Intro by Carla Ann

“Tiffany, I’ve asked you how everything is going with people and the activities you’re involved in, but you haven’t mentioned how you are coping with everything.” She emphasized the ‘you,’ when she asked that.

“Well, better than I was last year,” I started. “Way better than last year… I have a lot of friends now, and I’m not getting picked on every day.” I saw her eyes boring into me looking for something else. “Alright, I don’t know how I’m doing right now.” I told her honestly.

“What do you mean?” She asked.

“Well for one I’m really tired of everyone guessing I’m five if I wear the wrong clothes.” I told her hesitantly. I was sure my parents had filled her in with everything anyway, “Tuesday was pajama day. Mom and I had found some cute pajamas with feet on them that would fit Amy and me, so we wore them for pajama day. We really did look cute dressed like that, and I was having a lot of fun with it. That was until the sub in English class thought that I was someone’s little sister that had come them to school that day.”

I was really surprised Dr. Reynolds didn’t laugh about it, but I continued, “Then the next day the whole squad was wearing shortalls and our hair done in pigtails and I looked to be about five again. One of my best friends even brought a doll to school to play a joke on the sub that we’d had. I don’t think she knew that it really upset me though. I’m not five, I’m twelve! Amy has grown about five inches here in the last couple months, but I’m still the same height I was last year. It’s good for cheerleading stuff because people can toss me so easily… but…” I was doing my best to not go into tears over all of this. “as long as we’ve got my puberty stopped then I won’t be doing much growing. That’s all on top of the fact that I’m never going to be able to have periods like my friends… and I’m stuck with this stupid thing between my legs,” I told her with a great deal of exasperation. “I’m so tired of having to look at it, or hide it, every time I turn around. I know you can’t do anything about it till I’m eighteen – but I wish it could be gone now!” I had gone to tears now.

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 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  © 2010 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
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

Like the first two books I posted here, I will be posting a full copy here on BigCloset. This time I am going to upload two chapters per week to the site. The full version should be completely posted by August. For those that cannot wait however, I have an e-book version of the full book available from Lulu.com as of today. You may find it at My Store. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be more interested in this edition of the book rather than a hardback or paperback. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it ($5.95 for the eBook).

Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy reading Dreaming of Cheers!

 

Chapter 30:

 
FRIDAY MORNING I woke up feeling really groggy. I rubbed my face unconsciously and felt the stitches standing out of my skin. My face felt puffier and I winced as I touched it. As I stood up my head pounded like I was being hit with a sledgehammer. I could also feel that my whole body felt sore, especially my stomach. I gently leaned down and pulled my shirt up and noticed that my stomach was really bruised. ‘I’m alive,’ I told myself, ‘that’s all that matters right?’

I got off of my bed and navigated around the trundle bed that was still out and walked out of my room. I found both my mom and Amy in the kitchen and saw it was already ten o’clock.

“How are you feeling Sweetie?” Mom asked as she stood up and came over to give me a hug.

“I hurt,” I answered honestly.

“Well it’s time for some more medicine, that should help,” she told me. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll go get them for you and then we’ll get you something to eat?”

I sat down in my normal chair next to Amy at our table. “So what hurts?” Amy asked tentatively.

“What doesn’t?” I replied.

“I’m so sorry Tiff,” she told me before she leaned over and gave me a hug too. Everyone seemed to think I needed a higher number of hugs since the incident… and they were right.

“S’okay,” I told her in a quavering voice while barely holding back the sobs.

Mom came back into the room with a pill and poured me a glass of water to take it with. “What do you want to eat?” she asked.

I stared for a second at the table cloth trying to make up my mind before saying, “Eggs?”

“Okay, give me a little bit,” she immediately went to the sink and began working on scrambling some eggs for me. It didn’t take long and I was eating and again finding that my mouth hurt to chew. At least the eggs were softer.

“We could try something like baby food if it stays sore,” Mom suggested. I made a disgusted face, “just a suggestion sweetie.”

“I’m sure it’ll get better Tiff,” Amy said next to me.

“Sweetie Dr. Reynolds wants to see you as soon as we can get in there…”

“Do I have to?” I asked her. Dr. Reynolds was the last person I wanted to see right now. I just wanted to try and forget everything!

