The Girl Who Wanted to Wear Diapers (Ch. 24 - 4/24/24)

[Shotgun Diplomat]

I feel like Maddy should explore exactly what effect the pills have. From little you mentioned it looks like they are some form of Anti-Diuretic Hormone booster(?). That in an of itself is a little bit of a concern, I mean the pills aren't new, they are from whenever Grace stopped bedwetting. Using old presumably prescription medication is a huge no-no. Who knows what effect they might have after some years left languishing on a medicine cabinet shelf? 

[MinnesotaWriter]

15 hours ago, AnythingWillDo said:

Whoa, that was an information explosion of a chapter!

The lengths that her parents went to to avoid having Grace use pull ups seems extreme. So I think the ‘sheet’ is their word for a pull up because Grace didn’t like them and would refer to them as something else(all the descriptions could apply to a pull up too).

I also have a theory on the ‘pill’. I think it’s a placebo. Grace would have been desperate for the pills to work and Maddy is desperate for pull ups that mention of a pill that could stop her could make her scared enough to believe it. 

Daytime accidents are going to help her convince her parents if the pill does keep preventing her from wetting the bed though. I do hope she doesn’t actually end up asking for them directly. 

It does seem a little extreme, but there is a certain line of thought in the parenting world that pull-ups/diapers are best avoided for bedwetting, and there could be a bunch of other reasons why they didn't do it for Grace and are avoiding it for Maddy. I think that if they had used pull-ups successfully at any point for Grace, that this might have been brought up as a solution for the sleepover, but we'll have to see when we learn more about the motives they have for those decisions.

10 hours ago, spark said:

The parents strike me as one of those who will do anything to avoid going to d-word.  Sarah's mother would have put Maddy in diapers by now, but Maddy's parents aren't going for it.

For sure, it will be interesting to see their thought process for why diapers/pull-ups are being avoided.

1 hour ago, dl.spark1978 said:

My conspiracy theory revolves around Grace’s alleged bedwetting. I suspect Grace's bedwetting episodes were a façade driven by her desire to wear diapers, a desire she never dared to manifest through daytime accidents due to their parents' strict stance against such aids. Despite her efforts, the lack of tangible 'evidence' during the day led her to abandon her act. Enter Maddy, whose determination seems poised to eclipse Grace's, potentially escalating to daytime incidents and, perhaps, the occasional deliberate pants pooping. This scenario could reignite Grace, prompting her to resume her nocturnal episodes and perhaps escalate her tactics. This rivalry hints at deeper layers of sibling dynamics and personal struggles. The story has subtly laid the groundwork for this with nuanced interactions and Grace’s cryptic expressions of discontent. Should my theory hold, it could unravel a complex web of motivations, potentially leading to a pivotal confrontation or a profound bonding moment between the sisters, once the veil of deceit is lifted. Or, it’s just a wild speculation of mine 🤣

That would be quite the conspiracy.

1 hour ago, erik_hamburg said:

 

I really like the development of this story. From personal experience, I fully understand that the D-word is a big no-no that parents will try to avoid.

Maddy could be more pushy with the doctor, asking about all the options available. Pull-ups should be one of them. She will certainly need to avoid the pills. Headaches etc. seem to be a good way and easy to simulate. If I were her, I would also push much harder on how tired the wetting makes her. Getting up at night etc. She needs to work towards a solution that allows her to sleep through the night without making her sick. 

For sure, there are lots of ways Maddy could play things with the pills to show that they aren't a good idea (apart from making sure the bedwetting continues despite taking them).

28 minutes ago, Shotgun Diplomat said:

I feel like Maddy should explore exactly what effect the pills have. From little you mentioned it looks like they are some form of Anti-Diuretic Hormone booster(?). That in an of itself is a little bit of a concern, I mean the pills aren't new, they are from whenever Grace stopped bedwetting. Using old presumably prescription medication is a huge no-no. Who knows what effect they might have after some years left languishing on a medicine cabinet shelf? 

We'll get more info on the pills later (there's a doctor's appointment scheduled now). But as far as the expiration date of the pills, you have to recall that Grace was still using them up through early high school as an insurance policy when away from home. And the Mom did clear it with Maddy's pediatrician, so it's safe to assume that it's OK in this instance (meds can have a shelf life of up to five years, and that's not a true expiration anyways, that's just how long the FDA has tested)

It's clear that the medicine still works, as it is making it more difficult for Maddy to pee so it is stopping urine production as intended. We'll have to see what may or may not happen with the side effects.

[jaycanrdezum]

Really impressive story - I love the pacing (the fact that I'm itching for the chapter where Maddie gets her wish probably means you've done your job!), the character development, and the believable characters. The number of people who have commented with theories about the story is a testament to its quality. It's also pretty much completely non-sexual, which is a welcome departure from typical stories (especially given Maddie's age). Many of your readers probably empathize with Maddie or identify with her.

If I'm tossing in my two cents, I think it would be cool for Maddie's plans to backfire. Right now she seems to think she'll be able to bedwet her way into pull-ups without actually losing control of her bladder or having to suffer any of the indignities of actually being a bedwetter.

But if she ends up in diapers on long car rides/flights, or ends up having to report to the nurse before bed at soccer camp to make sure she has her diaper on, will the whole experience still be worth it for her?

[spark]

I have a sense that Maddy wetting the bed after taking the pills will give it away that she is doing it on purpose.   I'm not 100% certain, but I think those pills suppress the function of the kidney so that you can't produce as urine overnight.   It's a powerful drug.   I think Maddy's hopes of getting put in Pull-ups are looking bleak.

[Bel George]

There was a mention of side effects of the drugs.  If those are bad enough, maybe taking such a pill could be one-time thing, and another solution for the bedwetting would be needed.  

[MinnesotaWriter]

19 hours ago, jaycanrdezum said:

Really impressive story - I love the pacing (the fact that I'm itching for the chapter where Maddie gets her wish probably means you've done your job!), the character development, and the believable characters. The number of people who have commented with theories about the story is a testament to its quality. It's also pretty much completely non-sexual, which is a welcome departure from typical stories (especially given Maddie's age). Many of your readers probably empathize with Maddie or identify with her.

If I'm tossing in my two cents, I think it would be cool for Maddie's plans to backfire. Right now she seems to think she'll be able to bedwet her way into pull-ups without actually losing control of her bladder or having to suffer any of the indignities of actually being a bedwetter.

But if she ends up in diapers on long car rides/flights, or ends up having to report to the nurse before bed at soccer camp to make sure she has her diaper on, will the whole experience still be worth it for her?

I think it is fair to say that Maddy hasn't quite thought through all of the long-term implications for what happens after she has established herself as a bedwetter. We'll get a good look at how it plays out, it's safe to say that it could lead to a lot of interesting situations.

6 hours ago, spark said:

I have a sense that Maddy wetting the bed after taking the pills will give it away that she is doing it on purpose.   I'm not 100% certain, but I think those pills suppress the function of the kidney so that you can't produce as urine overnight.   It's a powerful drug.   I think Maddy's hopes of getting put in Pull-ups are looking bleak.

That's certainly what the pills are supposed to do. But, like most medications, it doesn't mean they work 100 percent of the time or work the same for everyone who takes it.

4 hours ago, Bel George said:

There was a mention of side effects of the drugs.  If those are bad enough, maybe taking such a pill could be one-time thing, and another solution for the bedwetting would be needed.  

That would be one option for Maddy to get away from using the pills.

[MinnesotaWriter]

Chapter 16: As Anticipated

It was amazing how many things could get lost all year in a locker.

I stood in front of my locker with a backpack and a garbage bag in front of me on the floor, sorting out the contents of my locker one-by-one. Some of it got tossed in my backpack to keep. Most things went into the trash bag.

The locker was now about halfway empty. By the end of the school year, the locker had reached its maximum capacity. I had already tossed more than a dozen long-lost pens and pencils into my backpack. I was sure I’d find another couple dozen by the time I was through with emptying the locker.

There were a number of overdue library books I needed to bring to the school library before heading out on the bus, an inside-out, balled up jacket I had left once it had become too warm outside to need it. There were half-empty plastic water bottles, crumpled up papers from homework assignments, and textbooks that I thankfully would never need to ever open again.

“You’re not finished yet?” Emma asked as she walked up next to me and stared into the abyss that was my locker.

I shrugged as I tossed out a Spanish workbook that I wasn’t going to need again. It was true that my locker was fuller than most, but that hadn’t been the main reason for how long it was taking me to get it all emptied out.

The conversation about bedwetting with my parents and sister yesterday evening had given me a lot to think about. The pills had proved to not be much of a problem. Yes, they had made it impossible to wet the bed in the middle of the night, as I would have preferred, but I didn’t have any difficulty peeing in bed once my alarm had woken me up in the morning.

I was rather proud of how I had figured out a way to wake up early without disturbing the rest of my family. Waking up to an alarm blaring from an earbud wasn’t the ideal way to start the morning, but it gave me time to wet the bed and relax before getting ready for school.

However, despite needing to pee in the morning, the puddle that had formed on the bed around my bottom was a lot smaller than any of the other times I had peed in the bed previously, proof that the medication had done its job of limiting my overnight urine output.

Mom, of course, had been a bit disappointed when she woke me up. She made sure to clarify that she wasn’t unhappy with me in any way, but it was clear she had higher expectations for how the medicine would perform. She had very much been expecting to see dry sheets and pajamas in the morning.

“Eww, is that what I think it is?” Emma pointed to a discolored plastic baggie that had been revealed when I had taken the book out of the locker.

I grimaced as I looked down at what was likely the remnants of an unfinished lunch from months ago. That was one of the problems with my locker. I always intended to get stuff out again right away, but as soon as it became buried, it would slip completely out of my mind. Emma held her nose in disgust as I pinched the corner of the baggie and quickly deposited it into the garbage bag.

I hoped there weren’t any additional baggies like that in the locker, but I was beginning to dread what I might end up discovering closer to the bottom.

“So, about the all-nighter? What did your mom say about the sleepover?” Emma asked.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. It was apparent that my friends were going to keep interrogating me until they got an answer. I answered the first half of that question truthfully. “Doing an all-nighter is a no-go. My parents don’t want us drinking all that caffeine and going crazy.”

“That’s silly,” Emma said as she watched me continue to empty the locker. “We wouldn’t have any problem getting away with that at my place. My parents wouldn’t care one bit as long as we didn’t wake them up.”

“Then we can go that later in the summer. Just don’t mention it to my mom.”

“But, like, we’re still good for a regular sleepover next Friday on your birthday?”

I paused a second before answering her question. I didn’t want to say that Mom hadn’t decided yet. That would just be an open invitation to unwelcome questions about what could have changed to make it so I couldn’t have sleepovers anymore. Besides, I was sure that I’d have access to pull-ups next week, which would allow Mom to say yes to my friends spending the night. “Of course.”

“That’s good,” Emma said. “I’ll go let Angie know. She’s a lot closer to getting her locker cleaned up than you are. I’ll see you at lunch.”

