All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 12: Fortnite

It was only shortly after noon on Saturday, and I was already dying of thirst.

I'd 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 needed to be hydrated for, I'd 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 felting 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 was 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 were starting to give out E-Sports scholarships. I neglected to tell Mom that there was 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 had 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 girl'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 was 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 was wearing them?

I only had about an hour before we were going to leave for the school for the tryout. Mom was going to drop me off, and then Samantha's mom would 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 was becoming appealing to me.

I considered taking off the pull-up I was 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 picked 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 was 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?