More landmarks passed behind them. The house painted a very sickly shade of green indicated that it would take eight more minutes to walk home. The mailbox that looked like a barn marked the five-minutes-remaining point. As they passed the slightly-bent yield sign that signified the three-minute mark, Hailey paused her stride and focused all of her effort on holding it back, but she nonetheless felt a small bit of urine spurt out into her panties.

Time slowed to a crawl for her, and her neck tingled as a sudden guilty feeling washed over her entire body. The feeling drowned out all of her other senses — even the sensation of fluid rushing out of her bladder was dulled for that moment in time. A single, powerful thought consumed her mind: I shouldn’t have done this! Why was I such an idiot?

The feeling passed in a moment, and the flow of time returned to normal for her; she snapped back into reality to feel herself still urinating at full force, liquid beginning to run down her leg, with the realization that she was unable to do anything about it.

Erin had stopped when she saw Hailey stop; she didn’t say anything as she saw her cousin’s jeans begin to grow darker, but she approached Hailey from the side and put an arm around her shoulder, giving a half-hug, half-squeeze, as the jeans continued to get wetter. The gesture helped immensely; here she was, twelve years old, and peeing her pants out in public, but at least her cousin cared for her enough that her accident didn’t make a difference.

They stood there for a moment as the last bit of urine trickled out of her. “I… I’m done,” Hailey whispered.

Erin continued to hug Hailey for a little bit longer, and then with a final squeeze, she stepped back, although she was still standing very close to her cousin. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out for a while. It seemed to Hailey that she wasn’t quite sure what to say in this situation. Hailey couldn’t blame Erin for not knowing — after all, every other accident she’d witnessed had been deliberate — but right now, she really did not want to be the one to start the conversation. She waited on Erin, staring down at herself and lightly brushing the obviously wet denim with the tips of her fingers.

“Are you going to be okay?” Erin finally asked.

Hailey was still silent for a moment. She’d hoped Erin speaking would help her collect her own thoughts, but her mind was still a battleground between her usual joy at the feeling of wetness and the embarrassment of having an accident in public.

This was entirely her fault, and it frustrated her. Only a couple of weeks ago, she’d made Erin mad at her by giving into her need to wet herself at an inappropriate time. And now, she’d let herself become fixated on wetting her diaper when she got home, which resulted in her stupid refusal to use the toilet before leaving school. Why was she letting her enjoyment of wetting herself control her like this? She couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer.

She owed Erin a response, though. “I think I’ll be fine,” she whispered, not moving her eyes from her jeans. “I can’t believe I did this…”

“It was an accident, Hailey. Don’t blame yourself,” consoled Erin. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Not really,” admitted Hailey after a long pause. “I really wish I had some way to hide this accident, but I don’t think we can.” What she’d done would be extremely obvious to any passersby, and it was still warm enough that neither of them had a jacket she could wrap around her waist to hide the most visible wet area.

“Well, the sooner you get home, the less chance there is that anybody will see you,” remarked Erin. “And when we get home, I’ll make sure to keep your mother’s attention so that you can go get changed without her seeing.”

Erin had correctly guessed her biggest worry. The accident itself was still something she’d rather not have had happen, but given that it did, Erin’s willingness to help was the best thing she could have hoped for. It was nice to know that someone was willing to help her out like this when she was feeling so low. Was this how Erin felt when she took care of Erin’s accidents?

Hailey turned to Erin and hugged her, being very careful to avoid pressing any wet areas against her cousin. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“Are you ready to finish walking home?”

“Yes,” said Hailey, beginning to walk. “This is really awkward.”

“I know how you feel, unfortunately,” returned Erin. “Just… try not to worry too much about it. It sucks, but worrying’s not going to help.”

“I know that. It’s just… well, this was kind of my fault.”

“This didn’t look like one of your usual accidents, Hailey. It sure didn’t seem like this one was on purpose, how is it your fault?”

“Well… because I didn’t go to the toilet before leaving school,” Hailey admitted. “I knew I had to go badly, but I waited.”

“Mmmm…” muttered Erin, apparently thinking. “Why’d you do that?”

“I… I wanted to use a diaper when I got home.”

Erin nodded. “So you thought you’d be able to make it home, and now you’re mad at yourself because you weren’t able to?”

“I think that’s about right,” said Hailey. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Hailey. You wanted to have an accident in a diaper, and you guessed wrong about how long you’d be able to last, so you ended up having an accident in your pants. I know it isn’t exactly the same, but at least you still got to have an accident, right?”

Hailey smiled at Erin’s attempt to cheer her up. “Yes, but as we talked about earlier… it’s not really as much fun when it’s not in my control.”

