Synopsis

In many ways Tiffany is the newest girl in her small community near Albuquerque, New Mexico. In the whirlwind of the last few weeks she has emerged from the shell of a scared and confused little boy named Brandon. Ever since Tiffany's parents confirmed with her their suspicions of her deepest wants and needs, they've supported her completely. With solid support from her family, her best friend and family and surprisingly, her growing circle of other friends it seems she might have a chance for a successful future.

'Can all this last?' is one of the biggest questions on her mind now. 'Will everyone stick with me when things get tough?' She's had an amazingly easy last couple weeks and she knows it won't last. What will happen when she returns to school? And most importantly, what will her psychiatrist decide? Will her doctor force her to return to living the lie as Brandon? These fears and more whirl in her mind as she looks to an uncertain future.

Daring to Hope is the continuing story of a bright, talented, and beautiful girl, who dares to hope for a future that is one based on happy dreams.

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

Copyright  © 2008 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
 
Last month I finally got around to publishing the first book of this trilogy, Standing Up to Life here at BigCloset. I had been delayed in publishing it there while trying to get it also published by Lulu.com. Well it’s taken me a bit longer on this book to get it up here as well, but here it is!

Like the first book I posted here, I am posting a standard copy of this here at BigCloset, and announcing that I have two versions available for purchasing through My Store at Lulu.com. Back by popular demand is the ebook download of the book. My assumption is that the majority of my readers would be most interested in this edition of the book. If you enjoy this work perhaps you will consider supporting me by purchasing it from my store($3.00 for the ebook). I also have a hardback edition that is available, and will work on making a paperback edition available as well here in the coming weeks. With both the paperback and hardback editions I hope to have them available through Amazon.com in a couple months as well, and will offer to have Erin sell it through her Amazon page at that time.

Thank you to all of you, my amazing readers! Your comments have kept me going through some times when I thought I would never be able to write or edit another minute! Speaking of editing, thanks to my amazing editor, Carla Ann, for helping me out with this large work. Now that this project is coming to a close I hope to be able to focus solely on Book 3, and have that ready for you all this summer. Since it is the concluding book of the series I wish to be sure that it’s done right. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this book!

     -Tiffany Shar

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Chapter 27
 
 

EVENTUALLY I MUST have fallen completely asleep, because Dad came in and did this, "Tiffany it’s time to wake up," thing that drove me nuts! Though this morning was a little different because I realized just what day it was. With that thought I quickly hurried through getting ready to go on the trip.

We had all been told that we’d need to wear ‘dressier’ clothes for the trip today, Friday, and Saturday. Sunday could be casual, but the rest of the days we needed to be wearing nicer attire. Again, no one really gave us any real reason for it, just that we should do it.

Of course this didn’t bother me a bit. I could be as pretty as I wanted to be! I had a cute dress I decided to wear for today, had a skirt/blouse combination for tomorrow, and another skirt/blouse for Saturday. I really enjoyed getting my hair just right that morning since I loved my new hairstyle. By the time I got into the car to drive to the airport I was bouncing off the walls.

When we pulled up to the airport parking lot I put my backpack on and rolled my two suitcases behind me. Mom was carrying the bag that had our dresses in it, as well as dad’s tux, and pulling another bag. Dad in the meantime grabbed the last two bags along with his extraordinarily heavy briefcase bag. I’d tried to pick it up to move it earlier and had barely been able to move it across the room, let alone carrying it on a trip!

I had peeked in there and saw that he had his new laptop in there that he got last week. It was an IBM laptop that was running the windows version that had been released a few weeks earlier. It was definitely a shiny new toy — I was more than a little bit jealous of him having it. The laptop was a lot lighter than one of the old ‘portable’ computers he used to have for work. This was actually light enough to carry around — but it still added up in his bag.

Next to that he had two gigantic parts catalogs that he was looking through for some project he was doing. He also had notebooks and other things; all in all it easily weighed fifty pounds! I had told him he should leave some of it at home — but he didn’t seem to agree. As long as I didn’t have to carry it I guess I didn’t care that much.

We were just getting ready to walk towards the counter when I heard footsteps running up behind me. Amy was positively bouncing too as we all went up to the counter together. Amy’s dad had everyone’s tickets — his friend had sent them to him. He handed my dad all of our tickets for us to check in with. Once the clerk printed off the boarding passes I asked my dad to see mine.

"We’re in first class?" I asked my dad incredulously.

He smiled, "That’s one of the cool things that Mattel set up for us on this trip."

"Cool." I said to him. "Amy did you know that we’re in first class?" I said as I walked over to her.

"Are you serious?" I nodded. "Oh this’ll be so much better than the Florida trip then. I’ve only gotten to fly first class once, but it was really cool!" she told me.

The two of us just began talking about nothing while we waited for the rest of the group to show up. We didn’t have to wait long since Ashley and Nikki arrived with parents in hand shortly after that.

"Tiffany I love your hair!" Nikki told me. "Ooh and you two got your nails done too?" She asked jealously. Ashley and Nikki both looked at both of our nails in admiration.

"Next time you two get your nails done you have to invite us too, okay?" Ashley said.

"Okay," I told them.

As their parents checked everyone in I asked Ashley, "Where are your sisters staying while you’re gone?"

"Oh they’re staying at home. Mom and Dad said they thought they could trust them. They were given instructions to not have any ‘wild parties’ this weekend." She then whispered to me, "they are going to have some friends over tomorrow night though." She giggled a bit with that.

After they checked everyone in we went up to the gate area. Dad forgot to take his pocket knife out of his pocket so the alarm went off. He handed it to the security officer who examined it, waved him through the detector, and gave it back to him. "Don’t forget to take that and put it in a container with your keys next time sir," the officer told him.

"Sorry about that," he had replied.

Once I saw that everything was fine there I began skipping down the hallway to the gate. When we got there Amy, Ashley, Nikki, and I all sat down together on the floor and played with some cards that Nikki brought. They also had to ask about what happened yesterday with our meeting. Amy and I gave them the abbreviated version of what had happened.

"Tiffany, Amy, this just sucks. I’m tired of these idiots doing this crap." Ashley said.

"Me too," I told her.

"Maybe if you make the dance squad next week it’ll help things out?" Nikki suggested.

"I have a feeling it’s going to make it worse actually," I told them. "Things seem to have gotten worse ever since people began to realize that I intend to try out."

"Unfortunately I think you’re right Tiff," Amy told me.

"Enough about this! I’m sick of talking about this. Has anyone gotten any more information about what we’re doing out of their parents?" I asked.

Everyone shook their heads. "I intend to torture my dad until he speaks tonight though," Amy said. "He told me that once we get to New York he’ll tell us most of what we’re doing this weekend."

"Most?" I asked with a pained expression.

"Yes most of what we’re doing," her dad said from behind me.

"Uh… hi!" I told him. "You know you’re not supposed to listen to us," I told him with a smile.

"Yes I am. How else can I drive you all nuts? Between you, Amy, and my wife I’m so outnumbered I can’t win otherwise."

"I see… still it’s not fair." I said.

"I’ll tell you almost everything when we get to the hotel. I do want to save a couple things for a surprise alright?" He said.

"Alright..." I said.

In what seemed like no time after that we heard the boarding call for our flight. There were twelve of us all together, and we basically took up all of first class on our plane. I was so excited to sit there in first class, the seats were a lot more comfortable than the ones that we’d sat in on the Florida trip. This was also only going to be my fifth plane ever and that excited me a lot too.

The excitement quickly faded into a nap though as we settled into a cruising altitude. It was a little over a three hour flight to Atlanta, and I slept for about two hours of that. I had woken up briefly for the breakfast they had fed us, and to go to the bathroom once, but other than that I just kind of enjoyed sleeping. Amy and I had sat together, with Nikki and Ashley sitting together across the aisle, they had all basically slept the whole way too.

When we got to Atlanta we were led through the terminal to another part of the airport. After discovering that we had an hour to kill, we all got lunch at a Burger King there. It was a quick lunch though and before we knew it we were getting on another plane. This one was a lot larger though! Our group still took up a large portion of first class, but there were a lot more seats in this plane for that.

Throughout the trip to New York from Atlanta, Amy and I just talked about everything that came to mind. As the stewardess came by to serve us some food she saw our nails. "Wow, I love those nails ladies," she told us.

"Thanks!" we both said together.

"I really love your hair too," she told me.

I blushed and said, "Thanks."

"It looks good on you."

