Chapter Nine

(Author's Note: My apologies if there are any formatting issues in this chapter. This chapter contains a text message conversation between two characters; in the original Word document, I took the time to put the messages in colored boxes like in a messaging app, but, unsurprisingly, this didn't translate. I think everything should be fine, but just in case, my apologies!)

Rei’s thumb hesitated over the send button. She barely knew the girl; should she really be texting her about…this? Somehow, though, she was the only person Rei wanted to talk to about it. Somehow, Rei knew she’d understand how awful Rei felt right now. Somehow, she would know what to do.

Rei took a deep breath and hit send.

“Hey, riley, it’s rei”

Rei immediately regretted hitting send. She stared at the screen of her phone, desperately wishing there was an unsend button. She even long-pressed the text box to make sure there wasn’t. After a few more long moments spent looking at that unchanging screen, Rei put her phone to sleep and set it on the floor next to her. It was stupid, Riley was probably busy, and, besides, it was dumb to even bring this up with her. But, who else could Rei talk to?

Megan Eckridge had been Rei’s best friend throughout both middle and high school; the two had been inseparable for six years and had planned to go to the same university. But the last time Rei had seen Megan had been a few months ago when she ran into Megan and her mother in Target; the latter had been pushing the former in a stroller. The look on Megan’s face had been embarrassed and slightly apologetic, but she had simply sucked her pacifier and let her mother do the catching up.

Rei had met Brian Redburn during their freshman year of high school; they were lab partners in biology and entered the science fair together, taking home third place. The two had stayed close after that, even though Rei always suspected Brian was aiming for more than friendship. In senior year, Brian started to be very vocal about his support for groups like Mothers for America that lobbied for the kind of social policy change that would eventually lead to the passage of The Hayes Act. That had been the end of their friendship.

Sally Walker had been her partner in the debate team; they’d always had a bit of a frenemy vibe going. No, that wasn’t quite right, they were never enemies, but frequent rivals, challenging the other to get better grades and perform better in their debates. They were fast friends when it mattered though. Sally’s mother had emancipated her when The Hayes Act was passed, and Sally went off to the kind of fancy university Rei herself would have gone to if not for…well, everything. They had lost touch. Maybe Rei could have reached out and tried to rekindle that friendship, but…no, Sally could never even begin to understand what Rei was feeling.

But, for that matter, could Riley? Riley had been emancipated too, but…there was something about her. She wasn’t fighting this fight for herself, but she was still down in the trenches fighting for girls like Megan. Girls like, it seemed, Rei.

Rei dived on her phone like a live grenade as it vibrated.

“Hey girl good to hear from you, hows it going?”

Rei let out a sigh of relief; part of her had been worried that Riley had only given Rei her number to be nice and didn’t expect Rei to use it.

Rei’s fingers danced across her screen.

“Tbh it has been a weird night. I was…kinda hoping i could talk to you about it, if that’s okay”

Rei was relieved to see the three bouncing dots that told her Riley was typing back appear almost immediately.

“Yeah of course, sounds serious, everything okay?”

Rei’s fingers remained motionless as she thought through how to respond to that question. Everything was definitely not okay, but…how to explain what had happened? Rei started typing, her fingers flying, as she narrated the events of the evening, starting with coming home. Wait, no, hold on. Rei held down the delete button until what she had just written disappeared. She had to explain the lead up to today, or else Riley wouldn’t really get how things had led up to this point. Rei started typing again, then started deleting before she had finished a sentence.

Okay, she thought to herself, just keep it simple. She typed out for words, let her thumb linger over send for a long moment, then let it drop.

“My mom spanked me”

“Shit. You okay? What happened?

And so, for the second time, Rei launched into her retelling of the events of the day. Riley remained silent on her end until Rei finally reached the end of her story. Rei pressed send on her final message and set her phone down to wait for Riley’s response. The burning, stinging sensation on her ass was finally beginning to fade, but the deep muscle ache was still very present. Rei couldn’t help but wonder if her butt would bruise.

