"Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, Dear Jyllina. Happy Birthday to you!"
The family and a couple of friends serenaded Jyll as she blew out her camera, and Janine snapped a picture.
"The family" sitting in the dining room included Joyanna, Janine, and James; two sets of grandparents, John and Rioko on Janine's side of the family and Robert and Sherice on James's side of the family; Peaches, Russ and their daughters, Lynn and Kira (first cousins once removed to Jyll and Joy); and finally, Aunt Claudia. Janine had to bring in extra folding tables and chairs in an attempt to fit the group into the room.
A couple of friends included two kids in Jyll's eighth grade class whom she remained close to. Her only good friends were a girl named Gretchen Harris and a boy named Isaac Mitchell. And now that Jyll was in the ninth grade, she spent even less time with them than before.
Now that Janine's casual supper of hotdogs and queso dip had been eaten and the cake had been extinguished, fourteen pairs of eyes stared hungrily at the treat from the Stoneybrook Bake Shoppe. However, there was the Yamakawa tradition to keep in mind: Presents first, cake-eating second. (The Kishis had never had any tradition governing birthdays, and so the other family won in the end.)
"Here Jyll," Lynn Benedict passed her a small gift bag. "This is from Kira and me." The two girls smiled, resembling each other an awful lot when they did.
The Benedict sisters were half Japanese, half Irish/Caucasian; their mother Peaches was Japanese and their father Russ had red hair and freckles. The girls each had slightly almond shaped eyes, creamy skin, dark reddish colored hair, and even a few freckles. Their brother, Russ, Jr. had a smile that would have matched his sisters if he had been present at the gathering.
At twenty-two, Lynn Benedict was actually too old to be called a girl. When Janine was sixteen and Claudia was thirteen, Lynn had become their first cousin, and they adored her. Now "the world's cutest baby" had grown into a beautiful young woman. Lynn was now a graduate student at Southern Connecticut State University, working on her Master's degree in speech-language pathology and audiology. Her job would allow her to help people, and that was Lynn's ambition in life. She wanted to work in a hospital with patients who had suffered strokes and teach them how to read, write, and speak again. She had been inspired to choose the career by the stories she had been told about her grandmother, Mimi. Lynn never met her grandmother because she passed away when Lynn was still a baby. Mimi had suffered a stroke in her old age and died less than a year later. As far as the Kishis and the Benedicts were concerned, Mimi now watched over them from Heaven.
"There's something else," Kira gestured to the gift bag. Jyll had already pulled out a small, silver pair of earrings. She reached down deeper, and pulled out two silver sticks. "Chopsticks for your hair!"
Kira gestured to her own hair, and Jyll laughed; she was wearing a pair just like the ones she had given Jyll only hers were red. It was obviously a tiny hint, too; Jyll never did anything interesting with her hair, and she had pierced ears but they had almost grown closed twice because she hardly ever bothered with earrings. Kira thought that Jyll could look rather stunning if she tried.
Kira had an eye-catching fashion sense like Joyanna. Right now, the two girls were seated next to each other at the table, and their styles did have a lot in common. Joy was wearing an army-green skirt, a tan shirt, and a denim jacket with clunky tan sandals. Kira looked similar in dark jeans with a red belt, a black V-neck shirt, black boots and her long hair held in a loose bun with the red chopsticks. Besides having style, Kira was a good student. (If you put Joy and Jyll together, you'd have Kira.) She was only a couple of years older than Joy, even though she was Janine's cousin. Kira's mother, Peaches claimed she felt way too young to actually be a great-aunt to Joy and Jyll. Kira was now freshman at Southern Connecticut State University. She lived in an apartment near campus with her sister Lynn, and it was working out just fine. Lynn and Kira got along better now that they were older. Kira realized that there was a lot she could learn from Lynn now that she too was in college.
Besides Lynn and Kira, there was also Russ who was studying pre-med at Penn. State, having chosen to stray a bit farther from home for college. And those were the three Benedict kids, Lynn, Russ, and Kira who were no longer kids, but young adults.
"Oooh, I love this kid!" Peaches was leaning in to kiss Jyll's cheek after Jyll had graciously thanked her for the simple cream-colored sweater that was exactly the kind of thing Jyll liked to wear. Peaches was a lot of fun. She wouldn't be Aunt Peaches or Great-Aunt Peaches, but just plain Peaches to everyone she knew. Her husband, Russ had given her the nickname long ago.
The tradition of two oddly-matched sisters had begun with Jyll's grandmother, Rioko and her great-aunt Peaches. Rioko was the older sister of that pair, and she had always been the more studious and serious sister. Peaches was the younger sister, and she had always been wild, loud, and flamboyant. The tradition continued, of course, with Rioko's daughters Janine and Claudia. And finally, there were Jyll and Joy, but the tables had been turned since little sister Jyll was the genius of the pair.
"Last one," Claudia placed a small box wrapped in red paper on the table, and it matched Jyll's cheeks. The thirteen year old was far too shy to be the center of attention for so long. "From your uncle Will and me. Girls, come see Jyll open her present!"
Claudia and Will were... you guessed it... married! They had been married for eight years in fact! Although they did not have any biological children, they had adopted two girls into the family. Their daughters, Nayen and Chae were seated in the kitchen at a small table since it was a very tight squeeze in the dining room. They hadn't minded a bit; they were happily eating cake and playing with their Barbies. When Claudia called to them, they rushed in hurriedly and stood on either side of Jyll.
Seven-year-old Chae was from China, and she had been adopted when she was just a baby. Four years later, Claudia and Will adopted Nayen who had been five years old at the time and was from from Korea. (Nayen had recently turned nine.) Nayen and Chae were the farthest thing from oddly-matched sisters. They had plenty in common and got along pretty well most of the time. Claudia was amazed at how the two girls hardly ever bickered.
Claudia homeschooled her daughters, and in addition to being their full-time teacher and mother, she had fulfilled a dream of owning her own art gallery. She and Will had owned and operated the Yamakawa Contemporary Gallery as a husband-wife business team for five years. Because the gallery was located in New York City, so were Claudia, Will, Nayen, and Chae. Today Claudia and her daughters visited Stoneybrook for Jyll's birthday, but Will stayed behind to oversee an exibit at the gallery.
Jyll had known what the gift would be before she opened it. For Joy's thirteeth birthday, Aunt Claudia had given her a beautiful silver locket. Jyll opened the box, and she had indeed received a locket of her own. Both Jyll and Joy were quick to notice that it was the exact same locket that was hanging around Joy's neck.
Joy sat up straight in her chair. The same one? She felt a slight twinge in her stomach. She had suspected that Jyll might get a locket, but... the same one? The girls had never received the same gift before. Somehow Joy didn't feel like the precious keepsake that she always wore around her neck had quite as much meaning now that Jyll owned the same one. Even so, she kept her mouth shut. Jyll was beaming and showing the necklace to Gretchen.
Still stunned, Joy fingered her own silver locket, and made eye contact with her aunt. Claudia smiled and Joy forced the corners of her mouth to turn upward in response. She tried not to let on that her feelings were slightly hurt.
She and her oddly-matched sister now owned the same locket.
A/N: I'm doing away with having an entire chapter-page for author's notes. I don't like it afterall. I think it kind of threw off my update though. Let that be a lesson to everyone. Don't try to trick fanfiction.net.
A/N2: In case you noticed, a lot of these are original characters. The ones who are NOT mine are: Claudia, Janine, their parents, Will Yamakawa (but his brothers and parents are mine), Peaches, Russ, and Lynn (but her brother and sister are mine.) And of course, Mimi. Bless her heart, wasn't she wonderful?