The rest of the trip to New York was over before we knew it. As we flew into the city it was like something out of a movie. I couldn’t believe just how cool the city looked — it was gigantic. How would we ever find our way around down there?

At the airport we got off of our plane and were met at the gate by Al, Amy’s Dad’s friend that had first set some of this in motion. "Hi Al, how are you doing?" he asked him.

"I’m doing great, how about yourself?" Al answered.

"Better now that we’re away for a few days," he answered truthfully.

Everyone was reintroduced to each other, or in my case introduced. There was a little bit of small talk before we all managed to break politely and run into the restrooms. Once we were done with that we went to the baggage claim to pick up our stuff. Al led us outside to where a short bus waited for us.

Inside I was pleasantly surprised to see it was even nicer than the busses we’d had in Florida, and we all comfortably stored everything in there. "I hope you all don’t mind this for transportation. It seemed like the easiest solution to get the twelve of you around this weekend. You will have a limo tomorrow night though," he told us with a smile.

"A limo?" I asked incredulously.

"Absolutely, you’re going to be the stars of the first part of the evening tomorrow night!" he said.

Wow… things had gotten larger than life very quickly with this. We sat in the bus for probably the better part of an hour as it wound its way through the city and traffic. In the meantime I just stared out the windows in awe of this city of skyscrapers. Albuquerque had a few ‘sky scrapers,’ but they weren’t even close to this tall, and there weren’t this many of them. It was really strange to be that closed in by buildings… It was kind of cool, but I instantly knew there was no way I could ever live in a place like this.

After what seemed like a long time we pulled up into the check-in area at our hotel. I read the sign, The Waldorf-Astoria, it looked really nice. I could even see a guy in a uniform standing there to open the door for people! As we pulled up a bellhop placed our luggage on a cart and we were led inside. Al had already checked in for us, so the bellhop took us directly upstairs to our rooms.

To say that the hotel was extravagant to my eyes would be to say that Rembrandt was just another artist… My mind was certainly having an overload and imagining how much it must cost to stay at a place like this. The paintings, marble, crystal chandeliers, and everything else we passed were gorgeous!

Each family was given a small one bedroom suite that had a sitting area with a fireplace in it. Everything inside the room was lavishly done and I couldn’t even begin to comprehend it all. I remembered seeing a thing inside the hotel in Florida that said the rate of the rooms, I decided to look really quickly to see what the rate was on this room. It said $2,000 per night.

"Wow," my parents said after they had looked around the room a bit. I couldn’t have said it any better if I’d tried. I also looked through a leather book they had inside that discussed the hotel. The line that t-shirts and shorts were not to be worn inside any of the public areas continued to hammer into me that I was in a completely different world!

AFTER WE’D FRESHENED up a little bit everyone met inside the Hancock’s room in their sitting area. "So what are we doing this weekend Daddy?" Amy asked.

"I don’t know… maybe I shouldn’t tell you still…" At this point she jumped up from where she was sitting and hit him on the arm multiple times. "Alright, alright, I’ll tell you," he said.

"Tonight we’re going to go out for dinner at a nice restaurant. From there we’re going to go up the Empire State Building to look at the city."

"That sounds cool," Ashley said.

"Yeah," Nikki agreed.

"So that’s today, what about tomorrow?" I asked. I knew we didn’t have a lot of time left in the day so it made sense that we weren’t doing much tonight.

"Well tomorrow morning we thought it might be fun to go stand in the crowd for the Today Show to start things off." Mr. Hancock said.

"Wow, that sounds cool," I said.

"What else Daddy?" Amy asked.

"Well after we get a chance to stand around there for a bit we’ll kill an hour walking around the plaza there before walking down Fifth Avenue and doing some window shopping there. We’ll eat down there and then go to an art museum for a little bit before you ladies are off to get your hair ready for the night."

"I just got my hair done…" I started to say.

"Just wait Tiffany, we’re going to get it done slightly differently for the night. Trust me," Amy’s mom said with a big smile.

"Okay, I trust you."

"Plus this way we’ll be able to get Ashley and Nikki’s nails done like you two got done." She told us.

"Really?" Ashley and Nikki said in near unison. They were both smiling really big from that one.

"Then what?" Amy asked.

"We’re going to go have dinner with the Mattel executives at five, then we’ll go to the film festival where your film is going to show at 7:30, we’ll watch the main film at 8, and then around 10 we’ll be going to the after show party that they’re going to have for the festival."

"Wow that sounds cool," Nikki said. We all voiced our agreement.

"So is Al going to eat dinner with us?" I asked. He had dropped us off at our rooms, but then he hadn’t come in for this meeting so I was curious.

"Yes, he’s the one paying for the meal," he told me. "He’s also the one who chose the restaurant we’re going to."

"So when do we leave for dinner?" Ashley’s dad, Mr. Sanders asked.

"Whenever you all are ready," he said.

With that we started to make our way back downstairs where our small bus was waiting for us. It turned out that it was a limousine company’s answer for slightly larger groups that needed to get places. As we were driving down the street to get to the restaurant we were going to the driver pointed out that there were some cokes in a cooler compartment if we wanted some. They probably charged for them… but we weren’t paying for it anyway.

We pulled up to the restaurant about forty-five minutes later. As we walked in I could see why we had been told to dress nicely for the trip. Even besides the hotel requiring you to dress nicely, this restaurant was definitely not a place you were going to walk into with shorts and t-shirt on!

Al walked up to the host when we got there and we were all invited to follow him. The inside of the restaurant certainly didn’t disappoint either — it was a gorgeous dining area. We were led to a very large half-circle booth. It actually had a path down the center of it for easier access to the center of the table. We ended up having a ‘kids’ section of the table, while the adults sat farther down on the table. I was sitting on the inside along with Amy, with Nikki on her right, and Ashley on my left. Al was on the other side of Ashley, next to Mr. Hancock.

As I looked through the menu I had some more sticker shock. The cheapest entrée on the menu was sixty dollars! Anything that looked good was well into the eighty dollar range. My parents seemed to be gasping across the table too — particularly my dad — about the prices. Al seemed to have sensed this from not just my parents, but Ashley and Nikki’s as well.

"Order whatever you guys want — as expensive as you want. We’re picking up the tab for your meals on this trip." He told us.

"Thank you," Amy and I said politely.

"You’re welcome ladies." He said before everyone went back to staring at the menu.

This restaurant seemed to take particular pride in their steaks. They also had lobster combined with steak on the menu. I had lobster for the first time a couple years before while we were on a trip through Nevada ($4.99 steak and lobster deal at a casino), and had fallen deeply in love with it. I was more than slightly curious to see what a hundred and twenty dollar meal tasted like…

"Amy, do you think it’s alright to order this?" I asked her.

"I don’t see why not… he said anything right?" She said. "Besides… I was kind of curious too!" She and I giggled a bit before the glare from Amy’s mom and my mom made us act serious again.

When the waiter came by for our drink orders Amy and I both ordered cherry cokes. They said they didn’t have ‘cherry coke,’ but they could make some with grenadine. I didn’t know what that was but it sounded interesting so we ordered them. Dad couldn’t resist the margarita that was listed on their drink menu. At thirty dollars I hoped it was good. We also placed appetizer orders for a variety of things — mostly fried.

My mom caught my attention, "Tiffany, what are you ordering?"

"Steak and Lobster?"

"I had a feeling you’d say that." She told me.

"Why?"

"Ever since we made the mistake of feeding you lobster that’s the first thing you’ve wanted to order. Of course we haven’t let you order it except in the casinos…" She told me.

I wanted to stick my tongue out at her so bad… but resisted. The people in the restaurant might get a little unhappy with that. "I’ll stick my tongue out you later," I told her quietly. She just smiled in reply.

The thought of the casinos brought back some fun memories of going to Nevada to visit some family. We would often go eat in the casino restaurants because they were so cheap. Obviously the price of steak and lobster there was amazing compared to here in New York.

"Ashley, what are you ordering?" I asked her.

"I think I’m going to get the same thing as you guys — it sounds interesting." She told me.

"Have you had lobster before?" I asked her.

"Yeah — a few times. My dad’s TV station takes us out occasionally for parties at some restaurants and I get it then."

"Cool." I said.

About that time the waiter came back with the drink orders. The cherry cokes tasted really good after all of the traveling today — I decided I really liked the way they made them. He also brought the appetizers fairly soon after that. After delivering those the waiter began taking our food orders. I was really impressed that he somehow kept it all in his head and didn’t write anything down. "And you ladies?" he asked us.