Riley did not keep Rei waiting for long.

“Shit. That’s so fucked up, im so sorry rei. What can I do to help? Do you need me to come get you? You can stay at my place for the night if you need to. We will figure out how to get your re-enrolled in that class, okay? So don’t worry about that.”

“No, no, that’s okay…I just needed someone to talk to about it, and tbh I didn’t know who else I could talk to about this. Anyway, there’s no way my mom would let me leave the house tonight and I don’t want to think about what she might do if she caught me sneaking out tonight. As for the class..idk, maybe it’s better I just obey my mom on this one.”

“Okay, if youre really sure…”

“I’m sure. I just…really needed to tell someone about this that I knew would be on my side, if that makes sense”

“Yeah, it does. And rei? Never doubt that I’m on your side.”

“Thanks riley. Thanks a lot”

Rei smiled weakly and put her phone down. Riley hadn’t been able to make anything tangibly better, but Rei hadn’t expected her to either. Just sharing what had happened and having Riley affirm that it was, indeed, fucked up was enough. That was all Rei had really needed.

Well, that was all Rei needed that she was going to get right then.

The two continued texting throughout the night, but conversation quickly turned on to other matters. When Rei finally went to bed that night, she fell asleep with her face bathed in the light of her phone screen as her eyes danced amongst those three bouncing dots.

When five minutes passed without a response from Rei, Riley started to think the girl had fallen asleep. She had, after all, said she was lying down in bed; it was the obvious assumption for Rei’s sudden silence. When another ten passed and Riley’s phone remained silent, she was quite sure of it.

Riley got out of her own bed and, leaving her phone behind, wandered downstairs to find a snack.

As she made her way down the stairs, she could hear the murmur of the TV coming from the living room and see the flickering light illuminating the hallway. Riley’s socked feet moved silently over the hardwood floor as she crossed the hallway and entered the living room, where she found her mother sitting in an otherwise dark room with a bowl of popcorn watching what appeared to be some old sitcom. She looked up at her daughter as Riley came into the room and paused the TV.

“Hey,” Anne, Riley’s mother, said, “you’re still up. I thought you went to bed a while ago.”

“Nah,” Riley said, plopping down on the couch next to her mother, “I’ve just been in my room, texting a friend.”

Her mother extended the popcorn bowl towards Riley, who grabbed a handful.

“Everything okay?” She couldn’t quite place it, but her daughter had an odd tone in her voice.

“Yeah,” Riley crunched down on a piece of popcorn and chewed thoughtfully. “Yeah,” she repeated once she had swallowed, “my friend is just going through some things.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Anne replied. “Is this a friend of yours I know?”

Riley shook her head, “nah, I just met her recently. She goes to school with me.”

When it became clear that Riley wasn’t going to continue, Anne picked the TV remote back up and pressed play, and the two sat in silence watching the TV and munching on popcorn for a long moment.

As they watched the show in silence, Riley’s mind drifted back to the whole reason Rei had texted her. Truthfully, Riley had been excited to see Rei’s text; their meeting had been brief, but she felt a connection with the other girl. If she was being honest, she had been slightly sad that Rei was coming to her because she had a problem. It was silly, but she wanted Rei to…well…genuinely want to talk to her. Would Rei had ever texted Riley if this hadn’t happened? Riley knew, however, that this thought was unfair and ungenerous to her new friend. Furthermore, it downplayed the significance of the fact that Rei had trusted Riley enough to come to her with this. Riley was sure the other girl had plenty of other friends she could have gone to.

All of this was, of course, overshadowed by Riley’s concern over the implications of Rei’s mother’s actions.

