Chapter 14:

PART IV: Dreams Do Come True

I WOKE UP questioning whether our conversation had really happened or not. Amy quickly settled that when she whispered into my ear, "I'm so excited for after school," on our way out the door to the bus. I was really unfocused that day, to the point it was ridiculous. I almost ended up with detention with one teacher, but thankfully he decided I should be given a break for a bad day since I was one of his best students. He also knew that my grandfather had the heart attack. I think he just thought I was distracted by that.

Amy and I talked like normal through the day, but there was something different. I think it was just the sheer fact that she now knew my deepest darkest secret. I had decided that morning that I could do one of two things; live in constant fear that she would tell someone, or I could trust her to be my friend. I had decided I would do the second. I was sure she wouldn't let me down.

I had several people try and give me a hard time with the Barbie bit that day, but I just brushed them off. Something about having the unconditional friendship of one of the coolest girls in school put me at ease. I also just honestly didn't care – as long as I wasn't getting beat up I was okay. The nice thing is that people still remembered the incidents with Matt and Jeff, and even with them thinking I was a 'sissy,' they were too scared to risk messing with me. Boy if they only knew how much of a wimp I really was...

Finally the end of the day came and we got on the bus to go home. As we went in the door we heard the phone ringing. Amy hurried over to it and talked to her mom for a couple minutes. Apparently her mom was calling to say that she was running late, and she wouldn't be home till six that night. That was the time when her dad normally came home too, but he was in court and wasn't expected to come home until at least then tonight.

"Okay then, shall we go upstairs?" Amy asked. I could tell she was really excited.

I was excited too – and nervous... really nervous. But I decided to throw caution to the wind and say, "Okay!" She and I raced upstairs and went straight into her room.

"Okay, first thing's first. We need to get you into the right type of underwear!" She went to her dresser and dug through her drawer and brought out two items. I just kind of stood there wondering if I was in a dream. "Okay, here is a pair of panties that should fit you, and one of my training bras. Go put them on in the bathroom and then put on my robe. It's hanging on a hook on the door. Okay?"

"Oh-oh-okay." I stammered. I did as she said and removed all of the clothes I had on before pulling the panties up my legs. Wow... They weren't like some sort of exotic type of panty, they were just cotton, but they had a different type of elastic, and... they just felt different. I finished putting them on quickly and fought for a few minutes to get the bra fastened. After several tries I managed to get it fastened properly.

My image beckoned in the mirror and I looked at myself with girls' underwear on. Instantly it was like I suddenly recognized myself and how I was supposed to look. I smiled and giggled. I couldn't believe it was finally happening!

I found Amy's robe hanging on the door as she said, put it on, and tied the belt in front of me. At that moment I took a deep breath, looked at myself in the mirror again, and then went out to her room. "You look great already!" She told me. "What do you want to try on first?" She asked me pointing to a bunch of clothes hanging up around the room. Clearly she had her ideas of how I should dress.

I looked around and saw a dress that I just had to see myself in. "How about that dress?" I said pointing to a dress that must have been Amy's Easter dress this year. It wasn't extremely frilly, most of the dresses that girls wore in our grades weren't frilly so that didn't surprise me... but it was a dress!

"Okay! I was hoping you would choose this one first." She said handing it to me. "Put this over your head like a t-shirt. If you can't get the back zipped up I'll do it for you."

"Okay!" I said very happily. I took it back in the bathroom and put it over my head as she told me. I actually tried to get it zipped a couple times before deciding I'd just let her do it.

I came out and she said, "Wow, Brandon... This is... wow... Actually I don't think we should call you Brandon anymore... Have you picked out a different name for yourself as a girl?" She asked as she zipped up the back of the dress.

How could she know I had? I turned to look at her, "Well... I've had it narrowed down to two for a while."

"So what are they?" She asked.

I hesitated for a moment; this was like the last secret. "Brittany or Tiffany," I said.

"Hmm... I think I like Tiffany better for you. You're not really like any of the Brittany's I know."

"That's kind of what I had decided." I could just see myself in a mirror in her room. Did I look pretty? Or did I look like a boy in a dress. I was so nervous. If I looked ugly now there was no way that I could ever become the girl I wanted to be.

Amy seemed to be reading my mind, and she said, "Tiffany," I smiled as she said my name, "you look really pretty already!" She gave me a hug that I returned.

"You're not just saying that?" I asked.

"No – you look like you should be wearing that dress. I think it fits you better than it does me." She said with a smile.

I believed her, I knew I could, and decided to ask, "So what's next?"

