Standing Up to Life

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.