Ashley was first up ordering the steak and lobster, followed by me, then Amy, then Nikki decided to be different and ordered some chicken instead. I quickly looked at the price and saw it was only a mere ninety-dollars. After chatting amongst ourselves for a bit Al turned to us and asked, "So what do you ladies think of New York so far?"

"It’s cool… but really strange," I told him. "It’s strange to only see buildings around us, instead of seeing sky and stuff."

"I agree. I’m glad my company is based in California," he told me. "It’s a lot more open than this in that area too."

We all talked to him about a lot of things as we waited for our dinners to arrive. As the appetizers came out he began asking us about the different things that we did in school. When it came out that I played saxophone he asked, "Have you ever been to a jazz club?"

I shook my head, "No, it would be really cool to go to one sometime. Mrs. Remar has been talking about starting up a jazz band… I just don’t know if I can even fit it into my schedule." I told him.

"You should try, it’s a great thing to be able to play," he told me.

"I’d like to." I told him.

He talked to all of us for the duration of the time it took to get our food. Once our food got there we were all completely taken in with eating the food. I didn’t normally eat that much… but the steak and the lobster were so tasty that there was no way that I could leave it on the plate. Thankfully the portions weren’t too ridiculously large — the food was just really good. I wasn’t sure it was a hundred-and-twenty dollars good or not, but it was good.

After I finished eating what I could the four of us girls ended up going to the restroom together. When we sat back down the waiter came back to get a dessert order and talked to us for a few moments. "So what’s the special occasion?" He asked us.

"We’re here because a video we made is going to be shown tomorrow at a film festival." I said.

He mentioned the name of the festival, "is that the one?" He asked.

"Yeah, you’ve heard of it?" I asked him.

"It’s probably our biggest film festival here. I actually managed to get some tickets for the main film tomorrow night," He said.

"Well then you’ll get to see our film," Amy said excitedly.

"You’re in that main film?" He asked with some surprise.

"No, it’s just being put at the front of it. We’re not really sure why they decided to do that, but it’s pretty cool." Nikki told him.

"What’s your film about?" He asked. We each chimed in to describe it, his words following that were, "well that sounds cute…" I’m pretty sure he was just being polite — his eyes just kind of said something about his honesty at that moment.

"Everyone seems to think it is," I told him. He took the dessert orders from the grownups at that point while we decided to skip it. We were all way too full. Of course that changed when I saw that Amy’s mom and dad had ordered a dessert that was on fire.

"Whoa, that’s cool!" I said. "What is that?"

"It’s called Cherries Jubilee," her dad told me.

"Why does it burn like that?" the pyro in me was dying to know.

"It’s a type of alcohol," Amy’s mom answered.

"Can I try a little bit of it?" I asked. I was dying to know what a flaming food tasted like. Once the flame died out they gave all of us a spoonful of it to try — I found it to be quite tasty.

"You probably shouldn’t eat that much of it at your age though," my mom told me. "We don’t want you getting drunk," she added.

"But the alcohol burns off right?" Amy asked.

"Not all of the way. Most of the way, but not all of the way," her mom answered.

We finished dessert about eight-thirty and went out to where our bus was waiting for us. I guess Al must have given him an approximate time we would be done by. I was really glad he had picked up the tab; I had caught a glimpse of the check and it was over eighteen-hundred dollars! That was like three months of my parents’ house payments.

From the restaurant we left as planned to go the Empire State Building. Apparently we had already traveled most of the way to the building, so it only took us another twenty minutes to get there. As I watched all of the pedestrians on the streets I wondered if it wouldn’t have been quicker to have walked. They seemed to be moving faster than our bus was.

Eventually though we arrived there. Somehow Al had already secured tickets for us to the 102nd floor observatory. The whole idea of going to the 102nd floor of a building just about blew my mind. As we traveled up I felt my ears pop. My dad in particular was incredibly intrigued by how high we were going and some of the technical details of the building.

From that observatory level we were able to see all around the city. I had been higher than this of course when up in the mountains… but there was something about knowing the buildings below you were already taller than what you were used to, and realizing that you were looking down on them that was just cool. Plus, as my dad pointed out, ‘someone had to come up this high and build this…’

About that time Al pointed out to us that the World Trade Center buildings were taller. He just had recommended coming here because it was easier for us to get to.

Amy and I skipped from window to window looking around at the lights that had become visible as it had gotten dark. I did feel bad for Ashley though… apparently she was terrified of heights. Even through the glass she was still incredibly scared of looking out at the city. She hung back far enough away from the windows so she couldn’t see down. Amy, Nikki, and I were all really nice to her about it though.

The cameras came out and we took some pictures from up there. Al was nice enough to be the one to take them for us. As we rode the elevator down he looked at his watch. "How about one more stop?" He asked our parents.

"Where to?" Mr. Sanders asked.

"Well Tiffany mentioned that she plays saxophone and Nikki also plays in band. Would you guys like to stop by a jazz club on the way back to the hotel?" He offered.

"Really?" I asked.

"That sounds cool," Amy answered.

"Yeah," Nikki added.

"I’m fine with it," Amy’s mom said, "We’re still on mountain time anyway, so it still only feels like about seven to us."

They all agreed with it and we met up with our bus driver outside. Nikki asked the driver a question that was on all of our minds, "So what do you do while we’re inside somewhere?"

"I just go find a good place to park this thing until about the time you all say you’ll be ready. Then I just try and find a place where I can pick you up."

"Oh. Well thanks for driving us," she told him.

"You’re very welcome Miss," he told her with a smile.

We drove around for a bit before pulling up in front a building that had a blue neon saxophone and trombone sign in front of it. The driver had recommended this as being a good club to go to — so we all went inside. Al paid the cover charge and made sure that we could come in as long as we had our parents with us. The club owner was fine with that and we found some seats near where the band was set up.

The band was already playing as we sat down. There was a saxophone player, a trumpet player, a trombone player, a bass player, a piano player, and a drummer all setup on a small stage. The bass player had a microphone in front of him and at that moment was singing a song that I guessed must have been called, ‘Nice Work If You Can Get It,’ he kept repeating that over and over again. When they finished playing we applauded along with the couple dozen other people that were in the club.

We sat and listened for more than an hour-and-a-half, and what I found out later were ‘two sets,’ before we were forced to leave by our parents. I had really enjoyed watching the saxophone player play some really incredibly hard sounding songs. They had played a mix of songs that were just them playing and songs that they did vocals with. All of them were incredibly gifted musicians — and I could only wish I would be able to play that well some day. The band actually came and mingled with us during their break. When I told them I played sax they told me to do all the things I was already doing (private lessons and practicing) and I’d be able to play like that some day… Yeah right!

As we left the club the traveling did seem to be catching up with me a bit. I was starting to feel a bit tired — but I wasn’t about to let my parents see it if I could help it. When we got back to the hotel, we all said goodnight to each other before heading to each family’s room.

I put on a pair of purple pajamas I had brought with me, got out my stuffed tiger that I had brought with me, and climbed into bed. As I went to sleep I wasn’t sure which was the dream, and which was reality. What would tomorrow be like? Would this strange moment in life continue? I was really excited to see what the new day would bring.
 
 
Chapter 28
 
 
MOM WOKE ME way too early in the morning — or at least it felt like it. I looked at the clock and saw it was only six in the morning. My mind did some quick math and realized it was actually four in the morning to my body. Groan.

I did my best to make myself look decent since we were going to try and be on TV. I managed to look pretty good actually. I really liked the light pink skirt that I was wearing with the blouse that I had on. I had thrown on some white tights this morning underneath on my mom’s advice. It wasn’t overly chilly today, but this morning was only Sixty Degrees. I didn’t want to freeze too badly outside while we were standing. I figured I could always strip them off in a bathroom somewhere if I got too hot.

When we met the group outside of our room I found that the other girls had worn tights too. "Well you all look nice," Mr. Hancock told us all.

"Thanks," we all said.

"Let’s go downstairs and get some breakfast before we head off to Rockefeller Center," he told us.

When we got downstairs we went to one of the hotel restaurants and sat down to a meal that we put on our room tab. Our parents all sat together at a couple tables while Ashley, Nikki, Amy, and I sat down at our own table. I had a lot of trouble eating anything that morning — it was early, and I was so excited for everything that was going on today! We left the hotel in the bus again for the relatively close destination.

