Life and Death Choices Made Casually

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Life and Death Decisions Made Casually: Day One

The bell rang and Angela stood up gingerly to leave the classroom. She clenched her butt cheeks together and walked as quickly as she could toward the bathroom. She passed by the rows of lockers and didn’t even stop by her books.

Her stomach rumbled and she winced in pain as the cramp hit her. She squeezed her cheeks with all her might, but she knew she would make it to the girl’s bathroom. She had to. She was eighteen and a senior in high school. There was no way she could live down an accident.

The cramp subsided and she continued her journey to the porcelain relief. It was just down the hall. She hurried as fast as she could, but she couldn’t run or even walk normally or she would poop--in her panties. Still, she persisted until she made it to the bathroom.

The girl’s room was a mess at 1:30 in the afternoon. There were paper towels on the floor, lipstick on the mirrors, and she was sure she would find pee on the seats, but it didn’t matter. She was desperate.

She groaned in disgust. All of the stalls were full. She stood in front of the row of stalls waiting. “Please hurry. I’m desperate.” Her voice sounded soft and alien to her.

“Hold on a bit,” a girl called from one of the stalls.

A girl flushed and exited a stall and Angela stepped toward it. Before she took a second step, she felt another cramp in her abdomen and she bent over slightly. That was all it took to make it the worst day of her life. The load she had been holding in Mrs. Miller’s class squeezed out in her panties.

It was sudden, her accident. It wasn’t slow; it just came out and there was a lot of it. Her load was wet too, but solid enough that it met the resistance of her jeans and spread in the seat of her panties.

She looked around and saw at least ten girls who were staring at her. One of them had her mouth open in surprise, but soon they would all know and then the who school would make fun of her.

She felt a blob of poop escape the leg bands of her panties and ride its slimy journey down the inside of her blue jeans to the floor.

“She pooped her pants,” a girl said.

“Hey everyone,” one of the girls yelled into the hallway. “Angela pooped her pants.”

Angela wanted to say something. They had to be wrong. This couldn’t be happening. But it was. She heard a pattering noise and looked down. To add insult to injury she was peeing her pants as well. She could only stare as the wet patch on the front of her jeans grew.

“I wish I could die,” she said.

###

Bridget Addison cowered in fear in the passenger seat of her big rig. Eighteen wheels of power moved uncontrollably down the street. She was supposed to be the driver. She had the commercial drivers license to prove it. She also had the hazardous materials and explosives endorsements that allowed her to haul the 9000 gallons of gasoline in the tank trailer behind her rig.

It was supposed to be an easy job. She didn’t even have to leave the city. She just drove around from gas station to gas station refilling their stock. At five o’clock she would return to the oil depot and drive home in her own car.

Today was different. As soon as she left the oil depot, she headed toward her first stop. It wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, but she had always felt safe. She had grown up here. In fact the truck driving school where she got her license was in the same neighborhood. She was the only pretty thirty-two-year-old in the whole class.

When she arrived at the first street light she had to stop. The armed gunman opened the driver’s side door and pushed her aside as he mounted the cab of her eighteen wheeler.

“Sit quietly or you’re dead,” he said. He took the wheel and begin to drive east away from the city.

It wasn’t worth dying over someone stealing gas. Bridget sat still in the passenger seat. Still the calculations came to her head. That was her talent. Gas was $2.53 a gallon for regular. With her combined load of super and medium grades as well, the fuel was worth $23,470. She made a little more than that in a year, but not much. It was still not worth her life. She pulled her knees up to her chin and stared at the gunman.

The man drove in silence. Every so often he pointed the gun in her direction, but he still had to shift. Bridget needed both hands to drive. At lights and on straight roads she could reach for the radio or even take a cell phone call, but she generally kept one hand on the steering wheel and another on the shifter just in case. The highjacker had to shift and hold her at gun point as well as steer. She cringed with each metal on metal crunch as the rig clipped other cars.

“Slow down,” she yelled. “You’ll get us both killed.” Sirens sounded in the distance and she knew it wouldn’t be too long until the police caught them and she would be safe, unless…

The man pointed the gun at her again. “Shut up or you’ll get it,” he yelled.

…unless he planned to hold her as a hostage. She shivered. She just wanted to get home to her apartment and forget about today.

The gunman turned a right and Bridget saw the trailer take out a fire hydrant as the rear of the trailer hopped the curb. Bridget felt the whole rig shake and she worried that her cargo might ignite. A full load would sure be hazardous.

He turned left again, but it was less violent.

“Why’d you turn here?” she asked. “This road only goes to the school.”

The gunman turned off into the grass and drove toward the Arthur Miller Elementary School building.

She realized what he was doing and knew she had to do something. She waited until he had to shift gears and then dove for the steering wheel. Riding her momentum, she turned the wheel to the left, hoping to turn the truck away from the school.

The truck careened and jackknifed around and she was thrown free out the window of the semi. She lay on the ground stunned, the wind knocked out of her. If she could have taken a breath, she would have breathed a sigh of relief as she watched as the tanker missed the elementary school.

Her relief was short lived as the tanker plowed into the building next to it: the middle school. She watched in horror as the gasoline exploded on impact. The screams of the students mixed with her own as she woke up in her sweaty jumpsuit.

“Will you knock it off?” yelled the inmate in the cell next to hers. She looked at her surroundings. Bars, a steel toilet, the narrow cot in which she slept, and more bars. She had awakened to the same nightmare every day since the terrorist attack.

“Today is the last day I wake up screaming,” she promised. The next time she went to sleep, she would never wake again. The terrorist who had tried to ram her truck into the elementary school was consumed in the explosion. The terrorist group had also claimed responsibility for the attack. No one had believed her that the gunman existed and today she would die because she couldn’t prove that he was the real killer.

“If only I would have turned the wheel to the right,” she whispered. She knew if she did that, the elementary school would have been hit. She had twelve years to relive the attack over and over again. Every day she had second guessed herself as she sat in a prison cell.

At least today she would be able to eat what she wanted. She knew a New York strip steak, a slice of apple pie with ice cream would be on its way to her today. She debated with herself on the ice cream. She didn’t dare eat dairy products because lactose intolerance would give her digestion problems, but she figured she may as well enjoy the ice cream because she wouldn’t be around long enough to need to worry about the after effects.

She went to the sink in her cell and splash water on her face and returned to her cot to wait for her fate.

###

The priest hadn’t been helpful. The food, on the other hand, was divine. She walked slowly down the hallway toward the waiting gurney.

“Will you want the needle in your right arm or left,” an orderly dressed in white asked her.

“Does it matter?” she asked. She hopped up on the gurney. Is this really how things are going to end, she thought.

The orderlies strapped her down to the gurney. A strap across her knees and chest and wrist and leg cuffs made any desire to fight impossible.

She could have fought. She almost wished she did as they rolled her into the execution chamber, past the witnesses. The witnesses were some of the parents of the middle school children. Most had to watch the execution on a video monitor outside the prison since the number of witnesses were limited to twelve.

Their eyes stared cold daggers into her as she lay helpless as the execution took an alcohol-soaked cotton swab and cleaned her arm.

“Is that to prevent infection?” she asked. She smiled a bit, but no one else seemed to think it was funny. Gallows humor couldn’t hurt, could it?

“Do you wish to make a statement?” the executioner asked.

“I tried to stop him,” she began. “If only I’d turned the wheel to the left. No that wouldn’t have worked. Or if I fought him before he was going to hit a school…” She stopped talking when she realized she was only babbling.

The executioner took the needle inserted it in her arm.

At the same instant Angela Murphy said, “I wish I could die,” Bridget Addison said, “I wish I could live.” Both of them got their wish.

###

Bridget almost stumbled. First she was lying horizontally and then she was standing. She looked around. She was in the middle of a bathroom surrounded by high school kids. Was this hell? It had to be and the students must have been what the children her truck had killed would have looked like when they got older. No, the math wasn’t right. Those students would be in their mid thirties now.

“Angela pooped her pants. Angela pooped her pants,” the students chanted.

Bridget’s legs felt warm and wet. She looked down. She had peed herself. She smelled a foul odor, felt a glob of poop rolling down her leg. She had pooped her pants.

If she had pooped her pants, who was this Angela girl that did the same?

A blonde girl walked into the bathroom. She looked at Bridget and her eyes traveled downward toward her crotch. She pushed through the crowd and took Bridget’s hand. “Stop making fun of her. You should be ashamed. Go to class.” She pulled Bridget out into the hall.

The blonde girl was pretty, but just a tad chunky. A size eight or ten, Bridget thought. No, this is high school: a size seven or nine. She wore jeans and a long sleeved shirt. On top of the shirt she wore a T-shirt that said, “I heart dorks.” She wore the yuckiest brown glasses Bridget had ever seen. They had big eighties lenses like Bridget had worn in junior high.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get you to the nurse’s office.” She pulled Bridget by the hand.

She was in still shocked by what happened. One minute she was about to be executed and another minute she was standing in the middle of a high school having disgraced herself.

Bridget felt the school nurse’s eyes glare at her. “You’re eighteen?” she asked.

“Miss Grosstree wouldn’t let her go to the bathroom,” the blonde said.

“She is very strict,” the nurse agreed. “We’ll have to call your mother to pick you up.” She turned toward her desk and picked up the phone.

“What is your mom’s number?” the nurse asked.

“Umm,” Bridget said.

“It’s 555-8273,” the blonde said.

The nurse dialed.

“Angela, I got to get to class,” the blonde said. “I’ll call you tonight.” She turned and walked away.

The nurse was already on the phone when Bridget looked away from the blonde. “Mrs. Murphy. You daughter had an accident. You need to come to school right away. No, she’s okay. She just soiled herself. I know she’s eighteen. No, it is not usual at that age. Just come and pick her up.”

Bridget was confused. She wondered who Angela and Mrs. Murphy were. She had a sneaking suspicion, but she dared not speculate. She stood inside the nurse’s office flushed and embarrassed. She refused to think about how she had gone from the death chamber to a high school.

###

Twenty minutes later a woman arrived. She looked to be in her early fifties. From the look on her face, Bridget thought she looked very angry. She walked straight toward Bridget. “Young lady, what do you have to say for yourself? How old are you?

Bridget blushed. “Umm, I…” She wasn’t about to tell this woman she was a death row inmate. She hoped the age question was rhetorical. She was thirty when the attack happened and she spent the last twelve years on death row, but she wasn’t going to tell her age in front of this stranger. “I’m too old to be having accidents,” she said.

She had to walk the walk of shame through the halls to the parking lot. She followed the woman outside toward the parking lot in silence. She kept her head down as she walked toward the car. As she walked she felt the poop slide around in her panties and against the inside of her leg.

“How could you disgrace yourself so badly?” said the woman. “I could imagine a first grader having an accident, but you? You’re eighteen years old and a senior. She led Bridget to a maroon Taurus and opened the passenger side door.

Bridget was about to get in, but the woman grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t sit down,” the woman said. She opened the back door. Bridget watched as the woman stripped the plastic off the dry cleaning laid in the back seat. She put the plastic on the passenger seat. “You can sit down now.”

Bridget sat. It felt disgusting enough to have poop in her pants, but when she sat down it was worse. The poop was soft enough that it squeezed into empty spaces inside her panties. Some felt like it moved to the front of her panties. She hoped it didn’t go inside her.

The woman got behind the wheel and they drove off. The only conversation was the woman berating the state of her underwear.

Bridget just ignored her and looked out the window. When she caught her badly angled reflection in the mirror she froze. Her wavy red hair was now dark brown and straight. Her face was now had the glow of youth. It wasn’t her face. She put her hand to her face and the reflection did the same. This wasn’t even her body.

She looked at the woman. Her coloration and looks were an older version of the reflection. “Mother?”

“What?” the woman said.

She didn’t know what to say. Was this how reincarnation worked? She didn’t think she was in Heaven or Hell. She didn’t know much about reincarnation, but she had thought reincarnated people start their new life at birth, not as an embarrassed teen in high school.

“What, Angela?” the woman, her mother repeated.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m sure you are,” her mother said. “You still are grounded. No TV and no computer beyond what you need for schoolwork, understand?”

Oh joy, do I really have to repeat this horrible part of growing up too? she thought. “How long?”

“For the rest of the week.”

That wasn’t too bad. “It’s Wednesday, right?”

“Yes,” her mother said and turned into a driveway.

The house was a suburban two story house. So much for lucking out and being reincarnated to a rich family. Maybe her karma was wrong because of how she reacted during the attack. What if she could have turned the truck far enough to the right? Would have she have ended up in a rich family or at least made the transition with clean underwear?

“Now straight to the bathroom,” her mother said.

I hope she didn’t think I would sit around stinking like I am, she thought. She had to waddle a bit as the poop was stuck to her bottom. Worse, it was starting to cool. Her pee stained thighs felt as if they were freezing.

Her mother led her to the bathroom and left her standing inside. “Don’t move. I’ll get a trash bag.”

Bridget looked longingly at the bathtub, but she stood on the cold tiled floor until her new mother returned.

“I think everything from the waist down is a loss.” She shook open the trash bag and set it opened on the floor.

Bridget kicked off her shoes and stepped inside the trash bag. She looked at her mother, but shrugged and lowered her pants and panties down into the trash. She looked down at her poop-streaked legs and sighed.

“Would you like me to help you clean up?” her mother asked.

The woman might be her mother, but Bridget still felt like she was a stranger. “I can handle it, mother.”

“Okay, I will lay some clothes on the sink for you.” She left.

Bridget took toilet paper and tried to get the worse of the mess off her legs and bottom. She let the paper drop into the trash bag. The shower that followed made her feel somewhat clean again. The water washed away the smeared poop, the horrible smell that seeped into her skin, and the clammy feeling of cold pee, but it didn’t make her feel truly clean again.

When she emerged from the shower, the disgusting trash bag was gone. Clean panties, jeans and a T-shirt lay on the counter. She dried off with a fluffy white towel and dressed into the new clothes.

When she left the bathroom, her mother noticed right away. “I put your backpack on the bed up in your room. Work on your homework until I say you can come down.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Bridget. She walked up the stairs and into a hallway. She didn’t know which was her room, but she knew it was the one with the red backpack on the bed. She looked in all three bedrooms until she found the one that was hers.

The room was smallish. It contained a twin bed, a writing desk with a Macbook on it and a large chest of drawers. A bookshelf stood by the window, filled with horrible romance novels. Bridget shuttered at the sight of them. The room was overly neat. That told her that information about herself would be easy to find or not there at all. The red Jansport on the bed showed the most promise of having the information she sought.

She unzipped the backpack and dumped the contents onto the bed: five spiral notebooks, a physics textbook, a Pre-Calculus book, and an English book lay on her bed. She opened the small pocket on the backpack and took out a cell phone, a little brown leather calendar, and a romance novel with a bookmark in it.

She picked up the little leather book and opened it to the first page. Inside in very neat handwriting was her class schedule. She groaned when she read the list of classes. Physics AP, Pre-Calculus AP, English AP, Fundamentals of Computers, Spanish II, and Study Hall. At least she had a study hall.

She had taken German in high school, but she didn’t remember much. The only Spanish she knew was from coworkers. She hoped it would be enough. She would have to seriously study to catch up. She’d also taken Physics and Calculus during the two years before she ran out of money and had to take that job at the department store. If her father wouldn’t have fronted her the money for truck driving school, she would still be working retail. During the past twelve years, she wished she would have stayed in retail. Her truck would not have been hijacked and her father would not have died of a heart attack the day she was arrested.

She opened the calendar to the current date. Every date had the date each homework assignment was due. Her new life had been incredibly organized.

She started on the pre-calc assignment. It took her over two hours to do. There were at least twenty-five complex problems and she had to read the text portion of the chapter and consult her notes to even know what to do. All the problems were even numbered problems, so she couldn’t look for answers in the back of the book. She had to solve the odd problems anyway so she would know she was doing the problems correctly.

Physics was different. She thought physics would be hard, but they were studying electricity. The problems were just resistance or capacitance of circuits, and her father was an electrician. She knew the theory. It was simple to calculate those problems. That took another hour. She was about to open up her English book, when her mother opened her bedroom door.

“You can come down for supper,” she said. “How is your homework coming?”

“Two subjects down.”

“Come down and eat.”

Bridget went down the stairs.

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The table was set for two. A TV dinner was set at each place. “I didn’t make a big production of dinner because your father is not here tonight.”

“Where is he?” Bridget asked.

“Don’t you remember? He is one of the witnesses to the execution.” She frowned. “I wanted to be there to see that horrible woman put to death myself, but there were so many parents who lost a child at that school.”

Bridget froze. Was she talking about her. “The woman who couldn’t stop the terrorist from…”

“That woman was the terrorist, and you were in kindergarten then. Your poor big sister died because of that wicked woman.”

Bridget remembered when the joy that the tanker missed the elementary school turned to horror as she watched it veer into the middle school instead. The twelve years of second guessing her brief struggle with the terrorist. She relived every scenario in her mind and still no matter what children died and she couldn’t go back and fix it anyway.

At least she had not been put to death. By Fates she ended up in a young body. She smiled when she thought of the chaos that was probably ensuing due to her disappearance from the gurney. The timing was none too soon; needle had almost gone into her vein.

She dug her fork into the food and tried to take a bite. Her lasagna, cooked with all the finesse of a microwave, seemed a bit more satisfying.

Her mother looked at her watch. “We’re missing the News.” She picked up the remote and aimed it at the TV. “I’ll let you watch this even though I grounded you from the TV, but Angela,” her mother said, “No other TV until you are ungrounded.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bridget said. She felt excitement. She was going to relish hearing the news of her magical escape. She could barely eat her meal as she impatiently waited for the weatherman to stop droning on about cumulus clouds.

“In the capital today, the terrorist Bridget Addison was set to be executed.” The TV screen showed protesters out protesting the death penalty.

Bridget scowled at them. She hated death penalty protesters in spite of the fact that the death penalty had made a mistake in her case. She looked back at the screen.

“Two hundred forty children died when Bridget Addison rammed a tanker truck into a middle school.” The screen showed another group of people holding signs. One said, “Burn, Bridget, burn.” “I wish we could strap her to a tanker and light her up,” said a man when a reporter held a microphone up to his face.

Just wait, thought Bridget, until they announce my escape.

“At 1:32 PM,” the news announcer continued, “Bridget Addison was given lethal injection. She jokingly asked if the alcohol on her arm was to prevent infection, and then made a rambling statement. When she finished, she whispered something to the executioner, and lay back as the needle entered her arm. She then screamed for her father, and was pronounced dead at 1:36 PM”

It couldn’t have happened like that. She didn’t die. She was sitting right here watching it on TV. Sure she had another body, but it was a newly created life she was starting anew. Wasn’t it?

What if it wasn’t a great escape, but she just traded bodies with Angela Murphy? That girl was innocent of everything, but if their bodies were switched… “Oh God, Oh God,” she said. She had another life on her conscious now. She felt hot as the blood rushed to her face. Her whole body felt numb and then her thighs felt warm.

A pattering sound came from beneath her chair, but she couldn’t investigate it until the news story ended. “They killed her,” her she said. She finally managed to look down and just stared at her lap as she finished peeing her pants.

“Angela Mae Murphy,” said her mother. No, it was Angela’s mother. She was just a cuckoo's egg left behind to devour the woman’s children. She was a pretender. “Angela, you’re peeing your pants.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. She forced herself to look in the woman’s eyes, “I’m truly sorry for everything.”

The lady looked at her with sad eyes. “Go to your room and change.” The woman sighed. “What am I going to do with you, Angela.?”

Bridget got up from the table and went to the upstairs bathroom. She undressed from the waist down and threw her wet things in the hamper. She walked bare-bottomed to her room and got dressed into some clean clothes.

She heard an annoying tune. Her phone sat on top of her bed where she had dumped everything out and a light on it was flashing. She picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Are you okay?” the voice asked.

Bridget looked at the display on the phone. “Lia?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Are you all right? I felt bad leaving you in the nurses office, but I had to go to class. The whole school is talking about your accident.”

She’s the blonde girl with the glasses, Bridget thought. “I was afraid of that? Do you think they will make fun of me for the rest of time, or did I just lose temporary coolness points?”

“Angela, we are both in AP courses and we are in the top ten percent of the class. We never had coolness points.”

“Oh,” she said disappointed, “Any other bad news?”

“Umm, yes,” said Lia, “but I can’t tell you because it will make you cry.”

“Go ahead,” Bridget said.

“It’s about Evan Fiscus.”

She had no clue who the guy was, but the way Lia was going on, she probably should know. “Is this news going to change any of my plans?”

“Yes. He is being a bastard about your accident. He told me to tell you he won’t take you to prom anymore. He asked that ho, Julia Grass instead. I’m so sorry, Angela.”

“Oh, darn,” Bridget said. She really didn’t care about Angela’s boyfriend and it was just as well. It was bad enough replacing a daughter that was executed in her place. A complex relationship was just too much.

“You’re taking this well,” Lia said. “I hope you’re not getting depression. If you’re sad you can talk to me.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I just had a really bad day. I actually forgot how to speak Spanish.”

“What? You’re the best Spanish student in the class. Just re-read the conversation over and over. We have until Monday to get it down. We can practice this weekend.”

“Well I suppose you called me about homework. I finished Pre-Calculus and Physics.”

“In English, just read the last three chapters of Brave New World. Miss Crampton is going to have us compare 1984 to Brave New World in an essay we have to write. That’s not due until next week. In Spanish: just work on our conversation. You wrote the whole thing in your notebook. You know this backward and forward.”

“Okay, so I just memorize my part and we read it together like in a play?” I ask.

“Yes. Are you sure you are all right. You don’t sound like yourself.”

“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m so grounded though.”

“For how long?”

“Friday.”

“This fundamentals of computers class: I don’t have the book at home with me. What do we have to do in there?”

“You’re usually the organized one. The Powerpoint thing is due Friday.”

“The power what?” she asked. Oh God, I am so screwed, she thought.