“I think you need to,” she responded. There was a worried look in her eyes that I knew I could at least help with if I went, so I agreed. I went to find something to wear in my room with Amy and decided to just forget my appearance and put sweats on. Amy ended up helping me pull the sweatshirt over my head, my arms hurt really badly as I tried to lift them up high enough. I didn’t bother with a bra; my sweatshirt was loose enough it covered up what was there. Since they were still as small as they were I could get away with that. I also felt the pressure of a bra would probably hurt more than it would help anything else today.

Amy did my hair for me after that, and I started to look like a girl instead of the poster child for abused and neglected children. “Ready?” Mom asked me as we walked out of my room a while later.

I shrugged, or at least tried to before my shoulders screamed at me. As I winced Mom gave me a really concerned look. “Are you okay?”

“No, but let’s get this over with.” I told her trying not to sound irritated. Of course I wasn’t okay. I’d been beaten to within an inch of my life yesterday!

Amy opened the outside door of our house for me and then opened my car door for me before going to the other side and getting in. Mom handed her my seatbelt and Amy buckled it for me. I was beginning to feel like I was a three year old…

The drive to town was mainly filled with my eyes closed. I was trying to prepare myself for Dr. Reynolds many questions, I had no doubt I was going to have to relive the whole incident again. I wasn’t looking forward to it. It didn’t help that even with the pain medicine my head was still pounding. When we pulled up into the parking lot of the hospital where Dr. Reynolds and Dr. Wilmer had their offices I forced myself to keep moving. Every time I moved I felt the bruises I’d gotten yesterday scream a little bit.

Amy had never been along on one of these trips, so Mom introduced her to Dr. Reynolds when she came out.

“It’s nice to meet you Amy. I’ve known your mom for a long time.”

“It’s nice to meet you too,” was all that she replied with.

“So how are you doing Tiffany?” Dr. Reynolds asked me next. Coming from her, those words carried a different meaning.

“I’ve had better weeks,” I answered.

“Well you definitely are the worse for wear after this, come on let’s go inside and talk for a bit,” she suggested. Amy didn’t know what to do at that moment and Dr. Reynolds seemed to sense that. “Amy would you like to join us? That is if Tiffany doesn’t mind?” She added afterwards.

I shook my head and reached for her hand before she could have second thoughts. Having Amy there would be better in a way… probably… She ended up surprising me by not making me relive every moment of the attack. Instead she talked to me about how I was feeling before that and since the attack. I still ended up crying and embarrassing myself again throughout the session, but it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. The bar had been so low it didn’t take much to jump it. I was pretty sure her biggest fear at that point was that I’d decided I didn’t want to live anymore or something. Other than being unhappy about the pain, I wasn’t feeling any of that and I let her know that. Killing myself was the last thing on my mind!

Following my appointment with Dr. Reynolds, Mom talked to her for a bit while Amy and I waited in the waiting room. The secretary behind the desk asked, “Tiffany, sweetie, what happened to you?”

“I got jumped by five students yesterday,” I told her.

“Who would do that?” she asked. It wasn’t a comfortable conversation but she had gotten to know me enough over the last few months that she couldn’t resist asking me if I was okay. I understood that.

The three of us rode up the elevator for a quick checkup with Dr. Wilmer next. “Tiffany I’m glad you’re mostly okay,” he told me. “Hormone-wise I think we’re going to leave everything alone. You should be continuing to grow for a while now, and I see no reason to change anything.”

“Thanks Dr. Wilmer,” had been as responsive as I could muster. After he gave my mom the sheet to take up front, we picked up Amy from the waiting area.

“Where to now?” Mom asked me.

I think she was hoping maybe I’d be feeling well enough to go shopping or something but I didn’t. “Home?” I asked. For some reason something clicked inside my head, “Don’t you guys have Dad’s Christmas party tonight?” I asked.

“We were supposed to, but…”

“You two should still go to it,” I told her.

“But sweetie…”

“Drop me off at Amy’s house like we planned. Please?” I asked.

She gave me a really strange look. “Why?”

I kind of looked around before saying, “I’ve caused enough problems for you guys, please go out to the party tonight? Have some fun for me?” I said.

She gave me a suspicious look and said, “We’ll talk about it more, later.”

I gave up for the moment and we repeated the drill that we’d used to get me into the car to get back out. I was feeling a little bit better now that I was moving around some. “When do I have to go back to school?” I asked mom.

“Not until you feel like it,” was the first answer. But she seemed to decide to tack on something else for fear I would say sooner than she was ready, “Definitely not until after Christmas Break.”

“Okay,” I said. I was actually really relieved. Maybe the bruising would go away by then.

