Synopsis

Brandon is a bright boy growing up near Albuquerque, New Mexico. He likes school, soccer, computer games, and playing in the school band. Small for his age and youngest in his class, his size has made him the target of every school bully for years. Each year the verbal and physical abuse increases, finally wearing him down to the point he doesn't know if he can continue. Just as he reaches the end of his rope, he is suddenly befriended by a classmate he least expected. As their friendship grows and deepens, Brandon learns the value of a best friend and finds himself moving down a road he never expected. Over the course of the school year, his friend helps him discover and cope with his feelings, hopes, dreams - and fears.

This is the story of a young person's unusual journey to stand up to the numerous obstacles that life has dealt him - and to become the person he believes himself to be. (Part 6 of 6)

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Viewing Note: This story should be viewed with the Edwardian Script ITC font installed on your Windows platform in the c:/Windows/Fonts directory. Microsoft Word installs this font automatically.

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The Legal Stuff: Standing Up to Life  © 2008 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2008 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
I began this trilogy of novels last year, first publishing this book at FictionMania and Story Site in March last year. Setting out to tell a story I felt I needed to tell, I was pleased that the readers of both sites seemed to enjoy the work. A couple months after I initially posted this book at FictionMania I met a dear friend Carla Ann who offered her services as an editor. With her help I began to go back and proof this book a few months ago for publishing at Lulu.com. More than anything I liked the idea of having a hardback edition of the book for myself, but I felt that perhaps others might enjoy a copy as well.

With that information in mind I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have three versions available for purchasing through My Store (www.lulu.com/tiffanyshar) at Lulu.com. There are 6x9 hardback editions and paperback editions, as well as a high quality pdf version available for download. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store. I hope to have it available through Amazon.com in a couple months as well, and will offer to have Erin sell it through her Amazon page at that time.

Thank you to all of you, my amazing readers, who have enjoyed this work in the past. You will discover that this new version is much more refined than what I initially posted a year ago. I hope you all enjoy this and my other novels. I hope to have the second book, Daring to Hope, also available in this form by mid-March, and the third book will hopefully be available this summer! I will make future announcements about Book Three through my Lulu storefront as well.

I will be posting this in six segments during this week. Please enjoy, and thanks for reading!

     -Tiffany Shar

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Chapter 24
 
 

I woke up the next morning to the sounds of Mom getting ready. Though I tried to go back to sleep for a few minutes I was too excited so I got up and started doing what I could to get myself ready. Two hours later it was 4:30am and we were pulling up to the airport. Amy and her parents, and Ashley and her dad all arrived right behind us. We all took our bags to the airline counter and checked in.

Everyone had been given their tickets last week so that we could all check in separately as each family arrived. Our teachers were right behind us and we started forming up as a group. That day I had dressed in a pair of boy’s shorts and a light blue girl’s top that could have easily been a boy’s shirt. I had done my hair today, but Mom wouldn’t let me do my makeup. She said she’d let me once I got back from the trip. When Ashley was finally able to come over she said. "Tiffany I love your hair!"

I told her quietly, "Thanks Ashley. But I’m supposed to be Brandon on the trip, so you can call me Tiffany, but keep it to only when the six of us from the slumber party are around okay?"

"Sure… I wish you could be Tiffany the whole time, but at least that’s something." She told me.

My family, the Hancocks, Ashley and her dad, and our two teachers walked into a restaurant in the airport to get something for breakfast. I ate just a standard fare of scrambled eggs and bacon. We then headed through the security checkpoint, heading towards our gate once our bags made it through the x-ray machine.

It was then that I started feeling it. I rushed for the bathroom and made it to a toilet just in time to throw up… When I got back outside Mom asked me quietly, "Tiffany are you okay?"

"I think so" I said groaning a bit, "I just needed to throw up all of a sudden."

She pulled something from her purse, "Here," she said handing me a small pill, "take this."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Dramamine, it’s for motion sickness, but it’s probably just your nerves. I know you’re really excited and nervous, you should feel better once you get a drink and relax a little. Everything’s going to be fine sweetie," she told me reassuringly. I just hoped I wasn’t getting the flu!

"I hope you’re right," I told her.

I swallowed the pill as I was directed and then went over to the waiting area by the gate. As time went on everyone in our group arrived in the same spot. The entire group from the sleepover gathered quickly into a spot in a corner. We were all talking in lower tones so no one else could hear what we were talking about. I had decided to fill them in quietly because at this point only Amy and Ashley knew the whole story. ‘Besides,’ I decided, ‘if they wanted to rat me out they wouldn’t need any more info than they already had to do it anyway.’

After we got to the part about the hair salon Lindsey said, "Speaking of that Tiffany, I love your hair!" Lindsey said. "Yours too Amy," she added.

"Thanks, please remember I’m supposed to be Brandon on this trip… unfortunately…" I said quietly.

"But you’re going to be Tiffany after that right?" Amber asked.

"I hope so Amber." I replied.

"Well, I can kind of understand them making you hold off for now on it… But I think we can all agree that we will think of you as Tiffany on this trip," Nikki said.

"Thanks, I appreciate that." I told them.

"Hey why don’t we just call you T when everyone else is within range? We won’t tell any of the others what T stands for if they ask, but that way you can at least be called by your name." Amy suggested.

"It’s better than nothing I guess," I replied.

Lindsey made a small motion to be quiet about stuff a second later as Jennifer and Brittany both walked up. "Can we join the rest of you girls?" She asked.

"Sure," Amy said. I took note of the fact she hadn’t figured out that I was in the group at that point — or something like that.

We expanded the circle a bit and I noticed Brittany and Jennifer both were kind of staring at me for a second. "Brandon?" Jennifer asked.

"Yes?" I replied.

"It just took me a moment to recognize you. I really like your hair." She told me.

"Thanks." I replied.

"Is there some reason you got it cut like that?" She asked.

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding… Warning… "We…"

Amy thankfully interrupted, "We had a bet and he lost so he had to get his hair done in the same style as me for the trip."

"That’s big of you to follow through with that bet Brandon," She responded. I don’t know if she bought it or not — I didn’t think she did. "It really is a cute hairstyle for you though." She replied seriously. I decided she knew something somehow.

Thankfully the girls changed the subject then — I didn’t want to get into that discussion with those two yet. It’s not that I really had much time to get to know the other girls; it’s more that I hadn’t had any time with them at all. I would not be surprised though if by the end of the trip these two found out.

Their conversation eventually ended up on a topic that affected almost all of them, cheerleading. The only two that weren’t on the cheer squad next year were Nikki and I. Maybe next year I could try out? I think I could do it — I’d actually helped Amy practice a bit before the tryouts this year.

The next thing I knew they were boarding elderly and children. We were considered in the children category so we were able to go ahead and get on the plane. The walk down the ramp to the plane was really cool to me, and once we got on there things just were so… new and cool. I got to my seat, which was on the aisle side of three seats, and Dad put my backpack in the overhead bin for me.

Mom was on the window side so she could see, and that left Dad in the middle. Across the aisle, sitting in those three seats, was Amy on the aisle, her Mom, and then her dad by the window. In front of me Ashley, her father, and Nikki sat. And in the seats cattycorner to mine sat Lindsey, Amber, and Jennifer. Brittany, Ms. Fitzgerald, and Mrs. Manning were in the seats back and to the right of me, and the boys took up a few rows behind us.

We were all pretty chatty and the flight stewardesses introduced themselves to us really quick. As everyone else piled on the plane I definitely felt my nerves coming back… What if something went wrong? I knew statistically that was rare… but still your first time… The sensation of the plane being pulled backwards was interesting, and when we finally were on the runway getting to leave I looked over my parents laps to the window as best I could.

Amy and I had been talking non-stop up until this point — a feat I considered impressive given how nervous my stomach still felt. We stopped for a few moments while the plane sped up down the runway and leaped into the air. It was definitely a fun experience I decided, if not a little unnerving.

Once we reached altitude Amy and I got our gameboys out and started playing various games. We also chatted across the aisle for a bit before she fell asleep. At that point I needed to go to the bathroom so I headed back to the lavatory in the back. Mom had given me a motherly instruction to be careful, and I took a new adventure to go to the bathroom at 33,000 feet.

It was actually kind of disconcerting in there, but I put the seat down and pulled down my shorts and the panties I was wearing underneath. Sitting down I took care of things, wiped, and then put everything back on again.

Even though I was supposed to be Brandon on this trip, I was determined that I was going to do everything as Tiffany. I might be going in the men’s restrooms but I was still going to be a girl. Maybe in a couple years I’d be able to get my parts readjusted to the proper plumbing…

I walked out of the bathroom and back down the aisle to get back to my seat. Amy was still asleep when I got back so I was debating about going to sleep myself. I didn’t even realize that the debate had been lost until Amy poked me. "Wake up sleepyhead." She taunted me. I was just awake enough to stick my tongue out at her.

I suddenly realized that we must be getting close to landing because it felt like we were dropping out of the air gradually. I watched out the window and saw the clouds slip by as we passed through them. We neared the runway in Houston, and once we landed I loved the rapid deceleration that we had! That was a great feeling.

After we pulled up to the gate, we were very quickly ushered through the concourses to another gate on the other side of the airport. We got there with about thirty minutes to spare. The teachers and adults all encouraged us to go use the restroom at that point, so I went again. When I came out I had several men stare at me as if ‘why are you in the men’s restroom girl?’ I was pretty sure that none of them would have hurt me — but I was still frightened. I was glad Dad was right behind me for safety, but I think he also noticed the looks. He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked out of the restroom. When I looked up at him I noticed there was a strange look on his face.

He went over and spoke with Mom while I rejoined the girls as we waited to leave Houston. We were all kind of drowsy but decided to go to a couple stores that were close. We browsed through — all trying not to spend the money that was in our pockets — and I got away with just buying a pretzel at a counter next to the shop.

In no time we were boarding that plane and the whole experience repeated itself getting into the air. On this leg of the race Kyle asked one of the stewardesses if he could get a set of ‘wings.’ She brought a set to him, and gave all of us a set while she was at it. I thought it was kind of childish and embarrassing on one hand… but it was kind of cute too! I put it in my fanny pack for my scrapbook back home.