"Well... Why don't we do something with your hair really quick?" She suggested. "You look okay now, I think you can look great though if we do a few more things!"

"Okay, where do you want me?"

"Just sit down in this chair," She pointed to a chair that was sitting in front of a dresser with a mirror above it. She had it turned away from the mirror for some reason. I started to sit down and remembered one of the things that every story I'd read on the internet talked about – you were supposed to smooth your dress beneath you. I did my best to do it, catching a smile from Amy just as she began working on my hair.

"What are you doing with it?" I asked.

"I thought I would do it like mine, where it's curled at the bottom. I'd love to be able to do it in layers for you like I've seen on some stars recently, but that would involve cutting it. So, we'll just go with this." She said.

She spent about twenty minutes working on it (I glanced at the clock nervously, it was now 4:10) and then she said, "Done! But hold on a second okay?" I nodded and she went to a jewelry box on the other side of the room. She came back with some earrings.

"Amy I don't have pierced ears." I told her.

"I know, these are clip-ons. I wore them until I was ten – I was too scared to let them pierce my ears!" She said with a giggle. "I think I was rather silly looking back at it. It stung, but it didn't cause me to fall on the floor and cry like I thought it would. Anyway, here let me put these on your ears!"

She fastened the clip-on earrings to my ears and told me, "stand up and tell me what you think!"

I couldn't believe it! I honestly could have hung out with the cool crowd look wise. Maybe not the dress (definitely a pretty, but non-cool dress), but my face and everything seemed to work together with this hair style. "Wow, thank you Amy, this is like so cool." I gave her a big crushing hug.

"No problem." She gasped. I walked around for a few moments before looking at the clock and seeing it was only 4:22.

"So do I get to try on other stuff?" I asked.

"I thought you would never ask Tiffany!" She said. Hearing myself called Tiffany sent a shiver down my spine.

She and I kept picking clothes for me to try on over and over again until I was sure that I had tried on all of her skirts and dresses. As I looked at my smiling face in the mirror she said, "Okay, most girls don't wear dresses to school anymore, let's put you into something that is more normal."

"Okay."

She dug up a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, which she insisted I call 'a blouse,' and told me to put them on. I went into the bathroom yet again and came out. "You know it would be so cool to take you to the mall like this! No one would recognize you as Brandon, and I know all of the guys would be looking at you!" Amy was beside herself with excitement.

"Okay Amy... Hold on... I'm not ready to be seen in public like this... and I don't think guys are necessarily my thing. At least... not as long as I have boy parts." I replied.

"Well, at least we know that you could be a really cute girl if you wanted to be. Is there anything else you want to try on Tiff?" She asked me. I kind of liked the shortened version too.

I thought for a moment, "Could I try on one of your swimsuits?"

"Sure, here let me grab one." She went through one of her dressers and came back with a bright green swimsuit with pink neon swirls on it.

I took it into the bathroom and pulled off everything else. I pulled everything else I was wearing off and pulled the swimsuit on. I remembered reading something about tucking my parts in, and decided to try doing it. I wasn't sure I did it the way I was supposed to, but when I looked down I couldn't see my parts sticking out anywhere – so I guessed it was at least marginally successful.

I found myself having a harder time getting myself to go out and show myself to her. It was a just a one-piece swimsuit, but it showed my legs all the way up – that part was really strange for me. After a moment though I mustered up my courage and went out to her room.

She whistled at me. "You look cute like that!"

I blushed. "Are you just saying that? I'm worried that people could tell that I'm a boy in this." I said.

"I can't tell that you have anything that a girl doesn't. I honestly think you could get away going to a pool party like that. Maybe we'll even have to arrange for that," she said with a twinkle in her eye.

"Umm... don't get evil on me here Amy." I said half jokingly. It was then that I looked at the clock and saw it was 5:42. "Hey, we'd better clean this up and I'd better get back into my clothes before your mom gets home."

"You're right. Go ahead and change and I'll start putting all of the rest of this up." She said and began to get to work. I went into the bathroom and took one last look at myself before slipping out of the swimsuit. I put my own clothes back on and took what clothes were in the bathroom back out to Amy. We worked together to put everything up when I felt like we were forgetting something.

"Amy, I feel like we're forgetting something." I said.

"Oh no, the earrings and hair!" She said.

I pulled the earrings off and said, "What should we do with my hair?"

"Just put it in a ponytail, no one should be able to tell we did anything with it after that." She said.

