The sound of the lock on the front door clicking open seemed to echo throughout the house, far louder than she could ever remember it sounding before. ‘I should have brought my key,’ she fretted. If -that- had woken somebody up, they might come to investigate, and if they saw the door unlocked, they would be sure to change that, thus trapping her outside. But it was far too late to worry about that now, so instead she slowly pulled the front door open just enough to squeeze out of it.
Their driveway was fairly long, but it never seemed that bad, not with the hard part of her journey out of the way. She still went a bit slow, in case her dad was lying awake, listening for sounds that could be a burglar approaching, but the moon was shining, and it felt as if the whole, seemingly empty, world was hers. It all looked so big after the claustrophobia of the hallway, and the minefield of the living room path to the front door.
Her parents had done her a great service, way back when they’d bought their garbage can, by getting one that was far too big for them to ever – except sometimes at Christmas – get close to filling up. Her garbage bag always had plenty of room, and once it was in there, in blended in perfectly with all of the others, so you would never guess it had been a last minute addition.
She let herself move more quickly on the way back inside, slipping her shoes off once she had locked the front door behind her. Sometimes she thought about just leaving her shoes out by the front door all the time, like everyone else in her family seemed to, thus being able to sneak through the house in just her socks, but she was always afraid she’d have trouble getting them on in the dark. It was probably stupid of her, but she’d gotten used to it by now.
The hallway was still just as dark as it had been on the way out, so she allowed herself a sigh of relief even before she’d gotten back inside her room and flopped down on her bed, gold hair flying every which way. She smiled to herself – she’d pulled it off again – and then allowed her bladder at last to relax, filling the padding around her bottom with warmth – and now she had started on the cargo for the next trip. It was probably even more stupid of her to wear a diaper under her pajamas while she was sneaking around the house, but after her mom had seen her in the exact same outfit when she actually -was- going for a midnight snack and not seemed to notice, she’d figured it wasn’t -that- big of a risk. Her nightshirt went well past her bottom, anyway, and her pajama pants were loose enough that the diaper wouldn’t be -too- obvious, even if the top of them could be seen.
She knew she should probably change before going to sleep, but her bathroom seemed so far away, and she suddenly barely had the energy to squirm over to a position where she could reach the light switch without actually having to leave the bed before she fell asleep.