April flash - "Denial" - 2 of 2

TWO

Her roommate is barely a teenager.

Kat pokes her finger at the building evidence. “You’re watching some kids show, you-”

“Dive Club is not a-”

“And you stripped the bed because you...” Kat feels a hot weight in her own bladder as she nods in understanding.” You wet the bed,” she whispers, aghast.

The biggest, most neon symptom of all.

Jane’s face turns red. “I did not!” She jumps to her feet. “You’re a big fat liar!” And then she frowns as she follows Kat’s stare, seeing how her bra is much too generous, her panties are ready to fall down to her ankles.

Kat backs her way to the bedroom door, takes out her phone. “You caught and you didn’t say.” She opens the app. “What did you think? It was just going to go away?” Like a urinary tract infection, flushing it with probiotics and cranberry juice.

She whines, “And you gave it to me!”

“I didn’t-”

“Of course you did! That’s how it works. And we have to call it in!”

Jane moves fast, lightning across the bedroom floor, and grabs the phone.

“Hey! We have to-”

“No,” says Jane. She holds the phone in a pincer-like grip. “There’s no point. We’re positive, and what do think they’ll do?” She smiles at Kat. “We can be in charge of this, we can have fun.”

Kate stares. “This isn’t a game.”

Jane shrugs. “Might as well be.” She looks over at her bed. “I didn’t get to see the rainbows when I peed,” she says, “because I was asleep.” She tosses the phone; it skips and bounces across the floor and under the bed.

“Jane!”

“But you can,” says Jane. She strokes Kat’s hair, puts her arms around her waist. “What’s done is done. I’m not in denial, I just don’t want to go through this in some icky clinic with a bunch of doctors.” She nods encouragingly. “I know you have to go; you’ve got that look.” She nods again. “You should just go.”

Kat looks away from her roommate’s smiling face. Of course, Jane is younger, how could she have doubted it? Younger and shorter; Kat could break away, there’s still time to scramble for the phone.

But the heat in her bladder is begging for release. And really, the doctors can’t do anything.

“We can still order pizza,” says Jane, her voice softening, almost teasing, as if she’s talking playfully to a young child. “And we can have ice-cream as well.”

Kat laughs, even as she imagines both of them gorging on junk food in their underwear, the light of the laptop flickering on their faces, as they stay up late watching...anything they want.

She’s going to let go. What else is there? She whines, “I don’t wanna be one of those dummies in the park.”

Jane tightens her embrace. “It’s okay, see?” She stands on her tip-toes, looks into Jane’s eyes. “We get smaller, we got the good version.” She beams. “We’ll be cute as hell.”

An unasked-for second chance. A giggling, gurgling burden on society.

Will their parents step up? Kat remembers how her mother had ended their last conversation:

I won’t clean out the attic just yet. All your toys and things. Just in case.

Kat swallows. “How little do you think we’ll get?” She thinks fleetingly of her Bratz dolls, and then of her Heelys sneakers.

Showing off for Daddy. Tea parties and fashion shows with Mommy.

“Dunno.” Jane giggles. “Hey, maybe we’ll be like sisters.”

Kat frowns; is that how the virus works? They have the same variant, does that mean the same bounce age? The question drops from view as she starts to urinate. Kat understands, as the warm wetness spreads from her crotch, that it was never a question of ‘if’, merely ‘when’.

“You’re doing it,” says Jane softly, giving the spectacle a hushed reverence. “Oooh, what does it feel like?”

For a moment, for the longest time, Kat doesn’t respond. She stares past her roommate, eyes wide as saucers, her mouth hanging open. And then she smiles, blinks, her mind relaxing. “I see the rainbows,” she whispers. “It’s all pretty.”

And then she can feel it, a tingle in her skin where inevitable physical changes are going to happen. She looks at Jane, abruptly eager for a return of the embrace. “Are we gonna be like twins?” she asks shyly.

Jane grins. “Maybe.” And she wraps her arms around her roommate. “Or maybe I’ll be the big sister.” She kisses Kat’s cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ll look after you. We’re gonna have so much fun.”

Relaxing into the embrace, Kat sighs and smiles. Kat’s right; it’s all going to be so much fun.

THE END

"Jane's roommate desperately tries to convince her she has APP virus, deep in denial Jane doesn't want to hear it, she just wants to relax and watch tv." - Joseph