Chapter 26:

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I woke up and put on my new swimsuit first, and then pulled on a pair of boy's shorts and a shirt on top of the swimsuit. My mom came and knocked to get in the room about that time, "Are you sure you want to do this Tiffany?" She asked me as she came in.

"I think so..." I replied timidly. I had a lot more butterflies today than I did yesterday. In general, the idea was simply that I was going to be Brandon until we got to the waterpark, then several of us – and Ms. Fitz, were going to split off and I could be Tiffany for the afternoon. I was not worried about strangers, none of them would know, I was mainly worried about other members of our group that might recognize me if they saw us.

At this point six of the other girls knew... but that was it. That left one girl and five boys I would have to deal with if they found out. Oh well.

While I'd been sitting there thinking about all of this, Mom had sat down next to me on the bed and was braiding my hair into one braid. "Won't people figure this one out?" I asked Mom.

Amy answered, "It'll be easier to deal with when we go to the water park." When she walked in front of me, I realized she too had braided hair. "All of the girls are doing it," she added. As if that made me feel like I wasn't sticking out at the moment. Before I knew it we were on the way out the door.

"Hey Brandon, who braided your hair?" Brittany asked.

"Umm... Amy did. She said it would keep my hair out of my eyes when we go swimming later." I responded. Slight lie... not huge though.

"That's a good idea. I'll have to get someone to do it for me when we get on the bus." She said thoughtfully.

We all boarded the bus and took our seats. As we drove through Orlando, we followed the signs to Disney World, and soon we got our first look at the outside of the Disney Park. After driving through the park roads for a while, we came to a beach where we got off the bus to take a boat out to the island.

Everyone at the island was dressed in 'safari' gear and we were soon on a tour of the island. They had a number of big Galapagos turtles there. They were so large we easily could have ridden them. The island had a number of things in it, but I think my dad's favorite was the bird cage. There were so many different types of birds in the cage, and they were all very colorful.

There were also some flamingos, some lemurs, and some swans... but it really wasn't that special beyond that. The workers gave us a fairly thorough set of science lessons with everything, it wasn't uninteresting, but it wasn't the highlight of the trip so far. Kennedy and Space Camp were better science lessons.

We stopped by the bathrooms on our way out. I found the farthest stall away from the door and moved quickly to take stuff off in such a way that the guys couldn't figure out that I had a girl's swimsuit on underneath my clothes. I honestly thought that Kyle might have seen a strap hanging out of the neck of my shirt at one point, but I don't think he was paying attention. I was just lucky that the shirt I was wearing was heavy enough to hide the suit.

As I left I noticed that one of the guides gave me a funny look trying to decipher why I had been in the boys room. Oh well... that's why I was going as Tiffany to the next park!

As we drove to the next park, I wondered why I was getting funnier looks by strangers today – then I remembered that my hair wasn't just long anymore, it was styled in a girls style. I didn't want to change that one bit, but I was looking forward to being less uncomfortable after this trip was done.

The bus didn't have to travel far before we were at Typhoon Lagoon. We were each given food vouchers for lunch and turned loose. Ms. Fitz led Amy, Amber, Nikki, Ashley, and I away from the rest of the group, dragging behind everyone else as they hurried through the entrance to the park.

Once we were in the park she suggested we go ahead and eat lunch first to give the others some more time to get out of sight before enjoying the park. We paid with our voucher and got a slice of pizza and a drink. All of us ate quickly before Ms. Fitz led us into a lady's locker room. The four girls and I all were ready to go outside pretty quickly – everyone had worn their swimsuits under their clothes – and we were in and out of the locker room in almost no time.

We had locked up all of my clothes in a separate locker that I could give a key to someone else to get them if we got desperate to hide my appearance. I didn't care that much at that moment, I was just happy to not have to try to act like I was a boy.

I skipped and giggled as we headed for the 'lazy river,' for a bit. Amy said it was kind of relaxing and fun – plus more importantly we knew the others weren't heading there first.