I watched as Emma darted off around the corner, weaving through all the other students who were busy getting their hallway lockers cleaned out for the year as well.

Well, I was committed to the sleepover now, which meant I was going to need to get my parents to get me the pull-ups or risk an even more awkward conversation with my friends about how we weren’t actually going to have a sleepover next week.

But it wasn’t time to ask my parents about pull-ups yet. There was still the doctor’s appointment to consider on Monday.

That appointment had me worried. I didn’t like going to the doctor, even for normal yearly checkups. There was that weird thing they squeezed around my arm to take my pulse, which nearly sent me into a panic attack every time they did it. But apart from the normal poking and prodding, the worst of it was always the needles. At least this time, I could be confident that I wouldn’t need to get any new vaccinations.

But what would the doctor make of my bedwetting? I felt confident that I had fooled my entire family so far. They hadn’t expressed a single inkling of doubt that my bedwetting was anything other than genuine. The idea of someone wetting the bed on purpose had to be so far out there that it probably wasn’t ever a scenario they had considered.

But what would happen when I was examined by an actual doctor? What if there was something I had missed during my times of faking bedwetting, something I had gotten wrong that would indicate to them that something was not as it seemed?

What if they ran all of their tests and determined that they couldn’t find anything wrong with me at all? Would they chalk it up to just a random fluke of genetics? Or would they begin to think something was amiss?

On the other hand, the doctor’s appointment could prove useful to my quest to get pull-ups. Surely, they would be aware of that being an option for dealing with bedwetting. Perhaps they might even recommend it as a solution. That would be ideal. That way, I could still at least pretend that I wasn’t all that happy about wearing pull-ups. I had to keep in mind that I was supposed to be behaving like someone who wasn’t happy at all about having to suddenly deal with bedwetting.

I resumed my inspection of the contents of my locker. To my great relief, I didn’t find any additional bags of moldy sandwiches.

<><><> 

Despite my older sister’s warning about the side effects she had experienced when she had previously been taking this medication for her own bedwetting, I had felt perfectly fine all day long.

I was tired after coming home from school, but that was just because I hadn’t gotten my usual amount of sleep. I hadn’t woken up at weird times in the middle of the night at all. Grace’s main complaint about the medication was that it had given her some extremely painful headaches. My head hadn’t hurt, and as far as I could tell, nothing else seemed to be off about my body.

That hadn’t stopped me from constantly wincing and rubbing my head all morning – especially when Mom and Grace were around. I needed to give them as many reasons as possible to stop with the pills and try to move on to another solution.

I continued with the act as Grace unlocked the front door to let me in. I groaned and rubbed my head as I eased my overly full backpack down onto the floor.

“You feeling alright?” Grace asked. “How did it go last night?”

I groaned again. “No, your stupid pills didn’t even work. The only thing they gave me was this lousy headache.”

“That’s too bad,” Grace said. “Maybe you’ll have better luck tonight. Oh, and Mom left a note for you in the kitchen. She wanted to make sure you got your laundry done.”

That was just great. Nothing like being reminded of additional chores the minute I was finally free from school and homework for the summer. Still, I knew better than to disobey, and this request suddenly gave me a good idea.

There were still about twenty minutes until Jackson got home from school, enough time to try out something new I had been wanting to experience.

I followed Grace as she walked up the stairs ahead of me. She’d be secluded in her bedroom again until it was time to walk over to the bus stop to collect my younger brother when he was dropped off later this afternoon.

I grabbed my full laundry hamper and hauled it all the way to the laundry room in the basement. Yes, this was going to be perfect. Ever since I had discovered how much I had enjoyed wetting myself in bed earlier this week, I had been desperately curious to see what it would be like to do that in different situations.

But there were a couple of challenges with trying out this new desire.

The first was that there were very few places where I could easily pee my pants without causing a massive mess. Most of our house was carpeted. I didn’t even want to think about how much of a pain it would be to try to clean up that much urine out of the carpet.

That left me with a few options. My bed, of course, worked perfectly because of the waterproof mattress. I considered peeing my pants with my clothes on in the bathtub but couldn’t bring myself to find that to be an acceptable option. It just felt too weird to urinate in a spot where I and the rest of my family would later be standing.

That left the laundry room in the basement. Its cement floor would make clean-up easy. Plus, there was even a drain on the floor, so if I were to pee myself over that, clean-up would be even easier.

That was far and away the best location, especially as I was not as likely to be interrupted, and it would be able to easily hear someone approaching from upstairs.

Having decided on a location, there was still another major obstacle, which was that I was rarely left at home by myself.

I was hoping that would change this summer now that I would be turning thirteen in a week.

In previous summers, Mom had put Jackson in a daycare-like summer camp that he would go to most days for the entirety of summer break. As for me, my schedule had varied. There were day and overnight camps that I would get signed up for. When I wasn’t doing that, I was often spending the day at one of my friend’s places if a parent or older sibling happened to be home.

But be allowed to stay at home all on my own? Absolutely not.

I wasn’t sure how many good opportunities I would get to experiment with peeing my pants during the day, so I had to be ready to make the most of them when they did show up.

The benefit of being in the basement was that I could easily tell where everyone else was in the house. I would be able to hear Grace’s footsteps the moment she started walking down the stairs to the main floor. I had to guess that she wasn’t going to be coming to the basement, but if she was, I would have ample warning to straighten things up quickly.

I had worked extra hard to stay hydrated the last couple of hours at school in preparation for this possibility, but now I was wondering if I would be able to pull it off.

I ran through the scenario once more in my head. I would change into an old pair of leggings from my hamper. I would stand in the corner of the laundry room where there was a drain in the floor. I would wet my pants there, where it would be easiest to clean up afterward. I would allow myself some time to enjoy the experience before using some of my other dirty clothes to dry off and mop up everything from the floor. Then, everything could be tossed in the washing machine, and no one else would have a clue what had happened once I had changed back into my regular clothes for the day.

All so complicated. It would be a lot easier if I simply had a pull-up.

I took off my leggings and replaced them with another pair from the laundry hamper. That was one of the strange things about this new interest. I didn’t have any desire to pee myself without any clothes on. I wondered why that was?

With this new pair of leggings on, I positioned myself right over the small drain set into the cement floor. I listened carefully. There was no sound from my sister moving around upstairs.

This would be another first for me. I had never peed myself while standing before. I assumed that it would be easier to do than while lying down. I spread my legs apart slightly and focused on trying to get my bladder to release.

The bottom of my pants began to get warm, and then a warm, wet sensation began to run down both of my legs. It was exhilarating in a way I couldn’t define. Part of it was tied to the physical sensation of what I was doing, but there was something else as well. Was there a certain amount of excitement that came from doing something so socially forbidden?

Like always, once I started, there was no stopping it at all. Not that I in any way wanted it to stop. I wished that this feeling could go on forever rather than just the thirty seconds that it would take for my bladder to fully empty. It had been every bit as enjoyable as I had anticipated all day long. The only problem was that it was over far too soon.

I looked down at my feet. I knew I had forgotten something. I hadn’t taken off my socks, which were now soaked. For some reason, I had figured that the urine would just go straight through the bottom of my pants and stream onto the floor. I hadn’t considered that it my might run down my legs to my feet.

Even then, the drain had proven to be quite effective, as there was only a small puddle remaining beneath me despite how much I had peed.

With the sound of urine dripping onto the floor now over, I listened intently again for any movement upstairs. There was complete silence. At any moment now, Grace should head down to the front door to wait for Jackson.

I looked back down at the puddle beneath my feet. Again, this would have been so much easier if I had been wearing a pull-up. I wouldn’t have even had to sneak downstairs. I could have done this in the comfort of my own bedroom.

I thought back to that girl I had seen at the mall, the one who had been about Jackson’s age, getting her pull-up changed in the restroom. For a moment, I wished that was me.

Faking bedwetting was one thing. Pulling that off was easy, given my sister’s history of bedwetting. And wearing pull-ups at night would be an easy secret to keep, even from my friends.

But to have accidents during the day was something entirely else. That would call for a much more thorough investigation into what was going on with my body. Besides, I didn’t think I could survive the shame of having my parents, Grace, or Jackson, witness me wetting my pants during the day. And that would make my task of hiding pull-ups from my friends nearly impossible, not to mention what I would have to do at school.

No, that wasn’t an option, despite how much I would enjoy being able to wet my pants at any moment whenever I wanted to. But I consoled myself with the possibility that once I got my hands on some pull-ups to wear at night, I could get away with wearing them occasionally during the day.

The worst part of it was that I had to clean up right away, rather than continuing to stand in the corner in my wet clothes. The only good thing was that the mess was relatively easy to clean up. I wet some of my clothes in the sink next to the washing machine and used them to mop up the small puddle of urine that surrounded the drain.

Satisfied that I’d managed to get everything cleaned up, I tossed the rest of my clothes in the washing machine – along with a large amount of detergent – and got it started before changing back into the leggings I had worn to school.

The pounding of distant footsteps told me that Grace was now coming down the stairs to the main floor. I waited until I’d heard the front door slam shut before I made my way back upstairs.

My heart was still racing as I shut the door to my bedroom behind me. With all of these new things to explore, this was going to be the best summer ever. I retrieved an old magazine from the bottom of the drawer beneath my bed and flipped instantly to the right page, my eyes fixated on a pair of special undergarments.

If everything went right, in less than a week they would be mine.

 

---

Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/ 

[LittleAcorn]

I love the characterization shown in the description of her cleaning out her locker.

Wild speculation ahead. What if pull-ups didn't work or leaked for Grace and they used diapers?  Is Maddie going to get more than she bargained for?

Edited April 1 by LittleAcorn
typo

[thedman]

29 minutes ago, LittleAcorn said:

I love the characterization shown in the description of her cleaning out her locker.

Wild speculation ahead. What if pull-ups didn't leaked for Grace and they used diapers?  Is Maddie going to get more than she bargained for?

I was thinking the same thing, that there might be diapers in the future instead of pull ups, could be an interesting plot twist

[MinnesotaWriter]

23 hours ago, LittleAcorn said:

I love the characterization shown in the description of her cleaning out her locker.

Wild speculation ahead. What if pull-ups didn't work or leaked for Grace and they used diapers?  Is Maddie going to get more than she bargained for?

Thanks! That certainly would be an interesting scenario. I don't think Maddy realizes yet that there are diapers her size, and not just pull-ups. I wouldn't think she would be disappointed with diapers instead if that were to happen.

22 hours ago, thedman said:

I was thinking the same thing, that there might be diapers in the future instead of pull ups, could be an interesting plot twist

For sure, there are lots of different ways diapers might come into play for Maddy.

[ErikMxx]

Absolutely loving this story, love the plot, although, for a twelve year old she seems quite the strategist! Probably mom imagines the preteen would be absolutely mortified at the idea of wearing any infantile garment (diaper), and would lash out at the mere suggestion. Probably just as Grace had in the past (?) 

