✅ Over Protected

4. Mum Makes the Rules

I pulled a diaper out of the pack under the side of my bed, and paused to lift the pack out and take a closer look. It seemed like there were three left. Probably my last three; we were on the second pack now, after Mum bought another one following Sarah's first accident. She had wet the bed one more time since then, just a couple of days after the first, but neither me nor Mum seemed to have any trouble staying dry at night. Either we'd missed out on the virus, or I'd had it but been fit enough not to show any kind of symptoms.

I knew I was supposed to be glad to be out of diapers again, because wearing them was a little embarrassing even just as a precaution. But I'd found that they were still pretty comfortable, and the extra thickness meant they didn't get so twisted up like regular underwear if I was turning over a lot in an energetic dream. For a little while I wondered if I could ask Mum to keep on wearing them, but I knew she would say that was weird, and I was supposed to be a big girl now. By the time I woke up in the morning, I could dismiss that idea as a silly, half-asleep thought that I would never have seriously considered.

Even if I had wanted to ask, I wouldn't have had time. Sarah came down in a foul mood that morning, growling about how some kind of argument between Bella and Scott, and how they expected her to be up early to act as a mediator. Sarah liked being in a position of responsibility, where people had to do what she said. But just as much, she didn't like actually having to do anything. She had gotten lazy recently, and started going quiet or lying when Mum asked about her chores. I didn't know much about what was going on at her school, but Mum often seemed upset about the stories she'd heard as well. The days when we had been a close family were pretty much over now; my big sister was an angry teen whose world was filled with things that she wouldn't even tell us about, and I knew that Mum was worrying a lot more than I was.

"What's eating you today?" Mum asked, trying to put on a smile even when she clearly wasn't feeling it.

"Just have to sort out everybody else's problems for them. Again. I won't be back for dinner tonight."

Mum took in a little breath when she heard that, and I was sure that she was going to say something about dinner. We were supposed to have Aunt June visiting, who always wanted to see both of us; but Sarah always seemed to have some excuse to get out of talking to her, whether it was homework that needed completing urgently or some extracurricular activity at her school. Any excuse she gave was bound to lead to an interrogation by Mum, which would further add to her sour mood. But I was surprised today.

"Really?" Mum asked. "That frown isn't because you wet the bed again?"

"I didn't!" Sarah yelled, so loudly that I flinched away and dropped my glass, which bounced off the edge of the table and then pinwheeled away, scattering red berry juice across the kitchen tiles.

"Indoor voice?" Mum said calmly, when the mostly-wordless rant had died out.

"Sorry," Sarah growled, lowering her volume just slightly but sounding no less angry. "But it's none of your business, I can look after it myself, and you–"

"It's my problem if you need to lie about it. I'm supposed to be supporting you, remember? And I can't do that if you're not honest with me."

"I don't need support. It's just a virus, it'll be gone in a couple of days."

"And yet that's what we said last week. What if it doesn't end in a couple of days? I'm going to go out and buy a new pack of Allnights for you, just to be sure. You can stop wearing them again when you can get through a whole pack without any little accidents. Understand? And lying about it doesn't make the problem go away."

"I don't need to wear diapers! You can't do this to me, it's so humiliating. What if Bella hears?"

"It's just a virus," I said, when there was a tiny pause. "Having a virus shouldn't be embarrassing. And I'll keep on wearing them as long as you do. So it's not like you're alone in this. If your friends even find out about it, you can say it's just a sympathy thing. Say I got... a little problem, and we're all wearing them so long as the virus might be in the house."

"If your friends notice anyway," Mum added. "How would they? If you're so worried about it, you can just not tell them. I don't see how that's a problem."

Sarah just grunted, and looked down at her breakfast. It was clear that the argument was lost when she couldn't even think of a comprehensible response. And then Mum turned back to me.

"Are you okay with wearing protective underwear just to make your sister feel more comfortable with it, Alice?" she asked. "Because even if it still has an effect, the virus won't be contagious after more than a week. If you had it, then you're already immune. If Sarah got it from somewhere else, she would have passed through the contagious stage by now, so this is just the lingering effects."

"I think I should," I said. "I'm the little one. It would be weird if she wears them and I don't."

I thought that wasn't quite telling the truth. It was kind of logical that the little sister should be the one wearing diapers for longer, but really it was an excuse because I wanted to keep wearing them. I wasn't even sure why. They were pretty comfortable, and they made me feel safe, but I was sure there was something else behind it as well. Something that I might start to understand if I just kept on trying.

"It might make her a little more comfortable, anyway," Mum said with a half smile. I didn't know if I'd said something wrong, or if she just didn't know how to react to that. I guess that it was weird at my age to be okay with wearing diapers for bed, but I really didn't see any reason not to. They were comfortable, and they provided some kind of protection just in case I managed to catch the virus at some point. But maybe Mum was worrying about me, because I wasn't fighting against it. Maybe it was because they were expensive; and I could see that being a thing. But Mum didn't say anything about money, so it was a few days before I wondered if that was what might have been worrying her.

I tried to imagine that it was weird to wear them. But there were plenty of ads on TV for those nighttime ones, talking about how comfortable they were, and how it was only natural for some kids to keep on having accidents longer than others. It might have been weird, but it wasn't that weird to still need them. They even still made them in Sarah's size, and there were ads that were actually aimed at older teenagers. Every day at some point, we would see an ad on the TV telling us that it wasn't weird for our friends to keep on needing them until they were fully grown-up. That was years away for me, so I just assumed that a couple of kids in my year might still have needed them, even if they didn't want to tell everyone. So surely those companies had spent years and years learning to make diapers comfortable.

It wasn't weird, I told myself. They were just comfortable because they had been designed that way. Because the companies didn't want the kids who needed them to be embarrassed, or to dislike how it felt. They must have put a lot of effort into making the diapers as comfortable as possible so that there would be less kids who didn't want to wear them; and I was just feeling the benefit of that extra comfort.

Nothing weird about it at all. And Mum didn't mention it again. She ordered another pack for me as well as one for Sarah – still in different colours and different sizes – and I didn't imagine that there might be anything to worry about.

We both had to keep on wearing diapers for bed. Mum would buy a new pack for each of us two or three days before the last one ran out. Once we could both go through a full pack without waking up wet, she wouldn't get one next time. That left the last pack as a kind of buffer, knowing that it might be the last one unless something changed. I thought that sounded pretty fair; just like it had last time Mum had laid out the rules. But this time, there was just one extra detail. Because Sarah had tried to lie about wetting herself, Mum would have to check her diaper in the morning.

That was enough for Sarah to go ballistic again, yelling that she was being treated like a little kid, and it wasn't fair. But like Mum said, it wouldn't have been necessary if she had just shown a little maturity.

"But... but..." Sarah ended up mumbling, when she realised that none of her arguments were going to make any difference. For a moment, it looked like she was almost about to cry.

"Oh, don't look at me like that. Okay, you can have one more chance. But if you're wet again, you have to tell me. Right away, understand? And you know I'll know about it."