All My Mother's Rules

Chapter 24: Just Pee Yourself

There were very few times in my life where I had been grateful to be soaking wet from head to toe, but this was one of them.

Cheerleading wasn't nearly as glamorous as TV shows made 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 didn't need to know the rules to know that not scoring any points wasn't good.

Throughout the game, I had kept waiting to hear a crack of thunder. Any sign of lightning 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 were 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 babysitter, 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 didn'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 had 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 was that once you're completely soaked, you aren't able to get any wetter. My pull-up, however, would have been completely 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 had 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 red zone.

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 a 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.