Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
Available for Purchase as
Download & Hardback |
Please visit Tiffany Shar's Bookstore Page |
Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 Part 1 of 8 by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
Available for Purchase as
Download & Hardback |
Please visit Tiffany Shar's Bookstore Page |
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
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!
Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them 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! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!
-Tiffany Shar
Prelude
I TRIED WIPING the sleep out of my eyes as we walked through the airport terminal to the baggage claim. We had just gotten in from Orlando via Houston, and I was exhausted. Amy, my best friend, was walking beside me as we stepped on an escalator to go downstairs.
“That was so much fun Tiffany,” she said to me.
“Yeah, it really was Amy. I can’t believe it’s already over — I mean we looked forward to it for so long.”
“-and now it’s done.” She added finishing my thought. “Well we’ll have to find something else to look forward to this year.”
“Yeah, I just don’t know what.” I replied. The next few months for me were going to present nothing but fear and anxiety. This trip had gone really well for me — even with the news to the other kids that I was no longer going by Brandon anymore… but I knew that anytime you start to soar into the air you usually realize that you forgot a parachute. Without that parachute you usually hit the ground really hard!
“Well we can start with having a blast this summer together!” She said with a smile trying to cheer me up. That did bring a grin to my face finally, I’m kind of grouchy when I’ve been asleep or need to sleep.
“Yes, there’s definitely that!” I said with a giggle.
“We’re going to have a great time the rest of this summer Tiff, just wait and see.” With that we were at the baggage claim.
After sitting there for what seemed forever the buzzer rang and bags began coming up the conveyor belt. That was my second experience at trying to catch a bag — it was a lot harder this time than when we left as my bag had become considerably heavier from souvenirs. I heaved it off the belt and carried it over to a luggage cart we rented from the airport.
Amy grabbed me before we started heading off though, “Let’s say goodbye to everyone — we may not see some of them again until after the summer!”
As a guy I never would have thought of that before — but she was right and I did want to at least say bye to the girls. Before I knew it all of the girls were exchanging hugs with each other and saying things like ‘call me.’ We also gave hugs to all of the adult chaperones, especially Ms. Fitz and Mrs. Manning.
Then the awkward moment came. All of the girls began hugging Kyle and David, who had stuck around. I wasn’t sure how they were going to react to being hugged by me.
I was standing right next to Kyle though and he asked me, “Aren’t you going to give us a hug too?” he reached over and put his arm around my shoulder. Just a quick friendly hug, but it left me feeling kind of strange… not in a bad way… but strange. I ended up hugging David too and we all broke up and went our separate ways.
I had a feeling that I would be thinking about that for a while… I wasn’t really sure how I felt about it — but at least it seemed that Kyle was considering me enough of a girl to feel okay with the hug. I gave Amy and her parents hugs goodbye at our cars, before sitting in the back of our car and buckling my seat belt. I put my backpack on the seat next to me and closed my eyes.
The next thing I knew I was being prodded, “Tiffany, wake up sweetie, it’s time to go inside and go to bed.” I woke up enough to make it into my room, change into a comfy set of pink pajamas from the photo shoot that Mrs. Hancock had paid for, and laid down on my bed.
As I went to sleep I couldn’t believe that the trip was over already.
Chapter 1
I WOKE UP to the sun shining too brightly in my room — didn’t it know I was trying to sleep!?! Stupid sun! I just kind of lay on the bed for a few minutes doing nothing but relaxing, before I suddenly became excited enough to wake up.
I could actually wear a skirt today!!!
I had just been given a preliminary diagnosis of a gender identity disorder three days before we had left for Orlando on the school trip. My parents, the psychiatrist, our teachers, and Amy’s parents (my other parents as I tended to think of them) had all decided it would be a bad idea for Tiffany to go on the trip though. Long story short, we tried having Brandon on the trip, but things became really awkward as people stared at the ‘girl’ going in the men’s rooms. After everything that had happened with my parents finding out about me, the walls had crashed down, and I could no longer portray myself as Brandon. By the last two days of the trip the ‘cat came out of the bag’ and I was finally able to spend two wonderful days as Tiffany.
However, I didn’t have a single skirt or dress to wear then. Today I would make up for as much of that last time as I could!
As I jumped up and looked in my closet I started searching through what I had. Before I knew it I had a long pink skirt with flowers on it in one hand, and a top to match in my other hand. I grabbed some panties that had lace around the openings, some other things, and flung my door open to go use the shower.
“Mom, are you guys done with the water so I can take a shower?” I asked loudly down the hall towards the kitchen.
“Yes sweetie. Go ahead.” My mom answered back. We didn’t live in a bad house, but it was old enough that the plumbing was not well planned. If anyone was taking a shower, and someone else used water elsewhere, the person in the shower would get a rude surprise. So my family was pretty good about communicating who was using the water at what times.
With that news I bounded into the bathroom. I got out of my pajamas and turned on the hot shower water. I used some shampoo and conditioner on my hair — really washing it out good. After I felt my body and hair were nice and clean, with the water growing cold, I dried my body off and wrapped a towel around myself.
As I looked in the mirror at the wet tangles of hair falling from my head I thought for a second about calling mom and asking her to do my hair… but I decided I wanted to do it all by myself. Pretty soon the blow dryer was screaming away, hot curling irons moved through my hair, and when I was done I looked in the mirror and liked what I could see.
I had it curled under at the bottom as I had been shown by the salon the previous week. I turned my head this way and that in front of the mirror satisfied with what I saw. Mom had brought my toiletry case into the bathroom for me this morning and I began digging around in it for a few things. I was really just looking for my toothbrush at first, but then saw the stuff for my ears and remembered, ‘oh yeah,’ and disinfected my freshly pierced ears.
I slid on the pair of panties, which were far fancier than anything I had taken on the trip, enjoying the feel of them. Then I put everything else together, adjusting the skirt and top to be just right. I really liked the way it made me look, and after twirling about a few times in the full length mirror on the door I stepped out into the hall.
Mom was running a load of laundry in the laundry room and looked at me and asked, “So did you take long enough to get ready in there? I thought you were never going to finish!” She had a smile on her face which I knew meant she was kidding.
“Would you like me to take more time?” I asked.
“No, you definitely don’t need to waste any more time in the bathroom!” She said assertively.
“But don’t I look pretty?” I asked her. I batted my eyelashes as I said that.
“Yes you do sweetie, but there’s a fine line between pretty and hogging the bathroom. And don’t bat those eyelashes at me.” She sighed. “At least you’re finally getting a chance to put them to good use. People have commented on those long lashes since you were little — at least as my daughter you’ll get to enjoy them more.”
She paused and the finger came back out, “But not at me!” she smiled and gave me a hug at that point.
I was smiling too as we walked down the hallway to the kitchen. It was at that point that I finally looked at a clock and saw that it was already 12:30 in the afternoon! Whoa. Mom made some cheese crisps for lunch (tortillas crisped in butter on a skillet with cheese melted on the top). I ate quietly while looking through some ads we had missed. I was so happy to be in a skirt today! It felt so much nicer than having to pretend to be Brandon like I’d had to through the majority of the trip.
Mom interrupted my thoughts, “So Tiffany once you finish that do you want to go run to Wal-Mart with me and get these pictures developed?”
“Sure!” I replied to her just before I put in the last bit of food into my mouth. I washed it down with water, threw the paper plate away, and ran down the hall to my room to grab some flip-flops to wear. I also grabbed some rolls of film that were sitting in my fanny pack from my camera. By the time I walked back out the living room Mom was standing there with a big Ziploc of film to get developed.
She handed me the bag as we walked out to the car. As I sat down and buckled my seatbelt, I added my film to the bag and started counting the rolls that were in the bag. I couldn’t believe it, there were twenty-four separate rolls of film in there! That was going to be expensive to process.
As we drove down the roads to our local Wal-Mart I messed with the radio until I had the local oldies station on. I don’t know why, but I really loved music from the 50’s and 60’s. Mom approved of the station and we pulled into the parking lot with a great Beach Boys song playing.
We walked into Wal-Mart and went to their film developing section where we surprised to see they weren’t busier. Mom pulled out twenty-four separate film envelopes, and we each started writing away on the information. On all of the rolls we ordered duplicates. That kind of surprised me as that was only going to make it more expensive. Fourteen minutes later we finally handed the stack of envelopes to the technician behind the counter.
“How long do you think it’ll take to get these done?” My mom asked her.
“Well, we’re really dead right now for some reason, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we have them done in an hour-and-a-half. Be safe and call it two hours and we should be done.” The girl answered.
“Okay, thanks.” My mom told her and we walked off.
“Well what now Mommy?” I asked her. She smiled, as I knew she would, I hadn’t called her ‘mommy’ since I was like four or five as Brandon. I had done it a few times in the past couple weeks and every time it was like flipping a switch to turn on the smile.
“Well why don’t we go home and you can help me with some laundry. Then we’ll go rent a video or two for tonight before we come back here?” She suggested.
“Okay,” I replied with a smile on my face. I was a bit hyper today and I think she knew it. It was probably a good thing that Amy wasn’t with me right then — the two of us would probably be feeding off of each other and making her go nuts.
We headed for the car with me skipping ahead a bit from her. I of course made it to the car long before her and turned around to see her just shaking her head at me. We made it home and I found myself being licked to death by our dog — Dad must have gone to pick her up from my grandparents. She was more than a little excited to see us — and I found myself doing the best I could to deal with her and my skirt.
Finally she calmed down, and Mom put me to work helping her with the loads and loads and loads of laundry we accumulated on the trip. Really at this point all we did was begin folding the underwear and socks from the trip that were done already. After that though, I helped her get the other stuff in the washer for the next load. Mom guessed that it was going to take a good eight loads to get through everything.
As Brandon I had never ever helped out with any of this stuff. I guess I was going to find out that girls were supposed to do some of this at least? Hrmm… Thankfully we headed back out after we got that load sorted out and went to Blockbuster to rent some movies.
Mom didn’t look like she was going to be real thrilled with it, but we got Jurassic Park — a lot of my friends had talked about it, but I hadn’t seen it yet. I also grabbed Lion King since she hadn’t seen that one yet and I knew she would enjoy it. She grabbed something else that sounded good to her and we left the store to pick up our pictures.
After picking up and paying for all twenty-four rolls of film we went out to the car and climbed in. “Tiffany, you look pretty, you’re behaving just like a girl should, but I’m afraid there is something we’re going to have to really work on this summer before you go back to school.” Mom told me as we drove away.
My stomach fluttered a lot right then, had I done something in Wal-Mart that would have given me away? “What?” I asked.
“Your handwriting — as I was looking at the envelopes that you filled out it occurred to me. It’s not that girls all have pretty handwriting, I certainly don’t, but your handwriting is definitely not like a girl’s should be.” She told me.
“Umm… is there anything I can do about it at this point?” I asked. Realistically I was probably stuck in my poor style at this point right?
“Well maybe I can get some handwriting books like when you were a kid and see if we can’t unlearn some of those bad habits.” She said to me.
“It couldn’t hurt I guess.” I replied.
“I’ll try and find some at a bookstore this week.”
“Okay, though I don’t know how much I’ll be able to fix it — I’ll definitely try.” I replied to her. Through the rest of the ride home I just kind of rode silently thinking about stuff. How many other things would come back to hurt me with this change?
TWENTY MINUTES LATER we pulled into our driveway and headed inside. Mom and I cleaned off our kitchen table and started going through the pictures we had taken. It took us the better part of an hour to go through all of the rolls. I put all of the pictures I liked in the front of each packet — that way it would be a lot easier to do something with them later.
We spent a lot of time saying, ‘hey look at this one’ and such. As I looked at the pictures I noticed that it seemed like my smile looked more genuine on the last two days of the trip, when I had been able to be Tiffany. I have to admit it may have just been my perception of the photographs though — I liked myself more as Tiffany.
Dad came in to the kitchen, as we were finishing up, and started going through the pictures himself. As I stood up to get a glass of water the phone rang.
I ran to beat Mom to it, answering, “Hello?”
“Tiffany? This is Amy.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Mom and I were wondering if you wanted to come over and work on our scrapbooks tomorrow?”
“Sure Amy, we just got all of our pictures developed too so that would be really cool. Have you gotten yours yet?” I asked.
“A couple hours ago, Mom got some really cute ones of you the other day!” She told me.
“We’ve got quite a few of you too — as well as a bunch of us together. My mom had duplicates made so I’ll be able to give you a copy of ones you want.”
“My mom did too. I think she has a few she’s going to go and get blown up tonight.”
“Cool…” I replied as we continued talking. We talked for 30 minutes before I had another caller beep in and I had to let her go.
It was my grandparents. “How was your trip?” My grandmother asked me.
“It was great! I had an absolute blast on the trip. You’ll have to see the pictures that we just got developed.” I replied.
“Well good sweetie, I’m glad you enjoyed your trip. So when are you going to come out to our place this summer?” My grandfather asked me.
“I don’t know, we’ll have to see what things are going to come up this summer. We’ll try and let you know by the end of the week maybe?” I suggested.
“That sounds fine sweetheart,” my grandmother told me.
We chatted for a couple more minutes before I handed them off to my Dad. I wondered why they had bothered calling since Dad had seen them this morning when he picked up our dog. I didn’t dwell on it long and instead got roped into helping with laundry again with Mom.
Once we finished I got to thinking about my scrapbook that I had started with Amy the week before we left. I had gotten through about half of the stuff I already had, and now I had like ten times what we had before this trip. I was certainly going to be very busy working on the book tomorrow.
It was at that point I remembered to tell Mom that she was invited too. She said she’d love to come and told me that I’d have to let her do some pages too.
I had to go to the bathroom at the end of the conversation, and as I washed my hands and looked into the mirror I realized there was something I really needed to take care of — new glasses. I hadn’t been wearing them as Tiffany much. I really hated them. In fact I only wore them when I had to see something clearly like the pictures earlier. I walked out to the kitchen where Mom and Dad were talking.
“Mommy, Daddy?” I decided this form of their names might get me farther.
“Yes?” Mom asked.
“I was wondering… Could I get contacts instead of glasses? I look so much better without glasses on — especially Brandon’s glasses — it would be really nice to not have to wear them next year to school.” I asked and prodded as sweetly and delicately as I could.
“I don’t know. Would you take care of them?” My mom asked me.
“Absolutely, I’ll do almost anything to not have to wear glasses anymore!” I replied, even if I wasn’t going to take care of them I wasn’t about to tell them otherwise. Of course I would do my best though.
“Well Tiffany is going to need to do something different, those glasses definitely don’t go with her face now,” Dad said to my mom.
“And it can’t be good for her all of the times she’s not been wearing them either…” Mom replied softly. “I’m okay with it, can we afford it?” She asked Dad.
“If we take it out of the earnings from the project they did we can,” he replied. “I don’t want to spend too much more out of that though Tiff, I’d really like to see us put most of that away for you for college… And I figure it might be able to help out down the road with some of the medical expenses that you could have,” he told me.
“Thanks Daddy!” I replied with a big smile and gave him a hug. “You too Mommy,” I said as I went over to her and did the same.
“You know I hate to add fuel to the fire here,” my mom started off, “but unfortunately her use of Mommy and Daddy is working just like she thinks it is.” She said to Dad in front of me.
Of course at that point I blushed and said indignantly, “I would never do anything like that.” Go ahead and paint that halo in my portrait above my head…. Just cause it’s held up with two horns doesn’t mean anything right? Right!
“Right.” Dad said sarcastically.
Just then the buzzer on the dryer went off and I ended up helping with another in the seemingly endless sea of laundry that we were dealing with. The day passed much like that up through a dinner of grilled cheese and soup.
After dinner I asked my parents, “So movies now?”
“Sure, but let me go to the bathroom first.” My dad said. I of course knew that I had merely started the long fifteen minute process of him getting ready to watch a movie — but hey, the process was started right?
In the meantime I decided to go to my room and put some pajamas on so I could be more comfortable while watching the movies. I picked out a long cotton sleep shirt and changed into it quickly. I hadn’t worn it yet and I was curious what it would feel like to sleep in.
When I returned I put in Jurassic Park first and told Mom we’d watch Lion King second. I had to get up almost immediately and return to my room for a blanket though. I know you’re saying, ‘it’s the middle of June in New Mexico, what’s wrong with you?’ You have no idea how much my mom loves her air conditioning. It might have been warmer in the Arctic!
I wrapped myself in my blanket and curled up on the couch. Dad and Mom came in just as the previews finished and the actual movie began. Although I grimaced at the stupidity of the actions of the characters, I enjoyed the movie. I especially grew attached to the character of the young girl. I definitely screeched and screamed a lot as the movie startled me several times!
When we finished the movie we all took a quick (or not so quick in my dad’s case) restroom break and started Lion King. He sat down on the couch beside me and I found myself cuddling up next to him. I honestly don’t remember ever doing that before. I guess I probably had when I was really little, but not in recent memory. Looking back on it the next day I would think about how warm and safe it had felt like that.
I must have fallen asleep sometime before the final battle, because the next thing I knew I was being carried by Dad into my bedroom. Mom pulled down the covers on my bed and he placed me on it. She pulled the covers up to my neck and both of them kissed me goodnight. I must have been tired because I only vaguely recollected it the next day. It was another item on this list of ‘first in a long time for.’ That night I slept feeling really secure and safe. I was afraid though that it couldn’t last forever.
Chapter 2
MOM WOKE ME up the next morning to get ready to go over to Amy’s. She pretty much had to prod me all the way through getting dressed and I lazily let her do my hair for me. Of course her payment for that was putting my hair in pigtails with some ribbon she had left over from the trip — she liked seeing me like that. I half-heartedly whined about looking like I was five, but I didn’t really mind.
By the time she had put some cereal in front of me to eat I was half-way conscious. I’m fairly certain all of the stress and exhaustion from the trip had just reared its ugly head that previous night and today. As soon as I realized that today was going to be a fun day with Amy though I snapped out of it.
Before long I was the one pulling Mom out of the house while holding a box containing the pictures from the trip.
As soon as Mom had parked the car at Amy’s house I bounced up the steps and rang the doorbell. “Tiffany!” Amy exclaimed as she flew open the door. “You have got to see these pictures!!!” She dragged me into the dining room where they had their pictures on the table.
“You have to see ours too!” I told her as we sat down. At that point we both had a free-for-all going with each others pictures. From pointing out each other doing stupid stuff, each other looking cute, making fun of various poses of other people, and just having fun. We killed the better part of an hour without even realizing it.
“Are you two done talking at a million-miles-an-hour?” Melanie (Amy’s mom) asked us.
“Umm… Maybe?” I answered sweetly.
“Possibly?” Amy added.
“Don’t count on it,” my mom said with a chuckle. “Can we see the photos now girls?” she then asked.
“Sure,” Amy said pushing hers over to Mom. I pushed ours over to Melanie, and Amy said, “Come on Tiff, let’s grab the scrapbook stuff — mom put it upstairs in the playroom.”
“Okay,” I replied as I tried following her as she ran up the stairs. The two of us grabbed our scrapbooks that we had started before we left, and each grabbed a container of scrapbooking supplies, and a box of pictures that we hadn’t managed to get into our scrapbooks yet.
We spread it all out on the parts of the table that our mom’s weren’t using while looking at the pictures. I opened up my scrapbook and looked through what I had already managed to get finished inside of it.
The pictures mostly started with the ski trip I had taken with her family earlier in the year. As I looked at those pictures I thought about how much fun I had on the slopes, and how neat it had been to have my first experience with having my hair put in pigtails. There were then pictures from band contest where I had to have my hair put up just like the girls in a ponytail with a piece of ribbon.
In both of these settings I looked like the girl I had become — though I definitely wouldn’t have believed that I would come this far so soon. There were also several pages devoted to our English project, which had been a short film made with Barbies. The project, with the help of Ashley’s dad (a local TV station manager) had become such a success that Mattel had bought the film from us.
I had a lot of fun memories of the weekend we had produced the project. It made me suddenly wonder if there might be some way I could do more with that kind of stuff in the future. Just as I was thinking about that though I flipped to the next page where I had begun a section on the sleepover we had to celebrate the beginning of summer.
Amy’s mom and my parents had suspected that Amy and I were dressing me up in her clothes. In trying to sort out what was going on with me they set up a situation where I could become one of the girls for the slumber party — I had to match everyone else right? Amy and I had fallen right into their trap, confirming our parents’ suspicions, and the last two weeks had seen a new course begin in my life. Really I couldn’t believe it had been just two weeks.
Suddenly I jumped as I felt a poke in my side, I screeched a bit, “Hey what was that for?” I asked, looking at Amy.
“I’ve been talking to you for like three minutes and you weren’t answering!” She said with a grin on her face. “Are you alright?” She asked — her face changed to show a bit of concern.
“Yeah, I was just thinking — it’s been kind of a crazy time recently.” I told her.
“You’ve certainly had an eventful few months.” She replied knowingly.
“Well anyway, shall we get started on this stuff?” I asked her.
“Sure. Are you going to finish up with the slumber party stuff first or are you going to skip to the trip?” She asked me.
“Let’s finish up with the party first?” I suggested.
“That’s probably a good idea.” She answered and we began working on finishing up three more pages each of the slumber party pictures. That ended up taking the better part of an hour. We were both so focused on what we were doing that when our moms handed us several pages that they had done of the pictures we were astonished.
“Wow! Mom you did a really nice job on this,” I exclaimed to her. “It’s so cute how you did this,” I said pointing to some stenciled lettering she had added to one part of it. She had gotten four pages made up from the first two days of the trip. I was really impressed!
“Thank you sweetie,” She told me. She was beaming a bit — I think she was pretty proud of herself too.
With that we kicked off a marathon session of scrapbooking! Mom had brought ticket stubs and postcards that I hadn’t even thought of putting into the books. Melanie had also bought a lot of stickers from various places to add onto pages too.
We stopped only briefly for a frozen pizza that was thrown in the oven at lunchtime, and went right back to the project. Throughout the time we worked together on the books all four of us laughed and giggled a lot. I thoroughly enjoyed spending the time with the three of them.
At about four o’clock we all finished up. By combining our efforts into mother/daughter teams (and we had switched moms a couple times actually), we had managed to complete the scrapbooks through the present time. The trip had surprisingly ended up being forty-three pages in each of our books. Mom said we’d have to get another book to do future stuff in — this one was already full!
After we cleaned up Amy and I traded scrapbooks to see what the other had done. Both of us had big things in the books talking about how the other was her best friend. Pretty standard really, but it really meant something to me to have this now. Our moms went into the living room to talk and left us alone in the dining room.
“Hey Tiff, do you want to go swimming for a bit?” Amy asked me.
“Sure, but I don’t know how much longer my mom is going to want to stay over here.”
“Let’s go ask her then.” She said while dragging me to where they were sitting.
“Tiffany and I were wondering if we could go swimming for a little while,” Amy said to them.
Mom looked at her watch and said, “We really need to get going here soon Tiffany, Dad is going to be home in about an hour…”
“Please?” I asked her. “We won’t swim long…” I added pleadingly.
She looked at her watch real quick and at Amy’s mom for a second. “You can swim for thirty minutes — that includes time to change into and out of your swimsuit.”
“Thanks Mom!” I exclaimed while hugging her. Amy grabbed my arm and we ran upstairs to her room. For the sleepover Amy’s mom had bought all of us matching pink swimsuits with Arielle on them. I had left mine at her house after the sleepover, and I quickly put it on in the guest bathroom down the hall. I ran into Amy (literally) as I headed back down the staircase to the pool.
I’m fairly certain I heard a chorus of ‘don’t run through the house,’ from both of our mothers — but we were already in the pool by the time it registered. The two of us splashed around and swam in the pool for what seemed like all of about five minutes when Mom came out to the pool.
“Tiffany, it’s time to go.”
“Do I have to?” I asked.
She gave me a stern look and didn’t even dignify my question with an answer. Knowing that look, I ran upstairs real quick and changed back into my clothes. I carried my swimsuit back down with me — I didn’t know if I could leave it for another time or not.
Amy’s mom was at the bottom of the stairs talking with my mom when I got there, “Tiffany why don’t you go ahead and hand that to me — I’ll wash it and just keep it here. You and Amy will probably swim here a lot more this summer.”
“Okay, thanks!” I said as I handed it to her. “Thanks so much for having us over this afternoon.” I added.
As we walked through the door she told me “You’re welcome Tiffany. We’ll see you later.”
I gave her a quick hug and got in the car with Mom to go home.
WE GOT HOME about 5:10 and mom started making some baked potatoes in the microwave.
“Mom why can’t we just do the potatoes in the oven?” I asked.
“They won’t cook in time sweetie.”
“I guess… They just don’t taste the same in the microwave though,” I pouted.
“Do you want to eat tonight young lady?” She asked.
“Umm… sorry… I do want to eat.”
“Then quit complaining! Here, cut up this zucchini like this,” she said showing me how she wanted it cut, “when you get done with that do the squash the same way.”
She continued to make me do all sorts of stuff around the kitchen to help her cook for the next twenty minutes until Dad got home. “Hi Daddy,” I said to him.
“Hi sweetie, did you have a good day?”
“I had a great day! Amy and I worked on our scrapbooks with Mom and her mom — and they really came out well.”
“I’ll have to look at it later. Honey what are we doing for dinner?” My dad asked my mom.
“Steaks? Go wash your hands then you can work on them outside on the grill.” She told him.
Mom was definitely the boss in her kitchen! By seven we had all of the food and dishes finished off. I showed Dad my scrapbook — he seemed to enjoy looking through it. He showed a fair amount of surprise at some of the earlier pictures of me with my hair tied up while skiing and on the band trip.
More than anything I watched his jaw drop on the pictures from the slumber party. At one point he commented, “Sweetie, don’t take this the wrong way, but I really didn’t expect for you to look as pretty, if not prettier than a lot of the girls… I mean you were my son… You do make a lovely daughter though.” He added at the end.
It was at this moment that I think I saw the first signs of some of the stress this was taking on him. He had been so good at being there for me, no matter what, the past couple weeks. But I could definitely see this was not easy for him to deal with.
I gave him a big hug, “Daddy I know this has been hard for you and Mom, thank you so much for doing all that you have. I know that maybe it seems like you’ve lost your son — but you still have her… I know that doesn’t make sense, but I love you so much for everything you’ve done for me,” I said with some tears in my eyes.
He embraced me and did something he hadn’t done in a very long time, sat me on his lap. “It has been a bit hard, but I don’t think I’ve lost anything. I love you so very much no matter who you are. I’ll always love you.” He said.
By this point both of us had tears in our eyes — but we recovered after another hug. I went to the bathroom to go rinse my eyes and then ended up in my room. I sat on my bed for a second looking around my room before fixating on the large dollhouse sitting in the corner.
It had been a gift from Mattel in relation to the Barbie film we had made. I had a number of Barbies with it — but hadn’t had much of an opportunity to play with them at home. I think I’d maybe had one real day to play with them? And that day was still covered in a fog with my memories; it was the day after my parents had found out about me. I had felt scared, angry, humiliated, and every other emotion you could imagine — so I didn’t have much in the way of memories of that day.
I got up off the bed and began playing with them at that point. After a while Mom came in and asked, “Can I play too?”
I gave her kind of a funny look and then said, “Alright,” with a big smile on my face.
I had to introduce her to all of my Barbies — she didn’t know all of the names. After that we changed some of the clothes and began to play together. I came up with some wacky situations, just like when Amy and I played, and she frequently chimed in with some wacky stuff of her own.
The next hour was probably one of the best I’d had with her since I don’t know when. I mean when had she ever asked to play with me as a boy? Maybe when I was a toddler? Maybe.
At eight she got up to go since she was sore from sitting, and I decided to occupy myself some other way for a bit. Mom had purchased the newest Seventeen Magazine for me yesterday at Wal-Mart. I got it off my dresser where it was sitting and began reading through it.
It was a neat magazine, but I have to admit some of the stuff on boys kind of made me squirm. What was I going to do about dating as I got older? I really hadn’t had feelings for either girls or guys at this point. I tried to think if there were any guys in our class that I’d consider going out with… I really couldn’t come up with any. I guess Kyle might be alright… but eew… that was still too weird.
I closed the magazine and decided to go ahead and get my pajamas on. Last night I’d worn a sleep shirt, it had been really nice… But I had several other pajama sets, and you just can’t wear the same thing every night, right?
I went back and forth in my choices before deciding a purple short/tank top set that was made out of a soft satin material. Once I was dressed I grabbed a stuffed teddy bear and went out to the living room where my parents were watching TV.
My parents were both in their recliners on either side of the couch — I just curled up on a side of the couch. I really wasn’t interested in the program they were watching, so I just kind of stared blankly at the screen.
During a commercial break my mom said, “So Tiffany, Amy’s mom was telling me about a camp that they’re sending Amy to next month for cheerleading.”
“Amy said something about it to me on the trip, it sounds like she’s going to have a lot of fun.” I replied. Amy was incredibly excited to be going to this camp; she’d mentioned it many times again today. She’d always been interested in cheerleading and dance stuff. Just this past May she had made the school’s cheerleading team for the next year as a seventh grader (upcoming).
Obviously they were going to be having a cheerleading camp for the team — but she was also going to this camp for individual girls before going to the team camp. She’d never been to the camp, but everything that she’d heard about it in magazines and such made it seem like it was really cool. Each girl was put together with fourteen other girls to make a squad for the week.
Together all of the girls would then work as a team to learn different stunts, cheers, individual technique, and leadership skills. The camp was set up to be a place for girls of all skill levels to get experience cheering, and in Amy’s case, get conditioned for the team camp they would have later.
The question I had though was why were they telling me about it? “Why do you mention it?”
“Amy told her mom that you seemed to be interested in the idea of going with her when she mentioned it on the trip.”
“Well yeah… Kind of… I just don’t know that I’m really someone that could do that kind of stuff… It might be kind of fun though.”
“Well Melanie called the camp today and found out they have one more spot open in the camp. Would you like to take that spot?” She asked.
My jaw dropped. “Seriously?” I asked.
“If you want it we’ll get it set up.” Mom replied.
“But what about… you know… How would I shower and stuff like that?” I asked.
“Well the camp is at a university that has a bathroom that’s shared between two girls. They said that we could still set it up to where you were Amy’s roommate.” She must have seen a small look of horror on my face, “And no, we didn’t tell them about you.”
Whew. “What do you think about it?” I asked my dad.
“Well I can’t say that it’s my idea of fun, but I think you would have a good time. Most of your friends are on the cheerleading squad this year. If you go to it this would probably make it easier for you to try out next year if you want to.” He said.
There was something in his voice that definitely betrayed his feelings at suggesting that I be going to a cheer camp. I was honestly proud of him, but you could tell it was straining him. Maybe me getting away for a week would help him? I didn’t honestly know that I wanted to be a cheerleader, but he was right; almost all of my friends were going to be on the squad next year.
Cheerleading was also probably the most girly thing you could ever do in school… But I’d never be let on the team — everyone on it was absolutely gorgeous. Even then, this camp could be a lot of fun even if I never did anything with it. I’d at least have fun with Amy.
“Then Yes!” I told them both. “Are you sure the spot will still be open by tomorrow?” I asked mom.
“Actually it’s not open anymore.”
I was about to cry. Why would she do that to me? I was also really getting angry. “Then why’d you tell me about it!?!”
“Relax. There’s a girl named Tiffany that took the spot.” She told me with a big smile.
I went over to her and hit her first before giving her a big hug. “Not nice!!” I told her.
“I know… but your dad has to take some of the blame, he was the one that came up with that joke.”
I proceeded to go over and lightly pound on him before hugging him as well. “Thank you Daddy,” I told him.
“You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it. But, make sure you thank Amy’s parents too — they’re paying for it.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes, they’ve insisted on paying for it — so make sure you say thank you next time you see them,” Dad told me. With that he got up and headed for bed.
“Mom may I call Amy?” I asked.
“As long as you don’t talk too long, ten minutes max, okay?”
“Thirty? It’s not like I have school tomorrow!”
“Twenty. Tiffany you do have an eye doctor appointment tomorrow morning that you have to wake up for.”
“I’m getting contacts tomorrow?” I asked — I was already smiling but it got bigger at the thought of not having to wear glasses anymore.
“Well we’ll get you fitted for them tomorrow. I doubt we’ll be able to get the actual contacts tomorrow though.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I said giving her another hug.
“Okay enough already, go call Amy, you need to go to bed soon.”
I skipped my way to the kitchen phone and dialed Amy’s number. Amy answered, “Hello?”
“Amy!!! Guess what?”
“You’re going to camp with me?” She asked.
“Not fair! You take all of the fun out of things.”
She laughed on the other side, “Mom told me about it a little bit ago. Blame her.”
“Nah… I can’t blame your mom — especially since my Dad told me she’s paying for it! So are you alright with me tagging along to this camp?” I asked.
“Alright with you tagging along?” She asked incredulously. “Let’s see you’re my best friend in the world, and I’ll be able to be with you instead of a bunch of strangers… Of course I’m okay with it.”
“Good, I just don’t want you to get sick of me I guess.” I told her.
“I won’t. So are you excited about going?” She asked me.
“I think so, I don’t honestly know what to expect.”
“It’ll be so much fun. We’ll be working really hard though — you should come over tomorrow and we’ll work on some basic tumbling and stuff with you.”
“Do you honestly think that I can do that stuff?” I asked.
“Of course! You won’t be perfect at it without a lot of practice, but we can probably make it possible for you to do some stuff before we go to camp.”
“I’ll ask my mom if I can come over after my eye doctor’s appointment tomorrow.”
“Ooh, are you finally getting contacts?”
“Yeah, I’m so excited. I’ve hated being without my glasses as Tiffany — but I definitely can’t wear my old glasses now.” My old glasses were the big metal framed glasses. Yeah all of you that had glasses in the early 80’s and 90’s know what I’m talking about. It was a large part of why I had picked up the ‘Ralphy’ nickname last year.
“They were pretty lame, even for a guy,” Amy joked.
I joined her laughing about them and we talked about other things for a little while longer before Mom said, “Tiffany you need to get off the phone now.”
“Mom, may I go to Amy’s house after we get done at the doctor tomorrow?” I asked.
“You were just there today.”
“Please? Amy wants to help me not look like an idiot at the camp!” I said. I heard a chuckle from her end of the phone.
“Has Amy asked her mom?”
I lifted the phone back to my ear, “Amy have you asked your mom?” I heard her yell and ask permission.
Amy said, “She says sure!”
I pulled the phone away from my ear, “Her mom’s okay with it. May I go?”
Mom looked thoughtful but said, “Okay I guess.”
I put the phone back to my ear and told Amy that I’d be there around one. She told me to come in some cotton shorts and a t-shirt. Before we hung up I asked to speak to her mom really quickly to say thank you and to tell her how awesome she was. Once I was finished I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and then forced myself to go to sleep.
Chapter 3
THE NEXT MORNING Mom got me up early to go to the eye doctor’s office. We were going to a different doctor than I had in the past since my old one had gone out of business for some reason. Because of that, we had all of those wonderful forms that we had to fill out. We sat down in the lobby chairs to fill all of them out. Mom hesitated as she filled out the paperwork — all of my insurance stuff was still set up for Brandon… There were also the gender boxes to fill in — what were we supposed to do?
Mom decided just to go ahead and fill it out as Tiffany, and spoke with the receptionist quietly. I watched the girls eyes grow and she did a double take at me. Mom said something else to her and I saw her begin to look a bit nervous, smile, nod, and then Mom came back over. I was dying to know what had been said up there — it made me really nervous and really curious at the same time — but I figured I’d have to wait until later. For now she just sat down quietly next to me.
I saw a magazine on the table that I thought looked interesting and started reading through it. Ten minutes later I saw a door open next to the front desk and heard, “Tiffany?”
I stood up and walked over to her followed by my mom. She led us down the hallway to a room where she put me through a barrage of tests. When I thought my eyes could take no more she left and the real doctor came in. More tests…
Finally after I was so sick of looking this way, that way, looking at lights and letters, he left to go calculate some stuff.
When he came back in he said. “Okay Tiffany, I think that we should be able to do contacts without a problem. I would like to go ahead and do…” he discussed the kind of contacts he wanted me to use. He seemed to think that it would keep my eyes from getting worse as I grew. My mom agreed with his plan and then he replied, “I’ll order them today and they should be in by Wednesday of next week.”
“That quick?” My mom asked.
“We have a place that makes them here in town, so as long as I get the order in today, they should be here by then. Why don’t you plan on coming in on Thursday and we’ll show you how to put them in and take care of them?”
“Okay.” I said. We finished up and went back out to the lobby. Mom stopped and talked to the receptionist for a moment as we went by. I couldn’t hear her, but the girl smiled and waved at me as Mom walked away.
When we were safely in the car, “Okay Mom, what was going on with that lady? Out with it.” I told her. I wasn’t really agitated, but I was far too curious.
“Why, are you really that curious?”
“Yes. What happened?”
“Well when I first went up there I told her that I needed her to process the insurance claim under the name of Brandon, but everything else was to be in Tiffany for the appointment. She looked at me really strange and asked why?”
“I told her that you used to be Brandon, but under the guidance of a medical professional you had become Tiffany.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
“Well she looked at you and couldn’t believe that you were a boy. She thought I was just trying to get her goat at first. I had to assure her that it was no joke, and that if she didn’t handle it discreetly, professionally, and confidentially the office could face problems. She kind of got nervous at that point, but she said ‘that’s fine, I’ll take care of it.’”
“Really?”
“Well she didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. I’ll be honest though — it did make me a little uncomfortable to deal with this visit. We’re going to have to see if we can get the insurance stuff and other legal stuff taken care of soon.”
“Not to mention school stuff.” I kind of shuddered.
I’d had it really easy so far with people accepting me. At the slumber party it was girls who had mostly known me and all liked me. On the trip, it had been a very closed-in environment, that the teachers had every right to send home a student if they became a problem: it was part of the agreement before we could go on the trip.
For whatever reason I had lucked out in that two of the cooler guys had gotten behind me with this when I came out with it. If Kyle and David stayed behind me I might have a chance this next year… but I knew there were going to be people that were going to have a fit about this. One of my mom’s closest friends had already voiced her opinion that I should be checked into a mental ward — not allowed on this path. Mom currently wasn’t really speaking to her.
I was raised as a Christian, I believed in Jesus and that He had given his life for mine — it did create a huge amount of turmoil for me… I had come to the conclusion that He had made me this way — with this issue — and that regardless of the right/wrong factors of this that I was forgiven. I knew though that the majority of people I had gone to church with as a kid would ostracize me at the least. To me though, it was like I had born with a birth defect, such as a facial disfiguration, that would hopefully be corrected by surgery sometime in the future.
But in my opinion that didn’t even seem to matter when I considered the school fun I was bound to have this year…
I felt a hand tickling me in my side “Tiffany,” Mom said.
“Huh?”
“Are you all right?” She asked me.
“Yeah, it’s just not going to be easy is it?” I asked.
“No sweetie. I don’t think you could have ended up with a harder way to grow up. Are you happier though?” She asked me.
I nodded, “Uh-huh.”
“Then I think we’ll eventually look back at this and see that though it was hard that it was worth it.”
“I hope so. What’s next?” I asked my mom.
“Well he gave me a prescription for glasses as well as your contact prescription. I want to go stop by a place and get you some glasses made that will work for you if you need to wear glasses instead of contacts sometime.”
“Umm… okay. But I’m not going to wear them often.”
“That’s fine, they’ll be there if you need them though.” She told me.
“Okay I guess.”
We drove over to a Lenscrafters location and we spent the better part of an hour deciding which frames to get. I finally asked a girl that was working there what she thought. She was just out of high school so she was able to better judge what was cute and what was scary!
When all was said and done I liked what we had picked out. It was about eleven-thirty when we finished up ordering the glasses. She said to be back in an hour to pick them up. So we ended up piddling around at McDonalds and a couple of stores for a bit before going back to get them. It was sure nice to be able to see again! Not that I think glasses ever look good on anyone — but these didn’t look too terrible on me (relatively speaking.)
I wondered what Amy would think when she saw them.
MOM DROPPED ME off at Amy’s house after giving me a chance to change into some shorts and a light t-shirt. “Hey!” Amy said to me with a smile as I came through the door.
“Tiffany I like your new glasses!” Amy paused for a second before continuing to ask, “Didn’t you say you were getting contacts though?”
“Yeah, they should be in next week. Mom wanted me to get a pair of glasses though so I could see if for whatever reason I had to take my contacts out sometime.”
“Well it definitely makes your face look a lot prettier than the old pair! I know you were just not wearing them most of the time — but you couldn’t have been able to see that well?”
“My eyes are strange — one can see close and one can see far away. Between the two I can get away without them.”
“You’re strange Tiff,” She joked.
“Just like you Amy, just like you.” There was our usual sticking our tongues out at each other session for a couple minutes. Eventually I asked, “So what did you want to do?”
“Here, let’s go outside to the back.” She replied as we walked to the grassy area of her backyard. “Okay, so they don’t expect you to know a lot when you go to this camp — but it’ll help you fit in better if you know at least a little bit of stuff.” She told me.
“Okay, I definitely don’t want to stand out anymore than I already will…” I told her.
“What do you mean by that Tiff?” She asked me as we started doing some stretches.
“Just that I’m not really pretty enough to be a cheerleader, am I?” I asked her.
“Tiffany, honestly, if I didn’t know you were a guy I would assume that you were a girl. I mean everyone has been for months since you started growing your hair out. Your face is easily as pretty as the average girl on the cheerleading squad at our school. You’re also as skinny as I am — if not skinnier. You’ll easily fit in look wise at this camp. In fact I’m sure there will be a lot of girls there that will not be nearly as pretty as you.” She told me.
“Really?”
“Yeah, this is an open camp, so that means there will be some girls that go to this that will never make a squad at their school.” She paused, “Look, let’s plan on you going and having a really great time. We’ll worry about figuring out some way to get you onto the squad at our school next year.”
I definitely didn’t know what to say or think at this point. “Amy thanks for being such a great friend.” I said and gave her a hug.
“You too Tiffany. And remember, even if only one of us is on the cheerleading squad I will always be your best friend!”
“I sure hope so,” I told her.
“Okay, now let’s make you suffer!” She said with a maniacal laugh… uh-oh.
For the next two hours that afternoon she taught me all sorts of stuff. She was really amazed when she found out I could do front-splits and side-splits already. “Tiffany, have you worked on those or something?”
I blushed, “I was always somewhat flexible when I was younger, but when I started thinking I should be a girl I decided to try and do some things like that.”
“You’re able to go down farther than some of the girls that are on the squad. Now let’s take it a couple steps further…” she began teaching me how to do them while jumping. Her mom came out several times and watched us — usually laughing at my expense.
She also began teaching me how to do some somersaults. I could already do some cartwheels, but I’d never tried to do a front-flip. At the end of our workout I still couldn’t do a front-flip: but I’d at least made a start at trying.
We went inside to take a break and get something to drink at about three-thirty. Her mom talked with us quite a bit — including giving us both some heckling about what she had watched.
Amy’s mom also took that time to comment on my new glasses, “Tiffany those glasses really frame your face well. They look really good on you,” she told me.
“Thanks!” I told her before Amy and I sat down on a couch in the living room for a bit.
After a while Amy decided we’d cooled off enough and dragged me back outside to teach me some other cheerleading basics. Needless to say, by four-thirty I was exhausted.
We went inside and just kind of vegged out in front of their TV. “So Amy what are you doing Saturday?”
“Nothing as far as I know, why?”
“You want to come stay the night?” I had asked my mom before she dropped me off if it was okay.
“Yeah! Do you have anything in particular you want to do?”
“Not really, I thought we could just hang out. Maybe we can go rent a movie or something and watch it?”
“Let me ask Mom real quick.” She said.
We both walked down the hallway to her mom’s office. “Mommy may I go to Tiffany’s on Saturday and stay the night?”
“I was wondering who was going to be staying over where… Yeah, that’s fine sweetie. What are you going to do?”
“Dunno. Maybe watch a movie or torture my parents somehow.” I replied to her with a grin on my face.
“Well don’t torture them too much — they might try and give you to us or something,” she joked.
“Oh alright… I can tell when I’m not wanted…” I heckled her right back and we left to go sit in the living room. We kept talking and watching TV until my mom rang the doorbell at five.
“You have to come to your ‘real home’ every now and then, Tiff.” My mom told me as we got into the car.
That night after dinner my body dealt me all of the soreness it felt I deserved after working out with Amy earlier. I ended up soaking in a bubble bath for a long time before bed that night.
Chapter 4
FRIDAY WAS AN early morning for me — mom made me wake up at 7:30 AM!! “Why do we have to go so early?” I griped to mom.
“Your grandparents are coming, and you know they’ll be here in like an hour at the most. Come on let’s get you ready so you can look your best.” She told me.
My grandparents had only seen me as Tiffany once so far… so I guess it made sense. “Alright, alright, I’ll get up.” I told her.
I looked in my closet and picked out a striped t-shirt and some shorts to wear for the day. After that I grabbed panties and a training bra before stepping into the bathroom to take a shower. I stood there for a long while letting the water roll off of me — I was really sore from yesterday. At some point I ran out of hot water and decided that meant it was time to get out of the shower.
I put on my clothes and worked on my hair for a while before deciding that I was presentable. When I was done I stared at myself to see what I thought others would think. As far as I could tell they shouldn’t be able to see that I was a boy underneath… Thankfully everything below my waist was small enough that you couldn’t see it when I tucked it into my panties. I was kind of worried about what was going to happen when things started growing — I was definitely going to have fun keeping that hidden as time went on.
The pounding on the door broke my reverie. I opened the door, “What?” I asked.
“Are you ever going to get out of there?” My mom asked.
“No. I’m your daughter now, I have to spend at least four times as much time in the bathroom now… It’s like some kind of rule.” I kind of grinned — I was still too asleep to smile — while saying that with the door open now.
She wanted to be annoyed and angry — she tried hard — but ended up smiling and giving me a hug. “You look nice today. I like that top on you.”
“Thanks.”
I went out to the kitchen and poured a bowl of Lucky Charms for breakfast. Dad was coming in from mowing the lawn outside when I sat down. He had taken another vacation day that day so he could spend some time with his parents. I was about midway through my cereal when I heard the doorbell ring and my grandfather’s booming voice. I jumped out of my seat and out to the living room to give him and my grandmother a hug. “Hi,” I said to them.
“Well don’t you look darling today,” my grandmother told me. Grandpa voiced his own agreement as well.
“Thanks,” I said as I blushed a bit. I brushed my hair back behind my ear to get it out of my mouth as I said that.
“Did you get your ears pierced sweetie?” My grandmother asked.
“Uh-huh, do you like them?”
“Absolutely. You look very lovely sweetie.” She told me. They followed my parents and I back into the kitchen where I worked on finishing up my breakfast.
I noticed then that it was nine am. I must have spent well over an hour in the bathroom… no wonder Mom was giving me a hard time about monopolizing it. Oh well, I looked pretty right?
When I finished breakfast Mom said, “Tiffany go get your scrapbook and show it to your grandparents.”
“Okay,” I said. I jumped up and ran down the hall to my room where it was sitting on top of my dresser. I skipped my way back to the kitchen and put it down in front of my grandparents. My grandmother grabbed her glasses from her purse and they began to look through it.
“This is cute. Where’d you take this?” My grandparents asked about a photo with the Hancocks that we’d taken on our ski trip.
“That was when Amy’s parents took me up to go skiing.” I told them. I remembered that day as being the first that I’d had my hair in a ponytail. You could actually kind of see it sticking up above my head.
They kept looking through it asking questions here and there about different pictures and places. The pictures from Florida were especially interesting to them. When we were done Grandpa said, “Well you’ve had quite a year Bran… Tiffany.”
“Yeah, it has been Grandpa,” I replied to him.
“Your mom was saying that you’re going to a cheerleading camp here in a few weeks?” Grandma asked. I think she was trying to keep me from dwelling on the fact that Grandpa almost called me Brandon.
“Yeah, I’m really excited about it! It should be a lot of fun. If nothing else I’ll get to hang out with Amy for all of that time,” I told her.
“That sounds good. What all are you going to do at this camp?” She asked me.
I proceeded to tell her all of the things that I had learned about the camp from Amy. “I think I’ll have a really good time actually. Amy was teaching me some stuff yesterday and it was a lot of fun.”
The conversation moved on to what we were doing that day. “Well why don’t we go to Price Club first? Then we can go eat somewhere.” My dad suggested.
“Okay,” my grandfather said.
With that the circus of leaving our house began. My mom tried to convince my grandparents to just go in our car, but Dad needed to have one of our cars there in case he got called out… Yeah, it was just a blast trying to get everyone organized in my family to do anything!
We then drove the twenty-five minutes into town, and another ten minutes across town to get to the store. When we finally got to Price Club we began walking up and down the aisles. My dad became occupied in the computer aisle while I walked around with my grandparents. I leaned over to pick up a giant thing of paper towels, when my necklace came out from underneath my shirt — hanging away from my neck.
When I had straightened up to put it on the cart Grandma said, “That looks pretty Tiffany,” she said coming over to me to get a closer look. “Where did you get that?” She asked me.
“Amy’s mom bought this necklace set for Amy and I on the ski trip.”
“I really like it. It looks good on you,” she added.
“Thanks.” I said as we walked down more of the aisles. Eventually we finished up with their shopping — at least I hoped so with as full as the cart was. We were in line when I saw Dad come up pushing a cart of his own…
“You’re going to buy a new computer?” I asked with no small amount of glee in my inquiry.
“Yes, I think it’s time, don’t you?”
“Uh-huh!!” I started looking at the specs on the box. Girl or not, I was still a computer nerd at heart!
“This looks great Daddy,” I told him.
“I’m glad you think so.” He told me as we all checked out at the cashier. In no time we were eating lunch at Olive Garden and everyone was talking about various things. My grandmother told us the latest gossip around the small town that was nearest their place.
There was also plenty of news shared about my dad’s brother and two sisters. My next to oldest cousin in particular kept getting into a fair amount of trouble in Arizona where they lived. My parents both commented about how poor the discipline was from his mother (his sister) and his dad.
Of course by now my dad’s siblings had learned about me as well. My uncle in particular couldn’t believe my parents were letting me do this. After the last conversation my dad had with him he had sworn off speaking to him for a long time. If we had any family gatherings this summer I had a feeling the two of them would probably get into it over me.
Thankfully my aunts both seemed to be cool with the idea — or at the very least not hostile. One aunt in particular, Aunt Linda, was a ‘free thinker’ and so she was definitely more predisposed to being supportive of my change.
Our conversations at the restaurant never really strayed onto my transition. As far as I knew it was just a silent agreement to not talk about it in public. Following lunch Mom, Grandma, and I all went to the ladies room together. I finished first and put on some lip gloss that I had in my purse after I washed my hands. I waited till Grandma and Mom were done before we all walked out to the cars.
“Where to next?” my grandfather asked as my dad’s pager began to go off. He looked at it for a second before pulling his cell phone off of his belt and called someone. Of course he would get a phone call on a day off! It really made me so mad.
When he finished up with the call he said, “Mom, Dad, I’m really sorry but I need to get back home so I can get my work vehicle and go to work. Mandy, what do you and Tiffany want to do?” He asked.
“Why don’t you guys finish shopping with us and then we’ll drop you off at home later?” My grandmother suggested.
My mom didn’t look really thrilled with the idea of shopping with my grandmother all afternoon, but I asked, “can we do that Mom?”
She looked pained at the idea of having to deal with my grandmothers’ style of shopping (look at every thing in the store)… but said, “I suppose. I do need to get home by four; can you guys get us back by then?”
“Sure hon, that shouldn’t be a problem.” My grandmother said.
With that my dad gave my grandparents a hug goodbye and took off with our car to go back home. My grandmother dragged us through the mall at one of the slowest paces I’ve ever seen. We must have spent an hour in Penney’s alone!
Before all of this happened I would have been overwrought with despair and boredom, but I actually managed to occupy myself in the girls section for forty-five minutes of that. I also spent some time in the juniors section — but Mom seemed to think that, since I didn’t have breasts or hips yet, I didn’t need to shop there. I decided I’d have to bring Amy back to help me out with that. Maybe we could go shopping tomorrow — then Mom could really be shopped out…
After two more chain stores we were basically out of time. Just before we left though we made a quick stop inside Claire’s because I wanted to look around. Grandma saw me staring at a pair of earrings for an extended time — and ended up purchasing them for me! I said thank you and gave her a hug for it before they took us back to our house to drop us off.
“Tiffany, thanks for going shopping with us. I had a really good time being with you today.” My grandmother told me.
“I had a good time too,” I told her. “And thanks for the earrings!”
Hugs were exchanged all around and they drove off. We went inside our house and I was annoyed that Dad had left a note to wait for him to assemble the computer — not fair! Eventually he came home, and that evening I spent a lot of time fighting over the computer with him — it was entertaining to me at least.
THE REST OF that weekend was a lot of fun for Amy and I. She came over like we had planned, and ended up going shopping at the mall with Mom for a while. Amy of course had helped me pick out a couple more outfits that were trendy and made me look cute. Most of them were still from the girls section though because the more I looked in the juniors, the more I realized I was still really tiny for a lot of it. On our way back from the mall we stopped to rent movies at our nearest Hollywood Video store.
I had a bit of a heart-attack while we were picking out movies. Three kids from our school, also looking for videos, saw Amy and came over to say hi. Amazingly they didn’t recognize me — so Amy introduced me as Tiffany, a girl who would be starting school this year at our school. Thankfully we didn’t talk long before we managed to move away from them.
I had told Amy and my mom of my disbelief that they hadn’t recognized me. They had just replied that I really didn’t look like the Brandon they would have seen the last day of school, especially with the new haircut and glasses. The rest of the night I kind of felt a buzz of adrenaline from that incident as it gave me some more confidence. Of course my confidence shattered when I realized that it was honestly only a matter of time before everyone found out about me.
It was with this thought and so many others that I went to see my psychiatrist for the second time on Monday. I wanted to make sure that she knew that I was a girl as much as possible — so I dressed up for the occasion. I put on a sundress that Amy’s mom had bought for some pictures a few weeks back, did my hair really pretty (adding some ringlets to it), and finished everything up with some lip gloss I had.
I wanted to use some of the makeup that Amy’s mom had purchased for me, but Mom put her foot down. She said I could use it for some special occasions, but I was not to wear it on a normal basis. I tried to convince her today was a special occasion but she wouldn’t bite. I played nervously with the bottom edge of my dress all the way to the hospital where Dr. Reynolds’ office was located.
Dr. Reynolds spoke to my mom first while I waited in the waiting area. They probably spoke for a good thirty minutes before she came back for me while my mom waited this time.
“How are you doing Tiffany?” Dr. Reynolds asked as she led me into her office.
“I’m doing really well today. How are you?”
“I’m doing well, thanks for asking. So what’s happened since I saw you last?” She asked.
Boy I’m sure she knew that was a loaded question… but if she didn’t she sure learned quick. I started off by telling her how Amy’s mom had treated us by taking us to her salon and getting our pictures taken in a bunch of outfits. I then told her about how I had done the best I could to last as Brandon on the trip, but finally we gave up the act for safety reasons.
I had been getting too many strange looks of ‘why is that girl in the boy’s bathroom?’ She seemed concerned that we had gone ahead and introduced me as Tiffany to the rest of the kids. “How did they react?” She asked with a level tone.
“Well, by that point all of the girls knew. One of them had figured out that I was wearing a girls top the first day. The couple others that didn’t know about me just kind of figured it out eventually on their own without me doing anything before the meeting. Even one of the guys, Kyle, figured it out the night before I told everyone.”
“How did he react when you told him?”
“Well… I was honestly shocked. It’s not like he’s ever picked on me — but he’s never been a friend either. He seemed to think it was kind of weird… but was okay with it. When we talked more the next day he seemed intrigued by the ability to completely blow everyone’s minds when I come to school in the fall.”
“He also led up an effort with another boy to make all of the kids promise not to spill the beans until the year begins. I don’t have a lot of faith in that happening, but I appreciate his trying.” I told her a bit more about that particular event as well while she seemed to write down notes every now and then.
“So what do you think of Kyle?” She asked me.
“Umm… what do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?”
“Do you mean do I like him — like him?”
“Well do you?”
“Umm… I’m really not interested in dating anyone — boy or girl — at this point…”
“But?”
How did she know there was a ‘but’ there? “Well… I guess he’s cool, kind of cute… I just don’t know — I really don’t want to start dating for a long time anyway. Plus all of this…”
“It’s okay Tiffany, you have plenty of time to sort out your feelings with this. You don’t have to feel pressured to like one or the other anytime soon.” She reassured me.
We went through the session talking about so many other things before she began giving me some role-playing situations. She asked me what I would do if such and such happened for the better part of a half-hour. Mom was sent for after a bit and she began to address both of us together.
“Okay, I think we got a lot of good information out today. I’d like to share some of my thoughts at this point Tiffany, okay?”
“Okay,” I said nodding. I was suddenly feeling very tense. Would she now tell me that I had to go back to being Brandon — that I couldn’t ever be Tiffany. I think she could read the sudden stress build up in my face.
“First of all relax Tiffany, I’m not going to tell you to stop being yourself.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Look, I really hate to diagnose you with this at this young of an age. You haven’t entered puberty yet — so you really don’t know what it fully feels like to be a man — but at the same time if we deal with this now you would have an easier time transitioning. As it stands right now I really can’t tell from outside appearances that you weren’t born as Tiffany. But, as time goes on and you start advancing through puberty that would change really quick.”
“I know, I really don’t want to have any of those things like having a beard or my voice lowering…”
“I don’t think you necessarily should have to go through that. To be honest, the amount of research in treating children of your age with this is almost non-existent. Many doctors in my field believe we should wait longer before doing anything, but to prevent puberty from happening for the time being. I’ve personally been back and forth on deciding what to do with you many times since our last session.”
“What I have come up with is that I would like to see you go to this camp in a couple weeks and then have an appointment with me again at that point. Through that point I want you to continue to be Tiffany in every way.”
“Mandy, you and your husband should probably go ahead and start working on getting Tiffany’s paperwork to match her new gender. Have Mr. Hancock help you out with the school district. I’ve got a note prepared here that you can have him use as the basis of those attempts to get things switched over. It also should be enough to get her excused from PE for the year.” She said handing the note to Mom.
“So what’s next for me?” I asked. “You seemed to be thinking about doing something more than waiting for me to start puberty as a guy?”
“I really want to wait until one more session before deciding anything and getting your hopes up… but I am leaning toward starting a therapy after the next session that will keep you from starting into puberty for a while. It will have the side effect of keeping you smaller for longer, but it’ll buy us a bit more time to decide if this is actually the best thing for you. Realistically we can easily wait until then before having to decide anything.”
“Then what?” Mom asked.
“Well after school starts up if things seem to be still moving in this direction, I think in the late fall we’ll begin looking at a hormone therapy. That’s as far as I’m willing to discuss at this point.”
“Okay.” I said with a smile on my face — but definitely some heavy thoughts in my mind. Was this going to be worth it? I sure hoped so… but I knew I was getting myself into something that was going to be really hard to deal with. Just the idea of having my own real breasts in a couple years sent tingles up and down my body!
Dr. Reynolds spoke more to my mom about things that she had learned over the session. There really wasn’t anything shared with her at that point that I hadn’t already told Mom. She did mention to Mom that I had expressed some mixed emotions about having feelings about liking boys or not. Mom’s eyebrow raised a bit at that and I knew I was going to be interrogated hard about that later.
As we left Dr. Reynolds held onto my shoulder with a soft hand, “Tiffany, this is not going to be an easy road — but I think it’s going to be very worth it for you.”
I gave her a hug and said, “Thanks Dr. Reynolds.”
“No problem. Remember Tiffany, if you ever feel like you need to talk to someone in a hurry here’s my card. If it’s an emergency just tell my secretary or the answering service that comes on the line and they’ll get me on the line as quickly as they can.”
When we got to the car mom gave me a quick hug before we got in — it was just what I needed at that moment.
Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 Part 2 of 8 by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
Available for Purchase as
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Please visit Tiffany Shar's Bookstore Page |
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
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!
Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them 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! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!
-Tiffany Shar
Chapter 5
THE WEEKS BETWEEN my second appointment and the cheer camp flew by faster than I could have ever imagined. It seemed like every night I was either staying the night at Amy’s house, or she was staying the night at my house. Amazingly the two of us weren’t sick of each other yet. Our parents had gone with us to go see Apollo 13 when it came out in the theater on June 30th. Both Amy and I had cried at the movie because it had moved us so much. All-in-all, it had been a nice outing with our families as they became closer and closer friends.
Beyond that Amy and I had been working out almost every day on my skills to try and make it possible for me to fit in better at the camp. Thankfully between what I had already worked on as far as splits before, and my being a fairly quick study, she thought I honestly could have beaten a couple of the girls on our junior high squad out that past spring.
I didn’t know if she was just saying that or if it was actually true though. Either way she really was a better friend than anyone could ever have hoped for.
As we approached the week we were leaving we both received letters in the mail from the camp with what we should bring. There was standard stuff like wash cloths, towels, bedding, clothes, toiletries, etc. As Mom and I scanned through the list it said to have a ‘nice dress’ for the final night banquet.
We looked through my closet, and other than a dress that was really pretty -- but too juvenile (it was from the photo shoot Amy’s mom had set up), I really didn’t have anything that would fit in. Mom immediately went into mom shopping mode though and invited Amy and her mom along that evening to shop for dresses. Both of us ended up with a new dress and shoes to match that evening.
It seemed like just the next day we were in a car with Amy’s mom driving us out to California where the camp was held at one of their state universities. For whatever insane reason, we left at Two AM in the morning. Amy and I had been talking excitedly most of the way there. We had both taken a couple naps on the twelve hour trip, but overall we stayed up for most of it.
Once we got to the university we followed signs on the campus that led us to a registration table in the lobby of a building.
"Hi, I’m Becky. Are you both coming to the camp?" We both nodded. "Okay then can I get your names?"
We told her and she looked up our information.
"Okay, we have you both sharing a room with its’ own bathroom -- you’re really lucky for that -- you’ll be in the Smith Building on the fourth floor. You can drive up that way to drop them off," she added to Amy’s mom.
"You’ll need to be at the Harbrough Dining Hall at five for dinner and to be introduced to your squad for the week. At that point we’ll also go over rules and stuff too. Until then you just need to get settled in. There’s some camp clothing that you need to pick up over there," she said pointing at another table, "before you go though, they’ll tell you what to wear for tonight. Any questions?" We shook our heads. "Well welcome to cheer camp girls!"
"Thank you," Amy and I echoed as we walked away with a packet of stuff over to the other table she’d pointed out.
"What are your names?" The girls asked us.
We told them and they handed us each a box that was already filled for us. They had some other t-shirts that weren’t in there though. "What size are you Tiffany?"
I told her my size and one of them said, "You’re so lucky to be that skinny!"
I blushed and said, "Thanks."
"Now both of you need to go ahead and wear the blue shorts and the ringer tee that’s in there to dinner/tonight’s activities."
"Okay, thanks!" I said with a smile. She smiled right back at me. The girls looked like they were college age and had on ‘counselor’ badges.
Mrs. Hancock drove us over to where they said we could park to move in and helped us carry our suitcases upstairs. We took an elevator up to the fourth floor and found our room down a hallway and to the right. Amy opened it up with one of our keys and we stepped inside.
Well, it wasn’t the Hilton, but it could have been worse. There were two beds inside the room that were lofted up above a desk. Next to the desk was a dresser on each side. We also each had a small closet to ourselves, and after inspecting the bathroom decided we should be able to survive the five days just fine. We made another couple trips for things like our dresses, which we had put in garment bags to keep from getting wrinkled, and for the boxes we’d been given of clothing for the week.
Looking at our watches we saw that we had just over three hours to kill before dinner. Amy’s mom helped us make the beds and sort through the rest of our stuff. After all of that was done we began looking through our boxes of stuff and more than once the comment was made, ‘Why’d we bring our own clothes?’
"Hey, the mascot for our squad here is the same as our school!" Amy exclaimed. Our school mascot was the Coyote. She held up a shirt that was for our squad -- along with a pair of shorts that matched. All-in-all it looked like we would be wearing our own clothes maybe two days?
The bottom of the box was what surprised me the most. "Amy we get a real cheerleading uniform for this week?" I was shocked.
"Apparently." She said, also surprised.
"Well the camp costs enough they should put in two!" her mom said.
We took them out of the box and found that not only had the mascot for our school matched up -- the colors did too (Dark Blue, Gold, and Black). "Did they do that intentionally?" I asked, continuing to look at it.
