and touched her back.

“Yes honey?” the nurse seemed nice. She was always nice to me, and she changed me now a zillion times. I wet like two times a day, so she knew she had to change me.”

“My sister accidentally forgot to get you earlier,” April said for me. “She told me she wet earlier, but we just met at lunch, so I think maybe because she is taking tests.”

“Alright, I’ll help your sister. You know what to do with her?”

April nodded.

“That’s my friend Cindy. She helped me last year, remember?”

The nurse smiled.

“She said she can help.”

“No, I’m afraid like I told you last year. I am not allowed anyone to help in this situation if you are not related. Lauren is your sister, so you can help get her ready for me, but Cindy can’t go back there with you.”

“Sorry, Cindy. I guess you should have just went to play with your friends,” April said.

“It’s okay. I will stay right here in the office until you take Lauren out. Just like last year with you. If you are worried about your sister, then I’m worried about your sister.”

April took me to a bed, and she helped me pull down my pants and she saw a lake in my diaper. She sighed.

“You need to go see the nurse if you are wet, even if you are taking a test,” she told me. “If you raise your hand and ask to see the nurse, if you are not supposed to, they will make you wait until you can, but the sooner you see the nurse, the better.”

I shrugged. “These tests important. I took some tests like them before. I knew I couldn’t see the nurse until break time, and since I peed at recess, they couldn’t let me see the nurse when I came back. I had to start the test.”

April shook her head.

 

After lunch recess, I had to go see the counselor while they looked at my tests. I was a little bit scared to look at him. The last time I was here, I messed up his work and his desk, and I ruined two or three of his books. I was really mad that I thought he tried to take Bridget and Jack and April away from me. So, I knocked very very light on the door. I hoped he wouldn’t hear me.

He came to the door, and he looked down at me.

“We didn’t have a good first meeting the last time I met you, did we?” he asked me.

I shook my head no.

“Well, let me be the first to say I’m sorry that I threatened to take your family from you.”

I looked up at him. His eyes were sincere, and he held out his hand towards me. I took it and shook it. “Your sorry is accepted, sir. And I sorry I made you do all your work again that you did, and that I ruined your books. I’m not sorry I messed up your office though because that part, I meant to do because you tried to take my family.”

He laughed. “I suppose I might feel the same way if someone tried to take my family,” he told me. I appreciate the part that you are sorry you caused me more work and that you ruined my books though.”

“You not taking my family this time, are you?”

“No sweetheart. I am doing some tests that your mom and dad wanted me to do this time.”

“It’s tests to see how stupid I am,” I looked up at him.

“You seem very bright,” he told me. “If I were to say it, I’d say they were tests to see how genius you are.”

“But everyone that knows me knows I am stupid. The Bridges know it. They just never say it because they are too nice to call me that. They get mad when I say it, too. But I know they know I’m stupid.”

“What makes you think you are stupid?” he asked me.

“I messed up your office and didn’t just talk to you like I told the principal who found out I loved my family. I pee my pants. The nurse just changed me because I peed my pants again. I can’t read at all, and I hate writing because it means spelling words right.”

“Well, what if I said that reading has nothing to do with how smart you are, and what if I told you that going to the toilet in your pants has nothing to do with being smart, either?”

“Then I think you are just being like Bridget and trying to tell me not worry about it, but you know that really, I’m stupid.”

He shook his head.

“Well, these next tests are going to show you that there is another intelligence that has nothing to do with reading,” he told me.

“Is it the test where I put shapes in holes or is it the test where I tell you what pointless ink splats look like something I make up in my head?”

“Interesting,” he said. “You are already predicting what I might try to use to test you. That doesn’t seem like reading at all, and it shows you are intelligent.”

I looked down.

“Actually, I’m going to show you some real outlines of things, the silhouettes which means, black figures, kind of like you might see if it was night and something was far enough away, you couldn’t see it clearly.”

“Okay.”

“And you are going to tell me what you think you see, and this time, it is not just telling me what the object is, but it is telling me what the silhouette is doing. For example, you might see a sleeping cat or you might see a boy throwing a ball in the air.”

I shrugged. “I guess I can do that.”

“Of course you can.”

