SubscribeStar Story: The Road Trip, Part 43
Find previous parts here
Part 43
“Thank you, Kate.”
Even when prompted to show her a bit of gratitude, I couldn’t believe that I was thanking her for putting me in the most embarrassing underwear possible. However, I was too out of sorts from the image in the mirror, and there was still the ever present desire to get dressed and leave the bathroom.
I should have seen it coming. Kate immediately said, “For what, little Annie?”
My lips tightened ever so much in annoyance, as I still was the older sister having to put up with this brat. However, that wasn’t the part I was playing at the moment. And I was absolutely in too deep to show any attitude now, while literally standing there in diapers. “Like, thank you for changing me, Kate,” I said, with a reluctant smile.
“You’re very welcome, little sis.” Kate stepped in front of me, looking down with an idle smirk on her face. “Now, remember. You’re going to wear your diapers for a week, until we know for sure that you’re potty trained. But that means no more accidents, okay? You don’t want to be in diapers all summer, do you?”
I blushed at the thought alone. Not sure whether or not the question was rhetorical, I just gave a small shake of my head. Just in case.
“Then you better be a good girl.”
Leaving it at that, Kate told me to get dressed. While I dealt with the shortalls, adjusting them in hopes that the unflattering cut would manage to hide the thick diapers as well as the denim had masked the pull-ups, Kate went about collecting all of her things and cleaning the makeshift changing station she had at the bathroom sink.
Once I was back in the immature outfit, she was more than happy to hand me both packs of diapers. The disposable pack that had partially been used for the changing process, and more cloth diapers that matched the ones I had been pinned in afterwards. So wasteful. I made triple sure that they couldn’t be seen through the pharmacy bags she had doubled around them; at least she had a little discretion, although keeping this hush hush was also to her advantage. Kate took another minute to consolidate all of her things into a single bag, and then we were finally done.
After reminding me that I needed to pay her back for all her purchases, she opened the bathroom door and led me back through the store. While it was good to be out of the mess I had been stuck in for an uncomfortably long time, there was still the awkward bulky feeling between my legs as I took each step. I had checked myself over in the mirror before we left, and it seemed like the thick diapers weren’t noticeable, but I still felt like every single person in the pharmacy that we walked past could somehow sense what I was wearing underneath.
Fighting the paranoia and playing it cool to the best of my ability while hugging the bag of diapers to my chest, I let Kate guide me back out to the car where our cousins were still waiting for us. “Remember your quota!” she said at the last second, with an annoying lilt to her voice.
Right. How many did I have left again? I already forgot. The moment I opened the car door, I kicked things off. “Like, sorry that took so long,” I said, with one of those painfully girl giggles I had been faking since arriving at our cousins’ place. “We, like, didn’t know where everything, like, was.” God, I sounded ridiculous.
“Don’t sweat it,” Lilah said, “We were just catching up on, well, everything.” She held up her phone, which was explanation enough. Thankfully, neither of the girls asked what we were there for. The first lucky break in a while, since a pharmacy implied personal stuff. If we had gone to a department store instead, they might have asked, and I still didn’t fully trust Kate with whatever answers she would offer up.
“Oh, Annie!” Kate exclaimed, “I forgot you need your car seat. One sec.” She dropped her bag in front of her own seat, which made me instantly nervous that one of the twins would peer back and potentially glimpse something from above. Like the light blue baby powder container, as that color was pretty telling. Although was there even any left in there? It felt like she used every last bit of powder earlier.
At that thought, I held the diapers even more tightly. It was doubly vulnerable, both wearing them and holding clean ones. Twice the chance to get caught. “Kate, I’m fine. Like, really.” But she was already circling around the car. With her needlessly touchy ‘help,’ I climbed into the car and back into the humiliating seat, letting Kate deal with the straps until she deemed that I was securely fastened.
Once she was done, she asked, “What do you say, Annie?”
I blushed immediately. The reference wasn’t at all lost on me. “Like, thank you, Kate . . . “
“What a good little sister!” Her following giggle was a lot more natural than mine.
