Chapter 11:

THE NEXT DAY I was really tired from the day before, but I was still really excited that we had done so well at contest. In the morning announcements the principal congratulated us on our fine performance at the contest. For the most part that day ended up absolutely flying by, and before I knew it I was riding the bus home with Amy. When we got to her stop she told me, "First person to the door chooses what we do!" and she took off.

To my credit I made it only a half second after her, even if it wasn't fair, I still lost. I grumbled a little bit to myself. As she opened the door and we went inside I asked, "So what are we doing today?"

"Come upstairs with me." She led me upstairs to her playroom. When we got up there she started getting a whole bunch of Barbies out and putting them in the center of the room. She pushed a gigantic doll house to the center of the room too.

"We're going to play Barbie's today! I haven't been able to play with them much in the past couple months – so that's what we're doing. Unless..." She paused, "you've got a really big problem with it?"

"Umm... I guess not, but I don't exactly know what you're supposed to do with them. It's not like I've ever played with dolls before." I replied timidly. I was absolutely trembling. I had wanted to play Barbies with her for so long now, and I was finally going to get a chance!

"That's okay, I'll teach you!" She said. "First things first, names..." She proceeded to tell me the names of several dozen dolls before saying. "Okay, now why don't we play with these ones today... and we need to change their clothes so help me out here..."

She continued to explain the intricacies of how to play with them for a while, and by the end of about two hours I'd had a blast. It was everything I had hoped it would be. I had a ton of fun that day! At the end Amy said, "You know Brandon you're more fun to play with than most of my friends."

"Thanks Amy, I had a lot of fun too." We were cleaning up her Barbies and putting them back in their places. She had promised me we would keep this from her parents for now. We had put a movie in the TV in the room where we were playing.

"So do you want to do it again sometime?" Amy asked me.

"Sure, why not?" I replied with a smile. When we were done putting everything up, we set up some bean bag chairs and continued watching the movie. A few minutes later we heard her mom coming upstairs.

"Hey Amy, Brandon, how did your day go?"

"Good Mrs. Hancock," I replied.

"It was good Mom," Amy said.

"Amy said that congratulations are in order for yesterday?" Mrs. Hancock inquired.

"Yeah, it went really well. We got the highest rating you could get. I guess we're the first sixth grade band at our school to ever do that!"

"Well congratulations. Listen, Brandon, I talked to your parents and they're going to meet us for dinner. Why don't both of you go put your shoes on, and wash up, so we can go."

"Cool," Amy said.

"Okay, that sounds like fun." I replied. We both put our shoes on and got ready. A few minutes later we piled into their SUV.

"Where's Dad?" Amy asked.

"He had to work a little late so he's just going to meet us there."

"Okay." Amy answered.

We drove to the better of the two local Mexican restaurants, meeting my parents at the door. A few minutes later Mr. Hancock joined us too.

"Brandon how was your day?" My mom asked.

"It was alright, I'm tired from yesterday though." I said.

"It was a long day..." She continued talking and asking me stuff but my ears were more on what my dad was saying to Mr. Hancock.

"I wanted to thank you again for taking Brandon with you on that trip. That was nice of you guys to take him!"

"No problem, it was our pleasure. The two of them seem to be joined at the hip anymore, and that's fine with us..."

"Hey Brandon, you want to hang out tomorrow?"

"Umm... Mom can I?" I asked.

"Yes, but don't forget you need to be selling candy bars for the trip too this weekend." Mom said.

"Why don't they do both?" Mrs. Hancock suggested. "They can walk around the neighborhoods between our house and yours going door to door. I'll follow in the car to keep an eye on them. You'd be welcome to come too if you want."

"That sounds like a great idea! Do you two want to do that?" Mom asked Amy and I.

"Sure Mom," I said nodding. Amy also nodded her approval. I knew we would have a lot more fun selling candy together!

Our food arrived right about then, and we all became more focused on food for a bit. I deeply enjoyed my Chile Relleno plate. There's nothing like New Mexican Green Chile! For those of you not from the promised land of New Mexico, a chile relleno here is a roasted New Mexican Green Chile Pepper stuffed with a white cheese, breaded and deep fried, then covered with more cheese (usually cheddar or Colby-jack) and plenty of green chile sauce! It really is some of the best food in the whole world...

