✅ My Sister's Problem

87. What You Really, Really Want

Author's Note: I hope there aren't any major errors here. I might have been a little tipsy, and very sleepy, as I finished this chapter. As always, if you spot a mistake, please let me know.

Thank you.

I spent the better part of ten minutes trying to unlock my phone. I didn't actually have to use my fingerprints, that was just the way I normally used. There was a backup password on there too, after a few minutes to remember what it was. But when the keyboard appeared, I found that it was very difficult to press the keys accurately with my nose. And by the time I had moved my face away far enough to properly focus on the screen, the letter I just entered had been replaced by another dot in the password box. There was no way to see if I had managed to press the right letter or not; and after a dozen painstaking attempts to enter the password, it seemed that every attempt had been wrong.

I might have kept on trying, but every time I made three wrong attempts, I would have to wait two minutes before it let me try again. I gave up entirely when a red warning in the corner of the screen told me that it would be permanently locked if I couldn't get it right the next time. Typing with my nose, it seemed, was a lot harder than I had ever thought it could be. I raised my face away from the phone and stared at it in despair until the screen went black again. I would have to work out how to unlock it later; or perhaps beg Mum to let me read the latest message from Hugo. She had to have seen it, I was sure. Would she really torture me that much as punishment for a single offence?

"What are you doing, baby sis?" I heard Lindy's voice behind me just as I was nudging the phone away from me again. I hadn't heard her come in; she must have left the door ajar earlier. And I couldn't really deny playing with my phone, because I didn't know how much she might have seen. "You're too little to be playing with big girl toys like that."

"I got a message. Please, don't say anything?"

"Oh, you need your fingerprints?" she just laughed. "Maybe I can help you. I think I can release you from the mittens for a few minutes. But you've been a bad baby, and you're supposed to be punished. So how about... I'll let you use your phone, but you only get released long enough to unlock it. You still have to work on actually reading it. Were you licking the screen? I would have tried my elbow, at least that way you can see what you're tapping."

I thought about that for a second. Maybe she was right; using my nose was harder than it would be otherwise because I couldn't focus on the screen when it was so close. My elbows weren't as pointy as hers, and I suspected that she would have struggled to press a single letter with such a large appendage, but at least it would be possible to see if you had hit the right button. If you could see, it would be possible to go back and try again until you got it right.

"How's that, baby sis? I'll let you unlock your phone, but you have to keep on doing what you were doing to actually get to the message. And you have to read it out to me, so you know how embarrassment feels. Like you did to me, right?"

I took a deep breath. I wanted to argue; to protest that I hadn't done anything. I had to look past this; finding out what that message said was more important than any kind of rivalry with my sister. If she told Mum that I'd been trying to break the rules of my punishment, there was no way I would escape without it getting worse.

"You know how that made me feel?" she continued. "Getting you babied like this took real sacrifice. I had to pour a bottle of water in one of those pull-ups and then put it on. When I heard Mum telling you off, I had to let her think I wet the bed again. You know how that makes me feel? That's a huge cost, and I'm not going to waste it by letting you get off easy."