[MinnesotaWriter]

Chapter 17: Not a Baby

Three Years Ago

I didn’t let my failure to find pull-ups in my sister’s bedroom deter me. I scoured the rest of the house. Jackson’s bedroom seemed like a promising Plan B, but there were no pull-ups or even baby diapers to be found in there either. The same held true for the rest of the house.

But just because I didn’t find any diapers didn’t mean that there weren’t other discoveries that were made.

The basement was the final frontier of my search for diapers or pull-ups. It was where things that were no longer needed were tucked away forever, or at least until Mom decided it was time to pull them out for a garage sale or donate them to a thrift store.

I had to tug hard at one of the doors in the closet that ran the length of the shortest wall in the unfinished area of the basement that was adjacent to the laundry room.

The door finally opened with a rather large bang. I hoped that no one upstairs wondered what I was doing. It was Saturday afternoon, so everyone was home. It would perhaps have been wiser to hold off on the search until Monday, when it would just be Grace and me at home during the summer while our parents were off at work and Jackson was attending preschool.

But I simply couldn’t bear to wait any longer. I was so convinced that there had to be diapers or pull-ups somewhere in the house. The fact that I hadn’t found them yet just had to mean that I hadn’t looked in the right places.

But this first section of the closet didn’t yield the results I had been hoping for. There were a bunch of storage boxes, but the contents of the clear plastic bins were obvious. It was just a bunch of Christmas decorations, ornaments, lights, and an artificial Christmas tree that would need to be painfully reassembled next year.

The door shut with a firm click. That was OK. There were still four more sections of the closet left for me to check. The next two were also disappointing, especially as they all contained cardboard boxes that I had to drag out and open before determining that the contents – old keepsakes, games, clothes, and other odds and ends – were not what I was looking for.

My anticipation was turning to despair as I approached the second-to-last closet door.

I tugged open the door. And there it was. For a moment, I thought I had hit the mother of all jackpots. 

The cardboard box of pull-ups was sitting at eye level with me on the shelf. I would have preferred to have discovered a box of my sister’s old pull-ups, but at this point, I was simply elated to have found anything at all.

It didn’t matter one bit that they were pull-ups meant for boys. I was so eager to finally try one on that I was willing to overlook that detail.

I pulled the box out of the closet and set it down carefully on the floor. I paused before opening it, listening for any sounds of movement upstairs. But no one was walking around at all, and there were definitely no sounds of anyone heading toward the stairs that led down to the basement.

I was relieved that the cardboard diaper box wasn’t taped up. All I had to do to open it was to unfold the top of it. My hands were shaking as I reached down and pulled the cardboard flaps on top of the box apart.

But it wasn’t diapers that I found inside.

Instead, it was an assortment of all the baby items that my brother had outgrown. There were bibs, bottles, pacifiers, an old diaper bag, tiny baby utensils, and sippy cups. 

I closed my eyes and groaned. I had been so close. I hurriedly opened the last remaining closet door. Nothing. Just more clear plastic bins that very obviously did not contain any diapers or pull-ups.

My mind felt numb. I had been so sure I’d at least find something. Every other option I had considered for getting my hands on those pull-ups seemed so far off and out of reach at the moment. I wanted them now. The realization that I was being denied that instant gratification stung deeply.

I went back to look at the pull-up box that didn’t actually have any pull-ups in it. I no longer had any hope of finding what I was looking for, but I dug my hand into the box nonetheless. All I found was regular, hard plastic, not the soft, crinkly sensation of the pull-up I had held in my hands a little over a week ago. I again regretted that I hadn’t been able to work up the courage to sneak that pull-up home rather than toss it away in the bathroom garbage container.

Then another thought took hold of me.

If it felt that good to wear a pull-up, perhaps it might also feel good to try out some of my brother’s baby items. Perhaps this whole search wouldn’t end up being a waste of time after all.

I looked down at the contents of the cardboard box. It was immediately apparent what my first experiment should be. I plucked out a pacifier from atop an assortment of other baby items.

I held the blue pacifier in front of me. Mom had gotten Jackson to give up pacifiers about a year ago – shortly after his second birthday. I tried to imagine what it would feel like to have it in my mouth.  

I examined the pacifier carefully as I rotated it a couple of times in my hand. How in the world was I supposed to tell which side was up? The clear, silicone part of the pacifier wasn’t uniformly shaped, so there had to be a right way to insert it into my mouth, but I was at a loss to figure out which way it was supposed to go. I tried to recall how it had looked in Jackson’s mouth, but I had never paid close attention to how he has used his pacifiers before.

But there was an incredibly obvious way to figure out an answer to that question. I flipped the pacifier over once more, opened my mouth, and brought the pacifier up to my lips.

I learned an incredibly important lesson when I put the pacifier into my mouth. It was very important to wash something that had been sitting in storage for a year before you put it into your mouth.

I spat the pacifier back out onto the floor. I had never in my life tasted something so gross. I felt as though I was going to puke if I didn’t immediately remedy the situation.

Water. I needed water. 

The closest option was the laundry room sink. I raced around the corner to the laundry room, fumbling for the light switch so I could see the sink in the far corner next to the washing machine.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have taken a single sip of water from this sink or any other one in the house. I had never been able to stand the tap water ever since we had moved into the house when I was about five years old.

No one else in our family had that problem, but after several days of me point-blank refusing to take even the smallest sip of water, my parents had finally relented and purchased a filtered water pitcher for me to use.

The filtered water tasted so much better. I couldn’t understand how my family could claim that it didn’t taste different at all to them. 

I had the same problem with water at restaurants. There was about a fifty-fifty chance whether I would be able to drink more than a couple of sips before insisting that my parents let me order juice, ice-tea, or even soda. At this point, they usually just ordered bottled water for me, if that was an option.

I looked down at the sink. Under normal circumstances, what I was about to do would have been unfathomable. But these were not normal circumstances.

I turned the handle for the cold-water faucet and cupped my hands beneath the cold stream of water before bringing them repeatedly up to my face for quick sips. This was probably the first time in four years that I had actually swallowed any tap water at this house.

I brought my cupped hands up to my mouth a half-dozen times before the awful taste left by the pacifier was gone. The tap water didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth, but in comparison to the aftertaste that had been left by the dusty pacifier, it was a massive relief.

That didn’t mean that I was in any hurry to drink more of it.

I paused at the sound of footsteps moving upstairs. It sounded as though someone was heading out of the living room, straight toward the kitchen.

I sprinted out of the laundry room, not bothering to shut the light off. I reached for the box of pull-ups and was just about to lift it up to return it to its place in the closet when the footsteps came to a stop right above me in the kitchen. 

I breathed a sigh of relief. It was probably just Mom getting started on her dinner preparations. I’d be fine as long as she didn’t need to come and get anything out of the pantry.

I realized as well that I had completely forgotten about the pacifier that had fallen to the floor. The second or so that it had been in my mouth hadn’t been nearly long enough for me to decide on whether I liked it, as that moment had been spoiled by its gross taste. 

My first thought was to wash the pacifier in the laundry room sink, but I immediately dismissed that idea. It was in bad enough shape that I was going to need soap. I tucked the pacifier into the pocket of my shorts. I would need to find a way to clean it later.

I looked at the size description on the side of the pull-up box as I put it back into the closet. The weight range that these pull-ups were supposed to fit was thirty-two to forty pounds. I knew from the scale in the upstairs bathroom that I was a good twenty-five pounds above that. Even if there had been some of these pull-ups left over, there wasn’t any way they would have fit me.

On the other hand, it was clear that the bedwetting pull-ups my cousins had worn must have had larger sizing requirements, as they had fit me without any issues.

But that was a question I wasn’t going to be able to get an answer to.

I didn’t have a smartphone. Grace, who was six years older than me, had just recently been allowed to have one for herself.

Plus, Dad had made it very clear that he was capable of seeing what things I searched for when I used the family PC or tablet. That was a lesson I had found out the hard way while searching for information on what should have been an innocuous topic, only to have to immediately advert my eyes at what actually showed up on the screen. 

I had closed the web browser immediately, but somehow, I still ended up getting a lengthy lecture from my parents about internet safety, followed by being banned from using the tablet for several weeks.

A few loud thumps caused me to turn my gaze toward the ceiling. There was no doubt about it now. Someone was headed toward the basement stairs.

I hurried back over to the laundry room after shutting the closet door behind me, hoping that the pacifier would, in fact, be a good consolation prize.

I got on my knees and started opening some cabinets on the floor, pretending to be searching for Chester.

“Maddy, what are you doing?” 

I turned around to see Mom standing in the laundry room doorway.

“I’m looking for Chester,” I said, giving the pre-made excuse I had prepared in case any questioned why I was spending time alone in the basement. We’d gotten the two-year-old orange cat several months ago. He was gradually becoming more friendly with us, but he still took to hiding in odd places around the house for hours at a time.

“He’s upstairs napping behind the couch in the living room,” Mom said. “But you need to leave him alone if he is hiding away like that. You can play with him when he comes back out again.”

“But, Mom.”

“If he doesn’t want to be bothered, he doesn’t want to be bothered. He’ll let us know when he wants to be played with again.”

Without any further excuse to stay in the basement, I watched as Mom grabbed a box of pasta noodles off of a shelf and then followed her back up the stairs toward the kitchen.

I made my way upstairs to the bathroom on the second floor of the house. I did need to use the toilet anyway, and this would provide the perfect cover for getting the pacifier washed. I hoped that the hand soap I was using to clean off the pacifier wouldn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth. I made sure to rinse it off as thoroughly as possible before placing it back into my pocket for the short walk down the hallway to my bedroom.

I took the pacifier out of my pocket and laid down on the bed. There was still plenty of time before dinner for me to see how using the pacifier would go. I cautiously slid the pacifier into my mouth. I had done a good job of washing it; there was no yucky taste of built-up dust or soap. 

I sucked on the pacifier awkwardly, trying to figure out exactly how I was supposed to use it. There wasn’t any real taste to it, just the bland sensation of semi-squishy silicone. I felt really silly. It wasn’t doing anything for me. It wasn’t anywhere close to as fun as wearing a pull-up.

I used my tongue to rotate the pacifier in my mouth. Perhaps it had just been in the wrong position. Nope, it was still the same.

It wasn’t as though I disliked sucking on the pacifier. It didn’t taste bad or feel uncomfortable. But it didn’t do anything for me. It was nothing like the euphoria I had felt when I had been wearing a pull-up.

I tried, and failed, to imagine myself as a baby, sucking on a pacifier or drinking out of a bottle, but whatever had led me to be interested in wearing pull-ups again wasn’t in any way connected to other baby items. Having grown bored with this new toy already, I hid the pacifier in the bottom of my dresser, tucking it safely away until I would have the chance to return it to the closet.

Later that week, when I returned the pacifier to its place in the pull-up box in the basement closet, I also tried drinking from a baby bottle, which required me to be incredibly stealthy to clean and fill, even with only my older sister around at the time.