After we finished our meal my dad picked up the check. "Here let us get that," Mr. Hancock said.

"No, you guys took Brandon on that ski trip, we'll get this."

"Well thank you," Mr. Hancock said.

I always hated moments like that, they're always so awkward! In the meantime my mom was talking to Amy's Mom. "So we'll come by at one?" She suggested.

"Sure, that sounds good."

We all stood up and headed for the door. "Well thank you for dinner," Mr. Hancock said at the door, "we'll have to do this again more often."

"Well we'll all be together on the trip next month so we should get some opportunities then." My mom said.

"Yes, I think it's going to be a great trip for all of the kids." Mrs. Hancock said.

"Yeah! We're really excited," Amy chimed in for us.

"Well, let's get going, good night guys!" Mr. Hancock said.

"Goodnight," I said to them and we got into our separate cars and drove home.

On our way home we stopped and rented some videos. We all just kind of vegged in front of the TV that night before going to bed. 'Wow, what a great day I'd had! How many times do you get to play with Barbies for the first time?' I thought to myself as I tried sleeping.

THE NEXT MORNING I woke up feeling really good and excited for the day. I had three boxes of candy to sell, with thirty bars in each. Everything I sold that day was going to all go into my own pocket for money to spend on the trip. Through other fundraising, and the amounts my parents were willing and able to spend, I had paid off my trip. I also already had about a-hundred-and-forty dollars in my account for spending money. At a dollar of profit per candy bar, I would be able to have ninety more dollars if I sold them all.

Amy had told me already that any of the money she raised went to her own spending account; I think she had about a-hundred-and-fifty in her account at this point. She was hoping for a similar sales spree today. This was our last fundraiser so... if I wanted to be able to buy anything really cool I'd have to keep raising the money!

We got in the car and put my candy in the trunk. Each box had our names on it so it would be easy to keep track of whose was whose. It was a really windy day that day, but it was still pretty warm. I had on shorts and a school t-shirt. When we got to Amy's house we went in for a moment and I saw that she was dressed like me. The only thing really different with our outfits, were our sandals. We got away from her house pretty quick and began walking down her street.

We walked up to the first door together and Amy took her first sale. We alternated who was the one selling, every other door. After that block we had both come out pretty evenly, each of us managing to sell one box. We got into my Mom's car and found that she and Mrs. Hancock were getting along very well. 'Perhaps too well...' I thought. We moved onto the next block and began all over again.

My hair was once again beginning to show that one little thing that made it annoying... it and the wind did not get along so well. My hair kept getting blown into my eyes and face. When we finished that block Amy offered a black hair tie to me, which I used without thinking much about it. I was impressed with myself, since I managed to put my hair in a decent ponytail without any help.

"Cute," my mom said. "If you keep growing it out I might have to have some fun with your hair myself. It seems like everyone except me has gotten to play with it!" she joked. I knew instantly that Mrs. Hancock had told her about my pigtails on the ski trip.... I got really nervous.

Thankfully I didn't have to respond as we reached our next block and the two of us started going to doors again. It was kind of funny – I could be wrong – but I think I sold at a higher rate after my hair went into the ponytail. Amy seemed to notice too. As we walked between houses she told me, "Brandon, you know if we put you in some of my clothes I think you could sell twice as much as you are. I think that when you put your hair in that ponytail they began thinking you were a girl." She giggled a bit and I joined in.

Within another hour we had all of our candy sold, and we each had an additional ninety-dollars to put into our accounts. "Do you two want ice cream?" Mrs. Hancock asked.

"Yes!" We replied in unison. I'd been noticing we were doing a lot of that recently, it was really cool. It kind of reminded me of some of the characters in the books I read when I was younger.

"Okay, let's go to Dairy Queen then." She said. Mom started driving down that direction while Amy and I jabbered along in the back seat. Selling the candy bars seemed to bring a new immediacy of the trip to mind.

"So tell me about Disney World," I had said to Amy.

She told me about all sorts of things there. "You'll love Epcot Center, especially all of the countries that are there."

"Countries?"

"There are a bunch of countries that have 'embassies' set up at the park in one area. They have restaurants, shops, and rides that are all themed on the country. You can even get a park passport and get it stamped at each of the different places."

