by Josh Vasquez
***
“Why are we leaving? Why do I have to pack? I don’t want to leave. Are Opie and Millie coming with us?”
My sister was asking a thousand questions, questions I didn’t know the answers to.
Why were we leaving? Why did I have to keep my gun close by? Why was Mom crying?
“I don’t know, Hay. Just pack your stuff like Dad said. We’re going out to the cabin,” was all I could offer.
It seemed to do the trick, because she continued to pack and babble on about something. Her voice became cloudy though, and very quickly, my brain toned her out. I went into my room and began to empty out my drawers and closet into my Florida Gators suitcase. I didn’t pay much attention to what I packed, but rather just stuffed equal amounts of shirts, pants, underwear, and shoes. We had some clothes at the cabin, so I wasn’t too concerned with outfits.
I glanced over at Hailey, who is laying out individual outfits across her bed. I yelled for her to hurry up. She huffed something and picked up her pace only slightly. My alarm clock said it was a quarter after four. I finished packing in fifteen minutes. My football grabbed my attention, but I remembered my Dad saying, “No toys,” and that I have another football at the cabin.
I walked back into Hay’s room, and she was still pulling out her outfits. She looked at me and gave me another “Aunt Laura” look that asked, “Well, are you going to help me or not?” It made me smile.
“Does it matter how your clothes go in the suitcases?” I asked, as she raced between the closet and her bed.
“No, bubba. Just, can you, can you keep them together?” she insisted.
“Sure, Hay.”
It took us another fifteen minutes to finish packing my sister’s things. She wasn’t too thrilled about the whole “no toys”-thing, despite the fact that she could bring a few. She stuffed a couple of coloring books into her suitcase and some crayons into its front pocket. She stared for a minute at the line-up of stuffed animals spread across her bed. After a Moment or two of serious contemplation, she finally decided on a pink bear. I felt a little bad for her. Her stuffed animal collection was always growing, and now, it had to be reduced to one single bear.
“C’mon Hay,” I said, ushering her to her bedroom door.
She started to cry.
“What’s wrong?”
She sniffled and tried to stop the sobs long enough to respond.
“I, I just, I just feel like I won’t ever see my room again.”
Her words floored me a little. The thought that we’d never come home again never even crossed my mind. Dad only said we’d be gone for a few weeks, but we were packing like we were never coming back. I only thought Hay was crying because she had to leave her toys behind. She is just like Mom and Aunt Laura. It doesn’t take too much to get tears out of our girls. They were all highly emotional.
One look at her face is what changed my mind. Her cheeks were red and her nose runny. This was not fake-crying, which I have seen plenty of. No, these were her genuine tears.
“Hey,” I said, as I wrapped my arm around her. “It’s all gonna be okay. We’re just going for a little while. We’ll be back.”
“But why, Bubba?”
I paused.
“I don’t know why, but Dad wants us to. We need to just trust him, okay?”
She nodded and wiped her snot on her sleeve.
“That is so nasty,” I said.
She giggled and proceeded to try and wipe it off on me. I quickly grabbed her bags and ran. She chased me down the stairs. For a Moment, everything seemed normal, like we were just messing around and having fun. Dad was standing near the bottom of the steps. For the first time this afternoon, he smiled.
“Be careful you two. You don’t-”
There were a few knocks at the door. After a second’s pause, it opened. It was G-Dad, G-Mom and Aunt Laura.
“Oh my goodness! Traffic was terrible!” G-Mom said.
“Well, I’m glad y’all got here safe,” Mom responded.
They talked for a few Moments about the traffic. It was normally busy this time of day, all the people leaving work in the city and heading home. They made mention of a few news reports, but then started doing that thing where they pretend not to talk about certain stuff in front of me. It gets kind of annoying, because I know they’re hiding things from me.
“Have you heard from Josh yet?” My Dad asked after a Moment of silence.
Aunt Laura shook her head no.
“Not yet,” she said.
My Dad began to pull on his goatee, something he does while he thinks.
“Well, we should start to pack up what food we can,” he finally said.
They began to shift into the kitchen, when Aunt Laura’s phone rang.
“It’s Josh,” she said excitedly. “Hello? Hold on, I’m going to put you on speaker!”
She pushed a few buttons on her phone.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” My uncle asked through the phone’s tiny speaker.
“Yes! Yes, we can hear you! Where are you?” My aunt responded.
There was a brief buzz of static.
“Work sent me to Brunswick late in the day. Had to pick up-FZZT- ladders and to-FZZT- no reception and trying to-FZZT- safe but-FZZT- will be on the way soo-”
The phone went dead.
“Hello? Hello?!” Aunt Laura screamed into the phone.
Nothing.
G-Mom and G-Dad moved over to her and held her as she began crying. We stood there, soaking in the silence. My uncle worked for a plumbing company where he delivered supplies to the job sites. He had to drive out of town a lot of times, sometimes to the other side of Georgia. From what I could understand from the phone call, he had to leave late this afternoon, putting him in Brunswick, Georgia right now. He was about an hour south of us.
“It’ll be ok Laura,” I heard my Mom say. “If anyone knows what to do now, it’s Josh. He’ll get back to you.”
“I know,” she said through sniffles. “I just wish he was here. And I wish we were all at the cabin.”
“Ok then,” my Dad said. “Well, let’s get started packing. The sooner we finish that, the sooner we can get out of here.”