After meeting Sean, I had a bit of a lull in my encounters. It was about nine or ten months later before I would have my next close encounter. The house that is across the street from ours had been empty for over a year. I remember hearing my parents talk about how the man that used to live there had died and the house was stuck in some legal red tape, so it couldn’t be sold.

One day, I was coming back home from the park where I had been riding my bike and trying to pop wheelies, which I wasn’t too good at, I saw a moving truck in front of the house.

Mom, my sister and I ended up going over later that day to welcome the new buyers to the neighborhood and I got to meet their son, who was my age. He had hair so blonde that it looked almost white when the sun hit it just right, and it was all combed straight back, making him look like a pint-sized mafia goon. His name was David, he also had really pale skin, I mean really pale, like a sheet of copy paper. He turned out to be an unusually quite kid and really super shy. I didn’t find out why until about a month later. I was just coming home from my friend Mark’s house and saw he was setting out on the front steps. I asked if I could go over to play until dinnertime and mom let me. Like I said, David was shy and quiet but he was still a pretty nice guy. When I got across the street, I made my way up the steps and sat down next to him. He looked a little bummed and was just staring down at his feet.

“Hey David, what’s up?” I asked as I sat down and gave his shoulder a bit of a push like I was trying to push him over.

He didn’t answer, so I pressed the issue a bit. “Why are you just setting here?”

He looked over at me and his eyes looked glassy, more than those pale blue eyes of his normally did. He looked like he was on the verge of crying.

“Uh, you ok?” I asked putting my hand on his shoulder.

He still didn’t answer and went back to looking at his feet again. Then he started to cry quietly to himself. I didn’t say anything else. I just left my hand on his shoulder and let him cry. We sat there for about five or six minutes until his dad pulled into the driveway. When David saw his dad, he got up and ran inside.

The next day, David, Mark and I were all walking home together and joking around a bit. In the back of my mind, I was still wondering what had been wrong with David the previous day, but I didn’t bring it up. About halfway home, we reached Mark’s street. We said goodbye and he ran up the hill as David and I continued toward home. David seemed to be in a better mood and in his quiet way, was having fun just joking and talking about school and stuff. When we turned the corner onto our street, we both saw it at the same time. Hanging out of his bedroom window was a white sheet with an obvious pee stain in the middle of it. I looked at David and could see the horror in his face. He gave me one glance and took off running for his house. I stood there for a few moments, not believing that his parents could do something like that to him. More importantly, I couldn’t believe that I had a friend that wet the bed and lived right across the street from me.

As I resumed walking toward my house, I briefly saw David’s face in his window as he pulled the sheet in and then closed the window and curtains. Being that I had an infatuation with diapers, this whole scene was replaying over and over in my mind as I reached my front door. I stopped, turned around, and that is when it hit me. Yesterday, when David and I were setting on the steps in front of his house, when his dad had arrived home and David had turned to run into the house, I had heard the sound of a diaper crinkling but it had not registered in my mind just then. Unfortunately, David was so horrified by the experience that he would have nothing to do with me after that. If he was outside and we saw each other, he would run into his house. If I saw him at school, he would turn and go the other way. About six months later, David’s parents split up and David went to live with his mom in Minnesota.

Near the end of that school year, Mark and I were walking home from school when Mark got a funny look on his face. Not funny as in Ha-Ha, good joke, but funny as in, he was in pain or something. I asked him what was wrong and then saw it. Mark had been wearing GoodNites during the day as well as at night for a while now, but today, his GoodNites had sprung a leak and was running down his pant leg. This was very bad because Mark’s dad is a huge jerk and he hits on Mark all the time for the stupidest stuff. I mean, my parents might spank me or smack my face when I say something really bad. Like the time I spilled a whole bowl of cereal on the dining room floor. Without knowing it, the ‘F’ word came out my mouth. My mom smacked my face so hard that I nearly went down to the floor. I got grounded for a week for that slip of the tongue. However, Mark’s dad would have pulled off his belt and laid into Mark until he made him black and blue. I have never personally witnessed Mark getting beaten, but I have heard about it a couple times as I had been going over to see him and heard it happening as I was walking up the front walk. I ran back home both times and never told Mark I had heard it happen. Mark and I had talked about it several times. It was pretty obvious to me since I always got to see the bruises that he had all over.

With just a look, we both knew what the other was thinking. From that first day when we swapped clothes, Mark and I had always worn each other clothes and when he slept over at my house, he would always wear my clothes and I always wore his when I stayed at his house. So we both knew right away that we needed to swap pants and underwear before Mark could go home, but we were outside and in the open. We both looked around and could not find any place that would be secluded enough. Then Mark had an idea. Without sharing his idea with me, he just said, “Come on!” and took off running.

We ran for three blocks, passing his street on the way before Mark finally slowed down. Then, I realized what he was thinking. There on the corner was the Quick-E-Mart. We went behind the building and had all the privacy we needed. Mark quickly shed his pants and the wet GoodNite, which was dripping as he pulled it off. I too slipped out of my pants and underwear, handing them to him. I took his wet pants and slipped them on. The pee was cold from having run all this way. Once we were both redressed, we started back toward his house, dropping his soaked goodnight in the trash dumpster behind the store before we left. No one was ever the wiser and I was able to rinse out his pants when I got home and I hung them over my desk chair to dry. We swapped our cloths back again the next day after gym class.