Foreword by Carla Ann

The door opened slowly. Inside, the elite Holden Coyotes Dance Squad is busy learning a routine. The girls are smiling despite the sweat and exertion. Two captains in front of the squad appear even more intense. Moving as sisters and leading by example they prod their team, their aim set on State or even National titles, lofty goals for their first year team. Tiny Co-Captain Tiffany Jacobson is entirely in her element and it shows. No one could watch and disagree.

Principal Henry watched, unobserved, as her friend Mandy Holt worked the girls. ‘She’s right, they have the makings of a championship squad.’ She smiled at the irony. ‘It almost didn’t happen.’ Weeks ago factions had allied to prevent Tiffany from trying out. The girl’s family and friends had to take their fight before the school board. Tiffany herself had finally laid matters to rest, courageously facing down her accusers at the meeting. She had merely asked for the same chance as any other girl. Luckily, the Board agreed. ‘Thank God for that. I’d still be trying to fill vacant jobs — certainly Mandy’s.’

She’d never seen a child blossom like Tiffany had this year. From bright, confused, and scared little boy in a world of bullies to this self-aware girl with so much talent; her transformation from pariah to pretty insider was amazing. Her authenticity made her a virtual friend magnet. ‘It’s worth the trouble she’s caused me. She has such great friends… If only her enemies will let her be’. She wondered what struggles and triumphs her small charge would see this school year. A lucky educator is blessed to mentor at least one student in their career whose intelligence, talent, and drive spurs them to great things in adulthood. ‘I wonder if she’ll be one?’

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

Like the first two books I posted here, I will be posting a full copy here on BigCloset. This time I am going to upload two chapters per week to the site (except this week I will post three - two tonight). 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!

Dedication
It amazes me that I have reached the end of another book, and it only seems fair that I give a dedication to all of the authors that have so inspired my view point, and whom I draw inspiration from — sometimes without even knowing it. First, to all the ghost writers who contributed under the names of Carolyn Keene, Franklin W. Dixon, Victor Appleton, and Gertrude Chandler Warner; you have my undying gratitude for being the light in my darkness as a child. Their works inspired my imagination and a desire to read like no others could. As a teenager and young adult I would like to thank authors such as J.K. Rowling, J.R. Tolkien, Christopher Paolini, Stephanie Meyer, Clive Cussler, and Tom Clancy for continuing their inspiration.

Life is too short to not imagine greater things. Imagination is something that comes easy as a child, growing ever more difficult with age. On account of that I would like to dedicate this lastly to my readers for indulging my own imagination of the tale of Tiffany and her friends.

Chapter 1:

THE ALARM WENT off in my room, pushing me to wake up to begin a busy Monday, beginning an equally busy week. I found myself padding into the bathroom attached to my room, jumping in the shower, and letting hot water roll down my body. I forced myself to be quick though, skipping washing my long hair, so that I could get my clothes on and go down the hall to Amy’s room. The two of us had convinced our parents that it was necessary for me to stay over Sunday night so that we could do each other’s hair for the day.

Today was our ‘crazy-hair’ day of spirit week at Holden Junior High. Since we were both co-captains on the dance squad we were expected to really go all out for each day. As I walked into her room she said, “Finally! I thought you were going to wait until we were late for school before you came in.”

I just stuck my tongue out at her in response since I was too tired to say anything. “You or me first?” I asked in the most polite response I could give at six in the morning.

“Well seeing as how you’re the most asleep and grouchy, why don’t I do yours first Tiffany?” She suggested.

“Okay, thanks,” I told her with the beginnings of a smile. Not being a morning person I hadn’t been incredibly thrilled with the thought of waking up an extra ninety minutes early for the day — but she was right. Pretty soon I felt her doing all manner of strange things with my hair. She had me move outside for a few minutes so she could use some spray hair color in our school colors on my hair.

After she put the color on she sprayed some glitter stuff on and said, “Tag, you’re it.”

I looked at a clock and saw it was 6:40 already. “Okay, let’s go back up to your room really quick.”

On the way upstairs I saw my reflection in a hallway mirror. Amy had first of all started off with two lopsided pigtails off the top of my head. She’d then added a couple small braids here and there, and a couple other bunches of hair sticking out here and there. Topped off with the color and the glitter stuff… I don’t think I could have looked any more ridiculous if I had tried. I grimaced and promised to myself that I would get even with her!

Forty minutes later I felt like I had done a pretty good job of making her hair at least as ridiculous as mine looked. I’d stolen her idea of pigtails, but had gone much farther, making like eight mini-pigtails all over her head. After adding a couple little braids, some funky hair accessories, spraying it with color and glitter, I decided that she was done. She looked in the mirror and shook her head. “Tiffany, I guess I should have known you’d get me at least as good,” she said with a wink.

“So is it ‘crazy’ enough?” I asked her.

“I don’t think you two could do it any crazier if you tried,” Amy’s Mom, Melanie, answered behind us. “You two also couldn’t be running any slower if you tried either,” she added. “Let’s get some breakfast in you before we can’t because you’re too late.”

With that we began a flourish of eating breakfast and a seemingly normal day of going to school. As it was kind of chilly that day I’d just worn some jeans and a long sleeve striped t-shirt. I noticed Amy was dressed the same way as we walked on out to her mom’s car. By the time we arrived at school I was feeling awake and talkative. The two of us must have been driving her mom crazy because she just shook her head as she dropped us off in front of the school.

About the time I finished dropping off my saxophone, the bell rang and we went off to our first period class together. In the hallway we bumped into Kyle and David. Since they were both on the football team they were also expected to at least make an attempt on their hair. Both of them had dyed their hair blue and sprayed their jersey number in white on top of that. “Tiffany, Amy, I don’t think anyone is going to top your attempts at crazy hair,” Kyle told me as we got to first hour history with Mr. Grainger.

I took that as the compliment that I knew it to be, while still sticking my tongue out at him like he deserved! As we sat down in class Mr. Grainger actually took down the names of all of us that had actually decided to participate today. He told us that each of us would be getting extra credit for the day. We all left his class smiling that day.

“So Tiffany, did you do anything fun this weekend?” Kyle asked me.

“My Mom and I went shopping for a bit in town on Saturday,” I answered. It was always kind of a pain to drive in twenty-five minutes or so to Albuquerque, but it was definitely worth it to shop! I’d gotten a really cute new top and skirt that I was hoping I would be able to wear at the dance.

“That sounds like fun I guess…” Kyle said without conviction.

“It was!” I told him with a smile.

My group of Kyle, Amy, Ashley and Lindsey all moved through the hallways without anything interesting happening. As we arrived in Mr. Grainger’s science classroom we all noticed a strange contraption standing off to the side of the classroom. It looked like something out of Frankenstein. Before any of us could go inspect it he directed us all to our seats.

After calling roll he began, “Ladies and Gentlemen, as we’re having ‘crazy-hair’ day today I thought of an experiment that goes along with what we’re learning about with electricity…” he lectured for a full ten minutes or so before leading us all over to the device we had all seen.

After telling us that it was called a ‘Van de Graaf Generator,’ he asked for a volunteer. No one raised their hands right away, but eventually Ashley stepped forward to do whatever Mr. Grainger wanted her to do. It sounded really simple — but kind of mysteriously dangerous — all he wanted was for her to put her hand on the metal ball that was on the top of a metal cylinder. Once Ashley had her hand there Mr. Grainger flipped a switch on a cord and we heard a small motor fire up.

Suddenly we all noticed Ashley’s hair begin sticking straight up and out and started giggling. Ashley said, “What?”

She didn’t catch on for a couple seconds that her hair was standing straight out. As soon as she did realize it though she screeched and pulled her hand off of the device. She had been one of the few girls in our class that hadn’t done a lot of extreme things with her hair — at least till now! We all had a good laugh about it and most of the people then took their turns with the generator. I had so much hairspray and such on my hair that it didn’t really make much of an impact on mine.

We all decided that was another reason to like Mr. Grainger, he was able to take and make class really fun sometimes!

After science class the day got pretty boring. Our choir teacher had to go to some meeting somewhere — so we just had a sub watching a movie. Amy and I had started to spend some time talking but the sub was being really mean about talking. She threatened to send anyone else who talked to the office! I’d already been there enough this year, and really didn’t want to head back.

Not that I was a trouble maker mind you, I was just a little different from the rest of the girls and that caused plenty of problems in of itself. I hadn’t been born Tiffany… I’d been born as a boy named Brandon. Over the last year I realized that I really was Tiffany though, and had begun my journey towards outwardly becoming her this past summer. While I did have a lot of good friends that stuck behind me as I became who I believed I was, I had more than enough other kids who had decided to try and make my life a living hell.

Throughout the first part of the year so far I’d had a lot of ups and downs, including going in front of the school board and being on TV trying to keep from being forced to be Brandon at school. Most of all of that had culminated two weeks ago at the monthly board meeting. The board had decided in my favor, and I had been able to make the dance squad a week and half before this. It all seemed like much longer though — it had been really stressful.

Our boring choir class led to an even duller Algebra class. All of the work felt like busy work — I doubted Mr. Martin was going to grade any of it! I went to lunch with Amy, Kyle, and David all walking in a group with me.

“So Tiffany, have you figured out which group you’re going to go with in the parade?” Kyle asked me as we walked down the hall.

He was referring to a conflict I had trying to figure out whether to be with the band or with the dance squad during the parade. I was torn mainly because I had been looking forward to marching with the band since the beginning of the year. I’d only been on the dance squad for these past two weeks, but it’s something I’d been working on just as hard as band. I honestly hadn’t been able to decide what to do, and both Mrs. Remar and Coach Holt had been awesome in telling me to choose which one I wanted to do — they’d be fine with the decision either way.

Of course that didn’t make the decision any easier. In the end I’d only seen one way to decide fairly, and that was to flip a coin! I did this with Amy present last night at her house.

“Well I decided I’d flip a coin,” I told Kyle as we neared the lunch room doors, “and it came out as going with the band. I’m going to wear my dance uniform still, and I’ll dance with the squad during the pre-game that night at the high school game. That way I get a chance to do stuff with both groups.”

“That’s cool. I wish our Coach gave us the choice,” he said, “I’d probably still choose the football team, but it would have been nice to have the option to march with the band. I’m the best trumpet player in the group, and I know they could really use me there.”

“That’s also part of why I’m happy to go ahead and play with the band — I’m definitely the best saxophone player in the group,” I said as we both picked up trays to put our food onto. The two of us chatted about a couple other things as we walked over to our groups’ usual table and our group just talked about a little bit of everything. Before long we had moved our party outside to a round picnic bench.

I was sitting on the table part, next to Amy, with Kyle, David, Ashley, and Nikki standing up facing us. “So Tiffany, what kind of pajamas are you wearing tomorrow?” Ashley asked me.

“It’s a secret.” I said with a smile.

“Seriously?” she asked.

“You’ll just have to wait. My mom found them for me this past weekend while we were shopping. I think they’re going to be perfect for tomorrow.”

“Does Amy have the same set planned?” she asked.

“Yeah, why would you guess that?” I asked her.

“You know you two are inseparable, I really hope you two stay friends like this through school,” she told me.

“Me too,” I said somewhat soberly. It was one of my deepest fears to ever lose her as a friend. I had several sessions with my psychiatrist that she had posed such situations — and I broke down every time. I forced myself not to dwell on that thought once again though and tuned into the conversation that was happening next to me between Kyle, David, Nikki, and Amy.

They were all talking about the dance and who they’d heard was going with whom. “Why don’t we all just avoid all of the problems that come from asking each other out,” Amy was saying.

“What do you mean Amy?” David asked.

“Why don’t we just plan on going as a group. That way we can all dance with each other and not have to worry about hurt feelings.” She replied to him.

Everyone nodded their agreement, including myself, at this idea. I’d been kind of worried about what I would do if Kyle had asked me to the dance. What would I say? Of course I was also scared about the idea that he would go with someone else. I didn’t know if I liked him or not, my feelings were so mixed up there, but I was pretty sure I would have been incredibly jealous if he’d asked another girl to go. If he asked me though, that might have caused problems for him. ‘Couldn’t my life stop being so complicated?’ I silently asked myself.

“So it’s a deal then?” Amy asked everyone standing there. She smiled at the chorus of agreements that reached her ears and we heard the bell ring to go to the next class. Amy and I walked together to home ec. That day we were learning how to use some sewing machines… It wasn’t a complete disaster for me like most everyone else, but I wasn’t nearly as talented as one girl in our class. Amy actually asked her how she was so good at doing stuff — she responded by saying she’d been doing it since she was little.

The two of us both made fun of each other’s work to the point that we got a glare from Coach Holt. The two of us stopped laughing instantly at that point — we had no desire to have to run reminders or do something else for goofing around! Coach Holt also offered us extra credit for our hair that day. Not long after we found ourselves being pulled out by the yearbook staff for pictures too.

The nice thing after home-ec was that we only had two more classes left in our day. First up was English with Ms. Damien. She complimented Amy and I on our hair, but didn’t offer us extra credit for it. I think there were a lot of us in that class that were disappointed by that. We read a story out of our literature book that day aloud in class. All-in-all, it was just another normal English class.

When Kyle and I got to band with Nikki we all took our seats and Mrs. Remar warmed us up. Immediately after that she told us, “Put all of your instruments across your laps.”

We all did as we were told and watched as she began passing out letters to all of us. After she was sure that everyone had received a copy she began to speak again, “Okay ladies and gentlemen, I have a lot I need to cover on this today, and not nearly enough time. Before I forget please be sure to bring tennis shoes tomorrow — we’re going to practice marching around the track for the parade. That’ll be one of the few times we’ll be able to practice marching before we get together with the other junior high on Friday before the parade.”

That kind of threw a kink in my plans for the next day with my pajamas. ‘I guess I’ll just have to change into my shoes that are in my cheer bag,’ I told myself. I forced myself to pay attention though as she went on.

“Friday the other junior high school is going to come here right afterschool to work together for a little bit before we head off to the parade. You need to wear your band shirts and blue jeans for this parade. Make sure you wear comfortable tennis shoes that day — I don’t want to see any flip flops!” she said menacingly. “Does everyone understand? Any questions?” She asked.

Of course there were questions — a lot of stupid ones really. The only one that was decent was a question about whether or not we’d have time after the dance, before the practice started, to change for the parade. Somehow she managed to not sigh as she answered the questions, but we had wasted a lot of time by the end of it.

“Okay the next thing that you need to look at is on the next page!” she said while flipping her own paper over. I saw that it was about the trip to Denver that we were going to take in April. “This is an information letter on the trip we’re going to take to Denver this spring. Make sure your parents see it!” She proceeded to go through all of the details, including when the first deposit was due and our first fundraiser that was going to start in a couple weeks.

The more she talked about the trip, the more excited I became! A few other things happened in class that day — but not a lot of playing. The only thing we really did was run through Louie, Louie one time before she had us put up our instruments. I had to hurry when the bell rang to get down to the faculty bathroom to change into my cheerleading practice gear, before then hurrying on down the hallway to the gym. Amy wasn’t able to meet me that day, but I’d decided I’d probably be safe enough going on my own to do this.

A couple weeks ago I wouldn’t have felt safe doing it, and I probably shouldn’t have felt that way then — but thankfully nothing happened on my walk to the cafeteria where we practiced. We spent the first hour-and-a-half working on our cheer routines with the whole group. After that part of practice all of us that were on the dance squad worked on our dance routine that we were performing at pre-game at the high school on Friday. We were doing the same routine on Thursday for our game as well, but we didn’t see it as important as Friday.

While we practiced the dance routine, the girls who were just on the cheerleading squad, all eight of them, were sent with butcher paper and worked on making signs for the football game and pep rally. During the dance practice my hair started flopping into my eyes and really becoming a nuisance — the hair spray had worn off. Apparently it looked even more ridiculous than before because when Amy saw it after practice she just about died laughing. “Tiffany, I think you need to go home and wash your hair,” she said with a wink.

“I hope it doesn’t take too long to get this stuff out, I have gymnastics practice in an hour,” I responded to her.

“It shouldn’t take an hour,” she paused for a second, “I hope.”

I glared at her a little, but smiled. “I think you’re going to have even more fun Amy, yours hasn’t even come loose yet,” I told her. She didn’t look happy with that knowledge while we got into her mom’s car. She was going to drop me off at my house — it saved a trip for my mom.

“How was your day girls?” her mom asked.

“Good,” we both answered. She struck up a conversation as we drove, but I was so tired already that I didn’t respond a whole lot. As she dropped me off at my house Amy told me to call her if I got a chance to talk about the next day. I promised I would before heading into the house and telling mom I was taking a shower.

I spent a good thirty minutes undoing braids, shampooing, re-shampooing, and re-shampooing my hair before I finally gave up and threw some conditioner in my hair. I hoped that I had gotten out all of the hair coloring and glitter that she had put into my hair. My only consolation was the knowledge that Amy was probably having just as much fun trying to get hers out!

As I got out of the shower mom began pounding on the door, “Tiffany?”

“Yes Mommy?”

“If you want to get something to eat you need to hurry up! You only have ten minutes until we need to leave!”

“Alright, I’m hurrying. Just let me throw on my clothes, I’ll brush out my hair while I’m eating.” I yelled at her through the door. I hurried through my changing like I said I would and ran out of the bathroom and to the table where she had dinner waiting for me.

She’d made a pot roast in the crock-pot that day with mashed potatoes. She’d already dished up a plate for me and I ate down as much of it as I could in the eight minutes I had left. From there I got into the car with my stuff for my gymnastics lesson.

“Hi Tiffany, how are you doing?” Tara, my instructor, asked me as I came in.

“I’m doing well,” I told her convincingly, “but this week is definitely going to be a long week,” I told her. I shared with her about the spirit week stuff as we did some stretches. I was in a one-on-one instructor situation with her, so I didn’t have to worry about sharing her with anyone. I had been really busy with some issues with the school board and an attack on me so we had missed several sessions up until last week, so we were just really beginning to get on to some new things at the end of the lesson.

“So I’ll see you next week?” She asked me as she walked me back to the front of the building at eight.

“As far as I know I don’t have anything else going on. I’m really sorry I missed those few weeks.”

“It’s okay Tiffany, you have had a lot of things going on,” she told me with a warm smile, “I’m glad to hear that things are starting to calm down for you.”

“Thanks,” I told her with a smile of my own. I’d been initially afraid that she would have freaked out about my having been born a boy… but she had been completely cool about it.

My mom drove me home and I focused on getting as much homework as I could get done before mom would want me to go to bed. As I finished the last part of my math homework, just before nine, the phone rang and I realized I’d forgotten to call Amy when I got home.

Sure enough a few minutes later I heard, “Tiffany! It’s Amy!” from the living room.

As I picked it up I said, “Sorry I didn’t call, I was trying to get homework done and completely forgot.”

“It’s okay Tiff, I figured you were probably still trying to cool down from gymnastics too.”

“So what’s up?” I asked her.

“Well I was going to see if it would be alright if my mom dropped me off a little early tomorrow and we can work on getting ready at your house?”

“What about her giving us a ride?” I asked.

“She said she’d be fine coming back for us to go to school.”

“If she’s okay with that I am too. What time were you thinking?”

“Probably about 6:30?” she suggested.

A gasp came out of my throat…

“Oh come on it won’t be that bad Tiffany. We’re just going in our pajamas after all so how much do you need to do to get ready before then?”

“What else?” I asked with added drama, “what about makeup, and hair, and all that stuff!” I said cutely.

“Oh stop being a drama queen, we’ll do our hair together tomorrow again, and, we’ll keep it simple. No billions of braids, hairspray, or whatever else you put in my hair this morning,” she said.

“Okay already.” I answered. “I’ll see you at 6:30,” I told her with a smile.

“See you then, goodnight,” she told me.

“Good night,” I replied before hanging the phone up. It had been a long day — and tomorrow was going to be just as long. I finished up with the rest of my homework as quickly as I could before finding myself going to bed about fifteen minutes early… I was tired.

Chapter 2:

THE DOORBELL RANG at six-thirty that morning, and I went to get it. “Hey Amy,” I said as I showed her in. I had to smile as I looked at her since she was dressed in the same pajamas as I was. While shopping last weekend mom and I had seen some of those footed pajamas I’d had when I was really little. We’d easily found a purple set for me that fit well, but Amy had a growth spurt this past month so we’d gotten the largest size hoping that she’d still be short enough for them. I was glad to see she was.

“You look cute,” I told her.

“So do you,” she said smiling back at me.

“Okay, so we’re both dressed, what did you want to do?” I asked her.

“Pigtails!” she responded pushing me towards my room and leading me to a makeup table that I had in there. She pulled at my hair for a couple minutes before tying a pigtail on each side of my head with purple ribbon. Amy was incredibly good at tying pretty bows with them, and I blushed a bit at how childish I looked. When she finished she exclaimed, “My turn!”

I returned the favor, though my bows weren’t as pretty as hers. When I finished I was amused and smiling. “We look like we’re maybe four,” I told her with a grin.

“Yep!” She said. “Everyone’s going to make fun of us all day probably — but it’ll be funny!” she said.

The prospect of everyone making fun of us all day didn’t sit well with me… but at least they’d be doing it in a more friendly way I hoped. She seemed to notice my concern because she said, “Oh Tiffany it won’t be like that…”

“I know Amy. Besides I’m the one who picked out the pajamas.” I told her while forcing myself to smile. “So what else are we doing?”

She looked at her watch and I realized it was already seven-fifteen. “Well we don’t really have much time for anything else. Did you eat breakfast yet?” She asked me.

“No. You?”

“Not yet, I was running late.”

“Why don’t we go get some cereal and I’ll make some toast,” I suggested and we began moving forward with our day. Before I knew it we were stepping into the hallway of school with lots of giggles following us. We’d both finished off the look by bringing a stuffed animal with us. Amy’s mom had taken tons of pictures with us like that and almost made us late.

When I got into social studies I saw that a lot more kids had dressed up for today than had yesterday. Ashley and Lindsey ran up to the two of us, “You look adorable!” Lindsey said to me.

“Thanks,” I told her.

“Where in the world did you find those big enough for you two?” Ashley asked.

“My mom and I were at the mall this weekend and we saw them. It was actually pretty easy for me to find them in my size — I’m only a size seven — but Amy went and grew some this month so we were lucky to find one bigger pair that was tall enough.”

“I want some too!” Lindsey said with a smile.

That class actually went really well. There was something about the ‘little girl’ cuteness look that seemed to draw the eyes of the boys more than normal that day. I wasn’t sure what their thoughts were though — was I in danger? Or were they just looking with disbelief? I had a pretty embarrassing, but really funny moment, going to English that day.

At the last second before we entered the classroom Amy rushed to the bathroom leaving me alone to enter the class. As I came in I noticed that we had a sub that day — Ms. Damien was absent. The sub came up to me and asked, “So who’s your big sister?”

I looked at the older lady like she was nuts, and asked, “huh?”

“I think it’s really cute that you came with your older sister today on pajama day, who is she?” She asked again.

“Umm… I’m in this class as a student?” I suggested.

“You’re a seventh grader?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said. Ashley had caught the whole conversation and was cracking up laughing. Meanwhile I turned red.

“Well… I’m sorry,” she said embarrassed herself. “What’s your name sweetie?” she asked.
“I’m Tiffany,” I told her.

“Well it’s nice to meet you Tiffany.” There was a pause as she saw Amy walk in, “I see you both came dressed the same today?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Well you two both look adorable.” She said before beginning class. After a brief set of instructions we began working together in small groups. Ashley and Nikki both began laughing about the sub’s comments and had to fill Amy in. The sub came by and checked on us while we were working.

Amy couldn’t help herself, she asked the sub, “So I’m just curious, how old did you think Tiffany was?”

I was mortified when the sub answered… “I don’t know, four or five.”

With that we all started laughing. I figured it was laugh or cry… actually I ended up doing both after all was said and done because I was laughing so hard. As I walked to band that day with Nikki, Ashley, and Kyle, Kyle got a strange gleam in his eye. “You want a piggyback ride Tiff?” He asked mischievously.

“Umm… I guess?” I answered not really knowing what to say.

Before I knew what was really happening I had my arms around his neck and my legs around him and he was trotting towards the band hall. I kind of squealed a bit in excitement. I looked back to see Ashley and Nikki shaking their heads at me. We walked into the band hall like that only to get the stare of death from Mrs. Remar.

He quickly put me down and I went to get my saxophone out. We both quickly began practicing what we were supposed to be doing before class started. “I’m glad you all look so comfortable today,” she told us as we started class. I looked around and saw that most of the band had dressed up except for about three kids. That was of course before she said, “Okay, let’s go outside.”

Oh no… I completely forgot about the marching today… I quickly checked my backpack and was relieved to see I had a pair of tennis shoes in there for practice later. I managed to somehow stuff my feet into the shoes (kind of tough because of the feet on the pajamas) and headed outside. She lined up the whole band and began describing how we were going to march. It was really strange, she wanted us to roll our feet ‘like a tube of toothpaste’ in time with the beat. That part wasn’t a problem from the dance stuff I’d been doing recently. Even rolling my feet wouldn’t have been a problem if not for the fact that my feet felt so cramped in my shoes. We had a couple of ‘interesting’ run-throughs of the music while marching around the track before going back inside.

As soon as we got back in I took the shoes off. If my feet could talk they would have been screaming ‘thank you’ at me. I hadn’t wanted to get the feet of these pajamas all dirty though. After I finished putting my saxophone away I heard Mrs. Remar say, “Tiffany, Kyle, would you come here for a moment.” She directed us into her office.

“Yes Mrs. Remar,” I asked innocently. I had no doubts that it would be about how we came into class.

When Kyle was there she asked, “So why did you two choose to enter that way today?” she asked calmly.

“Umm…” I said.

“It was a joke Mrs. Remar,” Kyle started surprising me. “In our last class we had a sub that thought she was someone’s little sister when we came in. I thought it would be kind of funny to give her a piggyback ride.” I was kind of annoyed that I’d become a part of a joke in this story… but I had fun and I knew he didn’t mean it that way.

“Just how old did she think Tiffany was?” she asked without expression.

“She guessed that I was four or five,” I told her trying to keep the smile from my face. I too thought that was pretty funny now on reflection.

I swear I saw the beginning of a smile on her face, but it disappeared just as quickly. “I expect more mature behavior from both of you in the future.” She looked over at me, “Tiffany I don’t believe you are actually four, don’t forget that.”

“Yes ma’am,” I said with my throat all lumped up.

“Yes ma’am,” Kyle said next to me.

“So she really thought you were someone’s little sister?” She asked allowing the smile to actually show.

I felt a surge of relief in my body.

“We couldn’t believe it, it was really funny,” Kyle told her.

“Well I suppose the pajamas and your height with the hair…” she paused. “Still she should have been able to know better,” she shook her head. “Are you two both coming to jazz tonight?” she asked opening her door back up to the band hall again.

Kyle nodded. I said, “Yes, I may be a little late though depending on how long we run practice after school. I’d really like to have a shower and eat before coming.”

“That should be fine Tiffany, I’m really glad that you’re playing with the group.”

“Thanks,” I said. “We’d better get to our practices Kyle,” I told him as we walked out of her office. Kyle was actually nice enough to go ahead and walk me to the restroom where I was changing into my practice clothes. He left me there and I quickly changed. I was still carrying my stuffed tiger as I walked down the hall to the cafeteria.

“Hey Brandon!” I heard from behind me. I refused to turn around; I already knew who it was. It had to be Jarred, a boy that I’d been having some problems with at the beginning of the year. I was almost to the cafeteria when I heard the footsteps get closer.

“Hey Freak stop!” he ordered me. I just opened the cafeteria door and walked through continuing to ignore him. I was really glad when I saw Amy standing near the door and calmly walked over towards her. I think she could tell something was wrong though.

“What happened?” She asked me.

“Nothing I guess… Jarred was calling after me in the hall first saying ‘Brandon’ and then saying ‘Freak stop.’” I was trembling a bit.

“It’s okay Tiffany. Look I think it’s time we talked to Coach Holt about getting you nearer to us during changing periods.”

“How could that possibly work?” I asked her.

“I don’t know, let’s go ask. I don’t want to see anything else happen to you this year from that creep.”

She began pulling me over towards Coach who was standing off to the side of the gym with a clipboard making notes. “Coach Holt, may Tiffany and I speak to you for a moment?” Amy asked respectfully.

“Sure. What’s up ladies?” She asked us.

“Umm… I think it’s time that we do something different with Tiffany changing for cheer practice.” Amy said softly.

“Is something wrong with what we’re doing now?” she asked me.

I was doing the best not to get really upset by the hallway encounter. It wasn’t even really an encounter was it? “I had a kid start trying to get me to stop so he could cause problems on my way over here.” I answered.

“What kind of problems?” She asked me.

I related what had happened, “It’s not enough for me to go to the principal over. And, it isn’t anything that anyone could fix at this point.” I added.

“But we need to watch out for you don’t we,” Coach said with a small smile. “Let me think about it a little bit more. Talk to me during home-ec tomorrow, I should be able to get you somewhere a little more secure than there. I have an idea but I want to run it by the other coaches and Mrs. Henry before I say that we can do it for certain.”

“Thanks Coach,” I told her.

She put her hand on my shoulder, “Tiffany you’re an incredibly special young lady and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. If you ever have anything at all that’s bothering you feel free to come talk to me, okay?”

I nodded and the three of us moved to begin practice. We continued the same routine of doing normal cheerleading practice for about ninety minutes before moving onto dance squad practice. During practice one of our friends, Lindsey, kept messing up for some reason. Coach was getting mad at her, something I really didn’t want to see happen. We were given a five minute break and I pulled her aside, “Hey Lindsey is everything alright?”

She looked like she was about to cry. “I… umm…” She sniffled and looked confused whether or not she should tell me. “I’m just having a really bad day Tiffany. My parents were fighting with each other last night, and then I fought with my Mom this morning. Coach keeps yelling at me about stuff, and… add to that I think I’m starting my first period…” at that point she just started bawling.

I gave her a hug and held her, “It’s okay Lindsey.” I said to her soothingly and helped her get herself back together after a few minutes. She still wasn’t happy, but she was doing better. I’d pulled her off outside of view from everyone else ‘so hopefully no one else really saw it,’ I thought to myself.

When she seemed stable enough I walked her over to the bathroom before running down to the one I was using and running back. When I got back I saw that Ashley had taken over for me with her. They both gave me a small smile back. Coach Holt said, “Tiffany, Amy, may I see you for a moment?”

‘Great, what now?’ I thought to myself.

“Tiffany is everything alright with Lindsey,” she asked me softly when we were both there.
“Oh is that where you were?” Amy asked.

I nodded at Amy. “She’s having kind of a rough day Coach. Maybe lay off her a little bit?”
“Do I need to?” She asked concerned.

“It might help her not mess up as much. She’s got a lot of things happening right now. Don’t tell her I said anything to you though.” I told her worriedly.

“I won’t say anything, don’t worry about that. I appreciate you were taking care of her — it’s a sign that I was right to pick you as one of the captains.”

That caused me to smile a little. I still felt really bad for Lindsey though, all of that stuff happening at once would not be fun. She talked with us for a few minutes about some other stuff she was thinking about before presenting it to the squad. “Okay ladies. Tomorrow is the multiplicity day of the week. Here are the shirts you all should wear tomorrow.” She passed out a t-shirt to each of us that had alternating stripes of a larger dark blue and smaller gold stripe. They also had rings around the collar and sleeve of gold.

“What are we doing for our hair tomorrow?” She looked at Amy and me.

I looked at Amy and shrugged, so she said, “Pigtails or ponytails?” She suggested looking at the other girls.

Ashley said, “I’d prefer a ponytail I think… but on the other hand pigtails look pretty cute.”

Everyone went back and forth for several minutes before we flipped a coin and it came out as pigtails. “Two days in a row Amy,” I told her. I hadn’t really cared one way or another, but I did agree that they were cute!

Coach Holt handed out some ribbons then too before asking, “Did everyone find a pair of short-alls?”

“I’m going to look like I’m five again aren’t I?” I whispered to Amy. She just replied with a giggle. Meanwhile everyone nodded.

“Someone make sure you bring a stuffed animal for Tiffany again,” Kristina, a new eighth grade friend I’d made this year razzed.

“I’m sure we can find another sub who thinks I came with my big sister tomorrow…” I decided I had to get in something too to make myself feel better. I was the smallest girl on the squad, and as earlier had suggested I looked young because of it.

Everyone giggled at that. “Alright ladies enough… I want to run the routine one more time before we stop for the night.”

I heard someone say, “You promise?”

I too had my doubts. She was only second to Mrs. Remar about lying about ‘one more time’ on something.

“If you do it right…” she said to a chorus of groans. “Come on ladies stop your whining let’s get going. We could always do some laps around the track first if you’re going to whine much more.”

Everyone was silent at that point and got to their spots for the routine we were doing at pre-game on Friday. Shockingly she didn’t lie. We actually got out of practice early that night — it was only five-thirty when we finished up. “Tiffany hold up a second,” Coach Holt said as I was walking out the door to go change.

“Yes ma’am?”

“I just thought I would walk you down there to keep you company.” She told me as we walked down the hall.

“Thank you,” I told her. “I’m not as worried about right now though. The only other people who are around are the football players. And they’re all pretty much either behind me or they leave me alone,” I finished.

“I know, but I feel bad about earlier.”

“I appreciate that,” I told her.

I changed back into my pajamas before she walked with me back towards the locker rooms. I found Amy and Kristina waiting.

“Tiffany, you and Amy really look cute like that,” Kristina said.

I just kind of blushed and said, “Thanks.”

Amy’s mom was a bit late in picking us up that night so I didn’t have a lot of time to eat before returning back to the school for Jazz practice. I definitely missed my shower opportunity… At least the pajamas were comfortable, even if they made me look like I was a little kid. Both of our mom’s had laughed endlessly when we told them about the sub’s comment. I had to remind myself not to get hurt about it. Besides, ‘I was the one who picked them out,’ I reminded myself.

At jazz that night Mrs. Remar began rehearsal by working on ‘improvisation.’ She taught us a scale and told us to make up a song with it. It was probably one of the hardest things I’d done in music so far. I gave it a good try, I wasn’t the worst, but I definitely didn’t really get it. I kept just using the notes in the order they were in. Meanwhile, Kyle was coming out with some stuff that sounded really cool. I don’t know how he was able to figure things out that quickly… It was so hard for me!

We spent half of rehearsal working on improvising before she handed out a song for the Christmas concert. As she handed me the first alto saxophone part I noticed it said a word over a section of the music, ‘solo.’ It had a bunch of things written above a difficult looking part to play. “Ummm… Mrs. Remar?” I got her attention, “What does all of this mean?” I said pointing to it.

“Those are the scales you would use to make up the solo if you want to improvise it,” she told me. I must have looked terrified, “Or, you can learn the written solo. I’d actually like to work with you on ‘making it up’ though,” she told me with a smile.

“Umm… Okay.” I told her. “I think I’ll try the written part for now though.” I told her.
“That’s fine,” she told me.

As it turned out we didn’t even make it that far in the piece that night. I was relieved, ‘at least I’d get a chance to practice it before having to play it,’ I thought. As I left jazz that night and got into the car I was amazed by how chilly it was. We passed a bank with a sign outside I could see that it was already down to forty-five degrees. I was really grateful for the warm material of my pajamas as I hadn’t even thought about bringing a jacket to rehearsal.

At home I took the much needed shower and then changed into another set of pajamas for the night. Truth-be-told I really liked the footed pajamas, I had when I was little too, but you couldn’t wear something for twenty-four hours! I made sure that I had everything else ready for the next day, homework done, before calling Amy to talk to her for a little while.

“So do you want to stay the night at my house on Friday after the game?” Amy asked me.

“I’d like to, but let me check with my parents first.” I told her. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

We said goodnight to each other and I sat down on the couch in the living room to watch TV. Mom shook me awake at ten, I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen asleep, “Tiffany let’s get you into bed, okay?”

All I could do was sleepily nod and move towards my bedroom. I laid down on my bed, my mom pulled my covers up while giving me a goodnight kiss and turning the lights out. With that another long day finished up.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

Chapter 3:

THE NEXT MORNING when Amy and I arrived at school I was feeling fairly self-conscious. I knew that footed pajamas are definitely something for little kids… but I thought I looked way more like I was five today than I did the day before! Since even Amy looked like she was about eight, I didn’t stand a chance! As we walked in I was really glad to see another girl on the squad, Amanda, looked at least as young as I did. She and I actually spent a couple moments giggling about it in the hallway before Amy and I went inside.

As I sat down in first hour though the day became fairly normal. Before I knew it I was in choir and having a great time singing a piece for our Christmas concert. I knew we were pretty close to that concert already… but it still seemed like so long away! After we sang through the new song Ms. Beecher told us we could sit and chat for the rest of the class.

Kristina, Amy, and I were chatting about a bunch of different things for a bit before she said, “Oh! Hold on a second — I have something for you Tiffany!”

She ran over to her bag and came back with a baby doll dressed in a cute dress and said, “Here, this is for you!” She said that with an evil little gleam in her eyes.

“Uh…”

“Ooh! Cute!” Amy exclaimed.

“You want me to look like a kindergartner?” I asked Kristina.

“Yep!” she said cutely.

I shook my head. What else could I do? I mean my friends were conspiring against me!

“You do remember I’m a captain right?” I told her with mock-menace in my face.

“So?” She sneered.

I started laughing, “I can’t win can I?” I said.

“No,” she told me.

A few minutes later, just before the bell rang, she told me, “Actually Tiffany I mainly brought Cali,” her doll, “as a joke against your sub. She’s still going to be there today — it’s so funny that she decided you must have been someone’s little sister!”

“That actually makes me feel better. Thanks for telling me that,” I told her. She grinned and gave me a hug just as the bell rang.

When I came into fourth hour with the doll, Nikki and Ashley just laughed non-stop. Mr. Martin, the algebra teacher, finally asked me towards the end of that hour, “Tiffany, why did you bring a doll to school today?”

“Well… actually I didn’t bring it. Kristina Jones did.” I told him. He still looked just as curious and clueless about everything so I decided to tell him the story. He was mostly cool about these kinds of things after all. “Yesterday I was wearing those footed pajamas right?” I asked him.

“Yeah, I remember that,” he told me.

“Well when I went to English yesterday Ms. Damien was gone so we had a sub. Before class started she asked me, ‘who’s your big sister?’ or something like that. She thought I was a little five year old that had tagged along to school with her sister on Pajama Day.” I told him.

He looked somewhat incredulous about it before starting to laugh. “That’s pretty funny. I could see that happening on any other day I guess. She should have known better on Pajama Day though,” he told me.

“Yeah, she should have. Anyway, we’d already had these outfits picked out for the dance squad for today anyway, but since everyone decided to put pigtails in their hair they all thought I’d look just as young today.”

“Actually I think you look younger,” he teased me.

“Not fair! Teachers aren’t allowed to pick on students!” I told him.

“That’s part of our job description,” he told me. He was actually acting like a younger teacher that day. Since he was actually in his sixties I was amazed. “I’ll have to give her a hard time about this later myself, that’s pretty funny.”

I was glad that he was being cool about it. A few moments later he wrapped up class and we all put that day’s assignment into the box. Going to lunch I was actually enjoying myself. Amy, Nikki, Ashley, and I had our arms linked together as we walked through the hallway to the cafeteria. The four of us were smiling and having a great time.

That was until I felt Kristina’s doll yanked from my hand as we were just getting ready to enter the cafeteria. I turned around and stopped Amy from pulling my arm off, “Hey,” I said, while looking into the eyes of the kidnapper.

It was Lucas.

I was just getting ready to say something to him when I saw another hand come and yank it out of his hand. He looked incredulously at Kristina who was just a bit taller than him. “Leave Cali and Tiffany alone,” she told him. “I’ll tell your mom if you keep this up.”

I didn’t think anything could faze Lucas — but that actually did. She turned around and led all of us inside to the line. She handed Cali back to me and we all just started chatting. After we sat down I learned that Kristina’s mom used to babysit Lucas when he was younger. Because of that her mom and his mom were actually really close friends. On one hand that really disturbed me, on the other I’ll take help anywhere I can get it!

The rest of lunch went smoothly without any major hiccups. After we’d finished our food Amy told me to turn around as she fixed my pigtails that had shifted. Following lunch, home-ec was broken up by all of the dance squad members meeting in the gym to take a picture together. They put me in the middle of the front row and made me hold the doll for the picture. I could have crawled under a rock and stayed there… but it couldn’t have lasted until after the yearbooks came out so it wouldn’t do me any good!

The icing on the cake for that day though was definitely English. Our sub just looked at me and shook her head before asking, “Are you sure you’re really a seventh grader.”

“Yep!” I told her. I couldn’t resist bringing it home though, “Do you like my dolly?”

Amy, Ashley, and Nikki were all standing around me at that moment and were nearly at the point of passing out from their laughter. The sub couldn’t seem to figure out what was going on. I think she almost considered yelling at us and sending us to the office… but instead she smiled and started laughing.

“You brought that today because of me didn’t you?” She asked.

Amy popped in, “She didn’t actually bring it, a friend of ours did... but it was because you thought she was five yesterday.” She was grinning.

“I guess I should have known better… but you really did look like you were too young to be in seventh grade. Actually if I saw you somewhere like a store dressed like you are today I would assume you were in early elementary school…” she said.

I grimaced as Amy and Ashley both laughed. Part of me wanted to cry, but I just laughed with them. I buried my head in the desk eventually and worked on the work that Ms. Damien had left for us. The rest of the day I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. Mrs. Remar had us all marching outside again to get ready for the parade on Friday. I swear she changed from being an evil Mr. Hyde to being eviler Mr. Hyde when she began having us march around the track. I did my best, and thankfully I was better than most.

After school I found myself beginning to think of dance and cheer practice as routine. I was still being worked incredibly hard by Coach Holt, but it didn’t seem as novel or as strenuous as it had been at first. I found myself surprised when practice was over so quickly that night. Following a quick dinner Mom took me to ballet.

This was only my second week of being in the second level class my teacher had wanted me in. Initially when I began coming a month before she had thought I’d studied at least a year. When I had told her that wasn’t the case she had still worked to convince my mom and I that I should be in the next class. It had made even more sense with the dance squad practices since I could actually eat before practice.

However ballet class was anything but routine, it was really hard! The other class had been easy, but this one somehow seemed way more difficult. A lot of it was probably due to not practicing for it at all… but still. At the end of practice I fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Mom woke me up as we pulled into the driveway, “Hey Tiffany, wake up. We’re home now,” she told me as she shook my shoulder gently.

I just kind of groaned and forced myself to walk inside and take a shower. When I had gotten dressed into my pajamas I went out to the living room and sat down on the couch. I had homework to do, but I was so tired! About the time I thought I could do no more my mom brought me a cup of hot tea.

“Here sweetie,” she said to me as I took it from her.

“Thank you,” I said with a tired smile.

“Other than being long, how did your day go?”

“Well… for the most part okay. Kristina heard about the sub thinking I was someone’s little sister yesterday, so today she brought me one of her dolls and told me to carry it around with me.”

Mom giggled a bit then.

Part of me wanted to scream about it though… it was funny… but at the same time it wasn’t funny! I was twelve! I shouldn’t be getting confused with being five! I thought about pouting but decided to continue on with the story. “Of course that meant that I really looked like a little kid with the shortalls, my hair, and carrying around a doll…”

“Not to mention your height,” my dad said as he came in chuckling.

I was mad. How could he do that to me? I stuck my tongue out at him. “You’re both supposed to be on my side!”

“We are sweetie,” my Mom said. I think she realized how upset I was actually getting. “It’s just kind of funny.”

“But at the same time it’s not!” I whined.

“You’ll begin to grow here in a few years Tiffany,” my dad said.

“Not at the moment though…” I said. All I could think about was that while I was on the hormones blocking me from growing up as a man, I also wasn’t growing as a girl either. I couldn’t help it, I began to cry.

Mom hugged me at that moment. Through the tears I could just barely see that Dad had a really puzzled expression on his face. I knew he was trying to figure out what he had done wrong.

I just cried for a couple minutes before Mom asked, “Did something else happen today that bothered you?”

“Kind of…” I sobbed, “Lucas gave me a hard time and tore Kristina’s doll out of my arms at one point… but that didn’t even bother me that much because she took care of him…” I was still trying to figure out why I was crying myself.

“Is there something else?” My Mom asked again.

“Well… yes… no… I don’t know,” I told her.

She hugged me more and waited for me to continue.

“I think it’s just this whole thing with me looking like I’m five just reminds me more that I’m not growing as a girl yet. The other day Lindsey was really upset because she was having a bad day… And all she was doing was venting about stuff… but then she started talking about how she thought it was awful that she was having her first period. And I guess that’s part of it. I’ll never get to have a period — I know they’re awful and gross and annoying and everything, but still!”

“And in the mean time if I wear the wrong clothes I look like I’m a kindergartner! When they start me on hormones at least I’ll have a chance because I’ll grow breasts… but…” I just sobbed at that point. I was exhausted. I was stressed. I was scared. And, more than anything I needed a break to cry.

“It’s okay sweetheart,” Mom told me as she rocked me back and forth. “It’s okay.”

After what seemed like eternity I finally calmed down. I rubbed my palms across my tear stained eyes and went to the bathroom to rinse my face off. As I looked at my reflection I looked like a wreck of a five year old. That almost made me cry some more, but I kept control of myself. When I returned to the living room I sat back down on the couch and drank some more of the tea.

By this point it had gotten cold… but I didn’t care. It was something to do. I needed to go to bed but I really wasn’t done with my homework yet. Mom came back in and sat beside me, offering to help me with my homework. I let her know there wasn’t anything she could do. She was terrible at math after all! I worked on it for twenty more minutes before deciding I just didn’t care anymore and went to bed.

All night long I kept having nightmares that made little sense to me.

WHEN I WOKE up the next day, Dad reminded me that they would be pulling me out of school at ten or to take me to see Dr. Reynolds. I remembered them telling me about it at some point, but had completely forgotten about it. Thankfully they were pulling me out of a couple classes instead of making me miss the football game that evening. Maybe my priorities were a little messed up… but I was getting A’s in all of those classes!

I was quiet when I got into the Hancock’s car that morning. I said ‘hi’ to Amy and her mom, but didn’t really say anything else. I think Amy noticed that something was wrong, but she didn’t push the issue — letting me sit quietly in my seat. I didn’t even know exactly what was wrong with me… I just was mad for some reason today. Between last night and my nervousness about seeing Dr. Reynolds today I wasn’t in a good mood.

‘Why was I even nervous about seeing Dr. Reynolds?’ I kept asking myself. I’d met with her more than a dozen times already. It wasn’t like she was going to change her opinion of what I was supposed to be doing…? Was she? I knew that my parents were both supposed to be at this meeting today, and they were bound to talk to Dr. Reynolds about what had happened last night. Of course I wasn’t even sure what had happened last night, I shouldn’t be this messed up from that.

I ended up sitting in my first hour class doing work while on autopilot the whole time. Kyle eventually broke through to me for a couple minutes. “Hey Tiffany, are you alright?”

I looked at him and said, “I guess.”

“Are you sure?” He asked.

“No, not really.” I told him with a shake of my head.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked. I could see that he genuinely was concerned about me.

“Not really… I’ll just have to talk about it more in a little bit anyway,” I said as I watched his face show more concern. “I really appreciate the offer though,” I told him as I forced a fake smile onto my face.

“Anytime,” he said, the concern still on his face. When I looked at Amy a few minutes later she had the same expression.

What could I tell them? At least today I didn’t look like I was five… or at least little less like it. Today was ‘war and peace’ day at the school. Our squad had decided to dress in camo pants and green shirts. I had my hair in a plain pony-tail. We were all going to be dancing at the pep rally today — so we were all in the same uniforms. That was part of why we were going to see Dr. Reynolds so early — I needed to be back by one-thirty.

Second hour I was still in the same kind of mood, but found myself chatting with Amy about the pep rally. She was worried about me, I could tell, but what could I tell her? Especially here at school. Before long I was called to the office and went with Mom out to her car.

“How are you feeling today, sweetie?” Mom asked me as she unlocked my door.

“I don’t know… better I guess,” I lied to her. I wasn’t feeling better, and I had no idea why I was feeling the way I was.

She gave me a look as if she knew I was lying, but let it slide as we drove off. “So I think you’re free this weekend, right?” she asked me.

“I don’t think there’s anything going on,” I told her.

“Why don’t we go shopping Saturday?” She suggested.

I could tell she was still feeling me out. I shrugged and said, “Sure,” with little enthusiasm.

“I think it’s about time we got you some winter clothes, it’s getting cold in the mornings already,” she said.

“Yeah, tomorrow night in my cheer uniform it’s going to be freezing!” I told her thinking about the high school game that we were going to be at.

“Well at least you guys got a long sleeve top for your uniform…” she continued to make small talk to me as we made our way to the hospital where Dr. Reynolds office was. We went up the elevator to the floor where her office was and sat down in the waiting room — Dad was already there.

“Hey sweetie,” he told me as we walked in. I sat down in between the two of them and waited for us to be called.

About ten minutes later Dr. Reynolds came in and said, “Hey Tiffany! How are you doing today?” She was being pretty perky today.

“Okay, I guess,” I told her.

Her eyes didn’t flash anything, in fact she made no reaction except to say, “Good. I’d like to go ahead and speak to your parents for a few minutes before I talk to you, do you mind?”

Like I honestly had a choice? “That’s okay,” I told her, my parents both squeezed my hands and then headed off to her office.

Left alone in the waiting room I began looking through the magazines. I’d already read the issue of Seventeen they had there, but decided to start flipping through it anyway. There were a couple things I’d missed before, but not many. I’d killed as much time in that magazine as I could and they still weren’t back in thirty minutes later. I was beginning to wish that I’d brought a book to read. They’d never spent that much time in her office before me when we’d come to other appointments. It made me nervous.

Bored, I began looking through whatever else there was there and ended up picking one of the Highlights magazines for little kids. I amused myself for another ten minutes with that before Dr. Reynolds finally came back in for me. “Tiffany would you come with me now?” She asked.

I got up and followed her down the hallway, passing my parents who she said were going to go wait in the waiting room for a bit while we talked.

She had me have a seat in her office in a comfortable chair away from her desk while she sat in another chair like it across from me. “So Tiffany how have things been going for you? We haven’t had a meeting in a few weeks because you’ve been so busy.”

“Well I’m sure my parents told you that I made the dance squad?” I asked her.

She nodded, “Tell me everything anyway, they may not have said it all — and I’d prefer to hear how things are going from you.

“Okay, well a few weeks back I made the dance squad. Well, not only did I make it but I’m also co-captain with Amy, my best friend. We’ve been working really hard since then to get ready for different things. Last week we had our first performance at one of our school’s football games. We did our routine at half-time, it was pretty cool.” I went on to explain everything that we were up to with that, told her about band, told her about jazz band, mentioned gymnastics lessons, and mentioned ballet.

“And I guess that brings you up to today when we’re doing our routine at our pep-rally and then at the game this afternoon. Then tomorrow we’re going to perform for the pre-game at the high school game, and we’ll do cheers with the high school cheerleaders during the game. Oh… and before that I’m marching with the band for the parade — I decided that I would do that since I had said I’d do that first,” I actually continued on for several minutes beyond this.

“So Tiffany, how have things been going at school other than all of these activities that you’re participating in?”

“Well I’m getting all A’s in my classes right now.” I told her.

“How about the other kids? Are they picking on you a lot like they were last month?”

“Well… for the most part no. There are a few kids that are still causing problems…” I told her about Lucas and the few other encounters I’d had. “Most of that seems to be going away now that I made the squad though. I have too many close friends that are ‘popular’ for people to make too much of things.”

“So do you think you’re becoming popular yourself?” She asked me.

That question kind of jolted me. “I doubt it. I mean who in the world would consider someone like me popular?” I asked.

“You may be selling yourself short there Tiffany. It sounds like you’re definitely doing way better with friends than I ever expected at this point. I’ve got some colleagues that would like to get a chance to meet with you at some point if you would be willing.” She told me.

“Why?” I asked her. Was this a good or a bad thing?

“Well in all honesty you seem to be a good example of the best case scenario for a girl like yourself. They would like to get a chance to figure out why things are going so well for you, and how they can help others do as well as you are.”

So now I was to be a lab rat? “Umm… I’ll think about it. The idea of other people studying me like an animal in a zoo doesn’t exactly sound like fun,” I told her as politely as I could.

“I can understand that,” she told me with a smile and a nod of her head. The way she did it was so disarming, even if I’d thought about getting upset about the idea, that look somehow managed to keep me calm. “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.

Dr. Reynolds came over to me and gave me a hug and handed me a tissue. When I got control of my tears she left for a couple moments and returned with my parents.

My parents both gave me a hug and moved me to sitting in between them on a couch that was next to the two chairs that Dr. Reynolds and I had been sitting in. Mom kept one arm around my shoulder while keeping another hand in mine. Dad did the same, stroking my hair with one of his hands. I had mostly recovered from the venting I had done. I was feeling a lot better really. I guess maybe just saying that stuff had helped… but I was sure that there were going to be some repercussions from all of this.

“Are you doing better now Tiffany?” Dr. Reynolds asked.

“Yeah, I guess so.” I told her.

“Good. Now I want to talk about what we’re doing from here.”

I found myself suddenly scared, she wouldn’t even think of telling me to go back to being Brandon because of this would she?

“Tiffany calm down,” she told me looking at me. “I know your worst fear would be me telling you and your parents that you needed to go back to being Brandon — I don’t ever see me saying that. In fact, I’m certain that what we’re doing is the right thing for you.” She told me with a smile.

I relaxed a lot at that point, “Thanks,” I said while my mom wiped some tears off of my face that had escaped.

“We’d find another doctor if she said otherwise,” my dad whispered into my ear and kissed me on the top of my head. I looked at him and smiled, I was glad to see no matter what my parents were behind me.

“I have two things I want to talk about with you and your parents at this point Tiffany,” Dr. Reynolds said to me. “The first is that I think you need to cut back on some of your activities.”

I gasped. “What?” I paused before saying, “Why?”

“Well Tiffany, I think you are overloading yourself too much here. Before you joined the dance squad you could keep up with the evening activities pretty well… but now I’m afraid that if you keep it up you’re going to cause health issues to yourself.”

“Actually sweetie we were already going to talk to you about this,” my mom told me.

I thought about getting upset about this… but I knew deep down they were right. I was pushing myself too far. “What all do you want me to give up?” I asked calmly.

“Well obviously not the dance squad, you’ve worked way too hard for that,” my mom told me with a smile, “and I think you should keep doing Jazz band on Tuesday nights because it’s good for you. You’re already doing the dance squad so I think the classes on Thursday with Ms. Clemens are a little overkill,” she told me.

“Do you think Ms. Clemons will understand?” I asked her.

“Yes, I think she will. I don’t think she’ll hold anything against you for the high school tryouts in a couple years. In fact maybe we can work it out to where you can do the spring session with her again. You shouldn’t have a problem coming back in at that point.”

I thought for a second before nodding, “Anything else you want me to give up?” I asked.

“Well I think ballet, and maybe gymnastics should go too,” she told me.

“I’d really like to keep trying to do gymnastics. I’m okay with giving up ballet though… I guess.” I said reluctantly. I didn’t really want to give it up… but they were right. I hadn’t had any time the last few weeks to cool down for my sanity’s sake.

Mom squeezed my shoulder, and then Dr. Reynolds continued, “I think that’s a good compromise. You may find that you need to cut back on the gymnastics too, Tiffany.” She said the last part gently. “But I think being able to have your Wednesday and Thursday nights freer is a start. Now, the next thing I want to talk to you three about.”

She paused and seemed to collect herself a bit as if she was nervous to have this particular conversation. “I would like you to come here and meet with another of my colleagues next week. I’m sure that my diagnosis is correct… but I would like a second opinion before we move onto the next stage of Tiffany’s treatment.”

“What do you mean the next stage?” I asked with a mixture of fear and excitement.

“Well honestly I would like to consider starting you on a hormone replacement therapy soon. You’ve demonstrated that you have absolutely no real problems fitting into your school as a girl, and I think that is the way that you should continue. There really are no doubts in my mind that you are going to grow up to be a lovely young lady,” she said to me.

“But…?” I asked.

“But I want a second opinion to confirm mine before I order the treatment. It is really unusual to consider doing this with someone so young. Almost always we start this after a couple more years… but I’m concerned that if we don’t start it you may have more problems fitting in than you do — and I’d rather help you continue to do well than to hurt you by holding back.”

“When do you want to have this second doctor interview her?” My mom asked.

“Well I would actually really like to schedule a full day next week for them to do so.”

“Them?” My dad asked.

“Well it’s actually a friend of mine that specializes in child psychology and another psychiatrist that has a lot of experience in gender dysphoric patients. Both of them have had numerous patients like Tiffany in the past. I think it would be beneficial to seek their advice on her.”

“I guess that’s possible, when would we do this? Where would we have to fly?” My mom asked.

“Well they’re actually both willing to come out a day early to a convention that we’re having here in town just so that they can meet her. That would be Wednesday if you think that you all could be available.”

“We’ll make it happen,” I said for them. I might be able to get on hormones sooner rather than later? And then I could maybe grow at the same rate as the rest of the girls? The biggest problem as I had seen it was that boys always grew later than girls… and I was being passed so far at this point I felt like I’d never catch up!

“I know I’ll be able to get off that day,” my mom said. “Joe, do you think you can?”

“I don’t know, we have a really important job for a client that day… I don’t know if I’ll be able to get free or not.” He told us.

“If you can’t that’s okay Mr. Jacobson. It would be better if you could though. Even if you maybe had a half-hour, for them to interview you really quick.” She told him hopefully.

“I’ll see what I can arrange.” He said.

“So for now?” I asked.

“Well I’ll see you and your mom at least next Wednesday, so that we can meet with them. If the meeting goes well, and I think it will, then we’ll go ahead and start setting up a treatment for you the following week.”

That made me smile. I got up and went over to hug her. “Thank you,” I told her.

We spent a little longer in her office clearing up some details about next week before leaving together. I joined Mom in her car, while Dad left in his. We met for a quick lunch at Burger King before Mom drove me back to school and Dad returned to work. Lunch that day was pretty quiet, I think we were all busy thinking about what she had said. It wasn’t like I didn’t want it — I really really did, but it was something that once we began it there wouldn’t be any real going back.

If we did this I would never be able to have kids of my own. That thought alone really bothered me. But, I supposed, there were plenty of kids out there that needed to be adopted right? I was so unsure about all of that I forced myself not to think about it. Sure my parents had me when they were really young… but I could definitely wait until at least after college right?

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 4:

 
AT ABOUT ONE o’clock Mom ended up dropping me back off at school. I had returned just in time for Amy and I to have home ec with Coach Holt. “Hey Tiffany, where were you at?” Coach asked me as I came in with a pass.

I spoke softly, “I had a doctors appointment.”

“Okay, everything alright?” She asked.

“More or less. Maybe sometime I’ll explain it all.” I told her.

I think of all of the teachers I still trusted Mrs. Remar the most, but Coach Holt was rapidly becoming someone I felt like I could trust too. Well I could trust her there was no doubt… but you know how it is… there’s always one teacher you know that you can share stuff with.

“Okay… I was just getting ready to tell Amy this. Why don’t the two of you go ahead and head down to the locker room and begin working on putting the face paint on each other and the other girls?”

“The locker room?” I asked quietly, with some trepidation.

She leaned close to me and said, “no one will be changing right now anyway — plus I got it approved that you’re going to use the coaches office in there to change from now on.”

I smiled. Something else that I’d been worrying about was suddenly working itself out. That was unexpected!

The two of us walked down the hallway with our backpacks in hand to go to the locker room. Our school was setup so that there were three locker rooms for each gender. Two of them were for PE, and the other one was reserved for sports activities. This time of the year the girls sports locker room was used by just the cheer squad and the volleyball team. Of course right now that meant it was empty because it wasn’t after school.

Entering the locker room for the first time was yet another sign that I was being accepted as a girl. I noticed that the bathroom actually had stalls setup for the toilets — so I could even use the restroom in here without causing problems. There were also curtains around the shower stalls so I could probably even change in here if we could ever get it worked out. I think Coach Holt realized it was inevitable that I was going to need to.

Amy poked me and brought me back to reality. She showed me a locker where Coach Holt had all of the squads makeup and face paint stored. We dug through it until we found some of our school colors and started painting things like ‘HMS #1’ on each others faces. The other girls started coming in at that point too, with Amy and I working to get everyone’s faces done as quickly as we could.

“Tiffany, why haven’t you been coming here to change now?” Lindsey asked me as I did her face.

“Umm… I don’t want to cause more problems than I already do I guess,” I told her.

“I don’t think any of us would mind if you were in here,” she told me.

“Well… Coach Holt says I can start using the Coaches bathroom in the office to change.” I said with a smile before pausing, “I still have things that I don’t want anyone to have to see though,” I told her while losing the smile.

“I guess I understand that one.” That was all we had time to talk about though because Coach Holt came in and began issuing orders to us to get stuff ready for our performance. We were also going to be taking part with the normal cheerleaders on a routine, so we had to get some pom-poms out to the gym for that before coming back in for a quick meeting.

We had performed at the football game last week… but that hadn’t been everyone watching. I was beginning to feel my nerves a little bit. I knew that I had to make sure I did as well as I could, if not perfect, to keep anyone from being able to comment on my skills.

Amy gave me a quick hug before we went out to join the rest of the cheerleaders. Coach had sent them out before the dance squad members. As we walked out I could see the entire school, about six-hundred, sitting out in the stands. We were called out to do a cheer with the cheerleaders almost as soon as the rally started.

The first cheer was really basic, it was just a chant more or less and it didn’t involve any stunts at all. We got through it quickly and they began introducing the players on the football team and such. The next part for the cheerleaders came soon though, and I found myself cheering along with them, and being put at the top of a small pyramid. I’d been scared I would be too nervous to do anything, but I think the summer performance at the camp had cured me of that.

Before I knew it I was being tossed in the air and caught by two of the other girls. At that point the girls that were just cheerleaders were introduced. They also introduced Katrina as the captain of them. She was the only girl that was on both squads that was introduced then though. In the meantime the rest of us huddled up on the other side of the gym for a quick pep-talk.

Coach Holt said, “Come on ladies you’re going to do absolutely fantastic! Show them just what you ladies can do.”

With that we all got into two separate lines and marched out in step to the center of the basketball court, and down in front of the stands. Amy and I were in front because of our Captain status, each standing just to the side of the center court line.

My heart was beating so loud I was sure the crowd must have been able to hear it. The music started though and I knew nothing but the routine that we had drilled so many times. I smiled as I did it with the knowledge that I was doing the routine right, and kept everything in tempo. During the music I tuned out the cat-calls from the guys — just concentrating with every part of my mind on what was next. Just like every other time I had performed I was surprised when I found myself at the end.

I counted the twelve counts that we were frozen in our last pose before jumping up, turning, and marching off with the other girls in step. I was all smiles though, we had performed so well!

We had a couple other cheers with the cheerleaders before the pep rally ended, including a class chant that the eighth graders won. At the end of the pep rally the football players all went with their coach to warm-up while the rest of the school was sent to their seventh period class to finish out the day.

By the time I got to the band room there was only about fifteen minutes left in the day. Mrs. Remar was far too intelligent to try and make us practice for the rest of the period, so she instead spent time talking to us about how the parade was going to work the next day. “Okay, Ladies and Gentlemen, what are you supposed to wear tomorrow?”

“Blue Jeans and Band Shirts,” all of us echoed back to her.

“Good. Please don’t forget. The only exception should be Tiffany I think… You’re going to wear your uniform right?” She asked me.

I kind of blushed a little, I didn’t know why, and said “Yes, that way I can go from there to the high school with the rest of the squad after the parade.”

“That’s fine Tiff. Nice job out there today by the way,” she added.

It was at that point that a lot of the band members began clapping for me spontaneously. I couldn’t believe it! They weren’t making fun of me either; I think they were genuinely impressed with how well I had danced. It was nice to see that my hard work was being recognized by the other students. I was so relieved to find out that I wasn’t going to face more ridicule for everything from my dancing.

Class broke up pretty soon after that with more of the kids telling me they were really impressed — and I was pretty certain there were actually some of the guys checking me out… Some of them were beginning to think that maybe I hadn’t really been a boy before. They were right in a sense, just not how they were thinking.

As I left the classroom I debated about where I was going to go to change for the game. It was a home game so I had about thirty minutes before we were supposed to be ready to head out to the field. Should I go to the faculty restroom like I’d been using? Or should I go ahead and go down to the girls’ locker room and use the coaches’ room like we’d talked about? I wasn’t sure. About the time that I had talked myself out of using the girls locker room for the first time I felt a hand on my shoulder. I tensed up for a second and turned to see who it was.

“How are you doing Tiffany?” I looked up and realized it was Coach Holt.

“I’m doing pretty well. How did you think we did earlier?”

“I think you all did well. Especially you. I can’t believe that you haven’t been working on dance and cheerleading stuff since you were little like most of the rest of the girls. Keep up the good work you’re doing,” she told me with a smile.

“Thanks.”

“Come on, let’s go to the locker room so you can get changed.” She said guiding me towards the gym.

I just nodded. Sure I’d gone in there earlier… but I’d been in the girl’s locker room before with my PE classes last year. Our coach last year was a lady and she’d have us come in there for some things dealing with health stuff, or written tests, so going there for face painting earlier hadn’t been as big a deal.

Now I was going in there to change — it struck me as a really big step. As I walked down the stairs to the locker room I accidentally ran my giant bag of cheerleading equipment into Coach Holt’s side. I grimaced and said, “Sorry.” She laughed a little and gave me a hard time about it. She pointed out the bathroom I was going to use to change and sent me in there to get dressed.

Changing into the cheer uniform was a continual adventure I found. On a daily basis I did everything I could to hide the male appendage that I hated so much… but in the cheer uniform I was so nervous that someone would be able to see something. Especially given that there was basically a one hundred percent chance that someone would see the cheerleading bloomers I wore underneath the skirt! So, as I closed the door I sat about making certain that it was locked away where it couldn’t reappear. If it wasn’t for the fact that I knew it would probably lead to death, or at least a long hospital stay, I wouldn’t have thought twice about taking a pair of scissors to it if I could have. That thought went through my head at least a dozen times every day.

Once I was certain it wasn’t going to escape to embarrass me, I pulled on my panties, put on the skirt, a sports bra, and the top shell of my uniform. I looked all around my clothes to make sure that everything looked fine before going out to the locker room. I was a little hesitant to go out there. ‘Would some of the girls get mad if I saw them naked on accident?’ I wondered to myself.

I needn’t have worried apparently though because as soon as I got out there most of the girls were already dressed. The other girls just changed without making a big deal about it. I made sure I didn’t stare at them so they thought I was trying to ogle them though too. I wasn’t really sure what to do next, but thankfully Coach answered that question by calling me over to where she was sitting and began applying some eye makeup to my eyes. She had a system in place that led to me next being attacked by another girl to put my hair into a high pony-tail that everyone was getting.

I felt like such an outsider — I’d had to pretty much get ready on my own for the last game. Well, Amy had met me at the faculty bathroom the last week and helped me out with everything, but not like this. If I felt like an outsider at that point it didn’t last long. Within the next ten minutes I felt like I should have always been in that locker room with them. Right about the time we were getting ready to go out to the field Mrs. Henry, our interim principal, came in to talk to Coach Holt about something.

She smiled at me and the rest of the squad and headed back out. I was nervous that it might have had something to do with me, but was sure I was just over reacting.

I didn’t have time to try and ask her though because Coach Holt told us, “Okay ladies, let’s go!”

We all began walking out of the locker room with our stuff, out the hallway into the gym, and then outside towards our football field. It was still about a half-hour before the game, so we began going through the motions of getting all of our pom-poms, megaphones, and bags setup along the track. As we did that I grimaced a bit — I hated our track at our school because it was covered with a loose layer of small red rocks. That meant it was inevitable that my bag would be filthy again by the time we got done with the game. I was really grateful that my mom was so good at cleaning stuff like that off!

We ended up killing a little bit of time laughing with each other before the first game started that afternoon. I had an absolute blast as we cheered first for the JV team, and then for the Varsity team. With every cheer that we performed, and got the crowd into, I felt a surge of energy flow through me. I loved every moment of it!

At half-time during the Varsity game we performed another routine with our dance squad. I was really happy to see that both of my parents were actually sitting in the audience watching us perform! I had noticed them just before we had gone to the back of the field to march on together. As I reached my mark I ran through everything in my head that I would need to do and waited for the music. We didn’t wait long though before the music started.

Amazingly I made it through another flawless performance of a routine with the squad, it made me so proud. After the routine Coach Holt had us all huddle together. “Ladies, that was awesome! You need to perform just like that tomorrow night at the high school game. I do have a few things I want to go over before then, but for now know that I think you all did a really great job!” We all cheered and smiled.

As we rejoined the girls that weren’t on the dance squad they smiled at us and told us that we had done a good job. I couldn’t help but feel the stares of anger from a couple of those though… They were really jealous that they hadn’t made it, and I was an obvious target for their anger. I began to feel like I might have some problems with a few of them as the year went on. I would have to mention that to Amy later to see what she thought I should do. I know that any of the ‘normal’ girls on the squad were just as likely to have catty stuff happen to them from those girls… but since I wasn’t born like them I knew I was a far easier target.

That thought distracted me a bit as we finished up the fourth quarter of our varsity team’s game. With about two minutes left in the quarter we did a cheer where I was put up in a lift. Without any warning the hands of the girl holding my foot up slipped and I began falling. I had a falling sensation in my stomach as I plunged to the ground, doing my best to cushion my unexpected fall with my knees. Just as I thought I might be able to land and not fall over I fell backwards onto my butt!

“Oww!!” I said as I felt the rocks of the track dig into my legs.

Courtney, who had dropped me had also fallen over, but she got up quickly and came over, “Are you okay Tiffany?”

As I looked into her eyes I wasn’t actually sure if she really was concerned or not. She was one of the girls that hadn’t made the dance squad. I forced myself to take the hand that she offered and said, “I think so… ouch though. Can we avoid doing that?” I asked her as nicely as I could. Honestly I was pretty mad, there was no good reason for her to be dropping me at this point in the season.

“I’m really sorry, I don’t know why my hands slipped.” She said. This time I could see a little quiver to her lips and realized it had really been an accident.

I got dropped in practice frequently… ‘Why was I getting so mad about this one?’ I asked myself as I gave her a hug and said, “It’s okay… sorry I snapped at you about it. It could happen to anyone.”

I gave her as real of a smile as I was capable of at that moment before Amy came over and said, “Tiffany you probably should put some band-aides on those,” as she pointed to my legs.

“I’m bleeding?” I said all of the sudden surprised. I had quite a few scratches on my legs where the stupid rocks had cut into me.

“Yeah dummy,” she told me as she led me over to a bench where the football team kept its trainer’s kit. Coach Holt came over and helped me get my legs patched up as the last quarter of the game ended — we had won the game by the skin of our teeth this time. It meant we were still undefeated, but everyone had been really nervous that we were going to lose this game at the end. I had been pretty distracted by the stinging sensation of Coach Holt helping me though.

AFTER THE GAME my parents came down out of the stands. My mom was really concerned about my fall, but she had managed to keep herself from running down to the track to frantically check me. “Are you alright sweetie?” She asked as I walked over to the opening in the fence where my Dad and she were waiting.

“Yeah… it just stings a bit.” I said gesturing to the 10 or so band-aids that were on my legs.

“I’ll bet,” my Dad said while putting his arm around my shoulder and grabbed my duffel bag. Mom grabbed my megaphone and we walked back to the car. I already had all of my clothes I’d been wearing in my bag, so we were able to just leave.

Dad opened the trunk and put my bag inside when we got to their car. “I’m actually parked over there,” my dad said pointing to his work vehicle, “where do you want to go eat?” he asked me.

“Eat?” I asked. I was hungry… but I was really tired. “I don’t really care… wherever.” I told him.

A few moments later he and Mom ended up choosing a restaurant that sounded good to them, with Mom leading the way. I actually would have really preferred to go home and shower before eating, but it was already seven when we left the school. I chatted about the game and everything that had happened since she’d dropped me off at school by the time we got to the restaurant.

“How many?” the hostess asked as we walked in.

“Three,” my Dad said.

“It’ll be about fifteen minutes, is that okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied.

As we walked to the left where they had seating to wait in I saw Ms. Fitz standing there. I ran up to her, “Hey Ms. Fitz!” I said while giving her a hug.

“How are you doing Tiffany?” She asked me.

“I’m doing really well actually!” I told her, “We just got done with a football game, so I’m feeling kind of tired — but it’s been a lot of fun!” I told her excitedly. It was so nice to see her! Ms. Fitz was one of the teachers that had taken a group of us to Florida this past summer. She was an awesome teacher, I really admired her.

“I’d heard you made the new dance squad, congratulations,” she told me with a big smile.

“Thanks!”

“Is there anything else new?” She asked as she also greeted my parents. We all talked for a couple more minutes before she and her ‘date’ were called. I knew I would have to tell Amy about that one — Ms. Fitz had a boyfriend!

As we sat there waiting to be called I saw lots of boys come by and stare at me. I knew they weren’t staring at me because they thought I was a boy though, they saw me as a cute cheerleader — and it made me smile. I wasn’t sure yet whether or not I wanted to date boys or not… but I definitely liked being thought of as attractive!

“Mandy, party of three?” the hostess announced.

We followed her to a table and she handed up menus, “Your waitress will be right with you,” she told us.

“Thanks,” my mom said for us.

We all looked through the menus for a few minutes before deciding what we wanted, about the time the waitress walked up. “Hey Tiffany, how are you doing?” She asked.

I stared at her for a second before realizing it was Ashley’s older sister, Valerie. “I’m doing good, how about you?” I asked her

“I’m doing okay. I take it you’re coming straight from the football game?”

I nodded. “Yeah, my parents decided we should come out to eat.” With that I introduced her to them real quick. She took our orders and came back off and on to talk to us. Val was the captain of the dance squad at the high school — and really good at dancing. When she’d helped us at our camp last month I couldn’t believe how good she was!

“So Tiffany what did you think about Dr. Reynolds request that you meet with those other doctors today?” My dad asked quietly.

“I’m kind of excited.” I told him while forcing a smile to my face. I was actually terrified that they would disagree with her. After a slight pause that I thought that in I said, “I so want to look like everyone else… It seems like I might be able to actually get there.”

He nodded. I could tell that he seemed a little bit nervous about all of it for some reason. “Look Daddy, I love you — thank you for everything. I really appreciate you coming to the game today to watch me.”

“You’re welcome sweetie.” He said with a smile on his face that seemed a little pained.

I was a little bit worried about him at this point, but the food came and I forgot about it pretty quickly. He got into moods, even before I landed this bombshell in their laps — that I couldn’t really do anything about. I decided not to push anything that night — not that I even had any energy to do it if I wanted to though.

As Val dropped the check off with my parents I noticed that she must have had her nails done. “I love your nails!” I told her. They were painted a deep blue and had some crystal studs glued onto them. I was reminded of how mine had looked when Amy’s mom had taken us to a salon to get ours done last month.

“Thanks!” She told me. “I’ve been nominated for homecoming queen, so I needed to get them done before we have the ceremony tomorrow night.” She said with a big smile.

“So are you going to dance tomorrow night with the squad?” I asked her.

“I’ll be absent I’m afraid — it’s too hard to get dressed in my dress and everything and try and juggle being in my uniform to dance. But I’ll still be around the squad when you guys are hanging out with us tomorrow,” she said.

“Cool.” I told her. With that she took my parents money and left to get change. I got a really strong chill in my body as we walked out of the restaurant that night. It had been tolerably warm when we’d walked in, but with the temperature falling quickly, I was wishing I was dressed in my warm-ups.

By the time I got home all I wanted to do was fall into bed — all of the adrenaline from the game had worn off by the middle of dinner, but instead I had to shower and do homework. In the meantime while I was working on homework Mom washed my cheer uniform since I would have to wear it again the next day.

We were supposed to wear them to school since we wouldn’t have time to change before the parade stuff… or at least the cheerleaders wouldn’t. Since I was going to do the band instead it was going to be a little bit different, but I was one of the dance captains, I didn’t have a choice but to wear it. It meant I also wasn’t going to be able to wear my new outfit to the dance…

Don’t get me wrong, I loved wearing the uniform. There was something about it that said you were cool without saying anything. It instantly moved you up the food chain in life — but I’d worn it all night, and would have liked to have worn something else until the evening. A lot of the girls who weren’t on the squad had talked all week about what they were going to wear to school Friday for the dance, but we were stuck without a choice.

