All My Mother's Rules (Chapter 36 - 3_21_21)

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All My Mother's Rules (Chapter 36 - 3/21/21)
Date Published: January 17, 2021, 10:32pm
Written By: MinnesotaWriter

Hey everyone. New member here, though I’ve occasionally stopped by over the years to read stories. Got into writing some of my own stuff cause of the downtime caused by Covid-19.
I have posted this story on another site (username and story title is the same). I figured it wouldn’t hurt to share the story here as well. I’m sure there’s not a complete overlap between the sites. That said, if you’ve read this before, no spoilers please. I’ve currently written 28 chapters. I’ll probably end up posting a couple a day here until I’m caught up. Feedback is welcome.
Chapter 1: Crime and Punishment
Christmas is my mother’s favorite time of the year. Can’t say the same for myself. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like Christmas as much as any other kid. Racing down the stairs at the crack of dawn to get the first glimpse of the surprises beneath the tree. Decorating cookies. And candy canes. I absolutely love candy canes.
But mom takes it to the extreme. And by extreme, I mean that I’ve just stepped off the bus to the sight of her at the top of a ladder stringing lights across the front of the house. It is the first week of October.
I do my best to keep a straight face despite the giggles coming from my friends Desi and Samantha. They know the drill, but it doesn’t make the situation any less funny to them. At least this year mom is not putting up Christmas themed Halloween decorations. Skeleton Santa anybody? Yeah, no thanks.
I try not to make eye contact with mom. I swear she is always trying to come up with new ways to embarrass me. She has on the absolute worst Christmas sweater, which is saying a lot because she’s got a closet full of them. It’s an unusually chilly for a fall day in New Mexico, and any excuse to wear a sweater is a good one for her. Walking quietly up the driveway, I nearly reach the front door – Christmas wreath on it and all – without catching her eye. Like I’ve ever gotten away with that.
“Sarah,” mom yelled. “Make sure to check up on your sister before you start your homework. It’s been about thirty minutes.”
“Sure thing Mom,” I reply, followed by a sigh that is too small for her to notice.
I might be turning fifteen soon, but any noticeable back-talk or back-anything meant risking some hard swats to my bottom.
Having been an only child for the first eleven years of my existence I was so thrilled when Emilia was born three-and-a-half years ago. I had helped decorate Emilia’s nursery, picking out all the colors and accessories. I even arrived at the hospital all proud with by big sister shirt on. That thrill had lasted all of three weeks until I graduated from adoring older sister to unpaid baby-sitter. And don’t tell me it builds character. I’ve heard that cliché more than enough.
I open the door to the sound of “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” serenading through the house, followed by the pitter-patter of bare feet scrambling across the wood floor.
“You’re home! You’re home,” Emilia yells as she rushes around the corner and gives me a hug around my waist. I mean, of course I’m home. Not like mom usually lets me go anywhere else after school is out. Fourteen might be old enough to babysit my sister, but mom didn’t think it was old enough to do things like sleepovers.
Emilia is dressed in a pink, Minnie Mouse t-shirt with a matching pink, Minnie Mouse pull-up. If you are wondering what Mom had asked me to check, let’s just say my latest responsibility was being conscripted into the great potty-training war. This our third attempt. Unfortunately, Mom hadn’t found my jokes about “World War Pee” to be particularly funny.
We had made two heroic attempts at potty-training already: Once when Emilia had turned two and again after her third birthday. We tried every tactic we could think of. Stickers, charts, rewards, special “big-girl” panties, potty-training toilets in every room of the house. There was a week where we had let Emilia just run around naked. That was such a mess. Mom had even half-joked about having me wear pull-ups to model good potty-training behavior for Emilia. I’m so glad she didn’t go through with that.
This time around though we needed to succeed. There weren’t any other options. Emilia would be kicked out of her preschool if she wasn’t toilet trained by her fourth birthday. Mom threw a fuss with the daycare, but I don’t blame them. Who wants to be changing a four-year-old’s dirty diaper? I sure as heck don’t.
Our most recent strategy is for Emilia to be wearing a special potty-training watch that goes off every thirty minutes to remind her to go to the toilet. We’ve given up on those plastic potty-chairs – such a pain to clear up after – and had instead settled for a toddler seat that could be quickly placed on the toilet in our lone bathroom.
“Guess what? Guess What?” Emilia clamored while giggling. “I’ve been dry all day.”
I’m a bit skeptical of that statement. Emilia isn’t very good at noticing her accidents. What was that phrase Mr. Higgins had taught us from that president recently in history class? Oh yeah, “Trust, but verify.”
Emilia smells good at least, so she hasn’t done a number two. That is a relief. The last thing I needed right now was a poopy pull-up to change. I checked the front of her pull-up as well, and the wetness indicators were, surprisingly enough, all still unchanged. Guess she is dry after all. At home, mom never let Emilia wear anything to cover her pull-up. She wanted to always be able to know right away whether it was dry, wet, or messy.
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
Well, mom was right about the timer needing to go off.
“Come on kiddo, it’s time to get you on the potty,” I said, grabbing Emilia by the hand.
This was followed by her usual, drawn-out protestations: “I don’t have to go. I don’t. I don’t have to. I… I don’t.”
Then she stomped her feet and started to pout. Emilia wouldn’t have dared to do that with mom, but I’m the good cop after all. On other days I might have attempted to gently cajole her into cooperation. Today I was wasn’t having any of it. I grabbed her under the armpits with both hands and hauled her off to the bathroom with her whining all the way. A few minutes later it turned out that she had needed to pee after all.
With the potty-training out of the way – for half-an-hour at least – I raced off to the kitchen to get an after-school snack. A few minutes of looking through the cupboards, fridge, and pantry left me feeling less hungry. There isn’t junk food of any type in sight. Mom has been on a health binge recently. I settle for a bag of veggie chips instead.
I take a look at my own watch. Thankfully, it didn’t come with a timer telling me when I have to go to the bathroom. But I had to start doing homework at 4:30 p.m. That’s another one of mom’s rules. So that gives me just about twenty minutes or so to relax.
I wasn’t the only one getting a break. Mom is in the living room as well, showing Emilia how to put together a simple puzzle – of Minnie Mouse no less, cause that’s my sister’s thing right now. I had barely been on the couch for just a couple seconds when mom interrupted me.
“Did you wash your hands before you started eating, young lady?” she asked.
Mom has certain ways of saying things. Young lady means she knows full well what the truthful answer is. Any attempt to fib your way out of the situation would be futile.
“I’ll do it right now,” I replied. I didn’t want to outright admit how close I had come to breaking one of her rules.
“Remember, twenty seconds,” mom yelled after I had already headed off to the bathroom sink.
When I came back to the living room, I wanted to take over the TV. There had to be something entertaining on. But I knew better than to interrupt what mom was watching – home videos of our previous Christmas mornings. Look, most families videotape their Christmas mornings, and then that’s the end of it. They might upload it to YouTube or let the tapes collect dust in a cardboard box in the basement. But my mom, she loves to go back and watch them. It gets her in the Christmas spirit.
I grabbed a library book instead and picked up from where I had left my last bookmark.
“Why is Sarah wearing a pull-up,” Emilia interjected suddenly.
I was confused at first. I mean, I had panties on after all. Then it dawned on me. Bless young children and their questions. I looked up from my book to the video playing on the TV. The slightly grainy footage must have been about six years old. But there I was, clear as day, opening presents next to the Christmas tree while wearing no clothing other than a pull-up adorned with a colorful assortment of flowers and butterflies. The pull-up was sagging between my legs and clearly soaked. I looked at the screen awkwardly for a few more seconds as felt my face go flush red before turning back to intently looking at my book.
Yes, I used to be a bedwetter, and my mom has ample evidence of it for all posterity. That was not something I liked being reminded about, and was certainly not a subject I cared for my blabbermouth of a sister to be aware of.
OK, this is too embarrassing. I hopped off the couch, tossed my empty bowl into the sink and walked toward my bedroom. Getting an early start on homework was better than watching videos of myself in pull-ups.
By my room I really meant our room. Cause three people in a two bed-room house means someone ends up sharing. Which is why I’m stuck in a room with my little sister.
Sharing a room with a baby, or for that matter, a toddler that isn’t toilet trained, sucks. There is always that lingering, hard to describe diaper smell that seems to persist despite the mighty powers of the Febreze can I keep in the top drawer of my dresser. I opened my backpack and pulled out the new book we are studying in my AP Literature class, “Crime and Punishment.”
Earlier today I had struggled not to laugh when Mrs. Whittleworth passed out copies of the Dostoevsky novel. Crime and punishment. That is the story of my life if there ever was one. Mom is big on rules. That is kind of her thing. And not just the normal rules a kid might have, like “no curse words” or “eat your veggies before your dessert.” My life is highly regulated. If I ever get a grade on any school assignment that is less than an “A.” Well, that’s a spanking. My butt still hurts when I think about the one time I got a “D” on a test.
With rules, come punishments, and I’ve experienced every one known to childkind. Time-outs. Getting grounded. Having my mouth washed out with soap. And spankings. That was mom’s favorite. She cherishes her grandfather’s wooden paddle like it is an actual family heirloom.
Once I logged into the computer at my desk, I made sure not to go to any sites that weren’t educational. Yes, mom tracks where I go online, and, yes, if I waste time watching cat videos on YouTube I’ll likely not be allowed to touch the computer for the rest of the week. I logged into the website our school uses to let us track homework assignments and grades.
“Shit!” I said.
I didn’t like what I saw, and I was glad mom was far enough away not to hear me. Stupid Mr. Higgins had given me a “C” on that quiz on President Reagan from earlier this week. What could I have gotten wrong? Getting a “B” wasn’t too bad, especially if it was a “B+.” But a “C?” That wasn’t going to make things fun tonight.
I do, however, have something going for me. Mom has one means of grace. If I’ve broken a rule, and I tell her rather than try to hide it or make her wait and find out herself, the punishment is usually a lot less. Mom does check my grades every couple weeks, but I would have heard it from her already if she’d seen it. I’d gotten better at avoiding spankings recently, but I don’t think I could get mom in a good enough mood to talk her out of them for that bad of a grade on an assignment.
But I didn’t have to decide immediately. There’s not any chance she checks my grades from the living room couch. Instead, I grabbed “Crime and Punishment” and jumped onto my bed only to be greeted with a loud, crinkling sound. So irritating.
Normally, I wouldn’t pay attention to the crinkle coming from the plastic mattress cover on my bed. But after the video, it was just another awkward reminder of my bedwetting phase that I’d really rather put behind me. It wasn’t that mom had been mean or strict about it, but it had still just been such a humiliating experience.
What was funny about the bedwetting was that Mom was nicer, a little, about nighttime accidents. I’ve heard that the condition – I forget the medical name for it – is hereditary, but no way would I every ask her about it.
I had wet the bed nearly every night until I was about nine. Mom never made too much of a fuss about it, besides making me wear pull-ups every night and keeping a plastic cover on my mattress. I had to stay dry a whole month before I was allowed to stop with the pull-ups, but no matter how hard I asked the plastic sheet was there to stay. That, and the reminders every night that I go potty before bed, you know, just in case, like I wasn’t a fully toilet trained teenager.
The rules mom was more stringent on were the ones about daytime potty-training. It almost made me feel bad for my bratty sister. Almost, but not really. The potty-training rules are as follows:No big girl panties unless you’ve gone seven straight days with no accidentsAny accident, no matter the reason, meant you were back in pull-upsIf you had two accidents in the same day, you’d be back in diapers for all of the next dayOnce every thirty minutes, you had to sit on the potty for three minutesNo lying about whether you’ve had an accident
Yeah, it’s strict, but I mean, I was potty-trained during the day before I turned two, according to my mom. And Desi and Samantha’s younger siblings, who I think are around the same age as Emilia, all are perfectly capable of using the toilet on their own. Who knows what is wrong with Emilia.
I flipped through the first few pages of the book. I hated AP Lit. This book is going to be the death of me. I’ve only got five weeks to read and then write a report on it. Maybe I’ll ask Desi for help, at least she can get onto CliffsNotes without her parents caring or noticing. As I read through the opening chapter, I couldn’t help going back to think about my own impending punishment. After fifteen minutes and only three pages, I decided that I may as well get it over with. I set the book down and headed back toward the living room.
I tried to be calm as I walked into the room. I really did. But mom must have some sort of sixth sense, cause she caught on right away that I was apprehensive about something.
“Sweetie, what is wrong,” mom asked.
Sweetie, now that’s another one of my mom’s key words. She does that when she suspects I’ve done something wrong but doesn’t know what. I could still back out now, tell her that everything is OK and hold off for another day. But though I had walked into the room determined to get the spanking over with, the words just stayed stuck in my mouth, refusing to come out. Mom gets what is going on.
“Do you have something you need to tell me,” she asked.
I nod, and walk up to her. I know the drill. This scene has played out hundreds of times before in my life. I could recite it as well as any of the lines from my school play. But just like in real life, when it comes time to go before an audience, I always muck it up.
“Mom, I broke your rule about getting good school grades,” I spat out, garbling all the words together.
“No, say that slower and enunciate your words.”
“I got a ‘C’ on a quiz in my American History class,” I said crisply and clearly, with my eyes pointing down at my feet.
“No, young lady, you look me in the eye while I’m talking to you.”
I matched my mom’s eye and felt my face go full red. Oh I hated how I had no control over my blushing. It just always seemed to amply the shame that I felt. I repeated again about how I had gotten a ‘C’ on the quiz.
“And why was it wrong for you to get that grade?”
“Because I need to be an ‘A’ student so I can get a good scholarship and go to college.”
“And what is the punishment for getting a ‘C’ on an assignment?”
This was trickier, you see, while my mom had punishments, they weren’t always consistent. Make it too easier, and she might go a lot harder on you. But if you gave yourself too much of a punishment, well, you were stuck with that as well. I decided to play it cautiously.
“A spanking.”
Mom gave methatlook. And I knew right away I had given the wrong answer.
“And just howmanyspankings is that punishment going to be,” she said.
I hesitated, which was bad. I’m always bad at thinking on my feet. I spit out the first number that comes to mind.
“Twenty.”
Bad, bad, bad idea Sarah. Twenty was more than I’d gotten when I’d burnt dinner and set off the fire alarm. I probably could have gotten away with just five. But mom didn’t object, didn’t say that seems like a bit much. She just gave a soft smile and stood up from the couch. It was so unfair.
“Hold still and lift up your shirt a little,” mom said.
I complied without saying a word. The shock of impending spankings was still fresh. Why, why, why did I have to suggest twenty of them. I pulled my shirt up just enough to reveal the top of my jeans and my belt. I felt mom’s hands as she undid my belt buckle and then pulled the entire belt loose. Next, she unbuttoned my jeans, pulled them off my hips and let them fall down.
Mom sat back down on the couch. She didn’t have to say what I was to do next. I already knew. I stepped out of the jeans, leaving them in a pile in front of the couch and carefully lay on the couch facedown so that my bottom was directly on my mom’s lap. My head was facing the TV, which only added to the humiliation. The video was paused right at an angle where you could fully see how wet the pull-up was. Yellow and saggy. Why couldn’t mom have changed me out of it before opening presents.
Emilia had stopped building her puzzle, which was about halfway done, a look of puzzlement on her face. It has been a while since I’ve been spanked. Who knows, maybe she doesn’t even remember having witnessed it before. I sure as heck didn’t want an audience for this.
“Emilia,” mom said. “Go get the black bag that is in mommy’s closet.”
I should have known I wasn’t going to get away with her not using a paddle. We live in a small house, it shouldn’t have taken even Emilia more than a minute to grab the bag. But it felt like an eternity. Why did I have to get a stupid “C” on that quiz anyway. All I had wanted was to get the spanking done and over with quickly, but it kept getting drawn out.
The pitter-patter of Emilia’s feet signaled that she had at last come back to the room. The plain, black gym bag was what mom used to keep all her disciplinary supplies in. Several types of paddles. Non-toxic soap to wash out mouths. Lotions and ointments for treatment after a spanking. The next choice mom makes would greatly determine my level of discomfort. Please, please, please don’t use the wooden paddle, I prayed silently.
After mom had finished rustling through the bag, I saw Emilia come back into view, sitting on the floor next to the coffee table where she had been working on her puzzle. But she hadn’t gone back to playing. She was facing me with a curious look on her eyes. My face was burning now. Why couldn’t mom just send her away.
Without any warning, mom pulled down my panties to expose my bare bottom. Oh great, this is it. She held the paddle against my bottom to line it up. And she had chosen the wooden one. I’d gone a year without getting a wooden paddle spanking.
Smack. The first whack knocked the breath out of me. I was barely able to squelch a sob. The strikes proceeded likely clockwork every five seconds. One after another. Left. Right. Left. Right. I was able to hold out for the first few swats. But the tears and cries of pain were inevitable.
Emilia watched the entire time. And that brat even started giggling. Suddenly, as quickly as they had started, the spankings came to a stop. The only sound in the room was my heavy breath and receding sobs. A cool sensation covered my bottom as mom rubbed a lotion into my skin. Despite the relief it was giving I knew sitting would be a pain in the you know what for the next week.
Mom pulled my underwear back up and helped me sit on her lap. Her hand took a firm grip of my chin as she held my face steady with hers.
“There, there,” she said. “Now what lesson have you learned from this?”
“I’ll study harder and get good grades. I promise.”
I couldn’t help it. All the pent-up emotion, pain and tension had to come loose again. The floodgates burst open, and I cried and cried and cried into mom’s shoulder as she rubbed my back. It was over. Thank goodness it was over.
Another beeping found filled the house. But it wasn’t Emilia’s watch. Mom quickly set me down on the couch.
“Put your jeans back on and help your sister clean up her toys while I get the casserole out of the oven,” she said.
Just the effort of sitting up and pulling on my jeans was enough to remind me of how sore I was going to be. As I finished pulling on my jeans, the sight of Emilia sitting in front of me gave me an idea about how to teach that brat that it is not nice to laugh when your sister is getting spanked.
I reached down and ever so gently gave her the slightest of tickles, enough for her to feel my touch, but hopefully not enough to blame me for what was about to happen. If there is one way in which my sister and I are most alike is that we are super ticklish at even the slightest touch. I know all her weak spots.
The result was exactly what I had hoped for. Emilia jumped up with a little squeal and placed both hands on the front of her pull-up. I didn’t even need to look at the wetness indicator to know what had just happened.
“Mom,” I yelled, doing my best to keep the satisfaction out of my voice. “Emilia just had an accident.”
Karma may not be a bitch, but It certainly is a wet pull-up.


Oh, hey, welcome.
I’ve been following this and your other story over at DD.
Nice to see you posting it here too.


Thanks, should have both stories posted here in the next couple days. It’s giving me a chance to read through them and make any edits that may have gotten overlooked.


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


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


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


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


this is a good story, I like it.


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


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


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


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


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


So I hopped over to the other site your story is on and got all caught up is there plans to continue the story over there/here. By the way the story is great I have really enjoyed it so far and can’t wait to see to develop further you have done an awesome job!I do have some idea to possibly mix into the story of your interested but yeah loved it so far


Yep, plan is to continue it. I’ve just been working on getting my other story, Diapers Never Lie, wrapped up. That only has one chapter left so I’ll have more time to focus on this one going forward. And I’ll post new chapters the same time on both sites.


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


Chapter 12: Fortnite
It’s only shortly after noon on Saturday, and I am already dying of thirst.
I’ve not had anything to drink since taking a sip of water when I first woke up this morning. Without any cheerleading events this weekend and therefor no physical activities I need to be hydrated for, I’ve decided to extremely limit my fluids in preparation for tonight’s sleepover. I tried to swallow some spit, as if that would make a difference, but it only exacerbated the dryness in my mouth. The feeling was simply unbearable, but the thought of peeing my pants at Samantha’s house later tonight was the only thing I could think of that would be worse.
Later today mom is going to drop me off at the school for the Fortnite tryout. Getting mom to give the go-ahead for the tryout had ended up going much more smoothly than I had expected, especially after I pointed out how colleges now days are starting to give out E-Sports scholarships. I neglected to tell mom that there is absolutely no way I would be good enough to qualify for something like that. But I got her approval, and mom even said that she was happy I was being so outgoing to start my high school career.
Yesterday’s discovery of the pull-up in the restroom was still weighing on me. It boggled my mind that I wasn’t the only girl at the high school who has issues with her bladder. I had spent the remainder of the school day trying hard not to look at people’s butts. I mean, I’d taken a peek at a cute guy’s rear end before, but I hadn’t ever been trying to figure what was underneath someone’s pants. But try as I might, nothing I saw gave any indication of someone who is also wearing a pull-up to school. Of course, no one – at least as far as I knew – had ever noticed my pull-ups, so what were the odds that I’d be able to see that someone else is wearing them?
I only had about an hour before we are going to leave for the school for the tryout. Mom is going to drop me off, and then Samantha’s mom will pick me up at the school and then get Desi on the way back to their house. I ran through my mental checklist of everything I was putting into my overnight bag. I had all my toiletries, pajamas, a fresh set of clothes for tomorrow, and some candy mom had given me to share with my friends as we watched movies tonight.
I took out the extra pull-ups I had gotten into the habit of keeping in the bottom of my backpack and placed them carefully back into Emilia’s dresser. I couldn’t risk having those with me at Samantha’s house. As I pulled my water bottle out of my backpack, I had to struggle to resist the urge to take a drink of water. At this point, even lukewarm water is becoming appealing to me.
I considered taking off the pull-up I’m wearing before heading out for the tryout, but I didn’t want to risk it. I could always take it off in the bathroom afterward before Samantha’s mom picks me up. I had still kept wearing my panties over the pull-ups, so I’d be able to swap over to just wearing those without a hassle.
While I was continuing to review what I had packed, Emilia came crawling into the room. She had on a pair of denim overalls on top of a onesie. The choice of clothes may have been intended to disguise the diaper my little sister is wearing as punishment for the two accidents that she had yesterday, but the outfit instead highlighted the diaper bulging around her crotch and butt. It probably was wet, but I didn’t bother to check. Mom kept to a strict schedule of changing wet diapers every two hours so it didn’t matter if Emilia had wet the diaper or not.
“It’s lunch time. Come on. Come on,” she said.
A pizza lunch on Saturday was one of our many family traditions, and mom always insisted that we eat all of our meals together. I picked Emilia up to carry her to the kitchen. I felt bad that mom had made her crawl along the wood floor to our room to let me know it was time for lunch.
A frozen pizza mom had cooked was sitting in the middle of the kitchen table on a cutting board. The pepperoni pizza – not one of my favorites – had been cut into eight slices. What didn’t make sense was the three small candles that had been stuck into the pizza. What in the world?
Then mom began singing the Happy Birthday song and Emilia joined in. I’d been so focused on the fact that today was my first sleepover that I’d forgotten completely that it is also my birthday. No cake, but we didn’t always do cake so that wasn’t much of a surprise.
“I’ve got your present saved for after you are back from the sleepover tomorrow,” Mom said, code for her not having gone to buy my present yet.
Mom had filled a sippy cup with Cool-Aid for Emilia and had set aside two large glasses – already filled to the brim – for myself and her. My decision to avoid drinking lots of liquids is going to get tested.
I placed Emilia into a highchair, sat down in the chair beside her, and waited for mom to quickly say grace before beginning to eat. I helped myself to two smaller slices that hadn’t been poked with a candle, while mom was busy cutting up one of the pieces into smaller bits for Emilia. I didn’t like pepperoni that much and was glad to avoid the larger slices mom might have stuck me with had I waited for her to dish the pizza onto my plate.
More concerning than the pizza was the large glass of Cool-Aid. The pale blue liquid wasn’t appealing, but it was usually mom’s go-to fun drink when we weren’t having milk, water, or juice. Mom had never been big on letting me drink soda – and Emilia was too young to ever have tried any – a holdover from when doctors had advised her to have me avoid sugar and caffeine when she had been trying to limit my bedwetting. Wild Blue is the flavor on the Cool-Aid container, but I don’t think that counts as a flavor, despite whatever marketing companies might think. I took a small sip. Blueberry. Maybe.
I scarfed the pizza down while mom was busy feeding Emilia by sticking the small bits of pizza into her mouth with a plastic fork. I was grateful for the distraction of mom babying my sister. If I could get up from the table without her noticing, perhaps I could quietly empty my Cool-Aid into the sink and avoid drinking it.
I stood up from the table with my empty plate and full glass in hand just as mom was putting another bite into Emilia’s mouth, but mom turned around just as I took my first step toward the sink.
“Sarah, you know better than that. Finish your drink young lady. You need to be setting a good example for your little sister.”
I didn’t have a choice, so I broke my liquid fast and chugged down the Cool-Aid in a series of rapid gulps. I shuddered both at the taste and as to what this is going to do to my bladder.
I had gone to the bathroom to pee right before getting in the car for mom to drive me to the high school, and I had again stopped at the bathroom and tried my best to empty my bladder before going to the computer lab.
Even with my trip to the bathroom, I had still gotten to the tryout about fifteen minutes early. As I walked into the computer lab only the coach of the Fortnite team – Mr. Olson, who also teaches chemistry – and Lisa were present. Lisa looked up for a brief second when I entered the room, but then refocused on the computer monitor in front of her. We hadn’t spoken to each other since the incident with Claire last week.
Had there been other girls present, I’m not sure I would have chosen to sit next to her. However, since it was just the two of us, it would have been awkward – and maybe a bit rude – to not take a seat at the computer next to hers.
I greeted Lisa as I sat down and received a meek “hi” in response from her. I really didn’t expect much conversation-wise from her. I turned on the computer and logged in with my school password to see that Fortnite had already been installed.
“You can go ahead and turn on the game and make sure the settings and controls are all set up the way that you like,” Mr. Olson said as he walked over to me.
As I made sure all the key bindings were set to my liking, four other girls made there way into the room. I’d seen a couple of them before but hadn’t met any of them. They were all upperclassmen, leaving me and Lisa as the only freshmen for the tryout.
Mr. Olson surveyed the room once the clock hit 2 p.m. and it was time to begin the tryout.
“Congratulations,” he said with a laugh. “We have six spots, so you are all on the team, as long as you are sure that is what you want to do.”
“So, do we actually need a tryout then?” asked Amanda, the senior who had taken the seat to my right.
“Of course, we will. We still have to determine who the starters and reserves are. It’s no different from any other sports team. The first half of the tryout will be having you play three individual games while I watch and see how you do. Afterword, I’ll divide you up into teams to see how well you perform as a group with some Duo games.”
I decided I was fine being a reserve as long as it got mom to let me practice playing Fortnite at home, but my hopes of being a starter increased as the first two games went along well. I finished in the top fifteen players each time and managed to score several kills in both games, but by the middle of the third and final solo game, all the Cool-Aid mom had made me drink earlier was beginning to irritate my bladder. I hadn’t had that much liquid all at once in more than a week, and my bladder was not in any way prepared to handle it.
In the past week I had gotten a good sense for whether I could make it to a toilet or if the urges would end up with an embarrassing accident and this situation felt much more like the latter option.
I toyed with the idea of trying to lose on purpose. Maybe I would be allowed to go to the bathroom with my last game over. I could make my character run from the hiding place I had chosen in hope of finding an opponent that could kill me and end the game. But I couldn’t do that. I had played so well during the tryout up until now and I didn’t want to make a bad impression with the coach.
I needed to move, if I could just to squirm a little in my seat I would be fine. Once I got to this level of urgency in my bladder, holding still would ensure that I would lose control, but I had to hold still to keep my focus on the game. I pressed my feet firmly against the ground, stilled my body, and let the inevitable take place.
As I finished emptying my bladder into the pull-up, in my peripheral vision it felt as if some of the other girls had turned to look at me. I tried not to panic. Had they heard me peeing? What if the pull-up had leaked?
I peaked to my right. Amanda was focused on her game. I then looked to my left and Lisa’s eyes rose to meet mine for just the briefest moment before we turned back to looking at our own screens. Had she been looking down at my waist? What for?
In my concern during the aftermath of my accident, I had gotten distracted from the Fortnite game and hadn’t noticed the sound of the footsteps coming from behind me. I heard the bang and saw my character’s health meter drop dramatically. I turned the character around and tried to build some walls to protect myself, but after another shot my character was dead. A message on the screen flashed to let me know that I had finished in sixth place. The best result I had achieved so far in the tryout, but still disappointing given how well I had been doing.
With my three rounds over, I turned to look at the rest of the girls in the room. Everyone but Lisa appeared to have wrapped up. After a glimpse at my pants which confirmed that the pull-up had handled my accident without a leak, I scooted my chair slightly over to behind Lisa’s and watched as she deftly moved her character in the game on the way to a first place finish. We jumped up and cheered as she got the final kill. Lisa acted like the win was normal and didn’t say anything, but her face blushed once she turned around and saw that we all had been watching her.
“Mr. Olson, can we take a bathroom break now before the next game?” asked one of the girls at the far end of the computer lab.
“Sure, anyone who needs to can go. Be back in five minutes.”
I doubted there was much more pee remaining in my bladder, but I wanted a chance to remove the wet pull-up. I was dismayed when I saw that everyone but Lisa get up to go to the bathroom. I had hoped to have some privacy.
“You OK with not going to the bathroom, Lisa,” Olson asked. “There won’t be another break till the tryout is done.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she replied, giving her dress a tug as she shifted in her seat.
On the way to the closest bathroom we chatted about how our first three games had gone. I was surprised to find out that I had done the best out of all of them. Once in the bathroom, I took my normal spot at the very back. While it was such a relief to slide the wet pull-up off of my butt and down to my legs, with someone sitting in the stall next to me I was too nervous to remove my pants to get the pull-up off. There was no way I was going to go the quicker, yet nosier, route of ripping the pull-ups sides to remove it.
I managed to pee a little. Hopefully that is the rest of the Cool-Aid. As much as I wanted to get the soaked pull-up off for good, I couldn’t find a way do it discreetly during the five minutes that coach had allotted to us for the bathroom break. I flushed the toilet around the same time that everyone else was and slid the wet pull-up back up till it was snug across my waist. The urine-soaked material had cooled in the few minutes the pull-up had been off of my skin and the colder, clammy feeling was so uncomfortable as my jeans pressed the pull-up against me.
Upon my return to the computer lab, I gradually eased myself back into my chair in anticipating of how the pull-up was going to squish against me.
“Listen up,” Mr. Olson said once everyone was in their seats again. “We’re going to break into three pairs. You’re going to be matched with a teammate with similar skills.”
As Mr. Olson read off the first two pairings, I realized that he hadn’t included my name. What does that mean?
“… And for our final group. Lisa and Sarah,” he said.
“I’ll try not to hold you back,” I said, turning to look at Lisa.
She widened her lips slightly to give me a small smile back, opened her mouth as if to say something and then didn’t as she instead stuttered and turned back to look intently at her monitor. This might be tough.
As I followed Lisa’s character in the game it became clear that she was on a whole different level of ability than me. She started right off with a raid on one of the secret agent bases to load up on weapons and supplies. Risky, but she had the whole route memorized, knowing exactly where each chest of items was. I simply followed her lead, so engrossed in the game that I’d completely forgotten about the wet pull-up I was wearing. Lisa barely said anything to me as we played. I ended up doing most of the talking and she would just nod in response.
We finished our three games with first, second, and fifth place finishes – better by far than any of the other teams – and the tryout came to a close with Mr. Olson announcing that Lisa and I would be two of the starters. I thanked Mr. Olson for that decision, but by the time I had turned to look for Lisa – I’d wanted to compliment her on how well she had played – she was gone with all of her things. I liked having her as a teammate, but It was going to be hard if we didn’t communicate at all.
Once in the bathroom by myself, I breathed an audible sigh of relief as I ripped the pull-up off. Sitting in it for the past hour had been so gross. I did my best to clean myself up with toilet paper as I hadn’t brought the baby wipes in the backpack, but I couldn’t get the gross feeling entirely off of my skin.
I left the pull-up hidden in the trash. I’d taken to burying it much further after the one I had found. The feel of the panties against my skin was so wonderful. I remembered how my last outing in panties had ended in failure inside a porta potty. I wasn’t at all confident I could succeed until I returned home tomorrow, but I didn’t have any choice in the matter. Today I’m fifteen, and I’m going on my first sleepover.


