Sugarplum 14

Chapter 1
Admire

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Chapter Description: Valentine's Day... and a strange one at that.

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Sugarplum 14

Admire

Second grade passed quickly without much of a thought. Vern would do all of his homework in 3 minutes and then help his friends complete theirs, which they were very thankful for. Classes came and went, and the Diaper Dolls spent time together regularly.

Chelsea didn’t know how Vern was able to help her relationship with her mother, but she wasn’t complaining. Vivian, Chelsea’s mother had put all of her effort into giving up drinking but was finally able to beat her addiction as much as she could, and was now looking at her daughter in a new light. Though she previously hated her daughter and verbally abused her for needing diapers, thanks to the dream which Carrie had induced Vivian now not only didn’t mind of Chelsea’s interests in being a baby, but indulged her. By the beginning of summer, Chelsea’s room was outfitted with nearly as many babyish things as Vern’s room. Chelsea’s father didn’t really mind, as he was an understanding man, and preferred his wife to connect with his daughter with something as abnormal as being a baby than cast his daughter away. It seemed as though the dream Vivian had experienced reminded her of her own childhood and how she wishes she could be a baby forever to have the affection of her own mother. She also realized how damaging it could be for a young girl to have a parent who is so abusive.

Summer seemed to vanish as quickly as hit had come, and now the girls were in third grade. Once again, Vern was paired with Jill in the class much to their delight, and Anna was coupled with Chelsea in the classroom next door. Vern wasn’t sorry to see the back of Ms. Huber. By the end of the school year Ms. Huber had developed a slight vendetta with Vern, not approving of Vern and Anna’s interest in diapers and baby clothes. She also could not manage to catch Vern cheating, as the people he sat next to didn’t understand the work presented to them. She even held Vern for a few minutes after classes and mildly interrogated him about how he was able to do the work correctly so quickly.

“I just know what I’m doing.” was Vern’s usual response.

Vern and the girls spent as much time as they could together. They went to the park, played hide and seek in each other’s houses, played dress-up (which wasn?t much of a game, since it consisted of them making themselves look and act even more babyish if possible), they played house in which they would each take turns being mommy, and all manner of little girl games. The holidays passed without problems. Over the past two Christmases, Vern received from Carrie a variety of baby clothes in her size, a new high chair, bonnets, onesies, booties, pacifiers, rattles and other baby toys, a new blankie, a large stroller, teddy bears, Barbie dolls, a new make-up kit, and lots and lots of diapers. Vern loved all of the gifts, though he was unsure Carrie could detect his true level of elation at receiving them.

One set of gifts which Vern had mixed feeling about was a few pairs of jeans, and a couple T-shirts. Carrie explained that her “big baby girl” might need to use them sometimes like in instances when she had to take “her Sugarplum” to the doctor and things of that sort. The few previous times, Vern?s doctor gave Carrie and Vern both a cocked eyebrow at Vern?s appearance.

That winter was exceptionally cold, and Vern needed to wear puffy snow pants and jackets (usually colored light pink or blue) to school. Though Vern was still fairly cold, he and his three friends relished in the fact that the four of them were kept warm by the soft insulation of their puffy diapers. The only problem here was having to sit in class with a wet diaper, as Vern and the others found that getting out of and into their puffy snow pants was difficult without the help of their parents, especially with diapers on.

For some reason Vern was sensing a different buzz in the air as February rolled around. It seemed like everyone was whispering or giggling to each other. On the days where Vern and his friends kept their babyish attire to a minimum and they were welcomed to sit at the lunch tables with the rest of the girls in their class (Vern and the rest were always friendly to the other students and not many people found a problem with their “Diaper Doll“ ways) Vern would notice the girls whispering and gossiping with their hands shielding their mouths, and every so often he would hear a boy?s name sprinkled into the conversation. Vern knew that the fine line between “boys are icky“ and “girls are weird“ was becoming somewhat obscured, and he remembered when he was this age, when he and his guy friends would talk embarrassedly about girls they “kinda-sorta“ liked, back when he didn?t wear pink and had pigtails a billion years ago.

All the same, the focus of his classmates’ conversation became more and more focused on the members of their classmates who weren’t supposed to wear dresses. Vern had never had this sort of conversation before, at least not with the group of people he used to think was weird.

“How could you like him?!” a girl would say.

“He’s been your friend forever! That’s weird.” another would add in.

“He’s really sweet. He gets all blushy when I talk to him sometimes.” the girl would say in her own defense. The conversations usually followed this pattern; someone would comment on someone else’s state of having a crush, another person would comment, and the girl being talked about would try to defend herself from being in such an awkward situation.

