Chapter 28:

"MOM! WHAT ARE you doing?" Amy asked sleepily, still holding onto me like a giant teddy bear.

It was then that we both realized what was going on and starting giggling. It really was innocent; neither of us was capable of thinking of the other in any way other than as sisters at this point. But that picture turned out to be something that her parents – and later mine – would razz us about for a long time.

They didn't have a lot of time that morning though, because as soon as I was awake, I was hurried into the shower to wash my hair. They had woken me a good hour earlier than I had any other day on this trip. I wasn't exactly real personable that morning at first, but when Mom came over and started working on my hair it started to make me smile.

Between Mom, Melanie, and Amy my hair was really pretty when it was done. We still had a half-hour before we needed to go downstairs so we made Amy's hair look like mine too. Between the hair and the clothes we were wearing we were sure everyone would assume we were sisters. That made me even happier, since that's what Amy was to me – a sister. All four of us shared quick hugs before heading downstairs to breakfast.

We had timed it so that everyone else would already be downstairs, and gathered around in a circle before I came down. As we came and joined the circle, I saw every guy – even Kyle – drop their jaws in astonishment. Only one of the faces looked at me as though I was a monster from outer space – that was Jarred – the rest were just shocked.

"Hi guys," I said.

"Umm... Brandon?" David asked.

"Actually, that's why everyone is supposed to be gathered right now. I need to tell you all something."

I paused for a second.

"I'm not going to be Brandon anymore – my name is Tiffany now." I told them. Maybe that wasn't the best way to break it... but I didn't come up with anything else at that moment.

"Huh?" David asked again.

"Look, over the past few months I've discovered some things about myself. I've talked to my friends, my parents, and even a specialist. The gist of it is that my mind is that of a girl, even though my body is that of a boy. My doctor has suggested that it would be better for me to live life as Tiffany than it would as Brandon. It's a much longer tale – and is a lot more difficult than I'm making it sound, but eventually I will have a body that matches that of a girl." All of that came stammering out of my mouth. I was beyond nervous.

From there the questions flew about me. I answered a lot of them, but my parents and the other adults fielded a lot of them too. The only guy who seemed to have problems with it was Jarred. The rest for whatever reason actually seemed cool with it. None of them seemed to think that I was contagious – definitely a good start.

When we seemed to have run out of questions we went ahead and got breakfast. Amy and I ended up sitting with Kyle and David. They actually made for two fairly cool people to talk to. I honestly wasn't completely sure what their reason was for sitting with us, but I was happy to see that things weren't going south. Every now and then I noticed Jarred staring at me strangely – I was kind of worried about him.

After breakfast we boarded the bus. Lindsey said, "Your hair is really pretty today, Tiffany."

"Thanks."

"Do you feel better now that you're not hiding the truth anymore?" She asked me.

"Yes, a lot better. I'm sure this is going to cause a lot of trouble going into next year though. Ten to one, by this time next week the school will already be talking about 'that freak' that thinks he's a girl. Oh well though, they're just going to have to deal." I said the last bit with a bit of a bob of my head that made my hair bounce. Lindsey giggled a bit.

"What?" I asked.

"You just bobbed your head up and down like one of the high school dance team girls – it was cute." She replied.

Amy had noticed this too and she said, "Tiffany you should try out for cheerleading this year!" She had a huge smile on her face.

"Umm... first of all I would kill myself, but second haven't you all already had tryouts for the team?"

"For the fall football games yes, but we'll actually have a separate set of tryouts in October to recheck everyone and for new girls. I think you qualify as a 'new girl.'" Amy answered.

"Umm... You still haven't answered the killing myself part of this." I told her.

"Well, you're really not as clumsy as you make everyone think you are. Plus, my parents were planning on sending me to this cheer camp next month to get ready to go for the school's camp. I bet we could get you into that camp still if you want to try." She told me.

"You really should Tiffany, it would be great to have you on the squad," Lindsey told me.

"There are a thousand insane things that will probably go wrong with this plan, but I won't say no, okay?" I temporized. Being a cheerleader would be a dream come true... but it was probably just that, a dream.

I managed to steer them onto other topics from there, but I had a feeling that this would not be the last I would hear about it. Not that I wanted it to be! Our bus driver drove us back towards Disney World, and this time we entered Magic Kingdom. Today was going to be a less structured day for all of us.

