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danielleandariel.com The Double Life of Ariel Crawford Selling Out |
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Ariel Summary Download Selling Out Misc. |
An hour later, as I ran out the door for the
bus stop, late as usual, I was questioning my sanity. I was wearing a
loose, velvety top that came down a couple of inches past my waist, the
peasant skirt, and a diaper underneath. I’d dug around for the thinnest,
quietest diaper I could find. It was probably also a diaper that would
leak a lot, but I wasn’t planning on wetting it because there was no way I
was going to bring extra and change. I just wouldn’t drink much that day
and if I did have to go, I’d pull the diaper down like underwear and use
the toilet. So why was I so nervous? The diaper didn’t show. Probably
because I was sure there was some kind of diaper radar emitting from me.
Something that would tell everyone instantly that I was wearing diapers,
and I couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t see Vince on the bus, which was a relief because I didn’t want him to hug me and notice that my crotch area was a little more poofy than usual. I hadn’t even thought about how to keep him from finding out, but we didn’t have any classes together today, so maybe I wouldn’t see him. Thank goodness for block scheduling that allowed me to avoid my boyfriend every other day, if necessary. I went to my locker after I got off the bus. Sarah was already there. “Hey, peasant lady,” she greeted me. I froze. She recoiled from the odd look on my face. “What? It’s just that long skirt and that shirt make you look like a peasant. But it’s a cute outfit. I’ve just never seen you wear anything like that before.” “Oh…yeah…I haven’t done laundry in forever,” I stuttered. “I didn’t have that much to choose from. I don’t even have any clean underwear.” Why in the world did I say that? Sarah looked at me in surprise. “Too much info! I don’t want to know if that means you’re wearing dirty underwear or none at all. Don’t tell me.” I grinned. She had no clue, so I decided to play with her. “Ahh, it’s so breezy today,” I said. Sarah laughed in spite of herself. “I said don’t tell me! I better get to class. You enjoy yourself. See you at lunch.” “Bye.” The rest of the day went surprisingly well. I went to the bathroom after lunch and pulled the diaper down like underwear, just like I’d planned. Nobody had any clue. By the time I got to my last class, I was feeling really confident. I could do this every day if I wanted to. About a half hour before school was supposed to end, I had to pee again. As the pressure on my bladder increased, it automatically tightened up so I could hold it. This seemed pointless. I was going to be home in less than an hour, and I didn’t think this was going to be huge wetting. I could pee in my diaper. Nobody’d know. I shifted a little in my seat and let it out. It made a faint sound that I hadn’t thought about, the sound of urine hitting the cloth of the diaper. I leaned forward a bit, trying to muffle the sound, while keeping my face neutral so nobody would know I wasn’t completely focused on the discussion of “Siddhartha”, which I thought was the worst book I’d ever read. Just then, the secretary’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Mr. Bolander?” “Yes?” answered our teacher. “Could you send Danielle Harding down to the office for a minute?” “Sure, I’ll send her down.” At that, all the other kids started saying “ooooooh” like they always did when someone was in trouble. Mr. Bolander filled out a hall pass for me. “I told you all those times you skipped my class were going to catch up to you,” he said in a mock-stern voice. “Very funny.” I wondered what the office wanted from me. I hadn’t done anything to get into trouble for, but my homeroom teacher was a little out there and sometimes turned in the wrong attendance cards, so maybe they thought I’d been absent when I wasn’t. Mr. Matthews, the orchestra teacher, was waiting for me inside the office. He’s a really tall, thin guy who always looks stressed. He’s also rumored to be the slackest, most passive teacher at our school, until concert time comes around, and then nobody wants to be near him. “Danielle, I’m glad I got to talk to you,” he said. “Andrew, the guy from Kellam you’re singing with, can’t make the rehearsal tomorrow after school, but he’s free this afternoon. I know it’s short notice, but do you think you could stay after today instead?” “Yeah, I guess so,” I replied. Why not? I didn’t have much homework and I didn’t think Aunt Jenny would care. “Oh, thank God. Thank you. I’ll meet you two at about 2:15 in the chorus room.” After school ended, I called Jenny and bought a bottle of water to get me through two hours of singing. I went to the chorus room. Nobody was there yet, so I sat on the risers, drank some water and looked over my music for a few minutes until the doors opened. I looked up at a guy who was about six feet tall, with brown hair that could stand to be trimmed, wearing a 17th St. Surf Shop t-shirt, shorts and sandals. “Are you Danielle?” he asked. “Yeah…” “Hi, I’m Andrew. I guess we’re going to be singing together. What are you, a sophomore?” “Yep. I just turned sixteen a couple of weeks ago.” “Oh, cool. Happy birthday. You’re an Aries, then?” I was a little taken aback. “Yeah. I was born April 11.” “Cool. I’m a Leo. My mom does astrology for a hobby. She planned my younger brother based on what zodiac signs would get along best with Leo.” “That’s weird,” I commented. He laughed. “Yeah. My family’s crazy. Oh yeah, by the way, I saw Matthews in the hallway. He said he’s going to be late because he forgot it was his afternoon to go pick his daughter up from