He worked with me using different puzzles, pictures, and a story game where I added to his story for the rest of the afternoon. Finally, he sent me back to the main office, where I waited at the desk I was given for the day.

I saw April and then Bridget and Jack walk into the office. April sat next to me while the principal took Bridget and Jack back into his office.

“They are talking about how I did on the tests,” I told April. “I did okay on the math, at least until they made me do the story problems. I did okay on some of the language arts stuff too, until they made me read or write.”

She nodded. “I know you hate reading.”

 

After a while, mom and dad came out of the office. “Your tests are wrong,” they told the principal. “I know she has some problems with her schooling, but she is not at first or second grade level,” they told him. “She communicates with us all the time, and her communication is as good as April’s is. She might be shy, but she knows how to tell you what she wants.”

The Principal was coming out of his office with Bridget and Jack.

“Look, these tests are very efficient in finding where to put kids in the learning program,” he told them.

“I don’t care. I am not impressed by them.”

“Well, if you want, you can set up to have different tests done. I can give you the address and phone numbers of places you can double check her abilities with.”

We all walked to the car, Bridget and Jack holding some papers about what the tests said about me, and they had that paper he talked about that had phone numbers and addresses on it.

 

I woke up the next morning, wet again. I was not getting better at night times, at all. But neither did Jack, nor Bridget, nor April care at all.

I was just opening my eyes, and I saw April at my door.

“Let’s play for a little bit until mom or dad come to wake you up,” she said.

“No,” I said shaking. I had not gotten out of bed early since the first time I was threatened that if I ever got out of bed early again, I’d go to jail for stealing.

“Why not?” April frowned.

“Because. It’s stealing if I get up early. You have a right to, you are the real child for Bridget and Jack. I’m not their kid. It’s stealing if I get up too early.”

“It’s not stealing, just getting up, and playing with your own things,” April seemed to think she could talk me into it.

“It is stealing,” I said. “It’s stealing lights, stealing clothes if I get cold, and stealing anything else I use that I use that isn’t mine.”

April looked down, and seemed unable to reply to what I said. Then, she took one of my toys and she came to the bed with it, got in bed with me, I wish she hadn’t done that, but I was scared to tell her she can’t, and she started to play in bed with me. We were talking for our stuffed animals. I felt myself pee again as I lay there playing. April didn’t say anything about it if she knew.

A few minutes later, I noticed Bridget, suddenly, at the door smiling in at us.

“Are my little ones already awake?” she asked.

April got out of the bed, and she was soaked. Her pants, especially.

“Honey, what happened? Did you have an accident last night?” I heard her ask April, though Bridget was very concerned and not at all looking like she was going to explode with anger.

“No,” April said smiling. “It’s not my pee. Lauren peed while we were playing. I didn’t say anything to her because when I just tried to get her on the floor to play, she said she couldn’t get out of bed until you came, and then she explain me, that because I’m your real daughter, it’s not stealing for me, but anything she uses before you get up, it’s stealing. She said if she turns on the light, it’s stealing, even wearing her own clothes, is stealing, so I realized now, that she wet the bed on purpose because she would steal the lights to the bathroom and then steal the toilet or at least the water when she flushed it.”

Bridget shook her head and came over to my bedside. She squatted down to look at me, and she asked me. “Is what April said true? Did you really think it would be stealing, if you went to the bathroom before I got up?”

I nodded. Wasn’t it?

“You listen here, Lauren Bridges. The courts may not have made it official yet, and it might be a year before it is official, but as far as I’m concerned, this is as much your house as it is April’s house. It is not stealing to get up and play, to watch television, or to use the potty in the middle of the night. Okay?”

I looked down.

“Okay, Lauren?”

I looked down.

Bridget went out of the room. April came over and pulled my blankets off me and then helped me sit in my bed. She sat next to me even though it got her bum wetter.

“It’s just like I tried to tell you,” she told me. “It’s not stealing to move around in your own house. And I would never spend the night with a friend that wouldn’t let me use the toilet at night. It was technically using their lights without them being awake and knowing and using their toilet, but even so, that’s just mean. I would not like spending the night with a friend that called that stealing. Besides, I’d let them use our lights and our toilet.”

I shrugged. That’s what I was taught.

Jack and Bridget came back into the room, and Jack picked me up in his arms, and he whispered to me.