We quickly did that and I found myself massaging my earlobes to get the dents out of them. We then sat down at the table in her room and worked on homework until her mom got there – three minutes later! We had certainly cut it a little bit close.

"Hey guys, what are you up to?" She asked.

"Just working on homework," I said. She's going to know... somehow she's going to know... I kept thinking to myself.

"Well I'll let you two get back to it." She said and started to go out the door.

"Mom what are we doing for dinner?" Amy asked.

She turned back around, "we're going to go out tonight. Does Olive Garden sound good?" She asked.

"Yeah!!!" Amy said.

"Yes that does sound good." I said.

"Okay, we're going to leave in about twenty minutes. Work on your homework for a little bit longer though; it looks like you guys have a bunch of it." She said and turned around.

Amy started giggling and so did I once she was out of earshot. "That was close," she whispered to me.

"Yeah. Thanks though Amy, you let me do something I've wanted to do for at least eight months now."

"No problem Brandon, maybe we can figure out a way to make it happen some more." She said.

"I would really love to do that again." I said with a large smile on my face. It dimmed a little though as I said, "I'm just worried about getting caught."

"You know I don't think anyone would be able to tell that you were Brandon if you were dressed as Tiffany." She said and we got back to working on the homework. We made amazing progress in ten minutes – almost done with it progress – when her mom came to the door.

"Okay guys get ready so we can drive into town to go eat. Your Dad is just going to meet us there, Amy."

We got ready to leave and drove off. The two of us sat giggling in the back seat talking about nothing of importance during the entire drive.

When we arrived at the restaurant and waited for a table. That took a good thirty minutes, but we all thought it would be worth it. After the wait we got called up and went to the table. The waiter came to me and asked me, "And what would you like to drink miss?"

"Umm... Iced tea please." I said.

Once he left Amy giggled a bit. "Brandon that has been happening a lot lately!" she whispered to me. "Just think..." She added. Just those two words had a new meaning to us.

"So Amy what are you going to order?" I asked.

"I don't know, you want to split something?" She asked.

"Sure." I replied.

"What sounds good to you?" She asked.

"I don't know, how about this Tour of Italy dish?"

"That sounds good, we get a little bit of everything then." She said. We chatted about the next day a bit until the waiter came back. We told him that we were going to split the dish and he said, "certainly ladies," the giggling started up again with Amy as soon as he left.

Mr. Hancock leaned over towards us and asked, "so should we correct him, or is this some sort of game you two are enjoying?" He asked with a wink.

"No we're having fun with it," Amy and I said at the same time.

"Okay, you two might be spending a little too much time together," her mom said jokingly.

Amy turned towards her dad, "So how did your case go Daddy?"

"It went well. I think we should win this case easily." He said.

"What was the case about?" I asked.

He told us about the details. Apparently a company in town had fired an employee for some unjust cause. The employee had come to him and they had ended up taking it all the way to court. Mr. Hancock was really surprised that they hadn't settled. Their closing arguments from both sides were definitely leaning more towards his client winning.

Our food came and conversation lulled while we ate. They had actually split the plate for us already, which was nice. The portions were still huge for our appetites and we both had enough leftovers for a decent snack the next day. We were on our way out when Amy leaned over to my ear as we walked and whispered, "Did you see that boy checking you out?"

"What?!" I whispered back.

"You heard me." Amy whispered.

"You must have been mistaken," I said back as we got inside the car.

Amy's mom got in too and said, "Are you two talking about the boy that was checking out Brandon?"

"What? You too?" I asked.

"Well he was," Amy's mom said. "As soon as you walked towards the door he couldn't take his eyes off of your face." She then giggled a bit, "Then your rear when you walked past!"

Amy was practically rolling out of her seat in the car. I was sure the only thing holding her there was her seatbelt.

I was trying to decide whether or not to laugh or cry. I guess I should have known this was going to happen if I really wanted to start looking like a girl...

"Brandon, we're not trying to make fun of you," Amy said, "It's just really really funny."

I decided to laugh. I mean perhaps this was just another step to girlhood? "I guess it kind of is isn't it?"

"Yes it is. I think it might have something to do with the hair though... did you do something to his hair earlier Amy?" She inquired.

Oh crap... she suspects? What do I say? I wasn't really panicking yet – but I was definitely at a loss for words.

"Yeah, you got us. I talked Brandon into letting me play with his hair earlier. I just used a curling iron though, I didn't really do anything that significant to it." She said.

"It's okay, I wouldn't have noticed in all honesty, if I hadn't seen the ends of his hair in the ponytail were so curly." I wanted to look in the mirror and see what was going on there. "Also, guys don't usually do that high of a ponytail. That's certainly the highest I've seen you do it Brandon." She added.

