Standing Up to Life

by Tiffany Shar

©2008, All Rights Reserved

 

Chapter 58:

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

"I think so…" I replied timidly. I had a lot more butterflies today than I did yesterday. In general the idea was simply that I was going to be Brandon until we got to the waterpark, then several of us – and Ms. Fitz, were going to split off and I would become Tiffany for the afternoon. I was not worried about strangers, I was mainly worried about other members of our group that didn't know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tiffany's right Ashley," Amy replied.

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

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

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

Our next stop was a few really tall water slides. Ms. Fitz just kind of found a seat and watched as we climbed the stairs to the slides. As I came down the 3^rd and final time on those slides the bottom part of my swimsuit slipped a little. Nothing became shown… but it sure made me nervous. I quickly put everything back in order as best I could under the water in the pool that it splashed into.

That was unnerving.

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

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

I had been in a store with Amy for about 3 minutes when everyone else started to arrive back. Nothing was said to the rest of the group about the extra girl that joined the group for the afternoon. As far as any of us could tell no one else ever ran into our group that day – that surprised me a lot, but I wasn't going to slap a gift horse in the mouth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter 59:

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

Today we were going to Epcot. It sounded kind of interesting, but I'll be honest I was kind of afraid that they were going to be too focused on learning today to be able to have a really good time. As I got up that morning and took a shower I put on another pair of panties and a pair of girls shorts. I also decided what the heck and put on a shirt that was really a girls shirt as well – it could have been a guys shirt (it wasn't though).

I had a pair of tennis shoes and white socks on when I stepped out of the bathroom. I saw Amy's mom putting her hair into 2 pig tails with red and white ribbons in each side. (red and white were our school colors, and as she pointed out later Minnie and Mickey's colors). "Tiffany you want to do yours like this too?" she asked me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sure," Amy and I chimed in.

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

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

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

Amy looked a little worried when we exchanged glances.

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

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

Houston we may have a problem. At that moment I had a decision to make… Amy and Nikki wouldn't tell my secret – it was mine and mine alone to tell and they knew it. Brittany could pressure any of the others, I didn't think they would tell, and could get information. What it really boiled down to was the fact that…

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

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

"So… you want to be a girl?" Her face was an incredibly frightening thing to look at right then. She looked puzzled, horrified, smiled, and a whole lot of other things.

Keep it simple stupid… "Yes." I replied back to her in the same whisper.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's an easy part," I replied with a smile.

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

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

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

Someone had suggested that I relocate to another school where people didn't know Brandon – they thought it would be easier to fit in. I didn't want to leave Amy and all of the rest of my friends though. I was honestly tempted to just show up as the 'new girl' at the beginning of the year and see what happened.

Before too long we were herded back onto a bus to go to Epcot at Walt Disney World.

When we got there we were met by a tour guide who took us around to the main attractions and helped us avoid being in any lines. My favorite stop on this tour was probably when we 'went inside the body.' It was a neat simulator ride – and honestly one of the most entertaining things that day. Also really neat was the moving fountain jets of water over a garden they had. Along with the sculpted animals out of plants it was a really neat place that a lot of pictures were taken at.

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

At this point Amy and I started leading our group to food. We were both starving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course once we had that done that opened up a whole new avenue of souvenirs to buy to take back home! I ended up with 6 additional pairs of earrings that I would be able to wear once my ears healed. Finally we were all pulled away from the various attractions and shopping by Mr. Hancock to go to dinner.

Chapter 60:

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

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

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

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

"Iced tea please?" I asked.

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

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

For me it was more of a safety factor than most girls… I was so thankful that I was actually able to go in relative safety to the girls room instead of being locked into the boys room. That's the way I had been doing things all day pretty much – and it made me far more comfortable.

I definitely enjoyed the food that was waiting when we went back. It was so rich and tasty. We split some desserts and began going through the rest of the embassy section. Amy and I began racing each other to see who could get their 'passport' book finished quicker.

We were of course slowed down by our parents… couldn't they see we were racing? We actually ended up finishing about 45 minutes before the fireworks show was supposed to begin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between all of the sheets of rain and our constant trek back to the busses holding hands I didn't have a lot of time to ponder that much more – but I knew I would have to think about it eventually. As we got on the bus and I sat down in my own seat Kyle looked at me and asked, "Can I sit next to you?"