We were all supposed to still remain in a group with at least one adult, but other than that our only guideline was that we had to meet up at the buses at 8:30pm.

Our group was a bit different today. Amy and I were of course in it – just try to separate us! Lindsey and Ashley also joined. But we also added in Kyle and David today too. My parents and Amy's parents stuck with us, while the others split up between everyone else.

We began by immediately heading for Space Mountain to start off our day. Amy and I both agreed that it was a better ride than the version in Disneyland. The day just flew by as we moved from one spot in the park to the next. We took a very quick break for lunch and were soon on the move again.

All along the way the six of us became a closer group than I expected. Kyle and David seemed to be dealing with me being Tiffany very well. I honestly was really surprised that I wasn't having tons of problems now.

At some point in the afternoon we ended up on Main Street shopping for souvenirs. Now that I was 'out' Mom bought Amy and me a set of Minnie Mouse ears and made us wear them in the pictures for the rest of the day. Every so often Kyle and David would give us a hard time about them. Amy kept threatening to get them their own set of Minnie Mouse ears if they didn't stop... that seemed to stop the comments. I wished it hadn't though... that would have made for some great pictures!

My parents had certainly been taking their share of pictures this trip, but they seemed to renew their fury with this after we got the ears. Time went on and it got kind of hot, by around five or so we were all absolutely drenched in sweat. Kyle and David dragged us all over to splash mountain – which we hadn't hit for some reason – in the hopes that we could cool down a bit.

Amy and I wore our ears on the ride so that we'd end up with them in that picture. Mom took some bobby pins she had in her purse and secured them a little bit better to our hair (it hurt!) before we went on the ride. It was a 'splash!' When we got the picture, I was really proud that I had managed to put my hands up in the air for the picture and smile. It looked exactly like something that Disney would have advertised with.

Of course, right after the camera flash I immediately grabbed for the bar and screamed! I was a girl after all! But at least the picture came out really good!

From there we hit various rides we had missed for one reason or another. At about 7:15 we got in line for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It had a really long line, but we figured we would have just enough time to ride it before we needed to head back to the bus.

As we stood in the line, the six of us kids just chatted back and forth. Pretty soon Kyle asked me, "So are you happier now?"

I nodded. "Yes. I've been tired of hiding this for so long. Now I just have to deal with the fallout from everything."

"Well next year let me know if anyone gives you any problems, I'll take care of them for you." Kyle told me. There was something in his eyes that told me he meant what he said.

What was going on? Why in the heck did he say that? I decided I had to ask. "Umm... Kyle why are you being so cool about this?"

"Well... I don't honestly know. I think part of it is I've gotten tired of seeing people put down so often in our school – I think you deserve a lot better treatment than you've gotten." He paused for a second, "Part of it is also that you've got a lot of guts to push through with this – I respect that a lot." There was another pause during which I was tempted to speak but held off.

"And finally, I think it's going to be a lot of fun to throw people off their feet with this. Yeah, they're going to hear about 'Brandon's some freak now and is going to wear dresses to school,' this summer. The look on their faces when they try to figure out where Brandon is – it surely can't be that new girl – is going to be hilarious." He ended with a gigantic grin.

"Really?" I asked.

"Were you looking at everyone's faces this morning?" He asked me.

I shook my head, "No I was too nervous."

"It was priceless, honestly the guys sort of recognized you... but not really. Especially the way you had your hair done and were dressed. They had the advantage of having seen you these past few days and still didn't recognize you really easily. I had already learned about what was going on from you last night so I was just kind of watching everyone."

About that time David moved over to our side of the conversation from the other one. "Yeah, I didn't recognize you at all," he said to me.

"And you're okay with this too?" I asked. I was really not trying to sound incredulous, but I did expect to have a bomb go off over my head at any time. This was all going far too smoothly.

"It's weird. But you've always been a little weird. Now I can just chalk it up to the fact that you're a girl, and girls are weird. No big deal. I'm with Kyle, if anyone gives you any trouble this fall at school let me know. I think we can make this a lot of fun for the whole group that came on this trip."

