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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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 33:

 
A HALF-HOUR after my parents and I got home, Amy’s parents pulled up and I scrambled to get my stuff out to their car. When I had hauled my last bag to their car, I made one last trip back in the house to grab Allie. Amy and I played with our two dolls all the way up to the condo, and placed them down on our beds to ‘sleep’ while we got ready to go skiing. I began really healing over the next few days. Being able to hang out with Amy and her parents away from my hometown, up in the mountains, seemed to allay my fears.

By Friday when my parents came up to join us, my mom noted that the bruises were almost gone from my face. What was left was unnoticeable unless you were looking really closely. The cuts had almost completely faded as well, so much so that I didn’t feel like I needed to cover my face completely up with makeup Saturday. My parents had slept on the sofa-sleeper downstairs that night. They both seemed to enjoy themselves during the day when we all went skiing. I had been skiing for five days straight at that point, so I was feeling really sure of myself on my skis.

Amy and I had ridden all of the black diamonds by the end of the week, including one that both of us had slid down the rest of the way on our butts when we realized how many cliffs were along the route. We didn’t tell our parents about that run…

Before I knew it I was riding in my parents’ car, with Amy sitting next to me, heading home. “Do you two want to go to the mall tomorrow?” Mom asked us as we got close to home.

“Sure,” Amy said. She was always up for shopping.

“Are we going to use that…?” I began before stopping, a bit red in the face. Daddy was in the car, it just didn’t seem right to talk about that with him there.

Mom did the amazing mom-mind-reading thing though and said, “Yes, I thought we would go do that.”

I smiled. The other thing that had become really apparent over the last two weeks was how much I’d grown. I thought mom was exaggerating, but when she came up on Friday she swore I’d grown an inch or two. I’d felt sore from skiing, but I think it must have been growing pains too. My chest had also grown out more, enough so that when Amy and I were in her room she had me try on one of her bras and discovered I could fill her A cup bra already! For whatever reason my chest had really begun filling out.

Monday, at the mall, I was almost skipping as we walked up to the Victoria’s Secret store. Once in there though, I couldn’t stop blushing… so many of their bras were… umm… too sexy for me? Mom got the attention of a sales lady and asked, “Can I get my daughter fitted?”

“Sure!” the girl who was about nineteen smiled at me. As we walked into a changing area she asked me, “Is this your first real bra sweetie?”

I nodded.

“Your mom is so awesome to bring you here for that,” she told me. “We’ll do a better job than most places.” After she made several measurements she told me, “Okay, it looks like you’re a 30A.”

I smiled at that.

“You’re actually not far from being a 30B actually though,” she said to my astonishment. “But at your band size it doesn’t take much to move you up into the next cup size. You’ll probably be ready for the next one in a couple months I’d guess,” she told me.

“Cool,” I told her smiling wider. I would be bigger than Amy? I just hoped I wouldn’t get too big.

“Well let’s go find you some to try on,” she told me and followed my mom, Amy, and I around the store until I had several bras to try on. The girl took some time to help make sure that they fit right, and I ended up with two bras from there that I paid for with the gift certificate.

“Okay, there you go,” she said as she handed me the pink bag that actually just held one of them in it. I had asked if I could wear one out of the store, and she told me yes. One wasn’t overly lacy… it was a pushup bra, which made my breasts look a bit larger. I actually seemed to have some cleavage with it on. The other was a full coverage bra that did have some lace on it. That one was red, while the first one was white.

As we walked through the mall we stopped by the car to drop that bag off at the car. I felt like I was getting too many stares while holding it. The three of us ended up in JC Penney’s where Mom got me four more bras in my size in different everyday colors that would blend in under my school clothes. Amy and I both fell in love with one bra there though. Mom looked between us both and said, “I’ll buy one for each of you, okay?” That had made us smile and Amy had given her a big hug. It was cute! We finished up shortly at the mall and headed home.

Mom had to drop Amy off so she could spend some time with her mom doing laundry. We did the same at home washing all of my new bras and dried them as the directions on them called for. I found out quickly that it was a pain to wash them since they were pretty much all hand wash, dry flat. Mom shrugged though and said that was pretty normal. She still washed hers in the washing machine and dried them all of the time… I didn’t want to chance ruining them though, so I just did it the ‘right’ way.

That night I spent some time playing my new saxophone. I hadn’t had a chance to play around with it hardly at all last week. My parents had told me they had spoken with Mrs. Remar and it was going to stay in her office during the day, so it would be safe. They really hadn’t wanted me to take it to school at all at first, but decided they were being a little overly paranoid since they had insured it. I barely cared about all of that while I played it though. It was so much fun to play!

When I wasn’t playing with my new sax I spent some more time playing with Allie. Amy and I had talked about how strange it was, but we both liked playing with the dolls a lot. Mom gave me the catalogue that night that she’d ordered her out of. I found several other dolls that were dressed in older period dresses that I also really liked. She suggested I could maybe get one a year and build a collection. When she first said that I’d been confused since I hadn’t paid too much attention to the prices… After that I said, “Maybe…”

By Tuesday morning I was beginning to feel like I was ready to face things again. This was good because it was already January second and that meant we were starting school on the next day. I felt ready all the way until I went to bed that night with Amy sleeping next to me in the trundle bed. Something clicked in my head about what I was going to really have to face the next day and I started bawling like I hadn’t for over a week.

Amy and my mom hugged me for a long time before I just fell asleep. I hoped the next day wouldn’t be as horrible as the last time I’d been at school.

