✅ My Sister's Problem

58. The First Day of the Rest of My Life

Author's Note: Did you think it was over? Sorry about that ☺ There might still be loose ends for Sally to tie up first.

This chapter is dedicated to Uwigi, with thanks for all your support on Patreon.

I awoke to the sound of a harp playing a grating, repetitive melody. For a second I wondered what the sound was, and then a vibration from my wrist was just at the right intensity to set my arm swinging where it dangled over the side of the bed. That woke me up a fraction more, and then I recognised one of the alarm tones that my phone had come with. I'd rarely used it, preferring to wake up to the gentle vibrations from my watch, which would automatically adapt to my sleep depth. Today would be an exception, because we needed to be up early.

The beach house! The memory leapt into my mind, and my brain was firing on all cylinders in an instant. Today was the day! I groped blindly for my phone on the floor, while my other hand carefully removed Mr Muggins from my shoulder, set him against the edge of the pillow, and patted the teddy bear's fuzzy head. I found the phone a second later, but my finger squeaked slightly across rough faux-leather.

I was confused for a second, with questions like "what?" filling my mind. But then they were replaced by more concrete questions. Like why my phone was upside-down, with the case facing me, and why my hand was wet.

Both questions were answered when I swung my legs out of bed and turned my phone over. Lindy had been awake before me. In fact, she had been awake almost all night, too excited to rest properly. Every period of theta sleep shortly followed by wakefulness, maybe even pacing around her room according to the step counter. I could easily reconstruct the scene in my mind's eye. She woke up for the last time, and saw that it was only half an hour before our alarms were set. She was tired, but couldn't sit still. Maybe she went to the bathroom, and took off her pullup so she wouldn't have trouble hiding it as we rushed to get ready. Maybe she saw a dim red glow from one LED on the side of my watch; she would be likely to assume, if she'd read the manual for hers, that it indicated the sleep profiler was running.

She was being good today; she didn't dare come into my room while I was sleeping in case my phone took a video. But she knew my phone was on the floor next to my bed, so she could probably stay out of sight by crawling along the floor, and then turned the phone over on the assumption that ZoneWatcher would use the camera that I'd left pointing upwards.

She wasn't asleep, and her heart rate had ticked up a little ten minutes ago. Had she panicked when my watch started to vibrate, and run back into her own room thinking I was about to wake up? I figured that in that case, it would be a shame to disappoint her. I was a little annoyed, because she had no reason to assume I was still wearing a diaper after the punishment ended, and that would have been a big deal if her trick had actually worked. I mean, sure I might have thought about doing a similar thing to her, but only after I'd seen that she had protection, and only because I thought she might be unable to sleep otherwise.

I shrugged. My alarm had gone off, which meant I needed to be moving. I jumped up and dashed into the bathroom, calling "Morning Lindy!" on the way past. I only glanced into her room for a second; it was unavoidable as I had to step past the bathroom door to open it, so she couldn't complain. But I saw her scrambling in panic when she heard my voice, desperately trying to hide an orange mixing bowl behind the first thing she could lay her hands on, which turned out to be Bosnia. Suspicion confirmed.

I took my diaper off. No trace of pee this time; the trick hadn't worked. Probably because I'd been too deeply asleep until my alarm started. If Lindy had waited until the second or third vibration from my watch, guiding me gently towards a more alert state, she would probably have gotten the result she was hoping for. But without seeing my sleep graph, there was no way she could have known that. There was still a wet diaper in the bin from yesterday, and I knew I should make an effort to take the trash out before anyone else realised. Mum wouldn't mind, and she probably wouldn't even say anything, but I didn't want her to know. Lindy, on the other hand, was less observant but would be sure to tease me if she got the chance.