It was a quiet afternoon when we got home. Dad had tried to take off the full day from work but couldn’t because of a project that was going on. He managed to get it done early though and left work at noon. He was home when we got there. Shortly after three I was sitting on the couch with Amy playing with some Barbies when the doorbell rang. Mom came in and got the door telling us not to get up.

“Oh hi detective,” mom said. “What can we do for you?”

“May I come in? I have a couple more questions and some information for you all about yesterday,” he said politely.

Mom hesitated for a second but said, “Of course.”

“Joe? Detective Wallace is here…” she said loudly enough to announce to him to come out.

I instinctively sat up and covered myself more with the blanket I had on for some reason. “Hi Tiffany, how are you feeling today?” He asked me while offering his hand politely.

“I hurt,” I told him honestly. “But I’m still here,” I added.

He smiled at me for the last part and took the offered seat my mom pointed him towards. “I’m not going to take up too much time with you here. I just wanted to confirm a couple things with you Tiffany.”

“Okay,” I told him.

“First, you received this in your locker last week right?” He held up a photo of the Barbie Doll that I had found mangled last week. For some reason I instinctively held my own Barbie Doll I was playing with closer to me. I didn’t want her to face the same atrocity.

“Yes sir,” I told him quietly. “Someone put it in my bag in Ms. Damien’s classroom while we were all at the library.”

He sensed it upset me to see it so he quickly put the photograph back down in his briefcase he’d brought in with him.

“And you’ve been receiving threatening notes for some time now?” He asked.

“Yes sir,” I answered again. He asked a few specifics before saying, “Okay, that’s all of the extra information I needed.”

“You said you had information for us?” My dad asked him.

“Yes sir, I do.” He started. Before he continued though he said, “Tiffany you’ve been incredibly brave throughout all of this. If at any time you want me to stop talking about stuff in front of you please tell me.”

I nodded for him to continue while feeling a huge knot in my throat.

“First thing is that it appears all of the notes and threats have been coming from these five. There were two other people sending notes, but apparently when this group decided to attack you they backed out because they didn’t want to go that far… We have their names and charges are going to be pressed against them as well. They won’t get much for it though,” he added.

That seemed logical enough to me, ‘but they should have tried to stop them,’ I thought.

“These five have been planning this attack for a while. It seems that as soon as you made the dance squad, they felt insulted enough that they thought that Tiffany needed to be gone from the school. One of them came up with the idea of ambushing her during a trip to the office a while back. Wednesday in your English class you told one of your friends about your appointment yesterday, and apparently one of them overheard it. After that they made plans yesterday to all ditch and attack you.”

I controlled an urge to sob right then. I had done enough crying for now I thought. The detective took a look at me and decided to continue. “During your struggle yesterday you did manage to injure Jarred. His eye was destroyed, but you will not be charged with that as it was a clear case of self-defense.” There was a part of me that wanted to cry from the sudden memory of my finger in that gooey tissue, but I bit my tongue hard and refused.

“Furthermore both he and Lucas suffered broken arms and ribs when Kyle came in to pull them away from you. He is also not being charged.”

“Kyle broke their arms and ribs?!?!?!?” I asked incredulously.

“Good for him,” I heard Amy and my mom say simultaneously.

“I agree I think they got off easily from that,” the detective said. “Between the stories that you and Kyle gave we have enough witness testimony to act against the five. They all told differing stories for the most part, but the evidence backs up your stories — not theirs. It helps that Brittany broke down and told us everything. Her testimony locks up everything as tight as a drum.” He added with a grim smile. “We also discovered that the fingerprints we’d found on the threatening items matched up with Caitlyn and Liza.”

“What happens now?” I asked.

“Well the five of them were arraigned this morning on charges of aggravated battery, assault, and attempted murder. All of their parents posted bail and they’ve been remanded to their custody. The district attorney and I talked earlier — he’s going to seek the maximum punishment for them… but unfortunately in New Mexico that’s only going to be two years in the Springer facility.”

“Only two years?!?!?” My dad asked angrily.

“I’m sorry, they’re all under fourteen, so we can’t charge them as adults. State law prohibits us from sentencing them more than that.” He said with an unhappy look of his own. “I wish it was more.”

“They won’t be bothering me again though will they?” I asked nervously.

“I would say all, but Brittany, are going to be in jail that whole time. The school has suspended them all pending an expulsion hearing. That’ll probably happen Monday, Mrs. Henry said, so even if they come back I don’t believe they’ll be allowed back in this district.”