 

WHILE I DRESSED the next morning I couldn’t stop shaking. I knew that the five students who had caused me so much pain were going to be gone… but that didn’t help all of the sudden. I looked at my face after I got dressed and was happy to see the bruises had faded completely, so I was able to put my normal makeup amount on. I did my hair like normal, and stared at myself for a few long moments. I checked every inch of my face, ‘was there any sign of what I had gone through?’

I checked my body up and down and hoped that I could survive dance practice after school that day. Since Amy and I both had to get ready, Mom had woken us both up early. As much as I hated waking up, it did mean that she was able to give me a hug as I walked out the bathroom and she headed towards work. Amy took very little time in the bathroom that morning before eating breakfast with me and trying to reassure me that everything would in fact be okay.

On our way to school I found myself shaking. I did everything I could to hide it from Melanie, since I was afraid she would take me directly to go see Dr. Reynolds if she knew how nervous I was. “We’re here,” she said sweetly as she pulled up to the school.

“Yeah,” Amy said forlornly. She wasn’t looking forward to being back at school any more than I was.

“Are you okay Tiffany?” she asked me sweetly while looking back.

I took a deep breath and said, “I guess… we’ll see you later,” I forced myself to add before she could say anything and the two of us got up to go inside. I had so much to carry that day with my backpack, dance bag, and saxophone. I walked with Amy into the band room first where Mrs. Remar was sitting in her office.

“Hi Tiffany!” She said warmly to me. She gave me a hug and then asked, “Is this it?”

“Uh-huh, what do you think?” I asked as she looked at it.

“I think you have a really nice saxophone now. You should be able to do all sorts of things with a horn this good,” she told me.

“Thanks!” I told her with a smile.

“I’ll keep it in here so it’s safe. You’d better start heading towards class,” she told us.

“Okay,” I said and Amy and I set off for first hour.

I was met by all sorts of friends and teachers welcoming me back. I was hugged more times than I could count and I felt a little overwhelmed by how much people seemed to care. Of course that didn’t extend to not giving me homework. We were told in first hour, “Tomorrow we’re going to be starting a project that is counting as both a social studies and English grade.”

“Great… more major work before Nationals,” Amy said next to me.

“Yep!” I said to her. We had both discovered on our planners that we were just four weeks from Nationals, and three weeks from state… Neither of us doubted that Coach Holt was going to be having us practicing our tails off.

We set off for science a while later wondering what this new project was going to be like when I froze all of the sudden. I couldn’t move, and I didn’t know why. I started hiccupping uncontrollably and my friends all had worried looks on their faces. Kyle and Amy had enough sense to lead me on past where we were. At the end of the science hallway, where my class was, the tears started and I realized what it was that had caused everything. I had been attacked… right there.

“Are you okay Tiffany?” Amy asked with tears in her own eyes. I was freaking out, shaking, and definitely scaring her. I could see it, but I couldn’t stop crying and hiccupping. Mr. Grainger saw us and let us sit outside his classroom for a while until I regained control of myself.

“Tiffany, are you doing better?” he asked me when I finally stopped.

I shook my head and then nodded. “I guess. I don’t know what happened…”

“Stuff like that can happen when you’ve been through something that traumatic Tiffany, it’s okay. Do you want to go to the office and go home?” he suggested.

I looked at him blankly… ‘what good would that do?’ I asked myself. I took a deep breath in and said, “No… I have to face this sooner or later.”

“Well then let’s get you into class.” He suggested. I took a moment though to wipe my face with some Kleenex that was in my backpack, grateful I wasn’t wearing mascara. When I appeared in class my friends all came over to make sure I was okay.

“I don’t know what happened, I just lost it then…” I told them.

After class Mr. Grainger offered, “Do you want to go out the door here and go around? I’ll walk with you so you don’t get in trouble for leaving the school…”

“No, I can’t run away forever,” I told him. But as I left the hallway I didn’t face it, I closed my eyes and had Amy lead me to choir until we were past that spot in the hallway. I didn’t look back, only forward as we walked down and turned left to go down the hallway by the gym to the choir room.

In choir we began some new music and Ms. Beecher welcomed me back just as warmly as the other teachers. Kristina seemed particularly excited to see me back, and I told everyone that I was grateful for the card they had all signed. Going from there to Algebra we took the normal shortcut around outside and through the front entrance so that I wouldn’t have to walk through that spot again. Unfortunately I realized during Algebra that I wouldn’t be able to avoid it the rest of the day. I was going to have to walk through that spot on the way to lunch, on the way to home-ec, and on the way back to get my bag after school.

It almost sent me into a panic but Amy seemed to sense it and talked me out of it. She and Kyle walked down the hallway with me each holding a hand as we walked back through that spot. I kept my eyes open that time and didn’t cry all the way up until we got through the doors into the cafeteria. “Are you okay?” Kyle asked me while letting go of my hand because a teacher was glaring at him for it.

“I think,” I hiccupped, “so,” I replied.

The hiccups continued all the way through lunch, making it difficult to eat without choking. We repeated the same hand holding down the hallway to get me to home-ec and he headed off to class. The hiccupping was slightly disruptive to class, but Coach Holt just gave me an understanding smile and ignored it.

“Do you get hiccups when you’re nervous often?” She asked me quietly as she walked by my table.

“Uh-huh,” I said in between hiccups.

“Have you tried drinking a glass of water?” she asked me.

“That was the,” hiccup, “first thing I tried.”

Coach Holt gave me several other suggestions but nothing helped. They just wouldn’t go away. When her class ended she suggested I go to the nurse but I shrugged it off and headed to English with Amy, hiccupping quietly all the way. Not only were they extremely embarrassing, they were beginning to make my stomach muscles hurt. Surprisingly though, I didn’t notice anyone making fun of me for it.