That actually reminded me that I wanted some pictures of us in the airplane — and I began snapping some pictures of everyone sitting there. This was a longer leg and they actually ‘fed’ us with some sandwiches. They weren’t great, but it was better than just having had the pretzel for lunch.

As the flight drew on, we all got excited that we were getting close to Orlando. The excitement turned to nervousness as we hit one of the craziest thunderstorms to fly through trying to land in Orlando. We all watched as lightning stuck incredibly close to the wings while we were all moving up and down, and side to side, from the turbulence. I located the barf bag in front of me just in case I needed it. I also began silently reading the card for the emergency procedures that would never do us any good.

EVENTUALLY WE LANDED and started walking through the terminal in Orlando. After following corridors for a while we got on a train to go to the car rental part of the airport. As students we all just kind of sat around bored for a few minutes while the adults set up the rental vans that we were using today.

Our first destination for today was to check in at the hotel, then we were going to go to the Everglades on an air boat ride. I didn’t really know what to expect from this, but I did hope we’d get to see some alligators or something. I did really hope that I wouldn’t become a meal for one though!

Ms. Fitz came up to us a few minutes later and said, "Okay, let’s go!" We were led out to some large passenger vans to put our stuff in and sit down. I sat down in the second seat of a van that my mom was driving. Amy and Nikki sat next to me, with Amy’s parents sitting in the seat behind us. Amber, Jennifer, and Kyle were also in our van.

As we drove down the streets and freeway to get to our hotel I was in complete astonishment by how green it was. I’d seen the mountains fairly green before, but nothing like this! Everywhere I looked was painted in a lush shade of green. The day was overcast unfortunately, but it was nice and warm as we pulled up to the hotel.

By hotel… I mean resort of course! I couldn’t believe how nice the place was! It wasn’t in Disney — something we all kind of were disappointed by, but it was a four star establishment that had a really cool set of swimming pools and jacuzzis. Mrs. Manning pointed us towards our rooms, and before we knew it we were heading right back out again. As I walked out of my room, a few steps behind the Hancocks, Jarred asked me, "Didn’t they do rooms by boys and girls?"

Uh… What to say? "Amy and I requested to room together. We’re best friends so we do that a lot." I said truthfully.

"Wow dude, that’s lucky. I wish I could share a room with Amy!" He said.

"Her parents are in there anyway Jarred," I replied… trying not to let my disgust show through so much. Amy and I were definitely not having problems with that one.

"Well, I was just curious." He said. Amy joined us in the hallway at that moment and gave me a funny look. Apparently my face must have given away some of my annoyance.

"Something wrong?" she asked quietly. I just smiled and shook my head as we walked back to our meeting spot. As quickly as we arrived we were led right back out to the vans again.

We drove for a long while and I watched the scenery go by. The main thing that we could see was pine trees. Who would’ve thought that Florida had pine trees? I certainly wouldn’t have. I’d always thought they only naturally existed in mountain forests.

We pulled up to the place about forty minutes later. The guys handed out life jackets and spent some time explaining what we were going to see. When he did that he also explained what we were to do if we fell in somehow… I just hoped I wouldn’t become food by the time someone pulled me out in that case!

I think we were all kind of in a daze from the trip, but were still very excited to go on this ride. The last thing they did before we left was hand out ear protectors to everyone for the noise. After everyone had taken a seat with those on we were off. We rode through the swamps and saw a few things here and there, but nothing really cool for about a half hour.

At that point I felt a drop of water. Then another. In a matter of seconds we were in a huge downpour and our guide drove as fast as he could to get us back to their shop. In the meantime we were going so fast that every drop of water pounded into our faces — it hurt so much! After what seemed like forever we pulled up to the shop and all of us ran inside.

"Ow!!" I said to Amy standing next to me.

"Oww is right! And I’m cold now." Amy replied.

"Yeah." Ashley agreed with us. I checked my camera to make sure it had stayed dry enough in my fanny pack — thankfully it had. I pulled it out and had Mom take a picture of all of the girls and myself — our hair was an absolute wreck! I told them all I wanted to have some pictures of this disaster for my scrapbook.

We all shivered and looked through their store for souvenirs. It poured for another fifteen minutes or so while we were in the store before finally stopping. I did look at the alligator heads as something to take back… but since I hadn’t seen any, what was the point?

"Is everyone ready to go to dinner?" Ms. Fitz asked us.

"Yeah," all of the guys said. The rest of us just nodded.

I was happy to walk outside where it was warmer. We were all still dripping water from our clothes as we climbed into the vans. The girls and I all whined a bit about our hair being a mess and how wet we were. The adults all promised us it would be a short ride though.

For dinner that night we went to a pizza place where there was a buffet. We ate quietly at first, but everyone started winding up as we ate. Laughter filled the restaurant and everyone began to discuss going swimming at the hotel when we got back. I was among the really excited kids about that, it had looked like a really neat system of pools.

Soon after dinner we headed back for the hotel. When we got there we all split off to our rooms. I looked very forlornly at my swimming trunks — I wasn’t allowed to wear a girl’s swimsuit. Amy came out of the bathroom in one of her swimming suits and I went in and changed myself. We all walked down to the pool together and started swimming.

I felt incredibly strange that night as I walked down to the pool. ‘How many times had I been dressed like this? Obviously too many to count, but I felt so odd this time…’ I finally pinned it down to the fact that my chest was bare. ‘It should be covered up like the other girls.’ I thought to myself.

After about ten minutes Amy pulled me away and said, "Come with me." She led me up to the top of a path that was attached to the pool and was the source for a waterfall that fell to a series of jacuzzis that cascaded down to the main pool. We sat down in the warm water and just talked for about nothing for a few minutes before Nikki, Ashley, and Jennifer joined us.

I wasn’t real happy when Jennifer joined us — she wasn’t part of my inner circle of friends. I was feeling pretty torn about the swimsuit thing right now. I knew I didn’t have anything that I needed to hide on my chest (yet!), but it still seemed weird. There was a lot of tension within me about this, and I really needed to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it with Jennifer there though.

"Brandon?" Jennifer was talking to me.

"Yes?"

"Umm… I noticed something earlier… and wondered if I could ask you a question, a kind of personal question…"

I had a bad feeling that this was leading towards the obvious question… But they were going to find out sometime or another. "Umm… I’ll answer it, but if it’s what I’m thinking of I’d prefer you keep my answer a secret."

"I promise. I was just wondering why you had on a girls shirt today?"

"What do you mean?"

"I have that exact same shirt — I almost wore it today but decided to save it for another day. And then there’s your haircut, I would love to have it myself — but it’s definitely not a boy’s style…"

Yep, she had something figured out. "You’re sure you can keep a secret?" I asked.

"Yes you’d better keep this secret," Amy and Nikki both stated looking like a pack of hyenas.

"I promise, but what’s going on?" She was smart but hadn’t figured it all out.

"Well Jennifer, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not a boy." I told her.

"That’s ridiculous, you have boy parts right?" She asked.

I paused, scared about all of this — but almost wanting to smile because of the way she asked. "For now, though I hope to deal with that in time. Look, I have what they call gender-identity disorder. The doctor I’m seeing says it’s not really a disorder though, they just call it that. My body just doesn’t match up with who I feel I am…" I replied.

She interrupted, "So… that’s weird… but that’s okay. You guys already knew?" She asked Nikki, Amy, and Ashley.

They all nodded, with Amy saying, "I’d suspected for a long time. Brandon has been over at my house for most of the year. I’ve probably known longer than he has."

"You don’t go by Brandon when you’re a girl do you?" She asked.

"No. My name is going to be Tiffany now. So… what are you going to do?" I asked nervously.

"What do you mean?"

"Well you know my secret now, what are you going to do?"

"I’m going to keep your secret. It’s a little weird, but I’d still like to be your friend if you’d let me." Jennifer said sincerely.

"Thanks Jennifer."

"So does that mean I can call you Tiffany now?"

"Sure, just make sure no one except…" I listed all of the names off, "are around."

"That many people know?" She asked, surprised.

"Well most of the girls found out when we had Amy’s slumber party." I replied.

"Actually I think Nikki and Ashley had figured out before hand during the Barbie project too." Amy added as they both nodded.

"So Tiffany, why did you come on this trip as Brandon?"

"The adults all decided it would cause too many problems." I replied.

"But they’re letting you wear some girls clothing?" She asked.

I explained the guidelines that they had decided for me. We then chatted about a good many other things before I heard someone coming up the trail to where we were.

"There you all are!" Ms. Fitz said. "We wondered where you all had gotten off to. It’s time to go ahead and head inside alright? We need to get an early start tomorrow morning!" She ushered us back down the trail and up to our rooms to go to bed.

As we split off Jennifer quietly said, "Good night Tiffany."

I looked back at her and said, "Goodnight, and thanks!" I said with a smile.

See I could have come dressed as Tiffany! I knew that while that meant I had almost all of the girls on my side, I couldn’t necessarily say that the boys’ reaction would have been okay though. Once Amy and I were back in the room we were ushered into the shower one at a time so that we could skip that step in the morning. I went first since I really wanted to get into my pajamas — because of course they were girl pajamas.

Ten minutes later I was brushing my hair out while Amy was in the bathroom. About then I heard a knock at the door. Amy’s parents were out somewhere so I decided to go ahead and answer the door. When I looked through the peephole I saw it was my Mom.

"How are you holding up sweetie?" She asked me.

"Well I wish I could be me on this trip…" I told her.

"I know sweetie, but you know that it won’t be too long until you’re able to be yourself." She told me soothingly. She grabbed my hairbrush out of my hand and began brushing it out for me. I was pretty much purring when Amy came out and sat down on the other side of the bed. Her parents came in a second later and she held her own hairbrush out to her mom.

A while later, as my mom had declared that she was tired of brushing my hair, we heard another knock at the door. It was Ms. Fitz this time. "You both look cute," she told us as she came in. She explained a few things with our destinations the next day, and then we were both told it was time for bed.

