"So...I see you've had some more changes at home."
Reflexively, you pull your eyes away from the wall you've been staring at for the last 15 minutes and meet the gaze of Miss Heather. For a split-second, you even feel the urge to speak, but running your tongue along the rubber nipple of the pacifier in your mouth reminds you that Quiet Time isn't over yet.
That's how every therapy session has begun since your step-mom started sending you here. Miss Heather says that when they arrive for all-day counseling sessions, patients are often bursting with disorganized thoughts: rants and imagined fights and jumbled lists of wants and needs. You were one of these tricky patients for her, talking a mile a minute about how your cruel step-sisters had tricked your step-mom into thinking you were wetting your bed.
So now every session starts with Quiet Time. Miss Heather sets a timer on the TV screen for 30 minutes and you just...wait. Once in a while she makes an observation or poses a question, but you're not meant to respond: just listen and think. When you struggled with this, that's when the pacifier was introduced. Gigantic with a baby-pink shield that bobs ridiculously when you swallow, it ensures that Quiet Time lives up to its name.
You go back to staring at the robin-egg blue of the office wall. What had she said, "changes at home?" If there were a Pulitzer Prize for understatement, Miss Heather would be a laureate a hundred times over. You shift uncomfortably, grimacing at the soft squeak your patent leather shoes make against the hardwood. This is the first time your step-mom forced you to go to therapy in one of your new outfits: a frothy little gingham dress with opaque white stockings and ridiculous pink ribbons fastened to your hair. You feel your face flush as you imagine how you must have looked, mincing into the office on 4-inch heels and sitting gingerly on the couch.
Always careful movements like that. You're not sure why you put in so much effort: Miss Heather knows about the diapers. Every night and now every day, your hips are bound in the bunny-soft padding of a thick, disposable diaper. They crinkle when you walk, they crinkle when you eat, and they seem to crinkle when you don't move a single muscle at all. But still, you try not to crinkle so much with Miss Heather. She may be the last person in the world who thinks of you as anything more than a diaper dumping loser.
Or is she? As if reading your mind, Miss Heather speaks again: "Did you have any accidents since our last session?"
You can practically feel the blood rushing to your face and turning it scarlet. She KNOWS you don't have accidents! Not real ones! You've told her a hundred times. Your step-sisters Lauren and Olivia had faked all those accidents by splashing liquid on you or your bedsheets when your step-mom wasn't looking! The only reason you use your diapers is because you're not allowed to take them off! "They're too expensive to waste," your step-mom would say. And with all the bottles Lauren and Olivia forced you to drink when they pinned you down, you could never hold it long enough to have a dry diaper at changing time.
You make a facial expression at Miss Heather to communicate that you're angry and you want to talk. The TV screen shows there are still 8 minutes left on the Quiet Time clock, and you chew your bobbing pacifier furiously. She continues to look in your direction, her expression unchanged.
A minute passes and you're still feeling tense; your bobbing pacifier settles into a rhythm as you count down the seconds to when you can make your feelings known. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck.
"You're so pretty today with those ribbons in your hair. Do you feel pretty when you're dressed like that?"
That's it. The pacifier shoots out of your mouth like a projectile as you spit it across the room. It clatters across the hardwood. You rise from the couch and stamp your foot, the block heel of your patent leather shoe clacking comically.
"Are you kidding me right now?! I look ridiculous!" You yell. You're practically trembling. You're an adult who just refused to keep sucking on a pacifier: a perfectly reasonable reaction in any other context, but there's an icky feeling in your stomach like you just did something very bad.
Miss Heather's expression remains unchanged. For a few agonizing moments, you simply stare at each other across the room. Then, slowly, she rises to her feet, saunters across the room in her tight jeans and converse, and retrieves your pacifier from the ground. With non-chalance, she walks back over to you, and you're practically hyperventilating as she pushes the rubber nipple between your lips again. Your cheeks bulge as you reflexively swallow, suckling for air. Suddenly your moment of rebellion feels so stupid, so futile. So immature.
Miss Heather slides back into her chair and gestures for you to sit. You obey, more hyper-aware than ever of the giant crinkling diaper under your butt.
Without a word, Miss Heather reaches over to her smartphone and taps at it a few times. With a blip, the timer on the TV screen changes from 05:17 to 60:00. She's reset the clock to a full hour.
That's not the change that bothers you, though. In big block letters at the top of the TV, you see that Miss Heather renamed the timer. Your therapy sessions no longer begin with your Quiet Time. They begin with your...
Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck. Tick. Suck.