About halfway through English they mysteriously stopped. Ms. Damien smiled at me when they stopped; she too had offered her suggestions which hadn’t worked at all. In the end I didn’t care why they stopped, I was just grateful they did!

She also alluded to this mysterious joint social studies/English project we were starting, but also didn’t offer any details. Ms. Damien did say we would be choosing groups out of our English classes rather than in social studies.

As I walked to band with Kyle and Nikki I couldn’t help but feel a little awkward as I tried to figure out what to do with him. He seemed to be feeling just as awkward though, so I didn’t feel too bad. We did hold hands as I walked to Coach Holt’s classroom to get my stuff. Coach Holt saw it and smiled at me.

That was the only smile I saw out of her for the rest of the day!

Dance practice was grueling. We did everything count by count again and again. She wasn’t satisfied with us being perfect, she wanted better than perfect, and she even admitted it to us. “Ladies, if we’re going to hope to be competitive in Florida we can’t accept ‘good enough,’ it has to be better than perfect.” She told us, “I want it three-hundred percent better tomorrow. Don’t forget to tell your parents about the next two Saturdays,” she added.

She had sprung two Saturday practices on us leading up to the competitions. They were going to be from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, ‘or whenever we’re done,’ she had said. By the time I got home from school I was so physically and emotionally tired I couldn’t do anything else but put my pajamas on, eat dinner, and crawl into bed to sleep.

 

THURSDAY MORNING IT was a shock to me that I was waking up without Amy around. I shook it off though and got ready quickly, spending some time reading the newspaper a bit while I ate some cereal. On page A3 I found an article following up on my attack.

‘An attack on a seventh grade girl at Holden Junior High was apparently preceded by threats for more than a month. This paper has received copies of threats the student was given regularly leading up to the attack. According to the documents we obtained, the student was left things such as ‘used tampons and feminine napkins,’ and a ‘mutilated Barbie Doll…’ the article continued after listing basically everything that had happened to me, ‘If it were not for one courageous student who happened upon and broke up the attack, the young girl’s injuries could very well have been fatal…’ I fell to pieces as soon as I read that.

Dad came up to me not long after that and took me into his arms. “What’s wrong sweetie?” He asked. I just held on tighter and cried more. ‘I really could have died,’ something about that sunk into my head like it had never done before.

Dad eventually got me calmed down enough to get an answer to his question. “Look…,” I pointed.

He was a slow reader on his fastest day, so it took him a long time to get to the part that had set me off. I couldn’t look at it, it would cause me to break down again — I was sure of it. At last I felt his arms encircle me again as he locked me into his arms saying, “Sweetie, we’re going to do everything we can to keep you from ever going through something like this again,” he kissed me on the top of my head.

“But…” I started to say.

“I promise you,” he told me. With that I started to cry again, and that’s where Amy and her mom found me when they came to get me.

“Do you want to stay home today?” Melanie asked me when she got me calmed down. Dad had been unsuccessful so he let her try.

“I want to, but I can’t,” I told her.

“Of course you can…” she started to say.

“No I can’t, if I do then those… kids… won.” I said. “All they kept repeating while they were attacking me is we’re going to get you out of our school… I’m not going to let them win,” I said while finding the strength to wipe my eyes one last time.

My dad looked worried in the corner as he watched; he hadn’t known what to do. Melanie just looked at me closely and nodded at me before giving me one more hug and saying, “well if you’re going to school we need to get you cleaned up… At least you were smart enough not to wear mascara today,” she told me. How could I at this point? I was such a cry-baby!

Melanie led me to the bathroom where she helped me wash my face off and hide the traces of tears. Except for the red eyes you couldn’t tell anything. Thankfully I could explain that as my contacts… By the time we pulled up to the school we were late, so she signed us both in. Mrs. Henry looked at us and quickly told the secretary to mark it excused. She walked Amy and I down to class together. It wasn’t until I got there that I realized I’d been holding Amy’s hand since we’d left my house.

Mr. Randolph was in the middle of handing out a packet of papers to everyone. “Did you two check-in at the office?” he asked us politely as we took our seats and he gave us a packet.

“Yes sir,” I told him.

“Good,” he said before beginning his presentation of the project. “Okay ladies and gentlemen I told you yesterday that we were going to begin a project, and this is it. This is going to be a joint project in English and this class. Each of you are going to be grouped in your English class into groups of no more than six, but at least four. For this project your goal is to research a piece of New Mexican history and present it in an interesting way to the school. Your final presentation must be a minimum of fifteen minutes long, and should be accompanied by a research paper about your topic that you will write using the guidelines Ms. Damien gives you…” he went on about the project for a long while and it sounded interesting.

“You will be given up to two days a week in class to work on these projects along side of our normal work. The final product will be due Wednesday, March 27th, and the final presentations will be given during that day and the following three days.”

The project guidelines he had handed out to us were incredibly long and detailed. The was even one whole sheet detailing exactly how we were to cite our research. Another sheet gave a list of examples of project types. It sounded like it could be fun, but I couldn’t get my head around what I was going to do it on right then. I couldn’t help but picture the words from the newspaper being projected onto the page in front of me. It was only sheer willpower that kept me from breaking down again right there.

Unfortunately putting all my concentration on putting up a good front caused me to miss a lot of things that day. I was completely and totally unfocused in science and nearly burned off my hand when I went to pick up a hot beaker without a glove. Thankfully Amy sensed my state of mind and she grabbed my hand before I actually touched it. “Are you okay?” Mr. Grainger asked me.