This was a new first in the level of trust… we were both allowed to share the second bed in the room. Not that anything was going to happen, but it really did help reassert the fact that they believed that I was indeed a girl. Before going to bed we both got a stuffed animal out of our bags to sleep with.

The last thing I remember for that day was Melanie saying, "Good night girls."
 
 
Chapter 25
 
 

IN THE MORNING we were prodded out of bed and herded to an area where they had a continental breakfast for us. We each had a bag with us this morning that had our swimsuits in them since we were going to go to the beach when we got done with going to Space Camp and Kennedy Space Center.

That day I had dressed in a pair of girls shorts and a guys shirt that could have been a girls. It was actually the ski resort shirt that Amy’s parents had bought me on that trip. Essentially there really was no way that someone could tell I was a boy today. Amy and I had both used a black ponytail holder to put our hair up that morning — we were far too tired to do more.

We all gathered together in the lobby when we were done eating to board the bus that would be taking us everywhere now. It was awesome getting on this bus — it had TV’s, comfortable seats that leaned back, and even had a bathroom! The bus driver was also really cool and we all settled in for the drive.

I’ll be honest; this was the part of the trip that I had been looking forward to the most. I had wanted to go to Space Camp for several summers since I had learned about it. My parents could never possibly afford to send me though, so this would be my one chance to see everything they had there.

The first part of our tour allowed several of us to try some equipment that let us experience how inertia could send us out of control very easily. It was a lot of fun! Amy and Kyle both tried out another simulator that let you feel what a flat spin would be like. I had no desire to go on that one and get sick!

We were shown a bunch of different science experiments and given a short tour of a shuttle mockup that the space camp attendees were able to run shuttle missions through. I was really disappointed that none of us were able to give that one a try.

After a long tour, that I found to be a blast, we were shown to another shuttle simulator that gave us an idea of what a passenger version of the space shuttle might be like. It was a neat experience that concluded our tour. The tour guide then led us into the store where I looked around for some souvenirs.

I ended up picking up a girls t-shirt and a couple postcards to take home. I also couldn’t resist the freeze dried ice cream. Amy and Nikki both followed my lead on those items before we all went to find a bathroom. Once again I felt some strange looks on my back as I went into the boys’ bathroom. I really wished I could just use the girls!

We left from there a little while later and drove over to Kennedy Space Center. At Kennedy we were given a science demonstration with things like the shuttle’s tiles having a blow torch used on them, among other things. From there we got to go on a tour of their museum — seeing some really cool things like the command modules and space suits.

Then they led us to the outdoor area where the rocket garden was located. We all just kind of wandered around aimlessly looking at the massive rockets that towered over us. It was easily enough to keep your imagination in overdrive. Our last structured stop at Kennedy, before lunch, was to the memorial for fallen astronauts. Even at our age we were all moved by the gravity of the memorial. I definitely felt like those astronauts deserved to have their names memorialized for their efforts to bring us to space.

By that point all of our stomachs were seriously growling, thankfully we were taken to a café to eat a lunch of burgers or hot dogs. Amy and I ate quickly so we could grab a cup of "space dots" for dessert before going to see an IMAX film about a shuttle launch. The IMAX film was probably one of the cooler moments of the visit — even though I wasn’t expecting it to be as cool as it was. The huge screen combined with the huge sound was a great way to experience a shuttle launch!

We had about thirty minutes inside the gift shop there where we all bought a couple things. I purchased a couple patches, some pencils and pens, and a few more postcards. I had my eyes on one of the space pens that you could write with upside down, but my parents talked me out of that purchase. We ended up leaving Kennedy at about 2:30 for Cocoa Beach.

It felt like a long drive, though it really wasn’t more than about forty minutes. In the meantime I gabbed with Amy and Jennifer. As the day had gone on I wondered why I had never gotten to know Jennifer. She really was a lot of fun. When we pulled up to the beach our teachers led us to a set of bathrooms we could change into our swimsuits real quick. Actually it was pretty much only the boys that needed to change as most of the girls had worn their suits underneath their clothes.

I actually kind of cheated — I changed in the bathroom on the bus real quick when we got on. I hated all of the stares I kept getting whenever I went to the public bathrooms. I was probably honestly drawing more attention to myself by going in the boy’s restroom than going in the girl’s restroom. Since I was already dressed I was able to go straight down to the beach with Amy and the girls.

All of us were commanded to put sunscreen on, and told we would need to get out of the water in an hour and a half. That would give us a little bit of time to go through Ron Jon’s Surf Shop. It was about 3:15 or so when we entered the water — and the beach wasn’t busy at all.

As I got in the water I found it truly amazing! The water was so warm, salty, and made me float more than I did in swimming pools. I enjoyed swimming in the water and went a little farther out after a bit. Someone had brought a beach ball that we started tossing back and forth at one point.

After a while we all kind of got tired and just floated around and talked.

"So Amy what are you doing the rest of the summer?" Ashley asked.

"Well I’m going to go to a cheerleading camp in California in a couple weeks. I’m hoping to get some experience before we start the school camp a few weeks later." She told her.

"I wish I could go with you," Lindsey said. The other girls all agreed too.

"How about you Nikki?" Lindsey asked.

"Well there’s a music camp that my parents want to send me to in like three weeks. I’ve heard that it’s fun. We’ll see though."

Nikki looked around for a second and then asked, "Tiffany what are you doing after this?"

"I haven’t really made it that far. I’m just looking forward to being myself when we get back I guess. Really I’ve been planning for this trip so long I haven’t made it much past it…. I’m sure I’m going to have a lot of doctor’s appointments when we get back."

We moved on to each person, and soon after we were finished were told to go ahead and start heading towards the shore to go shopping at Ron Jon’s.

We were first led to some outdoor showers, and then I put on a shirt over my chest so that I didn’t feel quite so out of place. I also quickly changed back into my normal shorts in the bathroom. Once I was dressed I hurried to meet back up with everyone going into Ron Jon’s.

It was an incredibly cool store. I really can’t do it justice in words. They had an amazing number of cool things all over the place in the store. In particular I saw a couple of swimsuits that I desperately wanted. I whispered that to my mom — but I honestly didn’t think she would do anything about it. I did buy a key chain and a few post cards there. One of the guys bought a waveboard thing — how he was going to get it back home I wasn’t sure.

I had already spent more so far on this trip than I could have imagined spending on a regular basis. It wasn’t a lot, but I was trying to hold out for more souvenirs in the Disney parks. I knew that things would be a lot more expensive there. Amy and I walked through the aisles pointing to this or that before we were all ushered out to the bus. It was 6pm by the time we pulled away from the beach and headed for dinner.

We pulled up to a fifty’s style restaurant about ten minutes later. I sat down at a table with Amy, our parents, Nikki, and the two teachers.

We had been sitting for a couple moments when the waiter came by and asked the adults, "Does she need a booster seat?" indicating Nikki.

Amy and I couldn’t help it — we giggled.

Nikki replied, "sure." I was a little shocked.

"Why did you say yes?" Amy asked.

"I get one at a lot of restaurants. I mean look how high this table is for me. I just hate having to put my arms out like this to eat. I don’t have a problem with it." She amazingly didn’t look embarrassed.

"Neither do we," I replied. "I’m sorry if I laughed though… it just caught us off guard and seemed kind of funny…" I said carefully, hoping that we hadn’t offended her.

"Yes it was." Nikki replied. "We should have asked for one for you though too Tiff." She said giggling just before the waiter came back with it. I stuck my tongue out at her. Truthfully she did look a lot more comfortable sitting that way — it was just kind of strange.

"So are you girls having fun?" Ms. Fitz asked us.

"Yes," the three of us answered in unison.

"What was your favorite part today?" She asked us.

Amy answered first, "The Beach. I love the water."

Nikki said, "Ron Jon’s was great."

"I think it was Space Camp, I’ve wanted to go there for a long time," I replied to her.

"I’m glad to hear you guys all had something you liked today."

We moved on conversation wise to what we were going to eat. The waiter soon came around and asked me, "and you young lady?"

"A strawberry shake first — and a bacon cheeseburger with fries please." I replied. I was pleased that he had called me a lady - even though I definitely ordered a non-lady like meal. As he took Amy’s order next to me I noticed that Kyle — sitting at a table across from us — seemed to stare at me for a moment. I wondered if he had heard the waiter refer to me as a lady.

I whispered to Amy, "I think Kyle heard me being called a lady. He just looked at me kind of strange."

"What’s he going to say? It’s not like you introduced yourself as Tiffany to him. He just assumed that you were a girl — Kyle shouldn’t be a problem Tiff," she whispered back to me.

"I hope not," I replied to her. Our shakes came shortly after that and my mind went solely to eating that. Every once in a while I swore I saw Kyle staring at me, but I decided I must have just been going nuts. Food came and went from there, and before I knew it we were heading back onto the bus to go to the hotel.

The bus driver put on a movie while we were going back. I thought that was so incredibly cool he was able to do that! Why couldn’t our school buses have TV’s on them? I must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing I knew Amy was poking me and telling me to wake up.

"Why’d you go to sleep?" Amy asked me.

"I went to sleep?" I inquired sleepily.

"Duh! Come on, we’re supposed to go to our rooms and get ready for bed. They said that we can stay up a bit later, but they want us in the rooms." She prodded me to grab my stuff and we went to the room. As soon as I got in there I woke up and started getting hyper. I could actually change back into my girls pajamas!

As soon as the hotel door opened I grabbed my pajamas and ran into the bathroom to change. I came out smiling with a huge grin and hopped onto the bed nearly knocking Amy, who was sitting on the edge, off.

"Hey!" she exclaimed.

"Sorry… just a little excited." I replied sheepishly.

"What’s gotten into you?" Amy’s mom asked.

"I hate having to be Brandon… I feel so scared every time that I go into a bathroom that someone’s going to ask why that ‘girl’ is going into the boys bathroom? I get stared at every time. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve been going in with my dad I think some people would have commented… or worse… I don’t belong there, and every stranger knows it…" I told her. A lot of my fears were being stated for the first time tonight.