Amy, Lindsey, and Ashley had all been acting like they were talking in another conversation while the three of us had been talking. I say 'acting' because I could tell that they were managing to listen in on us while we were talking and then joined up with our conversation now.

We all talked about lots of stuff, including maybe the six of us getting together for a pool party at Amy's house in a couple weeks. Just as we were finalizing some plans, we reached the ride and got to experience all that there was to experience about the Pirates of the Caribbean. The amount of animatronics they used in the ride was cool. It honestly wasn't anything too incredibly spectacular, but it was fun.

We all got off the ride and walked out to the bus that was waiting for us. On the way out of the park we took one last picture of the six of us, then the six of us plus Amy and my parents, and then we reluctantly left the Disney Park. Tomorrow was our last day here in Florida, but we wouldn't be coming back to the Disney Parks.

It had been a blast, and truly the 'trip of a lifetime.' When they had said that at the beginning of the year, I had no idea just how much it would really ring true. My life was definitely not going to be the same after today. I had officially become Tiffany in my group's eyes.

All of this was going through my head as we pulled into the hotel and headed for our rooms. Before we went up though I saw Ashley talking to everyone behind me, before she rushed up to me. "Tiffany hold up a second!" She exclaimed.

I turned around to her, "What's up?" I asked her.

"We talked Ms. Fitz and Mrs. Manning into letting us get together downstairs with just the students for thirty minutes. Everyone's going to get into their pajamas and then meet downstairs okay?" She asked me.

"Okay, why?" I asked back.

"It's a surprise." She told me.

"Alright," I replied hesitantly before going on upstairs to change. What was going on?

I went upstairs with Amy right behind me and changed into my pajamas. We headed back downstairs shortly thereafter and found everyone else there. Somewhere popcorn appeared along with some cokes and it turned into a pretty fun little gathering of all of us.

We all kind of just hung out for about twenty minutes before Ashley said, "Okay, can I get everyone's attention?"

Everyone was slow to look over at her but eventually she had everyone's attention. "Look, we've all had a pretty cool week this week, right?"

"Yeah," David and Jake exclaimed fairly solidly. We all gave our agreement.

"Look today we had some pretty surprising news that was delivered to the boys. All of the girls already knew about Tiffany by then, but we had kept it from the boys. I hope you aren't upset by that, but everyone was worried about what might happen when the truth came out." Ashley said.

"It's okay," David said.

"We do understand why you didn't tell any of us," Anthony added.

"Good, because that's why Ashley and I wanted to get everyone together tonight," Kyle said standing up.

"Look, I know that some people are not exactly going to stand up and be Tiffany's cheer squad," he said looking at Jarred, "but I think we all owe it to her not to tell anyone about what's gone on with her on this trip to anyone else."

"What do you want from us?" Jarred asked. "People are going to find out about 'it' no matter what you do." He was very irritated.

"Yes people are going to find out about her, but not until the first day of school when she walks into class." David replied catching on at about the same speed I was. They were trying to keep it from becoming a huge wave of outrage going into the new school year. I didn't see any way that could actually work though.

"You can keep this a secret, right?" David looked at Jarred with a very sinister glance. You have to understand something I haven't made real clear here. David was already three inches taller than any other guy in our grade. He was also easily the strongest guy that I knew too. Jarred on the other hand was only about average, if not a little small for average, and looked rightfully nervous.

"Umm... yeah I guess..." He stammered in reply.

"Good, we'll talk more about this later then." He added.

"So, can we all make a promise that no one will tell anyone not on this trip – including parents that don't know – until we get back to school?" Ashley asked. Everyone assented with real smiles on their faces – excepting Jarred's scowl. From there she made everyone do something that was really strange, but okay whatever, and grab pinkies of everyone next to each other and repeat a vow not to tell.

We spent our remaining five minutes or so laughing and having a good time talking about things that had happened on the trip. It was a lot of fun, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. As Ms. Fitz came downstairs to send us off to our rooms, I saw Kyle, David, and Anthony gather around Jarred.

I didn't know what they were talking about – but I sensed it might have been some sort of threat. I wasn't going to pay any more attention than that, I didn't want to.

When I got to ourroom I found that the parents had been having a meeting of their own in ourroom. Mom stuck around for a bit to talk with me before heading back to theirroom. Before long I was in bed andfalling asleep.

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