He talked with us for a long while before he came over and shook hands with everyone and left. We all just stood there in stunned silence. “Well at least Jarred is going to pay for the rest of his life,” Amy said with some satisfaction in her voice.

I just sat there. My dad seemed to also be proud of me for that, unfortunately I sure wasn’t proud of it at all. I’d been fighting for my life and that meant anything was fair, but I was afraid I was going to have that feeling of my finger going into his eye for the rest of my life. ‘I’ve got to move on,’ I told myself. ‘It’s not going to be easy, but I’ve got to move on.’

“Mommy? Daddy? Are you going to go to the Christmas Party like I asked you to?”

“Why would we leave you out of our sight?” Dad asked me fairly shocked. Apparently Mom hadn’t mentioned my request to him.

“Because I’m safe now… and I want you two to go have fun.” I told him.

“Sweetie, I don’t even feel like going out…” he started to tell me.

“Plus I really want to spend the night at Amy’s house…” I cut him off.

“Maybe we should,” Mom told Dad.

“Huh?”

“Look, Hon, I think she should spend the night at Amy’s house if she wants to… and I think we should go out for our own sanity’s sake.” She added.

He looked like he was going to argue but then decided, “If you both really want to.”

“I want you to go,” I told him.

“I think we should,” Mom echoed.

“Alright then. When are we going to take the girls over to Amy’s house then?” Dad asked.

“Well we probably need to start getting ready, I bet Melanie can pick them up,” she told him.

They worked out the details for everything, and in the end Melanie picked us up just before my parents left. It had been kind of painful but Amy and I had helped my mom get ready for the party. That had been fun, it was nice to turn the tables on her for once and help her. She gave me another dose of pain meds just before Melanie arrived and sent me with a several bottles of pills to Amy’s house. I took Emily with me since I didn’t want to be without her tonight when I slept.

At Amy’s house I was ordered to relax on their couch and brought anything I wanted or that they thought I needed. We had just started to watch a movie when we heard the doorbell ring at seven o’clock. Amy went to the door and said, “Hi Kyle.”

I was instantly nervous. I didn’t want Kyle to see me like this… ‘He saw me half-naked…’ I thought next. ‘I looked a lot worse too.’

“May we come in?” I heard a woman’s voice ask.

“Of course,” Amy said and Melanie went to go meet them in the foyer.

“Kyle wanted to stop by and see how Tiffany was doing after yesterday,” she said. “Her parents said she’d come over to your house.”

I got up slowly and was quickly told, “Sit down young lady, we’ll come to you,” by his mom.

Considering the pain I’d added standing up I didn’t want to disagree. They walked around to the living room and I gave Kyle a big hug as he leaned over to give me one himself. I found myself welling up with tears again and saying, “Thank you,” over and over again.

“I got you this,” he said kind of nervously, holding up a cute little stuffed froggie. “I thought he could keep you some company.” He sat it on the table next to me and it went “Ribbet!”

I was already looking down with my hair covering my face, embarrassed of my tears, so I just held Emily up and wagged her a little for him to see as I sat back down with a sheepish smile on my face. A little giggle snuck out between my sniffles and my bruised face tried to turn an entirely different color.

When I had finished being a big baby the six of us talked for a while before they went home. I gave them both a hug before they left and once again I was fighting to keep the tears back when I hugged him. The four of us didn’t talk much that night. We watched movies until midnight when Melanie ordered me to bed. Upstairs she gave me another dose of pain medication and took a look at my face while she was at it.

“I think we’ll definitely be able to take these stitches out on Tuesday Tiff,” she told me. I gave her one last hug and then she tucked me in for the night. I hugged Emily tight, and when morning came didn’t remember the nightmares and the screaming that I was told I had done. All I could remember was going to sleep in a place where I felt well loved.

 

Chapter 31:

 

SATURDAY MORNING BEGAN and time seemed to shift into a blur. I hurt so bad still it seemed to slow down time while I thought about it, and sped it up in every other way. That morning I saw ‘Student Attacked!’ was the headline on the newspaper.
‘Thursday morning at Holden Junior High, a twelve year old girl was attacked by five other students…’ The newspaper had every detail right, but chose to omit the names of students. ‘Our sources report that the student had been receiving threats for some time, and the school had made no progress toward preventing the girl from being attacked. Questions are being raised by this newspaper and other news organizations about whether more should have been done to protect the student…’ The newspaper asked questions that I had asked myself a million times, but still had no answers for. ‘Meanwhile we have learned that the student is resting at home and expected to make a full recovery. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her and her family.’

