Dreaming of Cheers (Standing Up to Life Book 3)

Chapter 39:

THURSDAY MORNING ALL of us were supposed to wear our warm-up pants, dance team shirts, and warm-up jackets. I wore all of that plus a heavy coat on top! Amy's dad dropped her mom, Amy, and I off at the school where we walked into the cafeteria and waited for the bus to get there. Amy and I both were carrying our dolls with their new outfits on. Both of us were so sleepy that we just found a seat and sat down.

"Hey Amy, Tiffany!" Coach Holt said coming back from her room.

"Hi," we both mumbled.

"How cute!!!" she said when she saw our dolls. She held mine for a moment before saying, "I want one..."

"I'm sure my mom's friend would make more of the outfits," I told her.

"I might have to ask her," she said when she handed Allie back to me. The rest of the girls started arriving and I was amused to see that every one of them was carrying a stuffed animal. They all had the same reaction to our dolls, and I found that I had to chase a runaway Allie down before we left the school! All of us were beginning to wake up about the time we got to the airport. Walking through security with the doll meant that the security guard was sure I was eight and needed my 'mommy' to walk through with me.

"She really is twelve," Melanie told him.

As we walked away, I just said to Amy, "so much for the boobs theory..."

MY EXPERIENCE ON the plane was similar to the security guard. The stewardess thought I was Amy's little sister or something, and had come along for the competition to watch my big sis. It took Melanie and Coach Holt several times to convince her she could treat me like a middle school kid. The first plane we were on was almost empty except for us, so we had the option of spreading out a bit more. I chose to sit next to Amy on the other side of her mother the whole time though. I felt safer that way.

While we were on our second flight, that took us into Orlando, we were acknowledged by the captain who said, "I would like to welcome the Holden Junior High Dance Squad, the New Mexico State Dance Champions, on board. They are enroute to a national dance competition. We wish them luck and thank you all for flying with us today." All through that leg the stewardesses did believe I was my age, but all of them wanted to look at my doll. In fact, there were a couple other ladies around that took turns looking at Amy's doll as well.

"Too cute!" was the phrase used most frequently.

All of the thoughts of cute dolls went away when we landed in Orlando though. Coach Holt had a bus ready for us that took us to the hotel in the Disney Park area. "Ladies, here are your room keys. You need to be ready to work on hair and makeup in the common area on our floor in one hour," she said. We'd barely had time to register the fact that it was sixty degrees warmer than home!

Amy and I hurried into the room we were sharing with her mom. Both of us quickly showered and dressed in the jazz pants and camisole set for the jazz routine. There were four moms on the trip, in addition to Coach Holt, to supervise us. All of them started up a beauty salon in one of the rooms on the same floor. "Hold still," Melanie told me as I fidgeted a little under the hot curling iron.

"Sorry," I told her. I was getting nervous, we all were.

After ten minutes of working on me – they'd been told to hurry – I was passed over to Kristina's mom who was doing makeup. That took as long as my hair, but I was pretty much done afterwards. All of us had already painted our nails the night before, so other than height and hair color it was almost impossible to tell us apart from a distance. I took off to our room and spent some time looking at myself in the mirror – she'd put an awful lot of glitter on my eyebrows... All-in-all I would never have worn my makeup like that for anything else, but it was cute for the occasion.