Published: March 20th 2023, 12:00:02 pm
As cute as Doyle was, and as tempting as it was to get a second chance at traveling right next to him, 'alone', Anna knew it wasn't a good idea. She didn't know exactly how much Doyle had been aware of what had happened on the plane, how much Karissa had told him, but he did know she'd peed her pants, anyway, no matter what he'd assumed those pants to be.
If she was going to stick with her story - and she intended to, since she'd made up her mind on what it should be - then, if anything were to happen between them, he would find out about her diapers sooner or later, so perhaps getting it out of the way so early was a good thing... However, this still felt too quick. She wasn't even really used to them yet!
Not to mention the Karissa of it all, the fact that she was going to have to live in the same room with the girl. And Karissa had been very nice to her so far, when she'd had opportunities to not be... And Karissa was so much prettier than her, and clearly miles more mature, so what chance would Anna have against her? Was that just Karissa, or was everyone in this country like that?
"I'll ride in the back," she offered, blushing slightly as she glanced over at Adrian, her seatmate.
Karissa blinked, as if she hadn't considered there was any other option. "Oh," she nodded. "Yeah. Okay."
Anna climbed into the backseat, wincing as her clammy diaper squished beneath her bottom. She probably should have changed - or had Karissa change her again - on the plane, or ducked into the bathroom at the airport to take care of it... It had been easier to forget about it while she was standing up, but now, sitting in it, she had to hope she wasn't going to get a rash from how long she'd been in this thing.
And she had to hope she didn't smell, too, that the scent of ammonia wasn't wafting around her. She'd like to believe she'd have noticed, though there was no guarantee. Her nose could have grown accustomed to it without her realizing. Maybe the whole family had been able to tell, and been too polite to say anything. Of course, in the airport, it would have been hard for them to pinpoint the origin of the odor. In the car, on the other hand...
Adrian certainly seemed like the one most likely to mention it, to blurt out something. She began to regret her choice, but she couldn't take it back now as Karissa slid the middle seat back, locking it into place, trapping Anna in the rear and plopping down in front of her. Anna squirmed, cheeks darkening further at the crinkling she heard coming from herself, grabbing the seatbelt and buckling it.
"Hi," Adrian smiled at her, already staring at her when she lifted her head up from fastening the restraint.
"H-Hi," she replied shyly, anxiously tugging at her t-shirt, feeling very self-conscious to be getting observed so closely.
"What do you think so far?" he asked.
Anna wiggled her bottom, knowing he couldn't mean her diapers, that there was no way, even if he had spotted them, that he'd be aware they were new, that she hadn't worn them for years. Despite being in a new country, somewhere she'd never been before, they were forefront on her mind, however, and, risk of rash or not, humiliating experience on the plane disregarded, she was enjoying them.
"I-It's pretty nice," she told him, biting her bottom lip.
"Don't bother her," Karissa leaned into the backseat for a second. "She's only seen the airport."
"It was a good airport, though," Anna shrugged. "Lots of... planes."
"You don't have to humor him," Karissa said. "Just ignore him, like I do."
That was easy for her to say, from a different row of seats. "No, ignore her," Adrian countered. "If you read her diary, you'd know she's too dumb to listen to anyway."
"Stay out of my dairy, you little...!" Karissa turned back around, and, although she only saw the back of the girl's head, she could almost feel her glare.
"Be nice, you two!" their mother reprimanded them from the front. "You've been back together five minutes! You should be glad to see each other again!"
"She wasn't gone nearly long enough for me to miss her," Adrian stuck his tongue out, then smiled over at Anna. "I'll show you where she hides them. She found a new spot before the trip, but it's even worse than her last one. It took me like two minutes to..."
"I told you to stay out of my room while I was gone!" Karissa huffed.
"I was helping mom set things up for Anna," Adrian said innocently. "I can't help it if your diaries were practically out in the open, waiting to be read."
"They weren't!"
It was good to know, Anna supposed, that siblings were the same all over. It was almost enough to make her miss Max... Almost. Maybe if she'd been living with him a little longer... As it was, it mostly made her all the more grateful to be away from him, and that she had never felt the need to write her feelings down on paper where they could be discovered. If she had, Max surely would have done so by now, would have told the whole family about Anna's obsession with diapers, because there was no way, with as often as she'd fantasized about them, that they wouldn't have found their way into her writings.
