Your Hand In Mine

Barbies, barbies, and more barbies. Ava has enough of those dolls for every little girl in America. She's got a castle, a cruise ship, a barn and eight cars, too. It's insane.

I'm pretty sure that when I was her age, I was fighting over Micro Machines, Teddy Ruxpins, Mr. Potato Head parts and GI Joe's with my brother. We fought so bad one time that I had to get stitches above my left eyebrow because he threw a toy car at me. I got him back the next day, though; I buried all of his Power Rangers in the backyard. It took him a week to find them.

"Shane, could you come help me out?" Ashley called.

"Sure. I'll be right there, Ash," I yelled.

"Does this mean you're done playing barbies with me?" Ava asked me.

"Yup. Until next time, though," I smiled. "I'm coming back tomorrow to help you guys, so we'll play again. Don't you worry," I said and ruffled her hair. It was impossible to say no to that little girl.

A very big grin made its way onto her pretty little face. "Okay! I can't wait."

"Me either." I walked out of her room and downstairs to the family room where Ashley was sitting. "What's up, Ash?"

"I can't lift the TV," she frowned.

"Somebody needs to hit the gym," I joked.

"Hey, this thing's heavy." I guess it was sort of big and heavy looking.

"Whatever you say. Where are we sticking this bad boy?" I said as we gripped the TV.

"Over there," Ashley stated and nodded her head in the direction of a wall that had empty floor space under it.

"Alright," I said. "Damn, this is kind of heavy," I huffed as we picked up the beast of a TV.

"Told you," she smirked as we set it down on the ground. "I can't believe we're really moving. It all happened so fast. It seems like yesterday we found out, but it was four months ago," she sighed, and then sat back down on the couch.

"I know. I'm going to miss you guys. It's not going to be the same without you here," I said with a frown, plopping down beside her.

"Ditto. But we'll be back for holidays and stuff. And you can come visit us whenever you want, too."

"I might just have to take you up on that offer," I smiled.

"As much as I'd love to just lounge here all day, we still have more shit to pack," she said and got up.

I groaned. "Help me up," I commanded and stuck my hand out for her to grab.

She pulled me up. "Lazy ass."

"I know."

We put their belongings in those ugly brown boxes all day. We got halfway done with it and decided to call it quits and get some food. We didn't have enough energy to get ready and go out eat so we just ordered some pizza.

~!@#$%^&*()_+

I pulled into my brother's driveway a little earlier today. Ten forty-eight if we want to get technical here.

Today was the last day we had to get everything packed and onto the moving trucks. Josh, Ashley, Ava, and their dog, Sammy, were heading south tomorrow.

Josh and I were assigned to the kitchen. And when I say assigned, I mean my mom literally had a clipboard and a spreadsheet with everyone's names and what room they were packing and what time they should be finished by. We're all pretty convinced that she has a severe case OCD, but she seems to enjoy it, so we just let her go and do her thing.

"You do this half, and I'll do that half," Josh said while he pointed to two opposite sides of the kitchen.

"Yeah, my ass. Your half is like, four cabinets, three drawers, and the fucking toaster. That means I'm stuck with the rest of the kitchen."

"Exactly," he smirked.

I rolled my eyes. "This is your kitchen."

"You're right. So you know what that means?" he asked. I shook my head. "I'm in charge." Wrong.

"Actually, Josh, Mom's in charge."

He laughed. "Right again. I think I'm going to get her a new high-tech clipboard for Christmas. What do you think?"

"Only you would encourage Mom to keep continuing her bizarre ways of being the leader," I told him and opened the cabinet that had all of the plates and bowls.

"It's Mom. Even if I didn't encourage it, she'd still bark out her orders. She reminds me of a drill sergeant, sometimes." I got a visual in my head of what my mother would look like in army boots and camouflage and laughed. "What?" Josh questioned as he pulled his head--that was covered with a pot--out of a cabinet.

"I was just picturing Mom in army clothes."

He scrunched up his face and cocked his head to the side. I was assuming he was picturing her, too. He shook his head as to get the image out of his mind. "Get to work," he told me and then threw a wooden spoon at me.

"Douche," I muttered and then whipped it back at him.