I finally stopped my griping to myself about this long enough to try and figure out why I was so concerned about that. ‘Who is going to care what you are wearing, Tiff?’ I asked myself. I wrangled with that one in my head for a bit. I was so confused about that issue, that I didn’t know what to think at all.

I believed I was really a girl — which meant that liking boys was okay right? But I’d been born a biological boy, which meant liking boys wasn’t okay? Then there was the whole issue of how I’d never really gotten along with boys anyway, would I really want anything to do with one? The idea of a dance tomorrow had me frightened because of it. If I decided I wanted to date a boy, would any boy ever want to go out with me? All of them had to know about me. That night I wished I could just skip the stupid dance, but I didn’t want to stay in class either.

The way the next day was supposed to work was going to be absolute chaos. We were starting off with our normal classes until eleven, when we could ‘buy out’ of our class and go to the dance in the gym. It was a dollar — and let’s face it! Who wouldn’t get out of a class for a dollar? So that was supposed to go on until noon, when we were supposed to have an early dismissal for the high school’s homecoming parade.

The dance and cheerleading squads were supposed to go eat and head to the staging area for the parade, but I was going to go with the band to our band hall to wait for the other middle school in our town, Cimarron Junior High, to meet up with us at our school to practice for the parade. After practicing for a short time Mrs. Remar was supposed to feed us pizza before we left to go to the staging grounds ourselves.

When we were done with the parade I was supposed to catch up with the squad and head up to the high school to help the high school squad finish decorating the stadium. After that we were going to practice our dance routine that we were going to do as a pre-game performance. Then the list continued on until the end of the football game when Mrs. Remar had asked all of the band students to stick around and watch the high school band perform their show that they were going to contest with the next day.

I didn’t know whether to be excited or cry about the next day as I finished up my homework. Thankfully about the time I felt like I was going to be forced to cry the phone rang and mom called out, “Tiffany, it’s Amy.”

I ran to the phone and said, “Amy I’m so glad you called!”

“What’s up Tiff?” She asked me.

“What’s not up?” I asked her. I came off a little more stressed than I meant to though.

“Whoa, what happened?” She asked me.

I told her about my brooding from the last hour of homework, well minus the part about the boys. That was something I wouldn’t mind talking to her about, but not on the phone where Mom and Dad could listen in.

“Listen Tiffany, tomorrow is going to be a blast! It’s going to be great, don’t worry about it. We’re all going to dance together in a group, so you don’t have to worry about anything. And, if there’s a slow dance it’s not like you have to dance,” she told me.

I wasn’t sure how she picked up on stuff without me even saying it. I guess that’s why she was my best friend. “I know…. I think I’m just tired.”

“Tomorrow’ll be great, trust me!”

“I do Amy,” I told her finally managing a smile.

“I know you do. Oh! I almost forgot why I was calling. Coach Holt called me and asked me to tell you that we’re all supposed to wear the cold weather version of our uniform tomorrow. It’s supposed to get down to thirty tonight, and she’s afraid it’s going to get pretty cold at the game tomorrow night too. She also said that we could all go ahead and wear our warm-up pants over our skirts tomorrow morning too if we want.”

“I’m so glad she decided that, I was a bit worried about that.”

“Yeah… it’s a bit cold tonight isn’t it!”

“I just about froze when we came out of the restaurant. It was so warm today and then it just cooled off so much,” I told her.

“Anyway Tiffany my mom is telling me to get off the phone and go to bed, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you then Amy — and thanks.”

“No problem Tiff, good night.”

My own parents came by shortly after that and told me to go to bed. Before I did that though I had to get my warm-ups out of the drawer I had stashed them in and grab the long sleeve shell that we had for our uniforms. Mom also suggested I throw in a thermal top to put underneath if it was really going to be that cold tomorrow night. The top was pretty warm though so I told her I wasn’t really concerned about it. Soon I was in bed laying there trying to put the pieces of my life into order…

 

Chapter 5:

 
MY ALARM BLARED before I knew it, and I dragged myself out of bed. I decided that I was going be excited about today — otherwise I would only have a miserable time. So I showered quickly and set about getting myself dressed for the day. Even though I had nothing to speak of in the chest area I still put on a sports bra first before putting on the top shell.

The top shell that we had for the long sleeve version was more like a sweater than anything else. It kind of itched a bit as I put it on, but I just ignored it — I’d be stuck wearing this all day, so it wasn’t worth thinking about. After getting my hair done I put on a little bit of makeup. My mom wasn’t real pleased with me using makeup at all — but it was a special day with everything going on. Plus, she was already gone! I smiled a bit at that thought. She always left for work before I was even up — so I could probably get away with a lot of things since she wasn’t there.

I wouldn’t though of course. Knowing my luck I’d get busted somehow. Besides, there was always my ‘other’ mom to consider. Melanie wasn’t quite as against makeup as my mom, but she definitely wouldn’t let me get away with a lot of stuff either. I sighed. My life seemed to be complicated every way you looked at it. Once I was satisfied with how I looked I carefully pulled up the pair of nylon warm-up pants I had over the top of my skirt. I had to be careful not to get it bunched up, but it went over fairly easily.

I somehow managed to be out of the bathroom ten minutes earlier than normal, even though I had done more to get ready than I did most days… go figure. I went into the kitchen and heated up some bacon my mom had already cooked and had some toast with it. The news was on in the kitchen already and I just sort of sat down and watched it. Just before I had to go wait for Amy’s mom outside they mentioned that we would be having our homecoming parade, and they would have pictures later this evening from the day.

I’d been on TV before for a couple things this year, not least of which was to try and fight for my right to be myself, but I still got kind of excited thinking about the fact that I might be able to appear in my cheer uniform. Before I could think about that though I heard a door slam outside and knew that must be Amy getting out of the car to come get me.

I ran into the living room, threw on the jacket that went with our warm-ups, picked up my backpack, cheer bag, and all of the other cheer stuff I needed before opening the door and heading out to the car with her.

“Are you ready for the big day?” Her mom asked me as I slid in.

“I think it’ll be fun,” I told her while forcing myself not to think about how uncertain I felt about the day.

“It will be Tiffany. I wish I could go watch the two of you at the dance… but Amy threatened to not talk to me for a week so I decided I could live without it,” she said jokingly. I saw Amy stick her tongue out at her mother and I giggled a little. It was always reassuring to me that I wasn’t the only girl that was abused by her parents like this.

As we arrived at school I noticed that a lot of the girls had dressed a little bit nicer. Nikki was even wearing a skirt to school that day with a really pretty blouse. Our last class before the dance was choir. Kristina, Amy, and I both took our warm-ups off in the bathroom during the class. When we finished getting settled I took my bags and stuff over to the band hall so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it during the dance.

“Teachers, please dismiss the students who are buying out for the dance at this time.” Mrs. Henry called over the intercom.

Kristina, Amy and I all jumped up from the riser where we were sitting faster than anyone else. We gave our money to Ms. Beecher and walked the short distance to the gym where we could already hear the music blaring. The three of us joined up with the rest of our friends in one corner of the gym and began moving to the music.

Kyle was a total goofball during the dance, even going so far as break dancing before getting yelled at by one of the teachers. I didn’t honestly think that was in his character, it was pretty funny. After about forty minutes of dancing I was feeling pretty hot, even without anything covering my legs. Amy must have felt the same way because she said, “Hey Tiff, let’s go get something to drink from the snack bar.”

“Okay,” I told her.

I heard Kyle behind me ask, “Mind if we join you two?” David was right behind him.

“Sure,” I said. The four of us walked together out of the gym and across the hall to the open snack bar.

“So you two look nice today,” Amy said as we waited in line to both of them. They had both dressed up in nice slacks and shirts with ties. All of the football players were required to dress like that for the parade. They were going to wear their jerseys over the top of those.

“Thanks,” Kyle said, “But not as nice as you two look today.”

I blushed. “Thanks,” I told him.

“So you’re dancing at the game tonight right?” He asked us.

“Yeah we’re going to perform for pre-game tonight — it should be a lot of fun!” I said.

“I was really impressed with how well you guys danced yesterday,” he told me. David and Amy began having a side conversation right about that time. “Is it really hard?”

“Yeah, it really is. I can’t believe I’ve been able to learn how to do it so quickly… but it’s so much fun to do!”

“I’m glad they let you on the squad. You’ve definitely had a tough year,” he told me.

I just nodded.

“What would you like to drink sweetie?” A lady working in the concession stand asked as I came up.

“Umm… a coke please.” I said as I handed her a crunched up dollar bill that I’d had in my shoe. It was the only place I could think of to keep money on days like this.

“Here you go.” She said handing over the drink.

“Thanks,” I told her with a smile. Amy, Kyle, and David got drinks too and we started heading back into the gym.

We found seats in the bleachers and tried talking to each other over the loud music about different things. Nothing was really that important, although we did enjoy making fun of a couple of snobby girls that no one would dance with. Several of them had given me trouble when I was trying to try out for the dance squad… so I couldn’t help but have a certain sense of satisfaction about it. With about ten minutes left in the dance we threw away our drinks and rejoined the dance floor.

They announced the last song soon after that, it was a slow dance. I started to kind of move off to the side of the gym, but I heard, “Tiffany.”

I turned around and Kyle asked me, “May I have this dance,” with an over-exaggerated bow. He was still being a goofball, and I felt like I could take him up on the offer and know he wasn’t going to take it seriously.

“Why not?” I told him. I put my right arm around his shoulder and he took my left hand into his. When he put his arm around my waist I felt goosebumps pop up on my legs. I really hoped he didn’t see them. ‘What’s going on with me?’ I asked myself. I found myself smiling as we danced for no apparent reason. ‘Am I enjoying this?’ I asked myself silently as he changed the direction that we were moving.

It was then that I could see Amy was dancing with David, while Kristina and several other people also had formed up into couples for the dance in a cluster right around us. I looked across the gym and saw a number of people openly staring at us. Kyle must have seen them too because he said, “So apparently this is going to be the talk of the school for the next couple weeks?”

“Probably,” I groaned a bit.

“Listen, you remember when I told you last summer that I thought this could be a lot of fun?”

“Sort of,” I told him trying to remember back.

“Well this is kind of what I was talking about. People have such strong opinions about you, now they’re going to have something else to think about. Some of them are absolutely going to throw a fit with the idea of a football jock like me dancing with you.”

I nodded, he was right… I’d been causing problems long enough this year to know that this was going to make a lot of girls unhappy. Of course when I thought of the fact that the snobby girls from earlier would be in that group I kind of grinned a little.

“Yeah, it’s definitely going to knock some people off their feet… but… umm… Kyle… I don’t know quite how to tell you this… but I want you to know that I don’t really think…”

“That we should date?”

“Well… I have a feeling it might cause more problems than either of us… plus I’m not really ready for that.” I told him.

“I’m not really ready for it either,” he told me, “I’m fine with us just being friends too. Like I said, this is as much fun for me as anything,” he told me with a grin.

“Really?”

“Really. But I do want you to know that I really do think of you as a girl — I don’t think you’re a boy at all. So, maybe not now… but maybe someday the two of us will go on a date. I’d be fine with that, that’s all I wanted to tell you.”

“Maybe I’ll be okay with it someday too. Until then I’d be really happy to be friends.”

“Me too. Do you mind if we do this kind of thing to people every now and then?”

“Maybe,” I told him. I didn’t have anything else that I could really say about it. The song’s last bars came to an end, and Mrs. Henry told us we were all dismissed for the day. I gave Kyle a quick hug around the shoulders and then walked away with Amy.

“What happened?!?” She asked me.

“You’re sure nosey…” I told her lightly.

“Well, I want to hear about this from my best friend, not from everyone else in school first,” she told me while linking up arms with me and heading back to the choir room where she had left her stuff. “So what happened?”

“Nothing, we danced… and Kyle told me a few things.” Part of me didn’t want to tell Amy about this where we could be overheard in the hallway. When we got into the choir room I added, “He wanted to watch people’s reactions as we danced. Kyle thought it could be funny… and I agree actually… well sort of… Anyway we both talked about how neither of us is ready to date yet, but that he considers me a girl for real… and maybe someday we would…”

“Wow!” She told me. “But you’re not going out?” She asked me.

“No, didn’t I just get through saying that?” I asked.

“Well… kind of. That’s cool though, if you’re going to land yourself a guy he is definitely the one.”

“You sound jealous!”

“Maybe a little… But I think I like David more.” She told me.

“Ha! So are the two of you going out now?” I asked her.

“I’m not sure that going out is the right word. I’m not allowed to date until I’m sixteen, so don’t you dare tell my parents!” she told me.

“I won’t say anything if you don’t say anything about Kyle.” I told her.

“Pinky swear?” She asked.

“Pinky swear.” We put our pinkies together, and I said, “Well you’d better go catch up with the squad. I’ve got to go into the band room before Mrs. Remar starts wondering where I am.”

We gave each other a quick hug and she headed off to the home ec room where Coach Holt was meeting the girls. Meanwhile I walked down the hallway to the band hall.

WHEN THE OTHER middle school band got to our school we quickly experienced organized chaos. As they came in I felt sort of possessive of them coming into our band hall and putting their stuff all over it. It just seemed wrong for some reason.

“Band atten-hut!” Mrs. Remar bellowed.

“Pride!” We echoed while standing erect at attention as she had taught us.

“Ladies and Gentlemen you have two minutes to have your instrument together and be outside on the blacktop, by instrument section! Fall out!” she told us. We all scrambled to get outside. Thankfully I already had my saxophone together.

Outside people didn’t seem to have any idea of where to go so I decided to at least get my section together, “Saxophones over here!” I said loudly while waving my hand in the air. The three other saxophones from my school came over, followed soon by seven from Cimarron.

“Hi, I’m Ben,” one of the guys from the other school said to me.

“I’m Tiffany, nice to meet you.” We had just enough time to introduce each other within our section before Mrs. Remar started lining us up in a parade block formation. She put the brass up front, followed by the percussion, and then woodwinds brought up the rear. I found myself in the row directly behind the bass drums. It was really cool — between both schools we had about a hundred students. There was a lot of energy with all of us — it was fun! I kind of wished that the football players and other cheerleaders weren’t missing from the group — it would have been even larger!

She had us practice marching as a combined group and playing at the same time. Both schools percussionists practiced playing the cadence in between when we played our piece. By the time we finished a half-hour later I was starving and tired of walking in circles.

“Band Halt!”

“One-Two!” We called back.

“Ladies and gentlemen stay at attention please,” Mrs. Remar said. “When I dismiss you please put your instruments in their cases first. Then Holden students please show the Cimarron students where our cafeteria is. Inside the cafeteria there is pizza and coke for everyone. Please start with two pieces; if there is extra you may get more then. Dismissed!”

I walked back to the band hall and met up with Nikki and Jessica inside. I hadn’t been hanging out with the two of them a whole lot since I joined the dance squad — mainly because I was always so busy — so it was nice to spend some time hanging out with them.

“So Tiffany what’s up with you and Kyle?” Nikki asked.

I blushed, “Nothing, he’s just a friend.” I told her.

“Riiiight.” She told me as we grabbed our pizza and went to find a seat.

I stuck my tongue out at her. “Really there’s nothing going on. He just asked me to dance more or less so that we could watch the expressions on everyone’s faces.” I paused before adding, “Please don’t tell anyone else that though, it might ruin any future fun for us.”

“We know what kind of fun you two want to have,” Jessica said with a wink.

I threw my hands up in despair — if my friends didn’t believe me who would?

“Just kidding Tiffany, I can easily see you and Kyle trying to pull something like that off.”

I breathed a sigh of relief; I was really worried about this rumor mill. Kyle may have thought it was fun, but it was downright terrifying to me. We spent the rest of the time we had for lunch just talking to each other about stuff that was going on. I’d had more time with Nikki than Jessica in the last couple months since she’d gone to New York with Amy, Ashley, and I for the film festival that our film had been shown at.

Before I knew it Mrs. Remar was telling us to head to the busses with our cases. Just before I got on the bus my Mom drove up. “Hey Tiffany, how’s your day been?” she asked me.

“It’s been good so far,” I told her.

“Good, do you have your stuff?” She asked.

“Here you go,” I told her as I handed her my cheer stuff and my backpack. She was going to meet up with me at the end of the parade to give it to me before we went up to the high school. “Thanks for taking it.” I told her. I also ended up handing her my saxophone case so that she could meet me with it too.

As I got back on the bus with my saxophone out Mrs. Remar gave me a look that made me think I was about to get in trouble. “Tiffany, where is your case?”

“I gave it to my Mom. She’s going to meet me at the end of the parade so that I can catch up with the squad to go up to the high school afterward.”

“Okay, I guess that makes sense. Just be careful since you don’t have it in the case.”

“Thanks,” I told her and took a seat next to Nikki. The two of us chatted back and forth about some things until we got to the parking lot of a grocery store where they staged all of the parade from. The bus drove through a large number of floats and groups until we got to the middle of the parking lot where it parked.

When we got off of the bus everyone began getting their instruments together and began talking outside the bus just hanging out. As I stood there I noticed the air was already cooler than it had been the day before at that time. ‘How cold is it going to get tonight?’ I asked myself. A few spots over I could see the cheer squad was getting ready — part of me wished I was over there. I felt so torn between the groups at that moment.

Even farther across the parking lot I could see the high school band getting organized. I watched as they began lining up at the front of the parade. Mrs. Remar had explained to us that we were going to be in the middle of the parade, about twenty floats back, so this was our only chance to see them.

After a few minutes of getting organized their drum major called them to attention and began yelling out seemingly random commands to them. We were all watching as the turned in every direction for several minutes before they were put at-ease. It was so cool! ‘I can’t wait until I get to high school!’ I thought to myself.

“That looks really hard…” Nikki said next to me.

“We’ll be able to do it when we get there — I’m sure of it!” I told her with a smile.

“Well you’ll be able to do it, I don’t doubt that… but I’m not as talented as you are.” She told me.

“That’s not true and you know it. Don’t be so down on yourself,” I told her with a smile.

“If you say so,” she said with a shrug.

I was about to say more to her about this when Mrs. Remar called us to attention and had us get into our lines. Before long the parade began moving forward. The parade route wasn’t overly long, just about a mile-and-a-half round trip, but the first part was up hill. As we marched along I saw some trumpets began moving their horns back and forth as the percussion played the cadence. I of course thought that was an awesome idea and started doing it too, getting the rest of the woodwinds involved.

Before long we had played the song about seven times and were in the middle of the cadence as we came up to the judges stand. An eighth grader from each school was acting as drum majors for us and we began playing our song as they gave us the command. After a roll-off we played our hearts out as we passed by the stand. I felt a sense of pride as I felt the judges and the crowd watching and cheering for us. It was a lot like cheerleading with that, I guess maybe I was an attention hog?

When we came to the end of the actual parade route Mrs. Remar called us to a halt for a quick rest before everyone was going to march back down to the staging point. I saw Mom standing there, so I said goodbye to Mrs. Remar, and walked with Mom to where she had parked a block away. After I put my sax up she drove me to where the cheerleading squads’ bus was.

They had just walked up when we got there. Amy waved at me, “Hey Tiff!”

“Hey!” I said and walked over to her with my bags in hand.

“You guys sounded really good!” Kristina said as I caught up with the two of them.

“Thanks! How did it go for you guys?”

“It went well I think. I wish you could have been with us for it…” Amy said.

“Well I felt like I wanted to do this since I’d been working on the music longer than I’ve been on the squad. You’re not mad at me over it are you?” I asked them.

“Of course not!” Kristina said.

“We understand Tiff, really.” Amy added. I could tell she really wasn’t mad — something I was grateful for. After the last year of being such close friends I was always worried something would come in between us — that thought terrified me.

“Well Ladies, come on we need to get going!” Coach yelled at us. After dropping my stuff off on a seat where the other girls had started a pile of bags and equipment, I sat down next to Amy. I looked out the window and sighed deeply, I’d made it through half of my day.

THE BUS RIDE to the high school lasted a little longer than it normally would have because of traffic from the parade. That gave Amy and me a little time to just sit and relax. We didn’t talk much though, we were both too exhausted from we’d already done that day.

Once we arrived at the high school Coach Holt led us into the high school cafeteria. The high school’s dance squad used that as their staging area and practiced there. They were already scurrying about here and there doing different things. “Okay ladies, this is Kathy — I think you all met her during the camp session, she’s in charge for right now. Whatever she asks you to do, please do it.”

“Hi girls,” she said to us. “Okay so the first thing we need help with is tying some ribbon on the fence in front of the stands…” she had us help with one task after another in decorating the stadium for the homecoming game. The field was freshly painted and had the high school’s mascot, a coyote just like our junior high, was vividly painted in the middle of the field.

I had a lot of fun working with the girls from the high school’s squads as we worked together. Apparently they had invited Cimarron’s cheer squad, but their sponsor had other plans already and couldn’t bring them up. I couldn’t believe that they still didn’t come up somehow, but it was their loss.

At about four our dance squad got onto the field and ran through our routine a couple of times to practice. Meanwhile the girls that were just on the cheer squad went and worked with the high school’s cheer squad. In between run-through’s the high school squad came out and helped fix some mistakes they saw. We eventually had to get off the field so that the high school dance squad could go through their routine. I loved watching them, they were so good. Coach Clemons though seemed to always find something to pick out on them though and she called out corrections on her handheld megaphone. When they finished both of our squads went up to the cafeteria where we had fried chicken waiting for us to eat.

Kathy came over while we were eating and sat down next to Amy, Ashley, Kristina, and I. “Tiffany, right?” she asked me.

“That’s me,” I said with a smile.

“I was really impressed with how you were doing out there. You’re one of the captains, and Amy you’re the other right?” We both nodded. “I wish you two were eighth graders and were going to be here next year… I would love to have you on the squad before I graduate.”

“Thanks,” Amy said for us.

“So I hear that you two are basically inseparable?” She asked.

“The only way they could be more inseparable was if they shared the same body,” Kristina said with a smile.

“We’re pretty close,” Amy admitted.

“That’s cool.” She told us.

She talked to us about a lot of different things while we had dinner. When everyone had finished eating, the high school cheerleading squad taught us several of their cheers so that we could cheer with them. Meanwhile the high school’s dance squad worked on getting into the outfits they were wearing for their routine that night.

Soon Coach Holt had our school’s dance squad assemble, so that we could get ready to go down to the field for the pre-game performance. She led us through the stadium, down to the field, and around the track to the back of the field. The football players were still practicing on the sides of the field — but they had cleared the middle for our performance.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, for your pre-game entertainment we would like to present the Holden Junior High Dancing Coyotes!” The stadium was only about a third full at that point, but the crowd that was there cheered none-the-less.

We marched forward to our starting marks and waited for the music to begin. As the music started we ran through the routine — I felt a huge amount of pride roll in as we marched off the field. I had done the routine better than ever before, and I was proud of myself and the squad. Amy felt the same way as we gathered on the track to wait for a signal to go wait to form a tunnel for the football players to run through. “Tiffany, I think we might just have a chance to do really well at that national competition Coach Holt wants us to go to!”

“Yeah, if we can raise the money to go…” I told her.

“We will,” she assured me.

With that the rest of the evening became a blur. At the start of the game we lined up with the high school cheerleaders, forming a tunnel, and then jumped up and down as the football players ran by. I was rather intimidated at that point — the guys were huge! I wondered if Kyle would ever be that big. During the game we stayed on the track and cheered with the cheerleaders from our school and the high school. Meanwhile the high school dance squad just sat in the stands. I had learned over the day that they considered themselves to be above the cheerleaders. A lot of the high school cheerleaders resented it, and I had a feeling we were eventually going to have a similar situation at our junior high. Well… we already had it, but I was on the other side of it so I hadn’t noticed it as much.

The game was a lot of fun! Leading into half-time our team led seventeen to twelve, and the crowd roared at every good play the team made. Listening to it was enough to send shivers up and down my spine — it was such a cool sound! During half-time the dance squad from the high school started the festivities off with their routine. As hard as I thought ours was, theirs was twenty times harder. They did a routine with beach balls that looked incredibly cool! The girls moved so quickly at times I had a hard time trying to keep track of the counts and moves they were doing. When they finished, the homecoming court nominees came out to the field.

They started off the court results with the guys, then saying the princesses for the underclassmen, before announcing Val as the homecoming queen for the year. I gave Ashley a hug as she jumped up and down. Her dad had escorted Valerie to the field, and had given her a big hug and kiss before the former queen put the crown on her head.

During the third quarter we were allowed to wander around a bit. The first thing any of us did though was put on our warm-ups. We were beginning to freeze! It had gotten cold enough I could see my breath. I hadn’t noticed it too bad while we were jumping around and screaming, but as soon as we stopped I began shivering.

Once we were dressed Amy and I walked over to the concession stand. Mom met up with us there and bought me some popcorn. “Are you having fun?” She asked me.

I answered with a big smile and said, “Yes!”

“Good.” She said.

“Where’s Daddy?” I asked.

“He got called out to work shortly after you guys danced during pre-game.” She told me.

“But he at least saw me dance?” I asked her, a little hurt that he’d had to leave.

“Yes, he saw you dance — he was very proud of you.” She told me with a smile. “Just like I am.” I got a hug from her and then ran into Kyle and David.

“You guys were great!” David said to Amy and me.

“We’re nothing compared to the high school team though…” I told them.

“You will be.” Kyle said to us.

The third quarter ran down rather quickly and we were back on the track cheering. At this point the high school’s dance squad joined us to cheer on the track. That meant we had well over sixty girls cheering — and we were a force to be reckoned with!

Late in the fourth quarter the opposing team made an interception and passed our team’s score. The crowd began going nuts as our team only had a little over a minute to make it back down the field to score. With each play we tried to get louder to inspire the crowd and the team. Just when I thought we might not win the game, our quarterback threw a long pass to another player in the end zone and scored. It was a good thing too — no one would have liked to have lost the homecoming game!

After the game I said good bye to everyone and left with Mom to go home. My plans of staying with Amy had been vetoed when she saw how tired I was the night before. As if to prove her right, I was so tired that I almost fell asleep in the shower. I had been sweating way too much to go to bed without showering first though, so I forced myself through the motions. As soon as I had on a pair of pajamas I went straight to bed — falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 6:

 
SATURDAY MORNING I woke up wanting to scream at the person who had turned the light on so rudely in my room…. Then I realized it was the sun… oops. ‘It must be really late!’ I just lay in bed though, enjoying the fact that last week was over — and that my teachers had all been nice enough not to give us homework this weekend. I could almost stay here in bed all day, maybe even read a book?

Knock, Knock, Knock.

“Tiffany? Are you going to get up today?” My Mom asked through the door.

Groan. “Do I have to?” I asked, annoyed that my reverie had been ended.

“Only if you want to go shopping…”

“Shopping?” I’d forgotten that she said she wanted to go shopping today. “Okay, I’m getting up!” Any thoughts of noodling in bed were instantly erased as I grabbed a pair of jeans, a top, some underwear, and ran into the bathroom. I had showered last night so it didn’t take me too long to get ready. I wanted to do my hair a little nicer… but ended up just throwing it into a pony tail with a scrunchie instead. After throwing a pair of earrings in my ears I quickly returned to my room to put on a pair of tennis shoes. I would have liked to have worn some nicer flats or something… but my Mom shopped at such a fast pace that those would have killed me!

After I’d finished tying them I ran out into the kitchen and said, “Alright, I’m ready!”

“If only she got ready that fast for anything else…” Dad teased me.

“It’s shopping, why wouldn’t I get ready fast?”

“Well, her attitude on shopping has definitely improved over Brandon’s.” Mom said.

I was getting kind of annoyed. They said shopping, not ‘pick on Tiffany day.’ I just glared at them both for a second before saying, “Well are we going?”

“Alright sweetie, let’s go,” Mom said. She and I walked to the car and began driving into town to go shopping. We left Dad at home intentionally. This was just supposed to be a mother/daughter day.

We pulled into one of the mall’s parking lots at about one. “Where to first?” She asked me.

“Umm… How about Mervyn’s?”

“Okay.” She told me as she drove to that part of the parking lot. The two of us then got out and I realized I had forgotten to grab a jacket, and it was cold outside. I was just about to complain about that when Mom opened up the trunk and said, “Here Tiff,” and handed me my cheer jacket. It was done in the same design as the shell of my uniform and had my name embroidered on it as well.

“Thanks for grabbing it… I didn’t even think about it.” I told her.

For some reason I grabbed her hand and walked with her inside holding her hand. I hadn’t done that much since I was little, but it felt good for some reason. As we made our grand entrance into the mall, the shopping began!

We began looking in the juniors section, but we found that I was still running into the problem of being too small for the clothes there. I was so frustrated when we ended up in the girls section when we couldn’t find anything in the other section. I was just way too short, by about eleven inches, for all of the bottoms. And, without any breasts, I didn’t stand a chance of any of the tops looking good on me — plus they were all way too long too.

“Here Tiffany, how about this?” Mom asked while holding up a sweater that was in an identical style as we had just seen over in the juniors section.

It was actually okay, “Okay, that doesn’t look like it’s for a five year old… I’ll try it on.”

We kept looking through the section trying to find anything else that looked like it might be wearable. I mean I could fit into anything that was a size seven… but that meant Mom had some scary things that she held up. At the point when she held up a pink sweatshirt with a big teddy bear sewn on the front of it I hit her. “Be nice!” I told her.

She just laughed at me. Unfortunately the laser bolts coming out of my eyes seemed to deflect off some sort of invisible armor she wore. We ended up leaving Mervyn’s with a couple sweaters and the one pair of pants we found that looked like I could get away with wearing. Throughout the rest of the mall I tried on outfit after outfit, but we didn’t find much. At JC Penney’s Mom forced me to make a decision on a winter coat. I ended up picking one that was purple and pink. It did make me look like I was five, but I did like the jacket at least.

Dillard’s was one of the last anchor stores, and after striking out there I decided that I was starving and we made our way back to the food court. There Mom and I got some chicken tenders and sat down to eat for a few minutes.

“I’m so tired of not growing,” I griped to Mom.

“You’ll start soon enough,” she replied.

“Not soon enough. At this rate I’m going to be in high school wearing clothes meant for a kindergartner.”

“Well… at least no one will ever think you’re old!” she told me.

I had no response for her except my tongue. She wasn’t taking this seriously at all!

“Oh chill out Tiff, we’ve been finding some things that are the same as what you could get in the juniors section. And, depending on what they decide on Wednesday, you won’t stay short for that much longer.”

That brought a small smile to my face, though not a large one. “I hope you’re right.”

“Come on, let’s keep shopping. Why don’t we go by Claire’s and see if there are any earrings you want.” I smiled at that.

In Claire’s we did end up picking up a few new pairs of earrings for me, including some that had cheerleading megaphones on them. I thought they were cute and actually bought a set for Amy too. Her birthday wasn’t going to be for a while, but I might as well start getting her some presents right?

In one store Mom led me over to the purse section. “You know Tiffany we haven’t ever bought you a purse. You don’t have to use it all of the time, but you really should have one for days like this when we’re shopping.”

“Okay,” I said with a smile.

“Which one do you like?” She asked. I picked through them for several minutes before the two of us decided on a small and simple black purse that would be big enough for me to keep a few things in, but not so gigantic that I wouldn’t want to carry it!

Several hours and another mall later we drove home. As we walked in the door my dad looked like he was going to be sick as he saw how many bags we had with us. “I really think that I shouldn’t let you two out of the house to go shopping,” he commented.

“It’s just one of the joys of having a daughter,” Mom said with a smile. Honestly I think she had as much, or more, fun shopping that day as I did. She’d wanted a daughter for so long but had never been able to have one. Now that I had become her daughter she was loving every moment of time we spent like this.

The evening passed quickly and I found myself getting ready for bed. As I looked over my selection of pajamas I couldn’t help but decide to wear the footed pajamas again… they were so comfortable. Mom gave me an amused smile when she saw me go out to the kitchen to get a glass of water. “So all day you fight with me about not buying clothes that make you look like a little kid… and you pick the pajamas that most make you look like you’re four…”

“They’re comfy though!” I told her.

She just shook her head and laughed at me as I walked back down the hall. Mom came right behind me, tucking me in and turning off the light, saying “Goodnight Tiffany.”

SUNDAY AND MONDAY passed by swiftly. I’d spent Sunday practicing some music for an honor band audition that Mrs. Remar wanted me to try out for. The music seemed close to impossible, but I worked as hard as I could on it. She was supposed to help me out with it Friday after school. Monday I had my gymnastics lesson, and during the lesson I managed to my first ever back flip! I came home very excited about it.

Tuesday after practice I went home with Amy to hang out for the evening. The two of us worked on homework for a half-hour or so and then we just sat down and played with Barbies like we’d been able to last year.

“You know Tiffany, I really enjoy cheerleading and the dance squad… But I do miss having our evenings free to play.”

“I do too,” I told her.

“Well, we only have practices till we get done with the competition in January. Then we’ll be able to have the afternoons free again,” she said.

“That is as long as we don’t go out for track.” I told her.

“Well I’m not really interested in doing it, are you?”

“Not really. I’d rather take a break for a couple months before we start dance tryouts again.”

“So you have your appointment with those other doctors tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“You said that if it goes well Dr. Reynolds will go ahead and prescribe hormones for you?”

“Yeah, she said that she would schedule another appointment with the other doctor we’ve been working with next week if they agree.”

“You don’t seem that excited about it Tiff, what’s wrong?”

I sighed. “I’m just scared that these other two doctors are going to tell her that she’s stupid for thinking of doing that already, and that we need to wait even longer.”

“I know you really want this, but would it be that bad to wait a little longer?”

“Yes! I’m so sick of looking like a five year old. And, as long as I’m stuck on the other medicine to just block my hormones I’m going stay like this. Plus, it’s not fair that you and all of the other girls are already starting to grow breasts! I want my own too.”

“Well not all of the girls have them,” she told me. “Nikki is just as flat as you are.”

I grimaced.

“Okay bad example — she’s also tired of looking like she’s five. Actually I think she’s a little shorter than you at least.”

“So?” I paused. “I’m just nervous I guess.”

“Tiffany, there is no way in the world that they will think that you’re not really a girl. As soon as they find out about all of the things that you’ve done this year they’re sure to go along with Dr. Reynolds plan.”

“I don’t know, do you really think so?”

“Of course dummy! Just the fact that you’re a co-captain on the school’s dance squad is bound to land tons of points in your favor. Everything’s been going really well for you — there’s no way they’ll say otherwise.”

“I hope you’re right,” I told her.

“I am, you’ll see.”

“Tiffany!” I heard Melanie cry out from downstairs. “Your Mom’s here.”

“Well I guess I need to go,” I told her.

As she walked me downstairs, “Call me whenever you find out anything!”

“I will.” I told her.

At the door I gave her a hug. Melanie and her dad also gave me hugs before I left and said, “Good luck tomorrow Tiffany.”

When I got home my parents let me stay up a little bit later since I didn’t have to go to school the next day. We just had to be at Dr. Reynolds’ office by eleven. That meant that I was able to just kind of pace about the house for the rest of the evening. Mom and I picked out a skirt and blouse that we thought would be pretty for the meeting. I’d gotten it at Bloomingdale’s, in New York, when we’d gone out for the film festival. The thought of that trip made me smile, and I tried to focus on positive thoughts as I hung the outfit in the bathroom and went back to my room and tried reading a book.

Nothing seemed to calm me down for that entire time I waited for bed. Finally out of desperation to calm my mind I went to bed before even being asked to. I held tightly onto Emily, a stuffed tiger I’d also gotten on the trip to New York, and found myself crying. ‘Would they agree with Dr. Reynolds? What if they said that she was completely wrong and I should be Brandon forever instead? Would these doctors just glare at me and tell my parents that I was a freak?’ I knew on some level that this wasn’t likely… but I couldn’t help but be scared.

I must have cried myself to sleep though, because eventually I felt mom gently shaking me awake.

AS I WAS woken up I felt a little disoriented. There was light outside my window and it was a school day. ‘Had I missed school?’ When I remembered what was going on today I shook a little. “Tiffany are you awake yet?” I felt mom sit on the bed next to me.

“I’m getting there,” I told her as I sat up and wiped my eyes. She prodded me up to the bathroom and I asked her, “what time is it?”

“It’s about eight. I let you sleep in a bit, but I figured you would want plenty of time to make yourself look nice.” She put her arm around my shoulder and gave me a hug.

“Will you do my hair for me?” I asked her. I wasn’t sure that I could manage to do it today — I was so nervous.

“Sure sweetie. Get your shower and get dressed then I’ll do it for you.”

I smiled at her and ran in to get ready. I stayed in the shower for a long time washing my hair out. My hair had become one of my proudest achievements in the last year! It had grown to past my shoulders, and because of that it took a while to get the shampoo and conditioner out of it. As I got out of the shower I wrapped it in a small towel and started getting dressed.

I really did love this skirt and blouse set! ‘Of course I should with as much as it cost…’ I thought to myself about it. I dried off the sweat from my face and went to the kitchen where I knew Mom would be waiting. She had already grabbed a blow dryer, a curling iron, and my hair brush and directed me to a chair.

I felt goosebumps as she worked on my hair — I really loved having her do it for me. There was a connection between us when she did it, and I only wished she had been able to work on my hair like this since I’d been little. She seemed determined to make my hair look as pretty as she could — it felt like a long time before she finished. While she was working on my hair she had shoved a plate of toast and bacon into my hands that I ate while she pulled at my hair.

“Finished,” she told me about the time I finished the last of my breakfast.

“Thanks!” I said and gave her a hug.

“If you want you can put on a little makeup today,” she told me. “But not much!” she said as my eyes had widened.

I hugged her again and ran to my room to do my makeup. As I sat down at my dressing table I dug out some nice earrings and the sapphire pendant necklace my parents had given me for my birthday. I just used a real light amount of makeup, I didn’t really need much since my face was still clear… but it made me feel more grown up. I needed everything I could get with my height!

I took some time just to stare at my reflection in the mirror — I couldn’t believe that I’d once looked like a boy. No one in a million years would ever guess I wasn’t a normal girl, and that made me smile. In fact I thought I looked pretty, prettier than most real girls. If only the doctors would help me stay that way today…

I forced myself to stand up and walked back out to the kitchen. “You look very pretty,” my Mom told me as I walked back in.

“Thank you!” I told her as I twirled around letting the skirt flare up a bit.

She gave me a hug and I sat down next to her to watch a morning TV show until it was time to leave. Shortly after ten we went out to the car to go into town for the appointment. I had worn pantyhose with the skirt… but I was still shivering by the time we walked to the car. Fall had begun to really hit our area, and I was beginning to think I was going to have to stop wearing skirts and dresses until it got back to summer!

I stuck my hands inside the pockets of my new coat and shivered while Mom turned the heater on.

“Tiffany, it’s not that cold!” She told me.

“You’re not wearing a skirt…” I mumbled.

She just smiled and shook her head at me as she drove off. Thankfully ten minutes later the car was warm enough I could take my jacket off and stop shivering. With some heavy traffic we pulled up to the hospital where she had her office at a quarter till eleven. I bundled back up and walked to the elevator with Mom at my side. Just as the elevator was about to close I heard, “Hold on!”

Dad had gotten there in time for us to start the meeting! He wasn’t sure if he would be able to get away or not. I was really glad to see him and gave him a hug as he hopped into the elevator with us.

“You look very pretty today Tiffany,” he told me as he gave me a hug and a kiss on top of my head.

“Thanks Daddy!” I told him.

The elevator ride upstairs was brief and we took a seat in the waiting area until Dr. Reynolds called us in. We didn’t wait long though, because almost exactly at eleven Dr. Reynolds came out, “Hi Tiffany, Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson, would you all follow me please?”

We followed her back to her office where we found two gentlemen sitting in chairs opposite the couch that we usually sat in for meetings. “Tiffany, I’d like you to meet Dr. Clark and Dr. Freedman.”

I curtsied a little and said “Hi,” shyly. Dr. Clark was on the right and looked to be in his late fifties. He had a very rough face and I wouldn’t have expected him to have been a doctor of any sort. Maybe a police officer or something, but not a psychiatrist.

Dr. Freedman was the total opposite of that. Between his glasses and demeanor he seemed like he was way too brilliant to be anything but a doctor or a scientist. He looked to be in his late thirties, looking much younger than Dr. Clark. All-in-all he was rather handsome.

“Doctors Clark and Freedman, this is Tiffany Jacobson, her mother Mandy Jacobson, and her father Joe Jacobson.”

There was a round of ‘pleased to meet you’ passed about before we were directed to sit in the couch across from them. Dr. Clark took over at this point, “Dr. Reynolds has been in contact with us for a couple months about Tiffany. Who, by the way looks very pretty today,” I blushed a little before he continued, “She’s told us quite a bit about the case, but we would like to treat this meeting today like we’re starting from a completely clean slate. Dr. Freedman and I would like to interview your parents first Tiffany,” he said speaking directly to me at this point. “While we’re interviewing them we have a survey we would like you to complete — Dr. Reynolds will help us out by helping you fill it out.”

“From there we would like to bring your parents together with Dr. Reynolds present — so I’m afraid you’ll have to spend some time in the waiting room alone then,” he said sympathetically. I think he understood how boring those waits could be.

Dr. Freedman took over then saying, “After that we’d like to take you all out to lunch to talk some more in a more comfortable environment. When we finish up with lunch we’ll come back here and interview you, Tiffany, separately and then together.”

“I think we’ll then give you guys a break while Doctors Freedman and Reynolds and I talk about what we’ve found.” Dr. Clark concluded.

“Okay.” I said.

“Before we begin though we’d like to let you and your parents know a little bit about our backgrounds. Myself, I’ve been dealing with gender issues in patients for about twenty-four years now. My primary focus has been in researching the best methods of treatment and helping gender dysphoric patients integrate themselves best into society.” Dr. Clark told us before giving a nod to Dr. Freedman.

“I’ve spent my entire career so far working in child psychiatry. In my practice I’ve come across several dozen young ladies like yourself, and have similar interests to Dr. Clark in how to help you deal with society.”

“What the two of them are not telling you Tiffany, is that both of them are at the top level of the field. Dr. Clark has worked at John Hopkins for two decades now, and Dr. Freedman is on faculty with the University of Chicago. I was really grateful when they first accepted my correspondence earlier this year, and then agreed to meet with you today.”

“It’s our pleasure to do this, from what Dr. Reynolds has told us you are an important person for us to meet.”

I blushed a bit, “Thanks.”

“Well, shall we get started?” Dr. Freedman asked.

“Yes,” Dr. Clark answered. “Mr. Jacobson, if you would come with me? And Mrs. Jacobson if you please would accompany Dr. Freedman?” My parents both stood up to follow them out.

After they left Dr. Reynolds said, “Okay Tiffany, let’s get you started on this survey of theirs.”

She set me up with some space at her desk and I began filling out the questionnaire. When they told me what I was going to be doing, they didn’t exactly convey how long it would take me to do. It was extremely long! I had just about finished the one-hundred-and-forty-fifth question when my parents returned from their individual meetings with the two doctors. Dr. Reynolds led me outside to the waiting area and gave me a clipboard to finish writing everything on.

By the time I finally finished the two-hundredth question on the questionnaire I felt like banging my head against the wall to make the pain stop. It had asked me anything and everything it seemed. It had questions asking me to rate how I thought about things, short answer questions, and multiple choice like questions… My hand was so sore when I finished it was ridiculous. ‘I don’t think I’ve even ever had a test this long!’ I thought to myself. I turned to look for the next page but found out in surprise I was done.

I sighed in relief and began to finally have time to ponder how my parents’ meetings were going. They had been in the individual meetings for the better part of an hour before going in together with everyone. Dr. Reynolds secretary noticed I was finished with the survey and took that to the meeting they were having.

In the mean time I tried to figure out what to do until they came out. I had already read all of the good magazines next to me… and didn’t really feel like re-reading any. I kind of just sat there for the better part of twenty minutes before boredom overtook me and I began reading this month’s Seventeen magazine again. It was getting really old by now.

I ended up putting that magazine down and trying to just sit quietly not thinking about my fate being determined as I sat in the waiting room. Just when I thought I could take no more, and my stomach was growling, my parents came out with the three doctors.

“Tiffany I have to get back to work now, I’ll see you at home tonight,” Dad said to me as he came in. He gave me a big hug before giving me a kiss on the forehead and heading out the doors.

“Well Tiffany, are you ready to get a bite to eat?” Dr. Freedman asked.

“Sure.” I said nervously.

“Very good then, let’s go,” Dr. Clark said.

Dr. Reynolds led the way downstairs. My Mom and I followed her in our own car as we drove to Chili’s. For some reason they chose that as being a comfortable restaurant to talk at. Once we got there we waited for about ten minutes while they got a booth ready for us.

“So Tiffany, I understand that you are on the dance squad at your school?” Dr. Clark asked.

“Yes sir,” I told him.

“Do you enjoy it?”

“A lot!” I told him with a smile. With that he and Dr. Freedman asked an unending stream of questions about school and my friends. During the questioning the waiter came by our table and took our orders.

As we sat eating some appetizers he asked me, “So what do you do when you aren’t at school or doing the dance squad?”

“I like to hang out with my best friend, Amy, and do all sorts of things. She and I especially like playing Barbies with each other… but we also hang out and do other things too.”

Over the course of lunch neither doctor treated me as I was anything different than I appeared, a normal twelve year old girl. They never once asked me about how I became Tiffany or anything like that — they seemed content to get to know who I was now, not who I was before. By the end of lunch I decided that I liked both of these doctors — and felt like I could trust them not to judge me too harshly.

AFTER LUNCH WE returned to Dr. Reynolds’ office and I was left alone with Dr. Freedman first. “Tiffany, I think I’ve gotten to know most of the things that you’re currently up to from lunch, and how you’re doing with everyone at school. Now I’d like to ask you about how you think everything started out for you.”

“Well it’s kind of a long story, but here goes nothing…” I proceeded to tell him about everything from a couple incidents in my childhood all the way to Liza’s comment last year that really set things off. “When she asked me if I was trying to be a girl things just kind of spiraled out of control in my head.”

“Soon after that I convinced my parents to let me grow my hair out longer, and began hoping that if nothing else maybe I could slowly work my way towards being able to become the girl that I wanted to be. There were several things that happened that helped that out…” I told him about the ski trip I’d gone on with Amy and her family, how she and I had played with Barbie’s for the first time, her figuring out that I wanted to be a girl and letting me dress in her clothes, and everything else up until my first appointment with Dr. Reynolds. We talked for a solid hour before I was switched over to Dr. Clark.

Dr. Clark was a much different person in the way he asked his questions. He was just as warm in his demeanor, but he had the ability to absolutely strike you to the core with a question. “On this trip you were asked to go as Brandon instead of Tiffany — why did you risk so much by dressing as Tiffany at the end of the trip?”

“Every time I went into a bathroom I was getting glared at… I felt like I might be attacked simply for being in there, for being a girl in the boy’s restroom. My dad and Mr. Hancock saw it too.” I pleaded with him to understand on that one. He eventually nodded and gave me a smile. His questions were so much harder than Dr. Freedman’s or Dr. Reynolds that I felt like crying several times.

Any time I was about to start outright bawling though he would deflect it by giving me another topic to think about. One of the big topics that he stayed on for a long time was my feeling that I wasn’t fitting in with the rest of the girls by staying so small, and not having any breast development. He went round and round with me on anything and everything for another hour before he said, “Okay Tiffany, I would really like to go ahead and take a break of about a half-hour so that Dr. Freedman, Dr. Reynolds, and I can talk about what we’ve heard so far today. Why don’t you and your mother go downstairs and get something to drink in the cafeteria?” He suggested.

He led me out of the office and motioned my mom over and discussed the plan. He then left us alone for the first time since the ordeal had begun, I looked at my watch, five hours ago!

“So how did it go?” Mom asked me.

I shrugged, “I have no idea. One moment I’m convinced Dr. Clark is for me doing this, the next I think he thinks it’s a mistake. Dr. Freedman was nice enough though,” I told her.

We talked as we went downstairs to cafeteria. Once there I settled on a cup of hot chocolate — it sounded good. The two of us wandered around through the gift shop for a bit before heading back upstairs to Dr. Reynolds office close to five. Her secretary said, “Tiffany, Mrs. Jacobson, they’re ready for you to join them again.”

“Thanks,” my mom told her. We walked back the hallway to her office and through the open door that Dr. Reynolds closed behind us. She motioned for us to take our seats on the couch again, with Dr. Clark and Freedman in high back chairs across from us, and Dr. Reynolds in another one to our right.

“Well, I think we’ve learned just about everything we could from such a short, intense, session like this.” Dr. Clark began. “I’d like Dr. Freedman to share some of his observations first before we get to mine, and our recommendations.”

Mom and I nodded.

“Well first of all I would like to say that as Tiffany you seem to be a very well adjusted girl. From the interviews that we had with you and your parents it seems that you have a good number of friends, are involved in school, and are excelling both academically and in extra-curricular activities. In fact I believe you have a more balanced sense of self than most other young ladies your age.” Dr. Freedman said.

I blushed a bit.

“If you were brought to me without me having had any back story I would assume you were just a normal twelve year old girl. All of your mannerisms, hopes, and perspectives of looking at the world match up normally there. I believe that you have been well treated,” he said nodding towards Dr. Reynolds.

“I would concur with that assessment as well,” Dr. Clark told her. “So I would like to now talk about what I’ve seen and heard about how Tiffany became herself. I believe that Dr. Reynolds, you, and your husband made the right choice in allowing Brandon to dress as Tiffany. From everything that I’ve seen and heard to not have done so would have been very traumatic over the long term. I don’t think it would have prevented anything either — she would have eventually begun dressing as herself regardless.”

His comments made me feel good. To have two completely new strangers come in and agree with Dr. Reynolds made me feel much safer. Both of them continued telling us some of the things they’d observed over the day and continued agreeing with Dr. Reynolds treatment thus far.

“Now I’d like to talk about our recommendations. Tiffany is a tough case to make decisions on. If she was eighteen or older I’d prescribe a treatment of gender reassignment surgery without any worries. Even if she was sixteen I would have no problems recommending that she begin hormone therapy so that she could better fit in until she could have the surgery at age eighteen. With her having just turned twelve we have a quandary on what we should do.”

He continued after taking a sip of water out of a water bottle he had. “I know for a fact Dr. Reynolds has also been trying to figure out what to do for the past few months, and there is good reason for us not wanting to just rush headlong into the process of reassigning your biological gender Tiffany,” he said.

My face slackened. I’d had such high hopes a moment ago, but now he was going to tell me I was too young… I could just tell he was going to shoot down the proposal to give me hormones already.

Dr. Freedman began speaking then, “Currently the majority opinion in the field is that we should do no more than give you hormone blockers, which you’re already taking, until you’re old enough to legally make up your own mind. Most doctors feel this is the age of sixteen to eighteen.”

He paused before adding, “But, quite frankly there’s not been enough research into the area of ‘tweens’ like you.”

“So what are you guys telling me?” I asked them as calmly as I could.

“Well, we feel like you might be a unique case that maybe we could work on getting some of that research accomplished.” Dr. Clark started. “You have assimilated yourself into your school setting so successfully we feel that you would be a good candidate to start a ‘female’ puberty treatment.”

“Really?!?” I asked with a huge smile on my face.

“Settle down Tiffany,” Mom said next to me. “What exactly are you proposing?”

“Well, we would like to begin administering a full hormonal replacement therapy to Tiffany. The few problems she’s having fitting in all stem from her lack of growth. Through the therapy she’ll be able to go ahead and start growing the secondary sex characteristics that the other girls her age are growing — well minus periods of course.”

“What’s the catch though? You and Dr. Reynolds have both stated that this is not a normal treatment for someone her age.”

“Well, quite frankly we would like to study how she develops and interacts from here on out. She’s already answered a baseline survey that has revealed a lot about where she’s at now. We’d like for her to continue her sessions with Dr. Reynolds and occasionally fill out more surveys like this. Over time we’ll also drop in so that we can check on her progress as well.”

“Does this sound like something you would agree to?” Dr. Reynolds asked, stepping in for one of the first times today.

I nodded and said, “Yes!” before Mom could say anything.

“She won’t be mentioned in any publications by her real name will she?” Mom asked.

“No, that would be unethical, her privacy will be absolutely respected.” Dr. Freedman stated.

“Then I suppose let’s get this setup,” she told them. I gave her a big hug and began crying. It was really going to happen!

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 7:

 
WHEN I MANAGED to get control of myself a couple moments later, Dr. Reynolds handed me a tissue and asked, “Are you alright Tiffany?”

“Yes!” I paused, “It’s just that I’ve been so stressed about what you all would decide I guess I just started crying…”

Dr. Freedman nodded and said, “That makes sense Tiffany, and it’s alright. Now if we’ve got all of this settled we should probably let Dr. Reynolds help you get everything setup with your endocrinologist. Dr. Reynolds, we’ll just wait outside for you until you’re finished.”

“Thanks Doctor,” she told him.

Before I let either of them leave the door though I gave them both great big hugs. They were helping my dreams to come true, I couldn’t let them leave without thanking them. “Good luck Tiffany,” Dr. Clark told me as he left.

“Okay, let’s see if I can’t get Dr. Wilmer on the phone real quick Mrs. Jacobson.”

She dialed him up and got him on the phone. Apparently he was working late so she was able to catch him, “So you can meet with us at nine on Tuesday?” Dr. Reynolds looked at Mom and she nodded, “We’ll see you then.”

“So we’re going to meet him at nine at his office on Tuesday. I’ll speak with him before then some more and let him know what we’re planning on doing — that way he’ll be prepared to start the treatment that morning. There’s no reason to make you have to come back yet again if we can help it.”

Dr. Reynolds went over more details for a bit before we finally were able to leave. As we went through the lobby we waved at Dr. Clark and Freedman again before heading downstairs. We both made a pit stop in the ladies room before heading out to her car. I sat down with a big grin on my face, it was finally happening. I hugged mom again across the console. I was so excited!

The drive home was silent though. I was lost in my thoughts of being able to finally become who I believe I was. Or at least I was moving along on another step of the journey. Even with their willingness to move things along earlier with hormones, I doubted they would ever let me get my genitals fixed until I was eighteen. ‘One step at a time Tiffany,’ I told myself.

As soon as we got home I had expected to see Dad, but he was still gone at work. Mom paged him and found out he wasn’t going to be home for several hours still, but I was able to quickly tell him about what they decided, “That’s great Tiffany,” he said, “I’m glad they decided this — it should make it easier on you in the long run.”

We were only able to talk for about a minute though before he needed to get back to work on his project. “Well Tiffany I had thought we should go for a celebration dinner… but why don’t we hold off till tomorrow night when your Dad can go?”

“Can we actually wait until Friday? We have the football game tomorrow night and I’ll be really tired after it. And then maybe invite Amy and her parents?” I asked.

“That sounds like a great idea Tiffany. Why don’t you call Amy and see if her parents are free?”

“I needed to call her anyway… if I don’t she’ll hit me tomorrow,” I told her with a smile.

“Go call her then.”

I dialed Amy’s phone number, “Hi, is Amy there?” I asked.

Melanie had answered. “Is this Tiffany?”

“Yes, how are you doing?”

“Good Tiffany, let me go get her. I’d like to ask you how it went today, but I’ll wait until she gets on the line. She’s been pacing around waiting for you to call since she got home from practice.”

That brought a bit more of a smile to my face, ‘what would I do without Amy?’

“Tiff?!?” I heard a few moments later. “How did it go?” Amy asked.

“It went well. They decided they’re going to start me on girl hormones next week!” I said.

“That’s great!” Amy said.

“Yeah, it is. I was really surprised that they went along with it…” I told her about everything that had happened that day. It took me a solid thirty minutes to recount my experiences that day. I found myself exhausted when I finally finished. “So do you think you and your parents would be able to go to dinner Friday?”

“I think so, hold on let me ask Mom,” She told me.

She came back with an affirmative answer and we talked for a bit more today. Some of the kids had asked her where I was today and she’d just said that I was at a doctor’s appointment. Amy also let me know of a couple assignments that I’d missed that day that it might be worth me doing before bed just so I wouldn’t have to try and worry about them the next night. When I finished talking to Amy she handed over the phone to her Mom who asked some questions before I handed my phone to my Mom.

I decided to go ahead and do the homework assignments that she told me about as Mom made a quick dinner of macaroni and cheese. Dad still wasn’t home when I went to bed that night, and I found myself wishing I could get a hug from him as I fell asleep — I resented his job so much sometimes!

The next day passed by uneventfully, well other than the football game which our team lost, as did Friday. That evening we had dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant and had a good time. Amy came and stayed over that weekend, and I felt like things were finally starting to return to a ‘normal’ state.

TUESDAY MORNING I was a bundle of nerves. I didn’t know how I was going to be receiving the hormones, and I wasn’t sure of what else was involved now. Dad had been being mean and joking that it was going to come in a gigantic needle that was going to hurt a lot. I didn’t admit that I believed him, but it made me more nervous. Mom took me to Dr. Wilmer’s office as scheduled that morning.

“Hello Tiffany, how are you doing?” He greeted me.

“I’m doing fine, how are you?”

“Well. And you Mrs. Jacobson?”

“Mostly fine. Has Dr. Reynolds arrived yet?”

“Right behind you,” Dr. Reynolds answered for him.

“Well then let’s get this meeting started shall we?” Dr. Wilmer asked while leading us back to his office.

Once we were all seated in chairs in his small office he began, “So Dr. Reynolds has said that she and a couple other specialists have decided that you should begin a full hormonal replacement therapy. I would like to go over some of the risks and possible complications involved with this before we go any further.” We nodded.

“First is that I have to warn you, once you begin this therapy you will likely never be able to father kids. I know that’s probably not a major concern of yours, given your diagnosis of gender dysphoria, but you will not be able to go back after this — not completely. Are you okay with this?” He looked at me first, and then my mom, before continuing. “I know you’re already aware of the fact that this is going to begin breast growth, but it will also affect where fat forms on your body too. You will see pronounced growth particularly in your hips.”

“Okay,” I told him. “I know what it’s going to do to me. I accept the risks, and so do my parents.” I wasn’t in the mood to sit here all day.

“I just need you to understand that if you change your mind down the road you will never truly be able to come back.”

“We do understand that Dr. Wilmer,” my Mom told him.

“Well okay,” he sighed. I don’t think he was really in favor of the treatment, but he was willing to administer it. “I would like to use a few drugs in combination…” he explained the drugs he wanted to administer to me.

“I think this would be the most effective plan for now. I must warn you not expect results over night Tiffany, you’re going to experience growth at the same rate as any other girl. With an older patient I would prescribe a higher dosage, but at your age we’re going to use a lower dosage over a long period of time so that you experience that normal growth rate.”

With that he wrote Mom the prescriptions that he wanted me to take. “I would like to see you once a month for blood tests to make sure the levels are where they need to be. Do you have any more questions?” he asked. “No? Well then I guess we’re finished. Good luck Tiffany,” he told me.

“Thanks!” I said as I headed out the door. All-in-all that meeting seemed like a bit of a letdown — I had expected for such a life changing moment to be more… I don’t know, life changing?

We said goodbye to Dr. Reynolds and agreed to see her again in a couple weeks. Mom then drove home to our local pharmacist where she dropped off the prescriptions. It was bout eleven by that point so she took me for lunch while the pharmacist filled the prescription. I was honestly surprised they’d said they did in fact have the drugs in stock… I was worried I’d have to wait while they ordered them.

When we went back after lunch it was ready and I held my first three pills in my hand at the parking lot at school. I looked at Mom and said, “Here goes nothing!” I placed the pills in my mouth and drank out of a bottle of water I had sitting in the car. I noticed one of them tasted rather nasty, but I couldn’t care less.

As I caught up with Amy in our next class I gave her a big hug and had a giant smile on my face.

 
 
 

Part II:

Thicker Than Water?

 

 

Chapter 8:

 
A COUPLE WEEKS later we were already preparing for the last football game of the season. Our team was playing a school from inside the city for the District Championship. Both of our teams had one loss, but were otherwise undefeated. Since it was such an important game we had traveled to one of the main stadiums in Albuquerque. The size of the stadium made even our high school’s stadium look tiny in comparison. We were all so excited that the game was being held there!

Normal games for our junior high varsity team were held at five in the evening, but this one was scheduled for seven-thirty like a high school game. The cheer and dance squads from both schools had arrived right after school to decorate the stands.

“Hey Tiff!” I heard from behind me as I was trying to tape up a piece of poster board.
“What?” I replied turning slightly.

“It’s crooked!” Coach Holt told me.

“No it’s…” I started to say before looking at it again. “Oops, sorry.” I told her sheepishly.

“It’s okay, just fix it!” She told me laughing.

As soon as I had the sign taped up right I jumped off of the fence that I had been taping it onto. I looked around to see how we were doing. As the other team was an Albuquerque team they were using the home side of the stands and we were of course on the visitor’s side. Actually the sad thing was that their visitor’s side was bigger than our high school’s home side at home… We had decorated all along the rail of the fence on our side with blue and gold bunting, and signs like the one that I had just hung up said, “Go Team,” “Send the kitties home,” and other messages supporting our school. Along one of the fences on our side up at the top of the stands, some of the girls had used Styrofoam cups to make another sign that said, “Coyotes #1,” and had all of the football players numbers too.

It was really impressive what we had accomplished in two hours. “Okay ladies, come here!” Coach bellowed at us.

I skipped over there and stood by Amy and Kristina.

“I think we’ve got the stands decorated enough for the game. Amy’s Mom just picked up some McDonald’s for everyone, so let’s go eat it. Please be sure and say thank you to her!” She said pausing. “You’ll have about thirty minutes to eat and then I want the dance squad back here for a run through of the routine. See you all then ladies.”

With our dismissal Amy, Kristina, Ashley, Lindsey, and I linked arms and began skipping down the track to the exit so we could meet up with Amy’s Mom. As we got to the edge of the track we climbed up some stairs that led us up to the parking lot and saw Melanie standing next to their car. She’d picked up happy meals for everyone, with chicken nuggets.

“What toy did you get Tiff?” Amy asked.

“Umm… hey it’s a Barbie!” I said giggling. It wasn’t a very good one, but it was a Barbie. Soon all of the two squads had gathered on a patch of grass and ate. It was kind of sad though, it was like there were really two squads — the dance squad and the cheer squad. Anyone who was just on the cheer squad was in one circle and the other girls, including myself, were in another circle.

I didn’t think about it too much though as Amy started talking to me, “So this is the last Thursday night that we’ll lose this year!”

“It’s kind of sad though, isn’t it?” Kristina said.

“Yeah… But now we’ll be able to focus on the competitions instead!” I said with a smile on my face.

“I’m with you Tiffany, I think it’s going to be awesome to go to the two competitions in January!” Ashley said with a smile.

“It will be a lot of fun,” Amy said.

We spent some more time talking back on the season. I had less to talk about since I hadn’t been on the squad as long, but we still had plenty of things from while I’d been a member. Ashley, Amy, Kristina, and Lindsey had all already been on the cheer squad going into the year and just moved up to the dance squad when it was formed. We sat there for as long as we felt we could. In the meantime Amy’s mom got the camera out and took quite a few shots of us. It was a good time, and seemed like a fitting way to finish up the last game of the season.

Eventually we headed back down to the field and ran through our routine on the field with their sound system.

“Okay ladies, just like tonight!” Coach Holt told us.

I saw both of the football teams beginning to come out of the locker rooms so I knew we were only going to get one chance to run through things. The music began blaring through the loudspeakers and we began moving through the moves of our dance. I wasn’t as fluid as I was supposed to be, and I knew it, but we made it through the routine without falling apart. It was by far the toughest routine we had worked up yet, so we were all a little bit nervous about it.

Of course as soon as we got done and came off the field Coach Holt starting listing things off, “Tiffany, you’ve got to be more graceful as you do the second part!” she rattled off things about everyone, but they weren’t me, right? The perfectionist in my mind was definitely roaring her ugly head, and I was beginning to get a bit nervous about half-time.

Coach had us begin to do some other things around the field again as the stands on both sides of the field began to fill up. By the time the kick-off happened at seven-thirty I couldn’t see any free seats on either side! We were all so busy cheering though I didn’t have time to think about it. At one point I watched as Kyle was about to get tackled by two players, but managed to pass the ball off down the field to David — who was well over twenty yards down the field. As I watched Kyle get brought down hard David ran as fast as he could down the field, “GO DAVID!!!” We all screamed at the top of our lungs.

He ran almost to the goal line when he was tackled and brought down. The score to that point in the game had remained 0-0, and it was halfway through the second quarter already — our team needed to score some points!

I watched as the boys lined up farther down the field for a second before Kristina called for us to do another cheer. As we finished jumping at the end of the cheer I watched the play begin and saw Kyle try to throw the ball to another player in the end zone, only to see it get knocked out of the way by the other team.

“Dang-it!” I said aloud. Kristina nodded at me about that.

Kyle setup for another play and we watched as he passed the ball off to one of the other guys, and he managed to get almost to the goal again, before he was stopped. I didn’t understand much about football honestly, but cheering for the past month or so had taught me that the third down was basically the last chance to score in this case.

So I did what a good cheerleader’s supposed to do, shouting, “Come on Kyle!!!!”

With that they began the play and I watched him toss it to a player in the endzone. He was so close to him, I didn’t think there was anything that was going to happen but a touchdown… then at the last second I saw a player from the other team leap in the way and catch the ball! “NO!!!!” I said aloud.

“Catch him!” Kristina screamed next to me as the player began running down the field. We watched him pass the twenty, the thirty, and then he was gone past the point of any of our guys catching him. Less than a minute later the score now read 0-8, with their team in the lead.

“It’s okay guys, you’ll get it back!” I said as Coach Holt began drawing those of us that were on the dance squad away from cheering. We had to prepare for the half-time show.

We hurriedly grabbed our props for this show and gathered on the track. As the clock ran down past the two minute mark there was another interception and as we lined up behind their team to come on we saw the scoreboard chance to 0-15. I nervously played with the beach ball I had as a prop for this dance as all of the girls were talking to each other and not paying attention to what was coming up, “Look ladies, we’ve got to focus on the performance,” Coach Holt said to us. It stopped the talking for a moment, but I was pretty sure that none of us were focused.

All of us looked glumly at each other as the other team ran off toward the locker room and we began marching onto the field together. I began thinking, ‘I sure hope I don’t mess up on that spot again!’ to myself.

With that the music began and I began moving to it. All of the sudden though, I noticed that I was out of sync with Lindsey, who was next to me. I was counting as hard as I could and didn’t think I was off though. Sixteen counts later I couldn’t tell what was going on though, as we did a move that was supposed to ripple down the lines I could tell that there were four groups of us, all at different spots.

‘What am I supposed to do?’ I asked myself as I continued to move through the routine, ‘We’ve never messed up like this before!’

I decided the only thing I could do was keep going and hope that we all ended up finishing together. At the end of the song I was supposed to end up on my elbows and knees with my head on the ball looking cute. As I started to do that move though, my knee slipped and so did the girl who was supposed to be leaning on me. SPLAT! We both went down on to the ground.

As we came off the field I was crying. It had been so terrible! I looked around and saw Amy crying too, and we both hugged each other.

“What happened Tiff?” Kristina asked me.

“I have no idea…. One minute we’re all doing fine, the next we’re all completely off of each other… and then some how I fell at the end. Oh no! Where’s Lindsey?” I asked out loud, she was the girl who had to have fallen next to me.

“I’m fine Tiff, it’s okay,” she said as I looked at her and she gave me a hug.

Our whole squad was a mess for the next few minutes as we tried to regain control of ourselves. We were so embarrassed by how bad we had performed. Coach Holt walked up to us about that point. She looked flustered and upset.

“Ladies, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised this happened with how little focus you showed on the sideline. You’ve got to get it together if we’re going to do anything other than embarrass ourselves at the competitions in January!” Her hard look she was giving us softened a little though and she said, “We’ll talk about it more on Monday though. Go take your time off, be sure to be back here quickly though.”

I felt Amy grab my arm and pull me off towards the restrooms. As we got through the fence we found ourselves face to face with our moms. “Are you okay girls?” Melanie asked.

We both shook our heads and went to our respective mothers for a hug we both needed. My mom stroked my hair a little bit before kissing me on the forehead and saying, “It’s alright sweetie. Things happen.” She tried to goad me into smiling by giving me a smile herself, but I wasn’t buying into it.

“It was awful! And then I fell over! How can you fall over when you’re on your hands and knees?!” I exclaimed.

Amy was pretty similarly upset because she had gotten incredibly lost in the routine. She’d been doing this kind of thing since she was little too, so I think it hit her even worse. The fact that the two captains had done so badly at the performance was not a good thing. Our mom’s led us to the restroom where we both went pee really quick, and then they tried to help clean up our faces a bit before walking us back to the track entrance.

“It’s really okay sweetie,” Melanie told me. “You girls will look back at this and laugh in a couple months.”

The two of us made our way back to the cheer squad silently, both obviously down about the performance. I heard two of the girls that hadn’t made the squad talking to each other, “I can’t believe they didn’t let us on the squad, and they let all of them on it. I mean did you see how awful Amy and Tiffany did? And they’re supposed to be the captains!”

“Well maybe I’m glad we didn’t make it now… that would have been really embarrassing. I think I would quit the squad if I did that bad…” I tried not to listen to any more of it, I already wanted to cry. I looked over at Amy and she looked like she’d been hit over the head with a two-by-four.

The rest of the game was a blur as it didn’t get any better. With one minute left in the game the score was 6-62, and everyone had given up hope that we would win the game. Our stands had emptied out to where not even half of it was still full. When the clock ran down we began quietly packing up our pom-poms and megaphones. Mom came down to the track with Amy’s mom and helped us carry our stuff up to where they were parked. Neither of us said anything.

I sat down in the seat of the car and turned my head towards the window as Mom made her way through the parking lot and back on the interstate to go home. ‘What a terrible end to the season,’ I thought to myself.

 

Chapter 9:

 
FRIDAY MORNING I dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt… and just hoped I would be able to disappear into the wood work. I so didn’t want to go to school and face everything, and everyone, after last night’s abysmal performance. I had just left my hair in a ponytail as I waited for Amy and her mom to pick me up.

As her mom’s car pulled in the driveway, I walked out slowly while making sure I locked the door behind me. As the icing on the cake to yesterday, my parents had told me I forgot to lock it when I left yesterday, and nicely chewed me out about it. I didn’t want to hear about it today.

“Hey Tiff,” a fairly downtrodden Amy greeted me.

“Hi Amy…” I said to her. She and I sat in silence for a few minutes before I told her, “I’m really not looking forward to this.”

“I’m not either… There are going to be so many kids that make fun of all of us for last night…” She replied to me.

“It won’t be that bad girls,” her mom said to us.

We both shared a look and said, “Yes it will,” in unison.

She sighed and said, “Just make sure you two stick together and everything will be fine girls.”

I think she resigned herself to not getting through to us any more than that though, because she let us continue the rest of the ride in silence. Amy went with me for my morning run to the band room, and then we caught up with Kristina just before the bell rang. She gave us a weak smile and went towards her own class as we walked down the hallway.

Lindsey and Ashley looked to be feeling about the same way as we got to our first hour class, and weren’t helped out when one of the girls that failed to make the team was talking loudly across the room, “Did you see how awful our so-called dance squad did last night…?” I felt like melting into the desk that I was sitting in. Any time we weren’t working on something during class I could hear her and a couple other kids talking about us. They all seemed to enjoy poking fun at me in particular. I watched them pantomime my fall more than once as they looked at me and laughed.

By the end of class I wanted to do nothing other than go to the bathroom and cry — something I started to do with Amy at my heels. Without a second thought I walked quickly into one of the girls restrooms and sat down in a stall. I felt my chest heave, and sobbed for a moment or two before forcing myself to get it together and going to the sink to make sure it didn’t look like I had been crying. Amy gave me a hug as we walked to our second hour class.

“Tiff, where’s your backpack?” She asked me suddenly as we walked in the door.

“Oh No! I left it in Mr. Randolph’s class!”

“Uh-oh,” Amy said.

I pulled Amy along with me as I walked up to Mr. Grainger who was standing in the doorway, “Mr. Grainger, may Amy and I go Mr. Randolph’s class to grab my backpack? I left it there…”

He looked at me with that look that said, ‘if you were anyone else…’ “Okay ladies, but please hurry.”

“Thanks Mr. Grainger!” I said as I hurried down the hallway with Amy by my side. The bell rang when we were half-way back there. We both looked at each other a little sheepishly… we weren’t exactly the rule breaking type so it seemed strange to be out in the hallway after the bell rang.

“What are you two doing back here?” Mr. Randolph asked as we came into the classroom.

“I left my backpack here, did you find it?” I asked him.

“No, I didn’t see it. What does it look like?”

“It’s purple and…” I gave him a description of it as we looked where I’d been sitting. As far as we could tell it wasn’t in his room.

“Maybe someone turned it into the office,” he said. “Here let me write you two a pass to go by there on your way to class.”

“Thanks Mr. Randolph,” I said. I was getting really nervous though. I felt in my pocket and was grateful that I had left my house key in my pocket, and kept my cash for lunch in my other pocket today… but everything else, including several homework assignments, was in my bag!

“We’ll find it Tiffany,” Amy told me as we walked to the office.

“I hope so…” I told her, completely unconvinced. First yesterday, now this, what else could go wrong?

The secretary greeted us as we came in, “How are you two ladies doing today?”

“Okay, yourself?” Amy asked politely

“Could be less busy around here, what do you two need?”

“I was wondering if someone had turned in a backpack this morning.” I told her.

“I don’t think we’ve had one turned in today, give me a second and let me look.” She disappeared around the corner and came back holding a blue backpack. “Is this it?”

I shook my head, “No mine’s purple.”

“Sorry sweetie,” she said, “I’ll keep an eye out for it today though, if we find it I’ll call you out, okay?”

“Okay, thanks,” I said. We headed back to class.

“You’re sure you didn’t leave it in your locker somehow right?” Amy asked me.

“It was with me while we were in class. I had to get my homework for Mr. Randolph out of it. Someone must have taken it…”

“I’m sure it’ll turn up Tiff,” she told me as we walked back into Mr. Grainger’s classroom.

“I hope so.”

Mr. Grainger gave me a questioning look to which I answered with a shake of my head. As he came by to pick up a short homework assignment that was due that day he told me, “Tiffany, if you want to turn it in Monday that’ll be fine.” He smiled as he said that, and I was grateful at least one thing wasn’t falling apart today.

“Thanks Mr. Grainger.”

Thankfully I didn’t need anything from my backpack for Choir, so it didn’t mess up anything there. Five minutes into algebra the secretary came over the intercom and said, “Mr. Martin?”

“Yes ma’am?” he answered.

“Would you please send Tiffany down to the office for a moment?”

“She’s on her way,” he said while nodding at me to go.

I looked at Amy as I walked out. She gave me a supportive smile as I began nervously walking down to the office. I had a bad feeling about this.

“Hi,” I said to the secretary as I walked in, “they asked for me to come down?”

“Hi Tiffany, you said your backpack went missing earlier right?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Is this it?” she said holding up my backpack.

“Yes…” I said first with a smile, and then my heart stopped. I took a closer look at my backpack… it looked wet. It also looked like someone had taken marker to the outside of it. The few things I could see weren’t very pleasant.

“I’m assuming you didn’t write this stuff on your backpack?” Mrs. Henry, the newly confirmed principal, asked me as she appeared from behind the secretary.

I shook my head, “No… what else happened to it?” I asked while feeling both angry and like I wanted to cry.

“Why don’t you come into my office?” She suggested gently while putting her arm around my shoulder. She steered me into a chair across from her seat at her desk.

“Where did they find it?” I asked while trying to keep my composure.

“One of our janitors found it in a toilet in the boy’s bathroom — down the hall from your social studies class. I haven’t actually opened it up yet, do you want to look inside and see what else may have happened?”

I wanted to say ‘no,’ because it didn’t look promising, but I had to see what else might have been damaged. “I guess… I wish we’d done this before you told me it was in a toilet though…” I was really grossed out by that.

She had cleared off her desk and she said, “Here let me help you then…” she could tell I wasn’t real thrilled by that. She seemed to be somewhat grossed out too since I saw her grab a pair of gloves out of her desk… I don’t think she wanted to touch the backpack at that point anymore than I did. The first thing I noticed was that the three textbooks that were inside my bag looked completely soaked. She pulled them out and we could both immediately see messages on them written in black marker. Things like ‘tranny,’ and ‘you suck at dancing,’ were some of the nicer ones. They got as bad as suggesting to watch my back because I was going to be raped. I could smell the urine that had soaked through them from across the desk… ‘They definitely didn’t just put it in the toilet.’