Chapter 61:

"Umm… Sure." I replied

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How so?"

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

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

Perhaps I could avoid the truth coming out for a little longer? "Well Amy and I have become really good friends this year – really you never see us apart at this point. It seems like I live at her house more than I live at mine." I paused for a second, "but it's nothing against you guys."

"Good, I didn't really think it was. When they made us all hold hands earlier I noticed that you had both your ears pierced… I also noticed that you looked like you had on some of Amy's clothes today?"

'Oh Crap'

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

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

"Look Brandon, I know I haven't exactly gone out of my way over the years to be your friend, but I haven't gone out of my way to be your enemy either. I don't know if you heard or not but I beat up Matt one time last year?"

"I heard something about it." I replied. I did remember it. Last year in 5^th grade Kyle had beaten Matt to a pulp one day. Matt had been so badly beaten he didn't bother me for a solid month. At least that's what I thought had happened. No one had seemed to know why the two had gotten into it.

"Well the reason was I was tired of him giving you all of that crap. He needed knocked down a few notches." He told me. But why was he telling me?

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

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

Nope, I wasn't going to get out of telling him something. And if I'm telling him something might as well be the truth right?

"You promise?" I asked.

"Yes, I promise."

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

"What does that mean?" He asked me.

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

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

"It's not something I picked to have, or even wanted, but it's something that I am dealing with." I replied back.

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

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

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

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

"Well the girls all seem to be fine with this. You're a nice person, and I have little doubt that when you actually dress completely as a girl are going to be hotter than I'd like to think. How are they going to keep you from becoming a guy with a deep voice and all of that?"

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

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

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

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

I nodded. Though I wasn't so sure that I wouldn't jump at the chance to have been able to have a kid myself when I got older. Definitely not until I was much older! Unfortunately I knew it would probably never happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's going on?" His dad asked.

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

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

"Yes," my mom said simply.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He saw my earrings and asked me about stuff on the bus." I replied. "I was just getting ready to come find you guys to let you know I think I need to just tell the other 4 boys since everyone else knows already."

"Lindsey knows?" her mom asked.

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

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

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

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

"I think you're right," Kyles mom said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When we went to sleep we were hugging our stuffed animals, thinking about the next day. I woke up the next morning and found that I was being held as a stuffed animal. Actually I woke to a camera flash taking a picture of us like that.

Chapter 62:

"Mom! Why are you waking us up like that?" Amy asked still holding onto me like a giant teddy bear.

It was then that we both realized what was going on and starting giggling. It really was innocent, neither of us were capable of thinking of the other in any way other than as sisters at this point. But it was definitely something that her parents – and later mine – would razz us about for a long time.

They didn't have a lot of time that morning though, because as soon as I was woken up I was hurried into the shower to wash my hair. I think they definitely woke me up a good hour earlier than I had been woken up so far this trip. I wasn't exactly real personable that morning at first, but when mom came over and started working on my hair it started to make me smile.

Between mom, Melanie, and Amy my hair was really pretty when it was done. We still had a half-hour before we needed to go downstairs so we made Amy's hair look similar to mine too. All three of us shared quick hugs before heading downstairs to breakfast.

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

"Hi guys," I said.

"Umm… Brandon?" Anthony asked.

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

I paused for a second.

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

"Huh?" Anthony asked again.

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

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

When we seemed to have run out of objections we went ahead and got breakfast. Amy and I ended up sitting with Kyle and Anthony. They actually made for 2 fairly cool people to talk to. I honestly wasn't completely sure what their reason was for sitting with us, but I was happy to see that things weren't going south. Every now and then I noticed Jarred staring at me strangely – I was kind of worried about him.

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

"Thanks."

"Do you feel better now that you're not hiding it from anyone?" She asked me.

"Actually I do. I'm sure this is going to cause a lot of trouble going into next year though. 10:1 by this time next week the school will already be talking about 'that freak' that thinks he's a girl. Oh well though, they're just going to have to deal." I said the last bit with a bit of a bob of my head that made my hair bounce. Lindsey giggled a bit.

"What?" I asked.

"You just bobbed your head up and down like one of the cheerleaders – it was cute." She replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All along the way the 6 of us became a closer group than I expected. Kyle and Anthony seemed to be dealing with my announcement and such very well. I honestly was really surprised that I wasn't dealing with tons of problems now.