What I didn’t know is that apparently Ashley’s dad’s TV station had aired the story last night. He had asked my parents whether or not they wanted the story pulled, but they told him that they were fine with the station running it. I think they were hoping that maybe the community might be able to punish them more as a whole when they found out who the students were. Already I was sure anyone who was at school that day knew everyone involved — that in turn meant that everyone would know soon enough…

Later that morning Mom came and got me to take me home — Amy and I made her bring her too. She wanted me in her sight and told me that my grandparents were supposed to stop by. I didn’t want them to see me like that so I tried to get her to put them off but it didn’t work. Grandma actually brought my favorite dessert with her to try and cheer me up. The two of them stayed till six and got to see one of the more amazing things that have happened to me in my life.

Beginning at noon, every fifteen minutes — or less, someone stopped by to give me cards, balloons, flowers, and other get well gifts. Every friend from school stopped by it seemed like, all of my teachers including Coach Holt, Mrs. Remar, and Ms. Beecher, my gymnastics and dance class instructors I’d studied with… I was like a constant hose of tears when they showed up with something. Coach Holt delivered a card signed by the squad, and Mrs. Remar and Ms. Beecher came in with gigantic poster boards signed by the band and choir.

By the time my grandparents left I hoped that everyone had it out of their system, there was nowhere else to put stuff in the living room where I was sitting. It wasn’t though, because my parents’ friends had figured it out by then and were stopping by too. I finally ‘went to bed’ at nine so that I could get away from it all.

“Tiffany you have a lot of people that care about you,” Amy told me as we lay there with the lights off hoping to scare people away.

“I know… and sometimes I don’t know why,” I added honestly to her.

“Well I do.” She replied as if it was obvious. “Goodnight, Tiff.” She added.

Sunday she stayed over at our house as well, but her mom made her go back to school on Monday. Monday in a way was nice. My mom decided I was okay enough for her and Dad to go to work, so I was left alone at home for the whole morning and most of the afternoon. Mom did come home at lunch to check on me, and Melanie stopped by later at one point too. She brought Amy over after school. She looked at my stitches and told me, “I’ll take them out tomorrow morning at the hospital, okay?”

“Yay!” I said demurely, “They’re itching, I really want them gone,” I told her. Amy stayed over at my house that night and we made plans for me to stay the night at Amy’s house the next couple nights.

The next day Melanie told me, “I don’t think you’re going to scar too badly from this Tiffany,” as she pulled the stitches out. It was an odd sensation as she did it. Sometimes the stitches got stuck and it hurt for her to pull on them. All the time that she worked on that, I had Amy holding my left hand and Mom holding my right. Dad stood cowering in the corner as it really bothered him. I had noticed she had said ‘too badly,’ meaning I was going to scar at least a little. When she was done she showed me a mirror in the examination room we were using. My face wasn’t nearly as swollen now that it had five days to heal. Losing the stitches took away a lot of the Frankenstein factor.

I hugged her and the five of us did lunch together before my parents dropped Amy and I off at her house and went to work. The six of us went out to dinner that night and Mr. Hancock discussed the lawsuits he was filing on our behalf against the families of the students with my parents. As much as my parents and I didn’t believe in lawsuits, we’d filed several this year… and I wasn’t exactly thrilled about it. “I filed one against each of the families for five-hundred thousand dollars, today,” he said.

He discussed how he didn’t expect to get that much, but that it was a starting place. Mr. Hancock figured that the families would just settle out of court — that’s what their attorneys would tell them to do when they found out he was the one filing them. He didn’t say that in a pompous way though, it was just true. He and my parents had also made the trip down to the school that afternoon to discuss matters with the school district. Before they had even said anything about not suing the district over their fault, they had offered to pay all of the medical bills.

My story had been picked up by the national news outlets on Sunday, and the district was trying to do what it could to sweep the mess back underneath everything. The story wasn’t going away easily though, because they had picked up on the fact that I was a transsexual. That, in their minds, made it a hate crime.

It was of course… But unfortunately in New Mexico we didn’t have a single law on the books to make it a hate-crime. That meant they were left with the original charges only, and as the news outlets picked up, they would only be spending a maximum of two years each in the state juvenile detention center. My parents had managed to successfully drive the reporters away from us though, with Greg’s help of course. So other than the occasional news story my parents tried to keep from me, I didn’t notice a lot of it.