The color of my face had clearly paled, “Are you alright Tiffany?” she asked.

“Not really…” I started, “I thought maybe we were through some of this… What else did they do?” I asked and we started digging through the rest of the bag. It didn’t really get better. The backpack and books were clearly ruined… and my homework assignments I had for that day were going to have to be redone. Luckily I could read most of the answers… but I’d have to take the time to recopy them. The worst of it though was that I had left a notebook with notes from the dance squad in my bag. I kept it there in case I wanted to look up something real quick from time-to-time… clearly a mistake. The notebook had received some of the worst marking up, had been shredded, and soaked from the toilet… it was all a lost cause.

That was it. That was the breaking point for me. I lost it.

Mrs. Henry handed me a tissue and came around and put a hand on my shoulder. “Tiffany, don’t worry about the books — we’ll replace them for you. And, we won’t charge you for them.”

“Thanks,” I said. Not wanting to think about what my parents would have had to pay otherwise. Mom wasn’t going to be pleased about buying a new backpack — I was sure of that. “May I call my Mom and let her know what happened?” I asked her.

I swear I saw her grimace a bit, but she said, “Yes Tiffany, what number do you need?” She dialed out on her phone and then handed me the receiver.

“Mommy?” I asked when someone picked up at home.

“Tiffany? Is something wrong?” She asked. I could almost feel her heart sink over the phone. At that moment I felt just as bad for her as I did myself.

“I’m alright… but someone stole my backpack and threw it in the toilet in the boy’s bathroom.”

“Is it just wet?” She asked.

“No… they put a whole bunch of graffiti and stuff on everything.” I was trying not to start crying more — I didn’t really want her to know how upset I was.

“Where are you calling me from?”

“Mrs. Henry’s office…”

“Is she there with you now?”

“Yes,” I replied, knowing that meant she’d want to talk to her.

“May I speak to her?” She asked next.

“Okay,” I said and handed the phone to Mrs. Henry. I swear she grimaced as she took the phone from me.

“Hi Mrs. Jacobson,” she started off and I got to hear one half of the conversation for the next ten minutes.

“Yes ma’am, I’m going to be looking into it as soon as I send Tiffany to lunch…” There was a pause, “and yes I’ll speak to the teachers that she had assignments due to today, I’ll make sure they excuse her from them…” bits like that filled the air until she finally said, “Yes ma’am I’ll have it ready for you to look at before the school resource officer takes it into evidence…”

Apparently my mom wasn’t going to take any chances with this continuing, she was filing a police report about it. I didn’t know that it was going to do any good though. As she hung up the bell for my lunch hour rang. “Tiffany let’s walk you down to the cafeteria… do you have money for lunch, or did that get taken out of your bag too?” she asked.

“No thankfully I left that in my pocket today…” I told her as we walked down the hall.

I felt a ton of eyes on me as I walked into the cafeteria. Walking in with a principal at your heels was never a good way to enter discreetly. Thankfully I was able to get in line with Amy as soon as I entered.

“What happened Tiff?” she asked me. “Did they find your bag?”

I just nodded, I didn’t trust myself to speak. She obviously sensed something had happened so she gave me a hug. Amy stood next to me silently as we got our food and made our way to our usual table.

“Tiffany what’s wrong?” Kristina asked as I sat down.

I sensed Amy had tried to make motions not to ask me about it, but she hadn’t seen them. For a second I debated about not saying anything, but decided what the heck, “What’s not wrong? We had a disastrous performance last night… Then someone decided to steal my backpack and make sure that I knew that I was truly hated for being a freak, that I didn’t deserve to be on the squad, and that they were going to rape me at the first chance…”

The fact that I said it all without shouting was amazing. I had said it all in a soft voice that said more than the loudest screaming could have.

“Oh Tiff!” Amy said and through her arms around my shoulders. I felt Kristina’s join around me as well.

“Tiffany you can’t believe any of that stuff. You aren’t a freak, you do deserve to be a captain on the squad, AND we won’t let anything like that happen to you.” Kristina told me.

Kyle had been across the table and had been just able to hear what I’d told them. “Tiffany we’ll find out who did it, and we’ll make sure they never hurt you.” He stated while looking at David.

I just nodded, I didn’t have any energy for anything else. I hated how anytime I started to get ahead in life everything went wrong.

“Earth to Tiffany,” Amy said as she waved her hand in front of my eyes to get my attention.

“Huh?”

“It’ll be okay Tiff. Really.” Amy said.

“Tiffany it wasn’t your fault that we did so poorly last night,” Kristina said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well… as much as I didn’t want to I decided to watch the video of it that my Mom recorded. I wanted to see how we’d gotten so far off…”

It was something I personally never ever wanted to see… How could she have brought herself to watch it?

“Anyway Tiffany, you were right on the right counts, so was Amy… I was off by eight, and another group was off by eight more. And the end… well you did slip on that, but I don’t think that was anything that couldn’t happen to anyone. Brighten up Tiff, you were probably one of the few girls that didn’t mess up!” Kristina told me.

“You’re telling me the truth there?” I asked.

“Do you really think I would lie to you about it?” Kristina asked.

I shook my head, “No…” I paused before adding, “Thanks,” with a weak smile.

“Don’t mention it Tiffany. With the rest of the stuff… those guys will get what’s coming to them. They’ll never be able to get to you through us.” She added.

With that we were being herded out of the lunch room to go outside to the courtyard area. It was cold… I wished we could stay inside for the rest of the time. More than anything I just wanted the day to end.

“What are you up to tomorrow?” Amy asked me as we sat down at a metal picnic table outside.

“I’m not sure. I really don’t want to do anything tomorrow at this point. It’s been such a long few weeks.”

“Tiffany, it’s been a long year for you; few weeks doesn’t even cover it,” Ashley said as she joined the conversation.

I nodded. “Yeah it has been.”

“So Tiffany… has that medicine begun to do anything yet?” Ashley asked softly.

I shook my head, “They said it would take a while. I’m hoping maybe in another month I’ll start to see some changes.” I told her just as softly.

I was rather grateful that the bell rang then… I really didn’t want to talk about my hormone treatment that publicly. Just one more thing that made today uncomfortable and stressful. During my next hour, I shook my hair to the side so that it would block my view of the rest of the classroom. Maybe if I pretended there wasn’t anyone else there I wouldn’t have to think about the day.

As the bell rang to end school for the day I was grateful that I was at least able to do one fun thing that day. Since we didn’t have practice I was going to go home with Amy to her house. We were planning on playing with Barbies until my mom came to get me.

“Come on Tiffany!” Amy said to me as we walked towards the bus that neither of us had ridden in forever to her house. The bus driver, one of my mom’s friends, said ‘hi’ to both of us. We were able to find two empty seats next to each other to sit down in. I still wasn’t in a great mood though as we got dropped off at our stop twenty minutes later. I couldn’t help but think about everything that had happened today… I just didn’t want to deal with anything.

“Okay Tiffany, I’m not going to let you be down like this.” Amy said to me as we were sitting on her floor.

“What do you mean?” I asked innocently. Of course I knew what she meant.

“Tiffany, none of this stuff — last night or today, is your fault. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Amy, you didn’t see the notes all over everything… I’m getting scared…” I felt the tears begin to come out of my eyes.

She just hugged me and said, “Tiffany, we’re not going to let anything happen to you… not me, your parents, my parents, Kyle, David, Lindsey, Kristina… anyone!” She said to me firmly.

I just nodded. I knew that all of them would work to protect me… but they couldn’t all be there all of the time. Eventually I would get separated… and something was going to happen, I just knew it.

“Tiffany!” Amy said while poking me, trying to bring me back again.

“What?”

“You’re really worrying me,” she said with tears of her own in her eyes.

“I’m sorry… It’s just every time in life I think I’m getting ahead… like before last night, something always happens to knock me down… I feel like I got knocked down hard today,” I said while taking an offered Kleenex and wiping my eyes, she was doing the same with another one.

The two of us talked for a good hour before there really was any thought of playing Barbies. By the time we began our hearts just weren’t in it. It wasn’t fun. I wasn’t a fun person to be around then. As my Mom came to pick me up at five, I turned around and gave her a hug and said, “Amy I’m sorry I wasn’t more fun to be around today… Thank you for listening… and caring.”

“Tiffany, that’ll never change — no matter what happens. You’ll always be my closest friend,” she said as she returned the hug.

We broke apart and I headed out the door with my Mom. With her perceptiveness she could tell that I wasn’t dealing well with everything. I could see a worried look in her eyes, and I hated that. It wasn’t fair. It was bad enough that I had to be upset about all of this, but why did everyone else around me have to suffer too?

Dinner was quiet at home. I could sense Dad wanted to ask me about everything, but the looks he kept getting from Mom warned him not to. I decided I couldn’t avoid them like I wanted to that night… that would only torture them more than it would help me. I grabbed a book, a blanket, my stuffed tiger, and went to lay on the couch in the living room. It took me a long while to get into the book, but after a time I managed to engross myself in it enough that I barely noticed when Mom came and sat down next to me, turning on the TV.

I noticed her just enough that I decided to shift how I was laying to where I was leaning against her. I forced myself to put the book down and watch the TV show that was on. Eventually my head ended up in her lap and she stroked my hair.

“Do you want to talk?” she asked me during one of the commercial breaks later.

I shook my head.

“You can’t go on blaming yourself for stuff Tiffany,” she told me — as if she could read my mind.

‘Did Amy tell her?’ I thought to myself. But I knew better, this was just Mom being perceptive. “I know,” I told her.

“You have to go on past this Tiff,” she told me. “How about we go shopping tomorrow? We’ll get you a new backpack and look for a few new outfits?”

Even as upset as I was, I couldn’t help but a get a little bit of the shopping gleam in my eye, “Shopping? Where?”

“In town? We’ll go hit the malls and Target…”

I sighed and sat up, “Do I look that depressed that you have to offer Target in addition to both malls?”

“Umm… yeah.” She said smiling a little bit. She had broken through, and she knew it.

“Okay… but what time will we go?” I asked. I wanted to sleep in tomorrow since I knew I wouldn’t go to sleep for a long time tonight.

“How about nine-thirty?”

Part of me wanted to groan… I’d still have to wakeup by eight at the latest to make myself look pretty enough to go shopping in the malls… but if she was offering. “I guess… though that’s going to feel really early still.”

She stuck her tongue out at me, “You wouldn’t care if I said seven if it was for shopping, and you know it!”

I just glared at her. She was right. Ever since I had become Tiffany to my parents I couldn’t resist shopping, it was like a virus… it took over me! I harrumphed and put my head back down on her lap while crossing my arms across my chest. She just laughed at me. Eventually I headed to bed that night and hugged my stuffed tiger as tightly as I could.

‘Would things ever become normal?’ I thought to myself as I couldn’t help but picture in my mind every single rude and demeaning thing that had been written on my books and backpack.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 10:

 
“WAKE UP PRINCESS,” Mom said to me as she prodded me that morning.

“Ughh… I hate mornings, let me go back to sleep.” I told her sleepily.

“Fine then we won’t go shopping.” She told me.

“Shopping?” I said aloud, while thinking ‘Oh that’s right, we’re supposed to go shopping.’

“But if you don’t want to go…”

I just jumped up and ran into the bathroom to take a shower. As I was washing my hair I realized that I had forgotten to grab clothes… oops! But as soon as I opened the shower curtain I could see my Mom had foreseen my forgetfulness… She’d put a pair of jeans, a sweater, and underwear in the bathroom already. I smiled at that. She’d saved us both a lot of time that way, although I might have chosen a different sweater.

I noticed she didn’t put out one of my training bras out though. I guess it wouldn’t matter today. I’d been looking at my chest every day from when I had started taking the hormones, right up until last week when I’d forced myself to stop doing it out of frustration. There just hadn’t been any growth as far as I could tell. It wasn’t worth going back to my room to find one.

I spent some time making my hair look pretty, put some earrings in, put on the necklace that Amy’s parents had given me (and her), added some lip gloss, and then headed out the door of the bathroom. By the time I got my shoes on it was already time to go…

“Are you ready yet?” she asked me.

“Almost, I just need to grab my purse…” I told her as I ran back to my room and grabbed it. “Okay, let’s go,” I said as I put on a coat and barreled out the door ahead of her.

She just shook her head at me, unlocked my door, and then went around the side to her door and we headed off to town. Mom knew me well enough that I should have something to eat before we started, so we grabbed a quick breakfast at McDonalds on our way to town.

“Where to first?” I asked.

“Well I think Penney’s might have some backpacks still that we could look at,” she suggested.
“Okay.”

With that the two of us drove on to the mall and began going through JC Penney’s. We found another purple backpack that was similar to the one I’d had. It wasn’t completely the same; it had some pink trimming to it, but it would work. “Are you happy with this one?” Mom had asked me as we went to the check out.

“I guess —it’s not like there was a lot of choices there, or anywhere else for that matter.” I told her. I thought maybe she would say more about it but she just nodded and we got the bag.

“Where to next?” She asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders, “Let’s just wander,” I suggested.

She smiled at me and nodded. We did run the backpack back to the car real quick, since I didn’t want to haul it through the mall, before starting our walk through the mall. We stopped at a number of stores on our way down the first floor. There were a lot of stores that had some really cute outfits for juniors. I found a lot of really cute outfits to wear, but like normal I just was too short and flat chested for any of it to look good on me. I really was still better off with the girls’ sizes.

“This isn’t fair,” I told Mom as we walked into Dillard’s.

“Sweetie, it’s not going to last forever. The hormones are starting their work, just like they are with your friends. It’ll happen before you know it,” She told me as she had her arm around my shoulders and hugged me.

“I want it now,” I told her.

“I know sweetie, but until then can I at least enjoy having my little girl be little?” She asked me.

“Umm… I guess.” I told her. ‘What’s she getting at?’ I wondered to myself.

“Well then… I’ve gotten to see you in some pretty dresses… but I’ve never gotten to see my daughter in a holiday dress before.” She said with a smile.

I thought I could see where this was going. I fought the urge to be upset at the moment. I thought there was going to be more looking like a five year old in my future… But Mom was right; I might as well make her happy as her ‘little’ girl as long as stuff hadn’t started working yet. Plus, I could have fun being a pretty girl, even if I did look little. A smile came to my face too at that point and I said, “Okay, but I do have final say on what we buy alright?” I told her.

“Of course,” she said with a smile.

With that we were in the girls section looking through the holiday dresses that had just arrived recently. There were so many of them, and I had to admit I was curious to see how the velvet would feel. I’d always kind of wondered about how stretchy it would be and everything. So in short I became just as excited as her! We looked through the racks and I ended up taking seven dresses in my size back to the dressing room. The first one I tried on was the one I was most excited to try. It had a black velvet bodice and a red satin skirt, with a beaded overlay.

I slipped it over my head and pulled it down before calling Mom in to help me tie the ribbon into a bow. “Mom, can you tie this for me please?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said as she came into the changing room. I turned my back to her and watched in the mirror in front of me as she tied the ribbon into a bow. She was smiling brightly and seemed to be enjoying herself. I smiled too, I looked pretty. As I looked at the dress in the reflection I noticed something, there were actually tiny bumps coming out of my chest! I could see them, I was sure they were bigger than I remembered when I gave up looking last week.

I didn’t say anything to Mom though — she might just tell me I was imagining things. Somehow I think she noticed my staring though, because she didn’t force me to turn around quite as immediately as I expected. After a few moments though she, “Well turn around, let me see.”

I turned around and she said, “I like this one, how about you Tiffany?”

“Uh-huh,” I told her with a smile.

“Let’s try the other ones on too though, okay?”

“Okay,” I said with a smile.

After that I tried on one that was green velvet for the bodice, and then a green satin for the skirt. It was okay, it wasn’t my favorite, but Mom liked that one as well. Several dresses later I tried on one that had a black velvet bodice and a white skirt. “Could I wear this one for the Christmas concert?” I asked Mom.

“I thought Mrs. Remar wanted everyone in the same shirts and bow tie outfits?” She asked me.

“Well… I’m in choir too right? We were just told black and white… I think she may have meant all black for us girls though…”

“You just are trying to get more than one dress aren’t you?” She asked.

“Well… maybe.” I said with a small smile.

“This was my idea after all,” she told me. “You saw the sale signs?”

I nodded. That was my next card to play. “Tell you what… we’ll get the first one, get this one, and the green one I liked, how about that?” She asked.

I gave her a big hug and said, “Thank you Mommy!”

“Let’s get you out of that dress and go pay for these, ‘kay?”

“Okay,” I replied. She undid the red bow on this one for me, and once she stepped out I pulled it off. Once I was in my regular clothes again Mom helped me put the four we weren’t buying back onto the rack, and we went up to the register.

“Is this going to be all for you Ma’am?” the lady at the register asked smiling at the two of us.

“Yes,” my Mom said as she started writing a check and waited for the total. The sales lady handed that to my mom and handed the dresses to me. We began walking out then.

“You did point out something Tiffany,” she told me.

“What?” I asked.

“We need to get you a black dress for that concert. I don’t think Mrs. Remar will have a problem with you wearing that for both groups.”

I nodded. “So I get four dresses in one day?” I asked incredulously.

“If we can find one,” she told me laughing. “Here let me take these from you so you don’t drag them.” Mom took the dresses and held them for me as we walked down the mall. It really was a lot easier for her since she wasn’t so short. I was almost skipping as we walked into a couple of other stores. We eventually found an all black dress that that went down to my ankles that would work for the concert.

“Okay Tiffany, let’s go back to the car and drop these off,” Mom said as we walked to the parking lot behind JC Penney’s where we had parked.

“We’re not done are we?” I asked prepared to pout.

Mom sighed, “No, obviously we still have to find shoes for you,” she told me with a smile.

“Yay! Shopping!” I said almost jumping. With as bad as yesterday had been I could almost forget about it while we were shopping.

Mom hung the dresses on a hook in the car and then closed the door. She grabbed my hand and we walked back inside to go shoe shopping. Really just one pair of black shoes would probably have been acceptable for all of them… but I ended up with a pair of red shoes, a pair of black, and a pair of white!

All of them had an inch heel on them. Mom had tried to talk me into just getting flats, and I’d tried talking her into something a little taller, but we’d compromised at the end. The heel was kind of my way of not feeling like I was five while I was wearing the dresses. I doubted it would help though. All of the shoes came from the smaller sizes of the children’s section.

It was about one when we stopped for lunch and left the first mall. “Where do you want to eat sweetie?” Mom asked me.

“I don’t know, wherever?”

“How about soup and salad?” she suggested.

“Okay,” I replied, and we ended up at Olive Garden.

As we ate Mom looked over me looking relieved. I think she was really concerned about everything that happened yesterday. “Tiffany, I’m glad to see that you are looking happier today,” she said tentatively.

“Well… how can I not be happy shopping with you?” I asked. A bite later I said, “especially when you buy me clothes!”

“Even ones that make you look a little bit younger,” she teased.

That was low… “Just how young did I look like that?” I asked nervously.

“Young enough,” she sighed. “Tiffany you’re growing up fast enough. Don’t rush it. Besides I think you noticed the same thing I did today,” she added the last part softly.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I think the hormones are starting to work a bit, don’t you?” She asked.

“I wasn’t just seeing things?” I asked excitedly.

“I definitely think they’re starting. By spring you’re going to definitely actually need the bras you’ve been wearing most of the time,” she said.

I just smiled. The hormones were working — how could I not be happy knowing that?

“So what’s next Mommy?” I asked.

“Well we have another mall we haven’t hit yet. And, you wanted to hit Target right?”

“Uh-huh,” I told her.

The two of us shopped through the other mall for a bit. We found a dress for Mom that she looked great in, and I talked her into getting it. I tried on a lot of clothes there, but we didn’t really find anything that I couldn’t live without. We looked in the jewelry counters a few times and I fell in love with a couple necklaces and such. All of them were way too expensive though, so I didn’t even say anything more than, “Mom isn’t this one pretty?”

The two of us shopped pretty quickly though that mall though, as there wasn’t as much stuff there. It didn’t take us long then to end up in Target. I found several new tops and a couple pairs of pants to go with them. Before we finished going through the store though I couldn’t help but go down the toy aisle with Mom. I admired a lot of the Barbie stuff that was there, and kind of hoped that maybe I’d get a few more this Christmas. For as much as I didn’t want to be thought of as a little girl, a part of me still didn’t want to be a grown-up yet.

After all, I would be a real young lady soon, instead of just a young girl — or something like that. I couldn’t ignore that I was still stuck with certain parts for the moment. ‘Unfortunately I was going to be stuck with them through high school, so I might as well get used to it.’ I thought to myself as we drove back home.

At home I gave my dad a bit of a fashion show with all of the new outfits. When I put on the black and red dress he said, “Tiffany you look gorgeous, sweetie.”

I just blushed at that point. We went out to dinner at a local restaurant that served dinner and breakfast all the time. I ended up ordering a thick Belgium Waffle covered in whipped cream and strawberries. “So what did your Mom and Dad say about Thanksgiving?” Mom asked Dad in the middle of dinner.

“Well everyone is going up to Wendy and Raymond’s place in Denver. We’re invited too if you want to go.” He told her.

“Do you want to?” She asked him. I think she was thinking the same thing I was… his brother Allen had been pretty upset by what we were doing.

“I think we should. They all need to be properly introduced to Tiffany,” he told her.

“What about Uncle Allen?” I decided to ask.

“He’ll behave,” Dad said. I wasn’t entirely sure he believed that. And what about his kids? I was almost more nervous to meet them than anything. His boys, Caleb and Bobby were like the ultimate football player jocks… I’d always been intimidated by them, but how would they act now?

“If you really don’t want to go Tiffany, we don’t have to,” Dad said after reading the fear in my face.

“No, we need to go Daddy… They do have to meet me sometime, and sooner gives them less time to make up stuff I guess.”

With that both of my parents began discussing what day we’d head up. We were supposed to have school all day on Tuesday, so we’d have to leave Wednesday. Since it was about a ten hour drive, we’d probably end up getting there in time for dinner Wednesday. Then we’d be at Uncle Allen’s and Aunt Wendy’s for lunch.

“We’d drive home Saturday I guess.” Dad said.

“So we can go shopping on Friday?” I suggested.

“What is with you and shopping now? It was a lot cheaper when you hated shopping,” he sighed.

There was a lot more truth to that statement than I cared to admit. Just the doctor’s bills alone were high. Even with insurance it was a good thing that I had earned some money myself through our film project. Before I could start brooding though, we left the restaurant and headed home.

My parents called my dad’s parents that night and let them know we were going to go up. Dad started working on finding a hotel. That night he went ahead and made reservations. As soon as he was off the phone I got onto it with Amy.

“Hey Amy,” I said when her mom passed her the phone.

“Hey Tiffany… is today going better for you?”

“Yeah, Mom and I had a lot of fun today,” I told her.

“What did you do?”

“Well we went shopping in town…” I began and told her about everything we had done shopping wise.

“Your Mom bought you three holiday dresses?” She kind of giggled.

“Why are you laughing?” I asked.

“Because now I’m going to have to wear one again!” She sighed.

“Huh?”

“I had been hoping I could skip having to wear one of those dresses this year, telling my Mom that I’m ‘too grown up’ for one now. Of course now that you’re going to be wearing them I’m going to be stuck too.” She sounded like she wasn’t really that mad, but she was slightly annoyed.

“They’re really not that bad…” I started.

“Well at least I’ll have company on this torture,” she sighed. All of the sudden she giggled a bit.

“So… Um Tiff?” She asked in a way that made me know she was up to no good.

“What?”

“Just how old did you look…”

“If you were here I would so stick my tongue out at you right now.” I told her.

She just laughed back at me. “Well I have to get even somehow.”

We talked to each other for a long time still after that. Our friendship was close enough that we seemed to always have something to talk about to each other. She told me a bit about what she’d been up to all day, and the stuff she was getting forced into tomorrow. Eventually both of our moms started pestering us to get off of the phone, so we both said good night.

I ended up in my room for the little bit of time that was left that night, reading a book. That night I dreamt all sorts of dreams with me wearing my new dresses… I briefly woke up annoyed when one of them featured me being sent back to kindergarten because I couldn’t possibly be a seventh grader. It was so real too!!!! I managed to go back to sleep after a while though, barely remembering the details of the dream the next day.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

---

 

---

 
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 11:

 
MONDAY ARRIVED FASTER than I would have liked, and I found myself right back in school. I’d spent most of Sunday doing as little as possible, but I’d still had a lot of homework to finish before I was able to go to bed the night before. As classes went Monday there wasn’t anything particularly special. It was a normal day. Normal… except that every few minutes I was double checking that my backpack was in fact still where I’d set it next to my legs.

I was so nervous about the incident from Friday it was ridiculous. Half-way through lunch Amy leaned over to me and whispered, “Tiffany, it’s all right, we’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

I blushed. I didn’t know it was that obvious. The problem for me was that I’d had a sort of peace that had built up, and the Friday thing just shattered that. I was back to worrying just as much as I had a month before. It sucked. I kept trying to tell myself that things wouldn’t get that bad again, but I knew I was honestly constantly on a tightrope trying to keep myself in the air — one slip and I might fall to the abyss that lay below. Thankfully that day all of me worries seemed for not, as nothing bad happened that day.

After school I went to the girls’ locker room and changed in the coaches’ office into my clothes for dance practice. Today was going to be the beginning of only having dance practice, no cheerleading practice first! I was excited about that. I mean, I enjoyed the cheer stuff too, but I had definitely found I had a bigger passion for dance. Coach had us gather around on the floor of the small stage that we had in the Cafetorium to talk to us.

“Good afternoon ladies,” she said to us with a smile, “today we’re going to begin preparation for the competitions were doing in January!”

We all smiled a lot, and I think everyone was genuinely excited to be moving forward.

“Look, I know we had a scary performance last Thursday, but stuff happens sometimes ladies. As long as we keep moving on we’ll be able to look at it and laugh in a few months.”

I hoped she was right. I almost wanted to cry now that she’d brought it back up. Why wasn’t she chewing us out for it? We deserved it…

“Today I got the official word that we’ve been accepted into the Dance Nationals in Florida the last weekend of January!”

“Really? We got accepted?” Lindsey asked, kind of surprised.

“Of course! I sent them a copy of the video of our routine from the high school homecoming game. They were really impressed with it ladies. Like I said, I know we had a bad performance last Thursday, but as a whole I believe this squad has a lot of potential.” She said that with a smile on her face that I felt was genuine.

“Thanks,” I found myself and most of the other girls saying.

“Okay, we have a lot of hard work to do for this competition. I’m entering us into two categories at the junior level. We’re going to do jazz and poms.”

I nodded, those were my two favorite categories and I thought it was going to be a lot of fun. There are other categories like hip-hop that you could enter, but I really like the styles that she was having us do the best. They were the ones I enjoyed the most. “How many other squads are there?” I found myself asking unexpectedly.

“So far the lady I spoke to said that they’ve accepted about two-hundred junior high squads into this competition… Of course there are probably some others that they haven’t accepted. You have to be good enough to get in,” she added. All of our faces took on a scared look.

“Cool,” Kristina said next to me breaking it though.

“Okay, I’m going to put the music on for the two routines now so that you can all listen to it, then we’re going to go ahead and start going through the pom-pom routine today.” She started the music and I could already feel myself moving to the beats. I was sure that we were going to have two really cool routines when we were done with it all. Every girl on the squad nodded and smiled afterwards, we were sure we could have fun with this! Coach Holt calmed us down and then had us begin working count by count. Practice was supposed to end at five-thirty for the night, but she had us stop early at five. I was already exhausted both physically and mentally by that point though.

“Okay come have a seat here for a few minutes and I’ll let you all get out of here early,” she told us. We all gathered around her and she started handing out packets to us. “This is all of the information for the trip. We’re going to be getting in two more uniforms for this competition in the next month or so. We’ll also use them at the State competition the week before that,” she looked at us to see if we had any questions.

“Why don’t you all look at the itinerary with me for a few minutes,” she instructed. She went through each of the bits of information about when we were going to be flying out of Albuquerque, when we’d be performing in the preliminary round, and hopefully when we’d be performing in the finals. We were also going to have one day to roam in Disney World. Amy and I looked at each other excitedly, even though we’d been there the previous summer (actually about a third of the squad had been with us), we were still excited to go back.

When we left that night we had all sorts of wonderful forms to fill out, and dates of some fundraisers we were going to be doing to get ready for the trip. Our parents had already paid a big chunk of the fee for the trip, but there were still some additional costs involved that fundraising would help with. I skipped out to where my Mom was waiting outside to take me home real quick, before leaving right afterwards to go to gymnastics.

“Hey Tiffany, how are you doing?” Tara asked me as I walked into the reception area at the gymnastics gym.

“Alright I guess,” I told her as we walked back to the back. “You?”

“I’m doing well. Having a bit of a Monday, but doing well,” she said with a smile. “So Tiffany, are you still doing everything you were doing at the beginning of this fall?”

“Actually I just stopped doing some of the stuff a couple weeks ago… I’m not doing the dance classes or ballet for a bit.”

“Oh?”

“Well my parents decided I was bit overloaded… and they were right… so I’m just doing this on Mondays, Jazz on Tuesdays, and dance at school.”

“That’s probably a really good idea Tiffany,” she told me.

The two of us actually spent a lot of time talking that night while we stretched together. “Thanks for listening to me,” I told her as we stood up to go begin some new things.

“Anytime Tiffany,” she said. “Okay, so I was kind of thinking about trying some balance beam stuff with you tonight,” she said to me.

I had to remember to breathe there after a second. “Okay…” I said nervously looking at the balance beam at the far end of the gym suspended in the air.

“Don’t worry, nothing too hard Tiffany,” she said to me. “And we’ll start with a lower one.”

“Good,” I said, the relief plain on my face.

We actually worked on one that was only about half-a-foot off the ground… probably a good thing because even though it was simple stuff, I still fell off of it plenty of times! By the end of our lesson that night I was sure that I was going to have some bruises and be sore in the morning. I did have fun though, so it was worth it.

When I got home I began talking excitedly to Mom and Dad about all of the details we had gotten about the trip that day. “It’s going to be so cool competing with all of those schools!”

“I’m sure you all will do really well sweetie,” Dad told me.

“Thanks!” I told him and continued on and on for the rest of the night. I’m pretty sure my parents were absolutely thrilled when I went to bed that night.

 

TUESDAY MORNING CAME and I was freezing as I walked across the hall to the bathroom. I made the mistake of getting into the shower before letting the water run for a minute first, causing me to shiver. ‘Just how cold is it outside today?’ I asked myself. I vaguely remembered Mom saying something about it getting cold today… but I honestly hadn’t paid much attention. ‘Obviously it’s cold enough that the shower isn’t even really getting warm…’ I said to myself as I washed as quickly as I could.

I had the hot water on all of the way, and the cold only at a trickle and the water seemed lukewarm at best. I was not in a good mood by the time I finished. I toweled off quickly and threw on my clothes as quickly as I could. I’d only put a long sleeve tee in the bathroom the night before… I was going to have to put on a couple more layers this morning, I was sure of that.

Dad was still at the kitchen table when I came out — now wearing the long sleeve shirt, a sweater, and a hooded dance sweatshirt on top of that. “Just how cold is it outside?” I asked him.

He just pointed to the TV where the weather man had just come on and showed a state map. Our town was listed as a measly eight degrees!!! “It’s only November… it’s not supposed to be this cold yet.” I grumbled.

He just shrugged and said, “Don’t forget your coat today,” as he stood up and headed off back to the bathroom.

Before he had fully escaped the kitchen I asked, “Is there something wrong with the hot water heater? My shower was freezing today…”

“I’ll look at it when I get home tonight sweetie. It probably just needs turned up a bit.”

“Please!!!!” I said. I was really trying not to sound rude, but I was sure I hadn’t really succeeded. I’m not a morning person but he knew it at least.

I quickly ate breakfast before going back to my room and looking to see where we had stashed my new winter coat. ‘It’s a good thing we got this early…’ I thought as I heard Amy’s Mom pull up. I threw on the coat really quick and headed out to her car while grabbing my saxophone and backpack quickly.

It was so cold outside that my breath was taken away initially. The cold bit at my cheeks, and I almost forgot to lock the front door in my rush to get inside the warm car that was waiting for me.

“Brrr!!!” I said as I jumped into the back seat next to Amy.

“I agree!” Amy said.

“Why aren’t we going to Florida today?” I grumbled. Amy smiled at me a little before going back to her own shivering. The car wasn’t nearly as warm as I’d hoped. At school everyone rushed into their classrooms as quickly as they could — no one wanted to be outside or in the hallways any longer than they had to. All of the classrooms were cold that morning though — no one had thought to turn up the heaters in the school the day before when it had still been in the mid-sixties.

All morning long everyone grumbled, but not as much as when we realized that it meant we were going to be stuck inside classrooms immediately after we finished eating that day. Before long everyone seemed to be in about as bad of a mood as they could be. In home-ec Coach Holt decided to just have us watch a movie in class that day. She seemed pretty tired, not looking good at all. At the end of class she called Amy and I over to her desk.

“Hey ladies, I’m going to have to cancel practice after school today. I’m feeling pretty sick. Would you mind spreading the word around?” She asked.

“Sure, I hope you feel better,” I told her.

“Me too,” she told me. “Either way we will have practice tomorrow. Alright?”

Amy and I nodded and left as the bell rang. “No practice after school? What are we going to do with ourselves?” Amy asked with a smile on her face.

“Find somewhere warm to curl up with a blanket,” I answered. She nodded to that.

“Do you want to ride the bus home with me then?” She asked.

“Sure. We should probably get a hold of our parents though and let them know practice is cancelled.”

Just as she was about to respond we were sitting down in English and a secretary came over the intercom, “Excuse this interruption teachers, we have an announcement that dance practice is cancelled after school today. Also there will be no jazz practice today either. If there are any girls on the dance team that need to call home please send them to the office at this time, thanks.”

“Well that works,” I told Amy with a smile. The two of us, along with the other dance team members in our class all headed towards the office. Not all of the girls really needed to call home… but it was a really good excuse to get out of class!

When it was my turn to use the phone Amy held her hand on my arm for a second, “Tiff, you should come stay the night tonight!”

“That would be fun… We don’t even really have any homework tonight… I’ll ask.” I told her.

“Hi, Mom?” I asked as she answered the phone at home.

“Tiffany, what’s wrong?” she asked really worried. It caused me to have a start for a second while I tried to figure out why she sounded that way, and then I realized I never called her from school for a good thing…

“Nothing’s wrong Mom, I just called to let you know that dance practice is cancelled — and so is jazz band. Would it be possible for me to stay tonight at Amy’s?” I asked sweetly.

“I don’t know sweetie, it’s a school night.”

“I’ve stayed over before… and I don’t have any homework.” I told her.

“You are supposed to have a sax lesson tonight though, remember?”

“Oh…”

“How about this sweetie. Why don’t you both ride over to our house on the bus, hang out there for a bit until I come pick you up for your lesson and then I’ll take you both over to Amy’s house in time for dinner there?”

“Okay!”

I hung up the phone and told Amy what my Mom had said. “That sounds fine… what do you want me to do during your lesson though?” She asked.

“I don’t know… you can come in and watch I guess.” I told her.

“I guess that’s only fair, I made you come to one of my dance classes last year.” She told me with a smile. With that she called her mom and told her what was going on. Amy’s mom said that it was a great idea for me to come over. By the time everyone had made their phone calls and we made it back to class there wasn’t a lot of time left. Ms. Damien had pretty much given up on getting anything done since half of the class had left to go call home. She didn’t seem real pleased, but she looked like she’d get over it.

Band flew by quickly, and at the end of class Kyle asked Mrs. Remar why we weren’t having jazz. “Kyle, I had a pipe burst at home so we’re cleaning up the mess and dealing with the plumber and everything tonight,” she told him. We all told her we were sorry to hear that — it would definitely suck. ‘Yet another reason to not like the cold,’ I thought to myself.

“Sorry to hear that,” I told her as I walked by.

“Stuff happens,” she said with a grim face that was trying to make sure we weren’t too worried about her.

I grabbed my sax and went outside to meet Amy. The two of us went to get onto the bus to my house that we rarely ever rode. “Hi Tiffany,” the driver said as we got on. “Your Mom told me you two would be riding. Why don’t you ride in the seat behind me, it’s the only one that’s really empty at the moment,” she added somewhat apologetically.

“Thanks,” I told her.

“I can’t believe that you had jazz practice canceled in addition to the dance practice Tiff,” Amy said as the bus began moving.

“I’m really surprised too… it’ll be kind of like not doing anything tonight. Of course my sax lesson is keeping it from being all the way like that. Are you sure you don’t mind being forced to tag along to that? I can have my Mom drop you off at your house.”

“It’s okay Tiffany, I’ve never really heard you play before,” she told me. Of course that was intentional. I didn’t even like my parents to hear me practice. It’s not that I was bad — quite the opposite I was showing a lot of potential — I was just very self conscious.

“I’m okay,” I told her.

Soon we pulled up to the stop that was closest to my house and we began walking the block to get there. I was glad that Amy was with me, the idea of walking alone on this walk did not thrill me. On this very walk I had been attacked and stalked by tormentors way too often. Towards the end of the year last year, Amy’s Mom had been picking us up, but due to dance practice she had rearranged her schedule to where she was working a little bit later and couldn’t pick us up on a day like this.

I pulled my key out of my backpack and unlocked the front door, tossing my sax case and bag next to the door. “What do you want to do while we wait for your Mom to take us to your lesson?”

“Well I need to get clothes for tomorrow,” I told her. I didn’t really need pajamas since I had a set there already.

“Okay let’s get you packed!” she said excitedly.

The two of us walked to my bedroom and began rummaging through my closet to decide what I wanted to wear tomorrow. It was supposed to be just as cold, if not colder, so I grabbed a camisole, a tight short sleeve shirt, a long sleeve shirt, and a sweater to put on top of all of it. “Think you’ll have enough layers there Tiff?” Amy asked while rolling her eyes at me. I stuck my tongue out at her and moved to my underwear drawer to grab a pair of panties and socks. I paused for a second at the training bras that were in my drawer and decided to go ahead and grab one. I really thought I was beginning to need them, but I didn’t let Amy see what I was grabbing… I was embarrassed for some reason.

As I began to close that drawer I had to open another one that it got stuck on. “Tiffany you should so bring those pajamas tonight!” Amy said as I was just getting ready to close the problem drawer. I followed her gaze to the set of footed pajamas. I hadn’t told her I had wore them more than that one time… I didn’t want to feel stupid.

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s cold silly!”

“Oh.”

“Plus then we can match again!” she told me. “It is a sleepover after all!”

“Alright, I’ll bring them.” I paused to look around and see if there was anything else I would need. I had a stuffed animal, as well as a second set of bathroom stuff like brushes, toothbrushes, and toothpaste at her house in my room and bathroom. I decided to grab a pair of earrings real quick and then I would be done.

“You should wear those tomorrow!” Amy said pointing to a pair in the shape of purple flowers.

“Okay,” I smiled at her and said.

The two of us then sat around and talked for a few minutes before Amy asked, “Tiffany do you have your practice tapes here?”

“Yeah, they’re in my bag — I didn’t get around to taking any of that out last night. Why?”

“Well I was thinking we could start learning the routine until your Mom gets home. I mean Coach Holt gave us the written copy of everything too.”

I looked thoughtfully for a second and said, “Okay.” I grabbed the stuff out of my bag and we began working through the routine by counts. We managed to get through about three-quarters of the routine before we encountered a couple move names that neither of us knew. “I guess we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to ask her,” I told Amy.

“Yeah… I was kind of hoping we could finish learning it slowly today though.” She said as I heard my Mom pull up outside.

“Oh well, we’d better get ready to go.” I told her.

“How was your day, girls?” Mom asked as she came in.

“Pretty good I guess,” I told her.

“Really strange without dance practice,” Amy added.

“Well I’m going to run to the restroom real quick and then we need to go. Do you have everything you need for tonight and tomorrow?” Mom asked me.

“I think so.”

“Okay, just make sure you’re ready to go in a couple minutes — I don’t want you to be late for your lesson.”

“Yes Mom,” I told her trying not to roll my eyes. I was ready to go — she was the one that wasn’t. Thankfully Mom was in and out of the bathroom pretty quickly.

“Let’s go,” she told me as she came out rubbing lotion onto her hands.

I grabbed my bags and my saxophone, Amy grabbed her backpack, and we walked outside to the car while Mom locked up. She opened the trunk for us to put our bags in and then Amy and I got into the back seat of the car. Mom seemed tired that afternoon, I asked her about it, “Mom are you alright?”

“I think so sweetie, I just didn’t sleep well last night. I had heartburn all night.” She told me.

“Oh… I’m sorry.” I told her.

“It’s alright, maybe it’s a good thing you’re going over to Amy’s tonight though,” she said with a slight smile. I tried to smile back but I felt bad for her. She seemed to have heartburn almost constantly, though some nights were worse than others.

It didn’t take long to pull up to the music store where I took my sax lessons. Mom and Amy followed me into the store where I said “Hi,” to my teacher.

She said ‘Hi’ to my mom as well. “And this is Amy, one of Tiffany’s friends. Do you mind if she sits in during her lesson?”

She looked at her and said, “No that shouldn’t be a problem. Let’s get started though,” he said as she looked at her watch. My teacher led us into the practice studio they had setup in the back, directing Amy to a seat behind me where she took out a book and started reading to kill time. I really felt bad about dragging her along like this.

“So what have we worked on this week Tiffany?” she asked.

“Well I spent a lot of time on the scales you wanted me to work on, and the pieces for the honor band auditions next week.” I almost stuttered when I said that last bit. I couldn’t believe those auditions were already here.

“Let’s see what you’ve done.” She told me with a smile. As I went through the scales that I would have to play two of next week, she corrected a few things here and there, but mostly didn’t say a lot.

“Good Tiffany, there’s only a few things I want you to change…” the lesson continued like that for the next hour after we had finally managed to get through the pieces too.

“So do you think I have a chance?” I asked her as I put my saxophone in its case.

“I think you have a very good chance. Definitely a better chance than most seventh graders do, just remember there will be some ninth graders auditioning for the junior high band too.” She pointed out to me as if to prepare me for the possibility of failure. I just nodded. As I walked out of the studio I gave her a quick hug and said ‘thank you,’ for her help.

With that Amy and I walked back to the front of the store where my mom was waiting. “How is she doing?” my mom asked my teacher.

“Tiffany played really well tonight; as long as she keeps up what she’s doing she should have a decent chance next week.”

I blushed but was again happy to have the compliment. “Thank you for all of your work with her,” my mom told her as we left the store. With that we drove to Amy’s house, with Mom coming inside just briefly to say ‘hi’ to Melanie before leaving to go home.

“Hi Tiffany,” Melanie said to me as I walked in.

“Hi,” I told her while giving her a small hug.

“Why don’t you two go wash up and then come downstairs for dinner?”

“Okay Mom,” Amy said and we went upstairs. I threw my stuff into my room and washed up in my bathroom. I still couldn’t get over the fact that Amy’s parents had redone one of their spare bedrooms for me this summer. Knowing, that her parents loved me almost as much as my parents, was an amazing feeling.

Amy and I met up at the staircase to head back downstairs to the dining room. “What’s for dinner, Mom?” Amy asked.

“Shrimp fettuccini alfredo,” she told us.

My stomach instantly growled. I loved fettuccini alfredo in the restaurants, but knowing Melanie this would probably be better than the restaurants. Both of us sat down just as Mr. Hancock came into the door. “Hey Amy, Tiffany, how was your day?” he asked as he came and kissed Melanie.

“It was good.” We both said together. That of course caused a small giggle. We were used to finishing each other’s sentences by now, but it was still funny sometimes.

“Good,” he said to us before going down the hall to a bathroom on the first floor to wash up. Meanwhile Melanie dished up food to all of us and we began eating. I was so hungry for some reason, and I finished my plate really quickly. Melanie offered me seconds but I politely turned it down. As good as it sounded I really didn’t want to get fat from it… I had felt the calories oozing out of the food as I’d eaten it!

After Amy finished up we both began to excuse ourselves from the table. “Hey Amy I thought you might want to look at this, it came in the mail today.” She said holding up a new Sears Wishbook catalog.

“Ooooh!” Amy fairly squealed. She jumped up and grabbed my hand with the free hand that wasn’t holding the catalog in her hand. “Let’s go make Christmas lists!” she told me.

“That sounds like fun,” I told her as I followed her up the stairs to her playroom. Beginning this summer it had begun to look more like a room just for studying… but all of her toys were still around the room. I smiled when I saw the dollhouse that was a sister to the one I had at home — we’d both received them from Mattel for our video project. It was off to the side now though, a desk had been moved into the room last month and a brand-new computer sat at it for her to use in classes.

“What do you want for Christmas?” I asked her. I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to want this year. Seventh grade seemed to be a really awkward year in that way.

“I don’t know. I mean I’m sure my parents will end up getting me a couple Barbies… but it’s not like we have time to play anymore,” she said sadly. “I guess maybe clothes?” she suggested.

“It seems so boring…” I said.

“Yeah… let’s look through this catalog though; maybe we’ll get better ideas.”

And so the Wishbook frenzy began in earnest. The two of us oohed and awed about a lot of things in there, and both of us started a list with a few things on there. We came across the CD players that were listed in there after a bit and I suddenly knew something I would like for me. “I’m going to put down a CD player,” I told her.

“Ooh! That’s a good idea, do you mind if I still your idea?”

“Nope.” I replied as the two of us then began scrounging through the catalog some more. We were just about to call it a night of looking at it when her Mom came up and asked if we wanted some ice cream.

“It’s freezing outside Mom, how can you possibly think of ice cream today?” Amy asked incredulously.

“It’s warm in here,” she pointed out to her. She took that as a ‘no’ though and headed back downstairs.

“Why don’t we go ahead and get our pajamas on?” Amy suggested. “I’m cold and those pajamas are a lot warmer than what I’ve got on.”

“Sure,” I told her and went down the hall to change. I felt ridiculously young as always as I put them on, but I noticed something. My chest really looked like it was beginning to change. I touched my nipple and discovered it was kind of sore. That was supposed to be a good sign right? I quickly zipped up my pajamas and skipped down the hallway to Amy’s room.

“Amy… can you look at something for me?” I asked nervously.

“Sure Tiff, what?”

“Well I think maybe the hormones are starting to work. Would you mind looking and seeing if I’m just going nuts?”

“Sure!” Amy said to me. She really was a sister to me, and things like this showed it more than almost anything else.

I was really embarrassed, almost frozen as I went ahead and unzipped the top of my pajamas down and showed her. “Tiffany I think you’re right! That’s what mine were doing at the beginning of the year!”

“Really?”

“Really. Do they feel any different?” She asked curiously.

“Well they’re kind of sore if I touch them… that’s okay right?” I asked.

“It’s normal Tiff. This is great! Soon you’ll be wearing a real bra too.” She had been so proud last month when she had gotten her first real bra, an A cup. I zipped my pajamas back up when I heard a knock at her door. It was Melanie.

“What are you two up to now?”

“Nothing…” We both said.

“Don’t be getting into trouble now,” her mom said to us.

“We won’t… get into much.” Amy said with a smile.

“Your dad just started a fire in the fireplace downstairs… why don’t you two come downstairs and have some hot chocolate with us?” She asked. “It’s not even something cold.” She said with a smile to Amy.

“Okay!” I said and we both headed downstairs with her.

For the rest of the night Amy and I just hung out with her parents. It was nice to hang out there at her house. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel like I had a family at home… but it was easier to relax around her parents than it was with mine. My dad always worried me a little bit, that I was taking too large a toll on him. At least here it didn’t seem that way at all. Her mom eventually sent both of us to bed and said goodnight to both of us. I had just gone through and gotten my clothes ready for the next morning when she came in to check on me.

“Tiffany do you need anything?”

“I think I’m good,” I told her with a smile.

“Okay then, why don’t you go ahead and get in bed and I’ll get the light for you,” she said with a smile. As she turned off the light and closed the door I felt absolutely safe and happy. I didn’t think that anything could possibly get better than that.

 

Chapter 12:

 

IN THE MORNING Melanie made breakfast for Amy and me, before driving us off to school. Things seemed a lot calmer that day then they had on Monday. So far nothing else had happened to me, and I was hoping it would stay that way. After school we asked Coach Holt about the moves that we didn’t know, and she showed us them so we could work on them. I think we were the only two to look at the routine on Tuesday, because everyone else looked really frustrated just getting through the first easy parts of the routine. I was proud that Amy and I were setting such a good example!

I wanted to go home with Amy again that night, but knew I shouldn’t push it with my parents. Instead I ended up talking to her on the phone for an hour while we worked on the same essay for English. We also made plans for her to come over to my house on Friday, that way my parents wouldn’t feel like I was completely abandoning them.

As I walked into the school building on Thursday I felt like things were going well, and I thought maybe things were going to be going great for a third day in a row.

Science made it kind of a toss-up though.

That day in class we were discussing the periodic table. Mr. Grainger spent some time discussing how we were to read it, atomic weights, and had given us an assignment we were to do in small groups. That was pretty normal for us in class. At the end though he called us all together as a class again, “Okay class, what number is Oxygen?”

I raised my hand high in the air, that was an easy one, “Yes Tiffany?”

“Eight?”

“Very good,” he said and then continued onto the other questions he had.

Two minutes before class was to end I overheard a boy and a girl in the corner whispering, “You know Brandon was an annoying know-it-all before all of this began, and he still is.”

I felt my face turning absolutely red.

Mr. Grainger was an intelligent teacher and he seemed to sense that the two of them were not focusing on the assignment so he called out, “Why don’t you two tell me how many protons Rubidium has?”

The boy, Erick, sneered, “I don’t know, why don’t you ask the genius Brandon over there. I’m sure he can tell you all about it.”

“Erick I’ll see you after class.” Mr. Grainger said to him coldly.

I was in shock. I didn’t even know what to say. Crying didn’t even occur to me at that point because I was taken so aback by his statement. Kyle was sitting a couple desks in front of him. I saw him turn around and mouth something to him… but I wasn’t really paying attention.

The bell rang and I found myself moving to Choir with Amy and Lindsey putting their arms around my shoulders. They actually steered me into a bathroom next to the choir room. “Are you okay Tiffany?” Lindsey asked. She looked appalled.

“I think so… What in the world just happened?” I asked them. They both looked at each other and gave me the shrug of their shoulders to emphasize they didn’t have a clue either. “I mean I just answered one question — not the whole worksheet. What in the world did I do to Erick?”

“I don’t know Tiffany,” Amy told me. “Are you going to be alright to go on to choir?”

I nodded, “I think so. I’m too shocked to cry right now.” Both of them gave me a friendly hug and we headed to class. The bell rang just as we came in the door. If we were any other girls I’m sure we probably would have been marked tardy, but in our cases Ms. Beecher just gave us a concerned look and motioned us with her head towards our spots on the risers.

Since the three of us were sopranos it made it easy enough to make our way in there without separating. We worked on some music for the Christmas concert that was only a month away. I was in the front row due to my shortness, while Amy and Lindsey were behind me. All through class I could feel their eyes watching me as if they were worried I was going to collapse.

Honestly I wasn’t bothered by the incident because of the know-it-all comment, or even just the fact they had intentionally referred to me as Brandon. It was the venom and outright cruelty that Erick had put into his voice. I was trying to think what in the world I had ever done to him to cause it. But there was nothing I could think of. ‘Maybe he was friends with Lucas?’

‘Yeah, that would explain it,’ I thought to myself. He was friends with Lucas. I had dealt with problems with him early on in the school year, but he had backed off when confronted by the administration. He’d been threatened with expulsion if it continued… but he probably thought he could get others to do his dirty work and get away with it… The part that bothered me was that he was probably right.

I explained this to Amy quietly over lunch. “Tiffany, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re right… but there’s no way we’d ever be able to prove it.”

“I know… just tell me I’m not insane for seeing a plot against me every time I turn around…” I answered.

She just smiled slightly and gave me a hug around the shoulders with her arm. It was freezing again for a third day, so once again we were inside after lunch instead of hanging out outside. Luckily for us though Coach Holt let Amy and I look through some uniform catalogs to see if we could start picking out outfits for next year. It gave us something to do at least.

Practice after school was brutal that day. Coach Holt had us run through the first sixty-four counts of the routine slowly, again, and again, and again for a half hour straight. It was tough enough to do it once, but with as many times as we repeated it I felt like I was going to curl up from the pain I felt. All of the other girls must have felt the same way by their expressions. The entire rehearsal went that way as she worked to try and improve it as much as she could in one rehearsal.

By the time Amy’s mom picked us up we were both on our way to sleep as soon as we crawled in the car. When she dropped me off at my house I briefly discussed her coming to pick us up after a lesson I was having with Mrs. Remar after school on my honor band music, and then dropping us off at my house so Amy could stay the night. As soon as I finished though I went inside my house, grabbed a blanket, my stuffed tiger, and curled up on the couch in the living room.

A half-hour later my mom came home and found me curled up on the couch, she nudged me awake. “Hey Tiffany, are you all right?”

I was groggy so about all I was able to do was go, “uh?”

“Sweetie I’ll let you go back to sleep for a bit. I’ll wake you up when dinners ready, ‘kay?”

“Okay…” I said and nodded right back off to sleep. I was so tired.

When she woke me up for dinner I had a hard time trying to stop being groggy. I ate dinner just silently looking at the TV. It was only after my plate was empty for several minutes that I considered how much I really needed a shower. Both of my parents were still sitting at the table, “Mom? Dad? Do you guys mind if I take a shower? I should have taken one after practice but I just fell asleep.”

Mom seemed to breathe a sigh of relief; I think she was worried there was something seriously wrong at that moment. Both of my parents shared one of those communicating looks with each other, and my dad responded, “Sure Tiffany, let me go to the bathroom really quick first though.”

“Okay,” I told him. In the meantime I went ahead and went to my room and got pajamas and put them in the bathroom. I also decided to wash my face while I was waiting for dad to finish up.

“Tiffany? I’m done with the water,” my Dad called through the bathroom door.

“Thanks,” I told him and started the shower water.

‘Might as well wash my hair tonight…’ I told myself. Once I got my hair washed I washed my body too, and then just stood there in the steaming water. I knew that life was always going to throw me curves like today… but I wasn’t real appreciative about having to deal with them all of the time. At least I still had my good friends.

I eventually noticed that the water was getting cold and heard my Mom knock on the door, “Tiffany are you going to stay in there all night?”

“Sorry Mom!” I called out as I turned the water off, dried myself with a towel, and threw on my pajamas. I hadn’t meant to stay in there that long. I looked at myself in the mirror with my hair wet. ‘I didn’t look like a boy. Why did they have to still call me Brandon?’

I sighed and then went out to the couch where I’d lain this afternoon with my hairbrush in one hand. My mom rushed into the bathroom when I opened the door, and then she came and joined me on the couch watching TV. I was still just holding the hair brush… I didn’t really have the energy to run it through my hair. When my mom came and sat on the couch next to me I gave her a small smile and held out the brush to her.

She sighed, “Well I never got a chance to have to do this for you every day when you were little, so it’s the least I can do now…” She grumbled as she took it. “Turn around.”

“Thank you,” I told her. There was something about her taking the brush through my hair that helped me relax. Well… at least when she didn’t find the occasionally snag. Those hurt! I felt my eyes seem to get heavier and heavier as she brushed though.

“So Amy is coming over here tomorrow night?” Mom asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s alright, right?” I asked her.

“Of course sweetheart, I love having both of you here! Sometimes I worry that if I’m not careful you’ll be like a kitty and go adopt another family,” she was joking, but I was afraid that was something she was really worried about.

“Mommy,” I said turning around, “I’ll always be your daughter! Just ‘cause I may spend time with them doesn’t mean I don’t love you guys.” I told her.

“I’m just teasing Tiffany; I don’t mind you spending time over there either.” She reassured me. That helped me relax again.

“Thanks,” I told her.

“I know how much your friendship with Amy means to you. I’m so glad that the two of you have that friendship — don’t think for a moment I would ever be upset about it.”

“Thank you for understanding Mom,” I told her and gave her a hug before turning my back to her again to convince her to keep brushing.

That earned me a poke in the side.

“Hey!!! Not fair!” I told her while I stuck my tongue out at her. I sat there for a while longer while she brushed my hair more than it really needed before forcing myself to go practice. The auditions were on Monday and I wanted to do well. As soon as I was done practicing though I went to bed, falling asleep quickly.

 

FRIDAY AT SCHOOL was a lot better than Thursday, no incidents, and it was a Friday, what could possibly be wrong with that? It had even warmed up to a balmy 40 degrees! For half-a-heartbeat that morning I considered wearing a skirt or a dress to school that day, but that died when I realized it was still too chilly for my tastes outside.

The school day even seemed to end before I knew it, and I was sitting in the band room with Mrs. Remar working on my honor band audition music. My private lessons teacher was a decent saxophone player… but she really was a flute player, so there were always limits to her help on saxophone. Mrs. Remar though, was a saxophone player and she was able to really get picky with my playing.

While I was working with her Amy was next door bugging Ms. Beecher. She’d seen the two of us come in together and I was pretty sure that she’d pegged Amy for some sort of task as soon as she’d seen her. I was just glad she didn’t have to sit in there and listen to me have another lesson again. I had felt kind of bad about her sitting through the last one.

“Tiffany, you’ve done some really good stuff with this music — you really should be proud of yourself.”

“Do you think I stand a chance?” I asked timidly.

“We’ll see Tiffany. You’re definitely going to be the best seventh grader trying out. The only problem is that there will eighth graders, and even a few ninth graders trying out too… just do the best you can, and we’ll see where that lands you.”

“Thanks,” I told her.

“Anytime, Tiffany.”

“You said we should dress up right? Are we going to have time to change before the auditions?” I asked. She had just broken the news to us earlier that the judges were going to be looking at us so we needed to look nice.

“You’ll have time seventh period before we leave. If you want just bring your clothes and leave them in the office.”

“Oh no! I forgot to tell Coach Holt I’d be missing practice Monday…” I muttered as I was pulling my saxophone apart to clean it.

“Don’t worry about that Tiff, I was talking to her earlier about you — she already knows.”

“Whew… Wait a second.” I said a little concerned, “You were talking about me?” I felt my face turn a little red with embarrassment.

“Well you came up in the conversation yes,” She said.

“About?”

“Well how I was really proud of how well you had been balancing band and cheerleading.”

“Oh, thanks. What did she say?”

“She said she was very impressed with you as well. She mentioned to me it wasn’t just those two things that you’re balancing… and both of us agreed that we think you’re going to go really far Tiff.”

“Thanks,” I said turning redder as Amy came in the door from the choir room. Looking for an out I asked, “Are you ready Amy?”

“Yep! You’re sounding really good,” she said as she came over to where I was latching my case shut.

“Thanks,” I felt like I kept repeating that word way too much today.

“Have a good weekend Mrs. Remar,” I said as I walked out the door with Amy.

“See you Monday, Tiffany!” she called out as we left.

Her mom was already waiting in the car outside so we went in and climbed in for the ride to my house.

“Hey Amy, Tiffany,” she said as we got into the back seat. The three of us talked all the way to my house where she dropped us off.

“Thanks for the ride!” I told her with a smile.

“No problem. Amy I’ll pick you up at eleven tomorrow, we have to go run some errands tomorrow.”

“Okay Mom,” Amy replied to her before giving her a quick hug through her window. The two of us went into my house and put her bag in my room. We had a spare bedroom that she could sleep in, but whenever she stayed over she was still sleeping on the trundle bed that I had in my room… We just liked it that way.

“So what are we doing tonight Tiff?” Amy asked me.

I shrugged, “My mom talked about going and renting some videos, but other than that I have no idea. Do you have anything you want to do?”

“Well… not specifically no.” She said.

“Hrmm… We’ve got about an hour until my mom gets home. Do you want to play with Barbies until then?” I asked. I didn’t really have a lot of enthusiasm behind that at the moment.

“Not really. What else could we do?” She asked.

I paused and thought for a second. “You want to see those dresses I got last weekend?”

“Sure!” she said. Clearly clothing seemed to be a more interesting thing at the moment.

We went over to my closet and I pulled out the three dresses one at a time to show her. She giggled. I glared at her.

“Tiffany, I think you’re going to look cute in these… but we’re going to do our best to make sure this is your last year in these,” she told me with a wink.

“I might as well let my mom have one set of pictures with me in one though,” I told her.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. Of course you’ll have a hard time convincing people later on that you took these when you were twelve though!” She said with a smirk.

I just stuck my tongue out at her. “Careful, your mom wants to get you one now too.”

That earned me a well earned glare and we were done with my closet for that point. The two of us ended up just sitting on my bed and talking for the next half-hour. We were just beginning to comment on our fear of our stomachs going on a rampage when I heard our dog start barking at my mom. Luckily for us she was carrying a couple pizzas when she came in the door.

“Tiffany can you grab these?” She asked.

“Sure,” I said while grabbing them. I took them into the kitchen and set them down on top of the stove. I heard the door open and close again a moment later and knew my dad must have come home as well.

“Would you like something to drink Amy?” My mom asked.

“Umm… what do you have?”

“Coke, Diet Coke, Tea, Water?” My mom rattled off waiting for a response.

“Tea please?”

“Certainly sweetheart,” my mom said while getting her a drink. “Would you like something Tiffany?”

“Tea as well please,” I told her.

Amy and I ate with my parents while they asked us about how school went. Amy and I spent some time talking about the dance team at certain points. I don’t know why but my dad always seemed to squirm a bit there. Well of course I had some guesses… but I didn’t want to think too hard about it.

“How did practice go after school today with Mrs. Remar?” My mom asked.

“It went well. She seems to think I have a decent shot at making it.”

“That’s good.” My dad said.

As we all finished eating our fill of pizza my mom asked Amy and me, “Do you two want to go rent some movies?”

I looked at Amy and she shrugged, so I said, “I guess so.”

“Well let me get ready and we’ll go rent some before they’re all gone for the weekend.” She said. “Joe, do you want to go with us?”

“Not really,” he told my mom. “I have a feeling I’m going to have to go work on something for Rob here in a bit — so you’ll be better off going without me.” I didn’t really care that he wasn’t going with us… but I was really tired of his side job working for this, other guy was taking him away all the time.

“Okay, well we’ll see you later then,” Mom said and we headed out the door soon after that.

The three of us looked through the movie aisles quite a bit and ended up bringing a couple movies home. Once home, Amy and I went into my room and grabbed a few bottles of nail polish before going into the living room to watch the movies. My dad hadn’t ended up having to go help his friend so he came in and joined us Every now and again I thought maybe he was giving Amy and me a funny look while we painted each other’s nails.

‘Was he having a harder time now with this?’ I silently wondered. I was beginning to get nervous about it. ‘I should probably mention that to Dr. Reynolds this week…’ I thought before getting back absorbed into the movie.

The movie, which had been a ‘chick flick,’ was pretty good. I think all four of us were crying at the end of the movie. You might find the fact that my dad was crying surprising… but he actually cried at movies almost as much as my mom. After that movie I ran to the bathroom before anyone else, being careful of my freshly painted nails. As I came out Amy was waiting to go in. I gave her a small smile and went back to the living room to grab my empty glass and get more water in it.

“Tiffany, why don’t you and Amy go ahead and put on your pajamas and we’ll watch the other movie?” my mom suggested as I entered the kitchen.

“Okay,” I told her with a shrug. I had just made it back down the hallway to the bathroom when Amy came out.

“My mom told me we should put on our pajamas and then we could watch the next movie.”

“Okay,” Amy said and followed me into my room. I looked at her a bit sheepishly, “Do you want me to go into the bathroom and change?” She knew what I meant.

“Tiffany, you’re a girl. Don’t worry about it.” She told me and the two of us went ahead and changed in my room together. It wasn’t a big deal really, but I was always afraid it was going to be a big deal. Once the two of us were both in our pajamas we went back out to the living room and sat on the couch next to each other. By the end of the movie we ended up sitting with my head on her shoulder. If I had never felt like she was more my sister than anything before, I certainly felt that way now.

“Okay you two; it’s time to go to bed. And please don’t stay up all night talking.” Mom added as she prodded us down the hallway to my room after the movie.

I didn’t want to lie to her, so I just stuck my tongue out at her. It was only ten after all; did she really expect us to fall asleep? Two teenage girls (well almost teenage), going to sleep early on the night of a sleepover? She was crazy!

The two of us settled down to sit on our beds and told my mom goodnight with a gleam in both of our eyes. She ended up just closing the door, not bothering with the light. Mom must have decided it was a losing battle that she didn’t want to fight. Of course as soon as she closed the door the two of us began giggling softly and talking. Our conversation stayed pretty light for a long time before Amy asked me something I wasn’t expecting.

“Tiffany… I’ve been wondering about something.”

“What?”

“Well, we all agree that you’re a girl… and I know that you’re on hormones and everything, but the one thing I’ve been thinking about and wondering is are you going to date girls or guys when you get older?”

Of all the questions she could ask me, this was the one I had the least certainty on. “I don’t know…” I started. “It all seems a little bit odd right now honestly. I mean as long as I have my male parts it’s kind of hard to think a guy would want to date me. At the same time I really don’t find that I look at girls in that way either…”

“You’re never really going to have an easy time are you?”

I shook my head, “I doubt it. In some ways it might be easier just to never date. Then I don’t have to put anyone in a bad situation.”

It was quiet for a moment before Amy said, “You know you’re wrong about guys not wanting to date you.”

“Huh?”

“I know for a fact that Kyle would go out with you in a heartbeat.”

“You’re kidding right?”

“No. He really would like to go out with you at some point. There are others too.”

“You’re serious aren’t you…?” I asked thoughtfully.

She nodded. “You’re not seriously thinking of going all the way through high school without dating anyone right?”

I bit my lip and shook my head, “No I can’t see being like that all the way through high school… but I have a feeling since I’m now their daughter, my parents are going to put the same strict rules on me they would have if I’d been born a girl.”

“Like?”

“Well I think she was kind of joking… but my mom told me I wasn’t allowed to date until I turn sixteen.”

“Well what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” she told me with a wink.

“Actually I don’t really mind that. It’s not like I want to get stuck in this stupid little town anyway. I’d really like to go to school somewhere else when I get out of high school.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know… maybe somewhere out east? I know there are a lot of good schools out there… or maybe California or something. I have a while to figure that out at least.” I told her. “Do you have any idea what you want to do when you get out of school?”

“Not really, though I don’t want to stay here any more than you do. You’re right, it is a really long ways away, I don’t even know why we’re talking about it.” She kind of laughed a bit at that.

I joined in. It was a fun night for us — and we definitely stayed up way too late. The last time I looked at the alarm clock in my room it read three a.m.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 13:

 
IN THE MORNING Mom showed us little mercy for how tired we were. She woke us up at nine and prodded us both to breakfast. I let Amy into the shower first after that so she could get ready to leave. Her mom had called and told her that she was on her way to come pick her up and they were going to go straight to shopping in town. Neither of us really wanted to have the other one go home that morning. I didn’t like how little time we seemed to have to hang out, and I know she felt the same way.

She also seemed to be dreading the shopping trip for some reason. “Why don’t you want to go shopping?” I asked her as I helped her take her stuff to the living room to wait for her mom.

Amy gritted her teeth and said, “I think Mom is planning something today…” She didn’t elaborate any more than that, and I decided to just leave it at that. When her mom came shortly after that I went out and said ‘hi’ before going back into the house and taking my own shower. It was noon before I was really ready to do anything, so I ate the leftover pizza my mom heated up, and then set about practicing.

I knew I would have to be able to play whatever they picked in the songs perfectly, so I played everything again and again until my mouth and fingers hurt. I looked up at the clock at that point and was surprised to see it was already five. I’d been practicing for over four hours! ‘No wonder my lips hurt,’ I thought to myself. I cleaned up my saxophone and went back out to the living room.

“What do you want for dinner sweetie?” My mom asked.

I shrugged, “I don’t know… What were you thinking?”

“Well your dad doesn’t really want to go out to eat, so it’ll have to be somewhere fast.” She told me.

“A happy-meal?” I suggested. I really wasn’t that hungry.

“Nuggets?”

“Yeah that’ll work.” I told her. That meant I’d have a while before I had food, so I decided to go over to the computer and play a game. I didn’t have a lot of time to play computer games now, but it was probably the one aspect of my life that I had any real tie to my former self. I had been playing a game off and on called Monkey Island 2, which was an adventure game. I enjoyed it, and the humor in it, a lot. This was my third time through the game though, so when my mom came home with my happy meal box in her hand I was easily able to save it and go eat.

Shortly after I finished eating the phone rang. I stood up and walked over to the phone behind me. “Hello?” I said.

“Hey, Tiffany?” I heard Amy ask.

“Yeah, how’s it going?” I asked.

“It’s going I guess…” I heard her grumbling a bit. Something was definitely not going well.
“What’s wrong?” I asked suddenly concerned.

“Oh nothing… except my mom decided I needed two dresses almost exactly like yours today!” she grumbled angrily. “And I’m blaming it on you.” She said. I could tell she wasn’t really mad at me though.

I giggled.

“It’s not funny!” she told me. I could hear her lip curled over while she pouted.

“Well actually…”

“Harrumph.” She said and I giggled even louder.

“Well when do I get to see them?” I asked her with a smile on my face.

“With me in them?” She asked.

“Yeah.”

“Never.” She said. I had a feeling she was glaring at her mom.

“They can’t be that bad Amy.” I told her.

“If I was ten they’d be fine, but I’m Twelve!”

“Look at it this way Amy, we’ll make it the last year either of us has to wear them,” I promised.

“How?”

I looked around and was grateful both of my parents were out of the room. “Well, we’ll just have to make sure we have too big of boobs to wear them next year.” I told her.

That finally made her smile, I could feel it across the phone. Sure enough a second later she couldn’t help herself, she giggled. “Well at least we’ll be in it together a couple of times,” she told me.

“Huh?”

“My parents usually have a Christmas party at their house, and of course you’ll be invited. It’s actually usually a pretty big event,” she added. That was kind of intimidating since most of her parents friends were going to be a lot higher up in society than my family was. Oh well, if Amy was there I was sure it would be fun. The two of us talked for a bit longer before her mom asked her to get off of the phone.

The rest of that night was spent watching TV on the couch in the living room. I ended up curled up with my head on my mom’s lap by the end of the night. It felt so comforting to me when she would sit there and play with my hair. She was also warmer than I was, even with the blankets I had piled on top of me. I must have fallen asleep at some point because I felt her push me up right and ask if I needed carried.

Somehow I ended up back in my room and asleep in my pajamas.

 

SUNDAY PASSED BY in a flash. I spent some time practicing when I first got up, then I went to Amy’s house for a bit. I of course had to see the dresses! She was so red when she showed them to me. “They’re not that bad,” I had told her. That had just earned me a glare and she shooed me out of the closet as quickly as she could. We both got some homework done together before I went home to practice some more.

I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep that night because I was so nervous about the audition the next day. When I did finally fall asleep it seemed like it had just been for a moment as I felt Mom shake me awake. I had asked her to wake me up early so that I could work on my hair, and with her consent for once, put on makeup for later.

The auditions were being held at a high school in town somewhere, and since Mrs. Remar said they would be able to see us I was going to dress up. I was wearing the one black and white dress that we had bought a couple weeks ago. It had a velvet bodice and a white skirt, but it didn’t look as little girlish like the other two dresses. The white skirt had an overlay on it, and I did kind of like this one. It was unfortunately the most appropriate thing that I could find in my closet the night before.

Even with the extra time I was still just finishing up in the bathroom when I heard Amy come inside to get me. “Tiffany are you ready?” she asked coming back to look for me.

I stepped outside of the bathroom and said, “Just a minute Amy,” before hurrying back into my room to get my stuff together. Making sure I had my saxophone and music I followed her out to the car.

“You look really pretty,” Amy’s mom said to me.

“Thanks!” I said, pleased with my efforts.

Amy leaned over and whispered, “You can actually see they’re growing,” to me.

In fact I had to wear a training bra that morning because I was afraid that things would show through the tight velvet! That had put me in a great mood that morning. I just nodded at her and we did our usual routine to go to class. In first hour my teacher asked what the occasion was, “It’s honor band auditions today,” I told him. “We’re leaving during sixth period, so I won’t be able to change,” I told him.

“Well I hope you do well,” he told me honestly.

Throughout the day I definitely caught looks from different people that all meant different things. Of course the girls were all examining the dress and me to see if I was in something that they would wear or not. Plus, of course they were looking at whether or not I looked like a girl or not. Thankfully that didn’t really tend to be a problem for me between the hair, size, and the fact that the hormones were beginning to do their job. That was the last reason all of the girls were staring at me. I heard more than one whisper, “How’s she growing those? Or do you think she’s stuffing a bra?”

The first part of the statement of course kind of made me smile a bit. The second part was insulting, but I just chose to ignore it. Boys also seemed to be looking at me more that day as well. The small bumps in the top of my dress seemed to be the thing they were noticing the most. They weren’t big, but just the fact that I had them at all seemed to be making them all wonder if I wasn’t really a girl that had been pretending to be a boy instead. Of course they were right, but they just weren’t right.

By the time sixth period came and we were getting on the bus I was ready to be out of the school — and out of the dress. It really wasn’t uncomfortable, but I got a lot more stares in it than I did my normal clothes. That was what made it a little bit more uncomfortable. The one thing that saved me was the fact that I wasn’t the only girl that had dressed up for the auditions. Nikki and Jessica had both dressed up in dresses too. In Nikki’s case she had an even harder time finding dresses that didn’t make her look like she was five than I did. She was still flatter in her chest than even I was, and combined with her size she didn’t even bother trying that day. She was in a dress that was clearly out of the girls section. Not that mine wasn’t clearly out of that section too… but with the bumps it was a little bit better somehow.

The ride on the bus just made me more nervous about the auditions. I coped by using a mirror on a compact I had and fixing every strand of hair that had escaped since I’d last looked at it in the bathroom ten minutes ago. When I was done with that I touched up my makeup and began nervously looking at the music I had in my lap. Mrs. Remar walked up the aisle of the bus and looked at me, “Tiffany you look very pretty today.”

I smiled a bit, “Thanks,” I told her.

“Just relax and breathe, you’ll be fine.”

I just nodded. How easy it was for her to say that!

At the school we were let off the bus and led into the school’s cafeteria. “Okay guys,” she said to the twelve of us who had come, “Warm up here for a few minutes and then go sign in at your room. Make sure you don’t play in the hallways at all. Good luck, I’ll see all of you in a couple hours. If you need anything let them know you’re looking for me.”

She actually gave me a small shoulder hug on her way past me and told me, “Good luck Tiffany.”

Not long after that you couldn’t hear yourself think in that cafeteria. We had been one of the first schools to get there, but as other schools came in and there were four-hundred students playing at once, it got really loud! I gave up on practicing; it wasn’t going to do me any more good. After I felt like I was warmed up I went down the hallway to find the saxophone room. I signed in as number ten on the list. I stood quietly in the hallway waiting for what felt like an eternity while that list grew longer, before the judge began seeing people in for the auditions. I had asked, when it seemed like everyone had signed in, how many people were trying out. “Looks like about thirty,” the older girl that was running our room told me.

A boy next to me introduced himself, “Hi I’m Doug,” he told me.

I took the hand he offered me and offered a limp shake saying, “Hi, I’m Tiffany.”

“What school are you from?” he asked me

“Holden Junior High,” I told him, and we began a conversation. Soon it included a few others around me and I was able to forget my nervousness a little bit. I was amused because Doug seemed to be…. well ‘flirting,’ or ‘hitting on me,’ seemed to be the best words I could use. There was a girl from his school that was in our conversation who seemed rather annoyed that this was happening. Her name was Erin, and she was an eighth grader like him.

“How many do they take?” I asked them.

“I think they take five if I remember right from last year,” Doug told me.

“Did you make it last year?” I asked him. I was getting more nervous, there were only two people, Doug and another guy, in front of me now.

He shook his head, “No, I missed it by one person.”

‘Ouch…’ I thought, ‘missing it by one? I sure hope I don’t do that.’ Before I had much more of an opportunity to dwell on it though Doug was in the room. I listened to him through the door and he was really good. ‘How am I going to compete with that?’