“I will be,” was my answer to him, and at the same time a challenge to myself. He nodded at me as if he understood.

In math Mr. Martin asked me to solve something on the board. I did it, but it took me ten times longer than I normally would. He had been in the midst of saying, “Kyle would you mind helping…” but I snapped back about then and quickly solved the rest of it. Amy and Kyle kept giving me worried looks all day.

English class came and the board instructions said to get into groups of up to six people. Amy grabbed my hand and had me sit down in one corner where we were joined by Ashley, Nikki, Kyle, and David. I came back to my senses as Kyle grabbed my hand and asked if I was okay. I just shook my head and gave him the same answer I’d given Mr. Grainger, ‘I will be.’ I began to believe if I could tell myself that enough maybe I would be able to move on.

“Ladies and gentlemen are there any of you who haven’t had Mr. Randolph’s class yet?” she asked. A couple students raised their hands in another group and she gave them each a packet like we’d gotten earlier. All of us dug through our bags and trapper keepers until we found our packets from earlier.

“Okay, all of you have followed directions and chosen groups, thank you.” She said. “I’m going to spend some time going over the research paper requirements for this project, and then I’m going to give you the rest of the hour to try and think up ideas on what you want to do your project on.” Ms. Damien spoke for about fifteen minutes on things that I thought were pretty easy. How hard was it to insert the name of a book, the author, etc. into a template that they gave you for the bibliography? It amazed me how one group had three girls obnoxiously raise their hands. I noticed for the first time that our class was smaller. Jarred and Brittany being gone took two people out of the class.

“Alright, any other questions?” She asked. “Good, spend the rest of class time today talking about what you want to do. Don’t forget that you need to all decide on a group leader and secretary to keep track of things.”

“Any ideas?” Amy asked after she’d been voted in as the group leader. I was grateful they didn’t ask me to do it. Nikki was being our secretary.

“Well I actually have been thinking of one since this morning,” Kyle said.

We all looked at him expectantly, “What is it?” Ashley asked.

“Well you know how you four did that video last year?”

“Uh-huh,” I heard myself say in unison with the three others.

“Well… what if we did a real film and did it based off of some piece of history.” He suggested.

“You mean a documentary?” I asked. Surprising myself and everyone else by coming back out of my shell where I’d been hiding.

“Not necessarily. They just said it had to be ‘based’ on something from New Mexican history. We’d do our research paper on the actual historical thing, but what if we did a real film.”

“Do you have an idea of something?” I asked him.

“Yeah…” he said hesitantly. Kyle was not your average football jock. In fact, I would label him as a nerd that happened to play football… but because of that he was really smart and paid attention to things other people might not care about. “you know that show Unsolved Mysteries?”

We nodded.

“Well a few weeks ago I saw them do a show on some gold that some people brought up from Mexico and hid here somewhere. No one knows where. What if we did something about that?”

“Tell us more about what you remember.” Amy said suddenly intrigued.

“Well they said something about they never came back for it because they figured the US government would want it because it was here in this country. It was supposed to be a lot of gold — a real fortune, and it’s never been dug up.”

“That sounds like a really good idea,” I told him with the first smile I’d given anyone all day. The blush on his cheeks made me giggle a little. “This could really work!”

“Tiffany, it was hard enough to do something in my dad’s studio, it would be really hard to do this for real wouldn’t it?” Ashley asked.

“It would be, but I bet we could get some people to help us out. I still have the information for the people we met at the film festival.”

That got everyone excited and we began talking about how cool it would be to do this. “Who would we get to act?” Amy asked.

“Well… Depending on what how we do things, we could do it, or we could get some other students and the teachers from school.” I suggested.

“Yeah!” David said. “I could be the hot hero that comes to save the day!”

We all laughed at that. The six of us were having such a good time that we didn’t even hear the bell ring. “Okay you guys, get the desks back and move on to your next class.” Ms. Damien told us.

Kyle, Nikki, and I hustled up to band and found Mrs. Remar putting new music on all of our chairs. “Get your instruments out,” she told us as we walked in. “We’re going to start looking at our contest music today.”

I went to her office and pulled out my saxophone. As I put it together I got the looks of envy from all of my friends again. Yesterday Mrs. Remar had introduced my saxophone to the rest of the band, and everyone knew how special of an instrument it was. “So have you named it yet?” I heard Jessica ask me as I bent down to pick up my music.

“Umm… not yet…” I told her. “Should I?” I asked.

“Of course!” she told me.

“Well I’ll think about it…” I looked at my saxophone and tried to decide what I should name it. ‘Well first things first, I have to decide if it’s a boy or girl,’ I thought to myself. I didn’t have time to make it any further though because Mrs. Remar had us begin reading through the ‘slow’ piece for contest. I had just looked at the page when I saw a scary word, ‘solo,’ written a few bars in. The title of the piece was ‘Amazing Grace,’ and it was based off of that famous church hymn.

Mrs. Remar played a recording for us and I was amazed by how pretty the piece was. I was a bit alarmed by how important the sax solo was right off of the bat. “Tiffany, this is all you here,” she said a bit later as she talked through it. The band tried to sight-read it, but it was a really tough piece. For my part I managed to not butcher the saxophone solo, but it wasn’t where it needed to be. “We’re going to need to spend some time working on vibrato,” she told me as I put up my saxophone up and carried it out of the room. I left wondering what it was that she was talking about.