“Your Powerpoint Presentation.”

“Oh,” she said, “Powerpoint.” The Internet really took off while she was in prison. She had limited access to computers, but she could get magazines and read about them. She had had plenty of time to read.

“You’re acting a little weird.”

“Sorry, I am really drained because I had the worst day of my life today.”

“Well I will let you go. I will see you on the bus.”

“Bye,” Bridget said and closed the phone.

Bridget opened up the spiral notebook labeled Spanish and flipped to the last marked page. Each line had neatly written gibberish following the name Angela or Lia. She flipped back until there was a heading. The conversation was three pages long.

“Tomorrow, get the pronunciation of every word,” she said to herself. She pulled out her book for English class and read 1984 halfway through. “Catch up on this too,” she said.

She packed her backpack and got ready for class. She wasn’t sure she wanted to face high school again, but she knew it would be an improvement over yesterday. She changed into pajamas and went to the bathroom.

She got ready the best she could. She refused to guess on the toothbrush, but there was a spare in the cupboard so she opened and used it. She made sure she peed before going to bed and left to her room.

The bed, clean of the backpack contents was actually comfortable. It was a big improvement over a prison cot. She covered up and soon was asleep.

###

The truck drove on through the early morning light. All eighteen wheels gleamed. The silver tank held its 9000 gallons. Each stop was written in red marker on her map. She knew which roads to take. The hijacker came again like every other night and the dead children invited her to relive her failure to save them again.

Tonight was different. There was another dead child. She waved out the door of the elementary school, as the truck skidded into the middle school. “You’ll kill me to save yourself,” she accused.

The dream usually ended when the truck crashed but tonight, it continued into death row. Tonight Angela Murphy lay on the gurney. She screamed and screamed as the needle entered her arm. “You killed me to save yourself.”

Bridget sat upright in the bed. It was just a dream. She felt at the sweaty sheets, but they were wetter than usual. She lifted up the blankets and turned on the lamp. She had wet the bed.

How many accidents was she going to have? First in the kitchen and now in bed. She didn’t count the one in the bathroom because technically that was Angela’s accident, not hers. She had nightmares almost every night for twelve years, and this was the first time it made her wet the bed. She hoped Angela didn’t have a weak bladder or anything.

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Life and Death Decisions Made Casually: Day Two

Bridget sighed and got out of her wet bed. “Usually I want to go back to sleep,” she said to herself. There was no way she wanted to lay on those cold clammy sheets. She peeled off her wet pajamas and sighed.

She got some underwear out of the drawer and walked to the bathroom. The heat of the shower massaged her body and she hoped it also washed away the pissy smell from her skin. She hated stepping out of the shower, but she needed to get stuff done. After brushing her teeth and hair, she walked back to her bedroom.

It was still early; the clock said 5:15. She opened her closet to select what to wear. She hated everything she saw. She was used to a whole different high school wardrobe. Everything here was different. All the jeans were low cut; all the tops were immodest. She eventually selected a babydoll T-shirt that had some chemistry quote on it and some jeans. She chose the non-faded jeans. If her bladder rebelled in school today, at least it wouldn’t show, she hoped.

She put all her wet things in a clothes basket and wandered over to the bookshelf. She was not going to go back to sleep and risk wetting her clean outfit, so she scanned the shelf for something enjoyable to read. It wasn’t likely with the shelf of bad romance, but she found something useful on the lowest shelf: the East High School yearbook.

It might make it easier to fit in if she knew with whom she was dealing with. She read the book for another hour.

“Angela, time to wake up,” said her mother. She opened the door and looked at her. “Oh, you’re already dressed.”

“Um, yes,” Bridget said. She blushed at the thought of the woman seeing the clothesbasket.

“Angela,” her mother asked, “Why are your sheets not on your bed?” She looked over to the clothes basket. “Did you wet yourself again?”

Bridget looked down at the floor and nodded.

“Angela, what’s going on?”

“Nothing.” There was no way Bridget could tell the truth. “I just had a bad dream and…”

“Well get ready for breakfast.” She pointed to the sheets. “I suppose I am going to have to wash those before I pick your father up from the airport. I am sure that finding out his daughter has forgotten how to use the toilet is not the first thing he wants to learn when he comes home.”

“Thank you,” Bridget said. She didn’t know what else to say.

###

Breakfast was delicious. Her own mother either never bothered to make breakfast, or just poured Bridget a bowl of cereal. Angela’s mother made bacon and eggs, and served juice. The empty spot in Bridget’s stomach felt warm and full for the first time in years. Maybe living here wasn’t too bad.

“Your bus is coming in about ten minutes,” her mother said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the bathroom first?”

Bridget was about to give an angry reply that she wasn’t a four-year-old, but given her accident record in the last day, she bit her lip and went to the bathroom before running out to catch the bus.

As soon as the big yellow bus pulled to a stop in front of her, Bridget remembered why she hated that part of school. Riding the bus had been the most humiliating part of high school for her.

She bit her lip and walked up the steps. The bus was crowded, dirty, and it smelled. A few people whispered and pointed when she got on. She knew they were talking about what happened the previous day. She guessed their whispers were, “She’s the girl who had an accident,” or “She’s the girl who peed her pants.”

“Angela.”

Bridget looked around. Lia was waving at her from halfway back. She stepped over the obstacles of backpacks in her path in the aisle until she got to Lia and took a seat next to her.

“Hi,” she said.

“Buenos dias,” Lia replied. She smiled.

“What?” Bridget asked.

“I was saying good morning to you, chica. Did you sleep okay?”

“Oh yeah. Spanish.” Why didn’t Angela take German? Better yet, why didn’t she take Spanish in high school? She remembered. Jesse Stevens took German, so she had to take it to so she could get a date. It was a wasted effort. He took Allison Stewart to junior prom. She did well in German, so she never regretted the decision until now. If only she had taken Spanish, then she would not have to learn two years of language in less than a semester. “I got it taken care of. I found our conversation in my notes. We’ll go over it Friday night, right?”

“That’s what I said,” Lia replied.

Bridget twisted her hair around her finger and tried to think of something intelligent to say.

“So are you seeing the new Star Trek movie?” Lia asked.

“There’s a new Star Trek movie?” Bridget asked.

“I guess that is a no,” her friend said, “You know those Harlequin romances will rot your brain.”

“Will they really?” Bridget asked.

“I guess not, but you are too smart to read those.” Lia smiled and looked out the window. “Hey. We’re at school.”

The two girls filed off the bus and headed to their lockers. Bridget just followed Lia. How was she going to know which locker was hers?

Bridget’s face turned red as the answer to her question became readily apparent. A baby diaper taped to her locker worked as well as a flashing beacon that pointed her way through the fog of students.

Lia ripped the diaper off and tossed it in the trash. “How dare they,” she yelled.

Bridget randomly turned the lock on her locker. It was no use anyway. She wouldn’t know the combination. “It won’t open,” she said.

“Here, let me try.” Lia opened the locker up.

“I guess I am just upset,” she answered. She pulled out her books she thought she would need for the morning and followed Lia to pre-Calculus.

The class was boring. The teacher droned on and on like the science teacher on the Wonder Years. She whispered her thoughts to Lia.

“What’s the Wonder Years?”

“Just an old TV show.” She couldn’t make that mistake too many times. If she wasn’t grounded, she would have spent time watching TV to see what she should be making references to.

The Ferris Bueller teacher kept rambling on. He probably didn’t even notice his white-board marker faded to illegiblescribbles five minutes ago. No, that was just an epsilon and an alpha.

The rest of the morning classes were uneventful. Physics was more lecture and in English they discussed Brave New World.

Mrs. Miller took the opportunity to embarrass her by asking her to compare the life styles of John Savage and Henry Foster. She had no idea who the woman was talking about. “Um, I don’t know.”

“Angela did you even read the book. Your paper on differences between themes of 1984 and Brave New World is due Monday. It is Thursday.”

“I’m working on my paper,” she said.

“Can you answer the question?” she asked Lia.

“John was a savage and had a mother. Henry was born in a test tube. It was an insult if someone suggested you had a mother or a father.”

“Good, Lia,” said Mrs. Miller. “At least someone knows the material.”

After class, they went to lunch. Before going to the cafeteria Bridget stopped in the restroom just to make sure.

“Wow, Miss Grosstree really laid into you about not knowing the material,” Lia said. “You usually know your stuff. What happened?”

Bridget thought of a quick lie. “You know that book I have with Fabio on the cover?” she asked. “Well I wanted to know if Tilda and Henri got together. They hated each other at the beginning of the book and... Well, I read it instead of Brave New World. So did Henry really come from a test tube?”

“Angela, are you getting senioritis? Even if you already got into college, you will still need to take your AP tests to get college credit for your basic courses.”

“I will read it tonight,” she told her. She guessed it would be no sleep that night. She was going to finish 1984 and start on Brave New World if it killed her.

###

When they stood in line in the cafeteria, Bridget knew she had been wrong. The bus was not the worse part of school it was the cafeteria food. She took her tray and sat down with Lia.

Lia opened her milk and took a sip. “I didn’t know how far behind you were slipping.”

“Oh relax,” Bridget said. She forked a bite of her spaghetti. “This tastes like prison food,” she said.

“What would you know of prison food?” ask Lia.

“Are you kidding? I’ve been here for what, almost twelve...” She stopped herself. “I don’t know, but I imagine cafeteria food and prison food are similar.”

“Exactly you’re guessing.”

“So.”

“Don’t look. Evan Fiscus and his ho Julia Grass.”

Bridget looked. Julia was blond and skinny. She wore a top that was so low, she had to keep pulling it up so her breasts wouldn't spill out which was a remarkable feat considering her breasts were on the small side. Her blonde hair was long, but thin and she apparently was no stranger to peroxide. She did look pretty though, but Bridget knew that Angela’s body was better. She was more curvier and had a prettier face.

Evan Fiscus was just a jock. He wore jeans and a letterman’s jacket. Since it was the off-season, he grew his hair out. It had that same look that made Bridget feel old. To her all the guys looked like they needed a haircut.

“I just looked. So?” she asked Lia.

“He’s coming this way.”

The couple came over to their table. “Hi,” Evan said.

“You’re a jerk Evan,” said Lia.

“This is between me and Angela,” he said. He put one are around Julia’s waist and pulled her close to him.

“Let me guess,” said Bridget. “You came over to tell me you are breaking up with me and I am gross. Did I miss anything?”

“Yes,” he said. “I am dating Julia now.”

“You’re just a big jerk, Evan,” said Lia.

“I’m the star quarterback, so I got to keep up my reputation for cool. I can’t have a girlfriend who goes around leaving a trail.”

Lia stood up. “I’m going to hurt you, Evan Fiscus.”

“Don’t worry about it, Lia,” Bridget said. “I am going to go to college in the fall. No one there will know about yesterday’s incident and we’ll have college boyfriends.” She looked at Julia who hadn’t said anything yet. She had looked up Julia Grass in the year book. “What are you Julia? A junior? Are you going to trust Evan to behave himself when you are a senior next year and he is a freshman football player in college surrounded by hot college girls? Maybe he’ll wait for you.”

Julia turned bright red and looked at Evan. She turned back to Bridget. “At least I don’t pee and crap my pants, Angela.” She turned and walked away pulling Evan with her.

“Wow, Angela,” said Lia. “You showed them. That was pretty harsh. I thought you would be crying.”

“Well in this novel I was reading, Rafe Castillo wanted to be with Lily Black even though Lisa Fennimore said Rafe was the father of her baby. It turned out that Lisa was just lying and when they got married, it turned out that she hired an actor to be the priest so the wedding wasn’t valid any way. Rafe left town and had nothing to do with either of them.”

“Angela, I swear you need to put away those romance novels.”

Bridget didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was actually a plot to a soap opera her mother had watched in the nineties. She would never actually try to read the romance novels on Angela’s shelf. She needed to get some science fiction in there or something. “A girl’s got to read something,” she said. “Do you have anything better for me to read? I am planning on reading Brave New World tonight.”

“Brave New World is a good start, but it is too academic as far as science fiction goes. Miss Grosstree said it was not science fiction because it is good, but she doesn’t want to admit science fiction is good.”

“Who cares?” Bridget asked.

“Time for class.” She stood up and picked up her tray. “Are you ready to finish your powerpoint?”

“Why not?” Bridget followed her friend to put away her try and go to class.

###

Computer class was something else indeed. It should have been simple, but so much had changed while she was in prison. Bridge just wanted to run out screaming. She had used PowerPoint a bit, but it wasn’t like she was used to. So much was different.

It started out bad when she sat down and logged in. Fortunately Angela had written her username and password on the first page of her computer class notebook. No problem there. Her notes also said, “Finish PowerPoint,” not “do PowerPoint,” so it was saved somewhere.

She looked at Lia to see where she got her disk from, but Lia was already working on her project. She opened her backpack and began looking for it. It was nowhere to be seen. She closed her backpack and put her keys and cell phone next her keyboard. “Lia, where did I save my PowerPoint?”

“Probably on your thumb drive. It should be on your keychain.”

Bridget picked up her keys and looked over at Lia’s computer. She saw how it worked and put the thumbdrive in the USB port and fired up PowerPoint. It was surprisingly well done. The last two pages didn’t have the data listed. It was a simple matter type in the last two slides from the outline in her notebook. She saved it and had it ready in no time.

She spent the rest of class going over the slides and practicing the presentation she thought she would have to give.

Spanish was film day, so they just watched Spanish language films. Bridgett was totally lost. At least there was no assignment given.

“Remember, your conversations are due next week. I think Angela and Lia are first on Monday,” said Senorita Faust.

Bridget groaned. At least it was only going to be like a play. She would have to work on the conversation with Lia that weekend.

She worked on homework in studyhall while Lia went to choir. She thanked God for small miracles that she didn’t have to go to choir. Bridget hated her voice and she hated the idea of trying to sing with Angela’s voice. Singing is a skill of the mind, not of the vocal cords and Bridget guessed she would be horrible at it even if Angela was good.

She finished pre-calculus okay and had to only take Physics, Spanish, and 1984 and Brave New World home with her. She sat with Lia on the bus.

When she arrived home, her bed was neatly made with fresh sheets. There was no pee smell at all. She lay on the bed and worked on homework and only came down for supper.

She lay in bed and read 1984 to its completion. She was going to read through Brave New World, but she glanced at the clock and it showed that it was already 12:30. She turned off the light and went to sleep.

There was no truck in her dreams. Instead it was rats.

Lots of rats like the ones that made Winston love Big Brother instead of Julia. She woke up screaming.

She felt around, but there were no rats. She was in her room. The sheets were sweaty and--she felt around her bottom and found a pee-soaked wet spot. “Uggg,” she said. She wet the bed again. A glance at her clock slowed her it was six. It was time to get ready anyway. Why was she wetting the bed? There was no truck dream with dying children. She got up and stripped her bed. She hoped Angela’s mother wasn’t too mad.

[writeleft]

Life and Death Decisions Made Casually: Day Three

“I swear, Angela,” said Bridget’s mother when she came to wake her up for school and saw the wet sheets. “What is this? The second day in a row? I won’t mention the accidents you had Wednesday.”

Bridget looked toward her mother. “I’ve been having bad dreams at night,” she said. She did not want to tell her about her regular bad dreams and she definitely did not want to tell her about her body jumping.

“We will talk about this later. Get ready for school and come down for breakfast.” Her mother walked toward the door, but turned back to face Bridget. “We need to have a talk after school.” She left Bridget alone.

Bridget went to the bathroom and peeled off her wet pajama bottoms. This had to stop. There was no way she could continue waking up wet every morning that she had been in Angela’s body. She was at a loss. The hot shower water rinsed the pee smell from her legs and crotch. Her hands rubbed the soap against her skin. It was much softer than her skin had been before when she was Bridget, but of course, Angela was much younger. Her hair was an actual color: a deep, rich brown that contrasted with her milky white skin. It was a lot better than the mouse brown her old hair had been, plus it was straight and smooth. She wondered why Angela wasn’t more popular.

She wasn’t in the in crowd because she was smart. Lia had confirmed that, and besides, her accident in school did not help matters. Lia said people would forget about it soon, but she doubted it. She still remembered the girl in seventh grade who wet her pants before giving a presentation in English class.

She stepped out of the shower, toweled herself off and hurried to her room to dress. She chose a plaid skirt and a white top--the Catholic look would always be in--and headed down stairs for breakfast. She smelled bacon and eggs as she walked down the stairs to the kitchen.

A man, sitting at the table looked up from a newspaper and greeted her, “Hey, pumpkin, did anything exciting happen when I was gone.”

She looked at her mother who shook her head. “No, sir.” She pulled out her chair and sat down.

“Why so formal today?” he asked.

Bridget’s father had been in the military and expected her to say “yes, sir” and “no, sir”. This would take some getting used to. At least she was able to spread out the misery a bit. “Sorry, Dad.” Sooner or later someone would think her miscues were strange and they might find she wasn’t who they thought she was.

“I missed you when I was away.”

“I missed you too, Dad.”

“Well, I better get to work.” Her father folded his newspaper and walked out the door.

Bridget sat and ate her breakfast.

“Now remember we need to have a talk when you get home,” her mother said.

“It’s going to be about my punishment for wetting the bed. Isn’t it?” She wondered what her mother could have in store for her. Fear of punishment might make things worse. She knew that a punishment wouldn’t make the dreams go away. Nothing would.

“It is about your bedwetting,” her mother said, “but don’t think of it as a punishment.” She picked up Bridget’s empty plate and took it to the dishwasher. “Now catch you bus before you get left behind.”

Bridget hurried out to the bus ready to begin class

###

Like yesterday, Bridget rode the bus sitting next to Lia. “I’m so glad it is Friday,” she said. “So are we going to work on Spanish after school?” She really needed help to get through her Spanish conversation. She had tried reading through it, but had trouble with her pronunciation.

“Well, I thought we'd see Star Trek and then study.” Lia looked at her and smiled. “You can stay over at my house and then we can stay up as late as we need to get through the entire conversation.”

“Lia, I don’t think it would be a good idea to stay at your house.”

Lia looked hurt. “I thought you would protest going to see Star Trek. We could see a romantic comedy if you insist, then you can come over.”

“Star Trek is fine,” Bridget said. She wanted to see it, but did not want to wait too long to get studying. She certainly didn’t want to spend the night and wake up wet at Lia’s house. “I just don’t want to sleep over.”

“We have fun. We’re best friends,” Lia protested. “Why don’t you?”

Bridget would have to tell Lia the real reason she couldn’t come over. Bridget sighed. “You can’t tell anyone what I am telling you.” She paused and felt her face burn red. “It’s like this. This is really embarrassing so you can’t tell anyone.” She waited until Lia nodded. “Ever since Wednesday I’ve...” She leaned in close to Lia and whispered, “I’ve been wetting the bed.”

“You what!” Bridget had to clamp her hand over Lia’s mouth to keep her from blurting out.

“Be quiet,” she whispered loudly. “I don’t need that fact spread over the school too.”

“That’s why you don’t want to come over, isn’t it?” Lia leaned closer. “You don’t need to be embarrassed. I’m your friend.”

“Me, too,” she said. “Thanks.” She still needed that Spanish study session or she would be lost on Monday. “If you want, you can come over to my house after the movie and study.”

“That would be good,” said Lia.

The bus arrived at school just in time. Calculus and Physics were uneventful. In the halls between classes other students would point and start whispering. She knew they were talking about her accident on Wednesday. (Rather Angela’s accident as she did not trade bodies with Angela until after she had the accident.)

She made sure to use the bathroom before English class. It was Mrs. Miller who had not let Angela use the bathroom in the first place which caused the whole episode. She did not know whether to blame her for the extra life on her conscious or thank her that she was still alive albeit in a different body. She met with Lia before class.

“Ready to face Grosstree?” she asked as they took their seats in the classroom.

“Sure,” Bridget muttered. She had spent Calculus and Physics reading Brave New World under her desk. It was really a different type of totalitarianism than 1984. One was awful in the creepy jack-booted-thug sort of way, but the other was a overly friendly creepiness. By Ford, it was beyond screwed up.

“It’s Mrs. Miller now, dork,” said a sarcastic voice behind them. “She’s only been married for two months already. Can’t you adjust?”

Lia turned and stuck her tongue out. “Does it matter, Cindy?”

Before Cindy could come up with a retort, class started. They started right away with Brave New World discussion. Bridget tried her best to stay out of the discussion. At least in this class she didn’t have to hide the book in her lap and look under her desk as she read it. She simply had it open on her desk and read through it. Easy as pie.

She had to answer a question about what type of clone Lanina was. “Beta,” she said, “although Henry was an Alpha.”

“I can see you finally read the book, Angela,” said her teacher. “Everyone, papers are due Monday at the beginning of class.” The bell rang. “Class dismissed.”

Bridget and Lia got out of class quickly and went down to the cafeteria. “What joy do we have today?”

Lia looked up at the menu board. “It says Frito pie. There should be some kind of true and advertising: chili poured over corn chips.”

“I actually like that,” Bridget said. She pulled a plastic spork from the container and grabbed a tray of food.

“Is this from Miss ‘It Tastes Like Prison Food?’” Lia took her own tray and they found a table together.

“Even in prison Frito pie has to be good,” Bridget said. Sadly, it had been the only thing she looked forward to during her twelve years on death row. She couldn’t go to the weekly movies they played for the general population because of security. She could read or listen to the radio. She mainly read.

“Whatever,” said Lia. She took a bite of her food.

“About tonight,” Bridget asked, “when does the movie start?”

“They’re showing it on a million screens, so there is one every half hour. I would like to go to an earlier showing so we can study earlier. How about just ride the bus to my house and we’ll drive to the theater. My brother is letting me drive his car.”

“Um, I can’t then. I got to go home so my mother can chew me out for peeing the bed.” Bridget’s face reddened. “My dad got home and she was too busy to finish chewing me out.”

“Oh he was at the execution of that horrible...”