"You're not mad are you, Mom?" Amy asked.

"Absolutely not. As long as Brandon was okay with it I don't see any issue with it."

I sighed with relief. "I'm okay with it," I answered back.

"So what do you two have going on tomorrow?" Amy's mom asked.

We talked about the different things that were going on the next day. When we got home it was about 8pm and she told us to go finish our homework.

Amy and I worked as quickly as we could, since we didn't really want to waste the rest of our evening working on homework. We had been working for about two minutes when I decided I wanted to get the pulling sensation the ponytail was giving me out of my hair. I pulled the holder out of my hair and let it down.

Her mom came up a few minutes later from downstairs with two bowls of strawberry ice cream. "Here, I thought you two might enjoy some ice cream." She said.

"Brandon, I just talked to your Mom, when you finish your ice cream why don't you call her back. Then when you're done talking let me know. I want to talk to her for a few minutes too."

"Okay, I'll do that as soon as I get done." I replied, and then she left the room. I ate my ice cream and continued to work on my homework. After about ten minutes I headed downstairs. Amy stayed behind to keep working.

I found the phone in the kitchen and sat down on the bar stool to talk to my parents. I dialed and Mom answered, "Hey sweetie, how are you doing?"

"I'm doing okay, I'm kind of tired." I replied. Not lying in the least... staying up late last night talking had worn me out. "How's Grandpa doing?"

"Well he was moved to a normal room today, and they will be ready to send him home on Tuesday. Your dad and grandmother are going to stay through then, but I'm going to go ahead and come back on Sunday. I'll pick you up around seven that evening when I get back."

"How are you getting home and they're staying there. Didn't you guys just take one car?" I asked

"Your Dad drove out your grandparent's car, and I drove ours. I'll drive ours back home."

"I guess that makes sense." I replied. We talked for another ten minutes or so about stuff – I think she was dealing with separation problems – and I said goodnight to her, but told her, "Don't hang up though, Mrs. Hancock wants to talk to you about something."

I handed her off to Mrs. Hancock and went upstairs to work on finishing my homework. Amy had gotten far too much of a head start there so she was done fifteen minutes before I was. I finished right around nine, and was surprised that we hadn't been told to go to bed yet. Amy ran down real quick with our dishes and saw that her mom was in her office on the phone.

"Brandon, I think my mom is still talking to your Mom." Amy came back up and said.

"That's strange."

"Yeah, but oh well. We should probably get ready for bed now so that she doesn't give us a hard time when she comes back upstairs to check on us." Amy said.

"Yeah, you're probably right. Why don't we get ready quick so we can watch TV in here until she says to go to bed?" I suggested.

"Okay, I'll go for that!" She said and we walked down the hallway. We both took turns in the bathroom, changing quickly, and then shared the sink to brush our teeth and stuff. Amy grabbed her hairbrush and told me to do the same. We went back to the playroom and sat down on the floor.

"Okay, I've done your hair enough, it's your turn!" She told me with a wink. She moved to where her back was in front of me and handed me her hairbrush. "Can you brush my hair out?"

"Sure!" I replied. I wouldn't even be close to being even with her. I started brushing her hair out, she practically purred. I gave her a hard time about it, "Are you sure you're not a kitty?"

"No. I think all girls are actually kitties at heart!" She replied. I brushed her hair out for about five minutes and then we switched places.

Okay, we'd done the hair thing before, but just flat out getting your hair brushed out by someone else was indeed a different experience. It felt really good.

"You said I purred!" She said with emphasis, "You must be at least part kitty too!" She said.

"Well, you said that all girls are part kitty – so it must be true for me too." I said giggling a little.

She stopped after a bit and we moved into bean bag chairs to keep watching TV. I thought maybe we would get a reprieve, and be able to watch TV till ten, but her mom came in at 9:30 and said, "Time for bed guys. I'll let you stay up as late as you want the next two nights though okay?"

"Okay Mom," Amy said.

We went down to her room and got into bed. Her mom turned the lights out and closed the door. When I thought the coast was clear I said, "Amy?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"You're welcomeTiff." She said. I looked over at Amyand saw her smile at me. I would foreverbe in her debt for today. How could Ipossibly repay someone for something like this? For being a friend through this? I had no idea. I went to sleepthat night dreaming of a day that I could have my own wardrobe like Amy's. All of my dreams that night involved me beingdressed the way that I felt I should be. It was a good night.

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