At dance practice we were once again subjected to one tough drilling after another of our two routines. In the middle of practice several girls ended up crying before Coach gave us a break for ten minutes. As I was almost in tears myself I was grateful for it. “Are you okay Tiffany?” Coach Holt asked me five minutes into the break.

“I’m working on okay,” I told her. “It doesn’t come easy though…” I added.

She gave me a hug and said, “I’m proud of you for sticking with it Tiffany.”

Soon after that though you wouldn’t know it — I was really glad we only had four more weeks left in the season…

 
 

Chapter 34:

 
FRIDAY IN ENGLISH and social studies we worked on outlining a storyline for the film we wanted to make. For the first time in several days I was able to focus on something and threw myself into the project head first. “Okay, so do we agree that this sounds like a good rough sketch?” I asked of the group at the end of English that day. I saw plenty of nods around the table as we looked at the story outline we were looking at.

We’d decided to make it a mystery/adventure style movie. The beginning of the movie was going to start off with a girl going through a normal school day to introduce her and her friends. One of her friends was going to be a geeky kind of guy that was always getting picked on. The next character to be introduced would enter the scene by telling the bullies to knock it off. By the end of the first school day the four main characters would be established, along with three ‘evil’ characters. I already knew I was going to base those characters off of some real life people.

The story continued with the girl arriving home and finding a package waiting for her from her grandfather. It was an old book he had found on his bookshelf that his grandfather had given him. She begins looking through it with interest. While she rifles through the pages a very old folded piece of paper falls out, it contains a letter written in Spanish. Intrigued she would take it to school the next day to show it to her friend that spoke fluent Spanish to interpret. They copy it and her friend spends the night translating it into English, calling her friend who gave it to her excitedly and telling her that it’s talking about hidden gold.

All four friends are eventually involved in finding a secret map on the back of the letter that leads them to way back in the boonies of her grandparents’ ranch. At an early point the three antagonists discover what they’re looking for and follow them on four wheelers out to the area where they’re searching. The three guys jump the friends and tie up three of them while one of them is gone. The rest of the film would involve the friends fighting their way free of their captors and coming back to dig up the large amount of gold.

“I think this sounds awesome!!!” David said. He and Kyle had come up with most of the action parts of the outline, while Amy and I had come up with a lot of the more mysterious pieces of the story. Nikki and Ashley had come up with a cute scene between the main girl and the geeky boy to kiss at the end.

“Yeah, this should totally rock!” Kyle said.

“I’m just really afraid it’s going to be hard to pull off,” I admitted to them honestly. I’d done some research in the past couple months into real filmmaking and this seemed like it might be challenging, especially in the amount of time we had to finish the project.

“Well you said you had some people you could call?” David asked. Amy and I nodded, “Call them and see what they say… If they say no then we’ll go to Plan B.”

“Sounds like as good of a plan as any,” I told them as English class ended.

“Tiffany you want to come over to my house and work on this tonight?” Amy asked. It was Friday, and because we had a practice tomorrow on Saturday, Coach was giving us the night off. “Maybe later… Mom is picking me up to go to…” I stopped. I didn’t like talking about seeing Dr. Reynolds when other people were around anymore. Not that I’d ever really liked talking about the fact that I saw a ‘shrink’ regularly.

“Oh yeah,” she remembered that I’d told her my parents were trying to minimize the amount of school I was missing for a few weeks on account of all the days I’d missed before Christmas. “After dinner maybe?”

“Maybe, I’ll see what my mom says,” I told her.

After school my mom picked me up from the band room and took me into town to be Dr. Reynolds last patient of the day. Dr. Reynolds was concerned about me, I could tell from the looks in her eyes, but gave me praise in my willingness to confront all of my problems. “Tiffany, just be careful, don’t push yourself too hard,” she told me. “I’m glad you do the dance squad and band, but be careful you don’t overload yourself again.”

“I’ll try,” I told her.

Dad ended up meeting us in Albuquerque at a restaurant for dinner since he was already there doing some work. “Hey sweetie,” he said as we walked up to the table he’d gotten for us.

“Hi Daddy,” I told him and gave him a hug. It was a nice surprise; recently it seemed that he worked late more often than not.

Dinner was a quiet affair. I ended up ordering from the kids menu simply because that’s what the waitress brought me. I wasn’t that hungry anyway. “It’s certainly cheaper when you do it that way,” Dad grinned at me as he paid for the check. He was almost as bad as Mom enjoying it when someone mistook me for a little kid.

“So who is staying at whose house tonight?” Mom asked as we drove back home.

“Huh?”

“I’m not stupid silly, I also don’t mind. Which house are you sleeping at tonight?”

“Amy’s?” I said tentatively.

“Okay, but you two have to stay at our house Sunday, okay?”

“Okay,” I told her with a smile. I didn’t really need to pack any clothes since I had a closetful in my bedroom there, so the small gym bag I took mostly just contained Allie, a couple of her outfits, and Emily. After the two of us had hung out for a while, Amy and I turned on her computer. There we worked the rest of the night on beginning a script.

“How long do you think this script needs to be?” She asked me.

“Well in one of the books I have,” I had checked out a couple books again that day during social studies, “says a page of talking is about one minute of screen time…”

“A normal film is what… an-hour-and-a-half at least?” she asked.

“Yeah, something like that. So ninety pages?” I said while feeling like something inside me screamed. Ninety pages seemed like a lot to write, and we didn’t have a whole lot of time to do it. I had also read that sometimes you would film a scene and not use it in the final movie… so it might have to be even longer…

“Wow…”

“Yeah…”

“Well we should probably get started shouldn’t we?” she asked.