"Well it’s a common enough mascot, and the colors are common too. We’ll have to ask though." Amy said
By the time we had gotten settled into our room, and changed into the clothes we were supposed to wear, we only had a little over an hour till dinner. Amy’s mom took several photos of us like that before we walked her out to her car. She was going to be spending the week with some family that lived in the area. Amy and I watched her drive off before starting to explore the campus.
It was such a unique concept of us being on our own that we both became hyper and were running around when we heard, "Hey, Ladies, where are you going?"
We both stopped and turned around. One of the girls that had checked us in earlier was standing there -- she now had on a shirt that said counselor and had ‘coyotes’ across the front of it. "We’re just exploring," Amy responded.
"Well you need to be going to dinner to find your tables... Hey, you’re in my group this week," she said as we got closer and she saw the mascot name on our shirts. "I’m Emily, I’ll be your counselor."
"I’m Tiffany." I said holding my hand out for a soft handshake. She shook my hand and Amy introduced herself too. She led us to where we were eating dinner and told us a little bit about herself. Emily was in her third year of college and had been a cheerleader since she was in grade school. Currently she was working on degrees in physics and psychology at the university we were at.
Amy and I both said wow about the physics part. ‘She must be really smart. How many girls do you know that would want to go into physics?’ we both thought. The three of us sat down at a table that had our mascot listed on it. Two other girls were already sitting down there. Their names were Rachel and Monica.
We all started talking about ourselves and different things. Monica was hoping to make her squad next year -- she was moving to a new school this year and had missed the tryouts. Rachel was going to be an eighth grader and seemed to be really cool.
About ten minutes before they were supposed to start everything off with a speech eleven other girls came and sit down with us; Christina, Katrina, Jennifer, Amanda, Stephanie, Camelia, Paula, Sarah, Erin, Melissa, and Katie. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk amongst ourselves before a really pretty lady stood up in front of a lectern and began speaking.
"Good evening Ladies, and welcome to the 1995 Southern California Cheer Camp!" She said with exclamation. We all cheered loudly.
"My name is Elizabeth Harding, and I’m the Director of the camp. This is our tenth year hosting this camp for individual girls to come learn and compete in squads of fifteen that we put you in. This year more than three-hundred of you girls have come to attend from all fifty states!"
She proceeded to make some other statements to get everyone pumped up. "Okay, while we have dinner tonight your goal is to find out as much about the other girls at your table as you can. Everyone understand?"
"Okay then," she started dismissing certain tables to go to the buffet line. Our table was in the second set of tables she dismissed.
Part of me wanted to just follow the other girls’ lead and just get salad... but I’m not that kind of girl. I ended up getting a couple slices of pizza and some pasta on my plate. I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of girls had way more food on their plates than I did.
When we sat back down at the table Emily began leading us in getting to know each other. Most of the things she started off with were really basic like; where are you from, are you on a cheer squad now, what grade, what’s your favorite color, etc. The questions got a little deeper than that after a while -- but not too much so. In the end we were all just really enjoying ourselves and I felt like I was getting to know the other girls in our group a little bit.
Amy and I both really liked Emily as a counselor -- she was so cool. We also really hit it off with Rachel, Monica, Stephanie and Katie. By the time we had finished dinner the six of us were already becoming closer to each other.
Mrs. Harding got back up on the lectern a little after we had all finished eating. "Well Ladies, I hope you’ve started getting to know your squad mates. You’re going to have to spend most of your time over the next week with these girls. At the end of this camp we have a traditional competition between squads to determine which squad is the best. We’ll award medals and trophies to the teams that place Fifth through First."
"We’ll also be keeping an eye out for the most outstanding cheerleader, most spirited cheerleader, and most improved cheerleader for the camp. Ladies the competition starts right now!"
There was a lot of loud screaming from all of us at this point.
"Now for tonight. It’s 6:30 right now. You’re going to be working with your squad on some teamwork building activities until 8:30 then you’ll all report to the stadium. Good luck, and have a great time! You’re all dismissed."
"Okay ladies, let’s get going." Emily said loudly, with excitement. She led us out of the room and immediately took off at a jogging pace. None of us had expected her to do that already, but we all took off after her and kept pace until we arrived in a grassy courtyard in between some of the buildings.
"OKAY, THIS IS going to be our main meeting place for squad practices. If your schedule says ‘team or squad meeting,’ you need to come here. We’ll be spending some time at the football stadium tonight, each night, and during some team sessions in a few days. Anyway, first I want everyone to get in a circle holding hands."
The fifteen of us did as we were asked. "Okay, now I want you all to reach across with your left hand and grab someone else’s hand..." she led us in a couple rotations of grabbing peoples hands until we were all locked together in one blob. "Okay, now you have to get everyone out of here without anyone letting go of each others hands..."
I wish I could have been the one watching this spectacle -- it was pretty funny. Pretty quickly we began working as a group telling one girl to slip under some others, or contort themselves in some strange way, until we were all back in a circle holding hands.
"Let’s see if you can do it again, but faster this time!" Emily said.
So we repeated the task. It was amazing how much faster we completed it that time. When we were all back in the circle she told us to sit down. She walked over to a bag that she had brought with her and got out a ball. She came over and sat down on the outside of the circle.
"Okay, the next thing we’re going to do is play a game so we learn each others names. As the ball goes around the circle the person holding it has to say their name and their favorite ice cream. They then pass it to the next person and they have to say the names and everyone’s favorites before them. Does everyone understand?"
We all nodded. I looked at where I was in the circle and immediately realized I was going to have to work really hard to remember it all. Amy was the only one that was going to be behind me... Better her than me!
She began, "My name is Emily and my favorite ice cream is rocky road."
The next girl said, "My name is Rachel, my favorite ice cream is cookie dough. This is Emily, her favorite ice cream is rocky road."
This continued around the circle until it got to me, "My name is Tiffany, I like strawberry. This is Monica, she likes chocolate, she’s..." all the way until, "And this is Emily, she likes rocky road." I was amazed I actually managed to get through it!
Amy, the showoff, did the whole thing twice as fast as I did! I’m not really that good with names though so maybe that was part of it. I was kind of surprised that Emily then did the whole thing herself -- and as fast if not faster than Amy. It amazed me how cheery she was... I didn’t think she was faking it either.
Emily looked at her watch before starting another activity. This one was an interesting challenge. She divided us up into six pairs and one trio to start off with -- I ended up with Rachel -- and gave us a challenge of only letting so many hands, elbows, etc. touch the ground. When we had done a couple as pairs she combined us into three groups of five. She used the same number of body parts still though!
From there we were grouped into the full squad to do the same set of tasks. Being up close and personal with all of the girls well within each others space broke the ice really quickly. By the end of the activity we were all giggling and joking together.
There were still a few girls that weren’t opening up a lot though; Christina, Jennifer and Amanda were either really shy -- or stuck up -- I wasn’t sure which. They weren’t being rude or anything, they just didn’t seem to be having as good of a time as the rest of us.
Since we had finished the last activity she had planned we headed over to the stadium. Amy and I linked arms with Rachel, Monica, and Stephanie and began skipping on our way over there. Emily turned around at that point and joined up with us followed by a few other girls. When we got to the stadium they assigned each squad a part of the field to stand on.
The lady that had been speaking earlier began talking through a wireless megaphone from the stands. "Okay ladies, I hope you all have gotten to know each other better over the past few hours. I would now like to introduce you to your coaches for this week. In addition to your counselor every squad will share a coach with one other squad..."
"The Coyotes will be sharing Coach Evans with the Eagles..."
"Before we call it a night we’re going to work on learning a few cheers all together. Be sure you learn them well as a squad, because beginning tomorrow, there will be a competition with these group cheers to determine who goes first for lunch and dinner. So Ladies are you ready?"
‘Yeah’ everyone screamed back at her. "Alright, let’s begin."
She taught us the first one -- running through it as a large group several times before telling us to work in our squads on it. Let me tell you, the noise from that many cheerleaders in one spot is absolutely incredible! I sure hoped no one was trying to sleep anywhere within a mile of the stadium.
We practiced with our group and Coach Evans came over to come help us. When she got over there I became a target really quickly. "What’s your name?"
"Tiffany," I replied.
"Okay Tiffany I need you to try this a little bit differently..." She showed me how she wanted to change the way I was putting out my arms. I felt so incredibly stupid -- some of the other girls weren’t having any problems. Honestly I didn’t think I had that many until she started working with me.
Once I had fixed the things that I was doing wrong she had us move on to the next part of the cheer. It seemed like only a few minutes later though she began getting on my case about other things in this part. This trend continued throughout the time that she came over to work with us. I was feeling really embarrassed.
When we had finished our time to practice as squads, Mrs. Harding had us do it as a group a couple times. After teaching us two more cheers she said, "Okay ladies you need to head back to your dorms. Your counselors will have a couple more things to talk about with you tonight, and then it’s lights out at 10. Goodnight!"
I began to walk away with Amy and the girls towards our dorm but was stopped by Coach Evans. "Tiffany, I know I was nagging at you a lot today -- but you really showed improvement in just that little bit of time. Are you on your squad at home?"
Was it that obvious? "No, I’m new to the school this year," I replied. Well that was honest wasn’t it?
"I wondered. Anyway, keep trying as hard as you were doing today -- it’ll come eventually." She said and walked away.
That sure left me feeling good about myself. ‘It’ll come eventually?’ I told myself to ignore the ‘I wondered’ comment, it could only make me mad.
Amy interrupted my chance to dwell on that by saying, "Come on Tiff. Don’t let it get to you, you’re doing great! Mom sent some popcorn bags with me -- I want to go pop some in the microwave in the dorm."
"You brought popcorn?" Rachel asked.
"Yeah, do you want to join us?" Amy asked.
"Sure!" Rachel smiled and walked back to the dorm talking to us.
While we walked back we learned that she was going to be the Captain of her squad next year. She was an eighth grader from a suburb in Phoenix and was really cool. The three of us were quickly becoming a close trio. Once we got back to the dorm we met Emily and the rest of the girls in the lounge that was closest to our rooms. All of our squad was staying on the same floor, in a single row of rooms.
"Okay ladies, I need to go over some rules that you need to follow this week..." she went over things like the curfew time, being on time, what to wear tomorrow, "and if you need anything, or have any special needs at all find me, one of the other counselors, or the residence director -- downstairs."
"If it’s a medical or life-or-death emergency call ext. 7777 -- don’t call 9-1-1 because they don’t know as much about the campus. Security will take care of getting people where they’re supposed to be. Understand?"
We all nodded.
"Okay then ladies, you have forty-five minutes until you need to be in your rooms with lights out. I will come by and knock on your doors at 6:30 to make sure you all are awake for getting ready for breakfast at 7:30. You’re free to go."
Amy and I hurried back to our room and changed into our pajamas before we went back to the lounge to use the microwave in the adjoining kitchen. Rachel met up with us and had Monica and Stephanie with her. Stephanie had two other bags of popcorn and a thing of Oreos with her.
"Can we join in too?" Stephanie asked.
"Absolutely," Amy started.
"Especially for an Oreo," we both said at the same time.
We looked at each other and giggled a bit. The other girls were also amused. "So you two already knew each other?" Monica asked as we sat down.
"Yeah, we go to the same school together." I started.
"I’ve known Tiffany since Kindergarten, but really it’s been this past year that we’ve become inseparable. My parents keep saying maybe they should make the spare bedroom Tiffany’s with as much as she stays over."
"That’s neat that you guys were able to come and do this together," Rachel said.
"Did you guys know any of the others before coming?" I asked.
"I met Stephanie here last year," Rachel said. "We’ve written back and forth quite a bit over the last year."
"This is my first year so I don’t know anyone from before," Monica said.
We all talked about different stuff for about twenty minutes when Emily came by. She stole a cookie and some popcorn while talking to us for a little bit. She eventually sent us back to our rooms to get some sleep.
It certainly didn’t take long to get there that night.
Chapter 6
THE NEXT MORNING Amy woke up before me at 6 AM to get into the shower. As soon as she was done she let me in to take a shower. Once I was dressed I opened the door to the bathroom and we worked in front of the sink together until 7 AM. There was a brief interruption at 6:30 when Emily came. She knocked to check and that we were awake, but otherwise we both worked non-stop in the bathroom to get ready.
At 7:20 the two of us wandered down to the cafeteria where we were supposed to be eating breakfast. We were both in a set of cotton shorts that we had brought along with us. For our tops we had a camp t-shirt that had a really cute cheer slogan on it. Both of us were pretty drowsy as we showed a door person the ID tags that had been given to us.
Amy and I filled our trays and then went to find a seat. Rachel, Stephanie, Monica and Emily were already sitting at a table marked as reserved for our squad. We both sat down and began munching on our food. As we all started waking up everyone began looking at the schedules that were in the binders they had given us.
"So the next thing for us is stunts? What all are we going to be doing Emily?" I asked.
"Well we’ll be working basic lifts with two girls holding up one girl, and some basic tosses today." She replied.
"So are you ready to be tossed today?" Monica asked with a semi-evil smile.
"...Me?" I asked.
"Well you and Amy are definitely the smallest girls on our squad." Rachel replied.
"I take it you haven’t been tossed before?" Monica asked.
"No, I can’t say that I have."
"It’s a lot of fun Tiff," Amy said reassuringly.
"I’m sure it will be," I said forcing a smile. My body was going to be getting tossed in the air like rag doll... what had Amy gotten me into?!
Of course they were right. I had hardly grown this past year. I was now 4’3" and had actually lost some weight down to sixty-seven pounds. That had mainly happened because I stopped drinking Cokes when I began thinking I wanted to be a girl... (yeah apparently it is that bad for you...) I was still healthy though and I wasn’t in any danger of starvation.
The conversation continued until Emily announced it was time to leave to go meet Coach Evans and the Eagles in one of the gyms. I was deep in thought when we arrived. Coach Evans had us all sit down in a small row of bleachers on the outside part of the gym floor. Out on the gym floor they had tons of mats down to cushion falls... great! I could be dropped and it would only hurt a little -- instead of a lot!
Coach Evans had the two counselors come out and join several other cheerleaders -- including some guys -- out on the floor. The group demonstrated how to do lifts with two girls on the bottom and one on top, they showed how to get that girl back down safely and catch her, they showed some basic tosses, and all the while I’m thinking ‘how many times am I going to fall/drop before we get this right...?’
When they finished the demonstration she took our squad first and divided us up into five trios. I ended up with Stephanie and Rachel as my two partners. At least I felt like I could trust them. After a lot of stretching, Emily and the other demonstrators began coming around while we practiced. They first worked on making sure that everyone on the bottom was using the proper technique. After that they focused on helping me stand the right way so as not to cause my own problems.
That of course is way harder than it sounds. They dropped me a couple times because they weren’t quite doing the right things. Then they dropped me several times because I lost my balance... yeah... Eventually though after about a half hour of non-stop work we were able to get me up in the air without the ground collisions.
After that they began working on dismounting and the girls catching me. I was fortunate on that one as Stephanie and Rachel had both been doing this a long time. The only reason they had struggled in the beginning was a difference in the way they had been taught. As long as I kept my body the way it was supposed to be they were able to get me down just fine.
Of course about the time I thought we were finally getting it Coach Evans made her way over. "Tiffany come on, you’ve got to keep your body straighter..." Ten minutes later I felt thoroughly stupid again.
I think Rachel and Stephanie realized that she was taking a toll on me. When Coach Evans (I really was beginning to think Coach Eeeevvil) left, they both began reassuring me that I was really doing fine. She was just picking on me for no real good reason. That brought a smile back to my face and we began working again.
After about two hours of this my ankles, butt, and everything else were sorer than I had ever imagined. It looked like Rachel and Stephanie were just as tired. Of course they were the ones doing all of the work -- I was just the one getting dropped.
As we walked to the next thing Rachel and Stephanie were talking with Monica and Katie. They all mentioned how sore they were, but Monica and Katie responded quietly, "Hey at least you have Tiffany -- she doesn’t weigh much at all -- we ended up having to toss Amanda. Not that she’s fat, but she probably outweighs Tiffany by a good thirty pounds!" They all giggled about that as we entered an auditorium for a leadership class.
I had no idea what they were going to be discussing in the leadership classes prior to that day. There was not a single person in my past that would have considered me a leader -- everyone looked down on me far too much. That being said, I actually felt like I had a better idea of why that had always been as I listened to the speaker.
It was an hour of motivational speaking and practice exercises that seemed to fly by very quickly. The speaker was definitely very accomplished at doing her job. I came out of there wondering if maybe I might be able to go into next year in a better position. That lasted until I remembered I wasn’t really a girl -- and everyone at school was going to know it and hate me.
I was actually amazed that I had kept the girls from figuring that out so far today. There had definitely been a lot of personal contact that could have given me away. Fortunately Dr. Reynolds had discussed some ways of keeping my parts out of the way -- I had used every one of them today. It had caused some pain in some ways, but anything was worth it to keep the others from finding out about me!
When we finished up with the leadership presentation each squad was brought up to the stage and told to do one of the cheers from yesterday. The judges all discussed the squads for a few minutes, and then they announced that we were able to eat second. Coach Evans had done some pointing at me after we had gone -- I wondered if I had cost us being first. I put that thought out of my head quickly though since second out of twenty ain’t bad.
I definitely did my best to stop being lightest person at that meal -- I was so hungry! Of course when I looked around, everyone, especially Amanda looked like they were doing the same thing. How could skinny girls eat this much?
After lunch we had a small break and then met up at the meeting place to work on cheers. Emily had a tube of sunscreen that she passed around to all of us. She also made sure that we all had full water bottles before we began since it was so hot that day. Once we had thoroughly slathered on the sunscreen she worked on making sure that we would need to empty the water bottles.
We first spent some time practicing the cheers that we had worked on last night. From there Emily began teaching us all some cheers that she thought could be good for our competition on Saturday. Rachel and Stephanie seemed to have some ideas of their own that they added to hers, and before I knew it we had like fifteen cheers that I had to memorize.
Each girl wrote the cheers down in her notebook -- all vowing not to let any of the other squads see their work. After several hours of work Coach Evans came by to see how we were doing.
She smiled at the cheers that we’d come up with -- I think she thought we were on the right track. As we practiced them she once again seemed to be focusing her attention on me. Coach spent less time on me this time though... I wasn’t sure if that meant I was getting better or she’d written me off as a lost cause.
We finished up at about four and left to go participate in a craft activity. Every team was given butcher paper and told to work on creating some banners for their squad to hang up on Saturday. We definitely had some artistic talent on our team with some of the girls. For my part I just tried to paint something that was recognizable.
By the time we reached dinner I had kind of refreshed my energy level a bit. At least the banners weren’t physical work and weren’t being done out in the hot sun. As we all sat down with our food I was surprised anyone had the energy to talk.
"Tiffany, you’ve never done any of this stuff before?" Rachel asked.
"No. I guess it shows that much?"
"At first, but you really have caught on quickly since then. You’ll be doing it at least as well if not better than a lot of the girls by the end of the week Tiffany."
"You’re doing fine Tiff," Amy said to me. "I think we’re going to have to get you on the squad back home just so we have someone who is actually easier to lift than me," she said with a wink.
The other girls gave her kind of a questioning glance. "There are only two of us on our squad at home that are really liftable, the other girls both too tall and too heavy." She said.
They all nodded. We made it through dinner with the girls telling various stories about the guys at their school. Discussions on how hot or not some of the boys sounded continued for the entire lunch. I just giggled when I was supposed to since I really hadn’t developed any opinions one way or another yet.
After dinner we were given some space in a large dance classroom with mirrors along the wall. Coach Evans was waiting for us when we came in. "Okay ladies, you have one more thing that we’re going to be working really hard on today -- your dance routine."
I was excited and scared at the same time. I had never danced outside of the PE class stuff like line and square dancing. I could even survive the two-step. Would I be able to even come close to keeping up with these girls on this? Amy had tried to help me with some of this before we left -- maybe I wouldn’t be a complete idiot.
That turned out to be wishful thinking very quickly. I was terrible!
About the only thing I could say for myself is at least I was able to feel the beat and move with it. Playing an instrument had helped out with that. I just couldn’t keep up with remembering all of the moves even though I tried incredibly hard. Of course Coach Evans was all over me.
Two Hours. Two Hours of pure-and-total-torture trying to get things right! I figured the rest of the girls must hate me after it was all said and done. About the only thing that could be said for me is that I could finally make it through the routine at a snails pace by the end of the practice.
"Tiffany may I see you for a second?" Coach asked.
Great! More comments on how terrible I was. "Yes Coach?"
"You’re doing better, but you’re going to have to spend some time practicing outside of our practices to get it right. I don’t see any reason why you can’t have it learned by tomorrow’s rehearsal."
"Yes ma’am, I’ll do my best" I replied to her.
With that she left to head over to the stadium ahead of us. The other squad that she was coaching had their rehearsal while we had been doing banners earlier. I wondered how they were doing with their routine -- she had said every team had a different one.
We all walked back to the stadium for another hour of group cheers. That didn’t seem hard compared to the dancing -- and I must have been doing better there because Coach only said like one or two things to me there. When all was said and done at 8:45 we were sent back to our dorms.
Before we left Emily said, "Ladies, go take some time and take a shower and rest up for a little while. I’ll meet you in the lounge for our last activity at 9:30."
There was a chorus of cheers since we were all beyond sweaty at this point. As Amy and I walked back she put her arm around my shoulders, "You’re doing fine Tiff. Coach Evans is just pickier than anyone I’ve ever met. You’ll be fine by Saturday," she said with a smile. What would I do without her?
"Thanks Amy." I said giving her a sweaty hug. When we reached our room Amy called the bathroom first (she was really good at calling things first) and she quickly got in the shower.
While she was in there I heard a knock on the door. I’d been silently practicing the dance routine and so I was even a bit sweatier when I opened the door. "Hey Emily," I said.
"Do you have a moment Tiffany?" She asked me.
"Sure, what’s up?"
"I just wanted to see how you were doing. You had a really hard day today with Coach Evans."
"Yeah, I’m pretty terrible at this aren’t I?" I asked her.
"Tiffany you’re doing fine. If you were on any of the other squads I don’t think Coach Evans would be focusing any of her attention on you. I think this squad is probably one of the strongest here at camp -- so she’s pushing everyone harder because of that. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that if you wanted some help tonight after our last activity I’d be willing to help you out."
"I’ll help too," Amy said behind me, while drying her hair with a towel.
"Thanks, I think I’ll take you up on your offer. But first, I really would like to have a shower!" I told her with a smile.
"Sure Tiff. Do you mind if I call you Tiff? I’ve heard some of the other girls like Amy call you that."
"That’s fine, I go by either." I said while thinking that I really hadn’t gone by either before a month ago...
"Okay go take a shower and I’ll help you out after our last thing tonight." She said as she left the room. I rushed in and out of the shower faster than I normally did so I could give Mom and Dad a call.
I found a pay phone on our floor and used a calling card they had given me to call them. "Hey," I said when Dad picked up the phone.
"Hey, it’s Tiffany," Dad said to Mom. I heard her pick up.
"How are you doing?" Mom asked.
"I’m tired -- this is a lot of work," I told her.
"I bet," Dad said. "Is everything going well though?" he asked.
"Yeah, you can definitely tell that I haven’t done this stuff before -- but I’m catching on quickly. Our squad got second in the challenge this morning to decide who goes to lunch and dinner first," I replied excitedly. I told them about what we had been doing all day and yesterday as quickly as I could before having to go.
"I’ll call you guys again in a couple days, I don’t think I’ll have a chance tomorrow," I told them.
"That’s great Tiffany, we love you, goodnight." They both said to me before I hung up. I got to the lounge with just a minute or so to spare.
I found a seat on the floor next to Amy and Rachel.
"Okay ladies, something that’s always been a tradition in my groups at cheer camp is to have a bedtime story," Emily said with a smile.
"So here it is..." She began to tell a really awesome story with a kid’s picture book. Okay so I felt like I was about three and a half or something, but it was a lot of fun! The only girls who didn’t look like they were enjoying it were the usual suspects. Particularly Amanda looked like she would have liked nothing but to be elsewhere -- but hey the rest of us had fun with it.
We all talked for a few minutes after she was done with her story before we headed back to our rooms to go to sleep. Or, I should say everyone else went back to their rooms to sleep. Amy, Emily, and I put some different clothes on and began working through the routine with me in the lounge for an hour-and-a-half.
By the time I crawled into bed at 11:30 I was so exhausted I didn’t even change my clothes.
Chapter 7
AS LIGHT BEGAN to pour into the window of our dorm room Amy prodded me to wake up. "Come on Tiffany, you need to get ready." After about ten minutes of her poking, prodding, and harassing me (in which I wondered if my mom had been giving her lessons) I finally made it into the bathroom. A quick shower was had before heading to breakfast.
We did stunts again that morning -- and for the first half just reviewed everything that we had done the day before. We actually were all doing really well in our squad and I had made considerable progress from the beginning of yesterday. They then began having us come together with our trios to work together then while Amy and I were on top.
The squad they had put together to demonstrate stuff yesterday put on an even greater show today. The coolest things they did we probably wouldn’t be able to do until college. The guys in particular were able to throw Emily a huge distance into the air. As they did that I began wondering what it would be like to be thrown that high -- surely they could easily get me higher right?
We also were given a lot of individual help on jumping. Thankfully this was one area that Amy had already been helping me out at a lot. Rachel was even impressed with how well I was doing on those. Coach Evans just watched me once and walked by.
The morning saw some more leadership training combined with ideas of different events that you could have at school. They discussed what you could do during a spirit week and different themes you could have. It was actually more interesting than I ever would have thought it could be. There was plenty of interaction between all of us and the speaker -- so it really was a lot of fun.
Just before lunch we had the competition for who went first. I was really amazed because we actually won the competition that day. A lot of the girls talked back and forth at lunch that we might actually win the competition at the end of the week!
After lunch we did more work on our cheers and I was quite surprised that I remembered all of them from yesterday. I had guessed that it would take me all of the days just to remember them. Emily pronounced the ‘words good’ and ‘chanting acceptable’, but then said it was time to start adding some stuff to them. Before long the stunts we had been working on were worked into those cheers.
The routines for each cheer weren’t as complicated as the dance routines -- but they weren’t easy either. We drilled all of that non-stop, taking special care for about three of the cheers that we were thinking about using for the competition. Emily said we would have to choose one for the competition, but we wanted to have choices up until that point.
In the last half hour of our session that afternoon Coach Evans came by and didn’t say anything to me. I thought she had decided that I was a lost cause at that point -- but I swore I saw her smile for a second. Must have been the light though because the next thing I knew she was getting onto me for something else.
The second afternoon session was when we worked on our dance routine that day. I arrived at the dance classroom with lots of little butterflies flying around in my stomach. Would the extra practice that I had done last night pay off? I was so tired at this point I hoped it had been worth it.
We started rehearsal by going through the routine at half-speed move by move. I hit every movement of my hands, feet, and body at all of the right times. ‘So far so good,’ I thought to myself. From there we sped everything up another notch. I still hit everything when I was supposed to.
Eventually after speeding it up several more times Coach Evans said, "Okay ladies, with the music this time."
Amazingly we had been practicing it faster than the music -- so it wasn’t quite as hard as it had been. I just kept counting to myself over an over again through our sets, and concentrating so much, that I barely registered the fact that I was in the final pose and we were done.
"Not bad ladies. Several of you..." God she could nitpick at anything! We were soon repeating the dance again and again.
Finally after about the tenth run-through of the routine she came over to me. "Tiffany, smile," she said. "You’ve gotten the moves down, but it won’t do any good if you can’t put a smile on your face and make people think you’re having fun." And with that she walked away. Speaking of smiling couldn’t she do it once in a while?
So in addition to counting, thinking, bending, and contorting my body -- I had to smile. I swear smiling took more concentration than the rest of it combined!
When we got through she had us all sit down in front of her. "Ladies I’m extremely impressed with how quickly you’ve picked this up. I gave you the harder routine of the two I brought with me for this week and you’ve gotten it learned faster than any of the other squads as far as I know. I think you’re going to do very well the day after tomorrow at the competition."
"That doesn’t mean I’m going to let up on you all though -- there are plenty of things we can clean up. I also have a couple ideas that Emily suggested we try out too to make things more interesting. We’ll try them out tomorrow. For now I hope you all enjoy your evening -- you should have a lot of fun."
As we all stood up she pulled me aside. "Tiffany, how much more did you work last night?"
"An hour-and-a-half," I replied.
"It really shows. You are easily one of the hardest working girls that I have ever seen come to this camp. Just make sure that you have fun while you’re doing this too, okay?"
"Yes, ma’am," I replied with a smile. She was actually complimenting me. Amy had stayed by my side during this time. Maybe she wasn’t quite as evil as I thought.
"You’re also doing quite well Amy. You should definitely be a captain at your school your eighth grade year."
"Thanks," she said.
"You two don’t separate from each other much do you?" She asked.
"Not really," we said at the same time.
"Well anyway you both should get going back to your dorm, keep up the good work." She told us.
When we got outside I started skipping and Amy joined in. We stopped and just started to giggle endlessly when we got to our dorm. "Tiffany we seriously have to get you onto our squad at school. I don’t know how we’ll do it -- but I think we have to. You’re doing way too well at all of this stuff for you not to do it."
"Thanks Amy, let’s just see how the year goes. I’m not sure that I’m going to be welcome to walk the hallways at school -- let alone perform as a cheerleader..."
"We’ll make it work somehow Tiff. I’ll always be there for you." She said as we entered our room.
"Shower first," I exclaimed. I giggled with glee. I never won these contests!
"Cheater!" she said with plenty of her own giggling.
I got into the shower and let the water wash all of the sweat and work on some of the pain I was feeling. I couldn’t believe how sore I was after only a couple days. Tonight’s activity was to have a massive pool party with everyone. I was very careful in hiding my parts -- a pool party was definitely an easy place for people to find out about me if I wasn’t cautious. The thought of the other girls finding out my secret was terrifying to say the least.
I got out of the bathroom just wearing my swimsuit -- a one-piece, Mom wouldn’t let me buy a bikini yet (or ever she seemed to think...) -- and asked Amy, "can you see anything?"
She knew what I meant, "No Tiff, there’s nothing I can see."
"Thanks, the bathroom’s all yours then." I told her. While she was taking a shower I put on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt over the top of my swimsuit. She came out fairly quickly with her own one-piece suit on. I think she wore it as moral support for me -- we’d probably be the only two girls in one.
She also put on a pair of shorts and a shirt before we headed down for dinner. It was nice knowing that we were going to be able to relax tonight -- we’d been working so hard non-stop up ‘til now. At dinner we all sat with our squads and enjoyed just talking to people.
Our trip to Florida came up with Katie at one point, "So you actually came out to Orlando for a field trip?" She asked surprised.
"Yeah, it was a lot of fun," I replied.
"I bet it was. Our school would never let sixth graders take a trip that far." She said.
"It was a special program, and only ‘kind of’ sponsored by the school." Amy replied.
"Still that’s really cool. If you two ever come back out there you’ll have to look me up. I only live thirty minutes outside of Orlando."
"It must be cool to live there," I said.
"It’s kind of nice -- I don’t know -- it’s what I’m used to. You guys are lucky enough to get snow; I’ve never seen that before." She said.
"You’ve never seen snow?!?" Amy replied incredulously.
"Neither have I," Christina said. "They have had a couple storms in my home town in Texas a few times... but none while I’ve been alive."
"That’s crazy!" Amy replied. Of course that was going to boggle her mind. She’d grown up with her parents having a condo near a ski resort -- and she had skied her whole life.
The rest of dinner was then made up of conversation on things that some people had never done or seen. It was a lot of fun.
After dinner we all made our way to the pool and had ourselves a massive party with all of the squads. There were a lot of games played between squads, getting to know other girls, and just having fun with loud party music blaring in the background. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of other girls must have moms like mine -- they were in one-piece suits too.
An hour into the party they shut the music off and all of the girls began doing the group cheers together in the water. It was kind of difficult to do the jumps in the water, but we all gave it our best. We did a couple of other group activities for a half hour or so before we were let loose to do whatever again with the music blaring.
After a couple hours we were all booted out of the pool and sent back to the dorms to relax. Amy and I both rinsed our bodies off real quick in the shower before putting our pajamas on. Out in the lounge Stephanie brought out a set of nail supplies and polish she had brought with her -- quickly all of the girls began working to paint each others nails in our squads’ colors. It was at that point that I thought to ask something I’d been meaning to ask, Emily had just come into the room.
"Hey, does everyone else have the coyote and these colors as their school mascot? Or is it just a coincidence that it matches up with the school Amy and I attend?"
Eight of the other girls actually said that it was the same for them, but the rest didn’t have anything to do with that mascot. Christina actually said, "If I showed up to school wearing the uniform they gave us I would probably be hung from the nearest tree! That’s the uniform our rival school wears."
"They try and match you all up somewhat when they put together the squads. At least trying to match up the mascots -- it’s never perfect though." Emily said.
"Stephanie and I were on this squad last year," Rachel said. "So we both decided to make it a tradition. Of course next year if we come we’ll be in a different camp set -- but hey maybe we can get the same mascot group there."
"That would be cool," Stephanie said.
We worked on each other’s nails for a good hour before Emily said it was time for that night’s story. She told another cute story that made all of us smile, even the unfriendly girls, before we all headed to bed.
As I laid down on my bed I said, "Amy?"
"Yeah Tiffany?"
"Thank you so much for bringing me along with you. I wasn’t honestly sure I was cut out for this kind of stuff, but I’m having a lot of fun."
"No problem Tiff, we’re just going to have to figure out a way to get you on the school team. If nothing else we’ll get you on in April -- you’ll easily beat out the other girls then." She told me.
"I hope so. I just know it’ll be a long fight to get to April..."
"We’ll get through it Tiff, I promise you."
I couldn’t leave it at that, I got up and gave her a hug before laying back down. "’Night Amy."
Chapter 8
THE FOURTH DAY passed by far quicker than I could have believed. We worked incredibly hard all day as a squad doing one practice after another. During the stunt practice that morning the college cheer squad asked for a volunteer -- for some strange reason I raised my hand. The college kids looked at all of the hands raised and Coach Evans gave them a nod towards me.
When I got down to where they were they spoke to me for a few minutes on what they wanted me to do. From there they built a massive pyramid -- and had me climb on top! At the top I was held in the air by two girls -- who acted like it was no big deal. It was incredibly cool. When we dismounted from it a couple of the guys caught me. I was really amazed that these guys did cheerleading -- they looked like they could have been varsity wrestlers.
I got a fun surprise then when they lifted me up in the air and tossed me. I wasn’t really expecting to get an opportunity like that -- but as I came down from a lot of height, trusted them to catch me. Thankfully they did!
When I got back with my squad I was absolutely grinning from ear to ear. Amy poked me. "Not fair," she whispered to me. The work didn’t seem as insanely difficult the rest of the day. In fact, I spent most of the time wondering why I’d had trouble smiling the day before.
When all was said and done by the end of the day we had all chosen which cheer routine we were going to perform for the competition. We had also worked up our chant and our dance to a really high level. I hoped that Amy’s mom brought her video camera to record our performances.
The way this camp worked, we would have the initial competition in the morning, and then the top five squads would perform them again in the afternoon. Following that we would have an awards ceremony when they would announce the winners. Parents were welcome to attend the finals and ceremony with their kids if they wanted. Amy’s mom was going to serve as both our ‘moms’ for the event. She already was like that for me most of the time anymore...
Anyway, once the ceremony was done we would move ourselves out of the dorms and we were going to start back home. Amy’s mom had said we would stay in Yuma, Arizona that night. She didn’t want to try and drive all the way home that night, so that seemed like a good spot to stop at.
Amy interrupted my thoughts about the next day while we were eating lunch, "So Tiffany are you ready for the dance tonight?"
"Yeah, I guess." I told her. "It’s kind of sad though since it’s the last night we’ll be here."
"You’re sounding more and more like a girl all the time," she told me quietly.
"Thanks," I replied back to her with a small smile.
With that we went to another practice, followed by yet another practice, before we were given a chance to go shower before dressing up for that night. We both put on our dresses and put makeup on. I had managed to convince mom to let me bring my makeup for this trip on the promise that I would not wear it every day. Really I’d been in no danger of breaking that promise. With as much as we’d been working and sweating, any makeup I could have put on wouldn’t have lasted five minutes anyway.
Tonight and tomorrow weren’t every day though -- so I made myself as pretty as I could.
The two of us worked on our hair together. We’d gotten the same haircut a month before so we decided we’d go as twins with our hair that night. By the time we finished up with our hair, we both pronounced each other as looking cute. A quick look in the mirror made me wonder how many people would assume that we were actually twins!
We both helped each other touch up before going out with our cameras to the lounge. As the other girls came out they all complimented us, and we complimented them. The flashes of cameras were almost constant while we waited for the last couple girls to arrive. As our squad entered the ballroom where they were hosting the event a lot eyes turned towards us. I know I’m biased, but I believe that we were one of the better looking squads there that night.
We had a fun night that finished when we broke into our squads. With the fifteen girls in our squad, Emily, and Coach Evans, we all sat in a circle in a dark quad of the campus. That was kind of awkward given how we were dressed, but we made it work.
All of the lights were off in our vicinity, and Emily brought out a large candle that she lit. "When the candle gets to you share whatever thoughts and memories that you’ve made this week with the group." Emily told us.
She then began to share with us her thoughts, "I’ve been amazed by how quickly you ladies came together. It’s not often that one of the squads at this camp comes together as well as you have. Your hard work has absolutely been inspiring to me. I’d especially like to say to Tiffany I can’t believe how far you’ve come this week. I think that when you get a chance to try out for your squad you’ll be sure to make it." She said stuff to most of the girls before passing it off to Coach Evans.
"Ladies I’m of the same opinion of Emily -- you’ve all been magnificent this week. You’ve bore up to my constant barrage of orders and pickiness. You should all be very proud of yourselves." She gave some comments to each of us -- especially me on my improvement again, before passing it on. Coach Evans then stood up to go to her other squad.
Each girl shared her thoughts in turn, and as it got to me I had to stop crying long enough to speak. "I want to thank everyone for the wonderful time that I’ve had with you. It’s been more fun than I could have ever imagined being here, and I hope that I can return next year with you. We’ll all have to stay in contact so we can let each other know how the others are doing. More than anything I know we’re going to do spectacularly well tomorrow as a squad."
I passed it on to the next girl then and resumed my sniffling and crying. ‘So much for my makeup,’ I thought. When the candle returned to Emily she led us in a squad cheer before extinguishing the candle and leaving us in darkness. We all walked back from there in silence, not really wanting to spoil the memory of camp by talking.
Back in the dorms we began talking about the next day and how we were getting ready for the competition. Our first performance was our chant at 9:25, our cheer routine at 10, and our dance routine was to be at 11. After our cheer routine we were to get our pictures taken by a photography company that would be there.
It was decided that we would all go to breakfast dressed in pajamas at 7:30, then work together on our hair, makeup, and warm-up till 9 when we would be in position to perform. Emily gave us some suggestions and tips and after we heard one more story she said, "Technically the camp is okay with you all staying up till midnight tonight, but I’d really recommend that you go to bed now so you’re better rested for tomorrow." It was 10:15 at that point.
We all looked at each other and silently agreed that was a good idea. The squad wanted to not only go into the competition and do well -- we wanted to win. All of us quickly headed for bed and forced ourselves to sleep. It wasn’t easy that night.
WE WOKE UP as planned and met at breakfast in our pajamas. Amy and I brought our cameras to breakfast and took several shots of everyone there. Emily pushed us to eat quickly so we could get back and get ready.
From there on the morning up to our first event was a complete and total blur. The next thing I knew it was almost nine and we were taking photos of ourselves in our uniforms. All of our hair was put up into high pony-tails and tied with two ribbons matching our colors. Emily had gotten the ribbon sometime over the past week for us, and we all thanked her.
Rachel and Emily went to work at making everyone have the right look of makeup for the day. It was really exaggerated from anything I had done before -- they told me it was so our facial expressions would stand out. For the most part I didn’t mind, we all looked pretty, but I would never wear it like this normally.
At 9:25 we marched onto the track of the stadium for our chant performance. It was kind of terrifying in a way to be in front of the judges and a huge crowd of family members. I guessed there were probably six to eight hundred people in the stands. I tried not to let that make me nervous though.
We took our spots on the track and Rachel led us in our chant. This morning we had elected her our team captain and she now bore a C on the uniform she had. Like the snap of a set of fingers it was over and we were heading off to prepare for our next performance. The audience had really gotten into our cheer, and had cheered loudly for us, but they were probably doing that for everyone I figured.
After running through the moves in our cheer routine we gathered together for a pep talk from Emily and Coach Evans. They both said we had done very well so far and we just needed to keep it up. Soon after that we were doing our cheer routine.
As we began clapping our hands and yelling together I made sure that I moved me hands to my sides, out, etc. at all the right times. The end of our routine called for a daring move to do two 3 level pyramids. I was on the top of one pyramid while Amy was on top of the other.
The squad before us had dropped a girl trying to do the same thing... I was really hoping it wouldn’t be like that for me. As we held our last pose in that position Rachel tumbled down the track in front of the pyramid. The stadium erupted in applause as we finished. I saw a number of them stand while doing so -- I just kind of blushed. As we jumped down off the pyramid I was happy to not have fallen and broken anything! We ran as a team back towards the one of the end zones.
Amy came over to me, "That was awesome Tiffany," she said giving me a hug.
I squealed and said, "yeah, that was great!"
"Too bad we’ll never be able to pull that one off at school." She said.
All of us kept congratulating each other and were led by Emily to a spot outside where they were taking our pictures. Each of us had our pictures taken both individually and as a group after checking to make sure we still looked alright. Amy ended up redoing my ponytail since it had shifted a little when we dismounted from the pyramid.
The company taking the pictures gave us an order form to send them to buy the pictures when we got home. They told us we could also come back after the preliminary round to have our parents pay. I wondered if Amy’s mom would be willing to get me a package... What am I asking? She’d probably already have it done by the time we found her.
From there we began huddling as a group and talking about the last portion of the preliminary competition. Coach Evans told us it was going to be the last stage for us making it into the finals -- if we nailed this we should be in the Final Five for the afternoon performance.
"Come on ladies, you can do it!" Emily told us as we got ready to line up to go back into the stadium for our final performance. We all gathered together and put our hands together and did a final chant before marching out for our dance routine.
The dance routine that we had worked on had been designed specifically for performing on the football field. We came on from the rear part of the football field towards the stands that seemed fuller than the last time we had been in there. When we got to our marks all of us put our hands out to our sides with pom-poms in each, our heads down, and waited for the music to start.
In what seemed both an eternity, and a really short amount of time, I heard the opening beats to our routine start up. I was completely on autopilot as I put my hands where they were supposed to be on each count, jumping, moving, everything as we had been taught. In my head I counted the moves as we had done again and again over the past few days: and then it was done.
From our ending, a frozen pose, we moved together off of the field and went into the stands to watch the last couple groups and relax.
As we sat down Amy’s mom came up to us and gave us both a big hug, "Amy, Tiffany your squad did great!"
"Thanks," we both told her.
At that point we both spent about ten minutes talking non-stop. One of us would say one thing and the other would finish the idea. I think the chances of her having understood anything from us right then were almost nil! We introduced her to all of our new friends as ‘Amy’s mom -- but she claims me too!’ It was a lot of fun.
She sat with us and watched the last four squads perform their routines. Amy and I both were really hoping that we had done well enough -- one of the squads we saw was really good... I wasn’t sure if we honestly could compete with them or not.
"Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for attending today’s preliminary performance. At this time all of the participants need to report to the track for the preliminary awards ceremony."
We all filed back down and proceeded to participate in a short procession onto the field to the spots we stood in during our night sessions. The beginning of the ceremony was opened with all of us doing two of our group cheers together. Amy’s mom captured that event on video tape -- it was s-o-o awesome!
Mrs. Harding spoke over the stadium’s sound system, "I would first of all like to congratulate all of the squads that performed today; it is not easy to come together in this little time to perform like they have! Before we announce the finalists please give a hand for each of these squads..."
"The Coyotes!..." We all jumped in the air and cheered...
"And the Wolverines, please give a hand for all of these fantastic girls!" Again everyone together jumped up and cheered.
A few moments later the field became silent and Mrs. Harding said, "And now I would like to announce the finalists for today’s competition. These squads will perform their three events again in the finals. The squads are in no particular order: The Badgers, The Wolverines, The Coyotes..." That was the last of that part I heard as we all began jumping, cheering, and hugging each other before we were shushed by Emily and told to get back in position.
"The finalists need to be ready to perform again at 2pm. They will have a meeting with their coaches at 1:30 to prepare. At the conclusion of the finals performance..." she proceeded to explain that we would have a couple exhibition performances by some cheer squads, and then they would announce the individual awards for the camp before the places.
When we came off the field we all went to the cafeteria together, picking up families of all of the girls on the way over. As we ate together there was a lot of tension in the air -- we were all really nervous. Sure we had made the finals, but we wanted to be the best! I didn’t really care about the individual awards -- there was no way that I was going to be named outstanding cheerleader or anything like that.
Rachel had participated in a jump competition the day before, and Stephanie had done a tumbling competition as well. Those were separate events and we were all hoping that they had done really well. None of us ate much at lunch, even though all of the parents (including Amy’s mom), were trying to force us to eat.
At 1:30 we met Coach Evans on an end zone where she had told us to meet her. She then led us to a spot away from the stadium to prepare.
"Okay ladies, I was very impressed with how well you performed. I picked up the judges comments and you were ranked second behind the Wolverines by about three points."
We all kind of steamed on that for a few moments. She chose to let it sit there and simmer -- she wanted it to push us to step up at the finals.
"So I think we need to make up more than those three points -- they’re definitely going to try and do better than they did this time. So you’re going to have to not only earn three more points, but I would guess another seven points more. This is how I think we can do it..." she proceeded to tell us all of the things we had done wrong over that morning. She read the list of things the judges has knocked us on.
We all stood together and began going through a few of the motions that had been an issue. Our squad was the second to last to perform on all of the events -- so we had a little bit more time to work. This time instead of doing the chant and then leaving, we performed the chant and went straight into our cheer. Both of those events went off better than I had ever done them -- I didn’t know about everyone else -- but I knew I had improved.
About twenty minutes later we were back on the field repeating our dance routine. The feeling I had when we completed it was like no other I had ever felt. I knew I had done my best -- there had been no more to give. Standing there in our final pose, I could feel the tears that were welling up and trying to escape my eyes. I was so proud of how I had done -- and how the squad had done -- but so scared to see what the judges had to say...
We took a spot on the side of the field while the last cheer squad did their dance. As I watched them I could see why they had placed lower than us in the prelims, and fully believed that we were still going to be ahead of them. If nothing else we shouldn’t come in last I thought!
The only thing left before the awards ceremony was the exhibition performances. There were three squads that performed; the reigning national high school champions (who were from one of the local schools), a squad of our counselors, and the university’s well renowned squad.
All three of their performances were absolutely stunning. We had watched them do some cool stuff this past week, but they outdid every single thing at this performance. The stunts and dancing they demonstrated were incredible! It left me with a feeling that I wanted to be able to be that good more than anything else.
The exhibition performances were over after a half-hour and it was time to start the rest of the ceremonies.
Chapter 9
OUR SQUADS WERE lined back up on the field, and all of the rest of the girls were seated together by their squads in the stands -- it was a sea of color. Up there they were chatting away completely unconcerned about what our fates were down on the field. It was basically over for most of them -- there might be some individuals that would still have a chance for awards -- but their squads were done.
That was in stark contrast to the sound on the field: silent. I don’t think some of the girls on the field had ever shut up before... I know Amy and I rarely did. Mrs. Harding stepped up to a microphone that was now connected so she could speak from the field.
"Ladies and Gentlemen to conclude our camp we would like to present awards to both individuals and to squads for their fantastic work this week! We’ll start first with the individual awards..."
I was kind of tuning out the awards a bit at that point -- that was until Rachel won the Jump competition, and Stephanie was the runner-up in the tumbling competition. We all cheered loudly for them and I started to go right back to just standing and tuning stuff out.
"And now we have three final awards to give, outstanding cheerleader, outstanding captain, and most improved cheerleader. We’ll start with the last award first. This young lady’s coach wrote, ‘when she first arrived here she was completely green with no experience. She seemed to be struggling through every little thing. I had my doubts that she would manage to be ready for the competition today. However, she worked longer and harder than any girl I’ve ever seen at this camp -- earning the respect of her squad and myself by learning her routines as well as anyone.’"
"This award comes with a $500 scholarship for a college of this young lady’s choice. That young lady is.... Tiffany Jacobson!!!"
I stood there in shock as my eyes went wide... Me? Amy prodded me to go up to the front where they had a small trophy and an envelope for me. I stopped to pose with Mrs. Harding and Coach Evans while holding them, and then proceeded to hug Coach Evans and saying thank you over and over again. Everything was all blurry from the tears flowing down my face. Who would have thought I would win an award this week?
As I got back to my squad I received tons of hugs before we got back into our lines. The rest of the awards went to girls that we didn’t know -- or at least I didn’t know -- and she moved onto the part that we cared about.
"And now ladies and gentlemen we will conclude today with the results of our final competition. In Fifth Place, The Badgers!" Their squad jumped up and down and they all ran up to grab the trophies for each girl. "In Fourth Place, the Spartans!"
"In Third Place, the Wildcats!"
"In Second Place..." This would be the moment... had we improved or had we stayed in Second place? "The Wolverines!" there was ever so slight a pause, then over the roar of the crowd, "And our champions are The Coyotes!!"
We were all completely ecstatic and showing it by doing jumps in the air. Some of the girls began tumbling -- all of us were screaming -- before rushing up to grab our trophies and fall back in. We were finding it impossible to stand still!
"Thank you all for attending our camp this year -- we hope to see you again next year!" She said as we all began hugging each other over and over again. We had parents that came on the field to take pictures of us with our trophies and a medal that we had all gotten (I actually had two trophies and an envelope -- I had no idea what to do with the envelope).
Amy’s mom was no exception to the other parents; she took a dozen pictures of us all together, and then another dozen of Amy and me together. As she was switching rolls of film Coach Evans walked up to us.
"Congratulations you two," she said with a smile and hugged us both. "Tiffany I hope you keep working on your skills -- you honestly should be able to keep up with any normal squad at this point for tryouts. Anyway, I have something I wanted to give you real quick," she said handing me a large manila envelope.
I opened it up and there were three 8x10 pictures in there of me; one on top of the pyramid with the demonstration squad, one with me in the air on the really high toss, and another with that group. They were really neat shots. I was certain Mom would be putting them up on the wall at home! "Thank you Coach," I told her.
"No problem. Congratulations again Tiffany, I hope to see you next year!" She said goodbye to Amy’s mom as well real quick before walking away.
When she left, Amy’s mom took more individual pictures of Amy and me. After she had finished another roll we went to the dorm to get all of our stuff moved out.
"Umm... Melanie?" remembering that she had asked me to call her that instead of Mrs. Hancock.
"Yes Tiffany?" She asked smiling back at me as we were walking back there..
"Do you have a cell phone?" I asked.
"Yes I do sweetie. Would you like to call your parents and tell them how you did?" She asked.
"May I, I promise to be short with the call..."
"Absolutely sweetie! Then Amy you need to call your dad and let him know too."
"Kay mom," Amy replied.
I was handed her cell phone and began to dial to talk to my parents. It rang twice and mom picked up, "Hello?"
"Mommy! You’ll never guess what happened today?"
"Hold on a sec honey," I heard her put the phone down in her hand and yell, ‘Joe, Tiffany’s on,’
"Hey sweetie!" Dad said on the other end,
"Hey!!! You’ll never guess what happened!!!" I said excitedly, "I won the most improved cheerleader award at camp!!!"
"That’s great sweetie," Mom said.
"Yes, sweetie that’s fantastic!" Dad said.
"And that’s not all! So I got a trophy for the award right? But I also got a $500 scholarship to any college I want later on."
"Wow that’s cool Tiffany," Dad replied.
"And, our squad also won first place at the competition today!" I told them.
"You have had a really good time haven’t you?" Mom asked.
"Yeah I have. I can’t wait to show you the trophies and my uniform and everything else!" I said it all so quickly I’d be surprised if my parents caught even half of it.
"We can’t wait to see them sweetie." Mom said.
"Are you on Amy’s mom’s cell phone?" Dad asked.
"Yeah, I should probably get off it. But I was so excited I wanted you to know!" I replied to them.
"That’s great sweetie, we’ll see you tomorrow," Mom said.
"I love you guys," I told them. There were the usual replies of ‘we love you too,’ as I hung up.
By the time I hung up we had reached the dorm and Amy called her dad. I was really surprised when she called him the first thing that she said was ‘you’ll never guess what happened! Tiffany won the most improved...’ Our winning First Place as a squad was her second thing. She really did care about me as a friend.
Her dad was really excited for us both and actually asked her to hand me the phone so he could congratulate me. We talked briefly before handing the phone to her mom. They discussed us leaving and then she hung up.
After that we had the hard work of moving all of our stuff down to her car. It took several trips and we switched clothes to a set of cheerleading shirts that her mom had bought for us from the camp while we had been performing in the morning. They were really cute! With those and a pair of shorts we climbed into her car and began driving towards home.
The two of us talked endlessly to her mom as we got on the road and drove towards Yuma where we were going to stay the night. A couple hours into the trip she pulled over at a Cracker Barrel for us to eat dinner. The hostess said we had about a thirty minute wait, something her mom assured me was worth it, and we began shopping after a bathroom break.
There were a lot of cool knickknacks in the store. Amy and I ended up picking up a couple of car games and a bunch of different candy before we were called. "Melanie, party of three?"
The waitress had menus and led us over to a table. Amy and I looked through the menu for a few minutes and began playing with the peg game on the table when the waitress came up to us. "Hi I’m Jennifer and I’ll be serving you. What would you like to drink?"
We told her our drink orders and she went back for them.
"So you’re both cheerleaders?" She asked us.
"We’re just coming back from a cheer camp," I said. "I’m not on the school’s squad yet -- I’m hoping maybe next year. Amy’s on the squad though."
"That’s cool. I really like those shirts," she said before going away.
I wondered at that point, ‘if I could actually become a cheerleader if it would help me?’ It would certainly help raise my status. As we sat there at dinner I just talked with Amy and her mom and only thought about how fun the last week had been. No one had known me -- and no one had any idea that I was a boy, at least physically. I was really fortunate I had managed to keep that from everyone...
After dinner we returned to the car and began driving some more. Amy and I played one of the car games for a little bit -- but fell asleep for the rest of the trip. We were woken up by her mom long enough to check into the hotel, change into our pajamas, and fall asleep in bed.
Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 Part 3 of 8 by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
Available for Purchase as
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Please visit Tiffany Shar's Bookstore Page |
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
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!
Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them 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! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!
-Tiffany Shar
Chapter 10
THE NEXT DAY Amy and I dressed comfortably for the trip home. Though we talked quite a bit, we also slept a decent amount too. I think Amy’s mom appreciated that since we weren’t asking for restroom breaks as often when we were asleep! We got into our hometown about 4:45 and pulled up to my house at 5.
My parents came out to meet me — and each received a gigantic hug from me. When we separated Mom went over to Amy’s mom to talk to her for a few moments. In the meantime Dad and I grabbed my bags out of the trunk. Once those were in the house I got my two trophies and some other things from the backseat.
“See Mommy? Daddy?” I showed them the two trophies. Both of them had a cheerleader on top with pompoms.
“Wow,” Dad said genuinely admiring them. Other than a small trophy I had won in a Cub Scout group, I had never brought home a trophy before in my life.
“Congratulations sweetie,” Mom said giving me another hug.
“Do you guys want to come over tonight and watch the video of their performance?” Amy’s mom asked my parents.
“Umm… I wouldn’t want to impose on you guys with as tired as you all are.” Dad said.
“No imposition at all, I know you would love to see the video — and that way Greg can see it at the same time too.”
“Well I suppose we could come over. What time?” Mom asked.
“How about 7:30?” She suggested
“Sounds good,” Dad said. From there we said our goodbyes until then and I entered the house. I walked back to my room with a load of stuff and got ready to open the door to my room. As I got ready to open it I saw they had put a cute sign on my door with letters that said ‘Tiffany’ on the door. I opened it up and couldn’t believe what I saw.
I stood there in shock, Mom and Dad had completely redone my room while I had been gone! I screamed with delight!
“Sweetie don’t you like it?” My dad asked very concerned.
I stepped inside to have a better look before turning around and jumping up onto him, “I love it Daddy!” I hugged him really hard and then moved onto mom.
“Thanks Mommy!” I told her with a hug.
“You’re welcome sweetie.” She replied.
I couldn’t believe what they had done with my room. My bunk beds were gone — replaced by a white day bed. I could see a trundle underneath the bed — so I knew that I would still have space for Amy to stay over — that was a must! The room itself had been repainted with a medium purple color for the main walls, with a lighter lavender trim, white ceiling, and the same lavender for the curtains on the windows.
They had put in a white dressing table that had a comfy looking chair in front of it so I could sit and do my hair or makeup. They had also replaced the old dresser I’d had with a new one that was also white. My bed was made with a quilted comforter that had pinks and purples in it.
All-in-all it was my dream bedroom! They had done it in such a way that it was very girly — but it wasn’t like a nursery set of colors. I loved it! Before I’d left I had said something about wanting to get rid of the white walls that had been there before — but never in a million years would I have dreamed they would have remodeled the room while I was gone.
“Thank you guys! How did you afford all of this?” I asked my parents.
“Well we dipped a little into the earnings of your project, but also your grandparents pitched in some money too. They also came and helped us paint a couple days ago.”
“Wow! Thank you so much,” I said giving them another hug.
“You’re very welcome sweetie. Now let’s work on getting your bags unpacked and your dirty clothes in the laundry.”
“Okay.” I told her.
We began unpacking my bags and Mom looked at my cheer uniform the camp had given me with astonishment. “Wow! I can’t believe the camp bought one of these for each of you.”
“Well Amy’s mom said something about they should for the price… Do you know how much it cost by chance?” Her parents had been the ones that had paid for it.
“No, but I’m guessing from what I was able to gather that it was about $1400.”
My jaw dropped. I had no idea that it was that much money. I couldn’t believe that her parents were willing to spend that on someone who wasn’t their daughter. “Whoa… I had no idea.”
“We’ll work on getting a thank you card done for them today before we go over, okay?” Mom suggested.
“Okay,” I replied. We hung that uniform on a hanger up in my closet — I honestly didn’t think I’d ever be able to wear it again… too bad.
We continued to unpack my stuff out of the bags. She oohed and awed at the other shirts and outfits that I’d received over the week. The shirt that Amy’s mom had bought us yesterday was especially one that she liked. Between the two of us we got a load of laundry started and then I remembered the pictures of me with the college guys and girls.
I got the envelope and showed the pictures to Mom and Dad as we sat down to eat some fast food he’d picked up for us.
“Umm… Was this safe?” Mom asked with a concerned voice.
“There were mats on the ground — and the guys that tossed me have been doing this for a long time — I trusted them.” I told her. “Just look at their muscles! I watched them toss a couple of the college girls earlier on in the week up a long ways. They were able to toss me even better since I weigh less!” I said with a smile.
“So you were one of the girls being lifted and tossed this week?” Dad asked.
I nodded, “Amy and I both were. I had a lot of fun doing it — although I was kind of scared at first…” I rambled on to them about the trip and everyone on it all the way ‘til it was time to go over to Amy’s.
We arrived at her house and she grabbed me, “You have to see this Tiff!” We went up to her room and I saw her dad had repainted it to basically the same as mine had…
“Whoa this looks exactly like what my parents did with my room at home!” I told her.
“Really?”
“Yeah it’s almost exactly the same; the colors are a little different but not much.”
“Come here then, you have to see the other thing Daddy did while we were gone.” She led me down the hall and into the guest bedroom. It was also redone the same way — and I instantly knew that they were giving me my own room at their house.
“Mine?” I asked Amy.
“Anytime you want to stay over,” a different voice — Amy’s dad — said.
I gave him a big hug. “You didn’t have to do this Mr. Hancock,” I told him.
“No, but you stay over often enough that we might as well have another room for you.” He told me returning the hug. I was crying at this point. A year ago I didn’t have a single close friend, and now I had one of the best friends I could have ever had, and her parents thought of me as their daughter… what a strange turn of events.
“You’ll have to break it in some time this next week,” Amy said.
“Yeah, though it kind of takes the fun out of staying up all night talking to you.” I told her.
She whispered back, “I think that’s why they did it — maybe we won’t stay up all night talking this way.”
I giggled, I think she was right. We all went back downstairs to the living room and her dad started up the video from our finals performance. Her mom had done a really good job of videotaping the performance — she’d used a tripod and managed to get us without only getting us.
My parents had a whole new level of respect for how I had earned my individual award after watching the video. “You both were really good,” Mom said to us. I had to agree, I hadn’t been able to watch myself in action before — I wasn’t bad now. And our squad had really done fantastic. My favorite part to watch was definitely our dance routine.
“Thanks!” Amy and I replied.
“We’ll have to get everyone’s pictures developed this week and have another scrapbooking session soon.” Amy’s mom suggested.
“Definitely!” I said.
They had copied the performance onto a VHS tape already so we could show it to my grandparents — not to mention have it for showing other people or watching myself down the road.
I went home and slept very soundly in my new bed — surrounded by a room that matched how I felt about myself.
Chapter 11
THE NEXT DAY Mom and I took my pictures to get developed. I had some really cute camp ones of all of us — especially Amy — that we put into the scrapbooks together. I stayed a couple of nights at her house later on that week before Mom made me come home.
She enticed me by saying she wanted to go shopping with me the next day — what can I say? Shopping is a powerful motivator!
That morning we woke up early enough to hit the malls right when they opened. Mom and I shopped at the malls for most of the day before returning home with a large haul for school this next year. It was a little on the early side for school shopping… but Mom and I couldn’t resist buying a lot of the stuff.
We had a fun day that day — bonding some more as mother/daughter — something we needed to do. Mom had always liked shopping — as Brandon I had wanted nothing to do with it. I don’t know why as Tiffany I liked it so much better… It really didn’t make sense. But I guess it was the variety of things that I could indulge myself in trying on.
A few days after that, I found myself talking to my psychiatrist about all sorts of things like this. “Tiffany I’m definitely thinking that you going to school as Tiffany is going to be inevitable at this point. Because of that, I want to start working on preparing you for what you’re going to experience.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Well, I want to start role playing some different situations with you.”
“Okay. Like what?”
“Well let’s begin with this one: It’s the first day back at school. You arrive and within a few minutes someone looks at you closely and realizes that you’re Brandon wearing girls clothes. Let’s say it’s one of the boys who used to pick on you before this, and he says ‘look at that fag!’ What do you do?”
That question laid waste to a lot of safety and comfort I’d been feeling… This was so likely to happen I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe that she would use that language though. “Umm… I guess walk away and cry when I get home?”
“What if he won’t let you walk away, what if he comes around the other side and pins you against a wall?”
“At that point scream for help?”
“But what if you can’t get help?”
“I… I… I don’t… I don’t know…” I know it doesn’t seem like a major thing to have this question posed to you… but this was my second worst nightmare that she was bringing up. Something very similar had even happened to me before. “I guess I could knee him in the groin?”
“That’s not a bad answer for safety sake, but how can we keep it from escalating to there already?”
“I don’t know. If you’re so smart you tell me!” I told her. I was in tears… I’d never felt hostile intentions from her before — but now I was beginning to get scared of her. Being the psychiatrist she of course knew this.
“Tiffany,” she said a couple times before I paid attention to her. “Tiffany, I’m not doing this to hurt you — I’m doing this to prepare you.”
I sniffled and nodded.
“You have to understand that I can’t believe the trip didn’t completely turn into a disaster when your parents let you get your ears pierced, and then come out to everyone. In nine out of ten cases you would have been at least verbally assaulted, if not physically. The crime rates against girls like you are very high. I’m not trying to scare you, but I want you to be prepared for when, not if, you face these situations.” She said while handing me a tissue and putting her arm around me.
I nodded again.
“So let’s talk through some different options here to keep this from happening okay?” She said tenderly.
“Okay,” I said in a shaky voice, still very nervous and unbalanced.
“So what could we do to keep him from ever getting to the point where he can pin you down?” She asked.
“Well on the first day… never leave some of my friends sides?” I suggested.
