It was the middle of the night on a Wednesday (actually, it was now Tuesday as the actual time was 12:02) when an 11-year-old Maddie was fast asleep in her bed. She had a great day at school today.
First, she was finally starting to understand her math a lot better and actually got an A this time on her past two fractions pop quizzes and even finally got most of the problems on last night's homework correct, only missing a few problems. Mr. O'Connor was very proud of her and even offered her to give him a fist bump, but she just wished her parents were more enthusiastic about it. Their reaction was just a monotonous "cool", and that was after so much nagging from them for her to bring her C- in math up a little bit more.
Second, Jerky Jessica was also out sick today, so Stacey, Allison, Kelly - Jessica's three slightly-less jerky friends - didn't bother her at all because Jessica was the leader while Stacey, Allison, and Kelly were her followers. So, Maddie and her friends were able to have a peaceful lunch without Jessica and her gang bothering them or with them teasing Maddie about her rumored crush on a popular seventh-grader named Corey Jenkins.
Maddie fell asleep hoping that she would have another good day at school today as she was finally in dreamland. She dreamt about her and the entire sixth grade going on a trip to Paris where they were all being dropped off by their parents at the airport, and just as she was about to be dropped off by her family, Evan kept poking her and saying her name.
"Maddie. Maddie. Maddie. Maddie," he kept pestering.
Eventually, she woke up to the feeling of Evan shaking her awake and the actual noise of Evan calling her name and telling her to wake up.
"Evan, go back to bed," she muttered, pulling the covers up closer towards her chin, seeing that the time was now 12:04 am.
Instead, Evan had a different idea, so he picked up one of the throw pillows sitting on her bed, raised it above his head high, and then started whacking her with it.
"Wake up!"
"Okay, okay," resigned Maddie, rolling out of bed and then sitting up, pulling on the string of her bedside lamp to turn it on and wondering what her three-year-old brother wanted. She rubbed her eyes to remove all of the eye rocks before she finally asked what the trouble was while only half-awake. "What is it Evan?"
Evan shyly stood there in his dinosaur pajamas, rubbing his hands together nervously, looking like he was ashamed of himself. "I-I...I peed."
"Okay?" Maddie questioned. Although he had been potty-trained for a year now, he still had an accident every now and then at school or at home. "Where did you pee?"
"My bed," he sniffed.
"Why are you telling me? Why didn't you tell Mom and Dad?"
"I didn't want them to scream at me for going potty in my bed," answered Evan, feeling very embarrassed. Last month when he had an accident in his carseat because his mom didn't make it to the house in time when he needed to go really bad, she yelled at him for it and even cursed at him.
"Oh, Evan," Maddie sighed, feeling bad for her brother as she noticed the wet spot on his pajama bottoms. "It's okay. Let's change your clothes and your bedsheets."
She was aware of how much patience her parents had almost lost when it came to potty-training Evan. When he was still in pull-ups and they were very adamant about putting him in big boy underwear, they even went to bribing him that they would get him Barney the dinosaur ones, but that didn't work...although he still got Barney underwear anyway. The reason why it was difficult to potty-train him compared to Maddie and Daniel was because Evan hated the porcelain toilet because the sound of flushing hurt his ears, and public toilets were so much worse for him because the sound was much louder. The first time he heard a public toilet flush, he immediately ran to Maddie, terrified and crying tears as he clutched her torso tightly.
Now, although he was no longer in diapers or even pull-ups, the loud noise of a public toilet flushing was still frightening for him, so he would always cover his ears whenever he would flush it. In addition, he was afraid to use the bathroom at night because the idea of walking into the pitch-black bathroom at night was scary. He also claimed that he was terrified of the "shower ghost" despite Maddie telling him that there was no such thing.
Sometimes, he would have an accident at preschool (mostly during naptime) because he was afraid of asking his teacher that he needed to go no matter how many times she, Margaret, and Phillip encouraged him to ask.
Once Maddie got Evan cleaned up, she handed him a fresh pair of underwear with race cars on it and a clean set of orange Tigger pajamas, she had him sit on the couch so she could clean his bedsheets.
When she examined his sports-themed bedsheets and the mattress under it, there was a big wet puddle of urine. She ripped the sheets right off the bed and then put them in the washing machine along with Evan's underwear and pajamas. In order to get the urine stain off of the mattress and also get rid of the smell, she used a wet paper towel with soap to wipe it up as best as she could. She tried to remember as best as she could from what she had observed her mother do when cleaning bedsheet accidents, so she sprinkled baking soda on the mattress to let it dry for a few minutes just like Margaret would do.
While Maddie let the baking soda do its job, she walked out to the living room to check on Evan, who she found sitting on the couch curled up in a fetal position. He'd gotten his underwear and pajama bottoms on, but he still didn't put the pajama top on just yet; instead, it was sitting right beside him. He was crying silently.
"Evan, what's wrong?" Maddie consoled, sitting down next to her brother and wrapping her arm around him.
Evan didn't answer. Instead, he just snuggled up into Maddie, who didn't need to ask any further questions about why he was upset because she immediately could figure out why: because he wet the bed.
"It's okay, you don't have to be ashamed about this," she soothed. "A lot of kids your age do this sometimes."
"What does 'ashamed' mean?" Evan asked, to which Maddie did not know how to answer. Sometimes when Evan asked her about something, she knew exactly what the thing he was asking about meant, but she just wasn't sure how to explain it to a toddler.
"Embarrassed, I guess," she shrugged.
"What does 'embarrassed' mean?"
"Um," she thought for a while before finally coming up with a good definition. "Sad or mad that something happened."
"Mommy and Daddy will be mad," he spluttered, choking out a sob.
"Don't worry, I won't tell Mom and Dad about this. It will be our little secret," she promised.
Evan smiled a little bit, finally feeling reassured. "I want to go to sleep. I want to go back to my bed."
"Your bed needs to finish getting clean right now," reminded Maddie, continuing to rub Evan's back. "Would you like to sleep on the couch for the night?"
Evan nodded his head up and down, indicating a "yes".
"Okay," acknowledged Maddie. "I'll get you your pillow and a spare blanket from the closet."
"What about Peter and Mr. Cuddles?"
"Don't worry, they'll be joining you, too," she chuckled. Of course, she would never forget Mr. Cuddles the teddy bear and the plush Peter Rabbit.
"Can I have ice water?" Evan commanded.
"Of course," conceded Maddie, grabbing Evan's pillow and stuffed toys from his room and a blanket from the linen closet before helping him put his pajama top on and then tucking him into the couch and fixing up a cup of cold icy water for him.
By the time she arrived with the cup, he was already asleep. So, she set the cup of water down on the coffee table and then gave him a kiss goodnight before she went back to his bedroom to finish cleaning up his bed by vacuuming up the baking soda and then spraying it with Febreze to mask the odor.
When she got back in her bed, she looked at her alarm clock only to see that it was 12:59 am, meaning that she had five more hours left to catch her Zs before needing to wake up...and it was a good thing that she was tired.
AN: I hope you all enjoyed, please review :)