Chapter 13: The Bedwetter (The Sleepover: Part 1)
The first thing I did when I got to Samantha’s house was to make sure I knew where all of the bathrooms were.
That might seem as if it would be a simple task, but Samantha’s maze of a house is massive. I’d only been there a couple of times before, so I wasn’t too familiar with the layout, but it had four bathrooms. Four. It is hard to imagine compared to the single-bathroom house my mom, sister, and I live in. Given the likelihood that I’d use each bathroom at least once before tomorrow morning I made sure I knew exactly where each one was.
I took a bathroom break as soon as I arrived at the house. My bladder had gotten close to bursting on the car ride over. Since I’d be staying the night this time around, Samantha gave me the whole tour. They had four bedrooms and two bathrooms alone on the second floor of the house, which I hadn’t been to before. That mean that Samantha along with her younger siblings – Tommy and Lilian – each had their own bedrooms. So unfair. I was jealous. However, we’d be spending most of the night in the basement game room with a massive TV and big, comfy couches to lounge on.
We sat down on some waist-high stools around the island piece in the kitchen and snacked on some potato chips while trading gossip about how the week had went. I’d been to Samantha’s house before, but this time just felt so different. The fact that I was really able to stay here all night hadn’t sunk in yet.
I watched Lilian run by the kitchen toward the bathroom with a bit of jealousy. The toddler was six months younger than Emilia, and she’d already been potty trained for nearly a year. I wish it could have been that easy with my younger sister. How could Lilian get potty trained so fast when it was such a struggle for Emilia?
Samantha had noticed me watching her younger sister. I’d complained enough about Emilia’s potty-training woes that Samantha managed to guess what I was thinking about.
“Still having trouble with Emilia?” Samantha asked.
“Yep, I’m stuck on diaper and pull-up changing duty twenty-four-seven. I’m glad to finally get a break from it today.”
“Gross,” Samantha said, but her expression of curiosity didn’t match what she was saying.
If anything, she was quite interested in the status of Emilia’s potty-training. I was just happy to have someone to vent to.
“It isn’t too bad. She’s at least gotten the hang of doing number two in the toilet, so I don’t have many messy cleanups to do. Still, she won’t stop wetting herself, even with taking her to the toilet every thirty minutes.”
I neglected to mention how mom had been forcing Emilia to wear diapers as a punishment. I didn’t want to admit that the potty training had been going that badly.
“How old is she again?” Samantha asked.
“Three-and-a-half. So six months older than Lilian.”
“They should meet sometimes. I bet they could become best friends. Just like us.”
“That might be good. I would just hope that Lilian’s potty-training skills might rub off on Emilia.”
“Does Emilia still even fit in pull-ups with how old she is now?”
I had to suppress a laugh at that question. If only she knew that I could even squeeze into the pull-ups without much of an issue.
“Not yet, she’s on the biggest size of the pull-ups we use during the day and the diapers we use at night.”
This discussion about potty training made me realized I hadn’t told my friends about the pull-up I had found in the high school bathroom stall. Two weeks ago, before any of my wetting accidents had started and I had begun wearing my sister’s pull-ups, I would have considered that a juicy bit of gossip to share, and no doubt we would have spent a bunch of time speculating about who the pull-up might have belonged to, but now I hesitated to share the story, even though this is an otherwise perfect time to bring it up. If I had my friends looking intentionally for signs that someone was wearing a pull-up that might inadvertently lead them in my direction.
I wanted to be able to confide to my friends about what I had been going through with the bladder issues. I thought Desi might be understanding, but it could be hard to judge how Samantha might respond. She was a loyal friend, but she could be judgmental of people outside our friend group – especially if they were different in some way. Maybe if we got into some deep, late-night discussion I might be able to gradually introduce them to what I had been going to them to gauge how they might respond. Our conversation shifted to how the Fortnite tryout had gone earlier today.
“Did that weirdo still show up to the try-out?” Samantha asked.
“You need to stop calling her that,” I said. “Yeah, Lisa is a bit awkward, but it isn’t her fault that she was homeschooled.”
Samantha simply rolled her eyes.
“How did the tryout go?” Desi asked.
I explained how Lisa and I had been the two best players and that we had both been picked as starters. My detailed description of the Fortnite games wasn’t nearly as exciting to them as it was to me. Their boredom at being forced to listen to my tale was interrupted when Samantha’s mom entered the room with the pizzas she had gone to pick up. Pizza twice in a day? I guess it is a lucky day for me after all.
“What kind of soda do you want with the pizza?” Samantha asked.
I didn’t want any kind of soda, but I couldn’t think of a polite way to decline the offer. You were supposed to eat junk food during a sleepover, after all.
“I don’t know. Pick one for me.”
Mom rarely let me drink soda, so I didn’t have much of a preference as to what flavor I would like. Samantha returned to the table with three cold cans of Mountain Dew that she had grabbed from the fridge. I didn’t want to even begin to guess how much sugar and caffeine must be in them. Samantha made a show of chugging the entire can of Mountain Dew in just a few seconds.
“Show-off,” Desi muttered.
“Well, can either of you do better,” Samantha retorted.
Desi chugged her can of soda nearly as quickly as Samantha had, without spilling even a single drop. They both turned to look at me.
“Chug it! Chug it! Chug it!” they chanted in unison.
I had no desire to drink the soda. I had hoped to get away with just a few sips. I popped the can open and started to pour the soda into my mouth. I gagged at the burning feeling of the carbonation. This was the first time I’d had any soda in at least three or four months, and I was not at all prepared for how it would taste or feel in my mouth. Desi jokingly patted me on the back as I finished coughing.
“Maybe I’ll save this to drink sometime later,” I said, hoping that later would end up turning into never.
“You can’t do that. It will go flat. Just drink it now,” Samantha said.
I looked back down at the still mostly full can of soda. I couldn’t think of a good excuse to avoid drinking it, but the possibility of wetting myself would be much higher if I did.
“Come on Sarah,” Samantha said. “It’s just soda. You’re supposed to like drinking it.”
I slowly sipped from the can until I had completely drained it, careful to avoid the reaction I had gotten when I had tried to drink it much quicker. I knew liquids didn’t immediately go to my bladder, but no sooner had I finished drinking the soda than I felt the urge to pee coming on again. This is going to be a long evening.
I returned from the bathroom to find Samantha and Desi debating what activity we should start with for the sleepover. I was eager to try on some makeup, but they had different plans on their minds.
“What should we do before we watch movies tonight?” Desi asked.
“We can swim in the pool,” Samantha said.
“Swim? It’s way too cold for that today,” I said. “Plus, you didn’t tell me anything about us doing that. I didn’t bring my swimsuit.”
“I’m sorry, I should have mentioned it. Desi just always brings one when we do a sleepover. You can wear a swimsuit that I’ve outgrown,” said Samantha, who has several inches on me. “I’m sure it will fit you just fine.”
Desi grabbed her bag and went to a bathroom to change into her swimsuit. She had just gotten the cast off of her foot earlier today so she was free to join in on the swimming as well. Samantha led me upstairs to her bedroom. She pulled out a hanger from the closet with the old swimsuit attached. I looked at the two-piece swimsuit a bit awkwardly. I recognized it from when we had gone to the water park together a summer ago. It may have been a perfectly normal piece of swimwear, but mom had derided it as indecent when she had seen Samantha wearing it. Mom only allowed me to wear one-piece swimsuits.
“Oh, come on,” Samantha said. “Your mom isn’t going to find out, and it’s not like any of our neighbors can see the pool through the fence anyways.”
I relented, stripped off my clothes, and tried the swimsuit on. The fit was tight, which I suppose was better than it being loose. I felt naked, even though everything that needed to be covered was covered. I nearly jumped when Samantha returned to the room, instinctively crossing my arms across my body.
“Stop being so prude,” Samantha said. “Hurry up. We’ve only got an hour or so of daylight left.”
I shivered as I stepped out into Samantha’s backyard in just a swimsuit. Samantha and Desi both went ahead of me and jumped eagerly in the pool. I stepped back to avoid getting splashed. Goose bumps began sprouting on my arms as I remained on the stone patio.
“Jump in. The water is heated,” Samantha said.
I tip-toed up to the edge of the pool and dipped my foot into the water. Not as warm as I had expected, but it was still better than the cold swimming pools I was accustomed to at the local YMCA and definitely better than standing out of the water shivering. I made a cannonball jump into the pool, splashing both Desi and Samantha. The pool was only four feet deep, but for me, that meant I had to stand up on my toes to keep the water from splashing into my mouth.
We splashed around on several inflatable pool toys, trying to knock each other off their float while staying on our own. After that, we settled into a game of tag. I was the best swimmer of the group, and I had no problem swimming rapidly toward one of my friends to tap them and then getting away before they could swipe back at me. I was chasing down Samantha at the moment, and I had her boxed into one of the corners.
She dove underwater, trying to get down past me, but I took a deep breath and dived down after her as well and tapped her firmly on the back with my hand. I kicked off the wall and began swimming toward the other end of the pool before coming to a stop a ways away from her. As my toes made contact with the bottom of the pool, the water around my waist began to feel warmer, and I realized I was in the middle of peeing. Given that I was already completely wet, the sensation of urinating hadn’t been as immediately noticeable as the other accidents I’d had in a pull-up.
I couldn’t remain in that spot for long. Samantha was now chasing after me, wanting to get me back for tagging her. I began moving toward the opposite side of the pool, but when I turned back to see what Samantha was doing, I saw that she was stopped right where I had just had the accident, her face showing an expression of disgust as she began to walk backwards from that spot where she must have noticed the unusual warmth.
“Sarah! Did you just pee in the pool?” Samantha shouted at me.
Desi turned to stare at me as well. I couldn’t admit that I had an accident, but with Samantha adamant that she could tell that someone had peed in the pool, I couldn’t deny having done so. My only option was to pretend that I had done it on purpose
“Yes,” I replied curtly.
“Gross!” Desi shrieked, scrambling to get out of the pool.
“Relax, the chlorine gets rid of it,” I said, and then turned to Samantha. “There is chlorine in the water, right?”
“Of course there is, but that doesn’t mean you can just pee wherever you feel like it,” Samantha said. “Just gross.”
Desi would have nothing to do with getting back into the pool so that meant it was time to head back inside. She shot me another look of disgust as we dried ourselves off with towels on the patio. After we had finished changing into our pajamas in Samantha’s room, we went to the basement to get started with a movie, but Tommy was already there, playing a video game on the TV.
“Mom, can you make Tommy get off of his game?” Samantha yelled up the stairs, trying to get her mother’s attention.
“No, I told him he could play for a bit before going to bed,” her mom replied back. “You know he goes to bed early so you’ll have plenty of time once he is done.”
“Whatever,” Samantha muttered loudly, stalking away with a pouting face.
I couldn’t believe the things Samantha could get away with. If I’d dared to behave like that, I’d wind up bent over mom’s legs on the receiving end of a spanking.
“You girls just head upstairs and find another game to play until you can start your movie,” Samantha’s mom said, ignoring her daughter’s outburst.
“What game should we play,” Desi asked.
“Didn’t you tell me that you always play Truth or Dare?” I said, eager to give that game a try.
“Of course,” Samantha said. “Have you ever played it?”
“No.”
“Do you know the rules?”
“Truth means you have to answer a question with complete honesty. Dare means you have to complete the task that you are given.”
The three of us went back up to Samantha’s room and sat down on blankets in a circle on the floor.
“It’s your first time, so you are going to have to start,” Samantha said to me. “Truth or dare?”
“Truth,” I said without any hesitation.
Samantha and Desi shared a glance and then whispered quietly between each other, trying to decide what question to ask me.
“Have you ever kissed a boy,” Desi asked.
Of course she’d ask something like that.
“No,” I replied.
“What about kissing a girl,” Samantha interjected.
I gasped. That was a rather scandalous question in a conservative community like ours. Besides, they were only supposed to ask one question.
“No!” I replied loudly.
“I’d never want to,” I added, just to be clear.
We stuck to truths for the first several rounds, with no one quite having the nerve to go for a dare. I learned that Samantha had once gotten three “Fs” on a report card and Desi had first said a curse word in front of her mom at the age of three, while I was forced to tell them that I’d eaten a booger before. The truths part was getting boring. I wanted to get on to the exciting stuff.
“Truth or Dare?” Samantha asked me when my turn came around again.
“Dare!” I said.
“I think I have one,” Samantha said before Desi could say anything.
“I dare you to pants my brother,” Samantha said.
“Do what?” I replied.
I didn’t understand what she was asking me to do. Samantha rolled her eyes at me.
“It just means that you pull down someone pants by surprise. Just their pants of course, you don’t want them to be naked.”
I was surprised by Samantha’s request. It was a strange dare, but not something that should be too difficult or embarrassing for me to do.
Tommy was standing in front of the TV downstairs wearing basketball shorts and t-shirt, jumping up and down and waving his arms in response to some sort of motion sensing game he was playing on the TV. As far as dares went, I felt like I had lucked out with being given an easy one. Instead of making a show of sneaking behind Tommy, which I felt was more likely to be noticed, I walked confidently up to the couch behind him like I was up to my own business. Samantha followed behind me holding her phone up as if she was recording the dare.
I walked all the way past Tommy. He didn’t pay any attention to me; he was too absorbed in the game to care one bit about what I was doing. I doubled back, this time intent on carrying out the dare. I came to a stop directly behind Tommy, kneeling down so my hands could reach his pants. In one motion, I got a firm grip on either side of his shorts and tugged them all the way to the floor. I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to see.
I hadn’t given much thought as to what was going to happen after I pulled Tommy’s pants down, but I had figured I would see either underwear or maybe boxers, likely decorated with cartoon characters or superheroes. Instead, Tommy was wearing a pull-up. The sides of the pull-up were a solid blue, with the main design being a series of horizontal blue lines. It was the last thing I had expected to see.
I don’t think Tommy immediately realized what had happened. He at first tried to reach down and grab his pants, but his hands weren’t able to reach all the way to his feet. Tommy then turned around and placed both his hands on the front of the pull-up, trying unsuccessfully hiding it from view. Tears began to form around his eyes. I stepped back and sat on the couch, embarrassed at the secret I had unwittingly revealed. However, Samantha wasn’t surprised at all.
“Aww, does baby have his diapie on for bedtime already,” Samantha said mockingly to her younger brother.
Tommy started to run off. Samantha handed the phone to Desi and chased him down. She grabbed Tommy and then turned him around so he was facing us with his hands held above his head and the dry pull-up fully exposed.
“Desi, come show Tommy the video,” Samantha said
Desi walked over to wear Samantha was holding Tommy in place and then played the video for all of us to see. The images in the video were crystal clear, leaving no doubt that Tommy was wearing a pull-up. Even more tears streamed down Tommy’s face as he watched it silently.
“Tommy, do you want your friends to know that you are a baby?”
“I’m not a baby,” he protested weakly, not a particularly effective argument when one is wearing a pull-up.
“Big kids don’t wear diapies,” Samantha said, ignoring Tommy’s protestations. “If you don’t want your friends to see this video, you are going to do as we say and be a good baby boy and you aren’t going to tell mommy about any of this. Do you understand?”
Tommy remained silent except for his quiet sobbing.
“Do you understand,” Samantha said, more firmly this time around.
Tommy nodded his head.
“Come on baby, hold up your shirt and show off your diapie,” Samantha said to Tommy, as she grabbed her phone and started another recording.
“Why don’t you tell everyone what you are wearing,” Samantha said.
Tommy muttered something that we couldn’t hear.
“Say it louder for the camera.”
“A pull-up.”
“And why are you wearing the pull-up?”
Tommy started to say something, but hesitated stuttered and then fell silent. Samantha pressed on with her interrogation.
“What do you do every night when you are asleep?”
“I wet the bed.”
I was aghast at the whole sequence of events. I knew Samantha could sometimes be a bit stuck up, and maybe even mean on occasion, but it had always seemed lighthearted compared to how cruel she was being to her brother. The whole situation reminded me vividly of how mom treats Emilia. I was so thankful I had chosen to not wear a pull-up or bring any in my backpack as backup. What if they had pantsed me instead?
I had thought – in hindsight quite foolishly – that perhaps I could confide in my friends about all the struggles I had been going through with my bladder and wetting accidents. Carrying the burden of that secret all to myself the past week had caused no small amount of stress.
Samantha snatched Tommy’s shorts off the ground before he could grab them.
“You aren’t going to be needed these,” Samantha said, giving Tommy a pat on his bottom as she led Desi and I back upstairs to continue the game of Truth or Dare.


