✅ The Last New Start [NaNoWriMo2021]

52. Overconfidence

This chapter is dedicated to Kilian. Thank you for your support, and I hope all the readers thank you for letting them see one extra chapter today.

"You won't have an accident in your sleep tonight," Gabby had said, giving Tess a long sigh of relief. She remembered those words when she woke up, right after she'd reached down to check her diaper and let out an excited squeak when she found it dry. She'd done it, another dry night, even when all the odds were against it. This hypnosis thing was really strong, and Tess was using it well to get her problem under control. Like a real adult, she thought. It didn't matter who called her a baby, because they would always be wrong.

But hot on the heels of that thought was another one. As proud as she was, she needed to not say that to any of her friends online. This was her little secret, and she didn't want to say something stupid again. She was sure now that she'd tripped herself up with the exact same thoughts the first time she'd asked for the suggestion. The trigger, she corrected herself. That was what a hypnotist called it when certain words helped you to do something or, in this case, not do something. Like the trigger on a gun there wasn't anything special about the words; it was just the way they were linked to something else in her mind. Like an artificial habit that Ffrances had created for her.

She was extra proud of knowing that as well. She sat up and felt the pressure in her bladder. There had been no need to check her diaper; if she needed to go like that, she knew she hadn't peed in the last eight hours. She needed to go soon, and to head downstairs for breakfast. But her alarm hadn't even sounded yet, and she still had five minutes of freedom before the great rush to get ready for school. Just this once, she told herself, she would sit up and catch up with a short burst of the biggest news from her network. The daily scream was a great way to start the day; a montage of all the top images, memes, video clips, and news stories of the last 24 hours, as chosen by everyone she followed on Clatter. If she just watched it, she wouldn't be tempted to reply to anybody and say something stupid. And then by the time she had used the bathroom, dressed, eaten, and washed her face, she would be thinking clearly enough to actually send lines to anybody who had news worth replying to.

Her laptop took just a few seconds to wake up. She opened Clatter on there for the bigger-screen experience, and clicked through to the scream. Her hand was already waiting over her alarm clock when it sounded, and she had her phone in her hand so she could silence the alarm and get on with her day. She briefly wondered if she should have gone to the bathroom first, but then she would probably have been out of the room when the alarm went off. That seemed inefficient, and not something a big girl would do.

There was a lot of news on there. Chloe had seen Tags on the day it opened, and reshared a whole bunch of rave reviews to get her friends' attention. None of the others had checked it out yet, but Chloe was joined by a whole crowd of people Tess had only seen online. Liz and Kyle took the recommendation and were going to watch it this week. Spike was asking if anyone knew if it was a noir movie, as that might influence his decision, but it seemed there was no easy way to answer that without spoilers. He was planning to visit the cinema after school today anyhow, as it was nearly his birthday, but he was still undecided about what to watch.

The scream lasted a couple of minutes, and told Tess more than she could digest about what had happened since her last visit. She could have clicked on any item for more info, but she restrained herself after a second to think. She didn't want to embarrass herself; she still had to try to think like a big girl for a few minutes more. So she told the laptop to sleep, closed it, and swiped her phone the instant it started to vibrate. She was really proud of herself now, for solving all her problems and working around the side effects.

As she thought that, she instinctively reached down and checked her diaper again. Of course it was still dry; it had been dry ten minutes ago, and she still needed to pee really badly. But regardless of the evidence, she still felt comforted by the simple act of checking. But that was as far as she would indulge this weird feeling of childishness today. She stood up, pressing her legs together, and started moving towards the door. But perhaps the hypnosis-induced confidence had been a little overconfident. She'd been pressing her legs tightly together without even realising, and one step was enough to release a little spurt of pee into her diaper.

"No!" she wailed, unable to believe she'd made such a fundamental mistake while watching out for more subtle ones. But there was no taking it back now; it took several seconds before she overcame her initial shock enough to think about what she was doing and clamp down on the flow. And by then, the diaper was soaked through, just like it had been on so many mornings when she'd woken up wet.

"No," she whimpered again, under her breath. There was no way this could have happened. She was a big girl, she needed to impress the grown-ups, and she had just waited until it was too late. And she really didn't want Gabby to know about this. There would be a wet diaper in her bin, after a night Gabby had told her not to have an accident. If Gabby found out, she wouldn't ever stop teasing her over it, and Tess couldn't argue because she'd been super mean about it when Gabby was a baby. And if Ffrances knew, she might get worried about the hypnosis thing and stop doing it, which was completely unacceptable. Tess needed to think of a solution, and she needed to think fast. But the first step certainly needed to be grabbing her lavender robe from the door and running across to the bathroom. Before anything else, she needed to finish peeing; and then she would be able to think properly about her next steps.

As it turned out, she didn't need to think too long. Emptying her bin in the morning was suspicious; the grown-ups would know why. Leaving a wet diaper in there would probably start to smell, and if Gabby came into Tess's room for any reason while she was away, perhaps trying to figure out where the dumb vacuum cleaner had gotten itself stuck today, she could easily notice it. But there was a bin in the bathroom as well. It was emptied every 2 or 3 days, Gabby was in the habit of buying pink trash bags with an awful floral scent, and nobody was going to be investigating why the bin was a little heavier than normal when it was normally used for sanitary products. It was stretching her self-confidence, but she knew that she wouldn't be discovered. Another setback, and she could still keep her secret.

Tess was about to strip off the grossness of a wet diaper, and prepared to be a big girl for the rest of the day. But as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she realised that it wasn't actually that disgusting. She'd initially expected diapers to be clammy, and the thought had put her off even trying them for quite some time. But she'd found out weeks before that when she woke up wet, the only way she could immediately tell was the additional weight of the thing. Now, this was the first time that she'd been aware of it within minutes of an accident, and the sensation surprised her again by not being what she had expected.

It didn't feel wet. At all. The super-absorbent stuff in these pyjama pants must have been a whole lot better than she expected, because there hadn't been a feeling of moisture against her skin for more than a second or two. Now it was just the heaviness she was starting to be familiar with, but also a feeling of warmth. If she had to describe it at all, she would have said it was like a compress or a heat pad pressed against her skin. Or like a warm towel after a cold shower. It wasn't actually unpleasant, which was probably the discovery Tess had least expected to make today.

For a second she actually contemplated letting go and wetting her diaper some more. It already needed changing, and nobody would ever know, when she was already in the bathroom. And a part of her wanted to know if the not-clammy, not-damp, not-disgusting feeling her body reported was for real. But she reminded herself that she was still almost a grown-up, and that she wasn't going to be tricked into stupid, childish things by her own subconscious. It was just the last echoes of a hypnosis session from weeks before, trying to convince her to feel childish because she'd done a childish thing. And she had to admit that distracting herself when she needed to pee was about the most childish thing she could think of.

Before she could be further tempted by ideas that didn't ever belong in her mind, she tore down the side panels of the diaper, and consigned it to the trash. Then she could use the toilet properly, making extra sure that she was clean. On impulse she tossed a couple of makeup removal wipes in the trash as well; guarding against any possibility that one of the adults would see the diaper in there. Now her secret was safe, she was sure, and she could go back to feeling like a big girl.