“That isn’t a bad approach. There is a lot of safety in numbers. Could you have done something in a response to deflect his comment instead of just walking away?”
“Like what?”
“Well, how about…” we went through situation after situation for a good hour.
In those situations she posed anything from me being called things to good friends like Amy betraying me… That wasn’t possible I swore — but it planted a seed of doubt that I knew shouldn’t be there. I knew as soon as I got home I’d be talking to Amy on the phone about this — I didn’t want to mention that part though.
When we finished Dr. Reynolds called for my mom to come into the office to join me there. “Okay Mrs. Jacobson please have a seat.” She said directing her to a seat next to me. “Today Tiffany and I talked through a lot of situations that she might run into once school starts. Some of them were likely, some of them were unlikely. Honestly we don’t know for sure how things are going to go when she starts school back up in August.”
“Okay, I guess that makes sense,” Mom replied.
“I didn’t do any of it for the sake of making you uncomfortable Tiffany, but I think if we do some more of this role playing it’ll help you to adapt better. I think if nothing else you’ve learned a couple of different responses that weren’t in your toolkit before this.” She said.
I nodded, trying not to start crying again — she’d gotten me genuinely worried about what was coming. Everything had been going well enough this summer that I’d kind of managed to keep it from being an immediate threat — that security was gone now. I wanted to be mad at her for what she’d put me through — but she was right, I needed to think about those situations. I just didn’t want to…
Mom looked at me with some concern as Dr. Reynolds continued on. “Anyway, I want to do some more of this for a couple of sessions before school starts. At the next session do you think it would be possible for your husband to join us here?” She asked Mom.
“If he needs to be here he’ll be here.” Mom answered. I hoped that was true.
“Good, then I will also have Dr. Wilmer attend this meeting with us too. He’s the endocrinologist that I want to work with her as we progress through the year.”
“Are you already thinking of hormones?” Mom asked, she seemed kind of surprised.
“Not exactly, I just want to go ahead and talk about delaying puberty from hitting yet. I want to wait a bit — but it’ll be more difficult for her if her voice starts changing lower. This’ll save her from having that happening until we’re certain of what we need to do.” She answered.
“You’re pretty sure that everything is still going along the same route?” Mom asked her.
“Yes, especially since she went on that trip with Amy to the cheer camp. That’s cemented a lot of my thoughts on her treatment.” She told mom.
“So what else is next?” Mom asked.
“Well like I said I want to meet with her next week with your husband. Again two weeks after that, and again the last week before school starts. From there I want to meet with her at least one time that first week of school and continue that for a while.” Mom and I were both stunned at the number of times she wanted to meet with me.
She must have seen that because she then continued, “Honestly this is going to be an incredibly difficult time and I want to make sure that Tiffany has someone talking to her about the issues that are going to come up daily.”
“That seems alright,” I told Mom.
We talked some more together as mother and daughter with Dr. Reynolds before leaving that session. I just sat in silence on the way home that night — my feeling of comfort that had been building up through the camp had suddenly come crashing down. How bad would it get this year?
As soon as I got home I called Amy. “Amy it was awful. I’m so scared now,” I told her.
“Why don’t I get Mom to let me stay the night at your house and we’ll talk there?” Amy suggested.
“Okay,” I said. I really needed a friend at this point. It was set up pretty quick and Amy came over to spend the night. When she got there we went for a walk away from my parents down to a nearby park. We sat down at the top of a piece of wooden playground equipment next to a slide.
“So what exactly happened?” Amy asked.
“She kept ‘role playing’ a whole bunch of different situations. I guess the ones that she did with me having problems with some of the people made sense — they’ll probably really happen. They bothered me, but not as much as the last one,” I said nearly in tears.
Amy’s a bright girl so she guessed, “Did they involve me turning on you?”
I nodded, the tears starting to form in my eyes “Amy I don’t believe you would ever do that — but just thinking about it freaks me out.”
She gave me a hug and said, “Tiffany, don’t worry it won’t happen. I would never do anything to hurt you, you have to believe me on that.”
I nodded, “I do, I guess I’m being silly aren’t I?”
“No, it sounds like Dr. Reynolds was being really hard on you today. Look, I’m not going to say kids are all going to be nice to you — ‘cause they’re not, they’re not even all nice to me! But, you can count on me, you can count on Nikki, Ashley, and I think most of the people on the trip. I was kind of surprised by Kyle, but I think he’ll stick by you — that means you’ve got some of the other guys too. You’ll be fine Tiff, we won’t let anything happen to you.” She told me.
We eventually began walking back home since the sky was beginning to darken. “Besides Tiff, they can’t get much worse than what it was at the beginning of last year can they?”
I made her knock on the bark of a tree we were passing… I hoped that those words wouldn’t haunt me next year.
AS WE WALKED back to my house I was surprised to see that Amy’s parents were there. I hoped that didn’t mean that Amy would have to go home… she was supposed to stay tonight for the first time on the trundle bed. I was really looking forward to having a friend over for the first time in my remodeled room.
When we walked in the door Amy asked the obvious question, “Mommy, Daddy, why are you guys here?”
“Hey Amy, we got a phone call at home a bit ago and wanted to go ahead and tell you girls about it.” Amy’s mom said. As she said that I saw headlights reflect off the window beside me. Ashley and her parents were in the car — a second later I saw Nikki and her parents pull up.
I instantly guessed it must have something to do with our film that we made… I didn’t know what though.
“So are you going to tell us what?” Amy asked her dad.
“I’ll tell you all at once,” he said. He smiled with that look like he was enjoying making her wait.
When everyone got to the door I opened it up and my parents scrambled for enough places for all of the adults to sit. Of course no one cared about us, so I ended up sitting on the floor — glad that I was wearing shorts today. It would have been more challenging in the skirt I’d worn the day before.
Once everyone was seated Amy’s dad said, “Okay, so I’m sure you all know that this has to do with their film?” He paused. “Well I received a call tonight from my friend at Mattel, and they had some interesting news for you ladies.”
“What did he say?” I asked him. What I was amused by was Amy saying the same thing next to me. We both giggled.
“Well, there’s a film festival in the third weekend of September that has accepted your film as an entry.”
“Cool.” Nikki said.
“Yeah, that sounds really neat. Where is it?” Ashley asked.
“It’s going to be in New York City, and they’re going to pay for all of us to fly out there to be at the premiere.”
“Awesome,” Amy said.
“Is it going to do anything else for them?” Nikki’s mom asked.
“Who knows? They will be in the run for some scholarship money in the youth category that they’re in. If nothing else it’ll be a free trip to New York for everyone — they’re even paying for the hotel.” He answered.
“How many days are we talking?” Dad asked, he would need to take off work — he didn’t have a lot of time left at this point this year.
“It’s going to show on a Friday afternoon, so they were talking about flying us out Thursday and sending us back Sunday.”
“I think I can swing that at work,” Dad told Mom.
We spent some time talking about some of the details he had been given — with a promise that he would talk to everyone when he got the final stuff. As we were wrapping up Ashley’s dad asked me, “Tiffany, do you want to send them another copy with the credits updated?”
“What do you… Oh right.” I didn’t even think about the fact that my name was still listed as Brandon on the credits. “Can we do that easily?” I asked him. “I had to send the master to Mattel when we got the money in May.”
“We’ll work something out.” He then started talking to Amy’s dad about that and they promised me they would call Mattel tomorrow about that and make arrangements.
As our parents kept talking, the four of us disappeared into my room for a bit. There I showed Ashley and Nikki the trophies that I’d gotten on our trip. I didn’t want to brag about myself… but I had to show them, right? Ashley and Nikki left with their parents after a bit, but Amy’s parents stuck around to talk to mine. Before they left we showed them my room. Everyone was amused by how similar our rooms had turned out — our parents hadn’t talked to each other at all about doing them.
We disappeared to my room while they were talking and played with my Barbies for a bit. Not too long into our playing though Mom came and got us.
“Tiffany, Amy’s dad had been planning on coming over here tonight anyway to talk to us.”
“About what?” I asked him.
“Well your parents asked me to help in getting some of the legal matters taken care of for you to be able to go to school as Tiffany next year.”
“I appreciate any help you can give me a lot,” I told him with a smile. I trusted him like a father anyway — he knew it, but it’s a nice thing to say.
“Anytime Tiffany. Anyway, so your parents wanted me to tell you where we’re at.”
I nodded.
The first thing he did was handed me a piece of paper that looked like a copy of my birth certificate. It said Tiffany Christine Jacobson on it! I had a huge smile on my face, “Is this real?”
“It is, but it’s not something that was easy to get. The state that you were born in really doesn’t want to do anything to help out in cases like yours. I worked through a friend to work on getting the name changed — the only thing that isn’t changed yet is this letter,” he said pointing to the M that was X’d instead of the F.
That made me frown, but at least the name was right. “How do we get the M changed to an F?” I asked.
“Well that’s going to be tricky, and unfortunately I don’t think we’re going to be able to do anything about it for at least a few months yet — if not a year or two. They’re going to want at least some proof that you are moving towards physically changing things before they’ll be willing to do anything on that. I’ll keep working on it though,” he told me.
He showed me a social security card (whatever that was) and some other documents too that he had gotten changed over to my name like. Some of those things, like insurance cards, represented a big feeling of relief for me. That eye doctor’s visit had been very nerve racking.
“Okay, so that’s the easy part Tiff,” he said, “the hard part is going to be next Wednesday when we have to meet with the school’s administration about this.”
Screech. The brakes in my head came on. After all that I’d gone through today with the role playing I hadn’t even thought about the fact that we’d have to meet with someone at the school this early already. “Next… Wednesday…?”
“We need to take care of it now so that if we have to take them to court we’ll have time.” He told me.
He must have seen the deer-in-the-headlights look I was giving him, because he quickly added, “However I think we’ll be okay. Your parents and I have set it up to where the principals, the school counselor, the superintendent, the school board president, and Dr. Reynolds will all be there. I will also be there to represent you and your parents.”
That information made me feel better about the meeting. If Mr. Hancock was there they wouldn’t dare do anything against me! I started asking/answering questions as we all talked through what would happen next Wednesday. He spent a lot of time discussing when we should talk and when we should let him talk.
Mr. Hancock also gave me some advice as far as what I should wear to the meeting. A dress, he said, would probably be a good thing to wear. By the end of the conversation, an hour later, I felt like we would be in good shape for the meeting.
When we finished I was quite happy that Amy was still left to sleep over that night. We changed into our pajamas before sitting together on the couch in my living room. Mom had rented a couple of movies the day before and we chose one of them to watch. Dad went to bed pretty soon after her parents left, but Mom stayed up watching the movie with us before shooing us to bed.
She wasn’t as used to us staying the night together as Amy’s parents were — but I think she knew as well as we did that we would be up all night talking. Especially, since I hadn’t been able to hang out with her for a couple of days.
“So are you still going to be here next Wednesday?” I asked Amy.
“No, we’re leaving that day for cheer camp with the school’s squad.”
“I’d forgotten about that… Oh well I hope you have fun with it! I wished I was going with you.” I told her.
“You’ll get to go next year Tiff, I know you’ll make the squad if you try out.”
“I hope so. I was talking with Mom earlier, she’s signing me up for some dance lessons this fall.”
“Neat!” She said.
“Yeah, I was surprised she agreed to it in some ways. But then she told me that if I was taking dance lessons she wanted me to start studying Tae Kwon Do too.”
“You know what?” She asked not really wanting an answer. “I should get my parents to sign me up for the same class!”
“That would be cool. It would certainly make it less odd that I’m a girl taking it,” I told her.
“Well we both should learn how to defend ourselves — you never know when some guy might try to take advantage of us,” she said in a very grown up manner — it was kind of funny, but not.
From there the conversation went away from the serious and strictly to the fun. Mom came and warned us to go to sleep at 3 — she’d gotten up to use the restroom and couldn’t believe we were still up!
Of course we were, what was she thinking?!? But we did go to sleep after that point — I didn’t want to get Mom mad at me — it was going to be a stressful enough week as it was.
Chapter 12
AMY HAD ACTUALLY ended up staying another night beyond that one. Mom had lamented to me after she left, “How does her mom deal with having both of you around all the time?”
I just stuck my tongue out at her and went to my room.
We had spent that Saturday out at my grandparents place. I brought my updated scrapbook, my trophies, and a certificate that had come in the mail for me about the scholarship, and the video to show them. They were amazed by the pictures that I had shown them and made me do some of the cheers for them.
I was both embarrassed, and pleased to show off what I had learned… It wasn’t that I was embarrassed to be a cheerleader… it was more that it was strange to do it by yourself. At camp I’d had fourteen other girls doing the same things with me!
I enjoyed that day a lot though. Both my grandparents seemed to be dealing with this a lot better than I expected them to. Thankfully for me it was as they said, “You’re our grandchild sweetie, whether you’re our granddaughter or grandson makes no difference to us. You’re still our grandbaby.” That had earned my grandmother a big hug at that point.
There had been further discussions of my one uncle that had wanted nothing to do with us now. Grandma had sent him one of the pictures that we’d taken of me with Amy’s mom in June — and he had been shocked by how pretty I was. He still wasn’t talking to dad, but he wasn’t outright bad mouthing him at every turn now. Grandpa thought he might be able to act civilized by Christmas.
After lots of town gossip we left for home. I spent Sunday night at Amy’s house with Mom coming to get me at eight so we could go to my doctor’s appointment. Amy had wished me luck before she went upstairs and went back to bed. We’d slept in our separate rooms that night, so she really didn’t have to wake up that long. I was glad she had though.
When we got to the appointment Dr. Reynolds secretary had us go into her office. Mom, Dad, and I sat down on a couch, while Dr. Reynolds and another guy sat across from us on another couch.
As we sat down Dr. Reynolds said, “Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson, Tiffany, I’d like you to meet my colleague Dr. Wilmer.”
“Pleased to meet you,” my parents and I said as we shook hands with him.
When I shook hands with him I saw his eyes pause and look me over. I think I saw a little bit of surprise in his face actually — I didn’t know what that meant though.
“Dr. Wilmer, I invited you today because I wanted you here to take part in discussions about Tiffany. As I told you on the phone we’re looking at starting her on a treatment to prevent her from entering puberty for now…” she continued on for a while.
This conversation was mainly between Dr. Reynolds, Dr. Wilmer, and my parents — I honestly felt like I wasn’t even there.
“Tiffany, if at any time you decide you want to change your mind on this you can stop the treatment and you should go on to grow up as a boy like you would have naturally. If you decide to continue being Tiffany I think we should probably consider moving onto a full hormone therapy late this fall, as Dr. Reynolds has suggested. I trust her judgment completely on this.” He told us.
“Do you want to do this?” He asked me.
This was the first time they had acknowledged that I had a brain as far as I was concerned. “Absolutely, can we start today?” I asked him.
“Actually I have set up an appointment for you to get a blood test in the lab downstairs. If we get that run this morning then I think we can go ahead and give you the first treatment, and the prescription you’ll be on, this afternoon around 2?”
I smiled. I didn’t think this would happen this fast. I know I wasn’t going to start growing breasts — but this would keep me from becoming a guy, a decent compromise all things considered.
“That should work for us,” I answered for my parents.
My parents then voiced their approval of the plan as well before my dad was allowed to go back to work. I walked downstairs with Mom to have my blood ran through their tests. I discovered that I really didn’t like that experience. It was weird watching my blood run into those vials. ‘How much of it did they really need?’ I had asked myself while watching them draw the fifth vial.
They gave me some water and something sweet before sending me back up to Dr. Reynolds office. There she grilled me with more role playing situations for an hour or so before Mom was able to get me to go to lunch.
Lunch was nice — Mom and I just hung out talking while we ate. Pretty soon though, we were in the car going back to the hospital. This time we went to a different floor where Dr. Wilmer’s office was located. We checked in with the receptionist who put us in line to see him. In the mean time I looked through the latest Seventeen Magazine that was sitting on the table next to me.
“Tiffany?” I heard a nurse call for me.
I stood up and followed her. She had me get on the scale to weigh. I was pleased to see I was still at sixty-eight pounds. As a boy that had bothered me a bit to be so light and wimpy — as a girl I was pleased to be so skinny! She had also taken a height measurement. I had actually grown an inch sometime recently and was now at 4’4”.
When she was done she took me into a room where I waited for the doctor to come in. Mom and I talked a bit while we waited. It really wasn’t anything deep as far as conversation until I asked, “Mom what do you think is going to happen Wednesday?”
“I don’t know sweetie. But one way or another you will be allowed to go to school as Tiffany. You will also be kept safe and treated with dignity or the district will be hit with a major lawsuit.”
That warmed my heart, but I was still worried. “What if they say I can’t be Tiffany?”
“They can’t really say that legally. I mean they could, but with Mr. Hancock there they aren’t going to be dumb enough to do that. That’s also why we’re bringing Dr. Reynolds in too though. She can say that it is for your own well being that you need to attend school as Tiffany. With a psychiatrist saying that you need to do that there isn’t much they can do.”
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
She came over and hugged me, “Everything will work out one way or another Tiffany, I promise you.”
The doctor came in at that point and shook our hands. “Okay, the blood screen shows me that we’re still in time to stop anything from really developing. There was a little bit of testosterone in her system, but not much. The shot that I’m going to give her will effectively stop her body from making any more of that until if, or when we want it to. You’ll need to follow this up with this medication every day as well.”
He handing mom a prescription. “So, are you sure this is what you want to do?” He asked one last time.
“Absolutely,” I told him.
“Okay then,” he said getting the shot. He administered it to me and then we left. It was that quick that we were done with him. We scheduled a follow-up exam in a month. Dr. Wilmer wanted to see me once a month to run blood and see how I was doing for the foreseeable future. I didn’t like the blood part… but if it was what it took to grow up as a girl instead of a boy I was more than willing!
After a stop at the pharmacy to fill my prescription Mom and I had headed home and I planned to take it easy. At least that had been the plan… She instead had made me clean my room. The nerve of her! Just ‘cause I had toys and clothes all over the place…
Chapter 13
WEDNESDAY MORNING CAME long before I was ready for it. I had picked out a light blue dress that had pink flowers on it to wear that day. I spent a long time on my hair making sure it looked absolutely perfect that morning. You would have thought I was going out on a date with as much time as I spent on it! My ears had finally healed from being pierced last month and so I was able to put in some butterfly earrings that seemed to go well with the dress.
Thankfully, Mom had known I would want to spend that much time on my appearance; so she had woken me up early enough so that even after all the time I spent primping, I had half an hour to spare for breakfast. Not that I really wanted to have any breakfast. My stomach kept flip-flopping around inside of me, I was so nervous!
Tuesday night I had talked with Amy on the phone for a long time. She had been so excited about going to camp today, but she told me she was going to miss me while she was gone. Amy said that she would call me tonight to see how things went. For me I just hoped that the fact she was doing cheerleading at school, and I wasn’t, wouldn’t get in the way of our friendship. She’d be doing cheerleading after school Monday through Thursday, every day — so I wouldn’t be able to go to her house every day anymore.
I told myself to focus on the present as we pulled up to the front of the school. I was being silly worrying about that when I had far more immediate problems to deal with. Mr. Hancock was waiting in the parking lot when we got there.
“Hi Tiffany, how are you doing?” He asked while he gave me a hug.
“I’m doing okay I guess… I’m really nervous and more than a little scared,” I added honestly. Dr. Reynolds pulled up about this point and began walking towards us.
“Don’t worry, we’ll get everything worked out. They don’t stand a chance,” he said as we walked into the school as a group. We checked in with the secretary who led us into the conference room I had been in several times last year. We each took a seat in the conference room. Mr. Hancock was on my right — the side closest to the head of the table, with my mom and dad on my left, followed by Dr. Reynolds.
The principal, the vice principal, the school counselor, the superintendent, and the board president all came in before the door was closed.
“First of all thank you all for coming,” Mr. Hancock began. “Before we begin though I’d like everyone’s permission to tape record this proceeding?” He asked respectfully.
Everyone concurred, and each spoke clearly stating they were in attendance and that they were agreeing to the recording. The principal actually had a recorder of her own setup for the meeting too. She was the first to speak, “Mr. Hancock you said this meeting concerned Brandon Jacobson, but all I see here is a girl whom I don’t know. What is this about — and should she be present?”
“Yes Ma’am it does concern your former student Brandon Jacobson. After counseling with a psychiatrist it has been determined it would be in Brandon’s best interest to begin coming to school as Tiffany.” It was like a bombshell had been dropped in the room. Everyone gazed at me like I was some sort of zoo animal.
“You mean that…”
I’d been instructed not to say much, but this was annoying, “Yes, I used to be Brandon, now I am Tiffany.” I told them matter-of-factly.
“Mr. Hancock this is highly unusual. If Brandon comes to school like this he’ll be nothing but a disruption to the learning environment.” The principal started to state.
“Ma’am for the rest of the meeting I request that you refer to Tiffany as Tiffany or Ms. Jacobson, not as Brandon since that is now her legal name,” Mr. Hancock said. “We will of course provide you with a revised copy of her birth certificate at the end of this meeting for your records.” There was a bit of venom there, but not an overwhelming amount. I don’t know how he pulled off being scary and pleasant at the same time. Crossing Mr. Hancock did not seem like something one would want to do.
“Al… Alright…” She said, clearly she was taken aback by his comment.
“Now, we have her psychiatrist right here with us today to discuss her findings. But in a nutshell, Tiffany suffers from a Gender Identity Disorder, a clearly defined condition, recognized by the medical community.” I grimaced when he said that, I hated that term, “This is a diagnosed condition that results in a need for her to live in the gender opposite of her birth sex, and probably transition to being a full girl when she turns eighteen.”
“Sir, do you understand how much he… I mean she, was getting picked on this past year? It seemed like I was dealing with one situation after another where someone was going after her. That was when she was just a short, intelligent boy. Now you want me to take her and put her in the student population as a transsexual? The kids will eat her alive!”
“Actually she has a number of friends who are already aware of her condition, and of her new identity, and all have been supportive of her” he shot back.
“Why don’t you transfer her to a different school in town? Surely one of the other middle schools where no one knows her at would surely be a lot easier?” She suggested. Clearly she’d rather give the problem to someone else.
“Because, she has friends here and has a relationship with many of the teachers already. That is in addition to her right to attend the school because she lives in-district.”
“Well then maybe we could put her into the special ed classroom, then she…”
“Ma’am I was wondering if you would try to suggest something like that. I will remind you that even if you did somehow get her classified as a sped student, she would need to be placed in the ‘least-restrictive,’ environment. Her academic record indicates she’s one of the school’s top students and, she has no physical limitations. Her only need is to be treated as the girl she is, and accorded the same considerations by the school as any other student. A special ed classroom would not qualify for that in her case.”
The banter went back and forth for quite a while as I sat there just sinking into my chair. Eventually the superintendent, Mr. Jameson, interrupted Mrs. Hinther, “Mrs. Hinther, that’s enough now. Dr. Reynolds, are you sure that it is in Tiffany’s best interest to come to this school next year as a girl?”
“Yes sir, I do believe that is the case.”
“Tiffany, you wish to come to this school as Tiffany next year?”
“Yes sir, absolutely.” I replied nervously.
“Then what would we need to do to make this work?” He asked everyone.
“Mr. Jameson I don’t believe that it can work…” Mrs. Hinther started to say.
“Mrs. Hinther, respectfully, you either need to start being helpful or be quiet. I’ve heard quite enough right now — and so have those tape recorders.”
She suddenly turned ashen… I think she had forgotten about the tape recorders. There had been several remarks she had made that could be brought up against her if we wanted to at this point.
Mrs. Henry, the vice principal, spoke up at this point, “Well I think first of all we’re going to have to address her class schedule. Right now she’s scheduled for a PE class, being in either the boys or girls locker rooms would be out of the question. So should we take her out of PE altogether at this point?” She asked.
Dr. Reynolds answered, “A lot of times that is the best way to work with this situation. The only other real alternative is to have a separate room where she can change — but there needs to be some monitoring in place so that no one goes in there after her for some reason.”
Mr. Jameson spoke up, “Let’s keep her out of PE for now. We’ll try to work something else out for next year maybe. In the meantime I would recommend you keep her doing something active for health reasons.”
“We have several things planned for that point already,” my mom told him.
“Okay, the next issue I can think of is restrooms… Do you have any recommendations on those?” Mrs. Henry asked Dr. Reynolds. I think she understood that she was the resident expert at the moment.
“Well in a lot of cases the best way to handle restrooms is to let her have access to your faculty restrooms. There’s usually a lock on those, and it’ll keep her from causing/having any awkward issues in the girl’s room. Under no circumstances should she be forced to have to use the boy’s room,” she said assertively.
“We should be able to arrange for her to use the faculty bathrooms,” Mrs. Henry replied. She apparently thought that was a good way to handle things.
After another two hours in this meeting we finally wrapped things up. They had discussed everything they could think about with the way I was to be treated, the expectations that my parents had for my safety being guaranteed by the school, and the strong likelihood of pressure being applied to the school to get rid of me. We also discussed meeting with all of my teachers together the week before school started — it was in my best interest for them to understand the situation so they could help me.
Mr. Hancock had made it clear that any missteps made by the district would result in a lawsuit. As we stood up to leave Mrs. Henry came over to talk to me. “Tiffany, I just wanted to tell you that you look very pretty today.”
“Thank you Mrs. Henry. And thank you for standing up for me.” I told her. In the middle of the meeting Mrs. Hinther had been dumb enough to start going after me again — Mrs. Henry had put her in her place. I was fairly certain after the meeting that Mr. Jameson, Mrs. Henry, and the school counselor were rooting for me. They would definitely be the first people I’d go to talk to if I needed something.
Mr. Winters, the school board president, hadn’t said much during the meeting. I honestly don’t think he developed an opinion one way or another. I did feel good though knowing that he and Mr. Hancock were golf buddies — that should help a bit if things got nasty.
Unfortunately that wasn’t going to make school easier with Mrs. Hinther. I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to help me one bit during the school year. I was actually feeling very nervous that she was going to be going after me for revenge after today… She definitely thought I was a freak to be dealt with. That really wasn’t a big surprise though, last year when my initial problems had been going on she hadn’t been very helpful. My parents had to push her to get rid of a student to keep me safe. Perhaps Mr. Hancock had brought up the word ‘suit’ enough though to keep her in check.
All-in-all it was an incredibly stressful meeting — but at least it had been agreed upon for me to attend school as Tiffany. Some schools wouldn’t have been intelligent enough to agree before having a lawsuit brought against them. In my case I knew that there were going to be more than enough other problems this year — this was just the tip of the iceberg for me.
That day as we left the school I gave Dr. Reynolds and Mr. Hancock both big hugs to thank them for their help. Amy called that night and I told her what had been decided. She was excited to hear that we didn’t have any major problems. Amy was also quite excited by the really good time she was having at camp. We discussed all of the things they had done so far — and what they were going to be doing tomorrow.
At the end of the conversation she said, “Tiffany you are so much better than half of the girls on the squad! I think Coach Holt is unhappy with most of the girl’s abilities and attitudes. She threatened to have a new set of tryouts in October to get rid of the girls that can’t hack it — and to let the ones on that should be on — before our competitions start. If they do those you have to try out!”
“I probably will if they do,” I told her before letting her go.
It was pretty quiet at dinner that night; the three of us were all preoccupied with our own thoughts. I went to bed two hours early that night, it had been a long day, and I was mentally and physically exhausted from it. As I lay down in bed, Mom came into my room and just sat down next to me for several minutes, stroking my hair — neither of us said anything. I vaguely remember her telling me “I love you, sweetie,” and giving me a kiss on the forehead before really beginning to fall asleep. I would also barely remember Dad coming into the room and saying “Good night princess.” At least through all of this my parents still loved me.
Chapter 14
THE NEXT COUPLE days were just lazy summer days. I slept later, did less, and generally moped around the house till Saturday since I had no one to do anything with. I received a phone call from Nikki that day asking if I wanted to come spend the night at her house. It was the first time she’d invited me so I decided to take her up on it. We had fun that night — but she definitely wasn’t the same level of friend as Amy. She and I could talk, but Amy and I were close enough we constantly completed each others’ sentences.
Sunday Amy came back and I went over to her house for a couple hours just to play and chat. During that time she told me everything that had happened on the trip — and how the coach was absolutely appalled by how badly some of the girls were doing. She’d been quite mean to some of the girls about it. She seemed to think that they would have some more tryouts in October to change the squad over — if they didn’t do it before then.
“Why would they do it so late?” I asked her. I’m not sure my parents would want to spend a thousand plus dollars on stuff for maybe two months of use…
“Well we’re going to be competing in some new competitions this year that are going to be held in the spring. Our coach cares more about us doing well at them than she cares about us doing well at the football games and such. I honestly think she would redo tryouts the first week of school if she thought she could get away with it.” She told me.
“Well, if and when they do it I think I’ll try out. I don’t know what we would do about the locker room situation for me though. They’re already planning on me not doing PE this year just so I don’t have to worry about that.”
“That’s cool though, you’ll get an extra elective, right?”
“Yeah, I’m going to take home ec, it’s the only thing beyond choir and band that I want to take.”
“Speaking of choir, we’re getting a new choir teacher this year,” Amy said excitedly.
“Good, she can’t be any worse than the ‘crazy woman’ we had last year.” I said with a giggle. Our previous choir teacher had been the only one with a bigger target on her than me at our school last year. “How did you find out about it?”
“Lindsey’s mom was talking to Mrs. Henry about it last week — she was going to pull her out of choir this year if Mrs. Schultz was still there.” She told me.
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to keep taking it either. Hopefully the new person is better.”
We talked through a lot of other gossip that she had heard over the trip, and she told me, “No one outside of our group that went on the trip knows about you yet.”
“You mean everyone’s kept the secret?” I asked her. We were really both surprised. The two of us figured if it had gotten out she would have heard about it on this trip.
“It seems that way — I think Kyle has kept the boys in check. I think all of the girls were okay enough with you that they’re not going to spill it either…”
“Of course we’ll just have to wait and see how everyone reacts when peer pressure starts, huh?”
“Yeah, there is that. Don’t worry though, we’ll get through it, I promise.” She told me.
I hoped she was right as I went home that night and thought about what was to come. There were now only three weeks left in the summer before we would be going back to school. I was lucky that we were starting so late for once, usually we started a week earlier.
During those three weeks Mom and I made sure that my wardrobe would past muster in the ‘cool’ department. She refused to let me dress too grown-up though. As she told me, “Tiffany, you’re not even twelve yet. You don’t need to be dressing like you’re eighteen!” I would usually respond something like, ‘I’m almost twelve,’ or ‘most of the girls in my grade are going to be thirteen this year,’ but she never bought it. Most of my clothes were coming from the girls department because of that. Truthfully, most stuff in the juniors department was too big for me anyway.
We also got the professional prints of our cheer squad from the camp during that time. My individual pictures in particular really came out well — I couldn’t see any hint of there being a boy underneath that uniform. Mom had taken an 8x10 that had come with it and put it on our wall in the hallway. I liked that picture a lot, it made me feel special every time I walked by it.
I also ended up having two appointments with Dr. Reynolds since she wanted me to be as prepared as possible. Slowly I was feeling less like her sessions were nightmares, and feeling more like I might have a shot at this next year. On Friday, the week before school started, we had set up a meeting with all of my teachers for the next year at the school board office. Dr. Reynolds and Mr. Hancock were also supposed to attend with my parents and me.
That morning was very much a repeat of the day we met with the administration — the butterflies were very much making their flying presence known. I tried once again to make sure I looked absolutely perfect before these teachers saw me. When Mom and Dad had talked with Mrs. Henry about the meeting she had told me that the teachers didn’t know what was going on yet — just that they needed to meet at the board office for a meeting with a student and her parents.
They had decided to have it at the board office so there would still be some anonymity possible before the school year for me. I didn’t honestly know that it was going to do anything good or bad, but we agreed to it anyway. We arrived on time and were directed into a conference room that they used for boardroom meetings. Mrs. Henry greeted me warmly, but I definitely felt the eyes of Mrs. Hinther drilling holes into me. Everyone else in the room was just confused as we sat down.
Mrs. Remar greeted my mom with a friendly greeting and asked, “Where’s Brandon? And who is this young lady?”
“Ladies and Gentlemen that is why we are having this meeting today,” Mrs. Henry started off saying to everyone — directing them to their seats. She introduced all of the teachers to my parents and me — I didn’t know all of them — and then she began to tell the teachers why they’d been dragged over to the board office.
“And this is Tiffany Jacobson, she’ll be attending school this year in your classes.” I watched Mrs. Remar’s face and was shocked honestly that it had taken her as long as it had for her to realize who I was. Mr. Randolph was right behind her in recognizing me, but I don’t think Mr. Martin made the connection until it was spelled out for him.
“A few weeks ago we were approached by Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson’s attorney, Mr. Hancock, and requested to set up a meeting with the administration. We had very little information about why, but we set it up anyway. At issue was Tiffany coming to our school this year.”
“Why would that be a problem?” Ms. Beecher, a young and pretty teacher asked. When she had been introduced I had learned that she was the new choir teacher.
“Well she has attended this school before as a different person. Last year she attended as Brandon Jacobson.” I saw Mr. Martin jump, he suddenly knew who I was. The other teachers began to take a closer look at me, with all of them shaking their heads.
“Are you saying that Tiffany is a transgender boy?” my new science teacher, Mr. Grainger asked.
“Yes, that’s what I am saying,” Mrs. Henry said.
"Actually, Tiffany is a transgender girl," interjected Dr. Reynolds. "A transgender boy would be a boy that is biologically female. Tiffany is male, but she is a girl," she continued as Mr. Grainger nodded his head thoughtfully.
“I don’t believe it, wow…” he replied back to her.
“Tiffany you look very believable as a girl,” Mrs. Remar said, “I assume your parents and everyone else know that this is going to be a challenging year in dealing with the other students though?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied to her. She didn’t completely scare me now, but she still imparted a bit of fear into me. As a band director she was a very powerful figure in my mind.
“Are you sure this is a wise move?” my math teacher who I’d had last year too, Mr. Martin, asked.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Mr. Hancock started, “But this is the move that is being made for her own well being. Dr. Reynolds here,” he said pointing to her, “has evaluated and determined that it is best for her emotional well being that she be allowed to live as Tiffany. It is more complicated than that of course, but this is something that will be allowed and facilitated by the district.”
“We have all spoken at the administrative level and Tiffany will be allowed to go to school this year. Because of that we need to discuss how we’re going to work together to maintain a safe learning environment for her.” Mrs. Henry added.
“The kids are going to be merciless with her,” Mr. Randolph guessed.
“Maybe, maybe not,” my dad said, “twelve of her fellow students already know about her changes. For better or worse it ended up coming out on the Florida trip this summer. She has a really good core group of friends that should be able to help her and keep her safe.”
“Who all is in that group?” Mrs. Henry asked. We hadn’t told them that much information when we’d met earlier on in the year.
I named off all of the kids I knew I could count on, then added the others from the trip that I wasn’t as sure of.
“That’s all of the good seventh grade cheerleaders right there,” Mrs. Holt, the home ec teacher said. “If they’re behind her that should help her quite a bit.” I’d forgotten that she was also the cheer coach at our school.
“I’ll try to make sure that we have those students scheduled in your classes as much as possible too,” Mrs. Henry told me. I had a feeling there was going to be some rearranging of schedules then, Amy was in most, but not quite all of my classes. I knew she wouldn’t be in band, but she was signed up for home ec too, but wasn’t in the same hour with me.
“So how are we going to deal with the initial introduction of Tiffany to the students?” Ms. Damien asked.
“Well we haven’t decided what to do with that at this point,” Mrs. Henry said. “We’ve tossed out a bunch of ideas, including an assembly, but I think our best approach might just be to have her go to school and go through the day as normal.”
“Won’t that increase the shock factor?” Mr. Randolph asked.
“It might, but it might also give the kids a chance to adjust and figure out that Tiffany is a great person before they even figure out who she was.” Dr. Reynolds replied.
“What about…?” The questions, concerns, and comments seemed to go on forever. I sat there not quite trembling, but definitely not comfortably the whole time, listening to everyone talk about me as if I wasn’t there. Every possible issue came up, including things like the band trip we were taking in the spring — what would be my situation for housing and such. To the teachers’ credit they all handled it quite professionally, and none of them once seemed to begin a judgmental vendetta.
I looked down at my watch as Mrs. Henry said, “Thank you all for coming, please remember this is not to be discussed with anyone at this time. If the media comes into play only the administration will be allowed to comment on it,” and saw that we had been there for well over two hours.
When we stood up to leave Mrs. Remar was the first to come over to me. “Tiffany, I think you look very pretty. We’ll get through this year together. Let me know if you ever need to talk,” she said with a smile and gave me a hug. Every once in a while her cold scaly exterior would shed itself only to find out she really was a human.
Right behind her Mr. Martin came up, “Tiffany I expect you to do just as well in my math class this year, let me know if you have any problems and I’ll try to help you out…”
The teachers continued coming up to me until Mrs. Holt came up to me, “So are you the girl that Amy was talking to me about?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well she mentioned a friend of hers had gone to a cheer camp with her earlier on in the summer. She seemed to think that if we had tryouts mid-season she would do well.”
I blushed, “I guess that’s me. We had a lot of fun at the cheer camp, and I think she wants me to be on the squad so that we can still hang out together as often.”
“Well let’s see how this year goes, but I am telling you that we are going to have a set of tryouts in late September for a new ‘dance team.’ It’s going to be just as responsible for cheering at games and such, but it’ll be the one that’s going to go to competitions this spring. She seems to think you’d make a great asset to the squad, so you’ll have to try out if you’re interested.”
I smiled and said, “Thank you Mrs. Holt.”
Eventually we got away from everyone and went home. Later that evening I was preparing just to lay down on my bed and read a book when the phone rang, “Tiffany, it’s Amy!”
I thought to myself what took her so long? She’d had to do some errands with her mom that day so I hadn’t been able to get ahold of her yet. The two of us talked for a long while that night before I remembered the part about Mrs. Holt. “You told Mrs. Holt about me?” I asked her.
“Not about you specifically…” she trailed off.
“Well she figured out you were talking about me during the meeting and afterward told me she’s going to start a new ‘dance team’ up this September. She seemed interested in me trying out for it.”
“Really!??” She asked me excitedly.
“Yeah… we’ll see how things go between now and then though. I think I’ll do it though if they’ll let me. I just have a feeling that I’m going to have a tough time to get them to let me onto a girl’s team for something.” I told her.
“That shouldn’t be a problem though Tiff, you are a girl.”
“Not on paper yet… and definitely not down lower… I’m worried that if I make it they’ll all scream about me beating some ‘real’ girl…” I trailed off.
“Tiffany, enough of that. You are a girl, you and I both know it, and if we’re the only two at the school that do then that’s fine, it’ll work out.” She told me.
“Thanks Amy.” I heard her talk to her mom off the phone for a second.
“Okay, so my mom wants to know if you and your family want to come over to our house on Sunday for a ‘back to school’ barbeque.”
“I don’t know, hold on let me go ask.”
True to typical kid form I yelled, “Mom?!?”
“Yes sweetie?” She said as she came in the room from the kitchen.
“Amy’s parents want to know if we would like to come over for a barbeque on Sunday to celebrate school starting again… I don’t really know what kind of celebration that is! But anyway can we go?”
“Tell her yes, we’ll be there.”
I put the phone back up to my ear, “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“I asked did you hear that?”
“How could I not… that was just after my ear drum burst from your yelling in the phone,” she said with a giggle before passing the information along to her mom.
“Who else is going to be there?” I asked.
“I think Nikki, Ashley, Lindsey, Jennifer, Kyle, and David will all be there with their families.” She told me.
“Whoa, that’s a lot of people.”
“Yeah, it’s a good number. Anyway, Mom is yelling at me to get off the phone. I keep telling them if we’d just move to one of our houses we wouldn’t have this problem… Mom’s just sticking her tongue out at me now Tiff, anyway I’ll talk to you later,” she said as we hung up.
The barbeque should be a lot of fun I thought. All of the kids that would be there knew who I was and had accepted me pretty well so far. Not all of the parents knew about me though… that could be interesting.
IN THE FEW days before we had the barbeque we went shopping to buy school supplies. I had gotten a purple trapper keeper, pens, pencils, highlighters, markers, folders, paper, all of the wonderful stuff parents have to shell out for each year. Everything was marked with “Tiffany Jacobson,” something that made me have goose bumps each time I looked at it.
In preparation for the new year I had also spent a lot of time with some of those little kid handwriting books trying to develop some better handwriting skills. By this point my handwriting was now passable as a girl — it still wasn’t great though.
Sunday I wore shorts and a t-shirt over my swimsuit when we went over to Amy’s. We had arrived early to help her parents out with cooking and such, but Amy and I were quickly shooed away from helping after she nearly dropped a chocolate cake. We were told to get lost and go swimming — something we were more than willing to do.
The two of us were swimming and playing some diving games when Lindsey, Nikki, and Ashley arrived in quick succession. Shortly after that Kyle and David had arrived and we all had fun laughing and giggling together. Later that evening we were dragged out of the water and forced to eat… Okay so that’s a bit of a gross exaggeration. Really as soon as we heard, “Dinner’s ready,” we had all jumped up and ran towards the food.
As we sat there eating David and Kyle got Amy and I off to the side.
Kyle told me, “Tiffany, we just wanted to tell you to let us know if anyone tries to pick on you this week. We’ll take care of anyone who does.”
I was feeling kind of skeptical on one hand, but I remembered the old saying ‘never slap a gift horse…’ and responded, “Thank you!” I restrained myself from giving them both hugs — I didn’t honestly know how they would react (me either for that matter.)
“So are they going to say anything about you to everyone?” David asked. I had looked at him with amusement as he asked that. David looked like the stereotypical, future All-American football player already in seventh grade. He was already over five and a half feet tall, well over a foot taller than me, and was very sturdily built. By all rights you would expect someone like that to be completely unintelligent, but his grades were almost as high as mine!
“Their plan right now is to say nothing to the students. I guess we’ll see how long it takes before they figure out that I used to be Brandon,” I told him.
“I don’t think they’ll figure it out until seventh hour,” Kyle told me. I’d forgotten he was in band with me, he played tuba.
“You really think it’ll take that long?” I asked.
“At least that long,” Amy said.
“Then why do you think seventh hour Kyle?” I asked.
“Because they’ll be able to see you playing saxophone — I think that’ll trigger it for a lot of people.” He told me.
“I guess that makes sense. Are you sure you two want to be associated with the biggest freak in the school though?” I asked him.
“Absolutely,” David said.
“Thanks guys, I really do appreciate it.” I couldn’t resist anymore and gave them both a hug before we rejoined the group.
Everyone talked and enjoyed themselves until about 8:30, when the party started to break up and head home. Mom and I were helping with cleanup while Dad and Amy’s dad talked. At nine we began to leave for home.
I had really wanted to stay the night at Amy’s, but as a cheerleader she had to be at school the next day for the sixth grade orientation to the school. She promised to call me when she got home so we could talk.
I forced myself to go to sleep that night, I was feeling a little better with the reassurance that Kyle and David were going to be behind me, but that didn’t help much. I had found out on the way home that some of the parents that found out there weren’t necessarily pleased… but they seemed to keep themselves in check.
Monday my stomach was in knots and I really couldn’t get myself to do much of anything. I must have picked and re-picked my clothes for the next day a dozen times before Mom got home and helped me choose something completely different.
When we went to Applebee’s that night — Mom didn’t feel like cooking after her first day back to work — I ordered something I normally liked. But, as I sat there I barely touched it. Mom looked at me with some concern but didn’t push me too hard to eat. I think she knew I was incredibly nervous about the next day and she didn’t really have anything she could say to me to make it better.
At home I talked to Amy about how things went earlier for her, but it was the only thing that brought a smile to my face. She had told me how one of the girls that was being lifted for one of the cheers had screwed up and done a face plant in front of the entire sixth grade class. I knew her, and felt really bad for her, but it seemed to epitomize the whole situation with what Amy had said about the squad having problems. I definitely knew I could have done that better.
I was so terrified of what was to come. I had been verbally and physically assaulted so many times last year, especially during the first half, that I knew how bad things could get. My only armor was what Dr. Reynolds had helped build up. I had faith in my friends, but I knew there would be times I would end up getting separated from them. And… friends can turn on you.
I tried to read a book that night, I tried to play a video game, I tried playing with my Barbies, I tried doing anything I could think of, but no matter what I did I couldn’t concentrate on it. Mom eventually brought me a cup of tea to try and soothe my nerves — it didn’t really help much though. When she suggested I go to bed early that night I didn’t fight her.
I thought maybe I would be able to forget about my troubles in the realm of sleep, but that didn’t happen quickly. I tossed and turned well into the morning imagining everything that could possibly go wrong the next day. When I finally fell asleep I kept waking up — not getting any real rest.
Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 Part 4 of 8 by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
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The Legal Stuff: Daring to Hope © 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
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!
Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them 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! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!
-Tiffany Shar
Chapter 15
"TIFFANY, IT’S TIME to wake up," I felt my dad nudge me gently.
I started a bit before realizing what was going on. I’d just been having a really bad nightmare, even as I was waking up I was forgetting it, but I was sure I had been getting beat to a bloody pulp about the time Dad woke me. I somehow managed to keep from crying as I went and jumped in the shower.
I washed my hair and showered as quickly as I could — I was planning on spending every spare moment on my appearance this morning. I tried not to tremble as I put my earrings in my ears that morning — it wouldn’t do to have to stop my ears from bleeding in addition to getting ready! I felt like I was going to start shaking at any moment if I let myself.
I had thought about wearing a skirt or a dress today, but Amy and Mom both thought it would be better if I wore shorts and a t-shirt like most of the other girls would be wearing. I ended up wearing a striped light blue t-shirt that had shorter sleeves than anything I’d ever worn as a guy. It also covered my stomach, but just barely so, it was a new style that was coming in. I’d heard about it for the first time when we’d been at cheer camp. I then put on a pair of shorts that didn’t even come halfway down to my knees.
I put on a pair of white tennis shoes I had and a pair of blue socks that matched my shirt. I spent the better part of an hour perfecting my hair that morning — I knew if I did it right it would help keep people from recognizing me a little bit longer. I knew it was inevitable… but if I could get through half a day without them figuring it out it would be nice.
I ate a quick breakfast of cereal before hearing Amy’s mom honk outside. She’d offered to take Amy and I to school this year, at least for a bit, the other night. Mom and I had thought it was a great idea — if I didn’t ride the bus I would have one less opportunity for something to go wrong.
I grabbed my purple backpack (which just had my trapper keeper in it) and my saxophone, before I ran outside locking the door behind me. I got into the back seat next to Amy and sat quietly. She put her hand on my shoulder, "You’ll be fine Tiffany," she reassured me.
"Tiffany, your hair looks very nice today," her mom told me.
"Thanks." I said. I couldn’t even bring myself to smile at her compliment. I was terrified.
When we pulled up to the drop off point at our school, Amy and I got out while waving goodbye to her mom. We had purposely timed it so that we got there just a few moments before the bell rang. I had just enough time to take my saxophone into the band hall with Amy before we heard the bell and went to our first class, social studies with Mr. Randolph.
As we took a seat in the classroom in desks next to each other, I looked around to see who else was in our class. I was glad to see that Ashley and Lindsey were in the same class. Kyle walked in a couple minutes late and sat down on the other side of me.
"Some of you I know, some of you I don’t know, so I’m going to go ahead and call everyone’s names. Please say here if you are here," Mr. Randolph told us.
He read through the list of names, when he got to mine he asked, "Tiffany?"
"Here," I was grateful he remembered our arrangement to just call my first name — not my last. The hour passed with me introducing myself to a couple of the kids in there that had known me before — but none of them recognized me. After that class I went to science class, grateful to see that Amy, Nikki, Ashley, Lindsey, Jennifer, Kyle, and David were all in that class.
Mr. Grainger seemed to be a neat teacher that also remembered to not use my last name when he called attendance. Of course, half of this class knew who I was, but everyone was friendly. I found myself making friends with several other kids that I had never really had a chance to get to know before. All of us were hyper and giggly at first, but as the day went on and we heard more and more of the rules over and over again we grew kind of restless.
In choir I discovered there were only fifteen of us in the class. Apparently most of the other kids had quit rather than have to deal with Mrs. Schultz again. Amy and Lindsey were the only two that I really knew since we were in the advanced group that was made up more of eighth graders than seventh graders. Amy introduced me to the cheerleading captain, Kristina, who was also in that class. When she told her that I had gone to the same cheer camp with her this summer she seemed very jealous about it.
"Wait a second! You’re the one that got to get tossed by the college guys?" She asked.
"Yeah, it was fun and terrifying all at the same time," I answered with a giggle.
"I can only imagine. Amy said you were sent a good fifteen feet in the air above the guys."
"I don’t know if it was quite that far, but I’m certainly glad they caught me!"
The three of us began talking with Lindsey about different cheerleading stuff up until our new choir teacher, Mrs. Beecher, began talking. She introduced herself, went over the same boring expectations, but then became one of the first teachers to actually do something that day when she at least ran us through some vocal warm-ups. She actually had some fun ones that we hadn’t done before.
Amy, Lindsey, and I were all in the same Algebra class with David, Kyle, Ashley, and Nikki. I could really see that the vice principal had played a lot with the schedules. I had many of the same classes with everyone that knew already. There were a couple of others from the trip in this class too.
Mr. Martin was the most boring of all of the teachers so far. He even had the nerve to give us a test on the first day back! I used to think of him as a nice teacher… I guess he still was, but come on! A test the first day?!?
After that we walked as a group down to the cafeteria to eat lunch. Amy introduced me to a bunch of the eighth grade cheerleaders that were at lunch and asked to sit with us. I was really amazed that they would be willing to let an outsider sit with them. Kristina was one of the eighth graders that joined us and I found myself really enjoying the conversation I was having with them.
After lunch I went to my home ec class, where Amy was the only one in there that I knew. "Amy are you alright with having basically every class with me?" I asked her quietly in the hallway before going in. Mrs. Henry had changed her schedule so that she had everything but band with me now.
"Of course Tiff. Why wouldn’t I be?"
"I don’t know, I just keep expecting you to get tired of hanging out with me…" I told her.
"Stop worrying Tiff," she told me.
Home Ec was going to be a different class. I was certain of that. Mrs. Holt discussed how we were going to be learning about cooking, sewing, finances, and child care this year. Child care? That part was not something I really wanted to look forward to. I’d heard that they made you carry around these little dolls everywhere you went for a weekend. They would cry incredibly frequently and you were lucky if you could get sleep at night. Not to mention they kept track of whether or not you changed them and fed them, and for all of that you got a grade.
At least the rest of it sounded useful though… I also noticed that there were a lot of ‘unintelligent’ kids in this class. I would say half of the students were in a gang of some sort — ‘maybe we should have taken a different class,’ I thought to myself.
It was another class that took place without incident though, and I began to feel more confident that I might be able to make it through the day without having anything go wrong. Sixth hour came quickly and I found myself in one of the most ideal classes for English. Right off the bat I discovered that Ms. Damien was a really neat teacher. She was a huge improvement over Mr. Tamera, who I’d had last year, just in the fact she spoke English!
All of the students that went on the trip were in this class. Unfortunately that included Jarred. Midway through the class I saw him looking up with a group that had five people who hadn’t been on the trip. He pointed to me and I saw people shake their heads in disbelief. Was he outing me? Out of all of the guys he had been the one I was most worried about. I looked at Amy next to me and whispered to her what I suspected, but it didn’t take him long to take care of confirming my suspicions.
"Yeah, that ‘girl’ over there isn’t really a girl guys. She’s really that freak Brandon." He started to say at the top of his lungs before Ms. Damien told him to join her outside in the hallway.
I was dead. People knew now.
Kyle wasn’t going to have any of that though, he walked over to the group that Jarred had talked to. He said something to them, I wasn’t sure what, but they all kind of nodded their heads and looked a bit scared. Not as scared as when Jarred walked back in though — I don’t know what Ms. Damien had told him, but he was on his best behavior through the rest of the class period.
Kyle walked with me to band, along with Nikki, and I took my seat in the saxophone section. Mrs. Remar said to get our horns out and so I warmed up — glad I had spent a bit of time recently practicing. I watched some of the other players try and play — they seemed to be in a lot of pain.
While we were warming up I heard some whispers from behind me and knew that the jig was definitely up now. Word had made it around quickly — likely to the whole school by now. One of the girls that I didn’t really know that well stood up from the clarinet section, walked over to me and asked, "Tiffany is it true?"
"Is what true?" I asked trying to play dumb.
"That you’re really Brandon?"
Yep the cat was out of the bag and on a rampage… "I’m not anymore, I’m Tiffany now." I told her firmly yet softly.
She looked confused, but nodded, "okay, you’ll have to explain that to me sometime. You do understand this is really weird right?"
"Maybe, to others. But I am who I am, and I know who that is now." I told her. She appeared to chew that over as Mrs. Remar told everyone to sit down and began warming us up as a group.
The sounds we made that day as a group were terrible! She berated everyone and told them all to go home and practice that night. She didn’t want that sound to ever happen again.
As I was getting ready to leave class Mrs. Remar asked, "Tiffany can you come here for a moment please?"
"Sure," I replied.
I went into her office and she closed the door. "How are things going so far today?" She asked me.
"I suppose they could be going worse," I started off, "No one had figured it out until one of the guys that I didn’t trust from the trip told people about me last hour. Up until then the day had been going perfect. I’m sure tomorrow will be bad though."
"Keep your chin up Tiffany, things’ll work out. I think you’re very brave to be true to yourself like this."
"Thanks."
"Nice job today, I’m glad to hear that at least one person practiced this summer," she told me as I left her class. That last comment kind of made me smile again as I walked out.
At that point I realized that I needed to go back to my locker really quick to grab something I’d left there earlier. As I approached it I felt a hand push me against the locker. I spun around and saw it was Lucas, a kid I’d had problems with the previous year. I turned back around and began opening the locker, grabbing what I needed.
"So not only were you a wuss last year, but, you really are a fag like I thought," he told me. It was just like a situation I’d run through several times with Dr. Reynolds.
"Get lost Lucas, you’re just mad there’s one more girl in school that wouldn’t go out with you even if you were the last guy on earth." I said smartly to him with a smile on my face. I watched his face go ashen, go into shock, and turned around before he could respond to anything. I began walking down the hallway when I heard running steps towards me. He came up in front of me, and I saw a fist fly towards me.
"How dare you fa…" he started to say before I saw a hand catch his hand in mid-air. In the blink of an eye he was on the ground with his arm pinned behind his back.
David looked at him and said, "You will leave Tiffany alone, you will not call her names, and you will certainly not attack her again."
"Or else?" He sneered trying to maintain his tough guy image, even though he was lying on his face in the hall looking like a frightened little baby.
"Or else me, and several other football players are going to be paying you a house call. Do you understand? Tiffany is under our protection, and you’ll pay dearly for not remembering that," Kyle said from behind him.
David released him and Lucas scampered down the hallway like the rat he was. "Thanks, that was a little scary" I said to both of them.
"You’re welcome Tiffany, you’d better hurry or you’ll miss your bus." David told me. I hurried off down the hallway and out to the bus stop. I made it onto the bus just as she was closing the doors.
I ended up sitting down right behind the driver as that was the only seat left that I could see. "You must be Tiffany?" the driver asked.
"Yes ma’am." I told her.
She handed me a card and said, "Would you please fill this out with your information?"
"Okay," I replied. I filled it out and gave it to her when we got to my bus stop.
As I got off at that bus stop I heard, "Hey Tiffany," I turned around and saw a new sixth grade girl that lived just down the street from me.
"Hey," I said politely. She began walking with me down the block towards our houses.
"Is it true?" She asked.
"Is what true?" I asked. I wasn’t trying to play dumb… but I didn’t really want to spread things farther than they already had.
"You know…"
Oh well, so much for damage control. "That I used to be Brandon?" I asked her.
She nodded.
"Yeah, I used to be, but I’m not anymore."
"How did this all happen?" She asked me.
She was being nice enough to me, ‘the least I could do was be civil about it and explain some of it,’ I thought. I began explaining things as we walked down the block. We ended up sitting outside my house for a half-hour or so talking and after all was said and done she told me, "Tiffany, this is really strange… But you make a really pretty girl, and I’m okay with this. I doubt many others are going to be though." She told me
"Well, we’ll see how much David’s threat against Lucas holds them back," I told her.
We parted and I went inside to collapse into a blob on the couch. I had made it through one day… but it was going to probably have been the easiest day since kids hadn’t known the whole day. I ended up crying just because of all of the pent up stress before falling asleep in a ball.
Chapter 16
THE NEXT THING I knew, Mom was opening the door as she came home. "Tiffany, are you awake?" She asked me. I could see she was really worried about me when she saw the condition I was in.
"Uh-huh, I guess," I said nodding my head as she sat down next to me.
"How did things go?"
"Well, they were going perfect — probably too perfect — until sixth hour when Jarred decided to tell everyone who I used to be. By the time I got to band everyone was talking about it. No one was sure what to make of it though, so I only had one girl in that class come up and ask me if it was true. She couldn’t believe it of course. At least she didn’t freak out on me."
I sniffled before continuing, "After class Mrs. Remar pulled me into her office for a few minutes to talk to me — she wanted to see how my day had been. That was an okay time until I got to my locker to pick up some stuff I’d left in there. Lucas came up to me and grabbed my shoulder to turn me around and called me a bad name. I got my stuff out of my locker and told him ‘you’re just mad there’s another girl in the school who can’t stand you,’ or something like that, and walked away."
"How’d he react to that?" Mom asked.
"Well he was pretty shocked. It took him a few moments to even get the insult — that was enough time that I started heading for my bus. He jumped in front of me and started to try to hit me when David got there and stopped him."
"Good for him, what happened?"
"Well he and Kyle threatened that they and the other football players would make a house call if they needed to… I’m so glad that they’re my friend’s Mom, but I can’t for the life of me understand why they are."
"I think it’s because they understand what an incredible girl you are Tiffany — and I think you can trust them." She gave me a hug.
"Other than that things went okay?"
"Yeah, Katrina, the captain of the cheer squad sat with Amy and me at lunch. She and I hit it off really well… I’m sure that’ll be over tomorrow though. It can’t be cool to hang out with the freak…" I said with tears coming out of my eyes.
"Sweetie, it’ll work out. I promise you things’ll eventually work out." About that time the phone rang.
Mom got up to get it and told me it was Amy.
"Hey," I said to her in a fairly lifeless voice.
"Are you alright?" She asked me.
"I guess. You must have heard about after school?" I asked.
"Yeah, Katrina saw it and told me about it."
"So she must be appalled that she sat with me today huh?" I asked.
"No, actually she was incredibly cool about it when I talked to her." She replied.
"Really?"
"Yeah. When we were changing into our workout clothes a lot of the girls were talking about Kyle and David sticking up for you — and since they know that you and I are best friends they started asking questions."
"Like what?"
"Well, I’m not going to go into detail — some of them were pretty stupid and I don’t want to upset you — but after all was said and done I think most of them respect your courage to do this."
"You’re kidding right?" I wondered if this wasn’t some massive setup for horror to come.
"No, especially Katrina was talking about how they want to make sure you get a chance to prove yourself as the girl you are — not as the boy that came to school before."
I was flabbergasted. "Not all of them thought that… right?"
"No. I won’t lie to you. We have fourteen girls on the squad, seven of us — including Katrina and Lindsey and me — are going to be standing right behind you, three of them are okay with it — they think it’s weird but aren’t going to make fun of you for it, but then there are the other four. I don’t think they’ll go out of their way to be mean to you — but I think they could cause some trouble especially when it comes time for tryouts next month. But Tiffany, three of those four are terrible and you’re sure to beat them!"
"Well ten out of fourteen isn’t bad." I told her
"No Tiffany, it’s not. So other than that did anything else happen after sixth hour?"
We talked for a good twenty minutes before Mom made me hang up so we could eat dinner. I had to recant everything for my Dad that night and Mom reminded me that Dr. Reynolds wanted me writing all of this in my diary. Of course that was in addition to practicing my instrument, doing some stupid homework some teachers had already assigned… and oh yeah I had to sleep too…
After a quick dinner, I decided to begin with practicing. We didn’t have much from school to work on, so I worked on some stuff that my private teacher had me working on. It was an etude that had a lot of fast sixteenth notes in it, and I’d been fighting with it for a week or so. After about an hour though I didn’t really have any desire to keep practicing — I was still completely frazzled and nervous about tomorrow and it was just too hard to concentrate.
Following that I flew through the homework that I had — thankfully it was just some stupid stuff that was easy to do. Then I had to do the task that I really didn’t want to do. Dr. Reynolds had asked me to start doing a diary a few weeks back but I hadn’t really started. That had caused Mom to begin riding my case and I promised that I would actually start doing it today… She told me if I didn’t I wasn’t going to be allowed to go to Amy’s. Talk about hitting below the belt!
I sat down and started writing about everything that had happened during the day. As Dr. Reynolds had asked, I described how I felt about everything as it happened — scared senseless covered most of it. I worked on it diligently until I had reached talking to Amy after school. At that point I looked up at my clock and saw it was already 8:30pm. My parents always wanted me in bed by 9 last year. I wondered if I could bargain for a later bed time this year…
I walked out to the living room, "Mommy?"
"Uh-oh… What do you want sweetie?" Mom asked. Was I that transparent? Okay, yeah maybe I was.
"I was wondering if I could stay up later this year — maybe till Ten?"
"I don’t know sweetie, you have a hard enough time getting out of bed in the mornings as it is."
"Please? Can we at least try it? I haven’t had any time to do anything fun tonight so far."
"Did you do your diary entry for Dr. Reynolds?"
"Yes, I worked on it for more than an hour."
"I dunno, I suppose we can try it — but if you start showing signs of not handling it I’ll move it back to nine. I want you in your pajamas and ready for bed by nine though, okay?"
I gave her a hug, "Thanks Mommy!"
She hugged me back, "what’s the chance you could call me Mommy sometimes when you don’t just want something?"
I just smiled back at her and went back to my room to change into my pajamas. As I left the room I turned to her and said dramatically, "You should know by now Mommy that I ALWAYS want SOMEthing!" I tossed my hair up and down as she smiled at me. Then I went into the bathroom and took care of the essentials of brushing my teeth and washing my face. I grabbed a teddy bear and sat down on the couch in the living room to watch TV with Mom. We watched something worthless until she told me I needed to go to bed.
As I went to my room with my teddy bear, turned off the lights, and lay down to go to sleep, I found that my thoughts of tomorrow completely overwhelmed me. What was going to happen? EVERYONE knew now. I just knew that as soon as I pulled up in front of the school tomorrow there were going to be two reactions.
The first would be all of the kids staring and talking about me, but they wouldn’t acknowledge me. They’d be staring at me just like some sort of kid that had been severely scarred in a horrible accident. When I looked at them they would turn away as if they hadn’t been looking — but we both would know that they had. If I spoke to them they would act like I didn’t even exist.
With the other group they would walk by me and taunt me. Some would be just as simple as whispering things like ‘freak,’ or ‘fag,’ or worse… but they wouldn’t say it loudly enough for a teacher to hear. They’d snicker as they passed by me or maybe purposefully run their shoulder into me to try and knock me over. Of course some of them would be like Lucas yesterday, and actually be obnoxious enough to make a scene if they thought they were safe.
At least with the first group I knew I wouldn’t be harmed physically. Psychologically was a whole other story…
Tomorrow was going to be hell.
With that thought I began crying softly… Then not so softly…
Mom came into my room without saying anything. She just held me while quietly stroking my hair. I clung to her for a long while that night before I must have finally gone to sleep.
Chapter 17
AMY AND I stepped out of her mom’s car and out to destiny. I’d done everything I could to delay stepping out of the car, but Amy had persuaded me to go ahead. When I stepped out of the car I swear all of the eyes that were near us went straight to me. ‘Straight to the freak,’ I thought.
Amy and I walked together to put my instrument in the band hall, and then stood by the door to wait to go into our class. As we stood there I felt someone come up from behind me. ‘Great, it starts,’ I thought to myself.
I decided to turn around just to see what threat was behind me.
"Hey Tiffany, how are you doing?" Kyle said as I looked at him.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief, after yesterday I knew I could trust him, "Better now that I know it was you behind me." I said with a tense smile. I felt a little bit of the tension in my body leave with him standing next to me.
"Don’t worry, we’ve got your back today."
