Drama

The Long Tuesday

By StoneRiver Green

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Michelle is fourteen, in ninth grade, and has been wetting herself at school for weeks. Today it happened twice: once in math, where nobody caught her, and once in history, where the teacher saw the chair and called for an aide. Now she is in the counselor's office at 1:05 on a Tuesday in November, and the counselor is trying to get her to go to the nurse for clean clothes. What the counselor does not know is that the wetting is not the problem. The problem is the foster placement she went home to in August, and the woman there who decided that a bedwetter should wear the evidence all day as a lesson. Michelle cannot change her underwear without disobeying her foster mother, and she cannot explain why without risking a call that might move her again, or worse. The stakes are the rest of the afternoon. Gym is at 2:10. The bus is at 3:15. Every adult who looks too closely is a door that could open onto the placement, and every door that opens could take away the only room she has. She has to get out of this office and back into a day that is already ruined, before someone decides to fix it. Who you are: You are Michelle, fourteen, in ninth grade, dark brown hair and light freckles, narrow-faced and a little short for your age. It is Tuesday, November 10th, 1:05 in the afternoon, and you are sitting at the round table in Ms. Pardo's

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