✅ My Sister's Problem

30. Challenge

"Ohhhh..." I whimpered as I looked down and saw my soaked shorts and a puddle on the floor. I couldn't even imagine how much trouble I was going to be in when Mummy got home. "I did an oopsie?" It should have been no surprise; I was just a little girl, and I didn't need to try to hold it. I could just relax and let grown-ups do all the hard stuff. But I knew now that it was naughty, and I had to do something about it. I thought I needed to remember how to be a big girl, but I wasn't sure how to go about it.

Another knock outside made me jump, and I realised it must be Hugo. We had plans for the afternoon, and I was really nervous about it. It wasn't quite lunch time yet, but he could have come over early so we could get food on the way or something. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't greet him looking like this. But all the worries seemed to snap me out of that weird state where I was seeing myself as a child. I knew that being caught like this would cause so many problems, with Hugo and with my family, and so I had to sort it out and clean up now.

The washing machine had just stopped, and the first load of laundry was dry enough to hang up; it would dry quickly enough in the sun. That meant that I could wash my clothes right now, with the second load, and nobody else would see them. As I looked at the puddle covering the floor, I realised that I was lucky I'd decided to do this in the kitchen. As well as having the biggest space to walk around without a convenient place to sit down without thinking, it had a tile floor that wouldn't be so hard to clean.

I dumped out the second bag of clothes for washing. There was all kinds of stuff in there, everybody's clothes, and a bunch of towels too. That was fine. I pushed clothes across the floor, hoping there would be enough fabric there to soak up all the pee. And after a minute or two it seemed to be working. There wasn't a visible spill now. I didn't know if the smell would hang around, but I could deal with that in a minute. I put most of the damp clothes back in their bag, and added my shorts and undies. Then I went to unload the stuff that was already in the machine, into a different bag. There was more knocking from the door, and I hoped he would wait for me. I couldn't let him in until I was dressed.

"Just a minute!" I shouted, hoping I was loud enough to hear.

From the bag of clean stuff, I grabbed a pale blue towel that could have been counted as either white or coloured, and used it to wipe down my legs with a bit of soap. I got some cleaning stuff from the cupboard, choosing one with a strong smell, and spritzed the floor a few times where the worst of the puddle had been. Then I rubbed over the top of it with the towel, standing on it and shuffling along to make sure that I'd cleaned it as well as I could. The towel, along with all the other pee-stained clothes, went into the washing machine at about the same time I heard my phone ringing. I ran up to my room to find it, before remembering I'd left it on the kitchen counter. I was so disorganised today, but I was sure I was doing well cleaning up.

"Hello?" I answered, hoping I wasn't still talking like a little kid without realising or something. It had been weird how much that thing made me think like the girl I'd imagined. Maybe it had done that last time as well, but only in my dreams.

"Hey Sally, it's Hugo. Hope I'm not bothering you, I'm outside. I knocked but I don't know if you heard."

"Yeah, yeah." I rushed up the stairs, phone tucked between my shoulder and cheek. "Sorry, I just... I've got laundry to do today, and I've been rushing, but..."

"It's okay. I saw you running around. Should I come back after lunch, or you want to take a rain check?"

"No, no! I just..." Of course, letting him in was a higher priority than laundry, even if he was standing there while I finished off. I was trying to think of some explanation for leaving him outside that didn't paint me as a baby, and nothing came to mind until... "Sorry, I just... I'm such a klutz. I put my hoodie in the machine with my keys in the pocket, I was running around looking for them so I could let you in before I realised. And I got them now but opening the machine before it's done, it spills so I got to go up to my room and change my pants."