✅ Younger Twin [NaNoWriMo2023]

30 - Tristan's First Day

This bonus chapter is dedicated to Peter. Thank you for your support!

I woke up early, sat upright in my crib, and smiled. Nik was lying on his back, sprawled like an untidy octopus across a pile of teddies in his crib. We'd acted up quite a lot last night, running around screaming as the grown-ups struggled to put us to bed, so it was no surprise that he was still snoring deeply. And on some level, not consciously available to me when I was actually playing with Nik, that might have been why I had been so eager to keep him up late. His body was still smaller than mine, so if we kept on playing until we were both exhausted, I was the only one who had a chance of waking up early.

I didn't know what time it was. I couldn't quite manage to read the clock right now, even if Nik's sleepiness meant I knew that I wasn't really a toddler. I grabbed the bars of the crib and pulled myself up to my knees, and a giraffe leant me a little leverage to help me stay stable while I reached for the catches to release myself. When I got out onto the landing I looked up to see Taylor in the doorway to her room, watching me with idle curiosity, but I didn't stop to talk. I just ran to the bathroom and slammed the door closed behind me. I wanted to get changed and start thinking like a big boy before I talked to anyone; I still hadn't managed to make it to the bathroom yesterday, even after Dr Maxwell made it easier, but I was sure that I would feel a lot more confident for the day ahead if I could at least pretend I'd not woken up in a wet diaper.

Today was going to be a big day, after all. It was my first day going to preschool with Nik, and I wanted to show all of them what a big boy I was. Bigger than my twin brother, anyhow. I found that I was staring at myself in the mirror as I thought about how embarrassing it would be if Nik turned out to be the big one anyway. I shook my head and tried to put all those thoughts away; I didn't want to think about that stuff now. It was a big day; my first day at school. That was something I'd never done before, and I wanted to do it perfectly.

With shaking hands I took off my diaper and threw it away. The pawprints disappeared, to make it easy to know just by looking that I'd had an accident. But I knew that I was a big boy really; I was sure of that. I washed myself a bit, and then pulled on a clean diaper. It was cuter that way, with a neat line of paw prints going between Dipper the Dalmatian in his crane and Sven the Terrier in his cement mixer. Characters I hadn't even known the name of when I'd started wearing these diapers a couple of weeks ago, but now I watched them any time the grown-ups gave me the choice. I smiled at how cute it looked once I was changed, and then looked down at the pyjama bottoms I'd so hastily pulled off so I could change. It didn't matter now if I could put them back on or not. It was morning, so I didn't need to be wearing pyjamas. I grabbed the robe from behind the bathroom door instead, hoping that would hide the cute diaper and make me seem a little bigger.

Taylor was still there waiting for me on the landing.

"How old are you today?" she asked, and I thought it might be a real question for me to answer.

"I'm big!" I said, not wanting to get lumped in with Nik.

"Yeah. But Tristan big, or Triana big?"

"Umm..." I mumbled. I wasn't sure, but it felt like I wasn't big enough to understand the question this time. Did that mean I wasn't big enough?

"Come on," she said with a smile, and pushed her bedroom door open. It still felt kind of weird going in my big sister's room, but she had invited me. And once she closed the door behind us, I felt that a lot of my memories started flooding back. I didn't say anything for a few minutes, feeling my mind shift now that I was allowed to be bigger; it was hard enough just remembering which things I was allowed to remember, and how big I was.