Soon, too soon, it was time for me to go into the room myself. I was so nervous I didn’t know what to do. The girl sitting outside with the sign-in sheet closed the door behind me. The judge was an older man that had grey hair and looked a bit like Santa Clause. He even had the beard to match the look. He smiled kindly at me and asked, “You’re letter J?”

I nodded, too nervous to speak.

“Relax, you’ll be fine,” he told me with that same smile. “Why don’t you go ahead and play your G and D scales for me first, and then your chromatic scale.”

“Okay,” I told him. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes before beginning on my scales. I could feel my fingers move up and down with the notes and was pleasantly surprised when I finished the chromatic scale that I didn’t make any squeaks or mistakes. I’d also managed to play the scales at least as fast as Doug had! ‘Calm down Tiffany, don’t get cocky,’ a voice in my head told me.

“Now would you please play from the beginning to measure…” he rattled off the sections we were auditioning on. Of course I already knew all of that. As soon as the first girl had gone — I’d felt bad for her — she had been badgered immediately into telling us where we had to play. Of course I was paying attention just in case he switched it up for some reason, but he didn’t. I played that piece, and the other one he asked for, before heading out the door.

Erin was going to be next and she gave me a look that made me wonder if I had played that bad or not. “You’re really good,” she told me.

I blushed, “Thanks. Good luck!” I told her and then headed back down towards the cafeteria. I was beginning to shake by the time I made it down there. I could feel my hands begin to wiggle violently and I tried my best to control them. I managed only as long as it took for me to put my saxophone in its case, and then I sat down quickly because I felt like I was about to fall over.

My face felt wet, and sure enough I was crying. My hand had come back both wet and black because of the mascara I was wearing. I kept my head in my hands for a good while before I felt an arm around my shoulder.

“Are you okay Tiffany?” I heard Kyle ask.

“I guess, I’m just really nervous,” I told him.

“You haven’t gone yet?” he asked me.

“No I went a while ago, you?”

“I just finished. If you’ve already gone why are you nervous now?” he asked with a small smile perched on his lips.

I shook my head, “I don’t know. It happens like this to me sometimes. I get nervous about something but it doesn’t come out until…” I hiccupped. “later. Oh no!” I exclaimed before another one followed.

Kyle was full out laughing at that point. I pushed his arm away from me and said, “It’s not” hiccup, “funny!” I was having a hard time not laughing myself now though. Thankfully Nikki came up right about that time from her flute audition and the two of us went to the bathroom to clean up my face.

“Tiffany, I think you should skip the mascara next year,” she told me.

I nodded with another hiccup coming out. Now she was laughing at me. It wasn’t fair! After about ten minutes I was back to looking normal, and headed out to the snack bar with her and getting a coke. I was still hiccupping frequently though. One of the eighth graders, Lauren, that had come with us had finished with her audition on clarinet and came over to talk to us.

“How did you two do?” she asked.

I shrugged and saw Nikki do the same thing. “Where do you find out the results?” I asked.

She pointed us down the hall to a window outside a library and I saw a few sheets were in the window already. I hurriedly looked to see if the saxes were done yet or not, but it was just the oboes, bassoons, and bass clarinets so far. Nikki and I were joined by the others to stand around and wait. It seemed I began to get more nervous with every passing moment. Eventually Doug came up to me and tried to get a conversation going again, but I couldn’t really bring myself to talk a whole lot more. Besides, it was a bit awkward with Kyle there too.

After what seemed like an eternity I saw my judge walk into the library with an envelope in his hands. He smiled at people as he passed by and I knew it was only a matter of time before we found out. My hiccups just seemed to get worse.

Of course as my hiccups got worse everyone else laughed more. “It’s not” hiccup, “fair!” I said to them, which of course continued the laughter even more. The worst part was that my nerves were starting to go towards the laughing hysterically phase, and so I was laughing soon too in between hiccups. Mrs. Remar walked back with a set of results of her own into the library while giving us a bit of a stare to quiet down. I did my best.

Not a minute later there was a new sheet being brought to the front of the glass window. It looked like it said saxes on it! I walked up there hoping I would finally know…. And then was disappointed when I saw it said tenor saxes. I walked back to my friends to settle in for the continuing wait. I grumbled a bit and noticed other people getting back up, including Doug, a few minutes later and saw that this was finally the alto sax sheet I’d been waiting for!

I attempted to push my way in through people, which wasn’t easy, but kept pushing until I managed to make it to the front where I could see. In the meantime there was a chorus of cheers and moans going on. ‘Would I be moaning?’ I wondered for a second while I tried to look at the list. I started at the bottom because I was sure that’s where my name would be. The fifth chair spot had gone to that girl Erin. I continued up the list not recognizing the names until my eyes settled on second chair…

I screamed. Then I screamed some more “I MADE IT!!!!”

There was a chorus of hugs passed around from my friends to me. Doug came and offered his hand to me, he’d made first chair. At that point shock set in, and I stopped noticing things around me so much. I couldn’t wait to tell everyone at home!

Everything kind of returned back to normal when Mrs. Remar came out of the library to find me. “Great job Tiffany!” she told me as she gave me a big hug. “Mr. Litman said that you only missed first by one little thing,” she told me when I asked what the difference had been.

After that I remembered the camera that I had meant to take some pictures with and went back for it. I took a roll worth of pictures, and had Nikki take one of me in front of the sheets. I hoped you might have been able to see the sheet. Before we left Mrs. Remar took one of all of us together, and then Kyle took one of Mrs. Remar and I together. Kyle had squeaked in as the eighth and last chair trumpet, Lauren had apparently been really good because she got first chair clarinet! Nikki had managed to also squeeze in just barely. Only two other students from my school made it too, and we took a group picture of us with Mrs. Remar before she told us to pack our stuff up.

It was about five-thirty when we got on the bus to go back. After the thirty minute ride back to school I was really looking forward to finding a bathroom. I didn’t get that chance right away though because my parents were already waiting outside the band hall in our car. They both stepped out and looked at me ‘trying to figure out if they were going to be congratulating me or consoling me,’ I guessed. I ran towards them with my saxophone, bag, and stuff giving them each a big hug saying, “I made it, I made it!!!!”

“Congratulations,” my dad said.

“Good job, sweetie,” My mom told me.

Mrs. Remar came over a second later. “Thank you for all of the help you’ve given her,” my mom told her.

“It’s no problem,” she told her. “Tiffany did really well… getting in as a seventh grader is hard enough, but getting second chair is a really big accomplishment” she said looking at my parents and I. I got another shoulder hug from my mom at that point. I guess I’d forgotten to mention my chair.

“I expect you to make first chair next year now,” she told me with a smile.

“Okay,” I told her before we turned and got into our car. They took me out to dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant that night. By the time we got home at eight I was ready to pass out. All of the adrenaline that had been going through my body had left, and in its place was only exhaustion. I knew I had to call Amy though as soon as I got home or she would be mad at me.

“Is Amy there?” I asked when someone answered.

“Yes, is this Tiffany?” I heard her dad ask me.

“Yes.”

“How did it go?” he asked.

“I have to tell her first or she’ll be mad at me,” I told him. He was laughing.

“Okay I’ll ask her in a few minutes then. Here she is,” he said as he passed it off.

“Tiffany? How did you do?” she asked.

“I got second chair!” I told her with a bit of resurgence in my excitement level.

“Congratulations!” she told me.

The two of us only talked for a few minutes though because I just wanted to go to bed. Sleep came very quickly that night!

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 14:

 
TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY passed by really quickly. I had tried to make plans to stay the night at Amy’s house on Thursday, but Mom had reminded me that I had doctor’s appointments. If we got home early enough I was still going to try and go over to her house, I wasn’t holding my breath though. Immediately after school Mom came and picked me up and took me to my first appointment which was with Dr. Wilmer.

“How are you doing?” he asked me as I came in.

“I’m doing good,” I told him nervously. I didn’t know why I was nervous, but I was. Eventually after some small talk and asking about any side effects I might be having he had me pull my shirt off so he could see how the growth was developing. After making sure there wasn’t anything unusual he said, “I’m not a gynecologist, but everything seems to be growing in normally for you as if you were born a girl. You’ll probably be able to fit into a real bra here in another month or two,” he told me as I pulled my sweatshirt back down over my chest.

He then had me pull my pants off and looked at the remainders of Brandon that I wished more than anything were gone. It was really embarrassing. When he was done, and I was completely dressed again, he made plans with my mom for us to come back again in another month. Probably when I was off from school, he suggested. The last thing he did was draw few vials of blood out of my arm.

Then we were off to see Dr. Reynolds downstairs. Our appointment with Dr. Wilmer had taken a little longer than we’d anticipated so we were just walking in right at our appointment time. Dr. Reynolds talked with my mom for a bit and then I went in and talked to her about stuff. The concerns I had about my dad got brought up by me.

“Tiffany, I think everything’ll work out there. Just know this is really hard on him too.” She told me. I nodded. “Don’t worry about it, it’ll work itself out.” She told me with a smile. My mom had come in again for a bit and we talked about things together with her for a bit.

“I think everything is going well right now, just keep doing what you’re doing Tiffany,” she told me. After I had gone into the lobby my mom had hung back for a moment and the two of them had shared something between them before Mom came back down the hallway and we went home. By the time we got home it was already six-thirty and mom didn’t want me going over to Amy’s. I pouted, but there was nothing I could do to budge her.

Friday after school I went over to Amy’s and did stay the night then. In a role reversal, I was the one that had to go back home early on Saturday morning. My parents hadn’t bothered telling me until late Thursday night that they were planning on getting some family pictures done on Saturday. When I got home that morning Mom had helped me pick out three other outfits besides my dresses that she wanted me to have my pictures taken in.

I’d gone ahead and put on the green holiday dress before she did my hair and makeup. She hadn’t done much, but what she had done looked really pretty. At the end of her working on my hair she added a green bow to the side of my head that matched my dress.

“Ready yet ladies?” My dad asked as he came into the kitchen as she was finishing up.

“Let me run to the bathroom real quick and then I’ll be ready,” I told him. By the time I returned out to the living room he had my other two dresses, my duffle bag, and my saxophone case in his hands. I’d been to the photo studio we were going to once before with Amy and her mom, but it had been long enough ago that I didn’t really remember where we were going. After a long time in the car we pulled up to the building I vaguely remembered.

Once again dad was relegated to the task for carrying my stuff as we walked in. The lady at the front looked at us as we came in and asked, “Are you the Jacobson’s?”

“Yes,” my mom answered.

“I’ll go let him know that you’re here.” She told us, before adding, “You can take your other outfits into the dressing room this way.” She pointed to a set of changing rooms I remembered from last time. It wasn’t long after I hung up my dresses that Dad was carrying that the photographer came out to meet us.

“How are you all doing?” he asked.

“Good,” my mom answered.

“Great! Well let’s get started. Why don’t we take care of the family picture first?” he suggested. Soon after that he got to work. We took pictures as family in several different poses and in front of different backgrounds. He took a few of me by myself in more places and poses before I went to go change into another dress while he took some more pictures of my mom and dad together.

It didn’t take me long to change into the other dress, but I did have to be really careful to check my face and hair. This next dress was the one that had the black bodice with the red skirt. Mom came up shortly after that and pulled a red bow out to put in my hair. She checked things over herself and then I was in the middle of another family picture, more pictures of me by myself, and then changing clothes again.

The last dress was the one I’d worn Monday, the black and white one, and I found myself enjoying myself as we took another round of pictures that I was sure you could see my breasts growing in. Mom had the photographer take some pictures of me holding my saxophone in this set. Three combinations of sweaters and jeans/skirts later I was in my last outfit — my dance outfit. I’d missed the team pictures for the cheerleading squad, so Mom decided we should make up for those while we were doing all of this.

Needless to say by the time I’d gotten back into just my simple jeans and a sweater outfit, I was tired of pictures.

“I should have proofs developed and printed today if you would like to come back and see them and pick,” the photographer offered.

“When do you think you can get them printed by?” my mom asked.

“Should be done by Monday evening if you come and pick out which ones you want before five today.”

“We’ll do that then,” my dad said.

“Okay, see you in a bit then.” He told them.

We went home for a bit to get rid of my clothes, and I changed into my much more comfortable set of sweats. I wasn’t feeling real great all of the sudden, and since I’d been more than a little bit dressed up earlier I felt like I should be more comfortable. Just after I got done changing I called Amy to kill a few minutes.

“Hey Amy,” I said.

“Hey Tiff, how were pictures?” she asked.

“Ugh… I thought I felt like a Barbie doll with you and your mom that last time… but I felt even more like it this time because Mom kept fixing this and that. I was surprised she didn’t make me let her dress me!” I said.

She snickered, “Well just to warn you I think you may have another round in a couple weeks.”

“Huh?” I asked suddenly.

“My mom was talking about doing another set of us together before Christmas.”

“Well at least I’ll have some company that way,” I told her.

“When do you get these back?” she asked.

“We’re supposed to go look at proofs in a little bit, and they said they’ll have them ready Monday night…. I think my parents want them done before we go up to Denver next week.”

“Wow, I can’t believe Thanksgiving is already next week! Are you excited?”

“Not really. Honestly I’m scared. This is the first time most of the family will have seen me since last Christmas. My parents sent some pictures to them… but that’s not the same as seeing them.”

“It’ll be okay Tiff,” she told me.

“Tiffany, we need to go!” I heard my mom call suddenly.

“Well I guess you heard that Amy, I’ll talk to you more later?” I suggested.

“Yeah. You should see if you can come over tomorrow and do homework — or maybe even stay the night.” She suggested.

“I’ll try.” I told her. I wasn’t holding out hope too much. My mom seemed to be hinting I needed to spend more time around my dad.

With that we got back into the car and began looking through a lot of proof pictures at the photo studio. I looked pretty in all of them, and that satisfied me. I was actually smiling a lot by the time we finished. We picked out two family pictures, one of me in each dress, one of just them together, and one of each of the outfits I wore, plus two of the black dress since I had the saxophone in one. My parents also got a second one with my dance uniform in front of a different background.

“Okay, that should do it then. Like I said, by Monday evening they should be done,” he told us.

“Thanks,” we said as we left. Going home we began to talk about the trip some more.

“When are we leaving?” I asked my dad.

“Wednesday morning we’ll drive up,” he told me. “We’ll check into the hotel and spend some time with them that night. Not everyone will be there until around noon on Thursday. We’re all going to have lunch at your Uncle Allen’s house. I’m not quite sure what you’ll do the rest of the day, but we’re going to probably have the football games on in the living room.” I saw him look excited about that.

“We’ll find something for you to do sweetie,” Mom assured me. “And then I think Friday the girls at least are going to go out shopping.”

I smiled. “Good.”

“Then Saturday we’re going to drive home,” my dad added.

“That’s going to be a long drive for a short trip,” I said. They both nodded. “And… is everyone okay with… me? At this point?” I asked nervously.

I saw Dad look in the rear view mirror at me. “They’re going to love you just like they always have,” he told me. I sensed he wasn’t telling me truth though — and I was sure that I looked at Mom give him a side-glance too.

‘Great! I get to spend Thanksgiving with people that think I’m a freak!’ I thought to myself. At home Mom pulled out some enchiladas that she had been baking in the oven for dinner. I ate fairly quietly that night, and pulled myself to my room to read a book in bed after dinner. I didn’t really want to hang out with my parents right now. Next week was a break from school, ‘I should be looking forward to it!’ I thought. ‘Now I’m dreading every moment of it because at least someone in our family is going to be rude to me…’

I had enough cousins that would be there that I hoped at least one of them would still like me. The six cousins were all so different age wise that surely one would get along with me still, right? My youngest cousin on my dad’s side was ten, and my oldest was seventeen. Up until I had become Tiffany I had been the grandchild that had made it more boys than girls… but as the ‘swing vote’ I had made it to where there were more granddaughters than grandsons now. ‘Would my family resent me for it?’

I eventually managed to get into the book I was reading, and soon enough Mom was prodding me to go to bed. I didn’t bother switching into pajamas, I just slept in my sweats.

 

SUNDAY MORNING I decided to ask Mom if I could go over to Amy’s. She had looked a little miffed at the idea at first, but then she decided to let me. I was really grateful that she relented. I couldn’t bear the idea of not getting to hang out with Amy on that day. I needed to be with someone who would listen to my worries, but wouldn’t be made more miserable by them.

My mom even ended up being nice enough to let me spend the night Sunday. Amy and I spent the time having a lot of fun together, even playing with Barbies for a bit for a couple hours. I had been kind of surprised by that, but she had brought it up — and of course we were together, so we had fun. Her family was going down to Las Cruces for the break. “Hey, and then the next weekend you have to come with us skiing!” she told me.

“Is there even any snow up there yet?” I asked.

“It’s not a lot right now, but it’s two weeks from now right? I’m sure some will fall before then.” Her words were going to come back to haunt me later that week, but I didn’t think anything of them at that moment.

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right.” I told her, now excited that there was something to look forward past the trip I was dreading.

“Of course I am. You know if you come up with us enough this year we might have to buy you your own skis!”

I was a little horrified, “Your parents don’t need to spend more money on me…” I started.

“Tiffany, you’re their other daughter, trust me it’s alright!” she told me with a smile.

The two of us played, talked, and just generally enjoyed each other’s company all evening. Neither of us was really ready to head to bed when Melanie came to shoo us there. It was really nice that she was around to fix us breakfast the next morning. My mom always had to leave so early in the morning that I had to fend for myself. Not that I was incapable… but I was lazy in the mornings.

Monday I ended up not having gymnastics for the second week in a row, so I managed to get to stay over at Amy’s again after dance practice. I convinced my parents that since I was going to be spending so much time with them over Thanksgiving it was fair. I couldn’t pull it off Tuesday night though, I knew that in advance. Even with my dread of the next few days I couldn’t help but be excited in seventh period when the bell rang. I had five days without school ahead of me!

Since the holiday was beginning we didn’t have dance practice after school. While I was glad not to have to go to practice — free time is always nice, I had to admit that we really needed to practice! After school Amy and I caught up with each other outside the bus to her house though. My mom didn’t want me to ride the bus to my house by myself, and I was more than happy to be going to her house anyway.

“How was band?” Amy asked me.

I shrugged, “It wasn’t anything special. Mrs. Remar was in a bad mood, so it wasn’t a lot of fun.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay, at least there’s no more school for five days right?” I said with a smile.

“Yep!”

And that was enough to get both of us completely smiling. The ride to her house went by with the two of us talking about how Amy wasn’t really looking forward to going to her grandparents in Las Cruces. “There’s nothing to do there!” She told me with a frown.

“There is a bright side Amy,” I told her.

“What?”

“It’s supposed to be like seventy degrees down there isn’t it?” I asked her.

“Well yeah…”

“I’m going up to Denver! I’ll be lucky if it’s thirty degrees for the high from what the news said this morning!” I whined.

“At least there’s shopping there.” She told me.

She did have me there. From what she had told me, there was some shopping down there, but not a whole lot. Personally I’d never been down there so I didn’t know. “I guess…”

We pulled up to our stop and went inside her house. The two of us ended up sprawling out on the floor in her playroom. “So you’re not looking forward to Denver at all are you?” Amy asked me.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I asked her.

“Not really… you’re just going up to see family… oh duh.” She said. For whatever reason I hadn’t talked with anyone about my fear of this week, even Amy. “Why wouldn’t they like you Tiff?” she asked getting it.

“I don’t know… I just know that my uncle wasn’t real fond of the idea of my dad’s son turning into a daughter. Plus what are my cousins going to think? I’m sure they’ll think I’m a freak!” I was getting shaky just thinking about this some more.

“Tiffany relax!” she told me while sitting up and giving me a hug.

“That’s easy for you to say,” I told her with a sniff.

“You’ll be fine. Look, they’re family first of all, but there’s also no way anyone can deny you’re a girl when they see you like you are!”

“I want to believe you,” I told her.

“Then do!”

“What if they pick on me?”

“Then tell them off and be glad you live far away from them.” She told me.

The two of us probably would have talked all night but I heard the doorbell downstairs ring and knew it meant my mom was already here. At the door as I opened it for my mom to come in I gave Amy a hug and took my stuff to our car and got in. “Call me when you get back,” Amy told me just before I closed the door.

”Oh Amy!” My mom called after her as she rolled down her window.

“Yes?” She said as she came over to that side of our car.

“Give this to your mom, okay?” She told her as she handed her a large manila envelope.

“Okay, see you later,” she told us again as she went into the house.

And with that I was locked into going and seeing my family tomorrow. I was terrified. When we got home Mom and I set about packing for a bit before having grilled cheese and soup for dinner. Dad came home just as the two of us were sitting down. “Hi ladies,” he told us, while giving us both hugs.

“Hi Daddy,” I told him before putting a spoonful of soup in my mouth.

“How was school today?”

“It was okay. At least I don’t have school for the next three days.” I told him with some enthusiasm forced into my voice. There was no reason for my parents to have to know how nervous I was about all of this. I went back to eating quickly so I could minimize my conversation with him right now.

A question suddenly occurred to me, “Mom? What was in that envelope you gave Amy?”

“I’m surprised you didn’t ask sooner Tiffany…” She said, I sensed she wasn’t as clueless about my current state of mind as I wanted. “It was the pictures from this weekend.”

“Oh. Can I see them?” I asked. I’d only seen them small — I hadn’t seen them enlarged yet.

“Finish dinner first,” she told me.

I held the half of the grilled cheese in my hand and decided that was her hint to try and get me to continue eating. I’d been slowly nibbling on the same half for a long time now. “Okay,” I said. I forced myself to finish that half, with one half still laying on the plate. I looked at it for a couple seconds, but my nerves were getting more strained every minute. I just didn’t feel like eating “Actually I’m kind of full already mom, do you mind if I go look at them now?”

Her look was one that I was sure she could see right through me. She sighed. “They’re on top of the TV in the living room, wash your hands first though. Go ahead and leave your plate and bowl there, I’ll take care of it.” She told me while giving me a look of concern.

I went out to the living room and found the pictures on top of the TV. I took them with me to sit down on the couch and look at them. The first picture made me smile right away; it was one of the ones with my parents and me together. I stared at the picture for several moments trying to see what others would see. Could they see that there was something wrong with me? That I was a freak? I was pretty sure that no one would ever guess that I wasn’t a girl… but I worried. When we gave this picture to my aunts and uncles would they hang it up? Or burn it? I wasn’t sure.

I kept looking through them, happy that I looked pretty in my dresses and the other outfits.

‘Who would ever guess that the girl in the pictures wasn’t what she looked like?’ I asked myself. I looked really pretty in the dresses… a little younger than I was, but cute. Then there was some contrast when I came to the pictures of me in the dance team outfit. I felt pride at looking at myself there — I was pretty, and I looked like I should be wearing that outfit. ‘How can my family not accept me like this?’ part of me wondered. There was another part of me that felt that no matter how pretty I was, I was going to be an outcast the next few days. It was so unfair!

I carefully put the pictures back into the envelope and just stared into space for a few moments. I didn’t want my parents to see me like this, so I decided to go to the bathroom. I went in and closed the door, looked around, closed the lid of the toilet, and just sat on top of it to shake uncontrollably for a few minutes. ‘What was I going to do?’

I could feel my face was wet, but I couldn’t do anything about it. All I could think about was the fear of what my family was going to say. Not that it was just going to bother me… what about my dad? He hadn’t done anything to cause this, but he was sure to take the brunt of it from his brother. Every time I’d heard anything about him it seemed like he was absolutely enraged by my behavior, but even more so that my dad was allowing it. ‘What would he say to me?’

I kept thinking over and over again about all of this when I heard a soft tapping noise in the background. It made me look up through my tear stained eyes and focus a bit.

“Tiffany? Are you all right?” Mom asked.

I didn’t know how to respond, I felt frozen.

“Tiffany, please, open the door…” Dad added.

I had locked it, I didn’t want any intrusions. They both became a little more frantic before I heard something being pressed into the door knob, some jiggling, and then a slight pop. My mom came in tentatively, “Tiffany, are you all right?”

I didn’t know what to say or do. I wasn’t all right. I was scared senseless! This was worse than thinking about going to any day of school had ever been. She sounded so worried though that I forced myself to look up at her. I felt her move my hair out of my face and she just held onto me.

We sat there like that for a long time, me just hugging her, and her softly reassuring me. I didn’t even know if she knew what was going wrong or not. Finally after a while I felt my sobs become more controllable and I pushed her away and grabbed a Kleenex.

“Tiffany, what happened?” My dad asked with concern in his voice.

“I don’t know…” I started to lie, but I figured they should know. “I’m nervous about tomorrow I guess. I’m scared.”

“It’ll be alright,” he told me. “I promise if anything gets out of hand we’ll leave immediately, okay?”

I just nodded.

“Besides Tiffany, your grandparents will be there — you know they’re already behind you right?”

I gave another nod.

Things went on like this for a while before I finally said, “I’ll be fine, really… I just needed to get it out of my system” I told both of them, hoping Mom would understand. She did and she helped me get dad shooed out of the bathroom so I could really go now. As I finished up I caught a glance of my face out of the mirror and cringed… I was a real mess. I grabbed a wash cloth from the towel rack and washed my face off with some really hot water. I grabbed a ponytail holder and put my hair up with it, before going into the kitchen and finding my mom.

“Mom do you mind if I take a shower?” I asked.

She looked momentarily a little worried, but then said, “I think that should be fine.” I had just turned around when she said, “Tiffany?”

“Yes Mommy?” I said. I figured I’d caused enough trouble today using that name would help a little.

“Would you please leave the door unlocked?”

I was startled a little bit. “Just don’t come barging in please…” I asked her as I nodded. I could understand their concern. I went down to my room and grabbed a pair of pajamas and a fresh pair of panties before going back into the bathroom and undressed. As soon as I had the water going as hot as I could stand I clambered in and washed my whole body. It had a great calming effect on me.

‘Tomorrow won’t be that bad…’ I told myself. ‘The worst part’ll be being in the car that long.’ I talked myself into being calm about tomorrow, and right about the time the hot water ran out I felt like I could face the day. Getting out of the shower I went ahead and blew my hair dry and put my pajamas on. I got back to packing, trying to make sure I had everything with me that I could want. When mom wasn’t looking I packed my makeup into my suitcase… I didn’t want her to gripe at me about it.

Of course I can’t get away with doing anything wrong so she found it as she came into triple check me. “Tiffany I don’t really want you wearing makeup on this trip…” she told me.

“But Mommy…” I tried with her.

“Sweetie, I want them to see you as the little girl you are, not as the teenager you’ll be next year.” She told me with a smile.

“But…”

“Tiffany Christine…”

I was stunned into submission instantly, she’d never done the middle name thing to me since I’d become Tiffany to them. They used to do it to me as Brandon when I was in trouble… I don’t know if she was really trying to accomplish the deer-in-the-headlights look or not, but that’s what she did. My whole arguing skidded to a stop.

“Alright…” I said weakly as she took the makeup bag and put it back in the bathroom. I couldn’t get away with anything. ‘What’s her problem?’ I thought to myself. It wasn’t like I never wore makeup. Why should it be such a problem on this trip?

What I discovered though, was that both of my parents were grouchy that night. At nine o’clock I finally decided I was done dealing with them and said goodnight to both of them and went to bed.

 

Chapter 15:

 
OUR DEPARTURE THE next morning was frantic and I just tried to stay out of everyone’s way. I knew that no matter what I did with my hair at this point it would just end up being messed up by the time we drove there, so I just put it up in a ponytail. I’d made the mistake of asking my parents about how long of a trip it was, ‘seven hours or so,’ had been my mom’s answer. She had told me we should be able to stop at the hotel before going over to my aunt and uncles, so I could make my hair look decent then. Since I was going to in theory have a chance to change, I just put on a pair of my cheer warm-up pants and a cheer shirt. They were comfortable, and even if we ended up going and meeting my family like this — it screamed that I was a girl.

When Dad had finally finished packing everything just the right way, I went out to our minivan and sat down in the middle row of seats. I had a blanket, a pillow, and Emily, my stuffed tiger in hand — fully intending to either read or sleep most of the way up there. As soon as the car was moving I began making myself comfortable in my seat with my head propped against my pillow. That felt comfortable for a moment until I felt my pony tail digging into the back of my head. I shifted to my side and managed to doze off fairly quickly.

Sometime later I felt a prodding, “Tiffany, wake up…” Mom said to me gently.

“Where are we?” I asked her as I sat up slowly while wiping the sleep out of my eyes.

“Raton,” she said.

“Where’s that?” I asked sleepily.

“We’re not far from the Colorado border,” she told me.

“Oh, why’d we stop?”

“Bathroom break silly,” she told me and continued to try and get me out of the car. I threw my cheer jacket on and the two of us walked into the gas station where we’d stopped. The bathrooms were single bathrooms which Mom went into first. She came back out shortly with her nose wrinkled up, and I could only imagine just how bad the restroom was going to be. I walked in to find a bathroom that was only one step up from a port-a-potty in grossness! I tried to not pay attention as I looked down at the toilet and pulled my pants down to sit down. I couldn’t help but look around the restroom as I went pee though… it was filthy and stunk.

I stood up as quickly as I could and used my foot to flush the toilet. The sink was covered in grime, it looked like the soap was empty, and the paper towel dispenser was also empty — I skipped the hand washing. Mom looked sympathetic as I came out and we walked to the car with Dad.

“That was gross!!!” I told her as we climbed in the car. She handed me a Wet One wipe, and I knew she must have had similar thoughts to what I’d been thinking. ‘I suppose I could still have skipped sitting down,’ I told myself — but knew I wouldn’t really consider that. We were back on the road pretty quickly and I decided to start reading a book. I could hear my dad snoring up in the front seat. Mom ended up coercing me into talking to her since he was sleeping. “I need someone to talk to me…” she had said.

I closed my book and began talking to her about lots of nothing. We talked about some of the scenery as we drove through the mountain passes, and then the absolute barren plains as we passed into the southern area of Colorado. In several areas as we drove there was snow piled up along the sides of the roads. I had been hoping we would get snow back home, but we’d yet to get a storm. Amy’s parents said there was snow up near their condo at least — so maybe we’d get to go skiing soon.

Eventually we saw a sign for Pueblo and Mom began looking for somewhere to stop for lunch. Dad woke up about then and suggested the Sizzler when he saw it. I didn’t really care, I just wanted out of the car! As we walked in a boy about my age held the door for us and said ‘hi’ to me shyly. I just smiled, and was somewhat amused as that looked like it had made his whole day. “You know you really shouldn’t do that to boys like that,” Mom told me quietly as we walked side by side.

I was worried she had a problem because it was a boy, but she continued, “it’s not really fair to them.”

I just grinned a little bit. She pulled me in closer with her arm around me and gave me a hug as we stood at the counter waiting for Dad to pay for us. As soon as the waiter had taken our drink orders I asked, “Where is the restroom?”

“Down that way,” the man said pointing towards the other end of the restaurant.

“Thanks!” I said and started for that way.

“I’m coming too,” Mom said to me and the two of us headed for the restroom together. I really needed to go, so I rushed a little faster than she did. I pushed open the door and was very happy to see that there were two empty stalls. I sat down quickly and began to go… feeling very relieved. I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror for a moment while I waited for Mom to do the same.

The two of us stopped back by the table where our drink orders were waiting before we went searching for food. I wasn’t that hungry, but I grabbed a little bit of everything to take back to the table. Mom and Dad talked to each other about different things, and what we were going to do when we got there.

“I would really like it if we could stop by the hotel first…” I told them.

They looked at me and both of them sighed at the same time. “You know it was a lot easier before you cared what you looked like,” Mom said in a way that didn’t sound like she really missed it, but accepted it instead.

“It’s probably not a bad idea to get rid of our bags and stuff,” Dad said.

I smiled, “Thanks!”

“You can’t spend all day in the bathroom though,” Mom told me sternly. I blushed a little and got back to my food. While I was taking my next bite I looked up and saw something I couldn’t believe. A big man… A REALLY BIG man was walking towards a table with a plate of food in his hand. It was stacked about eight inches high of food. I tried not to stare, but it was so crazy to see that much food on one plate. I forced myself to go back to the food in front of me, munching on the chicken piece I had. I quickly finished eating what I felt like eating on my plate.

I decided that meant it was time for dessert, something sweet sounded really good. I looked around the dessert area and grabbed a piece of pumpkin pie and a small brownie. I’d never be able to eat both, but I wanted a couple bites from each! As I returned to my seat I noticed the really big guy had left. I’d felt bad for staring unintentionally before. I had just put my first bit of brownie in my mouth when I saw him come back with another plate… This one covered with strawberries just as high as the previous one!

I turned to look at Mom, and she appeared to be just as stunned as I was. Neither of us said anything though. After I’d eaten all of the dessert I cared to finish the three of us hit the restroom on the way back out to the car. “How far are we from Denver?” I asked as I buckled my seat belt.
“It’s about two more hours sweetie,” Mom told me.

“Okay, I’m going back to sleep!” I told her, wrapped myself in my blanket, put my stuffed tiger underneath my arm, and laid my head down. I was still so nervous that the only thing I could think of to pass the time would be to sleep. It was surprisingly easy to do though.

 

TWO HOURS LATER I woke up as I felt the car slow down and I realized we were stopped at a stoplight. “You finally woke up,” Mom teased me.

“Huh?” I asked while wiping the sleep from my eyes. “Where are we now?”

“Almost to the hotel,” she said.

“Good,” I said and sat up. I noticed I had drool on my pillow, yuck! My ponytail had become messed up while I slept so I pulled the scrunchie out. I grabbed my hairbrush from my backpack at my feet and started brushing it out. I was still brushing it when we pulled up to the front of the hotel and Dad went inside to check-in. While he was inside I pulled it back up into a more organized ponytail. I sighed and started gathering some stuff together when he came back out.

“Let’s just unload the car here,” Dad told us.

“Is the room close?” Mom asked.

“They said the elevator is just through there, we’re in room three-twenty-four.”

The three of us filled our arms with stuff and walked through the lobby doors down to the elevator. Once inside the room I walked into the restroom first. After I used the restroom I looked at my appearance while I washed my hands. I was a girl. There was no doubt about that as I looked in the mirror… My relatives were just going to have to deal with it. I left the restroom so my parents could get into there too. Meanwhile I looked in my suitcase to see if there was something else I wanted to change into.

Nothing looked like something I wanted to wear right then though. It was cold outside, but I didn’t feel like wearing jeans. I’d be wearing a dress all day the next day… In the end I decided to just stick with what I was wearing. It might make things worse coming as the cheerleader girl persona, but it was probably going to be bad no matter what — ‘I might as well be comfortable,’ I thought to myself.

I did go into the bathroom and double check my hair and face one more time though. I saw my necklace clasp had made its way to the front so I turned it back to the back of my neck. As I came out my parents looked surprised. “You’re not ready already are you?” Dad asked incredulously.

I shrugged my shoulders, “I don’t care to dress up since I’ll be in a dress tomorrow… And these are more comfortable than jeans,” I said while pinching the fabric of my nylon warm-up pants between my thumb and forefinger. “So let’s go,” I told them.

My Mom gave me a smile, put her arm around my shoulder, and kissed me atop my head. “It’ll be fine,” she told me. The three of us then headed down to the lobby and to the car.

I sat down in my seat and watched as Dad closed the door for me. “Tiffany, we decided we’re going to go get something to eat first before we head over there — do you have anywhere you would like to go?”

I shook my head, “I don’t really care.” I told them. I didn’t, honestly I wanted to go to my uncle’s house and get this over with!

“How about just going to IHOP?” My dad suggested pointing across the way where one was sitting.

“I’m fine with that,” I said.

Mom started up the car and drove out in the street basically long enough to have to turn right off of it again. The three of us filed into the restaurant and were led to a booth. I hadn’t noticed it, but the waitress had grabbed a kids menu for me — complete with crayons. Mom saw it and started to object for me, but I just shook my head, “It’s alright Mommy,” with a wink. I normally would have been annoyed, but it kind of amused me at that moment. ‘Plus, it should be cheaper, right?’ I told myself.

I looked at the menu and ended up deciding that the ‘funny face’ pancakes sounded good. I opened up the crayons and began coloring while we waited for the lady to get back with the drinks. She wasn’t that old, probably just out of high school, so I was kind of amused that she thought I was that young. It didn’t usually happen when I was wearing cheerleading stuff. At least she didn’t bring my drink in a plastic cup… “And what are we having tonight?” she asked us.

My parents gave her their orders, followed by my, “The funny face pancakes please,” which she then smiled at me.

“I remember when I was in the youth cheerleading leagues.” She said to me.

“Actually this is my school stuff,” I told her with a smile.

She seemed to suddenly realize she’d guessed wrong on my age, “How come I get the feeling that you’re older than I thought you were…”

“It’s okay, I get it all of the time. I still qualify for the kids menu though,” I giggled.

Apparently her name was Emily, and she came back and talked to us several times through the meal. It helped me relax a bit before the coming onslaught of stress. The chocolate chip pancakes arrived with the whipped cream and strawberries making the face — something that made me smile a bit more. Maybe Mom was right, at least a little bit, about her wanting to enjoy me being her little girl for a bit longer.

I think my parents dragged their heels in eating a little bit longer than they normally would, because they were just as nervous as I was. They wouldn’t tell me that, but I could see their eyes flashing back and forth; wordlessly communicating about whether or not this was really a good idea or not. Eventually though, the food was gone, our bellies full, and it was time to go. While Dad paid, Mom and I once again stopped in the ladies room. I debated for a heartbeat about trying to get my hair out of the ponytail and into something more reasonable… but I didn’t have the time, and it probably wouldn’t matter anyway.

We clambered into the car for the drive to my Uncle’s house. I found my legs wouldn’t stop moving, I was almost trembling in nervousness. Their house was probably one of the larger houses that anyone in my family owned. I had never been there before, but I’d seen pictures and heard enough about it to know kind of what it was like. It was two stories, with a bedroom for my aunt and uncle, a bedroom for each of my three cousins, and one spare bedroom that my grandparents were staying in. Those were all upstairs, with some larger living areas downstairs. As I got out of the car I shivered, and not just from the cold. Mom grabbed my hand and walked side by side with me up the walkway and the steps, to stand on their porch with Dad in front of us.

He rang the door bell.

I took a deep breath in and waited.

I counted in my head, wondering how long it would be before someone came and answered the door. I could hear a lot of people deep in conversation inside the house. I heard someone grasp the handle of the door and turn it. As the door opened I saw my cousin Caleb come into view.

“Hey Uncle Joe, Aunt Mandy!” He said excitedly. My parents and I had always liked him — and he reciprocated that.

“How are you doing Caleb?” My dad asked as he accepted the invitation to come in.

“I’m doing well. And how are you doing Tiffany?” He asked me.

I paused for half-a-heartbeat trying to determine if there was anything in his voice that I needed to worry about. He didn’t sound like he was going to be a problem… “I’m doing great now that we’re out of the car!” I told him with a smile. He was in the middle of giving my dad a hand shake.

“I bet you are, that’s a long drive!”

He gave my mom a hug, and then did the same to me! I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be a problem. What a relief, if I could at least have one person to hang out with the next two days maybe it wouldn’t be as bad. At seventeen he was my oldest cousin and he’d always seemed like a big brother to me anytime we had hung out. Maybe this was just going to continue like it had been?

The rest of my family started appearing to greet us. If Caleb seemed like the person that would be okay with me, his younger brother Bobby was certainly not okay with me. I could feel his glares even before I looked up at his face. I quickly turned away and saw their sister, Stephanie, standing at the edge. I smiled at her, saying “Hi,” to which she smiled weakly, but didn’t seem so sure of herself. She remained close to her parents who were the next to greet us.

Uncle Allen said, “Hi Joe, Mandy,” with a handshake to my dad, and light hug to my mom.

“How was your trip?”

“Good, no problems on the roads or anything.” My dad told him.

“Good,” he said.

When he and his wife, my Aunt Jackie, had finished greeting my parents I felt as though the room temperature dropped below what it was like outside. They just kind of looked at me for a couple uncomfortable moments. We might have stood like that forever, I don’t know, but thankfully my grandmother broke through the crowd and said, “Tiffany!” Giving me a hug, “How are you doing sweetheart?”

I tried to remain calm, “I’m doing good, how are you?” I asked her.

The two of us talked for a moment before my grandfather joined us, he was coming out of their downstairs bathroom. “Tiffany!” he exclaimed happily towards me and he came and gave me a big hug as well.

My aunt and uncle both conveniently disappeared into the kitchen, leaving my parents and I, with Caleb, my grandparents, and Stephanie. Bobby had also disappeared. I was grateful that at least Stephanie had remained. She was thirteen, so she was the closest in age to me. I was really hoping that she and I could get along on this trip. The two of us had never spent much time together though, so I didn’t know how she was going to react. ‘At least no one has screamed at me so far,’ I thought to myself as I sat down on the couch.

“Where’s everyone else?” Mom asked Grandma.

“Well Linda and Bill called a little bit ago; they’d just checked into their hotel and are heading over here. It shouldn’t be too long before they get here. Wendy, Raymond, and the kids didn’t get started till late, so they’re just planning on going straight to the hotel and not coming here tonight.”

“Oh.” My mom said. I think we were all hoping that the more people we could have around the more likely it would be that we wouldn’t have family squabbles about me.

I just kind of sat on the couch quietly for a while… I didn’t really feel comfortable striking up a conversation. Caleb was talking to my parents and grandparents quite a bit, not ignoring me, but not really paying attention. Stephanie looked like she was fighting the awkwardness just as badly as I was, but also unsure of what to do. About the time I was just about to say something to her, the doorbell rang, and my Aunt Linda and her boyfriend Bill were shown in.

“Hi everyone,” Aunt Linda said.

“You must be Tiffany,” she said to me as she made the rounds of giving everyone hugs. She pushed me out to arms length and looked at me. “Your parents and grandparents weren’t exaggerating, you really are pretty,” she told me and gave me a hug.

“Thanks,” I whispered, trying to fight back the tears. I had known that she would probably be okay with me. She was the ‘free-thinker’ of the family. Aunt Linda had a very new-age outlook on life, had been in and out of several marriages, and generally disagreed with most of our family on most religious and political issues. That being said, she’d always been one of my favorite aunts because she used to always bring me presents when she came to visit! This time was no exception, though it wasn’t a physical one. It was the emotional present of knowing she accepted me for who I was.

The conversations once again started up, and I felt like I was truly on the outside of everything. No one really was paying attention to any of the kids, and, in the case of Uncle Allen he was intentionally not paying attention to me. He and Aunt Jackie had rejoined the group in the living room now that Aunt Linda was there. After a while boredom must have struck Caleb, because he came over to me and asked, “Hey Tiffany, do you want to play a board game or something?”

I looked up at him and smiled, “Sure!”

“You want to play too Steph?” He asked his sister.

She shrugged, “sure, I’m bored.”

“Let’s go pick one out then,” he said and led me down the hallway to a room that reminded me of Amy’s playroom, except a little bit more mature. It also was a lot more masculine as there were more boys than girls… I did see a few Barbie dolls scattered about though. ‘I wonder if Stephanie ever plays with them anymore?’ I thought to myself.

“What do you want to play?” Caleb asked as he opened a cupboard of games.

I shrugged, “Anything’ll work for me.”

“Stephanie?” he asked.

“Trivial Pursuit or Sorry?” she suggested while she pointed to a junior edition of Trivial Pursuit, and the Sorry game boxes.

“I don’t really feel like thinking that much tonight, Sorry?” He asked me.

“That sounds fine to me.” I replied. The only place I ever played board games really was at Amy’s and another cousin’s house, so I only barely knew how to play it. The three of us setup the game on a small table they had in the room.

“Do you want to see if Bobby wants to play?” Stephanie asked Caleb on the side of the room quietly. I don’t think they knew I could hear them.

“Not really. I’m sure he’d say no, and I really don’t like being around him right now,” he told her.

“Yeah, you’re right.” She said.

The three of us set up the game, not really saying a whole lot before Caleb asked, “So Tiffany… I think I heard your mom say you’re in band?”

I nodded, “Uh-huh I play sax. You?”

“I play trombone actually. Stephanie plays flute. Bobby’s the only one who isn’t in band. He used to be, but our director kicked him out last year,” he said with a shake of his head. He seemed to be fine with making the effort to reacquaint himself with me. After we played the game awhile Stephanie began coming out of her shell a bit.

“So you’re a cheerleader?” She asked motioning towards my clothes.

“Yeah, I joined the squad a month or so ago…” I paused then decided I’d elaborate a bit, “actually I’m one of the co-captains for the dance squad.” I smiled when I thought of that. ‘If I had been born a real girl there would have been absolutely no stopping the bragging with that. Well, not that I would have been outright bragging, but it’s something to be proud of!’

“Really?” Caleb asked. “You haven’t been doing this that long have you?”

I shook my head, “No, but I seem to do well at it… especially the dancing,” I told them with a smile.

“I really like that part too, but all we do are cheer routines at my school,” Stephanie said. “What kind of dancing are you guys doing?” she asked.

The two of us began to really hit it off at that point talking about different things our two squads were doing. Stephanie was fairly athletic, as was her brother. Caleb was on the varsity football team at his school. He’d been a starting linebacker this past year as a junior. Supposedly Colorado State was already trying to convince him to come their way. Bobby could have been on that same track, but so far he was too involved with drugs (or so my grandparents said) to be possibly able to do sports. While both Caleb and Bobby were solidly built, Stephanie was slighter — though not as small as I was.

For a long time the three of us were having a really great time, and though Caleb seemed a little removed from the conversation about cheerleading stunts, he tried to make his way back in eventually. “So I’m guessing you’re one of the girls that get tossed in the air?” he asked me.

“Yeah, I’m the smallest one on the squad.”

“Does that get a little freaky?” he asked me.

“Normally no… it was kind of unnerving this summer though when I was at camp. They asked for a volunteer to help the college squad out with something… so I raised my hand and got picked. A couple of the college guys were the ones that tossed me — I don’t even know how far I flew in the air, but I’m pretty sure it was at least fifteen or twenty feet up!”

“Wow!” Stephanie said.

“Well you were probably a lot easier to toss than who they’re used to normally,” Caleb said.

I nodded. “It was fun though.”

Uncle Allen suddenly made an appearance in the room right then, “Stephanie, you need to get ready for bed.”

“It’s only ten Dad!” she told him.

“Now.”

“We haven’t even finished out game yet, let us finish, please…?” she pleaded.

“Stephanie Marie…” he said with some venom coming into his voice. He looked like he was already angry, I was scared to see her make him more so.

Her expression went down and she said, “Yes sir…”

She began to stand up from where she was sitting and put her hand on my shoulder, “I guess we’ll talk more tomorrow…” Just as she was at the doorway she turned back and said, “This isn’t nearly as weird as I thought it would be Tiffany.” Then without saying anything else she left to go upstairs to her room.

After a quick glance that Caleb and I shared trying to figure out what was going on, we began to wordlessly start putting everything up from the board game. The two of us walked back to the living room and I was surprised to see my parents were already starting to get jackets from the closet. “Are you ready to go Tiffany?” Dad asked me. There was something wrong with his voice… I immediately knew I’d missed something. He sounded angry and hurt… between that and what had happened from Uncle Allen to Stephanie I was pretty sure they were all upset about the same thing… and of course I knew I was at the center of it.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 16:

 
MY PARENTS AND I left the house without saying anything else. My grandparents had disappeared somewhere when we were leaving, so I couldn’t even say goodnight to them. Aunt Linda and Bill had also made a silent escape apparently; at least I didn’t see them as we were leaving either. It was about twenty minutes to the hotel, and for the first fifteen I didn’t feel comfortable saying anything at all. I finally decided I wasn’t going to play the stupid kid on this trip. “What happened?” I asked quietly.

My parents both shared another one of their silent looks between each other, at some point Mom decided to speak, “Tiffany… You’re Uncle just got a little… umm…”

“Upset about us ‘indulging’ you…” My Dad offered.

This really wasn’t a surprise to me, I’d guessed as much. “What else got said?” I asked them.
“Well, it wasn’t really as bad as it could have been… but it happened after your grandparents went to bed, so he felt like he could unload a bit more.”

“What did he say?” I asked again quietly.

Dad looked at my Mom who I could see shake her head just a little bit. He hesitated, then said, “Look Tiffany, we’ll talk about it in the hotel room, okay?”

“You’ll tell me though, right?” I asked.

“Yes Tiffany, we’ll tell you,” Mom said with a sigh. Whatever it was must have been pretty bad, because they didn’t want to say anything about it. I didn’t really feel like they could afford to coddle me… honestly after everything I’d heard at school it couldn’t be any worse.

As we drove up to the hotel I was surprised to see how few people seemed to be staying there. ‘I would have thought the hotels would be filling up for the holiday,’ I thought aimlessly as we walked in through the doors. Once upstairs Dad decided to go for ice, and Mom suggested, “Tiffany why don’t you go ahead and put your pajamas on?”

“You’re not going to get away from telling me…” I started.

“We’re going to tell you, just please go put your pajamas on first?” She paused and then added, “I’m going to be waking you up a bit early so you can get ready to go over there for lunch, so I want you to be able to go to bed soon.”

I wondered if she was hoping that I would fall asleep before I could find out, but I knew I wouldn’t. I went ahead and grudgingly put my pajamas on, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and returned out to the room. Mom was sitting on the bed I was going to be sleeping on watching the TV. I went over to my bag, grabbed Emily, and then cuddled her while leaning against Mom. She silently stroked through my hair for a few minutes until Dad finally returned from getting ice.

“Sorry, I had to go down to the first floor before I could find an ice machine that was working!” he said.

I decided to just be patient and wait for them. Finally when I was out of patience Dad finally spoke. “Tiffany, I know you want to know what was said, but are you really sure you want to know?” He asked me with concern on his face.

“Daddy, I doubt it can be any worse than the million things that I’ve been told already at school and elsewhere.”

I watched him grimace, but nod. “We were talking earlier about a lot of things earlier before your grandparents went to bed. You weren’t really brought up a whole lot — and we didn’t see that rocking the boat was going to do a lot of good, so we didn’t say much. We did talk a little bit about the trip to New York, the fact that you were a co-captain on the dance squad, and a couple other things in passing, but not like we were talking about the other grandkids.”

“Eventually your grandparents went to bed around nine, and your Uncle began drinking some whiskey. From there he became mean to just about everyone, but when he came to talking about you and me he just became livid. He said some things about you that I won’t repeat, no matter how much you ask, but basically he called us bad parents for letting you be yourself Tiffany. He seems to think that maybe we shouldn’t even be claimed in the family tree anymore — stuff like that.”

None of this surprised me — I’d guessed that something like this might happen. “I’m guessing you didn’t take that too well?” I asked worriedly.

“No Tiffany, I’m tired of people berating you for no reason.” Dad started. He was controlling tears, I could see it. He and his brother had been really close at one point, but recently, mainly because of me — but also because Uncle Allen seemed to be drinking more, they were growing farther and farther apart. I didn’t think they could really get much farther apart actually. He just sat for a second before continuing, “I told him just where I thought he could stick his ideas. The two of us were actually probably as close to blows as we’ve been since we were kids. Thankfully your Aunt Linda calmed us both down. Of course once we were calmed down a bit she told your Uncle what she thinks… he didn’t like that too much either.”

Mom was kind of fidgeting at that moment… “What did she say?” I asked.

“Well she told him that ‘if a doctor, you, and we had decided that it was the right decision for you to become a girl then who was he to argue?’ He mumbled a bunch of other things at that point, and we all decided it would just be a good idea to get out of there when he stood up and said, ’It’s Stephanie’s bed time…’ We were just fixing to come get you.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Yeah, pretty much.” Dad said, and he came over and gave me a hug. I returned it; I honestly thought he needed it more than I did.

“It’ll be alright Daddy,” I told him. He stroked the top of my head and eventually we broke from our embrace.

“Tiffany I want you to do something for me tomorrow…” He started.

My face drained… he wasn’t going to ask me to be Brandon tomorrow?!?! I started to hyperventilate for a second before he figured out where my brain must have wandered. “No Tiffany, not that,” He said while giving me another hug.

I forced myself to breathe, “What?”

“I want you and your Mom to make sure that you are the prettiest granddaughter there.” He said with a smile, but I sensed he kind of meant it.

“I’ll do my best,” I forced a smile onto my face. I was still trying to recover from my near-panic attack. ‘I should know better by this point,’ I told myself.

“Okay then, it’s bed time for the princess,” he told me. Without warning he picked me up off the bed, hugged me, and then took me over to the bed. Mom must have seen what he was doing because she pulled the covers down and handed me my tiger. I smiled at both of them. I could deal with this part about being little still. My parents tucked me in, turned off most of the lights and the TV in the hotel room, and I turned over on the bed away from the remaining lights.

I sat up for a while thought listening to my parents moving around. They were talking low about something, but I couldn’t make it out. Dad headed to bed next, and all I could hear was Mom finishing up in the bathroom as I finally succumbed to sleep.

 

THE NEXT MORNING I felt Mom shake me, “Tiffany, come on, wake up sweetie,” she told me gently. I moaned and sat up, “What time is it?” I asked her.

“It’s seven, sweetie. Your dad and I thought it might be a good idea to get breakfast first before you get ready. Do you want to just go in your pajamas or do you want to change into something else?”

“You’ll let me go somewhere in just my pajamas?” I asked. Excepting pajama day that was a big no-no. I was wearing a pair of flannel pajamas with a t-shirt for a top, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t clothed though.

She nodded at me.

“Okay, let me put my hair up first though,” I told her groggily.

“Here I’ll do it for you,” she said with a scrunchie in hand already.

I turned my back to her and felt her grab my hair and force it into a pony tail. It was so frizzy, I didn’t have to look at it to see that, but I was too sleepy to care. The three of us headed downstairs and drove back over to that same IHOP we were at the day before. The restaurant was nearly empty as I guessed that once again most of the people must have been with family. I ordered the ‘pigs-in-a-blanket’ dish and just kind of zoned out.

I didn’t even remember ordering the orange juice that I began drinking with a straw, which also seemed to come from nowhere. Things had seemed to go well with Caleb and Stephanie yesterday, but apparently Uncle Allen was a problem…. Plus I was pretty sure Bobby didn’t like me either. I had no idea what my Aunt Wendy and her kids were going to think of me. I hoped I’d get along with them still… or at least not have issues. I was a little worried when her son Danny got together with Bobby.

The food arrived and I began cutting into the sausages that were wrapped in pancakes, and time seemed to pick back up. I was full after only two of them. I felt bad, there were a total of four of the wraps, and I couldn’t possibly finish all of them. Dad helped me out by taking one of them, but I couldn’t eat any more. Thankfully my parents had never made me finish all that was on my plate, or I might have been there all day.

Soon we were back at the hotel. Dad disappeared into the bathroom real quick before I was to get showered, “Mommy?”

“Yes dear?”

“Help me make Daddy proud…” I said nearly in tears. He’d asked just one thing of me, ever since reality had broken and they’d found out about me, he’d asked just one thing of me — and it had been last night. He wanted me to look pretty, prettier than my cousins.

Mom was really perceptive sometimes, and she instantly knew what I was thinking. She gave me a hug and said, “Tiffany, of course we will!” She gave me a kiss atop my head and then pushed me to arms length, “Not that we’ll have to do a whole lot of work to make you look prettier than them.” She smiled at me.

“Umm… right now it looks like it’s going to take a LOT of work,” I said pointing to my reflection in the mirror. It’s a good thing I’d been too unconscious to really think about how I’d looked going into IHOP for breakfast. The thought made me shudder. My hair was all over the place, and I was really wishing for my makeup bag. At least a little bit of mascara would have been nice. Some lip gloss? ‘Actually I do have some lip gloss in my backpack!’ I thought to myself excitedly. That didn’t precisely count as makeup, right?

The door to the bathroom opened and Dad came out. I gave him a quick smile on the way into the bathroom, and got right to work in the shower. Mom had left my shampoo and conditioner in there already, along with the body wash we both used. I scrubbed every inch of my body, my face, and washed my hair completely twice before I wrapped my hair in a towel and put another one around me.

“Are you done in the shower?” Mom asked me.

“Yes, but give me a moment before you come in,” I told her. I needed to pee. I sat down and took care of that, washed my hands, put on a pair of panties, my white tights, and said, “Come in Mom,” to her when I was back wrapped up. Mom helped me get ready the rest of the way that morning. She’d never been so involved in helping me get ready. My hair alone took her thirty minutes of blow drying, curling, spraying, and scrunching, before we finally got to the point where she helped me into my green holiday dress.

The dress had a stretch-velvet on top, so she didn’t have to zip me in — not that I couldn’t do that, but it had a bow in the back that I saw her smile really big as she tied it. She had put a bow into my hair already that matched the dress, and I smiled as I could see a couple ringlets coming down and framing the sides of my face. With the dress and the hair I looked a little bit younger than I liked, but I looked very pretty! Mom handed a cute pair of black Mary Jane shoes that I hadn’t seen before to me. Once I had those on she went back into the bathroom with me in tow.

From somewhere in her makeup case she brought out the sapphire earrings and necklace set that they had given me for my birthday. I silently wish they were emerald so they would match, but they were by far the prettiest jewelry items I had. Somewhere else inside of there she pulled out my mascara, “I thought you said I couldn’t bring my makeup!” I told her indignantly.

“I decided at the last minute that you could use a couple things out of there. Now hold still,” she told me.

“I can do it,” I told her.

“I know, but I want to do it,” she told me. I held absolutely stone still for her as she used the brush on both sets of my lashes. When they were dry I blinked a lot to make up for the lost blinks. She also pulled out a tube of my better lip gloss, “Here, I’ll let you do this one,” she told me.

“You do realize I’m twelve, right?” I asked her indignantly as I put it on. “You didn’t happen to pack any of my eye shadow in there did you?” I asked hopefully.

“No Tiffany, you’ve been wearing that too much as it is — you definitely don’t need it right now.” I frowned, I liked eye shadow. It wasn’t like I applied it in tramp amounts! I just liked how it could accent different colors. “Don’t pout at me young lady, or I’ll take it all away from you until you’re thirteen.”

I really frowned then.

“You know if it wasn’t for how fast things have happened, and the fact that your friends are all older I would never have let you start wearing makeup yet.”

I was kind of stunned by that. When I had first become Tiffany officially Melanie had gifted me with some makeup from my first salon visit, she had given me a little bit of grief then, but hadn’t said anything since. With everything else that was going on maybe she’d decided it was a losing battle. In a way I was surprised she was telling me this now, except that she was so stressed herself. “I’m sorry,” I told her.

“For what?”

“I don’t know, I seem to do everything all wrong,” I said trying to keep from having tears run through my eyes. I thought it was waterproof mascara, but I couldn’t remember.

“No you don’t sweetie, we just don’t seem to be able to do this traditionally.” She said giving me a quick hug. Dad had disappeared into the lobby on Mom’s orders so it was just us in the room right then.

I tried to smile at her a bit, but it was hard. I just seemed to hurt everyone in new ways every time I turned around. She read that doubt in my eyes and followed up with, “Tiffany, I won’t lie… I’d always hoped to have a daughter… I loved you when you were a boy… but I’d always dreamed of having a little girl to dress up in pretty dresses, do her hair,” she bobbed one of the ringlets coming in front of my face, “put makeup on her,” she had my chin lightly in her hands, “and everything else.” I smiled slightly at all of that, “And Tiffany, none of those dream daughters had anything on you. You’re smart, you’re talented, and you’re even pretty.” She gave me a hug and I was really trying not to cry now.

Thankfully Dad had given up on us at that point; we could hear the key card being swiped. She stood me up and shooed me into the bathroom. “Where is she,” I heard Dad ask as he came in, “I gave up on you two.”

“We just finished,” Mom said, “Come out Tiffany,” she called through the door. I walked out of the bathroom and I heard Dad audibly gasp.

“Hey! It’s not like I haven’t been dressed up before,” I told him sweetly.

“Yes you have, but every time it takes my breath away,” he told me in response.

“How do I look?”

“You look pretty… cute… unbelievable… I don’t really know how to sum it up in words.” He told me with a smile and took me into a gentle hug. Mom joined the hug a moment later, and then he asked, “So are you two ladies ready?”

“Yes… I think so.” I told him.

“Give me one second Joe,” Mom told him.

She used the restroom and fixed her own hair real quick before we left. I had complimented her a bit earlier on her dress. It was also green, though not quite the same shade as my dress, and she looked pretty in it. Dad had put on a button down shirt and slacks, but no cajoling could bring him to wear a tie today. He’d told us, “I’ll just pale in comparison to you two ladies no matter what.”

When we left the hotel to go to Uncle Allen’s house I had hope that maybe today would go well. I didn’t really believe it though.

 

THE THREE OF us climbed out of the car at Uncle Allen’s house and walked up the steps. Dad once again rang the doorbell, this time Aunt Jackie answered the door. “Hi Guys,” she said first. As I came into view she said, “Tiffany you look gorgeous!” she gave me a hug and I turned a little bit red from the attention.

We continued on into the living room and I saw that my Aunt Wendy’s family had made it. “H Joe! Mandy!” She said to my parents while giving them big hugs. “Tiffany, wow, you’re beautiful,” she said before she embraced me as well. She pushed me out to arms length and said, “I can’t believe it… Are you happy?” she asked me.

I was smiling and thought, ‘of course anytime I meet up with someone and they don’t point and call me a freak I’m happy!’ I knew what she meant though, “A lot happier than I was,” I told her.

She embraced me again, and then I was free of her to say ‘hi’ to everyone else. I looked around Aunt Wendy, planning on talking to Stephanie, but Aunt Linda caught me first.

“Tiffany I love your dress!” She told me. After some more gushing I thought I would be free of the Aunts and be good, but my older cousin Mindy, who was fifteen, also had to give me compliments.

“It’s good to see you Tiffany,” she told me a little hesitantly, but sincerely.

“It’s good to see you too Mindy!” I told her.

Cami, who at ten was my youngest cousin on that side of the family, came back in the room from the bathroom right about then. “See Tiffany got dressed up in a holiday dress too!” Mindy told her sister authoritatively.

“Just cause she does, doesn’t mean I should have to…” she said while walking over to us. “How are you doing Tiffany?” she asked me and gave me a hug.

“Good, you?”

“Good, except this dress…” She was wearing a holiday dress that had a black velvet bodice and a white skirt with an organza overlay, and a big red bow tied around her. It was pretty and she looked good in it - I didn’t know why she was complaining so much… “I guess that sounds a little strange to you… it’s not that I don’t like dresses, I just don’t like holiday dresses,” she answered the unanswered question in my mind.

“Oh, I guess I could see that. This was something my mom had to have me in this year, she said. I’d probably rather be wearing something more like Mindy has on,” I told her. Mindy just had a basic red fall dress on. It was simple, but it made her look a lot more mature than we looked.

“Mom wanted me to wear one of them again this year too,” Stephanie said coming from behind us, “but thankfully I’ve big enough on top that they didn’t fit right!” she said proudly.

The four of us made our way to the couches that were in the room while our moms all went to go help out in the kitchen. It was about eleven, and we were supposed to be eating at noon, so there was still plenty of work to do. All of our dads disappeared around the same time to go watch some game on TV, Caleb, Bobby, and Danny — who had only given me a nod as far as acknowledgement, went with them. That just left the four of us in the room.

As we sat down I said, “I’m really hoping that I’ll have the same excuse as you next year Stephanie.”

“What do you mean Tiffany?”

“My breasts being too big for the dresses!” I said with a smile as if that was obvious.

“You’re growing breasts?” Stephanie asked incredulously.

“Uh-huh,” I told her. “You can kind of see they’re coming in through the top of this dress.” I turned sideways and I heard a bit of a gasp.

“How can you grow them…? I mean that’s… you’re not a…” I heard Stephanie stutter.

“I’m on medicine for it. I’m going to grow just like every other girl with it.”

“Really?” Cami asked. She was young enough that she understood, but at the same time she didn’t.

“By the time I’m Mindy’s age there should be only one way that you can tell what I was born as…” I paused, “and hopefully by the time I get to college that should be gone as well.”

“My brother says you’re a freak because of that,” Cami said.

I kept myself in control, although all I really wanted to do was cry or scream at her. She hadn’t said it herself, just that her brother said it. Mindy came to the rescue, “Cami, you shouldn’t listen to Danny — he’s a jerk, and an idiot. Tiffany is different, but she’s family and I think she’ll fit in with us just fine today!” She said with a smile towards me. “You know you all are complaining about holiday dresses, but I miss them! They’re cute and pretty! I’d trade you in a heartbeat if I could Cami!”

Cami just shrugged, “you can’t fit otherwise I’d take you up on your offer!” she giggled.

“So Tiffany, umm… do you dress like this at school?” Cami asked.

“In this dress?!?!?” I asked with a hint of disdain. “Not this dress, but others sometimes. I’ll wear skirts, slacks, my cheerleading stuff… you know normal stuff!” I told her.

The four of us got into a big discussion then about how everything had happened to me. Mindy was awesome all the way through that talk. She knew just how to defuse her sister if she was thinking something stupid, and she seemed to be fine with me. The girls were all impressed that I was a co-captain on the squad — well Stephanie had found that out the night before. Somehow I managed to give them my condensed story of my life of the past year in forty minutes.

About that time Aunt Wendy came in, “girls, would you please give us a hand setting up the tables?”

“Yes ma’am” was said in surround sound at that moment and the four of us got up to go help out. They had one long table that was long enough to get all of the adults around, but couldn’t quite fit all of the grandkids too, so they put us at two card tables pushed together on the side of the room. It always kind of annoyed me to be put at a kids table, but it wasn’t worth arguing about — I’d learned that long ago. We helped put silverware and plates out at every chair, filled glasses with ice, and helped carry everything out to a buffet table they had setup. Their house was hands down the easiest house to host something like this at, since all of the rest of our houses were much smaller.

Grandpa and the rest of the men and boys came away from the TV about that time. He gave me a big hug and said, “Tiffany you’re absolutely the prettiest girl here,” quietly in my ear so that only I could hear. I smiled at him.

Grandma had been in the kitchen the whole time and came out about then too, “Tiffany you’re absolutely gorgeous!” she said as she gave me a hug as well.

As a family we began taking our places at the tables and Grandpa was asked to say grace, “Dear Heavenly Father, as we gather here today we thank thee for all that is around us. For our good health and all of the blessings you have given us. Thank you for granting us all safe travel to here, and please be with us as we travel home this weekend. We ask that you bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies, in Jesus name we pray, Amen.”

“Amen,” I said, and heard the rest of our family say it as well.

A line formed, and Grandpa said to us, “Ladies first.” That was actually rather nice since I’d always been on the other side of that! I saw a glare directed at me by Danny at that moment. I was dreading eating lunch at the same table as him. Thankfully I was sitting with Mindy on my right, Stephanie on my left, Cami and Caleb across from me, and Danny and Bobby were on the other end past Caleb and Stephanie. I wouldn’t have known what to do if I’d been sitting next to Bobby and Danny, both seemed to glare at me hatefully every time I turned around. Actually Uncle Allen’s stares weren’t very friendly either.

I tried to ignore all of that as I made my way down the table. I placed a couple pieces of turkey breast on my plate, followed by some stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallows on them, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a dinner roll before sitting down. Just looking at the food made me feel like I was going to gain twenty pounds, but it smelled and looked so delicious! As we got through the line first we were already sitting down when the boys came over there.

Danny looked around at the table and said loudly, “Do I have to sit at the table with the fag?”
Everyone in the room just stopped what they were doing. I’d just made it to the point of putting some mashed potatoes in my mouth, and felt like I was about to cough them up and everything else that might have still been in my stomach. I heard my fork land on the plate loudly as I turned to look at him. I had just barely turned my head when I saw a fist collide with Danny’s head.

“Caleb!!!” I heard Uncle Allen scream.

“He had it coming,” Caleb said calmly.

“You shouldn’t have hit him! Go to your room!” he yelled angrily at Caleb coming over towards him.

“Dad you’re not even angry that I hit him, you’re mad because I’m standing up for Tiffany,” Caleb was calm, but I could feel the anger in his voice. About that time I could hear Danny crying, I didn’t really care about him though.

“You’re right, why the hell you’re standing up for that freak I don’t know!” Uncle Allen shouted at him.

I wasn’t going to take this, “You know I don’t need him to stand up for me Uncle Allen. Go ahead. Say what’s on your mind! I know you hate me, I’m not stupid. Don’t go blaming everyone else because you can’t get over yourself.” He looked at me in disbelief — all of my family just stood still not knowing what to do.

“I’ve dealt with far worse than you and Danny. Go ahead, give me your worst shot, call me the worst names you want to, but don’t you dare give Caleb grief because you can’t deal with this. You’re a mean alcoholic and I don’t care what you think or say about me!” He moved towards me. My dad instantly became unfrozen and moved towards him.

“Don’t you even think of laying a hand on my daughter, Allen,” my dad said quietly. “I will beat the living tar out of you.”

“Like you could…”

“I will have no problem taking care of you Allen.” My dad flexed his muscles. Allen had a couple inches and fifty pounds or so on my dad, but my dad had much stronger muscles. I saw Allen weighing his odds.

“Boys, Boys!” My grandmother began saying as she came towards the two.

“Stay out of this Mom,” Allen said to her. “Just because you all have decided it’s alright for this abomination to behave this way doesn’t mean that I have to put up with it… not under my roof!”

“You know, you’re right Allen, this is your house… we’ll be going now,” My dad said calmly as he gently grabbed the top of my arm while putting himself in between the two of them. My mother also started walking out and gently grabbed a hold of the other side of me. I was in shock at this point. We’d made it as far as the hallway when I heard the shouting erupt between the rest of my family and Allen. Everyone else seemed to be pummeling him with shouts. I knew it was only a matter of time before I began crying, but I wasn’t going to let it happen here. He was not going to get the pleasure of seeing me cry over that.

Dad grabbed our coats off the coat rack and helped me into mine. I’d just gotten my arms into the jacket when I turned and saw the rest of family coming down the hallway. I didn’t care, nor did my parents. “Come on Tiffany,” my Dad said to me.

The three of us walked quickly down the sidewalk and to our car that was parked on the street. Dad had closed my door and I was just making it far enough along in my thoughts to put my seatbelt on when Aunt Jackie burst from the house and ran over to the driver’s side door where Dad was just getting ready to climb in.

“Joe! Hold on a second!”

“Why should I Jackie? I mean if he doesn’t want us in his house that’s up to him…”

“Because it’s my house too, and I’m not going to tolerate that behavior. You’re a guest and you should be treated like one, no matter what he thinks of you guys. Not to mention you’re his brother for crying out loud.”

“I’m not going to subject Tiffany to any more of that, we’ve had all that we’re going to take.” He told her.

“I promise you’re not going to have to deal with any more of it today. I told Allen if that happens again I’m calling the police on him.”

“I don’t want us to be causing this though, it’s more worth it for us just to leave and let everyone else have their thanksgiving meal in peace,” Dad told her moving to get into the car.

I saw some movement out of the corner of my eye and saw their garage door opening. As soon as it was open I saw a car go flying out of the garage and down the sidewalk with reckless abandon. Aunt Jackie sighed, and it looked like she was near tears herself. “Look, please come inside, I don’t think he’s coming back till tonight at this point — there’s no reason you three shouldn’t be eating dinner with us.”

“Joe, let’s go in and eat,” Mom finally spoke. He gave her a look that I could understand as, ‘are you sure?’ She nodded as a silent answer to the unspoken question.

“If anything else happens we’re not coming back inside — we’ll probably just head straight to the hotel, check-out, and head home.” He told her.

“There won’t be anything else, I promise you.” She said to him and gave him a hug as he stepped out. Mom unlatched the sliding door for me and I undid my seat belt.

As the four of us walked back in I felt like I really needed to cry, I was so embarrassed. Right at the door I was immediately met by Grandma and Grandpa, “Sweetie, we’re soo sorry about that,” they told me as they grabbed me into their embraces. All of the rest of our family was apologizing non-stop about Uncle Allen’s behavior. Aunt Wendy apologized for Danny’s behavior. I could see that Uncle Raymond was yelling at him in the room across from where we were standing. I hated that I had caused the family gathering to get so out of hand, and I couldn’t help it at that point, tears began coming through my eyes. I managed to hold it back to a few though. It wasn’t easy.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I told my parents, without giving them a chance to say anything to me about them.

‘I’m not going to lose it right now,’ I told myself in the mirror while holding a Kleenex up to my eyes. ‘I’m really glad this is waterproof mascara,’ I said to myself, ‘I’m such a cry baby…’ I forced myself to sit down, go to the bathroom, wash my hands, and check my reflection and leave the bathroom before I’d been in there too long. I knew my parents would have been worried anyway, but too long would have caused them to worry enough to come chasing after me.

Mom was standing there when I opened the door, “Are you okay Tiffany?” she asked as she hugged me.

“Not really, but I’m not going to let myself lose it till later, okay?” I told her.

She looked on the verge of saying something but bit her tongue and nodded instead. She put her arm around me and led me back to the dining room. I sat down at the table again, but wasn’t really interested in eating then. It didn’t help that my food had all cooled down to where it was cold. ‘Maybe we should have just left,’ I thought to myself.

“I’m really sorry about that,” Stephanie whispered to me.

“It’s not your fault,” I told her. “It’s not like it’s the first time it’s happened to me either.”

“Do you get this a lot?” she asked. I could see some concern in her eyes.

“Sometimes… I’m really lucky that I have a great group of friends, and they’re basically all the coolest kids in school — so that helps… but I’ve been called everything you can imagine, and some that you can’t. I’ve been attacked by kids and adults too. I don’t think it will ever really stop, although sometimes it seems to calm down a bit.”

“Is it worth it?” Mindy asked beside me.

“Sometimes I wonder… but then when I think of trying to live as Brandon… I can’t even imagine trying to maintain that… that… lie anymore. I am Tiffany, and that’s how I’m going to live no matter what anyone else tells me,” I said with conviction in my voice.

I felt an arm reach across my shoulder and pull me closer to Mindy in a small hug. “Well I’m fine with have you as a girl cousin,” she told me. “Anytime you want to come out and hang out with me I’ll be glad to have you.”

“Thanks Mindy.” I told her.

As I sat poking at my food I noticed that Danny had come back in to sit down. Or at least try to sit down, in addition to a bruise that was forming on his face where Caleb had decked him, he looked like he’d had a belt taken to his rear the way he was struggling to sit down. I had no pity for him. He’d deserved it.

I forced myself to look back down at my food and ate the mashed potatoes, a small piece of turkey, and the sweet potatoes before calling it quits on the plate. I just couldn’t really eat any more, I was too upset. If I had been anywhere else I probably would have tried to excuse myself at that moment, but I needed to be a good guest… whatever that was at this point. I didn’t hear much conversation anywhere though, so I figured that everyone must have been feeling similarly.

Caleb had an appetite that I had never seen matched, even with everything that had happened, and he stood up to go get dessert. “Tiffany, do you want me to take your plate for you?” he asked me.

“What…? Oh sure,” I told him. “Sorry,” I told him.

“Don’t be sorry Tiffany, it’s not your fault.”

I began to open my mouth to disagree but he just shook his head, “It’s not your fault. Would you like some dessert while I’m up?” He had gone to bat for me, punched my jerk cousin straight in the face, and now he was asking me if I wanted him to get dessert for me? There should be a rule somewhere that someone can only do so many nice things for you.

“No thanks, I’ll get some in a moment,” I said.

“Really, what do you want and I’ll get it for you,” he said.

At that point it would have been rude to turn him down, “Pumpkin pie, please?” I asked nicely.

“Pumpkin pie right up!” he said with a smile.

I stared at the empty spot on the table where my plate had been for a few moments before he returned with a dessert plate with a piece of pumpkin pie on it with a mountain of whipped cream sprayed on top. I couldn’t help but giggle at that, “Did you get enough whipped cream on it?” I asked.

“I can go get more if you’d like,” he told me. Then I looked at his plate as he sat down. He had the pie, a piece of cake, something else, and a mountain of whipped cream on his pie that made mine look like a small bump.

“Would you like a little bit of pie to go with your whipped cream,” Mindy snickered.

“Mom won’t let me just have whipped cream,” he said with a wink at us.

That helped break the mood a little bit. The five of us didn’t talk a lot, but we did engage in a small amount of conversation after that. That was until I made the mistake of looking up at Danny at one point; he was glaring at me and talking to Bobby. Both of them seemed to be agreeing on something, I was pretty sure it was something about me unfortunately.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 17:

 
AFTER ALL THE plates had been cleared I moved over to an empty seat next to Mom. I scooted the chair close to her and just leaned on her. I felt her arm move around me and give me a slight squeeze while she gave me a kiss on top of my head. “You want to look at the sale ads?” she asked me.