“It’s not stealing to go potty if you need to go, I don’t care what time it is,” he said. “You are a part of our family. That means, anything that the family uses, if you use it, it’s not stealing. That goes for the television, the toilet, anything that you are allowed to touch. There are only certain things you are not allowed to touch on your own, and that’s because it is dangerous for you, or because you don’t yet understand how it works. The kitchen stove, for example.”

I looked down.

“We mean it, Lauren,” Bridget said as she picked me up out of his arms and sat with me on the bed, getting her own back of her pants wet. “You are our baby, now, too. You have a right to go to the bathroom anytime you want. You have a right to get up in the night if you want to, and even to come into our room because you are scared. You have a right to get up in the mornings if you wake up early, and as long as you don’t wake anyone up before we need to be, you most certainly can touch the television and watch cartoons on it just like April does.”

Everyone was telling that what I though was stealing all this time, was stuff I had rights to do or to use in the house. I couldn’t understand. Why wasn’t it stealing? When is it stealing? Even April said if it was someone else’s house, but they didn’t let her steal the toilet during the night and the lights to find her way there, she would never sleep over there again.

I shivered. “Is this the real reason you don’t seem to be catching on to bed wetting, but you haven’t wet your pants in the day in over two weeks?” Bridget asked me.

I sadly shook my head no. “I mean, I do wet in my bed waiting for you, yeah, but I also wet the bed, while I’m asleep.”

Jack frowned. “Well from now on, if you are awake, you can go potty, and if it scares you to go without permission, you have the right to come and ask mommy or daddy or even April to take you potty.”

“I do?” I asked very surprised.

“Yes honey. April used to get us up all the time to take her potty, and we would be more than happy to get up to take you potty if it made you wet yourself less at night, and made you a happier little girl.”

I hugged Bridget who had me in her arms at the moment, and then I reached my arms out to Jack who picked me up and he hugged me.

“April, go get ready for school,” Bridget patted her butt to send her off.

“I have to go to work,” Jack told me, so Bridget will have to use the public bus and take you down where the school suggested us to get a second opinion of the tests they gave you. You will be there all day, so we’ll put you in diapers, but that doesn’t mean you need to wet them. If you have to go potty, and you have a chance to ask mommy to take you, you have mommy take you. If you don’t have a chance to ask mommy to take you, then no one will be mad if you have a relapse. It wouldn’t be your fault if you are scared to go potty by yourself.”

I nodded.

 

We got off the bus and started to walk down the road a ways. I felt myself drizzling into my panty-diaper, but I didn’t know why I was suddenly just wetting. I hadn’t planned on wetting, and I didn’t even realize I had to go on the bus, but now, I was just peeing my pants.

We walked into a brown building that was really really tall and went up towards the clouds.

We sat out in a waiting area after going up in an elevator to the sixth floor. There were some toys around the waiting area, but I didn’t feel like playing with them right now. I just sat in Bridget’s lap while we waited.

I finished peeing in her lap, but I didn’t think it leaked this time. I was glad of that. I felt comfortable and didn’t want to move from her lap, but I didn’t want to make trouble for her.

They finally took me back to talk to this man. He asked me to put some blocks in some holes. I shrugged and did it fairly quickly. I could easily tell which block went where. You’d have to be two to not know it.

He gave me some worksheets that had math facts, and while I wasn’t sure of what I was supposed to do on some of it, I took guesses at it anyway. I mean, it wasn’t hard to figure out, if the final answer was one thing, and you knew one part of how it was made, then finding the missing part was just some idea of doing an opposite operation that it was. If it said 3 + 5 = ? and you know it’s 3+5 = 8, and then they took the question like this: 3 + ? = 8…. well, eight is the biggest number you can have, so 3 plus some number has to be eight. If I count on my fingers, three, and then add one finger for 4, and two for 5, then I would get five fingers before I get eight, and I knew that 3 + 5 was eight, so it was logical that five was the answer.

He gave me sheets that went up to something like 2 X ? + 6 = 12. I don’t know what to multiply two against, so I looked at the six first. It is part of the 12, so I minus the six from the twelve. And then it becomes 2 X ? = 6. 2X1 is 2, 2X2 is 4 and 2X3 is 6. So, I think the question is three. I explained it as I told the doctor how I get the answer. Then I ask if I can see the original question again. I ask him to put 3 in the question mark place.

