Monday morning started off just like any other, except that Julia started the day off by wetting her diaper as soon as she got out of bed. In so doing, she realized that she wasn’t able to tell if she had wet it during the night. She didn’t remember wetting at all, and had in fact slept all night long without waking up. Breakfast came and went and her Mother
changed her into a new diaper after she was finished. Then she got dressed and headed off to school.
School.
‘Will people notice?’ Julia wondered. Julia had looked at herself in the mirror over and over after she had put on all her clothes. It really was almost impossible to see anything as far as she could tell so it seemed unlikely that folks would just notice from a visual of her. Julia had chosen a loose skirt for the day, one that didn’t hug her body much at all and came down well past her knees just to be on the safe side.
Her second concern was about having to use her diapers at school. Would people notice if I have a wet diaper? And what about a messy diaper? Julia decided she would just hold it if that became an issue.
By the time she got to school, Julia had thought enough about the situation to have come to a couple of conclusions. First and foremost, she was going to just have to ignore the issue a bit if she wanted to be able to pay any attention to her classes. It was really easy to worry about people noticing, and to spend all her time trying to listen to see if her diaper was making any noise. But after having spent all morning doing just that, she had decided that nobody would notice and that it really wasn’t going to be that big of a deal. It was only for a week, 5 days really, and she could make it though a week of just about anything. ‘If I really have to go, I will, but I’ll just try to wait until later in the day.’
First period came and went, and second period was also uneventful. Julia made it to lunch without much of any problem, but towards the end of lunch she knew she was going to need to pee at some point. On the way to class after lunch she decided to pee before it got to be too bad. She wet her diaper outside of the classroom and felt really confident that she could go at least one more time before she was going to have to worry about a leak.
Julia’s first class after lunch was math, algebra actually, with Mrs Niles. About 10 minutes into the class folks were going over the homework from last night and Julia was working with Judy, who sat next to her. Mrs Niles was at her desk looking at her computer and getting ready to talk about whatever new thing they were going to talk about that day. Julia was in the process of telling Judy how to solve an equation when Mr Niles looked up from her desk and called her name.”
‘Julia can I talk with you for a second?
Julia looked up and nodded, expecting Mrs Niles to just say whatever she was going to say. But Mrs Niles waved for Julia to come up to her desk, so Julia got up and walked over.
“Julia, I just got a message asking for me to send you to the office.” Mrs Niles said questioningly.
“Really?” Julia asked in disbelief.
Mrs Niles had been hoping that Julia knew what was going on. She clearly didn’t like that Julia appeared surprised as well. “Yea, really.” Mrs Niles said in a semi confused, semi concerned voice. “I guess you better go. Here, take the hall pass.”
Julia’s mind had been on math, and she had been expecting Mrs Niles to ask her something about numbers and equations or something like that. She had not expected to get sent to the office.
The fact was Julia had never been sent to the office. Ever. Julia was a good student, and never got in any kind of major trouble. She wasn’t exactly a perfect angel either, she had gotten detention last year for being late to a class (she had been talking to Becky and never heard the bell) and she had got in a bit of trouble early this year in her history class when she told Jimmy Dart that he was an idiot for thinking that the French were responsible for the Boston massacre. But she had never gotten sent to the office. That was for people who got in real trouble, like cutting class, fighting, or smoking and drinking. And she hadn’t done any of that.
Julia was about half way to the office when a really scary thought hit her. She remembered a couple of years ago some kid, Barry she thought, got pulled out of class and sent to the office. She remembered it cause it Barry wasn’t the type of kid to get sent to the office either. It turned out his Mother had been in a car accident and died. Barry didn’t come back to school for a week. Everybody felt really horrible for him and it was all just so sad. Julia thought about the possibility of something like that, and it really terrified her. She spent the rest of the trip trying to convince herself that there was no way it could be something like that.
When she got to the office, it occurred to her that she had no idea where she was actually supposed to go. She saw a door that said ‘front office’ and decided to try there.
Inside the door was a desk with a woman sitting behind looking at a computer screen. She had her hair up in a bun and wore half moon glasses. She stopped her typing and peered over the top of her glasses at Julia.
“Can I help you?” she said without a hint of expression on her face.
“Uh, yea.” Julia started a bit nervously. “I uh, was told I had to go to the office?”
“And what’s this for?” the woman asked.
“I… don’t know actually.”
Julia response threw the woman off and she actually sat up a bit and smiled. “Oh, well, let’s take a look quick. I’m sorry, I don’t think I have seen you before. What is your name?”
“Julia.”
“Ok Julia, do you know your student ID number?”
Julia, always good with numbers, had long since memorized her student ID number, even though she hardly ever used it. She recited it back to the woman. “024768”. The woman typed in some numbers, and clicked the mouse a few times. She read and nodded to herself.
“Yep, it says here that Mrs Barnard needs to see you. Her office is past my desk down the hallway on the right.” The woman pointed to a hallway past her desk.