Concerning school, everything was to go back to me being in my same schedule when I got back, and I was excused from all of my work completely during my missed days. They also made Amy excused too.

Everything just continued to fly by through until Wednesday evening. I was sitting at Amy’s house upstairs with her playing with Barbies. I wasn’t sure why I was able to play with them again after everything happened, but something clicked back into my head as it being okay as long as it wasn’t the one that had been tortured. I also just felt like being a little girl… the idea of being a grownup right then didn’t appeal in the least.

“Tiffany?” I heard Melanie say behind us after the phone had rung a moment earlier.

“Yes?” I asked politely.

“Phone for you,” she said.

“Okay,” I said and followed her to a phone downstairs.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Tiffany?” I heard Kyle’s voice ask.

“Uh-huh, Kyle?” I asked shyly.

“Yep…” there was a silence for a second before he said, “Umm… I was wondering if you might want to come on Friday to see Jumanji in town on Friday? There’s a group that would be going.”

I sat there for a second and debated on what I wanted to say, “I’ll need to check with my parents first…” I stalled.

“Your parents asked why I called earlier and they said it was okay,” he said excitedly.

“Can Amy come too?” I asked while still trying to decide what to say.

“Of course, it’s not like you two go anywhere without each other…” he paused as he realized that might have upset me. I did go somewhere without her last week…

I refused to get upset by it though, “Okay, if she wants to go, I’m up for it. What time and where?” I asked and he listed off the details. We’d have to have one of our parents drive us there. We were looking at getting there at eleven, eating lunch in the mall food court, and then going to the movie which our parents would pick us up after.

Just before we hung up I said, “Kyle… thanks again so much.” I told him. My tears started to come out a bit once again, but we hung up before he heard them.

“What did Kyle want?” Amy asked upstairs a few minutes later.

“How’d you know it was Kyle?”

“Mom told me,” she said with a smile.

‘Traitor…’ I thought silently. “He wanted to know if we wanted to go to see Jumanji on Friday.”

“If we wanted to go?” She said with an emphasis on the ‘we.’

“Okay, so he was really asking me, but still I asked and you’re coming too!” I told her.

“Who else is going to be there?” she asked me. There seemed to be a hopeful gleam in her eyes.

“Don’t worry, David’s going to be there,” I said taking my own small revenge.

“Ooh, you are learning to play dirty,” she told me with a smile.

We made our plans to go to town that day. Our mom’s were going to drive us in together and spend their morning shopping. Originally my mom and I thought about spending some more time shopping afterwards, but Amy’s parents were hosting a Christmas party that night, so they were going to be preparing for it that afternoon. Of course that would mean I was preparing for it too. “Get ready for four days of Christmas dresses,” Amy told me mournfully when she remembered the party.

“Four days?”

“Friday, Christmas Party, Saturday our parents have evil plans for us, Sunday is Christmas Eve, and Monday is Christmas…”

“Every day?” I asked incredulously.

“Welcome to life as a girl Tiff,” she had said with a smile.

 

THURSDAY NIGHT I stayed at Amy’s, and the two of us experimented to see if we could hide my healing face under enough makeup to keep me from drawing the stares I had the last couple days when we went anywhere. Her mom had told me I couldn’t wear makeup until then because she was worried about infections, but she cleared me for that night and Friday. The first attempt was a disaster, by the time we were done I had waaay too much makeup on — I looked like a clown. By the fifth attempt I looked like I just had a couple of light bruises still on my forehead. If we put anything more on them though it looked worse than it did without the makeup. I was glad to see that the cuts that they had to stitch close were healing well enough that they weren’t going to scar.

Friday morning Amy and I dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and sweaters that we covered up in heavy winter coats. A skiff of snow had fallen the night before, and the clouds had cleared off taking any heat with them. Amy and I had done my makeup just like we had the night before — I looked almost pretty again. My mom claimed I looked fine, but I wouldn’t think of myself as looking the same until the bruises were gone completely and I didn’t have to draw parts of my eyebrows back on. I was afraid I was going to have a nervous breakdown during the trip to the mall. I was trying really hard to figure out how I was going to talk to Kyle after everything. I was nearly shaking by the time we pulled in front of the main mall entrance.

“Okay girls, we’re going to meet you at three, outside the movie theater, make sure you’re there on time,” Melanie said to us.

“Behave yourselves and stay together,” Mom told us next.

“Yes Mommies,” Amy and I said together. Both of them looked at us and smiled as we got out.