“Yeah, but why don’t we look at this example first before we start writing,” I told her. The one book I had in front of me gave us an example script that showed how to write actions and dialogue out the proper way. We spent half-an-hour taking notes on just how to format everything before the two of us started taking turns typing at the computer.

“Girls, are you about ready for bed?” Melanie asked as Amy was taking her turn typing. We’d spent three hours on it and only gotten through a whole seven pages so far. Ninety seemed like so much!

“I guess,” Amy said, obviously feeling the same way I did.

“Okay then let’s get moving, you two have a long day tomorrow.” She added. We carefully saved the file we were working on to the hard drive, and just to be extra careful saved it to a floppy disk too. As I fell asleep that night I dreamt of what it would be like for us to do this and maybe get it setup to go to the big screen for real this time.

 

SATURDAY MORNING I was a little bit worried about having a full day of dance practice. Coach Holt had been pushing us so hard that I didn’t know if it was possible to do much more with the routine. She had us all meet in the gym, instead of the cafeteria. “Okay ladies, we’ve been working really hard this past week, and for a couple months now. I really do appreciate that,” she said with a smile at us. “Today I have some things I want us to get accomplished in the morning, some I want to get accomplished in the afternoon, and then I’m going to let you all go.”

‘For her that could mean killing one of us in the morning, two in the afternoon…’ I thought to myself with a smile forming on my face.

“This morning we’re going to be focusing on the jazz routine. I’d like to introduce to you Mrs. Jamie Tinning.” She said while pointing to a girl who looked to be around college age, “She’s been doing dance competitions like you’re doing for twenty years, and has been coaching groups for over ten,” she must have been older than I thought, I realized, “and she’s here today to help offer you some outside perspective.”

“Hi ladies,” Mrs. Tinning stepped up. “Like your coach said I’ve been doing this a while, and I’m really excited to see how you all are doing. I’ve known your coach since she was your age and she came to a camp where I was working as a counselor.”

‘She’s older than Coach Holt,’ I thought, ‘No way!’ Amy looked at me and I knew she was thinking the same thing. ‘I want to look that good when I’m her age… That makes her at least thirty.’

Mrs. Tinning had continued on unnoticed by me until she said, “Today I’d like for you all to do your routine for me a couple times first and then I’ll make some comments and suggestions. When I feel like we’ve gotten some things done we’re going to try performing it in your performance outfits…”

That elicited a lot of chatter, “They’ve come in?” I heard Kristina ask excitedly. We’d been told we’d wear one of our traditional cheerleading style uniforms with the pleated skirt to the awards ceremonies, but that we would be wearing different outfits for our performances.

“Yes Kristina, girls, they came in yesterday. I’ll hand them out to you once we get this part of the morning accomplished.” She smiled at us and Mrs. Tinning began to work us just as hard without saying nearly as much.

“Okay ladies, let’s see it!” she said as she had us line up in our opening poses.

The music started up and we began the routine. For my part I tried to do every little thing I’d ever been yelled at about — plus everything I knew I had to do besides those. At the end of the routine Mrs. Tinning said, “May I please see it again girls and then I’ll comment?”

Although all of us were slightly out of breath we did as she asked. At the end of that she said, “Okay, let’s talk about what I’m seeing right now…” she proceeded to pick apart the dance, and all of us, like a surgeon — no one was safe. After she made her initial comments she had us go through it by counts without the music and stopped us seemingly after every count. She was right on everything she was saying… but that didn’t make it any easier.

A couple hours later, when we’d actually been able to run through the routine with the music, and without her stopping us, she said, “Coach why don’t you go ahead and get them dressed in their performance clothes?”

“Alright ladies, let’s go down to the locker room…” Coach handed us each a pile of items for our costumes. She had us sit down on the concrete benches in front of the locker before to introduce the outfits to us. “Okay, the first outfit on top should be the jazz outfit,” she told us how we were supposed to use the black and blue camisole top with the black jazz pants. It was a really pretty top, with rhinestones and sequins set in place on it to make it sparkle. It covered just up to below our shoulders with the fabric on the front, and scooped down a little lower in the back. It was cute, and I thought it would probably stay in place pretty well while we were dancing. The shoes were just some black dance shoes which were fairly flexible for us to point our toes in when we needed to.

“The other outfit is your pom routine outfit,” she told us as we all opened up the packaging and looked at it. Of course we’d seen it all in the catalogs, but it wasn’t the same as seeing it in person. Our pom outfit was a unitard that went from our ankles, with straps around our feet, all the way to our wrists. Mainly black, it had a section of bright royal blue across our stomachs, a diagonal stripe of black, and then a navy blue section that came around our neck on one side and around. The sides of the bottom portion had vertical stripes of royal blue. It looked really cute, and in person you could see how it would work really well with the poms we would be using for the routine. Those were bagged underneath everything else.

“Okay, so what do you think?” Coach asked us after we’d all looked at everything.

“They’re cute,” was the general agreement around the locker room.

“Well then go ahead and get into the jazz outfit,” she said. I went into the coaches’ bathroom to change and saw Mrs. Tinning give me kind of a strange look. I just shrugged it off though and put on the uniform, redid my ponytail, and headed back out to the locker room. I saw her talking with Coach Holt as I walked out, and saw her eyes open wider as she looked at me again. I figured she must have asked the question, Coach answered, and she was a little surprised.

We were all dressed in our outfits and posed again in the opening move a little while later. Coach Holt had a video camera out to record us, and we began moving through the routine. While we stayed frozen in our final pose Mrs. Tinning said, “That was very nice girls. If you can fix…” she listed off several things, “then I think you have a really good shot at the state and national level.”