I managed to get away with it without being caught, but the result was the same, even though I had filled the baby bottle with my preferred filtered drinking water. Being a baby simply held no appeal to me. I couldn’t fathom wanting to suck on a pacifier or drink from a bottle for more than a minute or two. I certainly didn’t want to be a baby again.

But that didn’t matter.

As I had learned from my cousins, one didn’t have to be a baby to wear diapers.

 

---

Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/ 

[MinnesotaWriter]

Chapter 18: Only One Step Remains

Friday night was pizza night, and it sucked as I wasn’t even being allowed to have any pop.

Mom, Dad, and Grace each had a full glass of ice-cold root beer to go along with their pizza dinner. Even Jackson got a small glass of pop, albeit with a bunch of ice, so there wasn’t actually that much for him to drink. Like I had been at his age, he could get a little too hyper if he had too many sugary drinks. Any time he was given pop, my parents made sure it was of the uncaffeinated variety.

But I was the exception. I had a glass of water. Not even tea or juice. Both of those alternatives had been vetoed by Dad because they contained sugar. And it wasn’t even a big glass of water at that. I hoped this practice of limiting my fluids wouldn’t be so strict once my parents surrendered to buying me pull-ups. I took the tiniest of sips from the glass of water before taking another bite of my pizza.

I was making as much of an effort as possible to ration out the sips of water as I tried to finish my two slices of pizza. The last thing I needed was to finish the water before I had finished eating my pizza. That would leave my mouth parched for the remainder of the evening, as Mom had strongly implied that I wasn’t going to be allowed to have any more refills.

How many more times was I going to have to fake wetting the bed before they realized that this all was pointless?

I stared down at my slice of sausage and pepperoni pizza as we sat in the living room and ate our meal on the couch. I didn’t feel all that hungry at the moment, even though I hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch at school. Pizza just wasn’t as appetizing without a sugary, caffeinated drink to wash it down.

We were about twenty minutes into the movie my parents had chosen for tonight. The only good thing was that Jackson was at least old enough to be allowed to watch some PG movies, so we had something on to watch during dinner that was at least entertaining. The movie of choice tonight was “Spy Kids.”

I would have preferred to watch one of the Harry Potter movies, but Jackson still wasn’t old enough to start watching them, according to my parents, so that would have to wait for a time when he wasn’t around. It had been a lot easier in the few years when he had been too young to care about what was going on the TV. For now, I mostly had to stick with the books to get my magic fix.

Now everything that came on during the day had to be vetted to ensure that it was age appropriate for him. I knew Grace had her own shows that she watched on her computer in her room, but I didn’t have access to my own Netflix account like she did.

At least this was a movie I hadn’t seen before. We often got stuck watching a Pixar movie that I’d seen with Jackson a half-dozen times or more.

A line of dialogue from one of the parents in the movie caught my attention. The two adults – who were secretly spies – were expressing concerns about how their two kids were holding up without them.

“They can take care of themselves,” the mom said.

“They are still in diapers,” the dad said.

“Only one wears diapers. And only at night. It’s no big deal,” the mom said.

Jackson burst out laughing at that line of dialogue.

I did my best to continue focusing straight ahead at the TV. This was so embarrassing. Yes, having my parents see another reference to diapers being used for bedwetting could be helpful in my quest to get them to purchase those pull-ups, but it felt so awkward to have the possibility displayed right on the TV in front of everyone, especially as Grace was also aware of my bedwetting.

“That’s silly,” Jackson said. “Why aren’t they potty trained already?”

Grace, who was sitting closer to the TV on the same couch as me, turned back in my direction. From how red her face was, it was clear I wasn’t alone in being quite embarrassed by the scene in this movie.

“We’ll, they are old enough to be potty trained during the day,” Mom said. “But not everyone is able to potty train quickly at night. Sometimes their bladders don’t want to listen to them when they are asleep, at least not until they get older.”

My younger brother thankfully accepted the explanation without any other comments. I breathed a sigh of relief that Mom hadn’t decided to bring up the fact that everyone in our family, apart from him, was or had been a bedwetter at some point.

I tried to guess which of the two characters were in diapers at night. The oldest girl, Carmen, was the same age as me. Her younger brother in the movie, Juni, was nine years old. It really hoped that it was the boy who was the bedwetter.

Grace excused herself the moment she was finished with her pizza – if she had been allowed to take it to her room to eat, she most certainly would have chosen to do so – and left the room, presumably on her way upstairs to the bedroom. The only movies she enjoyed watching with us were animated ones. Grace always had a bunch of different facts on hand about the behind-the-scene details of how the animations for those films had been done. I wondered if that was something she’d be studying more in college in the fall.

Part of me wanted to get away from the movie as fast as possible. I had a sinking feeling that the topic of diapers was going to come up again at some point. There had to be a reveal as to which of the kids still needed them.

At the same time, I was curious about how it would turn out, despite how embarrassing it would be to have to sit around and be in the room when that scene played out on the TV.

I took one final sip of water and set the glass that was now only full of ice cubes to the side. With any luck, the ice cubs would melt enough by the end of the movie so I could get a few more sips of water. I still had half a slice of pizza left on my plate, but I didn’t feel like finishing it at the moment, not without something to drink to wash it down.

Beside that one oblique reference to diapers, the topic had been dropped off. I hoped that the audience would be left in suspense.

There hadn’t yet been any further conversations since this morning about the lack of effectiveness of the pill that was supposed to have prevented me from wetting the bed the night before

I had allowed my pretending about having a headache from the pills to drop off before Mom and Dad got home from work. I didn’t want to risk going too far overboard with it. I felt that my acting job from this morning had been sufficient to make them think that I was dealing with the same symptoms that Grace had when she had previously taken those pills.

Still, I wondered how many nights it would take for my parents to abandon the bedwetting pill as a solution to the nighttime accidents? I had to assume that as long as it wasn’t producing results, they would stop making me take it fairly soon.

I pulled my feet up onto the couch – which I now had to myself with Grace’s absence – and stretched out my legs. Chester hopped up on top of me a few minutes later and nestled in around my knees.

“Stop it, or I’ll call you names,” the younger brother, Juni, said, threatening his older sister during an argument.

“Go ahead, warthog. You got nothing on me,” Carmen replied.

I knew right away what was going to happen next. The writers had set Carmen up for a spectacular fall. Of course, it had to be the girl my age.

“Sure I do, diaper lady.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since forever. Mom made me swear not to mention it.”

Jackson was again laughing loudly at the scene. Why did everyone have to find the topic of older kids dealing with bedwetting to be so funny?

I really wanted to see the expressions on my parents’ faces at this moment. What were they thinking? Was this sparking an idea of something they could try if the pills stopped working? But I couldn’t dare bring myself to look back. I was both too embarrassed and concerned that they might get the wrong idea. I couldn’t have them thinking that I was either too eager for some nighttime protection or too embarrassed to be willing to try it. I wasn’t confident that I could work my facial expressions into an appropriate middle ground.

The movie continued for another half-hour or so, and it reached its conclusion without making any more references to the fact that the twelve-year-old girl still wore diapers to bed. Mom sent Jackson up to his room with instructions to tidy up his toys before it was time for his bath.

Now that it was summer, I still had a couple of hours before I would need to go to sleep. But this also meant that I was alone with my parents for the first time today.

The show had created a perfect opening for me to bring up the topic of pull-ups. But it was all too sudden. I hadn’t had enough time to figure out the proper way to word my request. And it was too important of a moment to try to do it impromptu.

Instead, I grabbed the third Harry Potter book off of the shelf and flipped to where I had been last reading it. It was my favorite of the series.

Mom preferred to read on her tablet while Dad was watching something on his phone with his earbuds in. It was probably a show that they didn’t think I was old enough to see yet.

I normally found it easy to get lost in the world of Hogwarts while reading, but I wasn’t able to concentrate on that tonight. My mind began to wander, wondering about how bedwetting would be handled in a magical world. I imagined there probably was a spell that would automatically dry off a wet bed.

Mom stepped out of the room for a few minutes. When she returned, she was again holding a small glass of water, and, like last night, I suspected she had those special pills in her other hand.

“Maddy,” she said. “It’s time to take your medicine again before bed.”

“Do I have to? It didn’t even work. And it gave me a really bad headache.”

“Why don’t we give it a try for a few more nights?” Mom asked. “If it doesn’t work, I promise I won’t make you take the pills again, OK? Perhaps there might be some other options your pediatrician can recommend on Monday instead.”

“Fine,” I mumbled. “A perfect way to ruin my first day off of school.”

It seemed like Mom meant other medications. I just hoped the doctor was familiar with nighttime pull-ups. Pull-ups. Mom. Why couldn’t she mention pull-ups? That had just been a subplot in the movie.

As if in reaction to my expression, Mom gave me a slight smile. “You don’t have to worry,” she said. “We never made your sister wear diapers to bed, and we aren’t going to do that for you.”

I did my best to put on a happy face. Someone my age who was actually a bedwetter would have to find a statement like that from their parents to be a relief.

But it was so hard to do so. With one single sentence, Mom had completely ruined all of my plans. I now realized that there wasn’t going to be any scenario where my parents were going to have me wear pull-ups of their own accord.

“Here,” Mom said, handing me the glass of water and the pills. “Best to get these down at least a little bit before you actually get to sleep.”

Still in a bit of shock from Mom’s pronouncement that she wouldn’t make me wear diapers, I downed the pills easily and then handed the empty glass of water back to her.

“Since you’re going back upstairs,” she said. “Can you please tell your sister that she needs to come down and do the dishes before she goes to bed?”

As I trudged up the stairs, my mind was in a state of complete shock as I tried to contemplate what I should do next. I had felt so confident over the past day that I was on a surefire route to success.

My mind kept replaying what Mom had said to me, parsing her words to try to find any wiggle room. She had made a small but important distinction. She had said that they wouldn’t force me to wear diapers, not that they didn’t believe diapers shouldn’t be used for bedwetting.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I reached the top of the stairs. There was still some hope for me, but I would have to somehow get it across to my parents that I would willingly accept wearing pull-ups at night and do so in a way that didn’t make it look like I was actually all that eager to wear them.

I needed to spend some time tonight thinking about how I was supposed to begin that conversation so I could be better prepared the next time that it came up. I silently chided myself for my lack of preparation. I should have been ready for that conversation tonight.

I was now standing at the end of the hallway. Like usual, Grace’s door was closed. I knocked on it a couple of times.

Unlike usual, there was no response from her. Not even a grumpy request to leave her alone. Somehow, she always seemed to know whether it was me or my parents knocking on the door. She would never be that sassy toward them.

I knocked on the door a second time. Still no response. Seriously, why was she not even bothering to answer?

I knew very well that I wasn’t supposed to open the door without Grace’s permission. She was not going to be happy with me.

But Mom had insisted that I pass along the message. Disobeying her was worse than bothering my sister.

I reached out and twisted the handle of the doorknob. I peeked inside as I slowly inched the door open. Grace was seated in the corner in front of her large monitor with her fancy computer box flashing all sorts of neon lights next to her.