When we got close to Rockefeller the driver suggested we just get out and walk from there — it was going to take a while through the traffic. The adults agreed with that and we began walking. It was kind of cool to walk down the streets of New York, but it was kind of lame because our mom’s all made us hold hands together. I felt like I was four.

When we finally got there we managed to find a spot along the fence built to keep the crowd from entering their area outside the studio. We ended up waiting about thirty more minutes after that before they actually began the show. There were monitors on the outside of the building to where we could see the show as it was going on — that was cool.

As time went on Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel both came out at various times to talk to the crowd and shake hands. Mom got a picture of Amy and me with each of them, as well as Willard Scott. Honestly it was just a fun experience. We ended up leaving before the show was completely finished though — our feet were getting tired. I was fairly sure that we ended up being visible on TV though! Amy’s parents had recorded it on their VCR, so we’d have to look when we got home.

By this point it was only about eight-thirty, and not much was open. Most of the shops along Fifth Avenue wouldn’t open till ten, and we needed to kill time. Mr. Sanders spotted a ‘Starbucks’ coffee shop that he said we needed to visit. I had heard a little bit about Starbucks, but hadn’t ever gone to one before. The coffee shop seemed cozy and everyone ordered a drink.

My dad’s reaction to his coffee was priceless… I swear I thought he was going to spit it out. "What is this stuff? Crude Oil?" Needless to say he wasn’t a big fan of the coffee. The other girls and I had all ordered hot chocolates — and honestly I thought they were pretty good. It was an ‘experience’ and we were able to kill some time there for a bit. Eventually the adults decided we could get our exercise in and start walking towards Saks Fifth Ave.

We got to the area about five minutes till ten and just stood around for a few moments until the store was opened up. Before we went in Mom came over to me, "Look Tiffany we’re browsing, not buying, don’t get your eyes too set on anything," she told me with a wink.

I didn’t know exactly what she meant until we got inside and I saw just how expensive of a store it was. They even had real fur coats and stuff. Looking at things like shoes and purses that started at five-hundred dollars made me quickly understand what she meant. Even Amy’s parents, by far the best off of our families, didn’t do much more than entertain themselves with sticker shock. They were more practical than those prices.

By far the most sticker shock I received was looking at some of the fur coats that were well above five grand. How could anyone ever spend this kind of money on something? I couldn’t understand it for the life of me.

From there we started moving down the street gawking at everything just like the tourists we were. We took some pictures in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral — it was a really cool looking church. My favorite store that we went to at first was Cartier Jewelers. I couldn’t believe all of the beautiful jewelry and things that they had for sale. There were so many necklaces that I would have loved to own… too bad I didn’t have a spare thirty grand for the one I really liked!

By the time we left there Amy, Ashley, Nikki, and I were all talking and plotting about how we would become rich enough to own things like that. Nikki made the most practical solution, "Marry some rich guy Tiff!" We all chuckled at that as we moved on down the street.

"I can’t believe how many people walk here, and how busy the streets are," I told Amy.

"I know Tiffany, this is absolutely nuts. I mean you see movies and hear about it in class and everything — but nothing compares to seeing it in real life." She said.

We walked in and out of numerous high end clothing shops for our enjoyment, and even tried on a couple dresses in one store. I liked the way I looked in one of them — but the thousand dollar price tag was certainly out of the question. Apparently we dressed like we could possibly afford stuff though — because I don’t recall once being given a rude comment or glare that we shouldn’t be there. If they only knew that my skirt came from Penney’s!

The next major stop that we made was at my namesake, Tiffany’s. It was such a cool store — we all had a blast looking at everything in there. Of course plenty of sticker shock ensued there too, but that was okay. Somehow we left there and arrived at FAO Schwartz just before noon. That store took the place of Cartier’s as my favorite store really quickly.

Yes, we were all basically at the age that we were going to be giving up Barbie dolls and other toys… but not that day. We all went wild looking at all of the dolls they had there — as well as all of the stuffed animals. I decided to spend my birthday money there and get a really cute stuffed tiger. I had decided right then I wanted to start my own collection of them!

All the other girls bought something from the store before we were hustled off to go get something to eat. We didn’t actually go far, there was a café in the store that we went and ate at. It was overpriced food… but it tasted good after all of the walking we had done. My feet definitely were happy to have taken a rest. I’d worn some pink sandals with a slight heel that matched my skirt that day — I really liked how cute they were, but they were killing my feet!

Once we had finished with lunch the adults decided just to walk the remaining block to Central Park. All of us were groaning a bit about our feet, so Amy’s dad came up with the best solution for us to be able to see the park and rest our feet — a horse and carriage ride!

It took a few of the carriages for us to all get in, but it was well worth it. Before we actually left Mom took a picture with us sitting in one carriage together. Many other pictures were taken as we rode through the park area and the streets. The rides weren’t cheap, but it was definitely worth it. When we had our fill of that Mr. Hancock decided it was time to start heading back up towards the hotel. He told us it was time for another New York Experience for that — the subway.

For someone who’s never grown up around that system it’s absolutely mind boggling. Going down underneath the street and traveling underground was cool. I was really surprised by just how easy it was to use the subway. It didn’t take us long to get back closer to our hotel and emerge from the tunnel. "That was really really cool!" Nikki said as we emerged.

"Yeah it was," Ashley replied.

"What’s next?" I asked. I’d taken a quick glance at a clock and seen that it was already two-thirty.

"We’re going to get back to the hotel and all you ladies are going to go ahead to the salon to get your hair ready for tonight." Dad told me.

"Cool," I said. "What are you going to do?"

We walked into the lobby as he said, "I think we’re just going to hang out here at the hotel while you’re gone. Mr. Sanders and I both have some work things we need to check on — and this seems like a good time for it."

"Fun…" I said sarcastically.

We all went upstairs really quick to use the restroom, then all of the moms and girls came downstairs to where the bus driver was waiting for us again. Amy’s mom gave him the address that we were going to and we were off. It took about thirty minutes to get there, with the driver doing his best to stay off the ‘main’ streets. The address was a really exclusive looking salon — it looked even more so than the one back home, you had to be buzzed in to be admitted.

As we went inside the receptionist greeted us. "You must be the Hancock party?" She asked.

"Yes," Amy’s mom answered.

"Give me just a moment, Ramona wanted to greet you personally." The receptionist spoke into a phone and another lady came out.

She introduced herself and said, "I’m so glad my friend called me. When she told me what you all were doing today I couldn’t have been happier to help out. This is a really neat experience for your daughters," she said. Her mom agreed and made some small talk for a few moments before we were moved us into the salon. I had done this a couple times by now, and Amy many more than that, but Ashley and Nikki were totally amazed by what was happening. Amy quietly commented to me on this and we both giggled a little. I was glad to see our other two friends getting to have such a neat experience!

For me there wasn’t a lot to be done. They worked on my hair for maybe forty minutes — making it look really pretty. They seemed to be going for that whole ‘prom’ type look with it — and I found myself with a number of tight curls around my head. They also added some beads and stuff that did add quite a bit of sophistication to the look. I definitely stared at myself for a while after they finished with me. I was done about the same time as Amy since we both had gotten our nails done already we only took half the time of everyone else. The ladies working on us had added makeup to both of us since we begged our moms to let us for tonight. They’d agreed that it was our night and let us.

Amy’s mom emerged next, looking as beautiful as ever, followed by Nikki and Ashley’s mom. When my mom came out I just about fell over. They had managed to do some things with her that made her appear much prettier than she normally looked. "Mom you look great!" I told her and gave her a hug.

"Thank you sweetie, you look very pretty too."

Nikki and Ashley were the last two to come out. They both had longer hair so there was more that they had been able to do with their hair. Both of them looked stunning as well, and I had little doubt that the pictures we would take later would be something we would all treasure for the rest of our lives. When we left the owner said, "Good luck tonight ladies, and congratulation!"

We all said our thanks and headed back out to where the bus was waiting. The bus driver managed to get us back to the hotel in record time where we had to quickly hurry and change into our dresses and get ready. I’d brought my new earrings and necklace that I’d gotten last week to wear with the dress. I know that I’m a little biased, but I think I looked gorgeous that night. My parents told me that too. Perhaps all of this was going to my head?

Naw.
 
 
Chapter 29
 
 
WHEN WE RETURNED to the hotel I noticed Dad had a worried expression on his face, but I just put it up to his nerves about wearing a Tux. I think the last time he’d worn one was at their wedding. We gathered downstairs and found two limousines waiting to take us to a restaurant that we were meeting Al and the rest of the Mattel executives.