Riley knew she was lucky to have a mother like hers; one that respected not only Riley’s adulthood but her personhood as well. The sad truth was, what had started as something practiced by only the most conservative families had become rather mainstream, and most girls had parents who had supported The Hayes Act to some degree or another. There was a reason The Hayes Act had soared through both houses of congress with the most bipartisan support of any bill in recent memory.

Of course, not every family went so far as to completely regress their adult daughters to giant infants. This extreme of the spectrum was still, technically, in the minority but large enough that it was considered perfectly normal. Large enough that adult sized baby products and clothes had become big business. Large enough that that they still outnumbered the families on the other extreme of the spectrum who had emancipated their daughters. The majority of families fell in sort of a middle ground that included varying degrees of regression: some families stopped short of fully regressing their adult daughters to babyhood, instead merely regressing them to toddlerhood; some treated them more like elementary age girls; some merely extended their teen years; and, of course, there were those who combined elements from ages to their liking.

The fact was that it was estimated that 82.7% of girls ages 18 to 28 wore pull ups or diapers. The fact was that only 8.5% of girls age 18 to 28 were emancipated. The fact was the companies like Kimberly-Clarke and Proctor & Gamble, companies that produced brands like Pampers, Luvs, and Huggies, were raking in record profits. The fact was that their profits had been having exponential growth over the last five years as this movement started gaining traction. The fact was that those rising profits had been reinvested in propaganda and lobbyists.

And that’s not even to mention the role of the pharmaceutical companies and private education institutes.

The fact was that Riley was well aware of all of these facts; they were ingrained in her memory, and just thinking about them was enough to make her furious.

She forced herself to unclench her jaw, then took a deep breath. She willed herself to calm down. It kind of worked.

Rei had told her today that her mother was a bit on the fence, but this was a sign that she was picking a side. This was a pretty drastic and pretty sudden declaration. How far would Rei’s mom take it? Were diapers in Rei’s future? Pre-school? Elementary? Maybe Rei would get lucky and her mom would just send her to an extended high school program. Riley hoped that’s all it would be, for the sake of her new friend. But either way, in in the best case for Rei, Riley would lose her.

Even if Rei went the way of Jennifer Duffy, being regressed to infancy in some ways while still allowed to attend college, it was only a matter of time before the two couldn’t be friends anymore. Rei was far from the first friend Riley would lose to this trend, and once their parents started dragging them down, it was only a matter of time before they stopped being friends. Sometimes, it was because their mother forbade them from hanging out with Riley, citing her as a bad influence. Sometimes, it was because the other girl couldn’t handle being friends with Riley, either out of embarrassment or jealousy or some other complication. And sometimes, it was because the other girl started drinking the kool-aid and decided Riley was a bad influence on their own.

That was how it had been with Jennifer Duffy.

Riley didn’t want to lose another friend, especially not one she had just made.

“You know,” Anne spoke up suddenly, startling Riley out of her thoughts, “I loved this show when I was a kid. I saw it was on streaming now and decided to rewatch it.”

“And?” Riley prompted. “How is it holding up?”

Anne chuckled, “not well. I remember it being a lot funnier; but maybe I was just easier to amuse back then. Either way, the show didn’t age well.”

Riley snorted a short laugh. “Yeah, well, some things are better left in the past.”

Anne looked at her daughter thoughtfully, wondering what was going on in her head. Something seemed to be weighing on her. Of course, it didn’t take a genius to see that Riley wasn’t thinking about TV shows when she had said that. Anne frowned, uncertain what to do for her daughter. Riley was smart and mature and passionate; Anne was proud of all that. She had given her daughter every opportunity she could give her to be independent and seek out her goals, but Anne could only do so much, and the world was against both of them. It couldn’t help that Riley was one of only a select few amongst her peers whose mother gave them such freedom.

“Your friend,” Anne said after a long silence, “is she…are her parents…” Anne gestured vaguely, uncertain how to put this euphemistically.

“No,” Riley responded, getting the gist of what her mother was trying to say, “at least, not yet. I don’t know. I hope not.”