“Sure,” I told her. No matter what happened I was sure we were going to go shopping the next day.

She left my side for a couple moments and then sat back down with a stack of them in front of her. Mindy, Stephanie, and Cami came and joined us to look through them. “What do you want for Christmas?” Mindy asked me from beside me.

“I don’t know… I don’t really have a whole lot of things in mind. I’d kind of like a new saxophone,” I said with a look up at Mom. I don’t think she was expecting that one, her eyebrows moved somehow.

“Umm… that one may not be possible Tiffany. That would be pretty expensive,” she told me.

I sighed, “I know. I’d of course go for clothes, maybe some new books, a couple new Barbies, and maybe some stuff from Bath and Body Works?” I suggested.

“I love their stuff!” Stephanie said in answer to the Bath and Body Works comment.

“So do I!” Mindy answered.

The three of us began excitedly talking about the products that we each liked from there. All three of us were in agreement on our favorite scents, I wasn’t expecting that. “I love the bubble bath from there especially,” Mindy said.

“I like the lotions a lot though too,” Stephanie said.

“So what do you want for Christmas?” I asked them.

“Well I mainly want Barbies!” Cami said, “But I’ll take some clothes and maybe some makeup?” she said in a hopeful voice that her sister answered with a shake of her head.

“Mom didn’t budge on me until I was thirteen, don’t count on her changing her mind for you,” Mindy said. “Personally I’d like some new clothes, some CD’s, and some new makeup. I don’t really have anything beyond that other than maybe a new CD player.”

“Well since we’re going around I basically want the same thing as Tiffany, maybe minus the Barbies though,” Stephanie said.

“Are you too cool to play with Barbies?” Mindy asked her with a shake of her head.

“You don’t still play with them do you?” Stephanie asked with her eyes open wide.

“Sometimes! You know just because you become older doesn’t mean you can’t occasionally be a kid still Steph.” Mindy told her.

The four of us got to talking some more about Barbies then, and somehow the video got brought up. “Mom said something about that to me, what was that? You like got to go to New York or something for it?” Mindy asked.

“You got to go to New York?!?” Stephanie asked.

“Yeah. My friends and I made this movie with Barbie dolls for a school project. One of my friend’s dad’s is the manager at one of the TV studios in town and we got to use their equipment. It came out really nice actually, and so Mattel came down and ended up paying us for it.” I laughed a bit, “That was before everything…” I became a little more somber then, “It was kind of awkward at the time because they sent each of us this gigantic dollhouse, and a whole bunch of new Barbies!”

“Wow!” Cami said, “I wished I could see this video, it sounds cool!”

“Mommy did you bring a copy of the video?” I asked. She had moved to the other side of the room to help out with something.

“I did, it’s in the car. Do you want me to go get it?”

“I’d love to see it!” Cami said. I had just now discovered that she was a fanatic with anything Barbie, so this sounded great to her.

“Hold on a few minutes and I’ll go grab it.”

“So how much did you make off of it?” Mindy had just asked when mom returned.

“Quite a bit,” I told her as we followed Stephanie to the living room and put the video on the TV there. Caleb came in right about then and joined us, along with my Aunt’s and Aunt Linda’s boyfriend, my grandmother also joined us. The girls were absolutely rolling on the floor on the funny parts. I was amused by their intense reactions. I think a lot of it came from everyone needing to laugh after everything that had happened that day. I stopped it when it got to the credits. This was one of the old copies before my name had been changed on the credits…. I didn’t want to see my old name on it, especially not today.

“That was awesome Tiffany!” Stephanie said. The Barbie hater actually like it! I was kind of surprised. I think she must have had a lot of friends at school that thought they were too cool for Barbie; I think that was where most of her hang-ups were coming from. I on the other hand was part of the ‘cool’ click, and most of us still played with Barbie’s.

My Aunt Linda asked, “Wow! Is that something you want to maybe do for a career some day?”

I shrugged, “I don’t know, it might be kind of fun. Just not with Barbie’s though… I think we’ve worn through that one.”

Cami must have gotten bored of talking after a bit because she asked, “Could we go play Barbie’s?” to the three of us.

I shrugged, “Sure, but I didn’t bring mine with me — I left them at the hotel.” I’d brought two with me just in case, but didn’t even think of it with all of the stress that morning.

“I’ve got enough for everyone,” Stephanie said surprisingly enthusiastic about playing with them.

“I’m game,” Mindy said with a smile, and the four of us went back to the playroom where we’d played the board game the night before.

Stephanie began digging through some plastic containers and brought out outfits and dolls for everyone to play with. The four of us spent a lot of time just giggling and laughing. Cami led us through most of our time playing though. I think we all decided that we were playing Barbie’s for her sake more than ours. She was happy the whole time.

“So Tiffany, you said something earlier about eventually looking like you’ve always been a girl?” Stephanie asked.

“If everything goes like it’s supposed to.” I told her.

“What all will they do to you?” Mindy asked.

“Well for me it’ll be a lot easier than before I started… Because they started me on hormones last month, I’ll have breasts and… fat in the normal places girls get it. My body shape will be pretty much the same as any girl that was born with a girl’s body.”

“What about… umm… down lower?” Stephanie asked.

“Well they’ll eventually remove what I have and turn it into the normal part.” I told her.

“Won’t that be painful?” Cami asked.

“Yeah, it’s going to be, but it’ll be worth it.” I told them.

“When will they do that?” Mindy asked.

“Probably not until I’m eighteen.” I said annoyed.

“Why that long? If everyone’s sure this is who you are?” Mindy asked.

“Well mainly because doctors don’t like doing it before then… but it also has to do with growth too… My birthday is in September, so that would put it happening during when I should be in the first semester in college. I’m kind of hoping maybe I can get them to do it a bit earlier even though I won’t be eighteen yet. If nothing else I’m going to have it scheduled for the day I turn eighteen, I want it fixed as soon as I can.”

“I don’t blame you,” Stephanie said. “After that though… everything will be… normal?”

“Well I won’t be able to have kids… but other than that yeah.”

“So like you’ll be able… to… you know…” Stephanie stuttered.

“Have sex?” Mindy finished helpfully.

“Yeah, if I want to I’ll be able to do that.”

“Wow…. That’s kind of weird…. it’s okay, but kind of weird.” Stephanie said. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Not really…” I told her.

“Who is he?” Mindy asked immediately.

“What?”

“”You said not really,” Stephanie answered.

“That’s definitely code for there is someone…” Mindy finished.

“Well I don’t really know if I want to date at this point… his name’s Kyle though.”

“What’s he like?” Stephanie asked.

“Well he’s one of the guys on the football team, so he’s pretty big. He’s smart too. He plays trumpet in the band…” I talked about him for a few more moments, really uncomfortable in their questioning. As I did so I became aware of the fact that I really did like him more than I’d realized, but became even more confused about everything. Eventually I managed to use the distraction of, ‘Hey I thought we were playing with Barbie’s,’ to try and save myself. Mercifully Cami was easily distracted by that ploy, and she refocused the other two onto playing.

Late in the afternoon the four of us returned to the living room in time for Aunt Wendy to ask, “Do you all want a turkey sandwich, a bacon sandwich, or a combo?”

“Both on mine please,” I told her.

Everyone else answered pretty much the same and she went to the kitchen to start microwaving bacon. My grandparents were sitting in the living room so I plopped down next to my grandmother. I leaned against her and she put her arm around me. “Are you doing alright sweetie?” she asked me softly.

“I guess so,” I told her.

“I’m sorry about everything earlier,” she told me.

I just nodded. I appreciated just spending some time next to her. I really loved my grandparents a lot. I just sat quietly cuddled up against Grandma until Jackie came in and said, “Dinner’s ready.”

They were making the sandwiches for everyone, and I asked for them to just put some warmed turkey breast and the bacon on the bread with nothing else. I also had some leftover mashed potatoes with the sandwich. Once again I was sitting at the kids table in between Mindy and Stephanie. No one was really talking again. It was like everyone had the turkey and their emotions come right back at them again. I felt really bad for Stephanie and Caleb especially… their dad was such a jerk, but they couldn’t exactly do anything about it.

And then I felt bad for their dad a bit too… Uncle Allen was wrong to have blown up that way, but I felt like I’d ruined his Thanksgiving. Who knows where he even ended up? It’s not like he was my dad’s brother-in-law and could have gone to his real family… we were his real family.
“Tiffany,” I heard out of the corner of my mind.

“Uhhh… What?” I said, grateful I was being knocked out of a line of thinking that was sure to cause me to start crying in the end.

“You said earlier that you’re a co-captain on your dance squad?” Stephanie asked.

“Oh… yeah, I am,” I said. I looked over at Mindy and she looked a bit concerned about me.

“What all do you guys do routine wise?” Mindy asked me.

Mindy and I got into a discussion of some of our routines. “I’d do our latest one for you but,” I pulled at the sides of my dress, “it’s kind of hard to do in this.” I told her with a smile. I really did enjoy all of the dancing stuff we were doing, it was nice to talk about it with someone who understood it.

“Oh come on!” She said with mock horror, “You can do it in tights and a dress, it’s no different from your cheer outfit!” I just stuck my tongue out at her.

“I’ve got a video that I brought with me if you want to show it to everyone,” Mom told me as she appeared from nowhere behind me.

“I don’t exactly want to be known as the ‘video’ girl, Mom,” I told her slightly embarrassed.

“I’d love to see it,” Mindy said.

“Me too,” Stephanie said.

“It’s by my purse at the door, why don’t you check and see if your grandparents want to watch,” she told me.

I didn’t have a lot of choice with Mindy grabbing my hand and pulling me that direction. Once I grabbed the video, which ended up being underneath the Barbie video by her purse, I went over to my grandparents next. “Grandma, Grandpa, would you like to see one of my routines from one of the football games?”

“Sure sweetie, let me go clean my glasses first,” my grandmother said.

“Okay,” I told her. My grandfather got up and began moving into the living room with me while my grandmother went over to the bathroom and used a cloth to clean her glasses. Stephanie took the video from me and popped it in and the rest of the family also began to trickle into the living room. I had looked at the label real quick, and had been really grateful that it was the high school’s homecoming pre-game performance. If it had been the last game I think I would have hid in shame.

The video started up right when we started marching onto the field in step, and so it was a minute before the music began. The video had been recorded by Amy’s mom so it had close-ups of both of us while we were coming on. My grandfather catcalled obnoxiously, “Wow! Look at those girls, especially that one!” I blushed and wanted to hide.

Amy’s mom was really good about zooming out to the whole squad when the routine began, so everyone was able to see the whole group. I was actually really proud of that performance, especially as I watched it go by. It was one of the early performances by us as a dance squad, but it was really good. After the dance was done Mindy said, “Wow Tiffany, you guys are better than my squad…”

I blushed some more, “I’m sure that’s not true Mindy,” she was after all on a high school team.

“No, I’m being serious there Tiffany, I can’t believe that a middle school squad could possibly do that well. I’ll have to tell my friends about this back home. You said you guys are going to go to Florida for a competition here in a few months?”

“In January, it should be a lot of fun I think.”

“You guys are going to do great!” Stephanie told me. “I wish I lived down there. It would be fun to be on the same squad.”

I nodded at that, “That would be cool.”

My grandparents and aunts were also all really impressed about it, but their comments didn’t mean as much to me. Both Mindy and Stephanie knew what they were supposed to be looking for. That they thought we were good told me we should have a chance to do well at the competition. As long as we didn’t perform like that last time…

I noticed Aunt Jackie talking quietly to my mom and dad over off to the side and wondered what was happening. I got busy grabbing the video and putting it by my mom’s purse though so I didn’t pay too much attention to it. Grandpa pulled me off to the side of the room just as I’d sat it down.

He gave me a big hug, “Tiffany, I want you to know that I’m real proud of you.”

“Thanks Grandpa,” I told him.

“This isn’t exactly the life I would have chosen for you, but you’re doing really well and I’m proud of you for sticking with your guns.” I fought my tears as he said that.

“Thanks,” I said turning red as he pecked me on the cheek and put his arm around my shoulders.

“Are you ready to leave Tiffany?” Mom asked as she came up.

“I… guess…” I told her. That was pretty sudden. ‘What changed?’ I asked myself. ‘Oh… maybe that’s why Aunt Jackie and my parents were talking a few minutes ago.’

“Why don’t you go ahead and say goodnight to everyone, sweetie,” she suggested.

“Okay,” I told her and began making my rounds. I didn’t take too long, I had a feeling Uncle Allen was coming back.

As soon as I’d said goodnight to everyone Dad helped me into my jacket and we walked outside to the car. It wasn’t that late, but because of the time of the year it was already dark. There wasn’t anywhere to go except the hotel, so that’s where we headed. At the hotel I got out of the car and the three of us went upstairs. I was actually really excited to get out of my dress and into a pair of pajamas, but it was only seven o’clock according to the clock in the room. I shrugged my shoulders about that though and headed into the bathroom with my pajamas and got changed.

“Feel better?” Mom asked me.

“Uh-huh” I nodded and sat down on the bed. Mom sat down next to me and began stroking through my hair while Dad went into the restroom. I absently flipped through some channels on the TV trying to find something to watch.

As I sat there I suddenly got really chilled and found myself snuggling into her more. She just gave me a firm hug; and something about it set me off. I couldn’t help it, I started bawling.

Everything that had happened today, Uncle Allen’s comments, Bobby and Danny’s comments and stares, all of that just suddenly broke through the shell that I had so carefully constructed around it. I soon felt another arm come and place itself around my shoulders and I knew Dad had joined me too.

I finally controlled myself just enough to sob, “I’m sorry Daddy, I’ve messed up everything for you and Uncle Allen.”

He squeezed me harder, “It’s okay Tiffany — that’s not your fault. That’s the alcohol talking. Allen has been drinking more and more the last year, and he’s to the point he can’t control himself at all…” He kind of gave a shudder of his own and I cleared my eyes out enough that I could see he was crying a bit too. I hugged him back.

The three of us sat quietly for a long while before my body made its desire to visit the restroom known to me and I shrugged out of their grips to go. When I returned my parents and I sat there watching a movie on TV for a while. “What are we going to do tomorrow?” I asked Mom.

“Well we’re planning on going shopping in the morning, I figured you would want to go with us, right?” She asked me with a smile.

“Uh-huh… Duh!” I told her with a small smile.

“We’ll probably spend most of the day shopping. Your grandmother, your three aunts, Caleb, Stephanie, Mindy, and Cami are all going to meet up with us at seven or so at one of the malls.”

“So Uncle Allen’s not coming?” I asked nervously.

“No, and I don’t think Bobby or Danny will want to come either.” She told me reassuringly.

“Good.” I told her.

“So what are we going to do after that?” I asked her.

“Well we’re eventually going to meet up with most of everyone else for dinner tomorrow night at a restaurant for dinner.”

“Everyone else?” I asked. I shuddered and felt my eyes widen as the implication of ‘everyone else’ hit me.

“I think so,” she told me. “I promise if anything happens we’ll leave Tiff.” She squeezed me lightly and I tried to smile.

“After dinner?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I thought we’d play that by ear. Maybe we can come back here and you and your cousins can go swimming or something. Or maybe we’ll just come back here and get some sleep before we have to drive home Saturday.”

“Okay,” I told her.

A few minutes later she asked, “So Tiffany what do you want for Christmas? I heard bits and pieces as you talked to your cousins earlier, but I walked away after a bit.”

I looked at her and Dad, “Well… I guess my first thing I’d like I think is a new saxophone. I mean mine’s alright, but I saw a couple others at honor band tryouts that seemed like they were a lot nicer… plus mine wasn’t new when you got it for me…” I tried to ask as politely and sweetly as I could.

“Saxophones aren’t cheap sweetie,” Mom told me while looking at Dad, “we’ll have to think about that one. Is there anything else?”

“Well you know, normal stuff like Barbies, makeup, clothes, and stuff would be nice too…” I told her.

“More makeup?” she asked me with a sigh.

“I’d take jewelry and earrings too…”

“You’re not going to be my little girl for nearly long enough,” Mom said. I didn’t say anything but gave her a hug. “Well why don’t you go ahead and go to bed sweetie since we’re waking up early tomorrow.”

“I guess,” I told her and after visiting the restroom one more time to brush my teeth and such before getting underneath the covers and closing my eyes. I did the very best I could to blank out all of the bad moments from earlier, but I couldn’t help but see Caleb stepping up to Uncle Allen over and over again. What was going to happen to him when everyone was gone?

 

Chapter 18:

 
THE NEXT MORNING Mom woke me up and prodded me out of bed. It was only about four in the morning, because we were going to try and hit some early bird sales that started at seven. “Sweetie you don’t have a lot of time to get ready if we’re going to get there early,” she told me.

“Alright, alright, I’m moving.” I told her. In the shower I wanted to skip my hair so I could move faster, but I needed it so much that I decided to do it anyway. I hurried quickly though so I might have a chance of blow drying it before we were going to leave.

As I jumped out of the shower I pulled on my clothes quickly and tried to do more than one thing at once. Mom had been nice enough to leave a curling iron plugged in still, so I was able to begin curling the bottom of my hair right away. Curling and blow drying away I tried to hurry to get my hair dry. Just when it was about dry Mom knocked at the door, “Tiffany, are you about ready?” She asked me.

“Just a couple minutes more Mom,” I said as I turned the blow dryer off and yanked the curling iron cord free of the wall.

“Well hurry up sweetie, we need to get going.”

“I know I’m hurrying,” I said. I quickly looked at myself in the mirror and decided my hair actually looked good — especially for the time of day — and brushed my teeth quickly before gathering a couple other things to do in the car. Since Mom had let up on the makeup yesterday I’d decided I could put some on today too — though I wasn’t going to push it. I was out of time in the bathroom, but I had a mirror in my purse that I was taking with me. I just grabbed some basics in my hands, along with some earrings and a necklace (the one Amy’s Mom had bought us), and ran out to the hotel room to put my tennis shoes on.

Since we were tight for time I shoved my feet into my shoes without bothering to untie the shoes. Mom gave me a bit of a shake of her head at that point, but I just continued. I’d tie them again later. I threw the stuff that was in my hands into my purse, and said, “Okay I’m ready Mommy,” with a smile that wasn’t forced. I had a feeling that shopping this morning was going to be a lot of fun.

“It’s about time!” She said to me teasingly and handed me my coat, “You’re going to want this today.”

“Is it going to be really cold?” I asked.

“A lot colder than yesterday at least.”

I groaned. Cold wasn’t something I was a great fan of. Other than the fact it meant you could get snow, cold was really just a nuisance. The two of us headed for the car and drove off. “Where are we going first?” I asked her.

“Well it sounded like there were some pretty good deals on some things at Penney’s, so that’s where we said we were all going to meet up at seven as the doors open.”

“Okay, how long before that?” I asked as I was putting my earrings in my ears. “It’s about twenty minutes to drive to the mall that we’re going to, but we’re going to be there plenty early still.” She glanced over at me because we were at a stoplight, “Enough time to do a little bit of makeup — not much sweetie.”

I just smiled at her and got to work. Of course I wasn’t going to put tons of makeup on, but I had to be presentable right? And since she’d let me wear makeup yesterday all day I’d decided it meant it was okay now. I didn’t put much on, just some foundation and powder, some mascara, and some lip gloss. Okay, so maybe that is quite a bit for my age, but all of my friends did it all the time at school — I didn’t even put any eye shadow on! I finished up before we got to the mall and put everything back into my purse. I actually had a hundred dollars, leftover from the trip, to spend today on Christmas presents.

Mom pulled up to the parking lot of Penney’s and I gasped, “Whoa…” I exclaimed. There was a line of people leading out of the store and around out of sight. It led to one of the main entrances to the mall, I wondered if we could even get directly into Penney’s.

“This is crazy,” Mom said while we pulled in. The two of us got out of the car and began following the line back around the building. About two-thirds of the way down the line we ran into my Aunts and Cousins.

“Hey guys,” My Aunt Linda said to us as we saw them. It was just Aunt linda, Aunt Jackie, and Stephanie — I had a feeling the others were running late. My Aunt Wendy in particular suffered from chronic lateness.

“Hey,” I said back to them.

“I can’t believe this line!” My mom said to them.

“Yeah it’s crazy isn’t it?” Stephanie said. “Apparently they’re offering free stuff to the first five-hundred people in the door.”

I quickly glanced up the line we had passed so far and tried to calculate how many people we’d seen so far. It was a lot, but I was fairly certain it wasn’t five-hundred.

“That’s cool!” I said.

“Well Tiffany let’s go back and see if we can find the back of this line,” Mom said to me.

“The back?!?” I asked. “But…”

“Tiffany it wouldn’t be fair to everyone else behind them. If we go stand back there now it’s likely we’ll still get in there before the door prizes are gone, come on,” she told me while pulling me away.

“Hold up a sec, I’m coming with you,” Stephanie said behind us.

I turned and waited for her to catch up with us. Unexpectedly she linked up her arm with mine like I did with Amy every now and then and the two of us skipped ahead of Mom. The end of the line wasn’t actually that much farther back, and I had a feeling we would probably be okay to get in there in time for the free stuff. “Why’d you decide to come with us?” I asked Stephanie as we waited for Mom to catch up.

“I was getting bored with just my mom and Aunt Linda… I thought it would be a lot more fun to hang out with you and your mom.”

“I hope so!” I told her. I have to admit that made a lot of sense to me. Mom caught up with the two of us finally and we watched in fascination as the line continued to grow behind us. We had come around the first corner before we had run into my aunts and Stephanie, and now it looked like the line was already around the next corner and who knows where else!

“Hey we’re moving!” Stephanie said abruptly in the middle of a conversation about how cold it was, and how ready we were to get out of it!

“Finally!” I said. We’d stood still without moving for about forty minutes.

The line moved a whole ten feet before stopping again.

“I figured they were finally letting us in,” a lady in front of us said.

“Yeah, me too,” her husband replied.

I noticed that guys were in the minority as we entered, it was probably seventy percent girls that had come out to shop this morning. My dad had certainly wimped out on it. There was a pause of several moments before the line moved some more again… and then stopped. We continued like this for what seemed like a long time. I fidgeted with my purse back and forth eager to spend the money inside. When we rounded the corner we could see that things were beginning to speed up a bit. In the end they opened up the doors at seven, and we ended up getting up to the door about seven-fifteen. Walking up they had a set of rope barriers up leading to the door. There was even a ‘red carpet’ setup to try and make the event seem bigger.

I could just see a table inside that had a pile of bags on it, there were still plenty! “We should be able to still get whatever it is!” I told Stephanie excitedly.

She smiled at me, “I hope it was worth this line!”

“Me too,” I told her as I tried not to rub my eyes. I remembered the mascara I had put on at the last minute. Mom would have definitely given me a ‘told you so’ look if I had done that. I was just so tired though! Some of that went away though as we went inside and got our gift bags.

“Finally!” I heard Aunt Jackie say as we saw her sitting on a bench not far from the entrance.

“It did take a while,” my mom told her.

“Well so what did you all end up getting?” Aunt Linda asked. Stephanie and I had begun rummaging through the bags almost as soon as they had handed them to us! There was a little, stuffed teddy bear, in mine that was kind of cute. I also looked and found a large t-shirt that my dad could wear…. But that was all that was obvious. In the bottom I scrounged and found a bunch of papers and stuff that I dug out. A lot of it was just general coupons and such, like one for a free drink at McDonalds.

I continued going through them, discarding some of them into a pile because I knew I would never use them, when I found a gift certificate to Bath and Body Works! It said twenty dollars on it, I squealed! “Look!” I showed Stephanie.

“Wow, awesome! I’m looking through mine to see if I have anything in mine still.” I saw that she had the same teddy bear and t-shirt I’d found in mine. A few moments more of digging she found a gift certificate for twenty dollars to Mervyn’s.

“I think I got the better one,” I told her.

She stuck her tongue out at me, “I think so too, but maybe I can get a cute top or skirt or something!”

She had me there. “Mom what did you get?” we both happened to ask at the same time. ‘We haven’t been around each other long enough for that!’ I thought to myself. The two of us started giggling hysterically.

“You two are silly,” Aunt Jackie said to us as both of our Mom’s showed us what they had gotten. Her mom hadn’t gotten anything of note in her bag. Mine had found a thirty dollar gift certificate to Penney’s. “Okay, are you two ready to shop now?” Jackie asked us.

“Of course Mommy,” Stephanie said. And with that the five of us began walking towards Penney’s first. Stephanie and I kept pointing to a few stores along the way that we wanted to go back to and shop at later. Mom kept us walking at a brisk pace though so there was no way that we were really able to stop. At Penney’s the five of us went through most of the store looking for deals of one kind or another.

In the juniors section Stephanie and I looked really thoroughly through the sales racks. I found a sweater that I thought was really cute, but when I tried it on discovered that I still wasn’t big enough to fit right in it. It wasn’t fair! Stephanie saw it in my hands as I came out of the dressing room, “Tiffany that’s so cute!”

“Yeah, but it’s too big for me,” I told her with a frown.

“I’m sorry Tiffany, you are just a little small for this section aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh,” I said pouting, “I hate this.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I still get some of my stuff from the girls section too.”

“Not much though right?” I asked.

“Well…” she paused, “not a lot, no.”

I sighed. “Oh well. Here, you should try it on, it is cute!” I told her while forcing a smile.

She gave me a quick hug and then went to go try it on. We both agreed after she did that she had to buy it!

I at least had some fun helping her find a couple more tops before she dragged me to the girls section to see if she could help me find some other things. There wasn’t a lot to be found there as far as I could see. Plenty of things that would fit me that had things like hearts all over them… not that I had a problem with hearts, but it just made me look too young. We did manage to find one sweater we both thought looked good on me about the time my Mom and the rest of the gang showed up.

“Ooh, that’s cute!” Mom told me as she came up and saw the sweater I was holding.

“Can we buy it?” I asked.

“It’s going to have to be wrapped…” Mom told me.

I took a look at it and sighed before saying, “Okay.” I looked at my aunts and saw that they all had some bags that they had checked out with already. I also noticed that my mom had a couple tops of her own that she had found. Mom, Aunt Jackie, Stephanie, and I headed up to the counter to pay for everything. I couldn’t believe my Aunts had already made it through this line once… It was insane!

I looked at my watch impatiently as we waited in line wasting valuable shopping time. It was a full thirty minutes before we got to the edge of the checkout lines. “I can help you over here!” a girl said to us and directed us to her cash register. Mom paid for our purchases. Aunt Jackie and Stephanie followed suit a moment later, and then we all headed out into the mall again.

As we walked down the hallway Stephanie looked at me and said, “Tiffany we have to go in here!” She grabbed my hand and pulled me into a store I hadn’t been into before. I’d seen some of their stuff listed in magazines, but we didn’t have one in the malls around home yet. It was mainly jeans and casual tops. Something I noticed immediately though was it looked like their tops were actually smaller!

She grabbed a cute top off the rack and held it up to me, “See, this is why I wanted to come in here. Their sizing is smaller, so you might actually be able to fit better into this stuff.”

Mom and Aunt Jackie came in behind us and Mom said, “She’s right, I think that actually would fit you right.” She told me. “Go try it on,” she said and I went to the dressing rooms in the back. It was marked as an extra-small petite, and I had hope. I pulled my current top off in the dressing room and pulled the new one over my head, forcing my hair back into shape real quick before looking at myself in the mirror. It was meant to be a more form fitting long sleeve shirt that had plenty of spandex in it. It had a tan color to it with alternating stripes of a cream color. I loved it!

I walked out to the store to let my aunts, Mom, and Stephanie have their say. “It looks great Tiffany!” Stephanie told me as I turned around for them.

“Wow, something you can actually fit into,” my mom said half teasingly. I saw a little bit of sadness in her eyes though. I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was that I’d be able to shop somewhere other than the girls section? Probably. After all she’d only have had her ‘little’ girl for less than a year in that case. I fought the frown that brought to my mind and focused on the present.

“I like it. It’s still a little bit big, but hopefully I’ll grow into it the rest of the way soon,” I told them.

“Switch back out of that top and we’ll look and see what else they have Tiff,” my mom said. Well with the aid of four other girls of course I had plenty of options thrown at me! I was just happy to have found a store that catered to teens that had clothing in my size! We ended up getting four other tops, in addition to that one, that were going to go under the tree as gifts from ‘Santa.’

I looked at some jeans, but even in their petite size zero I still didn’t have any hips to hold them up. ‘At least I can find similar jeans in the girls section,’ I told myself as we continued our shopping spree. Around nine we finally ran into Aunt Wendy, Mindy and Cami. ‘About time,’ was a comment made jokingly to all of them by pretty much everyone.

Stephanie, Mindy, Cami, and I roamed the stores as we went flocking together here and there. Stephanie shared with them her private goal of helping me find clothes that fit me that weren’t meant for a seven year old. Amusingly they all took on the task. Unfortunately the endeavor was mostly doomed to failure after our one grand success. At least we’d had that!

At about ten my mom and I ended up in the tool section of Sears looking for a present for my dad. We searched for a bit before we decided on a socket wrench set my mom had seen him drool over a little bit a few weeks before. I also picked out a new polo shirt for him that I thought he would wear.

Another long checkout line later and it was close to noon. “Your dad is supposed to meet up with us at a restaurant here soon.” Mom told me as she pushed all of us out the door.

“Hopefully the rest of our husbands will too.” Aunt Wendy said. Though I noticed that she did kind of give Aunt Jackie a strange and knowing look about something; I knew it had to do with me.

I said nothing though as we all headed out the mall to our respective cars to go meet them at the restaurant. Mom seemed to sense my unease and put her arm around my shoulders, giving me a small hug as she opened my door. I clambered into the seat and put my seat belt on as she came around the car and started it up. I was actually feeling really chilled by the time that happened and kept hoping the car would warm up quick!

It was a short enough drive to the restaurant we were meeting at, that the car never had a chance to get warm. By the time I got inside I was shivering. ‘I need to find a heavier coat…’ I thought to myself. I looked up and saw Dad sitting at a table with Uncle Raymond, Bill, and Caleb. I sighed in relief, Uncle Allen was nowhere to be seen.

“So what all did you ladies buy this morning?” Dad asked me as we sat down at the table. I sat in between him and Mom with Stephanie, Mindy, and Cami sitting across the table from us. My aunts were sitting on either side of them and Bill and Caleb sat down closer to my Dad. Uncle Raymond sat on one end, and my grandparents, making a little later arrival, sat on the other end.

“Well I found a really cute sweater…” I proceeded to tell him about all of the Christmas presents he had picked out for me today, “It was really thoughtful of you!” I told him. He just shook his head and gave me a one armed hug.

Lunch was kind of a pain that day. There were so many patrons in the restaurant that the servers were struggling to get to all of the tables. Our orders came out at completely different times. I got to watch everyone else eat for several minutes before my plate arrived. I took it in good nature, but I was really hungry! It also meant I was the last one eating, and therefore the girl holding everyone up from shopping.

“Where to next?” I asked my mom.

“You said there’s another mall not far from here?” my mom asked Aunt Wendy.

“Yeah, it’s about fifteen minutes north of here, just off the freeway.”

I had just stuffed the last bite in my mouth, chewing and eating as fast as would be even remotely lady like. “I’m ready!” I told them.

“We still have to wait for the checks sweetie,” Dad said. Somehow I felt like he must have been grateful for the delay of the attack on his bank account. It ended up being an extended delay as they tried to get the checks right. Thirty minutes later everyone was pretty thoroughly annoyed with the waitress, and I felt like tempers were short among some of the adults. I decided to just sit quietly during the drive; I didn’t want to make my dad mad at me.

Once we got the mall there were some more tense moments as Dad tried to find a parking space. My mom and I finally convinced him to just take one that was fairly far away, but at least it was a parking space. The rest of our family had just as much trouble finding parking spots. Eventually everyone joined up again in the mall and we started going from store to store. As we passed a Victoria’s Secret I was really curious to go in there and look at all of the bras and panties. One look at my dad’s face though was enough to keep me from asking. But just in case I had any doubts, “Not until you’re much much older do I want to hear of you shopping in there,” he said.

Mindy was standing on the other side of me whispered, “Don’t worry Tiff, when you need something let me know,” she said with a wink.

I smiled and giggled, she followed suit. Dad gave me a glare and I shut up. He just wouldn’t have a sense of humor would he?

That mall had more expensive shops in it, so we didn’t really find much there. There was one shop though that I tried on tons of clothes in, Limited Too. They had a Limited store in Albuquerque, but I’d never seen this store before! It had clothing that looked like normal stuff I could wear at school, but I could actually wear it! At the one store from earlier, I was just barely fitting into their smallest sizes of clothes, here everything fit! And there were tons of great outfits to choose from!

“Tiffany, we can’t buy the whole store,” Mom told me as I was trying to convince her to buy a dress, two long sleeve tops, a couple pairs of jeans, and a sweater. “Do you only want clothes for Christmas or do you want to be able to have something else?” She asked me gently.

‘What kind of question is that?’ I thought for a moment, but then remembered my parents weren’t made of money. I was just fortunate I was able to have what we’d already gotten. I knew that. “I guess not just clothes,” I told her forlornly.

“Okay then, pick two things,” she told me.

‘Just two?!?’ I thought to myself. “I guess this pair of jeans… and this top,” I replied. She smiled at me and then paid for the purchases.

As we walked out she told me, “Look sweetie we know that this store has some good things for you now, so maybe we’ll be able to find them occasionally if we’re traveling. And who knows? Maybe one of the malls at home will get one.”

“I hope so!” I told her. “But I also hope that I don’t need to shop there for much longer either.”

She sighed, “Stop being in such a hurry to grow up.” She looked around and made sure Dad was still sitting down on a bench a ways away still. “And sweetie when the time comes to get you a real bra, the two of us will go look in Victoria’s Secret,” she told me with a smile. “But you can’t tell your daddy. I think he would have a heart attack.”

I laughed at that. Eventually everyone was shopped out at the mall and Cami mentioned wanting to go Toys’R’Us. Shopping inside of there was fun, but way too crowded. I had a lot of fun showing my cousins the doll house that Mattel had sent me earlier in the year. I also pointed to several of the Barbie Dolls I had gotten for the project. “I’m so jealous of you,” Cami told me with a smile.

I really enjoyed the afternoon with her, Mindy, and Stephanie. The four of us had a lot of fun together, and I felt like they were friends as much as family. About five we finished up there and headed to another restaurant for the last meal we were going to have together before heading home the next day. As we pulled in Uncle Allen was standing there holding the door for my grandparents.

Just before the three of us got there he let the door close and went on inside. It wasn’t quite a slammed door in my face, but it was close enough that I wasn’t looking forward to the meal. My stomach became knotted, and I knew that tonight’s meal was going to be an endurance test. I looked up at Dad and said, “I’m sorry Daddy that he’s going to be such a jerk…”

“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk from you young lady,” he told me. But he squeezed my shoulder as he opened the door, “He won’t say anything to you though. If he does I’ll make him sorry for it.”

That didn’t make me feel any better at all. Maybe if I was a boy it would have, but as a girl it was something that just made me more uncomfortable. Thankfully my grandparents, and the rest of the family, were peacemakers — and intelligent enough, that Uncle Allen sat on the opposite end of the table from us. My parents sat next to me, and then it went down the line with my grandfather at the head of the long table the restaurant had put together. Everyone was there, just like at dinner the day before. I could feel glares from not just Uncle Allen, but also Bobby and Danny. I tried to ignore it, and took advantage of the fact that they’d given me a kids menu that had crayons with it.

Mindy was the nearest cousin to me at the table, just on the other side of Mom, and asked the waiter, “can I have one too?” pointing to my menu and crayons. It was nice to know she was so much like me. It was a pain to talk to her across Dad the whole time we waited for our food to arrive, but it was better than not having Dad in between me and Uncle Allen.

Actually dinner went by relatively peacefully. Afterwards we planned on Mindy, Cami, and Aunt Wendy coming over to the hotel for the two girls to go swimming with me there. Stephanie gave me a really downcast expression when Mindy asked her if she wanted to come too. She just gave me a silent look that I felt helpless about. How bad was everything at home beyond this? I began to worry about her a bit.

I’d watched Uncle Allen have four large margaritas while we ate. I believed what my parents said about him being an alcoholic.

At the end of the meal there was a lot of bickering over the check, and in the end Bill, Aunt Linda’s boyfriend picked up the check for everyone. Apparently he was wealthier than I realized, as my parents later told me ‘he can afford it.’ When the dust settled everyone began walking to the cold night air outside and said their goodbyes.

“I’ll see you later Grandpa,” I told him as I embraced him with a hug.

“I love you sweetie, you make me awful proud,” he told me.

I smiled at that and then moved onto Grandma, then Aunt Linda, Aunt Wendy, Stephanie, and Caleb before joining my parents just in time for Uncle Allen to come over.

“Joe, I’d better never ever see you step foot in my house again,” he told him to begin with. “I can’t believe you would raise a…” he started to say about the time my dad reached out and grabbed the top of his shoulder.

“You will never speak to me like that again, and quite frankly you will never ever speak of my daughter like that! Brother or not I will lay you out flat on this pavement.”

He started to say something else, “Like hell…” but stopped talking as a stricken look appeared on his face.

My dad had just squeezed harder on the pressure point that he had chosen. “You need to get a hold of yourself. You’re only going to wind up hurting everyone if you keep this up.” With that he left my uncle, clearly in a fair amount of pain still, standing there and guided me into the car and drove away. I was speechless.

 

THE MOMENT THAT we got back to the hotel I just walked into the bathroom and closed the door. I needed a moment to recover. I tried to tell myself that it was just one person’s opinion and let it go… but it wasn’t that easy. I tried to reconcile myself that I wouldn’t have to see him again… but what about Caleb and Stephanie? I liked the two of them a lot. It wasn’t right that this kind of thing could come between us.

“Tiffany? Are you going to be in there much longer?” Mom asked me through the door.

“I’m almost done, can you pass me my swimsuit though?” I asked her. When she knocked again I opened the door and grabbed it before pulling off my clothes and pulling on the one piece swimsuit. I had to do my usual tucking of everything, thinking in the meantime of how much nicer it would be when it was gone, before putting my hair in a ponytail and going out into the room. Mindy and Cami were already there.

“Cute!” Mindy told me.

“I got it in Florida,” I told them.

“I’ll be out in a jiff!” she said with a smile as she ducked in the bathroom to change into her own swimsuit. Cami followed her, and then the three of us went down with our moms to the swimming pool. Amazingly, there wasn’t anyone else in the pool so we were able to have the whole pool to ourselves. After we had splashed around a good deal the three of us just kind of gathered at one point in the shallow end of the pool and talked.

“Tiffany, I’m really sorry Uncle Allen has been such a jerk,” Mindy told me.

“I should be used to it by now,” I told her in the calmest voice I could manage. There were sometimes when I could push things like this from my brain while I was doing something fun, but that hadn’t worked tonight at all. The whole time I’d been thinking about everything.

“You shouldn’t get used to treatment like that Tiffany,” Cami told me.

“No you shouldn’t. Look, you may have been born with the parts of a boy, but I have no doubt you’re really a girl. I’ll always think of you as Tiffany from now on,” Mindy told me.

“Yeah,” Cami added, “No way are you a boy!”

“Thanks.” I replied with some teary eyes. I decided I didn’t want to continue the conversation any longer than I had to and decided to dunk my head into the water and swim underwater for a ways. After a while the three of us were told to get out of the pool and head upstairs. Mindy and Cami dried themselves off and got dressed before we walked them downstairs and said goodbye to them. I was going to miss them.

Back upstairs I looked at the clock, and seeing it was only nine o’clock, decided to ask, “Mommy do you think I might be able to get ahold of Amy now?”

I think she must have known I needed to talk to her because she said, “You can try…”

A few minutes later we had figured out the number and I heard the phone ringing on the other side, “Hello?” someone said.

“Hi, is Amy there?” I asked.

“Yes she is, may I ask who this is?”

“Tiffany,” I told her.

“Oh! It’s nice to talk to you, I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Amy’s grandmother,” she told me. I could sense a sweet lady on the other side of the phone.

“I’ve heard a lot about you as well.” I told her. Amy loved her grandmother a lot. It seemed like she was always doing nice things for her.

“Well one of these days I’ll have to meet you. Here’s Amy now,” she told me.

“Tiffany?” Amy asked.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“How’s it going?” She asked. I don’t think she had any idea what was going to come from that question.

I began speaking a mile-a-minute to answer her and before I knew it I could feel tears down my face. I didn’t turn around to look at my parents who I knew were standing there.

“Wow Tiffany, I’m really sorry about all of that.” Amy told me. “Look, you’ll be home tomorrow, maybe you can come stay the night with me Sunday?”

“I’ll ask,” I told her.

“Let me know what you’re parents say. You said you went shopping right?” She asked me.

“Uh-huh,” I told her. I hated how little I was saying, but that’s about all I could say at that moment.

“What did you get?” She asked me.

I choked back a sob and regained control — at least that part of the day had gone well. “Well I finally found some clothes that don’t make me look like I’m seven,” I told her.

“Where?” She asked me with excitement in her voice. Amy had been shopping with me many times and understood that problem.

“There were a couple stores…” I told her. By the end of the shopping conversation, she too had spent the day shopping, I was feeling better. Amy was always able to do that it seemed.

“Tiffany my mom is bugging me to go to bed. I’ll see you Sunday?” She asked.

“I hope so. I’ll let you know tomorrow, k?”

“We should be back tomorrow too, talk to you then.”

As I hung up the phone I felt someone sit on the bed next to me. I looked up at mom and just snuggled into her as she hugged me. I just closed my eyes and sat there in her embrace, as she wiped the tears off my cheeks and laid a hand over mine. After a few minutes I remembered I was still in my swimsuit with a towel around me. I felt a little embarrassed about that for some reason and got up and went to the bathroom to put my pajamas on. I decided to take a quick shower first though to rinse out my hair. I hated to go to bed with wet hair, but I didn’t care at the point my head hit the pillow.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 19:

 
“TIFFANY IT’S TIME to wake up,” My dad said to me the next morning. I grumbled and moaned while trying to roll over and go back to sleep. I hated when he said that line.

“Come on Tiffany, let’s get going,” Mom said to me as well.

“Don’t wanna!” I told them grumpily as I forced myself to sit up. My hair was still wet from last night, and I could feel it was a royal mess.

“Come on, let’s get going. Do you want to take a shower? Or just wait until you get home?” Mom asked me.

“My hair’s already,” I stopped and pulled a hair out of my mouth and continued, “wet enough!” I told her sleepily.

Both my parents started laughing at me. I gave my dad a stare that would have blown up an armored fortress and he amazingly enough stopped laughing. I rolled out of bed sleepily and found a set of grey sweatpants in my bag with a little pink heart appliqué, and a pink sweatshirt that matched. I had grumbled a bit when Mom had bought the set for me one day. Not that they weren’t really comfy, but they definitely fit into that seven—year-old’s clothes look. I didn’t care today though… Comfy trumped looking my age today!

I padded to the bathroom and threw them on. My appearance in the mirror was fairly frightening, but I didn’t really care. It had been a long week and I was ready to just be lazy for a day. We were going to be in the car all day anyway. The most I was able to get myself to do was wash my face real quick, brush my teeth, and then I came out of the bathroom to see my mom already repacking my stuff in the suitcase. She handed me a hair brush which I took, but quickly turned around and said, “Please…?”

“Alright.” She said resignedly. As she ran the brush through my hair she said, “You know if it wasn’t for the fact that I never got to do this for you when you were little I would probably gripe a lot about this…”

“Thank you,” I told her simply while both smiling and frowning on the inside. ‘So much lost time…’ I thought. ‘At least I can be me now.’

Once my hair was brushed into a reasonable form I felt her start pulling the ends into pigtails. “Mommy is there anything else you do with my hair?” I asked nicely.

“You were the one that handed me the brush sweetie,” she told me.

I sighed. I needed to start growing soon! I just decided to give Mom a hug. A year ago I would have done anything to be where I was now, the least I could do was tell her I did appreciate it. “Thank you Mommy for everything,” I told her.

“You’re welcome sweetie. Now let’s get going before it gets too late. It’s going to be a long drive back home.”

“Yes ma’am,” I told her and gathered up my remaining stuff thrown around the room. I grabbed Emily before heading down to the car. I caught several smiles from people as we walked down and thought about how I must have looked to them. The little girl carrying her stuffed tiger… It did make me smile though. Even if I was little, I was still a girl!

Dad had already loaded most of the car up, so I just had to pretty much hop in and put my seatbelt on. “We’re going to get breakfast in Colorado Springs sweetie,” he told me as he climbed in the car and closed it.

“How long is that?”

“About an hour-and-a-half or so.”

“Okay, Goodnight,” I told him and my mom. The pillow in the car was quickly leaned up against the window and I went back to sleep.

 

THE TRIP SEEMED to take forever to get home. It hadn’t seemed nearly as bad to get there, and in all honesty it hadn’t been. About three hours from home we began hitting a snow storm that made my dad slow down to a crawl. What should have taken three hours ended up taking us six! And, unfortunately, as we drove into my hometown there wasn’t a single skiff of snow to be seen. How unfair!

The worst part of the drive had just been the sheer boredom that had allowed me to think about everything that had happened in the past three days, and everything that was coming up. I had done my best not to think about the last three days, well at least the bad parts, just because I hated how I was tearing my dad apart from his brother. What Uncle Allen had said the night before… Well, I can’t think of something much more horrible for him to have said to him. Just like that he’d said he was disowning him, and didn’t care about him. How could someone do that?

And it was entirely my fault. I knew it. It made me feel awful to think about it.

Then there was the return to school on Monday. For some reason I just had a sick feeling in my stomach about it. It was probably just the nerves of a girl who didn’t want to stop being on vacation, but somehow it felt like something else. All of the notes that had been popping up the last couple weeks came back to me and made me worried.

We didn’t make it home until after eight that night, and so after we unloaded the car and got dinner it was already past nine. On a normal night I would have fought my parents to stay awake another hour or two, but not that night. That night I went to bed and did my best to fall back asleep.

 

SUNDAY MORNING I was woken up by the sunlight and the smell of sausage cooking. I hated the fact that school would be starting back up the next day, but at least we were getting close to Christmas Break. “Morning Tiffany,” my mom told me as I more or less sleepwalked into the kitchen. I was still in my pajamas, and just grunted. The last week had been long and tiring. I sat down at the table and wordlessly used a fork to grab two pieces and munched on them slowly. There was a stack of ads on the table and I began looking through them to see if there was anything I wanted.

“What do you think of this?” I asked mom pointing towards a sweater in the catalog.

“Cute,” mom told me. She didn’t say anything else though. I moved through the ads and eventually landed on our comic section. Garfield and Snoopy were two of my favorite ones. I looked through the others too though, also amused by The Far Side. The nice thing about my parents that morning was that they didn’t push conversation on me too much.

“Are you going to take a shower, Tiffany?” Mom asked.

I thought about it and ran a hand through my hair, “I need to,” I told her.

“Why don’t you go ahead and get in there then and then we’ll see about getting you ready to go over to Amy’s house.”

I suddenly woke up some more. “Okay!” I told her while moving out of my chair. I went to my room first and grabbed a training bra and a pair of panties to go under my jeans and sweatshirt. The shower felt great! I should have taken one the night before but didn’t really think about it. I took the time to blow dry my hair since it was below freezing outside. A lot of people might think that New Mexico is always warm… but that’s just not the case… especially, when you live as close to the mountains as I did.

An hour later and I appeared out of the bathroom dressed, hair looking reasonably decent, and somewhat awake. I was glad that the last week was over and I was going to be able to spend some time hanging out with Amy. Since I was staying overnight at her house I had to get my clothes together for Monday, as well as gather up my practice shorts and top for dance practice after school. Hopefully I was going to be able to actually make it to gymnastics that night too. ‘It’s nice to be able to get back into a routine,’ I thought to myself as I finished putting my clothes into my small cheerleading duffle bag. I also went ahead and put Emily on top of my bags so she wouldn’t get orphaned for the night.

“Tiffany? Why don’t you call over there and make sure they’re home before we go over?” Mom said to me loudly from another room.

“Okay,” I said back to her.

I called her number on the living room phone but no one picked up. “They’re not home,” I said dejectedly to Mom as she walked in.

She looked up at the clock, “It’s eleven, they may have gone out for lunch. I’m sure they’ll be back in a bit.”

I frowned at her, but there was nothing she could do. I had a key to their house but it felt rude to just go over there. I ended up having to wait about an hour before calling again and having Melanie pick up. “Hello?”

“Hi! This is Tiffany,” I said perking up.

“Hey Tiffany, are you coming over now?” She asked.

“If it’s alright?” I asked politely.

“Of course sweetie. Come on over.”

“Okay see you in a bit,” I told her as I hung up.

“They’re back!” I said loudly.

“Okay Tiff, let’s go,” she told me. I gave Dad a quick hug before heading out.

As we pulled into the Hancock’s driveway I was feeling both excited and relieved. I felt safe with my parents, but after the last week I felt kind of awkward around Dad. Everything that had happened between him and Uncle Allen was all because of me. He had never once complained or given me any reason to think he didn’t still love me… but I was causing so much trouble. To be able to spend time with Amy and her parents instead was going to be a huge relief.

Mom came up to their door with me, carrying my backpack for me, and to speak with Melanie for a few minutes. I hadn’t even gotten a chance to press the doorbell when Amy opened the door. “Tiff!” she said to me smiling brightly. She gave me a hug as I walked in. Her parents were just inside the door smiling and I gave them both a hug too before running upstairs to drop my stuff off in my room.

“So how was the trip home?” Amy asked me after I sat stuff down.

“Boring… We got stuck in a snowstorm and had to practically crawl home at a couple points.” I told her.

“That means there’ll be snow up at the ski resort though!”

“Are we still going this weekend?” I asked suddenly excited. I’d half forgotten about that trip.

“Of course!” She told me.

“Cool!”

The two of us ended up migrating downstairs at her moms’ request. Melanie started asking about details from our trip to Denver, but I didn’t say much. “I guess it was alright,” I told her hoping to not go into too many details. Mom had left already, I wasn’t sure how much she had told her.

“What happened?” She asked me.

“What didn’t happen?” I asked quietly. I did my best to keep the tears restrained as I told her some of the basics of the stuff that had happened. From Uncle Allen calling me names, Caleb sticking up for me, my dad and Allen getting into it, and then the final parting blow to Dad and myself.

“Tiffany that’s awful,” she told me as she came over and sat next to me opposite Amy on the couch. She gave me a big hug. “I’m really sorry that you had to go through that sweetie,” she told me and I found myself letting the tears loose at that point.

I don’t know how long I cried, but it wasn’t a short while. ‘I’m such a cry baby!’ I yelled at myself as I tried to gain control of my eyes. For their part Melanie and Amy just hugged me and showed me how much they cared. I was finally able to sniffle, “Thanks… sorry about that,” I told them.

“Tiffany, it’s okay to cry,” her mom told me. She added, “If you didn’t cry about this I would be really worried about you.” She handed me a tissue when she felt like it would do some good and I wiped my face up. “Did you find anything good when you all went shopping?” She asked me trying to find a topic that might cheer me up.

I nodded and sniffled a bit, regaining control, “Quite a few things actually. And I finally found a store I can shop for normal looking clothes!”

She knew about my issues there and said, “What store?”

That led to a short conversation on everything I’d found, and eventually what they had found on their shopping trips too. After the shopping stories ended we all just sat for a moment until Amy said, “Tiffany, why don’t we practice the routines for a bit?” She suggested.

“Okay… if I can even remember them. It’s been like almost two weeks since our last practice!” I told her.

She nodded and we went upstairs to her playroom where we cleared everything out of the way and set up her portable Boom Box. We spent some time stretching out a bit before getting right to it. I was rusty… but she was too… and so I was glad that she suggested doing this. We worked out the dance moves for the better part of two hours before calling it quits for the day. “Well hopefully we’ll be better than everyone else tomorrow,” Amy told me.

“I hope so. I can’t afford to not be one of the best — they’ll just say I shouldn’t be on the squad,” I told her somewhat unhappily. Uncle Allen’s comments had burst through any buildup of self-esteem I’d had going.

“Tiffany, you’ll always be one of the best — don’t worry about it!”

“Thanks Amy.” I told her with a smile.

“What now?” She asked.

“Shower and change into pajamas?” I suggested even though it was only like four in the afternoon.

“Sure,” she told me and the two of us went off to our own bathrooms.

As I took my shower I thought, ‘I can’t believe I have my own bathroom here… I don’t even have my own bathroom at home.’ I day dreamed a bit about what it would be like to just live over at Amy’s house all of the time… ‘Mom and Dad would miss me too much though,’ I thought. Not that I wouldn’t miss them too, but I still thought it would probably be more than Mom could take at least.

When I opened my bathroom door Amy was sitting on my bed and brushing her hair out. “Okay, what now?” She asked as I walked out.

“Umm… I don’t know.”

She looked thoughtful as I found a hair brush of my own on the bathroom counter and began brushing my hair. “Well you were the one that suggested pajamas already, what were you thinking of doing after that?”

I shrugged, “I just wanted to be comfy.”

She nodded. “Barbies?” she suggested.

“Okay,” I said smiling.

The two of us went down the hall to her playroom and started getting dolls off the shelf and pulling a dollhouse to the middle of the room. It was fun… but I really felt like something wasn’t quite the same that day. ‘Does this mean I’m outgrowing Barbies already?’ I asked myself before shaking the thought off. We’d been playing for a bit when Amy’s mom came in the room.

“You two about ready for dinner?” she asked.

“Sure,” Amy and I said together. I wondered if she had been thinking similar thoughts. Not that the two of us hadn’t been having a good time, but I think she felt something different too.

“What’s for dinner?” Amy asked.

“Stroganoff.”

“Sounds good,” I said to her.

“Great, why don’t you both wash your hands and then come downstairs and set the table.” She smiled at both of us and gave me a gentle squeeze on my shoulder.

Amy and I just walked to her bathroom since it was closer than me walking down the hall. Downstairs Melanie gave us each a hearty serving of beef stroganoff on our plates. It was a really good meal and I made sure to thank her. After dinner Amy and I helped her clean off the dishes and put them into the dishwasher. “Thank you girls,” she told us with a smile when we were finished.

“Why don’t you two watch a movie with us?” Amy’s dad asked from the edge of the kitchen where he was staying safely out of the way.

I looked at Amy for a second and said, “Okay,” for both of us.

“What are we going to watch?” Amy asked.

“Didn’t you guys go rent some movies yesterday? Just pick one of those,” he told us.

“Oh that’s right… I forgot about them for some reason.” Amy said and the two of us headed to the living room.

She had rented a few chick flicks that she and her mom had already watched. The only thing they hadn’t watched yet was Casper, so the two of us ended up picking that one. Neither of us had seen it in the theaters, but had heard it was good. “Works for me,” was my response to her.

Her parents disappeared upstairs for a few minutes before her mom came in with a couple big bowls of popcorn for us all to share. Amy and I sat down on the long couch in the living room in front of the TV. As her parents came to sit down her mom ended up sitting next to me, with her dad on the other side of her. Amy started the movie and the four of us just quietly munched on popcorn and drank the hot apple cider Melanie had brought in shortly after the start of the movie.

There was something about the movie that I just related to… I got goosebumps when Casper brought Kat the dress out of the old chest, I loved that part. There was a part of me that just related to it… It wasn’t like it was a boy getting a dress, but somehow it resonated with me. About half-way through the movie I felt Melanie’s arm go around me, and she began stroking through my hair. I noticed that Amy’s dad was doing the same to her.

If anyone walked in at that moment they would assume that I was the other daughter. ‘Probably the little sister,’ I thought to myself. For once though I wasn’t annoyed with that thought. I would have taken to being Amy’s little sister in a heartbeat, and I realized that I really must have in a way already. I felt safe here, maybe even safer than at home for some reason…

When the movie ended the two of us got prodded to go upstairs and go to bed since it was a school night. Amy and I said good night to each other and then I went to my own bedroom to get ready for bed. I went through my usual routine of washing my face and such before walking back into my room. I was surprised to find Melanie standing there.

“Are you doing alright, Tiffany?” she asked me.

“Better now,” I told her. I hesitated before walking over to her and giving her a big hug, “Thank you so much for everything… You’ve been so nice to me this last year…”

“Tiffany, it’s nothing. We love having you around here with Amy. We were never able to have another kid after Amy, so you’ve kind of been like an extra daughter for us,” she said with a smile. We separated from our embrace and she motioned for me to go ahead and climb into bed. “Anytime you need anything Tiffany you only have to ask. We both love you dearly.”

And for the first time I spoke words that were so overdue, “I love you too.”

She smiled at me as she tucked me into bed and gave me a kiss on the forehead before turning the light off and closing the door. I slept better that night than I had in a while.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 20:

 
THE NEXT MORNING Amy and I woke up and went about our normal routines to get ready. Melanie made breakfast for us and drove us to school with both us in pretty good moods. At school we found our friends waiting outside and all commented that we wished it was a lot warmer. As it was I had on my heavy winter coat and gloves, and was still freezing! Amy and I both huddled close to David and Kyle since they both acted as great wind blocks for the wind.

“If it’s going to be this cold the least it could do, would be to snow!” Ashley said next to me as the bell rang.

“I agree!” I told her through clenched teeth.

In first hour everyone was talkative. As much as we all hated to have to wake up and come to school that morning, we were all excited to see each other again. Mr. Randolph finally made the comment, “Geeze Guys! You’d think you hadn’t seen each other in months. It’s just been a week, let’s get back on task!”

We all grumbled and got quiet for a few minutes before someone started giggling and it became contagious. He just sighed and gave up at that point.

“Hey Tiffany, it’s only three more weeks till Christmas Break!” Kyle said from his desk in front of me.

“Really?” I asked. I knew it was close, but I guess I hadn’t realized it was that close.

“Yep!”

“Cool… what did you do over Thanksgiving Break?” I asked him starting another talking session that Mr. Randolph glared at us over. I didn’t care that much, I’d already finished the assignment. Kyle had too. The conversation soon included Amy and Ashley and continued into the hallway on our way to our next classes.

That was the way the day went in every class. By the time we got to the end of the day I was feeling glad that it had been a normal day. Nothing had gone wrong, and it was such a relief after everything from the past week. Last period, in band, we got chewed out by Mrs. Remar because of how bad everything sounded. No one, including myself, seemed to have practiced over the break. At least I played the right notes though.

“Look ladies and gentlemen we have just twelve more rehearsals before our concert!!!” She told us while looking at us sternly, “Everyone needs to take their instruments home tonight! I will lock the doors to the instrument room, and anyone who can’t get their instrument because they didn’t take it home will get detention.”

I think we all kind of shirked away from her glance at that point. I found myself looking at my stand and the music that was on it. I didn’t really want to look up at her. Thankfully the bell rang right then so we were able to escape. On our way out she yelled, “Don’t forget jazz practice tomorrow night!”

It was good that she said something… I hadn’t even thought about it. I cut through the choir room and went to the locker room in the gym to switch into my practice clothes. Using the bathroom in the coaches’ office had become routine at this point, and I emerged quickly into the locker room where the rest of the girls were coming in slowly and changing as well. I took some time to clean up my locker a little bit. The locker room was in theory used by both normal P.E. classes and ladies sports such as cheerleading. If you were in a sport, like I was, you were given a locker that was taller than the little small square cubical everyone else got. All of them had a network of diamond shape cutouts all over them for air ventilation.

I didn’t have a whole lot in it at this point, but felt like a few things could be moved around. As I was doing that I heard a startled and pained “aaaah…” from Lindsey standing a few feet away.
I turned to look over at her and saw that she appeared to have her shirt half-way over her head, but seemed to be in pain. “You alright Lindsey?” I asked.

“Tiffany?” She paused, “Can you help me? I somehow got the back of my earring caught on my shirt!”

I stood up and walked over to her and saw that she was sort of trapped by the shirt and the attachment of the earring to her ear. “Ooh. Ouch! Hold on just a second Linds,” I told her. I managed to help her get the earring unstuck from the shirt.

“Thanks Tiff… I was afraid I was going to rip it out of my ear.”

“Anytime Lindsey,” I told her as she began undoing her bra so she could put her sports bra on instead. I looked away. It didn’t interest me in any way, but I didn’t want to be accused of anything. I finished gathering my stuff together. Amy came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder, and then we led the girls out to the cafeteria across the hall.

Before Coach Holt made it there Amy and I started everyone doing some stretching routines. There was part of me that always loved this part. I’d worked so hard on doing splits well, and building my overall flexibility, that I was able to do better than about seven of the girls. Most of them had been doing stuff like this their whole lives! I smiled inwardly with that thought as I saw Coach Holt walk in.

“Good afternoon ladies, thanks for getting everyone started,” she added to Amy and I. We smiled in response. “We have just over sixty days until the national competition, and a week before that we’ll have the state competition.” She paused to let that set in. “I want these routines perfect before we leave for break in three weeks.”

Amy and I looked at each other with the same deer-in-the-headlights look at that point. That was a lot of time, but still… the two of us had been far from perfect the night before.

“Well, let’s see where we are,” she said at that point motioning for us to stand up.

I don’t know if it was her intention to make the point clearly to us that we needed to focus or not… but she chose to start right off with having us do the routine with the music. As a team we hadn’t done it in more than a week-and-a-half, and it showed. I was glad Amy and I had run through it yesterday as we were the only two that managed to make it through to the end together.

“FREEZE!” She said loudly at everyone. “I don’t care how bad it is, you don’t move until the team moves together!” She said sternly.

“Well, that was…” she paused, “I don’t think I need to tell you. Well let’s see the other routine.”

As we moved to set up for the other routine I gave Amy a sideways glance that she returned, ‘This was not going to go any better…’

The scenario repeated itself again, but as it was an even harder routine, I found myself ending eight counts ahead of the music. At that point I was beyond embarrassed with no hope of figuring out what move I had forgotten. Amy looked like she had ended in the right spot, but no one else looked even close from what I could see out the corners of my eyes. I did my best not to cry in frustration.

“Okay ladies, we have ninety more minutes of practice today, and we’re going to need every minute of it.” Coach Holt’s voice was dripping with disappointment and anger. “Did any of you even try to practice?” She asked.

Amy and I raised our hands. I looked around and saw Lindsey and Katrina raise their hands hesitantly as well.

“Thank you ladies, but four does not make the squad. All of you need to be practicing. When we hit Christmas Break we are going to have some practices after Christmas,” she looked around at everyone daring us to say something against it, “probably that weekend.” She paused again. “Look ladies, this is the first year we’ve ever had this kind of squad at the junior high level, but the high school has been taking awards at the state and national level for years. We need to match that high bar.”

She seemed to have run out of things to say. “Okay, let’s go back to the first routine, count by count!”

The next ninety minutes were grueling! It was not uncommon for us to end in a particularly awkward, uncomfortable, and/or physically tiring position. She had us do it over and over again. By the end of practice the first routine was only decent at quarter speed. Coach Holt never let up one bit, and at the end of practice called everyone together. “Ladies, we have to do better. Every day, every time we do something, we have to do better! Understood?”

“Yes ma’am,” I found myself saying aloud along with the other girls.

“Now, don’t forget, your next payment for the competition trips, is due on Friday this week. If for some reason you can’t make that payment, please talk to me before then. I have to make several payments to the hotel and the airline Monday.” She paused, “Anyone have any questions?”

Seeing none, she had us clean up our stuff and head down to the locker room to change. I pulled my sweaty shorts, t-shirt, and sports bra off quickly switching for my clothes I’d worn throughout the school day. I really needed a shower, but that would have to wait until after gymnastics tonight. I grabbed my backpack along with my saxophone, before I met up with Amy in the locker room. She had also just finished changing and looked as tired and depressed as I felt. On our way out Coach was standing in the hallway talking to the wrestling coach who was still there from their practice.

“Tiffany, Amy, thank you for practicing over the break,” was all she said, “see you tomorrow,” she added.

Outside I expected to see my mom’s car, but only saw Amy’s mom sitting there. She waved at us and we walked up to her. Amy climbed in the front seat and I figured I’d be waiting but she rolled her window down and said, “Tiffany, your mom called me earlier. Your gymnastics lesson tonight was cancelled.” I was kind of relieved by that. I couldn’t imagine any more physical abuse today.

“Oh, okay.”

“Anyway, get in — your parents are going to come for dinner tonight.” She told me.

“Oh, cool!” I said climbing in the back seat. Amy and I talked with her in the front seat and turning around to me in the back. Normally when we knew we were riding in the same car we both rode in the back so we could talk easier. She pulled into the driveway and I saw my mom’s car was already there.

“Hi sweetheart,” she said to me as I came in. She gave me a quick hug and continued, “Your daddy is going to be here in a bit, he’s going to be coming a little late from work.”

“Okay… do you think we have time to shower before dinner?” I asked Melanie and her. Amy nodded at my side.

“You should if it’s quick girls, go ahead and shower if you want.”

“Thanks Mom,” Amy said as we both headed upstairs and went to our separate bedrooms. I was glad I kept some spare changes of clothes there so I could switch right into them. I kept it quick, just long enough to get the sweat off of my body. I ended up scrubbing my face at the sink quickly with the towel wrapped around me before hurriedly throwing on the spare pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. I didn’t wash my hair, but of course it still got wet, so I came out of the bathroom rubbing my hair trying to dry it out. I was kind of surprised for some reason to see my mom sitting on the bed where Amy’s mom had sat last night.

“Hey,” I said.

“You really have moved in here haven’t you?” she asked me with a small smile.

“Sort of… sometimes…” I told her embarrassed. “Do you mind that I spend so much time over here?” I asked for the first time, scared of what answer she might give me.

“I guess I should…” she told me honestly, “but Amy spends a lot of time at our house too - so not really. I think Melanie and I feel just lucky enough that we each have gained another daughter on top of the beautiful one we were given.”

I had no reply for that, so I just gave her a hug. I quickly and discreetly wiped a tear away at my eyes and then separated myself from Mom. “Thanks Mommy,” I told her.

“You ready to eat yet?” She asked me. I nodded and grabbed my backpack and sax case before heading downstairs.

Dad showed up about five minutes later and the six of us sat down to eat. Amy and I were badgered with the normal questions about school for a bit before we were left to kind of chill out and eat quietly. Melanie had let a pot roast bake in the crock pot all day, and it was really good. She’d made mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli as well. I was glad we’d eaten there that night. As I left with my parents they made Amy’s parents promise to come over the following week for dinner. They would have planned it for over the weekend, but we were going up skiing. They actually invited my parents too, but they politely declined. I was kind of glad — I didn’t want to have to share myself with my parents this weekend.

 

TUESDAY MORNING I found myself patiently waiting for Amy’s mom to come pick me up for the daily drive to school. After the brief good morning remarks we were both pretty quiet. I was personally thinking about how several teachers were planning to dump huge assignments on us in the next couple weeks. Adding to that we were also supposed to have our band concert soon, which meant the choir concert too, and then in January dance squad stuff. It was just about enough to make me go crazy.

First and second hour passed with the homework being piled on. Particularly in science we were supposed to be working on a research project that was due at the end of January. Unfortunately we were supposed to have the project picked out and started by the week before Christmas! ‘When am I going to do that?!?’ I asked myself as I walked down the hallway with Lindsey and Amy towards choir.

I wasn’t paying much attention when BAM!!! I felt a pain in my side as I found myself bouncing off of the locker and onto the ground. “OW!” I screeched.

“Are you alright Tiffany?” Lindsey asked me as she knelt next to me.

“Ow… not really,” I said through clenched teeth. My side hurt in a familiar way from where one of the stupid locker dials had dug into it.

“Who did it?” Amy asked the two of us as we both looked around.

“I didn’t see them,” Lindsey admitted with embarrassment on her face.

“I didn’t see them either…” Amy said.

“Well that makes three of us.” I added trying not to cry.

“Whoever did that did it on purpose. It’s not that crowded in here," Lindsey said.

“Do you want to go to the nurse Tiff?” Amy asked.

“No… I’ll be fine,” I said. I was really trying not to start crying. They both put their arms around me and walked with me to choir.

“Are you alright Tiffany?” Ms. Beecher asked with considerable concern.

“Not really, but I will be.” I told her.

She looked questioningly at Amy and Lindsey but they both just shook their heads. “If you change your mind on that let me know, okay?”

I just nodded.

For the first several minutes of warm-ups I participated, but it was all I could do to do that. Lindsey was right. Everything from before, as well as from last week seemed to be on the precipice of spilling over into my brain at that moment — threatening to overwhelm the flimsy barriers that I had erected in my mind. I finally managed to focus. Through the last warm-up as Ms. Beecher worked our voices ever and ever higher. I tried to be the person that made it the highest, and I almost succeeded. Kristina bested me by a few notes.

After that I was able to concentrate. We were working through the Christmas concert music. When we finished working through one of the songs Ms. Beecher announced, “Okay, next week I’m going to have auditions for one girl to sing this part as a solo for the concert. If you’re interested please let me know before then.” And then as the bell rang, “Have a good day!”

As we walked out the classroom door she asked me, “Are you okay now Tiffany?”

“Yes Ma’am, I’m doing better now. Thanks for asking,” I told her.

With that we swept into the hallway and I told Amy, “I need to go by my locker really quick, walk with me?”

“Of course,” she told me with a smile. Honestly I knew better than to even have to ask — she still felt guilty about earlier in the year when I’d been left alone and attacked, so of course she would walk with me. “Are you trying out for the solo Tiffany?” Amy asked me.

“I don’t know… are you?” I didn’t want to compete with her for it.

“No!” she paused after saying that emphatically. “I don’t want to stand up in front of everyone and sing… that would be scary.” She paused. “So are you or not?”

“I don’t know… maybe… I’d really like to,” I finally admitted as she had pierced me with her gaze. I think she knew that I would want it.

She smiled at me, “You have one of the prettiest voices in there. You’ll get it for sure.”

“I wish I could be as confident about that as you,” I told her as I began turning the knob on my locker. Looking at it made my side throb some more. ‘That really hurt,’ I said to myself.

As I pulled it open I noticed a note folded piece of paper was sitting on top of my algebra book that I’d come for. I didn’t really have time to see what it said, but something in my stomach dropped and I felt like I had to look. Amy had been on the other side of the open door so she didn’t see the note sitting there, something in my face told her something though.

“Tiffany, what’s wrong?” I didn’t answer, just opened the note.

Dear freak. Leave our school, we don’t want your kind here.

I just handed it over to her. I wanted to cry, but I refused to do it there. “Oh Tiff!” Amy said, but I just began walking to algebra,

“We’re going to be late if we don’t hurry,” I told her with a level voice.

‘Is it all starting again? Am I ever going to get any peace?’ The voices in my head started roaring loudly, and I felt almost helpless to stop them.

In math I could barely concentrate. Amy finally asked Mr. Martin, “May Tiffany and I go see Mrs. Henry?”

It was the end of class, and he knew better than to argue with us on that, so he nodded, “Go ahead ladies, let me write you a pass before you leave.” A few moments later we headed down the hallway with a yellow pass in hand.

“Amy, why are we going to the office?” I asked.

“Because, you need to give that note to them, and tell them about earlier!”

I wanted to argue, but she was right. I just had lost all of my energy in the last couple hours. When we walked into the office the secretary automatically got a look in her eyes like, ‘What now?!?’ The district had already been sued by my parents, with Amy’s dad as the attorney… it made me seem like I had leprosy or something. “What can I do for you two?” One had the courage to ask.

“We need to see Mrs. Henry,” I reluctantly told the secretary.

“Just a minute, let me check and see if she’s available,” she told us. She turned and went back into her office and motioned for us to go in.

“Hi Tiffany, Amy, what can I do for you two today?” She asked me.

“Not much… I just needed to bring this note to you…” I hesitated before adding, “I guess I also need a copy of it to take home.” I was embarrassed and humiliated by all of this. It just wasn’t fair!

“I’m so sorry Tiffany, is there anything else?” She asked. We’d been through this routine enough that I knew nothing would happen about the note.

I started to shake my head, but Amy said, “Tiffany you need to tell her.”

“What?” Mrs. Henry asked politely.

“Well… on my way to choir someone, we’re not sure who, shoved me into a locker and I fell down.” I told her. I was so tired of this same routine!

“Who?”

“We don’t know,” Amy started, “Lindsey and I didn’t see them either. But I bet it’s the same people,” she said.

I just nodded.

“Are you okay Tiffany?” she asked me.

“I guess.” I told her.

“I’m sorry this happened today, I’ll look into it as much as I can Tiffany. Here let me take this and copy it for you and then you two can go to lunch, okay?” She told me politely.

As we began to leave the office, the copy in my backpack folded up into as many folds as I could angrily make it, Mrs. Henry said, “Tiffany, anytime anything else happens I want you to come immediately over here. I understand you’re tired of it, but I need you to help me keep you safe, alright?”

I just nodded as we walked out the door. I didn’t say anything as we walked down the hallway, just a couple minutes early to lunch. “You’re not mad at me are you Tiff?” Amy asked me.

“Why would you ask me that?” I paused, “Of course I’m not mad at you,” I told her.

“Well I know you didn’t want to go talk to her…”

“You were right, I needed to tell her… I just didn’t want to.” In a quieter voice I added, “Amy is this ever going to end?”

 

AS WE ATE at our lunch table a short while later I forced myself not to care about what had happened. It was going to happen… ‘people don’t like you, get over it,’ I told myself. With effort I pushed it from my mind and tried to have a good time talking to my friends. “So what are you doing this weekend?” Kyle asked me awkwardly.

‘Why is he asking me that?’ I asked myself. I answered though without a break, “I’m going with Amy and her parents up to their condo and we’re going skiing!” I smiled with that.

“Cool,” he told me. “I love skiing, but I think I actually like to snowboard more.”

“I think that looks kind of crazy,” I told him honestly.

“Well you know me…” he said with a smile.

I decided I’d see what he was doing, “So what are you doing this weekend?”

“I’m not sure… I was thinking about getting some friends together to go see a movie. But maybe I’ll do that the next weekend… that way maybe you,” there was kind of a stutter here, “and Amy might be able to go too?”

“That could be fun,” I told him awkwardly myself before we changed the subject.

As we left lunch that day for home-ec I was feeling relieved. That had been strange. To top off my worries about the conversation, “Tiffany I thought he was going to finally ask you out!” Amy whispered to me at our table in class.

“You must be mistaken,” I told her while thinking — ‘What would I have said?’

“I doubt it Tiff!” She giggled, “He’s cute too, you’re going to have a lot of jealous girls out there.” I just glared at her. I was so glad that Coach Holt started in class right then so she couldn’t continue to badger me about that. I had enough problems!

She didn’t have any other opportunities to ask me about it during school. In English we were given an assignment to write a two page book report on a non-fiction book due the last week before break. I was really beginning to get homework overload as I split off from Amy and went to band for the last period of the day. Luckily I was distracted when I got caught up in a discussion about shoes with Nikki and Ashley. The conversation was a lot of fun for the three of us, but hovering just at the edge of the group was Kyle. I just couldn’t escape that there seemed to be something happening there. I shook the thought out again and concentrated in band.

One kid, Josh, didn’t take his trumpet home the night before and so he got yelled at by Mrs. Remar — and assigned detention in front of the whole class. I was so glad I’d remembered my sax yesterday! “I expect better out of everyone in here. You all need to be practicing!”

By the time dance practice finished after school I felt like Mrs. Remar and Coach Holt must be trading notes. Practice. I couldn’t escape that word! At dance practice we’d continued working on the same routine, finally getting it up to three-quarters speed by the end of practice. We’d been told that we had to do better by tomorrow.

Dinner at home was something that I had to rush so I could fit a shower in before going to jazz rehearsal. I hated it when I showed Mom the new note, and hated the look that Dad got on his face when I mentioned that I’d been shoved into lockers again. Both were incredibly unhappy about it. I think they were actually more upset about it than I was. “Tiffany, the next time something like this happens I want you to call one of us.” Dad told me.

“But…” I started to say. I didn’t miss the fact that he didn’t add a conditional ‘if’ to his statement. He fully expected it to continue, and unfortunately so did I.

“No buts Tiffany, we need to take care of this. Next time you call,” I didn’t bother to argue with him.

It was kind of a relief when I got to jazz rehearsal and away from my parents. We were doing three pieces for the concert, including a version of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer that had a solo in it. It was a section that could be played on alto sax, trumpet, or trombone, three of us had it. “Tiffany why don’t you give it a try this time?” Mrs. Remar asked me.

