The Spring Girls

Someone on the other side of the room coughed, and I never found out if it was on purpose, but I broke away from our kiss and John smiled at me. His hair was cut so short that the redness of his forehead shined through, and his lips were blushed from our kissing.

“I missed you this morning.” He kissed my hair. “I was so worked up after my workout, God, I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

I hugged around his neck and had turned his cheek to kiss him again when Shia came bursting back into the room. He rushed toward us and I broke away from John, pushing at his shoulders in my surprise.

“Meg. Call your mom,” Shia said urgently.

Before I could ask him why, he shoved his phone toward my face. My skin tingled all over like hundreds of little thorns were poking me all over my body. I took his phone and called my mom’s number, hoping the sinking feeling inside me was only hollowing me out because of the look on Shia’s face.

“What’s going on?” John asked Shia.

Shia didn’t respond. I knew something had happened the moment my mom picked up the phone.

“Meg, Meg, please come home. It’s your dad, please get here.” She wasn’t hysterical or sobbing; she wasn’t herself, but was still calm and clear.

“Is he—”

“No, he’s alive. But in Germany”—there was a long pause—“at Landstuhl.”

I could feel my face heating up with each thought that ran through my head. What happened? How bad is he? How are my sisters? How is Meredith? Is my dad going to die? “How bad is it?”

John’s brows were drawn together and he stared at me. Shia’s hand touched my shoulder, and my throat burned until I gave in and let the sob break through my lips.

“He’s going to be okay . . . that’s all we know right now. But I have to leave and Aunt Hannah is going to need you to help around the house. I’m flying out in two hours, so I have to leave the house now.”

“I won’t make it for at least an hour.” I had to pack my suitcase, my makeup from the bathroom sink. There was no way I would make it home in anything less than an hour.

“I know, we’ve been trying to get ahold of you. I’m sorry, Meg. But I have to go now.”

“No, it’s okay. I know, I know.”

We hung up the phone as I looked from Shia to John Brooke. Their faces looked different to me, so I looked around the room. Nothing in the Club Room looked familiar anymore. More people were filling the space, it seemed. A space that was losing its luster by the second.

My dad.

His face flashed through my mind. Him walking in the house in his ACU, taking his combat boots off at the door.

“My dad,” I managed to say.

Shia squeezed my shoulder a little harder, and I tried to control my tears when his thumb rubbed in comforting circles.

“What happened?” John asked.

“My dad was injured. We need to go. Now. Oh my God.” My heart pounded so hard in my chest that it hurt. I pushed my palm against it, hoping to stop the pain. “Oh my God.”

“John, call the car up and go upstairs and pack the bags,” Shia said, lifting his hand from my shoulder. I immediately began to shake.

“Uh, okay. Meg, I need help with your stuff.”

I tried to nod.

“Help? Just pack the bags!” Shia’s tone was impatient and demanding.

John looked at Shia and stood up. His green eyes were on me, and the inside of my brain felt like a hamster wheel.

I grabbed my phone from my purse, and the screen was full of texts and missed calls from every one of my sisters, Jo more than the rest, but Amy’s and Beth’s names were there, too, along with Meredith’s and Aunt Hannah’s. They had been calling for almost an hour. Why hadn’t I checked my phone? And how did Jo know to call Shia?

“I need to go.” I stood up. “I have to get home. Now.”

I don’t know how the minutes passed from the lobby of the hotel to the thirty-minute car ride back to Fort Cyprus. The entire chain of events was all a blur, except for Shia sitting in the back, humming every song on the radio and softly rubbing my shoulder where my skin was touching the cold glass of the window.

32

jo

Once Meredith stepped out of the house and Aunt Hannah stepped in, my sisters began to lose their minds. Amy wouldn’t stop sobbing in my dad’s chair. Beth was just staring at the wall as if it were alive and fascinating. It wasn’t. It had been over two hours since we learned that my dad had been blown up.

Blown up.

How morbid did that sound? In reality, that’s exactly what happened. Two hours since things started shuffling and shifting inside our government-owned home. It started to click instantly that our house wasn’t ours. Just like the Fort Hood house, even though I’d spent most of my life in that house. I had a scrapbook of memories in my brain. From Meg’s first kiss to when my mom lost a baby and Meg read Oh, the Places You’ll Go! to me every single night for the few weeks that Meredith spent crying at night. Amy learned to walk in that house, and I learned to read. I wrote my first essay in that house. Meredith still had it; I planned to hang it on the fridge in my first apartment in Manhattan.

When Frank got orders to Fort Cyprus, we packed up our memories in a big government-issued moving truck and followed it from the heart of Texas to the bottom leg of Louisiana. It only took us a day, including our stop in the middle of nowhere outside of Houston, where we stayed in an Americas Best Value Inn that Meg swore was haunted. We slept maybe two hours that night because of Meg’s tossing and turning and Amy’s complaining that she was afraid of whatever ghost Meg thought was fucking with us. Frank ended up doing a “ghost check,” which included his special light—aka a little flashlight key chain he carried hooked to his keys around a belt loop. He searched under the beds and in the closets. All of the rest of us would have stayed fast asleep on one of the queen beds in the double room. Two hours felt so short then, and as I stood against the wall in our Fort Cyprus living room now trying to process what was happening, two hours felt so long.

Two hours later and Meg still wasn’t here, Meredith was at the airport getting ready to board a flight to Germany, and Aunt Hannah had already found Frank’s bottle of Captain Morgan under the sink in the kitchen, right behind the trash bags and next to the Windex.

Beth was sitting on the couch, closest to the wall covered in square frames with pictures of our family. I was on my dad’s shoulders in one. I was wearing a ball cap and overalls, and we were standing in front of a bronze Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse statue. My da

d’s eyes were tightly squinting, making his face crinkle up like it does when he laughs hard. Beth was wearing acid-wash jean shorts, like she still does at fifteen. Her dark hair was almost always pulled back then in a loose ponytail just above her neckline. Meg was wearing cutoff shorts and a Tweety Bird T-shirt tied just above her belly button. We all looked so young in that picture.

The Frank that took us to Disney World and kept me up-to-date on news and jokes and music, and even corny dance moves, most likely wasn’t going to be the Frank that came home to us. I didn’t know how to process that. I knew what PTSD was, and I feared it for my dad’s sake. But I didn’t know what it would feel like to be around. I just wanted Dad to be okay.

“When will Meg be here?” Amy asked, sniffling with red-ringed eyes and pouty, chapped lips.

Beth responded in a low voice. “Soon, Amy. She’s on her way.”

Amy let out a sob and curled her knees to her chest. I wondered if it was that my dad was injured that made her cry, or the shock of it all: Meredith’s leaving; Beth’s silence; Meg’s not being here at all.

I was starting to get angrier and angrier at Meg in her absence. I didn’t think far enough to consider it unfair for me to be pissed at her. We needed her. Well, I didn’t, but Amy wouldn’t stop asking for her. My phone kept vibrating in my pocket, and Laurie’s name kept flashing. I tossed my phone onto the couch and sulked into the kitchen. I didn’t like that Amy’s little mind was probably in shock. I’d read an article online that said the brain of a young adult can literally lose a small percentage of function during the shock of losing a loved one. I knew this wasn’t as bad as losing a loved one, but I also wasn’t naïve enough to think that part of our dad wouldn’t be gone.