Upstream

Chapter 4
Placement

Chapter Description: A confident Vanessa interviews to join a slightly different school. But is she up to the task?

Vanessa hadn’t been so excited all year.

She shimmied and twirled, basking in the flexibility of her new padding, and then lifted the front of her overalls so that she could look at herself one more time in the mirror.

“All the kids at kindergarten are gonna be so jealous of my pullups,” she began, as her mother entered the room, “I bet they’re all a bunch of dumb diaper-wearing babies, probably never even sawed one of these before!”

“Oh, honey…” her mother tried to interject.

“I wonder how long it’s gonna take me to become their queen,” the girl rambled on, “a minute? A second? What’s faster than a second? A super-second? Ugh, I can’t wait to show them who’s boss.”

“Honey,” Vanessa’s mother finally stopped the girl, “let’s remember to play nice, now. And I got you those pullups to help you for your interview today, but if you’re going to keep wearing them, you need to let me know when you have to use the potty, okay? Do you think you can do that for me?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” the girl rolled her eyes.

Her mother sighed. “You say that, but from the looks of it…” she said, patting the front of Vanessa’s training pants, “you’re soaked.”

The girl’s face reddened, and she coiled up into what her mother termed her grumpy pose.

“Well, how was I supposed to know that!?” she exclaimed.

The girl would maintain her crossed arms and pout as her mother tore off her sopping trainers and began pulling on a fresh pair.

“Prolly doesn’t matter anyway,” she grumbled, “not like they’re gonna make me go ta school with those dumb babies. I’m just gonna ace today and then they’ll send me up to the first grade and then the second grade…”

“And what comes after that?” her mother asked, in the voice of a kindergarten teacher.

The girl blinked a few times, then shrugged. “I dunno, what?”

“Well, that would be third grade,” the mother chuckled, “might be good to know that for today.”

Vanessa rolled her eyes again. “Yeah, whatever.”

The girl’s eagerness only built as she entered the elementary complex, reluctantly holding her mother’s hand. There was her old high school in the distance, where she had ruled so gloriously until this year’s sudden turn. There were the third and fourth- grade classrooms, where she had honed her craft of toying with the other children. There were the first- and second- grade rooms, which brought back memories of first imposing her will in the playground. And finally, in the very back of the building, there was the designated kindergarten, where a small crowd had gathered to await her arrival.

As she walked in, Vanessa observed that the desks had been stacked up towards the sides of the room, leaving a wide patch of open carpet in the center. Her friend Fiona was in the corner, giving the girl a wide smile and a thumbs up while holding a phone out in her other hand. A handful of teacher’s aides were standing around, some of whom the girl recognized as old classmates. And there was a cheery-looking twenty-something, with a long, blonde ponytail, sitting at the teacher’s desk.

“Hello! I’m Ms. Henderson, the teacher here at the kindergarten. And you must be-”

“I’m wearing pullups!” the girl blurted out, lifting her overalls to show off.

“That’s… lovely, dear,” the teacher said, trying to shake the twinge of discomfort from her voice, “now I understand that you were at the high school last year?”

“Yuh-huh! I was the popularest in the whole school! But then some weird stuff happened…” Vanessa drifted off.

“And now you’d like to enroll in the kindergarten?”

“Yeah…” Vanessa answered, the energy draining from her voice, “I guess.”

“I think she means that she would love to,” her mother chimed in nervously.

“MOM!” The girl’s face flushed red again.

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” the teacher assured them, “we just want to find what level best suits Vanessa.

“With that in mind,” the woman continued, “we want to just make sure you’re kindergarten-ready. Is it alright if we ask you a few questions?”

“Okay,” Vanessa rolled her eyes, “fine.”

“Now then, no need to be grumpy,” Ms. Henderson began, her kindergarten-teacher demeanor coming into view, “why don’t you take a seat on the rug? Just right in the middle of our space here.

“Yes, right there,” she pointed, “right on your butt. Can you show me your best criss-cross applesauce? Hands in front, back straight, face forward.“

Vanessa fuddled around for some time, trying to keep the directions straight, but eventually managed to reach the desired position, taking a cross-legged pose in the center of the room.

"Very good!” the teacher commended, before turning to her aide, “Mr. Thomas, could you please hand Vanessa the shape blocks?”

The man - who Vanessa recognized as a graduate of her old high school, from the class year prior to what used to be hers - did as he was asked, placing a tray of three blocks in front of the girl.

“Can you show me which one the triangle is?”

Shapes. Vanessa remembered them being brought up a few times on the shows she watched, but had never paid much attention when they were. Still, she thought for a few moments before deciding on one she thought was prettiest.

“No, I’m afraid that’s the circle, sweetheart.”

“Not quite. That’s the square.”

“No, I’m sorry, that’s the square again.”

“Oh, I’m sorry… why don’t we try something else?”

Vanessa tossed the block in her hand aside, happy to be done with the exercise.

The teacher tapped her pen on her several times, scratching her head before turning it back up towards the girl. “Vanessa, sweetie, could you count to ten for me?”