I didn’t have a clear line of sight to what was on the screen, though it looked like she had one of her digital art programs open. Even from just inside the doorway, I could hear the faint sound of music coming from Grace’s headphones. The music had to be on crazy loud for me to be able to hear it from where I was standing.

“Hey!”

Still no response. I took another step forward. Still didn’t have a good view of what my older sister was drawing on her computer.

“Hey! Grace!”

There was a flurry of taps on the keyboard. The monitor flashed away to the home screen before I could get a good look at what she had been drawing.

Grace removed her wireless headphones and turned around to look at me. Her eyes widened. She glanced back at her monitor one more time before returning her gaze to me.

“What the heck, Madelyn. You’re supposed to knock.”

“I did knock. Mom sent me to tell you to come downstairs and wash the dishes.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “I haven’t forgotten. You’d think they wouldn’t care as long as I got it done before I went off to sleep. Just tell her I’ll be down in a bit.”

“You can tell her,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

I left Grace with her secrets and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

With a mouth full of sudsy toothpaste, I considered my options for tonight, now that I had taken the bedwetting pill again.

What I really wanted to do was pee in bed again while lying down, but there was no way I was going to be able to accomplish that until the morning. The pill was effective enough at limiting my body’s urine production to the point where there would be no way for me to pee at midnight while I was taking it before going to bed.

One option was to wait until tomorrow. There would be no rush to get out of bed on a Saturday morning. By the time I woke up, my bladder would be full enough to pee in bed. And unless I slept in way too long, Mom and Dad wouldn’t be coming in to check on me.

But that also meant that my bedwetting accident would be more obvious to everyone, as I would have to bring the bedding down to the laundry room while they were all awake. I didn’t care for that option.

That meant faking a late-night bedwetting accident was better than faking an early-morning one. But without the ability to make myself pee, I had to resort to the trick that I had previously used of just tossing my dry bedding into the washing machine to create the appearance of having cleaned up after a nighttime accident.

I waited for what seemed like forever, though probably less than an hour had passed, until I heard my parents finish getting ready for bed.

I emptied out the remainder of my secret soccer water bottle onto the middle of the bed. May as well have the bedding appear wet while carrying it downstairs in case I ran into anyone on the way. I had the feeling that Grace was still awake, though, with any luck. She would be far too distracted without whatever secret project she was working doing on her computer.

As I returned to my bedroom after getting the washing machine started, thought back again to what Mom had said regarding my sister. They hadn’t forced her to wear diapers. I wondered if they had suggested that option to her only for it to have been refused. Had she perhaps reacted in a way that was making them not want to broach the topic with me?

I finished putting a new set of sheets onto my bed, which crinkled beneath me as I tucked myself under the covers. I tried to focus on the one bright spot from this evening. My parents were completely aware that there were diapers that could be used by bedwetters my age.

I thought back to how much I had accomplished in the past week since I’d put this plan into action. I’d convinced my parents that my bedwetting was a real issue that wasn’t going away anytime soon. I’d managed to keep up the act despite their multiple attempts to find a solution. I’d discovered that they were informed about the possibility of diapers, even if it wasn’t something they were currently planning to have me use.

I’d made so much progress, and now only one step remained. I needed to convince them that I would be OK with wearing diapers again.

 

---

Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/ 

[erik_hamburg]

I love the chapter and the story with the spy kids. Jackson's reaction is also realistic, especially for boys his age. In a way, it also proves her mother's point about not making her wear diapers. They are associated with babies and the parents want to avoid treating her like one at all costs. 

But what about Grace? Maybe she secretly likes diapers too? Is drawing a nappy girl her hidden art project? We are going to find out!

[AnythingWillDo]

Ok…ok… Ok! WOW! I never thought that we would get the phrase ‘we won’t force you into diapers’. I mean we knew the parents had reasons but to just flat out say that without even suggesting them as an option must mean something. 
The obvious options are that one or both of the parents were traumatized with them as a kid or Grace absolutely refused them or had a traumatic moment. But something tells me that there might be something bigger at play. 
Grace’s drawings may be just a misdirection but it would be interesting to see the 2 of them team up to get diapers!

Oh, and will day accidents be revisited by Maddie. You can plan all you want for bedwetting but she may just forced their hand with day wetting. Can’t wait to see the next installment!

[Allman90]

man spy kids really was one of THOSE moments huh? that one for sure meant a lot for me as a kid

[LittleAcorn]

I love the Spy Kids reference.  That makes me wonder if I can incorporate some other movie bedwetting reference into a story too.

It feels like there's something else going on here that's being hinted it.  Grace's secret drawing is the most obvious example, but I'm sure there will be more obvious ones in hindsight.  I'm looking forward to finding out what it is.

[MinnesotaWriter]

7 hours ago, erik_hamburg said:

I love the chapter and the story with the spy kids. Jackson's reaction is also realistic, especially for boys his age. In a way, it also proves her mother's point about not making her wear diapers. They are associated with babies and the parents want to avoid treating her like one at all costs. 

But what about Grace? Maybe she secretly likes diapers too? Is drawing a nappy girl her hidden art project? We are going to find out!

Oh, there's definitely something going on with Grace. My lips are sealed on that for now.

6 hours ago, AnythingWillDo said:

Ok…ok… Ok! WOW! I never thought that we would get the phrase ‘we won’t force you into diapers’. I mean we knew the parents had reasons but to just flat out say that without even suggesting them as an option must mean something. 
The obvious options are that one or both of the parents were traumatized with them as a kid or Grace absolutely refused them or had a traumatic moment. But something tells me that there might be something bigger at play. 
Grace’s drawings may be just a misdirection but it would be interesting to see the 2 of them team up to get diapers!

Oh, and will day accidents be revisited by Maddie. You can plan all you want for bedwetting but she may just forced their hand with day wetting. Can’t wait to see the next installment!

Given everything else the parents were trying, along with their lengthy experience of dealing with Grace's bedwetting, the lack of pull-ups/diapers very much had to be an intentional decision. We'll  get some more details about the reasons behind that decision later on.

As for why the topic came up. Maddy's mom must have misread her daughter's expressions regarding the diaper references in the movie (thinking her daughter was upset/worried at the idea of wearing protection for her bedwetting), and she was seeking to re-assure her daughter that she wouldn't have to wear them.
 

53 minutes ago, Allman90 said:

man spy kids really was one of THOSE moments huh? that one for sure meant a lot for me as a kid

For sure, I would have considered 2012 as another option, if Jackson had been old enough to watch it. That was so bizarre watching it in the theater without a heads up about that product placement for Goodnites.

45 minutes ago, LittleAcorn said:

I love the Spy Kids reference.  That makes me wonder if I can incorporate some other movie bedwetting reference into a story too.

It feels like there's something else going on here that's being hinted it.  Grace's secret drawing is the most obvious example, but I'm sure there will be more obvious ones in hindsight.  I'm looking forward to finding out what it is.

There are lots of movies and shows with diaper references. It can be a good plot device to start conversations about diapers/bedwetting, etc. with other characters in the story.

And yeah, there's a lot more going on in the story. There are several other additional storylines that have been briefly hinted at that will be expanding in some chapters that are coming up soon. I'm thinking this story ends up possibly reaching 100 chapters, so there's a lot still to come.

[MinnesotaWriter]

Chapter 19: Not the Same as Me

Note: In this chapter, a character uses offensive language about a person with disabilities. This is not an endorsement of that behavior.

I shivered as I held the ice pack against my forehead, but I had no one to blame but myself for the situation I found myself in on Saturday morning.

This morning, I had again kept up the pretense that the bedwetting pills had given me some annoying headaches. I had gotten out of bed just in time to snag the last of the pancakes that Dad had made for breakfast. From the look on Mom’s face as I entered the kitchen, it was clear that she had already noticed the sheets I had tossed into the washing machine last night. But with Jackson in the room, there wasn’t an opportunity to have a conversation about bedwetting again.

I groaned and rubbed my forehead frequently while eating my breakfast. It must have been a stellar acting job because no sooner had I finished breakfast than Dad had come up to me with an ice pack in hand.

The good thing was that my parents believed me. The bad thing was that they believed me and had offered me an ice pack to help dull the pain. I had no choice but to accept it, so now I was lying on my back on the couch, painfully watching the seconds pass by. I trembled a little as another shiver ran all the way through my body. A little bit longer, and perhaps I could pretend that I was cured for the time being.

Mom had promised to not make me take the pills for more than a few more nights if they continued to prove ineffective. I was going to hold her to it. I didn’t want to have to keep faking a headache every morning. It wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as faking the bedwetting.

My phone buzzed. With one hand still holding the ice pack to my forehead, I checked my most recent message. It was from Angie, who was bored out of her mind on the road trip her family was taking out to South Dakota. This morning, her family was at Mouth Rushmore, and she’d taken a selfie to share with Emma and me. I really hoped the vacation my parents had planned for later in the summer was going to have better destinations than that.

“Since you’re not feeling well, I moved your sheets over to the dryer,” Mom said as she stepped into the living room.

I groaned, this time from the fact that my bedwetting wasn’t exactly being treated like a secret rather than from faking a headache. With Grace fully aware of it, Mom and Dad weren’t showing any reservations about bringing up that topic with me while she was around.

“Is your headache still pretty bad?” Mom asked. “Perhaps you should stay home today to rest up rather than going over to Emma’s place?”

There was no way I was going to be spending the first day of summer stuck at home. Even with Angie gone, I still had plans to bike across the neighborhood to hang out with Emma for the afternoon.

“I’m sure I’ll be feeling better by then,” I insisted. “I think the ice pack is really helping.”

“We’ll see how you’re feeling later,” Mom conceded. “I can always drive you over instead.”

I re-adjusted the ice pack on my forehead, trying to find a way to hold it in place that wasn’t so cold. All of us were in the living room except Jackson, who was playing with Legos in his bedroom. For the sake of all our feet, those evil bricks were now banned from being anywhere else in the house.

After a few more minutes had passed, I set the ice pack down. Hopefully, that recovery time from the headache wasn’t too unbelievable.

“There was something else your mom and I were wanting to talk to you girls about.”

I looked over at my sister before looking up at Dad. Grace appeared just as confused about what this could mean as me.

“Maddy,” Dad said. “Since you are going to be turning thirteen in a week, we’ve decided that you’re going to be able to stay home by yourself this summer.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Grace said.

I glared at my sister. “No need to act that excited about it.” I did see where Grace was coming from, though. Having to be home with me had limited some of her opportunities for work and hanging out with her friends during previous summers.

“Hey,” Grace said. “I’ve been asking Mom and Dad to let you do it for a while now.”

“It’s a lot of responsibility,” Mom said. “And you need to understand that this is a privilege that can be taken away if you aren’t careful with it. There are some rules you need to follow. It’s similar to the rules we had for your sister when she was your age. No having any friends over while we are gone. No using the stove or the oven….”