Bridget didn’t wait. She got up and ran from the table to the bathroom. She remembered the pattering pee falling beneath her chair on Wednesday and she didn’t want a repeat accident here. Fortunately she made it to the bathroom dry. She used the restroom and returned to the table. “Lia, please don’t talk about Bridget Addison in my presence again. Especially at school. It is nightmares about her that give me problems at night.”

“What kind of...” Lia began. “Oh.” She looked at her with doe eyes. “I’m sorry.”

The rest of lunch was spent in silence until the bell rang. It was frustrating Bridget to no end that she couldn’t keep the bed dry for one night since her metamorphosis. It was almost a relief when the bell rang and she could go to class.

Fundamentals of Computers was next. She sat down at her place and logged into her machine. She still needed her notes to remember the password. She had logged in by the time Lia arrived at the place beside her.

“You got all quiet on me at lunch,” said Lia. “Are you mad at me?”

“No,” Bridget answered. “I was just thinking about stuff. Thanks for not bolting on me when I told you my secret.”

“We’re friends. I wouldn’t bolt on you.”

“Thanks.”

“Besides,” said Lia. She opened the drawer under her computer and pulled out a gamepad. “I need you on my team for Friday LAN party. I hope you finished your PowerPoint.”

Bridget wondered if you took turns playing or what. She hadn’t played video games in years. She had played Doom and Sim City, but that had been ages ago.

Ms. Hardy, the computer teacher walked around the room. “Put your thumb drives in the basket if you are finished with your assignment.” She carried the basket around the class room. Lia threw her thumb drive into the basket and Bridget did the same. Some of the students started to work on their assignments instead of turning it in. The rest of the class pulled game controllers from the drawer beneath their computers and started to play games.

Bridget started the same game as Lia. It looked like a shooting game, but a screen came up and asked what server she wanted to join. There was a list. “What server do I put?” she asked Lia.

“Are you having memory problems, Angela?” Lia looked worried. “It seems that since Wednesday’s incident, you’ve asked questions that you should know and it’s really creeping me out.”

Bridget froze. She could feel the blood drain from her face. Lia knew. “Umm,” she said while stalling for time. She forced herself to calm down. Lia couldn’t know the whole story. Jumping from body to body was crazy. It only happened in science fiction stories. Lia liked science fiction almost as much as she did, but Lia knew that Angela liked romance and she gave her a dig about reading too much romance.

“I’ve been going through a lot of stress recently with graduation coming up, needing a new prom date, and Spanish. It’s everything at once.” She smiled. “Did you think I was a pod person?”

“Pod person?” asked Lia.

“Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And I thought you liked science fiction.”

“We’re on server B2,” said Lia. Her face pinkened with embarrassment over my remark. “We’re Blue team,” she added when Bridget almost picked Red.

It was a shooting game like Doom. There were no cheat codes like in Doom and the graphics were far better: no pixilation or anything. It was a lot more complicated. Her screen flashed red and her gun began to shake on the screen as her view shifted vertical to horizontal. The words, “Fragged you Accident Girl,” appeared on the screen.

They did the same thing over and over until she got a handle on the controls and how the game worked. The next time they came around she shot them with her shotgun and ran across the screen to a more defensible position. She pulled out the sniper rifle and just killed Red Team players for the rest of the class period.

In Spanish she had to pay attention. She was lost most of the class because the teacher taught it in Spanish. If only the teacher taught German instead. She could ace that, or at least relearn it. The Spanish teacher asked Lia something and she nodded and said, “Si.” Then she asked Bridget the same thing.

She took a fifty-fifty chance and said, “Si.” The teacher seemed pleased by her remark.

“Everyone, conversations are due next week. Angela and Lia volunteered to go first, so they get five bonus points. We will have a test next Friday. You should be able to handle it easily. It is on chapter eighteen in your book.”

The bell rang and Bridget hurried to study hall. She got the pre-Calculus done fairly quickly and was about to pull Brave New World out to read, but the bell rang. She hurried to the bus. At least she had the weekend to get caught up. She hoped she could make it through Spanish and graduate.

[writeleft]

On the bus ride home, Lia seemed excited. She chattered constantly about what she heard on the Internet about Star Trek and how when the new Spock did a mind meld, he gave a whole new meaning to the term “my mind to your mind.”

“I don’t get it,” said Bridget.

“Because Zachary Quinto plays Siler on Heros.” She paused to see if I recognized what she was talking about. “And Siler eats peoples’ brains.”

“Ick,” said Bridget. “I don’t think I want to watch Heros.”

“Don’t worry,” said Lia, “I won’t watch it anymore after this season. I’ll pick you up in an hour,” she said.

The bus stopped in front of Angela’s house. Bridget hadn’t even noticed. She got off the bus and went into the house to have the talk with her mother.

###

“How was school, Angela?” asked her mother.

“Fine,” she answered.

“Sit down and let’s talk.”

Bridget sat down on the couch and her mother sat beside her. “You wet the bed two nights in a row and on Wednesday you not only had an accident in school, but you had another one at the dinner table. I’m worried about you.”

“I...,” Bridget started to say, but stopped. She didn’t know what to say at all. She was going to be grounded, she knew it and then she would do horrible in Spanish and maybe not get into college. She hoped she could do well if she failed the conversation assignment. She bite her lip and looked at her mother. “How long am I grounded for?” she asked.

“I’m not punishing you. I am sure you didn’t mean to have accidents, but I am getting tired of washing your sheets every morning. Just because I work at home doesn’t mean I have time to deal with your laundry every day. I have deadlines you know.”

“All right, I will try not to wet the bed,” said Bridget. She knew she would anyway.

“I think maybe you should wear protection to bed,” her mother said. “I bought you something to wear to protect your sheets.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bridget.

“Come on up to your room.” Her mother led the way to Bridget’s bedroom. On her bed was a package of Depends.

“There is no way I am going to wear diapers,” said Bridget. “I thought you said you wouldn’t punish me.”

“It’s just for night. No one will ever know. You don’t have to wake up in wet sheets anymore.”

“I can’t. Lia is going to spend the night. I don’t want her to see me in diapers.”

“I’ll put them in your closet then.” Her mother carried the bag of diapers to Angela’s closet. “I just thought they would be more comfortable than wet pajamas. We can try them out tomorrow night. Just try them one night and see if you like them.”

“I’ll think about them,” said Bridget. She did not want to wear diapers. Even the old people diapers her mother picked out would make her feel babyish. When her mother left, she went to her closet to pick an outfit for the movie. “Jeans and a math shirt would work. Her shirt said, “The meaning of life.” It had a sigma notation equation that worked out to forty-two. She smiled. At least the Hitchhiker's Guide was still popular among other nerds. The doorbell rung, which meant Lia had arrived. Bridget hurried down to meet her.

###

“The movie was really good,” said Bridget as the two girls walked out of the theater. She was surprised that even though they stepped away from cannon, they managed to do it without pissing off the fans, herself included.

“I liked it too,” said Lia, “but now I really have to pee. I wish I didn’t drink all that soda.”

“I drank as much soda as you and I got to go too,” said Bridget. They finally got out of the hallway and then saw the huge line for the bathroom. Bridget didn’t have to go that bad. None of her accidents were from having to hold it too long, except maybe the first one. They were all from nightmares or the surprise of finding that the real Angela died in her place. Lia, however, was wiggling and crossing her legs. “Lia, want to get a slice of pie at Village Inn? We can walk across the parking lot and use the bathroom there before we even get halfway through this line.”

“Good idea,” she said.

Bridget led the way out of the theater. She resisted the urge to stop at every movie poster and see what would be playing next. The idea of seeing another movie intrigued her. She moved on.

Outside the theater, drivers sat in parked cars waiting for people. Others were standing around talking on cell phone arranging rides or regrouping with friends when they were separated in the crowd. A middle-aged man in jeans and a T-shirt walked toward the theater. He kept his salt and pepper hair trimmed close, almost like a crew cut. His gray eyes pierced through her; they felt cold and there was not a hint of compassion in them. She recognized the eyes. She dreamed of a younger version of this man every night when he hijacked her truck and ran it into the school. The owl tattoos on his arm confirmed her suspicion. This man was the hijacker. She felt numb. What could she do? Would anyone even believe her? She felt hot and moist and...

“Angela, Angela, Angela!” Lia hit her on the shoulder to get her attention. “Angela, you’re wetting yourself.”

Bridget looked down. Her jeans were soaked between her legs. She stood in a warm puddle, and she was the last one to realize it. The worse thing was it was almost summer, so it was still light enough out that it was obvious that she had soaked her jeans. People around her were staring or whispering to one another. Lia’s announcement didn’t help matters; instead it called attention to her.

Evan Fiscus and Julia Grass walked up. “It’s your pee-baby ex-girlfriend, Evan,” Julia said with a grin.

Evan’s was more shocked than anything else. “What is wrong with you, Angela? Having accidents?” He shook his head and walked away with the giggling Julia.

Bridget looked back at the man with the gray eyes and the tattoos. He had a few friends with him and they were walking back to the parking lot. Lia dragged her in the same direction and they headed toward her brother’s car.

“What happened?” she asked. “I didn’t think you had to go that bad.” She stopped and crossed her legs and then started toward her car. “I can’t let you sit in the car either. My brother has cloth seats and he will never let me use the car again if I bring it back pee stained.”

Bridget started crying. These accidents were ruining her new life. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed.

“It’s okay,” said Lia. “I am going to end up like you if I don’t find a bathroom soon,” she said.

Bridget dug in her purse for a twenty. “Get us a whole French silk pie when you go in there.” She needed comfort food after tonight’s experience. What would her mother say when she walked in the house like this?

“I can’t believe you still want pie,” said Lia, as she walked away from the car. She was shaking her head.

While Lia was gone, Bridget looked around. The terrorist and his friends got into a Prius with Washington plates. The girl was young looking, maybe nineteen or twenty. She wore a greenie shirt that said “Go Veg!” on it. The man with her was in his mid-twenties. He wore regular clothes. She watched as the Prius drove away. She didn’t know whether to be relieved they were gone, or worried about what they were about to do.

She shivered. Her pee-drenched jeans were beginning to cool and the wet clammy fabric clung to her. People driving by slowed and stared at her. She covered her wet crotch with her hand, but it only rubbed the fabric of her panties against her privates. She blushed and held her hand further in front of her. She knew she would need to explore this feeling later, but now she had more reasons to want to change into dry pants.

She thought of the past accidents and thought about what triggered them. They occurred whenever she was alarmed and scared about something to do with the attack. Last night’s bed wetting was the exception, so maybe it was an anomaly or maybe she was just off about the whole accident thing to begin with. She did know she had no way to stop them or even predict them. She thought of the bag of Depends on the floor of her closet. A tear ran down her cheek when she realized what she would have to do.

Lia came out of the restaurant about fifteen minutes later. “They didn’t have any French silk. I got Reese’s peanut butter cup pie,” she said. She unlocked the passenger side door for Bridget and took the pie out of the plastic bag. She put the bag on the seat. “You can sit on this bag,” she said. When she sat down on the plastic, Lia handed her the Styrofoam box the pie was in and went to the other side.

“Lucky you made it,” said Bridget. “You only had one bag.”

Lia ignored her. “Let’s get you home and out of those wet pants.”

“Thank you, Lia,” she said. “Most people would have stopped being my friend. I guess I am embarrassing to be around. I have this.” She pointed with both hands to her lap.

“I can’t say I am not tempted, Angela.” Lia concentrated on driving, so she did not look at her.

“I promise I won’t leave puddles behind anymore,” she said. She thought of the Depends and how she didn’t want Lia to see them. She didn’t trust herself to stay dry anymore, so she would have to show Lia before they went to bed.

“Angela, you couldn’t help it,” Lia said. “Don’t make a promise you don’t know that you can keep.”

“You'll see what I mean when we get to my house. It’s so embarrassing wetting myself all the time. I wonder what my mother is going to say when she sees me come home like this.”

“We can stop at my house and I can run in and get something for you to change into. You’ll have to change in the car.”

She wouldn’t mind changing in the car, but she was going to wear the diapers her mother got her until it was safe. “No, I don’t want to pee on your clothes too. Let’s just get to my house.”

When she got home her mother was not too happy. “What happened, Angela?” she asked. She saw Lia come in behind her. “Lia, go on up to Angela’s room.” She turned back to Bridget. “This is getting to be a problem. I am going to make an appointment at the doctor’s office for you. Until then, we’ll put you in the Depends I bought.”

“During the day too?” Bridget asked. She didn’t blame her if her mother did make her wear them.

“That is up to you,” her mother said. “No one will know if your wear them, but they do know if you wet your pants. When Lia leaves in the morning we’ll start on the Depends. At least until the doctor tells us what is wrong.”

Bridget closed her eyes. “I’ll wear them.” If this wasn’t a punishment for wetting her pants, the whole situation was a punishment for not saving those children. “I’ll wear them now.” She kept her head down and could not even look at her mother.

“Go take a shower. I will get your things. Lia will never know you are wearing protection.”

Bridget went to the upstairs bathroom and peeled off her wet clothes. She looked at the image of Angela in the mirror. “I’m sorry things had to work out like this, kid.” By the time she showered and dried off, her mother knocked on the door.

“I got your things in my room. I didn’t want Lia to walk in while I change you.”

Bridget blushed. She never imagined having to wear diapers again. She wrapped herself in the towel and followed her mother.

“Lay down on the bed.”

Bridget complied. She closed her eyes and hoped for the diaper to be on so she could get dressed and get out of there. She waited but nothing happened.

“You need to watch me so you can do this yourself. You don’t want me to have to come to your school to change you, do you? Besides, you’re big enough to do this yourself.”

Bridget blushed. There would be no way to keep the diapers a secret if that were to happen. She watched as her mother powdered her, and taped her diaper shut. She handed her her pajamas. Bridget pulled them on. Being naked in front of this strange woman, Angela’s mother, frightened her. If she knew who Bridget really was, the woman would kill her. She felt so vulnerable.

The diaper felt thick and snug. It was thicker than the Always pads she wore during her periods. She hoped it could be hidden under her clothes. As she walked out of the room toward her own, she heard a crinkling sound. She would have to wear tight panties over the diaper or something if she wore it to school. She wondered what Lia would when she noticed. She opened the door. Lia had put on her own pajamas and was sitting on Angela’s full bed.

“Angela,” said Lia, “I was just thinking: what happens if you wet the bed tonight? Won’t you get me wet?” She wrinkled her nose when she said “me”, so Bridget knew the idea disgusted her.

“Let’s just get started on Spanish,” Bridget said.

“I’m serious, Angela.”

She would have to either send her home or tell her about her diapers. They were diapers even though her mother was careful to just call them Depends instead of using the word diaper. “I won’t get you wet,” she said. She pulled down the waistband of her pajamas enough to show the diaper. “My mom bought them for me today for the bedwetting, but after what happened after the movie, I am going to wear them just to be safe.”

“O-M-G, Angela,” said Lia. “How long is your mother making you wear them?”

“I’m going to the doctor’s, probably on Tuesday, to find out what is wrong with me. Until them I am wearing them.”

“Well at least it’s less noticeable than wet pants.”

“I hope so, although I don’t plan on peeing in it.” She paused a few seconds. “On purpose anyway. Now let’s get started on Spanish.”

It was all Bridget could do to get Lia to focus on Spanish. She kept stopping to ask what it felt like to use a diaper, but Bridget didn’t know because she hadn't worn the diaper long enough to wet it. They went through the conversation until Bridget was sure she could get through it by memory. Every so often, Lia would stop and ask, “Is it wet?” or an equally embarrassing question.

“So the conversation...,” Bridget said when they got through it enough times. “How was it?”

“You did great,” said Lia. “Don’t worry about it. I could have done without you being silly and mispronouncing stuff at the beginning. When you stopped joking around you were good.”

“So Monday then,” said Bridget.

“Yes Monday,” Lia said. “So Angela, are you really going to wear those diapers to class Monday?”

“I don’t see that I have much of a choice. I don’t want to be embarrassed in front of all our friends.” Bridget didn’t want to think about what would happen if the other students discovered that she was diapered. She supposed she would cross that bridge when she came to it. School only had another month anyway. She guessed she could stand the embarrassment for a month. She looked at the clock and yawned. “I didn’t know it was so late.”

“Yeah, it’s one o’clock.” Lia yawned and stretched. “I’m ready to go to bed.”

They settled in bed. Bridget closed her eyes and tried to sleep in spite of Lia’s soft
snoring. It didn’t help that after several hours Lia woke her up.

“Are you wet yet?” she asked.

“No,” Bridget growled and turned her back and curled into her covers. She felt so a peace when she finally got to sleep.

###

She ran as fast as she could, but they were still behind her. She couldn’t just run away from the engine noises because the men in the Prius chasing her were running off the batteries. She had to constantly look back to make sure they had not veered off to double around and come at her from the front.

She could see the tattooed driver through the Prius’s windows. His cold, gray eyes pierced her as she tried to escape. She ran toward a gas station she saw in the distance. If only she could make it there, she would be safe, or at least she hoped she would find refuge there.

When she arrived at the gas station, she saw no one in sight. The windows were dark and since the only light came from the flickering neon beer lights, she realized it was closed. The pumps were the old style ones with mechanical digits indicating the amount of gas bought and the price. The marquee over the pumps had peeling paint. The only sounds she heard were the metal price advertisements tapping out a warning when the breeze hit them.

She looked behind her, seeing the Prius try to run her down. Inside were the terrorist who stole her rig, the young college girl, and the other man she had seen at the theater. The Prius grew as it sped toward her, becoming her own tank truck. The man inside stared her down. It was less than ten feet away when it burst into flames. She braced for the coming impact, but none came. She woke up sweating and screaming.

“You okay, Angela?” asked Lia.

Bridget rubbed her eyes and tried to get her bearings. Light streamed into the room. She felt her bed near her bottom, but there was no wetness. “Just had a bad dream,” she said. “At least I didn’t wet the bed.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Lia. “Maybe you won’t need the diapers anymore.”

She put her hand inside her pajamas and felt the plastic of the diaper. It actually felt thicker than it had when she put it on. It also felt squishy. She put her hand in the diaper. Her skin was wet and when she took her hand out, it smelled like pee. “I do need them,” she said. “I’m wet, but my bed is dry.”

Lia got out of bed. “I’m going to go take a shower.” She hurried out of the room.

“But I--“ Bridget started to say. She got out of bed, took off her pajama bottoms, and looked in the mirror. The blue stripes up and down the front of the diaper were gone. She felt so babyish in the diapers, but at least she didn’t have to strip the bed. “And tomorrow, Angela” she said, “I will plan how to get the people that did this to us.”

[writeleft]

Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Day Four

Bridget took a shower after Lia left. She had a lot of work to do and she hadn’t even finished Brave New World. She would have to do that today to get the report finished. That would wait until her shower was over. She left the diaper abandoned in the bathroom trash and concentrated on washing herself. Her skin smelled of pee, but that had become a familiar feeling to her of late. She rubbed the scented soap into her skin and felt much cleaner.

Once clean, she dressed in a clean diaper, a t-shirt, and some shorts. It was hard to get the diaper on herself, but she managed. She did not want to ask her mother to do it for her again. She got up and spun around in front of the mirror. She couldn’t even see the shape of her diaper underneath her clothes. When she walked down the stairs, it crinkled audible. She blushed. “I’m definitely wearing tight panties over these,” she said to herself.

“How did you sleep?” her mother asked. She was getting ready to cook breakfast again. “Did Lia notice your protection?”

“I slept okay. I wet again, but the diaper got it all,” said Bridget. She tossed her hair. “Lia didn’t notice it until I told her.”

“I am definitely going to make a doctor’s appointment for you,” said her mother. “This is not normal for a girl your age. You are being very cooperative about the wearing the Depends, but I would rather find out what is wrong with you.”

“Me too. I don’t want to be in diapers forever.” Bridget knew the doctor wouldn’t find anything physically wrong with her. It was probably psychological and she didn’t know what to tell the shrink. Even if she was inclined to tell the truth, the psychiatrist would think she was crazy. She needed to find that terrorist and bring him to justice. Maybe that would stop the wetting. To find him, she knew, she would need help. She just didn’t know how she would get it.

Breakfast was eaten in silence. Her father had already gone to his buddies to practice in their garage band. It was pretty cool to have a father that was a rock star, even if the only money the band made was from t-shirts and CD sales when they played for tips in bars. Her real dad worked at an insurance company. Insurance paid better than rock star; fortunately, her new dad kept his day job. She closed her eyes to keep from crying. Her real father’s death was her fault too. She still blamed herself for his heart attack. If only she had fought of the terrorist sooner she would still be able to spend time with him.

She excused herself from the table and began reading Brave New World. It was noon by the time she finished and she had to bolt upstairs when John Savage hanged himself. This book and 1984 had crappy endings. She went to the bathroom and dried her face. She felt like peeing too, so she lowered her diaper and peed like a normal girl. It sure felt good to be in control. When she finished, she pulled up her diaper and shorts and hurried into her bedroom. She had a report to write.

The paper only took a few hours to type on her Mac Book. What took so long was figuring out how to use a Mac in the first place. Once she opened Word, it was a simple task to type her report away until she lost track of time. When she finished it was three o’clock. She printed out her report and read over it to check for errors. Then she put it in her folder. Physics and Calculus were both easy compared to writing a paper. Both were just math problems. She finished each of those by five. She thought of her status after wetting in school and in front of her classmates at the movie theater. Wasting a Saturday with school work wasn’t going to hurt her social status at all.

Her mother knocked on her door and came in. “I made supper. It’s just the two of us since your father is practicing with his band.”

“Sounds good. I’m starved.” She followed her mother down stairs. The table was set already and a cooked frozen pizza was divided in between too plates. She sat down across from her mother.

“Have you been staying dry today?” her mother asked.

She blushed and nodded.

“Good,” her mother said. “I went shopping for groceries today. I also got you some more supplies.”

