The Road Trip

Chapter 34
The Road Trip, Part 34

Part 34

Before I could push for a more detailed explanation or, better yet, find a way to get our aunt on my side like I came down to achieve in the first place, Kate was barging in and making everything difficult. Like usual.

“We’re in the kitchen!” Aunt Miranda called out in response to Kate’s question.

“Coming!”

What could I even do?! I couldn’t blurt out that I needed help; not when Kate was now within earshot and would no doubt find a way to twist my words. Besides, it was still difficult to think through how much of this was Kate’s fault vs. my own. There was a lot I could have done to prevent both the literal and metaphorical mess I was in. And yet, in retrospect, most of my own choices led to my current situation.

But I had to say something, right? I had to try! “Aunt Miranda, I don’t want to be twelve!” I said. It was the easiest way to express myself without knowing the whole story and without getting into all the complicated details about why I was sporting pigtails and embarrassingly immature shortalls. 

“Oh good, you’re getting into character!” Kate exclaimed. Turning the corner with a friendly smile on her face, she walked right up to me and draped her arm over my shoulder, “I mean, let’s be honest. Like, every 6th grader just wants to grow up and fast forward to high school. But you can’t just skip past all the awkward years, Annie! Besides, you made a commitment. This is an all weekend thing, remember? That was the deal!”

“No, that-” I caught myself, blushing deeply when I realized what I was about to say. Only a few minutes ago, I had reluctantly agreed to wear pull-ups all weekend. That didn’t mean I had signed up to be ‘twelve’ for the same time frame, but did it make a difference? Either way, I was on the defensive, and mentioning my current underwear predicament to our aunt meant that our parents would probably hear about it sooner or later. Likely sooner. 

“Yes, Annie?” Kate sweetly asked, “Why don’t you show Aunt Miranda your smile, and tell her how old you are?”

Even without a pointed look or a subtle reminder of what she had on me at the moment, I felt compelled to answer Kate the ‘correct’ way. She had harped on my attitude enough upstairs, and the girly attitude was ever so slowly getting more natural through repetition. “I’m twelve years old!” I said, with a light giggle, “Like, for the whole weekend!” Happy, Kate . . .?

Apparently, so. At least, her smile was a lot bigger than mine as she gave my shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Isn’t she SO cute?” Kate asked.

“Definitely,” Aunt Miranda nodded, “Your sister is quite the impressive actress.”

“She is, isn’t she? Maybe you should join Fraser’s drama club when you start there this fall. Wouldn’t that be fun, Annie?”

“Mm hmm! Super fun,” I replied.

Because in this false reality, I didn’t get the dignity of even attending the middle school I had left years ago. Instead, I was a rising 6th grader. Great. 

Kate’s arrival pretty much killed any chances I had of sorting this out with our aunt. I had already verbally signed up for more pull-ups in the name of avoiding humiliation, and now I was doing the same thing with my silence. By not directly denying Kate’s story about this being some kind of experiment, I was more or less allowing it to continue. There were probably better options, and yet I felt so limited.

My sister walked me out of the kitchen a minute or two later, with a quiet reminder about what was on the line as we made our way to the garage. She had me simply stand there and smile while she looked around the back corner. “Found it!” she exclaimed. Pulling something out of a cluttered mess of boxes and bins, my eyes widened when she lifted it from the makeshift storage area. A fucking carseat. “Luna said they keep it around for when they babysit and need to leave the house or whatever.” 

“I don’t need that, Kate!” I snapped. At the last second, I was able to contort my face into the fake expression that was turning into my ‘home base’ in terms of how I presented myself to her and the twins. Because of it, my protest likely lost a good bit of its strength as Kate walked back over, but I persisted nonetheless with the ‘younger sister’ attitude. “Like, I’m tall enough, I mean. That’s, like, so extra!”

“Better safe than sorry, Annie!” Kate winked, “Besides, the laws here are different state to state. I’d hate for our cousins to get in trouble because of you. They just got their driver’s licenses, remember?”

“But, like-”

“No buts, little sis! Wait right there. Actually, how old are you?”

“I’m twelve years old!” I responded, with a reflexive giggle.

“That’s a good girl,” Kate smirked, “Now wait right there, okay?” I did as I was told, awkwardly shifting my weight from foot to foot and shivering a bit from the coolness of the garage. Taking her sweet time, either on purpose to make me uncomfortable or maybe because it had been a while since Kate had to figure one of these things out, she finally stepped back from the car and gestured to the carseat. “Done! Get in, Annie. Luna and Lilah are changing; they’ll be down any second.”

As in, I could choose between already being in the carseat when they joined us, or deal with the embarrassment of getting into it while they watched. Of course, Kate wasn’t going to make it easy. The moment I began climbing into the car, I felt her hands on me. Pushing and manhandling my body this way and that, she ‘helped’ me into the car and manipulated my body so I was jarringly pivoted forward by her hands and then pulled backwards onto the seat. “Kate, don’t-” I began saying, but it was too late. With the help of gravity and my sister’s harsh tugging, I landed squarely on the mess that had caused a disgusting sag of the pull-ups pretty much the whole time I was on my feet. The awful mess simultaneously spread all over my rear and also pushed UP into me between my cheeks thanks to how I had fallen onto it. Gasping and slightly whimpering before I could cut off the pathetic sound, I immediately tried to adjust and somehow make things more comfortable beneath me. If that was even possible.

“Ah, ah!” Kate snapped. She stepped forward and leaned into the car, placing both of her hands on my shoulders. Her face ended up inches from mine, and she looked me right in the eyes. “It’s your fault you’re wearing shitty pull-ups, Annie. Remember that. You couldn’t wait all of thirty minutes in the car, and you clearly used my little joke as an excuse to finish the job. Now you’re going to have to deal with the consequences of your actions.”

I blushed deeply at the accusation. She was leaving so much out! Like the fact that I chugged all that water, and how the pacifier rule meant that I couldn’t express how badly I needed to go. And Kate had seemed so serious when she threatened to tell our parents if I didn’t do . . . that. This wasn’t me. It wasn’t! It was her. “Kate-”

“Hush, little Annie,” she said. Placing a finger on my lips, and keeping her other hand firmly on my shoulder, she kept the intense eye contact up. “Did you wet your pull-ups? Yes, or no?”

Nervously glancing away, I simply nodded my head. This wasn’t fair, making it a yes or no question, but I was too caught off guard by the gross sensations in the bulky underwear and Kate’s confrontation at the same time. 

“And you did more than that in your pull-ups, didn’t you?”

Again, I nodded. 

“That’s what I thought. So, whose fault is it, Annie?” she took her finger away from my lips. 

I knew what I wanted to say. It was Kate’s fault. EVERYTHING was her fault. The pull-up dare in the first place, the lemonade, the pacifier, the water. Both ‘accidents’ in the car and everything that had pushed me into the tween role I had been playing since we arrived. But that same doubt from before was creeping in–how I was the older girl, the more mature girl, and yet I had allowed all of this to happen to myself. And then, on top of that, Kate was a bit intimidating at the moment, and I felt a little too scared to point the finger at her.

So, making yet another bad choice in a never ending string of bad choices, I muttered, “Mine . . .”

“What was that, Annie?” Kate asked, “And don’t forget to smile, little sis.”