Chapter 14: Double Dare (The Sleepover: Part 2)
Desi and I walked up the stairs in silence behind Samantha. I still couldn’t believe what she’d just done. To leave Tommy downstairs without anything to wear over the pull-up? I felt guilty about not speaking up to stop her in the middle of it, like I was just as complicit in how Samantha had humiliated her younger brother.
“Are you really going to leave Tommy down there without his shorts?” I asked finally when we got to the top of the stairs.
Samantha paused and looked down at the basketball shorts she was still holding in her hand, but she didn’t immediately respond to my question.
“Look, it was funny and all, but you probably went too far this time,” Desi added.
I was relieved that Desi agreed with me and was standing up for Tommy as well.
“Fine. I’ll give him his pants back. I’m sure the brat has learned his lesson by now,” Samantha said, heading back down the stairs.
“What’s her deal with Tommy?” I asked Desi in a hushed tone as soon as Samantha was out of earshot.
I knew that the two siblings had never gotten along all that well, but I’d never gotten any hint that the situation was this acrimonious.
“Well, it is true that Tommy has been a bit of a brat lately, always trying to get Samantha in trouble.”
“But to blackmail him?”
“I know. Maybe we can talk to her later about deleting the video.”
Samantha arrived back upstairs, and the game resumed where it had left off. Since I had done a dare, I could in turn choose the next dare that one of my friends did. That gave me an idea. Samantha’s behavior had increased the urgency that I not have a noticeable accident in front of her, but with how they had been pressuring me to drink soda I could no longer be sure that I could avoid a bedwetting incident if I fell asleep. I hadn’t brought any pull-ups with me. However, I could take one of Tommy’s, but I’d need to know where his pull-ups were kept.
We returned to Samantha’s room to resume the game of Truth or Dare. It was Samantha’s turn, and with myself having just done a dare there wasn’t much choice as to what option she had to choose.
“A dare,” Samantha said, after I asked her what her choice would be.
“I’ve got one. I’ve got one,” I said, before Desi could get a word in.
This was my chance. I wasn’t going to pass it up. I had something I needed to find out, and I could get some justice for Tommy along the way.
“I dare you to wear one of Tommy’s pull-ups…”
The look on Samantha’s face as I paused was worth it. Shock and then a little bit of embarrassment as she soaked in what I was asking.
“… on your head,” I finished.
I think she would have refused if I had dared her to put on the pull-ups like you would wear panties, but a silly request – wearing them on your head – was too reasonable of a dare to be refused.
Desi burst out laughing.
“Damn girl. You know what you’re doing. You sure you haven’t played before?”
I chuckled. Even Samantha had to show a small grin on her face. She knew she’d been played.
“Well?” I said.
“Of course, I’ll do it,” Samantha said in a huff.
Samantha led us into the bedroom next to hers. This was what I needed to see. Samantha flipped the light switch on and then slid open the door to one of the closets in Tommy’s room. Sitting on a shelf in plain view was a large box that I instantly recognized. It was the boy version of the pull-ups I had once worn as a bedwetter myself. The size said it was extra-large, and fit kids from 65 to 125 pounds. I wouldn’t have any trouble wearing them. Samantha grabbed a pull-up out of the box and slid it on over her head so that her ears stuck out of the leg openings. She spun around in a silly dance before taking the pull-up off and tossing it on the floor.
I now knew everything I needed to know. I just had to wait until everyone was asleep and then I could slip into Tommy’s room and get myself a pull-up to wear after all.
Desi was last to receive a dare. After what Samantha and I had done it was hard to know what could be chosen to top it. Samantha had a glimmer in her eye. I don’t think she had liked how Desi had laughed at my pull-up dare.
“I get to call this dare, but I need a minute to think about it,” Samantha said.
Samantha let the full minute pass by in suspense while Desi awaited her fate. Given that each of the last two dares had involved Tommy’s pull-ups, I suspected that was the direction she was planning on going, but if Samantha had already made a decision, she didn’t give a hint of it. At last, a big grin spread across her face.
“Oh, get it over with Samantha,” Desi said.
Samantha just laughed and then stood up with a flourish to make a show of announcing the dare.
“Desi, I dare you to wear one of Tommy’s pull-ups and pee in it.”
Desi sat speechless on her blanket. Her silence was astonishing in and of itself. Samantha looked way too pleased with herself. I just sat on the floor with my mouth gaping open. Really?
“Damn, I do know how to play this game,” Samantha said mockingly, before running out of the room, presumably to get one of Tommy’s pull-ups.
“Samantha’s not serious, is she?” I said, turning to Desi with a look of bewilderment on my face.
“Nah,” Desi replied. “She’s just being dramatic to scare me. There’s no way she’d have me piss in a pull-up.”
Samantha arrived back in the room breathless, a smile on her face and a blue pull-up clutched tightly in her hand. Samantha tossed the pull-up onto Desi’s lap. Desi dropped it as if she were playing a game of hot potato.
“There,” Samantha announced with an air of finality.
“I’m not doing it,” Desi said, crossing her arms.
That wiped the smile off of Samantha’s face.
“Yes, you are. That’s the rule of the game. You asked for a dare and I gave you one. Now you have to do it.”
Samantha and Desi both stared at each other. Neither one seemed like they wanted to budge off their demands.
“Fine,” Desi said at last, grabbing the pull-up of the floor and marching off to the bathroom to put it on.
She returned a minute later, wearing just her hoodie and the pull-up. Desi’s slim figure is similar to mine, and the pull-up clearly was the right size for her. The pull-up was also clearly still dry, which meant Desi hadn’t yet fulfilled her end of the dare. The design was different than the one Tommy was wearing, as the space-themed pull-up was covered with planets and stars.
I glanced back and forth between my two friends. Desi was again glaring at Samantha, clearly unhappy with being pressured into this ridiculous dare. I thought Samantha might be taken aback at her friend’s unhappiness, but instead, she had a bit of a smug, satisfied look on her face as she glanced down at the pull-up Desi was wearing.
Desi pulled up her sweatpants until the pull-up was fully concealed.
“You can’t do that,” Samantha said. “We have to see whether you’ve peed in it. Take your sweats off.”
“Your dare said I had to wear the stupid pull-up and pee in it. I didn’t hear nothing about having to show it off to everybody.”
“But…” Samantha said, starting to object.
“You can’t change the rules of the dare once it’s started,” I said in Desi’s defense.
I didn’t want to spend the next couple hours watching Desi walk around in a pull-up. The dare was mean enough without making her do that, and my experiences with pull-ups the past week made it feel even more awkward
“I don’t need to pee now anyways,” Desi said. “I’ll show you when I’m ready to do that.”
We returned to the basement after stopping at the kitchen to get some snacks – Samantha had insisted on getting more soda – to find Tommy turning off the video game. Like Samantha had said, her brother did have his shorts back on, covering the pull-up he was wearing. I would have had no idea he was wearing them if Samantha hadn’t dared me to pull his shorts down earlier in the evening.
We settled into our spots on the couch and Samantha turned on the movie – Crazy Rich Asians – and handed Desi and I another soda and a large bowl of popcorn. I hated turning things down when they were offered to me, especially when I was a guest at someone else’s house. Plus, there were pull-ups I could nab later to provide some extra security. I cracked open the soda and took a sip. The carbonation didn’t hit me as bad as the soda I’d had during dinner.
I did end up having to ask Samantha to pause the movie three times so I could get up to go to the bathroom. I was heading to the toilet whenever I began to get the slightest urges in my bladder, not taking any chances of risking an accident.
The movie wasn’t my style, but I did have to admit that it had its funny moments. As the closing credits scrawled across the TV, Samantha slid over to where Desi was sitting on the couch and reached her hand toward the top of Desi’s sweats. Desi slapped Samantha’s hand away with a look of annoyance.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Chill,” Samantha said. “I just wanted to check and see if you’d used the pull-up.”
“Look, it’s dry still. I don’t need to pee.”
I wasn’t too sure of that statement myself, given how much soda we’d all had this evening, but I wasn’t about to call Desi out on it.
“I just can’t do it,” Desi said.
“Can’t do what?” Samantha asked.
“I can’t pee in a motherfucking pull-up. I just can’t make myself do it.”
Desi wanted out of the dare. I didn’t blame her one bit for it. But a dare was a dare; it had to be completed.
“You should have dared Sarah to pee in the pull-up,” Desi said. “She’s the one who’s had to go to the bathroom so often tonight.”
I blushed and looked down at my feet.
“It’s all the caffeine. Mom never lets me have this much, so I’m not used to it.”
Pull-ups and my bathroom habits were the two last things I wanted to be talking about right now. I tried to change the subject.
“Samantha, you promised I’d get to try out some of your makeup. Let’s do that before we begin the next movie,” I said.
Samantha took the bait with that distraction, and with that we went back upstairs to her room.
I barely recognized myself when I looked in the mirror. I had sat still – or at least as still as my anxious bladder would let me – for thirty minutes while Samantha and Desi put a full set of make-up on my face. I let out an audible gasp upon seeing my reflection. It definitely had the effect of making me look older and much more mature. I wished that I could do this at home, but my mom had strictly forbidden make-up until I turned sixteen.
“What do you think?” Samantha asked.
“It looks so amazing!” I said. “Thank-you.”
I excused myself to go to the bathroom for what felt like the umpteenth time this evening as Desi and Samantha proceeded to do each other’s makeup. Just like I had expected, I had now used each of the four bathrooms in Samantha’s house. I’d avoided having an accident, but I was still embarrassed about how often I had to dash away to the bathroom in front of my friends. They hadn’t teased me too much over it, but I was still worried about what they were thinking of me.
Desi and Samantha hadn’t done their own makeup quiet as extravagantly as mine, but they both still looked nice. We posed together for a couple of selfies. I was thankful mom didn’t follow my friends on social media. I’d have a lot of explaining to do if she saw those pictures.
I had hoped that after getting distracted with another activity that Samantha would forget about the dare she had given to Desi, or maybe even agree to let it slide, but as soon as we had gotten our makeup on she was again pressing Desi about whether she needed to pee. Desi relented at last. She sighed, loosened the drawstring of her sweatpants, and let them fall to the floor.
“Let’s just get this over with,” she said.
Desi’s face changed as she closed her eyes, squeezed her lips together, and gave a small grunt. I really didn’t want to watch this. I’m sure my cheeks were burning red from the second-hand embarrassment I was feeling. Nothing changed immediately with the pull-up, it looked as dry as when Desi had first put it on a couple of hours ago. Samantha still stared eagerly at the pull-up, like she was trying to will it to become wet.
After about thirty seconds of waiting, I heard the slightest of hissing sounds, and then a small, yellowish circle appeared at the bottom of the pull-up. In a matter of seconds, that circle expanded rapidly until nearly the entire pull-up was soaked and sagging down from her crotch. It’s one thing to wet a pull-up yourself and an entirely different thing to see someone else do it. I felt disgusted. Is that what is looks like when I have an accident?
Desi opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Her jaw dropped as she looked down at the pull-up to see the result of what she had just done. She twisted and turned in place, unable to find a comfortable way to stand with the wet pull-up sagging between her legs.
“Yuck,” Desi exclaimed. “This is so gross.”
Desi ripped off sides of the pull-up right in front of us without bothering to get any privacy, rolled the used pull-up into a ball, and tossed it right at Samantha, who stepped aside and let the pull-up land with a splat on the floor.
“There. I did the dare. Happy now?”
Samantha blushed slightly. At least she felt a little shame over what she had made her friend do. She picked up the pull-up and went over to Tommy’s room to toss it in the trash can while Desi put her panties and sweats back on.
“That is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever done,” Desi said, as Samantha left the room.
“Yeah, that must have been really weird,” I replied, trying hard not to show my familiarity with how wetting a pull-up feels like.
“All I know is Samantha better watch out the next time we play Truth or Dare,” Desi said, raising her voice enough that Samantha likely could hear her from her brother’s room. “I’ve got some ideas.”
At 3 a.m. I was finally certain that Samantha and Desi were both sound asleep. I had thought it would never happen. We’d stayed up and watched two more movies, before removing our makeup and settling into a trio of sleeping bags in the basement. I could hear Desi snoring, and Samantha had been motionless the past thirty minutes as they lay sound asleep in their sleeping bags. I’d never stayed awake this long before, but the caffeine combined with my frequent urges to pee and my fear of what would happen were I to sleep and wet myself was more than enough to keep me awake till now.
However, with at least another five hours or so to go, I wasn’t sure I could stay awake the entire night. I wasn’t drinking any more caffeine and the effect of what I had drunk earlier was bound to wear off sooner or later. I thought about my plan to get the pull-up from Tommy’s room. It was risky, but not as risky as accidentally falling asleep and waking up with my sleeping bag all wet.
I arranged my sleeping bag so that in the dark it might look like someone was still curled up inside it. The basement was pitch dark with no windows or lights, so I doubted anyone would be able to notice that I had slipped away. Even so, I crawled toward the stairs as stealthily as I could and walked up to the second floor of the house. Tommy’s door had been left open, with some bluish light coming into the hallway from the nightlight inside the bedroom. I peeked just my head past the door to see that Tommy was completely covered beneath his blankets.
I tip-toed over to the closet and grabbed a pull-up out of the box. I felt really guilty over stealing it. It was one thing to take them from my sister, and an entirely different thing to take them from someone else. But it was technically Samantha’s fault that I needed them, I rationalized. After all, she was the one who had pressured me into drinking so much soda. Just as I was getting ready to walk out of the closet. I heard the faint sound of footsteps in the hallway. Oh great. Had someone heard me after all? I stepped completely into the closet and pulled the sliding door until it was nearly shut. I had left Tommy’s door mostly shut as a precaution, and now it gave a brief creaking noise as someone pushed it open from the hallway.
I wanted to peak out and see who had walked in, but I didn’t dare do so. From the sound of the footsteps, whoever had entered the room had stopped next to Tommy’s bed. A minute passed in silence. Then two. Then three. At last I peeked through the gap between the closet door and the wall. With the nightlight to help me peer through the darkness, I could see Samantha kneeling to the side of Tommy’s bed. In one hand, she was holding a shallow, flat dish of water. Her other hand was on Tommy’s wrist, holding his hand into the water.
I may have been a novice to sleepover pranks, but I didn’t need anyone to tell me the purpose of what Samantha was doing. She was attempting to make him wet the bed, or rather – given how her brother was dressed – his pull-ups. Why was she doing this to him? I had never gotten the impression that Samantha disliked her younger brother. In fact, she had been so doting on him when he had been a baby. Seeing how she had cared for him had made me want a younger sibling of my own.
After several more minutes, Samantha placed the dish on the floor. She lifted up a corner of the covers and pulled down Tommy’s pajamas slightly to reveal the pull-up. Samantha must have been satisfied that she’d been successful in getting him to have an accident, because she tugged his pajamas and blanket back in place, picked up the water dish, and left to return to the basement.
I felt much more guilty at what I had seen than I had over the thought of taking one of the pull-ups. I remembered how humiliated I had been with my own bedwetting, and my mom had never made a big deal over it. How much worse would it have been to go through that while having an older sister and her friends torment me about it? I should have confronted her. It was one thing to tease her brother over bedwetting, it was completely different to do that while being the one to cause him to be a bedwetter in the first place. But I couldn’t say anything. There was no good explanation for why I was hiding in Tommy’s closet.
After giving Samantha several minutes to get back to her sleeping bag. I made it down to the first floor bathroom without waking anyone in the house, which gave me my first chance to examine the pull-up, which I wanted to do even though I’d gotten good glimpses of it on both Tommy and Desi. The pull-up was clearly a size bigger than what Emilia wore, though it still wasn’t as thick as the one I had uncovered in the school bathroom stall. While the pattern was the same on both sides, one of them had a small marking on it to indicate it was the back.
As I slid the pull-up up till it reached my waist, it was clear how much better it felt. The sides weren’t nearly as tight as Emilia’s pull-up, but they were still snug, and I didn’t have any concern about them sliding down on their own. I could tell just by the feel between my legs that this pull-up had even more padding than the ones my sister wore.
I’d gotten the boring pattern, rather than the space one, not that it mattered much. Disney characters are much more fun, but I was relieved that I had some protection against potentially being outed as a bedwetter in front of Samantha. I pulled up my pajama bottoms, making certain to tie the drawstrings tight. No one was going to pantsed me.
I cautiously walked down the stairs. There wasn’t a bathroom in the basement, so I did have an excuse for having gone upstairs if Samantha noticed me, but I’d rather avoid having that conversation. I managed to get back into my sleeping bag seemingly without anyone noticing me, and like before, Samantha appeared to be sound asleep.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. Even though I trusted the pull-up to hold an accident should I have one in my sleep, I no longer trusted Samantha to not accidentally discover my secret. And, if she were to discover it, I didn’t trust her not to spread the secret to everyone at school or hold it over my head as some unspoken threat. I got up to pee several more times over the course of the night. The need to go was urgent each time, but except for the first overnight trip to the toilet, I didn’t end up peeing much.
I pretended to be asleep when I heard Desi at last stop snoring and begin to stir in her sleeping bag. My eyes hurt like hell. I hadn’t managed to get any sleep.
“Good morning,” I said, with an unsuccessful attempt at stifling a large yawn.
Desi yawned right back at me. If she noticed how tired I looked she didn’t mention it. Samantha stretched out her arms and peeked out of her sleeping bag as well. I pulled out my phone to see that it was just after 9 a.m., I couldn’t believe my friends were up already having gone to sleep as late as they did.
I don’t know how Samantha’s mom guessed that we were awake, but she yelled from the top of the stairs that it was time to get some breakfast. We ran upstairs in our pajamas, not bothering to change our clothes. As we sat at the kitchen table eating a breakfast of blueberry pancakes, fruit, and orange juice, we didn’t make any mention of last night’s game of Truth or Dare, as if it had never even happened.
Tommy joined us for breakfast at the table. He was still in his pajamas from last night. It may just have been my imagination, but I thought I could see the bulge from the wet pull-up underneath his shorts. I couldn’t believe Samantha was torturing her brother like that. At least Samantha had given no indication that she was aware of my own nighttime excursion.
Tommy’s mom must have noticed the fact that he hadn’t changed out of the wet pull-up as well. While she didn’t say anything directly about it, she shot him a look that had him run upstairs and come down in a new set of clothes.
“Did you sleep at all last night,” Desi asked as I struggled to hold me head up at the table.
“Yeah, but I don’t think it was very restful,” I replied. “I’m not used to sleeping on the floor.”
The rest of the morning passed by in a blur. Desi and Samantha may have gotten more sleep than me, but they were still too tired to do much as well. I was so relieved when I heard mom’s car pull up in the driveway.
I could barely keep my eyes open as mom drove me home. I kept drifting off into a state of being half asleep only to be jolted awake at every bump or turn in the road.
“Didn’t you sleep at all last night?” mom asked.
“No, I couldn’t fall asleep.”
Mom shook her head.
“Sleepovers are for sleeping,” Mom said, scolding me. “Sleep. It’s part of the name.”
“I know. I know,” I said, releasing a large yawn that I’d been unable to hold in. “I just couldn’t”
Once home, I stumbled into the house in a zombie-like state. I walked past the kitchen and into the living room, set my backpack onto the ground and then collapsed onto the couch. I was asleep the moment my body landed on the cushions.


Chapter 15: Pinkie Promise
My dreams were filled with variations of all my fears from the past few days. I was standing in front of the TV in Samantha’s basement trying to play the same videogame Tommy had been playing. I was concentrating so hard on it that I was completely oblivious to my surroundings. I felt a pull on my pants as they got tugged down to the floor.
The pull-up I was wearing was now fully exposed, but it wasn’t one of the blue ones that Tommy had been wearing or my sister’s pull-ups with the Disney characters on them. It wasn’t even one of the plain white ones like I had found in the school bathroom. No, the floral design was that of the pull-ups I had worn as a bedwetter myself when I was Tommy’s age.
I turned around and Samantha and Desi were staring at me.
“Aww, baby has a diaper on,” they said, laughing.
“I’m not a baby,” I shouted back at them.
I reached down to pick up my pants, but they had disappeared. Desi and Samantha just laughed even harder, holding their phones up to videotape me. I tried to cover the pull-up with my hands, but that was pointless.
I turned and ran up the stairs in only a pull-up and t-shirt. As I came to the top of the stairs, the dream shifted, and I was no longer in Samantha’s house but at school. I found myself a bathroom stall. I had my clothes back at least. My pants and pull-up were draped around my ankles as I kept trying unsuccessfully to pee. The stall door swung open to reveal Claire, who stood looking down at my pull-up.
“Aww, baby has a diaper on,” she said in a mocking, sing-song tone.
I slammed the door to the bathroom stall shut in her face. I closed my eyes. I wanted to be anywhere but in the bathroom stall with my nemesis waiting outside for me. I was now back in my own house, laying face-down in my bed. I felt a sensation beginning on my hand, like it was in a bowl of warm water. The sensation spread to the rest of my body, and I felt myself begin to relax.
“Sarah. Sarah!” someone yelled at me; the voice came from outside the dream.
I woke up incredibly confused. Where am I? What? I’m on the couch? My hand was dry, but my bladder felt like it was on the verge of giving up. I jolted into an upright position, jumped off the couch, and started to run for the bathroom. But it was too late. I began to pee. The flow of urine was too strong to stop. I halted at the edge of the living room and the hallway, unable to run and pee at the same time.
I was still so tired that my mind wasn’t thinking straight. I turned back toward the living room to see mom staring at me. Oh no! She’s watching me pee myself. I looked down at my pants to see there wasn’t a wet spot in sight. Everything from the previous day came back all at once. The sleepover. The game of Truth and Dare. Tommy’s pull-ups. Samantha making him wet the bed. I was still wearing one of Tommy’s pull-ups. I could feel now feel how full it had become. I hope it isn’t showing beneath my pants.
“It’s about time you’re awake, Sarah,” mom said tartly, her arms held across her body and a look of disapproval on her face. “What startled you so much?”
“Nothing. Nothing. You woke me in the middle of a bad dream,” I stammered. “I need to go to the bathroom.”
I skipped the bathroom and into my bedroom. Thankfully, Emilia wasn’t in there. I changed myself into a clean pull-up. I wanted to lay in bed and cry. Why? Why am I wetting myself like this? I couldn’t understand how my body had decided to betray me the past couple of weeks. My heart was still racing from the moment of terror in which I had thought that I’d peed myself in front of mom. I felt better after taking several deep breaths to steady myself.
I hurried back to the living room, not wanting mom to notice that I hadn’t gone to the bathroom when I had said I would. A growl from my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast.
“I’m starving. What’s for lunch?”
“Nothing. We’re having pasta for dinner in thirty minutes.”
“What?”
I couldn’t believe I’d slept that long, but I pulled out my phone to see that it was indeed nearly 6 p.m. already.
“Next time you have a sleepover you need to sleep, young lady. You were completely out of it from the moment you collapsed on the couch.”
I didn’t want to ruin my chances for another sleepover. I needed to change the subject to something more positive.
“I made the Fortnite team, and I’m one of the starters,” I said, neglecting to add that there hadn’t been much of a competition for it.
“Will the schedule overlap at all with your cheerleading?”
“Not too much, but we have alternates, and coach is OK with that plan because then it gives everyone a chance to be involved.”
“That reminds me. I think you need to open your birthday present.”
Mom went off to her bedroom and returned with a small, wrapped box. Moving my fingers as rapidly as I could, I tore off the wrapping paper to reveal a wireless gaming headphone. This would be perfect if I wanted to practice remotely with any of my teammates.
“Oh my goodness! Thank-you!”
I gave mom a long hug.
Dinner was a weird pasta with broccoli and tomatoes in it. Not many meals made me long for one of mom’s casseroles, but this one was bad enough to do that trick. I was not alone in picking at my food. My little sister was doing the same thing. She’d only taken a couple of bites at most and was absentmindedly poking the pile of pasta with a fork despite mom’s exhortations that she needed to eat her dinner.
“Mommy! I need to go potty,” Emilia whined.
“You can go potty when you’re done eating, sweetie. You can’t skip your dinner.”
“Mommy!” She whined, squirming in her booster seat.
“Quiet. Eat your food.”
“Mom, it would only take a few minutes for me to take her to the bathroom. Emilia can finish her dinner after that.”
“No. There’s no point in potty training if she can’t learn how to hold her bladder for more than a couple minutes.”
Ugh, why does mom have to make this so hard? Emilia is only three. Let her go to the bathroom. I wish mom was the one changing Emilia’s pull-ups and diapers all the time. Maybe she’d take a different view of making Emilia wet herself. Mom’s refusal to let Emilia go to the bathroom did speed up the urgency with which Emilia was eating, but since Emilia had barely gotten started on her meal, there wasn’t nearly enough time for her to finish and get to the bathroom.
Emilia started to cry. I leaned over her chair and looked down at the pull-up to see that it was wet. Great, another pull-up that I need to change. Thanks mom. We both finished our meal at about the same time. With the pull-up already wet, Emilia wasn’t in any hurry to eat her meal. Mom and I had to constantly prod her to keep taking her next bite.
I grabbed Emilia underneath her arms and lifted her out of the booster seat and onto the ground. I held her hand as I led her to the bedroom to get changed. The only redeeming factor was that this was her first accident of the day so at least I’d be putting her into another pull-up rather than a diaper.
Emilia sniffled as I picked her up and plopped her onto the changing mat I had laid on my bed.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said.
“I know sis. That’s why it’s called an accident.”
I ripped the sides of the pull-up and proceed to thoroughly wipe her down. I tried to be both gentle and quick about changing her. Emilia had recently been getting much more sensitive about her potty-training struggles. If only I could find a way to channel that into getting her to become better at using the toilet.
“I know you can do better. Besides, you don’t want to still be wearing a pull-up when you are old enough to go to school.”
With Emilia cleaned up, I slid the fresh pull-up up her legs. I felt like such a hypocrite. Here I was reprimanding Emilia for wetting herself when I had been doing so secretly for the past couple of weeks. The urge to pee began to come as I was finishing with putting the fresh pull-up on Emilia. I couldn’t leave her on the bed to dash off to the bathroom. I might be able to hold my bladder for several minutes until I could have a chance to go to the bathroom, but that would be rather uncomfortable.
Whatever, I thought, as I relaxed my bladder and felt the urine begin to flow into the pull-up. What different does it make at this point? I felt the usual sensation of the pull-up expanding and sagging against my skin. I’d done it enough now that it no longer felt gross or odd to wet a pull-up. But this time I felt something else: a warm trickle running down my legs that quickly grew into a larger stream of warm liquid.
Drip. Drip. Drip. I stepped back from the bed and looked down to see a wet spot spreading out from my crotch and a puddle of urine collecting on the floor beneath me. Emilia leaned up from the changing pad, her eyes wide at the sight of her older sister having peed herself.
How? I’d tested the pull-ups. They’d never leaked before. I stood paralyzed. I was at a complete loss as to what I should do. The trickle of pee came to a stop. How in the world am I going to explain this?
Emilia jumped off the bed before I could grab her, giving her a full view of the accident. She stared at me without saying anything. I have to stop her from telling mom about this. How can I convince her to stay quiet?
“Pinkie promise,” I said, holding out my hand to hers. “You won’t tell mom. Please. Please?”
Her eyes still wide open, Emilia shook her head back and forth. A second, smaller stream of pee escaped from my bladder and more drops of pee begin splattering on the floor as the pull-up had completely lost its ability to absorb any more.
“Please, Emilia,” I said, practically begging. “Just promise you won’t tell her. OK?”
I’d kept so many of her secrets. Couldn’t she now keep one of mine?
I stood between Emilia and the bedroom door. Emilia started to dash for the door. I reached out to grab her, but she slipped between my arms and darted out into the hallway before I could get a hold of her. Oh that brat. I nearly wanted to strangle her.
A few short seconds later I heard Emilia’s voice all the way from the kitchen.
“Mommy! Sarah peed her pants.”


Well it’s a brilliant story keep up the awesome work!


I’ve read this at your other location up to the chapters you have written. Good to see you branching out and will be looking forward to your updates. It has been a good story so far with a nice progression.


It’s really great and an untypically plot.
Really really a great stuff!


Late to the party here… I saw the list of rules list and noped out, but this is a slow enough burn to make it good


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


Chapter 24: Just Pee Yourself
There are very few times in my life where I have been grateful to be soaking wet from head to toe, but this was one of them.
Cheerleading isn’t nearly as glamorous as TV shows make it out to be. Tonight’s football game had to be on the only day it had rained so far this month. It didn’t help much either that the football team had completely sucked. I was still mostly a novice when it came to the rules of the sport, but you don’t need to know the rules to know that not scoring any points isn’t good.
Throughout the game, I had kept waiting to hear a crack of thunder. Any sign of lightening would have brought the event to an immediate halt. But to my dismay, it was only a steady hours-long rainstorm that I had no choice but to endure.
More than two hours had passed and a glance up at the scoreboard told me that there was still six minutes and twenty-five seconds remaining in the third quarter. Seriously, why do football games have to take this long?
Besides a handful of parents who are way more emotionally invested in their children’s athletic success – or lack thereof – than they should be, the stands were basically empty. Mom and Emilia were both in the stands, with a large umbrella protecting them against the rain. Mom didn’t miss any opportunities to show up for any of the games I was cheerleading at, and she hadn’t managed to find a baby-sitter, so Emilia had got brought along as well.
By halftime, with the team trailing by twenty-eight points, most of the fans had made the sensible decision that sitting out in the rain just was not worth their time. Us cheerleaders don’t have that luxury. We were still waving our pom-poms and repetitively going through the chants and cheers that we’d already done so many times tonight.
One major consolation was that Claire – my fellow freshman cheerleader and a complete and total bitch – was completely miserable about the weather. Her perfect blonde hair was a mess. And her make-up, which she’d used way too much of, was completely ruined in the rain. As wrong as it might be, I have to admit that it was a sight that made me feel warm and fuzzy inside, especially after her recent failed attempt to expose my pull-ups.
The only upside to being out in the rain is that once you’re completely soaked you aren’t able to get any wetter. My pull-up, however, would have been complete soaked even if it had been a dry, sunny, and cloudless evening, like Friday evenings are supposed to be on an October night in New Mexico.
The rain had saved me from a lot of potential trouble. I was still wearing one of my own pull-ups, as I hadn’t found time to change into the pull-ups I had been taking from my still-not-potty-trained three-year-old sister.
My scheme to avoid mom’s tracking of my bladder accidents by using Emilia’s pull-ups instead has nearly last gotten me to the weekend without mom catching on to a single one of my accidents. Unlike our football team, I had actually made it to the redzone.
Nearly a week ago on Sunday, I’d had an inopportune leak from the pull-ups I had been taking from Emilia to hide the bladder problem I’d been dealing with for several weeks now. My sister had witnessed the accident, and that brat had gone running to tell mom. While I had managed to hide the pull-up, I didn’t have the time to hide my wet pants or the puddle on the floor.
Mom, who had no idea I had already been using my sister’s pull-ups, insisted on putting me back in pull-ups, having saved the ones I had been using up to several years ago as a bedwetter. Now I was stuck following the same potty-training rules as my three-and-a-half-year-old sister, meaning that I had to keep my pull-ups dry – or at least trick mom into thinking I had – before mom would end this toilet training charade.
Kaboom!
I paused in the middle of the cheer routine we were in the middle of doing to look up and see large flash of lightning streak across the sky. About time. The referees blew their whistles to bring the game to a halt, and the announcer ordered everyone off of the field.
I didn’t hesitate to take mom up on her offer to take me home to get dried up and cleaned off. While I had gotten into a good routine for hiding my pull-ups when I changed in the locker-room, I was still glad I wouldn’t have to deal with that tonight.
Despite being wrapped in a towel, I sat shivering in the passenger seat on the drive home. For some reason, I felt colder now that I was out of the rain. Though I’d become accustomed to the feeling of a soaked pull-up, the way it had swelled up from the rain was something else entirely. I doubted the pull-up could absorb a single additional drop of water or urine at this point.
As soon as we arrived back at the house, I made an immediate dash toward the bathroom. All I wanted to do was get my wet, cold clothing off and take a hot shower.
“Sarah, wait up, I need to check your pull-up.”
Not again. Though I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. With my back turned to her, I rolled my eyes.
“There’s no need mom, it’s soaked.”
I instantly regretted my choice of words.
“What! Why didn’t you tell me you had an accident?”
I sighed. I really should be more careful.
“I didn’t have an accident. My whole outfit got drenched in the rain. Can you just let me get cleaned up?”
I unwrapped the towel and turned to face mom again. While I hadn’t told mom the entire truth, the fact that my outfit had gotten soaked in the rain was too obvious to dispute.
“Fine, get yourself cleaned up.”
I waited until the bathroom door was safely shut behind me before I let myself breathe a sigh of relief. I examined the pull-up carefully after removing it. While it wasn’t super obvious that I had peed in it, if mom had taken the time to look closely, she would have noticed the faint, yellow stains. I’d gotten quite lucky there. If I can just hide my accidents for forty-eight more hours, I can finally get mom off of my back.
Friday evenings usually mean watching a movie after Emilia has been put to bed. Normally, that would be hard to do with how late the football games would go, but since the thunderstorm had cut the game short, we had time for a quick movie tonight. Mom occasionally lets me pick the movie we watch, but not tonight. She had her mind set on watching a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie, and there was no dissuading her.
I fiddled with my phone through most of the movie. I was glad that the movie had kept conversation between us to a minimum. We hadn’t talked about the whole nighttime diaper thing since mom had gotten me up in the morning. I’d done my best to repress that memory throughout the day, but now that my impending bedtime was rapidly approaching as each minute of the movie ticked away, I couldn’t help but feel an oncoming sense of dread.
I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about wearing a diaper to bed. On one hand, I had never been more humiliated than having my mother tape a diaper on me. But on the other hand, I knew that I had a bedwetting problem, and waking up in the middle of night wearing a soggy pull-up and surrounded by wet sheets was incredibly unpleasant.
What I did know is that I didn’t want to have a conversation with her about it. If I needed to wear the diapers to bed, I just wanted to get it done and over with until I could learn more about this incontinence thing that I had read about in the school library earlier today. While I hadn’t managed to find a solution to my problems, the fact that there was a medical term for it and lots of people writing about it online meant that there had to be something that could be done to help prevent me from wetting myself.
The movie wrapped up at last. Yes, the girl got the guy. Christmas was saved. Everyone lived happily ever after. I knew mom would want to be getting me diapered for bed soon, but since I had something else to ask her, I tried to pre-emptively change the subject.
“So mom,” I began, trying to figure out the best way to phrase the request I was about to make. “There’s going to be a Halloween costume party at the high school, and I was wondering if it would be OK for me to go to it, since I won’t be doing any trick-or-treating?”
Mom paused before replying. That isn’t usually a good sign.
“How about this? If you don’t have any more daytime accidents before then, I’ll let you go to the party.”
“It was only one accident during the day,” I replied, the lie rolling easily off my lips, but I had no intention of mom ever discovering the truth of the situation. “Do you really need to hold it against me for that long?”
“Stop complaining. Since it was just one accident you don’t have anything to worry about. I just want to be making sure you are setting a good example for Emilia.”
I know mom thought that making me follow the same potty training rules as my younger sister would help with Emilia’s potty training, but I felt it was having the opposite effect. I mean from, my sister’s perspective, if even her older sister could be put back in pull-ups and diapers, wouldn’t that discourage her and make her think potty training isn’t possible?
I decided not to press the issue any more with mom. The offer about the Halloween party was as good as I was going to get, and I didn’t want to talk about my bladder problems any more than I needed to. We both sat on the couch silently for the next few minutes. I fiddled with my phone awkwardly, I knew what was about to happen, and while I wanted to just get it over with, I couldn’t bring myself to initiate that conversation.
“Alright Sarah, it’s time to get you ready for bed,” Mom said matter of fact, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary with her needing to put a diaper on her teenage daughter before sending her off to bed.
I took that as a cue to run off to the bathroom. I didn’t care to have mom have to remind me to go potty.
A changing pad, diaper, and baby powder were already laid out neatly when I stepped into mom’s bedroom a few minutes later. I knew what to do without her saying anything. I laid down onto the changing mat and closed my eyes.
My bedroom was still dark when I woke up, unlike the previous night where I had managed to get an uninterrupted night of sleep. While I hadn’t forgotten that I was wearing a diaper, if I had, the loud crinkle it gave as I sat up would have done it for me. With the sensation of needing to pee coming from my bladder, I didn’t have to check diaper to know that it was still dry.
The urge to go wasn’t so strong that I needed to get up and rush to the bathroom right this instance, but it was strong enough that I doubted I’d be able to ignore my bladder long enough to go back to sleep. And, if I did somehow manage to get to sleep, my chances of waking up without a wet diaper were basically zero.
I surveyed my options. Peeing in the diaper was a non-starter. And mom had been clear that I was not to wake her up in the middle of the night, so that wasn’t an option either. If I could get the diaper off and then back on again all by myself, I could use the toilet and avoid waking up to a wet diaper in the morning, and my mother would be none the wiser.
I tip-toed stealthily out of my room and down the hallway. Thankfully, mom slept with her bedroom door shut, so there wasn’t any possibility of her seeing me.
I tried unsuccessfully to pull the diaper down to my knees, but mom had done too good of a job when she had diapered me, having made sure that the tapes were placed to create an extremely snug fit around my waist. Unlike Emilia’s baby diapers, the sides weren’t stretchy at all. I gave one of the four tapes a gentle tug, but it refused to come loose.
As much as I didn’t want to risk causing any damage to the diaper – I needed to be able to put the tapes back on in a way that mom wouldn’t notice – the urge to urinate was getting more and more unbearable now that my body was aware that relief was only moments away. If I don’t hurry, I might end up stuck in a wet diaper after all.
Trying to loosen the tape on the diaper felt a lot like trying to pull a band-aid off of my skin. Slow and gentle doesn’t usually work, sometimes you’ve just got to rip it off. I gave the tape a quick and firm tug.
“Shit…”
I’d managed to get the tape off, all right. But it had taken a small chunk of the plastic outer cover of the diaper along with it, leaving the fluffy white absorbent material inside the diaper exposed. So much for being able to re-use the diaper. But the damage was done and there wasn’t any going back. I ripped off the remaining three tapes, all of which also made small tears in the diaper, and plopped down promptly onto the toilet.
Even though I’d just saved myself from having a wet diaper or bed, I didn’t like my remaining options.
If I didn’t have a diaper on when mom checked on me in the morning, there would be hell to pay, and no explanation would be good enough to save my hide. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tape on a new diaper all by myself, but even if I could, the diapers were somewhere in mom’s room, and I wouldn’t be able to get to them without waking her up.
That left one option, which, as dreadful as it might be, was still preferable to anything else that my sleep-deprived brain was able to come up with.
I walked up to mom’s bedroom door and gave it a couple of soft knocks. I paused, and pressed my ear close to the bedroom door. Nothing. I hadn’t been loud enough to stir her out of bed. I knocked a lot harder the second time. I really wanted to get back to bed, and I knew I would be in so much trouble if I did so without getting another diaper on. But even with the louder knocking, I still didn’t get a response from mom.
“Mom, please, can you get up?” I said, as I tapped repeatedly on the door.
This felt so embarrassing. It’s been ages since I’ve had to wake mom up in the middle of the night. As I again pressed my ear against the door, I at least heard mom’s blankets shuffling as she got herself out of bed. Mom cracked open the door to take a look at me with a annoyed frown on her face.
“What are you doing out of bed, young lady? It’s still the middle of the night.”
I decided to get right to the issue.
“I need a new diaper.”
Mom gave me a tired, quizzical look. I don’t think she understood my question.
“Sweetie, if you had an accident in your diaper, you just need to go back to sleep. The whole point of wearing a diaper is so that you can stay in bed all night long without any disruptions.”
Really? Yes, I’d wet the bed quite a few times in the past week, but, I was still upset that mom had immediately assumed that my request was because I had a wet diaper that needed to be changed.
“I didn’t wet my diaper. I woke up and needed to pee so I took it off to go to the bathroom, but the outside of the diaper ripped when I took the tapes off so I need you to put a new one on me.”
“Sarah, while I’m glad you made it to the potty on time, the purpose of putting you in a diaper isn’t just to keep your bed dry. Neither of us are going to be getting enough sleep if you keep having to get me up every night. Next time this happens, I expect you to stay in bed, use the diaper if you need to, and go back to sleep until the morning.”
“Wait. What?”
“You heard me clearly, next time, just pee yourself.”
My jaw dropped at that response.
“I’m fifteen. I’m not going to pee in a diaper on purpose,” I said loudly. I knew better than to raise my voice at mom, but this was just ridiculous. No way was I going to intentionally pee myself in a diaper.
“Close your mouth young lady, and don’t give me that tone. You’re fifteen? Well, fifteen-year-olds are able to stay in bed all night without wetting themselves or getting up to use the toilet. You’ll be treated like you’re fifteen when you behave like you are fifteen.”
I was fortunate that mom hadn’t turned the lights on, so she couldn’t fully make out how angry I must have appeared. There was no winning an argument with mom. I’d gotten two spankings in the past couple of weeks, and I didn’t want another one, which was where this conversation was going to end if I didn’t relent.
After a few moments, I just nodded my head in response, worried that I couldn’t keep an angry tone out of anything I were to say.
The diapering that followed wasn’t nearly as gentle as the previous two had been, as mom hurried to get the diaper taped on me. She ended up putting the tapes on too tight, and it felt like they were pinching against my skin, but I didn’t care to complain and have her repeat the process all over again.
I waddled back into bed without bothering to put my pajama bottoms back on only to come across the most disturbing feeling – I needed to pee. Now, it wasn’t as if I had to go that badly, or that it would be anything more than a trickle if I went, but the sensation coming from my bladder was enough that getting to sleep was going to be really hard.
I tossed and turned for what felt like an hour, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake that tiny urge to pee or get my mind off of the fact that I had wet the diaper. And despite all the twisting and turning, the diaper remained and snug around my waist as it had when mom had put it on me an hour ago.
All I wanted to do at this point was to fall asleep. I wouldn’t care as much if I had an accident while I was asleep, but to intentionally wet myself in a scenario where it would be reasonable to let me use the toilet just felt so wrong.
Just pee yourself. Just pee yourself. Just pee yourself.
That phrase from the nightmare I’d had when my bedwetting issues first began kept coming back to me. That haunting, painful, humiliating request. I’d first heard Mr. Higgins say it to Lisa, in admonishing her about wanting a hall pass to get to the restroom. And now, mom was telling me the same thing.
It made no sense to me at all, but what was the point? Anything I did to resist was only going to result in a worse punishment. With the sleepy acknowledgement at last that this was not a battle that I was going to win, I let my bladder go and swiftly drifted off to sleep.