2 X (3) + 6 = 12. I look at it. 2 X 3 is 6 and 6+6 is 12. So I tell the doctor that my answer is right.

“Very good, young lady,” he praised me. But I knew this. You might mix up and think 3+6 is nine and then do 2 X 9 and get 18, and I told him about that.

“Someone might do it, but they might be wrong. You have to make the 2X3 before you can add. My teacher said so. My teacher said you do times-es and dividings before you do pluses and take aways.”

“You remembered that, did you?” the doctor asked me.

I just shrugged. I wasn’t a little kid. I could remember if my fourth grade teacher told me to do times-es and dividings first all the time.

He gave me something to read. I hate reading. I hate reading because the letters never make the sounds the they are supposed to. Some letters didn’t even have a reason to make a sound. Like ti makes sh.

“why does ‘tion’ say shun?” I asked the doctor.

“Well, it just does. It’s a phonics rule.”

“That rule is dumb,” I said. Because that means ti should make sh sound all the time. But you don’t say shime for time.”

The doctor sighed. “What sound does ph make?”

“It supposed to make f sound,” I told him. But gh is f sound too, sometimes. Sometimes it is just g sound, and sometimes, you don’t hear it at all.”

He looked at me for a minute. “Well, it sounds like you have the basics on phonics, so why don’t you read something for me?”

I started to read. I hate reading.

“The cat ran away from the dog. The dog was friften, frig-ten, frightened. Um frightened of the snack, snackay, snaayke… snake.” I read nervously.

I didn’t like this. I wanted to do something else.

He frowned. He took some notes.

I had to do a bunch of other tests. I peed my diaper again while we were doing tests. I didn’t want to ask in front of him. It was too embarrassing in case he said no.

They let me watch cartoons for two hours. Finally, they called Bridget and me to talk to that doctor and another doctor that came in with him.

“Your daughter understands the basic concepts of phonetics,” they told Bridget, whatever phonetics means. “But she doesn’t seem to be able to naturally apply the principal when it faces her in a practical situation.”

“Alright,” Bridget said patting me on the lap as I sat on her legs.

“She is also unable to remember what she read after she has gotten through a paragraph of reading.”

“I know. I heard her,” Bridget said. “What I want to know, is just how far behind her peers she is.”

“She is reading at about the level you’d expect a second or even a first grader would read.”

“That bad?”

“That is not so odd given her situation she has been in. What is odd, is that while she can’t spell which matches her inability to read, her writing, if you simply look at the words from her point of view, she operates at a level beyond most eighth graders. She understands how to use similies, metaphores, and other advanced techniques in writing. She has a vivid imagination, but often lacks words that match her maturity, and when that happens, she is quick to make up terms.”

Bridget smiled. “So, she’s not immature, just under-educated, right?”

“She is a genius,” the doctor told Bridget. “Absolutely do not allow the school to put her in a grade level under the fifth grade. She just needs some support. Most of her lack of vocabulary and spelling comes from her not reading enough in her past. Get her into a reading program. Get her a tutor, and before you know it, she will be surpassing all of the kids her age in language.”

Bridget smiled and patted my leg. “You see? I told you that you were not stupid. You had stupid people around you who didn’t let you explore enough. That is not your fault, honey.”

I smiled.

“I have also assessed some of her other communication problems. I think she fears talking out of turn, and even if it has something to do with something she needs, she will not ask until it is too late. You said you suspected neglect. I am going to concur with your suspicions. Now, you’ve only had her for about a month?”

“Yes sir,” Bridget answered the doctors.

“Well, the child has been taught to fear speaking out for herself. You can see it every time she is asked a questions, she looks around to make sure no one is going to answer it first, even though her own name was addressed to answer.”

“Yes, I saw that. I’ve even had that happen at home, but I thought it was just she was nervous and shy.”

“She is nervous and shy, and while some kids can be naturally shy, they normally know it is safe to answer a question that has been addressed to them. They don’t hesitate unless they feel uncomfortable. This testing facility is an uncomfortable place and not a common place kids are taken to, however, it is not foreign enough that a child should bottle up as much as she does. She hasn’t asked once or given an indication she’s had to use the restroom. You said she was wearing a diaper. If I had to guess, right now, I’d think she was soaked and yet she gave no hint that she had to go the whole time. That is not normal. Someone has trained her to stay quiet about her needs.”