Girls are so silly, Vern thought to himself as he nibbled at his chicken fingers, they take this too seriously at this age. He steadily avoided these conversations whenever they arrived, but this day he wasn’t so lucky. He and Jill were heavily in conversation about different colored hair-ties when Vern’s ears picked up the sound of, “Well Veronica doesn’t need to worry about it. The boys won’t like a girl who is still in diapers.”

Vern coughed through his chocolate milk.

“What are you talking about?” Vern said quickly.

“Valentine’s day,” said a skinny girl in his class with the face like a mouse, “We are trying to guess who will get the most cards this year.”

Oh... Valentine’s day. Vern realized that it was quickly approaching from the horizon. Every year, each class would have its students exchange small little valentines day cards which the students got their parents to buy for them. Last year was Vern’s first experience of this, and so he didn’t know much about it. He even forgot to fill each little card out with the usual “To ____, From Veronica” written on the back. But now, the topic was on him for some reason.

“Oh yeah. Valentine’s day.” Vern said. “Yeah, I don’t like Valentine’s day too much.”

The other girls looked a little surprised. “You mean you don’t like boys giving you cards and candy and stuff?” one of them asked. Vern’s eyebrows shot up.

“Uh... you mean boys have already given you chocolate and stuff?” he couldn’t believe that at such a young age, boys and girls already started to take this whole “I like you, Do you like me?” thing seriously. “You--we?re only in third grade.”

“So?” one girl asked with a laugh. “My sister?s older than me and she says that boys don?t have cooties.” this proposed a general increase in people participating in the conversation. Things like “yes they do!” and “no they don?t!” were being tossed across the table and for the moment Vern thought he had dodged this particular bullet. But soon, his classmates dragged him back into the fray.

“So we don’t think you’ll get a lot of cards this year. A lot of the boys think you’re icky cause you’re still a baby.”

“She’s not a baby!” said a small girl who Vern had spoken to maybe once, “she just dresses like one.”

“But don’t you like to pretend to be a baby too?” said the first girl.

“Sure.” said Vern.

“Why? Boys don’t like that.”

“Neither do girls.”

“I know, but then boys won’t give you Valentine’s day cards.”

“So? I just throw them away when I get home.”

A lot of the girls looked a little strange or violated, and many of them looked as though they had just swallowed a lemon. “WHY?!” a bunch of them asked.

“I dunno.”

“Don’t you like boys?” asked a girl with sandy-brown hair suddenly.

Vern was caught off guard. Of course he didn’t. He might have a girl’s body and wear girl’s clothes, but as far as he was concerned, he was still interested in girls. But he had been a little girl for a while, and hadn’t even thought about anything regarding sex or even a relationship. Unbeknownst to him, his physical age and gender had distracted his true mental process, and he was literally too young to care or think about boys. Not that he would.

Vern would have preferred to have a more casual answer than, “NO!”, but he was distracted too greatly by the question, that he was thrown off balance.

“Huh?” said some of the girls. “You don’t like boys?”

But Vern collected himself, and he realized that if he spoke the truth and said “no”, then the girls would think he was “weird”. But if he said “yes”, then he would end up feeling more awkward than ever. After a split second?s thought he found his answer.

“No I don?t, I mean not yet at least. We’re only in third grade. It’s too early to talk about boys like this.” the words felt so alien to him as they passed from his lips. At that moment he felt more aware of his own female body than he could remember.

“Well my sister says that we all get to like boys sometime. She’s 17.”

“Well, your sister’s a dumb-head.” input a girl who agreed with Vern’s apparent position. After a short argument, the topic was once again thrown in Vern’s direction.

“But we don’t think you or Jill are gonna get a lot of cards, because you’re still babies, and boys don?t like babies.”

Whatever, thought Vern, I could care less if boys like me because I don’t like them, and he and went back to eating his lunch and talking to Jill as soon as he could.

Sooner than anticipated it was Valentine’s day, and Vern had asked Carrie to buy him a package of small Valentine’s Day cards for him so he had something to give this year. He picked out a box of 30 cards, each with a picture of a teddy bear in a diaper holding a bow and arrow on the front. He laughed at how cute the baby cupid looked, and thought it would work well to get the boys in the class to not like him even more. The class sectioned off it?s usual window of time to allow the children to walk around the room and place a card onto everyone?s desk. As Vern expected, Not many cards found their way to his desk, but he didn?t mind. Jill didn?t receive many either. In fact, she received less than Vern, but she didn?t mind. She was starting to get used to people not being too fond of her.

