The rest of the day went by quickly. School was school, diapers or not and Thursday’s lab classes were less interesting than Wednesdays. Julia was actually happy to head to the nurses office during her history class since they were watching a boring movie about the middle ages.
At the end of lunch, Julia and her friends were just getting up from their lunch spot and cleaning up. Julia had just throw her napkin in the trash can when she looked up and made eye contact with a girl who was about to pitch her trash into the same can. The girl smiled and gave her a quick nod of the head.
‘Hey, hows it going?’ she said as she dropped her trash into the can. Julia could tell the girl recognized her, but the feeling was not mutual. She did seem familiar, but she couldn’t place her. The girl didn’t stay to talk, and just turned around and rejoined her group of friends.
“Who was that?” Fiona asked.
“I’m not sure.” Julia replied.
“You didn’t know her? She seemed like she knew you.”
“I know right? She looks familiar though.”
Linda, a friend who often ate with them spoke up. “Are you all talking about Kate?”
“Kate?” Shirley and Fiona said in unison.
Louise looked at Julia. “That girl that just said hi to you Julie?” Julia nodded. “Yea, that’s Kate Parson. She plays volleyball with me. Well, not exactly with me. She’s on the varsity team (Louise was a freashman). She like the best player on the team. I think she might even be getting a scholarship or something when she goes to college next year.”
It dawned on Julia where she had seen her. Without a second thought she asked “Did she get hurt recently?”
Louise paused. “What? Not that I know of. Well, I guess yesterday some girl and her bumped into each other and she like bruised her knee or something. But she was at practice this morning and seemed fine. How did you know that though? I thought you said you didn’t know her?”
Julia realized that she had opened a door best left closed. “Oh, I don’t know her, I just happened to see her yesterday with some kind of wrap or something on her knee.”
“It seemed like she knew you.” Louise said.
“Yea, I’m not sure how though.”
Lucky for Julia the girls dropped it since everyone had to get back to class. Julia of course had figured out that the girl, Kate, was the one she had all but run over trying to get into Mrs Barnard’s office yesterday. And apparently Kate had not forgotten Julia.
After what had been a pretty long week, Friday at school went by quickly and without any significant incidents other than another diaper change during math class. Her teacher had given her a brief inquisitive look as she handed over the hall pass, but had not asked any questions.
Julia had been keeping an eye out for Kate, since they had run into each other a couple of time now and Julia’s school was small enough that a run in was possible at just about any time. Sure enough, they made eye contact again at lunch. When Kate smiled and waved and Julia felt obligated to politely smile and wave back, even though she wasn’t sure why they were now waiving to each other. Julia decided that Kate must be friendly, which was actually pretty cool. Julia didn’t really know any of the seniors, and Kate was obviously a well-known, popular girl. Julia had no idea if Kate was actually nice or not, but she certainly seemed to be and for some reason she decided that Kate was OK.
When school ended Julia headed home and had a snack with her mom after her diaper had been changed. They were sitting in the kitchen talking.
“So, what are your plans for the weekend?” Shirley asked.
“Nothing really. I’m probably going to head over to Fiona’s house in a little bit. We were talking about watching a movie or something.”
“Well, if you want to have dinner over there let me know. Your father had mentioned something about taking me out for a change, so we might be heading out.”
“OK, I’ll let you know.”
Julia finished her snack and called Fiona to make sure it was cool for her to show up which, of course, it was. Julia yelled across the house to her mom that she was about to head out, and heard an ‘OK’ in reply. She walked out the door without so much as a thought about diapers, changing, or her parents heading out to dinner.
Thirty minutes later Fiona and her had settled down to a movie and were munching on popcorn. The two girls really liked scary movies, but this time they had gone with a classic, The Princess Bride. It was certainly not the first time they had seen it. In fact, they knew most of the lines by heart.
When the movie ended the girl got up from the couch and started thinking about dinner and what to do next.
“You should just spend the night. I’m pretty sure there is a Scream movie on HBO that starts at like 9.” Fiona suggested.
“Hey, good call. Let me just call my folks and let them know.” A moment later, Julia was talking with her mom.
“Hey mom, so I’m going to spend the night here.” Julia stated (she had stopped really asking for permission to spend the night a long time ago).
“OK, that’s fine. Your father and I are going to head out to dinner anyhow. I guess we will see you in the morning then?”
“Yea, sure.” Julia replied.
“Is everything ok?” Shirley asked.
Julia wasn’t sure what her mom meant. “Uh, yea, why?”
Shirley paused. “Nothing, sorry. Is Fiona’s mom there?”
“Yea, why?” Sometimes Julia sounded like a broken record Shirley thought.
“I just want to ask her something, can you get her on the phone?”
“Oh, yea hang on a second, let me go find her.”
Julia found Mrs Hayman in the kitchen where she was working on dinner. “Hey, Mrs Hayman?”
“Yes Julia?”
“My mom wants to talk with you.” Julia quickly added a “OK, bye mom” and then handed the phone to Mrs Hayman. She then left the kitchen and headed back to the living room.
“Hi Nancy, how are you?” Shirley asked.
“All’s well in this neck of the woods. How are things over there?”
“Good. Ted and I are about to go out to dinner and may catch a movie afterwords if we can stay awake.”
“Nice.”
“Should be. So Julia tells me that she is going to spend the night over there. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t really thought it through though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if I know her, she hasn’t even thought about what she is going to do when she needs to have her diaper changed. Maybe she thought she would just come back home quick or something, although I really doubt she has thought about it at all.”
“Oh yea. Even I forgot about that. Right, so she didn’t like talk with you about it before she came over?”
“Julia, thinking ahead? No. Well, at least not yet. I still have hope for the future. Heck, maybe this will be a wakeup call for her or something. But no, she just said she was going to head over there, and then she just called and said she was spending the night. I even tried to give her a hint that she might need to think about this but she didn’t pick up on it.”
“Have faith Shirley, they are still young enough that there is time for growth. At least, that is what I tell myself. OK, well what do you want to do?”
“I want to go out on a date with my husband….”
“I hear you. Look, she is over here now, so how about this….”
Julia and Fiona had retreated from the living room to Fiona’s room where they were talking about the past week at school. Things had been going well until Fiona started asking about Kate again.
“So you don’t know her, but she keeps waiving to you?”
Julia wanted to turn the conversation to something else. Eventually Fiona would want to know where they had run into each other, and that was a road she wanted to avoid.
“Yea, I don’t know what’s up with it.”
Fiona gave her a look and for a moment Julia got nervous that she might suspect something. But it passed and the girls kept talking.
About 10 minutes later the conversation came to a pause. It wasn’t anything odd, just a normal lull where nobody said anything for a few seconds. But for some reason this pause turned into an extended pause. Julia started wondering what Fiona was thinking about and even looked up at her. The girls exchanged an awkward smile, but the silence continued. It started to become awkward and Julia tried to think of something to say, but found herself at a loss of words. She realized that she was thinking about Kate, and diapers, and how she was keeping Fiona in the dark. An uneasy feeling grew in her stomach. Fiona finally broke the silence
“So, when are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Fiona asked with a hint of sadness in her voice.
It hit Julia hard and fast. The question wasn’t if something was going on, or if she was ok, it was when are you going to tell me. Which meant that Fiona already knew something was going on. Julia wasn’t sure what to do. ‘It’s Fiona after all, and you know you can tell her anything, right?’ she thought. ‘It’s one thing to talk about boys and stuff, but wearing diapers?’