Everyone was reintroduced as we met at the entrance of the restaurant that specialized in French Cuisine. There was ‘Billy,’ the CEO of the company, Lilly, the head of the Barbie division, Amanda, Billy’s executive assistant, Al, and Dave, the head of their marketing division. They were all dressed very classy. As we were led to the table that we would be dining at the wait staff was kind enough to pull the chairs out for us, and push them in.

As I looked at the menu I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to eat. Most of the menu was in French, something I didn’t understand at all, so I had no idea of what anything was to order it. Amy seemed to be having the same problem as I was. We both finally ended up asking the waiter for help — which he was more than happy to give. I ended up ordering a salmon dish in a ‘beur blanc’ sauce. Amy ended up with a chicken dish called ‘chicken kiev,’ that I had never heard of before. She said that she’d had it somewhere before and enjoyed it.

That night dinner seemed to fly by, with conversation happening in friendly tones with everyone. Lilly, the Barbie division head, ended up asking me how I was doing as Tiffany. Mr. Hancock had of course had to call them to see if they could get the credits redone, and also to warn them that it would be four girls instead of three girls and a boy this time. I told her things were going about as well as I expected them to go — but that it had been a long week. The topic was behind quickly though, and instead we talked about what they thought would happen tonight.

"Why did they decide to put our film with this one?" I asked Billy.

"Well the film that they’re doing tonight is a mystery film that’s very much on the serious side. The main films producers’ wanted something fun to open the night off with — and when they heard about your movie they thought that would be a great one to use. I guess once the film festival’s organizers saw your film they had a blast with it — and helped put a bug in the film producer’s ears about it."

"Cool," I said.

"Yes it is. You girls should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished — no matter what happens tonight." He told us.

"We are," Nikki replied to him.

"So have you all considered doing another film of some sort?" Lilly asked me.

"I don’t know. Probably not something with Barbies again… maybe at some point if we have another class project that we can do something like this for."

Talk finished eventually and we headed off to the theater where the main film of the night was to be shown. From dinner we had learned that there were four theaters in a close area that were being used for the festival. Except for tonight, all of them were running in parallel — each showing a different film at all times.

There were also some workshops being held along with a tradeshow in a hotel nearby. We decided we wanted to go to that for a little bit the next day — just for curiosity sake. As we pulled up to the theater I could see there was actually red carpet leading to the sidewalk where we were dropped off by the limo’s. It was like something out of a movie really… it was cool. There weren’t a lot of press people around, but several camera flashes did go off as we walked inside. They of course had no idea who we were — but obviously we seemed to be important!

Just outside the door we were met by someone who checked us off on the guest list. "If you will all follow Gerald here he’ll lead you to your seats," he told us.

Gerald led us to some very nice seats in the theater and we all just kind of stood around looking at the people that were there. Realistically we were dressed very nicely, and I think we looked pretty enough to be there, but we were way out of our league with the type of people that were hanging around inside. This was a fairly large social event for the weekend and the upper crust of New York had come out in force. I saw several actors and actresses that I recognized — knowing at least a couple of them were in the film that we were preceding.

A few minutes later a couple of well dressed, older gentlemen came over to us. "Hi, I’m Stuart, this is Robert, we’re the producers of the main film tonight. I take it you all are the ladies that created the film that is starting the evening?" he asked.

"Hi, I’m Tiffany," I told him. "This is Amy, Nikki, and Ashley," I said as we stepped into the aisle where we could talk easier.

Our parents actually decided to just stay off to the sidelines for this — they recognized that this was our show. We talked with them about it for about ten minutes or so before Robert asked, "I’m curious… I can’t tell. Just how old are you ladies?"

Amy fielded this one, "Well we’re all twelve, Tiffany just turned twelve last week actually."

"What grade are you all in?" he asked incredulously.

"We’re in seventh grade." Nikki told him.

"And you guys already created a film of this caliber?" He asked.

"Well… I thought it was fun project… I don’t know what you mean about ‘this caliber’ though," I told him.

"We screened it last week to see if it was what we wanted to do or not — and we were really blown away by it. Yes it was juvenile, but you all did a great job with what you were trying to do. You were the director right?" He asked.

"That’s what we put in the credits — but really everyone worked a lot on it," I told him.

"We made her put her name as director because that’s what she did," Nikki said.

"Yeah, really she’s a lot of the reason it came out so well," Ashley added.

I was blushing intensely by this point. "Uh... thanks for helping out there guys," I whispered to them.

"Well you really should keep trying to do stuff like this. I think you might have a career in it. Perhaps something with people acting next time though?" he suggested.

"That would be cool." I said. "But I don’t know where we’d ever come up with the equipment to do something for real."

"I’ll tell you what," he said reaching in his pocket, "here’s my card. If you ever come up with another project you want to do give me a call, I’ll try and help you out with getting equipment and any other stuff you need."

Billy had been standing next to us for the last bit of conversation, "Actually Tiffany, if you girls ever come up with another project you want to do we’d probably be willing to throw some money your way to see what you could come up with."

"Why?" I asked them. I was so confused how this dinky little school project had gotten this carried away. I mean don’t get me wrong, it was well done… but still.

"Because, a film that’s made by pre-teen/teenage girls is realistically going to be PR dynamite, we would have gone through the talk show circuit with you ladies on this — but your parents didn’t want to mess with that. If you were to come up with something else, and we did that, it would do well I think." Billy said.

I could see Amy giving me the same weird look that I knew must have been on my own face as an announcer came over the speakers. "Ladies and Gentlemen please take your seats. Tonight’s presentation is about to begin."

"We’ll talk more about this later," Robert told us. "You’re coming to the party afterwards right?" He asked.

We nodded.

"Well good luck tonight ladies." He told us.

"Same to you," Amy said as we shook hands and then took our seats.

The announcer came back onto the system. "Ladies and Gentlemen before we begin tonight’s films I would like to ask that you silence any pagers or other electronic alarms that you have with you." He paused for a second, "To begin this evening off we have a film created by four young ladies that are in the audience tonight. The quality of this film is nothing short of amazing considering their ages. It succeeds in its simplicity, and should serve to remind all of us here that imagination is the only absolute requirement for storytelling. We hope you enjoy their film."

The lights dimmed and the opening credits of our movie began. This was instantly a much cooler experience than watching our movie on the TV. Mattel had paid a hefty fee to get all of our footage moved over to real film, and it looked really cool on the big screen. During the opening credits my stomach decided it was time for some somersaults. I managed to not have to worry about throwing up… but I wondered how long that would hold.

Some of those nerves began to die away though as the film rolled on. Each segment of laughter from the audience made things better. It seemed as if they were programmed to laugh at all of the right places — I don’t think we could have done a better job by holding up ‘laugh here!’ signs. At the end I expected the normal silence as people were forced to watch credits of the movie, but instead there was applause — and a lot of it!

I was distracted momentarily from seeing that my name had been changed on the credits to Tiffany Jacobson. Between that and seeing people suddenly standing on their feet for some reason I started tearing up. Mom saw that and quickly handed me a small package of Kleenex to pass around amongst ourselves before we smeared our makeup too badly.

Amy, Ashley, Nikki, and I all exchanged hugs and were motioned up to the front by the organizer of the festival. "Ladies and Gentlemen I wanted to introduce you to the four young ladies that created this film." There was some more applause at this point. "These young ladies, at age twelve, are all the youngest filmmakers to enter our festival. They created this film originally for a class project using studio cameras at one of their dad’s TV station. All of the work is theirs though — verified by footage that you all saw in the credits — and we have decided that they deserve some recognition for this."

"In association with several of the major studios we would like to present each of these ladies with a five thousand dollar savings bond to help out with their eventual college expenses; as well as a special plaque for each of them — recognizing them as participants of this festival, and talented future filmmakers." He said while handing each of us an envelope with our names written on them.

We all shook his hand and curtsied to the audience as they gave us another round of applause. At that point we hurried back to our parents and took advantage of a ten minute break to go to the bathroom and freshen up — not to mention get some shouting out of the way. To say we were all in shock and enjoying the moment was not even close to our state. It took us a little longer to get our whole group back together, because people kept stopping us to congratulate us and shake our hands. I know I recognized some of those faces, but it was all kind of a blur.

The parents, especially Mr. Sanders for helping out, all got many hugs from everyone. Five thousand dollars wouldn’t pay for college… but it was certainly a start. Combined with our earlier earnings maybe I would be able to afford to go to a good school.

