Bella's Accidents

The Infelicitous Flight

The moment they got home, Bella bolted up the stairs and into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and began to undress. Flinging off her shoes, knee-high socks, and patterned navy-colored top, she then undid her skirt and discovered, much to her chagrin, that there was indeed a large, brown stain on the pale blue fabric where her unexpected discharge had seeped through the seat of her underwear. No wonder so many people had been staring fixedly at her as she and her mom had so abruptly and conspicuously left the hall...

Leaving her soiled underwear on for the moment, so that the hot water might wash away some of the mess before they went into the laundry, Bella stepped into the shower and began to sob. Her tears mingled with the streams of hot water that poured down her body, and her chest heaved up and down as she drew steamy, shuddering breaths. Why did that have to happen? Why couldn't I just have held it in? Instead, she reflected with considerable dismay, as a result of her own heedlessness, several dozen people had just seen her depart from her own recital before it had even come time for her to perform, having all too obviously just accidentally pooped in her pants. The mark on the back of her skirt could have left little doubt of that. And many of the children and adolescents among the crowd were people with whom she interacted, if only in passing, on an extremely regular basis – whenever she attended Mr. Ortega's for her music lessons, which was ordinarily at least two or three times per week. Her situation was almost too overwhelmingly humiliating and awful to bear thinking about...

After she was done with her shower and retreated to her room, Bella was grateful that her parents let her be. Her mom might ordinarily have tried to console her daughter after such a trying ordeal, but this time seemed to correctly intuit that Bella would simply rather be left alone. Hating herself, Bella put on her protection as she got ready to climb into bed and escape into the book she was currently reading. She glared reproachfully at her skinny, black-haired, olive-skinned reflection. It didn't matter how many times Bella's mom or dad or teachers or friends told her how pretty and smart and sweet and talented she was – all Bella saw staring back at her was a pathetic little girl in size L girls nighttime underwear.

***

The next few days were pleasant enough, despite the fairly devastating start to Bella's winter holiday. She lost herself for hours on end in her books, traveling alongside her favorite heroes and heroins as they embarked upon wild and dangerous adventures in faraway and mythical places, undertaking extraordinary challenges and conquering spectacular obstacles. Other than to pester her occasionally to do chores around the house, her mom let her remain ensconced in her own little world, until it was time to start packing for their annual trip to Florida.

As they did almost every year, Bella and her parents would fly to Tampa to spend Hannukah with her mom's side of the family. Although she was far too polite to say so, Bella didn't enjoy spending time with her mom's relatives nearly as much as with her dad's. This was mainly because her dad's half of the family included nearly a dozen members of her own generation, including a couple of girls (her immediate cousins) very close to her own age, while her mom's side of the family consisted entirely of older relatives, namely her mom's unmarried sister, their two elderly parents (Bella's grandparents), as well as their aunt and her son (Bella's great aunt and first cousin once removed). While this fact served to make Bella an object of acute and adoring attention whenever she visited her mom's relatives, she frequently found herself uncomfortably self-conscious in the midst of their incessant barrage of questions – and this was before the recent advent of her little nightly problem and its waking corollaries had conspired to drastically lower her baseline levels of confidence and self-esteem.

Their flight left at 3:30 in the morning, which meant that, including an hour and a half layover in Chicago, they wouldn't be arriving in Tampa until nearly eight and a half hours later, around 12pm according to their body clocks (although 3pm, local time). It also meant that they needed to wake up well before 2am in order to ensure that they would be at the airport in plenty of time to check their luggage and make it through security before their boarding call.