She came over and hugged me. "Look Tiffany, let me go get your parents and let’s talk about this okay?" She said. She looked at me as if she was concerned I was going to cry, but something was keeping me from doing that. I’m still not sure what.

I just kind of sat looking off into space for a moment when I heard the door open and close again with my parents, Amy’s parents, and Ms. Fitz now in the room.

Mom came over to me and gave me a hug, Dad did the same. "What’s going on? Is there something wrong?" Mom asked.

"Well, Tiffany was just talking to me about a concern that she’s had — and I’m frankly kind of worried about." Amy’s mom started off.

"Actually when she vocalized it a little bit ago I realized I had been kind of concerned about this today too." Amy’s dad added.

My parents looked really worried, and Ms. Fitz didn’t look like she was looking forward to this next part either. "Tiffany, why don’t you tell them what you told us?" Amy’s mom asked sweetly.

"I’m worried… Every time I go to the bathroom I’m afraid that someone is going to comment, or jump me asking ‘why this girl is in the boy’s restroom.’ Even dressed as a boy everyone assumes I’m a girl. If it wasn’t for the fact that people could tell that I went in with you, Daddy, I’m sure there were some boys earlier today that were going to make fun of me… or worse."

My dad responded first, "Actually, kind of like Greg, I’d been noticing this too even before we got into Orlando. I’ve been trying to keep an eye on you Tiff, but I think this is something we need to address."

"How?" I asked. I was staying calm… I was amazed by that.

"Well why don’t we go one day at a time with that?" My mom suggested.

"…Okay… What do we do tomorrow then?" I asked.

"Well tomorrow morning is Discovery Island, it shouldn’t be a big deal since we’ll be in a group by ourselves," Ms. Fitz answered. "So there shouldn’t be any of those issues that we’re worried about. We can just keep it as status quo there."

"And the afternoon?" I asked. It was at this point I noticed Mom had a shopping bag with her.

"Well how about wearing this?" She asked showing me one of the swimsuits I had pointed out earlier.

"Really?" I asked. "… but what about everyone else?"

Ms. Fitz answered first, "Why don’t you wear it underneath your clothes tomorrow. It may be kind of difficult to deal with in the bathroom in the morning… But when we get to the waterpark we can split off with a few of your friends and you can just pull your shorts and t-shirt off and be ready to go. That should keep you safe enough, and then you all can go off somewhere and enjoy yourselves."

"If for whatever reason you run into a person of our group who doesn’t know you can probably hide behind the other girls. It could get dicey, but if you’re going to come to school next year as Tiffany anyway there’s not a whole lot to lose at this point. I think some of the kids that don’t know are already starting to pick up some stuff anyway." She finished.

"It’s up to you though Tiffany. What do you want to do?" Mom asked me.

Was that a simple yet completely scary question or what?

I looked at Amy, "do you think we can pull it off?"

"Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone sees us… but if we’re careful we can probably make it work." She replied.

"Okay then. I guess Tiffany will be going to Typhoon Lagoon tomorrow!" I replied. I had a large smile on my face when I said that.
 
 
Chapter 26
 
 

THE FOLLOWING MORNING I woke up and put on my new swimsuit first, and then pulled on a pair of boy’s shorts and a shirt on top of the swimsuit. My mom came and knocked to get in the room about that time, "Are you sure you want to do this Tiffany?" She asked me as she came in.

"I think so…" I replied timidly. I had a lot more butterflies today than I did yesterday. In general the idea was simply that I was going to be Brandon until we got to the waterpark, then several of us — and Ms. Fitz, were going to split off and I could be Tiffany for the afternoon. I was not worried about strangers, none of them would know, I was mainly worried about other members of our group that might recognize me if they saw us.

At this point six of the other girls knew… but that was it. That left one girl and five boys I would have to deal with if they found out. Oh well.

While I’d been sitting there thinking about all of this, Mom had sat down next to me on the bed and was braiding my hair into one braid. "Won’t people figure this one out?" I asked Mom.

Amy answered, "It’ll be easier to deal with when we go to the water park." When she walked in front of me I realized she too had braided hair. "All of the girls are doing it," she added. As if that made me feel like I wasn’t sticking out at the moment. Before I knew it we were on the way out the door.

"Hey Brandon, who braided your hair?" Brittany asked.

"Umm… Amy did. She said it would keep my hair out of my eyes when we go swimming later." I responded. Slight lie… not huge though.

"That’s a good idea. I’ll have to get someone to do it for me when we get on the bus." She said thoughtfully.

We all boarded the bus and took our seats. As we drove through Orlando we followed the signs to Disney World, and soon we got our first look at the outside of the Disney Park. After driving through the park roads for a while, we came to a beach where we got off the bus to take a boat out to the island.

Everyone at the island was dressed in ‘safari’ gear and we were soon on a tour of the island. They had a number of big Galapagos turtles there. They were so large we easily could have ridden them. The island had a number of things in it, but I think my dad’s favorite was the bird cage. There were so many different types of birds in the cage, and they were all very colorful.

There were also some flamingos, some lemurs, and some swans… but it really wasn’t that special beyond that. The workers gave us a fairly thorough set of science lessons with everything, it wasn’t uninteresting, but it wasn’t the highlight of the trip so far. Kennedy and Space Camp were better science lessons.

We stopped by the bathrooms on our way out. I found the farthest stall away from the door and moved quickly to take stuff off in such a way that the guys couldn’t figure out that I had a girl’s swimsuit on underneath my clothes. I honestly thought that Kyle might have seen a strap hanging out of the neck of my shirt at one point, but I don’t think he was paying attention. I was just lucky that the shirt I was wearing was heavy enough to hide the suit.

As I left I noticed that one of the guides gave me a funny look trying to decipher why I had been in the boys room. Oh well… that’s why I was going as Tiffany to the next park!

As we drove to the next park I wondered why I was getting funnier looks by strangers today — then I remembered that my hair wasn’t just long anymore, it was styled in a girls style. I didn’t want to change that one bit, but I was looking forward to being less uncomfortable after this trip was done.

The bus didn’t have to travel far before we were at Typhoon Lagoon. We were each given food vouchers for lunch and turned loose. Ms. Fitz led Amy, Amber, Nikki, Ashley, and I away from the rest of the group, dragging behind everyone else as they hurried through the entrance to the park.

Once we were in the park she suggested we go ahead and eat lunch first to give the others some more time to get out of sight before enjoying the park. We paid with our voucher and got a slice of pizza and a drink. All of us ate quickly before Ms. Fitz led us into a ladies locker room. The four girls and I all were ready to go outside pretty quickly — everyone had worn their swimsuits under their clothes — and we were in and out of the locker room in almost no time.

We had locked up all of my clothes in a separate locker that I could give a key to someone else to get them if we got desperate to hide my appearance. I didn’t care that much at that moment, I was just happy to not have to try to act like I was a boy.

I skipped and giggled as we headed for the ‘lazy river,’ for a bit. Amy said it was kind of relaxing and fun — plus more importantly we knew the others weren’t heading there first.

The lazy river wasn’t overly exciting — but it was relaxing to sit down in the inner-tube and it gave me a chance to kind of calm down my nerves. After we floated around a good chunk of the park we all got out and headed for the ‘shark reef’ attraction. You could snorkel with the sharks in a tank that had a coral reef and lots of other fish. It sounded really cool!

As we approached the front of the line Ashley said, "This is kind of crazy isn’t it?"

"Naw…" I replied, "they wouldn’t let us swim with them if they were dangerous."

"Tiffany’s right Ashley," Amy replied.

"Alright then, let’s get this over with." She replied. I was really amazed that she was so scared of this.

They handed each of us a partial wetsuit type thing and a snorkel as we got to the waters edge. After a little bit of discussion we started swimming in the tank.

It was soooo cool! I took my time moving through the water so I could stare at everything below. By the time I got to the other side the other girls and Ms. Fitz had already handed in the gear and were ready to move on. Part of me really wanted to stay behind and go through that again — but they didn’t want to do that. My safety really stemmed from being with friends so I moved on with them.

Our next stop was a few really tall water slides. Ms. Fitz just kind of found a seat and watched as we climbed the stairs to the slides. As I came down the third and final time on those slides, the bottom part of my swimsuit slipped a little. Nothing became visible… but it sure made me nervous. I quickly put everything back in order as best I could under the water in the pool that it splashed into.

That was unnerving.

We moved on from there to a white water raft ride. Ms. Fitz said that was going to have to be the last thing we did if we were going to make it back in time to avoid running into anyone we knew in the locker room.

It was a fun final ride at the park with the raft ride. We all screamed and squealed a fair amount throughout the ride. Really it was more about having fun screaming than it was being startled or scared. All of us girls, including Ms. Fitz, skipped our way back to the locker room where I pulled my swimsuit off in a bathroom stall, put on a pair of panties, and put my shorts and t-shirt back on.

I had been in a store with Amy for about three minutes when everyone else started to arrive back. Nothing was said to the rest of the group about the extra girl that joined the group for the afternoon. As far as any of us could tell no one else ever ran into our group that day — that surprised me a lot, but I wasn’t going to slap a gift horse in the mouth.

That night we had dinner and ended up in our rooms watching TV for a bit before going to bed. I went down the hallway before I got into my pajamas and knocked on Ms. Fitz’s door. Brittany came to the door.

"Hey Brandon how are you doing?" She asked me.

"Pretty good, is Ms. Fitz in here?" I asked.

"She’s in the bathroom, she should be right out." She replied to me. "So Brandon did you have fun today?" She asked.

It was really strange being called Brandon for some reason at that moment. "Umm… Yeah I did. How about you?"

"Yeah I did too. So what else are you doing this summer?"

"I don’t know. We were talking about that yesterday at the beach; I really don’t have any more plans this summer." I replied.

"Is it true that your project with that video got you guys a lot of money?" She asked me.

"A fair amount…" I answered. Where was this going?