A picture of what those days at home might look like this summer came into focus in my head as Mom continued to go over all the things I’d need to do to be allowed to stay in the house by myself.

I had already thought this summer was going to be the best one ever, but this, having the whole house to myself? The implications became immediately clear. With the whole house to myself, I would have so much more freedom to experiment with peeing my pants.

What should I try first? I wanted to hold my bladder to the point of bursting before I let it out. I wanted to see what it would be like to wet my pants while sitting down. Maybe I could try peeing myself with different outfits on.

“Maddy, Maddy.” Someone was snapping their fingers and saying my name.

I blinked rapidly and returned my gaze back to Mom.

“Madelyn,” Mom said, “We want to give you more responsibilities, but you need to pay attention.”

“Sorry,” I said. I found myself beginning to subconsciously pick on my fingernails. I hoped that my sudden daydreaming hadn’t ruined this new opportunity before it had already begun.

Grace laughed. “I bet she was thinking about how to sneak in a boyfriend while I’m gone.”

“Eww,” I said. “No. Gross.”

“Your sister is right, though,” Dad said. “No friends over when you’re by yourself means no boyfriends as well.”

“Or girlfriends,” Mom said.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have either of those.”

“What, you want to grow up to be a crazy cat lady?” Grace asked.

I looked over at Chester, who was napping in a sunspot on the carpet in front of the window.

“That doesn’t seem like a bad idea.”

<><><>

I sat on my bed with the fourth Harry Potter book in my hands. I wasn’t as big a fan of the Triwizard Tournament story arc, but I always found the Quidditch World Cup to be fascinating. It would be enough just to have the opportunity to go to a soccer World Cup at some point. If only I could convince my parents to get tickets when the U.S. hosted it in several years.

I had already breezed through the previous book earlier this morning after having finally discarded the ice pack. Once the conversation about being allowed to stay home alone this summer had ended, I had retreated up to my bedroom to read. It was too noisy downstairs to concentrate.

My eyes flickered back and forth rapidly across the pages. My teachers always told me I read too fast. I didn’t see how that was supposed to be a bad thing.

“Maddy. Maddy. Maddy!”

My head snapped up as I finally caught wind that someone was calling my name. Mom was standing a few feet away, looking down at me. I hadn’t even heard her knock or open my bedroom door, which should have been enough to get my attention.

“Can’t you pick out something else to read?” Mom asked as she looked down at the book in my hands. “There are plenty of other books to choose from in the basement.”

That was another reason I had gone off to my bedroom to read. The Harry Potter series was pretty much the only books I’d read over the past two years outside of anything that had been required for school assignments. I hadn’t counted how many times I’d gone through the series, but it had to be a lot. Sometimes, I’d read through the books in order, but other times, I’d jump around to different ones depending on which one I felt like reading at the moment.

My parents didn’t have anything against the Harry Potter books. They just were overly insistent that I try to expand my reading interests. None of the other series they’d thrown my way had caught my imagination in the same way, so I usually conducted my Harry Potter reading out of sight as to avoid any criticism. My parents had never explicitly banned me from reading them, but they had very much pressured me to not read them so often.

“Your sheets are dry now,” Mom said. “Can you please go grab them from the laundry room? And make sure to fold them neatly and put them back in the closet. I don’t want to come back up and see them tossed in a pile in the corner.”

“Can I at least finish this chapter?”

“Right away, please,” Mom said. “It’s almost time for lunch.”

“Can I at least not take those pills again tonight?”

“Let’s just try it for two more nights,” Mom said. “That way, if it hasn’t worked by the time we take you to the doctor, then we can talk with them about what to do next.”

I suppressed a sigh as I got off of the bed and headed toward the hallway.

“And while you’re down there, don’t forget to clean the litter box,” Mom said, calling out after me as I reached the stairs. “You know you’re supposed to do that in the morning before going off to play.”

“Stupid chores,” I muttered to myself. I let my feet fall just a little harder on the stairs as I trudged down the steps on the way to the main floor.

We had sadly eaten all the pizza last night, which meant no leftovers for lunch. Instead, Dad was busy in the kitchen, with multiple pots and pans set out on the stovetop.

I tried to avoid making eye contact with anyone as I made my way back upstairs with a bundle of laundry in my arms, enduring the walk of shame in silence as I carried the evidence of my presumed bedwetting back up to my bedroom.

<><><> 

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Emma said as she opened the front door to let me into her house.

I had biked over to Emma’s house after lunch, though it had taken some work to convince Mom that my fake headaches had cleared up enough for me to leave the house after all. But she had still made me take a couple of Tylenol pills before I left.

Even though Emma’s house was on the opposite side of the neighborhood, it was an easy trek, one that I had made countless times before.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

I thought about that for a second. “Good news.”

“The good news is I’m still free to go to the park.”

That didn’t make much sense to me. Why would Emma not have been able to go to the park near her house, where we often hung out during the summer?

“What’s the bad news?”

Emma raised her eyebrows and looked over her shoulder. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Her.”

I took another step into the house and looked over Emma’s shoulder. The girl in the distance bore a slight resemblance to Emma, enough so that I had to guess that they were related in some way. They both had curly brown hair, though the girl's hair was done up in braided pigtails while Emma had left her shoulder-length hair unbraided.

But it was how they were dressed that differentiated them. Like me, Emma was wearing soccer shorts and a T-shirt. The girl was wearing long pink and white striped socks that came up to her knees. She had on a plaited, muted-pink skirt and a white shirt with a Hufflepuff emblem in the middle. There was a pink watch on her left hand and a half-dozen colorful bracelets in different styles on her right hand.

But what stood out most was the set of earmuffs she was wearing. I settled for that word rather than headphones, because something just looked off about them.

The girl hadn’t turned in our way yet. She was facing the other direction, staring off into space.

I lowered my voice so the girl wouldn’t hear me. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, despite whatever misgivings Emma seemed to have. “Why is she bad news?”

“She’s my cousin, Hannah. Her family has been staying with us for the weekend. She is bad news because I accidentally let her overhear that I was going to go to the park with you, and now she wants to come as well. She threw a tantrum when I told her she couldn’t, and then my mom said I had to let her tag along.”

I looked over again at Emma’s cousin before turning back to face Emma. Setting aside the fact that a girl our age throwing a tantrum was a bit strange, I still didn’t get why Emma was concerned. “So?”

Emma opened her mouth to respond, but Hannah ran over to greet me before Emma had a chance to say anything further. Emma grimaced as Hannah stood next to her.

“Hi!” Hannah said, waving her hand at me.

“Um, hi,” I said in return. I noticed that Hannah was looking down at my waist rather than up at my face.

“OK,” Emma said after the long silence that followed that awkward introduction. “Hannah, this is my friend Maddy. Maddy, this is my cousin Hannah.”

“What happened to your fingernails?” Hannah blurted out. “They look all chewed up.”

Were my nails that bad? I hastily pulled my hands up in front of my face. I did have a habit of picking on them absentmindedly, but it was embarrassing to have a stranger call it out so bluntly.

“I paint mine so I don’t bite on them,” Hannah said. She thrust her hands out in front of me, showing off nails painted in yellow and black. “I did them in Hufflepuff colors. Have you ever read-”

Buzz. Buzz. The screen on a bright pink watch Hannah was wearing around her wrist went off. She paused what she was saying mid-sentence and dashed off around the corner.

“Whatever you do, don’t mention that you like Harry Potter,” Emma said as soon as Hannah was out of sight.

“Why? I like Harry Potter.”

“I’ve had to listen to her yack about it for the past two days non-stop. It’s so annoying. She’s even more of a chatterbox than you. Can’t get her to stop for nothing, so don’t you dare get her started on it again.”

“And she can hear us fine with those earmuffs?”

“Yeah, as long as you aren’t whispering,” Emma said. “They’re supposed to reduce noise or something since she’s supposedly sensitive to loud sounds.”

“What’s the deal with her watch?”

“It’s to help remind her to go use the toilet.”

“But, like, why would she need to be reminded to do that?”

Emma rubbed her face with her hand. “Yeah, I should have warned you. She has autism. She acts like a toddler more than a teenager a lot of the time. You have no idea what I’ve had to deal with since she got here two days ago. I was hoping to get away from that weirdo for the afternoon, but now I’m stuck with her.”

I thought through all the details of my brief interaction with Hannah so far. That made sense. Something had felt obviously off about her.

“I suppose she is a bit different.”

“Oh, that’s not even the worst of it,” Emma said. “She still pees the bed every night. Can you believe that? She’s already thirteen, and her mom has to help her put on a diaper before tucking her into her sleeping bag. And, of course, she has to be sleeping on the floor in my room. I’ve been using a scented odor spray, but my bedroom still smells like piss.”

I prayed fervently that I could keep a poker face and not give any hint of what I was thinking. It wasn’t as though I wasn’t aware of the fact that my friends had a poor view of kids our age who wet the bed.

In the three years since I had learned about two of my own cousins being bedwetters, I hadn’t ever come across another kid who was a bedwetter. I had practically a million questions, not that I could ask Emma any of them directly.

“She really, like, pees in a diaper? That’s so gross,” I said.

That only encouraged Emma to continue her rant about her cousin.

“Honestly, her parents should probably just make her wear diapers during the day. She pissed herself all over the couch last night when we were watching a movie. It was so gross. She didn’t even really seem to notice. Just sat there with her soaked clothes until my aunt said something about it.”

I fidgeted and began picking at my nails again, even though there was hardly much left on the ends of my fingers.

Like Hannah, I had also been wetting the bed and peeing my pants during the day. But I was different. I wasn’t some weirdo like her. I had full control over what I was doing. I just did it because it felt good. It wasn’t anything like Hannah did, basically behaving like a toddler who wasn’t fully toilet trained.

Hannah came sprinting back around the corner with a smile on her face, nearly running into me as her feet slid on the wood floor. “Are we going to the park now?” she asked Emma.

“Yes, we’re going to the park,” Emma said curtly. “Go get your shoes on.”

Hannah walked over to the doorway and grabbed a pair of white and teal shoes off of the shoe rack. I noticed that instead of laces, they had Velcro straps.

Emma leaned in toward my ear and whispered to me. “I know right, she wears those cause she can’t even tie her shoes properly.”

We waited for Hannah to finish getting her shoes on and then followed her out the door.

“Aren’t you going to grab your bike from the garage?” I asked Emma once we were in the driveway.

“We’re going to walk since there isn’t a bike for Hannah, at least not one with training wheels,” Emma said.

Hannah appeared oblivious to our conversation. I was wondering exactly how well those noise-reducing earmuffs worked. She was sitting on her knees in the grass next to the driveway, plucking dandelions. The weeds were still bright yellow, not close to the point where their seeds would be ready to blow away.

The park, situated near the center of the neighborhood, was only a couple of blocks down. It was a massive complex. There was a large playground, a splash pad, a sand volleyball court, a couple of baseball diamonds, and, of course, some soccer fields. It would have been nicer to bike over to it, but walking along the sidewalk wasn’t that bad. This part of the neighborhood was fairly quiet, without much through traffic.