I didn’t trust myself to speak, so I decided to try. She’d taught us some of the basics of how to solo in jazz, but I didn’t think I was all that great at it. I relaxed a little as I saw that there was a ‘suggested’ solo written in. It looked kind of hard, but I figured it had to be easier than making it up. All of the letters above the music sort of made sense, but not really. At the solo section I went ahead and started blowing through the notes. Where I thought something was kind of crazy, and too hard, I just tried to sort of play the notes, but make something up too.

“Tiffany,” she said at the end of the piece, “Not bad. Anyone else want to give it a try?” She asked.

“I’ll try Mrs. Remar,” I heard Kyle say behind me.

“Okay then, everyone start at letter E,” she told the group. She counted us off and Kyle got a shot at it.

“That was also pretty good Kyle. Do you both want to solo?”

Kyle said, “Sure!”

I just shrugged, which she took as a yes from me.

“Okay then, everyone get your pencils out… we’re going to repeat measures,” she got real specific on where we were repeating. “Tiffany you’ll go first, Kyle you’ll go second.” She looked at everyone and then said, “Okay let’s go through the whole song one more time and then we’ll move on. This time, Tiffany, please stand when we get there.”

I just looked at her. She was immune to my stare though, counting off before I could even take a breath. The second time through though I wasn’t quite as nervous, and it sounded much better, almost good. ‘If I practice this I think I can do it,’ I told myself. Before adding, ‘I’ll just do that in all of the leftover time when I’m not practicing for other things, and I’m bored…’

“Good job Tiffany,” she told me after rehearsal when my mom came to pick me up. I was still putting up my sax when I saw Mom pull Mrs. Remar off to the side. She was talking to her about something. ‘Probably something to do with earlier,’ I worried.

I watched Mrs. Remar nod about something and then she wrote down something on a piece of paper for Mom before she turned to come get me. On the way out Mom saw Kyle and said, “Hi Kyle, how are you doing?”

“What…?” He turned to identify the voice, “Oh hi Mrs. Jacobson!” he said politely. “I’m doing really well, thanks!” Kyle seemed nervous again. What was I going to do about that?

In the car a few moments later Mom asked casually, “Tiffany, so what’s the story with Kyle?”

“Huh?!?” I decided to play dumb, “What do you mean?”

“He was awfully nervous when he talked to me, and honestly he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of you.” She added.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Mommy.”

“Ri-i-ight.” She told me through an annoying smirk.

I felt my face flush into an embarrassing color, which she seemed to enjoy tremendously, so I turned towards the window and didn’t talk to her the rest of the trip home. ‘What am I going to do about this?’ I asked, the question played over and over in my head for the rest of the ride home.

At home I hurried through getting ready for bed while at the same time trying to make some headway on my algebra homework. It was already nine o’clock when I started it! I worked hard on it till ten, when Mom came in to check on me.

“Are you getting close sweetheart?”

“Slowly, but it’s going to take me another half hour,” I told her. I so wanted to go to bed. I was tired!

“I wish he wouldn’t give you so much homework,” she told me.

“Me too. Of course part of it is my own fault for being involved in everything,” I smiled weakly at her.

“Still, if this keeps up I’m going to talk to him about it.”

“Please Mom! I’m fine. Just let me get this done, okay?”

“Okay.” She walked out and returned a bit later with a cup of hot chocolate for me. I think she felt it was about all she could do for me though — she and Dad were both terrible at math. Neither of them had gone to college. I ended up being wrong on the time, it took me a full hour to get it done! I was so tired.

I walked into the bathroom we shared where Mom was busy getting ready for bed. “Done finally?” She asked with concern.

“Uh-huh, I’m going to bed now, goodnight,” I turned immediately around and headed for bed. She followed me and tucked me in.

As I slept that night I had some really strange dreams. I found I was dreaming of Kyle and going skiing with him snowboarding along with me. Later on that night I dreamt of us going to a movie together. It was just the two of us in the movie theater, and I found my hand was being held. I turned and smiled at him. As I turned to look at him his face turned to mine and approached…
I woke up startled! ‘Eeeeewwwwww!!!’ I thought to myself.

 

Chapter 21:

 
WHEN I WOKE up the next morning I was really confused… more so than normal. ‘I am a girl, right?’ I asked myself. ‘That’s definitely a yes!’ I replied silently.

‘So is it wrong to like boys?’

‘…girls are supposed to like boys… and if I’m a girl I guess that means I am supposed to like boys.’

I talked back and forth to myself the whole morning as I got ready. When Amy got there she gave me kind of a weird look. “Are you alright?” she asked me quietly in the back seat.

“Yeah… I just had a weird dream last night,” I told her.

She raised her eyebrow and looked suddenly interested. I shook my head and mouthed, ‘later,’ to her. I don’t think she wanted to wait, but she did behave and not ask anything more. Before long we were at the school and Melanie told us, “Have a good day girls,” as we opened our doors and got out. I hadn’t taken my saxophone home last night after jazz, it was pointless, and so we just started walking towards our normal spot waiting for the bell to ring.

“So what was this dream about?” Amy asked impatiently.

I looked around, “You can’t tell anyone about this!” I told her.

“I promise,” she said.

I believed her so I started, “Well… umm… I had a dream about Kyle last night…”

Her eyes lit up, “Really? What happened!?!” She asked far louder than I cared for. Thankfully we were still standing away from everyone.

“Well we ended up going to a movie together…” she motioned for me to go on, “and well we ended up holding hands…”

“That’s not all is it?” she asked with disappointment.

“Well no…”

“Did you make out?” She asked.

I just blushed.

“Wow, what a great dream Tiffany!”

“I guess… but isn’t it a little strange?”

“Tiff, you’re a girl, you’re supposed to dream about cute guys!” She saw something in my face, “You’re not worried about this are you?”

“Sort of… but not really… I think it just surprised me more than anything else.”

“Well what would you think if it actually happened?” She asked me. But I saw Lindsey and Ashley coming toward us and made a big show of waving at them hoping to give Amy a hint. Being the great friend she was she changed the subject immediately. As we all talked and waited for the bell to ring, I realized how cold it felt outside again today.

“It would be nice if they would let us wait inside, huh?” I jumped! Kyle was standing right behind me!

“Oh, hi Kyle,” I said once I recovered my voice.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Kyle told me.

“It’s okay Kyle, I was just a bit startled.”

“So how are you?” He asked me.

“I’m doing good… uh, how about yourself,” I answered. I was afraid I was blushing — there was no way he could know about my dream, but in that moment I was terrified that somehow there was something written on my face about it.

“Better if it was warmer,” he said. “By the way nice job last night, you sounded really cool with your solo!”

I did blush now, “Thanks, I think you did better though.”

All of us talked back and forth in our circle for the next few minutes until the bell rang. On the way to my first hour class with Amy and Kyle I heard someone walk by me and say, “Freak!”

Kyle, Amy, and I all looked around for whoever had said that, but we had no clue. I wasn’t even sure they had been talking to me. They both gave me a sympathetic look, but we didn’t say anything about it. I was surprised that anyone would try that with Kyle around. First hour was boring and I was suddenly presented with a lot of time to think quietly to myself.

‘What am I going to do about Kyle?’ I asked myself. ‘We agreed that we were just friend just a month ago… But, why am I dreaming about him now?’ I couldn’t answer that question. ‘He seems more interested now too… why?’ I asked myself. I knew there had to be a reason but I couldn’t pinpoint it. ‘Would there be anything that wrong about going on a date with him?’

‘Your parents will kill you.’ A part of my brain thought. ‘They told you no dating until you’re sixteen.’

‘Yeah like they’re going to really enforce that…’

‘Maybe they’re right though, I’m only twelve…’

The bell rang and woke me up from my thinking. My usual cluster of friends began moving through the hallway to science. “Hey faggot get lost!” I heard from somewhere near me, but couldn’t figure out where from. ‘Why now?’ I almost screamed at myself.

I looked over at Kyle and Amy and saw looks of pure anger. They were both incredibly mad about it, but once again we had no idea who it was. We were in a junction of the hallways when I heard a girl yell, “Stop stuffing your bra, freak!”

I was almost in tears at this point. The hallway was so crowded there was no way to know who was saying it. I felt a hand touch and grab my hand. I was almost scared for a second that it was Kyle’s hand, but it was Amy’s. I held onto her hand and we walked down the hallway. Kyle kept scanning the hallway trying to figure out who had said the things.

“I think the first one might have been Jared,” he said as we went into the classroom, “but I can’t be sure.” He seemed especially mad that he didn’t know.

“Well this started up again yesterday,” Amy said. “Tiffany, you really should go tell Mrs. Henry about this.”

“What good would that do?” I asked. She didn’t reply. Science was a trip to the library that day to research for our science projects.

David and Kyle sat at the end of the table with Amy, myself, Lindsey, and Ashley also spread about working on stuff. I don’t think Kyle and David spent much time talking about their projects. Instead they were trying to figure out who was behind all of this. They seemed to think it had to be Jared and Lucas, but they couldn’t figure out what to do. At one point David suggested they just go beat them up. It sounded good to me, but I didn’t want them getting in trouble, so I told them not to do anything stupid.

Between science and choir we didn’t hear any other taunts. Unfortunately I wondered if that was just because we weren’t walking our normal way since we were in the library. I didn’t say that though… I didn’t want to jinx it. Choir was a relaxing class while we worked on our Christmas concert music. We were singing several songs I really liked, and I especially worked hard on the one with the solo in it.

As we walked out of the class though, I tensed up. Amy noticed of course, saying, “Nothing happened last hour, maybe it was just a one-time thing.” One look at her face told me she didn’t believe it anymore than I did.

We were just outside the door to algebra when I heard, “Hey freak would you like to be a real woman? I’ll help you out!”

Amy and I hurried into class and sat down at our desks looking at each other. ‘How could I keep dealing with this?’

“Tiffany, I’m so sorry!” She told me a few minutes later when we were heading to lunch. She gave me a big hug. Kyle, David, Ashley, and Nikki had joined her in forming a human ring around me. I don’t know if Amy or Kyle had said something to them, or they just did it on their own.

I returned the hug and we stayed together as a group in line. Throughout lunch I forced myself to talk to my friends. Just before we got up to go away to our separate classes I watched Jared, Lucas, and Liza walk to the door. As they did so I began to look away, but felt myself halt as they all moved as one trio and glared at me. The amount of hate in their eyes, I didn’t even know what to say.

Kyle was sitting next to me, and as I looked away from them I found myself looking at him, “Those stupid…” he said out loud and then trailed off to where I couldn’t hear him. “It’s them,” he told me simply. “It has to be.”

I just nodded. I too was sure that it was the three of them behind everything, but I knew it had to be more. They were being smarter now, and I was sure that there had to have been at least two others involved in taunting me earlier. So far it had just been taunting, what if it became more? Was it inevitable that I wouldn’t be safe… ever?

 

BY THE END of the school day I had two more encounters with taunts that we couldn’t identify. They were good at hitting and running, I had to give them that. The worst part was that as far as any of my friends scaring off the taunting… none of them seemed to be intimidating the people doing it. It was like they had waited until a certain point in the year and were now waging an organized war against me. Maybe I was personalizing it too much… I didn’t know.

I forced myself to focus on dance practice after school. I couldn’t let them know they were getting to me, I promised myself that. My biggest fear was that there were girls on the squad involved with this. If that happened I didn’t know how I would deal with it. I didn’t think that there were though. I knew for certain though, that there were probably some girls that were only on the cheer squad that would like to see me humiliated.

At the end of practice when my Mom picked me up I was filled with emotions. The official count for the day was eight times. Eight times people had shouted stuff at me, with friends around me, and I had no firm idea of who it was. Eight times the terror gripped me, and now I had no idea of how I was going to make it through the next day.

I walked into the house, dropping off my stuff at the door where I left everything, and walked into my room, quietly closing the door behind me. Emily was sitting on top of my bed, next to my other stuffed animals. I quickly became a part of the zoo on the bed, surrounded by the animals that never judged me, with Emily surrounded in my arms. I had fought to hold the tears back all day, but enough was enough — I let them out.

I didn’t sit there long though before a knock on my door rudely interrupted my crying. I didn’t bother hiding it though, “Come-in” I sobbed at Mom.

She came in and hugged me, and I just got back to being the baby I felt like and continued to cry. After a while I managed to get a dam in front of my tear glands, and Mom felt it was safe to ask what was wrong. “Tiffany, what happened today?”

“It’s so stupid Mom!” I started. “It seems like every time I’m close to not having any more problems something else happens!”

“I know sweetie, I’m so sorry.” She said rocking me a little in her arms but waiting for me to continue.

“This morning I was walking to class with Kyle, Amy, and some others when someone yelled…” I told her about everything, “I’m sure it’s Jared, Lucas, and Liza… but even if I tell Mrs. Henry about it what can she possibly do?” I paused for a second and wiped my face with the sleeve of the sweater I had on. “I mean, I was walking with five other friends at one point — and NONE of us could tell who it was for certain!”

I didn’t say much for a long time. “What else is bothering you sweetie? Melanie said you had some sort of dream last night?”

‘OH MY GOD!!! She is not asking about this,’ I roared at myself. I blushed. “That was something else…”

She looked at me with a look that was way too curious for her own good. ‘I do not want to talk about this,’ I started to myself, ‘on the other hand maybe she can help…’ I squirmed for a few moments before deciding ‘what the heck?’

“You can’t laugh at me!” I started, still sniffling a bit.

“Okay…” She said timidly. She had no idea what she was getting into.

“Umm… I kind of had a strange dream last night.” I paused looking at her, “I was on a date… with a boy…”

“And?” She asked, she asked as a massive smirk formed on her face.

“Well we held hands in the movie theater for a bit.” I said, deciding that maybe that was enough for that.

“Aaaaannnd?” she prompted.

‘She’s way too good at reading me…’ I complained to myself. “Well… we sort of kissed…” I told her.

She controlled herself, not laughing, for that I was proud of her, but the smirk was not fair!

“Anything else?” She asked.

“No, that was it…”

“Who was it?” She asked.

“Someone… I couldn’t really tell who it was,” I lied to her. Surely I could get away with that one right?

“Uh-huh… Who is it that we have to worry about you with?” She asked.

“No one!” I told her… “I mean I’m not even sure about anything… I’m definitely not interested in dating yet…”

“Not to mention you’re not allowed to, you’re only twelve.” She reminded me.

Something about the way she said that made me stick my tongue out at her. “You know, you’re mean.”

I was relieved though, she had taken it way better than I had expected her to. “Tiffany, I don’t want you dating yet, but it’s not unusual for girls to start to be interested in boys at your age.” She reassured me. I smiled back at her. “But, I really don’t want you getting serious with anyone yet. And, you have to be careful.” She could have gone on further, but she didn’t then. I appreciated that.

“I will Mommy,” I told her in my sweet innocent little girls’ voice.

“Oh don’t go all innocent on me now,” she told me. For some bizarre reason she started tickling me then. She didn’t stop until I was laughing and smiling, and dying of a need to go to the bathroom!

“Stop already, I’ll be careful!” I pushed the hair that had gotten all messed up out of my eyes.

“Why don’t you take a shower real quick while I get dinner done, okay?” She suggested.

“Okay,” I said. She kissed me gently on the top of my head and left the room. Mom succeeded in helping me make it through that night without dwelling on the incidents from today too much. I worked for several hours on homework, one of those while on the phone with Amy.

“Tiffany?” Mom hollered at me about nine.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Don’t forget you have appointments with Dr. Reynolds and Dr. Wilmer tomorrow. I’m going to pick you up from school tomorrow morning around nine.”

“Can’t I just skip school all morning?” I asked.

“No sweetie, you miss enough classes for these appointments, you shouldn’t miss anymore than you have to.”

I knew that was that so I let it go. My homework was done, even the stuff for the classes I was skipping out on tomorrow, so I headed to bed via a stop at the bathroom. Dad stopped by my room as I was getting ready to turn off the lights. He had just gotten home from work, something had gone wrong with some of the equipment he was in charge of, and he’d put in a fourteen hour day because of it.

“Goodnight sweetie,” he told me as he gave me hug.

“Goodnight Daddy,” I told him. From there I climbed into bed and did my best to sleep. I alternated between thinking about everything bad today, to thinking about what it would really be like to date Kyle, or any other boy for that matter…

 

I DREADED STEPPING out of the car that morning. Things had been so bad yesterday, and I didn’t see any reason why it would have improved. To make matters even more uncomfortable, right after I got out of the car with Amy I saw Kyle and David. I felt myself turn a little red as I thought about what I had been thinking last night. Amy seemed to know what I was thinking because she gave me a wink and a smile as he walked up to us. “Hey guys,” Amy said to them.

“Hey,” they both replied at the same time. They walked with me over to the band room to leave my instrument. I’d barely touched it last night and I didn’t even know why I had bothered to take it home.

As we stood outside waiting for the bell to ring everyone was on edge. None of us really knew what was going on, but I think Kyle and David were both looking in the hopes of figuring out who was doing stuff. That did bring a thin smile to my face. At least I knew if they figured out who it was, I wouldn’t have to worry about getting the principal to do something about it. I was sure that the two of them would have a ‘talk’ with them. The bell rang and we actually made it into my first hour class without incident.

“Maybe they aren’t going to be stupid today?” Kyle suggested to Amy and I.

“I’m not going to knock it, but I’m also not going to hold my breath.” I replied.

They both just smiled at me hopefully. Class dragged on during first hour. Mom would be picking me up just after second period began, so there was a lot of anticipation I felt towards that. What would Dr. Wilmer say about my hormone results so far? I had noticed that my breasts seemed to be getting bigger, and I think that was part of what the one girl had yelled at me about yesterday. They still weren’t anything worth bragging about, but they were growing.

Then of course Dr. Reynolds… I was sure that she’d be worried about me after the last week… ‘It’s going to be a long morning,’ I thought to myself.

As the bell rang for second hour I crossed my fingers that I would be able to make it without anything else happening until the appointment. I had just made it to second hour science, and sat down when a voice came over the intercom saying, “Mr. Grainger would you please send Tiffany down to the office? She’s being picked up.”

“Have a good day Tiffany,” He told me politely as I stood to leave.

“Thanks,” I said to him. “See you all later,” I told my friends.

I hated walking through the hallway by myself. The tardy bell had rung though, so there weren’t many students around. I passed a couple of gang members, but they didn’t really concern me. We were on opposite planes of existence and it wasn’t worth their trouble to bother me. I breathed a sigh of relief as I walked safely into the office and saw Mom there waiting for me.

“You ready sweetie?” she asked.

I just nodded. I was never truly ready for this kind of stuff. I followed her out of the office and out to where the car was waiting. The drive to the hospital took a little over thirty minutes that day. Somehow we avoided too much traffic, and I was soon in the waiting room for their lab first. I wasn’t exactly thrilled as they stuck me with a fat needle and took four vials of blood. “Here sweetie hold your arm up like this and hold this down,” the nurse told me after she pulled it out.

There was something disturbing to me the way the blood would pour into the vials and look almost like a soft drink swirling around in the tube. She returned and asked, “which band-aid do you want sweetie?”

She showed me a plain one, one with Rugrats, one with Barney, and one with Barbie. I pointed towards the Barbie one with my nose, my hand still otherwise occupied, “Barbie!” I told her with a smile.

“How old are you sweetie,” she asked as she took the gauze that I was holding off and put the band-aid on.

“Twelve,” I told her.

She looked a little surprised at that as she apparently hadn’t looked at my chart. “Well sweetie thank you for being so cooperative. You’re small enough I was a little concerned you were going to put up a fight,” she smiled at me.

I was almost scared to ask, “How old did you think I was?”

She looked a little embarrassed, “Eight or nine,” she paused before adding, “now that I think about it though you act much more mature than that.”

“Thanks,” I replied to her for the compliment before I got up and walked away with Mom to the elevator. I pushed the familiar button to go to Dr. Reynolds’ office. Mom put her arm around my shoulder and squeezed me close to her.

“Hello Tiffany,” Dr. Reynolds secretary told me with a smile when we walked into her waiting area.

“Hi,” I told her simply while returning the smile. Mom signed me in while I took a seat. I noticed that there was a brand new Seventeen magazine that I hadn’t read yet for December, so I picked it up. I didn’t sit long though before Dr. Reynolds came out and said, “Tiffany? Ready to come back?”

“I guess,” I told her with not a whole lot of excitement into my voice. I had a feeling it was going to be a particularly brutal session today. I followed her into the office with Mom behind me.

Dr. Reynolds made some small talk with me for a bit before dismissing my mom and starting to talk about me. As I explained last week with Uncle Allen I broke down crying. “I felt so bad for Caleb, Stephanie, and Dad!” I told her. We spent a long while talking about it and her trying to keep me sane about it. That spilled over into the verbal and written attacks from this past week.

“Tiffany, there’s a saying I want you to remember, ‘no one can make you feel inferior except yourself.’ It’s hard I know, the words are harsh… and it really hurts when those kids are being stupid like that… but they’ll only succeed in making you feel like that if you let them.”

“I know that, but it still hurts,” I told her.

“Anything else happen this week?” She asked. She noticed that I was hesitating about something, “Tiffany, you can tell me anything you know. And you need to,” she insisted.

I sighed, “Well I had this dream the other night.” I paused for a second as she motioned for me to continue. I told her about the dream and she proceeded to ask me lots of follow-up questions on it.

“Tiffany, I think this is actually a good thing,” she started, “It tells me that you really are adjusted to being a girl, and I think it’s going to be only normal for you to take an interest in boys. Just be careful and don’t get involved too much with anyone. It’s going to be tough on both of you dealing with your differences.”

I sighed, “I hate to tell you this, but you sound like my mother, Doctor.”

“Well your mom’s smart, listen to her,” she ordered.

She had me sit outside for a few minutes while she talked to my Mom, and then it was time to run upstairs for my appointment with Dr. Wilmer. I said a quick, ‘bye’ to the secretary in Dr. Reynolds’ office before we entered the elevator and pushed another button. At Dr. Wilmer’s office Mom handed the secretary some paperwork they’d given us from the lab. She made a phone call down there and made sure that the blood work was getting done quickly.

I ended up sitting in that waiting room for about fifteen minutes before a nurse called me. She weighed me and took my height before leading me into a room with Mom right behind me. “Dr. Wilmer asked for me to go ahead and ask you to change into this gown,” she said handing me a pink hospital gown. I gave Mom a look and she waited outside for a few moments while I took off everything except my panties. When she returned she chattered for a bit while we waited.

By this point I was not exactly comfortable as I felt naked in the gown. I was also mentally tired from my session with Dr. Reynolds and just wanted this appointment over with too. “Good morning,” Dr. Wilmer said finally as he entered the room.

“Hi,” I said shyly. This was only my third or fourth time of seeing him.

“Sorry to keep you waiting Mrs. Jacobson,” he said to my mom, “I wanted to make sure I had the results from her blood tests before meeting with you.” He motioned to the chart that was in his hands.

“How does it look?” My mom asked.

“Well it looks pretty good actually. Tiffany’s blood work looks like that of an average girl her age. The estrogen levels in her blood are right on target for now.” He said with a smile. Dr. Wilmer took another look at the chart before saying, “Everything else looks good level wise too. How have you been feeling Tiffany?” He asked me.

“Fine I guess,” I told him. I hadn’t noticed anything that was probably from the hormones. Although Dr. Reynolds did tell me that there might be a connection between them and my dreams. I was personally fine with it if it was. Once I got past how weird it was, I actually really enjoyed thinking about it.

“Good. Have you been noticing any results development wise?” he asked Mom and myself.

I blushed automatically, “Some,” I told him.

“Well let me make sure everything looks right,” he told me. He had me pull the gown up to where he could see my chest. “Good, there is some development starting to go on here,” he told me. He gently pressed against my skin and I winced a little. “Sore?” He asked. He continued to examine me and make sure things looked normal.

“A little,” I told him. Part of it was also it felt strange to have someone touching me there. I was proud of how they were growing though. I was just hoping that maybe by January I would be at an AA cup size. Amy had moved onto a full A cup already, I was so jealous of her!

“That’s normal. If you find it’s bothering you too much take some Tylenol,” he said as he continued checking over me. He listened to my lungs like a normal doctor, as well as then checking my lower area thoroughly. That was really embarrassing. I made it through it though and he let me pull the gown back down.

“Well Mrs. Jacobson everything looks fine with Tiffany. She’s developing at a pretty normal pace. I don’t want to up the levels at all, she is only twelve. I think at this rate by the time she’s fifteen or so she should be indistinguishable from the other girls. Excepting the genitals of course,” nothing of the conversation seemed to faze him, but I certainly felt embarrassed multiple times.

He and Mom eventually left the room and I was able to get back into my clothes. As we walked out of the hospital she grabbed my hand and gently squeezed. I squeezed back and forced a smile towards her that looked real enough. “Do you want to get something to eat before I take you back to school?”

“Sure?” I replied. “There’s nothing wrong with missing more classes.” I told her that time with a genuine smile.

“Not too long though. Olive Garden?” She suggested.

“Okay!”

It was only about eleven, so it wasn’t too busy there — Mom and I were seated quickly. We just had soup and salad. Afterwards Mom asked me, “Are you ready to go back to school?”

I sighed, “No?”

She just smiled at me and said, “Come on, let’s get you back.”

I groaned and sat quietly for the drive back. ‘At least the day’s been going well,’ I thought to myself in her car. Back at school she walked into the office with me and signed me back in. Fifth period was just about half-way through as I walked into home-ec. I handed my note to Coach Holt and sat down in my usual seat next to Amy. It turned out we were working on another sewing project today, so I began helping her out, cutting pattern pieces as she pinned them to fabric.

“Everything go alright?” She asked me.

I nodded, “Yeah, though I really hate having to go to classes after time with Dr. Reynolds.”

“I can understand that…” she then caught me up on what I’d missed that morning. Not much, from what I could tell. Home-ec went by fairly quickly and we moved onto English. We were given time to read our non-fiction book for our book report that was going to be due soon. I had decided to use a book on filmmaking I’d found in the library. As I sat down to start reading it I enjoyed learning more and more about how real movies were made.

Our little film had done really well, but I was learning all sorts of things that would make things work even better. I ended up daydreaming through part of the class about what I could actually do with the right equipment. Real film cameras, on real dollies, real actors, all of that would make things so cool! As Nikki and Ashley walked next to me to band I couldn’t help but tell them about some of the things I was reading. We all agreed we’d love to do another project and make a film for real. Unfortunately coming up with the money for such a film wasn’t something that seemed possible. It sounded like it would be at least a hundred-thousand dollars to do anything at all, let alone something really, really good!

After band I walked down to the locker room and opened my locker, talking to Lindsey as I turned the knob, and then gasped at what I saw! I just froze for a moment, stopping in mid-sentence, when Lindsey looked over my shoulder and said, “GROSS!”

Amy had appeared right then too, “Who would leave their bloody tampon in her locker?!?”

A very used tampon was sitting atop the top that I wore each day for practice. By now all of the girls were gathering, and that was enough to clue in Coach as she walked in. “What’s going on ladies?” she asked.

“Someone left a tampon in Tiffany’s locker,” Kristina said. “And not one still in its wrapper,” she added.

Coach Holt took one look at it before grabbing a paper towel to grab it and throw it in the trash can. The look on her face was one that could kill. As she picked it up I noticed a note that had been left too. There had been just enough room through the diamond shape holes in the locker for whoever did it to slip the tampon in, and they had used the same holes to slip the note in. It was labeled, ‘Freak.’

I had been just about ready to pick it up, but Coach had seen it as well and grabbed it with her other hand. She threw the tampon away, and then unfurled the note. If she had looked angry before the note, she was furious now! “WHO DID THIS?” She bellowed.

None of the girls said anything. I was just coming to terms with the fact that someone had left something so disgusting in my locker. Why couldn’t I just get back to living normally?

“I want to know who did this Ladies, and I want to know it now!” Coach Holt said aloud.

Again, none of the girls said anything. Was it really one of the girls that were standing in the room? Or, was it someone else, someone from an earlier PE class. I don’t think any of us had really looked at the tampon to see how ‘fresh’ it was. I was looking at Coach past the locker, so I could see that it must have been wet when it was put in there — there was blood on my shirt that it had been sitting on.

Coach Holt got really quiet with her voice then, “Ladies, I hope this wasn’t any of you. If I discover any of you were involved with this I will kick you off the team! I will also make sure that you receive a strong sentence from the office. You all need to be respectful of your squad members. Any more incidents and I’m going to seriously reconsider us going to nationals next month.” She paused and let that sink in.

“I’m going to ask that if you know who did this that you tell me. I want to know, and I want it to stop.” She had said all of this in a voice barely above a whisper. She stared us down for several minutes and then walked over to my locker, picked up the blood stained top, and said, “Tiffany, come with me please.”

To the rest of the girls she said sternly, “Get dressed. I want you in the cafeteria in five minutes.”

I followed her without a word, but wasn’t surprised when we got into the coach’s office that Amy had followed me too. Coach started to say something to her about going away, but her mouth closed without making a sound as she closed the door. “Tiffany? Has a lot of stuff been going on again recently?” She asked me.

I just nodded. I still didn’t know what the note said. “Coach? What does the note say?” I asked.

She shook her head, “Tiffany, you really don’t want to read it…”

“I have to copy it and give my parents a copy anyway…” I told her reluctantly. Part of me really wanted to just let it pass me by. I didn’t want to know. Maybe it was just a harmless, if not disgusting, prank by another girl. But of course I’d seen enough of the lettering on the outside of the note, and the derogatory word written on it, to know it wasn’t a harmless prank.

Coach Holt looked at me for a long moment before giving me a grim nod. She had crumpled it up in her anger some, but smoothed it out a little as she handed it to me. I silently read it. The wording was as crude as anything I had been given yet. Most notably they said, “Since you can’t do this on your own, here’s a tampon you can borrow so that people think you’re a REAL girl.” It continued on a few sentences later, “If you don’t leave our school we’ll make sure that you have more than enough soaked in your own blood…” Well, actually it was worse than anything before. A lot worse.

“Tiffany,” Amy said next to me compassionately giving me a hug.

I wanted to lose it then, I wanted to cry my eyes out, I wanted nothing more than for my mommy to hold me and rock me back and forth — I wanted all of that at once. I barely even knew what a tampon was. A few months ago while I was at Ashley’s house she’d gotten one out of her bathroom and shown me. Amy had just started needing them a couple weeks ago. Of course you would occasionally see one someone had carelessly left out in the bathroom, but… I was getting more and more upset and wanting to cry. In case any of the girls involved were in the locker room I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction though.

I took a deep breath. A second later I took another. After thirty or so I was getting mad. ‘How dare they do this to me?!?’

“So I take it this has been happening elsewhere too?” Coach asked again compassionately. I think she could tell I was about to lose it.

I nodded, “Nothing happened for a long time, but the last couple weeks it’s been getting bad again.”

“Have you talked to Mrs. Henry?”

“Yes, but we don’t know who it is,” I told her.

Amy took the moment to say something, “We think it might be Jared, Lucas, and Liza… but we aren’t sure…”

“Plus there’s at least seven of them I think,” I added to her. “Just the other day they would start shouting things at me and then run away before we could tell who it was,” I paused, “they’ve been even doing it when I’ve got five or six friends around — including Kyle and David.” I shrugged, “I don’t know what to do anymore.” I was really shaking now.

Coach Holt I think decided that she’d investigated as much as she could then. The girls had all walked out of the locker room to the cafeteria as instructed. “Well Tiffany why don’t I go copy this for you and show your shirt to Mrs. Henry. Do you have another top you can wear for practice?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got another one Tiff,” Amy told me. “Can we get changed now?” she asked Coach.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “go ahead. Unless you want to skip practice today?”

I sniffled, my nose was running, “I’m not going to give whoever did it the satisfaction.”

Coach Holt gave me a look in her eyes that flickered back and forth between worry and understanding. She looked torn about asking me more, but instead just simply nodded at me.

Amy led me back to her locker and handed me a spare shirt she had, it was one of the shirts from camp this past summer, and I went with the rest of my clean clothes through the coach’s office into the bathroom there to change. I was mad at this point. No one had any right to do this to me! I almost let myself cry there but held back, ‘not till later,’ I promised myself.

By the time I returned out to the locker room I looked at Amy a little calmer. “Are you alright Tiff?” She asked me.

“No. You?” I asked her, noticing it looked like her eyes were red as well.

“No. It’s not right Tiff! You’re not hurting anyone. You’re probably the nicest girl in the school, you’re so much better than they are! They’re the freaks!” She started crying at that point and we gave each other a hug and held each other.

‘So much for not crying,’ I told myself a second later. The two of us cried on each other’s shoulders for a long time. I finally sniffed and said, “Look, we need to get out there. I don’t want to give those retards the satisfaction of knowing they’re getting to me.”

She wiped her eyes off with her hands, I did the same, and then we both splashed some water on our faces to clear off the redness. Together we walked out into the cafeteria about the same time that Coach Holt returned. Practice was brutal that day for most of the girls except Amy and me. Part of that was that the two of us knew the routines better than anyone else, part of it was because I think Coach Holt knew us well enough to know that if I was dealing with something, so was Amy. By the end of practice I was really looking forward to going home.

After she dismissed us from practice Amy and I walked back to the locker room together. Almost every girl told me they couldn’t believe someone would do that, and asked what the note said. I told them thanks for supporting me when they said the former, and the latter I answered with the shake of my head saying, “It’s not worth repeating.”

When I had changed back into my normal clothes I found that my mom was waiting there in the office with Coach, holding a copy of the note. I saw that she had a plastic grocery sack in her other hand that looked like it held my soiled shirt. She looked furious. Mom also looked like she was really hurt about it all. “No one seems to be putting a stop to this,” Mom was telling Coach. “They say they can’t do anything…”

“Maybe it’s time for another meeting with the principal?” Coach suggested helpfully.

“For what good that will do…” Mom said bitterly. She saw me at that point and tried to smile, but it didn’t work too well. “Hi sweetie,” she told me.

I walked over to her and got the hug I so desperately needed. “Hi,” I told her softly.

She kissed the top of my head and said, “Come on, let’s go home.” She put a hand on my back and led me out.

“Have a better evening Tiffany,” Coach Holt said behind me. I turned and waved politely before walking out with Amy right next to me too.

“Your mom is waiting in the car outside Amy,” Mom told her.

“Okay,” was about all Amy was up to saying. She wasn’t happy either. Outside I noticed it felt kind of cold and warm at the same time. Thick clouds had rolled in during practice which, coupled with the late season, made it almost pitch black outside. Mom and Melanie were parked next to each other in the parking lot. Mom unlocked my door and then talked to Melanie for a second through her rolled down window.

Melanie didn’t look real happy either with all of that. She actually got out of her car, leaving Amy in it with it running, and came by my window which I rolled down. “Tiffany I’m so sorry,” she said while leaning in and giving me a hug.

“S’okay, not your fault,” I told her. She said a few other things to me that just didn’t even register, but at least she showed me that she cared. Amy made a motion with her hand to her ear for me to call her later, I just nodded.

The drive home was silent. Mom was mad about everything, but I think she was also worried. Though I hated it when she said it, I was her baby. As her only child I was her whole world — the idea of something happening to me scared her. That this particular thing was disgusting and nasty was a whole other situation. I didn’t know what to think or do about it. I felt powerless.

As we pulled into the driveway I asked, “Do you mind if I take a shower before dinner tonight?”

“Go ahead sweetheart,” she told me. She had a forced smile on her face that looked all too familiar from Coach Holt’s face earlier.

“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t bother to try.

I looked in my pajama drawer for the most comfortable pair of pajamas I could find. I decided on a pair of comfy purple sweat pants and a matching sweatshirt. I grabbed a pair of panties and jumped into the shower. As I did so I thought maybe I should have done a bath instead, but it was too late then. Instead I kept the water as hot as I could stand, and just stood there letting the water roll through my hair for a while. Several minutes passed before I turned and faced directly at the shower head and let it massage my facial muscles.

‘I can’t do this forever,’ I told myself. ‘I shouldn’t have to put up with this!’

‘What harm happened today though?’ That thought again. ‘It was gross, but it wasn’t like it was the first time I’ve seen it…’ There was a part of me that was trying to soothe the panic that raged inside of me. This was the second threat I’d received in the last couple weeks. ‘Is someone going to try and make good on it?’ That was the worst part. I had so many good friends that I could really look past the insults. They hurt, no doubt about it… but physical harm would be a completely different thing.

I don’t know by the clock how long I stood there, but eventually a part of my brain registered that the water had grown considerably cooler. I hadn’t washed anything with soap at all, so I quickly used shampoo on my hair and used some body soap on my body. By the time I finished the water was downright cold! Normally I might have made some sort of effort with my hair, or anything appearance wise, but I just pulled on my panties, put on the sweatpants, the sweatshirt, and called it all done. My hair was wet and not very dignified looking as I walked out to the kitchen.

Normally my mom would have made a comment like, ‘I thought you would never get out of there,’ to me… but not tonight. I think she had sensed my need for comfort food, so dinner tonight was grilled cheese and soup. Dad had the same gloomy look on his face as Mom, so I was sure that they had already talked about what had happened. The shirt still stood inside the bag over on the counter with the folded up copy of the note next to it. I wasn’t very hungry, only eating half of the sandwich and a quarter of the soup before I asked, “Do you mind if I go practice now?”

Mom looked thoughtfully at me before nodding. I went out to the living room where I’d left my saxophone and took it to my bedroom. I hated having anyone hear me practice, but since that was impossible in the house I settled for not having them watch me. I pulled out the large stack of music I was supposed to be practicing. My day hadn’t been bad until after school at least. I lost myself in the music for a long time. I looked up and saw it was already eight-thirty by the time I stopped. I felt a bit better by then though.

As I cleaned my saxophone I looked at it wistfully wishing for a new one. This one wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t as nice of one as I would like. Some of the more expensive ones had an extra key on them. Some of them were also prettier colors and one color all the way through the keys and the body — I liked how they looked. I still cleaned this one well though, since my parents had sacrificed a lot to buy it. We were in better shape now thanks to the money from the film, but I didn’t think they could be just going and buying me whatever. They hadn’t mentioned anything to me about costs for Dr. Reynolds or Dr. Wilmer, but I was sure that wasn’t cheap.

My parents had done everything I’d ever needed. They’d put up with everything without thinking I was a ‘freak,’ unlike certain other family members and people in my school. Not once had they expressed any anger at me about it. I couldn’t help but feel thankful for that. My thoughts finally returned to the present. I finished putting it into the case then walked out to the living room with it so I wouldn’t forget it tomorrow. Mom and Dad were in there sitting talking on the couch. I put the sax down and decided to go hop in my dad’s lap.

“You have gotten a little big for this you know,” he told me with a smile.

“I don’t care,” I told him. “I’m not that big,” I added afterwards while looking up at his face.

He smiled at me and gave me a hug. “So you’re going with Amy and her parents to go skiing tomorrow night?”

I let my jaw drop. With everything that had happened tonight I’d forgotten all about it. “Oh yeah…” I said. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten. Well maybe I could.

“Well I’m sure you’ll have a really good time up there,” he told me. I just nodded as he began rocking me back and forth a bit in his arms like when I’d been little.

Mom spoke up for the first time, “Your dad and I have been talking… we think it would be a really good idea for us to go in and talk to Mrs. Henry with you and Greg there.”

“Is he even free to come in with us?” I asked.

“I talked to him a little bit ago and he said he could make it if we let him know when.” Dad said. “He took tomorrow off from clients to get ready to go up to the condo.”

“Oh, good,” I said simply. Reality was beginning to set in again, and I was kind of going into a fog.

“Are you okay sweetie?” Dad asked. Mom looked at the two of us from her spot on the couch.

“Okay I guess.” I started to lie, but then added, “I have to say this all really sucks.”

“Yes it does,” he said. “Though I would prefer it if you wouldn’t say that word,” he added gently.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Do we need to get you into Dr. Reynolds again next week instead of just in two weeks?” he asked with concern in his voice.

I shook my head. It wouldn’t really do any good to go in any sooner.

“Let us know if you change your mind,” Mom added.

“ ’kay,” I told her.

I just sat there for a bit in his arms. I felt safe and protected there, something that was going away fast at school. There had been a solid month where things had been good… normal even! It just couldn’t last. After a while I looked at the clock and saw it was five till nine and remembered I had promised to call Amy. As if by magic the phone rang. It was just within Mom’s reach, so she picked it up.

“Hello?” she asked while listening to the other side of the phone.

“Just a minute Amy, I’ll get her over here.” Mom told her. She held the phone down and stated the obvious, “It’s Amy…”

I didn’t really want to get up, I was too comfy, but I had broken my promise to call her so I reluctantly got up. I just sat on the carpet in front of Mom and started talking to her.

“Hey Amy, I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” I started off.

“It’s okay Tiff, I don’t blame you.” She said reassuringly, “Today sucked,” she added.

“Yeah it did,” I told her.

“You ready for tomorrow at least?” Amy asked me.

“Sort of… I haven’t packed yet,” I paused, “I’d honestly forgotten all about it until my dad reminded me a few minutes ago.”

“Well you had a lot on your mind,” she told me. “Don’t forget your swimsuit,” she told me switching the subject.

“Okay… anything else I need to bring along with me?”

“Nothing more than last time. I’m really looking forward to going there this weekend! It’s supposed to snow a foot or more there tonight, so there’ll be a lot of fresh powder up there.”

“Cool,” I told her. I was feeling a little more excited, all the more by the prospect of not having to think about my problems at home this weekend. Just as I was beginning to really think about it I felt a brush start moving through my still wet hair. It felt really good, and I missed the next thing that Amy said.

“Tiffany? Are you still there?”

“Yeah, sorry… Mom just started brushing my hair — it feels good,” I said with a smile while turning my head to thank her.

“So are you going to be able to just bring your stuff out to the car tomorrow morning when we pick you up for school?”

“Yeah, I can do that. How cold do you think it’ll be up there?”

“Daddy said it was going to be pretty cold Saturday. Much colder than when we were up there last time.”

“Okay… well Amy I think I have some homework left to get done — since I haven’t done anything on it. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah, I haven’t gotten anything done yet either. See you tomorrow,” She said. I could sense the smile on the other side of the phone. I handed the phone to Mom who had to stop with the brush for a second while she hung it up.

“Thanks,” I told her as I allowed myself to purr a little while she continued.

I was disappointed when she stopped a few minutes later, “Okay time to get that homework done,” she told me.

I gave her a frown but got my homework out and began working on it in the living room on the coffee table. Thankfully there wasn’t a whole lot. We were having a quiz in math tomorrow, so Mr. Martin had been nice enough to not give us homework tonight. That left just a short English assignment, and a quick social studies assignment, both of which I finished in twenty minutes.

‘I still have to pack,’ I told myself a few moments after I got the homework put back with my backpack. The nice thing was that by the time I got to my room I saw my mom already had my small purple duffle bag set out for me, and had set my ski pants on top of it. I picked out a couple sweatshirts with some lighter shirts to layer underneath for the daytime. I debated about pajamas and decided on a set of pink flannel pajamas. I didn’t take a long time to pack, but by the time I was ready for bed it was already almost ten.

I told my parents ‘good night,’ and then went to my bedroom. My mom followed though. She tucked me in, kissed me goodnight on the forehead, and turned off my light before closing my door. The day had been awful, yet another bad day in the week that had not been good. I could only hope that Friday would be better. Fortunately I was tired enough that even my worries about the next day couldn’t keep me awake.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 22:

 
THE NEXT MORNING seemed really chaotic as I tried to get ready to leave. Mom had left me a ‘don’t forget,’ note on the bathroom mirror. Things like my pillow, stuffed animal, face stuff, etc. It was followed up by my dad hovering and making sure I’d already done the twenty things I’d already done. By the time Amy’s mom pulled up I was so ready to get my stuff in their car and get out of there I couldn’t stand it!

It was then that I realized I’d missed something overnight… Snow! I smiled as soon as I saw the skiff of it sitting outside. There wasn’t even enough to cover the rocks in our front yard, but it was still there! That also meant that I had to be more careful as I carried my stuff out to her car that morning. Twice I almost fell when I slipped on a patch of black ice beneath the snow.

“Good morning Tiffany,” Amy’s mom said to me as she got out of the car and helped me carry some of my load. I kept my school backpack in the seat with me and everything else was put in the back of her car.

“Hey,” Amy said to me. “It snowed!” She said excitedly to me as I sat down next to her.

“Uh-huh!” I agreed with her.

“Now if only we could get enough sometime soon to cancel school for a day or two!”

“It’s going to have to do more than this though,” I said doubtfully. We didn’t get a snow day last year. I really wanted to have one though… anytime you could miss school was a good thing.

“At least there should be a lot more than this up at the resort tomorrow!” Amy was excited — I could tell.

I nodded. By the time we got to school the two of us were pretty wound up. As soon as we walked up to the building though, I found myself losing that quickly. Amy grabbed my hand and squeezed it as we walked in to drop off my sax. We were late enough to school that we just came out of the band room as the bell rang to go to first hour. All through the hallway I dreaded a repeat of recent events… but nothing happened.

During first hour we were able to talk as we worked on a crossword puzzle. “I’m so jealous of you two,” Kyle said.

“Yeah, you should take us up there sometime,” Lindsey said.

“We’ll see, my parents might be up for that sometime,” Amy said.

“That would be a lot of fun,” I agreed.

About five minutes before the bell I heard the office page Mr. Randolf. “Mr. Randolf, would you please send Tiffany down to the office?”

“She’s on her way,” he told the voice and he nodded at me to go.

It was a nerve racking walk to the office. I knew that this was going to be a meeting with my parents, Amy’s dad, Mrs. Henry, and me. Even though Mrs. Henry had been a much better principal so far than Mrs. Hinther had been, I still didn’t fully trust her. I could understand that it was difficult to figure out who was doing — and prove it, but still…

“Hey sweetie,” Mom told me as I walked into the office.

I went up and gave her and my dad a hug before gluing myself in between them. Amy’s dad came in a few minutes later. After he came we were led into the all too familiar conference room. Mrs. Henry was the one who led us in, saying, “If you’ll be patient for just a few more minutes I’ve been asked to have one of the school’s attorneys here for this meeting.”

Greg answered for us, “That’s fine; we can understand the districts’ caution.”

Mom and Dad took seats on either side of me, with Greg on the other end of mom, closer to Mrs. Henry. We sat for a few minutes before Mom quietly asked me if I’d remembered some things for the trip. I of course had remembered everything; she just was being a mother. When the school’s attorney came through the door into the conference room he said, “Hi, sorry I’m late,” as he took a seat next to Mrs. Henry. The school resource officer also came in and took a seat next to him.

“Okay, let’s go ahead and get this meeting started,” Mrs. Henry said. She began by introducing everyone since we didn’t know the school’s attorney, and he didn’t know us. It was a different one from who we had dealt with a few months ago. Both the school district and Greg brought out tape recorders to record the meeting. “I understand that you have some concerns Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson about some recent events here at school.”

“That’s correct Mrs. Henry,” my mom said. “We’re especially concerned about the recent threats she has been receiving, and the increase in taunting. We want to know what the school is going to do to help insure those students are dealt with.”

“Could you list the specific incidents?” The school’s attorney asked.

“Yes we can,” Greg started, “There have been numerous notes left…” he detailed every note that had been left and presented both parties with our copies as he mentioned them. “Most recently yesterday Tiffany opened her gym locker and discovered a girl had left a used tampon on top of her clothing, along with this threatening note.”

“We recognize that these are serious incidents, and the administration is investigating,” the attorney said.

“That’s nice, but how long is this going to take?” My mom asked, clearly irritated.

“Well, we unfortunately have no proof that we can use against any students,” Mrs. Henry said. “No one has seen anyone do these things, or been able to figure out who is behind it.”

“We’ve told you at least three of the students who are involved,” Dad said, “what more do you need?”

“It’s all hearsay at the moment,” the attorney said. “We can’t do anything without someone observing it happening.”

The two sides argued back and forth for a good thirty minutes. A few times Greg calmed my mom down in an attempt to keep things from getting out of control. She was really upset. He wasn’t real thrilled either though, saying, “So what you’re saying is that it’s probably going to be a case of Tiffany being physically harmed before you’re going to be able to do anything?”

The school officials just stared blankly at us in reply.

“If that’s the case you can plan on a much greater lawsuit being placed against the district when it does.” Greg told them.

“Mr. Hancock, how can you reasonably expect us to do anything more?” Mrs. Henry asked, seriously flabbergasted and not knowing what to do.

The schools’ attorney made a stop motion to her. “The district will do all in its power to protect Tiffany, perhaps she should transfer to the other junior high for her own safety?”

My parents just about lost it at that point, but Mr. Hancock made the same motion to my parents that the districts’ attorney had made to Mrs. Henry. “Obviously that is unacceptable. Tiffany is well adjusted here with a lot of close friends. She is heavily involved with band, choir, and the dance squad. If she weren’t in that situation we might be able to agree with that — but in the situation we are currently in, we find that unacceptable.”

The two sides argued for a while longer. I just wanted to cry, this wasn’t fair. Finally about twenty minutes later they conceded to call in the students we believed were involved, and to check their handwriting against the samples that we had of the notes. ‘It was the best they could do,’ they said.

My parents took what they could get there, and I named the names of the students I thought were probably involved. I did understand that it was hard for them to figure out for certain whom it was, but I wanted them to do something! They also said they would speak to teachers again reminding them to be out in the hallways watching out for me. We all stood up at the end of the meeting and my parents took the time to give me a hug and say, “Have fun this weekend,” to me.

I said thanks and then took the pass from Mrs. Henry to go back to class. It was already almost fourth period so I hurried to the last three minutes of choir so that I could walk with my friends to English. Amy saw me and let me in next to her on the riser — they were just finishing singing one of the songs for the Christmas Concert. I sang the last verse with them and then the bell rang.

“Have a good weekend!” Ms. Beecher told us.

“What happened?” Amy asked me quietly as we walked to math.

“Nothing really… they said they couldn’t prove which students were behind it.”

“That sucks,” she told me.

“Yeah it does… at one point they basically said they couldn’t do anything unless I got hurt physically again.”

“You’re kidding? What did my dad say about that?”

“He wasn’t happy…” I said, “Basically their response was that maybe I should go to the other junior high, your dad and my parents said that was unacceptable.”

“So did anything good happen out of it?” She asked worriedly.

“I don’t really think so. They said they’d call in Jared, Lucas, and Liza to talk to them — and that they’d compare their handwriting to the notes… but I don’t think anything is going to happen.”

“That sucks Tiffany, I’m sorry.” She told me. We both just silently walked to algebra from there. I was grateful at least that nothing else happened in that walk. Our test in that class was a lot easier than I’d hoped for, and I finished about twenty minutes early. I pulled out some other homework and worked on it until Amy finished. The two of us passed notes silently back and forth till the end of the class.

Though I was incredibly nervous the rest of the day, I was relieved that nothing else major happened. In home-ec Coach Holton quietly asked me, “How are you doing today?”

“Okay, I guess,” I told her.

She gave me a hug and said, “Hang in there Tiff, you’re a great girl and things’ll work out.” I just smiled at her, that was all I could do, and she added, “Oh, and before I forget, your mom dropped off the check for your trip today.”

“I’m glad she did that… I forgot about it last night,” I told her truthfully.

“Just make sure you give her a hug and say thank you when you see her tonight,” she told me.

“Well it’ll have to be Sunday actually, I won’t see them again until then.”

“What are you up to till then?” She asked with curiosity. Coach Holt was an awesome teacher, and she genuinely took an interest in me — and every student, something that I appreciated. I found myself telling her about the trip with Amy’s family up to go skiing. It was a fairly low-key class that day, so she ended up chatting with Amy and me during most of the class period.

“I practically live at her house sometimes,” I told her.

“Well I live at yours some of the time too,” Amy told her. “But I don’t have a room at your house like you do at mine,” she conceded.

Talking with Coach helped out with my nerves actually. After her class I found the rest of the day to be surprisingly better. By the time I got to band I was getting excited about leaving for the resort. Mrs. Remar had us run straight through our music, all three pieces, before having us put up early that day. I was glad that I wasn’t going to miss anything when I was suddenly called to the office about thirty minutes before school let out.

I found Melanie waiting in the office, and Amy came in right behind me. “You’re picking us up early?” Amy asked excitedly.

“Yes, we decided thirty minutes wouldn’t hurt either of you in your classes, and that way we can be up to the condo before dinnertime.”

We both echoed our thanks and followed her out to her car.

“Well let’s go home and meet up with your dad,” Amy’s mom told her as she let us in the car.

The drive to their house was quick, Amy and I were beginning to get more and more hyper as she drove. At their house we quickly loaded up the last couple things, used the bathroom, and took off. We were on our way up to the resort before school would have even been out! That helped cheer me up — something I’d needed after the morning.

“So what are we going to do first?” I asked Amy in the backseat.

“Well Mom and Dad want to stop by a ski shop in town on our way up to the condo. Then I think we’re going to get dinner down there somewhere too before heading up for the night.”

“Okay, cool.”

The topic switched back and forth to all sorts of things on the way up. Eventually the snow began to really pile up as we got into the town below the resort. “I can’t believe how much snow is down here already,” Amy’s mom said to her dad.

“Skiing should be really good tomorrow,” he replied.

“Yeah!” Amy said from next to me.

In town they pulled up to a sporting goods store that had been there for a long time. Whenever my parents and I occasionally drove up this direction we stopped there for my dad to look around. There were always lots of cool things he liked looking at, and fun toys that I would find too. Located on the main street in town, it had a quaint looking wooden and brick front to the store. From what my parents had told me, I think it had been open when they were kids. Her dad parallel parked the car along the street, and we went out Amy’s door since it opened to the sidewalk.

“Brrrrrr!” I said as soon as the door opened.

“It’s definitely colder here!” Amy agreed. The two of us quickly shuffled into the warm store, a bell clanged as the door shut behind us.

“I’m glad I brought my heavy coat,” I told Amy.

“Me too,” she agreed. The door dinged behind us as her parents came in. We followed them to the ski section.

“I think my skis are going to be fine for another season,” Amy’s dad said to her mom.

“I think mine will be too,” she replied.

“That just means we need to get new pairs for the girls,” he said.

My brain came to a screeching halt… ‘For the girls?’ They were going to buy a set for me? Skis were expensive! Not that that had stopped them in the past from spending money on me… but really?

Amy’s mom registered the thoughts on my face, “You didn’t think we were going to come in here and buy a pair of skis for Amy and not for you, did you?” she asked with a smile on her face.

“You really don’t have to…” I started to object.

“Yes we do Tiffany. I just talked to you about why last weekend. It’s fine,” she said with a smile.

“Thanks,” I managed to stutter out.

“Okay then, pick a set you like,” she told us both with smiles. She followed me to help me pick out a pair while Amy’s dad followed her. She showed me how to judge them by my height, recommending that I might want to go a little bit longer since I would probably grow some in the next few months. I found a pair of pink skis that seemed absolutely perfect for me! They were K2’s and featured some patterns with purple and white mixed in. ‘They’re cute,’ I thought.

“How about these?” I asked Melanie.

“They look cute Tiffany. I think they’ll work fine, let’s see if we can get you a pair of boots to go with them.” She walked over to the boots with me, carrying the set of skis I’d picked out.

Amy had somehow already managed to beat me over there. She saw the skis, “Those are great Tiffany!” She told me enthusiastically. “I just saw the perfect boots to go with them!” She grabbed me and showed me a pair of boots that were mostly grey color with a pink upper section, and purple latches. They did match the skis perfectly.

“Wow I like them!” I told her. We asked the salesman that was helping Amy already to get a pair in my size.

“How do they fit?” Melanie asked me.

“Pretty good,” I hesitated, “but they might be a little big.” I added.

The salesman heard me and had me bend a bit and walk around before saying they’d probably be good for me for the year since I was growing. “Okay, now that we have those let’s get you a set of bindings,” her mom led me to yet another section with Amy not far behind me. She’d had to go for a little bit bigger boot and that took a couple minutes. We found a perfect set that matched up with the skis, again pink and purple.

“Are you satisfied?” The salesman asked as he came up behind us.

“Yes, I think these will work fine for her,” Melanie told the salesman. “How long will it take you to do the setup on them?”

“Well…” he thought for a second, “give me thirty minutes?”

“Sounds good,” she said as she helped him put the skis on the counter that ran along the side of the store.

“Here,” Amy’s dad said as he brought the setup Amy had chosen and set it on the counter too. “Okay, let’s pick out some new ski pants and jackets,” he told Amy and me.

I was in shock that they were spending this much on me. The skis and boots alone had come to well over five-hundred dollars for me alone. “We forgot poles!” Amy told her parents as we walked over to the clothing section. That was quickly fixed, Amy and I picked out the same poles that were mainly white with some purple and pink designs going up the pole. We just sat that stuff on the counter before going back to the clothing section.

“Tiffany, we should get matching jackets and pants!” Amy told me excitedly. I had been with her mom so I hadn’t realized just how hyper she had gotten. I really didn’t notice it much though since I was pretty giddy myself. We went through the couple racks of jackets and pants in our sizes before deciding on a set that matched. The pants were a light pink with a couple of white stripes on the front on either side of the legs. We had picked out a pair of white jackets to go with them, but her mom pointed out they’d be impossible to keep clean, so we found a pair of jackets that were mainly in the same color pink, with a section along the inside of the arms, and down the sides, that were in a darker pink.

All-in-all we easily killed the thirty minutes trying on clothes before showing her dad the final product, “You two look great,” he told us.

“Definitely two cute girls,” her mom added while giving us both a quick hug.

I smiled. When I was with them and Amy like this, it felt like we were a family, and more importantly that I had a sister that I’d always wanted. There were a few more things thrown on the pile like gloves. We made a quick check to make sure the boots fit into the bindings alright, and that the bindings were set to the right tension for us, before Amy’s dad brought the checkbook out and paid for everything.

I didn’t even want to imagine that total, so I purposely looked away at Amy to try and keep myself from feeling bad. Her parents carried the bags of clothing and jackets out while we carried our skis. “Thank you!” I told both of them with a hug once I’d put them next to their car.

“You’re very welcome Tiffany,” they both told me. Her dad strapped the skis on their rooftop ski rack and then led us down the street to a restaurant to eat dinner. The temperature outside was freezing, but I was feeling pretty warm from all of my excitement. It wasn’t a long walk though to a Mexican restaurant that was on the Main Street.

Dinner was good. Amy and I split a combination plate that had a chile relleno, a taco, a couple of enchiladas, and some beans and rice. It was good, but I was glad we had split the plate since I was barely able to finish my half. Her parents talked with us quite a bit during dinner, and I learned they were just as excited to be up there as we were. Her dad had grown up skiing a lot when he was a kid. He even worked as a ski instructor during the weekends during his last year in high school. That had slowed down when he’d gone to an Ivy League school out east, where he’d met her mom, but even then he tried to make trips up to New York as often as he could.

“It wasn’t really a good substitute, but it was something,” he told me as we stood up to go.

“Okay, let’s go to the condo,” Melanie said and led us back down the street to our car.

Amy and I walked silently behind her parents, and the ride up to the condo was quiet.

“You awake back there?” her mom asked at one point.

“Sort of…” was my quiet response.

Amy actually was really close to sleeping, but she said “Yeah, I’m awake too.”

“Why don’t you two go ahead and throw on your pajamas when we get inside, and then I’ll make some hot chocolate for all of us before you go to bed.”

“Okay,” we both responded sleepily.

As soon as we pulled into the driveway in front of their condo we opened our doors and began grabbing bags. I’d brought a backpack and a small suitcase that I pulled behind me on its wheels. Amy’s dad unlocked the front door and I immediately realized that it was cold inside! “Brrr…” Amy said behind me.

“Yeah, it’s cold in here honey,” Melanie said to her husband.

“Let me see what the thermostat is set at,” he said as he came in with arms full of stuff. He walked over to a box on the wall next to the kitchen and said, “I guess I forgot to set this back higher when I came here to check on things last month,” he said apologetically. “I’ve set it up to seventy though, and it should warm up soon enough. Until then I’ll get a fire going,” he said to answer the glare coming from his wife.

“Come on Tiff,” Amy said to me, “Let’s go take our stuff upstairs and switch into pajamas…” and after a second she added, “and a couple of sweatshirts each!” That occasioned a hurt glance from her dad, but she just smiled.

Upstairs I felt memories well up in the back of my eyes. This was the place where I’d first really felt like I had a real friend… it was also the first place I’d ever had my hair done into pigtails… I couldn’t believe I was back here, and how far I’d come since I’d been here last. Amy and her parents had been up a couple times over the summer, but I’d been busy with my parents on all of those occasions. Her parents also came up a couple more times when Amy was at my house for some alone time away from her… or the girls… as they tended to say now.

“Hey Tiffany,” I heard at the same time as I felt a tap on my shoulder, “you awake?” Amy asked me.

“Yeah, it’s just… this is where it started,” I told her honestly.

She gave me a hug and said, “I understand. Come on though, let’s get dressed, it’s freezing up here!” Amy gave me a smile that always helped no matter what I was feeling. In this case I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling, but it still helped. I put on the pajamas I’d brought with me quickly in the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror really quick and saw my hair was a total mess. When we had gotten in the car I had thrown it into a ponytail…. But it had since become a hideous mess, so I just pulled out the scrunchie and fluffed it a little while planning on grabbing my hairbrush out in our room.

After I used the bathroom I headed out to her room to find her looking at some of the dolls she had sitting on a shelf. I sensed she was having a memory trip of her own as she smiled at me. “Ready?” she asked.

“Hopefully your dad has a fire going,” I chattered my teeth as I spoke to her. She grabbed my hand and the two of us skipped down the stairs. Her dad stood over a small but growing fire as we came down. Amy went to a closet and grabbed a couple blankets and the two of us huddled next to each other in front of the fireplace. I heard her dad say, ‘we’re lucky we came up here this weekend, if we hadn’t the pipes might have frozen…’

“Amy did you know your parents were going to buy all of this stuff for me today?” I asked her quietly.

She shook her head, “I mean, I kind of thought they might, but I was pretty surprised when we started shopping today.” She paused, “I guess you really are my sister now aren’t you,” she said with a smile. My arm was around her shoulder underneath the blanket and I gave her a quick hug.

We just sat there silently for a while watching the flames of the growing fire. We could hear the heater working to warm up the condo. We could feel it get warmer, as we savored the hot chocolate her mom brought us — it was so peaceful. It was so nice to be away from school. Her parents had been moving around the condo trying to get things put away and organized a bit before they came and sat down on a couch behind us.

“Why don’t you two come sit next to us?” Melanie asked. I looked at Amy who shrugged and we got up and sat in between her parents. I sat next to her mom who began stroking my hair after a bit. I must have eventually drifted off to sleep because the next thing I knew was I was being carried upstairs. Melanie was actually carrying me, to my surprise, and I heard her softly say to her husband, “Tiffany’s actually still light enough I can do this without throwing my back out. I can’t believe they both fell asleep…” I heard her say before she quietly placed me in the bottom bunk bed and tucked me. I feigned being asleep the whole time; it felt so good to be carried.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 23:

 
WE WOKE UP, got dressed in our new ski clothes, ate breakfast, and hit the slopes as soon as the ski lifts opened the next morning. Amy and I both started off with some easier trails before working progressively harder trails. “Do you think you’re ready for something harder?” She asked me as we finished off the hardest blue trail at the resort.

“You mean like a black diamond?” I asked her.

“Uh-huh,” she said with a smile.

“Umm… what if I kill myself?”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine… what’s the worst that can happen?” She asked me.

“I break a leg, arm, or my neck?”

“Come on they’re not that bad,” she told me.

“I guess I can always slide down on my butt if I have to…” I agreed grudgingly.

“Yay, let’s go!” she said and led us off to the direction of a ski lift that went to some of the harder trails.

I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but I was prepared to go down the hill on my bottom if I had to. At the top of the ski lift we followed the signs to a black-diamond she swore wasn’t that hard. ‘Right,’ I said to myself pessimistically.

“Ready?” she asked me as she waited for me by the beginning of the trail.

“Not really?”

“It’ll be fun, I promise!” she told me. “Let’s go!” she said with every bit of cheerleading spirit thrown in there. With that I followed her down the slope. At first it didn’t seem too bad at all, definitely not as bad as the last blue trail we’d been on, but out of nowhere a set of moguls popped up! ‘The last time I did moguls I didn’t do so hot,’ I thought to myself in that brief moment.

‘Just stay calm,’ I told myself and began making my way through the miniature snow hills. I had slowed down a bit to give myself more time to think through the obstacle, and did really well through that section! Amy had stopped a little way down from there and was looking back up at me.

“Come on slow poke!” she told me.

My only response to that was to stick my tongue out. That started the two of us giggling as I caught up to her and we continued down the slope. We actually made it down the black part of the trail with no problems and continued down it as it merged into a blue down the back side of the mountain.

“Now see that was fun!” she told me.

“It was,” I agreed. “What time is it?” I asked as I looked down at my own watch too.

“Ooops… we’re supposed to meet my parents in five minutes!”

We quickly hurried to the ski lift to take us back as close to the restaurant as we could. It took a long ten minutes to get up to the restaurant and we could see her parents as we skied up waiting for us. “We thought maybe you forgot,” her mom told us.

“Umm… we just were stuck in between trails,” Amy said for us as we put our skis on a ski rack and walked into the restaurant. It felt really good to sit down, and the four of us sat and ate for a long while before Amy and I hit the bathroom before continuing. I don’t know how many times we had ridden up and down the mountain, but by about four I was really tired.

“Would you be okay with calling it a day?” Amy asked me as we came down the hill into the main ski village.

“I was getting ready to ask you the same thing,” I told her with a smile.

“My parents are supposed to meet us at the car in about a half-hour, why don’t we go get a cup of hot chocolate first and then we’ll walk over there,” she was saying to me as I felt an arm go around my shoulder.

I jumped, “Or we could just go put your skis away first and then go together,” a voice said behind us. I turned around already knowing it was Melanie.

“You scared us,” Amy told her. I was still too startled to make that statement.

“Well, do you want to go do that first?” her dad asked from behind her mom and led us to the car. There hadn’t been many people at the resort when we had got there so we were parked pretty close. It didn’t take long to put the skis up and return to the village where we sat down in front of a gigantic fireplace with the hot chocolates.

“Did you two have fun?” her dad asked from a chair he sat in next to couch Amy and I were sitting on. Melanie sat in a chair to our right.

“Uh-huh, thanks again for bringing me,” I told them.

“Anytime Tiffany,” he said with a smile.

“My hair is such a mess,” Amy proclaimed suddenly out of nowhere.

“Of course it’s a mess, you’ve been skiing all day,” Melanie told her.

“Where’d that come from?” I asked her.

“I just felt it,” she said as she reached up and pulled the scrunchie out of her hair to redo her ponytail. She grumbled a little bit before settling for another ponytail that was better. This of course made me self conscious and I redid mine as well.

“Are you two trying to get me to do your hair tonight?” Melanie asked us.

I looked back completely innocently, but Amy said, “Would you?”

“I guess… Let’s get dinner first,” she said to us.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Well, there’s a new restaurant here in the ski village that I thought we could try out.” Melanie replied.

“Okay, I’m starving,” Amy told her.

Melanie held out her hands to us and the three of us walked hand in hand with her husband following close by. The new restaurant apparently featured steak and seafood. Both sounded good after a long day on the slopes. Mr. Hancock stopped at the hostess station and asked for a table for four. A few moments later we heard, “right this way,” from a lady dressed in a nice black dress. As we sat down I realized that I was once again in a restaurant way classier than my parents could normally afford… and underdressed to boot at the moment! I squirmed a little inside.

“Would you like a childrens menu for your younger one?” the waitress asked referring to me.

My mouth opened a bit in shock, Amy’s twitched a smile, and Amy’s mom found words to say, “No, a regular menu will be just fine.”

“Of course ma’am,” the lady said without missing a beat. “My name is Carolyn and I’ll be taking care of you this evening. I’ll give you a moment to look at the menu and come back to answer any questions you might have.” She said this last bit almost too cheerfully for my tastes.

Well, maybe I was just holding a grudge because she thought I was a little kid. The grudge became bigger as I looked at the menu it said the kids menu was available for ‘kids ten and under.’

‘When I my breasts grow bigger no one will confuse me…’ I said to myself reassuringly. At least I hoped that would be the case. I probably still wouldn’t get very tall. If I could make it to at least my mom’s height of five-feet-two it wouldn’t be as bad - at least not as a girl. ‘Being that short might even help me get onto a college cheerleading squad, maybe even a scholarship,’ I thought to myself. I was grateful that after the last year I might not need it as much to pay for a good college.

“So what are you going to get?” Amy asked me.

I shrugged, “I guess I should wake up and look at the menu huh?” I said to her with a smile. She nodded.

“What are you getting?”

“I’m thinking about this seafood alfredo dish,” she said while pointing to the menu. “It sounds good,” she added.

It did sound kind of good, but there was shrimp scampi pasta below it that sounded even better to me. I loved shrimp scampi! “I think I’m going to get the shrimp scampi actually,” I told her.

“Oooh, that sounds good too,” she replied to me, “but I won’t copy you,” she said with a wink. “So how old do you think the waitress thinks you are?” she asked with a giggle.

“If it’s at least six I’ll be surprised,” I said with a shake of my head. Some snow had fallen on top of my hair and melted on the way into the restaurant, ‘that feels cold and wet,’ I grumped to myself.

“That’s about how old I bet she thinks you are. I’m surprised she didn’t bring you a coloring book and crayons.” She snickered a little.

“You know it’s really not fair that you decided to start growing already,” I told her.

“Oh it’s not so bad, and you know it,” she told me. “If you want to you can easily get the kids price at movies and everything.”

We had been talking in a pretty low volume so her parents didn’t really know what we were saying. “So what are you getting girls?” Amy’s dad asked.

“I’m getting the shrimp scampi pasta,” I said.

“I’m going to do the seafood alfredo,” Amy said.

“Sounds good girls,” he told us. “So Tiffany we’re coming back here in a few weeks during Christmas vacation, would you like to come up with us again?” he asked.

“Definitely,” I said smiling, ‘anything to get me out of our hometown,’ I thought silently. As the weekend progressed I decided I really didn’t want to go back to school. I just had a bad feeling about the next few weeks.

“Then we’ll plan on it!” He said with a smile.

At that time the waitress came back to take our orders. She took Melanie’s first, then Amy’s, then she looked back at Melanie, “And for her?” she said referring to me.

Amy couldn’t help it, it was funny, and she started laughing. Her dad glared at her though to get her to stop. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Melanie suggested politely, “She’s not as young as I think you think she is.”

The waitress turned bright red all of the sudden wondering how far she had been off. “Begging your pardon, and for you miss?” she asked as if she got do-over’s in this game.

“The Shrimp Scampi Pasta please,” I told her. She took that down on her pad and took Mr. Hancock’s order before picking up the menus.

As she was leaving I decided I wanted to know something, “Excuse me, Miss?”

She turned around on the spot and said, “Yes?”

“Just out of curiosity how old did you think I was?”

She looked really embarrassed because she knew she must have been wrong, “Um… Seven?” I had a feeling she actually inflated the age she thought. “How far off was I?”

“I’m twelve,” I told her with a smile, “I get it all the time, I was just curious. Thanks,” I told her.
There was kind of an awkward silence at the table for about thirty seconds before the giggling from Amy began. It was infectious and traveled around the table. I finally said sourly, “I’m really ready to start growing already.”

“Tiffany, really… enjoy it. It probably means that you’re going to be one of those girls that when you hit thirty people will still think you might be under twenty. You’re going to have the gift of always looking about ten years younger than everyone else.” She said that with a smile.

“I hope so…” I said. And with that we moved onto other conversations.

“So how’s practice going for the squad?” Melanie asked me.

“I think it’s going better now…” I paused for a second, “we’re down to less than two months before nationals now? I hope we do well there,” I added the last part hopefully.

“I’m sure we’re going to do great,” Amy said.

“You two get to go to Florida for the second time in a year!” Melanie said to us. “I’m still trying to get off for it,” she added.

“I can’t get off,” Amy’s dad told us right away when I looked at him. “I have a major case that’s scheduled to be in court that week. I’m sure you’re going to do great though,” he said. The rest of the time before we got our meal we talked about the outfits that should be coming in the next week, and everything else we had to do before we’d be ready to go on the trip.

When the food arrived I picked up my fork, stuck a piece of shrimp, cut off the tail with my knife, and then wound some pasta around it… it was great! I smiled as I closed my eyes and savored the sauce.

“Good Tiffany?” Mr. Hancock asked with a smile of his own.

“Uh-huh, thanks again.” I told him with the same smile.

“You’re welcome,” he told me. Everyone’s food was really good. Of course I couldn’t finish it all so a box was brought. Our waitress also brought a piece of chocolate cake out to the table and sat it down in front of me.

“On the house,” she said to us.

“You don’t have to…” I started to say.

“It’s on the house,” she said again to me, smiled, and left the check for Mr. Hancock.

“You are going to share right?” Amy asked me.

I looked at the gigantic piece of layered chocolate cake and said, “Hello! Do you think I can really eat that all by myself?” I took a bite of one section and motioned for her to munch on another section. Her parents took the fatter edge of it, and it was gone before she finished coming back with the change for Mr. Hancock.

“Come back soon now,” she told us as we walked out.

It was dark already as we walked down the decking outside the building. The mountain blocked any traces of sunlight that might have still been showing elsewhere. There were a few shops along the building, but all had called it a night and were closed. “Well let’s go back to the condo girls, and then I’ll do your hair for you,” Melanie told us as she grabbed a hand from each of us.

“Yay!” Amy and I said together.

“I seem to really get a lot of answers in stereo from the two of you,” she said as a smile and a shake of her head as we continued.

I watched my breath freeze and turn into a fog in front of me as we walked up to the car. It was really getting cold! Amy and I climbed in the back of their car and buckled up. The trip to the condo wasn’t too long, and we rushed to get inside quickly. “Brrr…” I exclaimed as I took my coat off and hung it up in the closet. ‘I really like that coat!’ I said to myself. ‘It’s cute!’ I almost hated the idea of leaving it there. But that was what I would probably do. Amy’s family kept a separate set of ski coats and such up there all year. I had one for home.

“Girls go upstairs and change into your pajamas and I’ll wash your hair,” she told us.

“Okay!” Amy said. She really liked having her mommy wash her hair more than anything else. I hadn’t even started moving when she was half-way up the stairs. Her mom smiled at me as I followed her up the stairs.

I went in the room and Amy said, “Tiff, close the door please,” to me. She didn’t even think of changing in front of me as strange that point and began stripping off her clothes, including her bra. I was so jealous of her breasts. I forced myself not to look at them though and grabbed my pajamas and changed my top. I hadn’t worn a bra that day. My breasts were still so tiny… it had seemed pointless since I was wearing something loose. I made sure she wasn’t looking and changed my ski pants out for my sweatpants. At least I was comfy at that point.

The two of us headed downstairs and I told her mom to go ahead and do Amy’s hair first. I liked it, but she liked it way more than I did even. I watched from a couch in front of the fireplace as Melanie washed Amy’s hair at the kitchen sink. The more I watched, the more of a flashback it seemed to be for me. I got goosebumps up and down my spine as I thought about how this is really where it had all begun for me. ‘Last spring I’d ended up with pigtails, would they do the same or something else?’ I wondered.

Amy sat up and her mom wrapped a towel around her hair carefully and said, “Next!” with a smile.

I smiled at her and walked over to the chair where Amy had been sitting up until a couple moments ago. “Amy, go get the hair dryer and the box of hair stuff.” She said to her with a smile.

“Okay mommy,” she said. Amy, like me, reverted to mommy every now and then. I always watched and saw it had the same effect on her mommy as it did mine.

I sat down in the chair and she wrapped a towel around my shoulders before having me lean back into the sink. I closed my eyes as she began using the sink sprayer on my hair and washed it first with shampoo, and then used conditioner on it. All the while she also gently massaged my scalp… I was almost purring by the time it was over. It was like being in the salon but more personal, because of who was doing it, I think. I got the same feeling anytime my mom did it too.

“All done,” she told me as she sat me up and wrapped my hair in a towel. I didn’t want to move, but I ended being led to the couch to wait for my turn for my hair. The tradition was Amy’s mom did Amy’s hair alone. I didn’t want to encroach upon that, even though I was sure it would have been fine.

I watched as Amy’s mom blow dried her hair, and proceeded to start by just doing two pigtails on either side of her hair. From there though she braided each side and tied the ends with a pink bow on one side and a purple one on the other side. She looked cute, and honestly she looked younger now. That thought amused me for a second until I remembered that last time I had ended up with the same hair style! I would probably look altogether like a little kid. Before her mom pronounced her done she added a couple of cute barrettes, with three flowers on each of them, to either side of the top of her head.