"And… doll houses for all of you?" She asked me.

"Umm… yeah, that’s funny in my case wasn’t it?" I asked ironically, hoping that we could get around this soon. My luck hung in there for the day.

"Hey Brandon," Ms. Fitz said from behind me. "What’s up?"

"I just wanted to come by and thank you for earlier… I really appreciated it." I told her.

"It was no problem. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but we’ll see if we can work out something similar." She replied to me.

"What are you guys talking about?" Brittany asked.

"Nothing… she just helped me out with something earlier…" I replied knowing I was leaving a question in there. "Maybe I’ll tell you about it tomorrow night or something. It’s kind of a long story and I really should be going back to my room. Goodnight guys." I replied…. Umm… Yeah… Way to blow that one Tiffany.

That night I didn’t sleep real well. I didn’t really know Brittany, but I knew she wasn’t dumb enough not to realize there was something more there. Had she pumped her roommate, Jennifer, for information last night? Would Jennifer have told her? I had pretty much decided that I was going to have to fill in Brittany if she asked me anything else.
 
 
Chapter 27
 
 

TODAY WE WERE going to Epcot. It sounded kind of interesting, but I was a little afraid that they were going to be too focused on learning today, for us to be able to have a really good time. As I got up that morning and took a shower I put on another pair of panties and a pair of girls shorts. I also decided what the heck and put on a shirt that was really a girl’s shirt as well — it could have been a guy’s shirt. It definitely wasn’t though.

When I stepped out of the bathroom, I saw Amy’s mom putting her hair into two pig tails with red and white ribbons in each side. Each ribbon had polka dots of the other color on it.

"Tiffany, do you want me to do yours like this too?" she asked me.

"Umm… I’d love to… but what about everyone else?" I asked.

"I think you’ll be fine, but you can always say that I made you do it," Amy answered.

"Okay, twist my arm why don’t you," I said. What I wasn’t expecting was Amy to come over and do just that. I stuck my tongue out at her.

We dried my hair as best we could, and soon my hair was put up exactly like Amy’s. I liked it. Really we were all way too old for pig-tails to be cool… but still. I guess I missed that part of my life so I didn’t mind it at this point.

When we got down to the breakfast area I saw that all of the girls had their hair done in the exact same way. My mom came over to me and gave me a hug. "Your hair is cute sweetie. I think Melanie was right that it would look cute — and it should make it easier to find all of you later too."

"So there was an ulterior motive then huh?" I asked.

"Well yeah. But you like it don’t you?" She added under her breath to me.

I blushed and nodded. She sent me off to get some breakfast and I sat down at a table with Amy and Nikki. A few moments later Brittany came over by herself, "Can I join you guys?"

"Sure," Amy and I chimed in.

Her hair had been done the same way too, I don’t know if she thought it was as cute as I did though. "I see the adults have had fun with your hair too Brandon?" she asked me.

"Umm… yeah. Actually I’m blaming Amy for my hair at the moment." I stuck my tongue out at her for show. "They may have had a little too much fun this morning?" I asked timidly trying to feel her out.

"Actually it is pretty cute — especially on you," she replied back. "You know with your hair done that way you actually would make a really cute girl…" She told me. I just about choked on the orange juice I was drinking.

Amy looked a little worried when we exchanged glances.

Nikki had her wits about her though and said, "Yeah, he probably would make a pretty girl if he was in the right clothes… Would you have a problem with that?" She asked innocently. I think she was the only one — being so short and such — that could have pulled off that question.

I’m not sure if Brittany was actually thinking of this as a possible beginning to a nuclear war before — now she seemed taken a bit aback and looked at us a bit. Her face bore a really puzzled expression. After a moments thought she laughed and replied, "No, I don’t have a problem with that. If Brandon was wearing a dress that might be a little weird, but I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Why are you all so touchy about this?" She asked.

‘Houston we have a problem.’ At that moment I had a decision to make… Amy and Nikki wouldn’t tell my secret — it was mine and mine alone to tell and they knew it. Brittany could pressure any of the others and could possibly get information. I didn’t think they would tell, but you never knew. What it really boiled down to was the fact that…

"Wait a minute." She had the good sense to whisper and look around to see if anyone else was around (they weren’t thankfully). "You’re wearing some of Amy’s clothes today aren’t you?"

Moment of truth… "No actually I’m wearing my own clothes." I replied back to her.

"So… you want to be a girl?" Her face was an incredibly frightening thing to look at right then. She looked puzzled, horrified, shocked, and a whole lot of other things. The most disturbing bit was that she was smiling too.

Keep it simple stupid… "Sort of… it’s complicated..." I paused, "Really I think that maybe I’ve always been one." I replied back to her in the same whisper.

She just sat there silent for a moment as she looked around a bit. "I’m the only girl here who didn’t know?" She asked.

"At this point." I replied. "I’m sorry I didn’t tell you already, but I don’t really know you that well. ‘The adults’ decided it would be best if I still came as Brandon on this trip. But they’re starting to recognize that it’s causing more trouble than it is really worth."

She still looked stunned but was getting over it. "I guess I should have wondered when you had that one shirt on when we left. Jennifer has that same top…" She paused for a few moments.

I looked at her and asked, "So are you going to be okay with knowing this?"

"And keeping it a secret," Amy added fairly fiercely.

"As long as you’ll consider letting me be your friend." She replied.

"That’s easy," I replied with a smile.

"I’m assuming you don’t go by Brandon when you are a girl?" She asked.

"No." I extended her my hand, "I’m Tiffany." She took it and shook it before extending her pinky to me and offering to let me swear her to secrecy without even me suggesting it.

With that our conversation lightened up a lot! Brittany was actually pretty nice. She had a lot of the same interests as we did — she just wasn’t in our school so we didn’t know her. That apparently was supposed to change next year — she said she was going to come over to our middle school. Of course I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be at that middle school after this summer…

Someone had suggested that I relocate to another school where people didn’t know Brandon — they thought it would be easier to fit in. I didn’t want to leave Amy and all of the rest of my friends though. I was honestly tempted to just show up as the ‘new girl’ at the beginning of the year and see what happened. Before too long we were herded back onto a bus to go to Epcot at Walt Disney World.

When we got there we were met by a tour guide who took us around to the main attractions and helped us avoid being in any lines. My favorite stop on this tour was probably when we ‘went inside the body.’ It was a neat simulator ride — and honestly one of the most entertaining things that day. Also really neat was the moving jets of water over a really pretty garden they had. With the plants sculpted into animals and Disney characters, it made a really neat place, and we took a lot of pictures there.

We finished our tour by riding up to the top of the big ball thing and seeing the different future possibilities inside of it. When we came down our tour guide left us and we broke up into some different groups. The group that I was in was definitely the largest. It was my parents, Amy’s parents, Amy, Lindsey, Jennifer, Brittany, and myself.

Once we split up our groups Amy and I started leading our group to food. We were both starving.

We ended up at another one of the many places in the Disney parks that cater to American needs in food — another hamburger. I was getting really sick of the burgers, but at least for dinner Amy’s parents had made arrangements for us to eat at a better restaurant. All I knew about it was that it was in the French Embassy area of the park.

After lunch we then started moving towards the other side of the park where all of the embassies were. We stopped in a store at the first stop and picked up ‘passports’ for each of us. We then started going from place to place hitting the attractions and finding souvenirs from the different countries. At one point we stopped at the restrooms and I went into the girls with everyone else. Well everyone else except our dads! I was really glad that all of the girls knew about me at this point — it made life a lot easier.

It was probably about 4pm when we went into a jewelry store in one of the sections. With the girls we walked through and were pointing out different necklaces and earrings to each other. A couple minutes later we came to the part of the counter that had different studs for piercing your ears.

"Tiffany, you should get your ears pierced." Lindsey said.

"My parents don’t want me to do it till we get back." I said sadly.

"What don’t we want you to do?" My mom came up behind me.

"Get my ears pierced before we get back." I replied to her. I managed to do it without too much attitude. There was certainly some bitterness present though.

She looked at me for a moment and then walked over to talk to my dad for a second. "Which ones do you want?" She asked pointing to the studs. I couldn’t believe it — I figured there was no way that I was going to be allowed to do that yet.

The girls all had an opinion on which ones I should get, but I finally settled on a pair of gold studs that had a deep blue sapphire in each of them. I really wanted the pink — but if I was even going to maintain a half-hearted effort at this lie then pink would be the wrong color to get.

I have to admit that I was kind of a bit on the wimpy side with the earrings. I definitely flinched and nearly cried from nerves before it got done — but at least once it was done I didn’t really feel that much. They gave us some stuff to clean my ears with — something Mom said I had to do every day. She wasn’t going to pay to get them re-pierced just because they got infected.

Of course once we had that done it opened up a whole new avenue of souvenirs to buy to take back home! I ended up with six additional pairs of earrings that I would be able to wear once my ears healed. Finally we were all pulled away from the various attractions and shopping by Mr. Hancock to go to dinner.

When we walked into the restaurant that Mr. Hancock had made reservations at I was suddenly concerned that we would be kicked out because of dress code. I mentioned that to Amy and she replied, "They’re used to people coming in like this from the park. As long as you make reservations they don’t have a problem with it."

I knew Mr. Hancock had in fact called earlier to expand the number since we had more people than he had expected originally. We were actually seated rather quickly, and they didn’t even give us a second glance for our clothing as far as I could tell. Our waitress came to the table soon after that.

"Bonjour! Je m’appele Elodie, your waitress for this evening. May I start you out with an appetizer?" She asked.

Mr. Hancock ordered several things for us all to share and then she came by for our drink orders. "Et vous, mademoiselle?" She asked me.

"Iced tea please?" I asked.

"Bien sur. By the way I love all of your hair," She said to all of us with a thick, authentic, Parisian accent. I know I blushed — I think Amy and Brittany did too. With that she was off to take care of our appetizers. The menu gave all of the stuff in both French and English. I was personally intrigued by the French stuff — maybe I’d have to study it when I got old enough.