At some point in the afternoon we ended up on the main street shopping for souvenirs. Now that I was 'out' mom bought me a set of Minnie mouse ears and made me wear them in the pictures for the rest of the day. Of course Amy wasn't to be left out and had her own set within that same amount of time.

My parents had certainly been taking their share of pictures this trip, but they seemed to renew their fury with this after we got the ears. Time went on and it got kind of hot, by around 5 or so we were all absolutely drenched in sweat. Kyle and Anthony dragged us all over to splash mountain – which we hadn't hit for some reason – in the hopes that we could cool down a bit.

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

Of course after that flash I immediately grabbed for the bar and screamed! But the picture came out really good!

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

As we stood in the line the 6 of us kids just chatted back and forth. Pretty soon Kyle asked me, "So are you happier now?"

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

"Well next year let me know if anyone gives you any problems, I'll take care of them for you." Kyle told me.

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

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

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

"Really?" I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amy, Lindsey, and Ashley had all been acting like they were talking in another conversation while the 3 of us had been talking. I say 'acting' because I could tell that they were managing to listen into us while we were talking and then joined up with our conversation now.

We all talked about lots of stuff, including maybe the 6 of us getting together for a pool party at Amy's house in a couple weeks. Just as we were finalizing some plans we reached the ride and got to experience all that there was to experience about the Pirates of the Caribbean. The amount of animatronics they used in the ride was cool. It honestly wasn't anything too incredibly spectacular, but it was fun.

We all got off the ride and walked out to the bus that was waiting for us. On the way out of the park we took one last picture of the 6 of us, then the 6 of us plus Amy and my parents, and then we forlornly left the Disney park. Tomorrow was our last day here in Florida, but we wouldn't be coming back to the Disney Parks.

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

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

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

"We talked Ms. Fitz and Mrs. Manning into letting us gather downstairs with just the students for 30 minutes. Everyone's going to get into their pajamas and then meet downstairs okay?" She asked me.

"Okay, why?" I asked back.

"It's a surprise." She told me.

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

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

We all kind of just hung out for about 20 minutes before Ashley said, "Okay, can I get everyone's attention?"

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

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

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

"It's okay," David said.

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

"Good, because that's1 why Ashley and I wanted to get everyone together tonight," Kyle said standing up.

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

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

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

"You can keep this a secret, right?" David looked at Jarred with a very sinister glance. You have to understand something I haven't made real clear here. David was already 3 inches taller than any other guy in our grade. He was also easily the strongest guy that I knew too. Jarred on the other hand was only about average, if not a little small for average, and looked rightfully nervous.

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

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

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

From there we spent our remaining 5 minutes or so of time laughing and having a good time about lots of different things. It was a lot of fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. As Ms. Fitz came downstairs to send us off to our rooms I saw Kyle, David, and Anthony gather around Jarred.

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

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

Chapter 63:

The next morning was pretty frenetic in that we had to pack up all of our suitcases and souvenirs to go home with after we finished in the Universal Studios park. We quickly ate breakfast and headed for our final destination.

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

Among the first rides we went on was 'Jaws.' Between the shark attacking the boat and things exploding everywhere we had a lot of fun. I definitely spent some time screaming as a girl on that ride – more because I was having fun than anything.

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

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

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

In a really short amount of time we ended up back on a plane to go back home. I had gotten a window seat this time, with Amy in the middle, and Kyle on the end of our 3 chair section. I wasn't really paying much attention to either of them though, I just stared out the window thinking.

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

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

I still had a lot of things in front of me that weren't going to be so easy though. I knew without a doubt that I was going to be struggling from day 1 in school this fall. If I had thought I'd been getting picked on before I feared it was just going to be the tip of the iceberg. Thankfully I had plenty of friends that should be able to help with that. We would see.

I was truly amazed and set aback that I was having as few of difficulties right now as I had. The fact that no one had been completely berating me since I came out yesterday still had me shocked. I knew it couldn't last forever.

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

The End?

  

Copyright Tiffany Shar 2008

I am currently working on a second novel in this series. Look for it to arrive sometime this summer!

  

  

  

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© 2008 by Tiffany Shar. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, and compilation design) may be printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without the express written consent of StorySite and the copyright holder.