Chapter 25: Practice Makes Perfect
Lisa gave me a smile as I took a seat next to her in the computer lab, which I returned. As much as I enjoy playing Fortnite, just being able to get out of the house for a bit on Saturday was a huge relief.
My diaper had been even wetter when I woke up this morning and mom checked it. And mom didn’t even act mad or disappointed in me. She just had this smug, I told you so look on her face as she cleaned me up. To make matters worse, Emilia had managed to wake up dry overnight for the third time this week, and mom made a big show of praising my younger sister in front of me.
At the tryouts last week, Lisa and I had been the two best players, though Lisa’s Fortnite skills were far beyond my own. I’d never asked her how often she plays, but I had to guess that it was quite a lot more than me. I’d arrived about ten minutes earlier to practice. I’d told mom that it was important for her to drop me off early so that I’d for sure be on time for the first practice, but really, I wanted time to change into my sister’s pull-ups prior to getting started.
It was rare for Lisa to initiate any conversation between us, so I took the initiative to ask her about her Halloween plans.
“Are you going to the Halloween Party on Friday?”
“Yeah, I have to, since my uncle is the chaperone.”
“You have to? Don’t you want to go?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never actually been to a Halloween party before.”
“Wait, seriously?”
“Yeah, um, my parents didn’t think Halloween was appropriate for kids, so I never dressed up for trick-or-treating or anything like that.”
“Wow, and here I was thinking my mom was strict for making me stop going out trick-or-treating once I turned thirteen. What are you going to be dressed up as?”
“I mean, I guess. But I don’t know what I should dress up as.”
“That’s OK. I haven’t chosen a costume yet either.”
We sat in silence for a bit as I turned on the computer and got logged into my Fortnite account. What could I be for Halloween? Mom wasn’t going to buy a fancy costume for me, and that wasn’t something my measly allowance could afford. I’d probably have to go with something simple or makeshift.
“Do you… Do you think we could do matching costumes?” Lisa asked.
I hadn’t talked with Desi or Samantha about what they wanted to wear for their Halloween costumes. I knew Desi wouldn’t mind if I teamed up with Lisa, but I was worried about how Samantha would react. She’s someone who jealously protects her friend group and doesn’t like other people coming into it. I decided to go for it, but there was one thing left to discuss. I guess I have to figure out what Lisa wants to go as first.
“Maybe, but I’m all out of costume ideas. Do you have something in mind?” I asked.
“We could go as Thing 1 and Thing 2, from Dr. Seuss,” Lisa said. “That should be an easy enough outfit to put together.”
“So… which of us will be Thing 1, and who is going to be thing 2?”
“It’s up to you. I don’t mind either way.”
“You can be Thing 1, then, and I’ll be Thing 2.”
Coach Olson walked into the computer lab right as it was time for practice to start.
“You guys excited about the updates to the Fortnite map?” he asked.
“No,” Lisa said firmly.
Everyone turned to look at her. It was just a bit out of character for Lisa to speak up like that.
“I hate all the vehicles they added,” she said. “They’re so gimmicky and exploitable.”
Well, Lisa wasn’t wrong about it, that’s for sure.
With the Fortnite map having got a massive update a couple days back, Coach Olson spent the first thirty minutes of the practice going over the changes and pointing out the best spots for us to make our initial landing on the island. I always preferred to land toward the outer edges of the map and work my way in, but he was encouraging us to be more willing to land closer to the center. Even with more players there, the reward of getting better items was worth the risk. Or so he said, at least.
Next, he introduced us to a couple of websites that have practice games where you can hone your FPS skills by rapidly clicking on a variety of moving targets. My index finger actually began to feel sore after a half-hour of those exercises, and I had even brought my fancy, ergonomic gaming mouse with me.
“Girls, we’ve got a five-minute break,” Coach Olson said. “Be sure to be back in time.
I had managed to make it through the first hour of practice without an accident, though any attempt to hold my bladder much longer would be pushing it.
Everyone but Lisa shuffled out to either go to the restroom or get a drink of water. I felt prouder of myself than a teenager should feel about the fact that I had managed to hold my bladder for a whole hour, though any attempt to hold my bladder much longer would be pushing it.
Lisa was still at her desk when I returned to my seat. I noticed something askew when I pulled up my chair and took a seat next to her.
My backpack, which I had left face-down, was now lying face-up. Lisa had been in the room by herself, but surely, she wouldn’t have searched through my backpack. No one else would have had the chance to move it though, since everyone but Lisa had left the room to either go to the restroom, get a drink of water, or just walk around and stretch.
First Claire and now Lisa, why did everyone have to be so interested in the contents of my backpack? I thought about confronting Lisa about it, but I didn’t want to make a scene, or make her suspicious if she hadn’t seen the pull-ups. Before I could make up my mind about asking her, a few of the other girls on the team ambled into the room. I guess I’ll have to let the issue drop for now.
The remainder of the practice went by quickly. We focused on solo matches, so I didn’t get a chance to play any rounds with Lisa. I tried to stay calm. Lisa wasn’t anything like Claire. She wouldn’t say anything if she had noticed the pull-ups? Besides, I’d taken to burying them even deeper in my backpack anyway, so there’s no way she would have noticed them even if she had opened her backpack. I tried to go back to focusing on my Fortnite match. Really, there’s no need for me to be this paranoid.
As soon as practice was over, I grabbed my backpack from underneath the desk. All the zippers were tight and where I had left them, or, at least how I remembered it to be. I must just be imagining things. Lisa tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention just as I was getting ready to walk out of the computer lab.
“Um, Sarah, I have a question for you?”
Another one? I felt my heart stop. I couldn’t open my mouth to say anything, so I just nodded.
“Hey, so do you think you would be able to come over to my place sometime so that we can work on that history project together?”
My initial reaction was to say no. Not because I disliked the idea of spending time with Lisa, but with all my bladder issues the idea of spending more time away from home than necessary didn’t seem like a good idea. I couldn’t think of a polite way to refuse. Lisa took my silence for acquiescence and continued with her proposal.
“I’m sure the project won’t take all that long, and, when we’re done, we can play a few round of Fortnite together. We can do it on my PS4 so we can see each other’s screens as we play.”
I made a feeble attempt to turn her down.
“I mean, I’d like to come over, but I’m not sure if my mom will be OK with that. Maybe we could use the library instead?”
“I’m sure it won’t be a problem. My uncle is a teacher, after all. I’ll have him give your mom a call about it.”
I was trapped. Lisa had ignored all of the off-ramps I had set up and had instead plowed ahead with her plan to have us work on the project at her house. At least it is not a sleepover, so I’ll probably make it through despite my bladder issues.
“I guess that would work with my mom.”
“Perfect! And we have our first Fortnite matches next week as well, so you can just come over straight away after that.”


Chapter 26: The Countdown
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
I stared anxiously at my watch as the seconds slowly passed by. Time passes slowest when you are most attentive to it, but the anticipation of this moment had left my brain too addled to concentrate on anything but the ever-changing numbers on my digital watch, until the numbers transformed themselves into a meaningless blur of color in front of my eyes.
I wanted nothing more than to put the misery and humiliation of this past week behind me. Ever since last Sunday evening, when a leaky pull-up had betrayed me in front of my sister, I’d been waiting for this moment. Mom had used that lone accident as an excuse to put me through this charade of re-potty-training, supposedly to set a good example for my younger sister, Emilia.
It was a stupid rule to make a teenager follow. After all, why in the world would a teenage girl not be toilet trained? Unbeknownst to my mom, my bladder problems extended far beyond that one daytime accident and the bedwetting that had followed closely behind it. I basically hadn’t avoided wetting myself during the day since the beginning of the month.
Her solution – to put me back in pull-ups and parade me around the house in them – was non-sensical under normal circumstances. Given that I was actually experiencing bladder problems, something did need to be done to get that issue resolved, but I was determined to do that on my own terms, not hers.
I’d been pestering mom all day about when I could stop wearing the pull-ups. She finally got annoyed enough that she had me set a timer on my watch counting down to the exact moment when I’ll have gone a whole week without any bladder accidents, or, to put it more accurately, a whole week without mom noticing any of my bladder accidents.
If she found out… No. I pushed that thought to the farther parts of my head. It didn’t do me any good to dwell on what might happen if mom discovered how I had been scheming to hide my bladder accidents from her. I simply had to focus on how to best conceal my accidents until I go to the point where I wasn’t having them anymore.
Fifteen minutes left. I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. I left my bedroom to head over to the living room. Emilia was on the floor, playing with her dolls. She was fully dressed, meaning that she was wearing a diaper beneath her dress and tights. She was sitting cross legged on the floor, sucking on a pacifier with a sullen look in her eyes as she lackadaisically fiddled with her miniature dolls and all their various accessories.
There were times this past week where I had been so, so furious with her for how she had tattled on me to mom about my accident without giving it a second thought. But after a week of having to endure my sister’s potty-training regime was coming to a close, the awfulness of it had brought me a new sense of empathy for Emilia. Could it be that it might be easier to potty-train her if mom wasn’t being so strict? I tried not to dwell too long on such a heretical thought. Openly questioning any of mom’s rules was recipe for disaster.
The only upside to the past week of potty-training was that mom had relieved me from my normal duties of taking care of Emilia’s diapers and toileting. I had rather hoped that I would have been given a permanent reprieve of those responsibilities, but that was apparently not to be. Mom had made herself abundantly clear earlier today that as soon as I was done with her potty-training that I was to be back in charge of taking care of my three-year-old sister.
Halloween might be less than a week away, but mom’s mind had already skipped several holidays ahead to Christmas. She had finished re-arranging the furniture in the living room to create space for the Christmas tree in the corner. You would think that someone with her level of enthusiasm – no, make that fanaticism – about Christmas would prefer to use a real, live, actual evergreen tree, but mom still preferred the nine-foot tall artificial tree that, when assembled in our living room, nearly touched the ceiling.
While it only took her an hour or so to get the tree set up, decorating it will be a weeks-long affair as she gets hundreds of ornaments out of storage and sorts through them to determine which ones will make the cut to hang on the tree this year. Mom usually requires that I assist with most of the household chores, but she views decorating the Christmas tree as too delicate or sensitive a task to be handled by anyone but herself. The collection of ornaments is vast. She never passes up the opportunity to add another ornament to the collection if she passes one in a store, and, as to throwing any of them away, that is simply unheard of.
But one does not simply decorate a Christmas tree in our house. The ambience and mood has to be just so. Christmas music – selected from a Spotify playlist – is playing through a portable stereo. And playing on TV is a collection of mom’s greatest hits – the home videos she makes every Christmas season.
I sighed internally. Another Christmas morning video. At least I was dressed appropriately in this one for a change – pun not intended. In that Christmas morning from several years back, mom had me dressed in pajama pants and a t-shirt rather than having me run around in only a pull-up. I stood and watched the video play on the TV for a couple of minutes. I wondered why Christmas didn’t fill me with the same anticipation and excitement now as it did then. I guess that must be a part of growing up, but then how do you explain my mom’s fanaticism about the holiday?
As I watched the video, I saw the shirt ride up the back of my younger self as I bent down to pick up a present, and display the tell-tale waistband of a pull-up was sticking out above the top of my pajama bottoms. I could do without being reminded of the much less discreet pull-up I was wearing at the moment. While at home, mom insisted that I not wear any cloths over the pull-ups I had on. I’d compensated for that with a warm hoodie and knee-high socks.
Mom finally noticed that I had entered the room. I wouldn’t have dared to interrupt her while she was busy decorating the Christmas tree.
“It’s not time yet,” mom said.
Geez, I like I’m not fully aware of that.
“I know. I was wondering if you could help with my costume for the Halloween Party.”
“What are you going as?”
“A friend and I are going to be going as Thing 1 and Thing 2, from Dr. Seuss.”
“Who is going to be the other half of the outfit?”
“Lisa, you haven’t met her before.”
“Oh, I forgot to mention it, but I think that was her uncle, Mr. Higgins, who had called to make sure it would be OK for you to go over to their place on Saturday to work on a class project.”
“Yep, that’s him. Mr. Higgins is also one of the chaperones for the Halloween party as well.”
“What are you going to need for that outfit?”
“Nothing fancy. Just a red shirt with a white circle with the number two on it. I think I have an old shirt or two that might work well for that.”
“If there are two shirts, do you want me to make an outfit for Lisa as well?”
“That would be great.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The conversation had made me completely forget about the countdown timer on my watch. I breathed a sigh of relief. I couldn’t wait to get these pull-ups off.
There wasn’t a chance that I was risking going back to wearing panties. I still planned to make use of Emilia’s pull-ups – without mom’s knowledge, of course – to manage the accidents that I will still likely be dealing with. I would, however, be much more cautious with them. That time last week where Emilia’s pull-ups had sprung a leak was the reason and I been in this whole potty-training mess in the first place.
“Let me check your pull-ups one last time,” mom said.
She turned to look at my sister, who wasn’t paying attention to our conversation.
“Emilia, come here. You need to see that your big sister completed her potty-training.”
I should be super embarrassed right now, but all I felt was relief. I could put up with once last awkward moment if it meant moving on from this charade. Mom may a show of using both hands to slide the pull-up down to my knees. It was dry. No surprises there.
“Go ahead and toss the pull-up in the trash. You can go and change back into panties and your regular clothes.”
I started to race off to my bedroom.
“Wait,” mom said, bringing me to a stop. “Come right back once you’re dressed. Emilia’s diaper needs to be changed.”
After tossing the teen pull-up into the diaper bin, I listened closely at the door to make sure no one was heading to the bathroom before putting on one of my sister’s pull-ups. The fit wasn’t as good as the pull-ups designed for bedwetting kids, but it would have to do for now. I pulled on a pair of jeans, and slid a belt on, making sure that the pull-ups didn’t rise above my pants.
I didn’t really want to rush back to the living room. With my luck, I’d have a messy diaper to change. Whenever mom put Emilia back in diapers because her potty-training wasn’t going well enough, my sister wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom for anything, even though she’d long moved on from messing her pants.
I didn’t bother to check Emilia’s diaper. Mom had last changed her before dinner, so I knew that a diaper change was going to be needed. I struggled to lift my sister up off of the floor. At the rate she was growing, I doubted I’d be able to carry her much longer. Much to my relief, the diaper was only wet, not messy. We didn’t talk as I rushed to get her cleaned up quickly. I didn’t want to make her feel any worse about wearing the diaper than I’m sure she already did. I suppose I should be grateful that she hasn’t finished her potty-training, as that gave me a discreet source of pull-ups that I could take to manage my own bladder issues.
With Emilia in a fresh diaper, I changed her into a bedtime outfit and sent her off to the bathroom to get her teeth brushed before going to bed. I spent the last couple hours before my own bedtime on the living room couch, mindlessly playing some boring games on my phone, doing my best to ignore the endless loop of home videos playing on the TV.
“Sarah, you remember what you had told me a few weeks back about how constipation can cause a problem with children when they are toilet training?”
I nodded. I did recall how I had spent some time online looking up ideas for how to get Emilia toilet trained, but I was leery of the direction that this conversation was going to take.
“I didn’t think it was a good idea at the time, but with Emilia still not staying dry consistently during the day or at night, and with your bedwetting picking back up, I think it might be a good idea to have both of you try some laxatives.”
I didn’t respond right away. Mom hadn’t really phrased her thoughts as a question, after all. That seemed like it would be too easy of a fix for such as major problem, but, on the other hand, if it did work my life would be back to normal and I would be free of having to change my sister’s diapers as well.
“I think that would be good to try,” I said.
“I’ll need to get them ordered then, and the ones that look best don’t have two-day shipping on Amazon, so they probably won’t come until next weekend.”
With about ten minutes to go until it was my bedtime, I slipped into my bedroom so that I could change out of my sister’s pull-ups and into a pair of panties, so that mom could diaper me for bed without finding out that I was taking Emilia’s pull-ups. I made sure that my sister was asleep. She was already snoring quietly and didn’t stir a bit when I gently nudged her shoulder.
Even though I’d only been back to wearing diapers to bed for less than a week, mom and I had already settled into a routine for getting me diapered for bed. Once I had finished with using the toilet one last time – not that it was going to do be any good – and had brushed my teeth, I slipped into her bedroom to lay on her bed and did everything I could to make the diaper go as quick as possible.
Once she was done, I didn’t bother with putting any pajamas over the diaper. It retained body heat much more than panties or pull-ups did, and I wanted to be at least somewhat comfortable while sleeping. The embarrassment of having to wear a diaper to bed was outweighed by the relief I felt over successfully making it through mom’s day-time potty-training regimen as well as the hope that I might soon be able to bring my bladder issues to an end.


Chapter 27: Monster Mash
Mom made good on her promise to help make Halloween outfits for Lisa and I, and she had overdelivered. Not only had she made the shirts, but she had gotten a hold of red and white striped leggings and pale-blue tutus for both of us. I also had a blue bow in my hair to complete the outfit.
True to my promise to Lisa, I had given her the “Thing One” shirt and the rest of her outfit earlier today. She had been a bit hesitant about the leggings – I swear I’ve only ever seen her wearing a dress – but agreed to it once I showed her the tutu that was also part of the outfit.
I was grateful for the tutu as well. The leggings mom had gotten were skintight and certainly would have exposed the outline of the pull-up I had on. Having safely made my way through mom’s toilet training regimen, I was back to stealing my sister’s pull-ups so that my continuing bladder problems would remain unnoticeable.
I arrived at the entrance to the gymnasium where the Halloween Party was being held to see Lisa loitering by herself in hallway. Half of the lights in the hallway had been shut off. After we had left for the day, students on the Halloween Committee had filled the school with spooky decorations. Cobwebs covered the walls and ceiling, a couple of lockers had skeletons peaking out of them. The remaining lights where covered in orange and red tape, causing them to cast an earie glow.
Lisa had her back to me and was looking into the gym. With the noise from the crowd inside, along with Halloween music playing through the speakers for a spooky ambience, there wasn’t any way she was going to hear me walk up to her. Still, I crept up as quietly as I could before reaching up to grab her shoulders from behind.
“Boo!”
Lisa gave a quiet shriek and jumped, before turning around to face me with her hands resting at the front of her tutu. We were a perfect match except for the fact that Lisa had a good six to seven inches on me.
“I don’t know if I really like Halloween that much,” she said, shuffling her feet and looking like she was uncomfortable.
“I’m sorry I scared you, but it is Halloween, after all. Besides, you look great in the costume.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, I bet we have a chance at winning the costume contest for best team outfit.”
“Do we have to?”
“Of course, that’s the whole point of dressing up like this. Now come on, let’s go inside. I bet there is something to snack on.”
The lights inside the gymnasium were as dim as the hallway, but the music was much louder now that we were inside. Strobe lights hanging from the single flickered and flashed. A couple hundred students were inside already, many of them dancing in the middle of the basketball court, but still no sight of Desi or Samantha.
We made our way around the edge to the snack bar. I grabbed a chocolate cupcake with orange frosting while Lisa helped herself to a Halloween themed Rice Krispies bar.
“Sarah, is that you,” Desi called out from behind us. “That is just so cute.”
I turned around and gave my outfit a twirl.
“Clearly you should have been ballerina rather than a cheerleader,” Desi said.
Desi had kept her Halloween outfit simple. Dressed as a ghost, she had a white sheet with holes cut for her eyes, nose, mouth, and arms.
“Boooooooo,” she drawled, with her arms raised above your head.
I leaned away in mock terror.
“Have you guys seen Samantha yet?” Desi asked.
“Nope, I wonder where she is at?” I replied.
We had pestered Samantha the whole week leading up to Halloween, and she hadn’t given us so much as a single clue as to what her outfit was going to be. Samantha had insisted that there was no way we were going to be able to guess what she was going to dress up as, and despite our best efforts, she had told us we hadn’t even come close. Knowing her though, she was certainly going to go all out with whatever she decided on doing.
We each helped ourselves to some more snacks and headed back toward the entrance just as Samantha walked in the gymnasium with the most ridiculously outfit on. And by most ridiculous I really, truly, mean most ridiculous.
She had pink and purple striped knee-high socks, a massive bib that went half-way down her chest, a had a baby bonnet on her head, and a pacifier in her mouth. Her hair was done in two pigtails with baby-pink ribbons. I guess that would have been fine, except that she had taken dressing up like a baby even further. Samantha had on a full-sized diaper, with pictures of a bunch of baby animals on it – monkeys, lions, giraffes – and a pair of tapes on each side.
Actually, I take that back. The one way Samantha’s outfit could be more ridiculous was if the diaper was wet or soiled. Thankfully, the diaper didn’t give any indication that Samantha had used it like that.
Desi, Lisa, and I all stood gawking at Samantha, before turning to each other to exchange silent glances of shock. We weren’t the only ones who had noticed her outfit. While most of the students were busy on the dance floor, I noticed quite a few people whisper to a friend and then point a finger in Samantha’s direction. Well, if Samantha was going for shock value, she certainly succeeded.
“You’ve got to be bleeping kidding me,” Desi said at last.
I waved at Samantha to get her attention, and she practically skipped over to join us.
“I did tell you that you were never going to guess what my Halloween costume was going to be,” Samantha said, taking the pacifier out of mouth and letting it hang from a clip attached to her shirt.
“Only because we couldn’t imagine you doing something so weird,” I said.
“Is that like, an actual, real diaper?” Desi asked.
“Um, yes,” Samantha said with a bit of a stammer. “Look, I want to win the costume contest, so I went all out with it, OK.”
At least she had the good sense to be a bit embarrassed. I was never more thankful than at times like this that my friends had no idea I was wearing a pull-up.
“Where exactly did you get that diaper?” Lisa asked.
“I found it only on Amazon, while I was looking for baby stuff for my outfit,” Samantha. “I hadn’t planned on wearing a diaper too, but when I saw it, I figured why the heck not. Maybe it will give me a better chance at winning the costume contest.”
“Just don’t actually use it,” Desi said. “Trust me when I say that is not comfortable at all.”
Lisa looked so confused at that comment. I decided it was best not to explain how Samantha had forced Desi to urinate in a pull-up during a game of Truth-or-Dare at that sleepover. If I couldn’t change the fact that Samantha was wearing a diaper, I could at least change the subject.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get on the dance floor for a bit.”
I grabbed Lisa’s hand before she could protest, and Desi and Samantha followed behind us.
The song “Monster Mash” began to play just as we got close to the center of the gymnasium.I was working in the lab late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For my monster from his slab began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise
He did the monster mash
It was a graveyard smash
I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I tried to wave my arms around the way every else was as well. It really just felt like I was kind of flailing around. What kind of dance is a monster mash anyways?
I couldn’t keep my eyes off of Samantha’s outfit as we danced to that extremely silly song. Even if I weren’t dealing with my bladder issues, I don’t know how I would be able to summon the courage to openly wear a diaper in public, if just for a Halloween gag.
I’d learned more than I ever wanted to know about pull-ups and diapers the past month, and I could say with some certainty that the diaper Samantha had on definitely appeared to be made like it was meant to be used, but who would go to the trouble of making something so niche like that?
“You know,” Desi said to Samantha. “Your outfit reminds me of something I saw on TV a while back. There was this super weird show about people being addicted to strange shit. And there was this girl on there who was addicted to wearing diapers. Like, actually using them too.”
“Oh, come on,” Samantha said. “I’m not some freak who likes to wear diapers.”
“I mean, if they make diapers that big, obviously there must be some people that need to use them,” Lisa added.
“I suppose,” Samantha said. “But you’d have to be a special level of retarded to be in high school and still need to wear diapers.”
Desi grabbed the pacifier and stuck it into Samantha’s mouth.
“Shush, babies don’t use naughty words like that,” Desi said, wagging her index finger back and forth in front of Samantha’s face while Lisa and I doubled over in laughter.
The music died down and the strobe lights came to a stop as Mr. Higgins, Lisa’s uncle, came up to the stage. The history teacher was the school chaperone for the Halloween Party.
“Everyone, everyone quiet down for a bit,” Mr. Higgins said into a microphone. “We’re going to take a quick break from the music to get started on with the costume contest.”
“The judges table is on the north end of the gymnasium, so if you want to register for the costume contest you need to go there to sign up so that the judges can rate your costume.”
“You guys go on ahead. I know I’m not winning anything,” Desi said.
The line for the costume contest was already crazy long by the time we got to it. I didn’t have a terribly urgent need to pee yet, but I hadn’t gone to the bathroom since I had left home to come to the Halloween Party, and I didn’t have full faith in the pull-ups either.
“If you guys can wait, I’m going to slip off to the restroom quick,” I said.
“I should probably go as well,” Lisa said. “The line looks long.”
“I’ll come along too,” Samantha said.
We both turned to look at her.
“What, you thought I was actually going to piss in a diaper?”
Only one of ten stalls was in use in the nearest bathroom. I grabbed one of the stalls in the middle. I had hoped Lisa and Samantha were going to take ones further down, but they instead slipped into the next two adjacent stalls.
I slipped my pull-up just a short ways down, so that it wouldn’t be visible beneath the stall. I could hear the tapes on the diaper ripping as Samantha undid two of them, presumably so that she could get the diaper tugged down enough to use the toilet. It was going to be a bit awkward when Samantha realized that she wouldn’t be able to tape the diaper back on afterward.
We each did our business with a bit of standard chit chat on the side. I got done first and was busy washing my hands when Samantha exited her stall, her diaper fully intact, no rips or anything on it. I didn’t care for the babyish designs, but I could see how a fancy diaper like that might help with nighttime trips to the toilet.
The line for the costume contest had gotten a little bit shorter by the time we returned to the gym. In front of us was a couple dressed up as a zombies, with some incredibly realistic makeup. After about twenty minutes we got to the front of the line.
A trio of teachers I hadn’t had classes with were at the judges’ table. Lisa and I went first. We printed out our names on a sheet of paper before standing up in front of the judges to show off our outfits. The teachers sat silently, scribbling some notes on paper. I guess they were writing down their grades of our costumes. After a minute or so they waved us on, and we went in search of Desi.
“You guys want something to drink,” Desi said, finding us first. “I saw you guys were getting close to the front of the line, so I grabbed some drinks for you.”
Soda and juice, the perfect combo to make me need to pee. Probably not a good idea.
“Thanks, but I’m good for now,” I replied.
“You want one Lisa?” Desi asked.
“No, I’m not thirsty either,” she said.
“Suite yourself. It’s really good,” Desi said, as she guzzled each of the cups in a matter of seconds.
Samantha joined us a couple minutes later holding a cupcake, looking at the three empty cups in Desi’s hand.
“Sorry Samantha, I would have got one for you, but they weren’t giving out punch in baby bottles.”
Samantha just rolled her eyes. We mingled on the edge of the dance floor for a while, waiting for the winners of the costume contest to be announced.
“You all set for our first Fortnite match tomorrow?” Lisa asked.
“I suppose. I’m nervous, but I guess it won’t be any different than any other Fortnite games we’ve played.”
“Yep, and you’re still good to come over to my house afterward to work on the history project?” Lisa asked.
“Of course.”
“Have either of you made progress on your group project,” I asked Samantha and Desi.
“Not much. Our third team member is totally ghosting us,” Desi said.
“Who is that again?”
“Jonathan,” Samantha said. “He’s not been responding to any of our texts. We had one meet-up already yesterday after school and he was so not prepared.”
“Tough luck,” I said.
“I’d say I feel bad that you aren’t part of our group project, but then you went off and got paired with the teacher’s niece. That’s almost as good as being paired with a teacher’s kid, right?” Desi said.
I let out a small laugh.
“We’ll see, maybe Mr. Higgins won’t grade us too harsh,” I said.
Our conversation was interrupt by an electronic screeching sound as the microphone was being setup again.
“Settle down everyone,” Mr. Higgins said. “We’re ready to announce the winners of the costume contest, starting with the singles division.”
Samantha stared intently at Mr. Higgins. I mean, she really must have wanted this bad to go as far as wearing a diaper as part of her costume. Mr. Higgins read off the names of the second and third place winners without announcing Samantha’s name.
“And first place, dressed as a real-life baby, Samantha,” Mr. Higgins called out into the microphone.
Samantha lifted her pacifier in the air triumphantly and walked with an exaggerated waddle toward the stage. Mr. Higgins handed Samantha an envelope and she returned to join us.
“And now, for the doubles division,” Mr. Higgins said. “Third place goes to our Dr. Seuss duo of Thing One and Thing Two, Lisa and Sarah.”
I shouted “Yes” at the same time that Lisa muttered “Oh, no.”
“Let’s go, we’ll just be on the stage for a few seconds,” I said to Lisa, putting my hand on her back.
We walked up to the stage together, where Lisa’s uncle was waiting with a pair of envelopes.
“That’s a great costume, Lisa,” he whispered to us as we posed with him for a picture for the school newspaper.
Once we were down from the stage, I took a peek inside the envelope. It had a $25 Amazon gift card inside. That was quite the treat. I glanced at my phone. It was already getting close to 10 p.m. That was when mom was supposed to pick me up.
“Sorry, I have to get going. Mom’s going to be coming to pick me up soon,” I said.
“Really, the party is just getting started,” Desi said.
“Yeah, I know, but you know how my mom can be at times. I need to be out to the car on time if I want her to keep letting me go to parties like this.”
I gave them one final wave goodbye and walked toward the gymnasium exit. Now what am I going to get with this gift card?


