The Weekend Visit, Part 24

Objectively, my situation was better.

I was wearing clean underwear, and everything else was the same. That was hardly a win, however, when the cost of changing out of the dirty padding meant that Kate was more convinced than ever that she was right about keeping me diapered 24/7 for the foreseeable future. No excuse in the world would explain the mess I was recently walking around in, which meant the only way forward was to stop having accidents long enough for her to take me seriously when I said that panties were just fine.

And a diaper rash? I wish she had let me inspect the damage. The knowing yet not knowing made it so much worse, and I was getting a little bit itchy down there just thinking about it.

Stuck holding Kate’s hand all the way back to the lingerie shop, holding the pacifier in my mouth all the while and ‘sucking’ it whenever I had to shift it in order to swallow, I was caught off guard when she walked us right past the lingerie shop. “The twins got tired of waiting,” she said. Holding up her phone to clue me in to the fact that she must have gotten a text at some point and merely said nothing about it until now, she took us towards the nearest escalator. “They’re finding us a place to eat.”

I still wasn’t ready to face Luna and Lilah. Now that they knew about the diapers, I had very little hope of convincing them that I was more mature than I looked. The immature way Kate had me speaking was demeaning enough, but I wasn’t sure how to proceed after Kate partially blabbed about our secret. The key word being ‘partially,’ of course, as our cousins didn’t know that it was a lot more than simply bedwetting and the occasional daytime accident. The latter was bad enough, especially since they had been told this had been a problem for weeks now, but I don’t know what I’d do if they learned just how often I had used my diapers over the last couple days.

Honestly, I was actually considering the idea of staying ‘twelve’ for the whole weekend at this point. Kate was probably aiming for that to happen anyway, and now this had gone way too far for me to try and pass it off as an elaborate joke. Or experiment, as our aunt believed it was. I would almost be better off resetting my age back home, and hope that the months between now and the next family gathering would give me enough time to figure out how to explain to our cousins why I was actually older than I had been portrayed as during this visit. And, of course, hope that they didn’t gossip about me afterwards.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have committed to the majority of what I was now stuck putting up with. Only then, I hadn’t known that my sister would lean so heavily into the tween thing. I was just trying to save face and keep everyone from finding out about the accident I had in the car. Now things had snowballed too much, and I was in too deep to push back on literally anything Kate threw at me.

We stopped at the edge of the food court. Kate gave my hand a squeeze and told me to wait, then exchanged a few texts with whichever one of the girls she was texting. Maybe it was both. Either way, I wasn’t involved. My phone was still back at the house, wherever Kate had put it after the initial drive.

“Oh! There they are.” Abruptly walking forward, causing me to stumble as she roughly pulled me along before I was ready, Kate gave a wave to the identical girls seated halfway down the section of tables between all the dining options.

When we approached the table, Luna beckoned us over. “Perfect timing! Your food just got here a second ago. If you want to get something else, we won’t be offended. This was a total guess.”

It was easy to see which meal was for which girl. One spot had a salad that looked more or less the same as what our cousins were a few bites into, as well as a bottled smoothie, and the other had a kids’ meal from the nearest fast food place. Lilah must have seen the look on my face, as she piped up, “I know you’re older than this,” she said, gesturing to the greasy box with colorful designs on the side, “But it’s actually cheaper than most of the normal meals.”

“Burger, fries, and fruit!” Luna said, “For only $5 of $6. We got you a water, too, although we can get a soda or something else from the place with the shortest line if you want.”

“Water is fine,” Kate answered for me, “Little Annie here has been trying to get better about hydrating. It was so nice of you to buy us lunch! What do you say, sis?”

The correct response to the patronizing question was ‘thank you.’ With the pacifier still in my mouth, I just gave her a hesitant look. I already had quite the mountain to climb after that mortifying obstacle course accident. Regardless of whether or not Kate was currently trying to trick me into breaking the pacifier rules she had insisted on time and time again, it felt better to play it safe.

“Oh, right. I almost forgot,” Kate chuckled, “Diaper girl and I settled on a fun rule for her penalty. She’s not allowed to talk when her pacifier is in, and she’s not allowed to take it out herself. That being said, I suppose her hour is about up at this point.” She let go of my hand and proceeded to pull the pacifier out of my mouth. “There you go, Annie. I’ll be holding onto this for safekeeping. We can always do a similar penalty later if you bail out on another activity. Now, you were going to say something?”

Stubbornly staying quiet wasn’t going to get me anywhere, plus I was aware that I had a lot of catch-up to do where filler words were concerned thanks to the prolonged time spent subjected to the pacifier. “Like, thank you for lunch,” I awkwardly muttered. There was no way to make it sound anything but how Kate had set it up–a younger sister being polite because she had been told to be polite.

“You’re very welcome,” Lilah said, “Come on, sit down. Your food is going to get cold if you wait much longer!”

Not really a problem for Kate, whose salad and drink would be just fine for a while in terms of temperature. I wasn’t even that hungry, but it would be rude to turn away the meal our cousins bought for us. So I reluctantly took my seat and started pulling out the items from the thin, cardboard box. When was the last time I had fast food? I had a fairly healthy diet most of the time, save for maybe some snacking at college. A cheap meal from the mall, warm or not, wasn’t particularly appetizing.

Still, I had to make a dent. The bowl of fruit was all I really wanted, but I started with a few fries before proceeding to unwrap the burger.

With the recent diapering that had been preceded by our cousins learning about my current underwear situation, I was worried that the first thing to come up would be more questions about all that. Instead, the other three girls just started talking about what classes they were all taking in autumn, what majors they were considering, and eventually shifted to more trivial topics like what shows they were currently watching. For the most part, I was a third wheel to the three girls that were all the same age compared to me, which was more exaggerated when they thought I was six years younger rather than one year older. Kate would occasionally rope me into the conversation, usually to reference one of my middle school classes or ask me about that teen TV series I was ‘always watching.’ I did my best to smile and bullshit my way through it; she was the one who still babysat every now and then for some spare spending money, so she would know way more about any given show produced for younger girls than I would.

All the while, there was the fact that clean diapers were still diapers. I still wasn’t used to sitting on the thick padding, and basically every little movement drew my attention to the embarrassing underwear. A day or two wasn’t nearly enough to get accustomed to something like that.

By the time they were done with everything, I had only eaten about half my meal. “Not hungry, Annie?” Kate asked, “You’re a growing girl! If you want to look like me by the time you’re my age, you’ll have to do more than just pick at your food.”

Internally, I was scowling. We both knew I was the older sister, and would probably never catch up to her height and curves. Keeping up the immature act on the outside, I awkwardly giggled and said, “Umm, I had, like, a big breakfast.” It wasn’t even a lie. Aside from my distaste for the meal before me, we ate pretty recently back at our cousins’ house.

Kate sighed, “So wasteful. Whatever. What’s next?!”

“Hmm, do you have any favorite stores?” Luna asked, “Or anything you’ve been meaning to shop for?” She was mostly asking Kate, but made the effort to glance my way as well.

I started thinking of possible ideas, as surely whatever I came up with would be better than anything that Kate did. However, I wanted to make sure that something I suggested didn’t have the potential to backfire on me, as so many other things had recently.

Thanks to my hesitation and self doubt, Kate ended up speaking up first. “Well, isn’t the arcade pretty close? I bet Annie would have fun there! Plus that will give me time to look at the map.”

“Good idea! So efficient,” Lilah said, “How about it, Annie? They have all kinds of games. It’s not just for boys, either. We used to go there all the time.”

A single look from Kate was all it took. “Like, okay!” I smiled, “I’m in.”