"I appreciate that," I told him as the bell rang.
As we entered the door to go into the hallway I felt like I was an important person with bodyguards. Behind me Kyle was joined by David, and although people stared at me in the hallway, no one seemed to be willing to say anything with them next to me. Who would have thought I’d be able to make it to my first hour safely?
As I sat down in my chair a kid leaned up from the desk behind me. "Why’d you come to school today freak?"
I just ignored him. What else could I do? In the mean time I saw another girl come over to me. "Is it true that you’re really Brandon?"
"No, I’m not Brandon anymore."
"But you used to be right?"
"I guess. I finally got tired of pretending I was him." I told her.
She just stood there with her mouth kind of open, before saying, "oh," and going back to her desk.
When I was guessing the types from earlier I had clearly forgot there would be some kids that would be in denial that I was who everyone said I was. That’s okay, that’s better than the kid behind me. I finally looked back and saw that it was a kid named Markus, he was a wannabe cool kid, but apparently thought he was cool enough to make fun of me.
As we went through the class I felt my desk get kicked over and over again by him. He did some other things throughout the class trying to get to me but I managed to tune him out. At one point I think Kyle figured out what he was doing, because he looked over my way — then back behind me, and the kicking stopped.
All in all, except for being a pointless class of coloring maps, I survived the hour without further incident. As I walked from that class to Science I remained in a nice sandwich between Amy, Lindsey, Ashley, and Kyle. The five of us actually managed to have a fairly normal conversation as we went through the hallway.
"So how about being in Mr. Randolph’s class again…?" Kyle asked me.
"It’s just loads of fun. I so look forward to another year of being educated by ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos.’"
"Watching someone getting kicked in various places ‘is’ educational right?" Lindsey asked.
"Sure!" Amy said. "It’s great ammunition for when you see Jarred running his mouth everywhere," she said. You know how making a girl mad can be a really bad thing? I don’t think Jarred even began to know of Amy’s anger…
"So what all did you do this summer after the trip?" Lindsey asked me.
"Well I went with Amy to that cheer camp," I told her. She’d been there yesterday when we’d talked about it, "Then I mainly dealt with stuff and did some shopping with my mom. Other than that I was at Amy’s house, or she was at mine, most of the time."
"That’s cool," she said as we rounded the corner to a hallway that led to a side area of the school that had our science class in it.
"What did you do?" I asked her.
"Well we had the team camp that we went to. That was a lot of fun — we’ve got to get you on the squad, I think you’d have a blast. My family also went to Texas to see some family in San Antonio. It was really hot down there! I didn’t do a lot beyond that though," she told me.
As we entered the class some of the students in my class shot me glares, some stared, some looked frightened, and some looked curious. Honestly the last group didn’t scare me — they were probably the most likely to be able to deal with this. The first were the ones that really made me nervous. Who knew what they were capable of doing?
That day Mr. Grainger assigned seating by last name, and I ended up by a couple of the kids I didn’t really know. One of them, a girl named Janica, leaned over and asked, "Have you heard about the strange rumor about you? A bunch of people seem to think that you’re really a boy. Can you imagine that?"
I couldn’t trust myself to speak… so I just smiled and shook my head. She was the resident airhead of the school.
"But it’s true though right?" A boy next to me, Paul, asked.
"Yeah, I guess it kind of is," I told them.
"You’re kidding?!?" the girl asked.
"I wished I was," I told her honestly. I wanted to ask her, ‘so are you going to just treat me like a freak, be a friend, or be an enemy?’ But of course you can’t ask something like that.
"But people like that go to hell…" She sort of trailed off into space. I realized that she wasn’t meaning to insult me — that was just what her parents had always said.
"Well, the way I’ve been taught one sin is as bad as the other, so this really wouldn’t be any worse than calling someone a name," I told her.
She seemed to think for a moment, "Well, I won’t hate you if that’s what you’re worried about. I can’t say that my parents would approve of me hanging out with you… but I don’t care."
I was truly amazed — someone who could think on their own.
Paul however opened his mouth, "Well I won’t be hanging out with a homo like you at any point. I can’t believe the school would even allow you to come to school like that."
At that point Kyle, who was sitting in the seat behind him leaned forward and said something to him. I watched his face turn pink, then red, then purple in quick succession. I’d have to ask him what he said later. After that Paul didn’t really speak at all in class again that day.
If you can believe it, all of that took place before Mr. Grainger finished handing out textbooks! He got up in front of the class and said, "Okay now that you have your textbooks please open them up to page…" We read through the introduction at the front of the book as a class. Everyone ended up reading a section of the text.
After that he told us he expected us to have read through the first chapter by the next week. He was a strong believer in us doing work on our own. At least we weren’t supposed to have vocab notebooks this year! This year we had an ‘earth science’ class. It seemed like it would be somewhat interesting… but I definitely thought biology last year was more fun than this would be. With biology there were lots of labs to do, dissections and such — it didn’t sound like we would be doing that as much with this class.
Class ended fairly quickly and Amy and I went to choir. The new choir teacher continued to impress us as a teacher — she was definitely way better than Schultz. Ms. Beecher seated us all by voice types that day and once again I found myself seated with the sopranos. At least this time as a girl that seemed more acceptable. Amy and Kristina were also both put in the soprano group with me.
That day we started learning ‘The Water is Wide,’ a song that Amy and I thought was really pretty. About three minutes before we were to be let out of class one of the secretaries called over the intercom asking for Amy to go to the office.
"It must be my lunch money," she said to me on her way out, "I forgot it on the kitchen table."
She left and I found myself alone for the first time in a day-and-a-half. Amazingly as we were leaving I heard, "Hey Tiffany!"
I turned around and saw it was Kristina. "Hey, what’s up?" I asked her.
"Is it true?"
"Yeah," I knew what she was talking about.
"Wow, that’s crazy..."
"Yeah, it kind of is…" I braced myself for awkward silence or something.
"Well, anyway I think you’re a really cool girl. Don’t let anyone get you down about this."
"You’re cool with it?"
"Sure. From everything that Amy’s told me about you from the camp I absolutely want to get to know you. Several of the other seventh grade girls have said some really good things about you too. I really hope you try out for the dance squad that Mrs. Holt is putting together in September. I don’t care whether or not you were originally a boy, when I met you yesterday you were definitely a girl."
"Thanks Kristina," I said as I began walking towards my next class. I was feeling really good at this point. I had never expected to do this well with people, maybe there was hope for my year to go really well.
Suddenly I found myself grabbed and shoved into a side hallway that few students ever went down. I tried to keep my wits about me long enough to figure out who had shoved me, but I was in shock at the surprise of it.
As I turned around I heard "Well, well, well, if it isn’t our resident tranny," from Jarred.
I also looked to see Lucas had joined him for this. "Yeah, I always thought it was a little fag, but I really didn’t think it would show it this much."
"All I know is my parents aren’t going to stand for a freak like you being in this school. They don’t want me to catch whatever diseases you have." Jarred sneered.
"Yeah, it’s probably already got AIDS or something…" Lucas looked absolutely disgusted.
"All I know is my parents are going to the school board to get you kicked out of here! Imagine if they let you in here what else they’d let in. Well my parents’ll get you out of here, mark my word, or you’ll be back in boys clothes. When they found out that you’d been allowed to dress like this the last part of the trip they flipped." He paused, "With any luck Mrs. Manning and Ms. Fitz’ll be canned after this too!"
I was shoved against a wall by Jarred now while Lucas said, "Well if you really want to be a girl that much perhaps we can arrange for it…" I honestly had no idea what he had in mind, but I knew that this was getting out of hand quickly. Dr. Reynolds had drilled this kind of situation into me so many times over the past few weeks I just reacted.
"You would like that wouldn’t you Lucas? There’s not a single girl that wants to go out with losers like you two, and you know what?" I paused, "You’re going to have to hope there’s another girl that wants to — because I’m certainly not going to." I kneed Jarred in the groin, twisted and ducked underneath Lucas’s arms and managed to get away from them. As I twisted away I left some scratches on his arm from my nails. I ran down the hallway as quickly as I could, crying all the way.
What else could I do? I was so upset I couldn’t make it to my next class. Instead I sat down on the landing of a flight of stairs. I curled up with my arms around my legs… It was only the second day and the first time I was alone I had been assaulted… To make it worse the possibility of them making me leave the school, or have to come back as Brandon frightened me to no end.
‘I’m not Brandon! I don’t think I ever was! Why couldn’t they just let me be? I wasn’t hurting them. I wasn’t hurting ANYONE!’
I don’t know how long I sat there before I felt a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t even have the energy to jump or run away at this point. ‘I might as well let them pound me into a pulp,’ I thought.
"Tiffany?"
I didn’t want to look up, it would probably be another bully out to get me.
"Tiffany, are you alright? Class started ten minutes ago."
I looked up and sniffled, it was Kyle. I shook my head, I definitely wasn’t okay.
"Come on, Mr. Martin sent Amy, David, Ashley, and I to look for you. Everyone’s worried about you." He offered me a hand to help get up.
I just looked dumbly at it for a moment before taking it. He led me back to the outside of my math class where he got Mr. Martins attention. I was just staring off into space down the hallway. He must have told Kyle to walk with me down to the office. About that time Amy and Ashley returned running up to me to hug me. They said a lot of things to me, but I really don’t remember any of it.
I knew it was going to be bad — I knew the risks coming in — but I just… Why?
"Tiffany, are you alright?" I looked up and found myself in Mrs. Henry’s office.
I managed to bring myself to wipe the tears from my eyes with my palms. ‘Tiffany, you have to get yourself together,’ I told myself.
"Not really…" I trailed off.
"What happened?" She asked me.
"What good will it do to tell you? Nothing’ll happen to them…" I started to say.
"Tiffany, that’s absolutely not true! Tell me what happened."
I looked at her and decided it couldn’t really do any harm right? "I was coming to this class just enjoying the fact that Kristina didn’t hate me now that she knew about me. As I was walking down the hallway I was dragged down another hallway I never go down, I think the special ed classroom is down it."
"When I had a chance to turn around I saw that it was Jarred and Lucas that were dragging me down the hallway. Jarred then called me a ‘tranny,’ and they took turns shoving me up against the wall. Lucas called me a ‘fag’ somewhere in this. Jarred then… Jarred said his parents were going to go to the school board to get me kicked out… or make me… make me come… make me come as Brandon." I really lost it at that point.
She handed me a Kleenex at this point, and I think I may have seen a bit of compassion in her eyes. After a couple minutes I settled down a bit, and she asked "What happened next?
"Lucas finally said something about, ‘if I wanted to be a girl — he could arrange for it.’ My doctor and I have talked about violence against other girls like me — I became really scared then. I managed to make a comeback against him about ‘them just being mad because all the other girls wouldn’t go out with them, and sorry to tell them I wouldn’t either.’ I kneed Jarred and managed to just twist away at that point and run away. I think I scratched one of them while I was trying to escape."
"Is that all that happened?" She asked me.
I started bawling again at this point, "yes ma’am." I couldn’t believe that she asked if that was ‘all that happened?’
IT WAS A long time before I managed to regain some semblance of control. When I did I found Amy was giving me a hug and my mom was walking in the door. Mom came up to me and took over for Amy.
Are you alright sweetie?"
"No… not…really." I told her.
She hugged me for a long moment before I could finish, then heard Mrs. Hinther say, "Would you please come into the conference room?"
"Hold on a few moments," my mom said. "I’d like to take Tiffany to the restroom to give her a chance to wash her face off."
"Well… we really don’t have all of our day at your disposal…" she began to tell my mom.
My mom stood up and said to her, "You WILL have all the time we need. If you don’t I guarantee you that there will be a lawsuit filed against you and this school by the end of today. Do you understand?" She did so with a low voice that dripped with venom.
Mrs. Hinther realized she was in a bad situation and directed her to take me down the hall to a faculty restroom that I had been using. I finally managed to regain some control of myself as I splashed warm water on my face. I spent several long moments sitting there doing that before I wiped it off with a paper towel. Mom produced a hair brush from somewhere and brushed it back to the point that it looked mostly normal. I still looked like a wreck.
She walked back with me to the office. As we began to enter the conference room I heard a voice say, "sorry it took me so long to get down here, I was finishing up in court with something." I turned around and saw Mr. Hancock standing there.
"Hi Tiffany," he told me.
I couldn’t believe he came down here on what must have been incredibly short notice, "Thanks for coming…" I said, trying not to start crying again. I knew with him present I would have a strong advocate.
As we walked in with him present Mrs. Hinther said, "Excuse me, he’s not a guardian and will not be allowed in this meeting…"
"Is that so?" He asked her. "Well then you’d better go ahead and let Mr. Jameson know that there will be a suit placed against the district by the end of the day."
I think she was surprised that he was going on the same line as Mom. "On what grounds?"
"Well first of all you’re not allowing a parent to have legal counsel with her when her daughter has been attacked at school. I might begin to believe that you condone the actions of the two students and wish to be lumped in with them."
"You can’t pull this. Mrs. Harris would you please call the police to have Mr. Hancock removed from the campus!"
"Mrs. Hinther, may I speak with you for a moment?" Another voice asked from the office. I wasn’t sure who it was, but it sounded familiar. Really all of this was just a fog around me — I wasn’t that coherent.
I know this incident doesn’t seem like that serious… I mean after all every student has been attacked in this manner at some point right? I certainly had more physical harm done to me last year at times. For me this was an event that was everything I’d feared might happen to me. Being attacked, called names, and threatened with some sort of sexual assault. It was eating at the very core of a fragile feeling of security that had formed since coming back to school yesterday. Well, not really eating, it had bashed and shattered that feeling. The worst part was now I had to deal with the mess that it already seemed to be causing.
"Mr. Hancock, I’m sorry for overreacting, you may stay for this meeting." Mrs. Hinther came back in and said.
I was taken aback by her change in attitude this quickly, but a second later saw who was responsible — Mr. Jameson, the Superintendent, had come to the school.
He joined my mom, Mr. Hancock, Mrs. Hinther, Mrs. Henry, and me at the table. "Okay, so what happened here today?" Mr. Hancock asked me after starting a tape recorder.
I managed to relate the events and what happened as calmly as I could… I only sniffled and had some tears go down my face — I managed not to outright bawl. I think I was pretty cried out at this point.
When I finished Mrs. Hinther responded, "Clearly I believe that this is a sign that this arrangement isn’t going to work. I believe we need to move Tiffany to a separate educational unit for…"
"Excuse me Mrs. Hinther, but that is completely unacceptable to my clients," Mr. Hancock started. "As we have previously discussed with you, all students must be in the ‘least restrictive environment.’ To place Tiffany in that situation would not follow the law. Tiffany’s grades are in the top three percent of her class. She has plenty of friends and relationships — proving that she can handle herself in the general population. Do you have some reason why she shouldn’t be in this population?"
"Well clearly h…she cannot be trusted to be in with other students. It’s only the second day and she has started a fight."
"Excuse me?" My mom and Mrs. Henry both asked.
My mom seemed surprised by Mrs. Henry asking the same question. Mrs. Henry also seemed equally surprised that she had let herself lose control.
"Mrs. Henry, Mrs. Hinther, may I see you in one of your offices?" Mr. Jameson asked calmly.
When they had left I asked mom, "How did he get here for this?"
Mr. Hancock answered though, "I called Robert as soon as your mom called me. I told him I had a feeling it would be in the district’s best interest to attend this meeting. He agreed."
"Why are they accusing me of starting the fight?" I asked Mr. Hancock.
"I think Mrs. Hinther is trying to drum up a charge to get you out of this school." He responded.
"Will they be able to do anything to Tiffany?" Mom asked him.
"I doubt it. It’s a good thing you called me though, I don’t like where this could go. We’ll see what their story is when they get back here."
We didn’t have to wait long, Mr. Jameson entered behind Mrs. Hinther and Mrs. Henry. As Mrs. Hinther sat down she looked at me and said, "Tiffany you have my apologies, I was out of line."
Mr. Jameson then spoke, "I assure you that there will be no action taken against Tiffany for this incident. We obviously cannot, and will not, discuss actions against other students due to privacy concerns, but I will assure you they will be punished."
"And the concerns, that were raised by Mrs. Hinther, about segregating Tiffany from the population?"
"That would be a foolish thing that will not be done while I’m superintendent. We have spoken and Tiffany will be treated with respect," I saw him give a glare towards Mrs Hinther, "and allowed to proceed through her education without interference. Everything will be done to maintain a safe environment for her — including punishment for anyone that attacks her."
"We would like to file a formal complaint against the students with the police in regards to this incident," Mr. Hancock told him.
"I can fully understand that, ‘Mrs. Hinther would you please call the school’s resource officer to the office?’" Mr. Jameson ordered.
I could tell she was in deep trouble with him as she walked away with her shoulders slumped down.
Discussions continued, statements were given to the resource officer, and they eventually noted that it was time for my lunch. Mr. Hancock stepped out to talk to the secretary for a few moments and then came back in. "Do you have what you need?" he asked the resource officer.
"I do, I don’t know what all we’ll be able to do at this point — this is going to probably need to be handled at the school level for this incident. We have it on paper though for now and we will have it for any further incidents."
"There’d better be more than enough deterrent to prevent that," my mom said to the principals.
"I assure you things will be taken care of," Mrs. Henry told us.
"Very well then." Mr. Hancock said while standing up. He led Mom and I out to the office.
"Would you two like to join Amy and I for lunch?" He asked Mom and I.
"Sure," Mom said. "Let me just check Tiffany out, hasn’t Amy eaten already?"
"I sent for her a little bit ago, we’ll bring them back after lunch."
We left for a brief lunch to a nearby Chinese restaurant. After eating off the buffet and having a chance to chat with Amy, being reassured by her that I would be okay to return to classes, I managed to gather enough courage to go back to school.
After all was said and done we returned to school in time to go to English. Kyle, David, Lindsey, Ashley, Nikki, etc. all completely surrounded me making sure I was okay. They were all concerned by what had happened. It was interesting — everyone except Jarred from the trip was sticking by me so far… who would have thought anyone, let alone a large group would stand behind me?
There were more threats issued towards Jarred and Lucas than I cared to catalog, and I somehow knew that I should have a while without problems from them. Jarred wasn’t in class — apparently the administration was following through with their promise to take care of things. I was afraid of what he was going to do to me to get even now though.
English proceeded that day with us getting textbooks. I had apparently missed a couple earlier from other classes. I’d get them tomorrow — I didn’t really care at this point. As I went through my last class, band, my friends never left my side. I arrived home without further incident that day.
Chapter 18
AS SOON AS I got home that day I had to quickly get ready to go to a dance class that I was starting. It looked like I was going to be having a very busy time during my weeks this school year. Mom had signed me up for two nights of dance classes, a night of gymnastics, a night of Tae Kwon Do, and my sax lessons doubling on the night of Tae Kwon Do. Of course, this was because I asked her to.
Prior to the film money my parents might have been able to afford one of those… but certainly not all four. It was definitely more than any one kid should do… but I had reasons for everything. Of the two nights of dance class one was a traditional ballet class and the other was a "cheer" dance class. The studio had enough girls interested in improving their chances to make the elite dance team at our high school that they could fill a class for that.
After this summer I really wanted to become a cheerleader, and possibly even get on the dance team I now knew they were putting together this fall. I figured both classes would give me a much better shot at achieving that goal. The gymnastics lessons were going to be one-on-one with an instructor to help me with that goal as well. And of course I didn’t really have a choice on the Tae Kwon Do lessons… they were a good idea and my parents were making me take them.
Mom came home at 4:30, fed me, and got me to the dance studio by 5. There were nine other girls in the dance class — all beginners like me — and I found myself having a great time throughout the class. Actually, because of the summer camp I felt like I was a bit better off than everyone else. I had a lot of fun, but it certainly was a lot of work.
All of the girls in the class were from other schools; none of them knew that I wasn’t physically a girl — and I did everything I could to keep it that way. We all talked a little bit as we finished up — but overall there hadn’t been a lot of time to get to know anyone. Just before we left the instructor came up to Mom and I, "I just wanted to tell you Tiffany that since you’ve done this stuff before maybe you should be in the level two class we offer."
"Done this before?" I asked.
"Surely you’ve done this before? You were doing so well with everything. I mean it’s clear that you haven’t done more than a year of training, but you’ve obviously had a very good year of training before."
I looked at her with a stunned expression on my face, "Umm… I’ve never done any of this before coming to class today," I told her.
"Any of it?" She asked incredulously.
"No, I went to a cheer camp this summer but that’s it. Never anything with ballet." I told her.
Mom piped in at this point, "Why don’t we go through another week of class, and if you still feel like Tiffany should move up we can think about it then?"
"That sounds fair enough. I’m thoroughly impressed Tiffany, you could do very well if you continue in this," she told me with a pat on the back.
"Thanks Mrs. Tyler," I told her as we left.
I was beaming by the time we were on our way home from that. During the time I had been in the dance class I’d managed to forget about everything that had happened that day. Maybe, given enough time, I would be able to have experiences like I’d had that night and at cheer camp — where no one knew that I was different from everyone else.
I worked on some homework for awhile until I got a phone call from Amy.
"Hey Tiffany, how are you doing?" She asked me.
"Actually I’m doing okay right now I guess." I told her.
"How was ballet?" She asked me.
"It was a lot of fun — I actually had the teacher fooled into thinking I’d studied for a year already."
"How’d you do that?"
"I’m not really sure. I guess I was picking up everything fast enough that she assumed I had been studying already. She wants me to join the next level up," I told her with a smile on my face.
"That’s cool, are you going to?"
"Mom wants me to wait and see what happens next week first. If I continue doing this well she’ll do it."
"That’s awesome. So you were kind of able to forget about earlier a bit?" She asked me.
"Yeah… kind of." I paused for a moment. She seemed to know to wait, "you know if today was the first day of this stuff how bad is it going to get?"
For some reason I was past tears… I wasn’t really sure why. I should have been bawling — instead I just felt numb about it all.
"Tiffany I don’t know, but we’ll all be here for you. From what Dad told me I don’t think you should have any more problems for a little while at least from the school. I don’t know, I’m a little worried about what Jarred’s parents are going to do about all of this. They’re fairly involved with the school board — they could cause problems."
"Yeah, I’m worried about that too."
"It’ll work out though Tiff, just wait and see." She told me.
"I sure hope it will."
We kept talking about a lot of different things for a while until we got to a topic I hadn’t really thought about. "So Tiffany, your birthday is like next Friday right?"
"Yeah it is. I haven’t really thought much about it though. I’ve been too worried about trying to get through this week."
"So what are you planning on doing for it?" I could sense she was trying to keep me thinking about positive things.
"I don’t know… I haven’t really talked to my parents about it. Usually I just end up having some sort of dinner and cake with my grandparents coming over. I’d kind of like to do something different this year — twelve isn’t as big as thirteen, but it’s my first birthday as Tiffany."
"We really should do something cool. Let me talk with my mom about a couple ideas I have." She told me.
"Like what?"
"Let me talk to her first okay," she said with a bit of glee in her voice. She was up to something; I hoped it was going to be good.
"Okay… Let me know soon though — otherwise I’ll get stuck into the same old lame tradition." I told her.
"Trust me! I’m not going to let you have another lame birthday party!" She told me. I could feel the smile on the other side of the phone. After a few more minutes of talking she let me off so we could both work on finishing our homework.
That night I went to bed and woke up three times to different nightmares about getting called names, beaten up, and in the one my dad woke me up to get ready for school it was even worse.
DAD HAD TO hug me and help get me moving after that one. He asked me what my nightmare was about… But I couldn’t go into it with him. It had been a dream that Jarred and Lucas were making good on their promises. I honestly was completely innocent in my way of thinking at that time — and really only understood what happened in sex due to my research on becoming a ‘real’ girl.
That was more than enough though for my brain to come up with an attack by the two of them. Somehow I found myself dressed in a skirt and a blouse, hair done, and looking pretty when Amy’s mom honked to pick me up that morning.
Amy’s mom knew something was wrong when she saw me though. "Tiffany are you alright?" She asked me.
"I guess…"
"I guess isn’t alright," Amy said to me gently.
"I just," I paused and breathed, "I just had a really bad dream last night. Well actually a three of them. I don’t really remember the first two — I just remember waking up — but the last one’s kind sticking in my head."
"What happened?" her mom asked me gently.
"I don’t really want to talk about it," I told her softly.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
At that point I definitely was fighting the tears, my voice cracked as I said, "no, I really don’t."
Amy gave me a hug and I did my best to keep myself in control. I didn’t really want to get to school and look like I’d been crying. A few tears went down my face though as I said, "I dreamed that Lucas and Jarred attacked me…"
"Like beat you up attacked you?"
"Worse…" I said unevenly. "They were doing other things to me."
I wiped the three tears that had escaped my eye off of my face with the palm of my hand. ‘I should be letting myself break down,’ I thought to myself, but I couldn’t do it right then.
Amy undid her seatbelt and gave me a hug, "It’ll be alright Tiffany, it was just a dream."
"Tiffany, do you feel like you really should be going to school today?" Her mom asked me. She had stopped the car at a red stoplight and turned around to look at me.
"Not really… but I have to go. I can’t run." I told her. My voice was far more firm and secure than I felt.
"If you change your mind call your mom or me okay?" She told me. She had to turn around and start driving. "She set it up to where Greg and I can pick you up from school too if we need to."
"Thank you," I told her with a forced smile.
Amy handed me a Kleenex and after using it to wipe my face I blew my nose. Amy rubbed my back with her hand the rest of the way there. Somehow by the time we got there I managed to look decent again.
Stepping out of the car that day was as big a challenge as anything. I knew that I had allies, but I also knew that there were other Jarred’s and Lucas’s out there. I wasn’t even sure that the two of them were done with me — rather I doubted that was the case.
We walked up to the school to follow the usual routine and I made it to first hour without incident. During class we were given some time just to talk while we were doing a crossword puzzle. So Kyle, Ashley, Lindsey, Amy, and I just pushed our desks together so we could talk.
"So have you heard about what happened with Jarred and Lucas?" Ashley asked me.
"No, no one has told me anything today yet. And… yesterday I just tried to make it through the day." I was fighting to keep my composure. Just the mention of Jarred and Lucas brought the nightmare and yesterday’s incident right back to the front of my mind.
Amy sensed trouble, but before she could try and warn Ashley off she told me, "Well they were going to try to expel them, so they gave them a ten day suspension until they could have the hearing. Jarred’s dad though apparently has more power than my parents thought — they threatened to sue the district if that happened — so they just gave both of them a five day out of school suspension."
"That’s it?!?" Lindsey asked incredulously.
"Well it could have been worse. They tried to get my dad’s TV station to run a story on how the district was allowing Tiffany to come to school and ‘disrupt’ the learning environment."
I was being pushed past the breaking point right now. I hadn’t even thought of the possibility that the news media might get involved with this. I think Ashley finally got the hint at that point and tried to do some damage control.
"Tiffany, don’t worry about that happening though, okay?" She started. "Remember my dad is the manager, he chooses whether stuff like this gets on or not. He likes you, and doesn’t want to see you hurt, so he squashed the story flat before it was able to take off." She said the last part with no small amount of pride in her voice.
"Tell him thank you for me," I told her with a forced smile. "What about the other stations and the newspapers though?" I asked her.
"He also let them know in no uncertain terms that if they ran with this story he would make sure there was a lot more coverage on his station about the ‘irresponsibility’ of running a story about a minor. I don’t think it’ll come up anytime soon around here." She told me.
"Thanks Ashley, your dad is awesome."
"I’ll tell him you said that. He also said he was going to call your parents and warn them though — so they have a heads up."
First hour seemed to finish pretty quickly after that, and second hour soon followed. As we were walking down the hall to choir a kid called me another uncreative derogatory remark.
Unfortunately for him though David was still walking with me. I’m not even exactly sure how David managed to do it, but the kid ended up sprawled on the floor pulling a wedgie out of his rear end. He mumbled a quick apology to me as he then scampered on to his next class. I just smiled at David and waved as Amy and I split off to go another direction.
As I sat down on the choir riser Kristina came up to me, "Tiffany are you doing okay?" I turned to look at her and saw some genuine concern. That surprised me given the fact we’d known each other all of three days now.
"Better so far today," I told her.
"I can’t believe what those two jerks did. And then I can’t believe that the school basically let them get away with it!"
"Yeah, I know five days of suspension is a lot — but it definitely wasn’t enough. I just hope maybe the two of them won’t try anything for the rest of the year."
She whispered to me and Amy at this point, "Actually the word’s gotten out that anyone who messes with you is going to be taken out by the football team and beaten."
"Good," Amy said.
"I won’t turn down help," I added.
"It’s kind of interesting that it’s not just the seventh grade players though, somehow David and Kyle convinced Bobby — he’s the captain this year — to get the eighth graders in line." Katrina said this with her eyebrows raised a little bit — and a big smile.
"I just hope that it doesn’t come back as something that they’re acting nice and they attack me when I don’t expect it…" I said warily.
"I think you’re safe Tiffany," Amy told me.
"Especially if you make the dance team." Katrina added. "You are trying out right?"
"I want to. Has she set the dates yet?" I asked.
"Not yet, she told me she’d have them by Friday though. I know she wants to have a week of working out and a Saturday session before having the tryouts. But she also said by the end of September, so I’d guess that last week will be the tryouts and the week before that the other part."
"How’s that going to work out with all of the cheerleaders that are sure to want to try out?" I asked.
"I think we’re just going to make that cheer practice that week." Amy told me.
"Well, I’m not getting my hopes up — but I’d really like to make it."
"You should Tiff. I saw the video from your camp yesterday at practice — I couldn’t believe how well both of you did." Kristina told me.
"Are you talking about their video from their camp?" Lindsey butted in.
"Yeah," Kristina said.
"That was really cool Tiffany — I couldn’t believe some of the stuff that you all did." Lindsey added.
"You took the video to practice?" I asked Amy. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that.
"I thought maybe it would help you out if some of the other girls could see how talented you are." She told me, "Are you okay with that?"
"I suppose. I think I’m just nervous because of yesterday. So you really thought I was okay?" I asked Kristina.
"Yea…"
"Time to start class Ladies," Ms. Beecher said ending our conversation.
"Sorry," I said meekly. I was among a chorus of a few girls there.
I kind of felt bad — how rude had we been? I didn’t know, but I was definitely enjoying her as a teacher. She actually taught us! It was another fun day in choir that led up to Algebra.
This time Amy didn’t let me out of her sight and we made it to class without incident. Towards the end of that class Mr. Martin asked me to come up to his desk. "Tiffany, are you doing alright?"
"For the most part Mr. Martin." I replied to him.
"I’m terribly sorry about what happened to you before my class yesterday," he told me. "If there is anything you need — or if there are any students giving you a hard time please let me know."
"Thanks," I told him.
"Did you have a good summer?" He asked me.
"Yes. It was definitely a busy one." I told him.
"What all did you do?" He asked me. This was kind of awkward… I guess he was trying to make sure I really was alright?
"We went to Florida in June, then I went to a cheer camp with Amy in July, and other than that I had a lot of appointments and such." I answered.
"I can imagine. Well anyway I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay, let me know if you need anything." He told me as I walked over to my desk and he wrapped up class.
At lunchtime that day I actually had fun talking with the group that sat at our table. Kristina, Lindsey, and I talked a lot about the video they had seen. I enjoyed the look on their faces when I told them about the college team that had tossed me.
"How high did you go?" Lindsey asked incredulously. "Is she serious?" she asked Amy.
"Yeah, I couldn’t believe how lucky she was that she got picked. First she gets to be on the top of that massive pyramid — and then she gets to get tossed by these really hot college guys!" She giggled. "She even has a picture of it too!"
"So what are you up to tonight?" Amy asked me. The two of us hadn’t been able to get together after school at all this week so far since she had cheer practice.
"Well I’ve got an appointment with Dr. Reynolds right after school. Then at 7 I’ve got that dance class for cheer stuff." I told her.
"That’s so cool that you’re taking that," Amy said. "I wished I could take it — but we have football games till about then that we’ll be cheering for each week."
"You’re already on the squad, so you’ll have a better shot of making the dance squad no matter what you do." I told her.
"I think you’ll both have a good shot at it," Kristina replied to me.
"I hope you’re right," I said as we walked out of the cafeteria that day to sit outside and talk. The conversation moved to more mundane stuff before we all headed off to our other classes. From there my day ran just as smoothly — it was a nice change from the day before.
Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 Part 5 of 8 by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
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Please visit Tiffany Shar's Bookstore Page |
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
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!
Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them 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! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!
-Tiffany Shar
Chapter 19
AFTER BAND I gathered my stuff quickly to go out to get picked up by my dad for my appointment with Dr. Reynolds. "How was your day Tiffany?" He asked me as I got in.
"It was good Daddy," I told him.
"So nothing happened today?" He asked me.
"Nothing bad at least." I told him.
He began the thirty minute drive to Dr. Reynolds office and went with me upstairs. Dr. Reynolds asked to talk to him for a few minutes alone before she began with me — by this time I was used to the drill of being talked about before I went in. I looked over at the table next to me and began reading through a fashion magazine that was laying next to me.
I didn’t really pay much attention to what I was looking at though. I was sure that Dr. Reynolds was getting a huge update on stuff that had happened in the past few days… I didn’t know what she would say about it… There really wasn’t anything she could do to make it go away.
After what seemed like an eternity I joined her in the office while my dad waited in the waiting room. "Hi Tiffany, how are you doing today?" She asked me.
"Fine I guess… I have a feeling my dad told you about yesterday?"
She nodded. "He told me some things, but I’d like you to tell me yourself."
"Well where do you want me to begin?" I asked her.
"Well why don’t you start with telling me how things began on Tuesday?" She suggested.
"Okay," I told her. I began to tell her about how well things started off on Tuesday. It had been great how I’d been seemingly accepted by my peers — most of them didn’t even recognize me. I told her about when Jarred told everyone about me, how I’d felt betrayed and scared all at the same time then. I continued through the events that happened after school and actually managed to smile when I told her about how Kristina and a lot of others didn’t seem to mind when I talked to them on Wednesday.
I actually managed to tell her most of the stuff about my attack that day without crying. "I was so scared, especially when they threatened to do something more to me than just beat me up," I told her with tears rolling down my face. "I did everything I could at that point to get away — and it doesn’t really help that I think the principal believes I should be getting treated like this." She asked me to explain more about the last part.
In my sessions to that point Dr. Reynolds had hid her own personal opinions very well on everything we’d talked about. She of course had been at the first meeting and wasn’t extremely surprised to learn that I felt animosity from the principal, but she was appalled by what had happened in our latest meeting. Dad hadn’t been at the meeting so he hadn’t really been able to tell what had happened as well. For a brief moment I could see an incredible amount of outrage on her face. Amazingly that outrage didn’t last long before being hidden back behind a veil of professionalism.
I got through telling her about making it the rest of the day, a little about dance class, and told her "Everything today actually went pretty well. I only had one kid say anything mean, and David shut him up really quick."
"Who’s David?" She asked me. Before I knew it I was going through a ton of questions first about him, and then more about Kyle. She seemed surprised by the number of allies I had and she commented on that.
"Before we end today Tiffany, I wanted to ask you about the dreams you had last night."
"…How do you know about those?" Dad knew I’d woken up crying, but I hadn’t told him anything specific.
"Well your dad told me about how you woke up — but also Dr. Hancock called me earlier today to tell me about the conversation she had with you this morning. So what happened?"
I honestly had hoped not to discuss these dreams — but I should have known better. We must have spent thirty minutes just discussing the dreams and her reassuring me that things would be okay. She also gave me instructions to call her if I needed to before my next appointment.
Before we left she pulled my dad in for a few minutes and talked through my journal and some other things before he drove me home. "Daddy, how are we going to make these appointments work? You can’t keep taking off work each week."
"My boss understands that there are some things going on with you." He must have sensed my wide open eyes looking at him, "No, she doesn’t know the specifics, at least not yet, but she told me to take whatever time I needed. She said she won’t dock me for these afternoons. Besides, I’m on salary so I’ll just get whatever I can’t get done on these afternoons done another time. Dr. Reynolds also told me it should only be a couple more weeks that we do this every week."
We arrived home about 5:30 to find that Mom had already made dinner. I scarfed down the casserole she had made and quickly changed into a pair of the shorts and a t-shirt that I had gotten from the cheer camp. The t-shirt I had chosen was just one of the general cheerleading shirts from the camp. But, it was really cute and I thought it would be appropriate to wear for a cheerleading class.
The class was being held in the same facility as my ballet lessons, so at least it was a little more familiar that night. As I walked in I kind of hoped that I would know someone there. I looked around hoping to see a familiar face somewhere and I quickly learned that wouldn’t be the case. I was relieved in a way though, as it would be another class where no one would know about me — that definitely had its’ pluses.
The teacher began class shortly after I arrived, and it quickly became clear to me that there were two types of girls in the class. There were those that had never done a day of dancing/cheerleading in their life and those that were actually on a cheerleading squad or had dance experience. Within that first group of girls, about half the class, about eighty percent of them were hopeless.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I fit in very well with the second group of girls — those that had experience — and found myself being asked to help some of the hopeless girls. Among them was a girl named Brianna.
I give Brianna a lot of credit, she tried at least as hard as what I did at camp this summer, and she did improve while I helped her… But the poor girl had absolutely no sense of rhythm at all. Just getting her to tap her feet to the counts we were going through slowly was impossible! I don’t think that it helped that her becoming a cheerleader/dancer was not real likely just due to her size.
She was easily almost 6 feet tall, and weighed at least double my weight, if not triple. I’ve been mocked/picked-on/stamped into the ground enough that I wasn’t about to start being mean to her though. I knew that even with as tall as she was she probably got teased a lot. I tried to help her as best I could, and she seemed to appreciate it. The class was ninety minutes long and I spent a good forty-five trying to help her. At the end of the class the teacher asked us to each individually demonstrate, slowly, the first dance we were working on.
She seemed to be intelligent and caring enough to go through some of the girls like Brianna first. I felt really bad as I watched one of the girls actually do far worse than Brianna had been doing to start off the demonstrations. From there things actually got steadily worse until Brianna got up there and did better than the first girls.
I ended up being asked to go last — I would have thought I’d have gone in the middle somewhere — and found myself smiling and doing all of the moves very well. I felt comfortable doing it and had a lot of fun. At the end the girls surprised me by cheering for me fairly loudly. We’d all been giving some polite applause to each other, but nothing that loud.
I found myself turning a deep shade of red but forced myself to smile. "Very nice job Tiffany," Ms. Clemens, the teacher told me.
"Okay everyone! Make sure you all take one of these count sheets home with you to work on this week. I want to be able to run through this with music by the time you get back. I have tapes for you to practice with here too."
As I grabbed my tape and count sheet from her she asked, "Tiffany can you stay for just a moment?"
"Sure Ms. Clemens," I told her.
As I stood by the side Mom came up to me and gave me a hug, "Nice job sweetie, I was really impressed by how well you did that."
"Thanks Mommy," I told her while hugging her back.
A moment later Brianna came over to me, "Tiffany you’re really good at this. How long have you been doing it?"
"Does a summer camp count?" I asked her.
"That’s it?" She asked incredulously. "Wow, you’re really talented then. Anyway I wanted to thank you for helping me. I know I must have seemed completely hopeless — I was certainly doing worse than anyone else before you started helping me. You really helped me a lot. Thanks."
"Anytime," I told her. I found myself then talking to the teacher.
"Tiffany did I just hear you tell that girl that you have only done this at a summer camp so far?"
I nodded.
"Wow. I don’t know if you know this yet or not but I’m the high school dance squad instructor. Which junior high do you go to?"
"Holden Junior High," I responded.
"Are you on the cheerleading squad yet?"
"No, I wasn’t able to try out last year." It was a bit of a lie… but I didn’t want to cause her to think I was a freak until she knew me as me.
"You should have. Mrs. Holt is planning on starting up a dance squad this next year though right?"
"Yeah, I’ve heard that we’re going to have tryouts the last week of September?"
"Well let me get you something really quick for you to work on for the tryouts," she said as she went over to her bag. "This is a routine that I’m planning on teaching this class in a couple months — it would be great for you to tryout on if they let you pick your own routine." She handed me a count sheet with directions on it and a tape.
"Umm… Thanks. I appreciate it."
"No problem Tiffany, I want to make sure you get on that team so you can get some experience before coming up to the high school. I think you could do really well on our squad up there."
"Thanks, I’ll see you next week," I told her as I was pulled to the door.
As I sat in the car while Mom drove me home I wondered to myself if I was really that talented or not. Were people just too nice to tell me I sucked? "Mom did I really look like I was doing well when you watched me?"
"Sweetie, I know I’m biased, but I really do believe you did better than any of the other girls out there."
"Thanks," I told her.
When I got home I hopped into the shower since I had been sweating a lot. I went ahead and washed my hair while I was in there — I thought that could save me some time in the morning — and put on a pair of comfy pajamas when I was done. I had just sat down in the living room to work on the one homework assignment I had received that day when the phone rang.
I jumped up and ran over to the phone yelling, "I’ve got it," to anyone who might care.
"Hello?"
"Tiffany?" It was Amy’s voice.
"Hey Amy, how was the game?"
"It was great! You should have seen it — David intercepted and ran with the ball for like twenty yards with six guys trying to pull him down before he got the touchdown. It was awesome! Then Kyle ended up coming in as quarterback and threw two touchdowns himself."
"Cool!"
"How did your stuff go?" She asked me.
"Well my appointment with Dr. Reynolds was… well an appointment with Dr. Reynolds. It’s kind of hard to describe what it’s like — it’s not a lot, and yet it is. Anyway, I made it through it. She seems to think I’m doing alright — she was rather mad about the incident the other day."
"Did you talk about your nightmares with her at all?" She asked me.
"Umm… yeah… she thought they should improve as I get farther away from the incident. I don’t know that I really believe that or not though. I just hope she’s right — it was a really awful dream."
Amy, sensing she needed to change the subject, asked "so how was the dance class?"
"It was really cool Amy. I think maybe I might actually have found something I could be really good at." I told her about everything including about Brianna, "I feel so bad for her Amy, she was trying so hard — and she did get better, but I can’t honestly see anyone ever letting her on a team just based on her size and looks. Isn’t that awful?"
"Yeah it is… I don’t really know that there’s a good answer for it though. At least you’re being nice to her though. Maybe she can come as far as you have if she’s given a chance."
"I guess that’s something." I replied. "So did you come up with any ideas for my birthday next week?" I asked her.
"How about you come stay the night tomorrow and we’ll talk about it?" She suggested.
"Why have you thought about something?"
"Of course. Actually I spent some time speaking with my mom last night, and I know she talked to your mom today, but I’ll tell you tomorrow at my house?"
"Okay, but I don’t know that I really want to wait till then to hear your plans," I said with fake exasperation.
"Oh you poor baby… I think you can wait. Trust me." She said. "So have you done this math assignment yet?" she asked me.
"I was just starting to work on it."
"You want to finish it together on the phone?"
"Sure, assuming my mom doesn’t complain that she needs the phone." I told her. It wasn’t as good as being able to work on it in the same place, but at least it was better than not hanging out with her at all. I hadn’t really been in the mood to do much this week — but the fact that we weren’t hanging out with each other every spare moment was kind of saddening.
After about twenty minutes we finished up with the homework and we ended up giving up the phone so our mom’s could talk to each other. Apparently they were in the midst of planning a party for me — and I had a feeling that they may have been working on it even before Amy asked yesterday.
I went to bed that night feeling like maybe I had a chance at a somewhat normal life this year.
Chapter 20
THE NEXT DAY the whole school was talking about the football game that had taken place the day before. Kyle and David were both being seen as the two coolest seventh grade guys in school. Fortunately for me I was part of the group of girls that hung out with them and that, of course, raised my status considerably.
That day I still heard conversations about me, but they seemed to be growing tired of me and were ready to move onto someone else. By the end of the day they had no new ammunition to attack me with and I was largely forgotten. I had worn a cute jumper that day and I had noticed a lot of various looks at me. It was as if I was an animal in a zoo with most of them — I might have come to school naked and had less staring actually…
I had been making it a point not to wear too ‘girly’ of clothing so as not to cause as much of a problem at school. It wasn’t like I’d been wearing boys clothes — they were definitely girls clothes — but I’d not been in a dress yet for most of them. It was amazing how this seemed to make everything step up to a whole new level of problems.
On one hand I received a lot of compliments on my outfit that day — many from teachers. I think a lot of them appreciated that I wasn’t just dressed in the normal baggy clothing that everyone else was wearing. For the girls many of them told me they ‘loved my outfit,’ and would love to have it themselves. Some of them just put on a fake smile as they walked by me and said hi.
Then there were a couple groups of girls that were clustered in a group as I passed and all started giggling and laughing — it may not have been about me, but it sure felt like it was. Some even just shook their heads at me and looked at me like I was a freak.
The boys were harder to read, but I think there were some that were checking me out every much as they would a normal girl. On at least one of those occasions I saw their friends slug them as if to remind them that ‘Dude, she’s not really a girl — what are you thinking?’
Overall though, things went well for me that day — at least I didn’t have any assaults that day. I did have a couple of ‘freak’ comments, but those seemed to be dying away. I think my novelty status was wearing off fast — and with a good support group of friends things seemed to be going okay. I had dealt with name calling for so long, that if that was all they were going to do, I figured I could deal with it. Eventually maybe they’d forget about me and things would settle down.
TGIF! Finally Amy and I could hang out after school. As busy as our schedules were it hadn’t been possible during the week at all. We rode to her house on the bus that day and quickly got into our swimsuits and went swimming. We were both so excited to be able to spend some time together — this week that had been scarce — and the two of us were extremely hyper by the time her mom came home and told us to go get dried off and get ready to go to dinner.
Amy put on a skirt with a top that looked really cute while I put my jumper back on. "So Tiffany how did your day go?" Amy’s mom asked me as we headed out to her car.
"It went much better, thanks for asking." I told her.
"Mom where are we going for dinner?" Amy asked.
"We’re going to meet Tiffany’s parents at Outback," she told her.
"What’s Outback?" I asked.
"It’s a steakhouse, they have a lot of different things though," Melanie told me.
"They have really good bread!" Amy added.
Dinner was just as good as they said it would be — though I thought it was a little on the pricey side for my parents. Amy and I helped out by splitting an entree — and her parents picked that part of the bill up — so it actually wasn’t too bad for my parents.
As we sat during dinner I finally asked Amy, "So what is it that you think I should do for my birthday?"
"Can I tell her?" she asked her mom and mine.
"You might as well — she’s never going to stop bugging us all otherwise," her mom replied. My mom nodded as well.
"Well we’ve actually already been planning on a party for you for a month now." She told me with a smile.
"What? Really?" I asked excitedly.
"Yeah, ever since I pointed out to my mom that this was going to be ‘Tiffany’s’ first birthday."
"So what are we going to do?" I asked.
"Well I thought we’d start off with having over some of the girls and maybe a few of the guys from school for dinner, then cake and presents. We’ll have everyone over in time so we can go swimming before that and watch a movie or something. At eight I figured we could kick the boys out and we could have a regular slumber party with the girls that come. Does that sound fun?" She asked me.
"Yeah, it does. Are you alright with having this at your house?" I asked Amy’s mom.
"Absolutely!" I looked at my parents to make sure they were okay with that too. They both nodded.
"Cool!" I said with a lot of glee. "So who’s coming?" I asked Amy. We talked back and forth at a very rapid pace for the duration of the meal.
After dinner I grabbed a bag from my parents that had some clothes in it, before riding back to Amy’s house. When we got there she and I began working on finishing some invitations that she had started the night before. She told me her mom had thought about doing Barbie invitations but decided that it might be a little juvenile for twelve year olds. That didn’t stop us from playing with Barbies once we were done though. Honestly we talked about it and I could see us continuing to play with Barbies for a long time after this. We had so much fun doing it, ‘who cares what everyone else thinks?’
The two of us had a really great time hanging out that night. After everything that had gone on this past week, I was just happy we could hang out and talk that night — forgetting about everything else for a while. She told me about how cheerleading was going so far — and how terrible many of the girls were. "I can’t believe that some of them even made the team," Amy told me.
"Why do you think they made it?" I asked.
"Well one girl said that her mom said that there was a lot of ‘input’ from Mrs. Hinther. I think she pushed Mrs. Holt to take some girls she wouldn’t have otherwise put on the team. Plus there are a lot of girls like you that are way more talented, but didn’t try out."
"Well… I was still trying to be a boy back then," I told her with a wink and a giggle.
"True… So did you bring home the permission slip and forms to tryout for the dance squad?" She asked me.
"Yeah, they’re in my backpack. I’ll show them to Mom and Dad tomorrow when I get home. I’m really excited… Didn’t you say Mrs. Hinther had a lot to say about the last tryouts? Won’t she try and stop me from being on the team then?" I asked suddenly nervous. It wasn’t that I felt like I was a shoe-in, but I did feel like I had a good chance if there was a fair process.
"Mrs. Holt told my mom that she’s going to be making this decision solely with some impartial judges being involved — Mrs. Hinther isn’t to be a part of it."
"Good, that woman hates me." I told her.
"Yeah, she’s definitely a witch." She said trailing off as we began heading downstairs to go watch a movie. "Hey have you noticed how busy this next month is?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well we have your birthday party next Friday, the Film Festival that we’re flying to with our project is the next week, the dance camp is going to be the next week, and tryouts will be the following Friday."
"You’re right… This is going to be a crazy month. With everything else going on I actually forgot that we were going out for the festival this month!" I told her.
"I’m really looking forward to it! Even though Coach Holt wasn’t real appreciative of me telling her that Ashley and I are going to be gone during a football game..." She told me.
"I’ll bet! Oh well, it’s not like this is a small reason for skipping."
"No, it’s not. What do you think will happen at the festival?" She asked me as she put in a movie for us to watch.
"Who knows? I doubt much will happen. Personally, as long as we’re not booed out of the theater I don’t care," I told her.
"Do you think we might win a prize or something for it?" She asked me.
"Eehh… Maybe. I’m not counting on it though. I think we’ve won all of the prizes for it that we could at this point."
"You’re probably right. At least we get out of two days of school!"
"Not to mention we get to go to New York for free! I’m not going to complain about that one bit. Do you think we could see something else out of this?"
"I don’t know. Daddy seemed to think that we could end up with an award for a student production. None of us were older than twelve when we did it — so that should put us in the lowest category if they have such a thing."
"I doubt they do… I don’t know, it’s going to be cool though I bet." I told her.
"Yeah." She said as we began actually paying a little attention to the movie. The two of us watched movies and talked late that night before her mom came and pushed us to go to bed. I ended up sleeping in her room that night — I felt really safe and happy with Amy’s family, but was still stressed enough then that I didn’t want to go down the hall to ‘mine.’
It had been a great night though — not being able to hang out with Amy every day was starting to bother me a bit. Hopefully that would be a problem that would fix itself soon enough. Of course what chance did I really have of getting on the new squad? Especially if Mrs. Hinther had anything to say about it!
THE WEEKEND FLEW by way too fast. I had spent Saturday with Amy, her mom, and my mom, out shopping for decorations and other things for the party on Friday. I was really excited — I’d never had a real birthday party complete with friends before. Oh sure I’d had an occasional neighborhood friend at a party — but not any ‘real’ friends. Does that make sense?
Every other party I’d ever had had mainly my parents, grandparents, and occasionally some other family friends there. None of them, not one, had ever had real classmates at it. The excitement that I felt absolutely drove my mom nuts on Sunday. I didn’t stop bouncing off the walls the whole day.
Monday morning came, and in first hour I began handing out invitations to my party. Amy and I had decided to invite Kyle and David to the pool party/dinner/cake and presents part of the party. When I gave them the invitations and told them what we were planning they seemed to think it sounded like fun.
As far as girls I invited Lindsey, Jennifer, Ashley, Nikki, Lindsey, Amber, Kristina, and of course Amy. Jennifer told me she wouldn’t be able to make it — she had other family plans, but appreciated the invite. All of the rest said they hoped to make it. Kristina seemed surprised to receive the invite when I gave it to her in choir, but said she would come if she could. I had debated a bit about giving her one — I didn’t really know her yet — but Amy seemed to think that she would be a lot of fun to have there.
Monday actually turned out to be a reasonably good day — nothing happened beyond that! Honestly even last year at this time I hoped for such days, but they never came. To have something like today go that well gave me a lot of hope going into the rest of the week. After all I think people had a lot more reason to want to pick on me now…
The next day things seemed to be on track to being another good day until sixth hour. In sixth hour one of the girls I didn’t know that well, Cassie, decided that today would be a good day to make her thoughts about me known — publicly. We had a short essay that we were writing for the class about our thoughts on some current event issue — I became issue number one for her.
As she spoke her essay began, "I believe that everyone is created by God to have one sex, either boy or girl. There should be no reason to…" I’m sure you can see where all of this led to… it was really dreadful. She finished with, "And that’s why I believe Brandon shouldn’t be allowed to continue acting like he’s a girl. He’s such a…"
"Thank you Cassie," Ms. Damien interrupted at this point.
"But I’m not finished ma’am. Don’t I have the right to free speech?" She asked.
"Cassie your right to free speech is why I let you read as much as I did. However, this has now turned away from free speech and into an attack on an individual. Please see me after class to talk about this," She said.
Cassie sulked back to her seat where she glared at me for the rest of the period. On our way to band Nikki said, "I can’t believe Ms. Damien let her read that much of her essay! It was awful all of the things she was implying about you."
I shrugged my shoulders, "I’m sure this won’t be the last time this happens. She really couldn’t justify stopping her up until when she did… That’s something Dr. Reynolds and I have talked about a lot. They have the right to feel that I’m a freak, they have the right to hate what I’m doing, but realistically no one can really do anything about it until there is a direct action against me."
"That’s not right Tiffany," she told me, "you’re such a cool person — you always have been — no one should be allowed to bring you down." She told me.
"I appreciate the fact you feel that way Nikki — it helps dull some of the pain from the comments." I said as I gave her a hug at the band hall door.
That day in band Mrs. Remar decided to start working a piece of music that we were going to play while marching in the high schools homecoming parade in early October. The piece was Louie Louie, and was kind of challenging for the band. She ended up throwing her hands up at the end of class and saying, "PRACTICE THIS!"
I of course made sure I took my horn home that night so I didn’t have to worry about her getting angry at me the next day! As I rode the bus home though I really didn’t know when I was going to find time to practice. I was supposed to have my first gymnastics lesson that night from 6pm-8pm, and I really didn’t want to practice immediately after school. Plus there was homework…
Somehow by 5:15 I had finished both my homework and my practicing in time to eat a quick dinner and change into some clothes for gymnastics. The instructor that I had just asked that I wear a pair of cotton shorts, a light t-shirt, a sports bra if I needed it, and had my hair tied back. If I ended up doing anything competitive they would have me start buying leotards and such.
I didn’t really need a sports bra… but I had convinced my mom that I wanted to fit in so she had bought me one anyway! The thought had me smiling as I got dressed to leave. Amy’s mom had gotten us connected with this gymnastics studio and I was going to be working with a local college student one-on-one on stuff. It wasn’t going to be cheap, but I really wanted to learn how to do some things like tumbling, and who knew what else?
Now that I was out as a girl I was able to act out on a lot of the dreams I had as a kid. Even before realizing that I wanted to be Tiffany I’d always been jealous of the gymnasts doing all of the cool stuff. Amy was really impressive with what she could do… but she had actually quit as of this year since she didn’t have any time with Cheerleading now.
Mom pulled up to a big metal sided building just before six. She went in with me and we checked in at a desk they had in the front.
"Hi, you must be new here?" The lady at the front asked.
"I’m Tiffany," I said to her while extending my hand to hers.
"It’s nice to meet you Tiffany, I’m Jan and this is my gym. You’re going to be working with Tara right?"
"Yes," my mom replied.
"Let me call her up here and she’ll get started with you," she told me. She spoke into a paging system through the phone asking for her to come up.
"So this is your first time doing anything with gymnastics?" She asked me.
"Yeah," I told her — nothing like short answers when you’re nervous around a new person.
"Well I hope you enjoy it. Tara is really good at pretty much everything we do here. She came in third place at nationals when she was fifteen — so she should be a really good teacher for you."
"Cool," I said as a brown-haired girl who was just under five feet tall came up to the counter.
"You called for me?" She asked Jan.
"Yes, this is Tiffany Jacobson — your new student." She told her.
I felt Tara look me over up and down for a few moments as she introduced herself. "Well are you ready to get started?" She asked me.
"Sure." I told her. I was really nervous as she intimidated me a lot for some reason.
Mom decided to stay and watch for today just to make sure everything went alright. She stayed on the side of the gym in a row of folding chairs they had setup while Tara led me onto a matted area.
"So what school are you at?" She asked me as she started leading me in some stretches.
"Holden Junior High" I answered.
"Oh that’s cool! That’s where I went to school." She told me with a smile. I think she could tell that I was incredibly nervous.
"What grade are you in?" She asked me.
"Seventh."
"So you’re thirteen?"
"No, I’m eleven until Friday."
"Wow, you’re young for your grade right?" She asked as she seemed to be mentally counting back her own age to that grade.
"Yeah, I just beat the deadline that year."
"Hey you’ll get to graduate earlier that way." She told me with a smile before asking, "So what is it you want to learn how to do?"
We switched to a different stretch as I answered her, "Well… I’d at least like to learn how to tumble… but I’d love to learn anything else too."
"Is there any specific reason you’re taking these lessons with me?" She asked.
"Well I’d like to have a better shot to make the cheerleading team at the school next year. I’m also hoping that it might help me a little bit with the dance team tryouts that they’re going to have this month."
"Okay. That gives me kind of a place to work from then. Have you ever done any tumbling or anything?"
"I learned some basic stuff from a friend of mine this summer, and a little bit more at a cheer camp we went to… But the most I can manage right now is one front flip." I told her with a grimace. I was so afraid of what she was going to think of me.
"Well then, now that we’ve stretched out let’s start working on some things okay?"
I nodded.
"We’re in a much better place really than I would have hoped from someone who hasn’t done gymnastics before. You’re able to do splits, and seem to be fairly limber, so that should help us get through some other things too."
I smiled, "Cool."
With that the smile on my face quickly turned into a grimace… ouch. The number of times that I performed face plants, landed on my rear, landed on other parts, and other indescribable conditions cannot even begin to be counted. For her part she managed to not to throw up her hands and tell me I was hopeless. Each time she just helped me up and told me how to fix something, held me in a position, or assisted me with the move in slow motion. I was so tired by the end of the lesson!
"Tiffany, today was a good lesson, if you’ll work that hard every session, and during the week in-between, I think we’ll be able to really get somewhere in a couple months." She told me.
I hadn’t honestly expected a positive comment so I managed a tired smile and a thank you before Mom led me out to the car. Once in the car I took my hair out of the ponytail it was in and put my head against the glass of the window next to me. Seconds later, or it seemed to me, mom woke me up by tickling me.
"Mom!!!" I told her angrily — I was grumpy.
"Well you didn’t want to wake up!" She told me, "Deal with it."
She was Evil with a capital E! I told her so and she just stuck her tongue out at me. I went inside and took a quick shower before going to bed. That night I thought about all of the other girls, even the little girls that had been doing so many cool things in the gym. I wished that I could do those things, but realistically knew I’d never be that good.
I wasn’t going to spend enough time doing it, and I was starting way too old to be able to be as good as them. If I could get decent at some stuff though, and have fun, it would be more than enough right?
Chapter 21
TUESDAY PASSED QUICKLY and safely. I had sax lessons as soon as Mom got home after school, dinner, and then I got changed for Tae Kwon Doe. Amy was taking that class with me so the two of us of course stuck together that day. The instructor taught our class from the absolute basics. We spent a lot of time practicing punches and kicking in particular. He also took some time to demonstrate some of the cooler things that were going to be in our future. Amy and I had really not wanted to separate after class, but our moms dragged us back to our respective homes.
Wednesday also passed with everything seemingly calm at school. I was really surprised that more things weren’t happening to me — it was making me nervous. Things should be a lot more difficult than they had been so far. The groups that were on the various sides of me were staying stable — no one was jumping ship from one side to the other — and that was making for peaceful days. I think the punishments that had been handed out early on to Lucas and Jarred had helped, but unfortunately they were back in school and I saw them glare at me and talk about me with their groups more often than I cared to notice.
Mom came home and got me to ballet at five, and I had another great night there. After class Mrs. Tyler talked Mom into switching me into the more advanced class. It would be the same night, but it would be from 7-8:30 instead of the current time. Mom seemed to think it might be a bit easier to get me there anyway. She asked me if I wanted to make the class that night but I had to smile politely and say I was too tired at that point. Mom let her know that I probably wouldn’t be there next week — since the trip was the next day. She was okay with that and we had gone home.
Mom cooked dinner while I showered and changed into a pair of pajamas to lounge around the house in. Just as we were clearing the dishes the doorbell rang. Mom went and answered the door — I could hear a voice that sounded kind of familiar but I wasn’t sure who it was.
"Hi Mandy, how are you doing?"
"I’m doing well, you?"
"Well."
"Good. Say I was wondering, you have a daughter right?" She asked.
"Yes, Tiffany. Why do you ask?"
"Well my husband and I are supposed to go to a party with his company on Saturday and we can’t find a babysitter. I was wondering if Tiffany might be interested in sitting for us?"
"She’s only eleven… actually she’ll be twelve on Friday… I don’t know."
"She’s responsible right?"
"She is, but she’s never done anything like this before. I don’t know…" I was overhearing all of this from the kitchen. "Tiffany?" Mom called for me to come in there.
"Hi Mrs. Lind," I told her.
"How are you doing Tiffany?" She asked me.
"Good."
"Well, did you hear what we were talking about?" She asked me.
"Yeah. I might be interested… Would I have to change diapers?" I asked. That thought kind of grossed me out.
"Well Jamie is four and is potty trained so that’s not an issue with her — though I will have to have you make sure she puts a pull-up on before bed if you do this. Brittany is only two though, and she’s still in diapers."
I thought for a second. I’d heard some of the older girls talk at school the other day about how much money they were racking up babysitting. It might be nice to have some money to go do stuff with Amy without asking Mom and Dad for it. Besides, I knew they weren’t exactly made of money. "I’ve never changed a real baby before," I told her. I had at least changed the doll that mom had gotten me in June… like once…
"I could show you how to do it if you want. It’s really not that hard," she told me. I think she was pretty desperate.
"What do you think Mom?" I asked her.
"I think you could do it. You’ll just be across the street so if you need any help you can always call home." She told me. Apparently she had decided it was okay.
"Okay then… if you show me how." I responded.
"Great!" She said with a smile on her face. "We’ll pay you of course. Could you come over now? I think Brittany should need changed about now anyway and I can show you how."
"Let me put on some other clothes real quick first," I told her.
"Okay, I can wait for a few minutes," She said.
I ran down the hallway to my room and changed into a pair of shorts and a top real quick. When I got back to the room we went across the street to her house. Mom decided to come with me and make sure that I would be okay doing this. "Jamie? Brittany? Come here." Mrs. Lind said when we came inside.
Her two daughters came in the room running and giggling. Both girls were really cute and we talked to them for a few moments. During the conversation Brittany came up to me and put her arms out asking to be picked up. I did so, doing my best to hold her — she was heavy! Or at least she felt that way after a few minutes.
Her mom took her from me after a bit and felt to see if her diaper needed changed. She showed me how she could tell it was wet and we walked back to her room where she had a changing table that she was almost too big for. I had expected her to just show me what to do, but she had me do it!
A few minutes later I had changed a diaper for the first time… it wasn’t as bad as I’d been afraid of. After she was in a dry diaper Brittany had to show me all of her toys. Eventually Mrs. Lind led my mom and I back to the door with me promising to sit for her Saturday. ‘If nothing else it would be an experience,’ I thought as I had gone back across the street.
Before I knew it the night had passed and it was time for another session with Dr. Reynolds. She seemed to be pleased by my progress so far, and positively ecstatic that things were going as well as they were at school. She told me that she was continuing to do as much research as she could into how to continue with my care. After talking to my dad we decided not to reschedule the appointment for next week — we’d just catch up the following week. On my way out the door she wished me an early happy birthday.
Next Thursday was already going to be the trip to New York for the film festival! Time was going by so quickly this year. Another night of dance class came and went. Things had gone just as well as they had the previous week, and I was really proud of myself. I know it seems unrealistic that I was doing as well at this stuff as I was… but I seemed to have found a buried talent within myself. Thursday night I went to sleep excited for the next day. It was going to be my first real birthday party!