He pretended like it didn't hit him and then pulled out a huge ass bowl. "Remember when we stuck Rex in here and gave him a bath?" he asked me, referring to our golden retriever that died when I was in sixth grade. "Then when Mom and Dad got home and saw water and bubbles all over the place they wanted an explanation as to why the living room was destroyed. We told them that a hurricane hit, and it only wrecked the living room."

"Are you sure it wasn't that bitch of a cat, Spike? She hated me, and I never even did anything to her. Well, except for that one time when me and Lex played dress up with her. She looked cute, though. And the whole hurricane thing.. I'm pretty sure that was the worst lie anyone could have thought of. You and your stupid mouth got my coloring books and Ninja Turtles taken away from me for a whole week. I'm pretty sure I went into a deep stage of depression because Michelangelo wasn't next to me when I went to bed for seven days."

"It was Rex, I'm positive. And come on, you definitely came up with the worst lies. You pulled a wagon full of pillows over Mom's flower bed for no reason, and then said that the giant from Jack and the Beanstalk stopped by to say hi. At least hurricanes are real. Characters from books are made up."

We went on for twenty more minutes arguing over who was the worst liar. Naturally, we couldn't decide so we called our dad in to help us out.

"Dad, who's the worst liar? Me or Shane? And be completely honest," Josh told him.

"You are," he simply said and then turned around and walked away.

"I told you," I said.

"Oh, shut up."

I got up from my spot on the kitchen floor and walked over to where he was standing then grabbed his cheeks a lot like old ladies do to teenagers. "Hey there, Mr. Grumpy Gills. When life gets you down, do you want to know what you've got to do?" I said, quoting a line from Nemo.

"What?" he managed to get out, clearly not finding me funny.

"I don't know," I said and dropped my hands. "But you've still got a lot of shit to pack, so hop to it." He grunted and got back to the silverware drawer.

"So, how's life been lately?" Josh asked after five minutes went by.

"Pretty good, actually."

"Care to elaborate?" he asked.

"Well, aren't you nosey."

"Hey, can't a big brother care about his little sister?"

"I guess so," I said. "Well, I've been spending a lot of my free time with Kris and the rest of the Pens. Lexa's been pretty busy, so we haven't been hanging out as often. Work can be pretty fun at times. School isn't that bad, either. And I'm just making my rent. What about you?" I told my brother a lot. Hell, he knows more of my secrets than Lex does. As far as I know, he hasn't told anyone about them. I haven't told anybody his, either. As we got older, we used to cover for each other when we would get into trouble or when we would sneak out. He was, is, and always will be my best friend. I loved the boy no matter how much he irritated me and pushed my buttons.

"Aw, Shane. Why didn't you tell me? You know I'll help you out. You don't even have to pay me back. How bad is it?" This is the side of Josh that not many got to see--his kind and caring side. Overall, he was a great big brother.

"It's not so bad. I should probably cut back on the number of movies I buy, that would help," I said and let out a little laugh. "I'm making it, but I've been late a few times because I haven't had enough money. But don't worry, I'm going to fix it, you'll see," I smiled. "And I told you, and Mom and Dad, that I didn't want any help. I want to succeed on my own, you know that."

I heard him sigh. "You amaze me," he paused, "I won't help you this time, but only because you asked. Next time though.. Next time, I'm chipping in. Got it?"

"Okay."

"Come here," he said and opened his arms.

"Love you, big bro," I said into his chest as I gave him a hug.

"Love you, too, lil sis."

"Aunt Shane? Can we play Barbies now? Please, please, please?" Ava interrupted as she bounced up and down.

"Yeah, I could use a break from all this packing," I told her. A smile appeared on Ava's face and she started to walk down the hallway to the steps with me in tow.

"Hey, Shane?" I heard Josh say.

"Yeah?"

"Kris.. He's a keeper," he said and winked. Not that I needed my brother to approve of Kris, but it was nice to hear him say that Kris was a good guy and that he liked him.

I just rolled my eyes at my brother and walked up to Ava's room. I spent just about two hours dressing dolls and combing their hair. We were in the middle of a getting them ready for a camping trip when my mom walked in and ordered me to get back to packing.