“Oh, OK. Thanks.”
Julia felt a bit of relief and a bit of further confusion. The good news was that Mrs Barnard was not Mr Trumble, or Mr Wood, the assistant principals. Julia knew that when you were in trouble you went to see one of them. The bad news is that she didn’t know who Mrs Barnard was. In fact she had never heard that name before. What she really wanted to know is if Mrs was one of the councilors. She didn’t think so, but the school councilors tended to change over pretty quickly. Julia figured that if somebody was going to tell her bad news it would be a councilor. She started thinking that maybe it would have been better if she had been sent to Mr Wood. But as she walked over to the hallway intersection she saw a sign that read “Counselors” that was pointing to the left. The lady behind the desk had said to go to the right.
“Huh, this is getting strange.”
Julia walked down the hallway, which turned out to be quite short. There was only one door at the end of it and there were a couple of chairs on the side of the hallway across from the door. Julia looked at the place where the office sign would normally inform you about who worked on the other side of the door. But the sign was missing, and in its place was a printed piece of paper taped to the wall. The sign just said “Mrs Lisa Barnard.”
Julia tried the door but it seemed like it was locked. Thinking that maybe the handle spun the other way she gave it another try, and in so doing confirmed that it was in fact locked. But apparently the noise she made had alerted somebody on the other side.
“Oh, sorry, I’m coming.” Said a female voice.
The door opened and Julia found herself looking at a woman, probably in her late 30s who was dressed in jeans and a button up shirt with pockets on the front. The woman smiled and held the door open and looked at Julia. There was a moment of silence, that dragged on to the point of being a bit awkward. Julia finally spoke up.
“Are you Mrs Barnard?”
“That’s what the paper on the wall says.” She said with a roll of her eyes and a smile. “Hopefully one of these days they will get around to getting me something more official looking huh? What can I do for you?”
“Um, I was told to come see you.”
“Oh, are you, uh, what was it,” Mr Barnard said. She closed her eyes and tried to remember something. “Julia?”
“Yea, that’s me.”
“Oh, OK, yes please come in.”
Julia came into the room and Mrs Barnard closed the door behind her. The room was pretty small as far as offices go, and it had what looked almost like one of the counters from her science classes along one side. Mrs Barnard was blocking her view though and she couldn’t really see very much of the room but she did see a sink along the counter.
“Is it ok if you have a seat Julia? There are a couple of chairs behind you.”
Julia turned around and saw a couple of old, plastic desk chairs along the wall with the door. She turned and sat in the first one. It occurred to Julia that whenever somebody had really bad news they always asked you to sit.
Mrs Barnard grabbed a clip board off the lab bench and came and sat next to Julia. She glanced at the clip board and nodded to herself and then turned to look Julia straight in the eye.
“I’m sorry, let me introduce myself since we haven’t met before. My name is Lisa Barnard,” she said as she extended a hand to Julia. Julia shook her hand.
“So,” Mrs Barnard set the clipboard in her lap and folded her hands together, “Julia, how are you doing. Is everything OK with you?”
Julia didn’t really think anything had happened to her parents, but she hadn’t been able to rule is out, so she was still thinking along those lines. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I got a message earlier today. I have been trying to get in touch with your mother, but she hasn’t been answering the phone. Do you know if she has a cell phone?’
Julia had been calm up to that moment. ‘This can’t be happening!’ “Yea, she does. What’s going on?”
“Do you know the number?”
Julia quickly recited her Mother’s cell number. Mrs Barnard looked at her clip board. “Well, ok, that is the number I have for her. Is she normally good about answering it and returning calls.”
Julia knew that her Mother in fact had a horrible habit of not answering her cell phone. Julia wasn’t even 100% sure that she knew how to check her voice mail. Maybe that was all that was going on. Maybe not though.
“Well, she isn’t always the best about it really. Is she OK? I mean, what’s going on here? Did something happen to her?”
Mrs Barnard looked up at Julia and in a second or two picked up on Julia’s fear. “Oh, no, no everything is fine. This has nothing to do with your family or anything like that I just wanted to talk to her.”
“You wanted to talk with my Mother?”
“Well, yea I was hoping to talk with her before I talked with you, but I wasn’t able to get in touch with her. But it’s not a big deal, we can just talk about this right now.” Julia felt a wave of relief in hearing that this had nothing to do with her family. “So, tell me Julia, I know we haven’t met before, but how is everything going with you?”
“Me?” Julia thought about what Mrs Barnard might be looking for. Maybe this was one of those counseling sessions where they check in to see if you have friends and stuff. Julia had heard that after some of the school shootings and stuff that had happened in other parts of the country, that school were trying to do a better job of talking with students and trying to prevent kids from going nuts. That would explain why she had the temporary name tag thing on the door.
“I’m fine I guess.”
“Has anything changed recently for you? I mean have you started having any problems or anything like that?”