While I was in the bathroom Mom helped me touch up my makeup — the few tears that I had let escape earlier had done a little damage. I was good as new though pretty quickly. We all made it back to our seats just in time for the announcer to come on and announce the main film of the evening. Realistically the film was actually higher rated than my parents wanted me to see at that point. I’d seen maybe one Rated R movie before this one, and it certainly earned the rating it got.

It was a decent mystery flick with a lot of suspense where it needed to be. I enjoyed a lot of the special effects they threw in at the end — and didn’t think it was too badly written. I guess I did think it was okay — I wouldn’t have gone and dropped the thirty-million they spent to make it though.

As the credits rolled the audience gave the film a hearty round of applause and people began mingling about — and in my case heading for the nearest restroom with friends in tow. Our parents were moving too slow in our opinions… so we just rushed ahead together. We had just made it through the line, in and out of the stalls, washed up, and walked outside when we found our mothers all waiting fairly far back in the line.

"Wow, you’re going to be waiting for a while," I told Mom.

"The joy of being a girl sweetheart," she told me. Yeah, I guess this was one downside. ‘But I’d rather wait in line for an hour than have to go and be Brandon again,’ I thought to myself.

We waited for the moms over by a wall along side the bathroom. "Tiffany I can’t believe we were just given $5,000 more for this film," Nikki told me.

"I’m pretty surprised by it too," Amy said.

"Well… maybe we’ll have to take up their advice and do another film sometime." I said.

"That would be cool," Ashley said. "I just don’t know what we’d do it on."

"Neither do I. Maybe we’ll figure out something this spring with a project." I said.

"It sounds like they’re willing to give money to us to do it even," Ashley said.

In the meantime people began to notice who we were again and began congratulating us on our film. Comments like ‘I never thought anyone could create something that much fun with just Barbie Dolls,’ and ‘I’d love to see girls with your talent do something else,’ certainly made us feel good about ourselves. Our dads of course emerged from the guys restroom fairly quickly and joined us.

After fifteen long moments of being congratulated and talked to, our moms finally came out. "You ladies certainly took long enough," Mr. Sanders joked with them.

"Well when you don’t have their youth and speed to get there before everyone else," Mrs. Hancock threw back.

I had begun feeling somewhat tired as we watched the other film — all of that seemed to have gone away now as we made our way down the street together to a nearby hotel. The hotel had a beautiful ballroom where everyone (invited everyone’s) was gathering for some live music, food, and the adults got cocktails. I started a trend with my friends though when my mom ordered a virgin strawberry daiquiri from the bar for me.

Eventually we took some seats at a table that was for VIP’s. Hors’d’oeuvres were served on silver platters around the room, and I found myself having a really good time. "Amy, I don’t think I would have ever believed that I’d be at an event like this," I told her.

"They happen Tiffany. You just have to be at the right place at the right time," she said with a smile. "Right now being your friend has definitely been the right place at the right time," she added.

"Thanks," I said. About that time Richard came over to us and began finishing what he said earlier. He gave each of us his card and said to call him if we did decide to do anything else. That left us all fairly giddy as we just sat and enjoyed the evening.

We met tons of important people that night. From studio executives to the Mayor of New York, it seemed like everyone in the room was ‘A Somebody’ but us. My dad was the one who showed the most strain from the event though since people events were not his first choice of things. As the clock approached eleven-thirty our parents started making our exit — apparently we would turn into pumpkins if we stayed out past midnight!

Goodbyes were said to all of the Mattel executives, the other film’s cast and crew that had hung out with us, and various other people. As we got into the waiting limo I felt fairly sure this was some sort of dream I was having. ‘It must still really be May, and I’m really still Brandon, and this is just some sort of crazy dream,’ I thought as we traveled up the elevator to our room. Amy must have known what I was thinking, she pinched me to make the point that it was indeed real.

Oye.

I of course pinched her back — she had to be sure too, right?

For some reason after I got my pajamas on the adults had the other girls come in and hang out in our room while they went next door to talk about something. We didn’t complain though as we reminisced about the evening — and all of the cool things we had done in our first real day in New York.

By one in the morning, when our parents came in, we were all pretty much falling asleep on the couches and seats. Each set of parents coerced their daughter back to their room and into bed. In my case I managed to actually get Daddy to carry me to bed. The next thing I knew I was being prodded awake the next morning.
 
 
Chapter 30
 
 
AS I WOKE up I realized I had no idea what our plans were that day. We’d all pushed for information about yesterday and the night before… but we’d stopped short of asking about today. I had been pretty nervous about last night — I had never expected things to go as they had. I was beginning to have dreams of maybe making another movie this spring. What would we make it about?

Mom rudely interrupted my thinking, "Tiffany let’s go, everyone is meeting downstairs for breakfast."

I groaned and managed to stand up, and putting one foot in front of the other, followed them out the door. As we went downstairs I saw that Amy didn’t look like she was much more awake than I was — and she was usually the morning person. We went to a different restaurant in the hotel, and I was surprised to see that the Mattel executives were joining us for breakfast.

"Good morning," Lilly, the Barbie Division Head said far too perkily.

Amy and I managed to say some polite good mornings back and we sat down to wait for Ashley and Nikki to arrive with their parents. Amy asked me quietly, "Tiffany do you know why they’re eating with us?"

"No, I figured you might."

"No I don’t. I wonder if it has anything to do with our parents talking for that long last night?"

"I don’t know. That meeting actually has me a little worried," I told her.

"Why?"

"I don’t know… I just have a bad feeling about it."

"Well I hope you’re wrong Tiffany," she told me. About that time Nikki and her parents walked in, followed closely by Ashley and her parents.

We all ordered breakfast and waited for our orders to arrive. "I appreciate you all eating breakfast with us," Billy said.

"Thank you for everything you’ve done," my mom replied to him. We all nodded and gave our own thanks in there too.

"You’re all very welcome. This has been a fun project for us to get involved with here. Last night after you all left the party I talked with a couple of studio people and made a deal that I think benefits you all very well."

"Oh?" Amy’s dad asked.

"Yes, it seems that they wanted to do a run of short films in some small theaters and run that to VHS a couple months later. This studio offered to go ahead and pay us an initial fee for use of the film and trademark and has promised us more if the release earns anything more. Realistically I do think this’ll be the last money that comes in for you all though," he said.

That kind of made me sad, but still we were getting something more? He began passing out an envelope and a card to each of us. "The envelope has a check and a savings bond for each of you. We actually went higher than we had talked about percentage wise — but I thought it would be worth it to donate some money to you for college. Each of you have a twenty-five thousand dollar savings bond in there, a scholarship account with fifty-thousand, and a check for twenty-five thousand for your parents to use however they see fit."

My eyes were popping out of my head, "Are you serious?" popped out of my mouth in surprise.

"Yes Tiffany. There were actually several groups that wanted to get in on this just to give you all some scholarship money for such a cute project." Lilly said.

"What about the taxes?" my dad asked.

"You should only have to pay taxes on what we paid out earlier and the twenty-five. The rest of it is tax free as long as they use it for college expenses."

"Cool," Amy’s mom said.

"Amy am I dreaming?" I asked her.

She of course pinched me, "did that hurt," she asked back.

"Yeah it did," I said massaging my arm where she pinched.

Nikki realized we were all overlooking something. "If that’s what’s in the envelope, what’s in the card?"

"Why don’t you all open them up to see?" He suggested. I swear his eyes were twinkling.

Inside the cards were two gift certificates, one for FAO Schwartz, and another for some place called Bloomingdales. Both were for five-hundred dollars. "Wow," Amy said next to me.

"We were just at FAO yesterday," Ashley said.

"Yeah it would have been nice to have had this then," Nikki said.

"Hey, we’ll just have to go back again and we can buy some of the things we wanted!" I said.

"What’s Bloomingdales?" Amy asked her dad.

"It’s a high end department store — it should be fun to go into. That won’t buy much though." He added the last part on.

"Cool," Amy said.

"Thank you for all of this," I told them.

"You’re very welcome Tiffany. We hope that maybe some day we’ll be able to do some other things with you all down the road."

"I think we’d like that," I told them.

Amy and I had gone from being mostly asleep to being extremely awake in no time now. After we quickly scarfed down breakfast we said goodbye to the Mattel execs since they were flying home that day. We all said a round of thanks, and we gave each of them a hug too. That one project had been life changing on so many levels.