Chapter 28: Study Buddies
Another morning, another wet diaper, another reminder that despite the façade I’ve been desperately attempting to construct, my bladder problems show no sign of improvement.
Mom’s not-so-gentle-hand nudging my shoulder was what woke me up this morning. I didn’t need to look at the alarm clock to know that it was way too early for me to be getting out of bed on a weekend. Saturday mornings are supposed to be for sleeping in. Surely, there must be some law about it. That had changed with the re-emergence of my bedwetting problems the past couple of weeks. Getting up bright and early was my mother’s mantra, and she used the excuse of needing to change my diaper to get me up at the same time that she did.
We had adapted into an unspoken truce regarding the nighttime diapers. I didn’t put up any fuss with the diaper changes and cooperated fully with them, and mom handled it without any unnecessary commentary on the situation. The arrangement was the best I could hope for until the bedwetting abated.
This morning, not only did mom remove the soaked diaper and wipe my bottom clean, but she proceeded to slide on a pair of panties for me, as if being a bedwetter again somehow meant I also needed assistance with dressing myself. At least I’d now successfully gone nearly a week of hiding my daytime accidents, so she wasn’t putting me in pull-ups for the day.
It’s also a good thing that there appears to be no end in sight for Emilia’s potty-training struggles, which have continued to plague her day and night. My three-year-old sister’s reliance on pull-ups has provided me with the ability to secretly use her pull-ups as well, and at least hide my daytime bladder accidents from my mom.
Times like this, where I would have to wear panties for a while before I got an opportunity to exchange them for a pair of Emilia’s pull-ups, were when I had to be on my guard the most. Mom already made me go back to wearing pull-ups for a week after just one incident of me peeing my pants, and I had no doubt whatsoever that she would do so again if there were to be a repeat of that incident.
Emilia was still fast asleep in her crib. Odds are good that her diaper is as soaked as mine, but mom didn’t bother waking up my little sister for a diaper change of her own. A cranky, tired, toddler is much more of a handful to deal with than a cranky, tired, teenager.
Anyways, I could wait until Emilia was up until I slipped into one of her pull-ups. I went to the kitchen to prepare a bowl of cereal as mom started a morning bath for herself. I’d showered last night so I didn’t need to this morning. I had only made it about halfway through my breakfast when I felt a tinge of pain in my bladder. How could I need to pee right now after I had woken up with a soaked diaper?
The need to pee was usurped by a bigger problem. I had panties on and couldn’t afford to have a single leak. I raced to the bathroom and knocked frantically on the locked door.
“Mom, can you let me in? I need use the toilet.”
“Not while I’m in the bath. You’re going to need to hold it.”
She was in the bathtub, not on the toilet. Couldn’t she just close the curtain for a few seconds while I relieved my bladder. At best, mom probably wasn’t going to be out of the bathroom for another ten minutes. I’d be lucky if I made it that long without wetting myself.
I peaked into the bedroom I shared with my sister. Emilia was stirring in her crib, appearing on the verge of waking up if she hadn’t already. I took a couple of cautious steps into the bedroom, but the creaky wood floor tattled on me, and Emilia’s eyes blinked open. My sister yawned, and then tugged at her blanket so that it covered her better. I had no doubt that Emilia would tattle on me if she saw me take one of her pull-ups from the dresser, and I wasn’t going to stick around in the bedroom only to wet myself in front of her for a second time.
I paced back and forth through the house, going from the laundry room to the kitchen to the living room and back to the only bathroom in the house. Walking seemed to slightly alleviate the urge to urinate, but it could only prolong the inevitable.
“Mom… please,” I said at the bathroom door again, my voice breaking into a high-pitched whine.
“Sarah, you’re fifteen. You can wait another five minutes.”
It turned out that I couldn’t wait another five seconds. I felt an immediate warmth and wetness in my panties, followed by a gradual wetness spreading down my inner thighs and legs. The sensation of peeing stopped almost as soon as it had begun. For as badly as I had needed to pee, I was surprised that my bladder really hadn’t been all that full. The puddle on the floor was tiny. Most of the urine had instead soaked into my jeans. I’d been so careful. Why did the one accident I had have to happen at the only time I wasn’t prepared for it.
“Why are you pants wet?” Emilia asked.
Out of the mouths of babes. I turned around to see my younger sister standing outside the bedroom door. I instantly wished I hadn’t, because the wet spots on my pants were much more visible from the front. To be fair, Emilia’s diaper was clearly sagging beneath her pajama bottoms, but to be fair as well, I’m also nearly twelve years older than her and have few excuses for wetting myself.
Emilia’s comment had made it through the bathroom door to mom as well.
“You did what, Sarah?”
I heard the sound of water splashing on the other side of the door and then a couple of footsteps as mom must have been stepping out of the tub. A few moments later, the bathroom door edged open a couple of inches as mom peeked her head out, wet hair dangling all over her face.
“Not again,” mom said with a sigh. “Sarah, take your wet clothes and put them in the washing machine, and then go to my bedroom when you’re done with that.”
I was too ashamed of the accident to make any attempt to argue with mom. I hurried to the laundry room, eager to be away from my sister, whose inopportune arrival had once again gotten me into trouble with mom.
After stripping off my wet clothes and tossing them in the washing machine, I grabbed a fresh towel from the dryer. Emilia wasn’t in sight when I passed the still closed bathroom door on my way to mom’s bedroom.
I felt frustrated more than anxious, because past experience now told me exactly what I had in store. Mom was going to make me wear pull-ups again, and I’d have to follow the same rules as my sister, meaning that I wasn’t going to escape that punishment until I’d kept those pull-ups dry during the day for a week.
I could pull off the trick I’d used the last time mom had giving me this punishment and use Emilia’s pull-ups instead whenever I could get away with it, but I wished my life could go back to when I didn’t have to spend so much time monitoring my bathroom habits.
Mom had told me she’d be out of the bathroom in five minutes, but I guess now that there wasn’t the urgency of freeing up the toilet for me, she felt as though she could take her time. I had been sitting on mom’s bed with the towel wrapped snug around my waist for about twenty minutes when mom finally stepped into the bedroom.
“Sarah, how in the world are we supposed to get your younger sister potty-trained if she keeps seeing you have these accidents?”
“It was only twice. And this time it wasn’t my fault.”
“Two accidents are two more than any girl your age should have.”
“I had hoped these weren’t going to be needed,” mom added, as she reached for something on the top shelf of the closet.
Mom retrieved an un-opened plastic bag, tore open the side, and removed a pull-up. I was relieved that I appeared to be avoiding a lengthy lecture, but disappointed that mom had pull-ups on hand for me still. The picture on the pull-up was different than the other ones mom had used for my previous bedwetting phase. Was this a new brand now?
“Why is the pull-up different?”
“You went through all the old ones from when you were younger, so I had picked up some more at the store, just in case. It’s the same brand. They must have updated the designs.”
I stood up from the bed, still holding the towel around my waist so that it wouldn’t drop to the floor.
“That’s just in the way,” mom said, yanking the towel off of me.
Mom knelt down and stretched the sides of the pull-up, and I knew what she expected me to do. I reluctantly guided my feet through the pull-up’s leg gatherings as mom slid it up to my waist. I looked down to get a better idea of what the new designs were like – cupcakes and confetti on a pale-pink background. That literally makes no sense. Not that I was all that emotionally invested in what my pull-ups looked like, but the other ones with the butterflies were one hundred percent better.
I didn’t even bother putting on anything to cover the pull-up directly. Sweatpants or even a skirt would be out of the question with mom’s insistence that my sister and I shouldn’t have anything covering a pull-up when we had one on. Instead, I burrowed through the bottom drawer of my dresser to change into the largest t-shirt that I could find.
The old summer-camp shirt didn’t completely conceal the pull-up, but it was likely the best I’d be able to get away with without upsetting mom. Only the bottom couple inches of the pull-up were visible, and it was now that I noticed that the bottom front of the pull-up had this strange, white rectangle on it that was so out of place with the remainder of the design. Whoever makes these has no idea what they are doing.
My cereal was soggy when I at last returned to the kitchen, where Emilia was eating her own breakfast. Mom had made toast with jam for her. Like me, my sister had on just a pull-up and a t-shirt. I hated soggy cereal, but not finishing a meal was one of the easiest ways to get on mom’s bad side, so I chowed away at the now soft chunks of cereal as quickly as I could manage.
“The laxatives arrived in the mail today,” mom mentioned casually, as if that was somehow a completely normal purchase to make for your two daughters.
I had completely forgotten that mom had ordered laxatives, at my earlier suggestion, none-the-less, since constipation was apparently something that could mess with your bladder. I wasn’t ready to mess with how my bowels work today. The last thing I needed was to accidently crap myself at school or at Lisa’s house when I’m studying with her this afternoon.
“We’ll give the laxatives a try tomorrow and see if that helps you and your sister with the bladder problems you’ve been dealing with,” mom said.
I wasn’t eager at the idea of taking some medicine that was supposed to give me an urgent need to poop, but if clearing out my bowels had the possibility of also helping me to stop wetting myself, I was at the point where I was willing to give it a try.
The hallway at the front entrance of the high school was completely empty as I walked in after mom dropped me off for our first official match for the Fortnite team. I made an immediately beeline for the nearest restroom, which, like the hallway, was also completely empty. I needed to get out of this pull-up pronto and put on one of the ones I’d taken from my sister instead. Another week of this charade where I have to carefully manage what undergarments I’m wearing was the price I was going to have to pay to get mom off my scent about the daytime accidents again.
Taking a seat on the toilet, I hastily removed the pull-up I had on. I was more than happy to take off the cupcake pull-up. I zipped open my backpack, and reached my hand toward the bottom, where one of Emilia’s pull-ups would be. Beneath the books for the history project, I felt some old erasers, candy wrappers, and a couple of pens, but the pull-up was nowhere to be found. My heart raced as I scoured the remainder of the backpack, but I came up empty.
How did I forget to bring some of my sister’s pull-ups along?
On one hand, this was the first of the seven consecutive days I would need to keep mom from discovering my daytime accidents, so if I did end up wetting the cupcake pull-ups, re-setting the clock would only set me back half-a-day.
However, this meant I only had one pull-up. Mom hadn’t sent another one of the cupcake pull-ups along. Since the two daytime accidents she had discovered were a couple of weeks apart, she at least still seemed to view them as isolated incidents and not part of a larger problem I was dealing with. I couldn’t afford to have two accidents, cause the second one would lead to wet pants and a puddle on the floor.
Lisa was already seated at her spot in the computer lab when I arrived. Shy was an apt description of her, but today she seemed to be a bit fidgety and on edge. She nearly jumped out of her seat when I grabbed the chair next to her and said hello.
Unlike with other sports teams, since Fortnite can be played online, we didn’t have to travel to another school for the Fortnite match. The requirement was only that we come to the school to play and the coach would just certify who was playing that day. Coach Olson gave a re-run of the rules once everyone had arrived.
“All the schools in the state that have a girls Fortnite team will take part in the matches each week, with four games to be played,” he said. “For this week, it will be all duo matches. There will be two matches going on at each time, so that pairs from the same school can’t collude by being in the same match.”
Olson gave Lisa and I a password to enter, and we logged into to the lobby for the first match and waited as players joined in from the other schools. I rubbed my palms against the sides of my jeans, as my hands had gotten a little sweaty. I shouldn’t have had any reason to be nervous. This wasn’t different than any other Fortnite match I’d played. Besides, Lisa, my teammate for the day, is a much better player than me.
We waited for about five minutes before the countdown timer began, and then we were off. It turned out that I didn’t have much to be nervous about. I was better than most of the competition, and Lisa was lightyears ahead of them. We parachuted straight down from the Battle Bus as soon as it arrived over the island, and we made short work of the other teams that had been unfortunate enough to also land in the same area. The round ended in an easy first-place victory over the second-place team we ambushed after hiding in a couple of bushes.
The second and third rounds went the same way, as we fought our way to decisive first places finishes. We were in the lobby waiting for the fourth and final round of the day when trouble arrived in the form of clear and unmistakable signals from my bladder that I better get my butt on a toilet sooner rather than later. But this wasn’t a sport with the option to call for a timeout, and the countdown timer for the next match was down to ten seconds already.
With the game underway, I had little hope that this round would end quickly. Lisa was simply too good, and I was a half-way-decent player myself. If we made it to first place as we had in each match so far, I was looking at needing to wait nearly a half-hour before getting to the bathroom. That wasn’t going to cut it.
I resigned myself to the idea that I was going to end up wetting the pull-up and needing to go commando until I got home later this evening. Like the first three matches, Lisa and I dropped down to island as quickly as we could, landing on separate buildings in the city before using our pickaxes to break through the roofs and equip ourselves with weapons from chests hidden inside the attics.
“Fuck!”
I turned from my screen for a second to see a look of shock on Lisa’s face. I’d never heard her use a curse word before.
“Someone got me from behind,” Lisa said. “Can you get over to revive me?”
I replied that I was on my way, but then another though popped into my mind, if my character died, then the match would be over, and I would be free to get to the bathroom on time. I hurried to build a ramp leading up to the top of the building that Lisa’s character was in, but as I reached the top, I moved my character forward without putting the next piece of the ramp in place, and my character plummeted to ground to meet its untimely demise.
“Ugh! I’m so sorry,” I said, trying to act surprised by what had just happened.
“It’s OK,” Lisa said, though she still sounded upset. “We should still get first place overall.”
It wasn’t the first time we had ever lost a match, and, with the three previous wins, we were going to end up in first place for sure in the aggregate ranking for the day, but Lisa definitely seemed annoyed.
“I don’t know how I didn’t hear them walking up the stairs behind me,” she muttered.
I couldn’t bring myself to rush off to the restroom right away, I didn’t want it to look like my bladder had distracted me from the game in anyway. I watched the match continue for a few minutes, before heading off to the restroom once it became clear that I couldn’t afford to wait any longer.
“I’ll be right back,” I whispered to Lisa as I slipped out into the hallway.
I made a careful examination of the pull-up as I sat on the toilet. Not a single sign of any leaks into it. I still couldn’t believe how I had forgotten to bring any extra pull-ups. That was a mistake I couldn’t afford to make again.
I returned to the computer lab just as the match was finishing up. It turns out that the team that had eliminated us had made it all the way to fourth place in the round. Even with that last loss, we were way ahead in total points for the day.
With the Fortnite matches over, Coach Olson dismissed us, and I followed Lisa to her uncle’s tiny office. Mr. Higgins was sitting at a desk with a stack of papers in front of him. The one he was working on at the moment had received generous amounts of red ink. I hope it wasn’t mine.
“How did it go?” he asked, not looking up from the paper.
“We won!” Lisa replied enthusiastically, appearing to finally have gotten over the ignominious defeat in the final match.
“That’s great. I’ve just got two more papers left to grade and then we can head home.”
Lisa grabbed her backpack and excused herself to go the restroom, while I took a seat on the floor outside Mr. Higgin’s office. My mouth was beginning to get dry, but I didn’t dare walk down the hallway to the drinking fountain. Mom wasn’t going go come pick me up from Lisa’s place until after dinner, so I had to avoid wetting this pull-up for as long as I possibly could.
We didn’t talk much on the drive to Lisa’s house. The trip took about twenty minutes, and by the end we were on a bumpy, gravel road on the outskirts of the city. I usually didn’t mind hanging out around my friend’s parents, but this was different. First, Mr. Higgins was Lisa’s uncle, and second, he was my history teacher. It was just awkward, being around a teacher outside of school. I had never envisioned them living normal lives, even though they surely must.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I entered Lisa’s bedroom. It had to be twice as big as the one I shared with my sister, and Lisa had this room all to herself. There was a TV on a dresser across from her bed, and on the side of the room, there was another door that led to what look like her own bathroom. If my bedroom was like that it would have solved my bladder problem this morning.
“I’m so jealous. Mom would never let me have a TV in my bedroom.”
“Is she strict?”
“Well, kind of. But I also share a bedroom with my sister. She’s three, so a TV probably isn’t the best idea anyways.”
“That must be tough.”
“Yeah, she has a bad habit of sometimes waking me up in the middle of the night when she can’t sleep.”
We got to work on our history class project right away, which was to put together a five-minute presentation about a U.S. President. We had been assigned George H.W. Bush. I thought it was a bit of a raw deal. He had apparently only served one term, so there wasn’t as much for us to talk about.
“Maybe we should start with a list of all his major accomplishments,” Lisa said, pulling out a miniature whiteboard and handing a marker to me.
“Did he really do anything all that important?”
“Well, unlike his son he didn’t get the U.S. army stuck in Iraq for more than a decade.”
I scribbled a note on the miniature whiteboard – better pull-out game than his son. We spent the next couple of minutes collapsed on the floor in side-splitting laughter. It was only after standing up that I realized that I had laughed so hard that I had peed myself.
A discreet glance down at my pants confirmed that the pull-up had done it job, but without a way to discard the pull-up, that meant I’d be stuck in it until mom picked me up. Since Lisa had invited me to stay for dinner, that was going to be a long wait. There was not a chance in the world that I would leave a wet pull-up in one of her garbage bins. While the pull-up didn’t feel all that wet, I wasn’t confident at all that it could handle another accident without leaking.
I continued to help Lisa put together the list of H.W.’s accomplishments. He’d actually had quite the busy four years in office. We made a power-point slide with the top five ones, so that we could spend a minute talking about each of them. I offered to do three of the slides, knowing that Lisa wouldn’t be excited about public speaking. I was going to talk about the first slide, and then we’d alternate from there.
We had sped through the project faster than I had expected, so we still had an hour or two before dinner, plenty of time for playing some videogames. Lisa had a Nintendo Switch that I was eager to try Mario Kart on.
“Should we find something to play now?” I asked. “We can practice giving the presentation after dinner.”
“Sure, but in a little bit,” Lisa said, with a bit of a stammer. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
I had no idea what Lisa could be referring to. She clearly seemed nervous, but about what?
“Of course, go ahead.”
Lisa paused and looked toward the floor for a moment as she shuffled her feet. She then took a deep breath and looked back up at me.
“What’s the deal with you wearing a pull-up?”