“Okay, you’re done Amy,” her mom told her with a kiss on her forehead before saying, “Tiffany, you’re up next,” she said with a smile.

“Cute,” I said as I passed Amy. She went to the downstairs bathroom to look at herself in the mirror as I sat down in the chair for my turn. For the next ten minutes or so I felt her blow dry my hair and pull my hair in ways that made me sure I was getting the exact same hair treatment as Amy… ‘The waitress would probably think I was four with this hairstyle…’ I thought to myself. Somehow I still found myself smiling though. This was how I had first had my hair placed into a girls style, and that brought back more than a few pleasant memories!

When she finally said, “Okay I’m done with you.”

Amy had reappeared and giggled a little when she saw me. “You said I looked cute… you are the cute one!” She giggled some more. I glared at her but had to go see what the damage looked like. I went into the downstairs bathroom myself.

I couldn’t help but giggle too. It was a really cute little girl in front of me. I frowned for a second as I realized once again I was ‘little,’ but there was no other way to put it. Besides as I started to think about frowning more I looked up to see Amy reflected now too. She looked just as young as I did at that point. We both smiled at each other and went back to the kitchen. Her dad came in at that point and smiled at us, “We have to get a picture of this,” he told his wife.

He returned with her camera and handed it to her. She took several pictures of us together around the living room. I was sure the ones with me sitting on Amy’s lap on the couch were going to be really cute. She was just enough bigger than me now that the angles would look right. Eventually she took some pictures with her dad in them too, and then handed the camera to him so he could take pictures of the three of us together. We had a lot of fun for a while doing that.

After all of the pictures that could possibly be taken had been shot, Amy and I were sent to find a board game to play. We had played mall madness and monopoly the first time I had been there, so we decided it was time for something else. “How about Trivial Pursuit Junior?” I suggested.

“Okay,” she said. The two of us took the game out to the living room and set it up on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. It was a fun night of playing a game that stumped us sometimes, but more often than not did her parents too because they were too old to know some of the questions.

After Amy had gotten home and answered her last question she said, “I win!” She was smiling big and started giggling.

“Okay you two; it’s time for you to head to bed.” Amy’s dad said.

“But it’s only ten!” Amy objected.

“Yes, but we’re waking up early and skiing till lunch and then going home.” Before Amy could object he continued, “And you two both have to go to school on Monday. I don’t want you two being cranky all week.”

I tugged Amy with me and said, “Good night,” with a smile to them before she could argue any more. I gave her mom and dad both a hug before heading to bed with her following grumpily. As we climbed into bed her mom came and tucked us both in and kissed us goodnight.

“And no talking all night…” her mom told us as she flipped the light switch off and closed the door.

 
SUNDAY MORNING WE woke up before seven so we could get breakfast, pack up, and then go to the ski resort. We were going to eat lunch and drop off our ski stuff back there before heading home. Neither of us had pulled out the braided pony tails so they were still there in the morning. Her mom had done them tight enough that other than adjusting the top barrettes both of our hair looked exactly as it had the night before. As I looked in the mirror I had considered pulling it out, but decided not to. ‘It wouldn’t matter that much anyway today,’ I told myself.

We were at the slopes as soon as they opened and spent four hours skiing until noon when we met her parents. The four of us drove back to the condo where her mom quickly made us grilled cheese and soup for lunch. “Did you two have fun?” Amy’s mom asked us as we ate.

“Yes, thanks again for bringing me.” I told her and her husband.

“Like I said, we’ll be coming back up in here in a couple weeks if you want to come with us Tiffany. Maybe your parents can come one of these trips too. It’s not the most comfortable, but we do have the sleeper sofa couch.” He said.

“They might really enjoy that,” I told him. It would be kind of fun to have my parents there too, but at the same time I kind of felt like it might intrude upon a place that seemed to be ours.

We stuck around the condo just long enough to wash the dishes, put our ski jackets and equipment in their closet, and then get into the car and take off. Amy’s mom had us bring our ski pants with us because her mom was going to wash them. “I’ll just keep them at our house,” she told me, rightly figuring I wouldn’t go skiing without them anyway. I had told her thanks for that and for buying them for me in the first place.

The trip home wasn’t quiet. Amy and I spent the whole trip forcing her parents to listen to some of the latest music we liked. Her dad grimaced at some of it, but her mom danced in the car with us most of the time. I had finally begun to get quiet as they pulled into my driveway at home. I didn’t want to go to school tomorrow, it had been such a bad week I didn’t believe it could possibly get better this week. As I opened the door to get out of their car I felt like an invisible wall of safety was crossed, and I felt myself slip into a less happy version of myself. I didn’t let it show though, my parents and Amy’s parents would worry — I couldn’t have that.

Mr. Hancock grabbed my bags out of the car and helped me carry them into my house. He and Melanie spoke with my parents for a few moments before they went home. I gave my parents both hugs and mom said, “This is cute, can I do your hair like this every day?”

I glared at her, “No! I forgot about it,” I said as I began to reach to take the barrettes out at least.

Her hand stopped mine though and said, “It’s cute though, let me enjoy it tonight.”

I sighed, “Alright.”

“Did you have a good time,” my dad asked as he watched the two of us amused.

“Yes… and I need to find a really nice thank you card for them,” I told mom. Cards were always mom’s department.

“Why?” Mom asked.

“They bought me my own ski equipment and a set of cute ski pants and a new ski jacket!” I told her both grimacing and smiling. I was happy about it, but I was also a little worried about their reactions.

“They shouldn’t have…” my dad said.

“But it doesn’t surprise me,” my mom said.

“Huh?” I said. My dad happened to make the same reply to her. We made a quick glance at each other before returning to her.

“Look Joe… our daughters are pretty much becoming shared between us. Amy spends a lot of time over here, and Tiffany spends a lot of time over there… They would do it for their daughter, so why shouldn’t they do it for their other daughter too?” She suggested softly. “You definitely need to get them a nice thank you card though Tiffany, why don’t we go do that now and get dinner after that?” She suggested.

“Okay,” I told her.

Dad had a funny look on his face as he was still trying to grasp what mom had said. He agreed too though and we left to go to a Hallmark Store to get a card. While we were in the store I had strayed away from mom for a few moments looking at some figurines. “Sweetie where’s your mommy?” An older lady asked that obviously worked there.

“My mom’s on the other side,” I told her. She motioned for me to show her.

“Ma’am we ask that you keep any young children close to you while you’re shopping in here,” she started to mom.

“How young is young?” She asked the lady.

“Under eight especially,” she said motioning to me.

“So since I’m twelve it shouldn’t be a problem?” I suggested to her. I was polite, but there was still a bit of sarcasm in there.

“Excuse me?” She asked and looked towards mom.

“Yes she really is twelve.”

“I’m really sorry sweetie, I saw how tall you are and the hair…”

“It’s okay ma’am,” I told her, “It happens to me too often. My hair’s just like this because my best friend’s mom did our hair like this last night.”

“It looks cute sweetie,” she told me. She was completely embarrassed at this point and when we went to checkout with the card I’d chosen she gave us a fifteen percent off that she got as an employee. “Sorry about that,” she told me again as she handed me the bag with the card in it. Dad had disappeared somewhere in the store while all of this had gone on and reappeared about then.

“What was that about?” He asked. The two of us explained it over dinner. I had sighed and turned red when he made a cute remark towards me that made me want to hit him. That night I filled out the card and put it into an envelope to send instead of just delivering it. It seemed like a nicer way to do it for some reason. As I went to bed I hoped and prayed that tomorrow would not be as bad as the last week. I didn’t know how much more of that I could take.

 

Chapter 24:

MONDAY MORNING THANKFULLY was as quiet as a morning could be when you went to school. The teachers all seemed to be bracing for the inevitable chaos that was going to come as the last two-and-a-half weeks before Christmas Break were upon us. I even made it all the way through the day without a single threatening note or comment. Maybe the principals were putting enough heat on whoever was doing it that I was going to be okay now… ‘I doubt it,’ I thought to myself after that though. Whatever the reason was I appreciated the break from the torment.

Dance practice after school went really well. We made it through both routines straight through without having to stop because someone was lost. “Well ladies that’s a good start…” Coach Holt had been complimentary for a few moments before quickly telling us we would still get our rears handed to us at Nationals at that point. So we began going through everything again and again. We spent most of our time without music the rest of the rehearsal, working solely by counts. More often than not we would get through two or three sets of moves and get told to do it all again for some mistake or another. As frustrating as Coach Holt was sometimes, I knew that she was making us better every day.

“Tiffany, nice job today,” she told me as I exited the coaches’ bathroom.

“Thanks!” I told her with a smile.

“Don’t forget to remind your parents that we’re having a meeting next Monday about the trip to Nationals,” she said as she handed me a note that basically said exactly that.

“Okay, I’ll tell them,” I said as I hurried outside to follow Amy.

Mom was talking to Amy’s mom outside their cars outside. “How was your day?” Mom asked.

“It was good,” I told them. I was feeling pretty good since nothing had happened and practice had gone well.

“Good,” she said as she gave me a hug and motioned for me to get into the car. “So Friday night you said?” She was asking Amy’s mom about something.

“Yes if that’s fine with you,” she told my mom.

“I’m sure they’ll have fun.” She said giving her assent with a nod. “I’ve got to get Tiffany to her gymnastics lesson, so we’ll see you later,” she said as she moved to the car and I closed my door.

As she closed it I handed over the letter, “Before I forget to tell you, we’re supposed to have a meeting with all of our parents and Coach Holt about the trip to Nationals, next Monday,” I told her.

“Okay, we’ll make sure we’re there,” Mom said to me before taking me home. I quickly changed for gymnastics and suddenly wondered what the point was of me even changing from my dance clothes before this.

Mom dropped me off at my lesson where I had a great time. We worked a lot on tumbling for the first half of the lesson and then began working on a dance routine involving the tumbling techniques I was learning and some other moves. My teacher was trying to get me ready to do a simple floor routine at a competition coming up in May. I doubted I could be ready for something that rigorous by then, but she seemed to think it would be good for me either way. By the time I got home from my lesson I was exhausted, but felt better after a long shower. Homework killed the rest of the time I had before Mom sent me to bed.

Tuesday passed the same as Monday, with jazz band taking the place of gymnastics. It was our last practice before the holiday concert, so Mrs. Remar was a bit stressed. We did well though, and I felt like it was going to be a lot more fun to perform with our jazz group than it would be to perform with the normal band. My solo went really well at the practice, as did Kyle’s. When we had a little break we talked with each other about being a bit nervous about the solos next week. Ever since the dream I felt a bit awkward around Kyle. I didn’t quite know what to do with or about him. As I went to bed that night I was even more exhausted than I had been the night before.

 
WEDNESDAY MORNING WHEN I heard the words, “Tiffany it’s time to wake up” from my dad I really groaned. I didn’t want to wake up. He actually had to come in twice before I began moving.

I decided not to do anything with my hair that morning, just putting up into a ponytail and calling it good enough. I was sure that I looked like crap as I walked out to Melanie’s car that morning. “Morning sunshine,” she told me.

I stuck my tongue out at her.

“I see someone else is cranky this morning?” She said with a smirk on her face. I looked over at Amy and saw that it looked like she had a mirrored expression on her face. She grumbled something at her mom too, and the drive to the school was more quiet than normal. I wondered why Amy was having a bad morning of her own.

I found out as we got out of the car, “I got into a fight with my mom this morning,” Amy told me as we waited to go inside.

“What for?”

“Well I don’t even know… I’m just feeling kind of moody today.” She was leaving something out.

“Period?” I asked nicely.

“Uh-huh,” she said nodding. “Believe me, it’s the one thing on being a girl you really aren’t missing out on.”

“What’s so bad?”

“Besides the cramps, the bloating, and the whole grossness?”

“I guess I can see your point…” I told her. Honestly I’d still have taken it, but now was not the time to get into that argument. Instead I gave her a hug and gave her a simple ‘sorry.’ It wasn’t much but it was appreciated by her.

The two of us walked pretty quietly to class and I think some of our friends must have wondered if the two of us had gotten into a fight. Kyle saw us and said, “Hi,” and seemed rather confused by the lackluster response. I almost always had a smile for him.

That kind of made me feel bad and so I said, “Sorry, I’m having a bad morning,” I forced a smile as I said that. It was kind of scary to watch the expression on his face brighten as much as it did. ‘Does he really like me?’ I asked myself.

“I can understand that.” He said simply. I may not have been a biological girl, but he was still smart enough to realize he shouldn’t delve into a question like that with a girl real deep. We were sitting down across from each other in Mr. Randolph’s class when he asked me, “So what are you getting for Christmas?”

“I don’t know… well I know about some clothes and stuff we bought after Thanksgiving, but other than that I don’t know much. I asked for some makeup and stuff… and a new saxophone, but those are really expensive.” I trailed off on the last part. Why would he care about the makeup? What was I thinking?

“That’s cool. I think my parents may be thinking about a new trumpet for me as well actually,” he said. I was so thankful he glossed over the rest of it…

“That’s cool, are you going to get a silver one then?”

“I’m hoping to, but they’re about twelve-hundred dollars for the one I want..”

“Ouch,” I said. “That’s still better than the saxophone I want though…”

“How much do they run,” he asked me. I liked how he always looked at me in my eyes when he talked to me. It scared me though too, it made me nervous for some reason. I found myself playing with the edge of my ponytail behind my shoulders right about then.

“Well the one I want is about three-thousand.”

“Wow! Ouch!” He said surprised. “I thought mine was bad. Do you think you might actually get it?”

“I don’t know. My parents have money from the film set aside for stuff for me, but I don’t know if they’ll spend money on that yet.”

The two of us continued to talk for a good long while before the bell rang. In between first and second hour I needed to run to my locker, “Do you two mind coming with me?” I asked Amy and Kyle.

“Sure,” Amy said simply. She was miserable, I could see it in her face. I’d actually wondered if she was going to have to go to the bathroom during the break but she seemed fine.

“Why not?” Kyle asked happily. As we came up to my locker I noticed something red and white sticking to the outside of my locker. As I came closer I noticed that it was a maxi pad stuck to the outside of my locker… another used one.

“What the hell?” Kyle said next to me. He was bewildered, he didn’t even know what a pad was really — but it looked gross.

As I got closer I could see they had just used the sticky backing that held it to your panties to hold it onto the locker. I looked around to see if there was a teacher around, but found one better as Mrs. Henry was walking down the hallway. In the meantime there was a whole group of kids that started giggling and laughing about it. Kyle had enough, “KNOCK THIS SHIT OFF ALREADY!!!! I WILL BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF WHOEVER IS DOING THIS IF I CATCH THEM!” He screamed.

I appreciated him trying to help me, but I was now a bit worried he was going to have his own problems from this. Especially since Mrs. Henry had heard someone screaming that and trying to figure out who it was. “Kyle get out of here, Amy will stay with me,” I told him quietly.

“But…”

“I don’t want you getting detention or in trouble with the coaches for swearing, get out of here,” I told him tersely. “I’ll see you next hour.”

As soon as he was down the hallway Mrs. Henry came over and said, “What’s wrong Tiffany? Amy?”

I didn’t say anything, I just pointed.

Mrs. Henry’s face moved through three distinct expressions. The first was shock, the second was anger, and the third looked like fear. Well the fear made sense, my parents were on the verge of suing the school district again — last time that happened the principal, her predecessor, had been fired. At least Mrs. Henry had always been supportive though. She used her hand held radio to call to the office for a janitor to come clean the pad off of the locker. The lady, her nametag said ‘Linda,’ had gloves on and quickly cleaned it off and into a trash bag she had with her.

“Are you alright Tiffany?” She asked me.

“Not really, no,” I told her.

She gave me a one shouldered hug. Amy by this point had her hand in mine and gave it a squeeze. “Would you open your locker please?” She asked me after the janitor had cleaned it off.

“Why not? I’m sure there’ll be another note in there,” I told her as I let go of Amy’s hand and did the combination dial with my now freed hand.

I wasn’t quite ready for what awaited me when I opened my locker. As soon as I opened it my relatively organized locker seemed to all fall out on me. It took me a second, but I realized that it was paper falling out at me. Lot’s of notes. I gasped as I looked at one of them that seemed to be larger than the others.

‘Leave school or DIE Freak.’

 
I DIDN’T REALLY remember how I got there, but before I knew it I was sitting in Mrs. Henry’s office with my parents and Amy’s dad.

“How can this be happening?” My dad asked angrily.

“We don’t know…” She started to say.

“Look, how can you not have a teacher notice something like that plastered to her locker in between class periods?”

“Well her locker is just a little out of sight of one of the teachers’ spots, but also I’m investigating why she wasn’t out there.” She answered that honestly.

“The thing I want to know is how any student was out, and unsupervised long enough to put that many notes through the slots of her locker,” my mom said angrily.

“I don’t know Mrs. Jacobson. The problem is Tiffany didn’t check her locker this morning so the notes might have been done anytime between one-thirty yesterday and this time.”

“The thing that concerns me Mrs. Henry is the escalating nature of these threats,” Amy’s dad started, “it seems unfortunately like it’s only a matter of time before someone acts out on these.”

“I don’t know what more we can do Mr. Hancock except remove her from the school…” Mrs. Henry started, but quickly continued, “but I don’t think that’s a good option either. She’s been an amazingly well adjusted student who does incredibly well with her grades and her extra-curricular activities. Tiffany is clearly not the problem here, everyone else is, but I just don’t know how to make sure with one-hundred percent certainty that she is safe.” Mrs. Henry looked exhausted.

“Well can we at least work to prevent the rest of this stuff from recurring continually?” my dad asked somehow sounding calm.

This whole time I had been letting them get away with talking about me like I wasn’t there, but I’d had enough with that. “How?!?” I paused, “I think there’s enough of them, that if they want to do anything they have no problem doing it. You don’t honestly think just one or two people are doing this?”

I watched faces drop down. “Look at these notes, there’s at least six different handwriting styles,” I had looked at them endlessly while waiting and could see that. I was too smart to let them just get away with acting like I was dumb kid. “Six people… and I’m sure at least one of them has to be a girl since they’re leaving me such wonderful gifts.”

“What about getting rid of her need for a locker altogether?” Mr. Hancock suggested.

“How?” Mrs. Henry asked. I sensed she was grasping at straws to save herself. I also got the feeling she genuinely wanted to help me, she just was clueless on how.

“Well could she leave her books and stuff in the office? Maybe give her a basket to leave her stuff in next to the secretaries’ desks?”

“I don’t know…” I said. I didn’t like the idea of having to come into the office multiple times a day. Avoiding the office as much as possible always seemed like the best plan to me.

“How many times do you go to your locker every day, Tiffany?” Dad asked me.

“I don’t know… maybe twice?”

“What all are you keeping in there?” Mrs. Henry asked.

“Books… homework… my binder sometimes…”

“So it might work?” My mom asked.

“I guess… maybe.” I added tentatively.

“Let’s try it then.” Mrs. Henry said. “I’ll even do one better and have my secretary give you a drawer in a filing cabinet.”

“Okay, so that covers her normal locker, what about her gym locker?” Mom asked.

“Well, I suppose she can just keep it all in the office.” Mrs. Henry suggested. I looked unhappy with that but she added, “that or maybe Coach Holt has a spot you could use in a cabinet in her room or something.”

“That sounds better,” I told her. The home-ec room beat the office for keeping clothes…

“I’ll check with her then about that. Other than that I suppose we could talk to the PE teachers about leaving it in their office there, but I think that would be less secure.”

“Well let’s give this a try then,” Mr. Hancock said. “My bigger concern than the threats though is that sooner or later someone is going to act out on one of these threats. The number that she’s gotten in the last week alone is ridiculous!”

“You know I can’t discuss discipline of other students Mr. Hancock,” Mrs. Henry started to say.

“So you have picked up some students and administered consequences?” he asked.

“Well… not exactly…” she said.

“What exactly have you done?” Dad asked angrily. This was the second time in a week he was here instead of work and he was losing money from it. That didn’t include the fact his boss wasn’t exactly thrilled with it.

“We’ve picked up some writing samples and compared them, but we don’t have any solid proof. Until we actually see one of these students place something…”

“Or until someone actually attacks her…? Is that what you’re really saying Mrs. Henry?” My mom asked.

Mrs. Henry finally said, “Look, I don’t know what else I can do. I’m doing everything I can. If you wish to continue this meeting at this point though I want to have a school attorney and the superintendent involved. I’m not answering anymore questions or allegations.”

That was that. Mr. Hancock said, “Very well, the district will have a formal written complaint filed in court by the end of the week. Thank you for your time Mrs. Henry.”

Her face showed that didn’t exactly surprise her. Quietly she said, “Do what you all have to do. I’m sorry I can’t do anything more to help you.”

“I am too,” Dad said.

My parents and Amy’s dad all gave me hugs before they left the office. I was doing my best not to start crying. ‘I’m not going to until no one can see me,’ I resolved to myself.

“Tiffany I’m going to walk with you to get your stuff out of your locker and move it here,” Mrs. Henry told me gently interrupting my thoughts.

She supervised me moving my stuff over from my locker to a file cabinet drawer that she had one of the secretaries empty. The secretary wasn’t real happy about it, I could tell, but the look on Mrs. Henry’s face said not to mess with her. My day had started crummy and it had only gotten worse…

I got what I needed for the rest of my real classes that day with me and she walked me to Algebra, which was half over. “Please excuse Tiffany, she was with me,” she told Mr. Martin my math teacher. “If she missed anything please just excuse it — she doesn’t need to make it up,” I heard her tell him quietly as I sat down by Amy.

“What happened?” Amy asked me.

“Pretty much nothing… I get to have my locker in the office now!” I said the last part with fake enthusiasm and a cheesy smile only a cheerleader can make.

“What?!?”

The two of us talked back and forth for a bit before Mr. Martin’s glares finally broke through to us. Since the bell rang right then though I didn’t care. ‘This just isn’t fair!’ I said angrily to myself.

We walked half-way to the cafeteria for lunch before I realized that Mrs. Henry was right behind us. As we continued down the hallway she stayed right there and I realized just how nervous she was about everything. She even stayed as Amy and I stood by Kyle in the lunch line, finally she came up to us as we sat down at our table.

“Kyle,” she said quietly in front of the three of us, “please refrain from screaming obscene threats in the hallways. I don’t want to have to punish you for anything.” She told him that and then turned around and left. I noticed our new assistant principal was now watching the three of us intensely. I had a feeling that ‘tag you’re it,’ applied to my babysitting.

Kristina had come up right about then, “What was that about?”

She got the full story and seemed near tears herself when everything was done. Kristina was just as mad as Kyle, but she seemed worried about everything. “Tiffany don’t go anywhere around the school by yourself, promise me.” She said with a lot of insistence in her voice.

“I never do Kristina, I always have someone with me,” I told her.

“I’m worried about you Tiff,” she said. Amy, Kyle, David, and Nikki all nodded together on that. No one seemed to think I was safe. ‘Great,’ I thought to myself.

The rest of the afternoon leading up to band was thankfully uneventful. I didn’t think I could possibly take anything else, so I was incredibly grateful for that. During band Mrs. Remar told us that she would be playing with a community jazz band the next night and that we would get extra credit for coming. “Are you going?” Kyle asked me as he walked me to the girls’ locker room. We hadn’t relocated my stuff from there yet.

“Maybe, I’ll have to ask my mom.” I told him.

“You?” I asked.

“Same, I’d like to though. Someone said they’re supposed to be pretty good. I bet it would be fun,” he added.

“Yeah…” I said as we reached the hallway to the girl’s locker room.

Amy had come up behind us hurrying so she could make sure she caught up with me. “You ready?” She asked me with a smirk on her face. I knew she was going to ask me about this.

“Yeah… Thanks for walking with me over here Kyle, you don’t have to do that you know,” I told him.

“I walk home anyway, and I’d much rather be sure that nothing happens to you.” He blushed a bit when he said that — it was cute.

“Thanks Kyle,” I said with a smile and walked off with Amy down the hallway.

Ten feet down the hallway she started giggling, I poked her. “Behave,” I told her.

Practice went about ten minutes over what it normally did that night because Coach Holt had gotten us into a rhythm where she was getting a lot done. She recorded our last run-through of each routine with a school video camera so she could show it to us the next day. I was kind of surprised as I came out of the coach’s bathroom from changing that Mom was standing there, but I guess she wanted to be sure I was safe.

“Ready?” she asked me.

“Yeah,” I told her while picking up my duffle bag of stuff. She took that from me and slung it over her shoulder and walked me out to the car.

“Let’s go home and let you get showered so we can meet your dad for dinner,” she told me.

“We’re going out?” I asked.

“Yeah, after today I don’t feel like cooking.”

“Did anything else happen?” I asked concerned. How bad could things get?

“Why would anything else need to happen? It was bad enough with what happened to you.” She said to me. That was a reminder to dwell on the gross mess left for me, and the fifty threats that had been in my locker…

 

THAT NIGHT WE drove to our favorite Mexican restaurant and the chile rellenos I had seemed to help my mood a bit. My mouth was on fire, but my mood was slightly cooled from what it had been earlier. The same could not be said for my parents. Both of them were down and I watched my dad snip at my mom for some little things. It made me so mad, because I knew I was at fault for all of this.

‘If only I hadn’t…’ I started to myself before another voice in my said, ‘What? Like this wouldn’t have been this way anyway?’ It wasn’t the first time I had gotten threats. These were more extreme than what I had gotten the year before, but I’d gotten threats against me even before adding Tiffany into the mix. That started me brooding myself for a few minutes as I tried to clean up every bit of remaining chile skin up to the stem of the relleno. I caught a seed that I chomped in between my teeth and reached for the water I had in front of me instinctively. Of course I’d already polished that glass of water off and our waitress was nowhere nearby.

Mom saw the look on my face and pushed my dad’s water over to me. As I drank the water through a straw absent-mindedly I saw my parents watch me. I felt self-conscious. “Don’t stare at me,” I said softly.

“You’re cute though,” Mom told me with a bemused look on her face. ‘Great, what was I doing?’ I wondered to myself.

Thankfully I remembered a way out of the attention being directed to me, “Mom, Mrs. Remar is playing with the Community Jazz Band tomorrow night. Can we go see her?”

“Wasn’t Amy going to stay the night tomorrow?” She asked me.

“I don’t know, probably…” I’d forgotten about it. I didn’t really think about it much though, we were almost always at one or the others house every week. I was supposed to be at their house this weekend, which meant she would probably be staying over tomorrow. We tried not to spend too many nights at her house — I didn’t want my parents to decide they hated me or something.

“Well will she want to go?” Mom asked.

“I’m sure she would,” I answered for her. She gave me a look like I should probably ask her but let it go.

“Is anyone else going?” She asked me.

“A couple other kids were talking about it….” I said. I was really hoping she didn’t ask who. Talking about boys in general with her was something to be avoided, but with Dad sitting there it was like a mine field was waiting for me.

“Who?”

“Just a couple other kids… Nikki said maybe… and a couple others…” She gave me a look that made me sure that she could read every thought going through my head.

“That sounds like fun.” She said after a moment’s pause. “I’ll go with you guys.”

“Great,” I said unenthusiastically. I’d known all along I wouldn’t have an unsupervised evening though, so that didn’t surprise me.

“Daddy?” I asked.

“No sweetie, I’m sorry I have work stuff that’s going to keep me late tomorrow. Have fun though,” he said finishing the matter. Again, I wasn’t surprised.

“You’re going to be able to come to my concert next week though, right?” I asked him hopefully.

“I wouldn’t miss it Tiffany,” he told me. That made me feel a little better.

“Thanks Daddy,” I replied with a smile.

After we paid for dinner and went home I worked on the homework that had piled up on me today. Missing classes every time I turned around for meetings with Mrs. Henry was becoming a pain in the butt. ‘Why can’t people just let me be?’ I asked myself angrily as I put up my homework late that night. I hadn’t had time to do anything fun, again, and I was getting really tired of it.

I washed my face, put my pajamas on, made sure my door was closed, and then covered my head securely with a pillow. Only then did I let out all of the crying that I had held in all day. I had hoped my sobs would be hidden from my parents. I didn’t want them to know about it, but Mom knew me too well and came in after a bit and I cried on her shoulder until I fell asleep.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 25:

 
THURSDAY MORNING WAS free of the torment from yesterday, but only because my parents had scheduled another appointment with Dr. Reynolds. They were all worried about me — Dr. Reynolds included — because all I seemed to be doing was crying late at night. “I’m not going to give them the satisfaction,” was my reply to Dr. Reynolds who suggested that holding it in until then every time was bad for me. She kept asking me questions making sure I wasn’t suicidal or something, before I eventually escaped back to school, certain I had missed even more homework.

“Are you okay Tiffany?” Kyle asked me on the way to band that day.

I sighed. “Yeah, more or less. I’m just tired of getting threats, and even more tired of people worrying about me more because of them…”

All the way to the band hall he listened to me talk, just nodding at the right moments and saying two word sentences, but I felt better after talking to him than I had talking to Dr. Reynolds. Just before we went into the band room I did something I didn’t expect anymore than he did. I gave him a quick hug and said, “Thank you for being you Kyle.” We must have both been red as we walked in, because when I sat down with my saxophone Jessica turned around from the clarinet row in front of me and whispered, “What happened?” clearly she wanted the gossip.

“Nothing,” I said to her honestly, more or less. I didn’t want to say we’d hugged because that would have brought more questions.

Thankfully Mrs. Remar chose that moment to step to the podium and begin her reign of tyranny over our band for the day. “Jessica turn around!” she said unhappily. I watched Jessica roll her eyes towards me but I managed to avoid the giggle that threatened to escape from my throat. She rehearsed us without mercy that day. I felt bad for Melissa, a flute player, because she had played a wrong note… Mrs. Remar nearly took her head off for it.

The end of class couldn’t have come quick enough for any of us. As I walked to Coach Holt’s office where I had stashed my cheer bag that morning, with Kyle in tow, I reflected that I may have just moved from the frying pan and into the fire though. Coach Holt was sure to be going after us today too. “Hey Tiffany, here’s your bag,” she told me as she reached into her cabinet behind her desk.

“Thanks,” I told her.

In the meantime I felt her give Kyle and then me a look before continuing, “Why don’t I go with you down there since I’m ready to close up my room.” She said that as if she’d had an especially long day already. Not a good sign!

“Okay,” I said. I looked at Kyle and said, “Thanks for walking me over here, I’ll see you tonight?”

He caught the hint of dismissal and said, “Yeah, my mom is going to come with me,” he said the last bit fairly embarrassed.

“So’s my mom, and Amy’s coming too,” I added.

“Oh… okay I’ll see you later then,” he told me.

As soon as he was out of sight, and Coach Holt had her keys out to lock her door, she asked “So… are you two going out?”

“Umm… not really no…” I told her.

“Too bad, you two would make a cute couple,” she told me with a smile.

I muttered a reply about my parents not letting me date till I’m sixteen or something. She just gave me a knowing smile. Like Mrs. Remar I felt that Coach Holt could read every thought going through my head sometimes. It wasn’t fair!

Practice went on forever that day it seemed like. Amy and I walked slowly out to my mom’s waiting car and got inside. “Hey girls,” she said as we got in.

We both mumbled a tired ‘hi,’ as we sat down and put our bags next to us on the seat.

At my house we had enough time to each take a shower, change into some nicer jeans and tops, eat, and then head off to the local community college auditorium. It was actually a pretty nice auditorium for a town like ours. We were going to have our concert there next week instead of at the high school. The stage was bigger there, and it was a lot easier to set up. When we pulled into the parking lot I looked around to see if we saw anyone we knew, but didn’t so I became immersed in a conversation with Amy.

“There’s Mrs. Remar,” I said as I looked at the program and saw her listed as ‘Alto Saxophone.’

“That’s the kind you play?” Amy asked uncertainly.

“Yes,” I told her. I didn’t blame her for not knowing I guess, but I really wish she had chosen band as her elective in sixth grade. Not that the two of us didn’t have fun in choir too, but band was where I worked a lot harder.

We had sat down in the middle of about the ninth row back, so we were about even with the stage, and talked for a while before I heard, “Oh hey!” from Mom. I turned around to look and saw Kyle and his mom walking our way. Unfortunately I was sitting with Amy on the right side of me, Mom on the left, and there was no way Kyle could sit next to me. I almost pouted before realizing Mom might see it and ask me about it. Amy and I had been sitting with our arms through each others and she gave me a knowing squeeze.

Kyle ended up sitting next to Amy, and his mom sat on the other side of my mom. “I’m glad to see you came,” I told him over Amy’s lap.

“Well its extra credit right?” He asked with a smile. The three of us talked fairly loudly for a bit until Nikki, her mom, Jessica and her mom, and a couple others showed up to watch too. The sad part was there were only maybe a hundred people in the audience. All of us from school were still talking loudly when the lights in the house went down and the band went quietly out onto the stage in the dark.

From out of nowhere we heard, “One, Two, a One-Two-Three-Four,” at a really bright tempo and then the lights came up right as the band began with a really big loud chord. With a typical big band setting of five saxes, four trombones, four trumpets, plus rhythm they put out a lot of sound! It was awesome to watch them play some really hard music. In the middle of the first song I watched Mrs. Remar stand up and begin to solo. I couldn’t believe how fast she was moving her fingers… and it sounded so good! As she sat down I clapped with the rest of the audience. I heard Kyle catcall from on the other side of Amy. I also felt rather than saw the glare coming from his mother on the other side of mine.

It was one cool song after another from the band. They played everything from swing, to funk, to rock, and in between before the intermission happened about eight-thirty. “We almost should go home,” Mom said to me.

“No Mommy, please can we stay?” I asked.

She looked at Amy standing next to me in line for the bathroom too and said, “I guess. Make sure you’re not cranky for Melanie tomorrow though,” she added. “Oh speaking of that, don’t forget you two need to pick out a couple of your dresses for tomorrow,” she said.

“Huh?” I said at first before remembering, “Oh yeah pictures,” I said. I’d forgotten that Amy’s parents were having family pictures done tomorrow, and I was being brought along for the ‘fun’ too.

“Yeah, pictures,” Amy said beside me. Apparently she’d forgotten too. She groaned, “That means I’m going to get stuck in holiday dresses too…” she pouted.

“At least you won’t have to wear them after this year,” I told her, “I’ll probably still fit in them when I’m thirty at this rate.”

“Tiffany, you are growing, and I promise you’ll be at least my height by the time you get to high school,” she told me.

“Five foot two is not very encouraging Mom,” I told her annoyed.

“Well you’re dad is five-six, that’s probably about as tall as you’re going to get.”

“You’ll just have to cheat with heels Tiff,” Amy said to me.

“I’d look like a hooker wearing heels tall enough to make me look the right height,” I complained.

Mom just laughed at me at that point and motioned me towards the stall that had just opened. I went in and used the restroom and waited for Amy and my mom to finish. Amy took a bit longer than she normally did since she had to deal with the whole tampon thing at this point. She came out looking disgusted, “I hate this,” she told me once again. I felt bad for her, but I was still insanely jealous — I’d have traded bodies with her at the drop of a hat.

The three of us returned to our seats and Amy scooted over to talk to Nikki leaving Kyle next to me for the second half. I resisted the urge the whole time to reach over and take his hand. It wouldn’t be fair to do that to him. He didn’t need to be branded a freak as much as I was. ‘Plus, how could he possibly ever like me knowing what I was?’ I asked myself over and over again.

The end of the show came at almost ten. Mom hurried us out to the car and quickly towards bed when we got home. She only paused in her hurry to send us to bed long enough for me to be forced to choose two of the dresses that were sure to make me look like I was a little kid. In the pictures that we had taken as a family I had looked pretty, but more in that little girl way than I liked to think about. When I had taken pictures with Amy over the summer we’d been the same height and she hadn’t started growing breasts yet so we looked like we were pretty close in age. Now that she had several inches on me and was growing a chest she was sure to look like an older sister.

‘Well she is almost a year older than you,’ part of me said. And if I was ever going to have an older sister Amy was definitely the best to have. Still… I sighed eventually and held Emily, my tiger, even tighter while rolling over in my bed to look at Amy already asleep on my trundle bed next to me. Mom had to give her some Midol before she was able to get comfortable. She really did seem kind of miserable, but it didn’t change my desire to have the chance to have that myself…

 

IN THE MIDDLE of the night that night I woke up suddenly, I couldn’t figure out why for a couple moments until I realized my chest hurt, and hurt a lot. I sat up and walked to the bathroom where I pulled up my shirt. I looked at my breasts, the nipple areas seemed really red, and I noticed it seemed maybe they were actually bigger? As I brushed my finger up against it to touch I just about screamed… it hurt! Was there something wrong? They’d been sore a month before, but nothing like this!

I heard a knock at the door and quickly pulled my shirt down, “Are you okay in there Tiffany?” I heard Mom ask.

I opened the door, “I don’t know,” I told her.

She entered, gave me a hug, and then said, “What’s wrong?”

“My chest is really sore,” I told her embarrassed.

“Show me?” She asked.

I was kind of reluctant to pull my shirt up, but she said, “Tiffany it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

I pulled up my pajama top and she smiled, “Well I guess they’re definitely growing, huh?”

“Are they?” I asked.

“It looks like it to me sweetie.” She paused before asking, “Just how sore are they?”

“Really sore,” I told her. I had seen in the mirror though that they had developed into larger mounds of flesh seemingly overnight.

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a sealed box that said, ‘topical analgesic’ on it. She opened the package and handed me a tube of stuff that looked a lot like the stuff you put on cuts. “Sweetie rub this onto them and let me get you some medicine to take too.”

I did as she told me and winced as I touched my nipple areas. It did help though, so that made things better. I had just finished up and pulled my shirt back down when Mom returned with a glass of water and a white pill. I took it and asked, “What was that?”

“Midol,” she said.

“Is that going to be alright for me to take?” I asked a little worried.

“Sweetie it’s mostly Tylenol. It’s got a couple other things in there, but it should help.” She suggested.

“Oh, okay.” I said and gave her a hug. “Thanks Mommy,” I told her.

“I love you sweetie,” she returned the hug. “Now off to bed.”

I went back into my room and found Amy slept through everything. She did seem to be tossing and turning though. I had a feeling she was going to be just as sore as me tomorrow, just in different spots. I had trouble getting back to sleep though, ‘I really am growing breasts!’ I said over and over excitedly to myself.

 

MOM WOKE ME up early that morning since Amy was staying with us. The bathroom schedule always got tighter on those days and so I was always the one woken up earlier. “How are you feeling sweetie?” she asked.

“Still sore,” I told her honestly as I accidentally brushed my left breast with the back of my hand.

“It’ll get better,” she said. “I put a tube of this in your backpack, rub it on in the bathroom if you need to later,” she suggested.

“Okay,” I told her before giving her a hug and disappearing into the bathroom. I looked at myself topless in the mirror for a few moments and became excited. ‘When will I be able to fit into a real bra?’ I asked myself. I had put my own clothes out the night before, but at some point Mom had added one of my extra sports bras to my clothes and a note, ‘Tiffany, you’re going to need to start wearing something all the time now unless the shirt has something built in.’

I smiled a bit at that until I got into the shower and found the water did not feel as good as it normally did. I washed quickly and after applying some more of the cream, returned to my room to wake Amy up. She went into the bathroom while I spent time doing my hair in front of my dresser. I decided to add a little bit of mascara that day… I felt so much more like a real girl now!

Amy didn’t look so great as she came in from the bathroom, so I offered to do her hair, she accepted with a smile. It helped her feel better at least, and that made me happier. “What’d you spend so much time in the bathroom with your mom last night for?” She asked me.

“Well… umm…”

“Tiffany there’s no way you can shock me at this point,” she told me.

“Well I woke up and my breasts were hurting a lot…” I blushed deeply as I continued, “so she gave me some cream and…” my face felt redder, “a Midol.”

“Are they growing more?” She asked excitedly. My sports bra was definitely hiding some of the shape.

“Uh-huh, but it hurts!” I told her.

“That’ll stop in a week or so, at least mine did.”

“I hope so.” I told her.

She looked at her watch and asked, “Can I see?”

I showed her my chest again, she’d seen it a month ago so I figured she’d have a good ability to see growth, “Wow! You’re going to grow quick I think.”

“How quick?” I asked kind of nervous all of the sudden.

“I bet you’ll catch up with me in another month or so,” she said. “I’m just an A cup though, so that’s not that far to catch up. My mom’s a lot smaller than yours too, so that may mean you’ll get bigger than me,” she said the last part kind of enviously. I kind of wretched a bit at that though. My mom was a bit too big for what I wanted. Hopefully since I wouldn’t be having a kid I’d be able to stay a more reasonable cup size. Well, plus the hormones for me could be regulated too.

She was so excited for me that morning that her mood improved. Her cramps also improved that morning too. Her mom picked us up like normal that morning and got filled in by Amy. “Tiffany’s breasts are growing, Mommy!” she told her not long after we got in the car.

“Great,” she turned around and told me at the stop light nearest my house. After a seconds pause she asked, “Are they sore?”

“Uh-huh,” I told her. “My mom gave me some stuff for them though,” I added.

“Good, remind me I want to take a look at them and make sure everything looks alright later,” she told me. That was the one bad thing about her being a doctor, she liked to keep an eye on both Amy and I herself every now and then. Amy complained about it to me frequently, though it had only happened to me once before. She gave me a knowing look though.

At school the morning actually started off alright. In choir we had the tryouts for soloist that morning. “Okay, Tiffany, you’re next,” Ms. Beecher said to me as she started playing the piano part. I took a deep breath and then sang fully.

“Very nice Tiffany,” she said and then had the next girl go. She had two others go and sat thoughtfully looking at some notes she’d made on the clipboard in front of her. “Okay drum roll please,” she said. Some of the boys began drumming on their knees. They did just about everything for her, since they all thought she was ‘hot.’ “The soloist is going to be Ms. Jacobson.” She said.

“Congrats Tiffany,” Amy said next to me hugging my shoulder. Kristina and my friends all congratulated me, but I couldn’t help but notice some of the other kids were glaring at me. Another girl, Caitlyn, who had tried out looked absolutely like she wanted to kill me. The more I thought about it she was friends with Lucas and Jarred… I hoped things wouldn’t get worse now. Ms. Beecher had us sing the whole song now with me standing out in front of the choir for the first half of the song. It started with a solo, the choir came in, and then I had another part. After that she had me rejoin the first row of sopranos where I normally stood.

I left choir beaming. That had been awesome! I was getting to sing a solo and also play a solo at our Christmas concert! It was a combined concert every year with the bands, the orchestra, choirs, and jazz band. At the end of the concert we were going to be playing and singing a piece all together. I had already agreed to go ahead and play with the band for that part because it would be easier. Ms. Beecher had been fine with that because there would be all of the choirs for that anyway. It was going to be a long concert though.

When we got to English Ms. Damien announced, “Okay ladies and gentlemen leave your bags here, we’re going to go the library and check out some books for your next book report that will be due after Christmas.”

I grabbed a book that I needed to return for the report I had finished Wednesday night, and walked down the hallway with a group of my friends. Ms. Damien was right behind us as she had closed the door and turned off the lights. She herded us down the hallway hushing us to be quiet. Some of the boys, Jarred included, had certainly chosen to be noisy just to cause trouble. Once we were in the library she set us loose. I went with Amy to turn in our books from the last project and then we began looking for something else to read for this one.

“This one’s on the list,” she said as she pointed to a gigantic book that said War and Peace on it. “It’s even worth extra points,” she said sarcastically.

“I think I’m going to pass on that one. I mean there’s Babysitter’s Club on the list too — that hardly seems like a fair comparison there,” I told her. She laughed too.

After about ten minutes we both had a book and sat down at a table with Nikki, Kyle, and a couple other friends, and began talking about different things. “So what are you up to this weekend?” Nikki asked the two of us.

“My parents are making us get a family holiday picture tonight,” Amy told her.

“Us?” She asked.

“Tiffany’s getting dragged along for the fun too!” She said with a smile. I answered with my own fake smile.

“Anything else exciting?” Kyle asked.

“No, we’ll probably end up just hanging out or something,” I told him. Honestly I was hoping maybe we’d get a chance to play with dolls or something non-grownup. I was tired of everything and just wanted an escape from the events of the past week.

“Cool,” he said.

My group of friends all coalesced on our table and eventually got loud enough the librarian chewed us out. Ms. Damien decided that meant it was time to herd us back to the classroom. I was in front right behind her with Kyle right next to me. I got to my desk and noticed that my bag was tipped over — I didn’t remember leaving it like that. As I opened the bag up I couldn’t help but screech. “WHAT?”

Ms. Damien came over there and gasped as well.

Inside my bag was a Barbie Doll, but it had been mutilated. I started to reach to pick it up but Ms. Damien said, “Tiffany let’s just take your whole bag down to the office.” She suggested with her hand on my shoulder. The whole class hadn’t quite made it back into the room yet so she tried to keep me quiet as I walked with her towards the door where the call button to the office was located. She pressed it.

A second later a voice came over, “Yes Ms. Damien?”

“Would you get Mrs. Henry to come down here please?”

“She’s busy right now,” the secretary started.

“Not that busy,” she told the secretary.

The secretary wasn’t stupid and figured something must have been bad for her to say something like that. And, if nothing else Mrs. Henry would instruct Ms. Damien herself in how not to be rude. “I’ll get her for you.”

I waited there standing by Ms. Damien’s desk for a long moment before the bell rang. Mrs. Henry showed up right then, saw me, and sighed as she put the pieces together. “I take it this has to do with you Tiffany?” She asked.

“Unfortunately,” I said.

The two of us walked down to the office and she looked inside my bag herself. She started to touch it but I said, “Actually Mrs. Henry I would like to the police to take a look at this,” I told her. She started to complain but decided it was probably a good idea. The school’s resource officer was called in.

“You didn’t touch this at all?” he asked the two of us.

We shook our heads. “I’ll be right back, okay?” He said.

He returned a bit later with a small tackle box in his hands. He pulled a pair of gloves out of there and picked up the doll. ‘Poor Barbie,’ I thought to myself. The hair had been somehow pulled out of the plastic — something I figured must have taken a lot of force. One side of the face was melted off with a lighter or something, the other side gouged with a knife and blood painted on there with marker.

I recognized the outfit on her — I had the same dress for my Barbies — it had been ripped up with a knife and more cuts made on it. One hand had been snapped off, the other burned. Both legs were broken, and underneath the doll I noticed that yet another note had been left. The officer took out some powder and a brush and dusted it for prints. I watched as I could actually see small prints become visible on the arms and face.

“Well there are some fingerprints on this,” he said and he took some print strips and collected the dust off the doll in the familiar elliptical shape. “I don’t know what good they’ll do us, but I’ll take them down to the station and see if they match any of our known kids here.”

I looked at him hopefully, “Tiffany don’t count on us matching anyone though. There are over seven-hundred kids in this school… and we only have maybe twenty of them with fingerprints from being busted for things.” He put the doll in a plastic Ziploc bag and sealed it before using his gloved hands to pick up the letter. He carefully uncrumpled it and sat on a desk for us to read.

‘Freak, this is your last warning. Drop out of school and give up your solo in choir or we’ll be making you look exactly like this doll.’ There was a colorful epithet at the end and the paper seemed to have drops of blood on it.

“Mrs. Henry I want to get my captain down here, this is beyond your average junior high threat at this point,” he told her with concern in his voice.

“If you think that is best,” she said reluctantly. “I need to call her parents and let her know about this incident,” she said to him.

For my part I sat down in a chair to the side of her desk and tried my best to blend into the woodwork. The next couple hours was filled with embarrassing questions from two other officers that came in and started asking me questions, Mrs. Henry and Ms. Damien questions, my mom questions, and finally a couple of my friends. The cops seemed to be taking the threat really seriously. “Why didn’t you call me down last week?” the resource officer asked Mrs. Henry point blank. She didn’t have a good answer for him. I guessed that I wasn’t supposed to hear that question, so I pretended to not hear it.

Eventually the bell rang for the day to be over. “Do you still want to go over to Amy’s tonight?” Mom asked me gently.

I nodded. I still hadn’t cried yet. I was afraid if I spoke too much though I was going to start.

“Okay then, let me walk you out to Melanie, she’ll be waiting outside, and then I’ll come back in here and deal with the rest of this.” She told me.

I nodded again and let her lead me out with her arm around my shoulder. I couldn’t believe it was getting worse. Before it had been bad, but now everyone seemed to be really scared about it. I’d been asked questions about everything. The choir thing had seemed a key they thought. I told them about Caitlyn’s look at me, but other than that I didn’t have any idea. It could have been any of the kids in or out of there. It might have just been a friend of someone’s too.

Amy looked up at me from across the parking lot as I crossed to meet her at her mom’s car. Melanie didn’t know anything had happened but picked up on it pretty quick. “What happened?” she asked my mom.

She explained and Melanie immediately gave me a big hug just like the one my mom had given me when she’d come into the office. “Do you still want to go along with us to do pictures?” She asked me.

“Sure, no reason for whomever this is to ruin my life…” I said softly. I was on the verge of crying but I didn’t want to let it out. Whoever it was might be in the parking lot and watching to see if they could get the satisfaction. ‘I REFUSE TO GIVE IT TO YOU!!!!’ a voice in my head screamed at them. ‘Screaming… that would feel good,’ part of me said.

She looked at me with concern in her eyes that mirrored my mom’s. “Do you want to keep her tonight?” she asked my mom.

“No, she wants to go with you guys still, and like she said it would give them a victory in some small way — at least the way she looks at it.” Then she added, “Plus I know she’s safe with you.”

Melanie gave my mom a big hug too and opened the door for Amy and me to climb in. I hadn’t realized it but she’d put her hand through mine several moments before. “We’ve got an appointment in about fifteen minutes at the salon,” Melanie told the two of us as we got into the car. “Hair and nails both,” she said as if she could read a question in my mind.

That thought made a thin smile appear on my lips. “You’ll have the nails and hair that way for the pictures, and if you’re careful the nails will still be nice for your concert Tuesday night.” She added.

“If they survive dance practices,” Amy said sourly.

“We can always get them filled if you chip them,” Melanie said to soothe her.

 

Chapter 26:

 

THE THREE OF us made my third trip to this salon walking in together. “Good afternoon Mrs. Hancock,” the owner said as we walked in the door. “We’re all ready for the three of you if you want to follow me,” she said and led us back to an area where we put on robes in place of our clothes. This salon and spa was upscale and amazing in every way. The three of us quickly changed with the two of them looking the other direction from me. It was a quick process and we filed back out fairly quickly. It was about four and we were supposed to get our pictures done at six as soon as Amy’s dad could get out of the office.

“How are you doing, Tiffany?” The lady, Lilly, said to me as I walked out of the changing area.

“Not so great, but nothing you can do about that,” I told her.

“Well I’ll see if I can’t change your mind on that sweetie,” she said with a smile as she led me over to her station. As I sat down she walked in front of me and said, “Okay what are we doing today?”

“Well I guess maybe a trim… but it can’t be too much because we need to have our hair fairly similar for our dance competition next month,” I told her. I was actually kind of glad to have that as a subject changer.

Amy’s mom came up behind her real quick on her way to a station down the row and told her something. “Alright Mrs. Hancock,” Lilly told the girl.

Lilly now had an interesting gleam in her eyes that made me wonder what kind of insanity she was planning. “Well since she told me that I know exactly what I’m going to do for you Tiffany,” she said.

“Is there supposed to be an evil cackle after that?” I asked her.

“Maybe,” she said and then giggled, “but I’ve never managed to perfect that laugh. Don’t worry, I’ll trim it for you so it’ll keep looking right and then I’ll get it done the way your mom wants it.”

“She’s not my…” I started to say, but paused before anything came out of my mouth. Who’s to say she wasn’t a mom for me at this point? I decided just to nod at her instead. Lilly washed and conditioned my hair really good and then began snipping and cutting here and there. When she finished she showed me my look in the mirror for my approval, “That’s looks great!” I told her. It wasn’t a lie, it looked better than the last time I’d been in there for a cut.

“Great!” she said. “Now for the evil part!” She made a show of scissors in her hand as if she was going to cut it all off.

“I will haunt you forever if you do that,” I said calmly.

She snickered, apparently since this was my second appointment with her she felt like she could have some more fun. “Okay Tiffany let’s get your hair up now,” she began twisting and pulling and curling my hair for the next twenty minutes. My whole head felt like it had pins pulling out all of my hair by the time she finished.

“I’ll show you the look when I get done with your nails,” she told me a few moments later as she began the process of working on my nails. She had taken my shoes off for me since I’d forgotten to do that in the changing room. “Well your toenails are in good shape sweetie, your fingernails are quite a mess though,” she gently chided me as she filed at a fingernail.

“It’s nearly impossible for me to keep from breaking them during dance practice sometimes,” I told her.

“You’re on a squad at your junior high?” She asked.

I nodded, “Amy and I are the co-captains of our dance squad. We’re going to go to the national competition in January,” I told her with a smile.

“You must be really good then,” she told me.

“I hope so… we work really hard at least.” I paused and added, “It’s our first year of having a junior high squad though so who knows what’ll happen.”

“I’m sure you’ll do well,” she said as she moved on to another finger, “Now do you want some tips on these?”

“They probably won’t survive…” I started.

“You never know.” Pointing to Melanie she said, “And she said you’re doing pictures and having a concert next week?”

“Yes.”

“Well then let’s put some longer nails on you then. Your mom already told me the color she wants, so don’t worry about that,” she said before I could hope to input that.

‘What madness is she up to now?’ I thought about Amy’s mom. I wondered what kind of photo session for a family would possibly involve this much work…

After what seemed an eternity, she was done with my nails and letting them dry. “Okay, let’s just do some makeup and you’ll be done!” she said. “I’m bringing over Lynette for that, give me just a couple minutes to get her.” As she started to walk off though, she said, “and no peaking!” to me.

I grumbled. My head was getting used to the pins that were holding my hair up in some shape or another, but now I was really curious. I looked down at my nails and saw they were a pretty design with a combination of a medium purple, and white snowflakes. The center of each snowflake had a little diamond rhinestone glued in there. She had also done some other little squiggles in the background design of each nail. They looked gorgeous!

I was so curious about my hair that I almost went ahead and turned the chair around before Lilly got back with Lynette, but she got back just in time. “How are you doing?” Lynette asked me. I recognized her from the first time I had been in the salon.

“Better now,” I told her. That was the honest truth — all the pampering was helping to dull the pain of the day.

“Good! Now do you have any makeup on today?” She asked me.

I started to shake my head no, but then remembered something she could already see I was certain, “I do have some mascara on,” I told her.

“Okay, I can take care of that real quick.” She pulled over a cart from a neighboring station and had me close my eyes while she cleaned the mascara off my eyes. Once her palette was clear she began working on me. “I’m not going to do a whole lot here sweetie, you have such a nice complexion you don’t need much.”

“Thanks,” I said as she used a wedge and some liquid foundation on my face. She worked on it for a moment and then worked on my eyes. She spent most of the time quickly putting eye shadow on my eyelids. She added just a tiny bit of eyeliner. “You really don’t need this, but Mrs. Hancock said she wanted you to have a certain look for the pictures you’re all about to take. I just finished doing Amy’s makeup almost the same way,” she said with a smile.

She eventually pronounced me done and I was turned around to look at myself in the mirror.

“Wow!” I said. Somehow she had managed to make me look like I was about two years older than I normally did! I still looked a bit younger than twelve, but I didn’t look like I was seven then. My hair was done up in a tall bun with ringlets coming out of every side of it. It was similar to how it had been done for the film festival in New York, but different slightly. I looked beautiful though!

“You like it?” Lilly asked.

“Absolutely!” I said and threw my arms around her shoulders. “For once I don’t look like I’m five years younger than I actually am!”

Lynette looked at Lilly and said, “This is the only time in girls’ lives they want to look older. I’d kill to look five years younger than I am…” she grumbled.

I gave Lynette a hug too and then was led back to the changing area. I had just finished when Amy came in. I saw her hair and she saw mine at the same time, “Cuuuute!” we both said together. That started us giggling as she hurried up to catch up and get changed. Melanie somehow was already waiting for us to leave and she said, “You two look beautiful!” and she gave each of us a hug.

“Okay, let’s get over to the portrait studio, it’s going to take a little bit to get you two dressed I’m guessing.” She said taking a hand from each of us and walking out with us. Her hair wasn’t done as high, but it was really pretty. We each told her that. “You’re both going to steal the show,” she assured us both.

When we got into her car I noticed that my dresses from home weren’t in there. “Umm… Melanie didn’t you have my dresses earlier?” I asked her.

She didn’t answer she just smiled at me. I wondered what she was up to. Last time something like this had happened was the week after I came out to my parents. We’d gone to the same portrait studio we were going to and she’d had dozens of outfits waiting for both of us there. ‘Was she doing the same again?’ I asked myself. I looked at Amy and she shrugged, she didn’t know any more than I did.

The two of us tugged our coats close to us as we got out and went inside the portrait studio when we got there. I could see the familiar ‘Rogers Portrait Studio’ sign and smiled.

“Hi Mrs. Hancock,” he said as we walked in together. “Tiffany, Amy, how are you two ladies doing?”

I just smiled at him. I’d had a crummy day that was improving a lot thanks to pretty things. “I’m guessing you’re ready to get these two changed and going?” he asked.

“Yes please,” she said to him. “My husband should be along in about forty minutes. I figured we could get these two done in some individual poses, together, and a couple with me with them before he gets here then we’ll do the ones with all of us in them.”

“Sounds good!” He said. He led us down to the changing rooms he had in his large studio. “It’s all in there as you requested,” he told her.

“Thank you,” she told him and then opened the doors to two of the changing rooms. “Stay here for a second,” she told us. She disappeared for a second and checked on something before returning, “Okay, Tiffany in this one, Amy in this one. Put on the dress that’s in there and then come out here so I can make sure you are set.”

I looked at her suspiciously before going into my changing room and seeing the dress.

“WOW!” I exclaimed. I ran out and hugged her real quick before returning to put it on. It was a gorgeous color that was somehow in between a true purple and lavender. It had two straps at the top, an a-line bodice, and a skirt that flared out. It had a ton of beads on it and as I touched it I could tell it was made of taffeta. The best thing about it, I thought as I began taking it off the hanger, was that I was sure it wouldn’t make me look like I was five! The pictures I’d taken with my parents the previous month certainly hadn’t managed that feat. I’d looked much younger in those pictures — it had bothered me.

I unzipped the back and carefully slipped it over my head. I noticed that the netting that was poofing the skirt out was really rigid. After I slipped on the dress I tried to zip it up myself, and was proud of myself when I succeeded. There was a bow at the back though, and I knew there was no way I would be able to tie it pretty enough for pictures so I just looked at myself in the mirror for a few moments. I was gorgeous. There was no other way to describe me at that moment. I smiled when I realized that you could sort of see the breasts forming on the inside of my dress. I had worried about that for a second since I knew my sports bra was definitely not appropriate for the dress, but I realized a second later the dress had a sort of bra built into it already.

“Are you about done in there Tiffany?” I heard Melanie ask softly.

I breathed and walked out. “How do I look?” I asked her.

“Gorgeous,” she breathed out, “you and Amy both.” Amy was already in the process of putting on a necklace and earring set that her mom had handed her. As she looked up at me I saw she had the same dress on as I did, in a bigger size of course, and hers was a pretty blue. “Turn around Tiffany and I’ll get your bow for you,” she told me.

I turned around and she tied the bow quickly before spinning me around. “You two are going to look gorgeous together in those dresses!” She squealed. As she looked at us I thought she was going to start crying, “You know its fun to shop for one daughter, but a second one makes things a blast,” she said with a wink.

“Here Tiffany,” she said handing me a fairly large white jewelry box, “This is for you.”

I opened it up and saw a gorgeous necklace that had a purple amethyst set in… “White gold? I can’t accept this…” I started to say. It must have cost a fortune.

“Nonsense, I got one for Amy so I had to get one for you. Hurry up and let’s get it on,” she told me with a smile. I handed her the necklace and she quickly did the clasp around my neck. I then put in the pretty matching earrings.

“Thank you so much!” I told her and gave her a hug and then Amy a hug too. In the end the three of us were embraced and I was on the verge of losing my control over my tears. I forced myself not to though as I didn’t want to look like a raccoon for the pictures.

“Okay, I need to get changed myself,” she said. “I’m going to have him get started on you two while I do that though,” she told us.

“Roger?” She said.

“Are they ready?” He said coming up a few moments later.

“I think so. You know what I want right?” she asked him.

“I think so. Go ahead and get ready yourself and we’ll be able to get through it all pretty quickly I think.” He said that with a smile before saying, “Okay ladies, this way.” He told us.

The next thirty minutes or so were a blur as he did pictures of us together and separate. About half-way through one set of pictures of Amy, I watched Melanie walk in so I walked over and hugged her. “You look really pretty,” I told her.

“You don’t look too bad yourself,” she told me with a smile. She’d put on a floor length gown of her own that was a pretty blue. I sat for a second wondering about how it would look with the three of us and decided it was going to be a great picture. Several more pictures were taken of Amy and me before we started doing some with Melanie. She did one set with just Amy for a bit and then included me for way more than they had done by themselves. I hoped Amy wasn’t feeling like I was intruding. Anytime I worried about that though she just continued to have a big smile on her face that I knew she wasn’t faking.

After a lot of pictures of the three of us in tons of poses, standing, sitting, and even laying down, Amy’s dad arrived and got into the pictures. He was wearing a suit and tie that somehow managed to work with all of our outfits. I wondered if Amy’s mom picked it out for him. Again they did some pictures with just Amy, and then a bunch of pictures with me too.

“Okay girls let me just get a couple pictures of just Mom and Dad and I think we’ll be done.” The photographer told us with a smile.

Amy and I actually were holding hands while they did the pictures and I think we both felt even more like sisters now than we had before. “What now?” Amy asked as her parents stood up from the last picture.

“Well we’re going to go have a nice dinner and go shopping in town for a bit,” she said to us.

We were both smiling, “Okay!” Amy and I said in unison. Everyone started laughing and continued to do so a lot as we walked out of the portrait studio. Amy’s mom had already picked up all of our clothes from inside the dressing room so we were ready to go. “Here ladies,” she said to us as she handed us each shawls that matched our dresses to put over our shoulders and arms. She also handed us each a dress coat that matched with our dresses nicely.

“Thanks!” I told her. I couldn’t believe she’d spent even more money like this on me. The dresses were at least four-hundred dollars each, Amy and I had guessed quietly. She was more accustomed to it though, so that didn’t make her jaw drop like it did me. The jewelry was at least two-hundred as well too. As the four of us walked into a really classy restaurant in Albuquerque we took a lot glances. Several teenage boys that were sitting in the waiting area couldn’t keep their eyes off of us. Something that Amy and I had some private fun with.

“Would you two stop tormenting those poor boys,” Melanie whispered to both of us as we were escorted to our table.

I blushed a bit as we were caught, but Amy said, “You would do it too Mom if you were our age!”

Her mom giggled a bit. The maitre’d at the table pulled the chairs out for each of us and pushed us in towards the table. “Have a good evening,” he told us as he walked away. A handsome waiter came and waited on us shortly thereafter. “I’m Mark and I’ll be waiting on you tonight. If I may ask what’s the occasion?”

“Just getting some pictures done,” Mr. Hancock said.

“I’m sure they were all gorgeous. You ladies especially look very pretty tonight,” he told us.

“Thanks,” Amy and I both giggled. He had made us both blush.

Dinner was nice and quiet. We each had a really nice meal and were well tended. Mark seemed to sense a pile of tip money coming his way if he did a good job, and made sure he lived up to that. “Thank you sir,” he told Amy’s dad as he handed him cash to pay the bill and told him to keep the change.

“Okay, so shopping now?” He asked us.

“No, bathroom first,” I said.

“Me too,” Amy said.

“Me three,” Melanie said, “We’ll be back, Greg.”

Amy and I felt like we were being herded by her mom towards the bathroom. I found it challenging and not much fun to go with dresses this big. I managed to avoid letting the dress hit the toilet though and I considered that an accomplishment. As I came out of the stall I found Amy hadn’t beat me like I figured she would have. I noticed she had her purse with her when she came in though so I guessed right that she was still dealing with monthly fun. She had that same disgusted look on her face again as she washed her hands. An older lady came in and said, “Wow, you two princesses look gorgeous!”

“Thank you ma’am,” I said to her.

She spoke to us for a couple minutes admiring our dresses until Melanie saved us from her and we got back in the car to go shopping. “Where are we shopping?” I asked.

“I figured the bigger mall?” She suggested.

Amy said, “Okay!”

At the mall we definitely looked out of place for shopping, but it was nice to be able to show off our dresses! We didn’t buy anything, or really try anything on, but we looked around and went to a couple of the main stores like Macy’s and Dillards for a bit before heading back to their house. It was about a thirty minute drive and Amy and I just sort of zoned out in the warm comfy car.

“Tiffany, are you awake?” I heard while Amy’s hand gently nudged my shoulder.

“Huh?” I had one of those moments where it’s like no, but yes, but I don’t want to be, and then said, “Sure.”

“Girls let’s go upstairs and get you changed into your pajamas.” She told us. Apparently Amy must have been just as tired because I didn’t hear her arguing. As we climbed the stairs she stayed right behind us, like she was afraid we’d fall backwards or something. At the top of the stair case we both paused long enough for her to undo our bows. She ended up unzipping us too, even though we could have gotten it ourselves.

I got to my room and pulled the dress back over my head, and then found a hanger for it in my closet. ‘I’ll get the real hanger later,’ I told myself. I found a pair of pajamas in a drawer and put them on before going into the bathroom and washing the makeup off of my face. I had a feeling I was going to collapse very shortly. I would have done it immediately, but I realized my hair was still up and I didn’t know what to do with it. I was afraid that if I left it in the pins all night I was going to have a massive headache the next day, but I didn’t want to ruin it either.

Melanie must have had a built in stress-meter or something because she appeared behind me all of the sudden and started taking it all out for me. “I hate to take it out,” I told her.

“You can’t leave it in all night though, it’s pinned too tight,” she told me agreeing with my fears. She pulled at a few of the pins and combs for me. I was happy that even when the curls came down off the top of my head, it still looked pretty. “If you really want it I can redo it for you in the morning,” she told me.

“No that’s okay,” I told her.

“So you said earlier you were feeling sore?” She asked.

I sighed, “yeah, I haven’t been paying attention to it all day though until you mentioned it.” I really hadn’t, I’d been distracted for most of the day by everything.

“May I see?”

I pulled up my pajama top and let her look at my swollen breasts. She carefully and gently prodded a bit before saying, “Everything looks normal,” she told me. “Looks like you’re going to grow pretty quick too,” she added.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, well you have enough hormones going through you from your pills that you should be. You should probably also be growing taller by a few inches here in the next couple months too,” she added.

I gave her a hug, “Thank you for everything.”

“Any time Tiffany, any time.” She said returning the hug before kissing the top of my freed head and saying, “Now do you want to go to bed or do you want to have a pajama party downstairs with Amy and me with some hot chocolate?”

“That sounds good!” I told her. She and I walked downstairs where Amy had a tea kettle going with some hot water. Amy smiled at me and the two of us sat down on bar stools next to each other. Her mom poured boiling water a few minutes later into cups with hot chocolate mix. It was a good time with the three of us in our pajamas just relaxing. A little later, after watching Amy and my eyes drooping low she said it was time for bed. Neither of us argued.

I had been in my bed trying to sleep for all of like twenty seconds before I fell asleep. I had desperately needed it. At some point in the night I started dreaming dreams that were way too vivid.

 
 
I was walking down the hallway from Mr. Martin’s class to the cafeteria, but for some reason none of my friends were with me. ‘It’s not far,’ I told myself a little nervous with everything going on. From the side hallway before you turned down to the cafeteria I heard, ‘There’s the freak. Get it!’ I turned back quickly to look and see fourteen kids chasing me with baseball bats and knives in their hands.

I ran as quickly as I could. I’d be safe in the cafeteria, Mrs. Henry or someone would be there right? As I tried to open the door to the crowded cafeteria I couldn’t get in. It was locked! I ran down the hallway to another entrance from that side, it was locked too! I could see Amy, Kyle, Nikki, David, and all of my friends sitting there waiting for me. Somehow I knew that no amount of screaming would get their attention in time though.

In the meantime I caught a glimpse of the group and saw that they were getting closer. I turned the corner and decided to try and run in through the entrance that was next to the snack bar… there had to be a way in!

I could see the door there was open, but before I could get there someone tripped me and I went flying. “GOTCHA!!!” I heard a voice that I instinctively knew was Jarred’s say. As I rolled over I could see him begin to bring a baseball bat down on my head and I screamed!!!!!!!

 

“Tiffany! Tiffany! Are you alright?” I heard a familiar and comforting voice ask me.

‘It was all a dream…’ I told myself and immediately started sobbing and holding onto Melanie. Amy came in too since she’d heard me and climbed onto the bed next to me hugging me too. I just kept crying.

‘It seemed so real,’ I told myself. ‘It’s going to happen,’ another voice in my head told me. I must have eventually cried myself back to sleep since I don’t remember anything else from that night.

 

THE NEXT MORNING I woke up when I heard, “Tiffany can you let go of me, I can’t breathe.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“You’re squeezing me too hard,” I heard Amy say.

I woke up enough at that point to realize something wasn’t right. I hadn’t gone to sleep with Amy in my bed… that just sounded wrong… I looked up to see her face a few inches from me and my arms around her neck. “Oops… sorry…” I turned red.

It was at that point that I realized how much of a baby I’d been last night… I tried not to start crying, but a few tears came through my eyes before I could wrench the glands shut. Thankfully Amy was sleepy enough that she didn’t notice. “Are you feeling any better?” she asked gently once she’d managed to breathe for a few minutes.

I shook my head but said, “I don’t know…”

“What happened?” She asked me gently.

I couldn’t remember saying anything last night and I was sure they must have thought I was possessed. “It was a really bad dream…” I said.

“Someone attacked you?” She guessed.

I shuddered but nodded, “Like twenty people…” I told her about it. “And just as I thought I was going to be able to make it to safety Jarred tripped me…”

She hugged me yet again and I started crying again. “Tiffany we’re not going to let anything happen to you,” she promised solemnly.

“I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do about it Amy — it’s going to happen.” I told her with a certainty that scared me.

She leaned back from me and looked at me with a worried expression, “Don’t say that Tiffany. You know we’re always there with you…”

“I know, but I just… I just have a gut feeling something’s going to happen soon.”

“Maybe you should go to another school?” Amy suggested. She saw the look in my eyes, “I’d go with you — I know Mom and Dad would be fine with that. Maybe even a couple others of our friends would transfer too…”

“It wouldn’t help Amy. I’m going to run into this no matter where I am. Anytime someone learns that I wasn’t born Tiffany it’s going to happen.”

The two of us talked quietly for a long time. “Nope, not going to let it happen,” she told me sure of herself finally.

I didn’t believe her, but I was ready to think of something else. Thankfully Amy’s mom took that moment to open the door and say, “How is everyone doing this morning?” She asked that as she came and sat next to us on the bed and gave me a kiss on my head and a hug.

I just shrugged in response, but Amy said, “Mommy, Tiffany’s worried she’s really going to be attacked. That’s what her dream was about last night.”

“I had a feeling it was something like that,” she said to me gently. “Tiffany you know we’re not going to let anything happen to you right?”

I just smiled weakly at her. I didn’t believe it. I was sure something was going to happen. She gave me a calculating look to try and decide what to do with me that day. Apparently she decided there was one solution for a look like that, she started tickling me!

“Hey that’s not fair,” I said as she had me giggling uncontrollably. “I’m going to wet my pants!” I told her loudly.

“We’re not going to let anything happen to you sweetie,” she said a few minutes later, “believe it, alright?” She told me.

I just nodded. “Okay, it’s nine-thirty in the morning and I think we need to go shopping all day today. Have you gotten Christmas presents for your parents yet Tiffany?” she asked me.

I shook my head, “not for my mom.”

“Well then let’s go do that today. A girl’s day out sounds like a good idea today,” she said while tucking some hair behind mine and Amy’s ears at the same time.

“Come on,” Amy told me pushing me to get up and head to the shower.

I fumbled around in my drawers there finding a pair of jeans and a sweater to wear for the day. I found some underwear, including my last clean sports bra at their house, some socks, and then climbed into my shower there. The hot water helped clear my head a little. I still felt like I was doomed, but at least I wasn’t doomed without people who cared about me…

By the time I made it downstairs Amy was already there eating a grapefruit. That kind of sounded good so I stole her other half and began munching on it. Melanie came down the hall from her office and said, “You two about ready?”

“I need to stop by my house,” I told her.

“What for?”

“I don’t carry my money with me to school…” I told her. I needed to grab the hundred dollars I had saved up for presents out of my purse at home.

She looked at me like she wanted to argue the point and offer just to pay but didn’t. Amy’s mom was smart that way, and I really appreciated that. “Okay, we’ll stop by there on our way out of town.”

My parents were both gone when we stopped by my house. I was glad I remembered to grab my key from my backpack before we left! I quickly went down the hallway and found my small purse and ran back outside locking the door behind me. I sat down in their car across from Amy and smiled at her. She was happy because she was going shopping, and I could almost forget about my troubles while we shopped.

“Now girls I don’t want you two wandering around without me, okay?” She said.

I nodded. She didn’t have to worry about me wondering off today, not after my nightmare last night. When we got to the mall it was already pretty packed. I was proud of myself though, I found a pretty necklace for my mom just twenty minutes into shopping — and it didn’t cost much either. I ended up buying her a blouse as well since I wanted to be fair to my parents and spend the same amount of money on them.

At that point, with fifty-dollars left in my hands I felt like there was lava in my purse that was trying to break through to the cash registers. I didn’t really find a lot of things that I wanted to buy though. It was annoying. Amy and I went through lots of clothing racks with her mother trying on different things but not deciding on anything. I did spend a little bit of money on some new lotion from Bath and Bodyworks. I had a feeling I was going to be fighting with Amy for it though since she loved it as much as I did.

By the end of the afternoon I was really tired, but had a good time. We went back to their house and had a surprise waiting for us. Amy’s dad had a huge stack of proof prints from the photographer on the kitchen table there.

“You two look so cute!” Melanie said to us.

I looked at the pictures and the happy sisters that sat there together. It did look like she was a bit older than I was, but not by much. The way everything was done made me look like I was about thirteen, and Amy only looked like she was about the same age. I wondered if her mom had gotten them to do that somehow with the makeup and hair… My favorite picture though was one with Melanie sitting on a block and the two of us leaned up against her on either side.

Melanie picked out about ten of the pictures and called the studio, surprised to find he was still in, I heard her say, “Yes, we want a twenty-four by thirty-six of that one…”

‘That was a big picture size’ I thought to myself. ‘It must have been the one we all liked of the three of them,’ I added.

After dinner that night I thought about playing with Barbies, but that thought ended the second I saw a doll that looked just like the one that had been used in the threat against me yesterday. Amy suggested we play with her old baby dolls instead, guessing correctly my problem, and I agreed. It was kind of strange to play with a baby doll after I’d changed a real diaper babysitting. My heart wasn’t really in it and we gave up after a short while.

“Wanna watch a movie?” she suggested.

The two of us ended up getting a movie going and her mom brought popcorn out to us and we all just sat quietly watching it. It was a quiet evening all the way through when Amy and I were told to go to bed. “Umm… Amy?” I asked.

“Huh?” She asked me as I climbed the stairs with her.

“Would you mind if I slept in your room tonight?”

She gave me a hug and said, “I don’t mind,” and we walked down towards her room.

Her mom came down the hallway a second later and asked, “Amy, do you know where Tiffany is?” She saw me a second later though. “Having a slumber party in Amy’s room instead tonight?” she asked with an understanding smile on her face.

“Do you mind?” I asked her.

“Of course not Tiffany!” she told me. She gave me a hug and helped us pull out Amy’s trundle bed. That night I hugged a stuffed teddy bear I kept at her house close all night. I did sleep all the way through the night for the first time in several nights though. Sunday passed quickly and we both ended up staying at my house Sunday night.

That night I had felt like crying again when I saw my mom. I gave her a big hug but held the tears in. I was afraid if she knew how upset I was that she would never let me go back to school at Holden again. I couldn’t run away though, I knew that with all of my heart it wouldn’t do any good.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 27:

 
MONDAY MORNING IT was tough to get myself out the door. If Amy hadn’t been there I was sure I would have stayed home sick. The only thing, other than her, that had any pull on me was that we had our Christmas Concert tomorrow night. I needed to be there to rehearse for the choir solo that had earned me that other threat on Friday. Melanie picked us up on time and seemed relieved to see that I had taken the time to do my hair and make myself look nice. “You look nice today,” she commented to me.