“Shouldn’t we wait to see what the doctor says?” she asked and took a bite of her pizza. Did her mother plan on her being in diapers forever?

“I would have, but the top of you Depends sticks out the back of your shorts. I got you some pull-up style protection. It should be easier to manage during the day.”

She quickly slapped her hand above the top back of her shorts and felt plastic. She could feel her skin heat up with embarrassment. If she had gone to schooled dressed as she was, then she might have been really humiliated. She imagined the cries of “Diaper baby, diaper baby,” of the other students and almost shivered at the thought. “I’ll change into one and test it out,” she said.

“Finish your dinner first,” her mother said.

Bridget sat down and fidgeted until she had eaten. As soon as the meal was over, she grabbed what was obviously incontinence products from one of the grocery bags her mother had brought home and took it upstairs. She peeled the bag open and pulled out one of the pull-ups. It looked like a thick pair of granny panties. She sighed and pulled off her diaper and pulled on her new disposable underpants. They were thick and itchy, but at least they didn’t peek out of the top or legs of her shorts. She checked it sitting and standing. She even bent over at the waist in front of her mirror. That showed the diaper from the leg holes in her shorts, so she decided not to do that.

Satisfied, she decided to go to the mall. The little diary said it was Lia’s birthday on Monday. Bridget knew she had to get her something. Lia was excited about going to University of Idaho next fall, so she thought she would get her something with the Vandals mascot on it. She would like that.

She walked down stairs. “Mother, I finished my homework. Will you please take me to the mall?”

Her mother sat on the couch with a laptop on her lap and a pen in her mouth. She typed away for a minute and before she answered her. She fished car keys out of her pocket and handed them to Bridget. “You can drive. Just do it safely and make sure you have your license with you. I only want you to drive to the mall and back. Understand?”

“Yes ma’am.” She was surprised. She hadn’t realized that Angela even had a license. She checked her purse and found it. She also packed a spare pull-up and headed to out to the car.

“Hurry back,” her mother called to her, “you got to reply to one of your acceptance letters. You are running out of time.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Bridget. “I’ll do it when I get back.” She was surprised Angela hadn’t done that yet.

Bridget hadn’t driven since that fateful day twelve years ago when she was hijacked in her tank truck. She sat in the driver’s seat, started the car, and backed out of the driveway. She breathed out with relief; she still remembered how to drive: one of those things she could never forget.

The trip to the mall was short. She got out of the car and walked in to the usual pre-summer Saturday crowd. If she remembered, there was a sporting goods store nearby. She walked through the mall until she got to where it was. Instead of a sporting goods store, she found Pottery Barn. She walked right by. There had to be a place to buy Lia a Vandals t-shirt in the mall. Half the people in the mall either wore Bengals or Vandals shirts. This was Idaho after all. She continued walking until she found a store called SporTees.

The store was devoted mainly to Vandals and Bengals t-shirts, but it also had NFL, NHL, and baseball tees. She went to the Vandals section and looked around. There were traditional t-shirts, babydoll t-shirts, and muscle shirts. Lia was a little chubby, so she decided to get a traditional t-shirt instead of a babydoll shirt. Unfortunately, the shirt she wanted for Lia was on the top rack. She had to step on her tippy toes to reach it and even then it was hard to get a hold of. In hindsight she probably should have asked for help, but instead she stretched to reach it. She had it in her hand when she fell backward into something soft and landed on her padded butt.

“Are you all right?” asked the girl she landed on. The girl got up and reached down to help Bridget. She was the girl in the Go Veg shirt from the night before. Today she wore a PETA shirt. It actually said the real slogan instead of what she was used to: “People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.” She was so surprised she wet her pull-up a bit.

“I’m fine,” she said. She wanted to grab the girl by the neck and force her to tell her where the terrorist who had ran her truck into the middle school. She wanted to waterboard her, but she had no idea how to go about the practice. She knew it involved water.

“They put the shirts up too high,” said the vegetarian girl. To Bridget, she looked almost sickly. Her skin had an unhealthy paler and Bridget thought she could see the outline of girl’s bones through her skin. “I want that Washington State Cougars shirt.” She pointed at a babydoll shirt on the top shelf. “I’m going to be a freshman there in the fall. I live in Seattle. My uncle came here to meet someone and took me along so I could see the University. It is so much cheaper here than at the campus store.”

Bridget was dying to press for more information. She didn’t dare spook the girl. “I still have to choose. I just can’t decide yet. I got acceptance letters from places,” she said. “My best friend is going to Moscow for college. I am getting her this shirt.” She held up the shirt she had literally fallen for.

“My name’s Flower,” she said. “My parents were hippies.”

“Br--Angela.” She started to say Bridget, but remembered at the last minute.

“Brangela is a funny name.” Her face turned red as Bridget guessed she realized she said something rude. “Not as funny as Flower.”

“My name is Angela. My friends call me Brangela because my boyfriend’s name is Brandon.” She showed her a picture of Evan Fiscus.

“Wow, I bet you are going to the school he goes to. I wouldn’t let him go off alone, Brangela”

“Just Angela now. He left me for the easy girl at my high school.” Bridget didn’t mind slandering Evan Fiscus at all. It actually felt good. It almost felt too good. She was beginning to like Flower and that couldn’t happen. She still wanted to get revenge against the terrorist and all his friends.

“Well, it was nice meeting you.” She pointed to the terrorist who had walked into the store. “My uncle is here. I got to go.” Flower turned and walked to the cash register, paid for her shirt, and left.

The pee started filling up Bridget’s pull-up. She was afraid it would leak, so she tried hard to stop peeing. She felt drops of pee at the legs of her pull-up. She hung up Lia’s shirt and walked quickly out of the store to the bathroom. Tears welled up in her eyes. The diaper would have held until she got to the bathroom, she thought. The pull-up was going to leak; she knew it.

She hurried in the lady’s room and grabbed a stall. She pulled down her shorts and the pull-up and let the rest of her bladder out in the toilet and cried.

She pulled off her shorts completely to survey the damage. There was a tiny wet spot on the inseam of her shorts, but it was hardly anything to worry about. It wasn’t even noticeable. She put on her spare pull-up and her shorts. It wasn’t the best thing in the world, but it wouldn’t be embarrassing to walk around the mall or even return to SporTees. She bought the shirt for Lia and returned home.

###

Her mother intercepted her as soon as she got home and handed her a stack of papers. “You got to confirm your acceptance with one college or another by next Friday. That means you need to mail it out Monday morning. I don’t care which school you pick.”

“Alright.” Bridget spread the mess on the kitchen table and spent some time sorting it. She had scholarships to both Idaho schools and the Washington State University in Pulman. She also had an acceptance letter to MIT, but she wouldn’t be given scholarship money and out of state tuition there was expensive. She picked the Washington State University. Not only did it have a Electronics Engineering major, but it was where the vegetarian girl Flower lived. Maybe she could use Flower to get to her uncle the terrorist and--she still needed to think through the and part.

Bridget was a sophomore when she dropped out of college because she ran out of money. This time she would finish. She filled out the forms she needed and put them in an envelope. She wrote thank you notes to the rest of the schools and got the envelopes ready.

“Did you decide, Angela,” her mother asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Washington State University.”

“That’s a good school too. At least it’s not too far away. You can come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas.” Her mother looked disappointed that she didn’t pick something closer. Bridget realized that Angela was Mrs. Murphy’s youngest child--the baby of her family. She felt bad for Angela’s mother, but she had to leave Idaho and go to Washington to solve her problems. It would be the only way to get closure and end her wetting problem.

She handed her new mother the envelopes and scooped the rest of her paperwork mess and took it up stairs. She went to bed feeling complete. Even thought she knew she would wake up dry, she put on a diaper before going to bed. The accident in the mall did not count. The pull-up hid it from everyone in view and she only had accidents during the day when she saw the terrorist.

She fell asleep and began to dream. The tanker truck crashed into the school in her sleep again. The terrorist was more vivid and real than ever. She saw everything about him: his eyes, his face, his rough hands, the barrel of his gun, and she felt the heat of the fire before she woke up screaming. She was safe in her room. Light drifted in from her curtains. She felt the dry bed and smiled. She was dry, but she remembered her diaper and felt inside. She had wet the bed again.

Bridget sighed. "Not again, it was supposed to stop when I had a plan." She supposed she would have to bring down the terrorist to have any peace at all.

[writeleft]

Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Day Five

“Angela, hurry or you will be late for church,” her mother called as she knocked on Bridget’s door.

“Oh yes, church,” she said. She got up, wrapped a robe around her, and took a shower. After putting on makeup and brushing her hair, she returned to her bedroom to dress.

It had been a while since she had been to church. In prison, she couldn’t go to the chapel with the other prisoners. They kept the death row inmates separate. Instead, a priest would visit her each week, but it wasn’t the same. She wasn’t even Catholic.

From seeing Angela’s clothes, she would have never thought the Murphy family went to church. She always remembered having to wear a dress to church. Her father had told her that only harlots wear pants to church. She never had the guts to tell her father that harlots probably didn’t go to church, but all her friends had worn dresses. She dug through the closet until she found a dress that didn’t look like an evening gown or didn’t look too casual. She finally settled on the one cotton dress she could find. After putting on a pull-up and pulling on the stockings, she pulled the dress on over her head. She looked in the mirror and twirled around. The only visible indication that she was well padded would be hidden when her mother zipped up the back of her dress.

“Are you ready for church yet,” her mother asked.

Bridget opened the door and turned away from her mother. “Need help zipping up,” she said, “then I am ready.

When she felt the zip being pulled up she grabbed her purse and an extra pull-up and tucked her protection inside in case she needed it later.

“Do you need a spare,” she asked, “or is that for just in case?”

“It’s for just in case, mother.” Bridget felt herself blush as she looked at her mother. Her mother wore normal pants and a shirt. She didn’t look ready for church.

“I’m surprised you are wearing that dress. I’ll have to take your picture in it and send it to grandma. She wondered why she never saw you wearing it.”

“I really don’t have very many church clothes,” said Bridget. She followed her mother down stairs. Her father stood by the door. He was wearing a polo shirt and khakis. Her real father had always worn a coat and tie to church. She hadn’t been to church since the last time she was a senior in high school, so maybe things had changed.

“You look nice Angela,” her father said. “The boys in your Sunday school class won’t be able to pay attention to the lesson.

“Thanks, dad,” she said. “I’ll though I am sure I’m not the only girl that will dress nice.”

He shrugged and they walked to the car. Once they got to the church parking lot, things got complicated. Bridget did even realize they were at a church until she saw the sign above the door that said the name of the church. She was used to a church with a steeple and stained glass windows. This looked like a normal building. They walked into the lobby and her parents walked away. “See you after Sunday school,” said her mother.

Bridget looked around confused, but then saw Lia. “I’m glad to see you here,” she told her friend.

“You’re dressed up,” said Lia.

“Of course,” she said. She looked around and everyone seemed to be underdressed for church. Lia even wore blue jeans.

“You’re acting weird again,” said Lia. “Almost like you did since Wednesday. You are acting like you never been here before.”

“Let’s just go to our Sunday school class,” said Bridget. She followed Lia, but tried to make it look like she was not following her. When they got to Sunday school, the lesson was about forgiveness. She seethed with anger. She could never forgive the terrorist with the owl tattoos and those cold, gray eyes. She tried to tune out the lesson and think of something else. Finally it ended, and she rejoined her family in the auditorium.

There was none of the songs or piano music she was used to at church. The music was all done with guitars and there was a quartet instead of a choir. Instead of songbooks, the words to the songs were beamed onto a big Powerpoint screen. When the preacher got behind the pulpit to give a sermon, he wasn’t even wearing a tie. Bridget spent the entire sermon looking around, so she never did remember what the sermon was about in the first place, although the outline of the sermon was also beamed to the screen.

After church, everyone walked to their cars and traffic backed up around the parking lot. Bridget was ready for the bathroom, but she knew she could wait until she got home. She also looked forward to the smell of roast beef in the oven that would greet her when she got home, but instead of going home, her father parked the car in front of a restaurant. She didn’t recall her new mom putting a roast into the oven after all.

Bridget waited until they had sat down and ordered before excusing herself to use the restroom. Her pull-up was dry so far, but she didn’t plan on peeing in it on purpose. She used the toilet like normal. She returned to the table and started to eat her food.

“So, Angela,” said her father, “your mother tells me you picked a college.”

“Yes, I did: Washington State,” she answered. “It was one of two schools that offered me a scholarship.”

“Better not tell Lia,” said her mother. “I think she planned on having you as her roommate at University of Idaho.”

“She’ll have to say something,” her father said, “I heard Lia saying the two of you would be looking for an awesome apartment near campus.”

“She never mentioned that to me,” said Bridget. “I just have to go to Washington State. I’ll have to find an apartment there, I guess.”

“Freshmen at Washington State are required to live in the dorms,” her father said, “at least when I went there.”

Bridget’s smile faded. The dorms. That would mean sharing a room and having to hide her bedwetting from a roommate. “It’s too late to change.”

“It’s not that bad,” said her father. “I met some friends I still hang out with in the dorms in college.”

“Are you worried about your nighttime problem?” asked her mother.

“Mother!” She couldn’t believe her mother had told her father.

“What problem?” he asked. He was probably just trying to find out to protect his daughter, but Bridget didn’t want him to know too.

“She’s just having stress about getting ready to graduate,” said her mother. “I just have been washing the sheets a bit more.”

She saw her father redden a bit. “Oh,” he said. “So what do you think of the Cougars?” He obviously tried to change the subject.

“Sounds like fun. I heard if University of Idaho loses to the Cougars they have to walk all the way back to Idaho from Washington.”

“Watch out,” said her mother. “I recall seeing Washington State people walking back to their campus a few times. Idaho State sometimes wins.”

“One of the problems of a mixed marriage,” said her father. “My parents warned me about dating across school rivalries.” He put his arm around Bridget’s mother. The whole scene embarrassed her. Her real mother died when Bridget was still young, so she never remembered her father and mother flirting with one another. She just sat and ate her meal while her parents ignored her.

After lunch they drove home. Bridget changed into comfortable jeans and a T-shirt and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening working on her Spanish. It was hard reading through the entire Spanish book and her notes and remembering enough. She also looked over the conversation Lia and she had practiced until she could do it with her eyes closed. She still had no idea what she was saying, but at least the words were right.

She was about to put everything away in her bag and enjoy the rest of the evening when her cell phone rang. She flipped it open. “Hello?”

“It’s Lia,” said Lia, “You ready for our Spanish conversation?”

Bridget said her first line from memory. “Yes, I’m ready.”

“Well we got to plan for Saturday,” she said. “I’m going to find a cute yet cool apartment in Moscow. It will be cool living right near campus and...” She went on and on.

“Moscow, Idaho might be a bit too far for me,” said Bridget. “I hate to disappoint you, but I am going to Washington State.”

“What?” asked Lia. “I thought we would be going to school together.”

“We’re still best friends,” said Bridget. “I don’t want to fight over the cute guys with you, so we’ll have to be on separate campuses.”

“But I’ll be alone. You’ve been my only friend since kindergarten. Who else will I be able to hang out with?”

Bridget sighed. “We’ll make new friends, and besides: we won’t be that far apart. Washington State and University of Idaho are a little over seven miles apart. We go farther than that to go to the mall.”

“It just won’t be the same without you, Angela,” said Lia. “Well get rest for our Spanish conversation tomorrow.” She heard a click as Lia hung up.

She felt a little bad about upsetting Lia, because she had grown to like her over the past few days. She was great about the accidents she had witnessed as well, but Washington State was important in her quest to get the terrorist guy and keep him from hurting other people.

She took out a science fiction book she had gotten at the school library and read it.

###

Tonight, she realized what was going on earlier in the nightmare. She even managed to get the semi-truck stopped before it rammed the middle school. She steered hard to the left and the truck rolled to its side. It lost a lot of momentum as the metal screeched and groaned across the ground toward the school. It stopped right in front of the entrance to the school.

She had tumbled to the driver’s side window, her arm pinned between the ground and the overturned truck. The terrorist had fallen on top of her. The fuel tanks had rupture and she could smell fuel, but at least the students were safe. She felt the ground where her arm was pinned. It was wet from the spilled fuel. She tried to get up, but her arm was pinned.

The terrorist was still masked, but she could do something about that. She grabbed at the mask with her free hand and tried to expose the terrorist. He only laughed and reached into his jacket. Whatever he touched made a beeping sound. “Beep, beep, beep.” She grabbed at his hands, but he shook her off of him, but she revealed what he had exposed. A ticking time bomb strapped to his chest said, “0:02” seconds, then "0:01" second, then she woke up screaming.

When Bridget sat up she realized three things: first, she slept in her clothes, she saturated her pull-up, and she wet her jeans and her bed.” Her hand brushed something hard. It was the book she had been reading the night before. She had fallen asleep reading. At least the book didn’t get wet or pee stained. She hoped the rest of her day would be much better.

[writeleft]

Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Day Six

Bridget climbed onto the bus and looked for Lia. As she walked down the aisle to claim her usual spot beside her, Lia didn’t pick up her bag off the seat to let Bridget sit down.

“Still mad at me about my college pick?” she asked.

Lia nodded.

“I got you a gift for your birthday.” She held up the gift bag with the Vandals t-shirt.

Lia moved her bag so Bridget could sit down. She opened the package and pulled out her gift. “Oh, a Vandals t-shirt. Thank you.” She folded up the shirt and put in her backpack. “I’m sorry I was mad at you. Still, why did you choose Washington State over University of Idaho?”

Bridget looked at Lia. “It’s complicated.” What was she supposed to tell her: that she possessed her best friend and was actually Bridget Addison? That would get her nowhere. If Lia repeated that to someone else it might get her locked up in a mental hospital.

“Tell me,” Lia said.

“I don’t know,” Bridget said. She stalled a bit. “I guess it is just where I feel I belong. Besides, most everyone else in our class is going to Idaho State or University of Idaho. I don’t really want my toilet problems to follow me to college.”

Lia looked down. “Oh, I never thought of that.”

The bus pulled up to the school and Bridget and Lia got out and walked to Physics class. The class assignment was to build a circuit by copying the schematic from the whiteboard. She couldn’t believe they actually had to build a real circuit on a breadboard and everything. It took the entire class period to finish it and then have it checked by the Ben Stein lookalike teacher.

Finally class ended and they went to pre-calculus. “Ready for the test?” asked Lia.

“I think so.” Bridget sat down and waited while the teacher passed out tests. Bridget looked it over. She was glad she had brushed done her Calculus homework the past couple of days. She sat down and begin answering the questions. By the time the test was over, she really had to pee. She turned in her test and asked the teacher, “May I run to the restroom.”

He nodded and Bridget left the classroom to go pee. She had to go so bad, she didn’t know what she would have done if he refused. No, she knew what she would have done. She would have been changing a wet pull-up in the busy bathroom between classes: that is if it didn’t leak.

Once in the bathroom, she pulled down her pants and pull-up and peed just as she heard the door open and shut. Someone else was in there with her. She was glad once again that her mother got her pull-ups instead of her plan to wear diapers all day. She knew the diapers would have been crinkling as she changed them. At least the pull-ups were relatively silent.

When she finished and left the stall, she ran right into Julia Grass.

“Watch it, Miss Pee-pee Pants.” Julia set her purse on the bathroom sink. “Any luck finding a date for prom?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I didn’t think you did. No one wants a prom date that leaves a trail.”

“Shut up and leave me alone, Julia,” said Bridget. “I was humiliated enough the first time, and you got my ex-boyfriend already. What more do you want? To make me feel horrible about myself? Well you got your wish.” Bridget turned and walked out of the bathroom back to class.

English was boring as usual, but as promised Mrs. Miller picked up the papers at the beginning of class. She spent the rest of the class period passing out copies of the last book they had to read before the semester ended: the Scarlet Letter. Bridget flipped through it while the Mrs. Miller droned on about Nathanial Hawthorne for the rest of the class period.

“Was it just me or was Grosstree especially boring today?” asked Lia.

“Especially boring,” said David Krouse, one of their classmates. “I mean, who cares about a bunch of Puritans.”

“I always liked that story,” Bridget admitted.

“You would,” said Lia. She turned to David. “You should see her bedroom. It is filled with trashy romance novels. That is all she reads.”

“I read other things,” said Bridget.

“Name the last book you read and you can’t count the 1984 or Brave New World,” said Lia.

“Fire Upon the Deep,” said Bridget and stuck out her tongue.

“Really?” said Lia. She looked shocked because she never expected Bridget to know the name of a science fiction book, much less read one. She forgot about that problem as she saw David walking away. She pulled him back by his backpack. “Ask her,” she hissed at him.

David suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Um,” he said. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not going to ask Angela to the prom. Everyone will make fun of me.”

“You’re a jerk, David,” said Lia. “Go away.”

“It’s alright, David,” said Bridget. “Don’t worry about it.” She turned to Lia. “Thank you anyway. But don’t worry about prom.” Bridget had been to her own prom. It was at a hotel ballroom. Here at the school Angela attended, the prom was going to be in the school gym. That really didn’t excite her much, but she didn’t care.

“It was still jerky to say that.”

“You put him on the spot, Lia,” Bridget answered. “I’m not exactly prime prom material. Who wants a prom date that leaves a trail?”

“Aren’t you wearing one of your...?”

“Yes, but I’m not advertising it and that won’t get me a prom date either. Let’s just eat lunch.”

Lunch was better than usually. Today it was Frito Pie again. Bridget sat down with her tray and enjoyed her meal. Maybe today was looking up. She hoped Spanish would go well. It should. She and Lia had practiced it enough.

“Let’s go over our conversation one more time, Angela,” suggested Lia.

Bridget nodded in agreement. “¿usted habla español?”

“Si” answered Lia. They ran through their conversation one last time before the bell rang.