FRIDAY MORNING I woke up and spent a lot of time doing my hair. I decided to wear a light purple dress that had some flowery designs on it to school that day. It was my birthday. I had to go to school dressed nice right? Right!
Amy and her mom both complimented me when I got into the car. I’d managed to find some time to paint my fingernails in a matching color the night before, and I looked pretty! The first part of the morning came and went without any problems. My friends all wished me happy birthday when they saw me, and a couple of the teachers led the class in singing happy birthday to me — I just turned bright red each time. At least in third period it sounded decent — the kids in the choir could sing decently. In second hour I’d wanted to gouge my eardrums out with the pencil I held in my hand!
In between third and fourth hour Amy and I stopped by our lockers to switch books, and I found a card taped to my locker. I was curious so I opened it really quick and looked at it. Amy being my best friend of course was right there beside me as I began to open it.
The outside had a dog on it and said happy birthday. I opened it thinking the dog was kind of cute only to find a message that shocked me. ‘Happy birthday faggot. Why don’t you give us all a birthday present and get the hell out of our school? If you don’t we’re going to make you pay.’
"Tiffany, I can’t believe anyone would do this to you." She said. Giving me a hug and taking the card from me. "I bet it was Jarred and Lucas…"
As she said that I looked up and saw the two of them standing a ways away watching me and laughing loudly. There were also a couple of girls around them that seemed to be getting into the act. It made me really angry.
"You know… I thought things were going too well," I said through an unsteady voice. I steeled myself and pushed back the tears that were welling up. "I’m not going to let this screw up my day though. And I’m not going to give those jerks the joy of seeing me cry right now."
"Good for you Tiff, but I think we should take this to Mrs. Henry before we go to our next class." She told me.
"Okay," I replied to her as she led me down the hallway to the office.
We walked up to the counter with the secretary at it and asked to see Mrs. Henry. Mrs. Hinther walked by glaring at me a couple seconds before Mrs. Henry came out of her office. "What can I do for you two?" She asked.
"This was on my locker," I said as I handed her the card.
She looked at the outside thinking ‘why would they bring this to me?’ When she opened it though she said, "Tiffany I’m so sorry. This is awful." She gave me a hug and led us into her office. "Did you see anyone around your locker?" She asked.
"No. I don’t have any proof of who left it." I told her.
"Well Tiffany I’m going to keep this card if you don’t mind and look into this. If I catch who did this we’ll be assigning them consequences for threatening you." She said with a grave demeanor.
"I appreciate that Mrs. Henry. Would you make a copy though for me really quick of the card?" I asked.
"Why?"
"My parents want copies of anything that comes in like that for their records." I told her.
Her mouth kind of hung open for a moment before she said, "Of course, hold-on just a moment." She ran out to the copier and came back with the copy in an envelope for me. "Her you go Tiffany. I hope you don’t let this ruin your day," she said.
"I’m not going to let it," I told her.
"Good! Let me write you two a pass back to class." When she had handed us a paper pass she said to me, "Happy Birthday Tiffany, I hope the rest of the day goes a lot better for you."
"Thanks Mrs. Henry." I replied as we left for class. Mr. Martin gave us a strange look as we walked in late, but let it go when he saw the note. The hour went quietly, and I managed to escape any choruses of happy birthday there.
For lunch Mom came and dropped off a couple of happy meals for Amy and myself. We got some strange looks as we both carried the boxes to the lunch table and began playing with the toys inside! Kristina just looked at us and said, "You two are so strange," and giggled. While I ate she started playing with the toy that I had. It was a better afternoon than the morning I’d had!
During English the secretary came over the intercom and asked for me to come down. Ms. Damien didn’t really want to send Amy with me, but she ended up going anyway. I was afraid it had something to do with the card from earlier. Amy and I vowed that I wouldn’t let it ruin my day though, no matter what!
As we entered the office door I noticed a big vase of flowers on the counter with balloons tied to it that said, ‘Happy Birthday.’ I wondered who else had their birthday that day. "Hi Tiffany, these are for you." Mrs. Walden the secretary said.
"Really?" I squealed with glee.
"Yep!" She said.
"Cool!" I said looking at them closer. There was a dozen yellow roses, with pink tips, in the vase. I saw there was a card attached and opened it.
‘Happy Birthday Tiffany! Love Mom and Dad.’
"Wow, this is so cool," I told Amy.
"Yeah… I wish my mom had sent me a dozen roses when I turned twelve!" Amy said.
"They got you flowers didn’t they?" I asked.
"Yeah, but they didn’t send a dozen! Geeze.. I thought I was spoiled!" She said smiling.
I stuck my tongue out at her as we walked back to class. The balloon was kind of a pain in the butt as I walked up the staircase, but I loved the reactions of all of the girls when I got into the room.
"Wow! Those are really pretty Tiffany," Nikki said. The others all agreed. Ms. Damien also commented about the fact she wished someone would send her flowers on her birthday. That kind of planted an idea in my head to look up her birthday and as a class we’d get her flowers this year. My mom had the entire district’s birthdays at home from working at the bus yard.
I was quickly distracted from that thought though as she piled on a reading assignment for the weekend. I think she did it just to annoy me.
Band was fun… Mrs. Remar had me set the flowers on her desk while class was going on. I didn’t know how I was going to manage my saxophone and the flowers when school got out, but the solution presented itself. Mom came into the room just before the end of class.
"Mommy thanks for the flowers!" I told her while giving her a hug.
"You’re welcome," she said with a big smile on her face. "Speaking of flowers where are they?" I got them off of Mrs. Remar’s desk and she carried my saxophone out to the car. Amy met us out there at that point as the bell rang and we headed for her house to prepare for the party.
When we pulled up to Amy’s house I carried my flowers with me while Amy opened up the door to her house. As I entered I could only think, ‘WOW!!!’
Their entire first floor was decorated with happy birthday signs and streamers for me. There was also a pile of presents already started on the dining room table where I set my flowers down. Amy led me outside to where they had some tables set up with table cloths and more Happy Birthday stuff.
I gave Mom, Amy, and Amy’s mom hugs in quick succession after seeing it all. "You all are so cool," I said with tears in my eyes.
"You’re welcome Tiffany," My mom said.
"We had to make sure you had a really incredible birthday," Amy’s mom added.
"I really appreciate it!" I told them.
"So what still needs done?" Amy asked ‘the moms.’
"Well not much, but if you two will…" my mom directed us to do a list of things before guests started arriving. I was really careful the whole time not to get my dress messed up. Around 5pm people started arriving, beginning with my grandparents.
"Hi sweetheart, happy birthday!" My grandmother said as she came in and gave me a hug. My grandfather also greeted me and hugged me.
"Here," my grandmother said as she handed me wrapped present, "this is for you."
"Thank you Grandma!" I said while giving her another hug. I turned to my grandfather and gave him another hug and said, "Thanks Grandpa, I appreciate you guys coming."
"We wouldn’t miss it sweetie," my grandfather replied. "You look very pretty today," he added.
I beamed with a big smile while leading them into the house. I dropped the present off on the table and introduced them to Amy and her mom. "So this is the famous Amy?" my grandmother asked me.
"Uh huh, this is the one." I told her.
"It’s nice to meet you Mrs. Jacobson," Amy told her.
"You too." My grandmother answered. "So how was your day sweetie?" she asked me.
"Well… it was mostly good."
Mom hadn’t been home all day to catch the message on our answering machine, "What do you mean mostly good?"
"Umm… Can we talk about this another time — I’d just kind of like to forget about it today and enjoy my birthday…"
She gave me a really concerned look but decided that she could interrogate me later. "I guess sweetie, but I’m not going to completely drop this."
"Thank you Mom," I told her before leading my grandparents into the living room where the adults were planning on gathering.
I sat and talked to them for about ten minutes or so before the doorbell rang again with Amy and me racing for the door. Our mom’s both yelled at us about running in the house as we opened the door to see who it was.
Amy beat me to the door by that fraction of a second for me to discover it was Kristina. "Hey Tiffany! Happy Birthday," she said while handing me a small gift bag.
I gave her a hug and said, "Thanks Kristina, I’m really glad you were able to come!"
"I’m glad you invited me. I just met you last week so I was kind of surprised you invited me." She told me.
We led her inside to the dining room where I sat the present down. "Well you’ve been so nice to me the past couple weeks I decided that you would be fun to have over."
"I’ll try to live up to your expectations Tiffany," she told me. "So what’s up first?" She asked.
"Well let’s go put your bag upstairs in Tiffany’s room until we get through the party." Amy said.
"I thought you said we were having this party at your house Amy?" She asked as we led her upstairs.
"This is my house… my parents just decided Tiffany needed her own room over here this summer. We came back from cheer camp to discover that my room had been redone and Dad had done one of our spare bedrooms for her while they were at it." She said.
"You have your own room at their house? You guys must be really close," Kristina commented.
"You could say that," Amy and I said together before giggling.
We topped the stairs and entered ‘my’ room. It was still kind of strange and awkward to have ‘my’ own room at someone else’s house — but I wasn’t going to complain. If nothing else it was Amy’s parents’ way of telling me that they considered me to be a daughter just like Amy. Thinking about it made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
"Wow, this is really cute," She said as we entered the room.
"Mine is similar, but in slightly different colors," Amy told her.
"Amy’s dad did a really good job with both of them," I added.
"So what’s first?" She asked as we walked downstairs.
"Well, we’re going to wait for everyone else to get here before we go ahead and eat dinner. Then we’re going to go swimming for a bit, before doing presents and cake," I said the last part with a bit of a squeal.
"Cool," she told me as the doorbell rang again.
It was Ashley this time, "Hey Tiffany, Happy Birthday!" she said to me as she came in. We repeated the steps of putting the present she brought (a bag) on the table and taking her bag upstairs. The four of us had just reached the downstairs again when the doorbell rang yet again.
This time it was the two guys I’d invited, Kyle and David. "Hey, thanks for coming!" I told them.
"Wouldn’t miss it Tiffany," Kyle replied.
"Yeah, besides what other party have we been invited to with this many hot girls?" David joked.
"And Food!" Kyle said, laughing.
Amy slugged him in the arm lightly before leading them to the dining room. They had each brought a present — I was really surprised that they had gotten me anything. I guess it is good manners though when you go to a birthday party… still. I was beaming when we sat down for all of twenty seconds before the last succession of my friends arrived. Lindsey arrived next, then Amber, and then Nikki, so that we were left with a total of seven girls and the two boys. Yeah… the guys were definitely outnumbered… but hey I didn’t care and they certainly didn’t seem to mind!
We all went outside and sat and talked while our mom’s worked on finishing up dinner. Amy’s dad arrived and worked on grilling hamburgers and hotdogs, joined by my dad about ten minutes before we ate.
During this time the nine of us just sat around and talked about all sorts of stuff. Shortly before dinner the game from the previous evening came up.
"So Kyle I hear you guys did really well yesterday?" I asked him.
"Yeah, it was awesome. David scored two touchdowns off interceptions and I threw three touchdowns. The other team didn’t really stand a chance," he told me.
"You should come to one of our games Tiffany," David said.
"Well I’ve been pretty busy so far, but maybe the week after next I can try and make it." I told him.
"Why not next week?" Kyle asked.
"Well we have that trip to New York," I began.
"Oh that’s right. Wow that came up quick." Kyle replied. The two of us were now kind of sitting in a group with David talking to Amy on his right, and Kristina and Lindsey were talking on my left. "Are you excited to go there?"
"Yeah… I think so. I’ve never really wanted to go to New York before… but I’m really excited for other people to see our film. I have a feeling we’re going to get laughed out of the theater though."
"Oh well, at least you guys seem to have gotten a lot from it already," he observed.
"Yeah."
"So what else are you up to right now?"
"What else?" I said semi-incredulously, "Well, one night each week I’m doing Tae Kwon Do, one night I’m taking Ballet, another a dance class for cheerleading, yet another a gymnastics lesson…" I paused. "A lot?" I asked sweetly.
"Yikes… and I thought football practice everyday was a lot."
About that time we were called for dinner and we all sat down at the tables they had set up outside. I got a hamburger from my dad off of the grill and put some cheese and ketchup on it, grabbed some beans, some potato chips, and then sat down next to my grandparents at the table.
I really wanted to sit next to my friends, but my mom had steered me there so I could be social with them. Luckily for me though Amy sat to my right, and Kristina sat cattycorner to me. There wasn’t a lot of conversation for most of the next ten minutes though — we were all too busy eating.
As I had just put another bite in my mouth my grandfather asked me, "So are you excited for next week?"
"Yes… at least I think I am." I replied to him politely.
"You know I’ve not seen this film yet that you ladies made," my grandmother added in.
I hadn’t realized that they hadn’t seen it yet. "Amy should have a copy here if you guys want to watch it while we’re swimming," I told them.
Mom must have heard that part of the conversation because she said, "That’s a good idea Tiffany. You have a copy here right Melanie?" she asked Amy’s mom.
"Yeah, it’s in the living room," she answered her.
"Do you mind if we throw it in after dinner?"
"Not at all!"
The conversation shifted back to my left with Amy whispering in my ear, "So are you intentionally flirting with Kyle or what?"
"What?!?" I whispered back loudly.
She just giggled.
"I’ll get you for that one later," I hissed in reply while smiling.
"Sure you will," she taunted back while sticking out her tongue.
I sat there stunned. ‘Was I flirting with Kyle? That’s kind of gross,’ I thought. I’d have to watch it for the rest of the day. I didn’t want to mislead him — though maybe I had already gone too far….
I was jolted out of these thoughts by Amy grabbing me to go setup the TV for my grandparents to see the video. Kristina hadn’t seen the video either so she wanted to watch too. Before I knew it we were all sitting there watching the movie again. ‘The moms’ had justified it by telling us that we should wait a bit before going swimming so we didn’t get cramps.
As we watched our project it brought back a lot of good memories of that weekend. It was a neat project that for whatever reason had caught on with people. We had used Barbie dolls to create a film based on a Nancy Drew book. Ashley’s dad had let us use his television studio’s equipment and shown us how to do stuff. From there he had been pretty much hands off — suggesting things here and there — and somehow we’d come up with a decent product.
Before I knew it the credits were rolling and I got a jolt out of seeing my old name. Under director it said ‘Brandon Jacobson.’ That made me feel weird… I wasn’t entirely sure why that bothered me as much as it did. I got up and walked over to stop the VCR as I listened to the comments by my grandparents and Kristina. Everyone else had seen it before — but I remained kind of in a trance. Things had changed so quickly… in less than a year I had gone from being a boy to a girl… it was strange. I felt Amy grab my hand to pull me upstairs, but I continued to think about seeing Brandon’s name on the credits.
Before I knew it I was upstairs changing into my swimsuit in the bathroom that was attached to my room. I quickly put on the one-piece before joining everyone else out at the pool. As I worked to hide my extra parts, I couldn’t help but continue to think about how much I wanted to be rid of everything Brandon…
Once I hit the water I snapped out of it and made it back to the present. "I bet I can hold my breath underwater longer than any of you," Kyle taunted everyone.
"Oh yeah?" Ashley answered.
That of course led to a contest, with Amy counting, "1…2…3…Go!" To everyone as we all went underwater to see who could stay longest.
I had taken a deep breath, like I would with playing saxophone, and held on for a long time. Soon I saw other people surfacing while I was still underwater. I held on as long as I could and then went back up to the surface gasping.
I heard an ‘aha’ from beside me. As I wiped the water from my eyes I turned around to see who it was. "See I told you all," Kyle said.
"Actually it was more of a tie," Nikki declared.
"What? A tie? No, we don’t have ties today. I win," I said in my own declaration with a big smile.
"What? No it doesn’t work that way Tiffany," Kyle said.
"Uh-huh, it does. It’s my birthday, I win!" The smile on my face was too much for him and everyone else. Everyone else just started cracking up laughing.
"Kyle I don’t think you’re going to win this argument bro," David told him.
He then started laughing on his own too and we all went back to splashing and swimming in the water. After a half hour or so Amy’s mom said, "Time for Cake!"
The guys had especially built up an appetite after swimming and we all walked back over to the outside tables after toweling off a bit. My mom brought out a large cake that was decorated in pink and purple. In the center of the cake it said ‘Happy Birthday Tiffany.’ They were being cute and put one of those big number ‘one’ candles on the inside, plus the twelve real candles that were my real age.
I stuck my tongue out at Mom after seeing that. "It was her idea," she said pointing to Amy’s mom. I then stuck my tongue out at her too, but she just smiled.
After listening to the dreaded chorus of happy birthday for the millionth time that day, I blew out the candles. As they passed out the pieces of cake I admitted to myself that I was kind of touched that they had decided this was Tiffany’s first birthday…
Chapter 22
AS CAKE WAS finished I began opening my presents from everyone. Most of the presents from my friends were small things that weren’t really anything that special. I got several Barbies, some stuffed animals, and some earrings — that kind of stuff. Kristina gave me one of the first ‘older’ gifts that I got.
She gave me a bottle of lotion from some place called ‘Bath and Body Works.’ I’d heard some of the girls talking about it being a new store in the mall — but I hadn’t gone in there yet. I opened the top and put some on my hands to smell it — I really liked it. "Thanks Kristina, this smells really good."
I then moved on from there. Kyle and David both gave me stuffed animals — I think their mom’s had thought that was a safe gift for a girl. I of course had no problems with them, so I gave them a smile and said thank you to them as well. Kyle’s was actually a really cute white tiger that was really soft. I had a cousin that was going to be very jealous since she collected them.
There were some other things that I opened before getting to the ‘family’ presents. My grandparents gave me a teddy bear holding a card with fifty-dollars. "Use it on your trip sweetie," my grandmother had advised.
"Thank you Grandma," I told her with a hug. I gave Grandpa a hug too before moving onto the present from Amy’s parents.
I must have just been the kind of girl that seemed to need more stuffed animals! Not that I minded… but I think three year olds get fewer stuffed animals for their birthdays. Amy’s mom had come up with a gift basket that had a teddy bear in it in a cheerleading outfit. There were a bunch of things sitting around and on the teddy bear.
I began with looking at the top — a really pretty tiara! I was highly amused and of course put it on before looking at anything else. I looked around at everyone else and said, "See I really am a princess!" They all laughed and that of course made me blush a bit.
Around the teddy bear were different things like lotions, some nail polish, lip gloss, and a bath soap set. In the middle of all of it was a card inside an envelope that Amy or her mom had done with pink glitter to say my name on it.
I opened the card up and was really touched first of all by the message inside of it. ‘Tiffany, we very much consider you to be the fourth member of our family. We were trying to think of an appropriate birthday present for you and decided that you might enjoy another day at the spa on us before the trip.’ It was signed, ‘Happy Birthday, Love Melanie, Greg, and Amy.’
I had tears in my eyes as I finished reading the card and the gift card was held in my hand. I hugged Amy’s parents and Amy before wiping my eyes with the towel that I’d wrapped around my body. "Thank you guys," I said.
"You’re very welcome Tiffany. I figured we can go together on Wednesday after school," Amy’s mom said to me.
"Sounds good!" I told her with another hug.
I put the card back in the gift basket and moved onto the presents from my parents — the last presents I had. There were about six boxes that I had to open that contained different things. In a couple of the boxes were some things for music stuff, one had a stuffed animal, another had a cute top in it, another had a skirt that matched it, the last of those (a large long box) contained a dress that was absolutely to die for!
As I unfolded it out of the box my jaw dropped open. "Why did you spend so much on the dress?" I asked Mom.
"Well you’re going to need something nice for next week — and actually I did find it on sale." She answered as I continued to look the dress over. Somehow it was a mix between being a dress for a girl that wasn’t developed yet but also looked like it was going to make me look older.
The dress was in satin with short sleeves and was in a brilliant bright blue. I held it up to me and looked at the full skirt and especially the bodice — it was gorgeous. It had embroidery on it with a white stitching that added a really neat texture to it. There were also beads at the points of the patterns creating an effect that would look really pretty in the right lighting. I twirled around with it in front of me, while all of the other girls gawked at it too.
"You have to put it on!" Ashley said.
"Yeah!" Kristina said.
"May I Mommy?" I asked.
"I suppose, but you have to take a quick shower to get the pool water off of you." She told me.
"I’ll be right back!" I said, as I started running off to the house.
But Mom said to me, "Hold it!"
I stopped in my tracks, "What?" I wanted to go try it on — they all wanted to see me with it, what was the problem here?!?
"We have one more present for you." She said.
I walked back to the table — surprised that they would have gotten me anything else. I guess she must not have been lying about getting the dress on sale — I was sure that it wasn’t cheap. My parents had never spent this much on me for a birthday before… I hoped they hadn’t put this on the credit card…
As I got to the table Mom said, "Trade me," she took the dress off my hands and handed me a black velvet box with a purple bow tied around it.
"Huh?" I asked dumbly as I opened it. Inside was a beautiful necklace and earring set — inlaid with blue sapphires.
I just stood there dumbstruck. My friends all pushed their way in to see with a chorus of ‘wows’ going on around me. I just stared at it, "Well what do you think?" My dad asked me.
I didn’t have any way to vocalize my feelings at the moment. As I tried to open my mouth nothing came — so I did the only thing I could, hug him and cry. After a moment he kissed me gently on the top of my head and I moved onto hugging Mom — making sure that my tears didn’t get on my dress.
"You guys shouldn’t have done this," I told them as I looked at them both.
"We wanted your first birthday as Tiffany to be special." My mom told me.
"Thank you everyone," I told the group.
I handed the jewelry box to my dad and said, "Can you hold this for a few minutes?"
He smiled and nodded. I grabbed the dress from Mom and ran upstairs to the bathroom. I quickly showered off the pool water, dried off, then pulled the dress over the top of my head and on. It gave me shivers up and down my spine as the fabric glided over my skin. I smiled really big.
There was a zipper up the back of the bodice that I worked closed. I grabbed a ponytail holder that I had left in the room for an emergency occasion, quickly put my hair up, and ran downstairs to where everyone was waiting.
As I walked outside to where everyone was still sitting around the tables I heard a catcall from my grandfather. "Wow…" he exclaimed.
I spun around for everyone before going over to where my dad was still holding the jewelry box. I took it from him and handed him the necklace before turning around. He got the hint and put the necklace on me. That moment was a defining moment in my life — it symbolized a formalized connection between him and my new self. As soon as I felt him finish fumbling with the clasp I turned around and hugged him again before putting the earrings in my ears.
At that there were a number of flashes that went off and my friends and I posed in any number of poses. Eventually things began to wind back down again and we sat down in the living room. "So why is it that I need this pretty of a dress for the trip?" I asked mom.
"Yeah, now we’re going to have to go dress shopping for me Mommy!" Amy told her mom. I could see that Ashley and Nikki both had that glimmer in their own eyes as well.
"Well we found out last week that you guys are going to have your film attached to the main film on Friday night — instead of just being a minor film in the afternoon."
"What’s that mean?" I asked.
"The film they’re attaching yours to is a premiere of a medium-large budget film by a well known director. They have a fairly well-known cast — it’s to be the main event of the night." Amy’s dad said.
"Why is our film being attached to it?" I asked incredulously.
"Yeah, why?" Amy asked. She too was flabbergasted.
"I guess they were looking for something ‘light and fun’ to open up things. I don’t totally understand it myself, but the director of the film and the festival called and asked if we were interested in this — we of course told him yes." He said with a smile.
"Wow, that’s cool!" Nikki said.
"So does that mean there will be red carpet?" Ashley asked. There were clearly stars in her eyes over this.
"That’s what they told us," Amy’s dad answered.
"Wow… this is too good to be true. What’s the catch?" I asked.
"None that we know of," he replied.
"So that means everyone’s going to have to dress up for this?" I asked.
"That’s right," he said.
I grinned from ear to ear thinking of my parents having to dress up for it. My mom occasionally dressed up — but I’d never seen my dad in a tux before. The thought had me really smiling. We talked about that for a couple more moments before Kyle’s mom came to pick him and David up. She came inside for a few moments and told me, "Happy birthday Tiffany. That’s a really pretty dress," she added.
"Thanks!" I replied to her. "My parents got it for me for my birthday — it’s actually for next week though."
"Well you look really beautiful in it." She said.
Kyle and David both wished me happy birthday again before leaving with her. All of the girls then went upstairs to change into pajamas. I was sad to take the dress off, but it wasn’t exactly something that was practical for the slumber party we were now starting. I also took out the earrings and the necklace off — handing the box to my dad to go ahead and take home.
The main party really began breaking up at this point with my grandparents wishing me happy birthday one last time before leaving as well. Dad wished me goodnight and left with them — I think he was running away from all of the girliness as quick as he could! As they left I put on the tiara from the Hancocks present so that I could properly begin a night of being the birthday princess!
We all ended up sitting down in a circle in the living room a few minutes later. "So what are we doing next?" Ashley asked.
"Yeah, what’s next now that we got rid of the boys?" Amber asked.
"I think that we need to do everyone’s hair and nails like you’re going to a big dance," Nikki suggested.
"Okay," I replied to them.
"And you’re first, birthday girl!" Amy told me.
"Of course. I also have the tiara on!" I smiled at them all.
Before I knew it they had led me upstairs, taken the tiara off my head, washed my hair in the sink, and led me over to Amy’s room where she had a makeup dresser with all sorts of curling irons nearby. Amy had plugged them in while we were washing my hair so they were all ready to go.
"Okay who’s first to work on Tiffany?" Amy asked.
Almost every girl wanted to do it, "Okay, how about let’s do it this way?" I started. "I’m thinking of a number between 1-100, the closest person goes first!" I said with a smile. I didn’t want to have any fights start at my first real birthday party!
Each girl guessed a number. Amy was closest by picking the right number, seventeen. I think she must have known that that was my favorite number. We decided that we were going to do it by every girl getting two minutes each to work on my hair. Everyone agreed that I deserved a full amount of attention since I was the birthday girl. Once they were done with me we were going to divide into two teams to work on each other within the teams.
Our moms were going to judge the end result and decide on a winning team. Speaking of moms, mine was busy taking pictures like mad as the girls worked on my hair. She used to always say how much she wished she had a daughter to do stuff with… I think she was happier with me like this.
I felt my hair get tugged, twisted, yanked (ow!), and all other manner of things by each of the girls in turn. The curling irons seemed to be in nonstop usage no matter who was doing my hair. After what really seemed like all of about three minutes, but really nearly twenty, I was told, "Done!"
I tried to turn around to look in the mirror behind me but Amy and Amber kept one hand on each of my shoulders, "Not yet Tiffany," Kristina said. "Are we all in agreement that we need to finish her majesty the birthday girl completely first?" She asked with a grin on her face.
"You all are having way too much fun right now — you’re not turning me into a clown are you?" I asked semi-suspiciously — but with a sweet smile. I trusted the girls… but you shouldn’t trust someone off a cliff, right?
"No Tiffany, we’re not doing that — we’ll do that to someone else later — we really just want to see the finished Tiffany first. You’re going to look a lot older when we’re done here," Kristina replied.
"Older?" I asked surprised, "How much older?" I was curious. I didn’t know that I really wanted to look a lot older on a normal basis — I’d look more suspicious with my flat chest… - but I was curious.
"It’ll be a surprise," Amy said. She whispered, "Trust me," into my ear.
"Okay," I said.
My mom had stepped out of the room for a couple minutes, and at that point came in with Amy’s mom to snap some more pictures. In the meantime the girls had each drawn their own battlegrounds with me. Ashley and Nikki were working on my feet, Lindsey and Amy were working on my hands, leaving the other three working on my makeup. Kristina was definitely the most experienced person in our group; though Amber was also pretty good at stuff too.
I was in sensory overload by the time everything was said and done. Having your feet, hands, and face worked on all at the same time… very cool, but it was also a little overwhelming. It did send shivers up and down my spine and give me goose bumps though!
Twenty minutes after they started Amy said, "Done!"
"So I get to see now?" I asked.
"Yep! Stand up Tiff," She told me while keeping me pointed the opposite direction from the mirror. "On three! One…Two….Three!" She said turning me around.
Whoa!
I did a double take — what they had done was impressive. First was the hair. My hair had grown down to past my shoulders at this point… but it wasn’t really incredibly long like Amber’s (hers was down her back). Still, they had somehow found enough hair to do a bunch of ringlets coming down from a braided bun at the top of my head. They had used some really pretty hairpins that Amy had to hold things in place. The goal of making my hair look like I was going to prom or something had been accomplished!
From there I moved my glance back to my face. The girls had managed to make my face look like I was seventeen or eighteen. It wasn’t garishly done though — it was just enough to do it… Mom snapped some more pictures as I looked down at my nails and saw that they were redone in a base coat of a blue (it just about matched my new dress), and had a mixture of flowers and designs on them. Each nail was different — but somehow they all looked good together.
I spent several minutes gaping at myself — my brain still trying to process everything — before giving Amy a big hug. I followed that up with all of the other girls. "Thank you all! Wow, you’re all really good at this!" I told them.
They smiled and we all broke down into a fit of giggles before breaking up into the two teams. Amy grabbed a kitchen timer and set it for forty-five minutes — each team had that long to make all of the girls look their best. It was then a frantic grab of curling irons, nail polish, and makeup. In my group (which had Amy, Kristina, and Nikki) the three girls that weren’t ready circled up and I rotated between them. It was crazy!
By the time the timer rang everyone was looking really nice and we called the mom’s back up to render judgment. To make it more fair, since it was our moms, we both stayed out of the picture and they rated each girl without knowing which team they were on. Then they rated how Amy and I looked before calculating the scores. Of course… fairness aside our group looked way better! But they announced, "It’s a tie."
We all got the prize of cookies. Yay more sugar for us!
For the next half-hour or so we went outside and sat on a few blankets that we had spread on the grass talking. It was nice just to see the stars and the Sandia Mountains in the background.
"So Tiffany, what’s going on between you and Kyle?" Nikki asked me.
I sat up really quickly and looked at her asking, "Huh?!?"
"You have to be kidding, right?" Ashley said to me, also sitting up.
"You have been flirting really hard Tiff," Amy told me.
"I have?"
"You have," Kristina answered for her.
"You’re all joking right?" I asked them. "We were just talking earlier…"
I stopped talking at that point and tried to think back to what I had been doing earlier. Was I flirting? I guess it could have seemed that way… I didn’t even know if I liked boys yet… They had all stopped talking and were just looking at me.
"Was I really flirting?" I asked Amy.
She nodded, "That’s what I would call it."
"Definitely," Amber said before adding, "He seemed to be enjoying it too."
"I don’t even know if I want to like boys or not — I mean I’m a girl so I should like boys… but why would Kyle even be interested in me — dating me would be the quickest ride to him being made fun of ever…"
"Well… I don’t know about that — he’s pretty popular." Ashley replied to me.
"But you must definitely like boys," Amy said.
I stuck my tongue out at her. "So if we’re going to play this way what was going on with you and David?"
She just blushed and stuck her tongue out at me. Everyone just broke up into laughter at that point. When everyone had calmed back down Kristina brought up something I guess she had wanted to know. "Tiffany can I ask you a question?"
Anytime someone asks if they can ask you a question you have to be a little nervous, "I guess," I replied.
"You still have boy parts down below right?"
"Unfortunately," I replied.
"Will they ever be able to fix that?"
At least she thought of it as I did — fixing it. "I hope so. They won’t probably do anything with them permanently until I turn eighteen."
"That kind of sucks… can they do anything else for you until then?" She asked me.
"Well they already started me on some medicine to keep me from getting a low voice and a beard, but I want them to start hormones that’ll make me grow breasts and a normal girls shape as soon as possible… But the earliest they said they’d even think about it would maybe be at the end of this semester. That’s the time they told me earlier this summer — since then though my doctor has been kind of backtracking there."
"Why?" Amy asked. I hadn’t told her this part yet.
"Well it seems that she had a phone call with another colleague of hers that thinks that’s too young to start on them. They’re afraid of the consequences being severe if I change my mind."
"What kind of things could it do to you?" Ashley asked.
"Well… Like I said the hormones will make me start growing breasts just like you all. It also would have an effect of softening my face and moving some of my body fat down to my hips. Because I’m still young I might even get wider hips. Basically I’ll start looking like I was born a girl."
"I get all of that, but why is that a problem?" Kristina asked.
"Well if I change my mind I’ll be stuck with breasts that will make me look really strange as a guy — same thing with the rest of my body. Plus… if I change my mind at that point it’ll probably be too late for me to be able to ever have kids."
"Are you worried about changing your mind?" Nikki asked.
"No, this is who I am — the doctors just have to be careful."
"Then they should be doing everything to make stuff work out," Amy told me. "Maybe I’ll talk to Mom more about this later though."
"With as much as our moms talk anymore I’m sure they already know." I told her.
"You’re probably right."
The conversation moved on to other things for a while before we all kind of grew tired and bored of sitting there.
"Tiffany why don’t we go play some board games?" Amy suggested.
"Does that sound good to everyone else?" I asked.
Everyone nodded and we went inside to go through her board games. As we were going through the board games her family had, I heard Amber exclaim, "You have Candyland still?"
"Don’t say that too loud Amber, she’s only slightly obsessed about that game still," I told her.
"I heard that Tiffany!" Amy told me. "Besides I’ve never made you play it." She added.
In the end we ended up getting two board games out since there were eight of us. Candyland and Life were both brought out. Amber had indeed spoken too loudly and I had gotten roped into a game of Candyland with her, Amy, and Nikki.
The other girls played Life while we played through two games of Candyland. On both of the games I swear Amy must have been cheating somehow… "Amy how in the world have you beaten us so badly with this game twice in a row?" Amber voiced my thoughts.
"I’m just that good!" Amy said.
"That lucky!" I added.
We put up the game and moved over to where the other girls were just about finished with their game. "So who won?" Ashley asked.
"Who do you think?" I replied. "We have the world’s biggest Candyland shark ever in the house."
"She beat you that bad?" Ashley asked.
"Yep."
"Well, she used to always do that to me too. That’s why I haven’t played that game with her in a couple years. I’m surprised that she hadn’t made you play it yet."
"Her mom wouldn’t let her pick it when we were up skiing last year."
"Just ‘cause she’s mean!" Amy said entering the conversation.
"I can see we’re not going to get through to her here," I feigned to Ashley.
"Nope."
I soon saw a tongue stuck out at me and watched Lindsey win their game. As they put it up I asked, "Movie?"
"Movie sounds good," Lindsey said.
"What movie?" Amber asked.
We then went over to the VHS collection they had and started trying to pick through them. As I let them go through and pick something out — I wasn’t real picky tonight on that one — I looked at a clock and saw it was already 11pm.
The girls ended up picking out The Little Mermaid for some reason. My mom came in at that point, "Girls, why don’t you all go wash your faces and such so that you can just go to bed when the movie’s over?"
There were a few groans but I said, "okay," to keep from us being rude. The girls split off between Amy’s bathroom, my bathroom, and the other spare bathroom upstairs.
By the time everyone got back downstairs, at 11:30, we started the movie. No one really seemed to pay a lot of attention to the movie though — we just talked. There weren’t any important conversations held — it was just normal kid stuff. Amy, Nikki, Ashley and I had our sleeping bags all fairly close together — we had talked about the trip quite a bit.
Honestly we didn’t even know much about what we were going to be doing — so we didn’t know what to get excited about. What little I knew about the trip it seemed like it was going to be really short and tiring. Especially, since we were going to be coming back the next week just in time to start the process of trying out for the new dance squad.
All of the girls in the room wanted to try out for that team then except for Nikki. She just wasn’t interested in it — that was fine with me. I’d have at least one friend not on the squad if I didn’t make it. The girls that were already on the cheerleading squad spent a lot of time talking about whether or not that was going to help or hurt them.
"Why would it hurt you to be on the squad?" I asked Amy.
"Well, Coach Holt really isn’t happy with the cheerleading squad right now. I think that’s why she’s forming an entirely new squad to go to the competitions this spring. Pretty much all of the girls who aren’t here right now have been terrible about everything on the squad."
"Yeah, it’s been pretty bad this year," Kristina added. "Especially the eighth grade girls. There are nine eighth grade girls on the squad, and other than one other besides me, they’re all terrible."
"So why are they on the team?" Nikki asked.
"Well Mrs. Hinther pushed for six of them to be put on the team — even though they weren’t really good enough. I think she’s good friends with their parents or something. I’m not really sure." Lindsey answered.
"Well Mrs. Hinther and I certainly haven’t been getting along this year," I said aloud.
"I’m amazed that she’s been the only one that you’ve had problems with." Kristina said.
"Really you’ve had so much easier of a time like this than I expected Tiffany," Amber said.
"I wouldn’t be doing this well without all of you," I told them with a small smile. "Which, speaking of all of you. Thank you all again for coming — I appreciate it."
"This has been a blast Tiffany," Lindsey told me, "Of course we were going to come. I may not completely understand why you would ever want to be a girl instead of a boy… but I think you’re really cool and don’t want to see you hurt."
"Why wouldn’t I want to be a girl?" I asked her.
"Well… there are so many reasons," She started off.
"Most of them she’ll never have to deal with though," Amy said with a smile and a wink.
"Yeah she doesn’t have to worry about periods… lucky." Katrina told me.
"I’ll trade with you," I told her. I really would. They looked down at the idea of dealing with those things — yeah they definitely would be a pain to deal with — but I’d do anything to have them myself. Let’s face it — I’d never be able to have kids myself...
Amy, always the ever present friend guessed something was going on in my head and decided to shift the conversation. "So homecoming week is in what four weeks now?"
"Something like that," Lindsey answered. "I think it’s going to be two weeks after the tryouts."
"Maybe Kyle will ask you to the dance," Amy joked with me.
"…Maybe…" I answered back. "I don’t know that I really want to go with anyone though — it’ll cause more trouble than I think it’s worth. Is our homecoming dance that dressy?"
"Not like the high school, but it’s something where you want to wear a nice dress." Kristina told me.
"I’m sure my parents are going to regret this more and more as I keep needing new dresses," I told them all with a giggle.
"Probably." Amy said.
It was about that time that the movie finished and my mom came downstairs from the guestroom and turned off the lights. She of course knew that we weren’t necessarily going to go to sleep at that point — but it was a start to push us in that direction.
That night I’m not exactly sure what time I fell asleep — I did so though knowing that I was a twelve year old girl, not a boy. I knew that I would not have any regrets on choosing this road. It was me. I actually enjoyed being me like this — I sure hadn’t had this much fun as Brandon. He wasn’t completely gone yet — as long as I had this stupid body part he wouldn’t be — but he was a very diminished portion of myself.
Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 Part 6 of 8 by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
Available for Purchase as
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Please visit Tiffany Shar's Bookstore Page |
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
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!
Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them 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! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!
-Tiffany Shar
Chapter 23
I WOKE UP the next morning with a prod. "Ugh… I’m sleeping here."
"Wake up before your mom tells me to tickle you," Amy told me.
I grumbled and forced myself to sit up a bit. "What time is it?" I asked while rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
"9:30, as usual you’re the last girl to wake up." She told me.
"Ugh… Why can’t you all sleep longer so I don’t look bad…" I asked her as I stumbled up.
"Oh stop your whining and come eat something. You have got to be the grouchiest girl ever in the morning," she told me.
"And proud of it too…" I said as I made my way to the dining room table where all of the rest of the girls were already eating breakfast.
After a few minutes of quietly munching on some scrambled eggs and bacon that were made for us I became a little more human.
"So Tiffany what are you doing tonight?" Amy asked.
"Actually I’m babysitting tonight," I told her.
"Really?" She asked.
"Yeah, our neighbor across the street came over and asked Wednesday night. I can’t believe I didn’t tell you about it."
"You kind of had other things on your mind," she reminded me.
Yeah I did, I thought, I still had to tell my mom about what happened on Friday. Although I had a feeling she might have already known since Dad had gone home where he would have been able to get the message off of the answering machine. "Yeah." I replied.
"Are you excited?" Lindsey asked me.
"I don’t know. I’ve never babysat before." I told her. "Have you done it before?"
"Yeah, several times, I really enjoy it." She told me.
Kristina chimed in at this point, "It’s a really great way to make some extra cash. I usually get at least sixty dollars a night for it — and it’s not really that hard of work compared to something like McDonalds."
"I know she said she’d pay me… I didn’t ask how much. It’ll be nice to have some more cash for our trip this week though. I just hope I can manage to do it — I’m not looking forward to changing diapers." I said.
"Well… that part kind of sucks," Kristina told me with a grin. "But you’ll have to deal with it one day anyway — might as well get used to it now."
I just nodded and moved back to my eating. Conversations weren’t very animated that morning. One of the girls that had gone to sleep before me asked how much longer we stayed up. "I don’t know, maybe an hour longer?" I suggested.
"Wow, it was three when I fell asleep," she told me.
"Were we really up that late?" I asked Amy.
"Probably."
"I think that’s the latest I’ve ever stayed up." I told her.
"I’ve stayed up later on these before… but usually during the summer when we haven’t had school the day of the party," she told me.
About that time the doorbell rang and we started saying goodbye to the girls one-by-one as their moms picked them up. By the time that Ashley’s mom came to pick her up (she was the last one), I had used my shower and changed into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Her mom actually stayed and talked to ours for a little bit about the next week. She didn’t seem to know that much more than we did about what was going to happen.
After a short time they left leaving just Amy, her mom, and my mom to finish cleaning up from the party. We all worked together ‘til about noon. Amy’s mom heated up some of the leftovers from the previous night and we ate before loading up my mom’s van with all of the presents I’d gotten that night. Amy and her mom helped with getting everything in there, before I gave them both really big hugs. How had I ever gotten so lucky to have my own parents, and then Amy’s family too?
"Thank you again s-o-o-o much for the party!" I told them both.
"Well we had to make your first birthday party as Tiffany special!" Melanie told me.
I was afraid that I was going to start crying — again — so I quickly turned toward the car.
"Call me tomorrow Tiffany," Amy told me as I sat down in my mom’s car.
"I will. Hopefully tonight will be fun," I told her.
"It should be — at least you should be able to make it so." She told me.
"Anyway, I’ll talk to you tomorrow," I told her.
With that, Mom drove away towards our house. Dad came out and helped me bring all of the stuff in — pretty much covering my bed with stuffed animals. Seeing my bed like that made me really smile! I also hung my new dress up very carefully in the closet.
"Mom, how are we going to get that to New York without messing it up?" I asked her.
"We’ll pack it in a bag made for dresses like that. I bought one last week since I knew we’d need it for the trip. It should be able to fit both of our dresses in it."
"Do you have a dress for the trip already?" I asked her. I was excited to see my parents dress up really nicely.
"Yes, but you don’t get to see it until the trip," she told me.
"Why not? Please?" I asked.
"Maybe Monday, it’s off getting some alterations done on it. It didn’t completely fit right when I bought it."
"Alright… I guess I can wait till then." I said with some disappointment.
I continued straightening some things up in my room before going out in the living room and sitting down to watch TV. "So Tiffany, what happened yesterday?" Mom asked me.
"Do we have to talk about it?" I asked her.
"Yes sweetie we do. What exactly happened?"
"Well it wasn’t that much of a thing I guess…" I tried to temporize but she gave me her patented mom stare so that I knew I didn’t have a choice. "I went to my locker yesterday morning and found a card taped to my locker. It looked like a normal birthday card at first, but when I opened it I found this." I had gone over to my backpack and gotten the copy out.
I could see Mom’s face grow red, "Joe?" She called my dad and showed him the note that was inside the card.
"If I ever…" he started off, "This is a clear threat, what did Mrs. Henry say?" he asked me.
"Well she didn’t have any proof of who left it, though Amy and I are pretty certain who it was. I don’t know if she’s done anything else with it." I answered somewhat nervously.
"This school’s administration is going to have to do something about this or we’ll go ahead and sue them for this crap." He said angrily.
"Look Joe, let’s wait until we can talk to them on Monday and see if they’re doing anything about this."
"You’re right Babe," Dad answered calming down a bit. "Tiffany thank you for getting a copy of the note like we talked about." He told me before he left the room and went into the den where the computer was. I could tell he was really steamed about this — babysitting tonight was going to be a good thing to get away from that at least.
Don’t get me wrong, I was upset about the note, but at least at this point it was just a note… I’d been prepared for far worse by Dr. Reynolds. I was doing my best not to let it get to me — but Dad was making it really really hard.
I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in my room playing with my dolls and practicing the tryout routine that Ms. Clemens had given me. It was hard! Really hard! I knew if I could get it down, and we needed something like it, I’d have a much better shot at making the squad. At three I began putting some homework and a couple of books in my backpack. I had managed to distract myself pretty well before I went over to the Lind’s house at four.
"Hey Tiffany, thanks for coming over!" Mrs. Lind told me. "Jamie and Brittany are just getting ready to eat dinner. Can you help me get them fed while I get ready?" She asked.
"Sure, just tell me what to do," I told her with a smile. I had no idea what I was doing. Without any little siblings I was pretty much clueless… Thankfully her kids were some of the better behaved kids I would come across in my life. Most were a lot harder to deal with than hers.
I went into the dining room where Brittany was sitting in a high chair and Jamie was sitting on a booster seat so she could reach the table. "I’ve already cut Brittany’s food up for her — and she should be able to feed herself — but just keep an eye on them okay?" She asked.
"No problem." I said sitting down next to Brittany. Jamie was on the other side of the table and seemed to be doing fine on her own.
"What’s your name again?" Jamie asked me.
"I’m Tiffany," I answered her.
"Hi, Tiffany," she told me with a big smile. Smiles were a good thing with kids I figured. "Mommy said you’re going to stay with us tonight?" she asked.
"Yep! I’ll be watching you guys tonight while they go out." I immediately went on alert though… Kristina had warned me that a lot of times the parents she sat for snuck out of the house without telling the kids. Great! I’d been there for less than five minutes and I had already screwed up!
Her only response to that at that point was, "Cool!" She then went back to eating. I looked over at Brittany at that point to see her drop her sippy cup on the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized they weren’t going to throw a fit.
"Oopsie," she said.
I picked it up and put it back on the tray in front of her. At that point her mom walked back in, "What do you say Brittany?"
"Thank you," Brittany said to me.
"Good girl sweetie." I was amazed that she had managed to change, put makeup on, and get ready in the span of maybe fifteen minutes while I’d been watching them. I helped her get Brittany out of the high chair and clean her up — she wasn’t that messy since she was getting old enough she wasn’t too bad about it, but she still had a little bit of stuff on her face. I also helped Jamie hop down off of her booster seat and cleaned up the dishes.
"Okay Tiffany, there’s some money on the counter if you want to order pizza for yourself. If the girls want a piece each they can have one, no more than that." She showed me some emergency numbers. "If Brittany asks for her bottle, ‘her ba ba,’ as she calls it, I have two in the fridge. You don’t need to worry about warming them up — she’s used to them cold. She probably needs changed here soon too."
She continued the worried mother routine for fifteen minutes or so before she and her husband left to go to their party. I went searching and found Brittany sitting down on the floor playing with some toys and checked her diaper. It was pretty wet so I picked her up to take her to her room to change her.
I did it just like I had Wednesday with her mom present, and felt like I’d done a reasonable job. I’d tickled her belly a little bit as I changed her and been rewarded with loud giggles and smiles. Hey! Maybe this could be fun after all! Once I was done with her I put her back down on the floor and got rid of the diaper in the trashcan she had in her room. I followed her back out to the living room where both girls had a bunch of dolls and other toys they were playing with.
"Can we watch a movie?" Jamie asked me.
"Sure," I replied. "What do you want to watch?" I asked her as I looked at what they had.
"Sleeping beauty!" she told me.
"Okay," I said as I got the movie and put it in the VCR. Both girls settled down to watch the movie and seemed to be doing fine. As I sat on the couch I felt my stomach grumble. Her offer of pizza was sounding really good.
I walked over to the other room with the counter and called Pizza Hut asking for a medium pepperoni pizza. As I hung up the phone Brittany came up to me with her thumb in her mouth. "Can I have Ba-ba?" she asked.
My mom would have had a fit with seeing her still drinking out of that… but at the same time I think I was still drinking out of one at this age. "Sure Brittany," I said as I got one of the bottles out of the fridge. I handed it to her and she went back out to the TV to keep watching the video.
I looked at the clock on the microwave as I passed by; it was already almost six. The movie thoroughly grabbed both of their attention for the next Forty-Five minutes that I waited for my pizza to get there. When the doorbell rang I answered it paying for the pizza. This of course got both girls riled up a bit so I stopped the movie and got them back to the table.
Mrs. Lind had suggested that if they did want some pizza I go ahead and put a bib on Brittany and cut it up. She’d also warned me that realistically Jamie needed one too… but just to be prepared to clean her up.
I did as she suggested with Brittany and tried to keep an eye on Jamie — all while trying to eat my own pizza. I had downed about two slices when Jamie and Brittany both finished up. I stopped eating long enough to get both of them cleaned up and let them down. I moved into the living room at that time trying to eat a third slice (I was hungry!).
Their movie had about ten minutes left in it when I put the rest of the pizza up. I figured maybe I could eat some more when they went to bed at eight. As the movie finished I spent some time playing dolls with both of them, followed by hide-and-seek, and finally began getting them ready for bed. Brittany had a wet diaper that I changed and put her into a cute nightgown that she had.
Jamie in the meantime had been really good and changed into a pair of green pajamas she had. "Jamie did you put your pull-up on?" I asked her.
She looked kind of squeamish… "Yes…" She told me looking away.
"Come here real quick okay?" I asked her.
She really didn’t want to come but I somehow managed to stare long enough that she walked over. Her mom had told me that she really didn’t like wearing them to bed anymore — but that if she didn’t wear them she’d have a wet bed. I could tell pretty quickly she didn’t have it on.
"Jamie, come on let’s get your pull-up on," I told her.
"I don’t wanna," she told me. She looked like she was about to cry. "I’m not a baby, I don’t need pull-ups!" She was getting more upset.
"Jamie, a lot of girls your age still wear pull-ups." I told her. "In fact I have one friend that was still in diapers until she was five."
"Really?" She asked.
"Yeah, well actually I think she may have even been a little older than that until she was really potty trained. You’re just barely four okay? It’s not a big deal." I told her.
"I still don’t like them." She told me.
"At least it’s not a diaper," I told her.
"Yeah… I guess so…" she told me. "Would you put it on for me?" She asked me.
That was a really strange question. Why did she want me to put it on her? Maybe it was because of all of the attention I’d given her little sister?
"No Jamie, you’re a big girl. Why don’t you go put in on yourself?"
"No, want you to put it on." She told me.
"…Alright…" I helped her put it on. It was really bizarre. When we had her PJ pants back up she gave me a hug and I put her in her bed, covering her with her covers. I then picked up Brittany and put her in her bed — making sure the rail was up where she couldn’t roll out. The girls shared a room and Mrs. Lind said she read a story to both of them together each night.
I grabbed the book that I had been assured would be their request and began reading it to them. I had a lot of fun doing different voices in the story. For two kids that had heard this story a million times, they paid really good attention. Maybe it was just because I was a different person reading it. Before long both were sound asleep. I turned off the light and walked back down the hallway to the kitchen. Once there I grabbed a plate and reheated another slice of pizza.
I ate it very guiltily though… I didn’t want to get fat did I? Oh well. I thought to myself — I’d burn off the calories in a week or so with the dance squad tryouts. I was still thinking about Jamie and her request. It seemed kind of strange — I’d mention it to her mom to make sure that she knew about it.
With that I sat down on the couch and worked on homework that was going to be due next week. I checked on the girls a couple times that night, but around eleven when I checked on them I could smell something I really didn’t want to smell — Brittany must have a dirty diaper I thought.
I was about to change her when I heard a car pull up. I’d already picked Brittany up though so I decided just to go ahead and change her. There was just enough light from the two night lights in the room that I put her down on the table and took the diaper off gently.
I managed not to throw up as I changed her — it was really gross! As I was changing her I heard her mom come up behind me. "I could have done that," she told me.
"I figured I might as well do it," I replied as I finished taping up her new diaper. She did take the dirty one and emptied it into the toilet before putting it in the trashcan. In the meantime I put Brittany back in bed and covered her. I was amazed that she hadn’t woken up even a tiny bit during all of this.
I followed Mrs. Lind out to the living room where she said, "Thanks so much for watching them for us Tiffany. Did you have any problems?" She asked me.
"No, not really. Jamie wasn’t real happy with the pull-up. She tried to make me think she had put one on at first — I could tell she hadn’t — then she asked me to help her put it on. It was kind of strange," I told her.
"That is odd. She was probably just jealous of the attention you were giving Brittany. Every once in a while she does stuff like that. No big deal though." She told me with a smile. "So let’s get you paid." She said.
She reached into her purse and handed me a stack of twenty dollar bills. "Is a hundred-and-forty enough?"
I just about coughed at that point… "…Are you sure you want to pay me that much?" I asked her.
"Absolutely. That’s a very fair rate for watching two kids for seven hours," she told me.
"Well… I won’t turn it down." I said with a small smile.
"Good, we’ll have to have you come and sit for us again. You seem to have done a good job with them. I think you must have even cleaned up the living room a bit." She said.
"Well thanks again," I told her as I went out the door and walked across the street to my house. She watched me from her door until I was home; then turned out her porch light.
It was about 11:30 when I entered my house. I expected to find everyone asleep — but both my mom and dad had waited up for me. "Everything go alright?" Mom asked me.
"Yeah… though I think she overpaid me," I told her.
"How much did she pay you?" She asked.
"A Hundred-and-Forty!" I said, both excited and kind of squeamish.
"Wow, she was pretty generous. But she’s also right that it really isn’t as much as some people would ask for. It’s a great way for you to make some extra money."
"Yeah I guess so. Anyway, I’m tired — I think I’m going to go to bed." I told her and Dad.
"Goodnight Sweetie," Mom said to me as I went into my room. I put on a pair of pajamas and drifted off to sleep very quickly. What a couple of days!
Chapter 24
SUNDAY CAME AND went quickly. Between homework, working on dance stuff, practicing sax, and doing as little of anything else I could… yeah the weekend was gone that fast. When I got to school on Monday things went fairly smoothly — at least until I got to my locker at the end of the day.
There was another note in my locker, ‘Leave the school or else.’ I didn’t have enough time to run back to the office to show it to them so I went ahead and put it in my backpack quickly and ran to the bus. As I sat on the bus I wondered how much I needed to be concerned about these notes.
On one hand they were just words… but they were beginning to take their toll again like last year’s words. I was so busy thinking about all of this that I didn’t even notice that Lucas and Jarred were on the bus until I was getting off — and the two of them were behind me. My heart skipped several beats as I realized they must be following me.
There couldn’t be any other reason they’d be coming this way could there? I didn’t want to start running home — I’d worn a pair of shoes with a slight heel to them today and knew I couldn’t run in them. If I had to I could kick them off…
I decided just to keep walking. As I made it halfway up the block to my house I looked back to see them still behind me. ‘Oh no,’ I thought to myself. They had also gained some distance behind me — they were maybe a hundred feet behind me now. If I could manage to get my keys out I could probably get inside and lock the door before they could do something. I’d have to call 9-1-1 when I got inside… hopefully they wouldn’t try anything beyond that.
I was so scared at this point that I didn’t have anyone with me that I almost missed the fact that Mrs. Lind was sitting outside with Brittany and Jamie in the front yard. Seeing a better opportunity to stay safe I decided to cross the street and go over there.
Mrs. Lind must have noticed something on my face because she immediately clued into the fact I was scared of something. As I walked up she asked me, "Tiffany is everything okay?"
I shook my head, "Can I stay here for a few minutes until those two boys go away?" I had tilted my head slightly so she could tell who I was talking about.
"Sure… are you okay?" She asked. I think she instantly realized that I was scared of being hurt by them.
"I’ll be better when those two go away."
"Tiffany, why don’t you come inside with me and tell me what’s going on, okay?" she asked.
I nodded, I was really upset and almost in tears. She had gathered Jamie and Brittany, shoeing them to play with some toys in the living room while she sat down in the kitchen to talk to me. "So what’s up with those two boys?" She asked.
Suddenly I was really nervous… I didn’t know if she knew that I wasn’t born Tiffany or not… they’d just moved in this summer after I’d been dressing as Tiffany. Would she be open to the idea that she’d actually had a ‘boy’ watching her daughters this past weekend? Or, would she freak out and scream at me — sending me right back out to Jarred and Lucas to get beaten up or worse…
I just started crying at this point. I didn’t know what else to do. Eventually I managed to get out, "They’ve both attacked me before, and I found a second threatening note in my locker today." I sniffled a fair amount before continuing, "Then I saw them following me today and I knew they must be up to trying to get me again…"
"Why in the world would two boys want to attack you?" She asked completely flabbergasted.
"Umm… because I’m different…" I told her cryptically.
"You look normal to me Tiffany, if anything you’re probably one of the prettier girls at your school." She told me.
That brought a small smile to my face. "The problem they have is I wasn’t… I wasn’t born Tiffany…" I told her.
"What do you mean," She asked. She had a very quizzical expression on her face.
"I… I…" I paused. Everyone at school knew, what was the big deal with a neighbor knowing? I took a breath, "I used to be a boy."
"What?!?" She said louder than I think she meant.
"I used to be a boy named Brandon. This past year I realized that I was supposed to be Tiffany."
"Whoa… I’ve heard about people like you… I never would have guessed Tiffany." She said truly in a state of shock.
"I guess I should be going now… I’m really sorry I caused you any trouble, thanks for helping me out." I said as I started to get up and leave.
"Hold on a second Tiffany." She said. I sat back down. "You’re different, and I won’t deny this is strange, but I’m not going to send you out to those boys to get hurt one way or another."
I gave her a small smile, "Thanks Mrs. Lind."
"No problem Tiffany. I have to admit I probably should be more concerned about this — but I don’t think you’d ever do anything to harm my girls — and that’s my standard. I am curious though, how did this all come about?" She asked as she went into the living room to look for the two boys. They must have still been out there somewhere though because she motioned for me to keep talking.
"Well it began last year…" I told her the basic outline of the events that had led to this.
She didn’t really interrupt at all while I was telling the story. When I was done her only reaction at first was, "wow, this must be really hard for you…"
At least it wasn’t the ‘you freak’ comment that I had feared. Thankfully some grownups were able to use their heads on things like this. I still was sure though that she wouldn’t ever want me to babysit for her again.
"Tiffany, I can’t say that I’m in total agreement that you should be doing this… It kind of goes against what I believe in. But, I think you really are a special young lady." She told me as she came around the table and gave me a quick hug.
"Thank you." I told her.
The two of us talked for about ten more minutes until my mom drove into the driveway. Jarred and Lucas had left at some point during our conversation. Both Mrs. Lind and I were pretty sure they had been waiting for me — they’d sat outside the house for the better part of forty minutes watching to see if I was coming out. She came across the street to talk with Mom when I went over.
Brittany and Jamie came over too — I ended up showing them my room and my toys. They both got really excited when they saw my doll house and all of my Barbies. Thankfully they didn’t stay but a couple more minutes though — it’s not that I didn’t want to share… but I didn’t want to share!
I was kind of scared of letting Brittany play with them. Jamie didn’t really concern me as much — but I was afraid Brittany might break something. It was a pretty selfish thought, but it was what I was thinking. It also managed to distract me from my situation earlier. When they were gone Mom asked me where I wanted to get some food from — I answered McDonalds.
We drove there and I asked for a happy meal. Just because I wasn’t five didn’t mean I didn’t want the toy! I was amazed Mom didn’t interrogate me about the reason I was over at the Lind’s during the whole time we were getting food, or when I was eating. She didn’t even ask me about it while we were on my way to ballet.
I didn’t really want to talk about it more — but I was really surprised she wasn’t asking. That ended up being the least of my concerns though when I got to gymnastics practice. Tara proceeded to review and build on everything that we’d worked on the previous week.
By the time we got through that lesson I’d managed to actually get two front-flips in a row. I was pretty proud of myself for that. Of course when I tried the second time I couldn’t repeat the feat. Tara told me to make sure I practiced this week — but I did warn her I wasn’t really going to be able to because of the trip. She seemed pretty intrigued by what I was doing, and wished me luck.
As we traveled home that night Mom sat in silence still — she still hadn’t asked me about earlier. Once I had taken a shower at home I sat down in the living room. "Mommy aren’t you going to ask me about earlier?"
"What is there to talk about sweetie?" She asked fairly curtly. What did I do?
"Did I miss something here? What did I do?" I asked her with some tears forming in my eyes.
She apparently hadn’t meant to snap at me. "I’m sorry sweetie, I didn’t mean it like that. I just don’t know what to do. They won’t do anything about the note — since the boys didn’t do anything we can’t really do anything about them… and I don’t think there’s a single thing I can do to protect you against them…" She was in tears at this point — I was too.
I went over to her and gave her a long hug where we both cried on each other for a bit. "I’m sorry Mommy… If you want me to stop this… I guess…" Could I really offer that…? Could I really exist being Brandon again..?
She jerked slightly and her whole demeanor changed as she looked into my eyes. She put a finger up to my lips, "Tiffany, are you happier now?" She asked.
I didn’t have to hesitate for a moment, "yes, much happier," I said nodding.
"Then I don’t want you to even ever consider offering that for a moment. I doubt it would be possible for you to do anyway. We’ll get through this — it’s just going to be really hard." She told me pulling me in close to her. I guess I knew that this all was affecting my parents a lot too… but this was the first time I saw Mom have a problem with it.
"Thank you Mommy," I told her. The phone rang right about then. I was sitting on my mom’s lap (doing my best to not crush her…) so she had just leaned over to pick it up.
"Hello?" She said. "Oh Hi Amy, here give her just a second to go get the other phone," Mom said as she gave me a shove off her lap.
I ran to the phone next to our computer, sitting down in the computer chair before saying, "Hello?" into the phone.
"Hey Tiffany, is everything okay?" She asked me.
"Kind of… Why do you ask?"
"Well someone saw Jarred and Lucas get onto your bus. Then someone else said they’d heard something about they were going to do something to you today — I was worried. But you haven’t been home to answer the phone every time I’ve tried."
"Well… I don’t know if they were going to try something or not… but they did follow me home after school." I told her.
"What happened?" she asked, even more concerned now.
I related the events that happened — including the conversation I had at the Lind’s house, and what had just happened with my mom.
"Tiffany, I’m kind of worried about you. What happens if they actually decide to attack you like that?"
I started getting upset again, "I don’t know Amy… I don’t know. It’s not like I have a choice — I have to get home from school. Mom said she was going to talk to the driver about not letting them on again… but realistically there’s nothing that we can go to the school with. I’m hoping maybe they’re just playing mind games with me…"
"Well it’s working with me Tiff. You know the bus stop to my house is a lot closer to my house than yours is to yours. Maybe you could start coming here after school?" She suggested.
"Maybe… I’d feel really strange going to your house without you though." I told her.
"It’d be a lot better than the alternative. How weird can it be, you even have your own room here," she told me.
"I guess let me talk to my mom about it," I told her.
"Okay, I’ll talk to mine about it too." She told me.
"So how did practice go tonight?" I asked.
"Terrible. Two of the girls just mouthed off to Coach Holt and walked out today… I don’t think they’re going to be allowed on the squad anymore."
"That’s probably a good thing?" I asked her.
"Kind of… unfortunately they were the only other two eighth graders beside Kristina that were able to do anything decently. We probably are better off without their attitudes though. Anyway… it’s probably going to be even more fun as we get through tryouts next week. Some of the eighth grade girls were asking about you — they heard you were trying out. A couple of them weren’t too happy about the possibility of you making it. I hope they don’t do anything stupid though." She told me.
"Me too," I told her.
"So how did gymnastics go?" She asked suddenly realizing that tonight probably wasn’t the night to bring any more problems up.
"It went pretty well. I managed to do two front-flips in a row. Well, once at least. I mostly fell on my face and my rear most of the time still…" I told her.
She was laughing like a hyena on the other end. "I remember doing that… of course I was like four when I was trying to get that far!"
"Hey! Just because you had a head start," I said giggling a bit. The two of us lightened up considerably then and we had fun talking about a couple of other things. By the end of the conversation I felt considerably better. About the time I finished, around 9:30pm, Dad came in from work.
He’d had a late night dealing with something at work. I just hoped that he wouldn’t have something come up to where he couldn’t go on the trip with us. I wanted badly for him to be there. I talked with my parents very briefly at that point though — floating Amy’s idea as a suggestion, before going to my room, putting on my pajamas, and crawling into bed. I didn’t really want to think more about anything.
As I tried to go to sleep I heard my parents with raised voices out in the living room. ‘It was probably about me’ I figured laying there. ‘What was I going to do?’
