Bears Know Best

Chapter 3: Are You Sure?

THE NEXT MORNING Mom had to go to work, and I chose to sleep in again. At ten though I finally gave in to the sunlight streaming through the windows and took a shower. My hair was still dripping wet when the doorbell rang. I pushed it out of my eyes as I opened the door to a Fed Ex deliveryman.

"Taylor Landt?" He asked.

"Yes sir," I told him.

"I have a bunch of boxes for you, would you care to sign here first and I'll bring them up."

"Shouldn't I look at them first?" I asked him.

He shrugged, "Whatever," and began bringing me the ten boxes that contained my life in them. Most of them were larger and heavier than I would be able to have managed to unload on my own. Thankfully he wheeled them all on his dolly into the foyer of the house. I checked to make sure the boxes looked mostly undamaged, and got to work on opening them and taking the contents upstairs. I'd managed to get about five of the boxes upstairs and unloaded when the doorbell rang again.

I stood up from the drawer I was leaning over and looked through the peephole. It was Alyssa!

"Hey Alyssa," I said opening the door and suddenly self-conscious of my still damp hair. "Come on in, I'm just unloading the rest of my stuff. It just arrived today."

I mentally ran through my head on if there was anything ridiculously embarrassing in the remaining boxes that I didn't want her to see. I'd already unpacked my underwear, so I figured I was safe.

"Do you need any help?" She asked me.

"Sure," I answered with a smile.

I wanted to crawl into a ditch though as soon as we made it upstairs to my room with an armful of stuff each. I'd completely forgotten about the way the room looked.

"Are you sure you're not a girl?" she asked sternly, hands on her hips.

I groaned, "Yes I'm sure... I guess this was the paint scheme from the family before us," I noticed her face was smiling now. "You knew that didn't you..." I added.

"Jessica was a cute kid... it's too bad her parents were so screwed up. She was nine, and this room was like her dream come true for all of the month they lived here," she told me. Her face was a bit sad about it. "It suits you well too though," she giggled.

I stuck my tongue out at her. She laughed, and the two of us got to setting up my room more. Most of the boxes had contained clothes, books, a few toys that I just couldn't bear to throw away, and a lot of various music related items. Among the toys was a stuffed teddy bear that my mom and I had put together at Build-A-Bear Workshop when I was five. It was one of the last things we had done together before she had left us. It didn't help my 'boy' status with Alyssa, because it had a dress on.

"Okay Taylor, what's the story with her?" Alyssa said as she held it up to me with a grin.

I blushed, but was determined to come out of this okay. "On my fifth birthday Mom and I went to Build-A-Bear. I saw the bear and decided it was the one I wanted."

"Okay, the bear I can understand... but?"

I knew that the white dress with multi-colored polka dots was confusing her. I shrugged, "I told my mom that it looked like a 'girl bear' to me, and I insisted that we dress it as a girl. I don't know why the bear struck me as a girl, but I insisted that she be dressed in a dress."

"What's her name?" She smiled - how did she know that my bear had a name...?

"Allie," I responded.

"Cute!" She didn't seem to be judging me about it, and instead carefully lay her down on my pillow.

"Well now that you know all of my most embarrassing secrets," I muttered, "You want something to drink?"