Bridget hugged me and kissed me on the side of the face.

“Does she go to the bathroom at all normally at home?”

“She has started to go in the daytime on her own at home. She hasn’t had a wet diaper at home in almost two weeks.”

“What about when you are out?”

Mrs. Bridget sadly shook her head. “She’s almost always wet when we come back from taking her somewhere.”

“She’s scared to tell you what she needs,” he told Bridget. “As long as she continues to live with whatever that fear is, that bothers her and won’t let her speak up, it will also influence her language and social skills. I think you should have her seeing a counselor.”

“Of course, we want to do everything possible to make her feel whole again. While she is in the foster program, they told us she has issues, and they have money that they are willing to spend on her. I just have to tell them what she needs with documentation.”

“I will write out a report of what I’ve found. As far as school, do not let them put her in second grade, which they may be tempted to do. It will hurt her confidence, and it is absolutely not where she belongs.”

“We have another daughter, and the two of them get along well. Our other daughter is in fourth grade. The school already has them in the same class.”

“I do think she could go to regular fifth grade though with some light support.

“I don’t think the school has support for kids like her.”

“The school itself does not. You have to reach out for help, but the school cannot deny her professional help so long as it does not interfere with the teacher’s regular lessons. I’ll give you a list of places you can look into for counseling, school help, reading and tutoring, and anything else you need. Even once you’ve adopted her, there are some state funds and grants you can apply for to help you afford her regular needs.”

I didn’t really understand everything they said. I just knew that I needed special help, that I needed counselors, that I couldn’t even ask for a bathroom like a regular kid, in short, I’m stupid.

Bridget took me to another floor in this same building, to meet with a counselor that was on the list of professionals that the man told her about.

“What’s your name, young lady?” a balding man with blue eyes and yellow patches of hair asked me.

“Lauren.”

“What do you like about school?” he asked me.

I shrugged. I didn’t like the kids. They were mean. I didn’t like most teachers, they were always giving homework, and they never thought I did anything right, and most of them yelled at me when they saw puddles in my chair and on the floor. I didn’t like anything, well, I didn’t like anything but except….

“Art,” I finally told him. “And writing, if the teacher isn’t looking for spelling, so when the teacher asks us to do a try copy for an assignment, I love to write it, but I don’t like the final try.”

“Why is that, honey?”

“Because I’m stupid. I never do it right.”

The counselor set up an appointment for a couple of weeks later. He said he would try to get more records from my adoption situation to help him figure out where to go from there.

We went to another place, and we waited an hour.

“Mrs. Bridges?” we were called back.

I held Bridget’s hand as we were taken into the back of a library like place.

“You realize that this is a special needs program, right?” the woman asked Bridget while Bridget settled me on her lap.

“Yes, I do,” Bridget reached in her purse and pulled out a slip of paper from the man in the first office. “I was referred here because Lauren needs to catch up to her peer’s socially and in vocabulary. This man told me you could pair her with a reading tutor that would help her.”

The woman read the paper, and then she smiled. “How do you feel about a teenager reading with you?”

“Will she slap me on the face or spank me if I get words wrong or tell me how stupid I am when I can’t get the word the first try?” I asked.

“Heavens, no, child,” the woman said appalled.

“She’s had some very bad people in her past,” Bridget told the woman. “She’s not just asking you those questions to shock you.”

“Well, if any of our volunteers ever did that, they would not only be disqualified from continuing with us, but we would send CPS to their homes to see what is going on to make them think it’s alright to treat young kids like that, and someone would go to jail, if I had anything to say about it.”

“Is she going to explain me why ti makes sh in tion but it doesn’t in time?”

“She’ll try honey. She would be a kid, like you, but older. She would be like a big sister.”

“I already have a sister.”

“I don’t mean a real sister, sweetheart. How about calling her your friend?”

“Okay. When do I meet her?”

“After your mom and I discuss some details, we will figure out a time later when the high school girl has time.”