Amy gave me her hand and we walked hand-in-hand together into the mall. We had just passed the store directory sign when I saw my friends Ashley, Kristina, Nikki, Kyle, and David all standing there. “Hey Tiffany, Amy,” they said as we came up. All of them gave me a hug and said how good I was looking after everything. I fought to keep my emotions in check as we set off together towards the food court.

“What are you going to get?” Kyle asked me as we stared at the options.

I didn’t know… I was hungry for something different than the meals I’d been having while locked up inside the last week. I finally looked at the Chinese place. My stomach seemed to think that it sounded good. “I’m thinking about the Chinese place,” I looked around for Amy and found she’d stepped away to go to the place next door to it. I had a feeling we’d been set up, but didn’t say anything.

“That sounds good to me too,” he said. He walked over to the line with me.

I chose some sesame chicken with some lo mein, and an egg roll. Just as I got towards the end of the line and was ordering a drink Kyle told the cashier, “I’m paying for hers too,” awkwardly.

“You don’t need to do that,” I tried to tell him… ‘He’d saved my life the week before, how could I possibly let him pay for my lunch, that should be the other way around!’ a voice in my head screamed.

“I want to though… think of it as an early Christmas present.” He said it in a way that made me think he’d rehearsed that line.

I sighed and agreed. The two of us carried our food on the trays over to a long table my friends had all taken over. “So what have you been doing the last week?” Kyle asked trying to start up a conversation.

“Mainly lying around doing nothing… playing a bit with dolls,” I admitted the last part shyly just to see what his reaction would be. “Also watching movies, reading, hanging out with Amy… mainly trying to not hurt anymore.”

“Oh…” he said, seemingly at a loss of what to say next. I looked down the table and everyone seemed to be listening.

‘This is so awkward!’ I screamed inwardly at myself.

“How about you?” I asked feeling like I should.

“Not much, I’ve been playing some video games and doing some weight lifting,” he said. “My mom’s also been making me help her do stuff around the house to get ready for Christmas,” he admitted.

“We all get dragged into that,” Amy offered, entering the conversation. “Tiffany and I’ll be helping my mom get ready for a Christmas party as soon as we get home today. We’ve been making cookies and candy all week at each other’s houses to get ready for it.”

The conversations around the table seemed to flow more smoothly between everyone once more people joined us. It felt like some of the awkwardness left. Before long I saw that it was time to go to the movie and found myself walking with Amy on my left and Kyle on my right. To the left of Amy was David. I was pretty sure that he was in a similar boat as Kyle was with me. The rest of my friends walked behind and in front of me. At the ticket counter I managed to pay for my own admission, then contributed into a fund we pooled together to get everyone drinks, popcorn and nachos. Well we were sharing popcorn and nachos… and I ended up sharing between Kyle and Nikki.

As the movie began I found myself trying to figure out if I should be doing something… should I be holding his hand if we were going to be going out? If he asked could I possibly turn him down at this point? ‘No,’ I told myself firmly. ‘He knows what he’s getting into better than anyone else by now.’

Eventually I decided to try and let him know it would be okay to hold my hand by putting it on the arm rest in between our seats. I tried my best to ignore it, to not think about whether or not he would take me up on the offer for a long time as I watched the movie… and eventually it happened. His hand took mine into his and with the back of his thumb he began stroking my hand gently. I looked up at Kyle. He had a look on his face that appeared to be asking my permission; I just nodded in response. Later during the movie I found myself leaning my head against his shoulder as we continued to hold hands.

The credits of the movie were rolling, and I felt like an idiot trying to decide what to do next. Kyle ended up deciding that for me by standing up while still holding my hand. He led me outside the theaters with Amy behind me. I saw she had a strange look on her face that I would have to ask her about later. Amy’s mom’s car was sitting there in front of the entrance and I could just make my mom and her mom out in the front seats.

“Thank you so much for inviting me,” I told Kyle as I turned around for a moment to face him.

“You’re welcome,” he said nervously. “Do you think you might want to go do something else sometime?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I think that would be nice. It’ll have to be with a group though… my mom won’t approve of it otherwise,” I told him.

“Okay,” he said while nodding.

I then proceeded to give him a hug unlike one I’d given anyone before. It felt different, like it meant more than a family ‘I love you’ or a friendly ‘hi.’ He hugged me back, and a moment later — before I was really ready for it — it was over and I was walking back to the car with Amy. “Our mom’s are going to give you a hard time for that hug,” she warned me.

“I know…” I paused debating on saying it or not, “but I really like him Amy…. more than just as a friend.”