We all took a stab at ordering something and she actually came back and interacted with us a lot. ‘The girls,’ as the adults had taken to calling us, all headed off for the bathroom before we got our food. It kind of amused me that I used to be someone that gave girls a hard time about ‘flocking’ to the bathroom.

For me it was more of a safety factor than most girls… I was so thankful that I was actually able to go in relative safety to the girl’s room though. That’s the way I had been doing things all day pretty much — and it made me far more comfortable. I didn’t get any strange glances when I went into the girls’ room. The day had been much better with that!

I really enjoyed the food that was waiting when we got back. It was so rich and tasty. We split some desserts, then after leaving the restaurant began going through the rest of the embassy section. Amy and I began racing each other to see who could get their ‘passport’ book finished quicker.

We were of course slowed down by our parents… couldn’t they see we were racing? We actually ended up finishing about forty-five minutes before the fireworks show was supposed to begin.

My mom pulled us off inside a store real quick at that point. "Hey why don’t we all go ahead and get one of these?" She asked holding up a yellow rain jacket.

"Do we have to Mom?" I asked her. Amy also looked like she wasn’t real fond of it.

"Do you want to get soaked again?" Mom asked me in return.

I grumbled but took the jacket that she bought for me and put it in a bag of souvenirs. Hopefully we wouldn’t have to wear them.

Before we split up we had a predetermined time and location we were all supposed to meet before the fireworks show. Amber, Nikki, and Ashley showed up and we became a group of girls in a circle pretty quickly. Nikki was the first to notice my new earrings.

"Tiffany, those are pretty!" She said as she examined them.

I had forgotten all about them. ‘I wonder what the guys are going to say?’ I asked myself.

"Thanks," I replied to her. "Do you think it’s going too far at this point?" I asked her quietly.

"No," I think you’ll be fine. She pulled me aside and whispered to me, "I think Kyle has figured out something. He asked me if I knew of anything going on with you. I didn’t say anything though," She added quickly.

"Maybe it would be better if I told him?" I asked her.

"I don’t know. I think you should just wait and see what happens for now. I just wanted to let you know."

"Thanks Nikki, you’re a really great friend." I gave her a brief friendly hug and we rejoined the group of girls that had now grown to all of the kids.

I stayed in between a couple of the girls to keep the guys from getting a good look at my ears. I really didn’t want to have to deal with that quite yet. As the fireworks show began to start all of the lights dimmed around the water where they were shooting them off.

The show was really cool — I’m definitely a pyro, so that meant I would have done about anything to have been involved with it. I thoroughly enjoyed watching things explode! As the last volley of fireworks went off as a finale I felt raindrops begin to fall onto my head. All of us began ripping open the packaging on our raincoats and putting them on.

I think, from later accounts, that the adults realized quickly they had a problem. Suddenly every one of us looked exactly the same! They all ordered us to hold each others hands and I ended up with Kyle holding my right hand.

That was strange. He looked at me kind of funny — and I realized he must have seen my earrings at that point. He kept hold of my hand still and I hung onto Amy’s hand. It was at that moment that it really occurred to me that eventually I might have to or want to date a boy… that would be really strange.

Between all of the sheets of rain, and our long trek back to the buses holding hands, I didn’t have a lot of time to ponder that much more. I knew I would have to think about it eventually though. As we got on the bus and I sat down in my seat Kyle stopped by my row and asked, "Can I sit next to you?"

"Umm… Sure." I replied

"So are you enjoying the trip so far?" He asked me.

"Yeah, I’m having the time of my life. How about you?" I asked.

"It’s great. I’ve never been east of New Mexico before. My parents have never wanted to go this way for some reason. Have you been here before?"

"No, my parents have never had the money for it. If not for the film we made I’d say they would never again… but hopefully that won’t be as much the case now." I told him.

"Was that fun making that film?" He asked me.

That could be taken as a loaded question. Did I have fun playing with Barbies? Well might as well go for broke. "Yeah, it was a great time. And, it certainly turned out well for us."

"How so?"

"Well Mattel, the company that makes Barbies, bought the film. They paid us each a large sum of money and promised us a share of profits if they ever show it publicly. It sounds like they’re at least going to pay for it to be entered into a film festival or two for us. So, if nothing else, we should have college paid for each of us." I told him.

"Wow that’s cool. So Brandon, the guys and I have been kind of wondering something." I casually stood up for a second to stretch and look around to see who else was around. "Why haven’t you been hanging out with us on this trip?"

Perhaps I could avoid the truth coming out for a little longer? "Well Amy and I have become really good friends this year. Really you never see us apart anymore, do you? It seems like I live at her house more than I live at mine." I paused for a second, "Her friends have become mine recently, so I just like to hang out with them. It’s nothing against you guys."

"Good, I didn’t really think it was." He paused for a second before lowering his voice, "Umm… Brandon… I’ve got a question besides that though… When they made us all hold hands earlier I noticed that you had both your ears pierced… I also noticed that you looked like you had on some of Amy’s clothes today?"

‘Oh Crap’

"Also, I didn’t think much of it the other day but when I saw Amy and your group I didn’t see you. I did see another girl with them. Is there something else going on? I mean I don’t have a problem if there is, I just was curious…"

"Umm…" I was at a loss for words all of the sudden. This was the first time that I had to tell a boy my age that I wasn’t really a boy — I was a girl… and to make it worse I didn’t really know if I could trust him or not.

"Look Brandon, I know I haven’t exactly gone out of my way to be your friend, but I haven’t been your enemy either. Did you hear about the time I beat Matt up last year?"

"I heard something about it." I replied. I did remember it. Last year in fifth grade Kyle had beaten Matt to a pulp one day. Matt had been so badly beaten he didn’t bother me for a solid month. At least that’s what I thought had happened. No one had seemed to know why the two had gotten into it.

"Well the reason I beat him up was because one day he started bragging to me about all the stuff he’d been doing to you. I was tired of him giving you all of that crap. He needed to be knocked down a few notches." He told me. But why was he telling me?

"Well thanks, I do appreciate it." I replied.

"So what’s going on with you? You can trust me — I won’t tell anyone else." He told me.

Nope, I wasn’t going to get away without telling him something. And if I’m telling him something it might as well be the truth right?

"You promise?" I asked.

"Yes, I promise."

"Well… I’ve had kind of an interesting last year. Last week a doctor diagnosed me as having a ‘gender-identity’ issue." I couldn’t say disorder that would make it sound like I was even more of a freak…

"What does that mean?" He asked me.

"Well it’s a really long story, but to make it a short one, basically my body doesn’t match up with my brain. On the inside of me I’m a girl — the only thing keeping me from being so is my body."

"That’s strange…" Thankfully he didn’t just jump up right then and scream ‘you freak.’

"It’s not something I picked or wanted, but it’s something that I am dealing with." I replied back.

"So does this mean that you’re going to be a girl at school next year?" he asked me. He was taking this far better than I expected.

"I hope so. That’s the plan at least." I replied back to him.

"Let me know if anyone gives you any trouble about it — I’ll take care of them." He told me in a way I knew he meant it.

"You’re… o… okay with this?" I asked him incredulously.

"Well the girls all seem to be fine with it. You’re a nice person, and I have little doubt that when you actually dress completely as a girl are going to be at least as cute as all the others. How are they going to keep you from becoming a guy with a deep voice and all of that?"

"Well…" I explained some more of what was ahead for me. Or at least what I hoped was ahead for me.

"So eventually you’ll be completely a girl?" He asked me.

"In every way except having kids." I replied back to him.

"Well that’s not a bad thing. That has got to hurt more than it would be worth!" he told me laughing a little.

I nodded. Inside I wasn’t as sure though. I might jump at the chance to have a baby of my own when I got older. Definitely not until I was much older! Unfortunately I knew it would probably never happen.

"So when are you going to tell everyone else?" He asked me.

"You think I need to?" I asked him. Strangely I did feel like I could trust him.

"Yeah, the rest of the guys are starting to ask questions — it’s only a matter of time before someone does something stupid. More than anything the pierced ears are going to push it over the edge for most of them in figuring it out." He told me.

"Do you think I can hold off till tomorrow?" I asked him.

"Yeah. I’m the only one who has seen your ears so far I think. Beyond that I don’t think it’ll hold off though." He told me.

About that time we were pulling up to the hotel. "Kyle thanks for not freaking out on me."

"No problem." I had started to get out of my seat, but he motioned for me to stop for a second. "I didn’t catch your new name though." He said.

"Tiffany, my name is Tiffany." I replied to him with a smile. He returned it and I went upstairs with my souvenirs from the day. When we got in the door Amy immediately started pestering me.

"What did Kyle want?" She asked me. Well at least that was the way you would interpret it.

I got her calmed down a bit and explained what had happened. "So you’re going to have to tell tomorrow?" She asked me.

"I don’t see any other way, do you?" I asked.

"No. I really don’t, we should talk with Ms. Fitz and the adults about this tonight." She told me.

"You’re right. I’ll go down and talk to them and my parents real quick." I told her about the time that the door opened and Amy’s parents, my parents, and indeed all of the adults.

"Well I guess I don’t need to go find you guys?" I asked.

"You were already going to come find us?" Ms. Fitz asked.

"Well yeah… I think my ‘secret’ is basically out of the bag." I told them. Kyle’s dad was in there too — I don’t think he knew yet.

My dad nodded, while my mom and Melanie exchanged looks that they already knew what I was going to say. ‘They must have already decided we couldn’t hide it any more too.’ I thought to myself.

"What’s going on?" Kyle’s dad asked.

"Umm…" I started to talk but Mr. Hancock took over here.

"I know Brandon’s not our kid, but may I break it to them?" He asked my parents. They seemed relieved about that. One thing my mom and dad had commented to me some time ago that I couldn’t have had a better person on my side than him. If I was ever to be able to return to my middle school as Tiffany instead of Brandon he would be the one to make it possible.

"Yes," my mom said simply.