Chapter 25
TUESDAY MORNING WAS the now normal routine of being picked up to go to school by Amy’s mom. "Tiffany, here." She handed me a key as we pulled into the school’s drop-off area.
"Are you sure?" I asked her.
"Why wouldn’t I be?" she replied.
"I don’t know…"
"You have your own room at our house! You’re welcome to come over anytime you want. I talked with your mom last night and we both think Amy had a really good idea. Our neighborhood also has a lot more people around there during the daytime — I think you would be safer."
Dad had mentioned that they thought it wasn’t a bad plan earlier when he talked to me. He got an emergency call into work though and left quickly after talking to me. I wasn’t sure if they were thinking I should go after school today or not…
"I appreciate it," I told her as I put it on my keychain. I gave her a hug through the window and went with Amy through our classes like normal.
During second hour I got called out of class to see Mrs. Henry. She wanted to see the note that I’d found and to talk to me about yesterday after school. "Tiffany I really wish I could catch whoever gave you these notes — so far I think it is two different people. The handwriting looks different on this one from the other one. I also wished I could do something about Lucas and Jarred riding your bus. But, they both had legitimate notes on why they needed to ride the bus there… and I don’t think I can do anything about it unless they do something to you." She told me with a lot of sympathy in her eyes.
I didn’t have anything left to me so I decided to just be polite. "Thanks anyway Mrs. Henry," I told her and headed back to class.
I was in kind of a foul mood after that… nothing physical had occurred since the first incident. But it was probably only a matter of time. At lunch that day I ate with Amy, Kristina, Lindsey, Ashley, and the rest of my gang, but noted that some of the eighth grade cheerleaders that had been eating with her had glared at me and moved to another table. The word was definitely out that I was trying out for the dance squad next week, and some of them weren’t happy about it.
I felt some nerves hitting with that — I just hoped that it didn’t cause more trouble than it was worth for me to try out. That ended up being the least of my worries by seventh period that day though. When I got to band to get my instrument out I discovered someone had glued my case shut.
Mrs. Remar was furious when I showed her what had happened. She and I then worked for the better part of ten minutes trying to get the lid unstuck. When it finally came loose one of the hinges broke on the case. My first thought was, ‘at least it’s open now and I can play…’ but inside I discovered yet another note.
The note read, ‘you won’t always be able to find someone to run to Tiffany, your days are numbered here at Holden. We’re not going to tolerate having a freak like you here.’ At that point I just started bawling. Mrs. Remar led me to her office where she closed the door and tried to calm me down.
"Tiffany, it’s okay — we’ll get your case fixed." She told me.
"I’m not worried about the case," I told her through my tears.
"This is the third note I’ve gotten in the last three school days. I think it’s from Jarred and Lucas — they followed me home yesterday… but Mrs. Henry can’t do anything since she can’t prove anything!"
Mrs. Remar gave me another hug, "Tiffany it’ll be alright. They’re just using the notes because they can’t get to you any other way."
"I hope you’re right." I told her.
"Come on, let’s get your horn together and play, okay?" She asked.
"Okay," I said meekly before going back into the classroom to try and play. I somehow managed to not completely butcher the parts — I was pretty upset. Ashley came up to me after class and walked me to my locker before I got to the busses. When I walked up to them I watched Jarred and Lucas get onto my bus.
It didn’t take but a moment for me to make up my mind what I was doing then — I got on the bus that would take me to Amy’s house. The driver gave me kind of a strange glance and asked, "Where’s Amy?"
"She’s got cheerleading practice, but I’m going to start going to her house after school sometimes anyway." I told her.
"Okay, I’ll check with your mom later though to make sure this is okay." She told me.
"That’s fine, she knows." I said.
I managed to get a seat and have an uneventful ride to her house. When I got to her house I let myself in with the new key — finding it really strange to be here without anyone else. I didn’t really know what else to do at the moment, so I got a glass of water and went up to my room to work on homework for a bit. Mom would be coming to get me for my sax lesson before anyone else got home.
The Hancock’s had been so thoughtful when they’d given me my own room — it made me feel a little bit better. I hadn’t necessarily seen a need for it before — after all it meant that Amy and I weren’t able to stay up all night talking! But, now I really appreciated the gesture as I sat down at a dresser/desk that was in there and began working on math homework.
Mr. Martin had given us our makeup work for the days we were missing — and I really didn’t want to have to worry about it on the trip! I worked solidly for an hour before I heard the doorbell ring downstairs. I ran downstairs and found Mom waiting at the door for me.
As I locked the door and stepped outside she asked, "So did this work out better?"
"Well I kind of decided it was safer after seeing Jarred and Lucas get on my bus." I told her.
"Well I’m okay if you want to do this each day. Mrs. Hancock seems to think it’s okay too, so just let me know which you decide."
"Oh I’m sorry… I completely forgot to call and leave you a message about this."
"Its okay sweetie, Linda told me you rode this bus. She wanted to make sure it was okay," she told me.
"Okay, sorry again."
"Like I said it’s fine, now let’s get you to your lesson." She said as we drove there. At the first stoplight she asked, "So how did today go?"
"Not good," I told her.
She sighed and asked, "What happened?" I could almost hear the ‘now’ part which she didn’t tack on the end.
I told her all about the case, thinking ‘at least they hadn’t damaged my saxophone.’ "Let’s have your teacher look at it, maybe they can fix it at the shop while you’re having your lesson." She told me.
She went into the music store with me when we got there and had them look at the case. While I was back in the studio working with my teacher the repairman took off the old busted latch and replaced it with a new one. I told them thank you when we finished up, and was happy that my teacher said it was a free repair. She was the owner of the music store — so she had the ability to do so.
Sandra was a really neat teacher — she had dealt with my transition without any issues. She just kept torturing me and working on my playing ability no questions asked. If anything the only reason why I got mad at her sometimes was because she was so brutally honest with me. If I messed up — she let me know. We were trying to focus on making the district honor band with me. Those auditions were going to be in December — and the music was difficult
After an hour of torture on it I was certainly ready to get home. We actually skipped that step and went directly to Applebees to meet my dad. Mom didn’t feel like cooking that night. As we sat down at a table Dad came in the door. He didn’t look like he was in a very good mood, and most of dinner was had in silence.
As Mom drove me home to get changed for Tae Kwon Doe I asked, "Mom is everything alright with Dad?"
"He’s just stressed sweetie, things are going to be okay." She told me.
"Is he mad at me?" I asked her.
"Why would you ask that?"
"Because I’m the reason for all of the problems…"
"Where are you getting this from?" She asked me.
"You two were yelling at each other last night."
"Look sweetie, we were having a discussion — it got a little loud — but it was still just a discussion. Your dad and I love each other very much, and no, we’re not going to split up if that’s what you’re worried about."
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"Yes sweetie, I’m sure. Daddy’s just stressed right now from some stuff going on at work. And sweetie," Mom started.
"What?"
"I know with everything in my heart he loves you very much, and wouldn’t do anything to hurt you."
"I know… but I’m still worried." I told her.
"It’s really okay." She reassured me. That night we got home, I got changed, and I went to practice. Amy was there — that helped make things better — and the two of us had a lot of fun.
The nice thing about the class, more than anything else, is that I was slowly learning some ways to protect myself the next time I was attacked. Unfortunately that is how I was viewing it at that point — it seemed like only a matter of time before I was attacked. Realistically it was going to take several years of training before I would be competent in any of this… but every little trick and help was another moment that I could survive.
Mom gave Amy a ride home that night — so the two of us were able to chat and I vented to her about everything. When we dropped her off she gave me a hug and said, "Just one more day Tiffany, then we’ll be gone for our trip!"
"Amy thanks for sticking with me," I told her as she headed inside.
We drove home and I hopped in the shower. Once I was done Mom helped me work on beginning to pack stuff for the trip — I noticed that Dad still hadn’t come home again. "Mom is Dad even going to be able to go with us?" I asked her.
"Sweetie he’s working late tonight so that he can. He said there were some things that he had to get done before he can take off. He’ll be going on the trip." She told me.
"Promise?" I asked her.
"Yes sweetie." She told me. "Now let’s finish working on some of this packing okay?"
"Okay." I told her as I began wondering why I was so concerned about Dad going. He had been better about being around since all of this began… but recently he’d been gone more and more again. I understood that he had a difficult job, but still. His biggest problem was that as a management person he was also their main troubleshooter.
The family that actually owned the company kept getting in his way at times — the daughter wanted to do things that were stupid (and he opposed as such), and realistically bad for the company. My dad kept things turning a good profit but the company definitely was taking him for granted. With everything going on my dad kept getting dragged in for one thing after another since they didn’t have to pay him overtime if he came in. The only good thing is that he did get some profit sharing out of it — just not really enough to make the job’s stress worth it.
Of course I understood that… but at the same time I wanted him to be there for me. I wanted him to come to my concerts and everything else. When he was around I felt safer from some of the stuff — I knew he wouldn’t let anyone harm me if he could help it. Of course I wasn’t seeing him often enough right now for that to happen.
About the time that I had my pajamas on and was climbing in bed I saw his headlights reflect through my window. I jumped out of bed and hugged him goodnight before heading right back to bed. It was already past my bedtime… and Mom didn’t want me to stay up any later that night. As I went to sleep I couldn’t help but resent his job.
THURSDAY I HAD hoped I would be able to just have a brief, but good day at school. My wish was not to happen though. Right off the bat I started off bad — we had a really hard pop quiz in science because a bunch of students just started messing around. I had no doubt that I had really messed up on it. At least Amy wasn’t happy about it either. By the time we got to choir the two of us weren’t in the best of moods.
Things only got worse from there though, we were both called to the office just as we were getting ready to sing our favorite piece. It turns out that someone decided to get more ambitious with their attacks on me - all while including Amy in the incident as well. Both of our lockers had been ‘tagged’ with graffiti done with a marker. Mine in particular referenced the sexual acts that the offenders wanted to do with me and seemed to say that today I was going to be attacked after school. Amy’s wasn’t particularly better.
This sent both of us into tears, and for a second I thought maybe Amy should just give up on our friendship. It was hurting her… and I was afraid if they couldn’t attack me they would get her… As we sat in the conference room waiting for Mrs. Henry to come back and talk to us some more I decided to offer her an out, "Look Amy… I’m kind of worried that if you keep…"
"Stop Tiffany, don’t even think about finishing that sentence," she told me.
"But…"
"No. Do you think I honestly care what other people think about me?"
I just sat there like an idiot.
"Tiffany, you are my best friend — you’re such a great person. I don’t care what anyone else says or does."
"But Amy, it’s not like I do anything for you…"
"That’s not even close to true Tiffany. You listen to me endlessly telling all my problems, you’re a ton of fun to hang around with, and so much more. You don’t even ask for anything in return! You’re like a sister to me, so don’t even think of trying to tell me I’d be better off not being your friend — because that’s not true."
I couldn’t do anything else at that moment but cry and give her a hug. "I’m sorry Amy." I told her.
"There’s nothing to be sorry about." She told me.
The two of us managed to get a hold of ourselves a couple minutes before Mrs. Henry came back in. We were actually managing to talk about some small talk when she came in. "Ladies I’ve called your parents about this incident, and they want to come down to talk with everyone present. I’d like for you both to come with me to get your lunch from the cafeteria, and then you’ll eat here in the conference room."
"Can’t we go and eat with everyone like normal?" I asked. Why should Amy get screwed by this too?
"This was a request by your parents. They’re concerned about your safety with the way some of this was done — and the fact it seems to be escalating. So I do need you both to get your food and come back here."
"Could we get some of our friends to join us in here?" Amy asked. That was a reasonable request right?
"Well… Like who?" She asked.
Amy listed off Nikki, Ashley, Lindsey, Kristina, Kyle and David.
"I suppose I can try and see what I can do. Give me a couple minutes." She said as she left the room. As promised she returned shortly and said, "Come on ladies."
She led us to the cafeteria at that point — still several minutes before everyone else was going to be released. As we stood in line all of the people that Amy had listed off also showed up. When we all had our food she led us back to the conference room where we immediately began getting interrogated by them.
"Tiffany, what’s going on?" Lindsey asked me when Mrs. Henry had left.
"Someone put some graffiti on our lockers — and they’re overreacting…" I answered, knowing that was probably not true.
"I don’t know Tiff, I heard about what they put on your lockers — I’m kind of worried about you two," Kyle said.
"It’s just graffiti Kyle," Amy told him.
"But where does it stop? I can definitely see your parents getting upset. The stuff on the lockers was really bad." He told her.
"So are you two going to be let back into class today?" Nikki asked.
"I don’t know…" I said.
"I guess our parents don’t want us to do anything until they’ve made it down here." I told them.
"Tiffany, this isn’t the first note you’ve gotten this week…" Amy said.
"What other notes have you gotten?" David asked me.
I told him about everything that had started last Friday. "This is so stupid, what’s their problem? It’s not like you’re hurting anyone Tiff," Kyle said to me.
Our friends helped us vent in that manner for about twenty minutes before Mrs. Henry came back in and sent them off to class.
"Okay girls, your parents should be here soon — as soon as they are we’ll talk about what we’re going to do about this. Hopefully we’ll be able to get you back into your classes by the end of the day."
We both just sat there bored for the next ten minutes after that. To say that we were mad would have been an understatement. Several of our classes in the afternoon were supposed to have tests — and we were going to have to make those up in addition to all of our other makeup work for the week. I was just hoping that maybe we could finish the day without it turning into something worse than it already had.
"Tiffany, did you remember about today after school?" Amy asked.
"Huh?"
"Mom’s taking us to the salon! You didn’t forget did you?"
"Actually… with everything else going on this week I’d completely forgotten about it." I paused. "Amy, is it ever going to stay normal for any length of time?" I asked.
"I don’t know Tiffany. I have a feeling if we can make it through this year things’ll get forgotten eventually. Maybe even enough that this stuff will stop happening."
"Maybe I should have gone to a different school this year."
"Absolutely not Tiffany. Look for every one of these jerks that are doing this stuff you have a friend who cares about you here. Just hang in there — we’ll get through this," She told me.
"Amy, I don’t know what I’d do without you." I told her.
"Be bored all the time of course!" She told me.
"So have you gotten anything out of your dad about what all we’re doing in New York besides the film festival?" I asked her.
"No. He’s keeping everything a secret from me. I think they’ve told our parents… but everyone is trying to surprise us for some reason."
"I guess it’s not a big deal — it should be fun either way. My parents and I have never been to New York."
"Mine have — Dad actually went to school somewhere in that area for a few years. Mom also has some family out there that she used to visit when she was a kid. But I haven’t been there before either."
"Cool." I said. "I’m kind of hoping to see a couple of cool sights like the Statue of Liberty and Central Park."
"Well the place where the festival is happening is actually in the city… so maybe we will get to do that. I’ve never been there before either. Personally I’d like to go see a show on Broadway… and maybe go to Fifth Avenue."
"What’s on Fifth Avenue?"
"What do you mean ‘what’s on Fifth Avenue?’ You don’t know what Fifth Avenue is?"
I shook my head.
"Tiffany, it’s like one of the most expensive shopping places in the world. I’ve heard there are some really cool things there. Not that even my parents could afford much there… but I still think it would be cool to go shopping there." She told me about some of the stores that were in that area — I had actually heard of a few of them.
"That does sound like fun." I told her.
"I think my parents would work to set up some things like that… but who knows. We’ll find out tomorrow!"
"Yeah," I said. "Amy, do you…" The door opened before I could finish my question. My mom and dad came in, followed by Amy’s parents, the superintendent, and both principals. Mom and Dad gave me a hug — Amy’s parents did the same thing — before switching the other way too.
"Okay what’s going on here Mrs. Hinther, Mrs Henry?" My dad angrily asked. "Our daughter should be having a safe educational experience at this school. You were given plenty of notice that there was a problem with students getting to her locker and doing things — yet you haven’t done anything about it?"
"Mr. Jacobson promise we…" Mrs. Hinther tried starting.
"No, Mrs. Hinther, don’t try to tell us you are doing everything you can, because you’re obviously not!" My mom said.
My parents both vented into them for a good five minutes before they stopped to catch their breath. At that point Mr. Hancock got involved, "Mrs. Hinther, Mrs. Henry, I have to say that I am equally concerned about the welfare of Tiffany, and Amy at this point. I know for a fact that Tiffany has given you each note that she has received. This means that you of course knew what was going on."
"There were several solutions you could have taken at that point, but as far as I can tell you haven’t done any of them. I guess my first question today is when were their lockers vandalized?" Mr. Hancock gave them a stare that made my own blood chill. He said everything so calmly and precisely — there was no overt hint of anger in his voice.
"Mr. Hancock we’re not really sure exactly when it happened." Mrs. Henry said. "We know that the two of them didn’t stop by their lockers between second and third — so it may have already been there. But, we’re guessing it happened during the first part of third period."
"So you are just letting students roam through the hallway at will?" He asked her.
"Well no Mr. Hancock, every student is supposed to have a pass if they’re not in class." She said.
"So I’m assuming you have gone to every teacher at this point and asked them which students were let out at that time? And perhaps all of the students that were late to class?"
"I’m in the process of doing that Mr. Hancock." She replied.
Part of me was kind of upset that Mrs. Henry was taking the brunt of this… but this was her job — she should’ve already had that answer. "It needs to be done as soon as possible," He told her and Mrs. Hinther. "I have also contacted the police — I wish to have them in on the investigation as well. We will be pressing harassment charges on the perpetrators of this."
"I can understand that," Mrs. Henry said politely. I don’t think she was taking it personally at least. "I am doing everything I can with this — someone will eventually talk. That is inevitable with students involved with this kind of thing."
"I sure hope so. Now that I know that you are investigating properly, what are we going to do to prevent this from happening in the future?"
"What do you mean?" Mrs. Hinther asked. This was one of the first times she had spoken.
"Well, obviously there must be a safer place for the two of them to have their lockers. Tiffany has already had far too many threatening notes left within her locker — not to mention this incident. Is there a safer place that they can have lockers? Perhaps they could have one next to a classroom where a teacher will be on duty?"
"We can look into that Mr. Hancock, but unfortunately we already have every locker assigned at this point. There are even a number of students who have ended up sharing lockers since we didn’t have enough to go around this year." Mrs. Hinther answered.
"It sounds like a problem that you can take care of though," Mr. Jameson directed. "My question for you Mrs. Hinther is how are we going to guarantee the safety of these young ladies while they’re here in this school? Realistically I think that Tiffany is in more danger than Amy, but it seems to be guilt by association right now for Amy too. What steps are we going to take?" He asked her.
I was really surprised to hear a school official ask that question in front of non-school officials. Mrs. Hinther was especially shocked by this too — you could see it on her face.
"Well we’ve already made sure that she has friends in each of her classes that can walk from class to class with her. What more do you want? A teacher to walk them from class to class? I would think that would make things worse." She told him.
Personally I agreed with her there. I took a brief glance at Amy — she and I shared a silent ‘PLEASE NO!’ look.
"Mrs. Hinther, I don’t really believe that’s a good answer either. Tell me are teachers monitoring the hallways?" My mom asked.
"They’re supposed to be." She answered.
"Where are you during the passing periods?" Mr. Hancock asked.
"Usually in the office…"
"Well there’s a start to a solution right there," My mom told her. "You should be stationing yourself out where trouble could be happening — in this case you know which classes these girls have. Stand in between their two classes. If they have a problem you should be able to pick up on it — if not then they just go on by like normal students."
Go MOM!
"I think that sounds like a good solution Mrs. Hinther," Mr. Jameson said. "I want to see it done."
"We’ll make sure it begins happening," Mrs. Henry answered for the dumbstruck principal.
"Now, for today, what are we going to do for these two? They have a threat on them that I think is fairly serious. Obviously the students that did it feel safe enough to be public about it. Do you think you’ll be able to figure out who did this today?" Mr. Hancock asked Mrs. Henry.
"I don’t know sir, realistically I’m guessing I’ll find out by Monday for certain. Today will probably be a little quick for that to get to me."
Mr. Hancock and my parents talked quietly for a few moments. "Would you please let Coach Holt know that Amy won’t be at practice today? I think we’re going to go ahead and take them home for today. They’ll be back on Monday after we get back from New York."
"Um… Okay." Mrs. Henry answered. "We’ll do everything we can in the meantime to figure out what’s going on."
"Yes you will, because if I feel for one second that you aren’t you can plan on a suit filed against the school next Friday. The suit will name both of you in it if that happens."
"Is that a threat Mr. Hancock?" Mrs. Hinther asked.
"No, it’s a fact of reality. The girls have a right to a free and safe education — they will get it. If it’s not provided to them willingly I will fight for it to be." He told them. Once he had paused for a moment he said, "Well thank you for your time, we’re going to take the girls now."
He motioned for all of us to go ahead and leave. Amy and I went together really quickly to our lockers to get our stuff. The custodians had done a decent job of getting the marker off… but you could still see some black marks here and there.
"I wish they would have cleaned it off sooner Tiff," Amy told me.
"Yeah, leaving it up between third and fourth hour just guaranteed that every student would see it."
"Well, let’s get out of here. At least we’re getting out of a half-day of school now." Amy told me as we walked away from the lockers.
"Yeah… but that means we have like three tests to make up next week from today. And that’ll be in the middle of the dance camp…" I told her.
"It’ll work out. Besides, maybe some of the teachers will decide to not make us take them?" She suggested.
"Maybe if you ask," I told her.
"What, you think that you can’t pull it off just as easily now?"
"Not really." I said as we caught up with our parents standing outside the office door.
"Are you two ready?" Amy’s mom asked us.
We nodded in response before they led us outside. "Well, this wasn’t exactly in my plans for today," Mr. Hancock said when we went outside. "Do you guys need to get back to work?" He asked my parents.
"Yeah I do," my mom said.
"So do I," my dad agreed.
"Why don’t you two go ahead and I’ll just take Tiffany to our house. We were going to pick her up to go to the salon later anyway," Amy’s mom suggested.
Mom looked a bit pained to be leaving me after all of this, but she replied, "That’s probably the best plan." Looking at me, "Tiffany come here for a moment though okay?" She asked.
I went over to their car and talked to Mom and Dad on my own for a few moments. They were mainly concerned about me and wanted to make sure everything was alright. Well… it wasn’t, but it could have been worse right? And everyone knew I would be just as safe with the Hancocks. They both gave me a hug before I went back over to Mrs. Hancock’s car and got in next to Amy.
Chapter 26
THE DRIVE TO Amy’s house was quiet. Before we got there though Amy’s mom asked, "Did you two eat lunch?"
"Yeah." I said.
"Kind of." Amy added into the same sentence.
"So I take it that you had it, but didn’t eat much of it?" She guessed.
"Basically." Amy replied.
"Do you two want to stop somewhere real quick?"
"Sure," Amy said.
"Is that alright with you Tiffany?"
"That’s fine," I said. I wasn’t trying to be rude… I just wasn’t feeling very ‘up’ after listening to the adults argue over us for that long.
I didn’t look up, but I could feel the look of concern from the front seat. The graffiti had upset me a good amount, but really it had been the battle that had been had in the office that really upset me. Was it worth all of this just to be the person I was?
We ended up at Burger King and each ordering a kids meal. If I’d been a boy still there would have been no way I ever would have ordered one, but as a girl it was kind of cute. We took the food home to eat — sitting down at the dining room table to quietly eat our chicken tenders. After we finished Amy and I migrated upstairs to her playroom where we just sat doing nothing for a while.
"What do you want to do?" She asked me.
"I don’t know, you?"
"Nothing really… but I don’t want to just sit here."
"Neither do I."
"Barbies?" She asked.
I shook my head, "not really."
"TV?" she asked.
"I don’t know what I want to do… that doesn’t really sound like it though either."
"It’s pretty warm outside right now… we could go swim — or at least sit in the pool for a while," she suggested. "I think my parents are going to have to have it drained in about a month for the winter — so we’re not going to have a lot more time with it for a while."
"Okay, I guess that works. What time is it?" I asked her as we got up and left the room.
She glanced at a clock in her room real quick, "Two. We have an hour and a half until we’ll need to leave."
"Okay, that’s enough time to swim for a bit and shower, right?" I asked her.
"Should be."
"Just checking." I said as I went to my room to get dressed.
At this point I had most of my swimsuits at her house. I looked through what I had and decided to choose my ‘first’ one. It was one with Ariel from the Little Mermaid on it. Amy’s mom had bought one for all of the girls for the slumber party that Amy had at the end of the year last year. Basically it was also the event that changed the ball from rolling slowly to tumbling down the tunnel like in the Indiana Jones movie…
For some reason it seemed like a comforting suit to wear at that moment. I had only worn it a couple times since then — I had others I looked better in. As I came out and went down the hallway to see if Amy was done her door opened. "You stole my idea Tiffany!" Amy told me.
Apparently the two of us thought more alike than I had ever realized. She had worn the same swimsuit, only the second time for her. That sent the two of us into a giggling fit as we went downstairs. "Where are you two heading?" Her mom asked.
"Umm… Mommy may we go swimming?" Amy asked belatedly.
"We’re going to the salon at 3:30," she told us.
"We should have more than enough time to swim and shower before then," Amy said.
"Please?" I added.
"Oh alright, but I’m going to kick you both out at 2:50 so you can get showered. I don’t want them to have to deal with two girls fresh out of the swimming pool."
"Thanks!" we both said together as we hurried outside to the pool. The two of us spent the time mainly floating around — not saying or doing much. After about forty minutes we migrated over to the jacuzzi. That felt really good, but we only were able to spend about five minutes in it before Amy’s mom sent us upstairs to go shower.
I didn’t spend a long time in the shower on anything other than my hair. I did want to get all of the pool water washed out of it. As I got out and got dressed I looked at my hair. Since the last time I had been to the salon I had added a fair amount of hair to my head. I figured I’d added another 3 inches to the length of my hair — I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it from here.
I grabbed a hairbrush from my dresser and went downstairs and sat on a couch brushing my hair out. Amy’s mom had a talk show on, and I just brushed my hair non-stop while watching the show. I was joined by Amy a little while later and in no time at all we were being herded into their car to go to the salon.
By the time we got to the salon Amy and I seemed to have relaxed a bit — some of the tension we were feeling was leaving us. The two of us were chatting normally as we walked in.
"Hello Mrs. Hancock, how are you doing today?" The owner of the salon greeted us.
"I think we’ve all had better days, but we’re kind of hoping you can help us forget that." She told her.
"I’m sorry to hear that. We will certainly do our best to work on that though." The owner said with a very vibrant smile. "What all are we doing today?" She asked as she led us towards a room where they would have us put on some really soft robes that I remembered from last time.
"Well we want to get Amy and Tiffany a new hairstyle that looks great for everyday stuff as well as more formal events. We’re going to be going to an event Friday that they’re both going to be dressed up for — we’d like to be able to do something with their hair for that."
"Why don’t you come back here Friday and I’ll get them ready no charge?" She suggested.
"We’d love to take you up on that, but unfortunately we’re going to be in New York for the event."
"Really? In that case do you think you can make it to…" she rambled off an address in New York. It might as well have been gibberish to me though — I had no idea where anything was in that city.
"That’s not too far from where we’ll be. Why do you ask?"
"Well I’ve got a really good friend there that owns a salon. She owes me a couple favors. Is this a really big event?" She asked.
"We think it is. The girls, and two of their friends, produced a video back in May for a class that has been picked up by a Film Festival there. Originally it was just going to be a minor daytime showing, but instead they decided to attach it to the main event film on Friday night. We’ve been told to come dressed for a ‘red carpet’ event."
"That’s awesome. Why don’t you three go ahead and get changed in here and I’ll try and get a hold of her while you’re getting worked on today." She said.
Once the door was shut we repeated what we’d done in June when they’d brought me here. I faced one wall and changed while they did the same. When we were all done we turned around. I hated the fact that I still had parts that none of us were comfortable seeing. If only they were already gone!
Once we got out of there we were led to some very nice leather seats that I remembered well from last time. Amy’s mom actually came over to the girls that were working on Amy and I first before going anywhere else. "Okay, this is Tiffany’s dress she’s going to be wearing on Friday, and this is Amy’s," she said showing them some photographs that she’d taken.
‘We probably should have brought the dresses with us,’ I thought to myself.
"We should be able to match these without any problem," one of them told her.
"Thanks," she told her before she went off to her own ladies section of the salon.
The one that had answered her came over to me, "Hi Tiffany, my name is Lilly, how are you today?"
"Honestly I’ve had better days, but I think this is going to help that," I told her with a smile.
"Well I’ll certainly do my best to live up to that. What do you want to do with your hair?" She asked me.
"Well… you know the haircut that Rachel on Friends has?" I asked her. She nodded. "Can you do something like that?"
"That’s become really popular recently, I can definitely do it. You’ve got just enough hair right now to make it come out right too." She told me.
"Cool," I told her.
"Well let’s start working then!" She told me with a smile.
She led me over to another chair where she washed my hair in a sink. As she washed my hair and massaged my scalp I couldn’t help but smile — even with everything that had gone wrong this past week at least this felt really really good. She wrapped my hair up for a couple moments in a towel while she led me back over to the really comfy chair.
"So Tiffany, what all do you do besides school?" Lilly asked me as she began working on my hair.
"Well I’m in band, I play saxophone. I also have been taking some dance and gymnastics classes so far this year."
"That’s neat, how long have you been doing the dance and gymnastics thing?" She asked as her scissors clipped.
"I just started actually. I’m kind of hoping to improve my chances to make it on to a new dance squad that my school is forming. The tryouts begin this next week."
"Well you’re certainly pretty enough to be on one!" she told me.
I blushed, "thanks," I told her.
"No problem, it’s true…" She made small talk with me off and on for a while as she worked on my hair.
After a while she left my hair to sit while another girl came over and did my nails. As she continued on my nails Lilly came back and did my first facial. I have to be honest… It kind of felt good, but at the same time it was really weird. I had mixed feelings on that experience. I did appreciate it as she massaged my face a bit.
The girl that was doing my nails actually started off with massaging my hands and feet — that part was easily my favorite part. There was something about it that made me feel really good. For a few moments as I sat there I wondered what it would be like to have a guy like Kyle do that for me. I shook my head clear of that thought pretty quickly though… that was still too weird.
After what seemed like merely ten minutes Lilly cleaned my face off, finished off with my hair, and turned me around to where I could see the finished product.
My heart definitely stopped for a moment as I looked at myself in the mirror. I’d had several moments recently where I was surprised by how I looked, but this one was just as exciting. I loved my hair. The layers worked really well with my blonde hair — especially since parts of my hair were naturally darker than others.
"What do you think Tiffany?" Lilly asked me.
"Wow!" I breathed. "It’s really cute!" I told her.
"I agree, it looks really good on you. Do you like the nails too?" She asked.
I looked down at my fingernails and toenails. I had been growing my nails out since the summer — trying not to cut or break them as much as I could. Because of that they were actually fairly long, long enough not to have fake nails added. The base coat on them was a blue that looked like it matched my dress perfectly. On top of the base coat there was a lighter blue that they had added some sort of curved design to it with. Included in the design they had added three little white ‘pearl’ things on each nail.
They were really so pretty! My toenails were done similarly, though they altered the design so that it was bigger for my big toe and got smaller through each of my little toes. After the fun I’d gone through today I was finally able to completely smile. I was going to be going to a major movie rollout event — and I was going to look the part!
I went back to the room where we had changed to get my clothes back on. I had just gotten dressed when Amy came in to change. "Tiffany, your hair is cute!" she squealed before coming over to me and giving me a hug.
I looked at her and she had them do some different things with hers too. It now curled under a bit more and she’d gotten rid of her bangs. "Your hair is really cute too," I told her. She changed really quick and we both went outside to where her mom was already waiting.
"Tiffany I love your hair! That style looks great on you." Amy’s mom told me. "Amy I think that yours is great too!" she said. I hoped Amy didn’t mind that her mom complimented me first…
"Thank you. And thank you for bringing me back here!" I told her as I gave her a hug. We walked outside to their car all talking.
I looked at Amy’s nails as we drove towards my house. She had to have some acrylic nails attached since she was constantly breaking hers. The nails were done in a light purple with some white designs on top of that. They had then attached some silver ‘jewel’ things on top of hers like they had done the pearls with mine.
"So your dress is a light purple?" I asked her.
"Yeah, lavender actually — it’s really pretty. I meant to show it to you earlier this week but completely forgot."
"That’s okay — as long as you let me see it when we get to our hotel tomorrow!" I told her with a smile.
"Okay." She said. The two of us were back to normal by the time that they dropped me off at my house.
My parents were both home at this point and my mom came out to talk to Amy’s mom. "Tiffany I love your hair," my mom said as she saw it. She made me turn around so she could see it from the front and the back. "It’s really cute Tiffany," she told me.
"Thanks Mommy," I told her. She admired my nails, Amy’s hair, and Amy’s nails, for a couple minutes before she and Amy’s mom started talking about their plans for meeting at the airport tomorrow. They didn’t talk too long before Mom and I went inside.
Dad was sitting at the computer in the dining room, he turned around as I came in. "Wow, your hair is really pretty Tiffany," he told me.
"Thanks, look at my nails!" I told him as I ran over so he could get a good look. Mom hadn’t looked at them yet for some reason. They both admired them as I put them out in front of them.
"They’ll go really well with your dress," Mom told me.
"I know, I can’t wait!" I told them. I was glad that nothing was said about earlier on in the day. Instead we just finished working on packing everything to go on our short trip. Our flight was leaving at 7am so Mom pushed me to get stuff packed as quickly as we could so that I could get to bed early. Shortly after 8pm the phone rang though.
"Tiffany, it’s for you!" Dad called from the other room.
I asked him, "Who is it?" as I walked over to take the phone from him.
"I don’t know, some boy?" he said.
I just stuck my tongue out at him, he was not the most useful person sometimes, and said, "Hello?" into the phone.
"Hey Tiffany, this is Kyle, how are you doing?"
"I’m doing okay. How are you?" I asked him back.
"Okay I guess. I know you’re getting ready for your trip tomorrow, so I won’t talk long, but I just wanted to make sure everything was alright. You and Amy just disappeared after we saw you at lunch today. And I was kind of worried about you two."
‘That was really sweet of him,’ I thought. "Things are okay I guess… the principals promised to look into things — but our parents are pretty unhappy with them. They’ve basically threatened them with a lawsuit if things aren’t taken care of by next Friday…"
"Whoa." Kyle said.
"Yeah… it sucks. I wish whoever was doing this stuff would just stop. It’s not like I’ve done anything to them." I told him.
"Whoever is doing it is just jealous of you I think Tiffany." He told me.
"What are they jealous of?" I asked him. I really didn’t want to think about this stuff right now, but I did want to talk to him for some reason.
"Let’s see you’ve got some of the coolest friends in the school, you’re one of the nicest girls in the school, and you’re one of prettiest girls in our grade." He told me.
"You don’t have to say that Kyle," I told him.
"It’s true though. Anyway, so everything’s okay?" He asked.
"I guess so… kinda sorta… our parents just didn’t see any reason for us to stick through the school day with everything that happened today. They also wanted to give them some time to figure out who was doing it. I’m just afraid that one of these days someone is going to make good on those threats…" I told him.
"Look if there’s anything I can do about that Tiffany, let me know. I was trying to figure out who was behind this stuff earlier, but none of the guys on the team seem to know anything about it. I’m pretty sure that Jarred and Lucas had a hand in it — but no one is saying anything about them."
"Yeah… I don’t know Kyle. I just hope it stops soon. I don’t want it to get in the way of me trying out for the dance squad next week."
"It won’t. We’ll make sure of it Tiff," he told me. It made me smile, I’m not sure why, but just the fact that he cared that much made me smile again.
"Thanks Kyle."
"No problem Tiffany, anyway I’ll let you go. I just wanted to make sure that everything was going alright for you. Have a safe trip." He told me.
"Thanks again, goodnight," I told him.
"Goodnight," he told me and we both hung up.
What was going on? Was Kyle actually interested in me? Was I interested in him? These questions were swirling about my mind when my mom asked, "So what boy were you talking to?"
"Kyle." I told her.
"Is there something going on between you two?" Mom asked me.
"Not that I know of," I told her honestly.
"Just remember you’re not allowed to date until you’re sixteen." She told me.
I stuck my tongue out at her and went to finish packing some shoes I had forgotten to put in a bag. Soon I was in bed just trying to fall asleep. Thoughts raced in my head so that I didn’t go to sleep until way past two hours after trying. One minute I would think about everything that had been going wrong at school, the next would be trying to figure out if I liked Kyle or not, the next would be thoughts about the trip. What would New York be like? Had I packed everything I needed? Would we get completely booed out of the theater? Had they done this just to make their film look better? What else would I see and do while I was there? They still hadn’t told us anything.
Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 Part 7 of 8 by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
Available for Purchase as
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Please visit Tiffany Shar's Bookstore Page |
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
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!
Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them 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! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!
-Tiffany Shar
Chapter 27
EVENTUALLY I MUST have fallen completely asleep, because Dad came in and did this, "Tiffany it’s time to wake up," thing that drove me nuts! Though this morning was a little different because I realized just what day it was. With that thought I quickly hurried through getting ready to go on the trip.
We had all been told that we’d need to wear ‘dressier’ clothes for the trip today, Friday, and Saturday. Sunday could be casual, but the rest of the days we needed to be wearing nicer attire. Again, no one really gave us any real reason for it, just that we should do it.
Of course this didn’t bother me a bit. I could be as pretty as I wanted to be! I had a cute dress I decided to wear for today, had a skirt/blouse combination for tomorrow, and another skirt/blouse for Saturday. I really enjoyed getting my hair just right that morning since I loved my new hairstyle. By the time I got into the car to drive to the airport I was bouncing off the walls.
When we pulled up to the airport parking lot I put my backpack on and rolled my two suitcases behind me. Mom was carrying the bag that had our dresses in it, as well as dad’s tux, and pulling another bag. Dad in the meantime grabbed the last two bags along with his extraordinarily heavy briefcase bag. I’d tried to pick it up to move it earlier and had barely been able to move it across the room, let alone carrying it on a trip!
I had peeked in there and saw that he had his new laptop in there that he got last week. It was an IBM laptop that was running the windows version that had been released a few weeks earlier. It was definitely a shiny new toy — I was more than a little bit jealous of him having it. The laptop was a lot lighter than one of the old ‘portable’ computers he used to have for work. This was actually light enough to carry around — but it still added up in his bag.
Next to that he had two gigantic parts catalogs that he was looking through for some project he was doing. He also had notebooks and other things; all in all it easily weighed fifty pounds! I had told him he should leave some of it at home — but he didn’t seem to agree. As long as I didn’t have to carry it I guess I didn’t care that much.
We were just getting ready to walk towards the counter when I heard footsteps running up behind me. Amy was positively bouncing too as we all went up to the counter together. Amy’s dad had everyone’s tickets — his friend had sent them to him. He handed my dad all of our tickets for us to check in with. Once the clerk printed off the boarding passes I asked my dad to see mine.
"We’re in first class?" I asked my dad incredulously.
He smiled, "That’s one of the cool things that Mattel set up for us on this trip."
"Cool." I said to him. "Amy did you know that we’re in first class?" I said as I walked over to her.
"Are you serious?" I nodded. "Oh this’ll be so much better than the Florida trip then. I’ve only gotten to fly first class once, but it was really cool!" she told me.
The two of us just began talking about nothing while we waited for the rest of the group to show up. We didn’t have to wait long since Ashley and Nikki arrived with parents in hand shortly after that.
"Tiffany I love your hair!" Nikki told me. "Ooh and you two got your nails done too?" She asked jealously. Ashley and Nikki both looked at both of our nails in admiration.
"Next time you two get your nails done you have to invite us too, okay?" Ashley said.
"Okay," I told them.
As their parents checked everyone in I asked Ashley, "Where are your sisters staying while you’re gone?"
"Oh they’re staying at home. Mom and Dad said they thought they could trust them. They were given instructions to not have any ‘wild parties’ this weekend." She then whispered to me, "they are going to have some friends over tomorrow night though." She giggled a bit with that.
After they checked everyone in we went up to the gate area. Dad forgot to take his pocket knife out of his pocket so the alarm went off. He handed it to the security officer who examined it, waved him through the detector, and gave it back to him. "Don’t forget to take that and put it in a container with your keys next time sir," the officer told him.
"Sorry about that," he had replied.
Once I saw that everything was fine there I began skipping down the hallway to the gate. When we got there Amy, Ashley, Nikki, and I all sat down together on the floor and played with some cards that Nikki brought. They also had to ask about what happened yesterday with our meeting. Amy and I gave them the abbreviated version of what had happened.
"Tiffany, Amy, this just sucks. I’m tired of these idiots doing this crap." Ashley said.
"Me too," I told her.
"Maybe if you make the dance squad next week it’ll help things out?" Nikki suggested.
"I have a feeling it’s going to make it worse actually," I told them. "Things seem to have gotten worse ever since people began to realize that I intend to try out."
"Unfortunately I think you’re right Tiff," Amy told me.
"Enough about this! I’m sick of talking about this. Has anyone gotten any more information about what we’re doing out of their parents?" I asked.
Everyone shook their heads. "I intend to torture my dad until he speaks tonight though," Amy said. "He told me that once we get to New York he’ll tell us most of what we’re doing this weekend."
"Most?" I asked with a pained expression.
"Yes most of what we’re doing," her dad said from behind me.
"Uh… hi!" I told him. "You know you’re not supposed to listen to us," I told him with a smile.
"Yes I am. How else can I drive you all nuts? Between you, Amy, and my wife I’m so outnumbered I can’t win otherwise."
"I see… still it’s not fair." I said.
"I’ll tell you almost everything when we get to the hotel. I do want to save a couple things for a surprise alright?" He said.
"Alright..." I said.
In what seemed like no time after that we heard the boarding call for our flight. There were twelve of us all together, and we basically took up all of first class on our plane. I was so excited to sit there in first class, the seats were a lot more comfortable than the ones that we’d sat in on the Florida trip. This was also only going to be my fifth plane ever and that excited me a lot too.
The excitement quickly faded into a nap though as we settled into a cruising altitude. It was a little over a three hour flight to Atlanta, and I slept for about two hours of that. I had woken up briefly for the breakfast they had fed us, and to go to the bathroom once, but other than that I just kind of enjoyed sleeping. Amy and I had sat together, with Nikki and Ashley sitting together across the aisle, they had all basically slept the whole way too.
When we got to Atlanta we were led through the terminal to another part of the airport. After discovering that we had an hour to kill, we all got lunch at a Burger King there. It was a quick lunch though and before we knew it we were getting on another plane. This one was a lot larger though! Our group still took up a large portion of first class, but there were a lot more seats in this plane for that.
Throughout the trip to New York from Atlanta, Amy and I just talked about everything that came to mind. As the stewardess came by to serve us some food she saw our nails. "Wow, I love those nails ladies," she told us.
"Thanks!" we both said together.
"I really love your hair too," she told me.
I blushed and said, "Thanks."
"It looks good on you."
The rest of the trip to New York was over before we knew it. As we flew into the city it was like something out of a movie. I couldn’t believe just how cool the city looked — it was gigantic. How would we ever find our way around down there?
At the airport we got off of our plane and were met at the gate by Al, Amy’s Dad’s friend that had first set some of this in motion. "Hi Al, how are you doing?" he asked him.
"I’m doing great, how about yourself?" Al answered.
"Better now that we’re away for a few days," he answered truthfully.
Everyone was reintroduced to each other, or in my case introduced. There was a little bit of small talk before we all managed to break politely and run into the restrooms. Once we were done with that we went to the baggage claim to pick up our stuff. Al led us outside to where a short bus waited for us.
Inside I was pleasantly surprised to see it was even nicer than the busses we’d had in Florida, and we all comfortably stored everything in there. "I hope you all don’t mind this for transportation. It seemed like the easiest solution to get the twelve of you around this weekend. You will have a limo tomorrow night though," he told us with a smile.
"A limo?" I asked incredulously.
"Absolutely, you’re going to be the stars of the first part of the evening tomorrow night!" he said.
Wow… things had gotten larger than life very quickly with this. We sat in the bus for probably the better part of an hour as it wound its way through the city and traffic. In the meantime I just stared out the windows in awe of this city of skyscrapers. Albuquerque had a few ‘sky scrapers,’ but they weren’t even close to this tall, and there weren’t this many of them. It was really strange to be that closed in by buildings… It was kind of cool, but I instantly knew there was no way I could ever live in a place like this.
After what seemed like a long time we pulled up into the check-in area at our hotel. I read the sign, The Waldorf-Astoria, it looked really nice. I could even see a guy in a uniform standing there to open the door for people! As we pulled up a bellhop placed our luggage on a cart and we were led inside. Al had already checked in for us, so the bellhop took us directly upstairs to our rooms.
To say that the hotel was extravagant to my eyes would be to say that Rembrandt was just another artist… My mind was certainly having an overload and imagining how much it must cost to stay at a place like this. The paintings, marble, crystal chandeliers, and everything else we passed were gorgeous!
Each family was given a small one bedroom suite that had a sitting area with a fireplace in it. Everything inside the room was lavishly done and I couldn’t even begin to comprehend it all. I remembered seeing a thing inside the hotel in Florida that said the rate of the rooms, I decided to look really quickly to see what the rate was on this room. It said $2,000 per night.
"Wow," my parents said after they had looked around the room a bit. I couldn’t have said it any better if I’d tried. I also looked through a leather book they had inside that discussed the hotel. The line that t-shirts and shorts were not to be worn inside any of the public areas continued to hammer into me that I was in a completely different world!
AFTER WE’D FRESHENED up a little bit everyone met inside the Hancock’s room in their sitting area. "So what are we doing this weekend Daddy?" Amy asked.
"I don’t know… maybe I shouldn’t tell you still…" At this point she jumped up from where she was sitting and hit him on the arm multiple times. "Alright, alright, I’ll tell you," he said.
"Tonight we’re going to go out for dinner at a nice restaurant. From there we’re going to go up the Empire State Building to look at the city."
"That sounds cool," Ashley said.
"Yeah," Nikki agreed.
"So that’s today, what about tomorrow?" I asked. I knew we didn’t have a lot of time left in the day so it made sense that we weren’t doing much tonight.
"Well tomorrow morning we thought it might be fun to go stand in the crowd for the Today Show to start things off." Mr. Hancock said.
"Wow, that sounds cool," I said.
"What else Daddy?" Amy asked.
"Well after we get a chance to stand around there for a bit we’ll kill an hour walking around the plaza there before walking down Fifth Avenue and doing some window shopping there. We’ll eat down there and then go to an art museum for a little bit before you ladies are off to get your hair ready for the night."
"I just got my hair done…" I started to say.
"Just wait Tiffany, we’re going to get it done slightly differently for the night. Trust me," Amy’s mom said with a big smile.
"Okay, I trust you."
"Plus this way we’ll be able to get Ashley and Nikki’s nails done like you two got done." She told us.
"Really?" Ashley and Nikki said in near unison. They were both smiling really big from that one.
"Then what?" Amy asked.
"We’re going to go have dinner with the Mattel executives at five, then we’ll go to the film festival where your film is going to show at 7:30, we’ll watch the main film at 8, and then around 10 we’ll be going to the after show party that they’re going to have for the festival."
"Wow that sounds cool," Nikki said. We all voiced our agreement.
"So is Al going to eat dinner with us?" I asked. He had dropped us off at our rooms, but then he hadn’t come in for this meeting so I was curious.
"Yes, he’s the one paying for the meal," he told me. "He’s also the one who chose the restaurant we’re going to."
"So when do we leave for dinner?" Ashley’s dad, Mr. Sanders asked.
"Whenever you all are ready," he said.
With that we started to make our way back downstairs where our small bus was waiting for us. It turned out that it was a limousine company’s answer for slightly larger groups that needed to get places. As we were driving down the street to get to the restaurant we were going to the driver pointed out that there were some cokes in a cooler compartment if we wanted some. They probably charged for them… but we weren’t paying for it anyway.
We pulled up to the restaurant about forty-five minutes later. As we walked in I could see why we had been told to dress nicely for the trip. Even besides the hotel requiring you to dress nicely, this restaurant was definitely not a place you were going to walk into with shorts and t-shirt on!
Al walked up to the host when we got there and we were all invited to follow him. The inside of the restaurant certainly didn’t disappoint either — it was a gorgeous dining area. We were led to a very large half-circle booth. It actually had a path down the center of it for easier access to the center of the table. We ended up having a ‘kids’ section of the table, while the adults sat farther down on the table. I was sitting on the inside along with Amy, with Nikki on her right, and Ashley on my left. Al was on the other side of Ashley, next to Mr. Hancock.
As I looked through the menu I had some more sticker shock. The cheapest entrée on the menu was sixty dollars! Anything that looked good was well into the eighty dollar range. My parents seemed to be gasping across the table too — particularly my dad — about the prices. Al seemed to have sensed this from not just my parents, but Ashley and Nikki’s as well.
"Order whatever you guys want — as expensive as you want. We’re picking up the tab for your meals on this trip." He told us.
"Thank you," Amy and I said politely.
"You’re welcome ladies." He said before everyone went back to staring at the menu.
This restaurant seemed to take particular pride in their steaks. They also had lobster combined with steak on the menu. I had lobster for the first time a couple years before while we were on a trip through Nevada ($4.99 steak and lobster deal at a casino), and had fallen deeply in love with it. I was more than slightly curious to see what a hundred and twenty dollar meal tasted like…
"Amy, do you think it’s alright to order this?" I asked her.
"I don’t see why not… he said anything right?" She said. "Besides… I was kind of curious too!" She and I giggled a bit before the glare from Amy’s mom and my mom made us act serious again.
When the waiter came by for our drink orders Amy and I both ordered cherry cokes. They said they didn’t have ‘cherry coke,’ but they could make some with grenadine. I didn’t know what that was but it sounded interesting so we ordered them. Dad couldn’t resist the margarita that was listed on their drink menu. At thirty dollars I hoped it was good. We also placed appetizer orders for a variety of things — mostly fried.
My mom caught my attention, "Tiffany, what are you ordering?"
"Steak and Lobster?"
"I had a feeling you’d say that." She told me.
"Why?"
"Ever since we made the mistake of feeding you lobster that’s the first thing you’ve wanted to order. Of course we haven’t let you order it except in the casinos…" She told me.
I wanted to stick my tongue out at her so bad… but resisted. The people in the restaurant might get a little unhappy with that. "I’ll stick my tongue out you later," I told her quietly. She just smiled in reply.
The thought of the casinos brought back some fun memories of going to Nevada to visit some family. We would often go eat in the casino restaurants because they were so cheap. Obviously the price of steak and lobster there was amazing compared to here in New York.
"Ashley, what are you ordering?" I asked her.
"I think I’m going to get the same thing as you guys — it sounds interesting." She told me.
"Have you had lobster before?" I asked her.
"Yeah — a few times. My dad’s TV station takes us out occasionally for parties at some restaurants and I get it then."
"Cool." I said.
About that time the waiter came back with the drink orders. The cherry cokes tasted really good after all of the traveling today — I decided I really liked the way they made them. He also brought the appetizers fairly soon after that. After delivering those the waiter began taking our food orders. I was really impressed that he somehow kept it all in his head and didn’t write anything down. "And you ladies?" he asked us.
Ashley was first up ordering the steak and lobster, followed by me, then Amy, then Nikki decided to be different and ordered some chicken instead. I quickly looked at the price and saw it was only a mere ninety-dollars. After chatting amongst ourselves for a bit Al turned to us and asked, "So what do you ladies think of New York so far?"
"It’s cool… but really strange," I told him. "It’s strange to only see buildings around us, instead of seeing sky and stuff."
"I agree. I’m glad my company is based in California," he told me. "It’s a lot more open than this in that area too."
We all talked to him about a lot of things as we waited for our dinners to arrive. As the appetizers came out he began asking us about the different things that we did in school. When it came out that I played saxophone he asked, "Have you ever been to a jazz club?"
I shook my head, "No, it would be really cool to go to one sometime. Mrs. Remar has been talking about starting up a jazz band… I just don’t know if I can even fit it into my schedule." I told him.
"You should try, it’s a great thing to be able to play," he told me.
"I’d like to." I told him.
He talked to all of us for the duration of the time it took to get our food. Once our food got there we were all completely taken in with eating the food. I didn’t normally eat that much… but the steak and the lobster were so tasty that there was no way that I could leave it on the plate. Thankfully the portions weren’t too ridiculously large — the food was just really good. I wasn’t sure it was a hundred-and-twenty dollars good or not, but it was good.
After I finished eating what I could the four of us girls ended up going to the restroom together. When we sat back down the waiter came back to get a dessert order and talked to us for a few moments. "So what’s the special occasion?" He asked us.
"We’re here because a video we made is going to be shown tomorrow at a film festival." I said.
He mentioned the name of the festival, "is that the one?" He asked.
"Yeah, you’ve heard of it?" I asked him.
"It’s probably our biggest film festival here. I actually managed to get some tickets for the main film tomorrow night," He said.
"Well then you’ll get to see our film," Amy said excitedly.
"You’re in that main film?" He asked with some surprise.
"No, it’s just being put at the front of it. We’re not really sure why they decided to do that, but it’s pretty cool." Nikki told him.
"What’s your film about?" He asked. We each chimed in to describe it, his words following that were, "well that sounds cute…" I’m pretty sure he was just being polite — his eyes just kind of said something about his honesty at that moment.
"Everyone seems to think it is," I told him. He took the dessert orders from the grownups at that point while we decided to skip it. We were all way too full. Of course that changed when I saw that Amy’s mom and dad had ordered a dessert that was on fire.
"Whoa, that’s cool!" I said. "What is that?"
"It’s called Cherries Jubilee," her dad told me.
"Why does it burn like that?" the pyro in me was dying to know.
"It’s a type of alcohol," Amy’s mom answered.
"Can I try a little bit of it?" I asked. I was dying to know what a flaming food tasted like. Once the flame died out they gave all of us a spoonful of it to try — I found it to be quite tasty.
"You probably shouldn’t eat that much of it at your age though," my mom told me. "We don’t want you getting drunk," she added.
"But the alcohol burns off right?" Amy asked.
"Not all of the way. Most of the way, but not all of the way," her mom answered.
We finished dessert about eight-thirty and went out to where our bus was waiting for us. I guess Al must have given him an approximate time we would be done by. I was really glad he had picked up the tab; I had caught a glimpse of the check and it was over eighteen-hundred dollars! That was like three months of my parents’ house payments.
From the restaurant we left as planned to go the Empire State Building. Apparently we had already traveled most of the way to the building, so it only took us another twenty minutes to get there. As I watched all of the pedestrians on the streets I wondered if it wouldn’t have been quicker to have walked. They seemed to be moving faster than our bus was.
Eventually though we arrived there. Somehow Al had already secured tickets for us to the 102nd floor observatory. The whole idea of going to the 102nd floor of a building just about blew my mind. As we traveled up I felt my ears pop. My dad in particular was incredibly intrigued by how high we were going and some of the technical details of the building.
From that observatory level we were able to see all around the city. I had been higher than this of course when up in the mountains… but there was something about knowing the buildings below you were already taller than what you were used to, and realizing that you were looking down on them that was just cool. Plus, as my dad pointed out, ‘someone had to come up this high and build this…’
About that time Al pointed out to us that the World Trade Center buildings were taller. He just had recommended coming here because it was easier for us to get to.
Amy and I skipped from window to window looking around at the lights that had become visible as it had gotten dark. I did feel bad for Ashley though… apparently she was terrified of heights. Even through the glass she was still incredibly scared of looking out at the city. She hung back far enough away from the windows so she couldn’t see down. Amy, Nikki, and I were all really nice to her about it though.
The cameras came out and we took some pictures from up there. Al was nice enough to be the one to take them for us. As we rode the elevator down he looked at his watch. "How about one more stop?" He asked our parents.
"Where to?" Mr. Sanders asked.
"Well Tiffany mentioned that she plays saxophone and Nikki also plays in band. Would you guys like to stop by a jazz club on the way back to the hotel?" He offered.
"Really?" I asked.
"That sounds cool," Amy answered.
"Yeah," Nikki added.
"I’m fine with it," Amy’s mom said, "We’re still on mountain time anyway, so it still only feels like about seven to us."
They all agreed with it and we met up with our bus driver outside. Nikki asked the driver a question that was on all of our minds, "So what do you do while we’re inside somewhere?"
"I just go find a good place to park this thing until about the time you all say you’ll be ready. Then I just try and find a place where I can pick you up."
"Oh. Well thanks for driving us," she told him.
"You’re very welcome Miss," he told her with a smile.
We drove around for a bit before pulling up in front a building that had a blue neon saxophone and trombone sign in front of it. The driver had recommended this as being a good club to go to — so we all went inside. Al paid the cover charge and made sure that we could come in as long as we had our parents with us. The club owner was fine with that and we found some seats near where the band was set up.
The band was already playing as we sat down. There was a saxophone player, a trumpet player, a trombone player, a bass player, a piano player, and a drummer all setup on a small stage. The bass player had a microphone in front of him and at that moment was singing a song that I guessed must have been called, ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It,’ he kept repeating that over and over again. When they finished playing we applauded along with the couple dozen other people that were in the club.
We sat and listened for more than an hour-and-a-half, and what I found out later were ‘two sets,’ before we were forced to leave by our parents. I had really enjoyed watching the saxophone player play some really incredibly hard sounding songs. They had played a mix of songs that were just them playing and songs that they did vocals with. All of them were incredibly gifted musicians — and I could only wish I would be able to play that well some day. The band actually came and mingled with us during their break. When I told them I played sax they told me to do all the things I was already doing (private lessons and practicing) and I’d be able to play like that some day… Yeah right!
As we left the club the traveling did seem to be catching up with me a bit. I was starting to feel a bit tired — but I wasn’t about to let my parents see it if I could help it. When we got back to the hotel, we all said goodnight to each other before heading to each family’s room.
I put on a pair of purple pajamas I had brought with me, got out my stuffed tiger that I had brought with me, and climbed into bed. As I went to sleep I wasn’t sure which was the dream, and which was reality. What would tomorrow be like? Would this strange moment in life continue? I was really excited to see what the new day would bring.
Chapter 28
MOM WOKE ME way too early in the morning — or at least it felt like it. I looked at the clock and saw it was only six in the morning. My mind did some quick math and realized it was actually four in the morning to my body. Groan.
I did my best to make myself look decent since we were going to try and be on TV. I managed to look pretty good actually. I really liked the light pink skirt that I was wearing with the blouse that I had on. I had thrown on some white tights this morning underneath on my mom’s advice. It wasn’t overly chilly today, but this morning was only Sixty Degrees. I didn’t want to freeze too badly outside while we were standing. I figured I could always strip them off in a bathroom somewhere if I got too hot.
When we met the group outside of our room I found that the other girls had worn tights too. "Well you all look nice," Mr. Hancock told us all.
"Thanks," we all said.
"Let’s go downstairs and get some breakfast before we head off to Rockefeller Center," he told us.
When we got downstairs we went to one of the hotel restaurants and sat down to a meal that we put on our room tab. Our parents all sat together at a couple tables while Ashley, Nikki, Amy, and I sat down at our own table. I had a lot of trouble eating anything that morning — it was early, and I was so excited for everything that was going on today! We left the hotel in the bus again for the relatively close destination.
When we got close to Rockefeller the driver suggested we just get out and walk from there — it was going to take a while through the traffic. The adults agreed with that and we began walking. It was kind of cool to walk down the streets of New York, but it was kind of lame because our mom’s all made us hold hands together. I felt like I was four.
When we finally got there we managed to find a spot along the fence built to keep the crowd from entering their area outside the studio. We ended up waiting about thirty more minutes after that before they actually began the show. There were monitors on the outside of the building to where we could see the show as it was going on — that was cool.
As time went on Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel both came out at various times to talk to the crowd and shake hands. Mom got a picture of Amy and me with each of them, as well as Willard Scott. Honestly it was just a fun experience. We ended up leaving before the show was completely finished though — our feet were getting tired. I was fairly sure that we ended up being visible on TV though! Amy’s parents had recorded it on their VCR, so we’d have to look when we got home.
By this point it was only about eight-thirty, and not much was open. Most of the shops along Fifth Avenue wouldn’t open till ten, and we needed to kill time. Mr. Sanders spotted a ‘Starbucks’ coffee shop that he said we needed to visit. I had heard a little bit about Starbucks, but hadn’t ever gone to one before. The coffee shop seemed cozy and everyone ordered a drink.
My dad’s reaction to his coffee was priceless… I swear I thought he was going to spit it out. "What is this stuff? Crude Oil?" Needless to say he wasn’t a big fan of the coffee. The other girls and I had all ordered hot chocolates — and honestly I thought they were pretty good. It was an ‘experience’ and we were able to kill some time there for a bit. Eventually the adults decided we could get our exercise in and start walking towards Saks Fifth Ave.
We got to the area about five minutes till ten and just stood around for a few moments until the store was opened up. Before we went in Mom came over to me, "Look Tiffany we’re browsing, not buying, don’t get your eyes too set on anything," she told me with a wink.
I didn’t know exactly what she meant until we got inside and I saw just how expensive of a store it was. They even had real fur coats and stuff. Looking at things like shoes and purses that started at five-hundred dollars made me quickly understand what she meant. Even Amy’s parents, by far the best off of our families, didn’t do much more than entertain themselves with sticker shock. They were more practical than those prices.
By far the most sticker shock I received was looking at some of the fur coats that were well above five grand. How could anyone ever spend this kind of money on something? I couldn’t understand it for the life of me.
From there we started moving down the street gawking at everything just like the tourists we were. We took some pictures in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral — it was a really cool looking church. My favorite store that we went to at first was Cartier Jewelers. I couldn’t believe all of the beautiful jewelry and things that they had for sale. There were so many necklaces that I would have loved to own… too bad I didn’t have a spare thirty grand for the one I really liked!
By the time we left there Amy, Ashley, Nikki, and I were all talking and plotting about how we would become rich enough to own things like that. Nikki made the most practical solution, "Marry some rich guy Tiff!" We all chuckled at that as we moved on down the street.
"I can’t believe how many people walk here, and how busy the streets are," I told Amy.
"I know Tiffany, this is absolutely nuts. I mean you see movies and hear about it in class and everything — but nothing compares to seeing it in real life." She said.
We walked in and out of numerous high end clothing shops for our enjoyment, and even tried on a couple dresses in one store. I liked the way I looked in one of them — but the thousand dollar price tag was certainly out of the question. Apparently we dressed like we could possibly afford stuff though — because I don’t recall once being given a rude comment or glare that we shouldn’t be there. If they only knew that my skirt came from Penney’s!
The next major stop that we made was at my namesake, Tiffany’s. It was such a cool store — we all had a blast looking at everything in there. Of course plenty of sticker shock ensued there too, but that was okay. Somehow we left there and arrived at FAO Schwartz just before noon. That store took the place of Cartier’s as my favorite store really quickly.
Yes, we were all basically at the age that we were going to be giving up Barbie dolls and other toys… but not that day. We all went wild looking at all of the dolls they had there — as well as all of the stuffed animals. I decided to spend my birthday money there and get a really cute stuffed tiger. I had decided right then I wanted to start my own collection of them!
All the other girls bought something from the store before we were hustled off to go get something to eat. We didn’t actually go far, there was a café in the store that we went and ate at. It was overpriced food… but it tasted good after all of the walking we had done. My feet definitely were happy to have taken a rest. I’d worn some pink sandals with a slight heel that matched my skirt that day — I really liked how cute they were, but they were killing my feet!
Once we had finished with lunch the adults decided just to walk the remaining block to Central Park. All of us were groaning a bit about our feet, so Amy’s dad came up with the best solution for us to be able to see the park and rest our feet — a horse and carriage ride!
It took a few of the carriages for us to all get in, but it was well worth it. Before we actually left Mom took a picture with us sitting in one carriage together. Many other pictures were taken as we rode through the park area and the streets. The rides weren’t cheap, but it was definitely worth it. When we had our fill of that Mr. Hancock decided it was time to start heading back up towards the hotel. He told us it was time for another New York Experience for that — the subway.
For someone who’s never grown up around that system it’s absolutely mind boggling. Going down underneath the street and traveling underground was cool. I was really surprised by just how easy it was to use the subway. It didn’t take us long to get back closer to our hotel and emerge from the tunnel. "That was really really cool!" Nikki said as we emerged.
"Yeah it was," Ashley replied.
"What’s next?" I asked. I’d taken a quick glance at a clock and seen that it was already two-thirty.