Chapter 29: Revelations
I looked down at my pants. I shouldn’t have looked down at my pants. That was a dead giveaway. Consciousness of guilt. But the response had been reflexive. I couldn’t have not looked. But in the same sense, there wasn’t any point in looking. Either my pull-up was showing, or it wasn’t.
I had been smart enough at least to make sure that my look down hadn’t been anything more than the briefest of glances at the front of my jeans, which, to my great relief, were completely obscured by my hoodie. The zipper on me jeans was up. The cupcake pull-up wet, but fully hidden. But how did she know I was wearing a pull-up? Lisa’s question wasn’t so much a question as it was a declarative statement with the wrong punctuation mark tacked on at the end.
That is to say, the nature of how Lisa’s question was phrased was perplexing. She hadn’t asked me if I was wearing a pull-up. Had that been the case I would have issued an immediate, flat-out denial. Embedded in her question was both the acknowledgement on her part that she knew I was wearing the pull-up and the gumption to make me aware that she knew it. She wasn’t giving me any room to deny what I was wearing beneath my jeans.
But the question was perplexing in another way. Asking someone why they are wearing a pull-up is like asking why water is wet. What else would a pull-up be for if not for handling bodily fluids that someone isn’t able to control? That left me both uncertain of how to answer Lisa’s question and wholly unwilling to engage with her on the topic. I decided to throw it back at her.
“I’m sorry, what?” I said, doing my best to sound confused as if I thought I had misheard or misunderstood her question.
That should have been enough to throw Lisa off balance. I liked the friendship we had developed, but I also had to be fair in my assessment of her. Being assertive and forward is far out of her normal social and emotional range. My thoughts scrambled­ through a range of ways I could extract myself from this situation. If I pushed back on her enough – gently of course – perhaps I could get her to drop the topic and rethink whatever assumptions had led her to believe I was wearing a pull-up. I’ll risk wearing panties the next time I see her and make sure that they show at some point. Everything was going to be OK. I could still keep my secret safe and get out of this situation without being outed.
Neither of us said anything as the conversation turned into a silent stalemate. I stared back down at my feet. I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with Lisa. Was there any way to break the ice that wouldn’t be disastrously awkward? As the seconds ticked by, I prayed fervently that Lisa would allow the topic to drop.
I had misjudged her. Badly.
“Hey. I. Um. Didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Lisa said with a stammer. “But, I wear them too, so, it’s OK.”
“Wait? What?”
This time my confusion was genuine. Lisa sucked in her lower lip and appeared to bite it before giving me a reply.
“I’m wearing a pull-up too.”
“No way,” I said, not intending to refute her so much as to express my surprise at this turn of events.
“I can show you.”
The mental image of Lisa hiking up her dress to reveal a pull-up was more than I wanted to picture.
“There’s no need. I believe you.”
Instead of pulling up her dress and flashing me, Lisa turned around and took a couple of steps toward dresser that was almost as tall as me. She pulled open the top drawer and removed a white pull-up, turning back around to face me with a cautious grin on her face.
Everything came together at once. The mysterious pull-up I found in the school restroom that looked just like the one Lisa was holding. How Lisa had always been in a rush to go to the bathroom. That time her uncle, the history class teacher, had casually told her she could have wet herself instead of rushing off to the bathroom in the middle of class. And that time where I was sure she must have snooped in my backpack. That must have been when she saw my own pull-ups.
The terror of having my secret revealed faded away, replaced with a feeling I couldn’t quite identify. This was so much to process all at once. My legs felt wobbly all of the sudden. I took a seat on Lisa’s bed for the first time. A tell-tale crinkling sound let me know that her bladder problems didn’t go away at night. Lisa took a seat next to me on the bed. She was still holding the pull-up. Lisa has six inches on me, but she felt even taller when we were seated with our shoulders nearly touching. I blamed my long legs.
“You really do have a pull-up on right now, right?” she asked.
I gave her a slight, affirmative nod.
“That’s so cool.”
There are many words I would use to describe needing to wear a pull-up. Gross, embarrassing, and shameful came at the top of the list. Cool was not among them.
“You wear them all the time?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what brands do you use?”
“I don’t know. Whatever mom ends up buying for me.”
“Oh, well, I can show you what I have.”
Lisa hopped up from the bed, grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the dresser.
Lisa pulled open one drawer after another, rattling through the names of almost a dozen different brands of diapers and pull-ups, none of which I recognized, adding details about which ones she liked better and why. There were ones with plastic or cloth backing. Some apparently worked better in certain circumstances than others. She was like a living, breathing diaper encyclopedia. I had never experienced Lisa being so talkative before. Even with Fortnite. And she loved Fortnite.
I couldn’t believe my good luck after Lisa pulled open the top drawer. Tucked into the back of the drawer, I could just barely make out the same brand of pink and purple pull-ups that I had on, some with the cupcake design and others with stars on them. If she let me have one of them to change into, I could arrive home later tonight with mom having no indication of the accident I had a little while ago.
This whole discussion was so weird, to be talking about pull-ups and diapers as if it was completely naturally for two teenage girls to not be able to control their bladders. Like. I get it. We both have bladder problems. That doesn’t mean we have to have an extensive, detailed conversation about it. She continued talking about the different diapers and pull-ups, oblivious to my discomfort at the topic. She peppered me with additional questions. How often did I have accidents? Did I ever mess in the diapers? To my relief, she clarified that she didn’t do that either.
I kept my answers truthful, if vague. I didn’t say anything about how I was trying to hide my accidents from my mom, or how I was taking pull-ups from my sister. And I wasn’t going to dare mention how mother changed me and made me stay in a diaper all night long no matter what. As the questions continued, my head felt like it was in a fog. This was just so surreal.
At last Lisa arrived at a question that made me pause.
“So, have you needed to wear all your life?”
The truthful answer to that question was no. My daytime issues had only been occurring for about a month now, and the re-occurrence of bedwetting had been for even less than that. True, I had been a bedwetter through my elementary years, but I’d had a lengthy period after that during which I toileting wasn’t something I even had to give a second thought to.
I hesitated on giving the truthful answer. To say no would be to invite a bunch of questions I wasn’t prepared to answer. Best just to nod like I meant yes and let her move on to her other questions.
“I see. I’ve dealt with incontinence my entire life as well,” she said.
I begin to feel guilty for how judgmental I had initially been. It wasn’t a hypocritical type of judgmental. I wasn’t looking down on her for needing to wear diapers. To do that while wearing a wet pull-up of my own would be ridiculous. But I had to admit that her exuberant enthusiasm about the topic had initially weirded me out.
When I paused to think about it from her perspective, it made sense. With toileting problems all her life, Lisa probably hasn’t ever had someone her age to talk to about it. I began to understand her excitement about discovering that we were dealing with the same condition.
I did, however, have some questions of my own.
“How did you figure out I wore pull-ups?”
“I noticed you were also rushing off to the bathroom a lot. And then one time I was standing next to you I thought I could hear the rustling sound from your pull-up.”
“Was it really that noticeable?”
“Not at all. I don’t think anyone would notice unless they new what they were listening for. Anyways, I definitely heard you have an accident during one of the Fortnite practices. And you looked down at your pants right afterward, too.”
“Did you look in my backpack for the pull-ups?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I did, but I really want to tell you that I wore as well, but I couldn’t risk being mistaken about it.”
“And you set up as partners for the class project?”
“I asked my uncle if I could pick who I wanted to work with for the group project. I felt bad about separating you from Samantha and Desi, but I couldn’t think of another way we would be able to have a discreet conversation together.”
I had to admire her ingenuity, even if I was annoyed that she has snooped through my stuff without my permission. But I needed a break from this conversation. I’d learned far more about Lisa than I had wanted to and shared more about myself than I had intended. Before we had gotten sidetracked with the discussion about our bladder problems, we had wrapped up most of the work on our history class project and had been set to play some videogames before dinner.
“Do you think you could get the Nintendo Switch setup?” I asked.
That was another thing I was jealous of about Lisa’s bedroom. She had her own TV. Granted, it was a small one, but still more than sufficient for a few Mario Kart races. As Lisa was getting the video game setup, I made a show of digging through my backpack, checking all the pockets, with my hand stretched toward the bottom. I was beginning to get an urge to pee and if I was going to go to the bathroom it would be good to change myself as well. But I needed an excuse to use one of Lisa’s pull-ups.
“What are you looking for,” Lisa asked.
“A pull-up, but I think I forgot to bring a spare one to change into. Could I borrow one of yours?”
“Sure, as long as you don’t return it when you are done with it.”
I didn’t get the joke right away but chuckled a bit a few seconds later. I opened the top drawer of Lisa’s dresser and made certain to grab one of the pull-ups with the cupcake designs.
“Oh, are you sure you want those?” Lisa said, when she noticed which pull-up I had selected. “The other ones are more absorbent.”
“These are the ones I wear during the day, and I should be able to make it home without any accidents.”
“It’s your choice if it works for you. There’s wipes and powder in the drawer next to the sink in the bathroom.”
Lisa wasn’t wrong about the absorbency of the pull-ups I’d been using. They were good for exactly one accident, and even then, I had to be careful. But it was the best I was going to get, since there was no way I was going to ask mom to get me a different brand of pull-ups to use. Lisa took a turn in the bathroom after me with a pull-up in hand. I guess it was time for her to change as well.
We both stretched out on the bed, our backs propped up against the backboard with pillows as Lisa handed me a controller. Then we were off to the races.
I’m so bad at racing games. The only saving grace was that in Mario Kart the player in last place is the one most likely to get the dreaded blue shell when receiving a new item. Lisa, who was in first place, wasn’t as amused when it struck her character in the middle of a jump, causing her Kart to cascade into the canyon below.
“This game is rigged,” she muttered.
“Yeah, in favor of newbs like me,” I said, laughing.
My relief at knowing that the first person to discover my pull-ups was someone with similar issues was tempered by the growing realization that a secret, no matter how well-intended, becomes harder to keep secret with each additional person that learns about it.
“You haven’t told anyone about my pull-ups, right?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
“Not even your aunt and uncle?”
“Nope.”
“And you won’t tell them?”
“Sarah, it’s OK. I’ll keep it secret. I assume Samantha and Desi don’t know either?”
“They don’t have a clue about it.”
“That’s impressive, but I have to ask, what’s the deal with Samantha? She went out of her way to wear a diaper during the Halloween Party.”
What was the deal with Samantha anyways? On one hand, her Halloween outfit, where she had come dressed as a baby, diaper and all, had been weird. That said, Samantha always went all out for Halloween and that was a common, if cliché, outfit for the occasion. If that had been the end of it, I wouldn’t have given Lisa’s question anymore thought. But that wasn’t the end of it. I thought back to the sleepover. How Samantha had dared me to reveal her brother’s pull-up, who she remorselessly tormented over his bedwetting. How she had dared Desi to actually wet a pull-up. How I had inadvertently discovered how she was pranking her brother into wetting the bed.
I had no intention of conveying anything of that to Lisa. Under the right circumstances, I don’t think Desi would react poorly to discovering my bladder problems. Samantha, on the other hand, had a judgmental side that left me certain that telling her would be a bad idea.
“That’s just Samantha being Samantha. She always goes all out for Halloween.”
“In fact,” I added. “It’s probably best to be careful about all this around her. I don’t know if she would react well.”
We played through all the classic courses. I forgot how much I hated Rainbow Road. I couldn’t stop my kart from spinning off into space when going around the sharpest turns. Lisa abruptly paused the game mid-race and rolled off the side of her bed onto her feet. She took a couple of steps toward the bathroom, but paused suddenly at the doorway, not going into the bathroom, but not coming back onto the bed to resume the game. She lifted her arm up to her face. Lisa’s back was still toward me, but I had to assume she was rubbing at her eyes. She seemed more upset about the accident than someone who had grown up without control of her bladder would be.
I wasn’t sure about what I should do. Should I say something? Get up from the bed and try to comfort her?
Before I could make up my mind as to what I should do, Lisa returned wordlessly to the bed. Her eyes had gotten red and puffy. She sniffled slightly. She knew that I knew what had happened. I didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that she had wet her pull-up, but what I didn’t understand was why this accident had affected her like this.
“Are you OK?” I asked.
Lisa didn’t reply. Instead, she grabbed her gaming controller and tossed it casually off the bed and onto the floor.
“I don’t really feel like playing anymore,” she said at last.
I didn’t know what to say. She had gone so quickly from near jubilation while talking with me about our toileting challenges to this sudden moodiness.
“I’ve been trying to get better at using the toilet,” Lisa said at last, her voice surprisingly bitter. “It went well this summer. I even had a couple days where I wore panties without any accidents during the day.”
“It’s school and video games that keep getting me. I’ve never had to deal with a class schedule before, and my bladder hasn’t adjusted to it yet. And I just get so distracted while playing videogames. I don’t always notice when my bladder is trying to tell me it’s time to go.”
“I’m sure you’ll manage to get the hang of it,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lisa said noncommittally. “But this was the first time I had a good chance at toilet training, and I couldn’t manage to pull it off.”
“But didn’t your parents try and get you potty-trained when you were a toddler?”
“Yes, and, no. It’s complicated.”
That didn’t make much sense to me.
Then Lisa told me everything.


A couple notes before this chapter begins. It’s mostly been covered in the comments, but I’m putting it here so it is easy to find as well.
Lisa’s backstory is covered by another story that I’ve finished,Diapers Never Lie. Lisa’s birth name was Annabelle, so that story begins with her under that name until she decides to have it changed to Lisa. It is a bit of a darker story, so if that is outside of your comfort zone, the relevant details are mentioned in this next chapter as well.
Chapter 30: Diaper Twins
I continued holding Lisa’s hand as her meandering story arrived at its conclusion and transitioned into a lengthy, silent pause. Lisa had rarely stopped to take a breath as she went through an almost monotone recitation of the events that had led up to her coming to live with her aunt and uncle earlier this year.
Never before had I had someone share something so deeply personal with me. I’d known my closest friends – Samantha and Desi – since our days together in kindergarten. We of course had confided in each other as young girls are prone to do, swapping tales about our crushes, both real and fantasy. Who we had kissed. Who we wanted to kiss. And the creeps we wanted nothing to do with. Had I been asked the question before today, I would have been inclined to say that I knew everything there was to know about my friends. Now I wondered how superficial our connections were, and if there were parts sunk beneath the surface that had yet to emerge despite all our years together. I thought about Samantha, and how, in my quest to take one of her younger brother’s pull-ups during the sleepover, I had come across her pranking him into wetting himself in his sleep. What other secrets do my friends keep?
After the initial uncertainty of how to respond to Lisa during the first several minutes of her tale, I ended up grabbing hold of her hand, our fingers intertwined. Her grip got stronger as the story reached its climax, as she described the night she nearly killed her mother, my smaller fingers squeezed painfully by her hands. I didn’t dare interrupt with the many question her story inspired, and she didn’t leave me with any opportunity to do so.
I wasn’t sure what had shocked me most about Lisa’s story. Her attempt to kill her mother. The death of her father and younger sister in a car crash. How she had never once in her life been fully toilet trained. Her parent’s abuse and torment over her incontinence. How she had attempted to kill herself in the shock of nearly killing her mother. Or the fact that she told this entire story without shedding a single tear.
All my problems seemed to pale by comparison. Mom was strict, but her rules were also clear, and you could count on her to follow them both fairly and scrupulously. As much as I disliked some of mom’s methods, her intentions nonetheless had me and my sister’s best interests at heart. My mind darted forward to thinking about the next step that mom was planning on taking to resolve all the toileting issues once and for all for me and my sister. True, the laxatives had been my idea, but she had gone ahead with buying them and the plan was to try them tomorrow. Mom would make me and Emilia wear diapers or pull-ups when she think we needed them, but she was still intent on doing what she could to get us to no longer need that protection.
With Lisa finished with her story, I didn’t make any attempt to fill her in on any more of the details of my toileting struggles. I didn’t want to minimize what Lisa had experienced by bringing up my own minor problems.
“You’re the first person I’ve told this to, I mean, besides my aunt and therapist,” Lisa said unprompted.
“If it is any consolation, I don’t think Annabelle was that bad of a name.”
“Thanks, but it was a terrible name, and I’m glad to be rid of it. Too many bad memories.”
I took a look at the clock after releasing her hand. We’d talked for over an hour, and it was nearly time for dinner, though Lisa’s aunt hadn’t made any mention of it yet. And my pull-up was wet. I had been so engrossed in her story that I had managed to completely ignore my bladder. That made it three accidents today. Twice at Lisa’s house and then once previously in the morning when I hadn’t been able to get to the toilet because mother had been taking a bath.
At least Lisa had extra pull-ups for me to change into. The initial mix of embarrassment and awkwardness of having Lisa be aware of my bladder problems had gone away, and I didn’t feel any discomfort letting her know about the accident.
“Can I have another pull-up? I need to get changed again.”
“Of course. I… need to get changed as well.”
Lisa grabbed two of the cupcake pull-ups from the drawer, surprising me since she had mentioned how they weren’t as reliable for her.
“We can be twins for a bit,” she said. “You can have the bathroom first to get changed. It’s better to change in there so that there aren’t any leaks onto the carpet.”
“You don’t have to wait. There’s enough room in there for both of us to change at once.”
“Sorry, I’m not used to dressing in front of other people.”
“Oh yeah, I do that so much in the locker for cheerleading that I don’t think much about it.”
Lisa hesitated for a bit, and then walked over to the bathroom to join me. The reason she was wearing skirts became clear as we each exchanged our wet pull-ups for dry ones. I had to completely remove my jeans in order to get a new pull-up on. All she had to do was slip the used one off, clean herself with a couple of wipes, and then pull the new one on. We were interrupted by the sound of Lisa’s aunt knocking on the door.
“Girls, dinner is nearly ready,” she said, her knuckles tapping on the bedroom door.
I pulled up my jeans hastily, confirming that the pull-up wasn’t sticking out the top. I hurried out of the bedroom behind Lisa. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. I hoped it was something good. As I got a foot out of the bedroom door, Lisa stopped me in my tracks with a look of concern on her face.
“Sarah. Your zipper,” she said in a hushed voice.
I glanced down. Sure enough, I had somehow forgotten to zip my pants up. That would have been disaster.
I took a seat at the dinner table between Lisa and her aunt. Mr. Higgins, Lisa’s uncle and my history teacher, was sitting across the table from me. I take back anything I thought about the awkwardness of having Lisa reveal that she knew about my pull-ups. Eating dinner at your teacher’s house is worse.
Dinner was simple: spaghetti, Texas Toast with garlic butter lathered on it, and steamed broccoli. Lisa had insisted that she hadn’t shared her discovery of my pull-ups with anyone else, not even her aunt and uncle. I believed her, but I also hoped we had remained out of earshot from them during our discussions of that topic. Mr. and Mrs. Higgins had left us alone the entire afternoon, but I belatedly realized that I didn’t have any idea of how far sound carries in their house.
The dinner proceeded normally, Lisa’s aunt and uncle asked some basic questions about me, which I answered between bites of food. Family. What things I like do to. How our project went. They gave no signs that they had discovered that Lisa’s invitation to visit had been about much more than the project for the history class.
Lisa stood up from her chair so suddenly it was almost if she had jumped. Both her hands rising to cover her mouth. The front of her dress was wet. It wasn’t as wet as might happen when someone pees themselves while wearing panties; the pull-up had caught at least some of it before overflowing. I felt bad because it was partially my fault for inspiring Lisa to wear a different pull-up than she normally did.
“Um, excuse me,” she said, pushing the chair back and beginning to turn around to walk over to her bedroom.
“So, Sarah, Lisa sometimes…” Mr. Higgins said, clearly attempting to perform some damage control for his niece.
“It’s fine, she already knows,” Lisa said, cutting her uncle off as she continued to walk toward her bedroom.
Lisa’s aunt and uncle both turned to look at me. I had no clue about what I should say. I certainly wasn’t going to tell them about the fact that I was also wearing a pull-up. I ended up simply shrugging, doing my best to indicate that I didn’t feel like Lisa’s incontinence was that big of a deal to me. What was strange, was that for all Lisa’s talk about having nearly gotten herself toilet trained, she wasn’t doing a good job of it today.
Lisa’s aunt broke the ice by taking another bite of spaghetti. Everyone resumed eating a few moments later, and no comments were made about Lisa’s leaky pull-up when she returned to the dinner table in a new dress.
“I don’t know what is with me today,” Lisa said, after shutting the bedroom door behind her. “I haven’t had this many accidents in one day since the first week of school. And at least then I had the excuse of having to get used to only being able to use the toilet on a set schedule between classes.”
“It’s OK, today’s been a bit of a rough day for me as well.”
“So, can I tell you something else?”
“Sure,” I answered, a bit wary of being on the receiving end of another long story.
“So, this is a bit embarrassing, but sometimes when I play videogames, I just go ahead and wear a diaper. Otherwise, I end up having to quit half my Fortnite games before the round finishes so that I can go to the toilet.”
In comparison to everything else I learned about her today, that revelation wasn’t all that shocking or embarrassing.
“I can change standing up, but it’s easier to do it when I’m laying down on the bed. And, you don’t mind, you know, if I do that now?”
“I don’t mind.”
I turned away as Lisa got on the bed and proceeded to exchange her pull-up for the diaper. Changing our pull-ups together had been one thing, but this felt too personal to watch, not that I was judging her for it. I heard the now familiar sound of the tapes getting attached to the diaper, and an unmistakable crinkle as she got of the bed and walked over to me.
Lisa offered to let me play Fortnite with her on the Nintendo Switch, but I’m not good at using those types of joysticks, so she let me log into my Fortnite account from her computer, while she joined in from the gaming console. We had wrapped up our third Fortnite round when I heard the sound of mom’s car pulling into the driveway. She had arrived precisely on time, and I knew she expected me to come out right away. Lisa gave me a brief hug before I stepped out of her bedroom.
“I’m so glad to have someone who can come over and just hangout without having to worry about hiding my incontinence,” Lisa said.
“I know. I just wish you hadn’t frightened me so much when you asked about the pull-up.”
“See you Monday.”
Lisa remained in her room as I headed toward the front door of the house. I suppose she didn’t want to risk my mother coming in and noticing the diaper. I stopped to thank Lisa’s aunt for having me over. She was seated in a reading chair, and her husband wasn’t anywhere in sight.
“I’m really glad you were able to come over,” she said. “It means a lot. Just how understanding you’ve been.”
She didn’t make any mention of Lisa’s pull-ups or the accident. But we both knew that was what she was referring to.
“Of course,” I replied, not wanting to go any further into the topic for fear of what it could reveal about myself.
Mom didn’t come in to chat with Mr. and Mrs. Higgins, leaving the car parked in the driveway. I guess she was in a hurry. Emilia was strapped into a car seat directly behind me. The tip of a diaper sticking out of her pants indicated that toileting had been just as much of a challenge today for her as it had been for me. I didn’t know what would have happened had Lisa not had extra pull-ups for me to use.
“You have a good time with Lisa?”
“Yeah, we managed to get our presentation completely ready.”
I didn’t make any mention of how we had spent have the time talking and playing videogames. That didn’t fall into mom’s view of what a studying meetup would entail. I knew though that being able to tell mom that I was ahead of schedule on a homework project was something that would never fail to put her into a good mood.
I hadn’t given much thought to how long the drive home would be. Lisa’s hour had been about twenty minutes from the school. My commute to school was only half of that during times where I wasn’t taking the bus. About ten minutes or so into the drive, my bladder began sending me a clear signal that it was time to get to the toilet, pronto.
“Mom, how much longer till we get home?”
“Another twenty minutes or so.”
Shit. Seriously? Why did Lisa have to live on the exact opposite side of town? If videogames were her toileting kryptonite, long car rides were mine. I knew better than to ask mom to stop at a gas station to let me run into the bathroom, she wasn’t going to agree, and it would likely get upset at me for even needed to ask. Emilia didn’t get potty breaks in the middle of car rides, so I couldn’t expect to receive one either.
The willpower I exerted to keep the pull-up dry gave out another five minutes into the drive, and I regretted having forgotten to use the toilet in my rush to get out to the car.
I thought I could almost hear the stream of urine hitting the inside of the diaper, or maybe that was my mind playing a trick on me. Either way, mom didn’t react, sparing me the indignity of revealing the accident for now.
The remainder of the ride home went much faster now that I didn’t have a full bladder slowing down the clock. No sooner had I taken off my shoes inside the front entrance had mom requested that I take my jeans off. Having spent almost the entire day away from home on a Saturday hadn’t thrown her off her toilet training routine.
“But mom, it’s cold in here.”
“Of course, it is cold. I’m not going to pay to heat the house while we are gone. It will warm up again in a bit.”
“Then can I wait and take my jeans off when it is warmer.”
I wasn’t sure I could pull it off, but I did think it was at least a reasonable enough request. If I could keep mom from seeing the wet pull-up, just maybe I would be able to sneak into a dry one for a change without her noticing that an extra diaper had been used. That was not to be.
“You know the drill, young lady. Pants down.”
I paused for as long as I could to delay following through on her request, but I at last unbuttoned the front of my jeans. The wet pull-up bulged out unmistakably as I unzipped the front of my pants. What I would give for a brand of diapers or pull-ups that you could wet without them blaring out that you’ve had an accident. I tugged the jeans off and left them in a pile near the front entryway. Mom rested her hands on her hips and gave a sigh of resignation.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said, grabbing me by the hand and leading me into her bedroom.
As unnerving as her exasperation was, I was glad to have been so far spared a lengthy lecture about my toileting. I kept my eyes closed as mom changed me. Instead of ripping the sides off of the pull-up, she grabbed it and pulled it all the way down my legs till it was past my feet and off of me.
“Two accidents in one day. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you. You need to be setting a better example for your sister. What’s she supposed to think when you come back home with a wet pull-up on?”
I didn’t answer. I knew it was a rhetorical question. I shivered as mom wiped me clean. I had yet to get used to the feeling of baby wipes. They weren’t so bad when you were using them on yourself, and could anticipate the cool sensation against your skin, but not having control of when the wipes would touch you almost made it a form of torture.
Mom stepped away from the bed, presumably to toss the used pull-up in the garbage and return with a fresh one, but she was away longer than it should have taken to do that. I held my feet together, waiting for her to slip the pull-up around them and slide the undergarment up my legs. Instead, mom grabbed hold of my legs and started to push them back to lift up my bottom.
“No NO! Please, no.”
I tried to get up from the bed, but mom pressed her hand firmly against my chest, preventing me from rolling over or sitting up.
“You know exactly how the rules work, Sarah. Two accidents in one day means you’re going to spend a day taking a break from toilet training. I’m not changing the potty-training rules I’m using for Emilia, so you’re going to have to follow them as well.”
“But mom, the accident happened while I was in the car. I would have gone to the toilet if I had one to go to.”
“That doesn’t matter. Part of being toilet trained is being able to hold your bladder when a toilet isn’t immediately available.”
I gave up my resistance, letting my body go limp on the bed. Mom grabbed my legs and rolled me slightly backwards to make room under my bottom as she slid the back of my nighttime diaper beneath me. The rest of the diapering passed by in a blur. I closed my eyes again. I didn’t want to look ahead to see mom’s hands as they pulled the front of the diaper up over me and positioned the tapes on either side. At last, she was finished. The fit of the diaper snug as always as mom grabbed my hands and helped me off of the bed and onto my feet.
“Go get your jeans on.”
I didn’t bother returning to the bedroom to put my jeans on there. I tried to pull them on while still standing in the entryway where I had left them. While I was able to wear the jeans on top of pull-ups without any issues, I had a harder time pulling them up over the much thicker diaper, and I couldn’t quite manage to get the zipper up. I didn’t have any looser pairs of jeans I could try, either. All of mine were fairly form fitting, so I made do with a pair of pajama pants instead.
The looser material made the outline of the diaper much less visible but did nothing to reduce the crinkling sound that came with every movement I made. I had to think back to what mom’s potty-training rules were for Emilia. Two accidents in a single day meant being put back into diapers for a break from using the toilet, but mom had always treated that as spending the entirety of the next day in diapers. Besides the diapers, mom had a tendency to also treat Emilia like a baby during those toilet training breaks, complete with making her use a pacifier and drink from a bottle. Mom at least hadn’t shown any inclination to do that with me, and I wasn’t going to do anything that might remind her.
My mind flooded with a bunch of questions. How often was mom going to change me? Would she check to see if it was needed or would I have to go through the humiliating ritual of informing her about the contents of the diaper? And what if I need to poop? Surely she wouldn’t want to have to clean up a messy diaper?
My only saving grace was that tomorrow is Sunday so I would be spared the indignity of having to wear a diaper to school. Would mom have made me do that? The idea terrified me. I could manage hiding a pull-up at a school. I had done that successfully for about a month, but a diaper would be impossible. Even if the other students were to somehow not notice the obvious crinkling sound, the bulge from the diaper beneath my clothes and the waddling while I walked would be signs that couldn’t be ignored.
The remainder of the evening was normal, or, at least as normal as an evening of wearing diapers could possibly be. The house didn’t warm up quickly, so getting to wear the pajama pants rather than go around with bare legs was a plus.
Having spent the day doing homework, mom left me free to do what I wanted, so I sat down to play some games of Fortnite myself, as I would need to get that in before I was booted from the bedroom when it came time for Emilia to go to bed. As I started the solo match, I realized that Lisa was probably still wearing a diaper as well, though at least she had chosen to wear one herself.
I remembered what she had said about how the doctor had given her these Kegel exercises to do. Lisa was certain they had produced a noticeable improvement to her bladder control. I wish I had asked her to give me a demonstration about how to do them.
As much as I tried to put the thought out of my mind, my natural bodily urges weren’t to be suppressed. The need to urinate arrived. My first reaction was to be grateful I noticed it. My second reaction was to stand up from my chair at the computer desk in my bedroom so that I could make a beeline to the toilet. My third reaction was to remember I had a diaper on and to utter a word I was extremely grateful mom wasn’t present to hear.
I needed to ask mom if I could take the diaper off to go the toilet. Maybe she wasn’t serious about this whole diaper thing? Could it just be an attempt to scare me straight after having two accidents? Certainly, she could appreciate not having to change a wet diaper?
With my bladder’s clock already ticking away, I rushed into the living room where mom was seating on the couch watching the evening news. Emilia was seated on the floor, guiding her dolls through a miniature dollhouse.
“Mom, can I take the diaper off to use the toilet?”
“No.”
“But I need to go now.”
“The toilet is off limits while you have a diaper on, you know how that works.”
Shoulders drooping, I sulked my way back toward my bedroom. Why had I even bothered to ask? If Emilia could get stuck using diapers for a day, of course I could as well. Once I was around the corner and out of mom’s line of site, I tried to make myself pee in the diaper. Nothing came out. I squeezed every pertinent muscle, but despite the growing need to urinate, I wasn’t having any success. It was so silly that it was easier for me to wet myself on accident than on purpose, though it wasn’t like I hadn’t purposely used a pull-up before.
I checked to make sure I couldn’t hear mom coming down the hallway before I stepped into the bathroom. I lifted the toilet seat cover – mom was finicky about making sure that got closed after each use – and took a seat on the toilet while still fully clothed.
I couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous. I was sitting on the toilet. I needed to pee. And I was supposed to pee in a diaper instead. The temptation to rip the diaper off, use the toilet like normal, and just deal with whatever consequences mom dealt out was really strong. But I knew better. If there was one thing mom had no tolerance for, it was the outright disobedience of her rules. It was one thing to get a bad grade on a test or to wet your pants, those at least weren’t intentional. Flagrant disregard for her rules would lead to a level of punishment I was sure to regret.
Sitting on the toilet proved to be a wise decision, as I managed to trick my bladder into releasing into the diaper. I hesitated for a moment before pulling down the front of my pants to take a look at the diaper. Did I really want to see this? But my curiosity overrode my shame, and I tugged my pants down enough to receive an unimpaired view of the front of the diaper in the bathroom mirror. The wet spot wasn’t nearly as large as I would have guessed. I estimated that the diaper would take at least three or four similar sized wettings before overflowing.
I didn’t bother with asking mom for a change. The wetness in the diaper was barely noticeable, so it made no difference to me whether I was in a fresh diaper or not. I returned to my bedroom but started up a game of Minecraft rather than Fortnite, aware that mom might put Emilia to bed at any moment, and she didn’t give any weight to the importance of being able to be allowed to finish an online game. In her mind, when it was time to be done gaming it was time to be done gaming now.
Sure enough, mom entered the room a few minutes later carrying Emilia in her arms. I got a strong, pungent whiff of my little sister’s diaper as she passed close by my desk. I didn’t envy the diaper change mom was about to have to do. I saved my game, turned off the computer, and walked out toward the living room without needing to be asked. I was rather eager to not be present when Emilia’s diaper was opened.
“Young lady, you come to the bedroom right now. I’m not asking another time.”
“Sorry, I’m coming.”
The waddle was more pronounced as I speed walked around the corner and down the hallway back to my bedroom. Emilia was already laying on her back on the changing pad mom had placed on top my bed. Mom had already removed my sister’s pants, which were now hanging out of her hamper. Her soaked diaper sagged off of her and onto the changing pad with a lumpiness to it that told me my nose hadn’t been mistaken about the contents of the diaper. Not a part of the diaper hadn’t been overtaken by the unique hue of urine. Instead of centering Emilia on the middle of the changing pad, mom had placed my sister to the side, leaving room for me to join her.
“On the bed,” mom said. “You need to be in a clean diaper before you go to bed.”
“It’s not my bedtime yet.”
“It is tonight.”
Using both hands, mom spread the waistband of my pants and let them drop to the floor in a heap around my ankles. My diaper wasn’t in nearly as bad a state as Emilia’s was. Mom changed Emilia first. I wasn’t sure why I had to be lying down next to her during. I had to pinch my nose when mom undid my sister’s diaper, and even then, the smell nearly made me gag.
As much as I had objected to being diapered for the evening, there weren’t any objections I could raise to being diapered for bed once my turn came around. Unless my bedwetting was to come to a miraculously halt tonight, the diaper was going to be soaked when I got up in the morning.
Mom let me off the bed to go brush my teeth in the bathroom, with an admonition that I was to go immediately to bed as soon as I was done. I spent the next five minutes giving my teeth the most thorough brushing they had received in years.
Even though I was in bed a couple hours earlier than I normally would be going to sleep on a weekend night, I felt exhausted. I wasn’t physically tired yet, but the day had worn me out emotionally. Between the stress of all the accidents and being put back in a diaper to the revelations about Lisa that I hadn’t been fully able to process, my mind was simply worn out. The sound of Emilia’s breathing slowed to a familiar rhythm. I was on my back. I didn’t prefer to sleep on my side and would normally have opted to sleep on my chest, but for some reason the way mom had taped the diaper tonight made it cut painfully into my skin when I attempted to lie down in that position. But not even the dread of what tomorrow would entail could keep me awake forever.