Mr. Hancock motioned for them to sit down in the seating spots around the room. "Look, this has been kind of a difficult year for Brandon. He’s had a lot of events that have happened this year, and thankfully some of them have been good. Among probably the best events for both him, and Amy, have been their becoming best friends. The two of them have probably one of the strongest childhood friendships you could have."

I smiled at that and saw that Amy was doing the same.

"It’s a long story that really doesn’t matter — and it’s not really my story to tell — but over the course of the past few months everyone around Brandon had been noticing some changes. After a few events in recent months it became clear to my wife, my daughter, and Brandon’s mom that something was eating away at him. Everyone seemed to agree that it started about the time that Brandon started growing his hair out."

"At one point Amy innocently dragged Brandon into playing with her Barbies a few months ago. They tried to keep it from us so we wouldn’t find out, but my wife came home one day and found them playing with them. After that, if they weren’t working on their homework they always seemed to be doing something with her toys."

"From here things just slowly escalated till one day Amy dressed Brandon up in some of her clothes, and it came out that he really wanted to be Tiffany." The mushroom cloud from the bomb definitely hung in the air for Kyle’s parents and Lindsey’s Mom. I had forgotten she didn’t know. There weren’t any knee jerk reactions thankfully. I think a lot of that had to do with Mr. Hancock telling the story.

He continued on and explained the past couple weeks and how the psychiatrist had suggested that I come as Brandon still. Pieces were filled in on how that had ended up not really working out, and my parents finally gave in today to me getting my ears pierced.

Finally we came to a part the rest of them didn’t know. "I don’t know what happened earlier, but I have a feeling Kyle found out about you?" Kyle’s mom asked.

"He saw my earrings and asked me about some other stuff on the bus." I replied. "I was just getting ready to come find you guys to let you know I think I need to just tell the other four boys since everyone else knows already."

"Lindsey knows?" her mom asked.

"For a while, she was at the slumber party." I told her.

"She never told me." She said kind of talking off into space.

"All the girls that didn’t know have put together the pieces and asked me over the past couple days."

Mrs. Manning spoke up at this point. "I think we are going to have to tell them something tomorrow. I don’t think we have to do anything tonight, but we do need to take care of this before we leave for Magic Kingdom tomorrow." She announced.

"I think you’re right," Kyle’s mom said.

"My first question is will there be any problems from you all that we need to work out tonight?" Mr. Hancock asked. Have I mentioned how awesome he is? It’s not that my dad is a bad guy. But he just tends to lack the will to really be aggressive a lot of times.

"It’s weird, and I believe in all honesty religiously it’s wrong," Kyle’s dad started out, "but with all of the research that’s coming out I don’t really think that it’s hi… er… her fault. As long as she’s not trying to put our son into the same situation we don’t have a problem with it." He answered.

"If Lindsey’s known about this for a couple weeks and hasn’t said anything to me it means she’s okay with this. I’m not going to get in the way. Besides I do have to say Tiffany is a lot cuter."

"You should see the pictures from last week," my mom added with large amount of pride. I knew that they would get broken out later. I was pretty proud of those though so I didn’t mind.

"Well, how do you want to do this Tiffany?" Ms. Fitz asked.

"Well… why don’t we just have a gathering at breakfast tomorrow and I’ll tell all of the rest of them what’s going on. I don’t know if it’ll make it easier or not, but I want to come as Tiffany with my hair done like last week."

"I don’t think that can hurt." Amy’s mom added.

"I’ll come over and help you," My mom said. "For now I guess we all need to head back to our rooms and go to bed. Tomorrow will take care of itself."

They all started leaving the room and Amy and I dug through what clothing I had left, that was clean, to pick out an outfit for tomorrow. Her parents pushed us to bed sooner than we liked, and told us to be quiet more than once as the two of us talked about what we thought might happen tomorrow.

When we went to sleep we were hugging our stuffed animals, thinking about the next day. I woke up the next morning and found that I had somehow become a replacement for her teddy bear. She had her arm tight around me just like I had my teddy bear. Actually I woke to a camera flash taking a picture of us like that.
 
 
Chapter 28
 
 

"MOM! WHAT ARE you doing?" Amy asked sleepily, still holding onto me like a giant teddy bear.

It was then that we both realized what was going on and starting giggling. It really was innocent; neither of us was capable of thinking of the other in any way other than as sisters at this point. But that picture turned out to be something that her parents — and later mine — would razz us about for a long time.

They didn’t have a lot of time that morning though, because as soon as I was awake I was hurried into the shower to wash my hair. They had woken me a good hour earlier than I had any other day on this trip. I wasn’t exactly real personable that morning at first, but when Mom came over and started working on my hair it started to make me smile.

Between Mom, Melanie, and Amy my hair was really pretty when it was done. We still had a half-hour before we needed to go downstairs so we made Amy’s hair look like mine too. Between the hair and the clothes we were wearing we were sure everyone would assume we were sisters. That made me even happier, since that’s what Amy was to me — a sister. All four of us shared quick hugs before heading downstairs to breakfast.

We had timed it so that everyone else would already be downstairs, and gathered around in a circle before I came down. As we came and joined the circle I saw every guy — even Kyle — drop their jaws in astonishment. Only one of the faces looked at me as though I was a monster from outer space — that was Jarred — the rest were just shocked.

"Hi guys," I said.

"Umm… Brandon?" David asked.

"Actually that’s why everyone is supposed to be gathered right now. I need to tell you all something."

I paused for a second.

"I’m not going to be Brandon anymore — my name is Tiffany now." I told them. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to break it… but I didn’t come up with anything else at that moment.

"Huh?" David asked again.

"Look, over the past few months I’ve discovered some things about myself. I’ve talked to my friends, my parents, and even a specialist. The gist of it is that my mind is that of a girl, even though my body is that of a boy. My doctor has suggested that it would be better for me to live life as Tiffany than it would as Brandon. It’s a much longer tale — and is a lot more difficult than I’m making it sound, but eventually I will have a body that matches that of a girl." All of that came stammering out of my mouth. I was beyond nervous.

From there the questions flew about me. I answered a lot of them, but my parents and the other adults fielded a lot of them too. The only guy who seemed to have problems with it was Jarred. The rest for whatever reason actually seemed cool with it. None of them seemed to think that I was contagious — definitely a good start.

When we seemed to have run out of questions we went ahead and got breakfast. Amy and I ended up sitting with Kyle and David. They actually made for two fairly cool people to talk to. I honestly wasn’t completely sure what their reason was for sitting with us, but I was happy to see that things weren’t going south. Every now and then I noticed Jarred staring at me strangely — I was kind of worried about him.

After breakfast we boarded the bus. Lindsey said, "Your hair is really pretty today, Tiffany."

"Thanks."

"Do you feel better now that you’re not hiding the truth anymore?" She asked me.

"Yes, a lot better. I’m sure this is going to cause a lot of trouble going into next year though. Ten to one, by this time next week the school will already be talking about ‘that freak’ that thinks he’s a girl. Oh well though, they’re just going to have to deal." I said the last bit with a bit of a bob of my head that made my hair bounce. Lindsey giggled a bit.

"What?" I asked.

"You just bobbed your head up and down like one of the high school dance team girls — it was cute." She replied.

Amy had noticed this too and she said, "Tiffany you should try out for cheerleading this year!" She had a huge smile on her face.

"Umm… first of all I would kill myself, but second haven’t you all already had tryouts for the team?"

"For the fall football games yes, but we’ll actually have a separate set of tryouts in October to recheck everyone and for new girls. I think you qualify as a ‘new girl.’" Amy answered.

"Umm… You still haven’t answered the killing myself part of this." I told her.

"Well, you’re really not as clumsy as you make everyone think you are. Plus my parents were planning on sending me to this cheer camp next month to get ready to go for the school’s camp. I bet we could get you into that camp still if you want to try." She told me.

"You really should Tiffany, it would be great to have you on the squad," Lindsey told me.

"There are a thousand insane things that will probably go wrong with this plan, but I won’t say no, okay?" I temporized. Being a cheerleader would be a dream come true… but it was probably just that, a dream.

I managed to steer them onto other topics from there, but I had a feeling that this would not be the last I would hear about it. Not that I wanted it to be! Our bus driver drove us back towards Disney World, and this time we entered Magic Kingdom. Today was going to be a less structured day for all of us.

We were all supposed to still remain in a group with at least one adult, but other than that our only guideline was that we had to meet up at the buses at 8:30pm.

Our group was a bit different today. Amy and I were of course in it — just try to separate us! Lindsey and Ashley also joined. But we also added in Kyle and David today too. My parents and Amy’s parents stuck with us, while the others split up between everyone else.

We began by immediately heading for Space Mountain to start off our day. Amy and I both agreed that it was a better ride than the version in Disneyland. The day just flew by as we moved from one spot in the park to the next. We took a very quick break for lunch and were soon on the move again.

All along the way the six of us became a closer group than I expected. Kyle and David seemed to be dealing with me being Tiffany very well. I honestly was really surprised that I wasn’t having tons of problems now.

At some point in the afternoon we ended up on Main Street shopping for souvenirs. Now that I was ‘out’ Mom bought Amy and me a set of Minnie Mouse ears and made us wear them in the pictures for the rest of the day. Every so often Kyle and David would give us a hard time about them. Amy kept threatening to get them their own set of Minnie Mouse ears if they didn’t stop… that seemed to stop the comments. I wished it hadn’t though… that would have made for some great pictures!

My parents had certainly been taking their share of pictures this trip, but they seemed to renew their fury with this after we got the ears. Time went on and it got kind of hot, by around five or so we were all absolutely drenched in sweat. Kyle and David dragged us all over to splash mountain — which we hadn’t hit for some reason — in the hopes that we could cool down a bit.

Amy and I wore our ears on the ride so that we’d end up with them in that picture. Mom took some bobby pins she had in her purse and secured them a little bit better to our hair (it hurt!) before we went on the ride. It was a ‘splash!’ When we got the picture I was really proud that I had managed to put my hands up in the air for the picture and smile. It looked exactly like something that Disney would have advertised with.

Of course right after the camera flash I immediately grabbed for the bar and screamed! I was a girl after all! But at least the picture came out really good!

