She’s coming home. Dani is coming home.
Dad called half an hour ago from the airport to let me know. The plane just landed and they’ll be home by three. Home in Jefferson Parish after four years.
It’s my birthday today. I’m seventeen. And my sister’s finally come home from the sandbox.
~*~
My aunt is going to kill me. Not literally kill me maybe, but she’s close to it. I don’t know. Maybe she would.
“Michael,” she says when she catches me running up the stairs for the fifth time to make sure I hadn’t forgotten to put back any of Dani’s CDs I had borrowed, “if you don’t calm down for five minutes…”
She doesn’t say what she’ll do, but I figure it involves the knife she’s using to spread the frosting on my cake.
I don’t mind. She’s stressed out, that’s all. My dad had to go pick up Dani and my aunt got stuck getting ready for the party, putting up streamers and balloons and cleaning up around the place. It’s not going to be a huge party, but her and my two cousins came down from Arkansas for it. They don’t usually come for my birthday though so my aunt made some big excuse about why they did this time. Me being her godson and all that, and her feeling badly about missing my sixteenth.
I know they’re really here for Dani and I don’t mind. I mean, I wish they wouldn’t lie to my face like that but hell, I’m here for Dani, too. I’d rather have gone into the city with James, my best friend, like we did for his birthday last month. But Dani’s going to be here in less than an hour and I wouldn’t miss her for the world.
Actually, that’s not true. I did miss her last time. It wasn’t my fault, though. I was on a trip with my French class. We’d gone up to Quebec and were there for five days, touring the city, and speaking French like real jerks. None of us could speak it very good, but at least we tried.
But anyway, there I was up in Quebec, staying at this swanky hotel that looked like it was a castle–even though it had always been a hotel–and eating fondue three meals a day, and my sister had come home unannounced. We still weren’t even in the same country! I wanted to punch my teacher in the face, I swear to god, for making that trip when she did.
I spoke to Dani on the phone when I was in that hotel; it was how I found out she was even home. She didn’t get to come back much because she was stationed at Camp Pendleton in California then, and they have some stupid rule about how many miles you can travel per day you have off. So to get home for three days, Dani had to take a five-day leave of absence. And before Pendleton, she’d been on a six-month “float” in the Mediterranean and you can’t exactly swing by New Orleans for a day when you’re in a whole ‘nuther hemisphere.
Well, I missed seeing her that time because she only stuck around for three days like I said before she had to go report back and ship out again. She’d visited to tell us that she was going to Iraq in October.
Quebec was the last time I got to talk to her in person, but I wrote her a few letters and even got one back from her a few weeks after Christmas last year. Mostly Dani didn’t write much when she was in Iraq and if she did it was to Dad. She was too busy, she said in her letter to me, training and moving out and securing areas. She said she was glad I wasn’t there because there were a lot of things she wished she hadn’t had to see, and would hate if I ever had to see stuff like that.
It’s been four years since she went into the Marines right out of high school. Three months to finish boot camp on Parris Island, two in SOI. She went into the School of Infantry the day the Towers were hit. I remember that, because I’d wanted so badly to talk to her but couldn’t. After SOI, though, she went off to Force Reckon school, to train until she got her tour in the Mediterranean.
It just hit me, but the last time I really saw my sister–not the Marine sister back from fighting for her country and protecting the free world, but the sister that was my best friend even before James–I was going into the eighth grade. Now I’m going to be a senior in high school and Dani is going to be twenty-three next month.
It’s going to be great having her back.
~*~
“Uncle Joey’s back with Dani!” I hear one of my cousins shouting. Then he calls for me to come downstairs.
The cousins are helping bring in Dani’s bags when I get to the bottom of the stairs. I don’t know why I don’t. I just sort of stay behind. I take a deep breath and stand at attention, to be respectful I guess.
As Dad enters the house, I hear him say, “There’s my birthday boy!”
Dad’s already given me about a million pats on the back today, but now he leans in for a great big hug. Not a guy hug mind you, where you both only really use one arm and slap each other twice to show your unspoken respect. No. A real full-blown honest to god hug.
Not that I mind. I’ll take a hug from just about anyone, even my dad, even around my friends. Maybe I’m weird. I just find it odd that all day he’s shaking my hand and patting me on the back saying how it’s just an easy slide on down to eighteen, but now that there’s a show to put on I get a real Dad-hug.