“Well you heard her, fix them,” Coach told us and we ran through the routine again. By the fourth time through in our new uniforms I felt like I was used to the way it felt to move in it. It definitely felt different than the shorts and t-shirt I normally wore at practice.

“Good job ladies, some nice work so far today,” Mrs. Tinning said after our last run through.

“You all can go change back into your practice clothes now, please hang everything neatly in your lockers…” Coach Holt gave us directions on what to do before she brought the food out for us. Lunch was from KFC, and after the long morning of dancing, all of us were starving. During lunch I was actually feeling almost back to normal again. The friendships that surrounded me made things much easier.

“Okay ladies back to work!” Coach told us mercilessly after lunch. We spent time working through the pom routine just like we had the jazz routine. At about three o’clock she had us go change into the unitard we were wearing for the dance and did it five times before she said, “Okay ladies come fall in over here,” she said waving at us to come to the front of the bleachers.

“First off, I would like you all to thank Mrs. Tinning for being here,” we all gave her a round of applause and some shouts of thank you. “Would you like to say anything before I finish up with them?” she asked her.

“Yes actually.” She paused, “Ladies, for a first year dance squad you’re all performing phenomenally. Considering you’re just in junior high I’m sure that the high school dance squad here is going to jump in talent enormously in another couple years. When you go to your competitions in the next couple weeks remember to focus and do everything you’ve practiced… but also remember to smile and have fun with it. This is something that you can only do for a short time in your lives, so enjoy it and good luck,” she told us.

We all gave her a chorus of ‘thank you’s’ again and Coach finished off practice. “I would like you to keep your uniforms at home for now. You’ll bring them back next Saturday. About next Saturday… we’re going to spend the morning and early afternoon working just like we did today with another guest. At four though, we’re going to have a special performance for all of your parents of both routines. You’ll have about five minutes to change from one to the other,” she looked around. “I’m really proud of all of the work you are doing, and I think we’re going to do well. We have to keep up the intensity I saw today all the way until finals at Nationals okay?” She said and we all beamed at her.

“Well then… have a good evening, ladies,” she told us. We all broke up and went back to the locker room to put on clothes more appropriate for the ten degrees it was outside. I made sure I carefully gathered all of the things that went into my uniform and put them into my dance bag. It was almost splitting from all of the stuff in there, but I managed to pull the zipper shut.

“Tiffany?” I heard from behind me. I almost jumped but controlled myself. I turned around and saw it was Mrs. Tinning.

“Yes, Mrs. Tinning?” I asked.

“I have to say I was impressed with you this morning, but I was even more impressed when Coach Holt told me everything you’ve been though this past month. That you’re still coming and participating after being assaulted like that… It’s really inspiring to me to see you continue.”

“Thank you Mrs. Tinning,” I told her feeling embarrassed.

“I run a cheerleading and dance camp in the summer time up in Michigan. She told me that you went to one in California this past year, but if you would like to go up to mine I’ll arrange things so you don’t pay for the camp. You or your friend Amy,” she added.

“That would be fun, I’ll talk to my parents about it,” I told her smiling.

“Good, it was nice meeting you.”

“You too,” I told her as Amy came up and the two of us walked outside to her mom’s car.
Melanie gave us a half-hour to shower and change into some other clothes before the four of us went out to eat. When we came back she acted furious with the two of us for not immediately showing her our outfits, “Come on girls, show me!?” she said impatiently. She wasn’t really furious, but excited.

She made us try on both of the outfits for her and took pictures. Finally at about nine we were able to just kind of relax on the couch in the living room and watch a movie. Amy and I both had our dolls with us. We had both become quite attached to them. Both of our dolls were in pajamas that were close in appearance to the ones we had on. That warranted her mom getting her camera back out while the two of us shrieked in terror. By bedtime that night I felt like I was really feeling myself again.

I would have been completely if it wasn’t for the nightmares I had that night.

 

SUNDAY MORNING AMY and I must have woken at the same time because we appeared at our doors together. We walked into the kitchen to find a big breakfast waiting for us courtesy of Amy’s mom. While we ate, we sleepily traded pages of the comics from the paper. After a while Melanie asked us, “Are you two planning on staying in your pajamas all day?”

I wanted to say, ‘Yes!’, but Amy and I both took our cue to go upstairs and change. As I took a quick shower I couldn’t help but remember parts of the nightmare from last night. It had been awful… instead of coming in to save me; Kyle came in with a knife and stabbed me himself. I shuddered and almost started crying again in the shower. I was so tired of this, ‘why couldn’t I leave that day back in December and move on already?’ As many times as I asked the question, I was still not getting an answer.

Amy and I worked on the script for the film most of the day. By five when mom picked us up to go to our house we had made it another twelve pages into the script, but we were both concerned with how we were ever going to reach ninety soon enough. We had copied it onto two floppy disks, one for each of us, in addition to her hard drive just to be safe. At my house after dinner was over we took over the computer in the den and worked until we had another seven pages done before bed. That brought us up to twenty-eight.

“We’re getting there,” Amy said as we called it a night.

“Yeah,” I said tired from all of the typing we had done. The two of us had traded back and forth so that we’d both typed about an equal amount. Before we called it a night that night I found a business card one of the film producers had given me, as well as a copy of Lilly’s — the head of the Barbie division — so that we could call them the next day. I dreaded going to sleep that night, I knew the nightmares would come again, but I had no choice as Mom sent us to bed and demanded that we be quiet.