“Thanks, it’s easier now with the haircut on Friday,” I told her. She smiled at me in response and we drove to the school. Almost as soon as we walked out of the car Amy and I were both ambushed by our friends over our nails, ‘They’re so pretty!’ Kristina said when she saw them. When I took my seat in science a couple hours later I was unnerved to find a note that said, ‘Tiffany,’ across the top of it.

Amy saw it too and tried to offer to read it for me first but I had to look. I opened up the note that had been folded into a note-square. I pulled the corner out and unfolded it slowly. ‘Stop stuffing your bra,’ was what it said inside.

I laughed. A little at first, and then a lot. I had so much pent up emotion that I couldn’t stop laughing a few minutes later when I had finally passed it to Amy. “What’s so funny about this?” She asked me.

“Out of all of the things they could have saidt… it’s just funny for it to be so wrong.” I told her when I caught my breath.

She gave me a look like I was crazy, but said, “I guess,” she said. “This does seem to be just a normal thing — even I’ve gotten notes like this,” she added the last part to my surprise.

“When?”

“Beginning of this year, I just tossed them in the trash.”

“I would do that with this one, but it needs to go to the office too,” I sighed the last part. I refolded the note and put it in the front of my backpack figuring we could take it by there on the way to choir.

That day we got an early look at our report card grade for science class. I was pleased to see that I had an A+ listed on the paper. “Good job Tiffany,” Mr. Grainger told me with a smile. I turned and began to walk away from his desk but he said, “Hang in there kiddo, things are going to calm down.”

I just smiled at him in response, I didn’t believe they were.

Amy and I took the note by the office without comment to the secretaries and walked to choir. In choir we rehearsed until the last ten minutes when Ms. Beecher gave us some time just to sit and talk. Somehow the topic of the last note came up as I was talking to Kristina. “You are growing aren’t you!” she said excitedly to me.

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s awesome Tiffany. Well sort of, don’t grow too much or you’ll have to get a new uniform for nationals,” she suggested.

“I can always force myself in there,” I said with a smile. “Besides I think Coach Holt ordered all of our uniforms with a little bit of extra room added for that competition. She told me that a few weeks ago,” I added.

“That’s smart,” she said to me.

The rest of the day continued with me getting another three notes about stuffing my bra, at which point it was just getting kind of old. When I turned in the other three notes before band with Kyle in tow Mrs. Henry looked at them and shook her head. “You know if this was anyone else I’d be telling you to ignore them,” she said honestly.

“I actually laughed at the first one this morning,” I told her, “But I’m sure these are probably related to the others.”

“Probably,” she conceded and took them back to add to her file on me. That had to have been almost a file cabinet full on me alone by now.

In band everyone turned in permission slips to go to the college for our rehearsal the next morning. I was looking forward to the idea of not being at school in the morning. I would just have to make sure I stuck with my friends like glue on the trip. After we ran through our concert music several times Mrs. Remar had us put up our instruments. “Tiffany, would you come here for a moment please?” She asked me.

“Yes Mrs. Remar?” I asked politely.

“Why didn’t you take your saxophone home Friday?” she asked me.

“I was in the office most of the afternoon and I forgot,” I answered honestly.

“Is everything alright?” she asked as she led me into her office and shut the door.

“No.” I told her.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s not going on?” I started before explaining everything from the past week.

“It doesn’t seem to get better for you, does it?” She asked me rhetorically. I just shook my head, “Tiffany, make sure you’re always with a couple people tomorrow, okay?” She suggested to me.

“I figure I’ll be with friends all morning,” I told her.

“Good.” She said leading me back out to the band room just as the bell rang, “Don’t forget…” she listed off a string of reminders to us all as I picked up my stuff and walked with Kyle to Coach Holt’s classroom again for my other stuff.

Coach Holt spoke casually with me as she walked down with me to the locker room. Practice was good that day. We watched the previous weeks’ recording again and tried to fix a few more things that were wrong with those run-throughs. “We’re going to record again on Thursday,” she told us. “But, since so many of you are involved in the concert tomorrow night we won’t be having practice tomorrow,” she told us.

“Thank you!” I said while a lot of other girls said, “Yay!” I had managed to make it through that practice without breaking a nail, but didn’t think I would succeed two days in a row. Before she dismissed us she said, “Don’t forget we have a meeting with your parents about Nationals at seven tonight!”

I had forgotten about it, but thankfully when I got out to the car my mom hadn’t. She had already called and cancelled my gymnastics lesson. “How was your day sweetie?” she had asked me when I got in the car.

“Well I didn’t have any major threats today…” I said, “does that make it a good day?” I asked honestly.

“It makes a start,” she told me with a thinner smile. I knew she couldn’t help but worry about me anytime I was out of her sight at this point. “Let’s get you home and showered so we can get back here for the meeting,” she said as she pulled away from the curb. I waved at Amy as she was getting into her moms’ car. She and her mom waved back at me and I was left to think quietly for a bit. I was grateful for the trip meeting tonight, because it gave me a chance to sit and daydream about what the competition would be like.

Coach Holt had dug up a tape she’d recorded off of ESPN of a competition similar to what we were going to. She’d even said there was potential for ESPN to do a show on the competition, but she thought they’d probably skip the middle school portion of it. Either way it made me dream of our squad winning the competition and bringing a huge trophy back to Holden Junior High.

I was suddenly awakened from my reverie when Mom said, “Are you getting out Tiffany?”

I realized with a jolt that we were at home already, “Umm… yeah?” I said as coolly as I could. I was kind of embarrassed, but at least I hadn’t been daydreaming about Kyle…

I jumped into the shower and tried not to take too long. Mom already had dinner in the Crockpot, so it was ready. I dried off and put on my cheerleading warm-up pants with a sweatshirt. I had gotten really chilled as I got out of the shower for some reason, so I also grabbed a hooded sweatshirt that I put over my first sweatshirt. “Cold?” Mom asked as I walked into the kitchen bundled up.

“Uh-huh…” I told her. She gave me a strange look and shrugged my temperature issues off, it wasn’t the first time. Dad came home about the time that I sat down at the table. He came by and gave me a hug before he went back to the bathroom to wash up.

“So there’s a meeting tonight?” he asked Mom and I as he sat down.

“Yes, about the trip to Nationals next month,” I answered.

“What time?” he asked us a second later.

“At seven,” she answered. I just kept picking at my food and was slowly warming up with the food in me.

“Okay, I think I can be ready by then,” he said. Just then the pager on his belt went off. He pulled it out of the holster and looked at the phone number. “Well maybe, let me see what this is about.”

Dad left his dinner on the table and walked over to the phone behind the kitchen table to dial the number that had been left. “I received a page…” I heard him say, immediately knowing he wouldn’t be going with us to the parent meeting.

That hurt for some reason, I wasn’t really certain why, but I found myself shivering more. I pulled my feet up on my chairs so they were my knees were right in front of my stomach before pulling my hoodie over them too. I forced myself to keep eating a few more bites before saying, “Mommy I’m going to go brush my hair out real quick before we go.”

“Okay sweetie, you don’t have too long though.”

I had been in front of my dresser for a few minutes when Dad came in behind me and gave me a hug around my shoulders. “I have to go to work so I’m not going to be able to come to the meeting tonight, sorry,” he told me.

“That’s okay, I understand,” I told him. I tried not to sound too unhappy about it, but that was pretty tough.

“I love you,” he told me before squeezing me one more time, giving me a kiss on the top of my head, and then heading out the door to go to who knows where. He was the best his company had, and that unfortunately meant when something went wrong he was called up to fix it. I probably wouldn’t even see him until the next night if I was lucky. I hoped he would make it to the concert…

“Are you ready, Tiffany?” I heard after I’d been brushing my hair continually for who knows how long.

I looked at myself in the mirror and decided to heck with it and threw my hair in a ponytail as I walked out my door. I had left my tennis shoes in the living room and quickly stepped into them without untying them. Mom gave me a look over that, but didn’t say anything. I knew it was a bad habit, but I didn’t really care. After grabbing I was ready to go.

I hurried out to the car while Mom locked the house up. My teeth were chattering by the time she opened it and I closed it. “Turn the heater on quick,” I begged her. “Just how cold is it tonight?”

She complied with the heater while saying, “It’s supposed to get down to ten or so tonight.”

“Brrrrr….”

About the time we were pulling into the parking lot at school the car finally warmed up. “Where’s the meeting?” Mom asked me.

“I think the cafeteria,” I told her uncertainly. I didn’t think we’d have it in Coach Holt’s classroom, the only other place was the locker room which didn’t seem likely either, so that’s where we went to — thankfully I was right.

“Hey Tiffany!” Kristina said while motioning that we should sit next to her and her parents.

“Kristina I think you’ve met my mom before?” I suggested.

“Yes, it’s nice to see you again Mrs. Jacobson,” she said to her politely. My mom had met her parents before too so there wasn’t much to be said.

“I’m so excited Tiff!” Kristina said to me as we stood around. “We’re going to do awesome at Nationals!”

“I hope so,” I told her. I kept a good cheerleaders’ smile on my face as I said it though.

“Hey Tiffany,” I heard Amy say behind me. I gave her a hug and I ended up sitting down with Kristina on one side and Amy on the other.

Our parents mingled a bit with each other and Greg, Amys’ dad, asked where my dad was. “He got called out…” Mom replied.

About that time Coach Holt walked to the front of the group and began saying, “If I can have your attention we’ll get this started and get you all out of here as soon as I can. I understand that your time is very valuable.”

With that all of the parents sat down and got quiet. I looked around real quick and saw that there were around forty people sitting around the tables closest to the stage. With sixteen girls on the squad that seemed about right. Coach Holt came around and gave each girl’s family a packet of information to look at. “Everyone got a packet?” She asked as she returned once again to the front.

Seeing everyone nodding she continued, “Okay the first thing in the packet is the expectations we have of the girls while we are on the trip. This is nothing new to them, but let me go ahead and reiterate a few of them. First and foremost is that there will be no alcohol or drugs, including tobacco on this trip,” she said looking sternly. “Any girl found with such things in her possession will be immediately sent home at her parents’ expense. I don’t think we’ll have any problems, but I want that clear.”

Coach Holt paused and looked around before looking back down at her paper, “Next, there will be a curfew. All of the girls will be taped into their rooms. We will also be having a security guard keeping an eye on the doors. I will get a report in the morning of any doors that are opened and deal with the girls immediately. Any girl that sneaks out of her room will also be sent home immediately.” She looked to make sure that everyone understood and went through a couple other rules.

“Okay, the next page is the itinerary for the trip.” Coach turned over the page in her packet and continued, “We’re going to be performing for the preliminary round Thursday afternoon at about four, and again at six-thirty. There will be an awards ceremony that will announce the results and finalists at about eight that night. Because of this we’re going to be heading out of the airport in Albuquerque at seven in the morning…” she continued to discuss the specifics of the trip.

We were going to get to spend Friday in Disney World having fun and then return to the competition on Saturday no matter what. Friday was the prelim round for the high school teams, and the finals for both groups would be on Saturday. The finals would be held on a stage in Disney World. Ours would be in the morning and the high school’s would be in the afternoon. There would be a massive awards ceremony for both categories that night in Disney World at the same spot as the competition. No matter how we placed we would be spending the morning and afternoon at the competition, watching if nothing else. ‘I really hope we perform and don’t sit all day,’ I said to myself.

Questions were asked and answered about all sorts of things for the next thirty minutes. “What about the state competition?” Lindsey’s mother asked down at the other end of the tables.

“We’ll be going to that the weekend before. Our performance times as of right now are at five-thirty and six-thirty on Friday night for the prelims. Finals will be held on Saturday.”

“Will they be missing any school for that?” Ashley’s dad asked.

“Maybe the last couple hours of the day, so we can get them changed and their makeup on.” She told him.

After ten more minutes the questions began to be less focused and relevant, so Coach Holt said, “Alright, I think we’ve gotten through everything. Please fill out the forms before you leave and give them to me on your way out the door. I appreciate your time!” She told us all with a smile and we began to break up to go home.

Melanie and my mom talked for several minutes off to one side and they took a moment to look at the room lists. I was going to be in a room with Melanie and Amy so that took away any possible problems with awkwardness. I kind of clung to Amy a bit wishing I could stay at her house or vice-versa, but as we walked to our cars our mom’s put a stop to that notion, “Come on girls, we need you to come to your normal houses tonight, it’ll do you some good to be apart.” We both grumbled a bit but consented.

At home I just kind of wandered around aimlessly. I finally sat still long enough to watch a bit of TV while curled up on the couch underneath a blanket and holding Emily. My bedtime came and I didn’t argue about it, I wanted to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long day with the concert and the dress rehearsal in the morning. I triple checked that I had a pair of pantyhose in my drawer before pulling the covers up over me. Mrs. Remar had been very specific that we were not to go on stage without a set of hose to cover our legs. Something about our legs “would shine like the sun” if we didn’t do so.

Amazingly I didn’t wake up that night to any nightmares. Instead all I remembered in the morning were dreams that were a mix of memories from the summer camp competition and what I thought the national competition would be like.

 

CHAOS REIGNED THE next morning as half the school boarded buses throughout the morning to go up to the college auditorium for the dress rehearsal. Because I was in both choir and band, I was going up with the band first thing in the morning, and then coming back with the choir a little bit before lunch. In between the two groups the orchestra would be rehearsing. Just as the choir got there, the advanced band and advanced orchestra were going to practice playing together while the choir sang for the final two pieces. I was glad that my friends would have to stay until Amy got there, at least I would always have someone there with me.

“Ladies and gentlemen have a seat!” Mrs. Remar said to us as she boarded our bus. I had been standing up stretching and flung myself down into the seat next to Kyle. “I expect you all to show the best behavior of everyone there!” She looked at us. “If I’m going to take you all to Denver in April I’d better be able to trust you to behave. Any problems from this group will make me reconsider that trip, am I clear?”

“Yes ma’am,” the whole bus said at once.

“Good, when we get there do not get off the bus until I tell you to. Also I expect that you all will help the beginners find their way to where they’re supposed to go. We’re going to start the concert with them.”

We all nodded and watched as she got off the bus and moved over to another one behind us. “So are you excited?” Kyle asked me.

“A little,” I told him before adding, “and scared too. I have a solo with the choir as well as the jazz band.”

“You’ll be great,” he told me with a smile.

“I hope so,” I said and turned to face the front of the bus as it started to move. The drive to the auditorium was across town so it took us about five minutes to get over there. We all waited obediently for Mrs. Remar to tell us to get off the bus. Once she did I grabbed my saxophone from the overhead bin above me and walked with Kyle, Ashley, and Nikki towards the doors. In the auditorium we were told to have a seat and stay there.

The beginning band was herded as quickly as they could be onto the stage. Chairs were already setup, but a few changes were made. Soon after that they started their concert program… They were okay I suppose, I’m sure we were just as bad at that point last year, but it was kind of tough to listen to. My group of friends continued to sit still as the intermediate band got onto the stage. It was a much smaller group than the advanced or beginning groups, but sounded a little bit better than the beginners. Mrs. Remar stood at the edge of the stage at the end of their rehearsal and told them and the beginners to pack up and board the buses to go back. She had some parents help out while she got us all situated.

For our part the rehearsal went okay, it wasn’t spectacular. Jazz band played our three songs first off to the right of the stage. My solo was good enough, and so was Kyle’s. The whole band sounded kind of cool in the large space, and I was pretty sure it would be the most interesting part of the concert.

Advanced band on the other hand wasn’t so great. We were certainly better than the other two bands at least, but I felt we could do a lot better. Mrs. Remar let us know that she thought that too. She had us remain in our seats as the beginning orchestra played through their songs. If the beginning band had been okay, I declared the orchestra bad… I think it was just how hard their instruments are to learn, but I wanted to jam earplugs into my ears. I looked over at my friends and they all seemed to agree with me — we just wanted them to stop already!

Fortunately for us they didn’t play but three very short lines out of their books. ‘Who plays a concert out of their books?’ I wondered to myself. It seemed strange to me that we had never done that with band. Why would they do that with orchestra? ‘Oh well, I didn’t ever want to do it,’ I finished to myself.

Just about the time the advanced orchestra came onto the stage the choir arrived too. The teachers decided to mix up their plans a bit and get rid of the band kids as soon as they could, so they got everyone together for the two mixed pieces. It was the first year they had tried this, so I think they were all really nervous. As Mrs. Remar was the one who was conducting the songs, she got up to the podium and looked out at the two hundred plus kids that were in front of her. They had set up the groups to where she was standing in front of the orchestra, which was in front of the band, which was in turn in front of the choir.

Her downbeat brought chaos the first time, the orchestra director always counted off for some reason. Mrs. Remar fixed that by practicing the first note several times, and then started the piece again. It was cool!!! I don’t know how it sounded in the audience, but from where we were sitting it sounded awesome. We did run through both songs twice just to make sure everyone was balanced right, and then advanced band was sent home and I ran back to the safety of the choir.

In the choir part Ms. Beecher announced that we were doing things a little bit out of order for the dress rehearsal. “The actual order is going to be Beginning Orchestra, then Beginning Band, then Beginning Choir. Beginning Choir, you’re going to go right back out to the seats so you can come back on for the last two songs, if you leave before the end of the concert you will fail the grade.” She looked at the sixth graders to make sure they understood. “After the Beginning Choir it’ll be Intermediate Band, Advanced Orchestra, the Jazz Band, Advanced Choir, Advanced Band, and then the combined groups,” she finished off.

I sat there thinking it sounded like a long concert to which she seemed to agree, “It’s going to be a long concert ladies and gentlemen, but you can help make sure it’s not too long if you move quickly on and off stage like you’re supposed to.” She continued to give us information before finishing the rehearsal. In the end she changed her mind on the choirs coming on and off the stage. She decided to keep all three choirs up there and have the other students that weren’t singing sit down where they were.

Ms. Beecher went through another list of things we needed to do in between each of the pieces. She included reminders about concert dress and when we were supposed to be there. By the time we got to the piece in which I had a solo I was feeling tired. The college had a set of stage hands there that made sure a wireless mic I was using for the solo worked alright. “Tiffany I want you to just start off holding it, and then when you’re done with your first solo put it down at your side. Then when you get to the next solo bring it back up to your mouth,” she told me.

‘Don’t drop it,’ was the thought going through my mind. The technician that handed me the mic mentioned that it wasn’t cheap… I made it through the solo without falling apart and crying, or doing anything else, but we decided to run it again. “Your name is Tiffany?” the technician said as he came back up to check on something.

“Umm… yeah,” I said tentatively.

“Make sure you hold the microphone close to your mouth,” he smiled at me, “that way we can hear your beautiful voice more clearly.”

“Okay, thanks,” I told him forcing a smile to my face. On that run through of the piece I did as he had said, and I was rewarded by a ‘thumbs up’ from the technician.

“That’s it ladies and gentlemen, let’s head back to the buses,” Ms. Beecher said.

In the chaos that ensued I made sure that Amy and Kristina followed me to the seat where I left my saxophone. Satisfied that it was alright, I followed them outside and sat in a seat next to Amy. “Nice job Tiffany!” Kristina told me once we were seated.

“It didn’t sound terrible?” I asked insecurely.

“Of course not! It sounded great!” She told me with a smile.

“Thanks Kristina,” I told her. The three of us talked about what we were wearing that night to the concert and how we were wearing our hair. “I don’t know how I’m doing it,” I told them. “I’m kind of hoping my mom will do something nicer with it,” I added.

“I am too,” Amy said hopefully.

“I’m not going to bother that much,” Kristina started, “I’ll probably just make it a little bit nicer than I normally do it.”

We were back at the school just barely in time to go to the beginning of lunch. The three of us made it through the line without any problems, and I was actually beginning to think things were improving. To my surprise, the rest of the day passed by without anything bad happening. Mrs. Remar was nice to us and didn’t make us play in band class since we’d already rehearsed that day. Instead she talked about the trip to Denver and gave us some more information. She also wanted our second payment in the next week.

“I’m glad I’ve already paid off the trip to Nationals Nikki, I think my parents would have trouble paying for this and that too!”

“It’s definitely a lot of money for your parents.” She told me. She wasn’t on the squad, but I really wished she was. If it wasn’t for how close I’d become with Amy, I’d probably have considered Nikki the next in-line for my title of best-friend. Nikki had definitely been friends with me longer, but things just hadn’t fallen into place that way. As soon as we were dismissed from class by the bell I walked with Kyle to where I met Amy.

“Tiffany, my mom’s here to give us a ride home,” she said with a smile as I walked up to her.

“Really?” I asked. I hadn’t been looking forward to riding the bus.

“Yep! She took off a little early today so she could help me get ready,” she told me.

“That’s nice,” I told her. “I’ll see you tonight Kyle,” I told him as we walked away.

“My mom would probably be willing to help you get ready too, Tiffany,” she told me.

“I know…” I said trying to decide how to put it, “I kind of want my mom to get a chance to get her daughter ready…” I said.

Amy smiled at me, “Mom thought you would say that.”

“Your mom’s smart,” I replied with a smile of my own. The two of us approached her mom’s car and we climbed inside.

“Hi girls, did you have a good day?” She asked the question hopefully.

“Pretty much,” I answered.

“Good. Tiffany, I know your mom doesn’t get off till four-thirty, do you want me to help you get ready for the concert?” she asked me.

“I think we’ll be okay,” I told her. “We don’t have to be at the auditorium until six-thirty.”

“Good,” she told me smiling. Melanie drove me to my house and parked in the driveway to let me out.

“Thank you for the ride!” I told her with a smile. I unlocked my door and she watched me go into the house before she pulled away. She and my mom always did that for us, they both watched to make sure we made it safely wherever. It made me feel good that she cared about me like that.

As soon as I got inside the house I headed straight for the shower. My mom would be home in about thirty minutes and I wanted my hair ready for her to work with! I used the time in the shower to relax a bit and try and calm my nerves. I was scared of messing up tonight on my solos. There were two of them in the one choir piece, plus the solo with the jazz band. The rest of the concert no one would really know if I made a mistake, but during those two times it would be plain as day if I messed up.

I clambered out of the shower and put on some sweatpants and a t-shirt to wear while Mom worked on my hair. I had just finished making that happen, with my hair wrapped in a towel, when mom came in the door. “Hey sweetie,” she told me as she came in. “You ready for me to do your hair?” she asked.

“Please,” I told her sweetly with a big smile.

“Sweetie whatever you do… please don’t use that smile on boys, they won’t stand a chance to say no to it,” she told me. I giggled in response and we walked to my room where I already had curling irons set up on my dresser. I sat down in the chair and just let Mom work. She disappeared a couple times mysteriously to get some things and I couldn’t help but wonder what she was getting as she worked on my hair. After much blow drying, curling, hair-spraying, pulling, tugging, and wincing on my part when the curling iron touched my scalp, she said, “all-done!”

I looked at myself in the mirror and found myself trying to keep from crying. She had done my hair as well as it had been done the previous Friday. It was up with lots of little spirals coming down from it. It looked so pretty! I turned around and gave her a big hug and said, “Thank you Mommy!”

“You’re welcome sweetie,” her eyes were wet and I knew she was on the verge of crying. “It’s your first concert as Tiffany, and I want everyone else to see just how beautiful my daughter is,” she said. “I’m glad to have a daughter to have this kind of fun with,” she added softly. I gave her another hug and then she said, “Okay, let’s get you fed, get you dressed, and then I’m doing your makeup!” she insisted the last part.

“Okay!” I told her and followed her to the kitchen. She got me a real quick dinner of leftovers from the night before. I swallowed the last bite my nervous stomach would hold when I heard the doorbell ring.

“I’ll get it,” I told mom who was still trying to finish eating.

I opened the door and saw in surprise that my grandparents were standing there! “Uh… hi!” I said.

“Hi Tiffany!” Grandma said, “Your hair looks pretty,” she added after she had given me a hug.

“Yeah… I’m not exactly ready yet,” I told them…

“It’s okay sweetheart,” Grandpa said and gave me a hug as well.

“Well I’m going to go finish getting ready,” I said as I showed them inside to the kitchen where my mom offered them some food. They turned it down because they’d already eaten.

In the meantime I headed back to my room to get out the dress that we had bought last month for this occasion. I closed my door and pulled my pants and shirt off. My pantyhose were already sitting on my bed. I worked them carefully up my legs and up over my panties making sure I didn’t cause a run in them. After checking to make sure they looked alright I carefully unzipped and slipped the dress off the hanger and pulled it on over my head. The dress was black and covered midway down to my elbows, and all of my shoulders. An a-line dress, I noticed that I now filled it out even better than when we’d bought it. I managed to get it zipped up and then walked out to the kitchen to peek my head out and get my mom’s attention.

“Are you ready?” Mom asked me.

“Please?” I said politely.

“Excuse me, I’ll be back in a bit.” Mom said as she came down the hallway and met me in the bathroom. There she began doing my makeup. She did it in an evening style so that my eyes and lips in particular were more pronounced. “Don’t you dare wear your makeup like this to school,” she told me.

“I won’t,” I told her.

“The only reason why you need this much tonight is because you’ll be on stage.”

I just nodded and asked, “Okay, it’s the same as when we dance for games and stuff right?”

“Not quite the same, but the right idea,” she told me. She sighed. “I wish I would have had time with you as a little girl, before makeup,” she seemed kind of sad by that.

“I don’t wear makeup all the time,” I told her.

“No, but you need it for this kind of stuff already. I just wish I could have had a chance to dress you in really frilly dresses when you were little…” She looked kind of sad before giving me a big hug, being careful not to smudge any of my makeup. “You’re going to do great tonight Tiffany. You’re really a beautiful young lady.”

“Thanks Mom,” I told her.

The two of us looked one last time at my makeup before I headed back into my room and got the earring and necklace set out that they had given me for my birthday. I had been tempted to wear the new necklace Amy’s mom had given me last Friday, but tonight I was being my mommy’s daughter. It seemed right I should wear something they had given me. I put on the pair of black two inch-heels that we had bought to go with the dress, happy that I seemed to be able to hold myself up without killing myself. Mom hadn’t let me wear heels much yet, saying I should wait until I was older. I liked how these made me grow two inches though!

As I walked out to the kitchen I saw my dad had gotten home and joined my grandparents at the dining table. “Wow!” My grandfather catcalled at me obnoxiously. He was really bad about it, and seemed to take pleasure from my reddening face…

“Sweetie you look gorgeous,” my grandmother said and gave me another hug.

“Thanks,” I managed to say.

The three of them fawned over me for a good ten minutes before my grandfather took out a camera and started taking pictures of me. My dad decided to do the same and I spent twenty minutes posing by myself and with my family members in the living room in front of the Christmas tree before Mom said, “I need to go ahead and get Tiffany to the college, I’ll save you all seats.”

I wanted to say thank you a hundred times to her for getting me free of the blinding camera flashes, but didn’t have much of a chance. I grabbed my saxophone, put on my long dress coat, and headed out to the car with her. I didn’t say much as we drove to the college, I was far too nervous about the solos. ‘Well at least I look pretty if nothing else!’ a voice inside me said.

 

PROMPTLY AT SEVEN o’clock the beginning orchestra started the concert. I had my saxophone in my lap and sat next to the rest of the Jazz Band members quietly and watched with a little bit of horror at the sounds from the orchestra. Well, it got everyone’s attention… We all watched the rest of the groups perform until it was our turn. We got setup quickly for the jazz band and Mrs. Remar had us play a B Flat Concert scale to tune and warm-up real quick.

“Ladies and Gentlemen I’d like to introduce the jazz band to you!” She said with some excitement in her voice. “Our first number will be…” I didn’t hear the rest of it, as I saw my grandparents and parents sitting in the audience watching me. Thankfully I came back to reality when she said, “One, two, a-one, two, three, four!” to get us going. The first piece had just been a jazzy version of Jingle Bells. It was pretty easy. Following that we played a slow ballad called Traces.

Then it was time for the final song… the song I had a solo in. “For our final piece I would like to talk to you about jazz etiquette. When someone has a solo in a jazz band it’s polite to clap after their solo. This piece will feature two of our members, Kyle and Tiffany,” she said pointing to us. I semi-froze and just smiled stupidly at everyone.

Before I knew it she had started the song. When I was about four bars out from my solo I carefully stood and raised my stand to be ready. I was never even exactly sure what I played during those measures, I think it was sort of what I was supposed to play. It was over before I even really knew it had begun — and I heard people clapping… After the song was over she had me stand and Kyle waved again since he was already standing in the back.

“Please give us just a moment to get set for the next group,” Mrs. Remar said after the clapping had stopped. Once she had put the mic down she came over to me and gave me a hug, “Good job kiddo,” she told me.

“Thanks, I’m not even sure what I played,” I told her honestly.

“You did a really nice job Tiffany, especially for your first performance improvising,” she told me. “You’re in choir right?” She asked me.

I nodded, “Uh-huh, I’m supposed to go there next.”

“Here let’s leave your saxophone on this table off stage then,” she told me and showed me where to set it before I took my seat on the riser next to Amy.

Ms. Beecher had us all stand at once and we sang through our first piece. The butterflies were really starting to hit me now as she introduced me as a soloist on the next piece and handed me the microphone. Before I could think much though I heard the pianist play the introductory measures, I placed the microphone to my lips and sang. At first I was really nervous, but I knew I couldn’t let that win so I just sang fully and smiled my big cheerleading smile while I did it. I felt better when the choir joined me for the next part. I felt my jitters return though as I began to think about what people would say to me after the concert. It took a lot of concentration on my part to force that out of my mind and put the mic back up to my lips and sang the second solo. As I returned to the choir for the last part of the song I smiled a really big smile: it was over, and I had done really well!

“Ms. Tiffany Jacobson,” Ms. Beecher said introducing me after the song again. I curtsied as the audience applauded loudly and I turned a bright shade of red. “Our final advanced choir piece tonight…” she finished talking and we sang. Right after we took our final quick bow I hurried to the side of the stage I left my saxophone. I quickly put the neck-strap back on my neck and hurried to go sit back in the band.

I felt rushed as I set my music down on the stand and got ready to play. Mrs. Remar got us all situated and I participated in my third ensemble of the night. I was getting kind of tired of running around! The band played the best we had ever played any of the music, and the audience seemed to enjoy it. The final piece with all of the ensembles performing at once arrived before I knew it.

“Ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for coming to our performance tonight. Please continue to support your students as they participate in the Holden Junior High Music Department. During this final song we invite you all to sing along to the songs with us. The words are printed in your program.” Mrs. Remar said just before she stood up on the podium and conducted us.

That to me was my favorite part of the evening. I could hear the mixture of the band and the orchestra, which was cool, but combined with the choir and audience singing it was absolutely surreal. I loved every second of it, and I almost hated to have it end. Right after the last notes the audience stood and gave us all a standing ovation for several minutes. As the last of the applause died out we all began finding our cases and putting our instruments up.

Just as I had placed my saxophone neck into the case I turned and saw my mom standing there. I quickly latched the case shut and she gave me a big hug. “You were great!” she told me enthusiastically.

We walked to where my dad and his parents were waiting. I saw Amy and her parents waiting there as well. On my way over there though I had some other people say, “Nice job young lady,” and other things like that. One even said, “Sweetie you’re going to be very famous someday with a voice like that…”

I felt really embarrassed and blushed profusely by the time I got to my waiting families. My dad and grandparents gave me hugs first. “Sweetie we’re so proud of you,” my grandfather told me.

“You looked like a princess up there,” Grandma told me, “I loved hearing you sing,” she added.

Amy’s parents gave me hugs and congratulatory comments too before Mr. Hancock suggested we go out for dessert. The nine of us all left to our cars with plans to meet up at a local diner that stayed open all night. There we talked about the concert and how pretty Amy and I had looked. It was towards the end that Amy’s parents said they had videotaped it and would give us all copies.

When we got home I had expected to be exhausted, too tired to do anything but crawl into bed. I wasn’t expecting to be more hyper than I could remember having been! I bounced around the house for a good hour before my mom finally put her foot down at eleven and told me I had to go to bed. As I did finally fall asleep that night I was actually happy, things had gone so well that night that I didn’t have any fears running through my head. I was a beautiful girl who sang and played her heart out that night — and everyone had noticed it. I smiled deeply with those thoughts.

 

Chapter 28:

 

WEDNESDAY WENT SMOOTHLY and I received a lot of compliments throughout the day from different friends who had been in the concert or had gone to support the rest of us. As I walked into Ms. Damien’s class for English she said, “Nice job last night Tiffany! You have a really pretty voice and a lot of talent on saxophone too!” I gave her a quick hug as a thank you for the compliments while blushing profusely.

“Thanks Ms. Damien,” I told her.

“You’re welcome Tiffany,” she told me and directed me to go towards my seat.

The last fifteen minutes of class she let us spend some time talking to our friends. Somehow during the conversation Amy asked me, “Tiffany are you umm… going to be here during science tomorrow?”

It took a second for me to think about it, we had a project we’d been working on due tomorrow in science… Oh no! I had an appointment with Dr. Reynolds scheduled tomorrow. ‘I could ask Mom to reschedule,’ I started to tell myself. ‘She’ll never do that right now with everything going on…’ I sighed internally at that. “Umm… no? I’m going to be getting picked up at the beginning of second hour again…” I told her grudgingly.

“Maybe he’ll let us present on Friday?” She asked me hopefully.

I shrugged, “Maybe he will.”

“I’m sure he will actually. He likes us both!” she said with a smile. It was true, we both got along with him great and were maintaining good grades…

“So do you want to come over to my house tonight?” Amy asked.

“I think my parents pretty much expected it,” I told her honestly. ”I’m also supposed to stay over Friday night since my parents are going to my dad’s company party.”

“That’ll be nice,” she told me. “Maybe we should think about doing something different like go to a movie or something?” She suggested.

“Let’s wait till then?” I looked at her before adding, “Especially if it’s going to be as cold as it was this morning.”

The conversation was cut short by the bell. Mrs. Remar gave us the day off because we had done such a good job the night before. The period seemed to drag on for quite a while since we weren’t doing anything. I was looking forward to getting dance practice out of the way so I could go to Amy’s house. Kyle faithfully walked me to Coach Holt’s classroom again and I began to really think I was going to have to do something with him. ‘My parents’ll have a fit with the idea of me getting a steady boyfriend too early though…’

That night I mentioned it to Amy, “I think my parents will have a fit about it. Yours probably will too now that I think of it…” I added.

“Yeah, I think they all will. But, at least they all like Kyle, so maybe you’ll be okay. What about just scheduling a group date?” she suggested.

“Huh?”

“Get together a bunch of us, maybe we get David, Ashley, Nikki, Kristina… maybe a couple others and we all get our parents to drop us off at a mall in town. Go see a movie or something while we’re at it?” She looked at me, “Then you can at least spend some time with him if that’s what you want.”

“The problem is I don’t know what I want Amy,” I told her. “I’m still not sure that I’m ready for dating…”

“So wait then Tiff, he’ll wait for you — I’m sure of that.”

“But that’s not fair to him…”

She interrupted, “Hello Tiffany! You’re a girl! You can afford to wait and do whatever you want when you feel like it.” She smiled as she said that, “We hold all the cards.”

“Hrmm… Maybe you’re right,” I told her. “But what if he gets tired of waiting and moves on to some other girl?” I asked.

“That’s a risk you’ll have to take,” she suggested. “Besides, I have a feeling that you’re going to end up dating each other at some point no matter what.”

I shrugged and changed the subject. The two of us ended up enjoying the night just hanging out since we’d already finished our science assignment. Amy had asked Mr. Grainger after school about us moving our presentation. He said he had no problem with moving our presentation if I got pulled out early from his class.

“Tiffany? Amy?” We heard a while later.

“It’s time for bed girls,” Melanie told us.

“Okay,” we both said sleepily and I headed down to my room. We had changed into our pajamas earlier, so all I had to do was brush my teeth and wash my face and I was ready for bed. I wasn’t looking forward to my session with Dr. Reynolds the next day. I was sure she was still concerned about everything with me. I really didn’t want to talk about it all.

 

“WAKE UP SWEETIE,” I heard Melanie say while knocking on my door. The door handle twisted and she came in when she didn’t hear me say anything.

“Really? Already?” I asked whining a bit. I was so tired still!

“Yep!” She said way too enthusiastically for a morning. Unlike my parents who would usually just give me some space at this point she came over and started tickling me!

“Come on, time to get up!” she said having fun at my expense there.

“You don’t play nice,” I told her as I finally got her to stop tickling me. My bladder wasn’t real happy with her right then, either.

“You’re awake now aren’t you?” she said with a smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back — a little.

“Yeah… I guess.” I told her.

“Okay then, pop yourself into the shower so we can get you two to school.”

“Alright,” I told her and started moving towards the bathroom. I had been kind of annoyed at first, I’d seen her do that to Amy before but I’d been off limits… The fact that she considered me close enough to do that to though brought a thin smile to my face. I forced myself to shower quickly so I could spend more time on my hair. I had been wearing it in the same style as Rachel from Friends for a while. It looked great on me, and with the trim I’d had last week it looked really good again. When I finally pronounced it ‘good enough,’ I decided to add just a little bit of makeup. A little bit of mascara and lip gloss finished everything off nicely, I thought.

I put my best friend necklace on, half of the set Amy’s mom bought us at the ski resort last year. I found my cheerleader megaphone earrings in my ‘other bedroom’ jewelry box to complete everything. ‘I wish I could wear a skirt…’ I thought to myself, ‘but no way in this cold!’ Instead I was wearing a pair of jeans and a fairly tight-fitting striped brown and tan sweater that just barely covered my stomach.

I noticed it really emphasized my growing chest. I had put on a sports bra that morning again underneath to keep things covered. They were still sore, but doing better than they had been last week. I was supposed to have an appointment with Dr. Wilmer about whether or not the hormone dosage was still right now or not. ‘Hopefully they leave it alone or increase it… I sure hope they don’t lower it.’ Everything was growing well, and other parts were even looking less healthy. I appreciated that as much as the growing breasts.

“Are you about ready Tiffany?” I heard Amy ask behind me.

I turned to look at her and just about laughed, she was wearing the same thing as me almost — right down to the necklace and earrings. Her top was a solid color instead of striped like mine. “Yes, but you copied me…” I told her with a smile.

“I copied you? I copied you huh?” she asked. “I’ve had this sweater longer,” she told me in response along with her tongue stuck out.

“We might not look like twins anymore, but we still look like sisters,” I said with a smile.

“I always wanted a little sister,” she said with a smirk. I just stuck my tongue out in response.

The two of us laughed and headed downstairs together. I made sure I grabbed my backpack and checked to make sure all my homework was in it to turn in later. I also grabbed my saxophone that I had brought, but hadn’t had a chance to practice. I did practice at their house sometimes. Enough so, that they had even surprised me by buying a music stand for my room like I had at home. Last night though, practicing had been far from my mind. Amy and I set our stuff by the door then walked into the kitchen.

Melanie had already poured two bowls of cereal for us to eat. I looked at my watch and saw that we didn’t have a lot of time before we had to leave. I started eating as quickly as I could without being sick. Amy and I felt a bit rushed, but we still arrived at school at our normal time.

“Hey Tiffany,” Kyle said as we ran into him while dropping off my saxophone in the band room.

“Hi Kyle,” I told him with a smile.

He walked with us to social studies and asked me on the way there, “So what are you two doing about Mr. Grainger’s class?”

“Huh?”

“Aren’t you leaving?” he asked me.

“Oh yeah. Amy talked him into letting us go tomorrow. I think he’s thinking about giving everyone one more day though too.” I watched his face light up.

“Another day? Really? That would be really good. I hope he does,” he added.

The two of us talked with Amy and the rest of my friends while Mr. Randolph played the movie ‘Home Alone’ on the TV in his classroom. We’d already taken our semester test in there and he was just giving up on the rest of the week, and the couple days next week. The calendar kind of sucked for us this year. Because of the way Christmas fell we still had two more days of school next week instead of having break begin tomorrow. I wasn’t looking forward to coming back for another three days after today!

The bell rang and my friends and I walked to Mr. Grainger’s classroom together. I was starting to get really excited that break was so close to being here. Kyle was even trying to arrange for a group of us to go see Jumanji come out next week, on Friday, in Albuquerque. “That would be a lot of fun!” I told him with a smile.

Mr. Grainger had just called roll when I heard a voice over the intercom say, “Mr. Grainger?”

“Yes?” He responded.

“Is Tiffany Jacobson there?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said looking at me with a smile.

“Would you please send her to the office, she’s getting checked out,” the secretary finished.

“Okay,” he responded and nodded to me. “Have a good day, I’ll have you and Amy, present your project tomorrow,” he added.

I heard some gleeful responses as Kyle talked him into giving everyone one more day as I walked out. I heard him also ask for permission for something just as I walked out of the door. I took a left outside of his classroom and headed down the hallway to get out of the science annex. At the end of that hallway I took a right and looked towards the main hallway that would lead to the office after another turn. Just as I got to the hallway to make my left turn, I halted.

Standing in front of me were Jarred, Lucas, Caitlyn, Liza, and Brittany. I felt a chill go over my body and I got really nervous. I decided to keep walking though; they wouldn’t really try anything right now would they?

Just as I was about to move around Lucas who was on the right he asked, “Where do you think you’re going freak?”

I ignored him and tried to get past him but he blocked me. “Let me…” I started to say but someone clamped a hand over my mouth and I felt my feet leave the ground as I was picked up.

“Take her in here,” Jarred said behind me, it was him with the hand on my mouth, “and I saw he was directing them towards the boy’s bathroom off the main hallway and to the right of the science annex hallway.

I tried to scream but his hand was too tight. I tried kicking whoever had my legs, but they had them too tight, and my arms were being held just as tightly. ‘What are they going to do to me?’ I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, I tried biting Jarred’s hand but it was just out of the range of my teeth, all I could do was bite my own lip which I did. I kept trying to scream and fight but it wasn’t doing any good. As soon as they got me inside the bathroom they shoved me against the wall in the back by the sinks. I lost my balance and hit my head.

“What are you doing?” I screamed as loudly as I could.

In response Jarred punched me in the stomach. I screamed again and began crying. Just as I started that though I felt vomit come out of my throat and felt a little bit of satisfaction as I saw a bunch of it land on Caitlyn.

“You little bitch!” she screamed at me and shoved me back against the wall. She smashed my head against the wall and I felt my head slide along it and could feel the cuts forming. She wiped the vomit I had gotten on her hand all over my shirt. “We warned you fag to get the hell out of our school but you didn’t listen!” she told me before she punched me again.

“You’ve been ruining our school every time we turn around,” Liza said to me before she tore at my hair and slammed my head against the wall again.

By this time I didn’t even think I had any scream left in me. I felt dizzy, breathing was coming hard to me, and I couldn’t even see because of the blood coming out of the cuts on my head. “Please…” I pleaded.

“Please what?” Jarred said sinisterly.

“Please? You want us to make you a real girl?” I heard Lucas say.

“Leave me alone,” I tried to say, but I wasn’t sure that’s what it sounded like. I was sobbing uncontrollably by this time. How was I going to survive this? There were five of them, and every single one of them was at least six inches taller than me. I shakily stood and looked as best I could at all of them. Jarred was moving towards me to do something. I couldn’t think of anything else so I tried to kick him in the crotch. He just laughed it off though as he blocked it easily with his hands.

“What are you trying to do that for freak?” He said angrily. “We’re just going to do for you what you want done anyway.” I saw Lucas pull out a switchblade knife and open it up menacingly.
“Please don’t,” I told him.

“It doesn’t matter how much you plead you little fag, we’re going to make it to where you never bother any of us ever again.” Caitlyn said behind them both. She came closer to me and said, “Let’s see just what you’re stuffing your bra with…

Jarred held me up by my throat all of the sudden while Caitlyn ripped my sweater off me with the help of Lucas’s knife. “Nice sports bra freak,” Liza said.

“Please…” was all that I could get out. Jarred was crushing my wind pipe. I could just barely see his eyes so I did the only thing I had left in me, I aimed for his eyes with two fingers like I’d been taught and tried to poke his eyes out. I missed his left eye, but I felt something gooey on my middle finger as it made contact and heard him scream, “YOU LITTLE BITCH!!!!!”

He moved away though and loosened his grip on my throat. I took in as big a breath as I could and screamed like I had never screamed before. Two seconds into that scream though I felt someone punch me in the stomach again before trying to rip my bra off. I tried to scratch at their face, but even as I felt my fingernails dig into their face and heard, “Fuck!” from them I knew it wasn’t going to do any good.

In those seconds I knew I wasn’t going to make it. There was no way, five of them against me… little me. What had I ever done to them? I was sobbing and knew it was only a matter of time before I was dead from this. “Mommy…” I cried all of the sudden out of nowhere. My poor mom. She had been so supportive of me, both of my parents had been, and now all of that was going to be for nothing.

“Your mommy ain’t going to help you slut,” I heard one of the voices say as they hit me in the face with their fist.

“What the fuck is going on in here?” I heard a voice say as someone was still trying to pull my bra off over my head. I knew that voice. ‘I must be hallucinating,’ I told myself.

“Tiffany?” I heard him scream louder next. “What are you doing to her?”

The next few moments were a blur, I had no idea what was going on but that I was sure I wasn’t going to last much longer. How could I? I was bleeding, humiliated, could barely breathe, and I couldn’t see straight. I heard someone scream and footsteps moving down the hallway as quickly as they could.

As quickly as everything had happened I felt a hand touch my bare shoulder, “Tiffany are you all right?”

It wasn’t the hand I expected though, it wasn’t one of the groping hands… it was a friendly hand. In that moment my brain finally made the connection and I opened my eyes to see Kyle standing in front of me. He grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser that I was curled up underneath and wiped the blood out of my eyes. Before he had even gotten more than one eye cleaned up though I hugged him and cried.

“It’s okay Tiffany, you’re safe now,” he told me over and over again as I hugged him. “Can you walk?” he asked me.

I couldn’t answer through my sobs, so he decided that meant no. I felt him place something over my body before picking me up and moving down the hallway with me. “What happened to her?” I heard my mom scream loudly as he took me into the office.

“Someone call Nine-One-One!” I heard another voice command.

My last memory from that moment was my mom taking me from Kyle and rocking me back and forth in her arms. Then I blacked out.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 29:

 
THE NEXT THING I remember was being on the gurney in the ambulance pulling away to go to the hospital. I heard a paramedic take a reading on my blood pressure as he dabbed at one of my many cuts with something that stung. My mom held my other hand tightly and was sobbing off to the side. “Mommy?” I called out softly.

“I’m here sweetie,” she told me as she squeezed on my hand. As she said that she sobbed even harder. I cried as well and lost track of time as we drove towards the hospital. I could hear the sirens blaring from above, and now that some of the cuts on my face were cleaned I could see a little better. My eyes felt swollen though, and I was sure they must be, so much so that I could just make out some stuff through my slitted eyes.

The paramedic that was working on me put a blanket on me. I was shivering uncontrollably now. I was alive! Why am I shivering? I can’t be alive… I didn’t know anything that was going on around me as we pulled into the emergency room entrance.

“Patient was attacked by several assailants. She has multiple lacerations and abrasions on her face, back, hands, and chest,” the paramedic told the doctor that must have been following me in.
“Okay, let’s get her into here and get her cleaned up,” I heard the doctor say. He began looking at me and poking in several spots. “Let’s get a cat-scan setup for her as well. I’m a little concerned by how hard she might have hit her head,” he said.

“Tiffany, can you understand me?” He asked me.

“Yes,” I gasped, I hurt so bad.

“I’m Doctor Hannah, we’re going to have to do some stitches here, but it looks like you’re going to be okay. You’re a brave young lady and we’re going to take good care of you,” he told me while he squeezed my hand. He seemed to have noticed my mother standing there who hadn’t let go of my hand the whole time. “Are you her mother?” he asked.

I heard a sob and felt my hand squeezed again.

“She’s going to be fine, but I want to get you out of here while I work on her, okay?”

“NOOO!” I screamed, “Don’t leave me!” I sobbed.

I heard a sob in reply next to me and I think the doctor decided that it wasn’t worth the fight. “If you’re going to stay I need you to put some scrubs on Mrs. Jacobson,” he told her.

“Tiffany she’ll be right back,” he assured me and I felt another hand take my place as a whole new round of sobbing began.

“Nurse can you get me…?” I heard him order off a dosage of two medicines and felt a needle go into my arm a moment later. I felt all fuzzy all of the sudden and the pain sort of went back behind a curtain. I didn’t really know what was going on, but could sort of sense people move around me. For a long time I just was. I wasn’t aware or interacting with anything, I just was. I was vaguely aware of tugging at my skin by some sort of needle, I felt my clothes get removed and heard a brief gasp from a nurse. Then I felt nothing for a long while.

 

MY NEXT MEMORY was of waking up and seeing my mom, Melanie, and Amy all standing around in my room looking concerned. Amy saw me stir and said, “Tiffany!” worriedly coming to my side and holding my hand.

“Tiffany, how are you feeling?” I heard Melanie ask me in her doctor’s voice as she came over to me.

“Hurt,” I managed to croak out a moment later after trying to figure out my answer. My throat was dry and on fire. My face was sore, my stomach hurt, my breasts felt sore and I couldn’t figure out if that was just their normal soreness, or because I had been hit there, I groaned.

“Well you have reason to hurt,” she told me. “But you’re alright now sweetie, and you’re safe.” She added.

“What happened?” Amy asked me.

Just then I swore I was being punched again I hurt so bad. I started to cry uncontrollably and felt three people hug me at once. I sat there crying for a long while before I managed to try and move my hands to wipe my eyes. My left hand wouldn’t move right though. I heard Melanie say, “Tiffany, just leave that hand alone for now.” Somehow I realized there must have been an IV in that wrist. The other hand seemed almost useless as I tried to wipe both eyes and found some strange textures right next to my eyes. It felt like a whole bunch of tiny hairs sticking out and a moment later I realized they must have been stitches, and a lot of them.

“You don’t have to tell us anything right now,” Melanie told me softly.

“I’m sorry Tiffany,” Amy sobbed next to me.

“Dr. Hancock?” I heard from behind them as my vision cleared a bit from my tears.

She turned around and looked at a police officer who had a camera in his hands. “I’m really sorry to bother you all but I need to take some pictures…” the officer looked genuinely embarrassed to have to do this.

“It’s okay, officer, I understand.” She told him.

“Tiffany this officer needs to take some pictures right now, don’t worry about how you look right now,” she added the last part in a low whisper and I was left to wonder just what had become of my face. The flash hurt my eyes as he took a whole roll of film of pictures of my face and throat. Melanie carefully pulled my gown up and he took more pictures of my stomach and bare chest area before covering me back up.

Lastly he took pictures of my hands for some reason and then said, “Thank you,” and left.

My dad came into the room right after that and ran over to give me a hug. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” he exclaimed and hugged me. “Who did this to you Tiffany?” he asked angrily.

“Honey they’ve already taken them in custody,” mom told him.

“They’d better keep them there,” I heard my dad cry next to me. He never cried, ‘I must look awful,’ I thought to myself and started crying again. It took a long while before I managed to stop the tears and become calmer again.

I mostly felt numb when another cop came in and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Jacobson I’m Detective Wallace, I need to talk to your daughter and ask her about what happened.”

“Detective you can try and talk to her, but if I think my patient’s health is at risk I will stop this interview,” I heard Melanie say.

“Of course doctor,” he told her. I felt hands holding onto both of mine as I saw the detective come to one side of my bed and pull up a chair. He had a small notebook in his hand.

“Tiffany, I know this is going to be really tough, but I need you to do the best you can to answer my questions, okay?”

“Can I have a drink first?” I croaked.

“Of course,” I heard Melanie say from next to me. I watched her bring up a cup with a straw for me that I sucked on greedily. I was so thirsty. “Not too much sweetie,” she told me and took it from me. It helped at least.

“Okay, I think I can answer some now,” I told him.

“What exactly happened when you left your science class?” he asked me gently.

I did my best not to start crying then. ‘I can’t cry right now, when I’m done I’ll cry more…’ I promised myself. “I was walking down the hallway to go to the office. As soon as I came out of the science hallway I saw Jarred, Lucas, Caitlyn,” I sobbed for a second, “Brittany, and Liza standing there.” I braced myself to continue and made the mistake of looking at my mom’s face which looked absolutely devastated. I forced myself to look up at the ceiling. It was white, and I could just barely push away her face if I concentrated on the fluorescent light just above my head.

“I tried to go by them, but one of them, Lucas, wouldn’t let me go by. I tried again,” I paused and took a breath, “but he wouldn’t get out of my way. I knew I was in a bad situation then so I screamed, or at least tried to…” I felt tears going down my face, “but Jarred put his hand down hard over my mouth so I couldn’t scream. I tried to bite his hand but I couldn’t get to it.”

I paused for a long moment and could feel the worried eyes looking at me.

“Officer, I…” Melanie began before I interrupted.

“They picked me up and held me tight before taking me into the boy’s bathroom.” I sniffled a bit and took a few ragged breaths at the memory. ‘I have to finish,’ I told myself. “ When they got me in there they threw me against the wall and I must have hit my head against it. As soon as I screamed someone punched me in the stomach and I threw up on Caitlyn…” I continued to relay as much as I could remember, it got kind of foggy after that. “I felt them rip my shirt off and one of the girls made a comment about finding out what was stuffed inside my bra. Jarred picked me up by the throat and I couldn’t breathe. I tried to kick him but nothing was working,” I was sobbing uncontrollably at this point.

Every breath I took seemed to hurt and it felt like I had water going down my throat. I felt someone squeeze at my hand and could hear several other people crying softly in the room. “I couldn’t think of anything else so I tried to poke Jarred’s eyes out with my fingers like someone showed me one time in Tae Kwon Do. I missed one of them, but I felt something gooey and heard him scream before he dropped me,” I found some new strength as I remembered it. At least I had hurt him? I hoped he was blind in that eye.

“I dropped to the ground and felt someone doing something else just before I heard someone ask what was going on in there. Was that Kyle?” I asked all of the sudden.

Through my tear-stained vision I just registered a nod from the detective.

“He must have done something because I heard some people run and then he carried me to the office,” I told him the last bit and felt every bit of strength immediately leave me again. I was crying uncontrollably like a baby and felt totally useless.

“Detective I think that’s enough for now,” I heard Melanie say with a voice that sounded like she was about to cry herself, I almost didn’t recognize her.

“I’ve gotten what I need,” he said as he stood up. He looked down on me and said, “Young lady you were incredibly brave, don’t think for one moment that this was your fault. I’m going to make sure these little shits pay for what they did to you,” he looked abashed for a second and said, “pardon my language,” he added. “Thank you for your time,” he told me and the room stood silent for a long time.

Eventually though I felt something calling at me.

“Umm… Melanie can I get up and go to the bathroom?” I asked nervously.

“You probably shouldn’t move around a lot quite yet Tiffany, we haven’t gotten the final results from your cat scan…” She seemed to contemplate telling me something else. ‘What else would I do?’ I asked myself, ‘I have to go!’

“Okay,” she said finally. “Let me help you get up though,” she added and I felt the bed I was laying in adjust to where I was sitting up more. She lowered a side of the bed that reminded me of the kind of railing they used to have on my bed as a little kid to keep me from falling out. Melanie and my mom slowly helped me stand up. “Be careful with your left hand sweetie,” Melanie told me.

She and mom helped me over to the restroom where I sat down on the toilet and discovered I didn’t have panties on to have to pull down. They helped me pull up my gown and I was able to overlook my embarrassment as I felt so much better from the urine leaving my bladder. Before I could feel too much better though I looked up in the mirror as I stood up and couldn’t believe what I saw. I let out an involuntary gasp before I could stop myself.

It didn’t look like me at all. Every inch of my face was black and blue, and there were at least six areas that had required numerous stitches to close up. My left eyebrow was completely gone, and my right eyebrow was halfway gone. There were bandages over both of my cheeks and I could remember how they had been scraped against the wall. ‘I survived,’ I told myself. ‘It’ll heal,’ I told myself unconvincingly.

Mom and Melanie both looked sort of panicked.

“I’m alright,” I lied to them unconvincingly. They didn’t let me look much longer and helped me back towards the bed. Once they had me back in the bed, Melanie helped me get back situated. As they laid me down I realized there was a bed pan in place for me to use.

“Sweetie you’re probably not going to be here long enough to have to use it,” she assured me when I had a shocked look on my face. Just as she settled me in another doctor came into the room holding a manila envelope. It looked like it must have been a bunch of x-rays. He started putting them up on a light board in the room and Melanie began looking over them with him.

“Dr. Hancock I don’t see anything worth being concerned about here,” he told her.

“You looked them over closely?” she asked.

“Absolutely, I even triple checked like you asked. I don’t see any reason to keep her overnight,” he told her.

“Thank you Dr. Knox,” she told him. He left with a smile towards my direction and then she started talking to my mom in low tones.

“Tiffany I’m so sorry,” I heard Amy say to me next to me.

“Why are you sorry Amy?” I asked.

“I should have gone with you to the office…”

“Amy, even if you’d gone with me there was nothing you could have done…” I forced myself to keep from crying again. My face hurt a lot now as I could feel the medication wearing off a bit. “There were too many of them…”

“Still…”

“No, don’t feel guilty, they would have just hurt you too,” I told her. She was crying I could see, and I knew that I looked terrible enough I was really upsetting her. “Is Kyle okay?” I asked as I gripped her hand.

She looked at me in surprise, “He got a couple bruises, but he did way more damage to Jarred and Lucas than they did to him. And Jarred collapsed just outside the school and had to be taken somewhere in an ambulance. I’m glad it wasn’t here, our dads would have killed him.”

“I’m glad Kyle is okay… I don’t know how I’ll ever thank him,” I said breaking down again.

 
SEVERAL HOURS LATER when Melanie and a couple other doctors were sure it was okay to release me they sent me home. “She’ll be more comfortable there,” she had told my mom when she asked if she was sure. “Besides I’ll come over in a bit and check on her,” she added.

“I don’t know how we’re going to pay all of these bills,” I heard my dad tell my mom to the side.

“We’ll help out if you need it,” I heard a new voice, Mr. Hancock, say. He came around and gave me a hug and helped me stand out of the wheelchair and get into the back seat of my parents car. Mom buckled me in and Amy ran around to the other side and sat next to me grabbing my hand gently. It was the one that had an IV in it till not long ago so she was gentle. The door shut, but I heard him say, “Besides, those kids’ parents are going to be paying for her care. They’re not getting out of this without doing that, I guarantee you that,” I could hear the anger in his voice.

Mom came and opened her door saying, “I’m going to go ahead and get her home…”

“Okay,” my dad said. He kept talking to Mr. Hancock and Melanie as we drove off.

I sat in silence as we drove towards home. My throat hurt too much for me to talk much… and I didn’t really have anything to say anyway. The hospital in our town wasn’t a long way from my house, so the drive wasn’t long.

At home Amy and Mom helped me out of the car and settled me down on the couch in our living room with some pillows to help me sit up. I saw from the clock that it was nearly five in the evening. Amy sat down in a chair nearby and just watched me, biting her lip nervously.

“Do you need anything sweetie?” Mom asked me after she had gone down the hall to the bathroom.

“Something to drink?” I asked. They had given me several large pills to take before I had been released, and they seemed to have knocked the pain out of the way for a bit. My mouth felt really dry now though, and I was incredibly thirsty.

She returned a few minutes later with a plastic cup with a lid on it and a straw coming out. “Do you feel up to eating anything?”

“I guess,” I told her. The truth of the matter was that my stomach was grumbling, but I just didn’t feel like I wanted to expend the effort to eat.

“What do you want?”

I shrugged.

“Grilled cheese and soup?” she suggested.

“I guess,” I told her. Her eyes showed just how upset she was about everything. She had been unable to protect me, and now I was a mess. There was no way makeup was going to hide my injuries. At least not until after the stitches came out… maybe ever. Melanie had said that she would remove them in five days. I guess there was something to be said about having your ‘other’ mom being a doctor.

Dad came home with Amy’s parents not long after. The rest of the evening passed with me eating half a sandwich and some of the soup before deciding chewing hurt too much to continue. I noticed Amy hadn’t faired any better with her dinner either.

Sometime during the attack my mouth had split open along the inside of my mouth and it hurt too much to chew. I was still hungry though so Mom went to Dairy Queen and got me a small strawberry shake to drink. All throughout the night I alternated between staring blankly at the TV and crying. I couldn’t help it when it happened; I just cried and cried and cried.

I felt bad because Kyle had called to talk to me and all I managed to do was mutter, “Thank you…,” before bawling like a baby again.

Amy stayed the night with us that night, sleeping next to me on the trundle bed. I woke up crying several times with my mom and Amy hugging me every time to reassure me that I was safe. It seemed like anytime I closed my eyes I was right back in that bathroom.

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 30:

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

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

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

“I hurt,” I answered honestly.

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

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

“What doesn’t?” I replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve had better weeks,” I answered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where to now?” Mom asked me.

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

“We were supposed to, but…”

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

“But sweetie…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay,” I told him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What happens now?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe we should,” Mom told Dad.

“Huh?”

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

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

“I want you to go,” I told him.

“I think we should,” Mom echoed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Chapter 31:

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes?” I asked politely.

“Phone for you,” she said.

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

“Hello?” I asked.

“Tiffany?” I heard Kyle’s voice ask.

“Uh-huh, Kyle?” I asked shyly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How’d you know it was Kyle?”

“Mom told me,” she said with a smile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Four days?”

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

“Every day?” I asked incredulously.

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay,” he said while nodding.

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

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

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

“It was just a hug,” I tried to say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I quietly sobbed my way back to sleep after that.

 

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

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

“…What??” we both asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Uh-huh,” Melanie grinned.

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

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

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

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

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 32:

 
SUNDAY MORNING WAS a little bit crazy. Mom had me wear another one of the holiday dresses I had. I was grateful for the fact though that I didn’t look like I was seven in this one. ‘More like ten,’ I thought a little mournfully. ‘At least I look pretty,’ I said to myself as I spun around in the bathroom while watching the reflection of my dress. Mom had spent nearly an hour doing my hair for me and helped out with my makeup. Each day it was becoming a little easier to hide the bruises. Mom’s parents were coming in to spend Christmas with us this year, so we had made sure that the spare room was made up for them.

Her brother Raymond was also coming with his wife, Jill, and two daughters Lauren and Lilly. They were going to spend the night tonight in a hotel along with her sister Penny, her husband Andrew and their daughter Halley. All of them were going to spend Christmas Eve and Day at our house. My dad’s parents were supposed to come over for dinner and a bit the next day too. Though our house was way too small to really get everyone in it comfortably, we felt it was better than being in a hotel room or something… I was sure it was going to be crowded though, so I was ordered about the house to clean up one thing after another.

About one o’clock my grandparents pulled up. I panicked suddenly, it was going to be the first time they had met Tiffany. As they came in the door I clung to Mom just in case they freaked out about everything. Grandpa Bill came in first and said, “Hi!” to us all. He gave me a big hug and said, “I’m so glad that you’re okay sweetie,” and I only cried because I was in shock. I had been so caught up in everything that had happened to me, that I hadn’t had a chance to be apprehensive about this visit, like I had when we had gone to Denver. Now that it was here I couldn’t believe I was getting that from him so easily.

Grandma Dorothy pulled me over from him and gave me a hug before looking at me and saying, “Tiffany you really are a pretty girl,” and gave me a hug. It made me wonder if I didn’t look pretty if she would have accepted me, but I just let that pass by.

“Thank you Grandma,” I told her. The two of them settled in pretty quickly and before long my grandfather was watching TV with my dad, while my grandmother helped Mom and I get some pies done for the evening. We had been cooking for an hour or so when we heard the doorbell ring again. I went out with my mom to repeat the meeting of Tiffany with Uncle Raymond, Aunt Jill, Lauren, and Lilly. My Aunt and Uncle had prepared my cousins for the fact I was Tiffany now, but Lilly, being just seven said, “Daddy I thought you said Tiffany used to be Brandon…” It was just cute enough to be laughable.

Lauren was ten, and Mom quickly sent me to go play with the two of them and got us out of the kitchen. I took the two of them back to my room and watched their eyes pop out of their heads at my doll house and dolls that were setup inside. “WOW!!!” Lauren exclaimed.

I just smiled at them and began playing Barbie’s with the two of them. We’d been playing for about an hour when the doorbell rang again and the final members of my mom’s family that were coming came in the door. Aunt Penny and Uncle Andrew came in with loads of stuff to put underneath the Christmas tree. Both of them doted on me a little before Halley joined Lauren and Lilly in my room.

Halley was the same age, twelve, as I was — but a grade behind me because of where her birthday fell. She kind of didn’t want to play with Barbie’s, but the three of us dragged her into it anyway. “I can’t believe you’re still playing with Barbie’s and in seventh grade,” she told me at one point.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well…” she started but couldn’t find anything to say.

“It’s fun, isn’t it?” I asked her. She’d been smiling all afternoon.

“Yeah… but…”

“I know. I only have a few friends that still play with them…. And I don’t play with them a whole lot anymore because I don’t have time, but that doesn’t mean you can’t.”

She paused to consider that, but seemed to accept it. “So you’re a cheerleader?” she asked as she saw my poms and megaphone sitting in the corner.

“Uh-huh… well actually more on the dance squad than the cheer squad.” I told her.

“Huh?”

I explained how they had started it. How we were going to Nationals hopefully next month and everything.

“That’s cool!” she said. All-in-all the four of us had a lot of fun until dinner time and we were called to go eat. Since the four of us were all wearing dresses nothing stuck out about any of us that night. My dad’s parents had shown up just in time to eat with us. After dinner we all played some family board and trivia games for a while before my cousins and their families headed off to the hotel.

Just before Mom sent me to bed that night she said, “Here, why don’t you open these two presents tonight?” she suggested while handing me one thinner clothing type box and another that was bigger.

I opened the bigger box first, I couldn’t help myself. I found a really cute stuffed reindeer in there. “Thanks Mommy, it’s cute!” I told her. She had sat down on the couch with me as I opened it and gave me a little hug. I sat the reindeer aside and opened the next box. Inside I found a pair of purple pajama bottoms and a matching top. The bottoms felt silky, and sure enough I looked at the label and they were actually made of silk! The top was just a t-shirt, but it was a really soft cotton material.

“My mom and dad used to always give me a stuffed animal and pajamas the night before Christmas,” she told me after I finished giving her a hug. “I didn’t do it before because I never thought you would like it… but I figured as Tiffany you would,” she told me with a smile. I gave her another hug and she sent me off to bed to wonder what the other Christmas presents I was going to get would be.

Over the last week I’d spent a lot of time at Amy’s house, but when I’d been at mine I’d tried to figure out what I’d been given. There weren’t a lot of bigger boxes, a lot of clothes I figured, along with some smaller boxes here and there. I still hoped for, but didn’t really expect that I’d get the saxophone I wanted… I wasn’t sure I’d be able to play it the next day anyway since my cheek still hurt where it had been cut open, but I wouldn’t let that stop me I thought. I hugged the new stuffed animal tight to my chest as I went to sleep in my new pajamas that night and dreamed of Christmas the next day.

 

CHRISTMAS MORNING WAS the same as it always was, a time of fun and presents!!! It all passed in a blur for me as I woke up and walked down the hallway to where Mom was already fixing breakfast with her mother’s help. “Morning princess,” she told me with a smile.

“You want to open a few presents before your cousins get here?” Mom asked.

“Really?” I asked. It was the first time we had ever hosted Christmas before, but I usually didn’t get to open presents until we were with the whole family.

“You can open your stocking and a couple others,” she told me.

I ran out to the living room where mom had sat my stocking on top of the TV next to theirs and my grandparents. She walked behind me and said, “hold on a couple minutes, I want to get everyone out here first.” She smiled at me before going into the other room to get everyone else. Dad came out of the bathroom a few minutes later and the five of us sat down and opened up our stockings. There were lots of packages of chocolate like normal, but I also had several pairs of earrings, a couple bracelets, some hair accessories, and several bottles of nail polish in there. I smiled at everything and gave her a hug when I found a particularly cute pair of earrings with saxophones on them.

Mom sorted out a few more presents that she let me open. Among them were several Barbie Dolls and a baby doll. I gave her a look kind of like, ‘Why?’ to her for that one.

“I wanted to get you one,” she said to get me to stop looking at her like that. It was a cute doll in a pretty dress. It had several diapers with it and supposedly wet the diapers just like a real baby when you fed it… I didn’t quite see why that was necessary, but just said thank you anyway.

Mom went back down the hallway for something else and soon came down with a larger wrapped present in her hands. “This is from us,” she said as I looked for a tag.

I looked at the pretty wrapping paper for a few moments wondering what was in it and hoping against hope it was what I wanted it to be. I carefully tore at the ends of the box and opened up the box. Inside the wrapping paper was a plain box that I had to borrow my dad’s knife to open it. As soon as I opened it my eyes were greeted by the sight I’d been hoping for so much!

I could see the saxophone case handle!

I pulled open the top of the box gently, and with dad’s help pulled the case out of the box. The case was made of really nice leather that felt soft as I carefully opened the two latches on either side of the case. Inside was the most gorgeous saxophone I had ever seen! It was a deep golden color and I fell in love immediately with it. It was wrapped with a plastic bag that I gently pulled it out of. Uncovered I felt the keys and pushed them up and down, listening to a pop each time I pressed them down. It was everything I had dreamed of!

“Thank you,” I said quietly, the tears already welling up in my eyes. I just sat there looking at it, the tears now running down my face. I sat it down and hugged my dad, then my mom while saying ‘thank you,’ over and over again.

“Well when do we get to hear you play it?” Grandpa asked me.

I looked at my parents for permission and went down to my room where I had put my old saxophone. My parents had picked it up for me from the school when they’d gone in for their meeting. I opened it up and found a reed and my neck strap before coming back down the hallway and carefully assembling my new sax. As soon as I played my first note on it I could tell the difference between it and my old horn. I messed around for a few minutes before becoming self-conscious and put it away.

I smiled brightly as I carefully put it up in my room to keep it safe as the rest of the family would be coming over. “Tiffany why don’t you go, get dressed now?” Mom told me. “Everyone will be coming over in about a half-hour.”

“Okay,” I told her and went to get the dress on she told me she wanted me to wear today. It was the one with the red skirt and black velvet bodice. I wasn’t going to complain to her about it at all, they had bought me the saxophone I had wanted so much! ‘It was well over three thousand,’ I thought to myself and wondered how they could have afforded to do that with all of the doctors’ bills I had last week. I kind of worried about that as I quickly pulled on some tights and pulled the dress on. I initially forgot to put a bra on and realized my mistake as soon as I had it over my head. The velvet on this dress clung tight enough that you could see almost everything on my growing breasts, including my nipples, so I quickly pulled it off and grabbed a training bra from my drawer before pulling it back on.

I heard a knock on my door and Mom came in to tie the red bow in the back of my dress for me. She also went into my bin of hair stuff and pulled out a red bow that she tied into my hair on one side.

“Cute,” she declared me and pushed me towards breakfast. I almost didn’t want to leave the saxophone but I forced myself to. I ate some scrambled eggs and a Belgian waffle that Mom had made me, and finished just as the rest of the family showed up.

“Okay girls, why don’t you all separate presents out for everyone,” Mom commanded us — mainly me. Lilly could read thankfully so it wasn’t too bad with four of us. Before long there was a large pile in front of everyone ready to go.

On cue everyone began opening presents, and I began stacking piles of new sweaters, jeans, and other clothing next to me. My parents had wrapped one box up that felt like it had nothing in it. As I began to open it, Mom saw I was opening it and whispered, “I meant to give this one to you earlier.”

My curiosity really peaked I opened it up and blushed as I saw it contained a gift certificate to Victoria’s Secret. Thankfully no one else was paying attention so I quickly put it in a new purse my dad’s parents had given me. “I figure it’s about time we go get you fitted for some real bras,” Mom said to me quietly with a smile.

I blushed vividly and gave her a hug before continuing to open presents. After a bit I came to another larger box that I had been wondering about, I opened it carefully. Inside was another large doll, but different than a baby doll, it was dressed like it was almost my age. “It’s from American Girl,” my mom explained to me. “They make some really cute dolls, and I thought maybe you might want to collect them…” I looked at it in amazement at how cute and life like she was. I left it in the box for the moment though and opened another box that contained several things of eye shadow and mascara.

My cousins and I each looked at each other’s gifts a bit, and everyone played a bit with the American Girl doll as I got her out. It was called a ‘Girl of Today’ doll that had blonde hair like mine and blue eyes to match. Mom had purchased a couple of other outfits to go with her, including a cheerleading outfit that I had to put her in. She looked really cute in it! I was holding her like a baby after lunch, amused by it. Mom eventually said, “I told Amy’s family we’d stop by, do you want to go now?”

“Sure, I said,” intending to put Allie, as I’d named her, up in my room.

“Why don’t you bring her with you?” Mom asked.

I gave her a look like ‘why?’ but said, “Really? Do I need to?”

“You should,” Mom said simply to me.

The two of us got into the car and drove over to Amy’s house. I felt kind of silly holding Allie as we walked up the steps, but felt much better when Amy opened the door with one in her hands as well! “Aren’t they cute?” She asked me excitedly.

I suddenly felt comfortable saying, “Uh-huh,” to her as we walked inside. Mom carried a bag of presents with her inside and said, “Okay, you two want to open your other presents now?”

“Other presents?” I asked since I was confused.

“Other presents!” Amy said excitedly and we walked into the living room where there were still quite a few presents piled underneath the tree. She and I organized them and I found that there were a number of presents for me from her parents. We gave them the presents I’d gotten for them as well, and sat down to open everything. In the presents there was one that contained several hair clips and combs in there that were really pretty. At least one of them looked like it was decorated with expensive crystal. I also got several outfits from them for me, a couple outfits for Allie (my mom had given Amy several for hers who she had named Megan,) a Barbie Doll, some makeup, and finally a set of really pretty earrings.

“Thank you!” I told her, Amy, and her dad while giving them big hugs.

“You’re welcome Tiffany,” they said. We had gotten Amy several presents so I didn’t feel like things were too unequal there. My presents to Amy’s parents were well appreciated as well, and before long I wanted to stay there the night.

“Sweetie, you really do need to stay and visit with your own family tonight.” I looked downcast at that, “But you’ll get to stay with Amy tomorrow night when you go skiing with them,” she said pointing to Amy’s parents.

“Okay,” I said excitedly. “How long are we going for?” I asked Mr. Hancock, who was closest.

“Well we’re leaving tomorrow with you, and we’ll stay till Sunday,” he told me.

I was instantly excited, but felt a little bad for leaving my parents that long. I looked at Mom to see her expression but it seemed they had something that was left out. “We’re going to join you guys Friday,” mom told me with a smile.

“Really?!?” I asked excitedly.

“Really.” Mom told me and returned the hug I gave her.

As we left their house Amy came and told me, “Make sure you bring Allie tomorrow!”

“Okay,” I told her while wondering what it was about this doll that made us both willing to play with it. Neither of us really had a lot of interest in larger dolls, let alone a larger baby doll… It was about then that I realized it was because it wasn’t a ‘baby’ doll. I liked it because it was a doll dressed more maturely, that wasn’t wearing a cute diaper that it was supposed to wet. That doll was still sitting in the packaging at home… I figured I probably should open it at some point though just to make Mom feel better.

That evening my family hung out one last time before everyone was heading back home. Goodbyes were actually said at the restaurant where we ate breakfast the next morning, and they all left from there to drive back to their various homes. I promised Halley and Lauren that I would write them. Halley was hoping to maybe she could go with Amy and I to the cheer camp we went to in California this next summer. I thought that would be a lot of fun!

Intro by Carla Ann

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

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

“What do you mean?” She asked.

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

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

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

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The Legal Stuff: Dreaming of Cheers  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright  © 2010 By Tiffany Shar. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
 
 
Preface
 
 
It’s been a long road to publishing this third book in my Standing Up to Life Series. I began writing the first book over two years ago, putting the first two books out in a quick succession of six months work. The third book became more challenging to finish as I had set my sights on only writing a trilogy. I declared myself finished last August, but found myself unhappy with the ending. Well seven months later I feel this is ready to give to you, my readers, and I hope you will enjoy it. It has not gone on the track I had expected, and indeed there will probably be at least one more book following this in order to complete Tiffany’s story. I hope you will find that your wait has been worth it.

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

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

 

Chapter 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!