From there we hit various rides we had missed for one reason or another. At about 7:15 we got in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It had a really long line, but we figured we would have just enough time to ride it before we needed to head back to the bus.

As we stood in the line, the six of us kids just chatted back and forth. Pretty soon Kyle asked me, "So are you happier now?"

I nodded. "Yes. I’ve been tired of hiding this for so long. Now I just have to deal with the fallout from everything."

"Well next year let me know if anyone gives you any problems, I’ll take care of them for you." Kyle told me. There was something in his eyes that told me he meant what he said.

What was going on? Why in the heck did he say that? I decided I had to ask. "Umm… Kyle why are you being so cool about this?"

"Well… I don’t honestly know. I think part of it is I’ve gotten tired of seeing people put down so often in our school — I think you deserve a lot better treatment than you’ve gotten." He paused for a second, "Part of it is also that you’ve got a lot of guts to push through with this — I respect that a lot." There was another pause during which I was tempted to speak but held off.

"And finally I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to throw people off their feet with this. Yeah, they’re going to hear about ‘Brandon’s some freak now and is going to wear dresses to school,’ this summer. The look on their faces when they try to figure out where Brandon is — it surely can’t be that new girl — is going to be hilarious." He ended with a gigantic grin.

"Really?" I asked.

"Were you looking at everyone’s faces this morning?" He asked me.

I shook my head, "No I was too nervous."

"It was priceless, honestly the guys sort of recognized you… but not really. Especially the way you had your hair done and were dressed. They had the advantage of having seen you these past few days and still didn’t recognize you real easily. I had already learned about what was going on from you last night so I was just kind of watching everyone."

About that time David moved over to our side of the conversation from the other one. "Yeah, I didn’t recognize you at all," he said to me.

"And you’re okay with this too?" I asked. I was really not trying to sound incredulous, but I did expect to have a bomb go off over my head at any time. This was all going far too smoothly.

"It’s weird. But you’ve always been a little weird. Now I can just chalk it up to the fact that you’re a girl, and girls are weird. No big deal. I’m with Kyle, if anyone gives you any trouble this fall at school let me know. I think we can make this a lot of fun for the whole group that came on this trip."

Amy, Lindsey, and Ashley had all been acting like they were talking in another conversation while the three of us had been talking. I say ‘acting’ because I could tell that they were managing to listen in on us while we were talking and then joined up with our conversation now.

We all talked about lots of stuff, including maybe the six of us getting together for a pool party at Amy’s house in a couple weeks. Just as we were finalizing some plans we reached the ride and got to experience all that there was to experience about the Pirates of the Caribbean. The amount of animatronics they used in the ride was cool. It honestly wasn’t anything too incredibly spectacular, but it was fun.

We all got off the ride and walked out to the bus that was waiting for us. On the way out of the park we took one last picture of the six of us, then the six of us plus Amy and my parents, and then we reluctantly left the Disney Park. Tomorrow was our last day here in Florida, but we wouldn’t be coming back to the Disney Parks.

It had been a blast, and truly the ‘trip of a lifetime.’ When they had said that at the beginning of the year I had no idea just how much it would really ring true. My life was definitely not going to be the same after today. I had officially become Tiffany in my group’s eyes.

All of this was going through my head as we pulled into the hotel and headed for our rooms. Before we went up though I saw Ashley talking to everyone behind me, before she rushed up to me. "Tiffany hold up a second!" She exclaimed.

I turned around to her, "What’s up?" I asked her.

"We talked Ms. Fitz and Mrs. Manning into letting us get together downstairs with just the students for thirty minutes. Everyone’s going to get into their pajamas and then meet downstairs okay?" She asked me.

"Okay, why?" I asked back.

"It’s a surprise." She told me.

"Alright," I replied hesitantly before going on upstairs to change. What was going on?

I went upstairs with Amy right behind me and changed into my pajamas. We headed back downstairs shortly thereafter and found everyone else there. Somewhere popcorn appeared along with some cokes and it turned into a pretty fun little gathering of all of us.

We all kind of just hung out for about twenty minutes before Ashley said, "Okay, can I get everyone’s attention?"

Everyone was slow to look over at her but eventually she had everyone’s attention. "Look, we’ve all had a pretty cool week this week right?"

"Yeah," David and Jake exclaimed fairly solidly. We all gave our agreement.

"Look today we had some pretty surprising news that was delivered to the boys. All of the girls already knew about Tiffany by then, but we had kept it from the boys. I hope you aren’t upset by that, but everyone was worried about what might happen when the truth came out." Ashley said.

"It’s okay," David said.

"We do understand why you didn’t tell any of us," Anthony added.

"Good, because that’s why Ashley and I wanted to get everyone together tonight," Kyle said standing up.

"Look, I know that some people are not exactly going to stand up and be Tiffany’s cheer squad," he said looking at Jarred, "but I think we all owe it to her not to tell anyone about what’s gone on with her on this trip to anyone else."

"What do you want from us?" Jarred asked. "People are going to find out about ‘it’ no matter what you do." He was very irritated.

"Yes people are going to find out about her, but not until the first day of school when she walks into class." David replied catching on at about the same speed I was. They were trying to keep it from becoming a huge wave of outrage going into the new school year. I didn’t see any way that could actually work though.

"You can keep this a secret, right?" David looked at Jarred with a very sinister glance. You have to understand something I haven’t made real clear here. David was already three inches taller than any other guy in our grade. He was also easily the strongest guy that I knew too. Jarred on the other hand was only about average, if not a little small for average, and looked rightfully nervous.

"Umm… yeah I guess…" He stammered in reply.

"Good, we’ll talk more about this later then." He added.

"So can we all make a promise that no one will tell anyone not on this trip — including parents that don’t know — until we get back to school?" Ashley asked. Everyone assented with real smiles on their faces — excepting Jarred’s scowl. From there she made everyone do something that was really strange, but okay whatever, and grab pinkies of everyone next to each other and repeat a vow not to tell.

We spent our remaining five minutes or so laughing and having a good time talking about things that had happened on the trip. It was a lot of fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. As Ms. Fitz came downstairs to send us off to our rooms I saw Kyle, David, and Anthony gather around Jarred.

I didn’t know what they were talking about — but I sensed it might have been some sort of threat. I wasn’t going to pay any more attention than that, I didn’t want to.

When I got to our room I found that the parents had been having a meeting of their own in our room. Mom stuck around for a bit to talk with me before heading back to their room. Before long I was in bed and falling asleep.
 
 
Coda:
 
 

The next morning was pretty frenetic. We had to pack up all of our suitcases and souvenirs, because we were leaving directly from Universal Studios Park. We quickly ate breakfast and headed for our final destination.

Once we were at the park we were again met by a park representative that sped us around all of the lines. I would really hate to have been one of the people that were stuck in line for an hour or more at times while we just got put in the front of the line…. Yeah, we definitely were getting special treatment. No complaints here though!

Among the first rides we went on was ‘Jaws.’ Between the gigantic shark attacking the boat, and things exploding everywhere, we had a lot of fun. I definitely got more experience screaming as a girl on that ride — more because I was having fun than anything.

From there we moved on to an Alfred Hitchcock attraction. We all got to see how they made special effects come to life in his films. It was really neat actually, and after we’d learned about that kind of stuff we watched clips of some of his movies in a theater there. The biggest thing there was it was in 3D. Watching birds flying through the air towards you is definitely not the most comfortable event!

We had fun though and moved on to a couple of other things like a Flintstones ride and finally ended up at a ‘Double Dare’ game show. Kyle got chosen out of our group to go and play. We got to watch him do some pretty messy and stupid things — it was a blast. We made sure that our parents got plenty of pictures of it. I was really jealous that I didn’t get to play myself though.

Our group separated from the tour guide at lunch. Eating lunch soon led to more souvenir shopping, a couple other small attractions, and finally back to the bus to go to the airport. The last day seemed to have lasted absolutely no time at all.

In no time it seemed we were back on a plane to go back home. I had gotten a window seat this time, with Amy in the middle, and Kyle on the end of our three chair section. I wasn’t really paying much attention to either of them though. Instead I just stared out the window thinking.

Over the past year everything in my world had gotten turned upside down, and gotten shaken about quite a bit. If you would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would now be going by Tiffany I never would have believed you. The sheer fact that I sat in a pair of girls shorts, a top, shoulder length hair, and pierced ears right now, would have made me scratch my head.

But, I was happier, a lot happier. I had an incredibly cool and close friendship with Amy, and a growing friendship with many other kids that I had never had before. That friendship with Amy had already led to more incredible experiences so far than I ever would have expected. Her parents had mentioned to mine about the cheer camp, and they were considering sending me. Me, a cheerleader? Maybe, who knows?

I still had a lot of things in front of me that weren’t going to be so easy though. I knew without a doubt that I was going to be struggling from day one in school this fall. If I thought I’d been getting picked on before, I feared it was just going to be the tip of the iceberg. The comments, threats, and physical violence I imagined I would face were more than enough to send chills down my spine. Thankfully I had plenty of friends that should be able to help with that. We would see.

I was truly amazed that I was having as few difficulties right now as I was. The fact that no one had tried to beat me up, or even said something awful to me since I came out yesterday still had me shocked. I knew it couldn’t last forever. Who would have ever thought that my life would take me down this road? Certainly not me.

What I knew more than anything was that I had no choice but to stand up to the hard road before me, walking down it step by step. Alone I could never do it, but with a friend like the one next to me how could I not? That thought brought a little smile to my face. I knew I could make the journey if others would only let me.

I stared out that window the whole time we were up in the air as though it symbolized everything in my life, ‘up in the air.’ Eventually I drifted off to a light sleep letting all of my thoughts and concerns fade away.

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Finis Book 1

Look for the continuing story of Tiffany and her friends in Daring to Hope, book two of the Standing Up to Life trilogy, available soon here and at Lulu.com! If you enjoyed this please consider purchasing it to support my writing! (www.lulu.com/tiffanyshar/)

Thanks for reading! ~ Tiffany Shar