As if the car seat and my getup weren’t enough, the drive back was extra awkward as I went out of my way to squeeze in as many ‘likes’ as possible before we made it back to the house. By the end, I was annoying myself with just how chatty I was being. I could only imagine what the twins thought. Not only did I sound like an overly talkative little tween, rambling about whatever while Kate oh so helpfully prompted me every now and then, but half the time the filler words made my responses almost nonsensical. “So, like, science isn’t, like, my best, but, like, I had to, like, do this thing . . . ” It was actually a real story from back when I was in middle school, but the way I stumbled through it like an immature valley girl was so cringeworthy.
Either our cousins were tuning me out for the most part, or didn’t care to comment on the way I was speaking. I distinctly remembered other girls in my childhood being lightly chastised by parents for this exact thing, and I was intentionally cranking the bad habit to eleven. Hopefully Kate was keeping track, because all my efforts were spent actively working to get the total as high as possible. I couldn’t count at the same time; at least, not accurately.
We made it back to the house soon enough, though that wasn’t exactly going to be a reprieve. Thanks to Kate’s lies, Aunt Miranda thought that this was partially my idea. And even if I managed to get a moment to myself, which was impossible when Kate had been attached at my hip almost every minute since we had arrived, what was I going to do with that time? My duffel bag was full of pull-ups, and my normal underwear had not so mysteriously disappeared. Plus there were those pictures; so far, Kate had only mentioned that they were for her own sake. Or, at the very least, to forever taunt me with once this was all said and done. But they still brought on a persistent pressure in the back of my mind, where I felt like I had to keep doing what I was told until I somehow found a way to delete them. After that, it would just be her word vs mine in terms of that mortifying ‘accident.’
“You two can go on!” Kate said, once the car was parked back in the garage. “I’ll take care of little Annie.”
Did the twins really not pick up on what Kate was doing? Even if I was twelve, which I wasn’t, that absolutely wasn’t how you talked to a middle schooler. And yet, Kate was doing it constantly, even with an audience. Patronizing. Teasing. Fucking brat.
She insisted on dealing with the car seat herself again, and took her sweet time with the straps while reminding me about all the things I needed to keep up for the rest of the night. And, once my feet were back on the ground, I realized that even being free from the car seat didn’t offer me a lot of options. There were still the bags of diapers and more, and our cousins also told us that dinner was almost ready. Apparently their mother texted them while they were waiting in the car. And, since we had taken so long, there wouldn’t be quite as much downtime after getting back.
Kate walked with me up to the bedroom, then made me awkwardly stand by my bed as she sorted out my clothes. Undoing some of Luna’s work from earlier, she pulled out all my outfit pieces from the drawers. “You don’t need these,” she casually explained, “The twins and I picked out much cuter clothes for you!” Adding both kinds of diapers to the top drawer next to the pull-ups, she then placed the rest of my clothes back into my duffel bag and tossed it over her shoulder. “We’ll do the rest after dinner!” she said, gesturing to the piles of clothes from when she and our cousins found various outfits for my ‘fashion show.’ “You do like our choices better than your boring college outfits, right?” she asked, giving me a look.
What else could I say? “Like, totally,” I said, though the energy from the phrase I used in the bedroom earlier was barely there. This was the longest day ever, and it somehow kept getting worse! She seriously expected me to wear Luna and Lilah’s old clothes instead of mine? But when I thought about it, it made sense. My clothes were a little too mature, and she seemed determined to keep me in the younger sister role all weekend. And honestly, she was probably going to. I kept digging my hole deeper, and still couldn’t see a way out without absolutely humiliating myself.
“Ready for dinner, Annie?” Kate asked. She held out her hand.
While there was still a little bit of Annelise in me that wanted to push back, this wasn’t the battle I was willing to put forth the effort on. “Ready,” I muttered. It was so dumb. I didn’t need an escort to make it down the hall and back downstairs, but I took Kate’s hand anyway so she could walk me.
With that same smug giggle, she squeezed my hand and said, “This is going to be so much fun! You really were always meant to be my little sister, weren’t you?”
No comment. Though it was just the two of us staying in the guest room, I was a little worried that she was leaving the bag of diaper supplies partially in sight. But it was too late.
Kate tugged at my hand, and I reluctantly let her walk me out of the room. Still in diapers. Still her tween sister. Even after a diaper change, I was exactly in the same boat I was before except with clean underwear.
And it was only Friday. There were still two full days of this to go.
Read more of “The Road Trip” (two completed arcs) and other exclusive stories on my SubscribeStar!
You may also purchase Arc One here.