When Julia was out of sight Lia said, “You should have slapped her. She is such a ho.”
“Yeah, and then I might have knocked loose her brain cell and then gotten in trouble.” Bridget smiled. “Besides Julia is going to have to go to community college because they won’t take her in a real college.”
“You’re right, I guess.” They walked in the Spanish classroom and waited.
As soon as class started the Spanish teacher said something totally incomprehensible to Deborah and Lia. Deborah had to look around before she realized Lia had gone up to the front of the classroom. She got up and stood beside her. She looked at all the students in the classroom just staring at her and froze. She would never get this conversation done. She would fail Spanish and have to stay at this school forever. She suddenly had to go to the bathroom bad. She looked at Lia.
Lia just mouthed the words, “You’ll do fine. Start.”
Deborah knew this. They rehearsed so many times. Deborah let a few nervous dribbles out and was grateful for the pull-up. She said her first line in Spanish. She hated speaking in front of the class. Still she waited and then Lia gave her line. Deborah did her next line. She was slow at first and stuttered through her recitation. She kept her eyes off the class and on Lia and the next thing she knew she was reading through the conversation like a champ. Before she knew it they were done.
“Adios,” said Lia.
“Adios,” repeated Deborah.
Lia smiled at the Senorita Faust. Deborah stood nervously twisting her hair around a finger. She looked pleadingly at the teacher and hoped she would say they could sit down.”
Instead Senorita Faust said something in Spanish and handed Lia a piece of paper. Finally Lia went to her seat and Deborah sat in the seat next to her. She didn’t even look at Lia. She knew they did awfully and that the teacher probably marked her way down for stumbling over, “Hablo español bien.” Deborah looked down at her crotch and felt the bottoms of her jeans to make sure she was dry. She felt damp and couldn’t wait until class ended to check the damage. She felt no wetness on her clothes; the only damage must be safely concealed in her pull-up.
She looked as the next couple groups gave their conversations seemingly perfect, although a couple of times Senorita Faust rolled her eyes or shook her head before writing something down on a paper. When the conversation finished she gave the paper to one of the group members. They took their seat and the next group came up. Three groups, including Lia and herself, gave their conversations before the bell rang. Deborah fled toward the bathroom.
She still had to pee, even though she leaked a bit. She entered a stall and sat down and went. As she peed she checked the wetness of the pull-up. The crotch was a bit yellowed, but it wasn’t soaked like the one she wet the bed in. If she hadn’t been wearing it there would have been a largish wet spot on her pants, but it wasn’t so bad that she would have been standing in a puddle. There were students in the other stalls and making noises in the bathroom. There was no way she could carry a wet pull-up to the trash. She pulled the damp thing back up and pulled up her jeans. It wasn’t that wet, but since she had pulled it down, the peed had cooled and irritatedd to her skin.
She left the bathroom and went to study hall. At least here, she could work on homework. She needed to do something and studying would have to do. She worked on Physics and read some of the Scarlett Letter. She wondered what letter she would have to wear if she was treated like Hester Prynne. She didn’t know if it would be a yellow letter P for having accidents or a green letter T for Terrorist since she had been blamed when she couldn’t stop the terrorist from crashing her truck into the school. Probably the T. She felt guilty about that. The P was not something to be guilty about. They were caused by the first. She would have to bring the owl-tattooed terrorist to justice to make her guilt go away: that and the accidents. They should go away too when she made the terrorist pay.