She smiled at me meaningfully as we got into the car. “And what was that about?” Mom asked me with a smirk on her face.

“It was just a hug,” I tried to say.

“Uh-huh… and he was holding your hand because you were having trouble walking?” Melanie jumped in.

“Umm…” I tried to get out of the hole I’d dug myself in at that point but couldn’t.

Twenty minutes into the drive home I finally blurted, “Okay, so I like him… get over it.”

That just sent the three of them into hysterical laughter, and I pouted for the rest of the drive. I was so grateful for being assigned various setup tasks at Amy’s house so they couldn’t torture me further. I couldn’t even begin to say anything to Amy about it during that time — I found myself turning red anytime I thought back on that hug. While we were setting up I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. Ever since I had begun coming to Amy’s house there had been a family portrait of the three of them hanging up in front of the entry way, next to the staircase. Sometime in the last week, I hadn’t noticed when, it had been replaced with a picture of the four of us.

Amy found me staring at the picture and I immediately hugged her while starting with new tears. I couldn’t believe that they loved me enough to put that picture up like I really was their daughter. Melanie came by soon after that on her way upstairs and she was given a bigger hug. The three of us stood there for some time before we were fixing a few more things and we began to change for the evening of being hostesses for their party.

We spent some considerable time redoing my makeup before I put on the purple dress that I had worn for the pictures the previous week. It was so pretty, I loved it! Mom and Dad arrived about five minutes before everyone else and mom fussed over me a lot as Dad and Amy’s dad talked. The party that evening was a lot of fun, but Amy and I were the only two kids there. It was a veritable who’s who in town that night. The mayor, state representatives, and such were just the beginning on the list. Amy’s parents really did know just about everyone between each other’s occupations. Most of them knew who I was and gave me their condolences on what had happened to me.

Even with all of the people there, the night went by without any really memorable moments. All of my memorable moments of the day revolved around Kyle. As I went to bed that night at their house, I found myself dreaming of what it would be like to kiss him…

Unfortunately my pleasant dreams shifted to nightmares sometime around two in the morning when I woke up shivering in a cold sweat. I bit down on my pillow to keep from sobbing. I’d just had the worst nightmare yet! As I’d relived the attack for the millionth time, and gone after Jarred’s eye his face had morphed into Kyle’s.

I quietly sobbed my way back to sleep after that.

 

SATURDAY MORNING AMY and I were forced out of bed pretty early. Amy’s mom had forced both of us to wear one of our holiday dresses. Amy and I had squirmed while looking in the mirror in her room, both of us looked much younger than we were. We both gave our mom’s dirty looks as they dragged us out of the house like that but it made no difference. “Where are we going?” Amy asked nervously. We didn’t really want our friends to see us like this.

“To the mall in town,” my mom said to our horror.

“…What??” we both asked.

“You’re going to see Santa,” Mom said cutely.

“But…” was all I got out. Amy and I were both at a loss for words.

“Tiffany we don’t have any pictures of you as a little girl… so I thought maybe we should at least get one Santa picture taken,” Mom said hopefully. I was more upset about it than she had expected. Part of me wanted to die of embarrassment, but another part of me acknowledged it would be cute.

“Won’t that line be really really long?” Amy asked with a groan.

“That’s why we’re going before they open up the stores,” Melanie said.

“And I have to do this too?” Amy groaned.

“Uh-huh,” Melanie grinned.

The two of us sighed simultaneously and found ourselves deciding to have fun with it. “So what do you want for Christmas?” was the question from Santa to me an hour later.

“Lots of Barbie dolls!” I said cutely like I was the cute seven-year-old I looked like. At least if he believed I was younger it didn’t seem quite so bad. Our mom’s both had a Polaroid picture of each of us in hand as we escaped. Amy and I kind of wanted to go shopping, but the crowds were too thick to make us feel comfortable shopping dressed like that.

We ended up going to lunch, and then heading home to Amy’s where I gathered up some stuff I would want at my house. For the first time in over a week Amy and I were forced to be at our separate houses and help out with stuff there. Mom had plenty of last minute wrapping she needed done and I got stuck helping her. She’d made me stay in the dress though because, “You look cute!”

After a while I got over myself and did admit it had been a good idea to see Santa. The picture that had been taken of me with Santa Claus would make it look like I had been a girl longer… that seemed important to my mom for some reason, so I let it go. I stayed up late with my parents watching a rented movie that night before going to bed for a family day the next day.