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.