"I'm so sorry about this, Anna," the mom called. "I would have thought my children would know to be on better behavior when we have company with us."
"You said she wasn't company," Adrian replied. "You said she was family while she was here." Anna smiled at that. "We fight in front of family all the time."
Their mother sighed. "Well, at least be nicer to her than you are to your sister. She has enough to deal with being in a whole different country."
As sweet as the sentiment had been, that was a good point. She had no doubt that, if he found out Karissa wore diapers, he'd never let her live it down... She didn't want him to do the same with her.
"Do you just wear jammies all the time where you live?" he asked.
Anna blushed. "No. It was a long flight, so..."
"Did you sleep on the plane?" he leaned over, Anna wiggling away instinctively, which only made her diaper crackle louder. "What was that like?"
"I-I was going to," Anna admitted, "but I wasn't able to." That wasn't entirely true... She probably could have, if she'd wanted to, or, rather, if she'd trusted her pajama pants not to slip down over her diaper and expose it to everyone as she tossed and turned.
"Was it loud?" Adrian stared over at her, wide-eyed. "I bet planes are loud."
"Yeah, kinda," Anna nodded.
"She doesn't want to talk about the stupid plane, brat," Karissa taunted.
Anna couldn't say it was her preferred subject of conversation, but if it kept his mind off looking at her too closely, possibly seeing the bulge of her diaper, she could live with it. Just like on the plane, she didn't want to risk drifting off in the silence, either,`for the same reason.
"Have you been on a plane before?" she asked him.
Anna was able to keep his mind on that, even talking around the parts of her own experience that revolved around her padding, until they pulled into Doyle's driveway. Karissa got out to say goodbye to him, Anna quickly grabbing for the buckle of her seatbelt. "Hold on!" she exclaimed. "Can you move the seat?"
"It's only going to be a minute," Adrian explained. "She's just getting out so she can slobber all over him in private, so unless you're going to do that..."
Anna's face turned bright red, praying that Karissa couldn't tell how much she might have liked to make out with Doyle, if things were different. "I-I want to stretch my legs a little," she lied.
"Oh, yeah, sure," Karissa said, sliding the seat forward, letting Anna climb out. Anna started to stretch, which, despite her fib, did actually feel good, until she realized lifting her arms too much made her t-shirt ride up, and then she stopped quickly, standing by awkwardly, unable to keep from staring as she caught a glimpse of Karissa and Doyle saying their goodbyes, looking quite a bit like Adrian had described.
She did empathize with them; there was no way they were going to be staying with the same host family, of course, but still, getting to stay in a different country together, away from their real parents... They'd probably been as excited about that as Anna had been about her own trip, and now they'd lost that opportunity at the last minute. Anna could only imagine how bummed she would have been if she'd arrived here, been turned back around and put on a plane back home... Especially if she hadn't been given time to stop somewhere and buy a pair of panties to replace the ones she'd thrown away.
She waited for them to finish up and trotted over to meet Karissa on her walk back to the SUV. "Umm, could you invite me to sit in the middle with you?" she whispered. "I don't want to offend your brother..."
"Don't worry about that," Karissa rolled her eyes.
Anna did, though. She didn't want to do anything to get on his bad side, to make him feel justified in searching for her secrets, like he did with Karissa's... It wouldn't be hard for him to find her diapers, most likely, and if he disliked her, what would stop him from telling everyone?
Luckily, Karissa helped her out. "Here," she announced loudly as they approached the car. "You can have Doyle's seat now. These seats are more comfortable."
"She's sitting with me!" Adrian whined.
"No, she isn't," Karissa informed him. "Go on, Anna."
Anna gratefully did as she was told, giving Adrian an apologetic shrug, glad to have someone else to blame changing seats on. She was closer to her host parents this way, and a glimpse in the rearview mirror might reveal her diaper to them if she wasn't careful, much more easily than if she was all the way in the back, but they had the road to concentrate on, so she was less concerned about that than Adrian seeing it.