“Well, I know you’re embarrassed, but are you enjoying the accident at all? Even a little?”

“It does actually feel good to be warm down there like that,” Hailey admitted. “So, yeah, I guess I like it a little… but I’d like it a lot better if I weren’t out in public and if I’d done it myself. But it feels weird.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the last time I had an accident in my pants was when my parents were going out to pick you up. Since then, I’ve been using the diapers for the last few months, and I’m sure you know it feels much different to wet a diaper than your pants.”

Erin nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“So I feel much wetter than I’m used to,” continued Hailey, “which is interesting in its own way. And I’m also wet all down my legs, which doesn’t happen when I’m using a diaper… and… it’s kind of chafing when I walk. The wet jeans really don’t feel that good when they rub against my skin.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” admitted Erin.

They finally reached their house, several minutes too late for Hailey’s bladder. “Well, at least nobody saw us while we were walking,” said Erin.

Hailey nodded. It was true that no cars or pedestrians had passed them between the yield sign and her house, but that didn’t mean that nobody could have been looking out their front window. She had no way of knowing, though, so she wasn’t going to parry Erin’s attempt to make her feel better with such an observation. “Yeah, we’re lucky, I guess.”

“Were you going to change in our bedroom? I want to know so I know where to take your mom so she doesn’t see you come in.”

“Actually, I was going to change in the downstairs bathroom. That way, I can just put my wet clothes straight in the laundry, and hopefully there’ll be some pants of mine in the dryer to change into. It’s my chore to do the laundry anyway, so it shouldn’t be too suspicious that I started the washer.”

Erin nodded. “Okay. Wait half a minute after I go in, I’ll tell her I have some questions with homework and keep her distracted so you can come in.”

Hailey watched Erin enter the side door of the house and checked her watch. Thirty seconds later, she tentatively entered herself, quickly glancing around to assure herself that her mother was not in the kitchen that the door opened into. Shutting the door behind her, she listened carefully, and heard Erin and her mother talking from the general direction of the living room. She was safe. She laid her backpack down on the kitchen table and immediately headed for her house’s odd combination bathroom/laundry room, shutting the door behind her with a sigh of relief.

Memories came flooding back to her as the smell of the laundry room combined with the feeling of wet pants. The last time she’d wet herself without using a diaper, she’d cleaned up in this room as well. Of course, last time it had been a deliberate wetting.

She set an empty laundry basket below the dryer and began pulling dry clothes out of it. Luckily, she was able to find another pair of jeans and a pair of her panties, and she set them aside as she finished emptying the dryer. She moved the clothes in the washer into the dryer and started it, and then stripped everything from her waist down. Her jeans and panties were obviously wet and went straight into the washer. The socks were a little less obvious, but she could feel that they were damp where they’d been in contact with the legs of her jeans, so they went in the washer, too.

If the socks were wet, then did my shoes get pee in them? Hailey brought her shoe up to her nose and took a large whiff, coughing as she realized her mistake. The inside of her shoes did not smell very good at all, but they didn’t smell like pee, and that was the important thing.

She wet a washcloth in the sink and cleaned herself off, putting the washcloth in the washing machine as well, and then pulled her clean panties and jeans on. She doubted her mother would ask why she was in the bathroom, but if asked, she’d say she had to pee, and while she was in there decided to get her laundry chore over with. To add to the believability of her story, she reached over and flushed the toilet, watching dejectedly as the completely clear water swirled down. If she’d been able to hold it just a few minutes longer, she could have made it to this toilet, or even better, to her bedroom where the pack of diapers tantalizingly awaited.

The toilet flush was probably unnecessary, as her mother wouldn’t be able to hear it if she was talking to Erin in the living room. Still, it was better to take those kinds of precautions, just in case.

She finished filling the washing machine with clothes from the hamper, poured the appropriate fluids into the machine, and started it. She pulled on the clothes she’d set aside along with a pair of socks from the hamper and her shoes, and took the basket of clean clothes out to the laundry room, where her mother and Erin were still talking about homework.

“Feel better?” asked Aunt Sue. “You ran straight to the bathroom without even saying ‘hello.’”

“Yeah, I had to go really badly,” she said. It wasn’t a lie… but it wasn’t exactly the whole truth either. “I feel a lot better now,” she said, setting down the laundry basket on the sofa. She noticed Erin give her a quick smile and a wink.

It was great that she had a cousin who was willing to help her avoid being caught, even when she deserved to be caught for so stupidly letting her desire to use a diaper get in the way of her common sense. Erin really was an incredible girl for saving her.