"We’re going to get back to the hotel and all you ladies are going to go ahead to the salon to get your hair ready for tonight." Dad told me.
"Cool," I said. "What are you going to do?"
We walked into the lobby as he said, "I think we’re just going to hang out here at the hotel while you’re gone. Mr. Sanders and I both have some work things we need to check on — and this seems like a good time for it."
"Fun…" I said sarcastically.
We all went upstairs really quick to use the restroom, then all of the moms and girls came downstairs to where the bus driver was waiting for us again. Amy’s mom gave him the address that we were going to and we were off. It took about thirty minutes to get there, with the driver doing his best to stay off the ‘main’ streets. The address was a really exclusive looking salon — it looked even more so than the one back home, you had to be buzzed in to be admitted.
As we went inside the receptionist greeted us. "You must be the Hancock party?" She asked.
"Yes," Amy’s mom answered.
"Give me just a moment, Ramona wanted to greet you personally." The receptionist spoke into a phone and another lady came out.
She introduced herself and said, "I’m so glad my friend called me. When she told me what you all were doing today I couldn’t have been happier to help out. This is a really neat experience for your daughters," she said. Her mom agreed and made some small talk for a few moments before we were moved us into the salon. I had done this a couple times by now, and Amy many more than that, but Ashley and Nikki were totally amazed by what was happening. Amy quietly commented to me on this and we both giggled a little. I was glad to see our other two friends getting to have such a neat experience!
For me there wasn’t a lot to be done. They worked on my hair for maybe forty minutes — making it look really pretty. They seemed to be going for that whole ‘prom’ type look with it — and I found myself with a number of tight curls around my head. They also added some beads and stuff that did add quite a bit of sophistication to the look. I definitely stared at myself for a while after they finished with me. I was done about the same time as Amy since we both had gotten our nails done already we only took half the time of everyone else. The ladies working on us had added makeup to both of us since we begged our moms to let us for tonight. They’d agreed that it was our night and let us.
Amy’s mom emerged next, looking as beautiful as ever, followed by Nikki and Ashley’s mom. When my mom came out I just about fell over. They had managed to do some things with her that made her appear much prettier than she normally looked. "Mom you look great!" I told her and gave her a hug.
"Thank you sweetie, you look very pretty too."
Nikki and Ashley were the last two to come out. They both had longer hair so there was more that they had been able to do with their hair. Both of them looked stunning as well, and I had little doubt that the pictures we would take later would be something we would all treasure for the rest of our lives. When we left the owner said, "Good luck tonight ladies, and congratulation!"
We all said our thanks and headed back out to where the bus was waiting. The bus driver managed to get us back to the hotel in record time where we had to quickly hurry and change into our dresses and get ready. I’d brought my new earrings and necklace that I’d gotten last week to wear with the dress. I know that I’m a little biased, but I think I looked gorgeous that night. My parents told me that too. Perhaps all of this was going to my head?
Naw.
Chapter 29
WHEN WE RETURNED to the hotel I noticed Dad had a worried expression on his face, but I just put it up to his nerves about wearing a Tux. I think the last time he’d worn one was at their wedding. We gathered downstairs and found two limousines waiting to take us to a restaurant that we were meeting Al and the rest of the Mattel executives.
Everyone was reintroduced as we met at the entrance of the restaurant that specialized in French Cuisine. There was ‘Billy,’ the CEO of the company, Lilly, the head of the Barbie division, Amanda, Billy’s executive assistant, Al, and Dave, the head of their marketing division. They were all dressed very classy. As we were led to the table that we would be dining at the wait staff was kind enough to pull the chairs out for us, and push them in.
As I looked at the menu I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to eat. Most of the menu was in French, something I didn’t understand at all, so I had no idea of what anything was to order it. Amy seemed to be having the same problem as I was. We both finally ended up asking the waiter for help — which he was more than happy to give. I ended up ordering a salmon dish in a ‘beur blanc’ sauce. Amy ended up with a chicken dish called ‘chicken kiev,’ that I had never heard of before. She said that she’d had it somewhere before and enjoyed it.
That night dinner seemed to fly by, with conversation happening in friendly tones with everyone. Lilly, the Barbie division head, ended up asking me how I was doing as Tiffany. Mr. Hancock had of course had to call them to see if they could get the credits redone, and also to warn them that it would be four girls instead of three girls and a boy this time. I told her things were going about as well as I expected them to go — but that it had been a long week. The topic was behind quickly though, and instead we talked about what they thought would happen tonight.
"Why did they decide to put our film with this one?" I asked Billy.
"Well the film that they’re doing tonight is a mystery film that’s very much on the serious side. The main films producers’ wanted something fun to open the night off with — and when they heard about your movie they thought that would be a great one to use. I guess once the film festival’s organizers saw your film they had a blast with it — and helped put a bug in the film producer’s ears about it."
"Cool," I said.
"Yes it is. You girls should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished — no matter what happens tonight." He told us.
"We are," Nikki replied to him.
"So have you all considered doing another film of some sort?" Lilly asked me.
"I don’t know. Probably not something with Barbies again… maybe at some point if we have another class project that we can do something like this for."
Talk finished eventually and we headed off to the theater where the main film of the night was to be shown. From dinner we had learned that there were four theaters in a close area that were being used for the festival. Except for tonight, all of them were running in parallel — each showing a different film at all times.
There were also some workshops being held along with a tradeshow in a hotel nearby. We decided we wanted to go to that for a little bit the next day — just for curiosity sake. As we pulled up to the theater I could see there was actually red carpet leading to the sidewalk where we were dropped off by the limo’s. It was like something out of a movie really… it was cool. There weren’t a lot of press people around, but several camera flashes did go off as we walked inside. They of course had no idea who we were — but obviously we seemed to be important!
Just outside the door we were met by someone who checked us off on the guest list. "If you will all follow Gerald here he’ll lead you to your seats," he told us.
Gerald led us to some very nice seats in the theater and we all just kind of stood around looking at the people that were there. Realistically we were dressed very nicely, and I think we looked pretty enough to be there, but we were way out of our league with the type of people that were hanging around inside. This was a fairly large social event for the weekend and the upper crust of New York had come out in force. I saw several actors and actresses that I recognized — knowing at least a couple of them were in the film that we were preceding.
A few minutes later a couple of well dressed, older gentlemen came over to us. "Hi, I’m Stuart, this is Robert, we’re the producers of the main film tonight. I take it you all are the ladies that created the film that is starting the evening?" he asked.
"Hi, I’m Tiffany," I told him. "This is Amy, Nikki, and Ashley," I said as we stepped into the aisle where we could talk easier.
Our parents actually decided to just stay off to the sidelines for this — they recognized that this was our show. We talked with them about it for about ten minutes or so before Robert asked, "I’m curious… I can’t tell. Just how old are you ladies?"
Amy fielded this one, "Well we’re all twelve, Tiffany just turned twelve last week actually."
"What grade are you all in?" he asked incredulously.
"We’re in seventh grade." Nikki told him.
"And you guys already created a film of this caliber?" He asked.
"Well… I thought it was fun project… I don’t know what you mean about ‘this caliber’ though," I told him.
"We screened it last week to see if it was what we wanted to do or not — and we were really blown away by it. Yes it was juvenile, but you all did a great job with what you were trying to do. You were the director right?" He asked.
"That’s what we put in the credits — but really everyone worked a lot on it," I told him.
"We made her put her name as director because that’s what she did," Nikki said.
"Yeah, really she’s a lot of the reason it came out so well," Ashley added.
I was blushing intensely by this point. "Uh... thanks for helping out there guys," I whispered to them.
"Well you really should keep trying to do stuff like this. I think you might have a career in it. Perhaps something with people acting next time though?" he suggested.
"That would be cool." I said. "But I don’t know where we’d ever come up with the equipment to do something for real."
"I’ll tell you what," he said reaching in his pocket, "here’s my card. If you ever come up with another project you want to do give me a call, I’ll try and help you out with getting equipment and any other stuff you need."
Billy had been standing next to us for the last bit of conversation, "Actually Tiffany, if you girls ever come up with another project you want to do we’d probably be willing to throw some money your way to see what you could come up with."
"Why?" I asked them. I was so confused how this dinky little school project had gotten this carried away. I mean don’t get me wrong, it was well done… but still.
"Because, a film that’s made by pre-teen/teenage girls is realistically going to be PR dynamite, we would have gone through the talk show circuit with you ladies on this — but your parents didn’t want to mess with that. If you were to come up with something else, and we did that, it would do well I think." Billy said.
I could see Amy giving me the same weird look that I knew must have been on my own face as an announcer came over the speakers. "Ladies and Gentlemen please take your seats. Tonight’s presentation is about to begin."
"We’ll talk more about this later," Robert told us. "You’re coming to the party afterwards right?" He asked.
We nodded.
"Well good luck tonight ladies." He told us.
"Same to you," Amy said as we shook hands and then took our seats.
The announcer came back onto the system. "Ladies and Gentlemen before we begin tonight’s films I would like to ask that you silence any pagers or other electronic alarms that you have with you." He paused for a second, "To begin this evening off we have a film created by four young ladies that are in the audience tonight. The quality of this film is nothing short of amazing considering their ages. It succeeds in its simplicity, and should serve to remind all of us here that imagination is the only absolute requirement for storytelling. We hope you enjoy their film."
The lights dimmed and the opening credits of our movie began. This was instantly a much cooler experience than watching our movie on the TV. Mattel had paid a hefty fee to get all of our footage moved over to real film, and it looked really cool on the big screen. During the opening credits my stomach decided it was time for some somersaults. I managed to not have to worry about throwing up… but I wondered how long that would hold.
Some of those nerves began to die away though as the film rolled on. Each segment of laughter from the audience made things better. It seemed as if they were programmed to laugh at all of the right places — I don’t think we could have done a better job by holding up ‘laugh here!’ signs. At the end I expected the normal silence as people were forced to watch credits of the movie, but instead there was applause — and a lot of it!
I was distracted momentarily from seeing that my name had been changed on the credits to Tiffany Jacobson. Between that and seeing people suddenly standing on their feet for some reason I started tearing up. Mom saw that and quickly handed me a small package of Kleenex to pass around amongst ourselves before we smeared our makeup too badly.
Amy, Ashley, Nikki, and I all exchanged hugs and were motioned up to the front by the organizer of the festival. "Ladies and Gentlemen I wanted to introduce you to the four young ladies that created this film." There was some more applause at this point. "These young ladies, at age twelve, are all the youngest filmmakers to enter our festival. They created this film originally for a class project using studio cameras at one of their dad’s TV station. All of the work is theirs though — verified by footage that you all saw in the credits — and we have decided that they deserve some recognition for this."
"In association with several of the major studios we would like to present each of these ladies with a five thousand dollar savings bond to help out with their eventual college expenses; as well as a special plaque for each of them — recognizing them as participants of this festival, and talented future filmmakers." He said while handing each of us an envelope with our names written on them.
We all shook his hand and curtsied to the audience as they gave us another round of applause. At that point we hurried back to our parents and took advantage of a ten minute break to go to the bathroom and freshen up — not to mention get some shouting out of the way. To say we were all in shock and enjoying the moment was not even close to our state. It took us a little longer to get our whole group back together, because people kept stopping us to congratulate us and shake our hands. I know I recognized some of those faces, but it was all kind of a blur.
The parents, especially Mr. Sanders for helping out, all got many hugs from everyone. Five thousand dollars wouldn’t pay for college… but it was certainly a start. Combined with our earlier earnings maybe I would be able to afford to go to a good school.
While I was in the bathroom Mom helped me touch up my makeup — the few tears that I had let escape earlier had done a little damage. I was good as new though pretty quickly. We all made it back to our seats just in time for the announcer to come on and announce the main film of the evening. Realistically the film was actually higher rated than my parents wanted me to see at that point. I’d seen maybe one Rated R movie before this one, and it certainly earned the rating it got.
It was a decent mystery flick with a lot of suspense where it needed to be. I enjoyed a lot of the special effects they threw in at the end — and didn’t think it was too badly written. I guess I did think it was okay — I wouldn’t have gone and dropped the thirty-million they spent to make it though.
As the credits rolled the audience gave the film a hearty round of applause and people began mingling about — and in my case heading for the nearest restroom with friends in tow. Our parents were moving too slow in our opinions… so we just rushed ahead together. We had just made it through the line, in and out of the stalls, washed up, and walked outside when we found our mothers all waiting fairly far back in the line.
"Wow, you’re going to be waiting for a while," I told Mom.
"The joy of being a girl sweetheart," she told me. Yeah, I guess this was one downside. ‘But I’d rather wait in line for an hour than have to go and be Brandon again,’ I thought to myself.
We waited for the moms over by a wall along side the bathroom. "Tiffany I can’t believe we were just given $5,000 more for this film," Nikki told me.
"I’m pretty surprised by it too," Amy said.
"Well… maybe we’ll have to take up their advice and do another film sometime." I said.
"That would be cool," Ashley said. "I just don’t know what we’d do it on."
"Neither do I. Maybe we’ll figure out something this spring with a project." I said.
"It sounds like they’re willing to give money to us to do it even," Ashley said.
In the meantime people began to notice who we were again and began congratulating us on our film. Comments like ‘I never thought anyone could create something that much fun with just Barbie Dolls,’ and ‘I’d love to see girls with your talent do something else,’ certainly made us feel good about ourselves. Our dads of course emerged from the guys restroom fairly quickly and joined us.
After fifteen long moments of being congratulated and talked to, our moms finally came out. "You ladies certainly took long enough," Mr. Sanders joked with them.
"Well when you don’t have their youth and speed to get there before everyone else," Mrs. Hancock threw back.
I had begun feeling somewhat tired as we watched the other film — all of that seemed to have gone away now as we made our way down the street together to a nearby hotel. The hotel had a beautiful ballroom where everyone (invited everyone’s) was gathering for some live music, food, and the adults got cocktails. I started a trend with my friends though when my mom ordered a virgin strawberry daiquiri from the bar for me.
Eventually we took some seats at a table that was for VIP’s. Hors’d’oeuvres were served on silver platters around the room, and I found myself having a really good time. "Amy, I don’t think I would have ever believed that I’d be at an event like this," I told her.
"They happen Tiffany. You just have to be at the right place at the right time," she said with a smile. "Right now being your friend has definitely been the right place at the right time," she added.
"Thanks," I said. About that time Richard came over to us and began finishing what he said earlier. He gave each of us his card and said to call him if we did decide to do anything else. That left us all fairly giddy as we just sat and enjoyed the evening.
We met tons of important people that night. From studio executives to the Mayor of New York, it seemed like everyone in the room was ‘A Somebody’ but us. My dad was the one who showed the most strain from the event though since people events were not his first choice of things. As the clock approached eleven-thirty our parents started making our exit — apparently we would turn into pumpkins if we stayed out past midnight!
Goodbyes were said to all of the Mattel executives, the other film’s cast and crew that had hung out with us, and various other people. As we got into the waiting limo I felt fairly sure this was some sort of dream I was having. ‘It must still really be May, and I’m really still Brandon, and this is just some sort of crazy dream,’ I thought as we traveled up the elevator to our room. Amy must have known what I was thinking, she pinched me to make the point that it was indeed real.
Oye.
I of course pinched her back — she had to be sure too, right?
For some reason after I got my pajamas on the adults had the other girls come in and hang out in our room while they went next door to talk about something. We didn’t complain though as we reminisced about the evening — and all of the cool things we had done in our first real day in New York.
By one in the morning, when our parents came in, we were all pretty much falling asleep on the couches and seats. Each set of parents coerced their daughter back to their room and into bed. In my case I managed to actually get Daddy to carry me to bed. The next thing I knew I was being prodded awake the next morning.
Chapter 30
AS I WOKE up I realized I had no idea what our plans were that day. We’d all pushed for information about yesterday and the night before… but we’d stopped short of asking about today. I had been pretty nervous about last night — I had never expected things to go as they had. I was beginning to have dreams of maybe making another movie this spring. What would we make it about?
Mom rudely interrupted my thinking, "Tiffany let’s go, everyone is meeting downstairs for breakfast."
I groaned and managed to stand up, and putting one foot in front of the other, followed them out the door. As we went downstairs I saw that Amy didn’t look like she was much more awake than I was — and she was usually the morning person. We went to a different restaurant in the hotel, and I was surprised to see that the Mattel executives were joining us for breakfast.
"Good morning," Lilly, the Barbie Division Head said far too perkily.
Amy and I managed to say some polite good mornings back and we sat down to wait for Ashley and Nikki to arrive with their parents. Amy asked me quietly, "Tiffany do you know why they’re eating with us?"
"No, I figured you might."
"No I don’t. I wonder if it has anything to do with our parents talking for that long last night?"
"I don’t know. That meeting actually has me a little worried," I told her.
"Why?"
"I don’t know… I just have a bad feeling about it."
"Well I hope you’re wrong Tiffany," she told me. About that time Nikki and her parents walked in, followed closely by Ashley and her parents.
We all ordered breakfast and waited for our orders to arrive. "I appreciate you all eating breakfast with us," Billy said.
"Thank you for everything you’ve done," my mom replied to him. We all nodded and gave our own thanks in there too.
"You’re all very welcome. This has been a fun project for us to get involved with here. Last night after you all left the party I talked with a couple of studio people and made a deal that I think benefits you all very well."
"Oh?" Amy’s dad asked.
"Yes, it seems that they wanted to do a run of short films in some small theaters and run that to VHS a couple months later. This studio offered to go ahead and pay us an initial fee for use of the film and trademark and has promised us more if the release earns anything more. Realistically I do think this’ll be the last money that comes in for you all though," he said.
That kind of made me sad, but still we were getting something more? He began passing out an envelope and a card to each of us. "The envelope has a check and a savings bond for each of you. We actually went higher than we had talked about percentage wise — but I thought it would be worth it to donate some money to you for college. Each of you have a twenty-five thousand dollar savings bond in there, a scholarship account with fifty-thousand, and a check for twenty-five thousand for your parents to use however they see fit."
My eyes were popping out of my head, "Are you serious?" popped out of my mouth in surprise.
"Yes Tiffany. There were actually several groups that wanted to get in on this just to give you all some scholarship money for such a cute project." Lilly said.
"What about the taxes?" my dad asked.
"You should only have to pay taxes on what we paid out earlier and the twenty-five. The rest of it is tax free as long as they use it for college expenses."
"Cool," Amy’s mom said.
"Amy am I dreaming?" I asked her.
She of course pinched me, "did that hurt," she asked back.
"Yeah it did," I said massaging my arm where she pinched.
Nikki realized we were all overlooking something. "If that’s what’s in the envelope, what’s in the card?"
"Why don’t you all open them up to see?" He suggested. I swear his eyes were twinkling.
Inside the cards were two gift certificates, one for FAO Schwartz, and another for some place called Bloomingdales. Both were for five-hundred dollars. "Wow," Amy said next to me.
"We were just at FAO yesterday," Ashley said.
"Yeah it would have been nice to have had this then," Nikki said.
"Hey, we’ll just have to go back again and we can buy some of the things we wanted!" I said.
"What’s Bloomingdales?" Amy asked her dad.
"It’s a high end department store — it should be fun to go into. That won’t buy much though." He added the last part on.
"Cool," Amy said.
"Thank you for all of this," I told them.
"You’re very welcome Tiffany. We hope that maybe some day we’ll be able to do some other things with you all down the road."
"I think we’d like that," I told them.
Amy and I had gone from being mostly asleep to being extremely awake in no time now. After we quickly scarfed down breakfast we said goodbye to the Mattel execs since they were flying home that day. We all said a round of thanks, and we gave each of them a hug too. That one project had been life changing on so many levels.
We all met upstairs inside our room to discuss our plans for the day. "So what are we doing today?" Nikki had asked.
"Well, first thing we thought we’d go down to the festival for an hour. They have a tradeshow that might be kind of fun to walk through," my dad said. He wanted to look at what toys they might have — even if they were outside of his field — and I happened to agree with that one. Gadgets were gadgets, right?
"Cool," I found myself saying with Amy.
Nikki asked, "When do we go shopping?" she was clearly far more interested in that.
"Well we had to work that into our plans now. We’re going to go to FAO after we go there, and then we’ll go to Bloomingdales from there."
All of us were grinning from ear to ear. The idea of a thousand dollar shopping spree would of course make anyone smile, but especially four girls!
"What are we going to do after that?" I asked.
Mr. Hancock fielded this one, "We’re going to go see the Statue of Liberty, the Guggenheim museum, probably come back here to freshen up, get dinner, and then head to ‘Beauty and the Beast’ on Broadway."
At that I swear I saw Amy tackle her father. "Really? Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said over and over again while hugging him.
Once she calmed down enough to somewhat sit in one place her dad said, "That was something else they set up for us once we knew we were coming out for this. I figured you all would enjoy that."
"Cool," I said. "So when do we leave?" I asked. It was eight-thirty at that point.
"We should get going now. The trade show part of the festival opens at nine. That’ll get us done just in time to leave for FAO and Bloomingdales around ten."
With that the circus moved on. Our driver once again drove us around town, and consulted with Mr. Hancock about making sure we were doing things in a way that made sense — no use backtracking if you can avoid it type stuff. When we got back to the festival we checked in at a desk to get badges so we could go through the showroom.
Actually I think the badges were almost as entertaining to us as anything there. They said ‘Filmmaker’ on Amy’s, Nikki’s, Ashley’s, and mine. Mr. Sanders’ said ‘Press,’ and the rest of our parents all said ‘Family’ on them. There were actually a lot of neat toys there that we looked through. I asked the price of one camera and just about passed out when I learned it was going for seventy-thousand. ‘How could a film possibly make a profit buying cameras like that?’
We walked through the hall quickly and I learned two cool things while I was doing that. One, at one booth they showed me how to load real film into a 35mm camera. That was cool, I was kind of curious to see if I could ever film with one. At another booth I also picked up some knowledge about how they actually record sound for movies — using an external recorder. If I ever created my own film again I was going to see if any of that would be doable. Of course as I talked to them I learned that doing things that way, the right way, was incredibly expensive!
At ten we pulled everyone away from looking at gadgets and headed off to shop. Our driver started us at FAO like we’d planned. We were told to get what we wanted, but to try and hurry so we could spend more time elsewhere. I ended up buying some Barbies, a baby doll (I only had one other one), a couple of stuffed animals, and a porcelain doll.
The porcelain doll was a gift for Mom. She had been collecting them since she was a little girl. I had asked her which one she liked most, but didn’t tell her it was for her until after she picked. All of that quickly wiped out my money for that store. I was also worried about fitting everything into my bag to go back home.
The other girls also bought what they wanted quickly. We were in and out of there in forty minutes easily. Our driver had just pulled around from his loop around the block as we came out. From there we headed on down to Bloomingdales.
Wow! It reminded me kind of Saks… but not. We at first kind started looking in the older department where they had some junior style clothing… but Amy quickly pointed out that we would get more for our money in the children’s section. Plus I really didn’t fit into those clothes very well most of the time anyway.
So we set about finding some clothes in the children’s section that didn’t make us look like we were too young. Well at least that was Nikki, Amy, and my goals. Ashley had actually grown quite a bit recently and was a size twelve in girls. Nikki and I were both the same size seven with Amy falling in at a nine. Nikki and I were at that wonderful size that almost everything for the little girls was available as well as for the big girls… I hated it when I found stuff that made me look like I was five — or younger.
As we shopped I felt bad for the dads. They sat around as we tried on clothes for the better part of an hour (we were hurrying as fast as we could.) At least they had some comfortable benches in there for them to sit on as they waited for us. I ended up buying a pair of jeans, a dress, a skirt that was on sale, a couple tops that were on sale, and a pair of ballet flat style shoes. I also picked up a wallet that I had seen my dad looking at — he seemed to like it — that I added into my purchase. For whatever reason he hadn’t been there when I checked out with mom, so it actually was a surprise when I handed it to him as we sat down in the bus.
"Thank you Tiffany, you didn’t need to do this," he told me.
"Yes I did." I said with a smile and a hug. We left there and Mr. Hancock asked the driver to find a good place for us to eat some New York Style pizza. He claimed we couldn’t visit New York without eating some of their pizza. When all was said and done I definitely agreed it tasted better than anything we had around home. There was discussion by Mr. Sanders that he liked ‘Chicago’ style better, but none of us girls had ever had either kind, so we didn’t have an opinion either way.
From there the driver took us to where we could catch a boat to go out to Ellis Island. I wish I could claim that it was my favorite event of the trip… but the ride on the water was not the most pleasant experience for my Mom and that distracted me. We climbed up the top of the statue, took pictures and all of that, but I didn’t really find as much satisfaction in the visit as I thought I would have. We left there understanding though why it was that it was such a historical site. It was pretty cool thinking about all of the immigrants that had come through there — including some of my ancestors.
From there we left for the Guggenheim museum. I think Amy and I had more fun making fun of the art there than anything else. Most of the adults, except my father, seemed to enjoy it though — so it was really only fair that we had gone there. My dad couldn’t get past the fact that some of the artwork was so strange. Things that weren’t in a format that looked like a picture didn’t appeal to him at all. I have to say some of it was way too bizarre for me to enjoy it as well. A lot of it was really cool though, so we all stepped away from that having ‘had an experience.’
That brought us to just enough time to go back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner. The whirlwind day continued at that point with Amy and I deciding that we needed to wear our dresses again tonight. You’re not supposed to re-wear a dress… but it was to a different event, and we didn’t have anything else that nice with us. It would have been nice if we’d have known we needed two formal dresses! We gave the adults a hard time about that as we walked out onto the bus.
My hair was basically still in the same shape as it was last night since I hadn’t washed it that morning. So I looked a little less polished than last night, but not by much! Dinner was at a nice Italian restaurant that our hotel concierge had recommended. The wait staff there all complimented us on our dresses, and before we knew it we were sitting in box seats at a Broadway show.
The show was awesome! We all came out of the show with songs stuck in our heads. The smiles on our faces said it all — we’d had a blast! After all was said and done we each bought a t-shirt and a poster. We each got the cast to sign our posters and headed back to the hotel. As we turned in that night Amy and I asked if we could stay in the same room that night. Our parents agreed, and we ended up sharing the bed in Amy’s room.
As we fell asleep I noticed that her parents went down the hallway together for something. I wondered what was going on with everyone. This was the second time that had happened. I didn’t care a lot though since I couldn’t imagine us having had a better trip than this. Now if I could just make the dance squad…
Chapter 31
THE TRIP HOME was pretty uneventful for us. We had caught our plane at about eleven — getting back into Albuquerque at five our time. It was a full day of traveling, but we were all grateful for the fact we gained two hours going back there. Mom and dad surprised me by following Amy and her parents’ home instead of going to our house.
"Mom, why are we going to Amy’s house?" I asked.
"We’re going to eat dinner there," she told me. The way she said that though made me think she wasn’t telling the truth. She kept nervously glancing over at Dad for some reason.
As we pulled up to their house I was surprised to see a car there that I recognized. Out from that car Dr. Reynolds stepped out. "Mom why is Dr. Reynolds here?" I asked.
Something was definitely up. Something big was definitely up. No one answered that question. My stomach began to churn since this couldn’t be a good thing.
"Hi Dr. Reynolds," I said as we got out of the car. Maybe she would give me more of an idea of what was going on.
"How was your trip Tiffany?" She asked.
"Good, it was really fun!" I told her.
Before I could begin to start speaking at a million miles an hour Amy’s mom opened the door to their house and we went inside. "Umm… Why are you here Dr. Reynolds?" I asked.
"I actually want to let your parents or the Hancock’s explain that one to you Tiffany. Let’s just have a seat on the couch for a few minutes first. Do you need to use the restroom before we sit down and talk?" She asked.
"Kind of, but…" I started.
"Tiffany go use the bathroom, it’ll be better if we can talk without you having to worry about that the whole time."
"Is this going to be that bad?" I asked. I was really nervous now — my stomach was doing flips and I was wondering what could possibly be this bad that they had brought Dr. Reynolds here to tell me.
"Just go Tiffany," she told me. Amy had come in at that point and dragged me to the downstairs bathroom and told me to go. I finished just in time to hear a doorbell ring and see Mr. Sanders being let in. Ashley was nowhere in sight though.
I sat back down on the couch once Amy went to the bathroom. On one side of me I had Amy, and the other side was my mom. My dad was on the other side of Mom. Across from me on the couch on the opposite side, Mr. and Mrs. Hancock sat with Dr. Reynolds. Mr. Sanders sat down in a chair on the side.
"Okay what is this all about?" I asked. I knew for certain at this point that whatever it was going to be something they expected to upset me badly. I was confused by Mr. Sander’s presence though.
"Do you want to tell her, or do you want me?" Mr. Hancock asked my parents.
"You might as well, or Mr. Sanders actually, he was the one who knows more anyway." My mom said.
"Why don’t you go ahead and tell her Mr. Hancock," Dr. Reynolds suggested. "I think it’ll be better coming from you."
What coming from him?!? Did someone die? Was I dying? Did the school suddenly change their mind about letting me go to school as Tiffany? What in the world was going on?
"Just someone tell me what’s going on already!" I said as calmly as I could.
"Okay Tiffany. I want you to stay calm though, we’re all looking out for your best interests here, okay?" Mr. Hancock told me.
"Okay." I said. I felt Amy squeeze my hand to let me know that she was there. She didn’t know any more than I did though, and I could tell that she was just as nervous as I was.
"Friday Mr. Sanders had a message left for him telling him to call his station as soon as possible. When he called them he found out that some things happened Friday that affect you." I looked at Mr. Sander really quick, and then looked at Amy’s dad to go on. "The first thing that happened was the newspaper published a letter to the editor about the school continuing to allow a ‘boy to masquerade as a girl’ even though it was causing disruptions to their child’s learning environment."
"What?" Amy asked next to me. "What disruption is Tiffany causing?"
Her dad glared at her to calm down before he continued. "The letter had initially had your name in it, but the newspaper removed your name to ‘protect’ your anonymity."
"Well that could have been worse…" I started to say before realizing that it must be for all of them to be here, "It is worse isn’t it?" I asked.
I looked over at my mom and she nodded.
"Once the newspaper saw that there was a potential story here that other organizations were going to pick up they decided to do their own investigation. Friday during the school day the students and parents were bombarded with reporters asking questions. Mrs. Hinther should have stopped the whole thing, but she ‘conveniently’ decided not to do anything about it. That night there was a report on each of the TV stations, including Mr. Sanders’, about you."
"But I thought you squashed that?" I asked Mr. Sanders.
"I did, but while I was gone a young reporter decided that it was too good of a story to pass up. I’ve already fired him and we’re going to work on airing a different report this week to see if we can help you out. I can’t tell you how sorry I am this happened Tiffany — I wish I’d been here to try and stop it from happening."
"But none of these said my name right?" I asked.
"Unfortunately one of the stations decided to not only air your name — but also a picture of you. It wasn’t a current picture though. It was one from when you were growing your hair out, but were still trying to look like Brandon." Mr. Hancock said. "They didn’t say as much, but they implied that you still look like that."
‘Oh my god! They must think I look like a boy in a dress… or worse!’ I thought as he said that.
"That one at least wasn’t my station," Mr. Sanders said.
"Anyway, unfortunately now there are even some national stations that are picking up on the story. There are a lot of parents and community members that are going absolutely nuts about this. The newspaper has published twenty letters to the editor about you yesterday and today."
"What does this mean for me?" I asked.
"Well… we don’t know yet. Personally I think this is all part of some of the students and parents trying to get you out of the school. It’s going to be a lot tougher at school now, I think," He added the last part.
"I can still be Tiffany though right?" I asked. Was their answer to this for me to go back to being Brandon? There was no way. I was never going back! I’d run away or kill myself first… Before I could get too stuck on that thought though, I saw someone move on the other side of the room.
Dr. Reynolds decided now was the time to step in, "Tiffany no one is going to make you be Brandon again. I won’t let that happen to you unless you want it," she told me reassuringly.
Amy gave me a hug at this point too.
"So what are we going to do about all of this?" I asked with tears streaming from my eyes.
"Well we’re not really sure yet. We have a couple options open to us," Mr. Hancock said.
"Okay," I said expectantly.
"The first option is we do nothing. You go to school tomorrow as normal and we hope this all blows over."
"Somehow I don’t think that’ll work," I said.
"I don’t either." Amy said. She had been remarkably quiet next to me.
"The second option is we let the newspaper do a real story on you and we do an extended interview on Mr. Sanders’ station. He’s already planning on a retraction story to air tomorrow night at six and ten. Your interview could be part of the station’s apology to you."
"Okay… I suppose that sounds like a good idea. Is there anything else I have to do?" I asked.
"Well if we go with this it might be worthwhile to be prepared for some of the national stations to pick up on this story. I can easily see this popping up on the national news program for our station," Mr. Sanders told me.
"Also Tiffany, I think we need to go to the school board meeting Tuesday night to make sure we’re ready to deal with the parents that are going to want to speak about you. I’m afraid that there are going to be discussions about you regardless of what we do… and unfortunately it’s probably going to get very personal Tiffany." Dr. Reynolds told me.
"Will I still be able to go to the dance squad stuff this week?" I asked.
"We’ll try," my mom told me. "I’m afraid one of the first things that the parents are going to do is try and keep you off of the squad."
"You’ll fight them though right?" I asked worriedly, with an uneven voice. Were they going to give up on me?
"Absolutely Tiffany! We’re going to fight for you tooth and nail all of the way," My dad said.
"We’ll all be here for you," Mr. Sanders said.
With all of the adults affirming their desire to fight for me we began discussing the battle plan. They discussed with Amy and I that we were to say ‘no comment’ when reporters tried talking to me. We would only talk to respectable reporters when they sat down for a formal interview with my parents and Mr. Hancock present. It was also agreed that we would never grant an interview to the station that initially disclosed my name.
As it was Mr. Hancock was going to draw up a lawsuit against them and Mrs. Hinther the next morning. We were going on the offensive — we decided that was the only way I was going to be able to continue to have my freedom to be Tiffany. And, if we didn’t succeed, my parents promised me that we’d move to another district that would accept me. They were not going to accept failure lightly though.
By the end of our meeting my heart had been torn every way it could be. They had shown me the letters to the editor, the news clips, and everything else that had come out since we left. It made my blood boil, scared me, and honestly some of it made me feel good. Kristina and a few other girls had appeared to support me on the interviews. They were way outnumbered by the other people in the way the story was presented, but I knew that they supported me — and that made me feel a little bit better.
When we drove home I thought I was going to be alright. Things would in fact work out.
As we drove down our street though we saw several news vans and reporters in front of our house! My mom used her head though and drove right past our house and went back to the Hancocks. "Mom what are we going to do?" I asked her anxiously.
"I think that tonight you’re going to stay with the Hancocks," she said.
Dad was furious by now. The things coming out of his mouth were worse than anything I’d ever heard him say before. Amy’s parents came out as we pulled up and asked what was going on. "I should have realized that might happen," her dad said.
"Well, I think that our best thing would be for Tiffany to stay here tonight until we can get rid of the reporters," Mom said.
"Yeah I think you’re right. Why don’t I go with you to your house though to help out?" He offered.
"That sounds good," Mom said again.
"Okay then, Amy!?" Her dad shouted. She had gone upstairs not thinking anyone would be coming back tonight to get ready for bed.
She came down the stairs, "Tiff, what are you doing back?"
"I guess I’m staying here tonight," I told her. She looked at me quizzically, but proceeded to help me take all of my bags upstairs to my room there. I said goodnight to my parents when they left and started getting ready for bed. Amy and I talked for a long while that night before we went to bed in her room. No one suggested that I sleep down the hall; I think they all knew I needed to have Amy nearby tonight. I wasn’t sure how tomorrow was going to go, but I was really worried about it.
As I went to bed that night I had a lot of nightmares. Unfortunately life and the nightmares were far too close to reality for me. Sometime that night I woke up from a really bad one, and realized that Amy had wrapped her arms around me. What would I ever do without her? How had I ever lived without that friendship before? Feeling safe again I finally managed to drift back to sleep.
Daring to Hope
Standing Up to Life: Book 2 Part 8 of 8 (Final) by Tiffany Shar |
Synopsis
In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.
'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.
Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.
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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
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!
Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them 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! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!
-Tiffany Shar
Chapter 32
THE NEXT MORNING I woke up and realized I was short clean clothes. The only thing I had that was clean and seemed wearable was the dress I bought Saturday. I showered and threw it on — making sure to do my hair like it had been done for me on Wednesday. Honestly I thought I looked pretty, but hoped the dress didn’t make me look too young. It wasn’t extremely juvenile… I was just worried about it. That was definitely my biggest disadvantage to being so short as a girl.
I was absolutely nervous as I went downstairs. The news story was a game changer — and I didn’t know for certain how it had changed things. What would change at school and what wouldn’t? I was fairly certain that I would be losing friends today — there was no way that all of them would be willing to stick behind me now… not when it was going to be so hard to do so.
As I rounded the bottom of the stairs I saw Amy was already sitting at the table. Amy’s mom asked, "What do you want for breakfast Tiffany?"
"I’m not really hungry…" I started off saying.
"You need to at least eat something, sweetie" she said to me.
"Do you have stuff for toast?" I asked.
"Yes, just give me a few minutes," she said with a smile.
As she dropped it off in front of me a few minutes later she gave me a hug. "Tiffany, it’ll work out, I promise. And you look very nice today." She said with a smile.
"Thanks," I told her with a slight smile.
I really loved her and their family. There were certainly moments where I was wishing that I’d been born their kid instead of with my parents. I know that’s terrible… but it was the truth. I loved my parents though, so I mentally smacked myself for thinking something like that.
Breakfast was over quickly and Amy’s mom drove us to school. Mom apparently had driven over my school stuff this morning. I wish she would have brought over some school clothes with her… but she apparently was too preoccupied. She did thankfully bring over some clothes for the dance squad practice afterschool. I had been worried about that as I tried to sleep that night.
As we pulled up to school one of my worst nightmares came true. Across the street, off the school grounds, was a group of people holding signs with various messages on them. All of the messages were directed at me. The signs had such wonderful messages as ‘boys shouldn’t wear dresses,’ ‘don’t let trannys ruin our school,’ ‘God hates transsexuals,’ and more that were worse and shouldn’t be repeated.
There were probably about thirty-five people in the group across the street. I could see Jarred and Lucas standing there with their parents, all but confirming they were partially behind all of this. As I stepped out of the car toward the school entrance, I steeled myself and walked away from the safety of her mom’s car. For whatever reason, I wasn’t really sure why, I turned around, smiled, and waved at them. I then turned around and walked with Amy into the building.
"Are you crazy Tiffany?" Amy grabbed my arm and asked me.
"Maybe… It was either do that or cry. I figured me waving at them would annoy them more than giving them what they want and crying." I told her. I was shaking a bit now.
"Maybe. Are you going to be alright Tiff?" She asked me as she could see I was beginning to shake, "Do you want to go sit somewhere for a few minutes?"
"No, I’ll be okay in a minute… I just hope that I can make it through the rest of the day." I told her.
"You will. Just look forward to practice after school." She suggested.
The bell rang about that time and we headed for first hour. It was like being back on the second day of school again… Except worse.
As I sat down in first hour what students didn’t glare at me didn’t even acknowledge me. If it wasn’t for Kyle, Lindsey, and Ashley — no one except Amy would have talked to me. Students that had begun being friendly to me and talking to me wouldn’t even give me a second glance. We had a group assignment that day, the groups were assigned randomly, and only Kyle was in my group.
It was nearly impossible for me to get anything done on the assignment because the others wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence. To make things worse as we finished the assignment one of the kids said, "get the hell out of our school queer."
The acts of unfriendliness continued as I found copies of the letters in the newspaper plastered up everywhere someone thought I would see them. Of course none of those letters were the good ones — they were all of the ones condemning me as a freak. Part of me didn’t care — but most of me was so taken aback by how far south things had gone in the last week. Before this I thought maybe things could settle into a normal school year. I was apparently really wrong about that.
As Amy and I came out of choir to go to math we saw that the protestors were still sitting across the street. If I was feeling hurt she was feeling absolutely enraged. As we came into math class and saw yet another copy of the newspaper articles taped to my desk she had had enough of this.
"LISTEN UP ALL OF YOU! I’M SICK OF YOU DOING THIS TO TIFFANY! SHE’S DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO ANY OF YOU — AND YET YOU THINK SHE DESERVES TO GET CHASED OUT OF THIS SCHOOL?!?! IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE FACT SHE’S HERE YOU GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!"
I was really taken aback by this. Amy never yelled — well except for cheerleading stuff, and I had never heard her swear before. Half the school had probably heard her. As a cheerleader she knew how to make a lot of noise, and she had definitely just accomplished that.
To further make the point she was joined by Kyle. "I’m with Amy," he said without shouting, "If I find out who is doing this you can plan on meeting up with me after school. You won’t even give her the chance — or even the time of day — just to get to know her. Some of you have even just changed your opinion of her just because some idiotic adults, that have never met her, say that you have to hate her — or stay away from her."
One kid, an eighth grade gang banger in our math class stood up and replied, "I don’t need any of those to tell me that Tiffany’s a freak. I’ve wanted her gone from the first day of school!"
"Well she’s not going anywhere," David stood up and said for me, "If you don’t like it that she’s here you need to find another school." The eighth grader was one of the bigger ones, but David towered over him by a couple inches and thirty pounds. The kid acted like he was going to make another statement but decided against it and sat down.
"You can’t intimidate me David," one girl stood up and said, "I’m a girl so you can’t hit me. Personally I can’t wait until one of these days when Tiffany’s alone — I’m going to enjoy beating her up." This girl was another eighth grader in our class. She was another of the gang girls whose sole mission in life was to have sex.
At that point Ashley and Kyle went over and each spoke into one of her ears something. She turned as white as she could (she was fairly dark skinned for a Hispanic so that was a challenge) and sat down.
A boy next to me, one of the only kids that was taller than David and the ringleader of the largest gang in our school leaned over to me. "Tiffany, I have to say you’ve got some good friends. Personally I think you’re cool enough — you’ve helped me in class before, so I’m going to help you out here."
He then stood up, "look, Tiffany’s not necessarily your normal girl. But I say she’s cool — keep your hands off of her or you’ll answer to me."
I watched the eyes in the room narrow from a couple of the people that were in other gangs, and the members of his own gang registered some shock. Nothing more was said at this point as Mr. Martin came in from the hallway — having never seen any of this. Towards the end of class I leaned over to Markus, the gang leader, and said, "Thanks, I wasn’t expecting that."
"You’re welcome. Just help me out again once in a while on these assignments, I’d like to be able to move on to the high school next year." he requested.
"Sure," I said with a smile.
From there the day didn’t necessarily get easier… but it was a little less tense. With his word that his gang was to keep hands off — and he would deal with any others — I didn’t look like I was as an easy of a target. I wasn’t sure that he was completely being honest and not just playing me about that, but it was worth hoping for right?
At lunch I found out that even if kids weren’t being actively hostile they could still leave a mark. Amy and I sat down as normal, joined by Kyle, David, Ashley, Lindsey, Nikki, and Kristina. But I watched the rest of the people that normally sat with us, girls that I had counted on as friends, go sit on the other side of the cafeteria away from us — or at least me. Brittany, Jennifer, and Amber were three of those girls. Amber had just been to my birthday party, not even two weeks ago, Jennifer had been invited, and now they wanted nothing to do with me?!?
Amy must have sensed what I was thinking as I stared over on that side of the cafeteria, "Tiffany forget about them. They must not have been real friends anyway," she told me.
She then did her best to engage me with conversation. Kristina also did her best to try with that, "Tiffany that’s a really cute dress. Where did you get it?" She asked.
"Bloomingdales," I told her.
"Really? Isn’t that a really expensive store?" She asked.
"Yeah… I never would have been able to afford to buy it — but we got some gift certificates to there and FAO Schwartz Saturday morning."
"That’s cool, what else did you all do?" She asked. Amy would always be my best friend… but if Amy was like my twin sister (which I often thought of her as,) Kristina was quickly becoming my big sister. By the time we had gotten through lunch she had managed to make the memories of our trip bigger in my mind than the last twenty-four hours.
I was actually even smiling a bit as we got into home-ec that afternoon. That class only had Amy in it, but thankfully word seemed to be out to leave me alone. So, everyone pretty much just ignored me. It sucked, but at least I wasn’t worried about getting beat up. At the end of class before the bell Mrs. Holt asked, "Tiffany may I talk to you for a second?"
I went up to her desk, "Yes Mrs. Holt?"
"Are you still going to try out for the dance squad?" She asked.
"I want to," I paused for a second before saying, "if I still can with all of this going on."
"I’m fine with you trying out Tiffany, in fact I’ve heard some good things about you from Coach Clemens at the high school."
"Really?" I asked.
"She seems to think that you would be one of the better girls I could catch — I’m hoping that will be the case. I do want to warn you though — you are going to have to deal with a lot of the other girls giving you a hard time. I have a feeling their parents are not going to be happy with you on the squad. Do your best though and I don’t think that will matter," She told me with a smile.
"Thanks." I started to turn around and head out the door because the bell rang, but stopped to ask. "Umm… we’re supposed to wear a cotton t-shirt and shorts right?"
"Yes Tiffany," she told me. "Along with a sports bra too," she said. That was nice enough of her to add. She knew as well as I did that I didn’t need one at this point. I had brought one though so that wasn’t a problem.
"Where should I change?" I asked her. I had been kind of worried about it.
"Well if you make the squad we’ll figure out something different, but for now why don’t you go ahead and change in the bathroom you’re using during the day here." She suggested. "I’ll let Amy be a little bit late so she can come with you." She added.
"Thanks," I told her as we left to go to our next class.
As we went to English we stopped by our lockers — still the old ones — and found more articles taped to them. This time there were also some other notes that were ridiculous and I decided to rip them all off and go hand them to Mrs. Henry. Amy tried to stop me, but I’d had enough.
"Is Mrs. Henry in?" I asked the secretary. "She’s in her office let me see…" she started to say but I just walked past her and in through her open door.
I put the notes and articles on her desk, turned around, and left to go to class. I didn’t trust myself to say anything. "Tiffany…" I heard her start from behind me. But I just went to class with Amy and made sure I got there by the time the bell rang.
Ms. Damien saw that I was not far off of losing it as I sat down and asked me to come talk to her in the hallway. "What’s going on Tiffany?" she asked me.
"What’s not going on?" I said louder than I intended to. "Sorry," I told her.
She smiled at me slightly, "Look I know this is a really bad day you’re having. This is a really crappy way to come back from a weekend. If you need someone, an adult not your parents or one of the principals, to talk to — let me know. Even if you’re in another class have them write a pass and I’ll find some time to talk, okay?" she asked.
"Okay." I said. I really didn’t want to calm down right now, I wanted to be furious, but she had succeeded in adding some length to my fuse.
"Let’s get back in there then," she said as she gave me a shoulder hug and led me back inside.
As I sat down I felt a lot of appreciation for her — she had done exactly what I needed and she was the only person that really could have helped. I began to work on the assignment she gave us — writing about an important event in your life — when Mrs. Hinther and Mrs. Henry walked into the door.
"May we see Tiffany for a moment?" Mrs. Hinther asked.
My eyes narrowed and I could see Ms. Damien’s did too, but she couldn’t exactly say no could she? She didn’t trust herself to speak — I could see that — and just nodded at me. I grabbed my backpack and followed them out to the hallway.
I ended up getting led to the office from the class and into Mrs. Hinther’s office. "Okay Tiffany, we need to talk about your rude behavior to Mrs. Henry a few minutes ago." She started to say.
"Excuse me ma’am, not to be rude — but I’ve been given two instructions for if you wanted to talk to me about anything else this school year. May I either have permission to record this meeting with the tape recorder I have in my bag or would you please call my parents or my attorney."
"You may have neither," she said.
"Then ma’am I am going to go ask the secretary to borrow her phone, and once I call out you can plan on Mr. Hancock making good on his promise of a lawsuit being filed against both of you." I said as I started to stand up.
"Young lady don’t you dare move out of that chair or I’m writing you up for insubordination," Mrs. Hinther said angrily.
"I’ve been told not to speak to you alone Ma’am. You can go ahead and write me up." I said as calmly as I could and stood up to go out into the main office. Both principals were stunned enough by my reaction that I had already dialed on the secretary’s phone before they even managed to get out of her office. My parents were really worried something like this was going to happen today — so they’d told me just to call Mr. Hancock’s office first since he had a secretary that could get them a message.
"Hello, may I speak to Mr. Hancock?" I asked.
"May I ask who’s calling?" his secretary asked.
"Tiffany," I said.
"Give me just a second sweetie," she told me. I’d never met her but Amy claimed his secretary was really nice — I guess she was right.
"Tiffany?" I heard from the other line.
"Hi," I said managing to sound vaguely coherent, "I’m really in trouble and I need your help." I sniffled, then continued, "What we talked about happening before happened. And, can you call my parents please?"
"Absolutely Tiffany, just give me about ten minutes and I’ll be down there. I’ll see if I can get a hold of your mom too." He told me.
"Thanks Mr. Hancock, I’m really scared."
I managed to look like I was fairly strong on the outside... but inside I was crying like the frightened little girl that I was. My parents had told me not to speak to her like she wanted under any circumstances, so I knew I was doing the right thing. But, I’d also been taught that principals are in charge and I shouldn’t disobey them.
I hung up the phone and sat down in one of the office chairs in the lobby area, trying to calm myself. "Tiffany you need to come back in here right now," Mrs. Hinther came out yelling at me.
"Not until my attorney and my mom get here," I told her politely and with a smile. She was absolutely furious with me. She made a big show of showing me the write-up she was filling out. With that she said, "You can kiss your chances of being on the dance squad good-bye Tiffany, you’re not allowed to be on it if you’ve had a write-up." She said.
She continued to issue a barrage of taunts one after another — but I had shut down. I wasn’t saying anything. If I did she might actually have a case; as of right now though she was well past the line of allowable actions. Mrs. Henry had actually stepped into her office and shut the door. I could see the secretaries covering their faces with their hands wishing that she would shut up. I decided that she was really close to losing it, so permission or not, I reached into the front pocket of my backpack that was on my lap, and turned on the recorder. I didn’t know if it would do any good, or if it would be useable in court, but with her threatening me I was scared it might be the only protection I had.
Ten minutes into this she said, "Alright, if you won’t come willingly I’ll move you myself," she had totally lost control by this point and began to grab the upper part of my arm to pull me up with.
"OW! Let go of me!" I told her.
"Get in here!" she screamed at me.
About that time the cavalry arrived. My mom and Mr. Hancock arrived at the same time and I could see my mom was absolutely furious. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING WITH MY DAUGHTER?" She screamed. "UNHAND HER NOW!" she said.
Mrs. Hinther suddenly realized she had really done it now. She let go of me and I began massaging where she had been gripping me.
Mr. Hancock looked over at the secretary and asked, "Would you please call the resource officer up here please. We will be filing assault charges against Mrs. Hinther." The secretary’s eyes grew huge and she looked afraid of Mrs. Hinther.
Mr. Hancock noticed that and added, "Don’t worry — she’s not going to be able to do anything to you after today." He then looked at me, "Tiffany, are you okay?" Mom had me in a bear hug and I was bawling. I had lost all control of my emotions at that point and it was a really good thing mom didn’t want me wearing makeup — it would have been all over the place.
"No, not really." I sobbed. "She’s been yelling at me non-stop since I called you. She also refused to let me record the conversation or call you and wrote me up out here telling me that now I can’t make the dance squad." If either of them actually understood any of this through my sobs I would have been really surprised.
He actually gave me a hug at this point too, and said to my mom, "Go get her calmed down and her face cleaned up. Then take her to her next class. I’m going to deal with the school district." He then tilted my head up to where I was looking at him, "Don’t worry about this one Tiffany, I guarantee you that write-up is going to get ripped up here in about twenty minutes. Mrs. Hinther has really screwed up this time." I gave him a hug and followed Mom as she led me through a repeat of a few weeks earlier.
Once my face was cleaned up — it was still incredibly red — she walked with me to band class. Mrs. Remar was surprised to see her and asked her what was going on while I got my stuff out. I heard her pretty loudly say, "She did what to her?!?" She was pretty pissed by the time all was said and done. You could tell as she got up on the podium to teach. Mom gave me a quick hug goodbye before she had to go back for her afternoon bus run.
During band I did my best to play well through all of that. We actually had a chair test that day on a scale — thankfully I could do that in my sleep though, because that’s basically the state I was in. As the bell rang, and I put my stuff up, Mrs. Remar came by and offered a hug.
"Where are you going now?" she asked me.
"I was going to go use the faculty restroom to change for practice today." I told her.
"What practice?"
"I’m trying out for the dance squad. Since there aren’t any football games this week they decided that they would do the weeklong workshop this week plus Saturday. Then they’re going to have tryouts next Friday during the school day."
"Well why don’t I walk you there to change, alright? That way I know you made it safely," she told me with a smile.
"I’d appreciate that," I told her. She did as she said she was going to and I was really happy to see Amy waiting for me there at the bathroom. I quickly changed into the clothes in the bathroom and then left with Amy to go to the gym. I’d been really concerned about what I was going to do while she was in the locker room — but was pleasantly surprised to see Kyle and David standing in the gym talking.
They were already dressed in their football gear so they had ten minutes before they would need to go to the field. Amy left me with them and telling me she would be quick.
"Tiffany what happened with Mrs. Hinther?" Kyle asked me.
"Umm… she assaulted me after not letting me call my parents or Amy’s dad… why do you ask?"
"Well everyone around school is talking about how they saw a police officer come down and escort her off the campus. She really assaulted you?" he asked incredulously.
"She grabbed me by the top of my arm and tried to yank me up out of a chair. She didn’t actually strike me, but I think that was enough." I told him, showing him where my arm was still red. I had a feeling it was going to bruise tonight.
"Maybe she’ll be gone for good?" He suggested hopefully.
"Maybe. I can only hope." I told him. He ended up asking me some more questions about our trip to get me to talk more. By the end I was almost not frowning — I definitely wasn’t smiling still — but he seemed to help me be more at ease with myself. I could feel myself coming off of my adrenaline high and I was starting to shake.
Amy was out of the locker room a few minutes later and we headed to the cafeteria where we would be meeting for practice. "Are you ready for this?" Amy asked me.
"I think so… I’m definitely going to have more of a shot now than before camp and my dance classes." I said while looking at my shaking hand.
"I think you’re going to do fine," she told me. We waited in the cafeteria for all of the girls to gather for the tryouts. In all there were the fourteen girls on the school’s cheerleading squad and about twenty other girls including myself that were trying out.
Before practice began a couple girls came over to Amy, Ashley, Lindsey and I. They asked, "What’s IT doing here?"
"She’s my friend, and she’s here to try out and beat you," Amy told them. They were stunned by her strong defense of me and left when they noticed Ashley and Lindsey weren’t budging either. Kristina also came over to me at that point too and began talking.
Coach Holt, as she was now to be called by me most of the time, didn’t spend any time at the beginning talking about stuff, she just moved right into things. She began with a lot of stretching. I was pleased to see that all of my exercises to become more limber had paid off. Only about eight other girls were more flexible than I had become by now.
After we finished stretching she began teaching us a bunch of names for moves that she wanted us to learn. I was really happy to see that they were all the same as the ones that we’d been learning in the dance class. I could already see that there were some girls who didn’t stand a chance of making it. They couldn’t even do the most basic of steps that she taught everyone.
After the first hour of practice she told everyone to go get a drink of water and use the restroom if they needed to. I did need to, but decided just to wait since I didn’t want to go all the way down the hall to the faculty restroom by myself. Amy and I just got a drink and came back into the cafeteria.
For the next hour after that break she taught us a dance in slow motion that we were going to have to do for our tryout. After working on it in slow motion count by count for fifty minutes or so she said, "Alright, just for kicks let’s see if anyone can do it with the music."
We were all lined up in three lines across the floor and started in the first pose. As I heard the opening beats to start the song I concentrated with all of my might to remember everything. I kept counting in my head, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, over and over again so that I could keep with the music. At the end of the routine I found myself on the ground with my legs in splits and my head down in the final pose.
"Nice job ladies," Coach Holt said and I allowed myself the luxury of looking to see who else had made it.
Only four others… all of them my friends I noted. Kristina, Amy, Ashley, and Lindsey. Most of the rest of the girls looked shocked and stunned by two things; one, how bad they had done, and two how well I had done.
"Okay gather around ladies!" Coach said to us. We all sat down on the ground around her panting as we had just worked our tails off. "So, now you all have an idea of what we’re going for with this group. You’re going to have to do that routine and another one that you come up with for the tryouts. If you don’t have a routine of your own already, there are some on top of the table behind me, along with practice tapes. If you take one please get me a dollar so I can replace the tape. I’m also going to want you to do a couple basic cheers that we’ll teach you tomorrow. This group is going to mainly be about dancing — especially once the football season is over — but I do plan on any girl that makes it cheering with the cheer squad for the rest of the season. After that then it’ll just be this group that practices each day."
"My goal is for us to go compete at a state-level competition in January, and to compete in a national competition in February, after we win at the state level!" She began handing out some packets of information then, "the cost for being on this squad is going to be two-thousand dollars this year. That’ll cover your uniforms and outfits plus travel expenses. We’re also going to spend four days down in Las Cruces at the university there during Christmas Vacation to get worked up towards the competitions."
"If the costs are a problem, please do speak to me after practice — we will try and do a couple fundraisers to help out. I don’t want anyone not on the squad just because of money issues. I do want to talk about something else though before I dismiss you."
"Would all of these girls please stand up? Amy, Ashley, Tiffany, Lindsey, Kristina." She paused for a second while we stood up. "All five of these ladies made it through the routine at full speed their first time of trying. I want you all to notice that Tiffany is in this group. Realistically Tiffany was almost perfect when she did it ladies, and if she does that well next Friday she’s going to make the squad."
Why was she saying this? Wasn’t this probably going to cause her problems?
"I’m saying this because I hope that she makes it with as hard of a worker as I know she is — and if any of you have a problem with being on the same squad as her — don’t bother showing up tomorrow. I’m sick of seeing people doing stupid things today. If you’re going to be one of those girls I don’t want you here. We’re going to do well at our competitions, but only if we act as a team. Begin now. If I see anyone act out towards anyone else — not just Tiffany — you can plan on not being on the team. Am I clear?"
There was a chorus of "yes ma’am’" before she dismissed us. I was pretty embarrassed at this point. I was also kind of scared that she may have just made things worse and kind of shrunk away towards my bag before I heard, "Tiffany would you please come here a moment?"
"First of all really nice job today! I can see why Coach Clemens thinks I should be taking you on the squad. Keep up the good work."
"Thanks Coach," I told her.
"Next, I know you may think that I was out of line there at the end, but I had to say it. The locker room talk was particularly vicious about you earlier and I wanted it stopped. You helped out a lot with that by knocking the socks off of almost everyone else today. Make sure you keep it up though — I have a feeling a lot of the other girls are going to come back more prepared tomorrow."
"Okay. Thanks Coach," I said as I grabbed my stuff, a tape of the routine music, and headed outside where my mom was waiting. It was nice to see the protestors were gone.
Chapter 33
"HOW DID PRACTICE go?" She asked me hoping that things had at least gone a little better since she’d left.
"It went well. I’m one of the better girls in there — well at least for today. We’ll see if that lasts or not." I told her. "What happened with Mrs. Hinther though?" I asked her the question that was really on my mind.
"Well we filed charges on her for assaulting you, Mr. Hancock got the write-up against you torn up, and he went ahead and filed a lawsuit against her and the district for what’s been allowed to go on the past couple weeks." She said. "He did tell the district that he would be inclined to drop the suit against them if she was removed as principal." She paused, "Since she was escorted off of campus today I have a feeling they’re going to cut her loose."
"Really?" I asked. I had begun to think of her as ninety percent of the reason things had gotten so out of hand this past week.
"That’s what they came over the bus yard’s radio system and said earlier while I was driving. She’s not allowed on school property without an escort until further notice. You can’t tell anyone that though okay? They’ll find out from other people — but we can’t give her any reason to be able to file a countersuit against us." She told me.
"I won’t. But at least maybe I’ll be done with dealing with her!" I said excitedly.
"Maybe."
"So what are we doing now?" I could see it was about six.
"Well I need to get you home for you to shower and get dressed back nicely. Once you do that Mr. Sanders is going to have a crew interview you here about everything that is going on."
I suddenly got really nervous. "Will they just make me out to be a freak?" I asked her. The way the rest of the media had made me out to be I was scared.
"No sweetie, he’s not going to let that happen. He’s also going to run a copy of the interview off, just like it’s going to air, and bring that by here before they put it on tonight."
"Okay," I said — still incredibly nervous. We drove home and I took a quick shower before changing into the skirt and blouse that I had bought at Bloomindales. Mom apparently had gone over to Amy’s house that morning after her run and picked up all of the stuff that we’d been forced to just leave there. Knowing that I had this today she had made sure they were both ready to wear.
I spent as much time as I thought I could get away with doing my hair and adding a little bit of makeup. I know Mom wouldn’t want much… but a little bit would keep me from looking like a pale ghost on camera. I had learned that this past weekend. When I stepped out of the bathroom Mom said I looked great. She had also taken some time to make herself look nice, and so had Dad, who had gotten home while I’d been in the shower. Mr. Sanders and the crew from his station arrived about ten minutes later.
The crew began setting up in our living room. I recognized the cameraman from when we worked on our project at the station. He was pretty friendly and said ‘hi’ to me as he worked to set up several microphones and plugged them into the camera. In the meantime Mr. Sanders introduced me to the lady that was going to do the interview. Her name was Tina, and she didn’t look like she was all that old. The two of us talked for a little while, making little small talk as she tried to make me feel comfortable around her.
While she was talking to me I could feel my stomach grumble. I was starving. I didn’t really eat lunch, and after practice I’d been immediately thrown into this.
Mr. Sanders and Mom both talked off to the side about something before she ran off to go grab something down the hallway.
I didn’t see her return though because the cameraman had a microphone he wanted me to attach to my blouse. Before I knew it both of my parents had sat down next to me and Tina began to ask me a lot of small questions. Things like how I liked school and what I liked to do outside of school. She didn’t even mention the reason she was there for the interview yet, she just kept it nice and friendly.
To answer her I explained that I really liked English, Science, Band, and Choir. I told her the last two classes were my favorites. I also told her that I was hoping to make the new dance squad at school. She asked some follow-up questions to those like what instrument I played and what part I sang. I think she was a little surprised when I answered ‘soprano’ for choir, but she didn’t comment on it. Eventually we talked about some of the problems that I’d been having in school during last year, and she used that as her link into her real questions.
"Tiffany, when did you first come to the conclusion that you were not a boy?"
That was a loaded question. I didn’t really want to tell her about Liza’s comment that started the chain reaction... I was suddenly really glad I hadn’t eaten anything — my stomach was now doing summersaults.
"Well I guess it was about a year ago that I really realized something was wrong. Honestly it’s built up from when I was little, but something happened at school one day that started me thinking about it. I’d always fit in better with the girls — the things they did were more like what I did. That’s a lot of why I think I was picked on so much as Brandon. It was like a light switch for me one day — I realized I must really be a girl… I just had the wrong body. From there I didn’t know what to do. I imagined if I had longer hair I might be able to look more like what I am. Several months later when it was longer people started to think I was a girl dressed as a tomboy. My best friend eventually figured things out, followed by both sets of our parents, and before I knew it they were being supportive in helping me be who I am."
"How did the kids at school react when you came as Tiffany?" She asked me next.
I was still pretty calm to this point as I answered her, "Well the first day most of them didn’t even know who I’d been. Until one student decided to tell everyone in my second to last class, I was just the new girl everyone was trying to meet. After that things got bad with a small number of the students. Two of them tried to assault me the next day, and others began leaving threatening notes here and there, making rude comments, stuff like that. But for the most part, everyone either stayed my friend or just didn’t talk to me."
"This has changed unfortunately hasn’t it?" Tina asked.
I nodded, pushing back the tears. "Last week, before we left on the trip, I started to see more and more threatening notes everywhere I turned. I told the principals who I thought it was, but they never did anything about it. Finally, the day before we left on the trip, my friend and I had graffiti all over our lockers. It was really bad." I said with a sniffle.
"I had a really good time when we left on our trip Thursday — things were great on the trip. Yesterday, when we got back home though, everything began crashing in. First, we had all of the news media trucks in front of my house. Why? Just because I was different? Because I was a great story to make the community angry with? Thankfully Mom and Dad got me away from there before anything could happen last night. But seeing the letters from the newspaper and bits of the news stories on the TV stations was awful. These people didn’t even know me! They’re just assuming that I’m a bad person. And the things they’ve said about my parents?!"