We all met upstairs inside our room to discuss our plans for the day. "So what are we doing today?" Nikki had asked.

"Well, first thing we thought we’d go down to the festival for an hour. They have a tradeshow that might be kind of fun to walk through," my dad said. He wanted to look at what toys they might have — even if they were outside of his field — and I happened to agree with that one. Gadgets were gadgets, right?

"Cool," I found myself saying with Amy.

Nikki asked, "When do we go shopping?" she was clearly far more interested in that.

"Well we had to work that into our plans now. We’re going to go to FAO after we go there, and then we’ll go to Bloomingdales from there."

All of us were grinning from ear to ear. The idea of a thousand dollar shopping spree would of course make anyone smile, but especially four girls!

"What are we going to do after that?" I asked.

Mr. Hancock fielded this one, "We’re going to go see the Statue of Liberty, the Guggenheim museum, probably come back here to freshen up, get dinner, and then head to ‘Beauty and the Beast’ on Broadway."

At that I swear I saw Amy tackle her father. "Really? Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said over and over again while hugging him.

Once she calmed down enough to somewhat sit in one place her dad said, "That was something else they set up for us once we knew we were coming out for this. I figured you all would enjoy that."

"Cool," I said. "So when do we leave?" I asked. It was eight-thirty at that point.

"We should get going now. The trade show part of the festival opens at nine. That’ll get us done just in time to leave for FAO and Bloomingdales around ten."

With that the circus moved on. Our driver once again drove us around town, and consulted with Mr. Hancock about making sure we were doing things in a way that made sense — no use backtracking if you can avoid it type stuff. When we got back to the festival we checked in at a desk to get badges so we could go through the showroom.

Actually I think the badges were almost as entertaining to us as anything there. They said ‘Filmmaker’ on Amy’s, Nikki’s, Ashley’s, and mine. Mr. Sanders’ said ‘Press,’ and the rest of our parents all said ‘Family’ on them. There were actually a lot of neat toys there that we looked through. I asked the price of one camera and just about passed out when I learned it was going for seventy-thousand. ‘How could a film possibly make a profit buying cameras like that?’

We walked through the hall quickly and I learned two cool things while I was doing that. One, at one booth they showed me how to load real film into a 35mm camera. That was cool, I was kind of curious to see if I could ever film with one. At another booth I also picked up some knowledge about how they actually record sound for movies — using an external recorder. If I ever created my own film again I was going to see if any of that would be doable. Of course as I talked to them I learned that doing things that way, the right way, was incredibly expensive!

At ten we pulled everyone away from looking at gadgets and headed off to shop. Our driver started us at FAO like we’d planned. We were told to get what we wanted, but to try and hurry so we could spend more time elsewhere. I ended up buying some Barbies, a baby doll (I only had one other one), a couple of stuffed animals, and a porcelain doll.

The porcelain doll was a gift for Mom. She had been collecting them since she was a little girl. I had asked her which one she liked most, but didn’t tell her it was for her until after she picked. All of that quickly wiped out my money for that store. I was also worried about fitting everything into my bag to go back home.

The other girls also bought what they wanted quickly. We were in and out of there in forty minutes easily. Our driver had just pulled around from his loop around the block as we came out. From there we headed on down to Bloomingdales.

Wow! It reminded me kind of Saks… but not. We at first kind started looking in the older department where they had some junior style clothing… but Amy quickly pointed out that we would get more for our money in the children’s section. Plus I really didn’t fit into those clothes very well most of the time anyway.

So we set about finding some clothes in the children’s section that didn’t make us look like we were too young. Well at least that was Nikki, Amy, and my goals. Ashley had actually grown quite a bit recently and was a size twelve in girls. Nikki and I were both the same size seven with Amy falling in at a nine. Nikki and I were at that wonderful size that almost everything for the little girls was available as well as for the big girls… I hated it when I found stuff that made me look like I was five — or younger.

As we shopped I felt bad for the dads. They sat around as we tried on clothes for the better part of an hour (we were hurrying as fast as we could.) At least they had some comfortable benches in there for them to sit on as they waited for us. I ended up buying a pair of jeans, a dress, a skirt that was on sale, a couple tops that were on sale, and a pair of ballet flat style shoes. I also picked up a wallet that I had seen my dad looking at — he seemed to like it — that I added into my purchase. For whatever reason he hadn’t been there when I checked out with mom, so it actually was a surprise when I handed it to him as we sat down in the bus.

"Thank you Tiffany, you didn’t need to do this," he told me.

"Yes I did." I said with a smile and a hug. We left there and Mr. Hancock asked the driver to find a good place for us to eat some New York Style pizza. He claimed we couldn’t visit New York without eating some of their pizza. When all was said and done I definitely agreed it tasted better than anything we had around home. There was discussion by Mr. Sanders that he liked ‘Chicago’ style better, but none of us girls had ever had either kind, so we didn’t have an opinion either way.

From there the driver took us to where we could catch a boat to go out to Ellis Island. I wish I could claim that it was my favorite event of the trip… but the ride on the water was not the most pleasant experience for my Mom and that distracted me. We climbed up the top of the statue, took pictures and all of that, but I didn’t really find as much satisfaction in the visit as I thought I would have. We left there understanding though why it was that it was such a historical site. It was pretty cool thinking about all of the immigrants that had come through there — including some of my ancestors.

From there we left for the Guggenheim museum. I think Amy and I had more fun making fun of the art there than anything else. Most of the adults, except my father, seemed to enjoy it though — so it was really only fair that we had gone there. My dad couldn’t get past the fact that some of the artwork was so strange. Things that weren’t in a format that looked like a picture didn’t appeal to him at all. I have to say some of it was way too bizarre for me to enjoy it as well. A lot of it was really cool though, so we all stepped away from that having ‘had an experience.’

That brought us to just enough time to go back to the hotel to freshen up before dinner. The whirlwind day continued at that point with Amy and I deciding that we needed to wear our dresses again tonight. You’re not supposed to re-wear a dress… but it was to a different event, and we didn’t have anything else that nice with us. It would have been nice if we’d have known we needed two formal dresses! We gave the adults a hard time about that as we walked out onto the bus.

My hair was basically still in the same shape as it was last night since I hadn’t washed it that morning. So I looked a little less polished than last night, but not by much! Dinner was at a nice Italian restaurant that our hotel concierge had recommended. The wait staff there all complimented us on our dresses, and before we knew it we were sitting in box seats at a Broadway show.

The show was awesome! We all came out of the show with songs stuck in our heads. The smiles on our faces said it all — we’d had a blast! After all was said and done we each bought a t-shirt and a poster. We each got the cast to sign our posters and headed back to the hotel. As we turned in that night Amy and I asked if we could stay in the same room that night. Our parents agreed, and we ended up sharing the bed in Amy’s room.

As we fell asleep I noticed that her parents went down the hallway together for something. I wondered what was going on with everyone. This was the second time that had happened. I didn’t care a lot though since I couldn’t imagine us having had a better trip than this. Now if I could just make the dance squad…
 
 
Chapter 31
 
 
THE TRIP HOME was pretty uneventful for us. We had caught our plane at about eleven — getting back into Albuquerque at five our time. It was a full day of traveling, but we were all grateful for the fact we gained two hours going back there. Mom and dad surprised me by following Amy and her parents’ home instead of going to our house.

"Mom, why are we going to Amy’s house?" I asked.

"We’re going to eat dinner there," she told me. The way she said that though made me think she wasn’t telling the truth. She kept nervously glancing over at Dad for some reason.

As we pulled up to their house I was surprised to see a car there that I recognized. Out from that car Dr. Reynolds stepped out. "Mom why is Dr. Reynolds here?" I asked.

Something was definitely up. Something big was definitely up. No one answered that question. My stomach began to churn since this couldn’t be a good thing.

"Hi Dr. Reynolds," I said as we got out of the car. Maybe she would give me more of an idea of what was going on.

"How was your trip Tiffany?" She asked.

"Good, it was really fun!" I told her.

Before I could begin to start speaking at a million miles an hour Amy’s mom opened the door to their house and we went inside. "Umm… Why are you here Dr. Reynolds?" I asked.

"I actually want to let your parents or the Hancock’s explain that one to you Tiffany. Let’s just have a seat on the couch for a few minutes first. Do you need to use the restroom before we sit down and talk?" She asked.

"Kind of, but…" I started.

"Tiffany go use the bathroom, it’ll be better if we can talk without you having to worry about that the whole time."

