Megan shrugged again. She was enjoying this timeout from the complexities of her adult life. Carrie would get the message eventually and either join in or leave her alone.
“I see what’s going on,” Carrie remarked. “Well, if you aren’t gonna go to Mom, then I’ll just have to do it myself.”
Megan smiled at her. Normally, she would never even consider letting her younger sister have any power over her. However, at that moment she could care less. Besides, as Carrie was constantly being ordered around by either her or their parents, it might do her some good to hand her the reigns for a little while.
Carrie checked Megan’s diaper and pronounced her wet. “You knew you were wet all along, didn’t you?”
Megan nodded, grinning sheepishly.
“Bad girl,” Carrie reprimanded, giving her a few gentle swats over the thick padding of her diaper. “I suppose you want me to change you now?”
Again, Megan nodded.
“I will,” Carrie told her. “But you have to ask Stephen for permission first.”
She nearly balked at this, but quickly reconsidered. What the hell, she thought as she approached her brother’s room.
“What the….” Stephen began, surprised to see his sister standing in the doorway watching him curiously.
“Can I have my diaper changed please?” she asked in her sweetest, most innocent-sounding voice. “Carrie says I have to ask you first. We’re playing a game.”
He looked dumbfounded at first but eventually gave a nod of recognition. “OK,” he said. “But you have to do one thing first.”
She nodded and turned around when he asked her two. He then gave her a hard swat against her diapered backside. Stephen grinned, confident that he had done some damage. Megan, however, would not even give him as much as an “ow.”
“Better luck next time,” she told him as she waddled away for a change.
“Hey Josh,” Megan said at work the next day. “I need a price check on a pair of gloves.”
He stared vacantly at the light fixture and gave her not even a hint of recognition.
“Josh?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, snapping back to reality. “My vacation is finally coming up and I suppose I’m a bit scatterbrained.”
“Don’t let Vern catch you,” she teased.
“Yes, well, with all do respect to our erstwhile employer, he can kiss my ass. I, for one, cannot wait to get out of here.”
Raul and Natalie applauded his impassioned speech and Megan smiled. Josh had always seemed so efficient, so pleasant and so focused. It was a relief to know that he was human after all.
“While I’m gone,” he said to them. “There will be a few night shifts available. Are either of you interested?”
Megan and Natalie exchanged glances. “You want it?” Megan asked.
“I can use the money,” she replied. “But if you want them, they’re yours.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
She worked solidly through to her lunch break, adjourned, and found a place to eat. After changing in the bathroom and getting herself a sandwich, she checked her phone for messages. There was a one from Sabrina asking her what she’d been up to, one from Jess asking her if she’d made any progress and one from Ron. It was the last that caught her attention.
“Hey, Meg, it’s Ron. Sorry about the other day. I heard Ted told you, so now you know what happened. Listen, anyway…I’m gonna be coming down to visit the T-man Friday night. We might go bowling again. If you’d like to come along, that’d be cool. I was thinking (pause) that maybe there’s something you wanna say to me that you don’t wanna be alone when you say it. So this way people will be around. Hell, I could be wrong. And if you don’t wanna come, that’s cool too. No hard feelings.”
Megan sighed and put her hands on her head in frustration. This guy was supposed to be a solution, not the cause of more problems. Besides, she was already offered more hours to work. Then again, was she lying when she expressed a desire to help him? She knew if she said nothing and just let things dissolve, she would regret it. And yet the prospect of delving deeper made her just a little bit afraid.
A.)“I’ll take Friday night,” she told Natalie when she returned to work. It was a shame about Ron, but the timing just wasn’t right. Besides, it was money in her pocket.
B.)“You can have Friday night,” she told Natalie. She didn’t know what would come out of it, but at the very least she wouldn’t be terribly bored. The same could not be said of a late shift at Bledsoe’s.