Computer class was non-eventful. They were just giving their next assignments and told to start them on the computers. Bridget didn’t even get a quarter of the way done. She supposed she would do it at home that evening. She had the Spanish conversation on her mind. She worried that the teacher might ask her some questions in Spanish that she hadn’t rehearsed. She looked over at Lia. She was typing away oblivious. Bridget envied her calm.

Finally, the bell rang. Lia touched her shoulder and smiled. “It’s okay,” she said. “You practiced this.” They walked out of the hall to class.

In the hall, Julia Grass bumped into them. “So, Accident Girl,” Julia sneered, “I heard you had to scrape the bottom of the barrel and ask David Krouse to prom.”

“David’s not the bottom of the barrel,” said Lia. “He is pretty smart too.”

“Yeah, he was smart enough to reject Pee-girl,” said Julia.

“Stop it,” said Bridget. She grabbed Lia’s arm. “Let’s go.”

When Julia was out of sight Lia said, “You should have slapped her. She is such a ho.”

“Yeah, and then I might have knocked loose her brain cell and then gotten in trouble.” Bridget smiled. “Besides Julia is going to have to go to community college because they won’t take her in a real college.”

“You’re right, I guess.” They walked in the Spanish classroom and waited.

As soon as class started the Spanish teacher said something totally incomprehensible to Bridget and Lia. Bridget had to look around before she realized Lia had gone up to the front of the classroom. She got up and stood beside her. She looked at all the students in the classroom just staring at her and froze. She would never get this conversation done. She would fail Spanish and have to stay at this school forever. She suddenly had to go to the bathroom bad. She looked at Lia.

Lia just mouthed the words, “You’ll do fine. Start.”

Bridget knew this. They rehearsed so many times. Bridget let a few nervous dribbles out and was grateful for the pull-up. She said her first line in Spanish. She hated speaking in front of the class. Still she waited and then Lia gave her line. Bridget did her next line. She was slow at first and stuttered through her recitation. She kept her eyes off the class and on Lia and the next thing she knew she was reading through the conversation like a champ. Before she knew it they were done.

“Adios,” said Lia.

“Adios,” repeated Bridget.

Lia smiled at the Senorita Faust. Bridget stood nervously twisting her hair around a finger. She looked pleadingly at the teacher and hoped she would say they could sit down.”

Instead Senorita Faust said something in Spanish and handed Lia a piece of paper. Finally Lia went to her seat and Bridget sat in the seat next to her. She didn’t even look at Lia. She knew they did awfully and that the teacher probably marked her way down for stumbling over, “Hablo español bien.” Bridget looked down at her crotch and felt the bottoms of her jeans to make sure she was dry. She felt damp and couldn’t wait until class ended to check the damage. She felt no wetness on her clothes; the only damage must be safely concealed in her pull-up.

She looked as the next couple groups gave their conversations seemingly perfect, although a couple of times Senorita Faust rolled her eyes or shook her head before writing something down on a paper. When the conversation finished she gave the paper to one of the group members. They took their seat and the next group came up. Three groups, including Lia and herself, gave their conversations before the bell rang. Bridget fled toward the bathroom.

She still had to pee, even though she leaked a bit. She entered a stall and sat down and went. As she peed she checked the wetness of the pull-up. The crotch was a bit yellowed, but it wasn’t soaked like the one she wet the bed in. If she hadn’t been wearing it there would have been a largish wet spot on her pants, but it wasn’t so bad that she would have been standing in a puddle. There were students in the other stalls and making noises in the bathroom. There was no way she could carry a wet pull-up to the trash. She pulled the damp thing back up and pulled up her jeans. It wasn’t that wet, but since she had pulled it down, the peed had cooled and irritatedd to her skin.

She left the bathroom and went to study hall. At least here, she could work on homework. She needed to do something and studying would have to do. She worked on Physics and read some of the Scarlett Letter. She wondered what letter she would have to wear if she was treated like Hester Prynne. She didn’t know if it would be a yellow letter P for having accidents or a green letter T for Terrorist since she had been blamed when she couldn’t stop the terrorist from crashing her truck into the school. Probably the T. She felt guilty about that. The P was not something to be guilty about. They were caused by the first. She would have to bring the owl-tattooed terrorist to justice to make her guilt go away: that and the accidents. They should go away too when she made the terrorist pay.

After school she beat Lia to the bus. She still wore the damp pull-up, but the coast wasn’t clear to change it in the bathroom. As embarrassed as she was by her daytime accidents, she would be more embarrassed if someone, especial Julia Grass, discovered her pull-ups.

“Hi,” said Lia as she sat beside her.

“Sorry about the conversation,” said Bridget, “I was really nervous.”

“What?” said Lia, “We got an A. We got the five bonus points for going first. You already got an A in almost everything in Spanish.”

“I’m still worried about the final,” Bridget admitted.

“Seniors are exempt from finals in classes where they have an A,” said Lia. “I probably only have to take my Calculus and Physics final. You would have to really mess up to need to take a final in any class. Maybe in English though. Grosstree hates you.”

At least she didn’t have to worry about finals. That only left a few more weeks to worry about. The bus stopped at her house before she knew it. “Get my homework assignments for me tomorrow. I will miss morning classes.” She got off the bus and went home.

“So how was your day?” ask her mother. “Did you stay dry okay?”

“Mother,” Bridget said.

“Well if you’re not you need to tell the doctor tomorrow.”

“No, I’m dry.” The wetness in her pull-up was just from being nervous. “I’m going upstairs to do homework,” she said.

Upstairs she changed clothes and put on a new pull-up. She only had homework in Physics and English tonight and English was just a reading assignment. She worked on the last two questions in Physics and read more of the Scarlett Letter. She only came down for dinner.

After dinner, this time she made sure to shower and put on a diaper before going to sleep. She certainly did not want a repeat of the night before.

The terrorist and the truck was back. This time the terrorist had a green T at his collar. She looked down at her body. Her pajama top was unbuttoned and at her breast was a greenish T-shaped mark on her chest like a festering wound. She screamed and woke up. She felt her diaper. She was wet again. She turned on the light and opened her pajama top: no mark on her chest.

It was still early: only one o’clock. Bridget tried to go back to sleep. How could she enjoy reading ever again if she incorporated everything she read into her dreams. That would not work and it would have to stop. She tried to think of happier times. Maybe that is what it would take to finally fall asleep.

[writeleft]

Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Day Seven

“Angela, it’s time to wake up.”

Bridget stirred and looked toward her bedroom door where her mother was standing. “I’m up,” she said. She looked at her clock. It was already 9:30. She normal had to catch the school bus at eight.

“I let you sleep in. Your doctor’s appointment isn’t until eleven, but you should probably get up now.”

Bridget got out of bed and rushed to the bathroom for her shower. She undressed and looked in the mirror. Her diaper was soaked almost to the point of leaking. The bedwetting needed to stop. Hopefully the doctor would have something to say about it. She hoped it was something that wasn’t embarrassing. The daytime problems only happened when she was near the terrorist. She would still need her pull-ups when she finally decided to hunt him down and make him pay.

She went to the mirror and started to dress. Her pull-up would be obvious if the doctor had her undress. She was tempted to go to her room and get some panties, but maybe the pull-ups would help the doctor know how serious her bladder problems were. Jeans and a cute t-shirt would be enough for clothes; the doctor probably wouldn’t care what she wore.

She emerged from the bathroom and went to her room for her schoolbag. She would need it when her mother dropped her off at school after her appointment. Even though Bridget thought the appointment should help her, she dreaded it. At least it would be a doctor and not someone good looking. Even so, she looked in the mirror and attempted to make her hair look nice. She also added make-up.

“Angela, are you almost ready?” asked her mother.

Bridget exited her room. “I’m ready.”

“Good, let’s go,” said her mother. They went downstairs and got into the maroon Taurus. The last time she had ridden in this car, at least in the passenger seat, she had been a poopy mess. This time she was clean and she would remain clean because of her pull-up. At least she hoped.

During the ride to the doctor’s office her mother constantly talked about her control issues. “Now no matter what the doctor says, we’ll still love you,” her mother said. “You’ve been very responsible and not fighting me about wearing protection.”

“Well I still don’t want to be known as the girl who pees herself with or without the diapers,” said Bridget. “I want my normal bedtime routine back.”

“Well, the doctor will find out what is wrong and treat you,” said her mother.

Before Bridget knew it, they had pulled into the doctor’s office. Bridget got out of the car and looked around nervously. Her mother held the door to the doctor’s office open for her and they went in. The waiting room had rows of chairs. There were about four of five patients in the room. Two were children with their mothers. Two others were old ladies and then there was a man of about thirty. Bridget hoped they didn’t know why she was here. She didn’t know why they were there so it was reasonable to expect that they didn’t know why she was there.

She sat in her chair and read the Scarlet Letter some more while she was waiting while her mother filled out the paperwork. She was really wondering if Chillingworth was going to do something bad to the preacher, but then she had to put the book down when her name was called.

“Angela Murphy.” The man was older and he was wearing scrubs. He had gray hair and he just looked old. Bridget felt comfortable now. Sure it would be embarrassing to tell him about the wetting, but at least he wasn’t a cute guy.

“Dr. Ulman,” she said as she followed him down the hall.

“Actually, I’m Dr. Vance. Dr. Ulman will be with you later. Go into this room.” He pointed to an examination room. Bridget went inside and sat on the examination table. The paper on the table crinkled as she scooted up on it. Dr Vance put her folder in the pocket on the door and shut it leaving her in privacy.

Bridget sat bored. She looked around at all the posters on the wall. There were pictures of the heart, the lungs, and many of the other organs. There was also a picture of a man on a sailboat. Bridget didn’t think it fit in with the other images, but she shrugged. She thought the man looked kind of cute.

The door opened and a man in a white lab coat entered. He was the cute man on the sailboat. He wore a stethoscope around his neck and he was smiling. “Hi. What seems to be the problem?”

“Problem?” asked Bridget. “What problem? I’m just here for a checkup.” There was no way she could tell this guy that she couldn’t keep her bed dry and that she wet her pants sometimes.

The doctor looked at her chart. “It says here you are having some control issues. Is that correct?”

Bridget felt her face burn. She nodded and hung her head.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” he said. “Lots of people have bladder control problems sometime in their lives. If you don’t tell your doctor, then I can’t help you.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. If he hadn’t been so cute, she would have told him.

“Your mother said it is mainly a nighttime problem, but you had a few accidents during the day.”

“Yes.”

“Does it burn when you pee?”

“No.”

“Well that doesn’t rule out a bladder infection, but I am going to run a test just to make sure.” He handed her a plastic cup and opened the door for her. He led her to a bathroom. “Just fill that up for me, please.” He shut the door leaving her alone.

Bridget sat down and peed in the cup. When it was full she finished peeing in the toilet. She adjusted her clothing, washed her hands and carried the cup out to Dr. Ulman.

He took the cup. "Wait in the exam room while I check this for you." Bridget had no choice but to do what he said. Soon he came back. “I didn’t see any bacteria in the sample,” he said. “Are you waking up wet or waking up as you are wetting the bed.”

“I wake up wet. I have a dream and then wake up wet,” she said.

“Oh, the classic dream where you dream you are going to the bathroom? That is common.” He wrote something down.

“Not exactly,” she said. “I have nightmares every night. Not really going-to-the-bathroom related.”

“I see,” he said. “Do you know what is causing these nightmares?”

“Yes,” said Bridget. No, he will ask me about it, she thought. “No, I mean. Just bad, scary stuff.”

“Maybe I can refer you to a psychologist,” he said.

Bridget shook her head vigorously, “No, no,” she said. “No shrinks.” A shrink would find out who she really was. Maybe they would execute her if they knew she had jumped bodies. She shivered.

“It helps to talk things. I think your problem is psychological. A psychologist could help. It’s probably just stress and he can give you ways to manage stress.”

“Do you have pills you can give me to make me stop wetting the bed,” she said. “Yes, pills.”

“There are pills,” he said and looked at her chart, “but you are allergic to one of the ingredients. Maybe when the summer starts you’ll see a reprieve from the bed wetting. Until then, wear protection. I still recommend you talk to a psychologist though. We’ll still run a few more tests.”

It took another hour of being poked and prodded before the doctor was satisfied. Bridget walked out off the office feeling upset. She hoped the doctor could find a medical reason she was wetting the bed. He probably suspected the root of the problem when she mentioned the bad dreams. “I’m done,” she said to her mother.

As Dr. Ulman and her mother talked for a little while, Bridget felt her face burn with embarrassment. When her mother said the words bed wetting or accidents, she felt like everyone in the waiting room was staring at her. It was probably just her imagination, but it sure felt like it. Finally they finished and Bridget rushed her mother to the car.

“That was certainly embarrassing,” said Bridget.

“Well, at least you know what you need to do,” said her mother. “Dr. Ulman gave me the name of a psychologist. I can make an appointment. Do you want me to do that Angela?”

“No.” Bridget remembered the psychologist she talked to after being arrested. He showed her stupid ink blots and expected her to tell them what she thought they looked like. They all looked like explosions to her, but she answered, “a pretty butterfly,” or something equally tame. At the time her attorneys were trying to get her off on an insanity plea, but she thought her only way to get the terrorist caught was to tell her story at trial. She’d been wrong. “I’m not talking to a psychologist.”

“Would you rather talk to a psychologist or wear diapers to bed?” asked her mother.

Bridget thought for a second. “Diapers. I know that seems silly, but I can’t talk to a psychologist. I just can’t.”

“Okay, Angela,” said her mother. “Let’s just get something to eat. We’ll talk about this later.”

###

They had Burger King for lunch. Bridget bought the biggest Angus burger they had. It felt good to eat real food instead of cafeteria slop. While they were eating, Bridget watched as protesters gathered outside. They had signs that read “Murder King” and “Meat is murder.”

“What are those bozos up to?” asked a guy at the next table.

“Oh those are those PETA crazies. They protest a different fast food restaurant every week,” he said. “I belong to the other PETA: People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.” He took a bite of his burger.

As Bridget finished her burger, she scanned the protesters outside. There were just five of them. They held signs as people drove by and gave them the finger. One of the guys looked like the terrorist’s friend from the movie theater.

Suddenly, she had to go the bathroom urgently. She pushed her chair back from the table and walked swiftly to the bathroom with her hand in her crotch. She took the first stall, pulled down her pants and peed. “That was close.” She felt the crotch of her pull-up. Thankfully it was still dry.

She ate the rest of her food without saying anything. When she took the last bite, she said. “Let’s go. Please.”

Her mother followed her to the car and they got in. “Did you have an accident?”

“No, I made it.” She pointed toward where the protesters were. “Let’s avoid those guys,” she said. They knew the terrorist too. She didn’t share her thoughts with her mother. Even if she could somehow get past the body snatching aspect of her weird week she had been in Angela’s body, surely people would think she was schizophrenic if she was so paranoid she had wetting accidents when she spotted the terrorist or his compatriots.

“I’ll drop you back at school. You should be able to get there in time for Spanish class.”

“Sounds good,” said Bridget. Burger King and the PETA protesters were behind her and now out of her mind by the time her mother dropped her off at school. She got out of the car and went straight to Spanish class.

She was still a little early, but most of her other classmates were there. David Krouse was laughing and joking with his friends. Julia Grass and Evan Fiscus were attached at the hip as usual. However she couldn't find Lia anywhere. She turned to David. “Where’s Lia?” she asked.

He stopped laughing and his smile faded. “Um, she...”

“She was supposed to tell me what I missed when I was at my doctor’s appointment.”

Julia came over. “Yeah, I got your stuff.” She handed me the assignments that Lia had written down for me. “Her mother came and pulled her out of class this morning. Her father was hurt really bad at work.”

“He’s a lumberjack,” said David. “Some idiot environmentalist spiked a bunch of trees and when he cut one of them down, it broke his chainsaw. He got cut up pretty bad.”

“No,” said Bridget. She put her bag down on her desk and sat down before her knees weakened and she fell down. This was her fault. The terrorist or one of his friends had to have done this because Bridget couldn’t convince anyone the terrorist was still at large. She had a whole week to warn everyone, but she had said nothing. “Will he be all right?”

“They say it doesn’t look good,” said Evan. “He’s probably not going to make it. That’s why Lia’s mother pulled her out of school.”

The bell rang and Senorita Faust called the class to order. “I know we’re all worried about Lia’s father, but we got conversations to get through. I’ll get a card for Lia that we all can sign tomorrow.”

Bridget was glad Lia and her had already done their conversation. Lia would have been a mess and Bridget had barely known what she was doing. Bridget could even concentrate on listening to the other conversations. She just dreamed of all the things she could do to that evil, evil terrorist. She had been idle far too long.

Study hall was no different. She could barely concentrate to do her homework but she managed to get through pre-calculus and physics. Nothing was left but reading on the Scarlet Letter, and Bridget just wasn’t up to it. She frowned and looked at the clock. There were five more minutes. She packed her bags and the study hall teacher glared at her. Mrs. Simkins was one of those teachers that hated when students packed their bags before the final bell rung.

Finally, class ended and Bridget left to go home. As she was switching books around in her locker, the kid with the locker next to her said, “Hurry up, accident girl.”

“Give it a rest for a few days, please,” said Julia Grass. “She’s Lia’s best friend. You heard what happened to Lia’s dad.”

“Thanks,” said Bridget.

“No problem,” said Julia. “When Lia comes back, though, it is back to normal.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” said Bridget. She hurried to catch her bus. When she got on the bus, it felt like a different place. No one yelled, “Pee girl,” as she boarded and people told her to wish Lia’s father to get well. It was funny riding the bus alone without Lia beside her like she did all that week.

###

After supper, Bridget called Lia. “Hi. It’s Angela.”

All she heard on the phone was sobs.

“You want me to come over? Where are you?”

The phone just hung up. Lia was really upset and probably didn’t want to talk to anyone. She would call Bridget back when she wanted to talk. A minute later Bridget’s phone rang out the tone that said she received a text message.

“Can’t talk. Yes. Come over. I am at home.”

Bridget went down stairs. “Mother, can I use the car. I need to go over to Lia’s”

“Are you sure she is home and she wants you over?”

“Yeah. She texted.”

“Okay.” She handed Bridget the keys.

Bridget wasted to time getting to Lia’s place. When she got there, there were cars and dirt caked pick-up trucks parked up and down the street. She had to park around the block. Bridget walked to the door and rung the doorbell. Lia’s mother answered. She wore black and she looked much older than when Bridget had seen her earlier in the week. “I’m here to see Lia,” she said.

“She’s in her room.” She led Bridget through a living room full of lumberjacks and their wives. Finally she got to Lia’s room and went inside.

Lia knelt at her bed and she was still sobbing. She turned around and Bridget could see her red and puffy eyes.

“Do you want Angela here with you, Lia?” asked Lia’s mother.

Lia nodded.

Bridget walked over and sat beside her friend and put an arm around her. “I’m here Lia. We’re best friends.”

“Angela, my daddy died,” said Lia through sobs. She buried face into Bridget’s shoulder and wailed.

Bridget swore in her heart that she would make the terrorist pay for this. If the terrorist was not responsible for spiking the trees that killed Lia’s dad, he probably knew them and she would make both killers regret they ever heard the name Bridget Addison. She was out for blood. She squeezed Lia gently in her arms and patted her softly on her back as she cried.

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Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Chapter Eight: Prom Night

It was late Saturday morning and the day of the senior prom. Bridget sat with Lia in her room trying to cheer her up. “Daddy looked forward to seeing me off on my prom date. I should call James and tell him I’m not going,” said Lia. “It won’t be right.”

“You’re going and that is final,” said Bridget. She put her arm around Lia. “Besides, your dad would want you to go to prom.”

“I suppose,” said Lia, “but you have to come too.”

“I don’t have a date,” said Bridget. No had wanted to go with her to prom because of the very public accident she had. Since Lia’s father had died only a few days before, the other students stopped teasing Bridget since she was Lia’s best friend, but Evan Fiscus was still taking Julia Grass instead of her.

“That’s just an excuse,” said Lia.

“It’s not. The prom committee made a rule that everyone has to have a date.” Bridget didn’t really want to go. Still it would pass the time before she could find Flower and have her lead her to the terrorist. Still that would not happen until then end of August. It was still the middle of May. There was one more week of regular classes and then finals week. School was almost over.

“I’ll get you a date then.” Lia ran out of her room and into her bathroom and slammed the door.

Bridget spent the time laying out Lia’s dress and other accessories on her bed. Lia had been trying since Evan left her to set Bridget up with a date, but even David Krouse refused. Lia had picked out a nice dress. It was not as dowdy as she expected a dress for Lia to be, but it also would not look like a satin feed sack strapped around her like a towel. She even had a little matching purse.

“Okay,” said Lia, as she came out of the bathroom, “I got you a date.”

“With whom,” she asked. “If it’s anyone from school with a bucket of pig’s blood, they’ll rue the day they messed with me.”

“Pig’s blood?” asked Lia, “You suddenly got a whole lot of knowledge about geeky literature Miss Romance Junkie.”

Bridget worried that she gave herself away again. Quickly she covered: “Well I thought Carrie was a romantic comedy. It didn’t end how I thought it would end.”

“Well, anyway my dad’s boss said he would do anything for me. To make a long story short, his son just got home from college and he is taking you to prom.”

“No,” said Bridget. “I don’t have a dress; I don’t have my hair done; and I don’t have anything to wear. Prom is tonight. Besides, I am worried about embarrassing myself.”

“Yeah, we better get to the mall,” said Lia. She grabbed Bridget’s hand and dragged her out to the car.

###

“I told you it’s too late to get a dress.” The clothes racks in the prom dress sections were sparse. The sales girl was busy consolidating the remaining dresses to a single rack.

“I need a prom dress,” Bridget told the sales girl.

“What size are you?”

“Um, three, I think.”

“I think that dress and that dress are both threes.” She pointed out a hideous green and yellow dress and a very lovely pink dress.

“I’ll try on the pink one,” said Bridget as Lia lifted it up by its hanger.