"That sounds neat, we should do that." I said to her.

She went on about a bunch of other things that you could do as we reached Dairy Queen. We each ordered an ice cream cone and sat outside to eat them. I think everyone, including our Mom's had a lot of fun today.

"Well, what are we doing now?" I asked.

"Well, if you want to go hang out with Amy and her family tonight that's fine. I'll come pick you up at nine?" She suggested.

I glanced at Amy and she nodded vigorously. "Okay," I replied.

Mom dropped the three of us off at Amy's house with a promise that she would hang out at our house on Friday.

"So what are we going to do?" I asked Amy when we got inside.

Her mom answered before she could though, "Well, in about an hour I'm going to go get some Chinese food for dinner. Then I thought we could all sit down and watch a movie in our living room?"

"That sounds good Mom," Amy said.

"Until then?" I asked.

"We go up and play or something. Let's go," she said and dragged me upstairs. Her mom smiled behind us.

We went upstairs and she closed the door. "Barbies?"

"But what if your mom catches us?" I asked.

"She won't care. Besides, this is just another one of my harebrained schemes!" She said, giggling a bit.

So we went ahead and began playing. We played for about fifty minutes and were putting things away when her mom peeked her head in to check on us. "Barbies?" Her mom asked.

"I decided Brandon needed to be inducted into my way of playing!" She said.

"Well, okay, as long as Brandon doesn't mind." She hedged.

"It's okay Mrs. Hancock, we're always doing things I want to do. It only seemed fair to do something she wanted to do." I replied.

"Okay then. I'm going to go pick up the food, I'll be back in about ten minutes." She said as she closed the door.

"Amy, I can't believe your mom didn't say anything more." I told her.

"Why would she? I play with Barbies all of the time – she actually asked me once, teasingly, if I'd made you play with them yet!" She giggled a bit.

I was torn in my emotions on what to think of this but decided to giggle as well. "Well let's finish putting stuff up," I told her.

After we did so we washed our hands and headed downstairs just before she opened the door with food. She sat the food on a bar that was in the middle of their kitchen and we dished up the food that we wanted. It was great. I guess you've realized by now I'll eat almost any kind of food. I do draw the line with mayonnaise, sour cream, and salad though... those items make me sick!

We sat down at their dinner table and ate until we were full. "So are you guys ready to watch a movie?" Her dad asked.

"Sure, what are we going to watch Daddy?" Amy asked.

"Well I just bought a new movie today it's called Stargate. Several of my clients have said it's really good."

"Okay... that sounds okay then," Amy replied.

It sounded like a good science fiction film to me – and as someone that liked Star Trek and Star Wars, I didn't think you could go wrong there. "Sounds interesting," I added.

We sat down in their living room and put the movie in. Amy and I sat on one couch while her parents each sat in a chair on either side. I don't know about Amy, but I loved the movie. It was great! That may not have been the most girly movie to like... but I loved it nonetheless.

My mom rang the doorbell shortly after the movie was done and I left with her to go home. I said thank you to the Hancocks and told Amy I'd talk to her tomorrow or see her on Monday. On the way home Mom said, "Why didn't you tell me that I'd missed an opportunity to see you in pigtails already?"

"I don't know... I thought maybe you would get mad?" I replied.

"Of course not, laughed a bit, but not gotten mad. Look I'm really not surprised to hear that happened, especially with you hanging around Amy so much."

I was in shock! I had honestly thought I would have gotten in trouble for all of this... Why I don't know, but I did. "Mom, while we're on the subject, could you pick up some of these pony tail holders like this?" I said pointing to my hair. Why not try?

"Sure sweetie, I'll pick some up at Wal-Mart tomorrow. I probably should have gotten some for you sooner."

"Thanks!" I said.

We got home shortlyafter nine that night. I wasn't quiteready to go to bed so I just read a book in my room until my mom told me I hadto go to turn out the light. I couldn'tbelieve how accepting everyone had been about everything that day... I mean itwasn't really that many things. I hadgotten so absolutely nervous about everything – to actually have people accept thingsthat were bringing me closer to being like a girl really surprised me. I went to bed thinking that maybe my ultimategoal might not rub my parents the wrong way as much as I had thought it would.

***************************************************************

Please press the Like Button Above! Comments are also appreciated!