school, so he has to go do that, and we’re supposed to practice until he gets here.” “He has a daughter?” I asked, surprised. “You didn’t know that?” “I guess I did, but it’s just weird to think about him…” “Having sex?” Andrew asked. I laughed. “Ew!” “You think that’s scary…my precalc teacher weighs like two hundred and fifty pounds and she’s got pictures of her four kids on her desk. Think how many times she’d have to do it to get four kids! You ever want to lose all respect for any authority, picture them in bed.” I had a brief but very scary thought of my mom and dad. “Ugh!” “I bet Matthews is a complete sexaholic. It’s always the ones who seem completely asexual. Look at the music he picks out. I mean, Moulin Rouge is about a prostitute who doesn’t want a relationship with a starving artist. One of our songs is completely about me trying to get inside your pants. I mean, my character trying get inside your character’s pants,” he explained quickly, turning a little red. “Dress,” I corrected him. “Huh? Oh yeah, she always wore those long fancy-looking gowns.” “Yeah, I’m supposed to wear one for the concert, but I don’t have anything like that.” “Prom stuff’s on sale now. You can get a dress really cheap. My ring dance date got her dress for like $30 two days before the dance.” “Is she your girlfriend?” I asked. “Not really. We’re just good friends. With, uh, benefits.” “That’s lucky. I’ve got a boyfriend without benefits. Well, benefits, but not the whole deluxe package,” I explained, laughing. “Ahh, the discount deal, huh?” he said, laughing too. “That’s okay. Actually, Lisa and I haven’t done anything since ring dance. She’s interested in someone else now.” “That sucks.” We didn’t say anything else for a moment and then I tried to change the subject. “Do you surf?” I asked, looking at his 17th Street shirt. “Yep. Since I was five.” “Five!” “Best time to learn anything is when you’re young. That’s why I think it’s really stupid that we aren’t offered foreign language classes until middle school. By then it’s a lot harder to connect those neurons in your brain. Do you surf?” “Do I look like I do?” “No. Well, you should come with me this summer. I’ll teach you. I have a feeling we’re going to have some pretty decent waves once hurricane season rolls around.” “Oh, great,” I said sarcastically. “Come on, just give it a try.” “I can’t.” “Why not?” “Well, uh, to surf, you probably need to know how to swim, right?” He looked at me like I was crazy. “You don’t know how to swim?” “Not exactly,” I admitted. “How could you have grown up here and not know how to swim? Even if you don’t go to the beach, look in any direction and you’ll see about six pools!” “But I didn’t grow up here. I grew up in central Georgia. Look in any direction and you’ll see more corn than you ever knew existed.” “That explains your accent,” he said. “Well, you’ll have to learn. They have adult swimming classes at the recreation center.” “That’s all right.” “Oh, come on. You have to learn how to swim. How am I going to teach you how to surf if you can’t swim?” “I don’t want to learn how to surf!” I exclaimed. “I have no desire to ever go in the ocean. I have managed not to set foot in the ocean as long as I’ve lived here, even though every summer my whole family drags me to the beach and I sit there and watch my cousins swim like friggin dolphins all over the place, and it’s the hottest and most miserable few hours of my life.” Andrew sighed. “If it’s so miserable, then why don’t you go in the ocean? You won’t drown if you don’t go out very far.” “You want to hear about my horribly traumatic experience at the beach when I was little?” “Sure. We’ve got time. Matthews probably forgot how to get back to the school.” “Well, when I was four, my mom and my dad and I went to a beach in Florida for the weekend. My dad was going to teach me to swim. We were out in the water and my mom was watching from the towel. Dad was holding me above the water and I was kicking my legs and he kept saying I was doing really well and then suddenly I felt this horrible burning pain in my right foot. It was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life. I started screaming and looked at my foot and saw this huge purplish blob by it…” “You mean a jellyfish?” “It was not just a little jellyfish,” I protested. “I think it was one of those Portuguese things.” “You mean a man of war?” “Yes.” “I really doubt that. I don’t think there are any on the east coast.” “It was!” I exclaimed. “You weren’t there, were you? It’s my traumatic experience, and I say it was the most poisonous kind of jellyfish that exists.” “Okay, okay. It was a man of war.” “I started screaming and closed my eyes and I just saw blurry red and felt really dizzy. My dad ran out of the water with me and my mom and a lifeguard met him and my mom started crying and yelling at my dad that he shouldn’t have taken me there and that just made it worse. They took me to the hospital and the doctors wanted to give me a bunch of shots in my foot, but I was still so upset that they had to hold me down. After that my foot just went numb, but it was swollen up so big I couldn’t get my sandal on and my parents decided to leave early and they fought the whole way home.” “And that’s why you don’t go in the ocean now?” “Yes.” “Okay, even if it was a man of war that stung you, I promise you we don’t have them here. It’s too far north.” “There are sharks, though.” “They don’t bother anyone. I’ve never even seen one.” “What about that one that killed that kid two years ago? That was like three miles from here!” “That was a bull shark, and it was really warm that summer,” Andrew reasoned. “They usually don’t come that far north.” “Just like man of wars don’t come this far north?” “All we have around