This is a really remarkable piece of work: writing two stories at once that inter-connect and doing a fine job with each is no easy thing to do. I probably had forgotten something you mentioned somewhere along the line in one or both of the stories, but the Annabelle/Lisa connection surprised the heck out of me. It fits perfectly, of course, but I just didn’t suss it out in advance. Great work!


I agree that both stories have been really good and I love the backstop. Indeed it is darker, but really painted the picture of what Lisa has been through. That was also a good job of summarizing for chapter 30 for those that do not want, or could not get through the back story due to its dark nature.


Thanks! I was very excited to finally get to the point of being able to make the reveal. It was a lot to setup.


Yep, it was important to give Lisa a fuller backstory given the role she is to play later in the story. I don’t think it is too much of a spoiler to imply that.
And yeah, I figured a summary was needed because her story was a lot darker.


Chapter 31: Full of it
With the covers tugged off and tossed into a pile near the baseboard of the bed, I adjusted my position so mom could slide a changing pad beneath me. I pulled my feet in closer so that my toes were rested on the bed rather than dangling off and my knees were pointed upward in the air.
With the resumption of my bedwetting, the alarm clock I had once relied on to wake me up on time – a task it had never failed to do – was now never turned on. Mom was my alarm clock. The gentle nudge of her hand against my shoulder a replacement for that awful, annoying buzzing. And she was just as punctual.
I struggled at that thought of how easily I had adapted to these changes in my life. Waking up to the feeling of a squishy diaper strapped around my waist and stuck beneath my legs. The ease at which I allowed mom to change me. She had stopped checking to see if my nighttime diaper was wet, getting started with changing me under the assumption that I had failed to retain all the liquid in my bladder over the course of the night. Her assumptions about that were correct. The nighttime situation with my bladder had devolved to the point where I was waking up wet each morning without fail. Almost a week had passed since I had woken in the middle of the night with my bladder urging me to go sit on the toilet.
There are moments when you wake up and realize something is off. You have that leftover feeling of anxiety or nervousness that you were unable to shake off with a full night of sleep. I rubbed my eyes as mom began removing the four diaper tapes one by one, each coming off with a loud ripping sound. Despite having been put to bed early, I remained groggy, and I couldn’t quite put a finger on what exactly it was that I was supposed to be unhappy about. I knew I would eventually remember. And I knew I would likely be even unhappier when I did.
The diaper was eventually removed, and I readied myself for the pull-up mom was about to put on me. I wish I was allowed to do that myself. Only, it wasn’t a pull-up mom was putting on me. It was a diaper, and I instantly remembered the source of my morning angst.
I fought against the urge to resist the diaper change. I wanted to kick mom’s hands away, grab the diaper, rip it up, and toss it in the corner of the room. That would do me no good. I knew that, too, but thinking about made it easy to get through the diapering procedure.
The second factor that helped me keep restrained was the realization that I bore a decent amount of fault for this situation. No, I wasn’t assigning any internal blame for having wet myself. The randomness of the accidents indicated that they were far outside my control. I did, however, blame myself for a factor that was completely within my control: how I had failed to hide my accidents from mom.
So, I let the diaper change go by without any attempts to bring it to a halt, lifting my bottom at the right time, even holder the font of the diaper in place so mom could get the tapes into a better position. It’s just one day. I can suck it up and deal with it. I’ve usually done a good job hiding my accidents and if I can manage to learn from the few mistakes I’ve made in recent weeks, I’ll be able to exfiltrate myself from the web of these potty-training rules, especially if this laxative is anything close to the miracle cure I hope that it will be.
My first mistake had been yesterday morning, when I had wet my pants outside the bathroom door while mom was taking a bath. I had been wearing panties at the time, because mom had put those on me after changing me out of the nighttime diaper. I should have been wearing one of Emilia’s pull-ups as a precaution, but I hadn’t managed to change into one of them yet that early in the morning because Emilia was nearly awake in her crib in the bedroom. I needed to keep more of her pull-ups in my backpack so I could have another way to access them and not get stuck wearing panties during an accident.
My second mistake had been much simpler, and I remained rather annoyed at myself for having made it. In my rush to get to mom’s car while leaving Lisa’s house yesterday evening, I had failed to use the bathroom, despite the fact that I was about to go on a half-hour long car ride. Had I avoided just one of those accidents, I wouldn’t be in the mess I was in right now. Mom would have put a pull-up on me and I could have worked toward another seven consecutive days of hiding my daytime accidents from her.
With the diaper securely fastened, mom pulled a skirt on me. Skirts were by far one of my least favorite outfits. But with jeans a no go since they wouldn’t fit over the diaper, a skirt was probably the next best option. The idea of wearing leggings over a diaper was unthinkable, and I certainly didn’t want to walk around in an exposed diaper like what mom made me do while wearing a pull-up.
I let myself relax a bit once the skirt was on. While I hated being made to wear a diaper for the day. I accepted it, knowing both that the situation was at least partially the result of my carelessness and that mom, in being fair in the application of her rules, would let me be back in pull-ups come tomorrow.
I sat on the couch with Emilia, watching cartoons as mom prepared breakfast. That was a rarity for her. With the exception of Christmas morning, in which she always prepared a breakfast feast more suited to a dozen people than three, mom never made anything elaborate for breakfast. That was fine with me. I liked my cereal, though sizzle of bacon in the frying pan was getting me to work up an appetite.
I was grateful I had gotten to the living room first and as such, had seized control of the remote before Emilia came crawling in with a pacifier in her mouth. Emilia was going through a phase where all she wanted to watch was Caillou. Like, I didn’t hate every little kids show. I could sit through an episode or two of My Little Pony without getting too bored. And Sesame Street at least wasn’t annoying. But if I had to listen to that bald brat whine or throw a tantrum one more time, I might go crazy.
Still, mom had imparted on me the importance on not watching anything too grown up when my three-year-old sister was present. I’d found some Scooby-Doo re-runs, that were causing both of us to giggle like crazy as the gang with The Mystery Machine raced around on screen avoiding the monster. Formulaic, but perfect for mindless Saturday morning entertainment. And mindless entertainment was what I wanted right now. Thinking wasn’t good. Thinking meant coming across thoughts that I may not have wanted to appear. Like thinking about why something between my legs was preventing them from closing all the way. Or thinking about that crinkling sound that came every time I shifted my position on the couch. The less I thought about the diaper the happier I was going to be, so I tried to keep it off of my mind.
Emilia knew I was wearing a diaper. There hadn’t been any way to avoid that, but she really hadn’t made any mention of it at all, though I supposed the pacifier was some help in that regard. Whenever mom put Emilia back in diapers, that also resulted in my sister being treated like a baby and not a preschooler. Being made to crawl on the floor and having to use pacifiers, bottles, and sippy cups was the typically extent of how far the babying went. My knees hurt at just the thought of having to crawl across the floor. I certainly wasn’t going to complain that mom wasn’t handling my diaper that way, but I was nonetheless suspicious of why this had been a point where she was willing to break from her rules.
The breakfast did turn out to be a feast: buttermilk pancakes, crispy strips of bacon, scrambled eggs, and a half a grapefruit with a tiny bit of sugar sprinkled on top. The only item out of place was my drink. This wasn’t even one of those big kid sippy cups, with a straw on top that might have been of little difference from one of my sports bottles if not for the childish patterns on it. This was a full-on toddler sippy cup, identical to the one in front of Emilia’s plate.
“Mom, is this really necessary?” I asked, picking up the sippy cup to examine it. “This is a baby cup.”
“You want to tell me what you are wearing under your skirt right now?” Mom said, letting her voice trail off.
I didn’t want to tell her. I don’t think I could bring myself to say the word aloud even if I wanted to. I accepted defeat and raised the sippy cup to my lips.
Had I been wearing a pull-up or panties, I would have been leery of drinking orange juice. That drink was a bladder accident begging to happen. But I knew I wasn’t going to have to be concerned about that today. Accident or otherwise, anything pee I produced today was going to be ending up in the diaper. I really enjoyed drinking the orange juice as I worked my way through the breakfast, despite the fact that I had been served it in a sippy cup. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been able to drink something without wondering about what the repercussions would be to my bladder.
“I’m heading outside to do some stuff for a bit,” mom said, grabbing her now-empty plate and walking over to the seat. “You can watch TV until I’m done. We’re going to give the laxative a try after that.”
Stuff to do meant putting the remaining Christmas decorations up outside. For normal, rational, sane people, Christmas begins the day after Thanksgiving. For mom, Christmas was more of a year-round thing, but the first weekend after Halloween was when it really kicked into high gear. I retreated back to the living room couch, making sure to finish breakfast before Emilia to retain my hold on the remote. The urge to pee came and went as I released a trickle into my bladder. I really shouldn’t have done that. Even without access to a toilet, I ought to be holding my bladder as long as I can to simulate waiting on my turn to go to the bathroom. I tried not to think too much about the laxative. I really should have looked up more info about it. Was it going to make me sick? Was it going to hurt a lot?
Emilia didn’t show any signs of discomfort at her own diapered state, but then again, she almost always had one or two days a week where she was being put back in diapers, so this wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for her. The Scooby-Doo marathon had kept up through breakfast, so we managed to watch another couple of thirty-minute episodes I caught the sound of the front door opening and mom coming inside.
“Come on girls, let’s get to the bedroom,” mom said, in a cheerful voice that sound like she too, was optimistic that her days of changing diapers were soon to come to an end.
I’m a bit surprised that mom hadn’t come across this laxative idea herself. After all, she had tried everything in every potty-training book every written in her attempt to toilet train Emilia.
The changing mat was already spread out on the bed when I walked into the bedroom with Emilia in my arms. seemed a bit early for a change, my diaper was barely wet, and I doubted that the condition of Emilia’s diaper any different. Mom directed us to lay down on the changing pad, and I obeyed, setting Emilia down onto the bed before laying down next to her.
“I’m going to give you the pills while I get you changed,” mom said.
That didn’t make much sense at all. Normally, when mom was going to give me a pill or vitamin capsule to swallow, it would be in the bathroom and she would hand the pill to me with a glass of water. I had mastered an easy trick of getting the pills down by tucking the pills directly behind my bottom row of teeth and then tipping my head back and taking a swift swig of water. It never failed to work.
“How are we supposed to take the pills while laying down?” I asked.
“These aren’t normal pills. I got suppository laxatives. They are supposed to work faster. I figured it would be better to get this over with in an hour rather than have it take all day.
Suppository? That was a word outside of my vocabulary. How on earth would you take a pill if you weren’t going swallow it?
“What’s a suppitory?” Emilia asked, bungling the word which was well above her toddler-level phonics.
“It’s a pill that is inserted into your bottom,” mom said, way more nonchalantly than a statement like that deserved.
I subconsciously tightened my legs together, cutting off access to the part of my body in question.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
Mom looked directly down at me.
“I’m completely serious. Suppositories get absorbed into your bloodstream much faster than regular pills, so this will be better since it will be over with quicker.”
“But the pill has to go up my butt?”
“Yes, it has to go up your butt. Suppositories are more common for babies, since you can’t trust them to swallow a pill, but they get used for adults in certain circumstances as well.”
The promise of this all being over quickly was enough to soothe my anxieties about this new method of taking medication. Mom removed the wet diapers from both Emilia and I, and then positioned fresh diapers in place, but didn’t tape them up.
We had so far danced around the issue of what the laxative was actually going to cause me to do, which is to say, poop a lot. Up until the past month or so, my bathroom habits had not ever been a topic of conversation with mom, especially anything that might result in a direct mention of the process euphemized as going number two.
“This should cause your bowels to empty out completely, a process that will take up to an hour to finish,” mom said while looking at the back of the small bottle she was holding up to her face.
I thought about how bad Emilia’s diapers or pull-ups would get when she pooped into them. And then I thought about how much worse an adult sized poop in an adult sized diaper would be.
“So, can I sit on the toilet while the laxative is… doing its thing?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to your sister if one of you got to sit on the toilet for this and the other didn’t,” mom said. “Besides, I can’t have either of you taking up the toilet for an entire hour.”
“I don’t wanna poop in a diaper,” Emilia said, starting to fuss.
Mom reached down to rub Emilia’s head.
“Shush. Shush. You have too much poop in you. All right here.” she said, poking the lower portion of Emilia’s belly, causing my sister to laugh. “This medicine is going to help you get it all out, and then it will be easier for you to go potty on the toilet like a big girl.”
I had a more important concern I need to raise to mom’s attention.
“Will the diapers hold it all in?”
“The diaper brand indicated that it was designed for fecal containment as well, so it should hold up without any issues.”
I had no way of knowing what to expect when mom inserted the pill, but other than a few brief seconds of discomfort, I didn’t initially notice anything. Mom cleaned her finger off with a baby wipe and repeated the process with Emilia, taking a suppository from a different bottle.
I stayed behind in the bedroom as mom carried Emilia off into the living room. I decided I didn’t want to be in the same room as someone else when laxative started working. I stood up and stretched, noticing that the diaper wasn’t on me as tight as normal. I hoped that wasn’t going to be a problem.
The next few minutes passed slowly as I sat at my computer desk in anxious anticipation of what was going to happen. I hadn’t felt anything yet. Was this pill really going to work?
Those thoughts were interrupted by a burning sensation inside me wear mom had inserted the pill. My hands instinctively reached down to behind my crotch, not that it would do me any good. It felt as though the pill was melting inside me. Gasping for breath, I wrapped my arms tightly around my chest. I got up from the chair, thinking perhaps to walk to the living room to tell mom what was happening. Then the cramps began.
I let out a yelp as the pain drove me down to my knees. The pain was a juxtaposition of two competing sensations. I was feeling the most urgent need to poop that I had ever felt in my life. Not even the worst stomach bug I had experience and the diarrhea that had sent me sprinting to the toilet had felt more urgent than the need to poop right now. Compounding the problem was the fact that I couldn’t poop. I don’t mean that my bowels are blocked, just that there was nothing I could do to make the bowel movement come any faster. I suspected that once it started coming out there would be nothing I could do to make it stop until my body had emptied out everything that it could.
Both those feelings held steady, neither getting stronger nor going away. The momentum from the laxative was going to take me where it wanted to go whether I wanted to or not. It began with a loud fart. The noise startled me. Farts just don’t normally happen on their own. And this wasn’t a fart either.
I’d messed myself. Actually, really, truly messed me self. Despite all my toileting problems this past month, I hadn’t actually failed to go number two in a toilet since my toddler days. I could feel the force of the diaper pressing the feces against me. Sticky. Wet. Warm. Gross. Gross. Gross. I froze in place. Why the hell had I suggested laxatives? That the mess in my diaper had been the intended result of the laxative didn’t in any way reduce the shame in having soiled myself.
I couldn’t remain standing up for long. The cramps and the urge to defecate hadn’t gone away. Sitting down or lying on my back weren’t desirable options either, as that would only result in smearing feces over my bottom.
I crawled onto the bed, careful not to press my bottom onto anything. I managed to lay on my stomach for a couple of minutes, but I found it impossible to remain in that position for any longer than that. The urges coming from my bowels couldn’t be ignored, and the intense pain and cramping forced me to at least be partially upright. I sat on my knees with my legs bent backward behind me. I leaned forward to rest on my elbows, with my face hanging downward, resting on my pillow.
Tears streamed out of my eyes, transferring directly onto the pillow, which began to feel wet against my cheek.
Several minutes of cramping, followed by an explosive burst of shit into the diaper. The process repeated itself over and over and over again, as the diaper began to sag further and further away from me. I had naively thought that laxative would simply cause one extra-large bowel movement and then be done with it. I understood now why mom hadn’t taped the diaper on as tight as normally. The looseness of the diaper allowed it to expand as my bowels continued to empty.
Eventually the cramps began to lessen, and the next couple of bowel movements were quieter and not as strong. The smell wasn’t all that bad, but my nose had also gotten all kinds of runny and stuffy from the crying, so perhaps I just wasn’t able to smell it at the moment. I normally would have wanted to grab a tissue from the bathroom to blow my nose to clear out all the mucus that had built up during my crying, but I expected it might be better to put that off until after I had gotten changed out of the diaper.
Had an hour passed already? Time had lost most of its meaning while I was kneeling on the bed and messing myself. With the cramps no longer keeping me upright, I laid down face-first on the bed, my legs spread apart as far as the could to avoid squeezing that mass of poop now deposited in the diaper. I thought the situation couldn’t get any worse. Then I began to pee. I don’t know what had taken all the orange juice so long to come out. Maybe the laxative had put my bladder on pause while it was working on getting the poop out. Either way, this was the longest piss I had taken in quite a while. It came and came as the front of the diaper filed up.
I had never desired a diaper change so badly in my life. That the idea of being put into a fresh diaper could be made to sound appealing was proof of how bad the laxative had been. I inched myself off of the bed, a difficult task to accomplish as I had to keep my legs spread apart and couldn’t roll over onto my back.
With a wet diaper, the waddle is created because the diaper itself has expanded from soaking up all the urine, making it so you can’t physically place your legs together. With a messy diaper, the waddling isn’t a result of any physical limitations, I could squeeze my legs together if I really desired to, but I didn’t desire to find out what would happen to all the poop that would be displaced if I were to do that.
I had managed a few tentative steps toward the door when I heard the sound of mom walking toward me. Mom entered the room with Emilia in her arms, but my sister wasn’t cuddled close into mom’s shoulder. Mom was gripping Emilia under each of her armpits with Emilia facing toward mom, but held about a foot away from her. Mom’s shoulder, where Emilia had likely been resting her head for the past hour, was soaked. I guess I wasn’t the only one who had spent most of the past hour crying. Apparently, toddler laxatives are as awful as there adult variants.
“Sarah, crack the window open. Now,” mom said, with a sense of urgency in her voice.
Mom needn’t have bothered with telling me to hurry. The smell coming from Emilia’s diaper was way more nauseating than my own. I took too steps as quickly as I dared to get to the window nearest to the bed while doing my best to ignore the sensation of poop smearing around my bottom. I unlocked the window and then lifted the glass pane up as high as it could go before locking it again in that position. When I turned around the reason for the odor became clear. Emilia’s diaper had not been up to the task of containing the results of a laxative. Light brown poop was smeared out of the top of her jean and onto her shirt. The way the diaper caused her jeans to bulge outward around her bottom suggested the laxative had been highly effective on her.
I thought perhaps that mom would want us both on the changing mat together, like she had done before bed last night, but she instead ushered me into the hallway so I wouldn’t be in the way as she got Emilia cleaned up.
Walking with poop on my bottom was difficult. With each step, I could feel the stickiness of it as it came in and out of contact with my bottom. I decided to wait while standing near the bathroom sink until it was time for my diaper change. I didn’t want to have to walk all the way to the living and back in this condition, and it wasn’t like I was going to be sitting down on the couch when I got there either.
As I waited for mom to change Emilia, the smell from the diaper was finally beginning to get to me in the worst way. The most terrible part about it was that there was nothing I could do and nowhere I could go to avoid the smell.
The door our bedroom creaked open finally, followed by Emilia’s tiny footsteps as she exited the room. She peaked her head around the bathroom door to look at me, a pacifier that looked a little too small for her was stuck in her mouth.
“Mommy said it’s your turn,” Emilia said, taking the pacifier briefly out of her mouth as she delivered the missive from mom.
I returned to the bedroom at as fast a pace as I could manage. The room smell strongly of air freshener when I entered it, an odor that was almost as overwhelming nauseating as a messy diaper, just in a different way. Getting onto the changing pad was the worst part of it. There simply wasn’t a way I could do so without putting weight on my bottom. I set myself onto the bed as slowly as I could manage, but that only served to extenuate the poop being forced to spread further through the diaper.
Mom had taken a wad of either toilet or tissue paper and stuffed it up each of her nostrils, grimacing as she pulled back the front of my diaper.
I understood now what Lisa meant the other day, when she had told me how there were times she had experienced a sense of schadenfreude over making her mother have to clean up a messy diaper. I didn’t have to see my bottom to imagine what it must look like, having changed more than my fair share of Emilia’s messy diapers. It must have taken mom at least five minutes of thorough wiping to get me cleaned up, and it felt as if she had gone through an entire package of baby wipes in the process.
We didn’t speak at all during the diaper change. Maybe it was because mom was needing to concentrate so much on getting me cleaned up. Or maybe the total awkwardness of the situation had finally gotten to her. At least I knew I wasn’t going to need to poop at all the rest of the day. I couldn’t imagine possibly having any more left in.
For the remainder of the day, mom didn’t bother ever asking me or my sister if we needed to get changed. She let several hours pass between each diaper change, at which point there wasn’t any question as to if the diapers were wet. Each time she would direct us to the bedroom without so much as taking a peek at either or our diapers to check their condition. Not that it mattered. Neither of us had the ability to hold onto to our bladder for nearly that long.
I tried to recall if the toilet training articles I had found online made any mention of exactly how long it was supposed to take to get more control of your bladder after going through with the laxatives. Sooner would be better than later, but I wasn’t going to get an actual chance to test it out until tomorrow.


She will get a surprise if her mom decides to diaper them both the next day and repeat the process until however long the program lasts.
You did well with your creative license and it being different than the actual program. Looking forward to the next chapters.


Thanks!
Well, it is a Sunday in the story, so diapers and laxatives would make for a interesting setup at school for a Monday morning.
The next couple of chapters will layout pretty clearly where this is all going next.


Ahh school. Other than my not keeping track of which day of week it was… lol there is always evening. I’m sure that isn’t the case though
Looking forward to the next few chapters.


I’m a bit embarrassed to admit how late I stayed up last night reading this story… Once I picked it up, I just couldn’t put it down!
I like how you’ve captured high school life in the story. There’s obviously the needless and petty bullying that freshmen get roped into. Another little detail I like is how the teachers handle hall passes. One thing that struck me after I went to college was the difference in reactions when asking to use the restroom. In high school, teachers reacted to the question as if you’d just asked to start a bonfire in the cafeteria. In college, professors couldn’t even care and wondered why you even bothered wasting their time asking.
I really want to know what is up with Claire and Samantha, and why they are the way they are. And Sarah’s mom… how many times I muttered under my breath “why is she such a b****”. She is on the fast track to no contact once her daughter finally slips out from under her thumb.
Fantastic story, can’t wait for more!


notdeviantenough:
And Sarah’s mom… how many times I muttered under my breath “why is she such a b****”. She is on the fast track to no contact once her daughter finally slips out from under her thumb.
I was tempted to comment on the rather one-dimensional nature of her mother, but I had to remember that the protagonist–and narrator–is a teenager in highschool, thus the relationship as it appears is very believable. Not a lot of kids her age have close relationships with their parents, as they often tend to strive for independence, and sometimes go for rebellion. So a rather detached perspective is quite fitting.
That said, one of the earlier chapters wherein Sarah manages to “win” with her mother by using her mother’s own logic against her, that’s one of the few times where Sarah is shown to have any closeness to her mother, and it’s only because she’s learning to argue just like her. All other knowledge of her mother seems entirely geared around avoiding punishments and generally steering clear of her bad side. There’s no trust.
That said, I would disagree that the mother is a bitch. Unlike Lisa’s mother, she’s not intentionally being cruel. But she’s cold, distant, militant. There’s no love in the house at all, no even the faintest hint of it. Whatever else happens, I can easily see Sarah and her mother growing only further apart.


Vearynope:
the protagonist–and narrator–is a teenager in highschool, thus the relationship as it appears is very believable.
This is a fair point. From a teenager’s perspective, it makes sense she’d call out all the points where her mom is making her life miserable.
I think why I settled on my choice of words (other than oversimplifying due to being awake far too late at night) was most notably because of the mother’s distrust in doctors. I have my suspicions about why Sarah started having accidents, suspicions that a doctor would likely clear up in the story. Thinking about many of the ABDL stories I’ve read in the genre, though, the doctor visit is often a key early plot point that sets up diapers, so from that sense I do appreciate this character trait which avoids a common trope. But I also struggle to be okay with that sort of behavior in real life, so I guess I also appreciate the story for successfully eliciting that emotional response!

Vearynope:
one of the few times where Sarah is shown to have any closeness to her mother, and it’s only because she’s learning to argue just like her.
Yes! There was another time too, I think when Sarah is changing Emilia, where she starts to agree with her mother’s methods. I felt sorry for the family, there are definitely some pretty rough things happening here that will likely leave scars on these children for years to come.


notdeviantenough:
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit how late I stayed up last night reading this story… Once I picked it up, I just couldn’t put it down!
I like how you’ve captured high school life in the story. There’s obviously the needless and petty bullying that freshmen get roped into. Another little detail I like is how the teachers handle hall passes. One thing that struck me after I went to college was the difference in reactions when asking to use the restroom. In high school, teachers reacted to the question as if you’d just asked to start a bonfire in the cafeteria. In college, professors couldn’t even care and wondered why you even bothered wasting their time asking.
I really want to know what is up with Claire and Samantha, and why they are the way they are. And Sarah’s mom… how many times I muttered under my breath “why is she such a b****”. She is on the fast track to no contact once her daughter finally slips out from under her thumb.
Fantastic story, can’t wait for more!
Thanks! I’ve been guilty more than once of doing some very late night reading as well.
And yes, things will get explained. No spoilers other than that.

Vearynope:
I was tempted to comment on the rather one-dimensional nature of her mother, but I had to remember that the protagonist–and narrator–is a teenager in highschool, thus the relationship as it appears is very believable. Not a lot of kids her age have close relationships with their parents, as they often tend to strive for independence, and sometimes go for rebellion. So a rather detached perspective is quite fitting.
That said, one of the earlier chapters wherein Sarah manages to “win” with her mother by using her mother’s own logic against her, that’s one of the few times where Sarah is shown to have any closeness to her mother, and it’s only because she’s learning to argue just like her. All other knowledge of her mother seems entirely geared around avoiding punishments and generally steering clear of her bad side. There’s no trust.
That said, I would disagree that the mother is a bitch. Unlike Lisa’s mother, she’s not intentionally being cruel. But she’s cold, distant, militant. There’s no love in the house at all, no even the faintest hint of it. Whatever else happens, I can easily see Sarah and her mother growing only further apart.
I think that is a fairly good description of the relationship, or lack thereof, between Sarah and her mom.

notdeviantenough:
This is a fair point. From a teenager’s perspective, it makes sense she’d call out all the points where her mom is making her life miserable.
I think why I settled on my choice of words (other than oversimplifying due to being awake far too late at night) was most notably because of the mother’s distrust in doctors. I have my suspicions about why Sarah started having accidents, suspicions that a doctor would likely clear up in the story. Thinking about many of the ABDL stories I’ve read in the genre, though, the doctor visit is often a key early plot point that sets up diapers, so from that sense I do appreciate this character trait which avoids a common trope. But I also struggle to be okay with that sort of behavior in real life, so I guess I also appreciate the story for successfully eliciting that emotional response!
Yeah, the the first idea I really had for this story was the idea of the protagonist taking steps to hide her growing incontinence from her mother. And a doctor visit would be too cliche. A good doctor would put an end to many otherwise interesting ABDL stories.

notdeviantenough:
Yes! There was another time too, I think when Sarah is changing Emilia, where she starts to agree with her mother’s methods. I felt sorry for the family, there are definitely some pretty rough things happening here that will likely leave scars on these children for years to come.
I think her view on her mom’s methods is definitely evolving as that ends up getting used on herself instead.