Karissa was tired, too, and probably sad to be leaving Doyle behind when they'd been planning on spending as much time as possible together for the next semester, so she left Anna alone, the smaller girl getting close to drifting off on the short ride from Doyle's place to their own.
"Home, sweet home," Karissa and Adrian's father declared as they pulled into the garage.
"I hope you like it, dear," their mom smiled back at Anna. "I'm not sure what you're used to..."
"It looks lovely," Anna replied. It was nice, if not all that different from her own house, back home, other than the electric plugs looking different. That would make it easy to get accustomed to, even if it didn't feel all that much like she was somewhere else. She gladly accepted the dad's offer to carry her bags upstairs to her and Karissa's room, then, once the two new roommates had been left alone, flopped down on one of the beds, exhaustion really starting to hit her now in the familiar confines of a teenage girl's bedroom. It wasn't exactly the same as hers, of course, thankfully a bit bigger, and decorated a little more maturely, but there was no mistaking that was what it was.
She laid there for a moment or two, wanting very much to fall asleep right away, before she realized she was being stared at, glancing over to see Karissa standing there at her bedside. "I-Is this your bed?" she asked, reluctantly sitting up. "It was a bit smaller, so I assumed..."
"No, that one's yours," Karissa told her. "I just thought we should..." Her cheeks took on a tinge of red. "D-Did you... pack plastic sheets?"
Anna's eyes widened; she should have thought of that! If she wanted to pretend she needed these diapers, that only made sense for her to have those, too! Had she blown her cover by forgetting?!
"It's okay!" Karissa sensed her panic, and luckily not what, exactly, was causing it. "I bet they would have been a pain to try to pack. Did you plan on buying some once you got here?"
"Y-Yeah," Anna nodded, swallowing her sigh of relief at Karissa thinking up an excuse for her. "I guess I ought to do that now, huh?"
"Well, it might be a good idea before you go to sleep, if..." Karissa stopped herself with a shrug. "I-I mean, I assume if you need them during the day that you..."
"S-Sometimes," Anna said, head spinning a little at the idea of what she was confessing to, embarrassed by it, even knowing it was a lie, especially when she thought about it and had to amend it to a flat, "Y-Yeah, I do." If she was going to act like she was incontinent enough to require diapers all the time during the day, it would be odd if she didn't also use them in her sleep.
"I bet we still have some of Adrian's," Karissa assured her. "I can go look for you, but... You probably should stay awake until we have them on, right?"
"Y-Yeah," Anna blushed. "Y-You're right... Plus, I wanted to stay up until tonight to try to get used to the time zone here."
Karissa chuckled. "You can try," she replied diplomatically, her tone making it clear she didn't think Anna would make it. "A nap probably wouldn't hurt. Let's get you those sheets first, though, just in case."
"Thanks," Anna said, watching her go, squirming on the bed, getting another reminder of how soggy her diaper was. She definitely needed to change soon. The only question was... Did she want to try it herself? She couldn't rely on other people to do it the whole time she was here... Could she? In the bedroom here, or the bathroom, wherever she chose to do it, she'd have more space than she had at the airport, or on the plane, so she might be able to do a better job... But it had been so nice to have Karissa do it for her, and it hadn't leaked.
She'd told Karissa she wasn't good at changing herself, but the girl definitely knew that they were the same age now, that she should at least be capable of handling that on her own when they were on solid ground. If Anna asked her again now, maybe she could pass it off as her being tired from the flight, though Karissa was tired, too, surely... She didn't want to seem totally helpless to the other girl... Did she?
She could also ask her host mom. How likely was it that she'd be able to keep it a secret from her the whole semester? It was possible, especially if she had Karissa helping her... She had a feeling it wouldn't be easy, however, so it might be better to rip the band-aid off now, let her in on it, too, so Anna wouldn't have to worry about her discovering it later.
She nibbled her lip, thinking hard, knowing she only had a minute or two, probably, until Karissa returned. What was she going to do?
Should Anna...
Change herself in the bedroom?
Change herself in the bathroom?
Ask Karissa to change her?
Or ask her host mom to change her?