The lazy river wasn't overly exciting – but it was relaxing to sit down in the inner-tube and it gave me a chance to kind of calm down my nerves. After we floated around a good chunk of the park we all got out and headed for the 'shark reef' attraction. You could snorkel with the sharks in a tank that had a coral reef and lots of other fish. It sounded really cool!

As we approached the front of the line Ashley said, "This is kind of crazy isn't it?"

"Naw..." I replied, "they wouldn't let us swim with them if they were dangerous."

"Tiffany's right Ashley," Amy replied.

"Alright then, let's get this over with." She replied. I was really amazed that she was so scared of this.

They handed each of us a partial wetsuit type thing and a snorkel as we got to the waters edge. After a little bit of discussion we started swimming in the tank.

It was soooo cool! I took my time moving through the water so I could stare at everything below. By the time I got to the other side the other girls and Ms. Fitz had already handed in the gear and were ready to move on. Part of me really wanted to stay behind and go through that again – but they didn't want to do that. My safety really stemmed from being with friends so I moved on with them.

Our next stop was a few really tall water slides. Ms. Fitz just kind of found a seat and watched as we climbed the stairs to the slides. As I came down the third and final time on those slides, the bottom part of my swimsuit slipped a little. Nothing became visible... but it sure made me nervous. I quickly put everything back in order as best I could under the water in the pool that it splashed into.

That was unnerving.

We moved on from there to a white-water raft ride. Ms. Fitz said that was going to have to be the last thing we did if we were going to make it back in time to avoid running into anyone, we knew in the locker room.

It was a fun final ride at the park with the raft ride. We all screamed and squealed a fair amount throughout the ride. Really it was more about having fun screaming than it was being startled or scared. All of us girls, including Ms. Fitz, skipped our way back to the locker room where I pulled my swimsuit off in a bathroom stall, put on a pair of panties, and put my shorts and t-shirt back on.

I had been in a store with Amy for about three minutes when everyone else started to arrive back. Nothing was said to the rest of the group about the extra girl that joined the group for the afternoon. As far as any of us could tell no one else ever ran into our group that day – that surprised me a lot, but I wasn't going to slap a gift horse in the mouth.

That night we had dinner and ended up in our rooms watching TV for a bit before going to bed. I went down the hallway before I got into my pajamas and knocked on Ms. Fitz's door. Brittany came to the door.

"Hey Brandon how are you doing?" She asked me.

"Pretty good, is Ms. Fitz in here?" I asked.

"She's in the bathroom, she should be right out." She replied to me. "So, Brandon did you have fun today?" She asked.

It was really strange being called Brandon for some reason at that moment. "Umm... Yeah I did. How about you?"

"Yeah I did too. What else are you doing this summer?"

"I don't know. We were talking about that yesterday at the beach; I really don't have any more plans this summer." I replied.

"Is it true that your project with that video got you guys a lot of money?" She asked me.

"A fair amount..." I answered. Where was this going?

"And... doll houses for all of you?" She asked me.

"Umm... yeah, that's funny in my case wasn't it?" I asked ironically, hoping that we could get around this soon. My luck hung in there for the day.

"Hey Brandon," Ms. Fitz said from behind me. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to come by and thank you for earlier... I really appreciated it." I told her.

"It was no problem. I don't know what tomorrow holds, but we'll see if we can work out something similar." She replied to me.

"What are you guys talking about?" Brittany asked.

"Nothing... she just helped me out with something earlier..." I replied knowing I was leaving a question in there. "Maybe I'll tell you about it tomorrow night or something. It's kind of a long story and I really should be going back to my room. Goodnight guys." I replied.... Umm... Yeah... Way to blow that one Tiffany.

That night I didn't sleep really well. I didn't really know Brittany, but I knew she wasn't dumb enough not to realize there was something more there. Had she pumped her roommate, Jennifer, for information last night? Would Jennifer have told her? I had pretty much decided that I was going to have to fill in Brittany if she asked me anything else.

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