“To ten?” Vanessa confirmed, as she tried to think how large ten was, “uhhhh… okay. Umm, one… two…”

The girl paused, looking at the ceiling for several moments. “Third?” she tried, unconvinced by her own answer.

“That’s very close! But not quite there - would you like to try again?” the teacher offered.

“Poopy,” Vanessa muttered under her breath, before losing her train of thought completely.

“Ummm, can I start over please?”

“Of course, dear.”

“Okay okay okay.” The girl puffed her cheeks out and concentrated as hard as she could. “Ummmm… one… two…”

Vanessa stared once more at the ceiling, trying to think what the next number could possibly be. Was it five? No, that didn’t sound right. Third? No, something about that felt off as well. Eleven?

Eleven. The girl giggled to herself at the silly-sounding word. That’s not a number. How did I even come up with that?

“Uhh, sweetie,” the teacher said uneasily, after a few moments of silence, “why don’t you draw us a picture?”

“Ooooh, a picture!” Vanessa’s attention jumped over immediately, “Yeah, I draw the bestest pictures, you’ll see!”

Ms. Henderson forced a chuckle. “That’s lovely, dear. Mr. Thomas, could you?”

The aide collected a thick sheet of paper and a box of crayons from the supply bin and carried it over to the girl on the rug. He had a strain on his face from holding back laughter, but Vanessa hadn’t noticed it at all.

Instead, she was poised downward and hungrily licking her lips, eager to impress with this new activity. Moving quickly, she fixed the sheet of paper in front of her and then poured the box of crayons out onto the floor, grabbing the first black one she saw with such force that she could barely hear the loud rumble that came from her stomach as she did so.

Vanessa clutched the crayon in her fist and began to assemble haphazard shapes on the paper. First, there was a roughly made circle, and then a long line drawn down from it. Next, the girl added two uneven lines jolting out from the bottom of the long stick, and two uneven lines near the top. Finally, she added a makeshift smiley face inside the circle, and several clumsy waves around it to represent her hair. It was her crude self-portrait, but it wasn’t done yet.

The girl tossed aside the black crayon and reached for a yellow one. After pausing for a few breaths, she began to add the final element, a crown for her stick-figure avatar. She started with a misshapen triangle, pointing far up and to the left from the top of the figure’s head. But as she began to make the motion to draw a second triangle, pointing up and to the middle, she was interrupted by a sudden urge.

Vanessa scrunched her face, crayon still tightly in her fist, instinctively pushed her bottom upwards, and grunted. All around, there were gasps of shock and muffled bursts of uncomfortable laughter, as well as an audible “oh dear” from the girl’s mother. Immediately, everyone in the room knew exactly what was happening.

Everyone, that is, except for Vanessa.

****

Vanessa let out a deep sigh as she thought back to that day at the kindergarten. It had taken several weeks for her mother to finally tell her the school’s decision, but when she did, it hit the girl as both a shock and a revelation. Slowly, she began to piece together the mistakes she made, starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, she might have been a little too sure of herself.

So when word arrived that the town preschool would allow Vanessa to join in the coming year, with no preconditions, she made sure not to take the opportunity for granted.

The girl began to watch her educational shows more earnestly, trying to pick up all the lessons that she could. Most would still go well over her head, but bits and pieces stuck. At the very least, their frequent singsong and nursery rhyme elements gave her something to exercise her memory, with “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” quickly becoming a favorite tune.

She also began to pry curiously about the sorts of classmates she could expect to have at the preschool, and her mother reluctantly obliged. Vanessa listened in horror to stories of almost perfectly potty-trained children, capable of counting past ten and reciting their ABC’s, and wondered how she could ever be able to compete with such intellectual heavyweights.

“Just play nice,” her mother would say, “and they’ll play nice with you. Share with them, they’ll share with you, and they’ll help you when you need help. Show them kindness, they’ll be less likely to pick on you, and you’ll have more friends on your side if they do.”

As foreign as the idea seemed at first, it did look to Vanessa like her only real chance to fit in, and so the advice finally began to take.

And now, at last, the day was upon her. After such a shocking exit from the top of the high school heap, after months and months away in infantile isolation, Vanessa was about to start her first day back at school. She tucked in her white shirt, adjusted her Hello Kitty backpack, and tried her best to get her short plaid skirt to cover her much-needed, thick, pink diaper.

But there was one more thing left to do.

“One…”

The girl closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to think back to an episode of Blue’s Clues she had watched the previous day.

“Two…”

Excitement crept in as she imagined impressing her preschool teachers and classmates, proving to them that she truly belonged.

“Three…”

The girl concentrated as hard as she could, sweat beginning to form on her furrowed brow.

“Five.”

Vanessa exhaled and gave a soft fist pump, before opening her eyes and turning them towards her open door.

Briefly, the girl wrinkled her nose, wondering if a new smell in the room had anything to do with the growing feeling at the seat of her pants. But she soon dismissed the thought and strut forward, ready once again to take on the world.