Crushing hard in Marine Bootcamp and Operation Semper Fi

Chapter 3

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No freaking way! My brother was standing in my door way wearing his uniform. A big grin on his face.

"Ashy!!!!"

"Brother!"

He flipped on the lights and he ran over to me, crossing the room in 3 long strides. He pulled me close to his warm, axe smelling body. His uniform scratchy against my skin.

"What are you doing back so early, David?", I mumbled into his chest, so excited about my brother being home.

He pulled back, "We have to train new recruits at Paris Island in 3 days so we got to come home for a few days".

Oh god.

He obviously didn't know I was going to be there and he most certainly didn't know I was going to be a marine like him.

"What's wrong Ash"

I was nervously fingering through my hair loooking for any kind of distraction.

"Well um,-"

"Cmon Ash tell me what's up."

He stared at me with his blue-green eyes waiting for some kind of response. I looked past him at the loose threads in my carpet avoiding his gaze.

"Iamjoiningthemarinesandgoingtobootcampin3days", I said very quickly and rather unintelligibly.

Shock washed over his rugged features his mouth went slightly agape. I did not want to meet his furious gaze, I felt alone and very small.

My door slammed shut and I looked up, David was no longer in my room. I heard a stream of curses from downstairs, no doubt who it was.

I quietly tiptoed over to the door and cracked it open. Light was flooding out of my moms door across the hall. I saw her favorite gray fuzzy slippers and then she came out of her room, her hair was wild and I saw her shiver in her violet robe. She glanced at me and looked at me questionably.

"Honey who is here?" her voice was tired and sleepy.

"Davids home and he sort of found out about me going to Bootcamp."

"He *sort of* found out, he sounds quite angry", she said making qoutations around the sort of.

She headed for the stairs and then she was gone.

I sighed, why the hell could he join the military but it's terribly bad that I want to. I heard there screaming voices from downstairs.

"Why the fuck are you letting her do this?!"

"Honey, calm down. I said she could do this and it's what she really wants".

"She is going to get killed out there!"

"If she stays here it WILL kill her, this is who she is." Robbin said.

What had happened to my sweet brother, the one who cared about my feelings. The marines had hardened him, but somewhere underneath that tough exterior was my sweet sweet David.

He had always been there for me, no matter what.

"You don't understand!" 

"Do you have any idea about what goes on when we deploy, I see things no one should ever have to see."

I cringed, but he couldn't scare me away so easily.

"Women get raped by the dumbass marines who feel lonely on the front lines, why can't she ever learn that she is only a girl with a better future then this in front of her!"

"David!", my mother yelled.

This was way to much for me, I need to get out of here.

I grabbed my running shoes out of my room and slipped down the stair and out the back door, I caught the last snippets of their conversation.

"You need to go talk to your sister David, she needs you right now."

"She could get out of her, go to college! She has so many scholarship options, just becasue I couldnt go does not mean she cant!" He shouted.

I slammed the back door and walked across the yard to the hammock that me and David had hung up so many years ago between the only two trees in our yard. 

I lay down across it and though about his words.

David could not go to college because we could not afford it and he had asked one thing of me and that was to go to college to get an education. But college was not for me and the Marines was were I wanted to be. He may never understand that but thats how it is. He couldnt force me to go to college and who knows maybe I will go later on but right now that wasnt the place for me.