Vern, Jill, Anna, and Chelsea had decided to wear their most girlish, most pink, most babyish clothes to school, and Vern even went to the extent of putting blush on his cheeks and sucking on a cherry lollipop. He was relishing in their ability to stun their fellow classmates even now after 2 years of them all knowing Vern and the rest as “the girls who are still babies”.

Either way, the cards were exchanged, the teacher gave them each a few pieces of candy, and the class was glad to experience a relatively easy day at school.

Vern arrived home later in the day. He had asked Jill if she wanted to come over, and not many words were exchanged before Jill said yes. After throwing the bag of valentine’s day cards he received into the crib not caring to look at them, and changing into more comfortable clothes, Vern heard the doorbell ring, and he trotted off to allow Jill to enter his house. In greeting his friend at the door, he noticed that Jill’s lips were incredibly red, almost as brightly red as her crimson hair, for a moment he thought she had applied deeply noticeable lipstick before arriving, but only a moment passed before he noticed that she was sucking on a heart-shaped lollipop, which Jill popped from her mouth before saying, “Hey Veronica” and giving Vern a hug.

Vern and Jill waddled their heavily diapered bottoms to Vern’s pink room, and began a day of playing. A few hours later the two little girls were once again coloring in coloring books on the living room floor while cartoons played on the television. They chatted about their usual things, but soon the conversation drifted once more towards Valentine’s day.

“So why don’t you like Valentine’s Day?” Jill asked Vern again.

“I dunno. I just think it’s silly.”

“Why?”

“I told you, I dunno.”

“But you like boys, right?”

As Vern had done at lunch days prior, he was caught off guard. He felt funny answering either way. If he said “No”, then Jill might consider him weird (although he didn?t think Jill as old enough to grasp the concept of homosexuality), and if he said “Yes”, he would need to wash his own mouth out with soap for just speaking the word, even though he was only saying “yes” to make Jill think he was normal. A moment or two passed before Vern swallowed his pride and mumbled, “... yyyyes... I do like boys...” He grimaced to himself.

“OK, just making sure.” said Jill with a smile. But a few seconds later, Vern was caught off guard once again when Jill asked, “Do you like anyone in our class?”

“No!” Vern said loudly at once, slightly at odds with his previous statement.

“Who do you like?”

“Nobody!”

“Do any boys like you?”

Vern’s mind raced with images of boys, distracting him, and he stumbled in saying, “No-I-dunno-I-hope-not.”

Before Vern could say any more in his defense, Jill popped to her feet and announced, “I wanna go see if any boys in our class likes you.” And she trotted off down the hall.

“Wha-- how??” said Vern, not getting up to join her. A moment passed and Jill came back into the living room carrying Vern’s small bag of cards given to him by his classmates.

Before Vern could protest, the bag was dumped on the living room floor and the cards flew into a heap in front of Vern’s eyes. Through Vern?s mumbled and half-finished questions, Jill looked at each card, and because nothing Vern would say was stopping Jill?s actions, he ignored her and went back to coloring his picture of Cinderella. Then very soon, Jill stopped, and held out a card under Vern?s distracted nose.

“Look at this, Veronica.” she snickered with a little grin.

Grudgingly, Vern took the card. It was clearly from a boy. It was dark blue, and wasn’t romantically designed for a girl, even for a third grader. It had pictures of boy-centric toys on it, and the back held a picture of a racecar with the words “It’s Valentine’s Day, and Flower are Vrooming!” imprinted underneath.

Scribbled under the picture and the words were untidily written words as if the person who wrote them was very nervous about doing so.

I think your are really cute and pretty as a baby in your diapers. Happy Valentine’s Day”

There was no name to identify who had given it to him, and instead, where the name should have been written, there was a hand-drawn flower with a smile at its center. It was well drawn too, and for a moment Vern was distracted by the artistic talent of whoever had given it to him.

Unfortunately, seeing as how Vern hadn’t received many cards in comparison to everyone else in the class, there wasn’t much hope of identifying the card-giver due to process of elimination. Jill was sniggering to herself and saying something about the other girls being stupid for saying that no boys liked Vern for being a baby, but Vern didn’t hear her very well. Blood was pounding against his eardrums. As disgusted as he was for being told he was liked by another boy, as horribly strange the thought of eventually dating a boy seemed to him, as much as he wanted to rip up the card into thousands of little pieces, he lay there on the living room floor reading the card over and over.

He cursed himself silently as he felt his cheeks get hot in a perfectly girlish blush...

To Be Continued

From this point on, I?ll be telling each chapter of the story quite rapidly, as I plan to follow Vern?s growth through the story. Thanks for reading!

(Still yet more to come soon. Leave one or multiple comments. I love reading them.)

(these stories are inspired by the short story Sugarplum written by filthymind at the ARArchive)

 

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