I got quiet. I didn’t know what else to say. Besides, I probably talked too much. I was lucky that Bridget wasn’t Angela. I would have been slapped the moment I opened my mouth if I was still with the Harrisons.

“Some things a teen will have to understand about Lauren,” Bridget said.

“I’m stupid,” I said for Bridget.

“No honey, you are not stupid. Be quiet, okay?”

I nodded and let Bridget talk.

“She has severe confidence issues, and she isn’t likely to talk for herself unless she feels comfortable. She might not want to read the first few meetings that she comes. Would that affect the program?”

“A lot of kids that we tutor have confidence in reading issues, and we teach our high school students to listen to the child first and to only read when they are ready.”

“And there is one more thing. She should not put Lauren in her lap unless she wants a wet lap. Lauren has accidents that we are working on, and she has gotten good about at home, but still has trouble in public places.”

“We normally tell high school students not to hold kids over the age of seven anyway. But if she does wet herself, how does she get it taken care of?”

“Normally, someone she trusts has to change her, or she goes home and changes at home.”

“I see. Well, that might limit where our high school student can see her. Would you have any issues if she met Lauren at home for the first few weeks?”

“I would actually feel better if I could see how they work together the first few weeks, so I know how Lauren feels about her, when she is sitting with her. I really don’t mind, if she has Lauren’s permission, if she wants to pick her up, but she does need to understand, that she shouldn’t do it without knowing the risk of Lauren peeing on her.”

“I will make sure the student we sent to you knows of her issues.”

“She will have to be really patient with Lauren. Lauren is very clever in her own way, but she has been shut in so much, that her vocabulary is stunted, and while she understands the phonetic sounds of most of the letters, she has trouble applying it in the same inherent way that most fifth graders have become accustomed to over time.”

“Yes, I understand. Actually, I would like to hear Lauren read right now, so that when I send her a special big friend to help her, I match her with one that is aware of her needs.”

“Am I reading again?” I asked Bridget.

“Yes sweetheart.”

I hate reading. I started to read for the woman.

“Whinny the Pooh was a silly old bee-r? Bare? Be-are? Um…. Bear?” I looked at the picture and I knew the story was about the picture. “He livid, livt, lived… lived in an old tree with a window. He eight honey for breekfas, brefas, breakfast, breakfast ev ah ry moaning.”

“What do you understand so far?” the lady asked.

“There is a bear.”

“Good.”

“The bear is live in tree with window? The bear has 8 honeys at morning?”

“Very nice,” The lady said.

I sighed and she closed the book.

“I see what you mean,” she told Bridget. “I will call you as soon as I have a volunteer to assign to her.”

Then we started for home.

We were finally on the bus, going home, I finally told Bridget.

“Excuse me, Bridget?”

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I peed my pants,” and I emphasized it by closing my legs together to let her know I didn’t feel comfortable.

“I know, sweetie,” Bridget said a sadness in her voice. “I had your go bag ready by the door, but in the moment, thinking of the papers we had to take and show them, and getting all the relative important things gathered for the first meeting, I forgot to grab it on the way out the door,”

“It’s okay. I wore wet diapers a long long long time before I stayed with your house. I can go all the way home. But I don’t know if I embarrass Ms. Bridget because I make my pants wet later. I um… it happened. I peed twice already.”

Bridget pulled me over closer to lean against her. She rubbed my shoulder, and she said shush very softly. I was safe. Bridget did put her hand on my diaper and pushed to check. It was hard enough, she can tell I wet a lot. Bridget smiled and whispered to me.

“No one will care if you leak, baby.”

I leaned against her and relaxed knowing she was okay with how wet my diaper was. I was glad she felt my diaper, because now, she said no one will care even though she felt my diaper, and knew if I peed again, like I did, that it would leak. At least I didn’t feel like going again yet.

47 minutes ago, Hugues said:

To be honest I don’t think this edition is better. I prefer the previous version.The narrative rhyme is broken.It is too quick than it should be.

I just want to say that absolutely I respect your hard working and I really know how difficult to create a story from the void.But I think you’re growing up. You can be a better one based on the details of the work. 

Thank you for your input, but I've already committed to this new version and had the stuff saved over, so I really am going to just go forward with it.  I think I will delete the first versions of chapter 4 and 5 so readers don't get confused in them.