Lia twirled it around and smiled. “I told you we’d find a dress for you.” She looked at the dress and frowned. She held the dress to the sales girl. “This one has a big blue stain.” Sure enough, a blotchy ink spot covered the bottom of the dress.

“Oh crap, the ink tag must have broken.” The sales girl took the dress and took it to the back room.

“Now what do we do?” asked Bridget.

She pointed at the ugly green and yellow dress. “You can get that one.”

“Absolutely not,” said Bridget. “I am not wearing that ugly dress no matter what.”

Lia pulled out her cell phone. “I guess I better call James and cancel.”

She grabbed the phone away from Lia. “Fine, I’ll wear the dress.” She picked the dress up by its hanger and carried it into the dressing room. As she undressed, she called out to Lia. “You owe me for this.” She kicked off her shirt and pants and pulled on the dress. When she slithered in to the silky dress and looked in the mirror. She stuck out her tongue at her reflection in the mirror. “You had to fit perfectly, didn’t you, ugly dress?”

She heard rattling at the door. “Do you have it on yet? Does it fit?”

With reluctance, she opened the door and spun around for Lia. The sales girl got a weird look on her face when she glanced at them and Lia spun her back.

“Your diaper is showing.” Lia walked around her and zipped up the dress.

Bridget felt her cheeks pinken. “It’s not a diaper; it’s a pull-up,” she hissed.

“Well, it’s covered now,” said her friend.

“Fine,” said Bridget. “Unzip me so I can get dressed and go home.”

“Does the dress fit?”

“Yes, now unzip me,” said Bridget.

As soon as Lia unzipped the dress, Bridget shut herself in the dressing room and took off the cursed garment. She pulled on her jeans and T-shirt and hung up her ugly dress.

“I’ll take this one,” said Bridget to the sales girl.

The sales girl blushed and didn’t look at Bridget during the entire time she rung the sale. Bridget could hardly wait to get away. When the transaction was finished, Bridget took her new dress and walked out of the store without waiting for Lia.

When Lia caught up, she said, “If I have anymore incidents to send to Seventeen’s Tragic Proms, I Angela Murphy will hold you personally responsible.”

Lia just laughed. “Don’t be so dramatic, Angela.”

###

Bridget looked at her nails and sighed. The polish matched her dress, but it was the ugliest shade of green and yellow she had ever seen. “I look like a freaking dandelion,” she said.

“And I really thank you for doing this for me, especially since your outfit didn’t work out,” said Lia. Her gorgeous red dress made her look almost heavenly. Bridget tried not to be too angry since she knew Lia had never got to be the hot friend with Angela around. Going to prom dresses in the outfit she was wearing would only be a little embarrassing. Every dress at her previous high school’s prom had to have been as hilarious as looking at her mother’s prom pictures had been to her. Who knew? Maybe the garish dress she was force to wear would look styling when she went back to look at it in the future why everyone else would look foolish.

At least her hair was coiffed professionally. Lia looked beautiful and she hoped prom would be perfect for her. That was the only reason she had gone along with being dressed like a lawn pest. “Do I look okay,” asked Lia.

“You look lovely,” Bridget said.

“You look really good too,” said Lia, “and don’t worry your pull-up isn’t showing since you are zipped up.”

“Don't mention that when our dates get here.” As soon as the words left her mouth, the doorbell rang.

“Ooh, someone’s here,” said Lia and walked to the door. She opened it and a man stood at the door. He dressed sharp, his brown hair was short and trim, and he was broad at the shoulder. He held a wrist corsage in his hand and he smiled. His tuxedo might have been a little tight and he had a light line scarred his tanned face, but he was almost like a god.

“I hope you are not James,” said Bridget.

“I’m Derek Stevens,” he said. “You must be Angela.”

“Of course it’s Derek,” said Lia. “You know who James is.”

“I got you a corsage.” He held up a box. “I didn’t know what color dress you would wear, so I got red.” He looked at her dress and just shook his head.

Bridget held out her hand as Derek slipped the corsage on her wrist. “Thank you and sorry about the dress. I bought it today. There is a reason why most girls don’t buy prom dresses at the last minute.”

“I didn’t mean to imply--,“ he started.

“I just hope you don’t mind how horrible I look,” Bridget said.

“Stop gabbing and stand over there for pictures,” said Lia. She had her digital camera out and took pictures of the two of them. “Now hold each other tight.”

Bridget felt chills go through her as she stared up at Derek Steven’s eyes as he held her for the picture. It was all she could do to contain her disappointment when he let go of her when the picture was taken. She felt glad for the protection of her pull-up as she was sure she felt slightly damp with the excitement of the embrace. You can’t be acting like a horny little school girl, she thought.

The doorbell rang again. “That must be James,” said Lia and opened the door. Bridget recognized him from school. He wore glasses and was in their physics and pre-calculus class. She supposed she recalled Lia speaking to her at some point, but she didn’t think they were dating.

“Your limo awaits, my dear,” he said to Lia and held out his hand for her to take it.

“Oh cool, you rented a limo!” said Lia.

“Not exactly,” said James. He led them out to a big black Ford Crown Victoria. “My dad got it for me at auction. They had about four or five they auctioned off. They used to be owned by the Feds.” He opened the door to let Bridget and Derek into the back seat and then opened the front door to let Lia in the front.

“It looks like the inside of a cop car,” said Derek. He pointed to the metal divider between the front and back seat.

“Sorry, I just got it today,” said James. “That can come off I think.”

Bridget put her finger on some holes near the side window. “At least they took the bars off the back window,” she said.

“Unto prom,” said Lia as the car began to move forward.

“Yeah, unto prom,” said Bridget. She promised herself she would have a good time no matter what.

###

James parked the car at the school and walked around to open the door for Lia. Bridget looked over at Derek. “Aren’t you going to go around and open the door for me?”

He pulled on the door handle. “It won’t open.”

Bridget tried to open her door and it was stuck as well. She tapped on the glass. James opened the door for Lia fine, and opened it for Derek. He flipped a switch on the inside of the door. “Oops, it has cop car doors.” At least they wouldn’t be stuck in the back seat of the car on prom night.

The four of them walked into the gym together. The prom committee had decorated the place with crepe paper streamers and a flower-covered arch at the entrance to the gym. The photographer was set up in front of the arch, so there was a bit of a bottle neck getting into the gym. Confetti covered tables were placed beneath the basketball hoops and the center of the gym was the dance floor.

Bridget blushed when she looked up on the stage and saw that one of the band members from the live rock band waved at her.

“Is that your father’s band?” asked James.

It was her father’s band. A girl’s father at prom was the dream of every high school kid, wasn’t it? Only if that dream was a nightmare. “I’m love prom so much,” said Bridget to Lia using her sarcastic voice. “Everything is working out perfectly.”

“I wouldn’t mind having my father at prom, Angela,” Lia whispered.

Bridget decided to change the subject before Lia’s makeup ran. “Let’s grab a spot at one of the table and sit down.” She looked over to their dates. “James, would you and Derek get us some punch?”

Lia and Bridget went and sat down at the table and watched everyone dance. “Look,” said Lia, “there is Evan Fiscus and Julia Grass.” Julia hung on Evan’s arm as they walked across the dance floor. “It looks like she had to do last minute dress shopping too.” Julia wore the exact same dress as Bridget. It looked just as hideous on her as Bridget thought it looked on herself.

“Now they’re coming over,” said Bridget. She hoped she would keep her promise to be nice.

“Hi, Lia,” Julia said. “I’m so sorry about your father.” Julia took Lia’s hand in both of hers. “I’m glad you could still make it to prom.”

Lia looked confused about Julia’s behavior.

“She’s been really nice since Tuesday,” said Bridget.

“Thank you,” said Lia.

“Oh, Angela,” said Julia through a big fake smile. “I’m so mad at you. You stole my dress. I searched for weeks to find a dress that was unique and made me look beautiful.”

“I’m sorry,” said Bridget, “I got it last minute and it and another dress with a big ink stain were my only choices.” She took some satisfaction in saying in not so many words that it was the last dress she would even want to be seen dead in. “I wasn’t going to go to prom, but Lia wanted me to, so I am here.”

Julia gave no indication that she was insulted by Bridget’s comment. “You’ll have to introduce me to your date. I didn’t know you had gotten another one.”

“It’s a friend of Lia’s from outside school,” Bridget said.

“My dad’s boss’s son,” said Lia.

“Well I can’t wait to meet him,” said Julia.

“I bet she does,” whispered Lia.

The band began to play a slow dance song and Evan must have sensed things were going to get out of hand between Julia and Bridget. “Julia, let’s dance.” He dragged her off to the dance floor.

“Well that wasn’t awkward at all. Thank you for coming. I know you don’t like to dance and you would have to see Evan and Julia together. Thanks for putting up with it all,” said Lia. She pointed to the guys. “At least our dates are back.”

“Here are your drinks,” said James. Derek and James handed them each a glass of punch and sat at the table beside them. “So do you think Julia got the most votes for prom queen, or do you think it is Marcy Phillips?”

“I’m hoping Marcy. Even though Julia was being nice the past few days, she still is a ho,” said Lia.

“Which one is Julia?” asked Derek.

“That girl there,” said Bridget as she pointed at Julia, “the girl in the hideous green and yellow dress.”

“Pot. Kettle. Black,” said James.

“I think you look rather nice in that dress,” said Derek.

“Then you have as good of tastes as Julia,” said Bridget. She giggled and put an arm around Derek. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

“How about we dance?” Derek suggested when the song changed to a Latin number. “You do know Salsa, I hope?”

“Of course I do,” said Bridget. She looked over to Lia who was waving her hands in the negative and mouthing, “No.”

“She’s going to embarrass herself,” Lia said to James.

“More than before?”

Bridget barely heard them. She got on the dance floor and put her right hand on his shoulder. He took her left hand in his and they began to dance. “I’m a little rusty,” she muttered. She had last danced with a man about a year before her incarceration. In prison there was no longer anyone to dance with so she hoped she did okay. Let’s see, she thought, right foot back, left foot up and down, right foot forward, left foot forward, right foot up and down, and left foot back. If she could just repeat that all night, she would be fine. She hadn’t lost her touch at all.

He knew a lot of turns and he changed them randomly as they danced. She spun as he turned her and before she knew it, she was laughing and smiling as they danced. A few more songs later and she was hot and sweaty. Bridget was glad for the thin layer of baby powder between the fabric of her dress and her skin. She didn’t have to smell like an ox.

The song changed to a slower rhythm and she let him lead her back and forth across the dance floor. There wasn’t as many turns to this song, but she still followed his lead. At the end of the last song Derek laid her back in a dip. The music was so sensual she thought that he was going to kiss her. She looked at his lips and parted her own, ready to let him ravage her lips, but he just stood her up again and escorted her back to their table.

“When did you learn salsa, Angela?” asked Lia. “I’ve never seen you dancing to anything but hip hop.”

“The last song was bachata anyway,” said Bridget. At least her relationship with Edwardo Lozano for a few months back in college taught her something: Latin dance and running from Consuela Lozano. That bastard never told her he was married. “Besides, the guy does everything. All I have to do is move my feet and follow.” She smiled.

“Where is Angela Murphy and what did you do to her,” said Lia. Bridget quit smiling. She had been tormenting her just a little, but she didn’t think she gave herself away.

“What do you thing I read about in all those romance novels?” asked Bridget. “I’ll tell you: hot Latin lovers.”

Lia laughed.

“James, aren’t you going to ask Lia to dance?” Bridget asked.

“Don’t go there, Angela. I can’t do all that stuff,” said James. “When there is hip-hop or slow dancing I can do that.” The band started to play Soulja Boy and James pulled Lia onto the dance floor.

“You want to dance to this?” asked Derek.

“Not a chance,” said Bridget. “I like you, but I am not doing that.” She pointed at Lia and James trying to jump as if they had a Superman cape when the part of the song that went, “then Superman da oh.”

“Point taken,” said Derek. He looked over at Bridget. “You know, you seem a lot more grown up then I imagined when Dad said I would be taking a high school girl to prom. I didn’t expect I would be wiping noses and changing diapers, but I thought there would be a lot more, ‘OMFG, LOL,’ type talk.”

Bridget felt her cheeks burn at the mention of him changing diapers, and she hoped he didn’t expect she was really wearing diapers when he saw her face turn pink.

“When did you graduate?” asked Bridget. “I assumed you would be a freshman or a sophomore in college.”

“I got one more semester and then I’ll graduate in December.” He smiled. “I don’t really relish another winter in Massachusetts, but it will be a light load.”

“Wow, I’m really a step down for you,” she said. “Is that Massachusetts as in MIT?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to be an engineer and build things. I don’t want to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water.” He frowned. “Lately Dad’s been wanting to give up running a lumber company. Too much looking over his shoulder for crazies like the people who set that trap for Lia’s dad.”

“They affect my life too. Saw some protesting outside Burger King the other day,” said Bridget. She recalled seeing the protestor with Flower and the terrorist at the movies when she saw Star Trek.

“Well there is a difference between peaceful protesters and the people that leave nails in trees to maim or kill lumberjacks.”

“They are the same people or at least they hang out together,” Bridget yelled. “If you think the Meat is Murder crowd is any different from those tree spiking murderers, you are wrong.” Other students were staring at her. The song had just ended so they only heard her say the last three words, but she had drawn attention to herself. She shut up.

Lia and James walked back since they were playing another Latin song.

“I’m sorry, I was just upset because I love Lia,” Bridget told him. “Here you were thinking I was so mature and I had an outburst like that.”

“I know how you feel,” said Derek and patted her on the back like she was a child.

“Arguing with Derek, Angela?” said Lia. “Shame, shame.” She ran her finger along her other index finger as the gesture for shame.

“We had a little disagreement,” said Derek. “We made up.”

“Prove it,” said James. “Take her back out on the dance floor.”

Bridget stood up and took his hands in hers. “Yes. Prove it.”

He took her out on the dance floor for a little more dancing. Bridget stumbled a few times as she thought of the terrorist’s friend at the Burger King. She decided to concentrate on dancing so she could enjoy herself and let Derek spin her until she was dizzy on the next meringue song.

[writeleft]

“I got to go to the bathroom,” said Lia. “Come with me.” She dragged Bridget out of the gym and out into the hall toward the bathrooms.

Bridget went in a stall and pulled down her pull-up and sat down to pee.

“So I think I’m going to give up my virginity to James tonight,” said Lia from the next stall.

“Did you tell James you would do this?” asked Bridget. She didn’t think they were really that close.

“Not yet,” said Lia. Bridget heard her start to pee. Bridget did the same. She hadn't needed her pull-up after all, but she was not taking chances. The only wetness in her pull-up was from sweating so much. Dancing is sweaty work, dancing in a diaper, even if it is a cloth-backed pull-up is even sweatier. It wasn’t pee, so she pulled it back up.

“So do you love him?” asked Bridget.

“No,” said Lia, “but it’s prom. Everyone loses their virginity at prom.”

“I would wait. What if James gets you pregnant or gives you a disease? I would hold out for a college boy.” Bridget sighed at the thought of letting Derek take her to bed. “You have seen Derek, right?”

“Thanks, Angela,” said Lia, “you’re pretty smart. I guess I don’t want to end up a ho like Julia Grass.”

“I don’t think she is losing her virginity at prom,” said Bridget. “That ship has sailed.”

“Yeah, her freshman year.”

###

They got back from the bathroom just in time for the class awards. The class president got up on the stage and pulled out a clipboard. “Hey everyone, this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for, when we give the results for those who done the most to be remembered in this class.” The class vice president handed him a stack of envelopes. He pulled out the first envelope. “We have a boy and a girl for each category. When I call your name come up and stand by your counterpart for the class favorites dance.” He opened the first envelope. “Prom King is Evan Fiscus.” Evan walked up, took the plaque that was handed to him and walked down to stand in the middle of the dance floor. The class president took another envelope. “Prom Queen is Marcy Phillips.”

Marcy squealed like a stuck pig and took her plaque and ran down to the dance floor and threw herself in Evan Fiscus’s arms. She gave Julia Glass a dirty look.

“Now our Most Likely to Succeed students: the boy is James Duane and the girl is Lia Jones. Both of them did nothing but study, and you know how successful people like that become.”

Bridget clapped as Lia and James went up to collect their awards. As Lia left the stage after getting her plaque she stuck out her tongue at the valedictorian Cindy Ericson who had thought she would be Most Likely to Succeed.

“Now our high school is like many others where students try to impress one another with their clothes. Why do they do that? Because they know they will be awarded with the Best Dressed award. Daniel Crawford and Jana Smit come up to accept your award.”

The two student ran up to the stage. Daniel Crawford, not only had a smart tux on, but the tux had tails. He also carried a top hat and a walking stick. Jana Smith wore a Renaissance-style dress. Her honey-brown hair cascaded down her back like loosely wound golden springs. Bridge thought she deserved the award.

“Now we have our final award: the Most Embarrassing Incident.”

Bridget froze. A few students glanced in her direction, but she thought they wouldn’t be that mean to bring up the accident that happened just before she became Angela Murphy. She hoped not.

“This award goes to Darren Farling for his performance on the field at the homecoming game. Darren scored every single touchdown in the entire game. Of the five touchdowns he scored, only three of them were for East High. That my friends is embarrassing.”

As Darren sheepishly stepped up to receive his award, all eyes went to Bridget.

“Usually we tell the embarrassing story that is cause for this award, but everyone knows why you are getting this prize. Angela Murphy come up and get your plaque. Don’t hide or we will tell the story.”

Bridget walked up and took the plaque out of the class president’s hand. He gave her a hug. “Thanks for being such a great sport,” he whispered. Bridget walked down the stairs to stand with Darren Farling.

“Don’t pee on me, Accident Girl,” said Darren as he put his hand around her back to slow dance with her.

The music started and Bridget began to follow his lead. “If I didn’t care about embarrassing my date, I would,” Bridget said.

“I think he would be embarrassed to even be here with you,” Darren said. He turned her hard, almost making her lose her step. Bridget just glared at him. It felt like the song was going on forever. Would the humiliation ever end?

As soon as the dance was over she returned to her table were Derek was sitting. “So, what was this embarrassing story they were talking about?”

“I’m sorry,” she sniffled and thought about how grossed out he would be if he knew she still had accidents. "Everyone was too embarrassed to go to prom with the girl that had that embarrassing incident,” she explained. “If I tell you, you won’t like me anymore.”

“Okay,” said Derek. “I guess it must be pretty traumatic if you feel that way. I won’t pry.”

Bridget took a Kleenex and dabbed her eyes, careful not to wipe away her makeup. “My makeup’s not too smeared, I hope.”

“It’s fine,” he said. The band started to play another slow song. It was Elvis. “Want to dance?”

“Yes,” she said, “but only fools rush in.”

“I can’t help it,” he said as he led Bridget to the dance floor. He held her close and they slowly dance. The song was so soft and Elvis’s voice just made her want to be closer to Derek. She couldn’t help it and threw both arms around his neck, squeezing her body against Derek’s on the dance floor. His hands lowered themselves to the small of her back, but it didn’t go any lower. Derek was too much of a gentleman.

Bridget had counseled Lia to not give up her virginity to James tonight, but just like Elvis, she couldn’t help falling in love with Derek. If he asked her, she would let him have sex with her. She thought of the pull-up under her dress and how she would hide it when she let Derek undress her. It somewhat took her out of the mood, but the song had ended and the music had stopped.

The class president got back on the stage and said, “I want to thank the prom committee and senior class of 2009 for an excellent prom. Drive home safely everyone and thank you for making the class of 2009 the best.

Derek walked her back to the table where she retrieved her purse.

“Wow Angela,” said Lia, “I couldn’t dance that sensual with my dad on stage.” She held her hands over her eyes and turned around.

Bridget was torn between looking up at the stage for her father and comforting her friend. She chose the stage. The lights obscured the band from seeing what was happening on the dance floor, so she felt safe. She noticed Derek was looking up at the stage as well. She turned and put an arm around Lia.

“I’m sorry,” Lia said. Her mascara was running. Bridget took a Kleenex from her purse and wiped away her tears. “I’ve ruined my makeup.”

“It lasted through most of prom,” said Bridget. “Let’s just smile for another half hour and well be home and we can stop pretending to have fun.”

“Oh, I did have fun, Angela,” she said. “I just know my daddy’s not going to be at home worrying about me that makes sad.” She started to walk out with Derek and James.

“I’ll admit I had fun too,” said Bridget.

“Angela, we forgot our plaques!” Bridget and the guys waited as Lia ran back to the table and retrieved the awards. She handed Bridget her plaque. “We don’t want to lose these.”

“You do remember how I won this, don’t you?”

“Oh,” Lia said. She looked a bit embarrassed.

“Thank you for going to prom with me, Lia” James said.

“And thank you for taking me,” Lia replied. The group walked back to James’s car and they all piled in.

As James started the car, Bridget held up a hand and said,

“Home James, and don’t spare the horses.” Tonight certainly hadn’t been ruined for her. It had been embarrassing at times, but she was glad she came even if she held a plaque in her hands that she earned by pooping and peeing her pants. The only thing she regretted about prom night was not sleeping with Derek.

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Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Chapter Nine: Graduation

Bridget woke in a wet diaper. She thought that with school over and the ability to relax, she would wake up dry, but she had another bad dream. Lia’s father had starred in last night’s nightmare. She couldn’t get the image of a chainsaw chain catching on a spike and breaking. The news had done a special on eco-terrorists and then showed video of what a chainsaw would do to a mannequin. She could still see the plastic being torn apart and imagined that happening to a person.

Bridget ripped her diaper off angrily and threw it into her waste basket. If only she could find Flower again. She only had the malnourished hippie’s word that she was going to Washington State University. It was a big campus and she hoped she could track the girl down. She still did not know how she would be able to interrogate the girl, but she would find a way. Until she could get to college, she would have to make do with her new mom and dad.