When Dad steps away from hugging me, and he must have held on for a minute at least, I see a woman in the doorway that only vaguely resembles my sister Danielle. She wears a camouflage jacket, pants, and a square hat. And black boots that gleam.
“Mikey,” she says and sets her gear down.
I try giving her a hug and her back stiffens, so I settle for a guy hug. One two and then we break apart, like bumper cars that hit too fast.
Dani smiles at me and shakes my hand, which I can tell feels more natural for her somehow. “Happy birthday.”
“Welcome home.” I offer to take her bags, but Dani lifts them up before I can get to them.
“I got ‘em,” she says and starts up the stairs. “I have to get out of my camis, anyway, and… Well let’s just say it takes a bit.”
“James’ll be here soon,” I say. “He’s excited you’re back.”
“Yeah? Jimmy? No kidding. All right, I’ll be down as fast as I can.”
She hustles up to her room. The smile never leaves my face.
My sister. Home.
A moment later, Dani’s door slaps shut and I hear her turn up her stereo full blast. Probably feels good to be back with her stuff.
“All right, kiddo!” Dad slaps a hand across my back before I can start thinking about all the great things Dani and I are going to do before school starts up again. “Let’s get those burgers cooking.”
I help Dad in the back yard until James shows up, then we go inside to play video games with Justin. A few more kids from the neighborhood come by, too. After a while, I look around and wonder… where’s Dani?
“Here,” I say to James, “you play. I’m going to see if Dani’s out back.”
Only she isn’t.
And she isn’t in the basement either, looking over her old comic books what Dad had stored down there for her. And no one is in either of the bathrooms.
I slowly mount the stairs; the music is still going full blast.
I knock on her door. “Can I come in?”
No answer.
I open the door and the music hits me harder. When I step inside, I find her. She’s there lying on her bed, her boots still laced, and her camouflage jacket unbuttoned to reveal her olive green t-shirt underneath. Her arms are folded neatly across her stomach. She looks passed out. I would have left, too, but her mouth moves and I think I hear the word “stay” over the thrashing metal of her stereo.
I shut the door.
Dani turns down the music, not so far as to actually be quiet but enough that I can hear her better. She says, “You doing okay, kiddo?”
When she looks at me, I nod. I sit down in the swiveling chair she keeps at her desk. She seems serious.
“That’s good.” She stares up at the speckled ceiling. “I want to tell you something.”
I ask, “Me?”
My stomach knots. I feel my lungs struggle to fill with air. My sister has been to war; I can only imagine what she might tell me, and those imaginings aren’t exactly nice.
But Dani smiles. It looks like it hurts her face, but it’s still a smile. She turns back from the ceiling, swings her legs over the edge of the bed. She’s so formal-looking, even half out of her military garb. She takes a deep breath, something I wish I could do right about now.
“Okay,” she says. It sounds like she’s convincing herself of something.
“If you don’t want to talk about it,” I manage to say, “it’s all right. We’ll have plenty of time. I know… I know you saw some stuff.”
A quick, low noise comes from Dani’s throat. It was brusque but I realize she had laughed.
“Nah, Mikey,” she says. “Nothing like that. I just want to tell you first. I don’t want to steal your thunder. Birthday party and all.”
I hesitate. “Are you reenlisting?”
She shakes her head. “Not for a while. Maybe some day. Fact of the matter is, I’m home for a pretty serious reason. Mikey,” she says as she leans over to put a hand on my pant leg, “what do you think if I told you that you were going to be an uncle?”
My brain freezes. Dani’s eyes show a trace of concern and that melts me.
I say, “For real? How soon?”
Dani’s cracked smile lights her face. “Six months or so.”
It’s my turn to laugh. I jump up and hug my sister, never minding that she still feels awkward and stiff about it. I ask her all kinds of things, like who the father is and if she’s planning on getting married and if I can be the godfather. I ask if she’s going to tell everyone downstairs and she says only if I want her to, which I do.
As we head back to the party, Dani stops me on the stairs. She thanks me and says, “Happy birthday, Mikey.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Jack M. spent his formative years in the bitter north of New England. Nowadays, when he isn’t creating, he enjoys stumbling and tumbling into hilarious internet memes.