April Thornton was the epitome of the ugly duckling that became a beautiful swan. She was tall and awkward as a young girl, larger than her peers throughout most of her early school years. She was perpetually shy, though brilliant in her own right.

She also had a problem that haunted her. She was a bedwetter. She couldn't help it. Her body and her ability to remain dry at night was one of the last things to catch up and mature.

Her mother didn't see it that way. Mrs. Thornton tried to help her daughter get dry at night, but she convinced herself April didn't want to stop wetting the bed. Mrs. Thornton thought April wet the bed for attention. With that mindset, her mother put her daughter in thick cloth diapers and heavy plastic panties every night.

April woke nearly every morning soaked despite having nothing to drink after 7:00 PM. She wished she could stop, but it wasn't something she controlled. Her bladder would have to catch up to her growing body.

If being a bedwetter was not bad enough, having an uncaring mother was worse. Mrs. Thorton berated her daughter and ridiculed her nearly every morning. She had to wait for her mother to let her out of her diapers before she forced April to rinse them out.

The humiliation didn't end there. Her mother forced her to hang the urine-stained diapers and plastic panties to dry on the clothesline in pleasant weather. There, for all to see, were April's diapers and plastic panties, blowing in the wind.

April often walked to school in pleasant weather to avoid the bus driving down her street. When she rode the bus, she walked to the end of the block to ride with others in the neighborhood that lived on the corner. That worked for a few years.

As luck would have it, a new family moved in two houses down from April and the bus stopped every day. While some of April's friends knew she had a problem, it soon spread around the entire school that April was a bedwetter. This made her more introverted than ever, and she soon withdrew into books because books didn't tease her.

She was dry for a night or two a week. She pleaded and begged her mother to stop diapering her. Her mother agreed to it only if she were dry for an entire month first. April did her best and finally achieved a full month of dry nights.

Though April had rid herself of the need for diapers, the long and tumultuous years of being forced to wear them had left a mark on her mentally. The need dissipated, but the desire remained in the recesses of her mind, waiting for an opportunity to arise.