Emma and I both had our soccer cleats and a soccer ball tucked inside matching drawstring bags on our backs. Emma shifted over to the left side of me, leaving me between her and her cousin. As we walked down the sidewalk, there was a sound coming from Hannah’s direction that brought back an old memory. Could that faint rustling sound be what I thought it was?

I didn’t have long to consider it. When the park came into view after turning around the corner, Hannah darted out ahead of us, skipping energetically down the sidewalk with her arms swaying awkwardly out by her sides.

Emma put both her hands on her face. “She’s such a fucking retard.”

I bit my lip and stared down at my feet as I continued to walk alongside Emma.

There had been one time five or six years back when Grace has used that word at me during an argument we had been having. The details of what had led up to that confrontation had been long forgotten, but the aftermath of it was still stuck in my mind.

My parents had always been fully opposed to corporal punishment. They’d never once laid a hand on my bottom. As far as I was aware, that was the only time Grace had ever been given a spanking. Her face had been puffy, red, and wet with tears when my parents brought her back to apologize to me afterward. I still remembered how Grace had squirmed uncomfortably on the couch that evening.

The message had been crystal clear. And that word had never been heard again in our house. I wouldn’t have ever considered using that word against someone else, no matter how angry I was or what I thought of them.

Even years later, when I first discovered a word that rhymes with duck, the only thing my dad had told me was that unless I had just whacked my finger with a hammer or stubbed my toe, that I shouldn’t be using that type of language.

As uncomfortable as I was with what Emma had just said, I found myself agreeing with the overall sentiment. I felt uncomfortable around Hannah in a way that I hadn’t felt about anyone else before. I cringed as I watched her prance around in the playground in a way more reminiscent of girls my brother’s age. Something about her rubbed me the wrong way, like a piece of chalk being slowly dragged across a blackboard.

“How long is her family staying?” I asked.

“Just through the weekend, but it might end up being forever. They are looking for a house in the area. There apparently is a school around here that her parents want to send her to, you know, one for special kids like her,” Emma said, making air quotes around the word “special” with her hands.

“Emma, can you push me?” Hannah yelled in the distance.

We looked over at the playground. Hannah was sitting stationary on a swing.

Emma sighed again. “Better go do it. I’ll hear it from Mom if she finds out that Hannah didn’t have a good time at the park.”

I followed Emma over to the swing set, watching as she stepped behind her cousin and took hold of the swing, pulling it back as far as she could before running forward and giving it a big push. Emma sprinted underneath Hannah as she flew in the air and then came to stand next to me.

There wasn’t any mistaking it as Hannah flew up on the swing. The wind caught hold of her skirt and lifted it up, revealing that Hannah wasn’t wearing ordinary underwear. My suspicions about the sound I’d heard on our walk over to the park were confirmed.

There was a short flash of pastel colors on a material far bulkier than normal underwear. I waited with bated breath as Hannah swung backward and then came up toward me again. This time, my eyes were locked in.

When her skirt lifted up in the air again, I caught sight of a pattern I had only previously seen in magazine ads. What Hannah had on beneath her skirt was nothing other than the pull-ups I was so badly wanting for myself.

---

Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/ 

[thedman]

So if Hannah is already wearing pull ups during the day and Emma is suggesting that she should be on diapers, does that mean that the diapers that were referenced for night time are actual diapers as opposed to pull ups?

[DL64]

I have a feeling there will be no diapers before the doctor's visit, but that this visit will bring about the pull-ups, and that the doctor will have something to do with it.

[spark]

Emma is not a very nice person.  That typical for kids in middle school, they are awful people.   They are mean, self-centered, narcistic monsters (a bit like politicians).   

When I was teaching middle school, I heard a theory that middle school is like another version of the terrible twos.   They are ready to take on the world, but still think they are the center of the universe.   FTR- by 10th grade- kids stop being mean- they are just stupid.

I think you've shared that you're writing Maddy as a bit on the spectrum.   She doesn't appear to be neuro-typical, but after 23 years in biz- I'm not sure what neuro-typical means.    It just some students less typical than others.

Based on how you've written her, I don't think she would have an IEP, but she is not like Sarah (AMR) either.   She strikes me as a C+/B- student.  FTR- that was me.   I got an A in Geography (I'm a bit of savant) the 1st quarter, and my dad said "why don't do that all the time?"  I made sure not to make that mistake again.   I was OK C's,  My dad wanted B's.  I shot for a B, but aimed low.  By my senior year- my aim was really good.  I had that C+ dialed in.

[MinnesotaWriter]

23 hours ago, thedman said:

So if Hannah is already wearing pull ups during the day and Emma is suggesting that she should be on diapers, does that mean that the diapers that were referenced for night time are actual diapers as opposed to pull ups?

That's a good question. In the ABDL world, we definitely make a clear distinction between pull-ups and diapers, something I've done for the most part in all my previous stories.

That isn't the case for a lot of people outside of the community. Most adults would refer to depends as an Adult Diaper, for example. In this case, with Emma, the ambiguity is intentional.

22 hours ago, DL64 said:

I have a feeling there will be no diapers before the doctor's visit, but that this visit will bring about the pull-ups, and that the doctor will have something to do with it.

There are a number of different scenarios for how Maddy first gets a hold of pull-ups. She needs them by the birthday sleepover, which is less than a week away, so whatever way it goes, it will have to be relatively soon.

13 hours ago, spark said:

Emma is not a very nice person.  That typical for kids in middle school, they are awful people.   They are mean, self-centered, narcistic monsters (a bit like politicians).   

When I was teaching middle school, I heard a theory that middle school is like another version of the terrible twos.   They are ready to take on the world, but still think they are the center of the universe.   FTR- by 10th grade- kids stop being mean- they are just stupid.

I think you've shared that you're writing Maddy as a bit on the spectrum.   She doesn't appear to be neuro-typical, but after 23 years in biz- I'm not sure what neuro-typical means.    It just some students less typical than others.

Based on how you've written her, I don't think she would have an IEP, but she is not like Sarah (AMR) either.   She strikes me as a C+/B- student.  FTR- that was me.   I got an A in Geography (I'm a bit of savant) the 1st quarter, and my dad said "why don't do that all the time?"  I made sure not to make that mistake again.   I was OK C's,  My dad wanted B's.  I shot for a B, but aimed low.  By my senior year- my aim was really good.  I had that C+ dialed in.

Emma certainly isn't nice, though I'd say she probably takes it further than your average middle schooler. And yes, Maddy is very much written as being neurodivergent. How she relates to Hannah is important for her development as the story goes forward.

[MinnesotaWriter]

Chapter 20: Euphemisms

Mesmerized by what I was seeing, I watched Hannah swing for another minute. Once Emma had gotten her cousin started with a push, Hannah didn’t have any issues maintaining her momentum on the swing set. Hannah swung her legs back and forth in a rhythm that kept her flying high into the sky each time she swung toward me.

Every time Hannah was vaulted up into the air by the swing, the wind seemed to catch her skirt without fail, lifting it up enough to give me a brief glimpse of what I was by now one hundred percent certain was a pull-up. I wondered if Hannah knew how little her outfit did to conceal the pull-up and if that was something that concerned her in any way.

Emma was standing next to me in front of the swing set, but she had pulled out her phone and was tapping away at it. If Emma had gotten a glimpse of her cousin’s undergarments, she didn’t say anything to me.

Despite the suspicion that I had heard some crinkling from Hannah as we walked to the park, I was still somewhat surprised to find that Hannah was wearing a pull-up. Emma’s tale about Hannah wetting herself on the couch – and her statement that she thought Hannah ought to be put back in diapers during the day as well as at night – had made it appear as though Hannah hadn’t been wearing any daytime protection.

But I was certain my eyes hadn’t deceived me.

I had accepted Emma’s statement about Hannah’s bedwetting without thinking too hard on the matter. After all, my sister had wet the bed until she was my age, and it was clear from the advertisements I’d seen that pull-ups were sold for bedwetters the same age as Hannah and me.

So, finding out that a thirteen-year-old girl was still wetting the bed – though unusual – wasn’t a surprise. And, from what I’d learned recently in conversations with my parents and Grace, there seemed to be some clear medical explanations for why a kid my age could experience bedwetting.

But this – a girl my age needing to wear a pull-up during the day – was something altogether different to consider. It was like that five- or six-year-old girl I had seen getting her pull-up changed at the mall last week, another shock to my preconceptions about pull-ups and who used them.

But why? That was the question I couldn’t escape. Why would a girl my age have difficulty controlling her bladder while she was awake? I wanted to pee my pants, and even trying to get my body to do it intentionally took an insane amount of effort. Using the toilet was natural, and it took a lot of convincing to get my body to do otherwise.

So, what was the deal with Hannah?

I looked around the playground. It had been several years since I had lost interest in running through it. We weren’t the only people using the playground by far. There were a couple of younger kids on swings further down the line on the swing set, and behind us on the playground, and another dozen or so from toddlers to kids a couple years younger than others running around on different play sets and equipment.

I cringed a little as Hannah’s skirt lifted up to flash her pull-up again. I found myself getting embarrassed at the thought of what anyone else at the park would think of Hannah – and by association, Emma and me – if they were to notice that Hannah was wearing a pull-up, and about the derogatory word Emma had used to describe her cousin on the way to the park.

As my parents had explained from their own experience, bedwetting was a normal thing that could happen to any kid, so while it was still embarrassing to have my family view me as a bedwetter, I could handle that as it allowed me to get pull-ups for myself.

I remember that Emma had mentioned that her cousin had autism as if that was a one-size-fits-all explanation for all of her strange behavior. That had to be the explanation for why the girl wasn’t smart enough to use the toilet, despite being a teenager.

“Alight, she’s good now. Come on,” Emma said, looking up from her phone. “She’s perfectly fine playing by herself.”

We walked a short way from the playground to a nearby soccer field that wasn’t being used.

I sat down on the grass and switched over from my tennis shoes to the soccer cleats I had brought along in my bag. I considered the possibility of taking a pull-up or two from Hannah once we got back to Emmah’s house.

If I hadn’t already begun my bedwetting plan, I was sure I could have arranged to spend the night at their place. That would have been a perfect chance to get some pull-ups and learn more about why Hannah needed them. But with my parents now thinking I was a bedwetter, and with them not having gotten me any pull-ups yet, that wasn’t an option.

Besides, as impatient as I was getting for pull-ups – seeing another girl my age wearing them wasn’t helping – I felt certain that I would be getting some from my parents soon, so unless the perfect opportunity presented itself, it wasn’t worth risking it to get any from Hannah.

These soccer fields were currently set up for elementary-age kids, so the soccer goals were a lot smaller than the full-sized ones we typically played on. But that worked well for playing simple games of one-on-one and for practicing being more accurate with our shots. It was a shame that Angie wasn’t around, as she would have been able to play goalie for us. Instead, Emma and I took turns attempting to block each other’s shots.