MinnesotaWriter:
Yeah, the the first idea I really had for this story was the idea of the protagonist taking steps to hide her growing incontinence from her mother. And a doctor visit would be too cliche. A good doctor would put an end to many otherwise interesting ABDL stories.
Unless of course, it happened due to the cheer-leading accident and her mom still believes she should have control so continues to go through with the rules. I had the theory early on that the accident may have had something to do with it but of course, we may never know!


Chapter 32: The Gray Area
I stepped off the school bus Monday morning with a bit of trepidation. I had several reasons to be nervous today. Lisa and I were to give our history class presentation this afternoon. Our practice presentation on Saturday had gone without a hitch. I wasn’t worried about myself. Public speaking isn’t fun, but I know how to suck it up and get it over with. I remained concerned about how Lisa was going to handle it. This would be the first time she had ever gotten up and spoken in front of a class before, and there were plenty of things that could go wrong.
My next worry also had to do with Lisa. She knew I was wearing a pull-up, and there was no taking that back. The diaper genie was out of the bottle. I trusted that she wouldn’t intentionally reveal my secret to anyone else, but that didn’t preclude the possibility that she might accidently reveal my bladder problems to someone. A slip of the tongue at the wrong time would spell disaster.
My habit of heading into the bathroom right as we got off the bus no longer raised any questions from Samantha and Desi, who had gotten adjusted to my new routines. I exchanged the pull-up with white stars on it for one of Emilia’s Minnie Mouse pull-ups, relieved at the knowledge that any accidents today would be completely hidden from mom. Back at home, I had grabbed a half-dozen of my sister’s pull-ups, as much as I dared to take at one time, and had placed them at the bottom of my backpack. I intended to be much more careful from now on about always having extra pull-ups to fall back on so that I could ensure I would return home with my initial pull-ups kept dry.
My last worry was one that had started when I first woke up earlier this morning. My diaper was wet. Emilia’s diaper was not. I had to endure the effusive praise mom lavished on my sister for having a single night of staying dry, only to see her look of disappointment as she checked my diaper next to find that it was soaking wet. I knew I wasn’t going to get any praise, but a few words of comfort or encouragement would have been nice. One night was way too soon to make a full assessment of whether the laxative was working, but what if it worked for Emilia and not for me? The thought of my sister getting toilet trained, being allowed to wear panties during the day with me still stuck in pull-ups was beyond horrifying.
I was determined to make it through the school day without any accidents. If I could at least pull that off, then I could deal with the nighttime wetting later. Samantha and Desi were both waiting for me in the hallway as I left the restroom. Occasionally, they might feel the need to join me and empty their bladders before school began, but that wasn’t a common need for teenagers whose bladders functioned normally. The bus route had run ahead of schedule today, so we had some time to kill before our first class was to begin.
“You guys going to be good for the presentation today?” I asked, remembering how they had been assigned to work with another random student since Lisa had managed to get her uncle to put her in a group with me instead.
Samantha and Desi exchanged a nervous glance at each other. Not a promising sign. I wondered what exactly had transpired during their work on the presentation with Jonathan, their partner for the project.
“Oh, we’re good,” Desi said. “But that isn’t the right question to ask.”
“What’s the right question then?”
“You need to ask how our Jonathan is going to do,” Samantha said.
“Is it that bad?”
“It is that bad,” Samantha answered.
“Really?”
“Like, if you have the chance to grab the bathroom pass and get out during our turn, you totally should do it,” Desi said.
I didn’t pester my friends any further about how bad the preparation for their presentation must have been. What’s the worst that it could be? Maybe their partner didn’t do any work, but Lisa and I had managed it all ourselves with just the two of us.
The pull-up I had changed into prior to the start of my first class remained dry as I walked alongside Samantha and Desi toward the cafeteria. I’d gotten through my first several classes without any accidents. I hadn’t needed to rush out of the room, hall-pass in hand, on a well-memorized route to the nearest available toilet. Maybe the laxative had worked? Was this just a placebo effect? Or was it just my imagination that my toileting situation was improving. After all, I had gone through periods before where I would have been certain that this situation was on the up and up.
My friends got in line to get whatever garbage was on the school menu today while I searched for somewhere for us to sit. Mom had put together a lunch for me to take to school as usual. I kept a close eye out for a spot that would be suitable for the four of us. Our lunchtime trio had expanded to four as Lisa had taken to joining us on a regular basis. It turned out that she had already staked out a four-person table near a window, and I took a seat alongside her.
It’s amazing how, when you don’t know something exists, that you aren’t able to notice it at all. But, as soon as someone tells you it is there, the signs – real or imagined – begin to appear so obvious that you couldn’t believe that you missed them in the first place.
Lisa was dressed modestly as usually. It wasn’t as if other girls at the high school didn’t wear dresses on occasion, but Lisa was the only person I could recall who I had never seen wearing a different outfit. She had confided in me the other day that she longed to know what it would feel like to come to school wearing short-shorts or leggings.
The way she dressed had stood out to me before, though I hadn’t given much thought as to the possible reasons behind what she chose to wear. Of course, I knew now that the outfit was chosen to conceal the bulkier pull-up she chose to wear. I suppose I would have difficulty wearing jeans myself I had on that brand of pull-up myself.
Lisa had a mouth-full of food right as I was about to sit down, so she just gave me a small nod instead to acknowledge my presence. We were in an emptier part of the cafeteria, and no one was seated at any of the tables closest to us. It would fill up soon, with students at nearly every seat. The lunch period had only just started and most of the students were standing in a winding line waiting to get served. It felt as though whoever designed the school and only setup the exact amount of seating in the cafeteria with no extra tables whatsoever.
Desi had welcomed Lisa into our group with open arms. Samantha hadn’t said anything negative about the situation, but she still mostly avoided directly engaging in conversation with Lisa, not that this was a difficult task as Lisa became much less talkative in situations where it wasn’t a one-on-one conversation. In all our years together, no one else had ever broken through into our friend group. It wasn’t as if we didn’t have friends outside of each other, but when we did things as a group it had always ever just been the three of us.
Lisa always dressed so modestly that there was no way anyone would discern that she had a pull-up on unless they knew about it beforehand. Yet I could have sworn I had heard the faintest of rustling coming from the pull-up as Lisa shifted slightly in her chair. I hoped it was only my imagination. The idea that my – and her – pull-ups were more noticeable that I had previously thought was discomforting.
We were alone enough that we could have talked briefly about what had transpired between us over the weekend. The echoes of a hundred different conversations taking place in the cafeteria would conceal our whispers. I had more questions. I wondered about the Kegel exercises. And I almost wanted to tell her about the laxatives. Lisa hadn’t mentioned that as something she had tried before, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to raise the subject. Not because I thought someone else would overhear it, but because of the other questions that were bound to come up. I didn’t want to talk about mom’s rules. About spending a day in the diaper. About Emilia’s potty-training struggles. About the sippy-cup I had been forced to drink orange juice out of for breakfast. The worry that permeated my thoughts was difficult to name. It wasn’t shame or fear of being judged. Lisa had grown up only knowing black and white: the unrelenting cruelty of her parents contrasted with the unwavering acceptance of her aunt and uncle. Mom wasn’t either of those. The implication is not that mom doesn’t love me, but it was a love that more often drove her to correct, not comfort. In knowing what Lisa’s ultimate reaction had been to her own mother, I hesitated to describe how mom chose to discipline me and my sister. I wasn’t afraid of Lisa or afraid that she might take it upon herself to do anything. I worried that she lacked the context to understand what I was going through, and that this lack of understanding might push us apart. I was unhappy with mom, but I loved her. I at times despised the rules I had to follow but begrudgingly acknowledged their necessity.
So those things went unsaid between us. I wondered if the topic was on Lisa’s mind as well. In a matter of minutes, the seats around us began to fill up, leaving our ensuing conversation to topics safe for general consumption.
The worse part of class presentation days was having to listen to other students as they got up to the front of the room to speak. They almost always seemed to fall into one of two categories. Some presentations were better than yours. The PowerPoint designs more detailed and polished. Those presentations made you wish you had put more work into your project. Made you embarrassed at the thought of pulling up your own slides and how simple they would look in comparison.
Then there was the other category. This one didn’t have as many students in it, but it provided a necessary component of relief everyone else involved. These were, of course, the students who weren’t doing nearly as good a job as you were. Maybe they hadn’t done any prep other than a few hasty hours the night before. Maybe they simply had a fear of public speaking and stammered through everything they had to say. Either way, they served a valuable purpose of easing the tension in the room. At least your presentation wasn’t going to be remembered as being the worst one.
When Mr. Higgins called our names about half-way through the period, I stood up from my desk first and let Lisa follow me to the front of the classroom. I plugged a USB flash drive containing the presentation into Mr. Higgs laptop, and loaded the first of the PowerPoint slides to be displayed by the projector. We had split the five-minute presentation into five one-minute chunks of time, with each of us alternative back and forth between those segments. I had offered to take the first, middle, and ending parts, so that Lisa could be more comfortable as we went back and forth through the presentation.
The students whose presentations had proceeded ours looked bored. Everyone who hadn’t gone yet showed signs of various degrees of anxiety. Pencils slowly twirled in hands. Fingers tapped aimlessly and quietly on the wood topped desks. A couple of students were determinedly reviewing their note cards.
The motion of getting up and walking to the front of the class hadn’t been good on my bladder. I suppose it felt that the class was done, and it was time for it to be let loose in the restroom. The problem was that there was still another twenty minutes left in the period. And I was standing in front of a couple dozen of my bored or nervous classmates, not alone by myself in a bathroom stall. I hated how something as simple as getting up and walking could throw my body all out of sync.
I got the presentation started without a hitch. I kept my gaze focused on a spot on the wall on the back of the room, avoiding eye contact with any of my classmates. I had all three of my sections mostly memorized, though I took a glance or two back at the slide being projected on the whiteboard to make sure I was staying on track. I though perhaps that standing still would allow the urges coming from my bladder to relent, but my bladder had interpreted my body’s movement as a signal that I had trekked to the bathroom next to the classroom, not to the front of the class.
I had finished the first two of the three sections I was doing for the presentation, stepping to the side of the podium for Lisa to take her final turn. Lisa was doing a manageable job with her part of the presentation on George H.W. Bush, with the exception of a couple of brief stutters that were barely noticeable.
The fight to keep myself from performing a twitching potty-dance in front of all my classmates was becoming too difficult to ignore. I reached my hand out to the podium, gripping it tightly to steady myself. I let myself pee, trying to keep the stream of urine as slow and limited as possible. I took a couple of small breaths in an attempt to keep the discomfort in my pants from showing on my face. If there was one time I couldn’t have a pull-up fail on me, this was it. It didn’t fail. I couldn’t know that directly, as I didn’t dare take a glance down at my pants while the whole class was staring at me, but enough people were watching that there would have been a visible reaction should any sudden wet spots formed on my jeans.
With the urge to pee out of the way, I wrapped up the remaining portion with ease. Lisa had wisely counseled me to leave the “pull-out game” quip out of the presentation.
After we returned to our seats in the back of the classroom, there wasn’t much point in grabbing the bathroom pass to avoid the supposed disaster that my friends predicted to occur during their turn to give their presentation. I ended up being glad that I had passed on grabbing it, as a few minutes later Lisa got out of her seat to take the bathroom pass, having apparently done a better job at avoiding an accident during this class period than I had.
It turned out that my friend’s dire predictions about the state of their group presentation had been a tad melodramatic. Was Jonathan prepared? Not at all, he stuttered his way through an awkward two minutes that ended in a ten second pause of silence before Samantha took over and got the presentation back on track.
When the history class ended, I had gone over to the nearest bathroom right away, intent on changing into a new outfit for cheerleading practice in privacy, so that I could keep a new, dry, pull-up on during it. After I had finished pulling up my workout shorts, with the waistband tied as snug as possible to prevent them from coming down and exposing the pull-up, I began to hear a commotion coming from out in the hallway. Some yelling. Some laughter. The sound of racing footsteps of students headed in unison toward the source of whatever was going on.
Using cold water, I washed my hands quicker than the twenty seconds you are supposed to take, not bothering to try and get the finicky sink to spout out warm water. One paper towel later, my hands were mostly dry as I stepped out into the hallway with my palms rubbing against my shorts to get the remaining moisture off of them.
It turned out that the clamor wasn’t coming from right outside the bathrooms, but from the far end of the hallway, and I gasped when I turned to see what was happening. Lisa was bent down on the floor on her hands and knees, scrambling to pick up a collection of books and school supplies that had scattered across the hallway near her locker. Her dress was hanging down by her feet as she frantically grabbed books and haphazardly attempted to stuff them into her wide-open backpack. That wasn’t the worst of it.
Claire and two of her senior friends stood around Lisa like three points on a triangle. They were tossing an object back and forth over her head, as if they were playing a game of hot potato or monkey in the middle.
After giving my shorts a quick look over and tug to ensure that my pull-up remained discreet, I took off running down the hallway toward Lisa. As I got closer, I had to zig zag and squeeze between other students as a growing crowd had assembled, gawking at the scene. A couple of the students had their phones out, plainly recording the escalating situation, but no one had stepped forward to diffuse it.
It wasn’t until I got closer that I realized what Claire and her friends were holding. It was one of Lisa’s white, unused pull-ups. Had it spilled out from the backpack on accident, or had they intentionally emptied it onto the floor only to discover the pull-up? I wouldn’t have put it past Claire to have discovered Lisa’s pull-ups and to have exposed them on purpose. She was a snoopy bitch.
I had reached the edge of the crowd when Claire snuck up behind Lisa before I had a chance to do anything. Claire grabbed the bottom of Lisa’s skirt and yanked it upward over her head, exposing a frilly white pull-up with an unmistakable wet spot on it.
“Uh oh, this baby needs her diapie changed,” said Claire, in a sneering, sing-song voice.
Her lackeys echoed the taunt loudly, in a chant that carried across the hallway and resulted in a wave of laughter from the students close enough to have gotten a view of Lisa’s pull-ups.
“Baby needs her diaper changed. Baby needs her diaper changed.”
Lisa struggled with the dress for a few seconds before getting it back into a position where it concealed the pull-up. With the last of her books in her bag, she zipped the backpack halfway and stood up, leaving a smattering of pens and pencils behind on the floor. The sense of humiliation was evident in her tear-crossed face as she stood up, snatching the pull-up out of Claire’s hand.
I couldn’t believe Claire had stooped so low, but then I remembered how she had nearly outed me a while back in the locker room after cheerleading practice. That sent a chill down my spine. This could just as easily have been me.
I stepped forward toward Lisa. I was at a loss for words. I wanted to reach out and grab her hand and take her down the hallway to somewhere private. As I reached out to her, Lisa gave me a firm shove to the shoulder, pushing me out of the way, before taking off running down the hallway as onlookers stepped aside to clear a path for her. The pull-up was still in her hand.


It has been firmly established that Claire is a bitch, but is shestupidas well? Lisa is the teacher’s kid; how in the world does the bully think she’s going to get away with it this time?


Bullies being stupid is pretty cliche. However, in this case, I think you can argue that Claire isn’t aware of Lisa being Mr. Higgin’s niece. That wasn’t something Sarah was aware of until Mr. Higgins told her.


Chapter 33: M.A.D.
“You knew,” Samantha said, looking pointedly at me from across the aisle as I took a seat next to Desi on the bus.
“I what?”
I knew exactly what Samantha was suggesting that I knew. I just didn’t need her to know that. And I certainly didn’t care to acknowledge it.
The whole school must know about Lisa wearing pull-ups by now. The hallway had been crowded with onlookers yesterday afternoon when Claire had dumped the contents of Lisa’s backpack onto the hallway floor to discover one of Lisa’s extra pull-ups. Everyone watching the incident undoubtedly would have shared the gossip with their friends who would then share it further. And that’s how a rumor – or in this case an actual salacious fact – spreads throughout a high school in less than a single day.
This wasn’t close to the most scandalous thing that a student had done this school year. It’s a high school; shit happens. But it might take top prize for strangest or weirdest. And that meant basically everyone already knew about it. And, if they didn’t know about it, they would know about it by the end of the day. My anxiousness over the upcoming school day eclipsed by far anything I had felt yesterday. A class presentation seemed like amateur hour compared to this.
Samantha leaned in toward me, keeping her voice down. I hoped no one on the bus was paying close attention to our conversation. I’m sure some must have noticed how I had been hanging out with Lisa more frequently. The conclusions they might arrive at should they attempt to connect the dots would probably not be generous to me.
“You knew that Lisa wears diapers.”
“Pull-ups,” I said, correcting her before realizing that in doing so I had essentially supplied an affirmative answer to her question. “That’s what she had on. Not a diaper.”
“Pull-ups, diapers, whatever,” Samantha said. “My point was that you knew she was wearing them.”
To someone who is incontinent, the distinguishment between those two particular garments is important, as Lisa had made clear to me on Saturday and as I knew full well from my own experience. To anyone not in that world, I suppose it doesn’t make any lick of a difference.
“Yeah, so?
I didn’t think Lisa would say anything about my pull-ups, but when each of us had been keeping the other’s secret, I had felt safer knowing that she wouldn’t reveal my secret as I could in turn reveal hers, and vice versa.
As soon as I had arrived home from cheerleading practice, I had constantly been turning on Fortnite on my computer. Not to play. I only went to the game’s lobby and checked my friends list to see if Lisa was online too. I had even dared to turn on my computer after Emilia had begun snoring lightly after being put to bed. But each time, Lisa’s account status had indicated it had been away since Sunday, and she hadn’t replied to the numerous messages I had sent her way.
“How long have you known?”
I would have felt guilty gossiping about Lisa under any circumstances, but in this case, given that I was recently afflicted with the same bladder problems as her, any discussion about Lisa was going to be awkward to manage without also giving myself away. I wanted to escape Samantha’s badgering questions in a way that didn’t implicate the pull-up under my jeans that suddenly felt much more conspicuous. A lie is better with a little bit of truth mixed in between.
“I was at her house on Saturday. We were prepping for the presentation. I accidently found out, and she made me promise not to say anything about it.”
“Like, does she actually use them?”
What is it with people asking if someone uses a diaper or pull-up? And why in the world would you wear one in the first place if there wasn’t a need to use it?
“No, she just wears them for the fun of it,” I said, snapping back in annoyance at Samantha’s question.
That remark produced a reaction I hadn’t expected from Samantha. She looked extremely taken aback my sarcasm . Her face flush red with embarrassment. Good. She should feel that way for digging into a situation that was none of her business.
“There’s a video,” Desi said, joining into the conversation at last. “It. Um. The diaper, sorry, pull-up, looks like it has been used.”
“Wait, someone posted a video of Lisa online?”
“It wasn’t up for that long. It got taken down pretty quickly.”
Well, that gave Samantha an answer to her question, at least. I wondered how many students at the school had gotten a chance to see the video before it was taken down. I hoped that it wasn’t too many.
“Anyway,” I said, desperate for something, anything, to help me steer the conversation in a different direction. “We can agree that Claire is a bitch.”
“Of course,” said Samantha and Desi in unison.
Claire had tormented me relentlessly during yesterday’s cheerleading practice. The fact that I had been hanging out with Lisa more and more hadn’t escaped her attention. Claire hadn’t gone so far as to imply that I also wore pull-ups, but she intended to make it clear that my close association with someone who did was to be a mark of shame for me as well.
This was all my fault. Claire couldn’t get back at me because of Coach Addison’s edict that any further conflict between us would result in us both being removed from the team. The fight that had occurred in the locker room when Claire had attempted and failed to expose my own pull-up wearing had resulted in an uneasy truce between the two of us. We had words for each other now and then, but only when Coach Addison was out of earshot, and neither of us had been reckless enough to let it evolve into anything greater than that.
That left Lisa, who Claire probably wouldn’t have given two shits about, except for the fact that it had been Lisa who I had been protecting from Claire’s bullying when I had struck that bitch in the face in the cafeteria during lunch period. Claire wasn’t allowed to get back at me, so she had struck out at Lisa instead.
“So, Lisa is incontinent then?” Samantha asked, bringing the topic right back to Lisa again.
I paused at the question. That wasn’t even a word that I had known prior to my wetting accidents beginning. I wasn’t sure how it had ended up in Samantha’s vocabulary, but I wasn’t going to risk revealing that I was aware of what that word meant.
“Incontinent? What does that mean?”
“You know. Like not being able to control your bladder.”
There wasn’t any answer to that other than to state the obvious.
“I guess so.”
“I thought that was only an old people thing,” Desi said. “Or, you know, if you pop out a bunch of babies.”
“Ewe,” I said. That was a mental image I didn’t want to have this morning.
The conversation took a brief pause. I guess Samantha had finally run out of questions about Lisa. And neither myself nor Desi wanted to continue with the current topic of conversation.
“So, anyways,” Samantha said, as I breathed a quite sigh of relief that she appeared to be taking the conversion in a different direction at last. “We need to have another sleepover.”
“Absolutely!” Desi said, chiming in before I could attempt to poor some cold water on that proposition.
A little over a month ago, my answer would have mirrored Desi’s. With the return of my bedwetting, as much as I wanted to hang out with my friends, there wasn’t any way I was going to risk falling asleep at Samantha’s house. But I realized also that the bedwetting wasn’t my only source of hesitation about a sleepover. I thought back to the game of Truth or Dare that we had played. It had started as your standard sleepover affair, before spiraling out of control to the point that Samantha ended up successfully daring Desi to urinate in one of her brother’s pull-ups. That was a level of awkwardness I didn’t care to repeat.
“For sure, I’ll have to ask mom,” I said. “She wasn’t too thrilled about the last one, so I’m not sure she’ll say yes.”
There was absolutely no way at all that I was going to pose that question to mom. She hadn’t let me attend sleepovers in my previous bedwetting phase and I couldn’t imagine that her response would be any different now.
“Well, if we can’t do a sleepover, we can at least hang out for a day on a weekend,” Desi offered.
It wasn’t until after we had gotten off the bus that I realized we had overlooked an important question about our next get together. Would Lisa be invited?
Lisa did not join us for lunch that day. I thoroughly scoured the cafeteria, thinking she perhaps had been too ashamed to come sit with us and had instead tucked herself away in some obscure corner of the room. She was nowhere to be found. I had made a point to stop by her locker several times as well, but again didn’t find any sign of her.
I expected that she had likely skipped school today, though how she managed to do get away with that with an uncle as a teacher was surprising. Maybe Mr. Higgins had agreed to say that it would be OK. No one I had talked to so far in the school day had made direct mention of Lisa’s pull-ups, but I had caught mention of the topic in snippets of conversation from quite of few of my peers as we had made our way through the hallways between classes. To be fair, a few of the comments were kinder, with suggestions that it had been wrong of Claire and her friends to bully Lisa, and that it wasn’t right to make fun of someone with a medical condition like that. But most of the comments, well, they weren’t worth repeating.
I was glad Lisa wasn’t around to hear it. I just really hoped that some other student would do something noteworthily stupid enough to get everyone’s attention onto something else soon. I understood, perhaps better than anyone else at the high school, the amount of shame she was feeling and how that was going to drive her hesitancy to new extremes.
Shame is the acknowledgement of our failure to conform to expectations placed onto us by society. We feel shame, not in the act itself, but in our knowledge of how our peers would react should they be made aware of what we had done.
But shame is a double-edged sword. I was more keenly aware of the side of it that Lisa and I felt. From the moment a child can walk and talk, society ingrains upon them the expectation that they perform certain bodily functions on the toilet and only on the toilet. You can’t be a big kid unless you do this. And the inverse, if you are still peeing and pooping in your pants, you must be a baby. So we hide our incontinence. We rush off to the toilet as often as we can get away with it. We wear pull-ups or diapers for the times we can’t. We select our outfits in a manner that hopefully will conceal our deceit, the reality that we aren’t really normal at all.
But there is another side to it. The side of Claire and her friends, who tormented Lisa mercilessly after discovering she was wearing a pull-up. The side of the onlookers in the crowd, who laughed, took videos, or maybe just stood quietly without thinking to intervene. But’s it’s also the side of Samantha. How she teased her brother for his bedwetting pull-ups. How she brought that humiliation onto him by tricking his body into wetting itself at night. You see, to someone who is normal, their first instinct when they react to something that isn’t normal is differentiate themselves from it, as if shame is somehow contagious, and they might get infected if they associate themselves to much with it.
Shame is nothing without knowledge. You can’t feel bad about violating society’s rules if you aren’t aware of them. Did Adam and Eve shit and piss themselves everywhere they went in the Garden of Eden? They were naked and unashamed. Without shame, that great motivator to action, would they not simply have done their business when and wherever they pleased?
When a young toddler relieves themselves into a diaper, they don’t feel any shame or embarrassment. They are yet to be burdened with expectations of how they ought to behave. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, at some point the curse of knowledge is given to us. And, with the full awareness of our bodily functions and society’s expectations for them, comes the shame when those expectations aren’t met.
That reminded me. Emilia had been dry again last night. And I had woken up soaked. My bedwetting had been more bearable when it had been happening to my sister as well. I didn’t fear getting any inquisitive looks for her or judgement glances from mom, but the act of waking up in a wet diaper becomes that much more shameful when you have to contrast it with a much younger sibling who has managed to remain dry. I hoped the trend wouldn’t continue. At this point, as much as I wanted my own bedwetting to also stop, I’d settle for Emilia joining me and becoming a bedwetter once more.
“Who can tell me what M.A.D. is,” Mr. Higgins said, as he spelled out the word in three red capital letters on the whiteboard.
Like all students, we had settled into a routine of where we sat in each class. This wasn’t elementary school, where a teacher laid out the room in a carefully organized seating chart, designed to keep troublemakers apart. We’d long since been in the habit of taking same seat each time during history class, so Lisa’s absence was easily noted when the class began with her seat in the back row still empty. She was never late to her uncle’s class.
Mr. Higgins had made no mention of his niece’s absence. He never did role call at the start. I assumed he knew all his students by face – or by seat – and marked our attendance that way.
No one initially raised a hand to Mr. Higgin’s question. It didn’t help much that it was at the end of the school day, and I’m sure most student’s minds were wandering to topics of anything but school.
“Is this about the magazine?” said a student in the front row – a bit of a smart aleck – who Mr. Higgins had called on after he raised his hand.
“No, but the magazine began in the same era as this,” the teacher answered, tapping the back of his marker right below the word on the whiteboard.
“It stands for Mutually Assured Destruction. Pretty scary right? The idea is fairly simple. Us and the USSR were in the middle of a cold war. Can anyone tell me what that meant?”
The smart-ass in the front row raised his hand again. Mr. Higgins ignored him. After a few seconds passed with no other takers, Mr. Higgins continued his lecture, leaving the student to awkwardly lower his hand.
“That doesn’t mean we were ignoring each other; we just didn’t engage in any direct confrontation. We didn’t fight a World War III against communism. There was a whole bunch of spying and trying to catch spies. Some proxy wars. And a big arms race to see who could have the largest military and the biggest bombs, but nothing that escalated to the point where we declared war on each other.”
That sounded an awful lot like how Claire and I had spent the past couple of weeks.
“That’s where nuclear missiles come in. The power to completely wipe a country off of the face of the planet. You’re too young to remember this, but when I was your age in school, we had to do our normal fire drills, but along with that, we had a drill during which we would hide under our desk, practicing what we might do if a nuclear war were to begin.”
That brought a bit of nervous laughter. How would hiding under a desk do any good?
“I know right, a wooden desk isn’t going to do much good if a nuke was dropped next door. But still, that’s what they had us do. But as powerful as nuclear bombs are, they have a major downside. There’s no going back once they get used. If the Soviet Union had nuked us, we’d nuke them back. And then tit for tat until there wasn’t anything left of us, and maybe the rest of the world as well. That’s where the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction comes in, since both sides knew any direct military confrontation would almost certainly lead to an escalating series of nuclear strikes that would only end with both nations destroyed, it was clear that we were better off leaving each other alone.”
That gave me an idea about what to do with Claire.


I really liked Sarah’s soliloquy on shame, both how she slipped into it thinking about Lisa’s situation and how she slipped out of it thinking about Emilia and her own. There’s just something too about the idea of someone thinking so deeply and maturely about philosophy while wearing a contradiction of that maturity. I just really like that scene.
I hope someone can caution Sarah here after the MAD lesson… self-sacrifice for the sake of others is powerful, but friends don’t want to see their friends getting hurt, even if it’s for their sake.
This is such a good story. Great work!


Thanks!
And yes, Sarah may not have exactly picked up the point Mr. Higgins was trying to make in that history lesson.


I really enjoyed that last chapter I think it was brilliantly written I look forward to hearing about Lisa


I’m really interested in the MAD. Great plot!