The Girl Who Wanted to Wear Diapers

Chapter 14: A New Solution

I woke up with a bunch of fur in my face.

I let out a loud sneeze as I shoved our orange cat off of me. Chester trotted halfway to my now open bedroom door – he must have snuck in while I was sleeping – and then looked back and made a chirpy meow at me. Yes, yes, I get it, cat. You're hungry.

There was no choice but to get up and feed him. Not unless I wanted him bothering me until it was time to get up and get ready for school. My digital clock still said there was an hour-and-a-half left until it was time to get up for the day. I could probably even squeeze in another ten minute of sleep if I waited until Mom came to wake me up.

I looked down at my pajamas as I got out of the sleeping bag. There was a clear and obvious problem. These were the same ones I had worn to bed last night. I had forgotten to toss them in the laundry with my bedding last night.

I took a deep breath. That was a close call. If Mom had caught me in these pajamas, it would have raised questions I'd be unable to provide a satisfactory answer for.

I changed into a new pair of pajamas and headed downstairs with my old ones. There wasn't a need for the flashlight app on my phone as the first rays of sunlight were coming through the windows. I walked as quietly as I could. Chester trotted alongside me, chirping noisily. At least I'd have a good excuse for being up if anyone was awake when I was returning to my bedroom.

I filled up Chester's food and water bowls in the laundry room. They hadn't even been fully empty. The stupid cat couldn't be satisfied with eating out of a bowl that was only half-way full.

Now I needed to deal with my pajamas. I turned on the faucet in the sink next to the washing machine and held my pajamas under the water until they were soaked. I twisted them in my hands to wring out all the excess water and then stuffed the pajamas in with the still very damp bedding in the washing machine.

There, now, when Mom moved the laundry over to the dryer, nothing would seem out of place.

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A yawn escaped me at the start of math class. Mr. Thompson was going around handing back our final homework assignment of the year before we got started on our final exam.

It had taken me about an hour to fall back to sleep after putting my pajamas in the washing machine. At that point, I'd only gotten another thirty minutes of sleep before Mom woke me up for school. From the look on her face, this most recent fake bedwetting incident had completely caught her by surprise. I suppose she had thought all the preventative measures she'd made me take would have been enough to bring the bedwetting to an end.

Mom had taken care of vacuuming up the baking soda on the mattress and moving the laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. As far as I was able to tell, she hadn't caught on to the fact that I had faked the bedwetting accident simply by tossing my bedding and pajamas in the washing machine.

Mr. Thompson handed the algebra homework paper to me as he passed by my desk. I stared at it in disbelief. The letter "C" was circled in red at the top right corner. I skimmed through the questions. Several of them had been marked as incorrect with red dashes through them.

That was a complete betrayal. It was totally unfair. I had held up to my end of the bargain in keeping Grace's secret, and she hadn't even bothered to deliver me a good grade. There was no way these questions had been too difficult for my older sister.

I tucked the assignment angrily into my backpack. I was going to have a word with Grace after school.

The next set of papers our teacher handed out was even less fun than the first. Our final exam for the math class was fifty questions long and would account for twenty-five percent of the grade for the year.