I dribbled the soccer ball out past the penalty box, which, like the goal, was proportionally smaller than the field we played our games on. Emma positioned herself in the middle of the goal, a few feet off of the line.

Behind her, Hannah was having fun by herself on the playground. She had moved on from the swing set. Now she was busy climbing on a massive, circular jungle gym. Twisting through the different rings and levels until she was near the top of the structure.

I pushed the ball ahead of me to the right with the outside of my right foot before stepping ahead to line up a shot. I pulled my leg back as far as I could before swinging it forward. I wasn’t going to give Emma a chance to stop it from going into the net.

In the distance, Hannah had reached the top of the jungle gym. Even from as far away as I was, it was still obvious that she wasn’t wearing normal underwear. That made me even more curious. Emma hadn’t seemed to have had any reservations in talking about all the issues she had with her cousin. I couldn’t see how Emma could have been unaware of her cousin wearing a pull-up.

That brief moment of taking my eye off the goal caused me to send the shot well over the top. The soccer ball sailed in the air.

“Seriously,” Emma said. “You would have missed that by a ton, even on a regular-sized goal.”

I groaned and jogged past Emma. It was my responsibility to retrieve the ball since I had missed the shot. Hannah saw me approaching and slid down from on top of the jungle gym. She jogged up to grab the soccer ball, which had rolled a few feet onto the rubber surface of the playground.

“I want to play soccer now,” she said, starting to walk with me toward the soccer field.

I really wanted to say no. But Hannah hadn’t even phrased it as a question. By the time I had managed to think of a somewhat polite way to tell her to go back to the playground, we were already nearly back to the soccer field.

Emma had taken advantage of the break to grab a water bottle from her bag. She had just finished drinking from it when Hannah and I returned.

“Can I have some of your water?” Hannah asked her cousin.

Emma pointed to the other side of the playground. “Go get something from the drinking fountain over there.”

“I tried it. It’s too cold,” Hannah whined. “It makes my teeth hurt. Can I have yours instead?”

“Fine,” Emma said. She didn’t look happy about it, but she handed the water bottle to Hannah nonetheless.

Hannah pushed open the cap, and then raised the water bottle right up to her mouth, placing her lips on it.

“No, no, no,” Emma said, snatching the bottle out of her cousin’s grip. “Don’t be gross. I don’t want your germs on my water bottle.”

Hannah stomped both of her feet on the ground. “That’s not fair. I need something to drink.”

I winced at the sound of her high-pitched whining, but I wasn’t going to offer her my water bottle. I didn’t want anyone’s germs on it, either.

“You can have my water bottle,” Emma said. “But you need to pour the water into your mouth.”

Hannah crossed her arms. “I can’t do that. It will spill.”

Emma tilted her head back and demonstrated for her cousin, pouring water from the bottle into her mouth without having her lips touch it. “That’s how you do it.”

Emma handed the water bottle back to her cousin.

Hannah hesitantly raised the bottle in the air, but she didn’t have it aimed correctly at her mouth. When she squeezed the water bottle to get a drink, the water instead sprayed all across her face and dripped down onto her shirt.

Emma looked as though she was having a hard time suppressing a laugh as she watched her cousin struggle to line up the water bottle for another attempt at taking a drink.

The second attempt didn’t go any better than the first. And now Hannah’s face and shirt were all wet.

“I can’t do it,” Hannah pouted. She looked like she was going to start crying.

“Fine,” Emma said. “Drink it however you want. You can have the rest of it.”

Hannah raised the bottle to her lips and sucked on it almost like a sippy up.

“See what I have to deal with,” Emma said to me quietly. “She whines like a baby when she doesn’t get what she wants. If I hadn’t given her the water bottle, she would have been tattling on me to my mom and aunt when we got home.”

“All done,” Hannah announced. She handed the now-empty water bottle back to Emma.

“Why don’t you go back to the playground,” Emma said. “Maddy and I are going to play soccer for a little while more, and then we will head back home.”

“I can play soccer, too,” Hannah said.

I watched as Emma started to say something and then bit her lip. I remembered what she had said just earlier about how she was supposed to be accommodating to her cousin. “Yes, that would be nice,” Emma said flatly.

“Awesome!” Hannah yelled. She walked up to one of the soccer balls and kicked it toward the goal, putting it straight down the middle. Hannah turned around proudly toward us. “See.”

“Yeah, and I would have blocked it if I was playing goalie,” Emma said with a wave of her hand.

We decided to play a game called World Cup. The rules were simple. One person would guard the goal while the other two players competed against each other to score a goal. Whoever scored had to take the next turn at playing goalie.

The game started off with Emma standing in the goal. She threw the ball out toward the middle of the field, and Hannah and I raced off to get it. Hannah was unexpectedly fast for how awkward her running form was. She made it to the ball first and began to turn to dribble back toward the goal.

I backpedaled a little as I kept myself in front of Hannah, waiting for her to lose control so I could step in and easily poke the ball away from her. But, to my surprise, she was handling the ball much better than I had anticipated.

Still, as she neared the top of the penalty box, I swung my foot forward, thinking I was going to get an easy steal, but instead of making contact with the ball, my cleated foot swung harmlessly through the air, and I nearly lost my balance.

I didn’t know how Hannah had managed to evade me, but I turned to see her spinning past me, all while maintaining perfect control of the soccer ball with her feet. She took a shot at the goal and put it past Emma and into the corner of the net. She jumped up and down in celebration, again showing off the pull-up she was wearing.

Emma started laughing at me. “I can’t believe you fell for that move.”

“You’re the one who let it in the goal,” I retorted.

“Only cause I was too distracted by you spinning in a circle.”

I made Emma pay for that comment by stealing the ball from her and getting a goal of my own. Hannah’s goalkeeping skills weren’t anywhere near the level of her dribbling, so that wasn’t as much of a challenge.

We continued our game for another twenty minutes or so, though the question of who was the winner was never really in doubt. Hannah had easily scored more goals than either Emma or me. It made more sense when she mentioned that she played the forward position on her school team back in Illinois.

After scoring another goal, it was my turn to guard the goal while the two cousins faced off against each other again.

I punted the ball gently, sending it out for them to chase after it. Hannah again reached the ball first and managed to keep it away from her cousin until she was closer to the goal. Hannah sidestepped deftly past Emma, but before Hannah could get the shot off, Emma shoved Hannah off of the ball with her hip, causing Hannah to fall to the ground. I was so caught off guard by the move that I wasn’t ready for Emma’s shot, which sailed past me untouched into the goal.

Emma did an exaggerated celebration, sliding down on her knees on the grass. The way she had been so aggressive toward her cousin shocked me. No hard fouls was one of the unspoken rules we had when we were practicing.

As Hannah lay on the ground for a moment, I got a much closer look at her pull-up than before. It did appear as though she had managed to keep it dry so far.

After a few seconds, Hannah stood up awkwardly, brushing off her skirt as she did so.

Beep. Beep. Beep. The timer on Hannah’s watch began to go off. Unlike when we had been back at Emma’s house, Hannah didn’t rush off to use the restroom. She tapped frantically at her watch, finally getting the alarm to shut off.

Hannah got into position next to me as Emma grabbed the ball to walk toward the goal.

Emma looked over at her cousin. “Aren’t you going to take your potty break?”

“I can wait until we’re home,” Hannah insisted.

“Hannah,” Emma said. “Your mom did tell me to make sure that you went if your watch went off while we were out.”

Hannah glanced over at the center of the park. “I’m not going in a porta potty. Those are gross.”

“Whatever,” Emma said. “I suppose you are wearing a diaper today, so it doesn’t matter if you pee your pants.”

“I’m wearing a skirt, not pants,” Hannah said. “And they’re absorbent underwear, not a diaper. Only babies wear diapers, and I’m not a baby.”

I recognized the euphemism from how the pull-ups were often described in the advertisements I had seen. I had always found the phrase to be really silly. Who would actually think those undergarments were underwear rather than just another version of a diaper?

“Whatever,” Emma muttered quietly, rolling her eyes after turning away from her cousin. “Same difference.”

Emma returned to stand in front of the goal before again through the ball out for Hannah and me to chase. We went through a few more rounds before deciding it was time to head back home. Emma and I sat down to change from our cleats back to our tennis shoes for the walk back to her house. Hannah was still dribbling a soccer ball absentmindedly in the field behind us.

“Are you free to do anything else this afternoon?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure what answer I wanted. There was part of me that was curious about Hannah’s need for pull-ups and another part of me that really didn’t want to spend any more time around that weirdo than was necessary.

“Sorry, we’ve got plans to do stuff with Hannah’s family this evening,” Emma said. “But we could do something tomorrow.”

“What are we doing tomorrow?” Hannah had snuck back up on us completely unnoticed. “We could play soccer again. Please?”

“I think it is supposed to be raining tomorrow,” I said, as we started to walk down the path out of the park.

“Then we can stay inside and watch a Harry Potter movie.”

“That would be fun,” I said automatically, without thinking about it. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I saw Emma just glare at me. I then remembered how she had warned me not to bring that topic up.

What followed was an incredibly detailed interrogation from Hannah.

“What House would you be in? What is your favorite character? What movie do you like best? Should Harry have ended up with Ginny? What would your patronus look like?”

I barely had time to answer dozens of rapid-fire questions before Hannah jumped onto the next one.

There finally was a brief pause, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness that was over. I was mistaken.

The next thing I knew, Hannah was talking about some Harry Potter fanfiction she had read on a website I hadn’t ever heard of before. Emma had slowed down, and was now trailing a dozen feet or so behind us to try to avoid the conversation.

I hadn’t even realized that people writing their own versions of those stories were even a thing. She was talking at one-hundred miles an hour, with just the shortest of pauses to catch her breath as she detailed her favorite alternative plot, which somehow involved Hermione and Malfoy becoming friends.

It was so bizarrely outlandish, but there wasn’t a chance for me to step in and ask any questions.

Hannah paused her rambling mid-sentence as we were about a half-block away from Emma’s house. She then took off in a straight sprint, cutting across several yards rather than remaining on the sidewalk.

“You know,” Emma said as she caught up to me. “You can’t say that I didn’t warn you about bringing up that topic.”

Ahead of us, Hannah came to an awkward stop about halfway up the driveway to Emma’s house, when she suddenly frozen mid-sprint and stood with her legs crisscrossed. She remained frozen in place for about fifteen seconds before walking slowly up toward the house.

“Yep, looks like she just pissed herself again,” Emma said with derision. “Such a baby.”

---

Links to all my stories can be found at https://abdlwriter.wordpress.com/ 

[LittleAcorn]

I love this story, and I was not expecting a Harry Potter fanfic reference, but that's genius.  Her parents certainly wouldn't mind her searching for that, since they want her to read something else (ok, they probably didn't mean fan fiction, but still), so searching for that should be fine, even with her concern about parental controls.  And where there's fan fiction, I'm sure there's ABDL fan fiction too...  I'm really curious to see how all these threads get resolved.