here usually are sand sharks and little ones like that. Besides, it was one person out of how many hundreds of thousands came that summer and weren’t bit? My friends and I go surfing almost every day in the summer and the worst thing that’s ever happened to any of us is being pinched by a crab.” “Oh, that’s pleasant,” I said sarcastically. Andrew sighed. “Tell you what. We’ll start you swimming in a pool this summer and work our way up to the beach.” “Fine,” I agreed, although I was still a little bit nervous. People drowned in pools every summer around here, too. “So you’re from Georgia?” he asked then. “Yeah. I lived there until I was thirteen.” “How come you moved here then?” I told him all about my parents’ divorce and not getting along with my mom, and about my family, leaving out any parts that had to do with diapers. Mr. Matthews came in then and looked at us in surprise. “Oh. Sorry I’m late. I thought you would be in the orchestra room.” “No, this is where you said to meet,” I reminded him. He still looked confused. “Oh. So I did. Well, how’s the practicing coming?” “Good,” we said. “Why don’t we start working on ‘Come what May?’” We worked on that one song for over an hour. It wasn’t that hard of a song, but my voice sounded really shaky on a part near the end when I had some high notes. Part of the problem was that the notes were a little higher than I was used to, though not out of my range, but mainly it was because I was distracted. I’d finished my entire bottle of water pretty early on. I’d almost forgotten I was wearing a diaper, until I realized I had to pee. Peeing again in the diaper was out of the question. It was pretty soaked from earlier. In fact, it was getting pretty uncomfortable, and I was worried it smelled, too. I tried to stand as far apart from Andrew as possible, although we were supposed to be standing close together and holding hands. At the end of the song, Andrew was supposed to take me in his arms and kiss me on the lips, and I kept pulling away. “Danielle, you look completely disinterested in Andrew,” Mr. Matthews said at one point. “He’s supposed to be the love of your life by this point. You want him to kiss you.” “I don’t bite, I promise,” Andrew assured me with a smile. Fortunately, he seemed to think the reason I didn’t want him to kiss me was because I had a boyfriend. Actually, I just didn’t want him to notice that I smelled like pee. I didn’t mind being kissed. It wasn’t every day I had the opportunity to be kissed by a rather good-looking guy who wasn’t my boyfriend and pass it off as acting. My friends would be jealous. Finally Mr. Matthews said “Okay, let’s go through it one more time, and then you can go.” I managed not to mess up any of the notes, and I stood close enough to Andrew to satisfy Mr. Matthews. At the end of the song, Andrew kissed me gently. I stood there for a minute, thinking he must use chapstick to get his lips that soft. I’d better start using some, and I’d have to make sure to wear smudge-proof lipstick on concert night… “Danielle? We can go now.” Andrew interrupted my thoughts. “Do you want a ride?” I did, but I had to pee really badly by now. If he gave me a ride, I’d get home sooner, but what if I couldn’t hold it even that long and my diaper leaked in his car? That was something I couldn’t risk. Andrew was a cool guy and I was hoping we’d be friends even after the concert, but peeing in his car would definitely reduce the chances. “No thanks,” I said. “I need the exercise.” “No you don’t,” he replied, smiling. “Well, I like walking.” He shrugged. “Suit yourself. See you Thursday.” “Bye.” I left the school as quickly as I could, although walking fast made me have to pee worse. I took the fastest way home, which also avoided most of the roads and gave me a little privacy. I had to pee so bad. I wanted to hold my crotch like a little kid but I wasn’t sure I had enough privacy to do that. After I’d been walking about ten minutes, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I stopped, crossed my legs, held my crotch and did all of the traditional “I gotta pee” dances of a three-year-old. “Just a two-minute walk alongside this nice little pond here, and then I just have that short stretch of sidewalk left…” I told myself. Too late. I knew I wasn’t going to make it before I started peeing. “Ahh…shit,” I said, at the same time smiling with relief. The diaper wasn’t going to hold it. I felt it going down my legs. Wearing a skirt was definitely a good idea. At least there would be no big wet spot around the diaper. It stung my thighs a little bit though. I saw a dog standing up against a fence watching me. “Hey, don’t give me that look,” I said. “You do this all the time.” I walked the rest of the way home. I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my family, who would inevitably pose several detours on my way to the bathroom. There was never any hope of privacy if I wanted to do something I couldn’t do strictly inside my bedroom. Plus I smelled like pee worse than I had before, and my diaper was making squishing sounds. I tried to come in the front door as quietly as possible. The silence of a still house greeted me. It would certainly be a first if nobody was home when I didn’t want them to be. I hustled up the stairs and grabbed some clean clothes before anyone could come popping out from somewhere and start pestering me. After changing, I sealed the diaper up in one of the plastic bags I kept in my room for such occasions and left it there while I went to figure out where everyone was. I found a note on the kitchen counter: Danielle – We’re at Jessica’s having dinner. Come on over when you get this. Jenny I sighed with relief that I’d gotten away with everything and went to go throw away the diaper. |