"Is this going to be that bad?" I asked. I was really nervous now — my stomach was doing flips and I was wondering what could possibly be this bad that they had brought Dr. Reynolds here to tell me.

"Just go Tiffany," she told me. Amy had come in at that point and dragged me to the downstairs bathroom and told me to go. I finished just in time to hear a doorbell ring and see Mr. Sanders being let in. Ashley was nowhere in sight though.

I sat back down on the couch once Amy went to the bathroom. On one side of me I had Amy, and the other side was my mom. My dad was on the other side of Mom. Across from me on the couch on the opposite side, Mr. and Mrs. Hancock sat with Dr. Reynolds. Mr. Sanders sat down in a chair on the side.

"Okay what is this all about?" I asked. I knew for certain at this point that whatever it was going to be something they expected to upset me badly. I was confused by Mr. Sander’s presence though.

"Do you want to tell her, or do you want me?" Mr. Hancock asked my parents.

"You might as well, or Mr. Sanders actually, he was the one who knows more anyway." My mom said.

"Why don’t you go ahead and tell her Mr. Hancock," Dr. Reynolds suggested. "I think it’ll be better coming from you."

What coming from him?!? Did someone die? Was I dying? Did the school suddenly change their mind about letting me go to school as Tiffany? What in the world was going on?

"Just someone tell me what’s going on already!" I said as calmly as I could.

"Okay Tiffany. I want you to stay calm though, we’re all looking out for your best interests here, okay?" Mr. Hancock told me.

"Okay." I said. I felt Amy squeeze my hand to let me know that she was there. She didn’t know any more than I did though, and I could tell that she was just as nervous as I was.

"Friday Mr. Sanders had a message left for him telling him to call his station as soon as possible. When he called them he found out that some things happened Friday that affect you." I looked at Mr. Sander really quick, and then looked at Amy’s dad to go on. "The first thing that happened was the newspaper published a letter to the editor about the school continuing to allow a ‘boy to masquerade as a girl’ even though it was causing disruptions to their child’s learning environment."

"What?" Amy asked next to me. "What disruption is Tiffany causing?"

Her dad glared at her to calm down before he continued. "The letter had initially had your name in it, but the newspaper removed your name to ‘protect’ your anonymity."

"Well that could have been worse…" I started to say before realizing that it must be for all of them to be here, "It is worse isn’t it?" I asked.

I looked over at my mom and she nodded.

"Once the newspaper saw that there was a potential story here that other organizations were going to pick up they decided to do their own investigation. Friday during the school day the students and parents were bombarded with reporters asking questions. Mrs. Hinther should have stopped the whole thing, but she ‘conveniently’ decided not to do anything about it. That night there was a report on each of the TV stations, including Mr. Sanders’, about you."

"But I thought you squashed that?" I asked Mr. Sanders.

"I did, but while I was gone a young reporter decided that it was too good of a story to pass up. I’ve already fired him and we’re going to work on airing a different report this week to see if we can help you out. I can’t tell you how sorry I am this happened Tiffany — I wish I’d been here to try and stop it from happening."

"But none of these said my name right?" I asked.

"Unfortunately one of the stations decided to not only air your name — but also a picture of you. It wasn’t a current picture though. It was one from when you were growing your hair out, but were still trying to look like Brandon." Mr. Hancock said. "They didn’t say as much, but they implied that you still look like that."

‘Oh my god! They must think I look like a boy in a dress… or worse!’ I thought as he said that.

"That one at least wasn’t my station," Mr. Sanders said.

"Anyway, unfortunately now there are even some national stations that are picking up on the story. There are a lot of parents and community members that are going absolutely nuts about this. The newspaper has published twenty letters to the editor about you yesterday and today."

"What does this mean for me?" I asked.

"Well… we don’t know yet. Personally I think this is all part of some of the students and parents trying to get you out of the school. It’s going to be a lot tougher at school now, I think," He added the last part.

"I can still be Tiffany though right?" I asked. Was their answer to this for me to go back to being Brandon? There was no way. I was never going back! I’d run away or kill myself first… Before I could get too stuck on that thought though, I saw someone move on the other side of the room.

Dr. Reynolds decided now was the time to step in, "Tiffany no one is going to make you be Brandon again. I won’t let that happen to you unless you want it," she told me reassuringly.

Amy gave me a hug at this point too.

"So what are we going to do about all of this?" I asked with tears streaming from my eyes.

"Well we’re not really sure yet. We have a couple options open to us," Mr. Hancock said.

"Okay," I said expectantly.

"The first option is we do nothing. You go to school tomorrow as normal and we hope this all blows over."

"Somehow I don’t think that’ll work," I said.

"I don’t either." Amy said. She had been remarkably quiet next to me.

"The second option is we let the newspaper do a real story on you and we do an extended interview on Mr. Sanders’ station. He’s already planning on a retraction story to air tomorrow night at six and ten. Your interview could be part of the station’s apology to you."

"Okay… I suppose that sounds like a good idea. Is there anything else I have to do?" I asked.

"Well if we go with this it might be worthwhile to be prepared for some of the national stations to pick up on this story. I can easily see this popping up on the national news program for our station," Mr. Sanders told me.

"Also Tiffany, I think we need to go to the school board meeting Tuesday night to make sure we’re ready to deal with the parents that are going to want to speak about you. I’m afraid that there are going to be discussions about you regardless of what we do… and unfortunately it’s probably going to get very personal Tiffany." Dr. Reynolds told me.

"Will I still be able to go to the dance squad stuff this week?" I asked.

"We’ll try," my mom told me. "I’m afraid one of the first things that the parents are going to do is try and keep you off of the squad."

"You’ll fight them though right?" I asked worriedly, with an uneven voice. Were they going to give up on me?

"Absolutely Tiffany! We’re going to fight for you tooth and nail all of the way," My dad said.

"We’ll all be here for you," Mr. Sanders said.

With all of the adults affirming their desire to fight for me we began discussing the battle plan. They discussed with Amy and I that we were to say ‘no comment’ when reporters tried talking to me. We would only talk to respectable reporters when they sat down for a formal interview with my parents and Mr. Hancock present. It was also agreed that we would never grant an interview to the station that initially disclosed my name.

As it was Mr. Hancock was going to draw up a lawsuit against them and Mrs. Hinther the next morning. We were going on the offensive — we decided that was the only way I was going to be able to continue to have my freedom to be Tiffany. And, if we didn’t succeed, my parents promised me that we’d move to another district that would accept me. They were not going to accept failure lightly though.

By the end of our meeting my heart had been torn every way it could be. They had shown me the letters to the editor, the news clips, and everything else that had come out since we left. It made my blood boil, scared me, and honestly some of it made me feel good. Kristina and a few other girls had appeared to support me on the interviews. They were way outnumbered by the other people in the way the story was presented, but I knew that they supported me — and that made me feel a little bit better.

When we drove home I thought I was going to be alright. Things would in fact work out.

As we drove down our street though we saw several news vans and reporters in front of our house! My mom used her head though and drove right past our house and went back to the Hancocks. "Mom what are we going to do?" I asked her anxiously.

"I think that tonight you’re going to stay with the Hancocks," she said.

Dad was furious by now. The things coming out of his mouth were worse than anything I’d ever heard him say before. Amy’s parents came out as we pulled up and asked what was going on. "I should have realized that might happen," her dad said.

"Well, I think that our best thing would be for Tiffany to stay here tonight until we can get rid of the reporters," Mom said.

"Yeah I think you’re right. Why don’t I go with you to your house though to help out?" He offered.

"That sounds good," Mom said again.

"Okay then, Amy!?" Her dad shouted. She had gone upstairs not thinking anyone would be coming back tonight to get ready for bed.

She came down the stairs, "Tiff, what are you doing back?"

"I guess I’m staying here tonight," I told her. She looked at me quizzically, but proceeded to help me take all of my bags upstairs to my room there. I said goodnight to my parents when they left and started getting ready for bed. Amy and I talked for a long while that night before we went to bed in her room. No one suggested that I sleep down the hall; I think they all knew I needed to have Amy nearby tonight. I wasn’t sure how tomorrow was going to go, but I was really worried about it.

As I went to bed that night I had a lot of nightmares. Unfortunately life and the nightmares were far too close to reality for me. Sometime that night I woke up from a really bad one, and realized that Amy had wrapped her arms around me. What would I ever do without her? How had I ever lived without that friendship before? Feeling safe again I finally managed to drift back to sleep.

---

 
To Be Continued...