I actually was almost at full blown tears at the moment. I could see a lot of compassion in Tina’s face. Just about when I didn’t think I could go on anymore I felt my mom grab my right hand and hold it. It gave me just enough strength to say the worst of it. "And the worst part…" I paused to breathe before I started sobbing, "the worst part was when girls that I considered to be friends decided to turn their backs on me. Just because some adult told them that I was a freak or something worse, they shouldn’t be friends with me. I can take a lot, I always have, but losing good friends… I can’t take much more of that. Especially — without a good reason. And, this isn’t one."
"Look, I don’t expect everyone to go out of their way to be friends with me. I understand people fear what they don’t know, and I’m something they don’t understand at all. I just want people to let me be who I am and to let me become the best girl I can be. Whether that is in school, in band, or even on the dance team, I just want people to give me a chance." I said while wiping away tears that were coming down my face.
"Tiffany thank you so much for letting me talk to you today. I feel privileged to have been able to do so. I hope this story helps you out." At this point the camera turned to face her again and she did an exit tag with her name and the station. The cameraman turned the light off of the top of his camera and began to break everything down.
Mr. Sanders had already talked to us about their announcements about the story. It was going to be a special segment at 10, and they were going to run the full thing again on the morning newscast and the noon news. With as much of a story this had become, even statewide now, it was probably going to be a big ratings boost for them. I was okay with that — at least they were trying to help me out.
While I’d made a conscious decision to not look at the newspaper, a decision ruined by all of the kids pasting them everywhere, I knew almost everyone in the area had their opinion about me. I hoped maybe this would help people change it — or at least make a more informed decision. Mom gave me a hug and touched my nose gently to try and get my attention. I wrinkled it in response but came back to the real world. The crew was just leaving and Mr. Sanders was talking to us.
"I’ll have a copy for you guys to look at here in about two hours," Mr. Sanders said as he left.
"Thanks for your help," my mom said.
"Anytime. We’re also going to run information about Mrs. Hinther’s attack on Tiffany today as well. That’ll be the second part of the story."
"Could that land us in trouble in the form of a lawsuit?" She asked.
"No. We found out all of the information about that from other sources. We’re going to even protect you by saying that you wouldn’t confirm or deny that while the investigation was pending."
"Good." My dad said. He had run to the restroom really quickly while they had been packing up the equipment.
"Anyway I need to get going. I’ll come back by around nine-fifteen, okay?" He asked.
"Sounds good." Mom said.
"Bye Mr. Sanders," I said as he left.
"Oh crap!" I exclaimed after he left.
"What Tiffany?" My dad asked.
"Mom did you let them know I wasn’t coming to gymnastics tonight?"
"Yes sweetie. Tara said she understood and would see you next week. She also told me to tell you ‘good luck,’ with everything." That made me feel good. At least one person wasn’t freaking out. I had never told Tara about me — but she had to have found out from the news this weekend.
"Good. Can we get some food now?" I asked.
"What do you want?" She asked.
"…Burger King?" I replied.
"Joe do you mind running there?" my Mom asked Dad.
"Do you have some cash?" he asked.
"Yeah in my purse let me get it," she said.
He left for a bit and I started unpacking all of the things from the trip. Mom had left my one new stuffed tiger at Amy’s house by accident — she didn’t know I had slept with it in Amy’s room last night — but everything else found a home in my room somewhere. I put my new jeans in the washer and made sure that the dress I had worn today was machine washable before putting it in the washer too. I didn’t see any reason why they couldn’t be washed together.
I then came out of there and went back to my room to do the little homework I had. Most of my teachers had waved off the makeup work that I hadn’t done on account of everything else going on. I had finished the homework by the time Dad came home with the food.
I was so hungry I ate my whopper and fries in like five minutes. My parents just kind of stared at me funny for a moment. "I was hungry since before the interview, don’t look at me like that," I told them. They just let it slide. About the time that we finished I heard the doorbell ring.
"Joe would you go get it?" Mom asked.
"Yeah," he told her. "Tiffany stay in the kitchen unless we tell you to come in — just in case it’s more reporters or something."
I didn’t know what the something might be — but I could imagine it being bad.
Thankfully it was something else, but just not something overly bad. It was one of the members of the family that owned the company my dad worked for. Karen had always been really nice to all of us, even going so far as to give me Christmas presents before. Dad said, "Tiffany come on in here if you don’t mind."
"Karen this is my daughter Tiffany," my dad said as I came up to them.
"Tiffany you’re very pretty. Your dad had said you were when I asked him about you today — but I never dreamed you would be this pretty. I love your outfit." She told me.
"Thanks." I said.
"So what brings you here Karen?" My mom asked as she came in.
"Well I wanted to see how you were all doing. Joe had given us a heads up about what was going on a couple weeks ago — and when we saw the press go nuts while you were out of town we were kind of worried. Plus, I wanted to meet Tiffany."
I smiled at that. "So you’re okay with this?" I asked her.
"You know I hate to admit it, but if you’d been really ugly I probably would have had a problem with it… but you’re as pretty if not prettier than most girls your age — so yes, I’m okay with this."
"Thanks," I said. I could see her logic. If I looked like a freak then there might be more room for concern there — but as things stood I didn’t.
"Though now that I know Joe has a daughter your age that is reliable you may have to come babysit for me sometimes." She told me.
I knew she had an eighteen month old daughter and a four year old daughter who were both very energetic. I also knew they would be able to afford to pay even better than the Linds, so I said, "Okay," with a smile on my face.
She stayed and talked with us for a half-hour or so before heading back home.
"So your job is safe Daddy?" I asked.
"As far as I know. With Karen being okay with this I should be fine. Thank you for asking sweetie," he told me. I think he was somewhat surprised that I had put those pieces together. It’s not like I was five though — he should have known I would.
"Good," I replied.
We ended up watching TV for another hour or so until Mom sent me to go get my pajamas on. My parents were going to let me stay up and watch the interview on the news — but I had to be ready to go to bed. Around nine-thirty Mr. Sanders stopped by to show us the clip.
It was really strange to see this girl — who was me — sitting there and talking on camera. I wasn’t used to looking at myself like that and found myself being a little self-conscious afterwards. The interview came off well though I think — and we gave them the go ahead to air it that night. Shortly after Mr. Sanders left I heard the phone ring.
"Tiffany it’s for you," Mom said.
"Hello?" I said into the phone a moment later.
"Hey Tiffany, this is Ashley."
"Hey, what’s up?" I asked her.
"Not much. I just wanted to tell you I think you did a really good job in the interview. Dad just showed it to me and I think it should help out a lot."
"I just hope it doesn’t make things worse. If it makes things better then that would be a step-up from where things stand now."
"I think it will Tiffany. Anyway Dad is pushing me to go to bed — so I’ll talk to you tomorrow okay?"
"Okay, thanks for calling Ashley."
We hung up and I felt a little bit better about myself. Between Karen stopping by, Ashley calling, and my own thoughts on the interview I was hoping tomorrow might very well improve. It seemed like I had hardly put the phone down than I heard our doorbell ring again.
I stayed in the kitchen where I was talking while Mom went to go check it again. Thankfully I heard a voice that made me feel even better. I didn’t even bother waiting for them to okay this one, "Amy what are you doing here?" I went out to the living room. Her mom was also with her.
"Well I talked my parents into letting me come over here and spend the night." She told me.
"Yay!" I said.
"You’re okay with it right Mommy?" I asked her.
"Melanie wouldn’t have brought her over if not," she told me. "You’ll still take them to school in the morning right?"
"Yeah, I’ll be by at seven-forty girls. Be ready to go okay?" she told us.
"Okay!" we said as she left. Amy and I went to my room and pulled the trundle bed out from underneath my bed.
As we finished getting the bed ready for her I said, "Thanks for coming over Amy. I really appreciate it."
"I was worried about you, with everything that happened today, so I thought the least I could do was see if I could spend the night here." She paused for a second, "I know last night and today were really hard."
I gave her a hug. She put on her own pajamas and then we went out to the living room to wait for the news to start. While we were waiting Amy and I talked about the practice and how things had gone that day. "Tiffany you did really well today. I could see you out of the corner of my eye and you were right on with everything!" She told me.
"Thanks Amy. I don’t doubt at all that you’ll make it. I’m just hoping that I will too."
"Coach Holt all but told everybody today that you would!"
"Yeah… but with my parents filing the lawsuit against the district I’m afraid that somewhere someone is going to get even."
"I don’t think it’ll happen soon though — and not with this. You’re going to do too well on the tryout," she told me.
"Say we have like ten minutes — have you gone through the routine since you got home?" I asked.
She shook her head, "I had too much homework to do — and I was trying to unpack."
"You want to run through it real quick? I have a tape player in my room to play it through."
"Sure," she said as we stood up to go into my room. With the trundle bed pulled out there wasn’t a lot of room to dance in there — but we somehow made do. Mom must have been watching through most of it as we ran through because she clapped for us when we were done.
"Great you two. I think you’re both going to do fine next week."
"I hope so." I said.
"Come on out to the living room, the news is about to start."
I don’t remember ever being that excited to watch news before… Actually it wasn’t excitement so much as anxiousness. When we’d watched our interview in May about our project that had been exciting — this was nerve racking. We watched through the opening intro, five minutes of local news, three minutes of national news, and then they got to the ‘special report.’
The anchorwoman began, "Ladies and Gentlemen last Friday a letter to the editor appeared in the newspaper here in town. This letter was written with one purpose, and one purpose only, to create an incendiary and hateful movement against a local girl. The letter’s sole argument for doing so was that she was not born biologically as a girl and is transgender."
"Several local news stations began investigating and aired reports on this young lady. One station in particular, irresponsibly chose to violate her privacy and air her name and an old photo. From there several stations then chose to camp out at her house and attempt to create a public fervor just to increase their nightly ratings. I am ashamed to say that our station did air a report that night — though we chose to hold off on the young lady’s name. Given everything that has happened to this young lady on account of the local stations’ irresponsibility, we would first like to formally apologize for airing a report in the first place."
"This young lady, Tiffany, was gracious enough to sit down with a reporter from our station this evening for an interview in the hope that perhaps it will help create more tolerance and understanding about her issues. So, here is our exclusive interview with Tiffany Jacobson."
The news cut to the interview at this point and repeated the clip I had seen earlier. I appreciated their introduction — the apology was a welcome start even if I had known it was coming. Amy and I sat together on the couch watching it all pass by before the anchorwoman came back on the screen. At a couple points the video was cut away from me talking, to some images of the trophies I had won this summer and the plaque we received for the film festival. At some point mom must have sat them down on top of the TV in the living room, and the cameraman had recorded some video of them. That’s not where they normally were. ‘That must have been what Mom and Mr. Sanders were talking about,’ I thought to myself eventually.
"Again our apologies to Tiffany. We hope that the community will take a closer look at how they treat her in the future."
The anchorman took over then, "Yes Karina, by the way, I’m sure you saw the plaque and trophies in the interview. Tiffany and three of her friends were just presented plaques for being ‘Outstanding Young Filmmakers’ at a prestigious film festival in New York last week. They made the film in our very own studios with Tiffany directing it. Their film was the warm-up for the main event on Friday night."
"Her parents must be very proud of her Mike. All of us that have met her recognize what an outstanding young lady she is. We wish her well in the future and hope that people will treat her with the respect she deserves."
The anchorman continued, "In other news we have learned tonight that a principal at a local middle school was arrested and escorted off of campus for allegedly assaulting a student. The principal, Mrs. Carol Hinther, allegedly refused to let a student speak to her parents or her attorney. When the young lady sat down in the office to wait for someone to arrive to speak for her, Mrs. Hinther allegedly tried manhandling the girl."
"The school district had no comment on the matter, but did confirm that Mrs. Hinther is on paid administrative leave pending an investigation into the matter. We have also learned that assault charges were filed on the principal by the parents of the girl involved. This station is choosing not to release that students name as she is a minor."
"Continuing on this evening we had a bizarre…"
"Maybe things might actually work out." I said to no one in particular in the living room after that.
Mom sent us to bed at that point telling us, "You do have school tomorrow girls, please don’t stay up all night talking."
"We won’t," Amy told her.
In fact we didn’t. We spent maybe five minutes talking about how it should hopefully help out a lot without Mrs. Hinther being there. After that we both crashed. From today alone I would have been tired enough to sleep easily… but combined with the trip and last night’s nightmares, I was out like a light when my head hit the pillow.
Chapter 34
THE NEXT MORNING Amy and I got up and got ready to go to school as we were supposed to. I found myself feeling drained still — even after sleep — and hoped that this day would go better. As we pulled up to the school I saw that there were some protestors again today, but there were far fewer of them. Where it had been twenty-six or more yesterday today there were maybe ten. The ten that were out there no longer held signs directly aimed at me — today they were just about how it was a sin and that it shouldn’t be allowed in the school. It still sucked though.
Once again as we got out of the car I waved at them, ‘kill them with kindness maybe?’ I thought. The rest of the morning was more subdued than the previous day. I received several notes still, but they were not as numerous as the day before. A lot more kids had seen the news last night than I had expected. I guess it had also re-aired this morning too though, so I would say seventy percent of the kids had actually seen it. Everyone quietly talked about it though.
Lunch was the first interesting experience of the day. I was sitting down with the same people as yesterday and saw Brittany, Jennifer, and Amber all walk over towards my table. "Tiffany, can we talk to you for a second?" Jennifer asked timidly.
"Sure," I told her.
"Look… umm… Look we wanted to apologize for yesterday. We know who you are, we’ve known about you for longer than anyone else, but for some reason when the news started declaring you a freak we started believing it ourselves. We were stupid…" Amber started.
"And we’d like to apologize to you for it," Brittany finished for her.
"I’m so sorry Tiff," Jennifer said.
"Me too… Once I saw you on TV last night I realized how terrible we were — and there really wasn’t a good reason for it. If you can forgive us we promise we’ll never turn our backs on you like that again," Amber said.
"Friends?" Amber said holding out her hand to me.
I had a moment to think. I could easily stay mad at them — they’d been witches to take and stab me in the back like that. I also could be falling into a trap — what if they were planning something really nasty now? But I wouldn’t get far in life always distrusting people though so I grabbed her hand and said, "Friends."
Each of them gave me a hug and apologized again before sitting down at the end of the table. "Umm… so how was your trip?" Jennifer asked.
The conversation lightened up from there and we had a good time telling them all about the trip. No one could believe all of those things had happened. I couldn’t really blame them though since I didn’t believe it had all happened either.
"So Tiffany that producer really offered you help if you want to do another movie?" Amber asked.
"Yeah, it sounded like he was willing to even help us find funding and equipment and stuff." I told her.
"Wow… so are you going to do it?" She asked.
"I don’t know. Not right now — especially not with the dance tryouts. This spring? I could see us coming up with something for then." I told her.
"Speaking of dance tryouts I couldn’t believe you yesterday Tiffany! You were like perfect on that routine and you’d only been learning it as long as we had. How did you do that so quickly?" Brittany asked.
I shrugged. "Going to the camp really helped. We only had a couple days to learn a routine that was a lot harder than that one. Also the dance class has been helping too I think."
The day continued to get better after that thankfully. All the way through to seventh hour things actually seemed to get back to normal a little bit. Honestly I was surprised that things were calming down that fast. I was rather worried that things were going to go south really quick at some point. It didn’t happen during the day though, and the dance team tryouts went smoothly as well.
Coach Holt had continued to work on the dance routine. She also began teaching us some basic cheers and such for the girls that weren’t on the cheer squad. Between the camp and Amy showing me what they had been doing though, I already knew all of what she was teaching. I saw several of the girls that were trying out give me some frustrated glances — they didn’t know how I could have been a boy a year ago and be doing better than them at this stuff.
I was also laughing very hard inside at Danica, one of the girls that was on the squad and had come up to make fun of me yesterday, as she kept screwing up time after time on the basics. As practice came to a close Kristina came over to me with Ashley.
"Hey Tiffany we were wanting to try something new with a lift… and thought we could try it with you?" they asked.
"Why me?" I asked Kristina.
"I want to show some of the other girls that you know what you’re doing," she replied to me quietly."
"Okay!" I said.
They ended up doing a simple lift and having me jump and spin as I came down. Some of the other girls looked at me and just said, ‘wow.’ After that day I didn’t feel like there would be a really good reason for me not to make the squad.
We had rescheduled my sax lesson that day for later on in the week — it would have been right at the end of practice and it didn’t make a lot of sense to do it then. And, unfortunately I wasn’t going to be able to go to Tae Kwon Do tonight since we needed to go to the school board meeting.
So I had the joy of being hot and sweaty at five-thirty, showering quickly and eating, before going to a school board meeting at seven. Mom did her best to try and keep me in a good mood — she knew I would need to be pleasant if anything came up. Ultimately she failed, but Amy coming over just before we left helped out significantly.
I’d been to one board meeting before — that was to present our video before leaving quickly. I didn’t know what was going to happen at all tonight. We pulled up to the administration building where the meetings were held shortly after six-thirty. I had put my skirt and blouse back on after Mom had done some ironing while I was in the shower, so I looked nothing like a boy. That was my best defense in all of this.
Amy and I sat next to each other, sandwiched on either side by our parents, and waited for the meeting to start. Shortly after we arrived I saw Ms. Fitzgerald and Mrs. Manning, the two sponsors from our trip to Florida, come in. "Hey Miss Fitz!" I said giving her a hug before doing the same with Mrs. Manning. Amy did the same thing as well before taking our seats again. I didn’t have the heart to ask if they were there for me or not.
Soon after that I saw Danica and a couple other girls that weren’t going to make the dance squad — but were on the cheer team now — with parents in tow that didn’t look happy. If looks could kill I would have been dead several times over in their cases. As they took seats on the other side of the room Ashley, her sister, and her dad came in, followed closely by Nikki and her mother, Kyle and his dad, David and his parents, Kristina and her parents, Coach Holt, and most of my teachers.
I just about cried at that point — it was apparent they were all here for me. You could feel the tension in the room though. It made me feel good to know that for every one of the jerks on the other side I had two friends and parents to go against them. That wasn’t even including the teachers that had come.
I felt Amy hold my shoulder as I saw Mrs. Hinther enter the room. I hissed softly. "Amy what’s she doing here? I thought she wasn’t allowed on school property"
Mr. Hancock had heard me somehow, "This isn’t the school, and technically she’s been escorted in by a school official. There will probably be a closed session after the open meeting to discuss what to do with her — so she’s here."
That didn’t make me feel any better. Seeing Jarred and Lucas coming in with their parents only made me angrier.
The school board president called the meeting to order and had a local minister say the invocation. Following that a cute little second grade girl came in and led the group in the United States and New Mexican pledges. Everyone gave her a smile and a little bit of applause before she left with her parents. I didn’t blame them. I sure didn’t want to be here! Plus I doubted they wanted their daughter to see what was going to happen at this meeting.
The board meeting started with an approval of minutes from the previous meeting, a presidents report, a couple other reports, and finally led to an open forum. Both sides had people signed up on the sheet to talk, beginning with Danica’s equally vile parents. Her mother was the first to speak, "I wanted to come to talk tonight about the district allowing a boy to first of all dress as a girl, and second allow him to participate on a girls sports team. Tiffany…" she started to say before the president interrupted.
"Ma’am you may speak about issues you care about, but you may not bring up students by name in any case. This is for maintaining an orderly meeting, the students right to privacy, and also for your own protection against a slander suit. Please continue without names," he said coolly.
"The boy that is attempting to join the team is a sinful disgrace…" the tirade continued on until her time ran out. During which she had brought up that a boy on the girls team would screw up their ability to compete evenly.
"Coach Holt, I do have a question on that issue — though it doesn’t affect the situation she is referring to. Would a boy being on the squad cause an issue at competitions?" The board president asked.
She stood up. "No Mr. President, if a cheer squad has only one boy on the squad they are still considered to be a girl’s squad."
"Thank you for clearing that up Coach," he told her with a smile.
"Next up to speak is…" Danica’s father got up and added a tirade on top of her mother’s. I was so angry as it all went on — how dare they! After they finished then it was time for the other girls parents. I was getting really tired of this.
Ashley’s parents began their own tirade against the district for allowing the story to become so sensationalized. They also used the time to give positive points on why I should be allowed to be Tiffany, etc. The night continued on with several of my supporters, then a couple of loud idiots, several more of my supporters, more idiots. My parents and I had snuck onto the end of the list and were called last.
My parents both spoke first about the problems they had seen within the school — and how little had been done about it. They spoke about how I had the right to be who I was and how much happier I had been since I had come out as Tiffany. Well at least before this mess. They both used their time and I was allowed to speak. I had done my best to prepare my thoughts before getting up there — but I was still making it up as I went along.
I copied the beginning from some of the people like Mr. Hancock as I began, "Mr. President, Members of the Board, I would like to talk to you all tonight to give you an idea of what has been happening with me this past year. Bullying isn’t something that’s new to me. Unfortunately it is an experience for me that has been going on for far too long. No one has ever stopped it, and in some cases I believe that principals have intentionally allowed it happen."
"About a year ago I began to realize that I wasn’t a normal boy. In fact I began to believe that I was really a girl. Most of you take your gender for granted… I used to. After a lot of thinking and hoping I was eventually able to open up about really being Tiffany to my best friend — and from there things began to happen. I’ve been really fortunate to have some awesome friends and family who have accepted me for who I am."
"I do understand that there are always going to be people who won’t accept me for who I am. A couple weeks ago in history class we talked about how people fear what they don’t know. And in this case, I’m what you don’t know. So before everyone continues to scream and rant and rave about me, let me tell you about myself," I turned and faced the gallery at this point.
"My name is Tiffany Jacobson. I’m twelve years old, and I’m a girl. No my body doesn’t yet match that yet — but I AM a girl. I’m a good student and I love music, dancing, and recently gymnastics. I like to play with Barbie Dolls just like most of my friends. I believe that I am going to be able to go far and do some really cool things in the future. Everything that a normal girl does and thinks — I think. My psychiatrist has determined that and would agree with me on this."
"Look, like I said, I don’t expect you all to like me — or even accept me. But I do ask that you don’t go actively out of your way to be cruel to me. I haven’t done anything to you — and I won’t. With the dance squad tryouts this week I say may the best girls win! If I happen to be one of those girls that make the squad, it’ll be because I earned my spot by being better than the other girls. I do hope that happens. I guess that’s all I have to say. Thank you for your time," I finished and began heading for my seat.
Silence.
Clap.
Clap. Clap.
As I sat down the applause grew stronger and stronger until most of my allies and teachers were all on their feet clapping for me. I started bawling. Up front every one of the board members also stood to their feet. My parents and I embraced, followed by Amy, and Amy’s parents.
THE REST OF the board meeting went relatively swift. The members of the board all commented that I was a remarkable young LADY, and that they would be sure that I was treated better in the future. They all wished me luck on the tryouts next week. At this point the opposing parents all hissed and left unhappily. We all left at the end of the open session at about eight-thirty.
Everyone in my group seemed to think we’d won a fairly large victory. I honestly wasn’t so sure. What had been gained by this? I guess at least I knew where everyone stood now.
Wednesday came and went in much the same way as Tuesday — fairly calm. When we got to school in the morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that there were no protestors across the street. I took that as a good omen and went through my first three classes with absolutely no negative incidents — not even a single note.
Then fourth hour I got called to the office.
Going to the office recently had been about as terrible of an experience as I could have. I was not expecting this time to be any different. I was slightly reassured though when I saw my mom and Mr. Hancock were standing there.
"Hi," I said to them. "What’s going on?"
"They want to discuss what happened Monday with Mrs. Hinther." My mom told me.
"Who wants to discuss?" I asked.
"Mr. Jameson, the school board president, and the school district’s attorney."
"Okay…" I said.
We were led into that well overused conference room fairly soon after I got there. Before we sat down Amy’s dad told me quietly, "Tiffany, don’t say anything unless I tell you to. This could get interesting depending on what they’re trying to do."
I gave him a strange look, ‘what defined interesting to him?’ I thought, but nodded.
"Okay thank you for coming down Mr. Hancock, Mrs. Jacobson. We had wanted to talk to you about Monday’s incident sooner — but wanted to make sure our investigation was complete." Mr. Jameson began.
"We appreciate that," Mr. Hancock replied. "What have you determined?"
"Well mainly that Monday’s incident should never have happened. Mrs. Henry has confirmed Tiffany’s original story that the whole thing got out of hand when Mrs. Hinther refused to let Tiffany ‘record the conversation’ or contact an adult to speak on her behalf. Truthfully, we do not believe she was out of line to refuse the recording — but she went against district policies when she refused to let Tiffany call home."
"I agree with that," Mr. Hancock responded.
"Tiffany was in the wrong however when she refused Mrs. Hinther’s directive to come back to her office." Mr. Jameson continued.
"I disagree Mr. Jameson. As events later panned out Tiffany had every right to be scared that things would get out of hand without another adult present. Tiffany did the only sensible thing she could do in her situation. In no way did she cause any sort of harm or destruction to anyone or anything. She also didn’t just storm off to class — she instead sat down very responsibly in the office where she could still be monitored. I would consider it to be a very grave error on your part if you were to try and punish her for this matter." Mr. Hancock responded.
"We do not intend to push this matter at all Mr. Hancock, we are in fact going to give Ms. Jacobson a pass on this incident." He said with a nod to me. "We do acknowledge you felt cornered without any choices. I think you did choose the better of the choices here."
"Thanks," I said. Mr. Hancock had nodded that I could speak.
"Now what about the more serious of the incidents?" Mr. Hancock began. "We walked in seeing Mrs. Hinther clearly manhandling Tiffany without just cause."
"This is indeed an incident we consider to be grave and troubling Mr. Hancock. We cannot discuss any pending action against Mrs. Hinther, as it is a personnel issue, but it will not happen again."
"Well that’s not going to cut it as far as we’re concerned. The lawsuit against the district is going to stand unless we have assurances that A — Mrs. Hinther will not have any further contact with Tiffany, B — Tiffany and her mother are guaranteed there will be no retribution for this incident, and C — Tiffany will be guaranteed more protection and aid against any further bullying and harassment."
"Mr. Hancock the district will not be bullied into getting rid of an employee," the school’s attorney stated. "We brought you in here because we wish to look into settling this matter out of court. Honestly we understand that you have good cause to be concerned here and we just want to get this matter taken care of swiftly."
Okay… what was going on? They didn’t want to get rid of Mrs. Hinther? Wasn’t it in their best interest to get rid of her and not pay off a lawsuit?
"We’re listening." Mr. Hancock said.
"Your lawsuit calls for damages of Fifty-Thousand dollars, we’d like to talk about Two-Thousand dollars."
"You’re kidding right?" Mr. Hancock said. "If you really want to settle this out of court — which believe me in court you are going to lose, and lose badly — we need to talk at least Twenty-Five Thousand."
"Mr. Hancock I don’t think the court would consider someone grabbing some by the arm worth twenty-five grand."
"No, if it was just that I would agree. However it was the pinnacle of abuse and neglect that an administrator in your district was allowed to partake in. I have notes and recordings, as do my clients, of the verbal abuse that Tiffany took in our initial meeting with you all. There were also later incidents that occurred and as such we believe that the district knowingly let an abusive administrator let Tiffany get physically and psychologically abused."
"We also have her psychiatrist who will testify as to the specific damages that the bullying she has encountered — not just this year — have caused. I can’t guarantee that we’ll get Fifty Thousand out of this, but Two-Thousand for a settlement is insulting." Mr. Hancock concluded.
The banter went back and forth for the better part of an hour — I was starving as we went into my lunch hour. I don’t even know why they brought me into the room. What was the point anyway? Arguing about a settlement amount? What was it going to change?
Finally about one o’clock they finally decided to settle for Fifteen-Thousand. I still didn’t know what the point was. I was glad to see more money coming our way, but this wasn’t something I wanted to deal with. As we walked out I asked Mr. Hancock, "does this mean Mrs. Hinther will be back here?"
"No… he couldn’t tell us that but I’m fairly certain she’s gone. The press is having a field day about it — I don’t think you saw the newspaper today but they are having fun with it. Today was all about covering the district’s liability. They needed to get this taken care of asap."
"Why? Like he said I couldn’t see the court awarding us that much money for a principal grabbing my arm."
"But like I told them Tiffany, it was more than just that. They should have done something about Mrs. Hinther after the initial meeting went so badly with her. That she was allowed to continue to abuse you and permit others to; that was the issue. The school district was in error — and we could have made the higher amount stick far easier than they liked. Between that and the bad press this made it easier to get rid of the incident."
"I guess." I said. I wasn’t real happy with the whole situation. Don’t get me wrong, the money would be nice to put into something… but it wasn’t going to change a thing.
"Look Tiffany, it’s done now — and that’s something to be happy about. For now why don’t we go get you something to eat since you missed lunch," Mom told me.
"I guess," I told her.
Mom put her arm around my shoulder and led me outside to the car. We said goodbye to Mr. Hancock — I made sure I said thank you — and then she drove me to our preferred Chinese restaurant. We just had the buffet, something that usually was good… but I wasn’t really pleased with everything that had gone on. I don’t know. Something about the lawsuit to fix things just bugged me. In the end it wasn’t fixing anything.
I did manage to enjoy the food though and Mom drove me back to school, getting back in time for sixth period English. Amy had no idea why I’d been pulled out earlier so I filled her in with a few details — telling her we really couldn’t talk about it with anyone else. When some of the other students asked I just said, ‘it had something to do with Monday.’
Thankfully class seemed to go well for me that hour and band went well also. Mrs. Remar had begun talking about a trip we were going to take to Denver this year with the top band that I was in. We were going to be starting with some sort of cookie-dough fundraiser in a few weeks. The trip was going to cost about three-hundred dollars. In Denver we would be competing against a bunch of other middle school bands — and Mrs. Remar seemed to think we could win.
She also talked about the jazz band she wanted to start having on Tuesday nights. I had no idea if there was any way I could begin to work that in — I was pretty much packed at this point. She was doing her best to get me to join though. On our most recent chair placement test I had once again been first chair. That had really made one eighth grader mad — she thought she should be first chair. Oh well…
Dance practice after school was finally beginning to feel like the fun it was supposed to be. The rest of the girls, other than Danica and company, seemed to be getting over the recent stupidity and were being nicer again. I wouldn’t say they were outright being nice though — just nicer. By the end of practice I had pretty much nailed everything that she said she was going to make us try out with. The only other girl that was ‘that on’ was Amy. I had actually snuck ahead of some of the other girls somehow.
That night I was pretty pleased with myself as I went home and got ready for my ballet lessons. At ballet that night I had my first night trying to fit in with the second level class. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that while I was behind, I kept asking questions on what stuff was, I was able to catch up with them fairly quickly. By the end of that lesson I was still behind — but not too terribly bad.
As I got home from ballet that night it was already time to go to bed — and I was ready.
Chapter 35
THURSDAY AND FRIDAY passed without any major incidents at school. Thursday night at dance class I asked Ms. Clemons to watch me do the solo routine she’d given me — she thought I was doing well at it. She actually stayed a half-hour after class ended to give me some tips — and pick on things that were wrong. It was actually way more grueling working with her than it had been at either of the last two practices after school.
Friday we didn’t have a group practice after school since we were going to practice all day Saturday. Since Amy and I were both free Friday night I ended up catching the bus to her house to spend the night. It was a pretty quiet evening where we ended up watching a movie that had just been released on video, ‘A Little Princess.’
I loved the movie — as did Amy. We actually tortured her poor parents by rewinding it and watching it again. Her mom told her dad at one point, ‘At least she’s not three anymore — making us watch the same thing five times every day.’ He shuddered as if the memory still haunted him.
Speaking of Amy’s dad — I sat down and apologized to him that night. I told him I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful the other day; I was just stressed by everything. He told me there was nothing to apologize for — he completely understood. The two of us ended up talking for a half-hour or so before Amy dragged me up to the playroom for a bit. Her mom ended up letting us stay up till about one-thirty before she forced us to our rooms.
When we woke up at seven-thirty the next morning I did feel like an idiot for staying up so late — I was so tired! Amy and I both put on our clothes for practice before her mom took us to the high school where we were having this ‘camp.’ We ended up arriving about ten minutes before we were supposed to start and looked around for someone to talk to. I noticed that Ashley was talking to a high school girl that looked a lot like her.
"Hey Ash," Amy said as we walked over to them.
"Hey Amy, Tiffany, how are you two?"
"Tired… Amy kept us up all night," I said — lying just a little bit.
"I kept us up?" Amy stuck her tongue out at me.
"Is this your sister Ashley?" I asked. I vaguely remembered meeting her at one point.
"Yeah, this is Valerie. Valerie I think you’ve met Amy and Tiffany before." She said.
"Maybe, I think. Nice to meet you two." Valerie said. "So you’re the famous Tiffany?"
"Umm… I guess?" I suggested nervously. Great was Ashley’s sister going to be mean? With the interview — and everything else — everyone knew who I was.
"Ashley’s told me that you and Amy both seem to be the shoo-ins for the squad. I’m curious to see you two work today." She told us.
I breathed a sigh of relief. We talked as a group, growing with a few girls every few minutes, until practice started. I hadn’t realized it before — but Ashley’s sister was a captain on the high school’s varsity dance squad. She was really nice — and I finally remembered that I’d met her when we’d shown our film to the parents for the first time.
Coach Holt gathered us all together to start right on time at Nine o’clock. I noticed that a couple of the girls that needed to be there the most hadn’t gotten there yet. It wasn’t ‘required’ that you attend to make the squad… but it was ‘strongly recommended.’ She actually began the morning off with a lot of slow stretching and warm-ups. For the first hour I didn’t even feel like I’d exerted myself at all.
The second hour we spent mainly working on some more cheering stuff — she made it clear again that her goal was for those of us not already on the squad to join those that were to cheer for the games from here on out. She taught a couple new things during that time — but nothing complicated. It only took me two to three times of doing it to get it right. At that point she gave us a break of ten minutes to get water and cool down a bit.
"Hey, Tiffany, right?" One of the high school girls came over to me.
"That’s me," I said with a smile. So many things could go wrong with new people.
"Nice job on the stuff so far. I’m really impressed." The girl said smiling. "By the way I’m Carey." She said holding her hand out.
"Thanks… Like you already guessed I’m Tiffany."
"So how long have you been working on this stuff?" She asked me as I was trying to figure out if it would be kosher to go into the girls restroom or not.
"Since this summer." I told her.
"No way!"
Amy came up to us about then — she’d been filling up her water bottle. "She’s telling the truth. You wouldn’t know it from how well she’s doing though."
"Well that’s cool," she told me. "Anyway I need to get back in there to help one girl — but I just wanted to tell you to keep up the good work." She said.
"Thanks!" I told her.
As she walked away I asked Amy, "Do you think she knew about me?"
"Definitely. There’s not a person in town that doesn’t after all that’s been in the news."
"She was really nice…" I said off to space. I was expecting to have more people come out of the woodwork to cause problems with me at any given moment. "Umm… Amy?"
"What Tiff?"
"I really need to use the restroom… but I don’t think they have a faculty one around here." I said. We were in the corner area of the cafeteria where the high school’s dance squad normally practiced. There were gates up blocking access to the rest of the school.
"Let’s just go to the girls room like you do every other place except when you’re in school." She said while grabbing my arm.
I was too stunned to say anything. The two of us went into the girl’s restroom like everything was normal to do so. When we came out I realized first that nobody seemed to care and second, just how much of a pain it had been so far this year to use the faculty bathroom every time. It was so stupid that I couldn’t just use any of the normal girl’s rooms. Maybe I would push for that next year? This year would probably be too soon. ‘One battle at a time,’ I told myself.
Amy must have realized that I was still thinking about all of this. "Look Tiffany if you make the squad we’re going to have to start doing something different for you anyway. We can’t be trying to find a special bathroom for you everywhere we travel as a squad. There’s no way you can go into the boy’s bathroom — you’re a girl. Besides, we have stall doors to keep anyone from peeking in anyway. There’s no real reason why you can’t just use the girls room."
"I know… I just don’t want to give people any more opportunities to attack me." I said.
"You’ve gone through a lot Tiffany, but trust me on this. I think if you just started going into the girl’s room at school no one would even notice." Amy told me.
About that time we had to get back ready to go for other activities. We ended up spending the next hour-and-a-half doing teamwork building activities. Many of them were the same as at cheer camp. We also did trust falls and some other games.
At lunchtime they brought in some pizza for all of us before getting right back into the hard work session. We began the afternoon session by doing the dance routine three times straight through so that the High School girls and Coach Clemons could watch how we were doing. Between the second and third times I saw Coach Holt and Coach Clemons talking, smiling, and pointing at me. That made me feel good — but I almost missed the first counts for the third time — thankfully it was just almost though.
After we finished that run-through they divided us all up with different girls from the high school. It ended up being about two girls for every one high school student. Amy and I ended up with Carey who found plenty of things to get onto us for still. It was a lot of fun though, and by the time we rejoined the group I thought I had gotten better at a couple of things. Mainly some of the transitions between moves were what kept giving me trouble.
Coach Holt worked us ‘til we were exhausted. Around four in the afternoon, she had us all join up in a circle around her. "Nice job today Ladies!" She said. "I’m really looking forward to the tryouts on Friday. I spoke with Mrs. Henry yesterday — we will be having them during the school day and telling you the results before you go home from school. Those girls that do make it will need to get me at least a two-hundred dollar deposit by the next Wednesday following tryouts."
"We’re going to need that money so that we can get at least one uniform ordered for everyone. I’m going to go ahead and place the order on Friday after I get sizes from those that make it. So if for some reason you don’t think you can do that, please let me know before you try out."
"Next. This week we have to get back to normal cheerleading practices so that we can be ready for the game on Thursday. I’m not going to require it, but any girls that aren’t on the squad may come and practice with us Monday through Wednesday. It would be a good thing for you to do; so that you’re not so far behind if you do make it." She said.
For whatever reason when she suggested this she had been looking straight at me. I definitely felt a hint being flung at me. Of course… all that being said I still didn’t know if I was going to make it or not. I felt sure that I was doing really well — and that I could be one of the better people on the squad… but what if other politics came into play? Last year Mrs. Hinther had caused more than enough problems with some of the other girls that were trying out now. With so many people out to get me, would more of that happen now?
I went home with Amy that night — my parents were okay with me staying over there again. I think with as much as I’d gone through this past week they decided that asking me not to be with Amy might have caused more problems than it was worth. That night after we got to her house we got a surprise though — pictures! Everyone had been so busy this week that no one had gotten their pictures developed from the trip and my birthday party yet. Amy’s mom had gotten theirs developed — and my mom had dropped off ours there too.
After the two of us showered, Amy and I ended up scrapbooking most of the night and just enjoying hanging out with each other. We stayed up far too late that night, but were allowed to sleep in Sunday ‘til eleven… so it was a good day.
Sunday and Monday both passed by very quickly, and without any real incidents. I went to the cheerleading practice Monday after school and found myself having a lot of fun. I ended up being on top of the lifts as much as anything — I was by far the shortest and lightest girl there. Thankfully with all that I had learned at cheer camp I managed not to be the reason that I fell. Actually they only dropped me twice that day. During practice I picked up on most of the things they were already doing pretty quickly. I wrote down what cheers I didn’t already know from Amy teaching me before leaving that night so I could memorize them at home.
Tuesday was supposed to be the first Jazz Band practice at night. Unfortunately I had Tae Kwon Do that night… and Mom didn’t want me to get out of it. The day had gone by great except for Mrs. Remar doing her best to get me to come to the Jazz practice that night. "I’ll see what I can do… If I get done early I’ll try and make it here," I told her. Jazz was supposed to be from seven-thirty to nine, Tae Kwon Do was supposed to be from seven to eight-thirty… things didn’t line up too well realistically.
I got dressed for Tae Kwon Do and left with Mom. We picked up Amy, and got there a little bit before seven. As we came in the instructor came over to us and asked, "May I see you in my office?"
We of course agreed, wondering what it was about. Of course I should have known what it would be about. "I’m sorry to do this… but I’m going to have to ask Tiffany to find another place to study. I’ve had several people threaten to pull their kids out if she stays… its just business." He said.
Mom didn’t even stay to listen to the rest of it. She just turned around and walked out the door with Amy and I right behind. I heard him say as we walked out, "Amy can stay…" of course he didn’t realize it was a package deal.
Mom was furious as she got into the car. As soon as she sat down behind the wheel I could see that she had some tears going down her face. "I’m sorry Mom," I told her.
"Why are you sorry sweetie?" She asked.
"I’m making things so difficult," I told her.
"Well you are doing that, you’re right, but it’s nothing to apologize for. We’ll find some other place for you to study. Amy I’m going to go ahead and drop you off at your house, okay?" she asked.
"Okay, that’s fine Mrs. Jacobson," Amy said. She looked over at me and gave me a faint smile. There was no question. That had sucked.
After Mom dropped Amy off I asked for her to let me swing by the house and change and then take me to Jazz Band. She’d responded with a, ‘might as well,’ comment. Honestly I was glad things worked out that way, as I really enjoyed jazz that night. The music was a lot harder than the stuff we were playing in class right now — and sounded a lot cooler. Rehearsal went quickly and Mom picked me up to take me home.
Wednesday and Thursday were a complete blur to me. Wednesday I stayed again for cheerleading practice — but it wasn’t a normal practice that day. We ended up spending a lot of time on making signs and other things for the football team and not a lot of time on practicing. We did run through all of the cheers they were doing really quickly and we even ran through the tryout routine once. But most of it was on stuff that was cheer related… but not difficult. Well not physically anyway. The girls all made fun of how badly I painted signs… but that was another story! Ashley in particular declared me ‘hopeless,’ when it came to painting. I still had paint on me when I went to ballet that night.
Thursday passed by quickly and I found myself being picked up by Dad at the end of the school day to go to my first appointment with Dr. Reynolds in a few weeks. We talked through a lot of what went on the last couple weeks — especially the incident with Mrs. Hinther. She seemed to be very concerned about that incident and wanting to make sure I thought I could still trust adults.
She seemed genuinely excited with the progress I was making with the dance squad. I think she believed that it was going to be a big milestone if I made it. She also tried to set me up to accept it if I wasn’t taken on the squad. She pointed out that they might not want to take me just because of all of the issues that could and would come up. If I hadn’t been nervous before, her talk sure made me that way.
I did feel a bit better about myself after talking to her though — she seemed to think I was making good progress. I hoped that it was good enough that she might be willing to put hormones up for discussion later this fall. I knew it wasn’t normal to start them at my age… but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.
With that meeting done I went home to eat and change before going to dance class. All of the girls there had since figured out who I was. For whatever reason none of them had said anything last week — but this week the one girl that had asked me about me came up to me before class started. "So Tiffany… when I was asking you about that kid a couple weeks ago… I didn’t know it was you. I wanted to apologize if I came off rude. I never would have dreamt that you weren’t really a girl." She told me.
"It’s okay… but I really am a girl — I just have a problem with some parts not matching up." I told her.
"That’s kind of strange, but I’d still like to be your friend if you’ll let me," she had said. From there we had a fun conversation. All of the girls were really interested in the fact that our school was starting a dance squad. Most of them were really jealous — but all of them wished me luck before leaving that night. It was a good night, and had been a good week (for the most part), and I of course went home to become a complete ball of nerves worrying about the next day.
Chapter 36
I WOKE UP the next morning shaking. I couldn’t seem to brush my hair right, I couldn’t seem to get my hand to put my contacts in my eyes right, and I couldn’t seem to stop talking endlessly either. As Amy and her mom pulled up I hoped that I looked like I could possibly be a cheerleader — I felt like I was such a mess. When I hopped in the car Amy told me, "Turn around Tiffany."
I didn’t know what she wanted but I turned my back to where it was towards her. Immediately she started gathering my hair up into a ponytail and tied it with some ribbon that she had somewhere. She tied a double bow in my hair — one with each of our school colors, before pronouncing me done.
"You look cute Tiffany," she told me.
"So do you," I told her noticing for the first time that she had done her hair like that too.
The two of us had to go through three painful class periods before we would be called out to an early lunch before the tryouts. The only thing that happened during that time actually made us feel better, was when Amy and I both got called to the office during second hour to each take a delivery of a vase with a rose in it and a teddy bear. Our mom’s had each ordered us a ‘Good luck present.’ Sooner than I liked, and yet longer than I wanted, they finally called us to be dismissed.
As I sat down with food in the cafeteria I looked around me. It was then that I knew just how tough it was going to be to get on the squad. There were fourteen girls on the cheer squad already, and all of them were trying out for the dance team. Beyond them there were also another twenty girls, including me, who were trying out that weren’t already on the squad. Realistically only five of us were likely to have a chance to make it. The rest of the spots would be filled by girls already on the cheer squad.
I did my best not to psych myself out before the tryout though. Amy and I both tried to keep each other as calm and not nervous as possible. After we finished eating (not that any of us really ate) we were allowed to go change and asked to meet in the gym. Once there we were all given a chance to warm up as a group before drawing numbers out of a hat to see what order we were going in. I got number eight and Amy got number twenty-two.
The tryouts were being judged by five people. Coach Holt and Coach Clemons were both on the panel. Two of the other judges were cheerleading coaches at other junior highs in the Albuquerque area and the other was another teacher from our school that got pulled in at the last moment — Mrs. Remar. I kind of went ‘huh?’ when I heard that — but one of the eighth grader girls told me that she used to dance as a kid. Crazy!
The panel actually made me feel like I had a fair chance. As long as politics didn’t come into play I thought I should make it. We would be going in groups of three at a time to make the auditions go faster. Coach Holt came out to give us some final instructions just before the first group went in.
"Ladies I’m very impressed with how far all of you have come since we began preparing you for this. I wish I could take all of you — but unfortunately we’re only going to take the top sixteen girls for this squad." She said the last part with what sounded like genuine remorse. "I’d like to just go over the procedure with you all one more time before we begin."
"The first thing you’re going to do is march out with the two other girls to the spots we have marked on the gym floor. Once there you will be given several cheerleading fundamentals to do. We will judge you on each of those. After the fundamentals you will do the three tryout cheers as a group. You will not be judged as a group though — just as individuals. After the cheers, you will start the group dance audition piece. At the end please freeze until I say ‘thank you.’ Once I say that you will perform your individual routine, if you have one, one at a time in order of number. I believe most of you have given your tapes to me, if you haven’t I need it now." She said with a pause. One girl quickly grabbed a tape out of her purse and handed it to her.
"When all three of you have finished that you will go back out to the hallway and wait in the choir room for everyone to finish. Ms. Beecher will be gone but the room will be kept open for you to sit in. I’m even putting a movie in on the TV so that you all can think about something other than your nerves. When all of the girls have finished you will all sit in the choir room while we tabulate the scores. When that is done we’re going to call you all back in one at a time into the gym to tell you if you made it or not. Those of you that do make the squad need to stay afterwards so we can measure you for uniforms."
What would I do if I didn’t make the squad I wondered… just go off to a corner and cry? I knew I would. She finished up with the speechmaking and asked the first three to line up to go into the gym. Once she had settled into her spot at the table she called them in and the door shut. I stood outside the door in silence.
From the outside all I could hear was the music when it started. I moved my hands and arms around in small movements practicing and reminding myself what I was supposed to do. I saw Amy doing the same thing. I heard three other songs and then those girls started coming out. I saw at least two of them crying.
That meant there was only one more group before me! I just tried to focus… If I stopped to think about everything, I knew I would start bawling. As it was I could feel my hands shaking — I held them in front of me just to verify. Yep, they were shaking. I wasn’t feeling even close to ready when those girls came out. We were lined up in the order we’d go in. Amy came over and gave me a hug and said, "Good luck Tiff," to me before I went inside.
I lined up and went through the door with the other two girls. As I marched out I saw that my spot was dead center in front of the table, and slightly ahead of the other two girls. Talk about putting the pressure on! I forced myself to smile though. I knew that there were points on the sheets for presentation — and that was part of it.
She called off a couple of things that she wanted to see right off the bat, including some jumps and splits. I just concentrated on each thing though — forcing myself not to think about how good or bad I might be doing. Before I knew it we were already onto the cheers. During the cheers I made sure that all of my movements were right and that my voice was clear and loud. I didn’t care that there were two other girls in there — as far as I was concerned I was the only one. My spot in front of them actually seemed to help out with that a lot.
Once we finished the cheers Coach Holt smiled at us and directed us to go to our starting poses for the dance. She started the music about thirty seconds after that and I just let myself go on autopilot like I had this summer. I found myself frozen in the final pose waiting for her to say "Thank you," sooner than I would have imagined.
"Thank you all." She said and I jumped back up to the attention position before walking over to where we were supposed to sit to wait for our individual routine. I hadn’t noticed who the other two girls were until that moment. Danica was in that group — and she was the first one up from our group.
If she hadn’t been so completely and totally rude to me before I might have felt bad for her. Actually I still did feel bad for her — I was human — as she did a terrible performance of a terrible routine. She seemed to never be able to get her movements synched to the beat of the music. I stopped focusing on her fairly quickly though since I didn’t have time to lose concentration. Each of our ‘solo’ routines were only one minute long, so she was done quickly.
I stepped up and got into position for mine at that point. I listened for the opening couple counts to get the beat and immediately began the routine that Coach Clemons had given to me. At the end of it I wasn’t forcing a smile anymore — I knew I had done the best I could do. I could only hope that it was good enough.
The other girl in our group was a girl name Jenna. She wasn’t on the squad yet — and likely wouldn’t be unfortunately after her performance. I wouldn’t find out until much later — but apparently she and Danica had fallen apart in the main dance routine too. I just couldn’t see it from where I was.
We exited gym and I got mauled by Amy. "How’d you do?" She asked me.
"Well I finished smiling — I think I did well…" I said, before breaking down completely into tears.
She hugged me and said she understood. I’m glad she did — I sure didn’t. I just did really well, or at least I thought I had, why was I bawling? I went from there to the choir room by myself so that she could concentrate on her own tryout. I wanted to stand there with her, but Mrs. Henry had come into the hallway to push us on to the next room so I couldn’t stay.
When I got to the choir room I saw Danica was curled up into a ball in one corner. Jenna was curled up into another, and I saw the counselor in there trying to decide if she should go to either corner. Thankfully there were no choir classes in the afternoon — so that meant that things worked out for privacy. I could hear that there was a sub in the band hall watching those students who were watching a movie. It sounded loud.
I brought my attention back to myself though as I sat down on one of the risers. I couldn’t believe it… I’d made it through the tryout! But was it enough? The fact that Mrs. Henry was sitting there in the hallway made me nervous. She’d never been the main problem for me… but I still wasn’t sure about what was going with Mrs. Hinther either. Everyone had been being closed lipped about it, and that made me nervous too.
I found myself back to worrying about the team… would I really be able to belong to a group like this? A girl who a year before had been the shortest, dorkiest, most outcast boy in school? I must have been back to crying because the counselor came over to me and handed me some Kleenex. She also offered up a bottle of water to me which I took and found out I was thirsty.
A while later I saw Amy come in with mixed emotions of her own, I jumped up and ran to hug her. The two of us sat and blew off some of our tension by talking to each other till we were just about feeling normal. Right about that time the last group of girls that were trying out came into the choir room. All of the girls alternated between being silent, crying, and in one case laughing uncontrollably. Apparently when Robin got nervous she just laughed, and laughed, and laughed until she looked like she was going pass out. That was a good mix with the hiccups I found myself enduring about that time.
No one said or did much for the next thirty minutes while they were putting together the list for the team. After that time passed they asked each of us one by one to go to the gym. Somehow the counselor and Mrs. Henry had a system worked out so that no one came back to the choir room when they were done. What happened if you were accepted? What happened if I got rejected? I found myself wondering that — and stuck wondering that for a very long time. We were well into seventh hour — almost to the end of it when Kristina was called, and it was just Amy and I left in the choir room.
"Amy… Why are we the last two? We didn’t go last…" I told her.
"I don’t know Tiff… I’ve been feeling like I need to throw up for the last fifteen girls."
About that time the counselor said, "Tiffany, you’re next."
"Good luck Tiff," Amy said.
"Same to you Amy. I’ll see you wherever they’re stashing us." I said.
I walked the distance from the choir room to the gym. Before I’d always thought it was just a few steps, no big deal, but now it seemed like the gym was a mile away. Mrs. Henry opened the door for me and I saw the Kleenex box propped on the table. Did that mean I didn’t make it?
I was shaking badly by the time I found my way into the chair that was in front of the table of judges. Coach Holt took the lead on speaking, "Tiffany, you’ve never done anything with cheerleading before this summer — and a lot of times I could tell that in practice. But after only a couple times through, you were doing it better than the veterans. If every girl on the squad worked as hard as you do we could have a really great team." Did that mean I made it?
"You easily performed the most difficult solo routine of any girl today. I was surprised by how difficult the routine was, and how well you did on it. It was really amazing. You even looked like you were having fun doing it — by far one of the hardest things to pull off. All that being said, do you think that you can function on the team with things like changing rooms?"
"I’ll do anything I can Coach Holt. I ask that you not let the fact that I have some stupid extra parts prevent me from being on the team. I am a girl — regardless of those."
"Tiffany, I have to say I believe you. And, that’s why I’m pleased to tell you that you made the team." She said with a smile.
"Really?" I asked timidly. I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly.
"Really. We’ve been calling girls into here in order of their scores. You had the second highest score. You easily blew away almost every other girl — you should be very proud of yourself." She said.
"Congratulations Tiffany," Coach Clemons said to me. "You did even better today than you did last night."
"Very nice job," Mrs. Remar also said as I went over to each of them and gave them a hug to say thank you.
One of the coaches from another school told me, "If you ever want to go another school, let me know. I’ll put you on the squad right away."
"Thanks," I told each of them.
"Tiffany, I would tell you to go down to where the other girls are being held to measure and be picked up by your mom… but I think you would probably rather wait off to the side for Amy right?" She asked.
"Please?" I asked.
"Sure. I don’t want her to see you until afterwards though. Go wait beside the bleachers on that side." She said pointing to the other side of the gym.
"Thank you!" I said with a big smile. I grabbed a Kleenex off the table quickly and went to where she asked.
I watched the same routine happen with Amy — apparently it was a tradition at our school (except the order thing) and when they told Amy she made it I ran over there to give her a hug. I was a little confused though — they had told her she had the second highest score too. And they’d gone in order, and she was the last girl. What was up with that?
"Okay Amy I asked Tiffany to stay for another reason I didn’t tell her about. Both of you had the second-highest score because you both scored the same. I think I know the answer to this, but, could you two both work together well as co-captains?"
"Captain?" I asked. Amy’s voice was mixed in with mine.
"Yes, Captains." She said. "It’s a big responsibility. We went back and forth debating on one or the other. We didn’t really want to make one or the other so we decided both. Are you okay with that?"
"Yeah!" We both said and hugged each other.
"Good, that will work out well I think," she told me. "Let me go ahead and walk you two down to the holding room and we’ll get all of your sizes done. I have a feeling both of you have mom’s waiting for you."
As we walked down the hallway I couldn’t believe it. A Captain? Me? I was a boy just a year ago. How could I possibly be a captain of a girls dance team?
As we walked down the hallway I asked Coach Holt a question, "Umm… Coach?"
"Yes Tiffany?"
"Why us, and not an eighth grader like Kristina?"
"I’m running this squad completely based on skill. If there is a seventh grader that does better than you two next year she’ll be captain. This will make sure that it’s less about grade or anything else, and more about skill." She told me.
"Okay, I guess that makes sense," Amy said. "I was wondering the same thing."
About that time we arrived at the room where all of the rest of the girls were being measured and waiting. One of the school’s secretaries was helping measure the girls who made the team. As I walked in she was taking another batch to the restroom to measure them. There seemed to be just Amy and I left to measure after them.
The other girls were all in tears and standing off to the other side of the room. I felt bad as I saw some of them over there — but I was really happy to see that Kristina, Ashley, Lindsey, Amber, Jennifer, and a couple other girls who were nice to me were on the side that made it. They ran up to Amy and I, "Did you make it?" they asked.
"Uh-huh!" Amy said. Hugs were all passed around and much jumping up and down with screaming occurred. Thankfully about that time someone had the brains to get the girls who hadn’t made it out of there to another room where they could cry in peace.
The secretary was back pretty quickly for Amy and I. She took us to the bathroom and asked us to strip down to our panties and sports bra before remembering about the fact that I had some extra stuff below. "Oh I’m so sorry Tiffany…. Umm… I guess maybe I should have your mother do this? Or at least without…" She was really freaked out.
"Miss I don’t mind if Amy’s in here, and I don’t mind if you do it. I’ve got on another ‘panty’ underneath this so it’s just really like okay — you won’t see anything that might embarrass us."
"Oh… okay…" she said before continuing with measuring us. "Sorry for freaking out on you there." She told me.
"It’s okay. We’re going to have to figure out how to deal with this stuff soon anyway," I told her.
We finished getting my measurements and we got dressed. "Tiffany, Amy, I wish I had your measurements still…" She told us on the way back.
"No… I don’t have anything in the chest yet," I told her.
"It’ll come," she said. I hoped she was right, but I wondered if she understood what she had said.
The two of us got back in time to see our mothers carrying in some more balloons and a bear that said, ‘Congratulations’ on them. Both mothers got huge hugs and tears from both of us before we separated so that Coach Holt could deliver one other bit of news to the girls.
"Okay ladies, I just wanted to clear up a couple things before I let you go home early. Everyone else in school still has a half-hour left, but I think you’ve all suffered enough for one day. First remember that your deposits are due by Wednesday. I’m going to go ahead and order the first uniforms today and have them express shipped. The company says they can get them to us by Wednesday. I’m not going to show them to anyone until we get them Wednesday though — so don’t ask. It’ll be a surprise!" She said the last bit with a smile, before going on with some other details.
"And lastly I wanted to tell you who your captains are going to be for the dance team. Both of these ladies tied in their scores, and did a great job. I think they’re going to make a great team to work for you all — Amy and Tiffany will be your co-captains," She said. The other girls had a mix of expression from disappointment to happiness. Most of our friends were happy for us — I did see Kristina was disappointed. The two of us exchanged hugs though.
"You’ll be the dance team captains and I’ll be the cheer squad captain," she told us with a forced smile. "I’ll be okay with this after I cry a bit," she whispered to me.
All of us broke up and went with our mom’s home after grabbing our stuff. Amy and I were all smiles as we left.
Coda:
AFTER WE GOT home, Mom told me to go shower and change into something nice. Apparently we were going out to eat with Amy’s parents for steaks at Outback to celebrate. I did as I was told, spending a fairly long time in the shower with the warm water hitting my back. Once I was out of the shower I dried my hair and worked on it until I was satisfied it was pretty. I made sure that my dress looked alright and stared at my reflection for several minutes. I liked what I saw.
By this time mom was pretty much pounding on the door, "Tiffany hurry up!" she told me through the door.
After I took one last look I went to my room and found the necklace/earring set mom and dad had given me for my birthday. After putting them on I looked again at the mirror in my room for a couple minutes, "Stop staring at yourself Tiffany, let’s get going. We’re going to meet your dad and the Hancock’s at the restaurant," she said.
"Oh… alright," I said with a smile.
"You do look very pretty tonight Tiffany," she told me as we walked out the door.
I chatted all the way to the restaurant. I think mom was just hoping that I would shut up by the time we got there — she certainly looked tired. I was excited! Who would have ever thought I would be on a dance team? I never would have!
We pulled up into the parking lot and saw Amy’s mom’s car sitting there. "They must have already gone inside," Mom told me.
They had gone inside and had put a request in for the table. Lindsey and Ashley’s parents were also going to join us — though supposedly Ashley’s dad was running late for some reason. As we sat waiting near the bar area I saw a blip about a special report with our school in the background on one of the TV’s. Amy’s mom was on top of things and asked, "Can you turn that up please?"
The bartender did as she asked and soon we were watching a report on Mr. Sander’s station, "Today the school board accepted the resignation of Mrs. Carol Hinther, the principal at Holden Junior High. She had been under investigation for manhandling a student. The district would not comment on the status of the student, but did mention a settlement has been reached with that students’ family. No announcement was made on a permanent replacement for Mrs. Hinther — but the assistant principal will be the acting principal for the time being. In other news…"
I couldn’t believe it… "She’s really gone?" I asked out loud.
"That’s what they said Tiffany!" Amy told me — she was just as excited. We had already been on Cloud Nine; this was something way above that now. The two of us overwhelmed our poor moms for the next ten minutes until Lindsey arrived. At that point they both got some relief because Amy, Lindsey, and I formed a trio of our own.
As everyone else arrived that night Mr. Sanders asked, "Did you guys hear yet?"
We told him we had, but he was able to give us a few more details that couldn’t be said on the report. Apparently she had been given the option of quit or be fired. Under those circumstances she wasn’t stupid enough to take the second option. He’d also heard that Mrs. Henry would probably end up with the job. I thought that wasn’t a terrible outcome — at least she had stood up for me from time to time. Maybe without Mrs. Hinther there she would be more supportive.
I got a surprise a few minutes after Mr. Sanders got there and told us this — my grandparents came to dinner too! They gave me a hug and handed me some flowers and balloons with a card. I was so glad that they were being so supportive of me!
After dinner that night Mom made me come home, "I haven’t seen you hardly at all recently," she told me as her reason. We ended up having a pretty girly mother daughter weekend complete with shopping, her doing my hair, and renting chick flicks. I had a lot of fun — it was nice to spend some time with her.
By Monday the school was completely abuzz with two big stories. Number one of course was Mrs. Hinther leaving. She had never been popular with the students so that was seen as a good thing. The other big news of course was about that ‘new girl,’ as some had taken to calling me now. A lot of the cheerleaders were really pissed that two seventh grade girls had taken the title of captain for the new squad. Many were angry that I had made it at all. But mainly a lot of them were unhappy about how they had ‘unfairly’ not made it.
Surprisingly when I ran into Danica on Tuesday after practice she actually said, "Tiffany you did a really good job. If I wasn’t going to make it I’m glad that you did. You did awesome during your solo routine." The girl was human? I didn’t believe it — not after our initial problems.
That week our practices were done with an hour and a half of cheer practice followed by another hour and a half of dance team practice. It was an especially busy week because it was a game against our rivals, and the premiere of our new squad! The next week was also going to be busy since it was the high school homecoming week — and we would be invited to do a lot of the stuff with them.
The week passed by quickly and led to Thursday at half-time during the junior high football game. Like most junior high football games it was still light outside, so it wasn’t quite as nerve racking as we came up the field, but I was still plenty nervous. I knew Amy was to the right of me — and that at least made me feel better.
I loved our new uniforms that we were wearing — even more so than the ones the normal cheerleaders were wearing. Really, they were pretty similar, but instead of being white mainly, ours were black. On top of the black there was a bright blue band outlining several zigzagging bands of color. In gold lettering, with blue white and blue outlining, our mascot, the coyotes, was spelled across the front. There were other stripes of gold alternating with the earlier blue ones, at times crossing the blue stripes.
It was in a word awesome. Towards the top, above my left breast area, in smaller gold stitching my name, "Tiffany," was embroidered in a cursive stitch. I couldn’t believe that they had managed to have these made and shipped quick enough to have yesterday before we left practice. When we wore them to school today I felt like I was really special — especially when I saw the eight girls that were still wearing a white cheerleading uniform.
There was one other really cool thing about my uniform. Above my name, in a different script, was the word ‘Captain.’ Amy also had that on her uniform — we had both confessed to each other that it gave us goose bumps when we had first opened the bags they had been in!
On the football field we began the routine. It was basically the same one as we had performed for our audition, except we now had small pom-poms in our hands for it. Over the loudspeaker we heard the music begin and we all started moving as one with our routine. As we reached the end of the routine I couldn’t believe how far I had come. Who would have thought I’d ever be wearing this uniform and performing like this? And who would have ever thought that the girls would be following me as a captain? Certainly not me!
What would the future bring for me now? I now knew that I could be who I believed I was. Life was just beginning for me as Tiffany and I could only hope that it would continue as it had this past week. As I marched off the field I smiled because I knew that as Tiffany it could.
I hope you've enjoyed this book. If you're interested in an ebook copy of this work it is available at My Store at Lulu.com for a nominal fee of $3.00. Thank you all for reading. Hopefully I'll have the third book of the trilogy completed and posted here by the summer!