She walked into the bathroom and took a shower. The water ran down her back and she turned and let the spray soft massage her shoulders and run down her breasts in sudsy rivulets. She scrubbed her skin and paid special attention to her diaper area. In prison, she had taken her showers before bed, but with the bedwetting she had no choice, but to take them in the morning. Since school had ended, she still got up and took her shower because she didn’t want to run around the house in a wet diaper.

She stepped out of the shower and dried off. She smiled at the fact that the senior students who hadn’t got an A for the semester in a given class were probably sitting in school taking their finals. Bridget felt a bit of cruel satisfaction that Julia Grass, a high school junior, had to take all six of her finals while Bridget had the last few days off. She had planned to do something great today if only to tell Julia what she was doing while Evan’s ho was taking an English final.

She pulled on jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of a covered wagon that said You Have Died of Dysentery. She thought it was cute when she saw it online and bought it with her mother’s credit card after her doctor’s visit hadn’t gone as planned. She knew none of her high school friends would get the joke but she didn’t care. She had played the game when it first came out and she had thought it was pretty advanced at the time.

She came down the stairs and found strange people sitting in the living room. “Hi Angela,” the lady said. “We came in late last night to see your graduation.”

The older man sitting next to her smiled. “I knew you would get pretty good marks. Your mother said you were number four in your class. Pretty good in a class of three hundred and twenty. I was number three in my class but we only had four students.”

Bridget’s mother walked in. “Do you want decaf or regular coffee?” She looked at Bridget. “Oh, you’re up. Don’t just stand there. Say hello to your grandpa and grandma.”

“Hello,” Bridget said. She sat in the chair next to the couch where they were sitting. She folded her hands in her lap and tried to make polite conversation. It was more of Angela’s friends and family to fool. She longed for college to start so she could be herself and stop pretending to be Angela except in name only.

“What time do we need to be at your graduation ceremony?” asked Grandpa.

“It starts at 5:30, so I would get there by five,” said Bridget. “I think I have to be there even earlier for rehearsal.” She dreaded the rehearsal because Julia had texted last night that there truce was over and it was fair game to tease her again. Bridget had opted out of signing up to go to the party after the graduation ceremony because she knew Julia would resume the teasing.

“Tell Grandma and Grandpa where you will be going for college,” her mother said.

“WSU,” said Bridget. “I’m majoring in double E.”

“I thought you were going into teaching,” said Grandma. “That’s what you told me when you visited during spring break.”

According to her grades, Angela was really too smart to be a teacher and Bridget did not care for teaching. Not that she wanted to knock teaching. Bridget had the benefit of two years in electrical engineering before she gave up school due to money issues. Oh course she chose engineering. “I just changed my mind,” Bridget answered. “I know it will take a lot more math classes, but I did well in math.”

“What ever you do, Angela,” said her Grandmother, “you will do well.”

“Thank you.”

“Breakfast is ready,” said Bridget’s mother. Her mother outdid herself with bacon, omelets, and pancakes. Bridget smiled as she took her place at the table. She sat between her grandparents and enjoyed her dinner.

When dinner ended her mother cleared the table and her father stood by the back door. “Since Angela is graduating she is almost all grown up,” her father said. “I love you Angela and I got you a gift to start out your adult life. Come on. It’s in the garage.”

He led her, her mother, and her grandparents to the garage and opened the garage door. Inside was a black car. It was exactly like James’ car, but it looked a lot nicer. The paint was shiny black, not scarred and rust trimmed like the ride she rode to prom. “It’s a 1984 Ford Crown Victoria Police. It was the nicest one.” Her father put his hand on the hood. “There is not a spot of rust on this one.” He opened the hood and Bridget gazed at the engine that looked like it barely fit in the car. “A 5.8 liter engine and a Variable Venturi carburetor.” The car was well taken care of. Bridget opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat. She looked into the back seat, expecting to see the metal barrier dividing front and back seats, but it wasn’t there. In fact, she couldn’t tell from the inside that it had even been a cop car.

She stood up and gave her dad a hug. “Thank you.”

“Now it uses quite a bit of gas,” he said, “but it has power.”

“I love it,” said Bridget.

“And I love you and want you to be safe.” He walked around to the passenger side and sat down. “Let’s go test this out. Get in.”

“Yes sir.” She sat back down in the driver’s seat and her dad handed her the keys.

“We’ll be back in about an hour,” he said to her mother and grandparents.

Bridget started the car and smiled as the engine roared to life. “It purrs like a kitten,” her father said.

Bridget put the car into gear and stomped on the gas. “Only if the kitten is a lion,” she said as the car squealed out of the garage and onto the street. She slowed down to the speed limited and drove normally. When she got to the highway her dad had her go I-90 east. After about twenty minutes they crossed into Montana.

“Open it up,” her dad encouraged her.

Bridget stomped the gas and soon had the car going ninety. At one stretch of road she got it up to one hundred, but she didn’t dare get it faster. She slowed down to seventy-five and turned the car around.

“It’s supposed to get up to 130, but you’ll never find anywhere straight enough. Let’s go home before your mother worries.”

Bridget drove the rest of the way home at seventy-five and drove home smiling. She would have fun with this car. She just knew it.

###

“Wow,” said Lia. “It’s just like James’s car, only it looks like someone took care of it. Oh, and it is not so police inside.” It was true. Bridget’s dad had removed all trace of there being a cage in the back. He even filled the holes where the bars had been screwed.

“Well, are you ready to do this?” Bridget asked as she adjusted her graduation cap and honors stole.

“Yes. I just wish our school colors were not orange and blue,” said Angela as she adjusted the blue tassel over her orange cap.

“I know what you mean,” said Bridget. “Well we better hurry. If we are late for rehearsal they might not let us walk the stage.”

Bridget drove to school and parked her car in the parking lot next to James’s similar car. There was a marked difference in quality although James had removed the divider in between the front and back seats. Still it was not as shiny or as nice as Bridget’s. She didn’t dwell on that too long. She went into the gym and started rehearsing for the ceremony.

Bridget had some relief that Julia Grass wasn’t there. She was only a junior, so she had a whole other year before she could graduate. She was probably right about Evan finding a new girlfriend in college. He was a jerk too and proved it during a break in the rehearsal.

“So, Angela,” he said, “I’m lucky I come before you in the alphabet. I wouldn’t want to slip if you pee on the stage.”

“Evan,” said Lia. She gave him a mean look.

“Besides, I am in the top ten, so we go first,” said Bridget. “If I leave a trail, you can still trip.” She smiled with an evil grin. “Besides, no one here will see me again. What do I have to lose?”

“That’s disgusting,” he said before walking away.

“You do have a pull-up on, don’t you?” asked Lia with a whispered voice.

“Nope,” she said. “I have on a full diaper. I am not taking any chances. Besides, I got this long gown to cover up with and underneath I have on a long dress so no one will know.”

“You are enjoying this too much,” Lia said.

“Only the part about making Evan uncomfortable.”

“Alright everyone, take your seats and get ready for the ceremony.”

###

The room got hot and the whole area where senior class sat was alight from the overhead lights. Bridget tried to look behind her for Lia, but couldn’t see. She gave up and looked up in the stands for her parents and grandparents. They were not around either. The announcer called the gym to order and Cindy Ericson got up and did her valedictorian speech. It was really good. At the close of her speech the teachers motioned the front row to stand up and walk to the stage.

Cindy left the podium and took her place at the front of the line and the names were given as they walked the stage. “Cindy Ericson”, “James Duane”, “Peter Schuster”, and then finally they called her name: “Angela Murphy.” She walked the stage, shook the principal’s hand, took her diploma, and stood beside Peter. When the first ten names were called the principal put yellow cords on the shoulders of the top ten students. Then they went and sat down as the other students names were called and they got their diplomas. Bridget smiled to herself. At least the high school portion of her new life was over. Three and a half weeks of high school was too much to relive, especially if the first day that time started with a stinky poop in her panties. At least she didn’t have to take finals. She sat and watched the rest of the students graduate and was glad the whole thing was over. Her next step was college.

After the ceremony Grandma wanted to take them all out to eat so they went to have dinner. Grandma was happy about the dress that Bridget had chose. It was the dress she wore to church that first Sunday. They ate at a nice steakhouse and Bridget ordered the New York strip. It tasted much better than her last meal in prison had tasted. Tonight was great and she would be closer to her goal of finding the terrorist. Not here in the steakhouse: she doubted the terrorist would set foot in a steakhouse unless he were attacking it. She would be going to college and could get the terrorist through Flower.

The evening ended and Bridget got undressed to go to bed. She had to put a new diaper on because she had to pee and the tapes tore the plastic of the diaper when she took it off to use the bathroom before bed. She went to sleep and her dreams were almost peaceful.

She had the dream again, so that interrupted her sleep, and of course she had wet the bed in her sleep. She tried to be upset about it, but she had gotten used to waking up wet. She’d never like it, but it wasn’t too bad.

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Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Chapter Ten: Freshman Orientation 1

Bridget put her packed bags in the trunk of her car and closed the lid. “All ready to go,” she said.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” asked her mother. “For freshman orientation you can have a parent with you.”

She knew Flower might be there and wanted to get info on what she was up to. There was no way she could get time to lean on Flower with her mother there. “I need to do this on my own. I know there are things you can help me with and I have a cell phone if I need anything, but it’s time I do a few things by myself.”

“Do you have enough supplies?” her mother asked. “You’ll be staying overnight for two nights.”

“Mother.” She looked around to make sure no one heard, but it was only her mother and father there. She was embarrassed, but was sure her mother hadn’t mentioned the word “diaper.”

“Well drive safe,” said her dad, “and try to keep it under one hundred.” Bridget smiled back at him.

“I’ll try.” She hopped in her car and drove toward Pullman, Washington. At last she would be able to make some headway on her search to get the terrorist. Her lips curled in anticipation of how she would make the terrorist pay. During the few hour drive, she thought about different punishments she would give the terrorist. Maybe she would soak him in diesel fuel and light it, or maybe she would strap him down to a gurney and inject poison in his veins. Whatever she decided, she could only do one thing to him because she knew it would be fatal.

When she got to her destination she parked where her orientation packet said to park. She parked beside a red Eclipse and got out to get her stuff.

“Hi. I’m Ami Kent,” said the Asian girl getting out of the Eclipse. She dressed and talked like an American so Bridget guessed she wasn’t an international student.

“Are you here for freshman orientation too?” Bridget asked.

“Yeah,” said Ami. “Of course I am.” She pulled a large bag out of the passenger seat and smiled. “No parents and no boyfriends. Nothing will stop me now,” she said.

Too hyper, thought Bridget, but she responded anyway. “Well I want to get settled in before everything starts,” said Bridget.

“Good idea,” she said. “Let’s go in.”

The dorm they would be staying in for the next few days was the Stephenson Complex. It was not by any mean luxurious and Bridget knew that. She didn’t care. She wanted to get in her dorm, find a place to hide her diapers, and get a little downtime before they rounded them up for orientation.

“So why didn’t your parents come with you?” Bridget asked. “I mean mine didn’t come either, but I had reasons for wanting to be alone.”

“My dad had a multimillion dollar business deal he had to deal with and my mother is too sick to come so I am here alone.” She shrugged. “I’ve been doing everything for myself anyway and Dad’s got money so I manage.” She looked at Bridget struggling with her bags. “So what’s your story?”

“I just wanted to be alone,” said Bridget. “I love my parents, but they can be a little overbearing sometimes.”

“I understand. Mother is overbearing when she isn’t pretending to be sick so Dad with pay attention to her.”

They arrived at the door to the door and walked over to a table that was set up there. “Angela Murphy,” she said to the Resident Assistant looking over the list.

“And Ami Kent.” She watched the girl struggle a bit and pointed at her name. “That’s A. M. I.”

“You too can have 418,” said the RA. She handed them each a key and pointed to the stairs.

###

“That was fun,” said Bridget as she pulled her stuff into the room and walked toward one of the beds. She worried for a second when she saw the plastic sheets, but both beds were equipped the same way so she knew they weren’t put there just for her.

“Especially when that one guy asked us why we were taking the stairs after we already made it to the top.”

Bridget opened a door in the corner of the room and looked inside. She expected a bathroom, but it was just a closet. It was a rather big closet, divided in two and it divided the dorm room into two branches of an L. It still did not afford much privacy, but it was more private than most dorms. “Where is the bathroom?” she asked.

“I think it is down the hall?” said Ami.

“Great,” said Bridget. “I’ll be right back.” She walked out the door and found the lady’s room. There were rows of showers, rows of toilets, and rows of sinks, which meant she would either find a way to change into her diapers quietly in her dormroom, or in the bathroom and then get back to her dormroom without any noticeable crinkling. She did her business and returned to the room. It was only going to be two nights and Ami wouldn’t be her real freshman year roommate.

“I’m settled in, I think,” said Ami. “Let’s go down stairs and mingle.”

“Good idea,” Bridget agreed. She first took the time to make her bed first before going downstairs. If she had to get her diapers on in the room with Ami there, she wanted to do it under her covers.

When they got downstairs, they ran into other freshmen in the dorms first floor lounge. Some were playing pool, others were sitting in comfortable chairs in front of a big screen TV. Still, others were chatting or flirting or other stuff.

Since it was just orientation, most students had parents with them. Some looked at Bridget and Ami with a bit of jealousy. Theoretically, it was almost college, and it was hard to impress other students with parents present. That would change when classes started the last week of August. Still that was a month away.

“Hey Angela,” said a voice called to her. Bridget turned to see Flower standing there. “It’s pretty cool that you decided to come to WSU.”

“Yeah,” said Bridget, “I decided at the last minute. I’m surprised I could get my FAFSA done in time.”

“Oh, I hate filling out forms,” said Flower. “So much paper going to waste. At least I could fill them out online and not hurt trees.” She wore a green t-shirt that showed a tree. It said, “Hug a tree.”

“It probably burns more carbon to run your computer, than it takes to fill out a paper form,” said Ami.

Flower got an angry look on her face for a moment, but then smiled. “Well, I see my uncle. I should probably sit with him.” She pointed in the direction of the chairs in front of the TV.

Bridget looked and saw the terrorist sitting calmly watching a show on the discovery channel and froze. Hot pee warmed the insides of her pull-up and she couldn’t focus on anything else. She was peeing so long she thought she was going to leak. Finally it stopped and she looked down at the legs of her blue jeans. Still dry, but she wondered for how long. Her pull-up felt saturated.

“Excuse me,” she told Ami. “I left something in the room.” She turned and hurried toward the elevator and up to the room.

Finally, in the safety of the elevator she felt the back of her pant leg. It seemed to be a bit damp and she almost panicked and decided to drive home. However, the elevator was mirrored and she was able to see the back of her legs. They didn’t look wet. She half smiled and decided she could do this.

Once in the room she stripped from the waist down and began to clean herself with some wipes. She got out a new pull-up and pulled it on. She was tempted to put on her night diaper and hide it under a skirt, but Ami and Flower might notice if she changed clothes. Instead, she pulled up the jeans she had been wearing over the pull-up. She felt some relief that she hadn’t leaked, but it had been close. Tomorrow she would wear her long skirt and Depends. She carried the wet pull-up to the trash inside the common bathroom and started downstairs.

Today, however, she had to get back to the orientation session. It was supposed to start at 1:00 and it was already 1:05. She hurried back down to the lounge just as everyone was filing out for the campus tour.

“Took you long enough,” said Ami. “That creepy skinny girl kept asking where our room was. She wanted to look for you.”

She imagined Flower walking in on her as she was changing herself. “What did you tell her?”

“I certainly didn’t give her the room number.”

“Good,” said Bridget. She had plans for Flower, but she didn’t know how to get her alone without the terrorist. Maybe Ami should have told her to go up and find her, but someone else would have gone looking for the two of them and Bridget wasn’t sure how she would interrogate Flower. She didn’t think water boarding would work and besides, she still didn’t google how to do it.

The tour of the campus took over an hour. They walked from building to building while the campus ambassador droned on and on about the different buildings and what went on inside them. “And this is the Engineering Building where most of the engineering students have classes.

Bridget looked in the window and wondered what else would be going on in the class. She looked over at Flower who was standing with her uncle. At the sight of the terrorist, she had another little accident. It was just a trickle this time since she had completely emptied herself with her just before the tour. Her cheeks burned and she looked around to see if anyone noticed. “Just don’t look at him,” she whispered. “Pretend he’s not there.” Her pull up was mostly just damp and did not overwhelm the absorbent material at all.

“You okay” asked Ami. “You look a bit flustered.”

“I’m just a bit warm,” she said. Her face did fell warrm, but it was from the heat of her blushing, not the weather.

“Now we are going inside this building and we can start orientation,” said the tour guide.

The rest of the day was spent in a boring lecture hall. There were presentations about student life, campus rules, and diversity training. Where she was seated she couldn’t see the terrorist though. She wasn’t constantly dribbling anymore either. Pretending he wasn’t there was her best bet if she wanted to win. Finally they were dismissed.

“I’m glad that’s over,” said Ami.

“There are two more days of this,” said Bridget. She looked over her orientation schedule. “I wonder why they need three days or orientation.”

“Worthless lectures about anorexia, racism, and acceptance,” said Ami.

“Well the rest of the time will be with our advisers and team building exercises and stuff,” Bridget said.

“Although your creepy, thin friend must not need the anorexia lecture,” said Ami. “She was nibbling on stuff from her lunch bag all day. She’s probably bulimic.”

“She’s a vegan,” said Bridget. “She must eat a lot, but nothing of substance.”

“Well speaking of food, they led us to the cafeteria,” said Ami.

As soon as they returned to the Stephenson complex, they were led into the cafeteria. Bridget and Ami heaped their trays full of food. Today they were serving chicken and Jello. “I don’t think those two foods go together.”

“I don’t care,” said Bridget. She set her tray on the table and picked up a drum stick and started to eat it. “It’s good enough.”

Flower came by and set her tray on the table. She only had Jello on her tray. “I can’t believe you two are eating that much chicken. You know they live their entire lives in tiny cages and they can’t turn around.”

Ami took a bit of her chicken breast and swallowed. “Not true. They’ll live some of their lives in my stomach.

“So you are going to fill up on just Jello,” asked Bridget.

“Yes,” answered Flower. “I don’t eat food from animals or animal products. Jello is made from fruit.” She spooned a bite of Jello into her mouth.

“Hate to break it to you,” said Ami, in between bites of chicken. “Actually, I am happy to break it to you. Jello is made from the bones and skins of hogs. The only fruit in it is from the artificial flavoring.”

“It is not,” said Flower. She took a tentative bite of her food.

“That’s not nice,” said Bridget. “She hardly gets enough food as it is.”

“I’m sorry I tied to trick you,” said Ami. She smiled. Bridget tried unsuccessfully to forget that Ami’s fingers were crossed. She was glad she loved meat. She ate fried chicken until she was full. She lost her appetite for Jello.

“You going to eat that?” asked Ami as she pointed to her Jello.

“No,” said Bridget.

She scooped up Bridget’s Jello and ate it. “Sorry, but I am a hungry girl.”

Flower finished her food about the same time. “A vegetarian diet really is healthier,” she said.

“I can’t,” said Ami. “My Korean heritage requires me to eat meat, especially your cat or dog.”

Flower got up and walked away quickly.

“You don’t really?” asked Bridget.

“Of course not; I was just messing with her,” Ami answered. “I’m born and raised in Seattle. I grew up on salmon filets, sea food, and Starbuck’s Coffee.”

Bridget giggled. “Just don’t scare the poor girl away. I need to find out something from her first.”

“Okay, I have another confession to make,” said Ami.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t have a Korean heritage. My great grandfather came to Seattle from China.”

Bridget giggled again. She looked around and Flower was nowhere in sight.

After supper Bridget spent the time mingling with others students. She and Ami were they only girls she found that were in engineering. A lot of the freshmen hadn’t even picked a major, which shocked and appalled Bridget. Bridget knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to take electrical engineering as a major and actually finish this time. Thanks to Angela’s parents money would not stand in her way.

She hurried up to her room. Ami wasn’t there yet, so she used the time to diaper herself for bed. She didn’t know when Ami would walk in, so she changed herself on the floor of the large closet. There was no air conditioning in the Stephenson Complex and the evening was hot. She just put a T-shirt and gym shorts on over her diaper and went to sleep.

It was funny trying to sleep at night in a strange place. It’s not the same. The bed in the Murphy house where she slept had felt strange the first week or so and this place would take getting used to as well. Any bed was still better than the cot she slept on in prison before she became Angela.

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Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Chapter Eleven: Freshman Orientation 2

Dreams came to her again that night, but it seemed too real. There were dead children. There was Lia’s father’s death. There was the terrorist. He entered her dream and just laughed at her as she frantically tried to steer the truck away from the middle school. She felt the needle enter her arm in the death penalty and then she woke up in the woods. Lumberjacks were coming down the trail with chainsaws to cut the trees, but the terrorist had booby trapped them. Frantically she tried to pull the spikes from the trees with a crowbar, but the crowbar turned to rubber in her hands. Instead she tried to warn the lumberjacks what the terrorist had done but she couldn’t talk or make a sound from her throat. When the lumberjack started cutting a tree, she finally was able to yell out a warning, but it was too late. The chain saw went flying and hit her on the head.

She woke up screaming just as a pillow hit her in the head. The sheets were wet and sweaty and twisted around her. Her shirt had ridden up and her shorts had come down exposing her diaper.

“What the freak,” asked Ami. “Do you always scream when you wake up?” She walked over to retrieve her pillow.

Bridget looked down make sure her diapers were covered, but the sheets were so twisted she couldn’t cover up before Ami discovered the juvenile garment she wore.

“Is that a diaper?” asked Ami. “Most people stop wetting the bed by college age, Angela.” She paced back and forth across the room. “This is just gross. Cover up.” She grabbed some clothes and her toiletry bag to run to the bathroom.

Bridget got up and stood between Ami and the door. “Listen, I can’t help it,” she said. “I went through a very stressful situation last year. I have nightmares every night and it’s horrible.” Tears came to her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut to keep from crying, but it couldn’t shut out the tears. “You have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“It’s still gross,” said Ami. “Maybe you want to take a shower because you smell like pee.”