Anne frowned deeper. She knew how many friends Riley had watched have their adulthoods stripped from them. She knew how furious the whole thing made Riley.

“You know you can’t interfere, right?”

Riley reached over and grabbed a small handful of popcorn. She shoved it in her mouth and chewed silently, staring at the TV.

“Right?” Anne said again, louder this time.

Riley swallowed pointedly and gave her mother a withering look, “it’s rude to talk with your mouthful.”

Anne sighed, “but seriously, okay? Right?”

Riley flopped back on the couch, “right, whatever.”

“I know it’s hard, Riley. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s fucking dumb is what it is.”

“That doesn’t make it any less real.”

“I know, mom.”

“I just worry you are going to get yourself in trouble. Even I can’t protect you if you get in trouble.”

“I’m not gonna get in trouble.”

“Uh huh, sure, you’re not, little miss Rebel.”

Riley rolled her eyes but said nothing. She hadn’t wanted her mother to know she was member of Rebel, much less figure out that she was its founder and leader; she would very much have preferred if that had stayed a secret. But Riley’s mother wasn’t stupid.

“I’m serious, Riley,” her mother continued a moment later, her tone dropping to reflect the gravity she intended for her words, “you know I’m proud of what you are doing, but I want you to scale it down, okay? That was dangerous and risky.”

Riley just sighed. Her mother hadn’t said anything about the bombing yet, but of course Riley knew her mother knew Riley was behind it. Of course, Riley knew she wasn’t going to stay silent about it forever (how could one stay silent if they knew their child had masterminded an explosive act of domestic terrorism, after all, and Riley was, quite frankly, shocked it had taken her this long), but Riley really wasn’t in the mood to talk about it tonight.

“Hey, you listening to me?” Anne pressed.

“This is the only way we are going to effect change, mom,” Riley replied calmly.

“You are not fighting this fight alone, Riley; let the larger groups with more resources do stuff like that. Stick to vandalism and anti-propaganda, okay? That’s what you are good at anyway.”

“We had to do something big, mom!”

“No, you didn’t. I told you, if I thought this was getting out of hand, I would revoke your emancipation. It would kill me to do it, but I’d rather you hate me than see you in prison…or worse.”

“It’s not getting out of hand.”

“You could have killed someone, Riley!” Her mother was trying to keep her voice level, but that one tested her.

“We made sure we wouldn’t. We did our research, made sure no one was in the building.”

“What if someone had stayed late?”

“Well, no one did!”

“But, what if?” Anne huffed angrily. Fighting was going to get nowhere. And the truth was, it really wasn’t like Anne disapproved of what her daughter had done, she just didn’t want to see her daughter get in trouble. “Look, I don’t want to fight, okay? But you know what could happen if they catch you, right?”

“Yeah, mom, I do.” Best case scenario? Prison. Worst case scenario? Fostered with a family that would send her to some place like Brighter Days Academy where they’d force the kool-aid down her throat.

“Are you really willing to risk that?”

Kill me if I ever become like that. Those were the words Riley had spoken to Rei just that day. Riley wanted to say yes, that this fight was important enough to her that she’d risk the ego death of complete regression, and maybe there was some part of her that truly was dedicated enough to the ideal to risk it. But the truth was, the bombing hadn’t even been her idea, and she had been against it at first—not out of principle, but out of fear. But it was safer that her mother think it had been Riley’s idea—safer that Anne not know who truly led Rebel.

Finally, Riley sighed and gave her mom a half smile, “can we go back to doing robberies?” She was making a joke only she would get; she had been against that too.

Anne sighed in exasperation, “You know I didn’t like it when you did that either, but I’d prefer that to this. But I’d really prefer you stick with vandalism and anti-Hayes propaganda.”

“Yeah, okay,” Riley agreed, genuinely hoping she could keep her end of that agreement but also genuinely worried she might not be allowed to.