Monday morning was rough for everyone thanks to me screaming in the middle of the night. I felt terrible about it, but no one blamed me at least. Mom said she thought I definitely needed to visit Dr. Reynolds again this week. She wanted to ask her if there was anything that could be done to help. I already knew the answer, time would have to pass… even then I would probably still have these nightmares. I knew this from watching talk shows, the few times I was home anymore to watch them, where they talked to rape victims. I hadn’t been raped, but Dr. Reynolds had already told me the experience was just as terrifying.

In social studies class when we asked for permission to go to the computer lab and work on our script, Mr. Randolph asked what we were doing. “Well… we’re going to try and make a movie,” Kyle told him.

“A movie? Like the one you did with Barbies last year?” he asked smiling at Amy, Ashley and me.

“Kinda, but this time we want to use film and real actors, acting out a real story plot,” I told him. “We met some people when we were in New York and we thought we could ask them for help.”

“It has to be your own work though,” he said to us.

“It is and it will be,” Ashley assured him.

“This sounds awfully complicated…” he told us as we had filled him in with more details. “Are you sure you can do this?”

We all nodded. “We at least want to try,” I told him.

“Okay then, why don’t you take this book,” he said while pulling a book off of his shelf, “it tells the factual story of the gold you guys are basing your story from. You can use it as one of the sources for your paper.”

As we finally escaped the room, Ashley, Amy, Kyle, and, I began thinking in overdrive about the script. We showed Ashley and Kyle what we had gotten done over the weekend. “Awesome!” Kyle said. “This is great,” he added as he read another page.

“You two are really good at this,” Ashley said agreeing with him.

“Twenty-seven pages? This is enough already isn’t it?” he asked.

Amy and I shook our heads together, “No, it’ll need to be about ninety pages.” Both of them turned and looked at us incredulous.

“The rule is one page per minute,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Ashley asked doubtfully.

“Yeah, we even tried it out for ourselves yesterday, it’s right about on… sometimes it’s even a little bit less than a minute,” she added the last part with a grimace.

“Do you think we can get that much written in time?” Kyle asked.

“I think Amy and I can get this done if the rest of you can get the research paper part of it done,” I suggested.

“That seems fair,” the two of them agreed. We didn’t get a lot written before the bell rang, just another page, but everyone was thinking on the same track now — and that was worth something. Amy and I managed to spend some more time on it during Algebra when we’d finished up with an assignment early. Mr. Martin actually had a computer in his classroom so we didn’t have to go anywhere to use one. It was enough time to get two pages in, and so the day went. In English we immediately asked for time to work on it in the lab, and Ms. Damien agreed.

Amy and I continued to write the script while the four of them did the research to get the research paper portion of the project done. We’d already decided that the script needed to be written by the end of the week so we didn’t have to worry about it at all after that. Meanwhile the other groups sat and talked, wasting time, not really sure what they were doing. We had returned from a productive four pages when Ms. Damien was chewing out the class. There was just enough time left in class that we decided we should try calling some of the people.

We asked politely for permission and were directed down to the office where we began to ask permission. “Why don’t you ladies call after school when you get home?” One of the secretaries began to give us some lip about it.

“Because we have dance practice,” Amy answered calmly and honestly.

“Please it’s for our project,” I pleaded. Mrs. Henry came out of her office to ask what was going on. ‘Let them call,’ was her simple directive to the reluctant secretary. We decided to call Lilly first.

“Hi may we speak to Lilly?” I asked. Amy was on another phone on the same line.

“Just a moment,” her secretary said.

“Hello, this is Lilly.”

“Hi Lilly, it’s Tiffany Jacobson and Amy Hancock, we’re the girls that…”

“Of course Tiffany and Amy, how are you two?” The conversation was pleasant and she seemed interested by the idea of getting the company involved in helping out. “I’ll have to talk to Billy about this. Have you talked to anyone else yet?”

“No, we were getting ready to call this one guy, Robert, who we met that night.” I said.

“Definitely call him, I have a feeling he’ll be interested in helping too. Call me back on Thursday okay? And we’ll talk more then.”

“Okay!” Amy said excitedly.

The two of us hung up and dialed the other guy, Robert Spencer, who had co-produced the film that had followed ours. He wasn’t a ‘nobody,’ so I wasn’t even sure if he would take our call. Apparently the number he’d given us on his card was nearly a direct line to him. “Hello, Mr. Spencer’s office,” came the polite response from the secretary.

“Hi, my name is Amy Hancock. Mr. Spencer gave my friend and me his number at the film festival in New York in October. He told us to call if we were ever interested in doing another film…. Is he available?” Amy asked politely.

“Hold on just a second and I’ll see,” she said while putting us on hold. We were transferred through several minutes later.

“Hi, I’m Amy Hancock and my friend Tiffany Jacobson is also on the phone with me. We made the Barbie film that preceded yours at the film festival in October,” she said.

“Of course, I remember that, it was delightful!” he said with enthusiasm.

“Thank you,” I said, making sure he did in fact know there were two of us on the line.

“What can I do for you girls?”

“Well…” we outlined what we were trying to do, “…and we were wondering if you might be able to help us get going in any way.”

“My dear girls this sounds like a neat project! Why don’t you send me the script when you finish it up so I can give you some suggestions. In the mean time let me call around to some friends, maybe I can help you get some equipment for your production?” he suggested.

“That would be great!” we gave him Amy’s dad’s number just because he had a secretary and would get the message, “we look forward to hearing from you!”

As we hung up we both jumped up and down and said, “Yes!!!!”

It looked as if we might just be able to get the kind of sponsorship we would need to pull off doing the film and make it look good!