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Olivia
She was going to be in trouble, and she knew it because of the cold wet spot between her legs and under her bottom in bed.
Shame heated her face.
She’d peed the bed.
She didn’t understand. Only babies peed the bed and she was a big girl.
She was in kindergarten!
She thought of Noah DeAngelo. He’d peed his pants in class at the beginning of the year. He’d cried and been sad but everyone had been nice to him, even Ms. Moretti, who’d taken him to the school nurse. Noah had come back sniffling and wearing new pants (Olivia didn’t know where the new pants came from).
But Olivia was pretty sure her dad wasn’t going to be nice about the wet sheets because her dad wasn’t nice about anything anymore.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to move. Maybe if she pretended she hadn’t peed the bed it would go away, like magic. She knew magic was real because it happened inThe Neverending Story.
“Olivia!” her dad barked, suddenly standing in the doorway of her room at his apartment. “Time to get ready for school. And don’t drag your ass this morning. I don’t have the patience for it.”
She waited for him to disappear, then sat up in bed. At least the pee hadn’t gotten on her sparkly purple comforter. It was her favorite part of her room at her dad’s (she didn’t call it home because home was where she’d lived with her mom before the business trip she’d had to go on, which was taking forever).
She liked her room at her dad’s fine she guessed, but it wasn’therroom. Not really. There was no nightlight (her dad said nightlights were for babies) and no fish swimming on the walls before she went to sleep. The walls were white instead of pink and she didn’t have twinkly lights here like she did at home.
But mostly, she missed her mommy.
Olivia missed her mom’s pancakes and the way she smiled when she caught Olivia doing something she wasn’t supposed to do. She missed the way her mom sang when she braided Olivia’s hair. She missed the way her mom snuggled next to her in bed for her nighttime story (her dad sat on the edge of the bed, like he didn’t want to get too close to Olivia) and the way she used different voices for all the characters in the books, even the animals.
“Get moving, Olivia!” her dad yelled from the other room.
Olivia scrambled out of bed and went to her dresser to find clothes. She chose pants and a sweater because it was too cold to wear her dress without tights and her dad said tights were apain in the ass.
Her dad could say things like that because he didn’t have a swear jar like her mom, and that meant no ice cream either because Olivia’s mom always used the swear jar to take Olivia for ice cream.
She hurried to get dressed. Maybe if she got to the table early her dad wouldn’t come in to her bedroom and then he wouldn’t see the pee spot in her bed.
She covered it with the sheet just in case, but she left the sparkly purple comforter off because she didn’t want pee to get on it.
“Finally,” her dad said when she came into the kitchen. He didn’t say it like he was happy to see her, more like he was mad, even though she’d hurried today.
He poured cereal into the bowl at the table while Olivia scooted onto the chair. Then he went to the fridge for milk. “Where’s the permission slip for the field trip?”
“In my backpack,” Olivia said, picking up her spoon.
He sighed and turned toward the hall, and then Olivia remembered about her accident.
“I can get it,” she said, sliding off the stool.
“You eat,” he said.
She thought she heard her heart beating, the way the heart had beaten in a documentary she’d watched with her mom about doctors.
Thump-thump, thump-thump.
Except she wasn’t sick or anything so she didn’t know why she could hear her heart.
“Olivia!” He’d found the accident in her bed. She could tell from the sound of his voice. “Get your ass in here.”
She slid off the chair and walked slowly down the hall.