“Do you promise?” asked Bridget. “I’m not asking you to refrain from teasing me; I’m just asking that you not tell anyone about this. It is so embarrassing.”

“Okay,” said Ami. “I promise.” She looked toward the door. “I got an embarrassing problem too. I wasn’t counting on the common bathroom. I hate public bathrooms and...” She looked around. “It’s early enough. Can you guard the bathroom door while I go. I promise I will keep your secret.”

“Okay, but we better hurry.” She went into the closet and put on her robe. She also grabbed the outfit she planned on wearing for the day and her bag of toiletries. Before she came out, she stripped off her diaper and rolled it up. She put it in a plastic bag and wrapped it in her towel.

“I’m ready,” Bridget said.

“Let’s hurry,” Ami said. She put one hand over her butt for a second before they went into the hall.

###

“Thank goodness no one is in there,” said Ami. “Wait by the door and please don’t listen to anything.

Bridget stood in front of the doorway feeling foolish. She smelled herself: a mix of sweat and pee. Her hair felt matted and gross and her t-shirt stuck to her skin where she had soaked it with her sweat. She also had the wet diaper and new diaper hidden in the folds of her clothes and towel. It was only a matter of time until someone discovered her holding them.

She almost screamed when a hand tapped her shoulder. “I’m done,” said Ami. “You can come in now. Ami’s face had turned bright red. “It’s so embarrassing. I overate yesterday.”

Bridget hurried into the bathroom, deposited her used diaper into the garbage and hopped straight into the shower. She had just gotten wet when Ami called from the next shower stall.

“On the bright side, the water is hot. I expected it to be cold,” she said.

“One thing went right today,” said Bridget. She let the water rinse her pee and sweat down the drain. She rubbed the shampoo in her hair and let the lilac smell cover the grossness she felt every morning. When she was finished she dressed in a toilet stall, this time in her diaper and skirt. She was not taking a chance with leaking today. She finally came out and brushed her teeth at the sink. Ami was just finishing flossing when Bridget came out.

“Ready for another day?” asked Ami. “The schedule said we have to take math, English, and writing placement tests. We should get a good breakfast first or they will put us in dummy classes.”

“I guess you are right.” Bridget dragged her comb through her wet hair. She winced a bit as a tangle got caught in the teeth, but then had it under control. Angela’s hair was longer than her old hair had been and it was much harder to take care of, but she liked how it looked and had never cut it.

Ami spent a longer time on makeup than her, so Bridget was able to finish at relatively the same time. “Ready for food?” asked Bridget.

“Of course,” Ami replied. After dropping their stuff off at the room, they took the elevator downstairs for an early breakfast.

###

It was bad enough that Bridget couldn’t cross her legs while wearing her diaper; it was even worse she couldn’t drop her hand in between her legs like she could if she were wearing pants. She bit her pencil and tried to concentrate on solving an equation. She wished she’d had just worn her pull-up and took chances that it might leak. She also wished she had gone to the bathroom after the English placement exam or even before the writing placement exam.

Of course the bathroom had been full of other girls and she hadn’t wanted them to hear her diaper. She hadn’t had time between exams to go up to her room, and even if she had, she couldn’t get the privacy she really wanted. It was starting to get urgent and she was only fifteen minutes into her placement exam. She was tempted to give up, but that wouldn’t work either. She was only a third of the way through and needed to get through this exam or she might be put in remedial classes. That was three extra credit hours and hundreds of dollars and besides, she knew the material.

She imagined she felt wetness in her diaper, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t feel anything come out. She wondered what would happen if she just got up and went to the restroom. Would they let her back in to finish the test? She didn’t want to take the chance.

The proctor went up to the board and erased the 45 that was written on the board and wrote 40. She was running out of time. What would she do if she peed her pants? She sighed. It was not like her diaper wouldn’t hide it, but she had never just wet herself on purpose. It was always an accident. The terrorist caused those. She caused this herself by not using the toilet when she had a chance. She tried to concentrate on her math, but her bladder kept signaling that it wanted to be empty.

The proctor changed the 40 to a 35 and she decided that it would only be a one time thing. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine she was on the toilet and relaxed. The familiar feeling of uncontrollable wetness streamed into her diaper. She just stared ahead and hoped it would stop before she overwhelmed the diaper.

It did stop and the thirsty material of the diaper did its job. She tried to ignore the wetness against her skin as she finished the last bit of the test. She finished with moments to spare and went straight to the bathroom.

As soon as she got in of the stall she took of her skirt and diaper and sat down on the toilet. She was completely empty, but her skin was wet. She just wiped off with toilet paper and grabbed a clean pull-up from her purse since she hadn’t brought an extra diaper. She pulled it on and rolled up the dirty diaper. Before exiting the stall, she checked that the coast was clear and then went and threw the old diaper away. She washed her hands and had just deposited the used paper towel into the trash over her old diaper when Ami walked in.

“Oh, hi, Angela,” she said and rushed past her into the stall. Bridget could hear her fumbling with her clothing before sitting and starting to pee. She came out soon afterward.

“How do you think you did on the tests?” asked Bridget.

“I think I did okay,” she said. “Just wish the test wasn’t so long. I almost wish I would have stolen one of your diapers. I had to pee so bad.”

Bridget blushed not only at the mention of her diapers, but also at the thought of having used one during the test. “About that,” she said. “You did promise you wouldn’t tell anyone. I don’t want anyone to find out by mistake.”

Flower walked in. “Hi. How were your tests?”

“Especially her,” whispered Bridget.

###

The three walked to the cafeteria for lunch. “I wonder if they have anything healthy for dinner today,” said Flower. She gazed at the menu and smiled. “Cool,” she said, “they have portabella mushroom burgers.”

“What’s that?” asked Ami.

“It’s like a hamburger, except they have a portabella mushroom instead of the meat.”

They went through the line pretty quickly. Ami grabbed a regular cheeseburger. “A little meat might help you,” said Ami. “You’re too skinny and your skin has an unhealthy paler to it.”

“Humans beings were made to eat only fruits and vegetables,” said Flower. “You don’t know what healthy even looks like.”

“Will you two knock it off?” Bridget said. “Let’s just sit down and eat without arguing. They chose a table and Bridget started on her cheeseburger.

“So what is on the agenda this afternoon?” asked Ami.

“Well, it says there is a presentation by intramural teams and the student activities center,” said Flower. “I am hoping there will be an environmental club or something.”

“Are your whole family vegetarians or green?” ask Bridget. This was the perfect chance for interrogation. She leaned forward in her seat ready to listen.

“Not really,” she said. “My uncle has been a vegan as long as I’ve known him. I started in seventh grade. My parents were supportive though.”

“So this uncle of yours: did you always hang out with him more than your own parents? I saw that he came with you for orientation and I saw him with you when we met at the mall.”

“No, he just lives closer to WSU. I am from Seattle, so it would be a bit of a drive.” She took a bite of her mushroom burger.

“So your parents must have busy jobs?”

“Kinda,” she said. “My brother is starting college too and they are taking him to orientation at University of Oregon.”

“So they ducked out of taking you?” asked Ami.

Bridget and Flower both gave her a dirty look.

“Get it? University of Oregon’s mascot is the Ducks.”

Bridget couldn’t help but smile. She knew Ami was sarcastic. She didn’t know she was into puns.

“Anyway,” said Flower. “I am staying with my uncle until school starts. He works for an animal rights group up in Spokane. I’ve been spending the summer volunteering.”

“Oh,” asked Bridget. “What does that entail?”

“So far I am just stuffing envelopes and walking door to door to get petitions signed. That kind of stuff.”

“I kinda thought it would be a bit more exciting than that?” Bridget said. She didn’t know how to ask her if she was spiking trees or who did. She was about the same age as Angela, so she wouldn’t have had anything to do with the tanker incident.

“Well anyway I am taking civil engineering so I can work on more sustainable ways to build things,” Flower said. “I actually can’t wait until school starts.”

“I am taking Aerospace Engineering,” said Ami. “I am going to be working at Boeing.”

“Nice goal,” said Bridget. “I’m in Electrical Engineering. Don’t know how that is going to work out for me. I do know that I will finish and get a degree this time.”

“This time?” asked Ami and Flower together.

Oops. She had misspoke again and in front of Flower. “I...uh...I said, ‘the first time.’”

“Well I am only thinking about this time,” said Ami.

“Tuition is high enough,” said Flower. She held up her water glass. “To getting through it the first time.”

“Cheers,” said Bridget.

###

There were quite a few clubs and intramural sports at Washington State. The presentation ran several hours and it was late in the afternoon before the presentation was done.

One of the advisors came into the room. “Your placement tests were graded and I have the results to pass out too you. Also, I will pass out a slip of paper with your advising appointment on it. We will be making your class schedule there so have an idea of what classes you want to take and when. We will class you together for certain basic courses so your entire dorm floor is in the same section of English 101, for instance.”

The names were called and each freshman walked up and took his or her advising appointment and test scores. When the name “Flower Childs” was called Flower ran up and got her scores.

“Flower Childs?” Ami said and broke into giggles. “I thought Flower was bad enough.”

“No wonder she is a screwed up hippie,” said Bridget. Not that having an eco-terrorist for an uncle screwed her up or anything, Bridget thought.

Ami Kent was called and got her stuff. “I knew I would ace them all,” she said and showed off her score.”

Flower stuck her tongue out at Ami. “I don’t have to take any dummy classes at least,” she said.

“Now I’m sitting here without my scores and feeling all nervous,” said Bridget. She really didn’t want to take remedial math or English, especially since she was an honor student in high school. The would probably say all Idahoans were hicks if that happened.

“Angela Murphy.”

Bridget went up and got her scores. She looked at what she had: 95 in writing, 96 in English, and 92 in math. She frowned. It was the distraction of having to pee that had done her in on the math test. At least she still qualified to take calculus in the fall. That would have been embarrassing. She returned to her seat.

“So what did you get?” Ami pulled her paper away.

“That’s supposed to be private,” she said.

“It’s not so bad,” said Ami as she pushed her scores back to her. “Some of these people are dummies. That girl over there has to take remedial math, writing, and English. At least she’s an art major.”

“What do art majors do when they graduate?” asked Bridget.

“I’ll give you a hint: would you like fries with that?” Ami giggled at her own joke.

“That’s not so funny,” said Flower. “McDonalds kills chickens in the most inhumane way. If children knew how their food was killed they would not call what they eat Happy Meals.”

“I’m suddenly not hungry,” Bridget said. “Want to go up to the room, Ami?”

“I am sort of hungry,” said Ami.

“Well I know a pizza place that delivers to the dorms.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I don’t want to eat dinner with Flower tonight.”

“Oh,” said Ami.

The two girls said their goodbyes and went up to their dorm room.

[writeleft]

Life and Death Choices Made Casually: Chapter Twelve: Freshman Orientation 3

Bridget woke up screaming again and wearing a wet diaper. At least the sheets weren’t twisted around her exposing her diaper to Ami again.

Ami groaned. “I guess I am never going to get my beauty sleep with your nightmares.” She sat up and looked over at Bridget. “Did you have an accident again?”

Bridget sighed. “I have terrible nightmares.”

“Well, we may as well hit the showers,” said Ami. “You probably need one and I want one because it gets hot in here at night.”

Bridget pulled on her robe and went into the closet to get her clothes and toiletries. She chose a pull-up instead of a diaper. She didn’t want to repeat the experience of wetting in the daytime and she was too embarrassed to change or make crinkling noises in the bathroom that could be heard by other girls. She collected her stuff just as Ami collected her own things. “I’m ready.”

She and Ami went to the bathroom and they showered. It was early enough that it was still empty and they had the bathroom to themselves. Bridget dressed quickly and brushed her teeth before Ami came out and started to put on her makeup.

“What’s on the agenda today?”

“Just schedules,” Bridget answered. “I hope I get into the classes I want.”

“We both did pretty good on the placement tests,” Ami said.

“Yeah, that’s true only I did well on mine,” Bridget said with a smirk. She ran a brush through her hair and then scowled when it started to tangle.

“Grammar Nazi.” Ami stuck her tongue out. “Serves you right. My hair is always straight and smooth.”

Bridget brushed the tangles out and looked in the mirror. The pretty face that looked back at her was worth a bit of pain. It might not be worth the bedwetting and partial incontinence, but that would take care of its self when she got revenge with the terrorist. “I’m liking the long hair too much.”

“Whatever.”

“Feel like breakfast now?” asked Bridget.

“Not really.” Ami rubbed her stomach. “I’m still satisfied from that pizza we gorged ourselves on last night.”

“Well, maybe if we go downstairs the pool table will finally be free.” Bridget always had looked at the pool table with longing whenever she was escorted past the recreation area at the prison. They hadn’t let her mix with the other prisoners when she was incarcerated. She had spent most of the twelve years on death row alone.

“Sure, sounds fun, Angela,” Ami said.

They walked to the dorm’s rec room and sure enough, it was empty. The clock on the wall showed six o’clock, so most everyone else was in bed.

Ami put the triangle on the table and began arranging balls. “I haven’t played pool since they dragged us all to some bowling alley after graduation so we couldn’t go to drunken parties.”

“That actually sounds fun,” Bridget said.

“Well you wake up wet no matter if you go to bed drunk or not,” Ami said.

Bridget felt her face flush. She looked around to see if anyone had heard. “You promised you wouldn’t tell.”

“Relax,” said Ami. “No one’s here. I’m not going to let anyone know your secret. Besides, you helped me out with my problem yesterday.”

Bridget chalked her cue and aimed at the cue ball. “Well sorry. I guess I was just paranoid.” She pulled back her cue and broke. She smiled when the balls struck with a resounding crack.

“I guess you’re stripes,” said Ami.

Bridget sent four other balls into the pockets before finally missing the ten ball.

“Thanks for getting your balls out of my way,” said Ami. She took her cue and only manage to get the two and seven balls in. Her third shot missed, but she managed to get the cue ball between the bumper and the eight and five ball.

Bridget scowled. “Thanks for leaving me with a shot.” She had to bank off two different bumpers and didn’t even make the shot she was trying for. The cue ball rolled to a stop right in front of one of Ami’s balls leaving her an easy shot.

Ami tapped the ball in and then tapped in a second and a third ball. She missed the forth ball. “Well at least I am tied with you.

“Until now.” Bridget took aim and sunk the twelve. Her next shot sunk the ten. “Eight in the side.” She aimed at the eight ball, but the cue knocked it just short of the pocket. It rolled back toward the center of the table.

“Man, that was an easy shot, Angela,” gloated Ami. She sunk a ball, but missed her next shot, leaving only the eight ball and one other solid on the table.

“Hey can I play winner?”

Bridget looked back and saw Flower standing behind her.

Ami frowned. “Sure, I guess.”

“Eight in the corner,” said Bridget. She took aim and sent her cue ball into the corner pocket. “Oops,” she said and handed her pool cue to Flower.

“You did that on purpose,” said Ami.

Bridget faced Ami and put a finger on her lips. “No, I didn’t. It was an accident.”

Bridget walked away and sat in front of the TV while Flower and Ami played. She flipped through the channels, but never settled on anything to watch.

After awhile Ami and Flower came over and sat down on either side of her. “Ami didn’t even give me a chance to win,” Flower complained.

“What’s the secret to winning, Ami?” asked Bridget.

“It’s my diet of bacon,” Ami answered. She smiled as Flower made a horrified face.

“She’s just messing with you,” Bridget said.

“So, are you excited about your advising session?” asked Flower. She seemed to be desperate to change the subject.

“A little,” Bridget admitted.

“I already know what classes I want to take,” said Ami.

“Yeah?” asked Flower.

“Well, I want to take the basic math, English, history, and engineering classes, but I think I can fit an art elective in there.”

“I didn’t know you were an artist,” said Bridget.

“Well, I like doing things with my hands,” said Ami.

“The only art I’ve ever done is making protest signs,” said Flower.

“Yeah, you were making protest signs in kindergarten with your finger paints when the rest of us were drawing stick figures,” said Ami with a sarcastic voice.

“That doesn’t count,” said Flower. “I drew stick figures in kindergarten. I just never did any serious art.”

“I think I am taking ballroom dancing instead of art,” said Bridget.

“You dance?” ask Ami. “I like to dance too, but the boys at my high school weren’t really into dancing except for “Soulja Boy.”

“What’s wrong with Soulja Boy?” asked Flower. “I like that dance.”

“We kinda like dancing with boys, not watching them show off,” said Bridget.

“Yeah,” said Ami.

“Oh,” said Flower. “It that how you get boyfriends?”

“Now you are beginning to understand, Flower,” said Ami. “However, you can’t expect a boy to survive on eating grass, so you need to learn how to cook him something good.”

“I’m not going to sacrifice the lives of animals to give a boyfriend an impressive meal.”

“Then bake him a cake. Or cookies.”

“Can’t,” said Bridget. “She’s vegan, so eggs and milk are out. Right Flower?”

She nodded. “But I can make tasty vegan meals. They are just as yummy.”

Ami looked at her watch. “Oh crap. My advising appointment is in ten minutes.”

Flower looked at the clock. “Mine too.”

Bridget checked her schedule and sighed. “Well, see ya. Mine isn’t for another hour.”

She watched as the two girls hurried out of the room and toward the administration building.

###

Bridget walked around campus for a bit and then walked toward the administration building. She had got turned around a bit on her walk and only managed to arrive a minute before her appointment.

Flower waved and she looked like she was ready to burst with excitement. “Angela, I got great news.”

A mans’s voice called from the advising office, “Angela Murphy.”

“I can’t talk. My appointment is now. Tell me after I get done.” She hurried into the advising office.

“Do you have your schedule picked?” asked the advisor.

“Yeah, I do,” said Bridget.

“Let’s see.”

Bridget laid her schedule on the table.

“Well let’s see how we can fit those classes in.” The man typed her schedule into the computer in frowned. “That section is full.”

“Do I have to pick something else?” asked Bridget.

“Hold on.” He tapped a few buttons and then smiled. He turned his monitor toward Bridget. “How does this look?”

Bridget looked at the screen. The classes where just rearrange so that she was in different sections from what she originally picked. There was only one eight o’clock class and it was on Tuesdays and Thursday’s. “That will be fine,” said Bridget.

He printed out her schedule and handed it to her. “Now that your schedule is decided, are there any concerns or questions about the dorms or living conditions?”

“Um, what do you mean?”

“Do you need some special accommodation or something?” he asked.

Bridget remembered that this was when she was supposed to ask if she could get a roommate that was also a bed wetter. Her mother told her to ask if that was possible and that likely it would be. However, she counted on having a female advisor and she couldn’t bring herself to tell this man that she still wet the bed like a three year old. “No, I don’t have anything like that,” she said.

“Well, I guess we are done. We’ll see you in the Fall.” He stood up and held out his hand.

She stood up and took it.

“Welcome to WSU.”

“Thanks.” She turned in left the room.

Flower and Ami were waiting for her when she returned.

“Guess what?” asked Flower.

“You have news that you are bursting to tell me about,” said Bridget.

“Well yeah,” said Flower. “We’re going to be roommates.”

Bridget just stood there.

Ami mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”

“Well that sounds like fun,” said Bridget. She wondered how she could get close to Flower. Although she hadn’t counted on her being so annoying, it was probably the best way she could think of to find out more about this terrorist, especially since Flower would be part of any environmental group among the WSU student organizations.

The three headed back to the dorm to pack. Freshman Orientation was over and in another month classes would begin. She had plenty of time to get her revenge with the terrorist.

###

Bridget stood in front of her suitcase and stared at the stuff she had brought. She shoved her dirty clothes in her suitcase and then packed everything to go home.

Ami smiled. “We’re taking the elevator down this time, right?”

“We better,” said Bridget.

“Oh, and sorry about you ending up with Flower as a roommate,” said Ami. “She is pretty annoying.”

“I know, but it’s not that bad. Besides, she needs someone to keep an eye on her.” Bridget piled her suitcases together and sighed.

“I hope she is nice about your nighttime problem,” said Ami.

“I wasn’t planning on sharing that little factoid with her,” said Bridget. “Do you think she will find out?”

“It depends on how restless you sleep.” Ami picked up her suitcase and reached for the door.

“Yeah, she is going to blab to everyone.”

“No,” said Ami. “I’ll speak to her about it if she finds out. I’ll put the fear of God into her.”

“You’re a good friend,” said Bridget. “Thanks for being so good about my diapers.”

“No problem,” said Ami. “It’s still gross, but I think that issue is minor compared to your nightmares.” She shivered. “I couldn’t stand nightly nightmares. I’d rather have to wear diapers twenty-four-seven than go through what you go through every night.”

“Now that you put it that way,” said Bridget, “the bedwetting doesn’t seem as big a deal as I thought.”

“Well, we better go downstairs. My mother will probably notice me since I was gone for three days.”

“I hope that straightens itself out,” Bridget said.

“I’m not betting on it,” said Ami.

###

Bridget followed Ami out to the parking lot. They started packing their cars. Ami got in her car and drove away. Bridget waved.

“Bye, Angela,” she heard. She turned and looked. Flower and her uncle were walking across the parking lot toward the terrorist’s Prius. Bridget felt the crotch of her pull-up get warm. She was peeing uncontrollably. She felt frozen in place until her bladder was empty.

“Bye, Flower,” she said when she regained control of her voice. The pull-up caught most of the urine, but there was wetness seeping down the back of her legs. She looked down, but she seemed to be dry from the front. “I’ll see you in the Fall.”

She waited until Flower in her uncle drove away in their Prius before she reached into her glove box for a trash bag and put it on the seat. She got into her car and drove away feeling soggy. That had not gone well. She looked at her gas gauge. At least she had enough gas to get home. Something had gone right. She imagined having to get out of her car, pump gas, and pay all while showing a pee stain in the back of her pants. She would have to make sure her bladder was more empty during the day if she ever expect to fight the terrorist.