✅ My Sister's Problem

6. Analytical

This chapter's dedicated to Jordan, with thanks for all your support. Hope you're enjoying the new story!

The more I watched Hugo Eisen, the more sure I became that there was something superhuman about his abilities. Admittedly, he was standing in his back garden now, dribbing a ball along the hard paths that separated grassed areas, and he must have done each of those routes a thousand times. But it wasn't just the precision of his movements, or the way he knew exactly where the ball would be without looking. It was how good he looked when he was doing it, like a dance. If the school basketball team ever made a calendar they'd make a fortune; so long as they had the foresight to put that guy on every page. He wasn't just some himbo either; he excelled in school as well, and had been asked to stand up in front of the school more than once to be congratulated on winning some award.

I was sitting in my room now, my face resting against the window so I could see him practise next door. At this time of the evening, he'd be staring into the sun if he tried to shoot for the hoop on the front of their garage, so he had to use the one at the back. That was more convenient for me too, because it meant I could watch without being seen. I did my best to take note of the way he moved, the way he carried himself. I noted the muscles rippling under his skin, and how he kept his balance. Basketball shouldn't be that different from hockey, I thought. It was all about movement, and grace. Hugo had that in spades, but I was still a long way from being able to match him.

I wished I could show him what I could do, maybe get an opinion. But I couldn't stand thinking that he might laugh. Anyone else mocking me, maybe I could brush it off. But if it was Hugo saying mean things I wouldn't be able to cope. Maybe I could ask him to teach me, but I worried too much that he would look down on me. He was in my year at school, less than a year older than me, but that confidence made him seem so much mature. And he saw me as one of his little sister's friends, like I was becoming a little kid by association. If I asked for help, he might end up treating me like he was helping a little kid, and I didn't think I could cope with that.

But when I thought about being childish, other thoughts came into my mind. As soon as Hugo finished his drills and walked back into their house, I was back on my PC. Checking some stuff on the web, that might help me find a way to test out those weird dreams. And this was going a lot better than my attempts at mastering a new sport. It turns out everything is on the Internet, if you just think of the right thing to look for, Even the answers to questions that you think nobody in their right mind would ever have asked.

I'd started out last week, after my misadventures in Lindy's room, looking to see if anybody had ever tested that thing. The trick with the bowl of water. I mean, I'm sure everybody's heard that putting a sleeping person's hand in warm water will make them pee. But the only people it happens to are friends of friends of friends, or people who always have to exaggerate. Did it really work? I wanted to know if I'd done something wrong, or if it was just a myth. There was some TV show where they had tested it, Mythbusters, and I could watch the episode easily enough. They said it was fake. Harper told me it was real, and she'd done it to me when we stayed at her place the night before our first big match. But I still couldn't be sure; I remembered that I'd got up to pee when I woke before noticing a damp feeling; and there had been no smell. Things that suggested to me she'd just poured water on my pants after finding out that the trick didn't work.

Could I do that to Lindy? I wasn't sure. It felt unfair; even though she wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I wasn't sure why it even made a difference. I mean, I was trying to make my sister wet the bed so that there would be diapers in the house. Was making her think she wet the bed worse than that? It seemed bad because it would be like lying, but I think I'd already crossed some kind of moral event horizon and it shouldn't make any difference. But it felt weird. Wrong, even. But maybe more importantly, I didn't think it would work. Having her hand slowly lowered into water might not wake her up, but pouring water on her might be a different matter. That was my thought based on my personal experience, and I knew that wouldn't get me what I wanted. I needed her to pee, and I needed it to happen without her waking up.

The internet could offer two different theories of why some people insisted it worked, while others claimed it was a myth. Well, three theories if you counted the possibility that the people it worked for had all been tricked, like my own experience. The most popular idea was that it only worked for some people and not others. That wasn't a particularly positive thought; but I had to bear in mind that it might be true. But there was one more answer that gave me hope. It was pure chance, they said. If you put a friend's hand in water and it worked, you were really lucky, like a one in a thousand chance. Because the trick works for some people, but only at a particular phase of sleep, or a particular place in their circadian rhythm.

I'd read everything I could about that theory, and there were several small groups of people who were sure they knew the details. Apparently some research students at Tokyo University had found pretty good evidence; but they had a million dollar sleep lab at their disposal, where they could measure changes in a subjects heart rate, brainwaves, body temperature, eye movements, and biorhythms while they slept. That research paper was written in Japanese, but I could also find a version translated into scientific mambo-jumbo that was just as hard to understand. It had been cited by dozens of other studies, so there must be some merit to it. They'd managed to pinpoint the perfect time to shake someone so that they woke up feeling completely refreshed; and a different point when waking someone would maximise the chance of them remembering their dreams. I thought that was particularly impressive, and many tech firms had found a way to sell products based on the research. A little note suggested they'd also found the perfect time during sleep to put your enemy's hand in water; but oddly enough they hadn't treated it like an important result.

Nobody wanted to use high-tech equipment to cause bedwetting, and there was no obvious way to turn the discovery into something that would do the opposite. So it was a curiosity that one scientist in the group had noted down and then forgotten. And it was exactly what I needed, if I could figure out how to monitor Lindy's heart rate without a bunch of super-expensive lab equipment from the '80s. Obviously that wouldn't help me, but it got my mind on the right track. Thinking scientifically, I'd had a vague idea of a plan that might work. And Nadine's pacifier had been exactly what I needed to make me realise how I could do it.

I managed to pull my mind away from that crazy plan long enough to open up my homework and read the first question. But my focus was shattered by an indistinct yell:

"Girls! Dinner's on the table!" I grumbled to myself, but I knew there would be time later to think through my plan and decide whether it was worth attempting. I glanced down at the pacifier again, made sure it was shut in the drawer where nobody could snoop, and went to see what Mum had made for us today.